Snowden and the NSA

[sukeban]

We should all know the news by now, but if you don't, here's some background on the story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files?guni=Network%20Front:crumb%20nav:Position1:NSA%20files

 

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Long story short, what many citizens of the USA and Europe already suspected to be true, that the government backs up and analyzses nearly all of our internet activity and telecommunications, has been proven true by a whistleblower, Edward Snowden. As such, I'd like to pose some questions:

 

1. What is your opinion of Snowden and his actions? Heroic or otherwise? Do you care that he likely broke the law or does his contribution to the public debate over privacy outweigh this? What do you think will ultimately happen to Snowden?

 

2. What is your opinion regarding NSA surveillance? Is privacy a thing of the past? Where is the ideal equilibrium between privacy and security in the present age? Where do private companies like Google fit into this equation for you?

 

3. Leaders of both parties are united in support of NSA surveillance, yet the libertarian elements of the right and the left are also in consonance in its condemnation. What do you think of this unusual political alliance? Would these leaks potentially change how you vote in an election?

 

4. For all the Europeans out there, how do you feel about being surveiled by the USA without any theoretical constitutional protections? Your governments appear to be sub-contracting data directly from the NSA in order to circumvent laws against its direct collection.

 

5. Many technologists (and internet companies) advocate that we should get used to "living a life online" with our actions on display for all the world. Is this a wise course of action? If not, is it inevitable anyway?

 

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My personal take:

 

Snowden should be commended for his courage and his actions celebrated as perhaps the apogee of modern civilian patriotism. He has bucked current government policy and has instead proven his fidelity to the broadly libertarian values that the United States was founded upon. He is likely a criminal, but this is, at best, a quaternary consideration in my mind given his enormous contribution to our understanding of goverrnment power.

 

I have also been quite annoyed at the flippant response from Obama and senior Congressional leaders, who have publicly announced that they "welcome a debate" while simultaneously announcing that "a balance has already been struck." I am appreciative of Senators like Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and even Rand Paul for taking more libertarian positions on this issue and I am hopeful that the privacy debate will persist in American political discourse. Should candidates run on this issue in 2014, they will have my ear and potentially my vote, regardless of their party.

 

Beyond that, my primary concern with this revelation is not so much what it can do now, but what it will enable governments to do in the future--in other words, its capability rather than its current intention. I do not believe that Obama harbors any extraordinary (in a literal sense) authoritarian ambitions, but I believe that any American can recognize that the Executive has been steadily accumulating power over the last several decades and that one cannot predict the actions of an administration many years down the line. A secret surveillance system designed to apprehend foreign extremists might experience "mission creep" over the next several decades and will, if left unchecked, arrive at a point where we are reliant on the benevolence of the government not to abuse it.

 

More fundamentally, I worry at a world in which our every action and life event is digitized and permanently catalogued online for later retrieval. This might not be such a huge issue for older folks (unless they are libertarian-minded), but for today's youth and the youth of tomorrow, this is an almost existentially grave concern. Given the almost impossibility of living a life entirely offline, children being born today will have almost every facet of their lives recorded on the internet, from their parents posting their baby pictures on Facebook to potentially their grades and school assignments (online classes and work submission), to the entirety of their correpondences (email, instant message, VoIP, video chat, cell phone, text messages), to their internet activity (home IP, visited IPs, website logins), to their physical appearance, friends, and life story (Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+), to the innermost thoughts of a person (private blog, personal website), to their financial records and purchase history (Amazon, Paypal, banking records, ATMs), to the contents of their hard drive (cloud storage/computing), to their precise physical location at all times (cell phone, car GPS, IP from WiFi). Beyond the potential for obvious government abuse (aggregate all of that information in real-time and you would have Big Brother++), you just have the general creepiness of having everything you do exposed to the rest of the world--whether that be the government, a creepy ex-boy/girlfriend, a potential employer, Russian hackers, your friends, or a random person looking to copy your awkward photograph from the 80s for a new internet meme.

 

This, to me, is just creepy in all possible ways. And yes, you don't have to use many of these services, but how many of you honestly think that the Postal Service, land lines, and potentially even hard currency will be around 50 years from now? In a matter of course, all activity will be conducted online by default and the only alternative will be to live a life like Thoreau or else retreat to private networks. But then how shady will you look when the government wants to know why you rely on proxy servers and local intranets instead of the mainstream internet? In innumerable ways the internet is the most beneficial invention of the modern era, but "living life" online appears to me to be dystopian by design.

Edited June 12, 2013 by sukeban

[TRoaches]

1. Heroic, considering the monster that he is antagonizing, the fact that he is not hiding behind anonymity, and the privileged and lucrative position that he gave up in the process. I had initially glanced over the story of the leak and did not pay much attention to it because I assumed it was done anonymously, as these things usually are, and because the claims being made were the type that seemed obvious to anyone who has been paying attention yet frustratingly unverifiable without a solid source. This interview with Snowden made be really admire him. He elaborates on just how cushy his position was, and even goes into the fact that the information that he released was worth a fortune on the black market. He chose to share it for free, and at great risk to himself. He briefly touches on the possibility of being "rendered" by the CIA, or retaliation being brought against him via their third party partners in organized crime. It is rather chilling to hear him say "that's a fear I'll live under for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be".

 

2. The surveillance itself isn't necessarily a bad thing and is a inevitable side effect of living in a technological society. The fact is that all of the information that the NSA is gathering through this program is stuff that people are willingly putting out there to be collected. The alternative is to live off the grid without a bank account, credit cards, the internet, etc. It may be a crummy choice, but it is still a choice. Data mining is something that private businesses have been doing for years as well, just not on the same scale as the NSA. They are basically a data mining company with unlimited access and a near-unlimited budget. The scary part of what Snowden is exposing is not that the program exists, but that it is set up in such a way that it can be so easily abused without oversight.

 

3. This is one of those issues that serves to illustrate the absurdity of the one dimensional left v right paradigm of political thought. The two major parties are always in agreeance when it comes to the really important stuff and put on a big theatrical presentation of disagreeing about more petty issues.

 

5. They advocate it because their business model relies on it. We could choose not to use their services. I have never understood why people who are concerned to any extent about privacy choose to use things like Facebook. Cell phones are an inherent invasion of privacy. There was recently some outcry about a court ruling that one does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy while using a cell phone. I agreed with the ruling, because I can't imagine why one would have a reasonable expectation of privacy while operating a radio transmitter that is being bounced through a privately owned relay service.

Edited June 11, 2013 by TRoaches

[sukeban]

(Hmm, I thought this topic would be more popular, ah well....)

 

Largely in agreement with you, Roaches:

 

1. Unfortunately, he now seems to be "missing."

 

2. I agree that some degree of surveillance is necessary in the information age, but I seriously doubt that al-Qaida uses Facebook or any other American social media. I mean, if average Americans already believed that the internet was tapped, it seems like basic Terrorism 101 to assume the same and abstain from its use. Foreign ISPs and telephony, I can agree with, but you would have to be the worst terrorist in world history to correspond using Facebook or Google Chat. Big Data seems more designed to catch home-grown radicals and only then after they have already committed a crime. I've about 5% confidence that the NSA's algorithms can predict behavior ahead of time, and even then that would probably entail so many false positives and incidental invasions of privacy that it would not at all be worth it from a societal perspective. Plus, even if their algorithms were predictive, do we really want the government judging the thoughts and beliefs of every American by default and placing us into boxes for national security purposes, especialy when its definition is subject to change from administration to administration?*

 

3. Absolutely.

 

5. I also agree, though I would seek to draw a bit more of a line between services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. and services that are more fundamental to one's existence in the modern world such as an email client, web browser, ISP, cell phone, etc. The first group is clearly a user opt-in and I do agree that users should have little to no expectation of privacy when these services' raison d'etre is to broadcast one's life to the rest of the world. The second group, I would argue, has an implied expectation of privacy because these services have effectively replaced the protected means of correspondence and information exchange that preceded them. The "papers and effects" referred to in the Fourth Amendment reflected the state-of-the-art in 1791, a time when communication was conducted via the physically written word or through face-to-face verbal discourse. Like certain other provisions of the Constitution that have not aged particularly well, it would appear to be an abandonment of the original intent of the Amendment if its implication is not updated to take into account the modern day standards.**

 

I would accept that companies may collect data on users of their services, as they are not public utilities--but this should always be stated up-front rather than obscured (Google). If privacy becomes a dominant concern, the market should theoretically provide for more anonymous services supported by alternative business models. In my mind, however, there should be a brick wall between the private sector and government, with that wall breachable only by an individualized warrant obtained via a court and supported by probable cause. It is one thing for the government to obtain information on an as-needed basis, with the information remaining in private hands, and quite another for it to maintain databases as a matter of course, searching them at their own convenience and maintaining them in perpetuity. I don't particularly trust internet companies, but they are at least checked by the profit motive; whereas a secretive spy agency whose every doing is classified isn't really able to be checked by anything. So if information must be collected, I'd far rather it be done by a privately held company than by a clandestine government agency.

 

*Not saying that you advocate this, just for the sake of argument.

 

**I am obviously not a Constitutional scholar.

Edited June 12, 2013 by sukeban

[Nintii]

_{Remember this gem ... back in 2012}

_{"Information released last month by the German government shows that between 2008-2011, representatives from the FBI; the U.K.’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA); and France’s secret service, the DCRI, were among those to have held meetings with German federal police about deploying “monitoring software” used to covertly infiltrate computers.}

_{The disclosure was made in response to a series of questions tabled by Left Party Member of Parliament Andrej Hunko and reported by German-language media. It comes on the heels of an exposé by the Chaos Computer Club, a Berlin-based hacker collective, which revealed in October that German police forces had been using a so-called "Bundestrojaner” (federal Trojan) to spy on suspects".}

_{But it is the German government’s response to a series of questions recently submitted by Hunko that is perhaps the most revealing to date. In a letter from Secretary of State Ole Schröder on March 6, which I have translated, Hunko was informed that German federal police force, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), met to discuss the use of monitoring software with counterparts from the U.S., Britain, Israel, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Austria. The meetings took place separately between Feb. 19, 2008, and Feb. 1, 2012. While this story has been covered in the German media, it hasn’t received the English-language attention it deserves.}

_{Both the FBI and Britain’s SOCA are said to have discussed with the Germans the “basic legal requirements” of using computer-monitoring software. The meeting with SOCA also covered the “technical and tactical aspects” of deploying computer infiltration technology, according to Schröder’s letter. France’s secret service and police from Switzerland, Austria, Luxemburg, and Liechtenstein were separately briefed by the BKA on its experiences using Trojan computer infiltration.}

_{The use of highly intrusive surveillance technologies in any context demands some level of democratic scrutiny. How many police and government agencies are sanctioned to use hacking and Trojans as a means to surveil their citizens, how frequently does it happen, on what grounds, and with what oversight? The fallout from Germany’s Bundestrojaner scandal may have shed some much-needed light on this murky world, but still we are left with many more questions than answers.}

_{(Quotes from Slate ... a Division of The Washington Post company)}

 

Well in the light of the Snowden revelations it seems that we have just a few more answers ... don't we !

This is merely a continuation, another ripple in the water, so to speak, of the ongoing deceit we face from

an ever encroaching attempt at organised society ... wonder what's next ... oh yes, the chip, LOL.

 

Oops silly me, that's only going to happen after the universal Patriot Act.

 

And for your entertainment I present ...

 

_{ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/patriot-act-nsa-surveillance-review}

Edited June 12, 2013 by Nintii

[JimboUK]

As a European I look across the Atlantic with ever increasing alarm, what should be a beacon of freedom and liberty is fast degenerating into a police state, not that's it much better on this side of the pond. Snowden should be given a medal, while his revelations aren't surprising he has put this into the public domain at considerable risk to himself. The politicians reaction to this has been predictable, we're abusing you to protect you from the bogey man, if you've nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear ect.

 

Anyone expecting opposition to this is in for a long wait, in Europe and the U.S we don't have Party A vs Party B any more, we have a political class vs the people, they've long given up the pretence that they serve the people, they see themselves as rulers and act accordingly. The lack of democracy in the E.U is even worse, we only elect mangers, managers who mange on behalf of the real government in Brussels, a government full of crooks and parasites. I'd have been more surprised if the E.U wasn't involved in this, the E.U has been riding roughshod over the wishes of the people for years, it sees it's citizens as a problem that needs controlling.

 

I don't know what the answer is, nothing can be done until people stand up and say enough is enough, sadly we have a population more interested in reality shows than they are the people abusing them.

[Lisnpuppy]

I saw a program not long ago in which a scientist talked about "information" and how the collecting of it can be used for good and ill. However the main point he made was that we need to look at our personal information (not just financial but our internet activity, our likes, our purchasing records, all that kind of stuff) as a COMMODITY. That it is something we have ownership of and we need to protect it and address who can and can't/should and should not have access to it.

 

This is a perfect example of that.

[Hardwaremaster]

Hello everyone, saw this thread and figured i might as well make my first post. With regards to this, mess, i saw a interesting article on Forbes. Not sure how to Hyperlink but here it is: the Keyword list is on page two. Now I got to thinking if its Terrorists their worried about, why are all the Keywords in English, shouldn't they be in Arabic? :huh:

 

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/

Edited June 12, 2013 by Hardwaremaster

[JimboUK]

Hello everyone, saw this thread and figured i might as well make my first post. With regards to this, mess, i saw a interesting article on Forbes. Not sure how to Hyperlink but here it is: the Keyword list is on page two. Now I got to thinking if its Terrorists their worried about, why are all the Keywords in English, shouldn't they be in Arabic? :huh:

 

---------------------------------------------------

http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/

 

Terrorism is the excuse, not the reason.

[Hardwaremaster]

Hello everyone, saw this thread and figured i might as well make my first post. With regards to this, mess, i saw a interesting article on Forbes. Not sure how to Hyperlink but here it is: the Keyword list is on page two. Now I got to thinking if its Terrorists their worried about, why are all the Keywords in English, shouldn't they be in Arabic? :huh:

 

---------------------------------------------------

http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/

Yeah, i get what your saying. Browsing the Internet i found this Washingtonblog, lots of interesting links regarding subjects related to that particular issue. Looks like someones been busy. :ermm:

 

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http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/u-s-government-planned-indefinite-detention-of-citizens-long-before-911.html

[TRoaches]

What I am most curious about with this story is what the process is like to bring the private companies on board. None of this would be possible without access to the communications companies that the monitoring is being done via. I figure that there are two possible ways that this access can be achieved: either with the cooperation of the private company or covertly by inserting an agent as an employee. I would guess that the majority is done through cooperation because it is more reliable than using an agent who could be fired at any time, thus ending the connection.

 

So the next question is why do the companies cooperate? It could be because the NSA asked really nicely, but I imagine that there must be some greater incentive. They could offer money, or some sort of protection or immunity promise. Given the nature of the NSA it would probably be easy to dig up some dirt on any of these companies and leverage it against them. It could be a high-ranking official at the company who practices some sort of social deviance i.e. drug use, adultery, pedophilia, etc. Or it could be a questionable business practice, like money laundering or sheltering. In either case the NSA could offer a deal: Allow us to plug this dongle into your system and we will not let our friends at the FBI know about what you are doing.

 

Whatever the reason for the cooperation I fault the companies that are participating more than I do the NSA. With any government bureaucracy it is nearly impossible to narrow the blame for any given policy or action down to a single person or small group. This program was not the brainchild of a single person or administration. It is the cumulative result of many years worth of policies and programs that could probably be traced all the way back to WWII. WIth a private company, however, it is easy to find the right person or people to blame. They sit in the boardroom, or at the heads of the departments involved.

 

I think throwing our rage at the NSA is a big waste of time. They do not concern themselves with public opinion of what they do. The private companies, however, are extremely concerned with the public's opinion of them. If people let it be known that they do not approve of their information being passed wholesale to the NSA it would possibly be more effective at slowing it down and in bringing light to the situation.