Quinn Norton has written an interesting article on how insecure our online communications are and why we seem culturally incapable of doing anything about it. Part of his explanation is that the Intelligence Community is itself living in a world without privacy so they’ve lost touch with the value of privacy. What they value is what most people value, which is having their job be as easy as possible.
In theory, the reason we’re so nice to soldiers, that we have customs around honoring and thanking them, is that they’re supposed to be sacrificing themselves for the good of the people. In the case of the NSA, this has been reversed. Our wellbeing is sacrificed to make their job of monitoring the world easier. When this is part of the culture of power, it is well on its way to being capable of any abuse.
Put in the simplest terms, the NSA is not at all interested in helping us keep our communications secure. They are interested in keeping our communications as insecure as possible. Perhaps there are other factions within the government who make it their business to have our interests at heart, but they don’t have the same technological know-how and resources as the NSA.
They’re not on your side when it comes to privacy or any of the attendant issues surrounding privacy.
But I do think they – and everyone else in the intelligence “community” – is legitimately horrified that they “let” 9/11 happen. To the degree that national security is “on our side” it’s in keeping the nation secure from attack.
But you’re right, they’ve gotten carried away with what they CAN do rather than what they should.
But wasn’t it not so much an intelligence failure as it was a failure of the administration to act on it?
Right. But then if scooping up everything is supposed to protect us, why did the Boston Marathon bombing happen? Also, is the NSA really just acting like Big Brother? Are they blackmailing people like Yertle the Turtle and Mini-me?
Rule 1: Secrecy is corrosive of democracy.
Rule 2: Absolute secrecy is absolutely corrosive of democracy.
In 1947 and 1949, the Congress set up institutions of absolute secrecy, which over the past 60 or so years have been leaky enough not to be absolutely corrosive of democracy.
After the end of the Cold War, fearing loss of funding the military invented missions and cloaked them in more and more secrecy. And with the arrival of the internet, the intelligence community sought Total Information Awareness–the all-seeing eye–even to the point of sabotaging crytography standards.
It is woefully apparent that Congress lacks the power to stop this activity. The President might lack the power to stop this activity as well, although he comes off as not wanting to stop it.
Passage of the USA Freedumber bill as it stands expands and legitimizes in the courts (as if they needed any additional legitimacy from judges who have forgotten the Bill of Rights) the NSA’s ability to conduct total dragnet surveillance contrary to the Fourth Amendment.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Democrats for all the world look like they are taking a dive this year so as to ensure gridlock and unaccountability.
I have argued before and will say again that it is well past time to repeal the national security and intelligence institution authorization made during the post-World War II Red Scare and the legislation rushed through under threat of anthrax attack after 9/11. Members of Congress should not be muzzled about financial and operational abuses by intelligence agencies. And the general public should not be clandestinely propagandized by the military and intelligence agencies in the name of “information warfare”.
The American public currently are low-information voters because that is the way that people making the decisions that run our lives and our government want them to be.
I really have very low expectations of privacy; they tend to relate to personal modesty than being concerned about the ‘security’ of my communications. Every time I get an alert from a bank or healthcare provider telling me they’ve had a breach I believe less and less that I have any control over my personal information, or that I can actually do anything to prevent identity theft. All my information is out there somewhere in an unsecured form. Frankly, Target spies on me more than the NSA.
exactly the only way anyone’s info is secure is to not use the internet or a telephone, if you can do that you’ll have privacy otherwise expect some one somewhere to be able to see your stuff either in government or at a private company like Google
Well that’s one way to look at it; that “this is just how stuff has to be.” As I tried to emphasize in the previous thread, Greenwald, Snoweden, and many of their supporters are either oblivious to this fact of corporate spying, ambivalent, or usually completely indifferent to it.
But it doesn’t have to be. Google’s entire enterprise and wealth is precipitated by their spying. That is their business model. But why does their business model have to be legal? There was a time when advertisers, for example, had to just take a guess and send out ads nilly willy and hope that they reached people rather than using their data to tailor it specifically to each person.
I don’t expect my position to be popular; most people don’t even give a fuck about Google’s spying, and don’t see it as nefarious (not even Greenwald). After all, people “willingly” gave their information. But is it willingly giving it? In general it’s almost become a necessity.
Their model either needs to be unacceptable to society, or made illegal. I guess society (for now) has chosen it’s acceptable, but should it be, and does it need to “be this way?”
It’s easy for us to take positions on this, but we all rely on data to make our lives easier. My google phone can tell me traffic because of the data from all those gps enabled phones with data. I can use that data in one of their apps live if I turn my gps on, which I do sometimes. I know my cell phone company knows approximately where I am all the time and can pin me down with a ping. My cable box keeps track of what I am watching and could tell my cable company my viewing habits. The data’s out there, it’s how it’s used that should be important.
Government has rules they have to follow, we should be electing better congressscritters to write better rules for government AND business.
As I tried to emphasize in the previous thread, Greenwald, Snoweden, and many of their supporters are either oblivious to this fact of corporate spying, ambivalent, or usually completely indifferent to it.
Really? As they’ve pointed out, and Emptywheel too, corporations like Google do what the NSA wants them to. The telecommunications companies as well.
Yes, really.
`Twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads`
You’re so obsessed with what the “government” is telling Google to do, ignoring the fact that Google’s entire bread and butter is fucking spying. If the NSA didn’t exist, or their other 16 sister spying agencies, or even their contractors, Google’s revenue and business model is spying.
Really the fundamental problem is that we built the internet. First you decide to connect every computer on the planet to every other computer on the planet, and that’s awesome, but then you start to worry about privacy and security. So you put up a bunch of firewalls, and now your data is security, only there have to be holes in the firewalls or you’re no longer on the internet. So you start getting into encryption and so forth, but at the same time the interconnections are getting more and more elaborate at a pace that’s still accelerating, making security an ever greater challenge.
So honestly, the best we can expect is that our financial data is reasonably secure. Beyond that, the whole idea of online privacy is a fantasy.
NSA wants what Target has on everyone too. How else can you post-facto find everyone who bought a pressure cooker in Boston in the weeks leading up to the 2013 Boston Marathon.
And once it has all of this information, it can do its “Big Data” analysis of patterns and if your purchase of a pressure cooker and umpteen other factors that correlate with what is known of the Boston Marathon bomber match to closely, you become a suspect before a crime has occurred.
And once you become a suspect, law enforcement treats you as if you have been convicted and presses you to confess (or alternatively tries to convert you into an informer for “others in the conspiracy”).
And the system becomes one of manufacturing continuing threats in order to justify continuing and increased funding.
It is helpful to read about how the Stasi’s operations evolved to understand that run-amok bureaucratic process that “makes sense” to everyone involved–until it doesn’t. And winds up hurting lots of innocent people who just had their information at Target picked up.
The problem is the arrogance of the bureaucratic assumption of guilt and the arrogance of the Big Data method, which is correlation without proof of actual relationship. Bad coincidences, in other words.
Part of his explanation is that the Intelligence Community is itself living in a world without privacy so they’ve lost touch with the value of privacy.
Quinn is a she, not a he.
Why, it almost sounds like it would be prudent to be hostile to the NSA.
Love your hopeful optimism, the best that can be said, IMHO, is that there are some government activities that coincide with public interests, with proper oversight. Like the highway programs. The contracting companies will, most of the time, provide roads and infrastructure in return for our money. But the money is their goal not the public’s interest.
The intelligence community and the MIC generally have proven time and again that the money and power are the thing. Public interest, reasonable results are only window dressing, an unintended byproduct or non-existent in the formulation.
The CDC and the NOAA would be the only serious contenders for having the public interest as a primary driver.