Tag Archives: privacy

Technology and Society

Extreme irony, NSA edition.

“[They] stole sensitive, internal communications that would provide a competitor, or adversary in litigation, with insight into the strategy and vulnerabilities of the American entity.”-The United States Department of Justice indicting five Chinese officials for “cyber-espionage” for economic reasons.

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A new report based on leaks by Edward Snowden reveals the National Security Agency played a role in the monitoring of a U.S. law firm that represented the Indonesian government during trade disputes with the United States. The document notes the Australian agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested U.S. customers.”

Technology and Society

The NSA opened Pandora’s Box

For a long time, it has been a well-known fact that the rule of law in America applies separately for different groups. The old line goes something like this: steal one dollar, and you’re a thief. Steal a million, and you’re the king.

Steal one dollar, and you’re a thief. Steal a million, and you’re the king.

We saw this in 2008 where the only Goldman employee criminally prosecuted during that period was guilty for the sin of taking open-source code from Goldman he had worked on for documentation purposes—as opposed to trickery that cost America billions and perhaps even trillions in lost opportunity and jobs.

This has never been so blatantly obvious until now. In his latest revelations, Edward Snowden has claimed that the NSA spied on human rights groups in America, and used algorithms to tease out metadata from groups of individuals never suspected of plotting or doing actual terror attacks—individuals who were “guilty by association”.

This breaks so much of the spirit that governs the Constitution, but more importantly, it breaks so many laws that this assertion is breath-taking in of itself.

If these assertions are true, we are back to the days of the old, illegal, and covert COINTELPRO program, a FBI program that unscrupulously, and covertly monitored such radicals as Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein for advocating on civil rights.

Imagine a world where I could come under surveillance and special targeting for writing this piece, and you could as well by reading it.

This may be the world we live in now.

The NSA has opened Pandora’s box.

It is now the duty of those working for a free, fair, and open Internet to close it back up—no matter how hard that may be.

Telling the Truth to the NSA with code(love)

Telling the Truth to the NSA with code(love)

Technology and Society

A Letter I Sent To My Elected Official on Privacy

With the latest revelations on the British security services tapping into webcams and storing video data en masse, I don’t think it’s acceptable that anybody can sit back and not register their voice in the face of our eroding collective privacy.

I highly encourage everybody to send letters to their elected official. Here is mine:

I’m writing because with each passing day, revelations are getting worse and worse about the surveillance capabilities of security agencies. Just today the Guardian revealed that the GCHQ, our British allies, collect webcam recordings en masse, including sexually explicit material shared between two consenting individuals.

We know the Harper administration is stuck as being part and parcel of Five Eyes, and that the CESC has conducted spying for the NSA, using Canada’s good name for nefarious purposes.

I write this in the hope that you are aware of this issue, and to inquire as to what you and your party are doing with this regards, and what active efforts you will be making in the future to shed awareness about this creeping invasion on our privacy. As Canadians, we should be protected under Section 8 of the Charter with regards to reasonable expectation of privacy, but I do not want this to constantly shift because security agencies continually push us down the slippery slope Senator Church so eloquently warned Americans about during the Church Committee:

“If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

“If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny.”

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

Let me know how I can contribute to any efforts with this regards. I hope you are well, and eagerly await any response you have on this topic.

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Why is this debate so important?

 

Longform Reflections

An Open Email to the NSA (CC Supreme Court)

Dear NSA,

Twenty years ago, you would have had the pleasure of receiving this in a nice white envelope, but now we know worse. I’m sending this to you virtually, as many of us will, because it only me one click of a button to do so.

We know worse: a large number of us have chosen to sacrifice privacy for convenience or vanity, and I am no exception. I post everything from the most banal to the most profound about myself online. If someone were so inclined, they could build a pretty complete sketch of who I am from the different digital portraits I have constructed over the ages.

I have also connected with more people than ever online. Studies will show that this probably makes me more stressed, and more narcissistic. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that the number of connections I and everyone around me have make it increasingly likely that our digital metadata will be snagged into your watching eyes.

Using a nifty digital application, also one click of a button away, I’ve ascertained that if anybody in my network of 22 million friends of friends…of friends is up to something potentially nefarious, you could come knocking. That’s if I was American. As a Canadian, I don’t even get this courtesy before you share the data with my domestic security agency.

It’s a funny thing when you make laws that protect only domestic citizens, because everybody is a foreigner somewhere. I wonder if the GCHQ in Britain, with which you are closely collaborating with, have the same respect for the privacy of Americans as you espouse when they are rifling through Gmail for you.

Five Eyes with code(love)

Five Eyes with code(love)

Perhaps, however, your intent is benign. After all, you are balanced by law that binds you only to search for metadata: the fact that you can’t rifle through the actual data should count for something right?

I work in technology. I’m keenly aware of how metadata can be used to trace connections between people, their location, and their habits. It’s perhaps why you and a million other companies are finding it valuable to scoop out this data.

The same technology that allows us to hail cabs at the push of a button, can also be used to track us within meters. If I were to go to an abortion clinic, or a therapist, my parents might not know, but you will.

The connections between me the peers I choose to connect with most frequently can also be equally revelatory. They can reveal the organization I work for, but also my political affiliation or sexual orientation, even if I have not revealed them to anybody.

NSA Listens with code(love)

NSA listens with code(love)

You may ask why we care less if Google has our data but not you.

Until Google gets the robot army they are seeking to build, and has the power to imprison me by force, me and many others will care, but care less that Google has that information about us.

Google buys robot firm Boston Dynamics. ruh roh

You may ask why we should care about this metadata being revealed about ourselves.

The first reason would be because as we relax privacy constraints around all of our information, it is highly possible that financial information, and health information will fall into your hands as well: this has already happened to a certain degree.

The second reason is because you have a history of tracking notable political and business figures for reasons that do not correlate well with national security. In fact, your sister agency, the FBI, often still tracks people for their political beliefs.

The third reason is because, with lax oversight, your propensity to lie to elected representatives, and consequently to the American people, makes you a hard agency to trust with anything.

These are harsh truths, but the American nation was built on these truths. And one overriding truth is the following: absolute power corrupts absolutely. While it is far from me to suggest that you have absolute power at the moment, it is certain that your agency could help somebody obtain it, and it is certain that right now, you are playing around the lines of a balance of powers that has served the American people well for centuries.

“[If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.

-Senator Church of the Church Committee

You may ask why it matters if you are authorized by elected representatives to do what you do, even barring how unclear that is given how legislation has been warped to fit your needs.

On this, we do have an agreement of sorts. I do think it sad that security has come to override every other concern, and perhaps it is right that America needs a change in her elected officials if they have allowed you to get away with this. However, I also do know that you are being sly on this point. Consider your interpretation of Patriot Act Section 215 and how you have overstepped it.

So I write this in the open spirit you have abandoned for the American people: please consider reining yourself in. We live in a new age, and there should be new rules.

We live in a new age, and there should be new rules.

If you ignore this advice, I have kindly CCed your friends at the Supreme Court. I am sure they have much more to say on this than I do.

Sincerely yours,

(Well, you can probably figure out who)

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For a look at how the Supreme Court might respond, click here.

Longform Reflections

The Supreme Court on Digital Privacy

In a talk at Harvard Law School, Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer summarized the “mechanistic” formula the Supreme Court uses to determine which cases it rules upon: the case has to pose a important legal question with federal implications that different federal courts have inconsistently ruled on, with differing opinions on the same issue.

With the recent ruling of Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia that decried NSA surveillance programs as “almost Orwellian” and most likely violating the Constitution, and another ruling from Federal Judge William Pauley that declared the NSA programs essential on the war on terror, and therefore legal, the path towards the Supreme Court is now clearer than ever. The Department of Justice is appealing Judge Leon’s anti-surveillance ruling, while the ACLU is appealing Judge Pauley’s pro-surveillance ruling.

The likelihood of yet another landmark Supreme Court case on par with New York Times Co. v. United States—-when the Supreme Court ruled that the New York Times could reveal the classified Pentagon Papers which bluntly laid out how the government had lied to the public about the Vietnam War—-has never been higher. Daniel Ellsberg has often been compared to Edward Snowden. He boldly announced “there has been no more significant disclosure in the history of our country” than those of Edward Snowden—including his own leak of the Pentagon Papers. If a ruling on the matter from the Supreme Court is forthcoming, he will be proved right.

“There has been no more significant disclosure in the history of our country.”—Daniel Ellsberg on Edward Snowden

While President Obama has rejected most of the substantive findings of his own commission on the NSA—mostly maintaining the status quo on privacy in the digital age—if there is a privacy-affirming ruling from the Supreme Court, subsequent legislative action may also follow from Congress, reining in the powers of the NSA to collect and analyze large amounts of digital metadata. It will be one of the most significant rulings in modern legal history, and the definitive opinion that will shape privacy in the digital age.

The Importance of Privacy with code(love)

The Importance of Privacy with code(love)

Is such a ruling even possible?

Let us consider the simplifying rubric of liberals and conservatives for dividing the justices. This is something that the justices themselves do not like, and one that often falls to the wayside on a myriad of different issues, but it is a good rubric for an overview for this case. Let us also assume that the Supreme Court will accept the duty of considering this issue.

The liberal justices would consist of Associate Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, all appointed by Democrat presidents Clinton and Obama.

The conservative justices would consist of Chief Justice Roberts appointed by Republican president George W. Bush, and Associate Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, appointed by Republican presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

The liberal justices voted as a bloc together in CLAPPER, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ET AL. v. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA ET AL. to try to challenge the constitutionality of warrantless wiretaps, and one should expect much the same from them in any future case.

Of the conservative justices, Roberts, has a tendency to try to attempt home-run majority rulings for his legacy of being a “by-the-rules” arbitrator—-the most notable case being his majority opinion upholding Obamacare. His pronouncement of privacy as being the paramount constitutional issue facing the Supreme Court would seem to define him as the most likely conservative justice to deliver an opinion with the liberal justices. With that said, his previous defense and work on behalf of controversial Supreme Court nominee Bork—-whose originalist theory of the Constitution claimed a lack of basis for a constitutional right to privacy—-may indicate otherwise.

Justice Kennedy—the typical swing vote for landmark rulings—cannot be counted on when it comes to privacy issues. His majority opinion on Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives granted a “special needs” exemption that allowed the Fourth Amendment to be ignored if it was deemed to be in the overriding interest of public safety. This is the basis of the NSA’s metadata collection program.

Justice Alito subscribes to a mosaic theory of privacy that argues that a search is a collection of aggregated actions: so, while use of a GPS device to track a vehicle in one case may not be construed as a “search” under the Constitution, the long-term of use of said GPS device could be considered a “search”. This would seem rather favorable to Justice Alito’s tendency for a pro-privacy ruling, given what we know about the metadata collection capabilities of our phones, which can track our location within meters for months or years.

However, Justice Alito also shows a strong deference to executive power, and national security agencies, part of the reason why President George W. Bush had him confirmed in the first place. While working for President Reagan’s Justice Department, he argued that the attorney general should be immune from prosecution for wiretapping Americans.

Justice Thomas and Scalia agree with Justice Alito on this point: all three share an ideological bent that presupposes that the “national security agencies” know best for the nation’s security, and should therefore not be overly constrained. Justice Scalia has also called a general constitutional right to privacy “blah, blah, blah, garbage.”

“Blah, blah, blah, garbage.”—Justice Scalia on a general right to privacy in the Constitution.

The votes might be there. It probably hinges on Justice Roberts, or maybe Justice Alito. Significant legislative and judicial changes to how the American government deals with privacy issues could happen within a couple of years. We could see national security agencies that are more accountable and transparent to the people they are serving.

Barring that, the discussion sparked from a transparent argument in an open court of law about privacy issues will bring much reason and thought on a topic that is critical to all of us in our new digital age. To quote Justice Brandeis, a historical giant of the Supreme Court, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”.