Yesterday, we learned from Edward Snowden that the NSA
has penetrated the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data
centers around the world, complementing their court-supported compromise of
American technology companies at home with good-old-fashioned clandestine compromise
of those same companies abroad.
Think about it.
That’s hundreds of millions of records from hundreds of
millions of users – many of them Americans, whether at home or abroad – hoovered up
on a dynamic basis, stored and analyzed in massive secretive government data
centers. With zero effective oversight.
That’s a virtual wet dream for ex-Soviet era KGB and East
German Stasi types who once relied on tracking and monitoring citizens based on
reams of paper and warehouses of filing cabinets, as opposed to, for instance,
the NSA’s Utah data center with the capacity to store 5 Zettabytes (5 billion
Terabytes) of information.
Indeed, courtesy of www.opendatacenter.de: “Assuming that a filing cabinet with 60 files
(30,000 pages of paper) uses up 0,4 m², which would correspond to 120 MB of
data, the printed out Utah data center would use up 17 million square
kilometers.” (Note: The Continental U.S. is about 10 million square kilometers).
But I digress.
Ours is a country built on the rule of law and respect for –
fealty to – the rights of citizens. Both
of these fundamental precepts are increasingly at risk in terms of what has
become an out-of-control technology-run-amok surveillance state spawned by our post-Soviet
era government-inspired culture of fear.
Yes, we should expect our government to engage in
appropriate intelligence gathering activities for national security
purposes. And yes, we do have laws and
oversight processes in place to govern the activities of our intelligence
agencies to preclude abuse, at home or abroad.
But, advances in technology and storage and processing have ridiculously
eclipsed legal or oversight regimes, resulting in rampant abuse and invasion of
privacy, at home and abroad.
Do I trust my government to do what is “right?” Perhaps. Today.
But who knows what the world will look like in ten years. Look, I’m sorry, but given everything that has
been unveiled since June, and the consistent exposure by each succeeding
revelation of the latest round of government “clarifications” being, often as
not, patently untrue, I simply cannot accept nor trust government protestations
that “there is no abuse” and “there are laws to protect you,” etc.
I would prefer to benefit from a “trust-but-verify” process
(due props to President Reagan). Such,
however, thus far, seems an impossibility, in terms of the complexity of the
technologies involved, the vast, endless amounts of data being mined, analyzed
and stored, and the iron curtain of government secrecy cast over what the NSA
and other agencies may or may not be doing with that data. King George’s “writs of assistance” that our
Founding Fathers so valiantly objected to two-and-a-half centuries ago are back,
and on steroids.
In the name of national security we have effectively undermined
national security: Our adversaries are clever enough to evade the dragnet, our
allies are now alienated, our leading technology companies – key contributors
to our economic national security – are at risk of becoming pariahs, the infinite
data teats that our intelligence agencies have so greedily suckled may well go
dry, or, at the very least, sour. The
precedent we have set is a model for totalitarian and repressive regimes
worldwide to mimic, the deepest irony being that we have consistently accused
such regimes of such abuse in the past knowing full well that our own
transgressions were significantly more grievous.
Enough with the vain government protestations of innocence and good intent. It’s time for a reset. It’s time to rebuild trust. It’s time to restore American honor, pride,
privacy, and leadership. It’s time to
acknowledge that technology has outpaced and out-scaled outdated and, to some
extent, outlandish policy, law and regulation, and to adjust ourselves
accordingly.
1 comment:
Bill - well said. I fear that there is no way to put the Genie back in the lamp (or the toothpaste in the tube or unscramble the egg, or whatever metaphor one might choose). Once a government seizes a power, it is very difficult to get it to relinquish it, and both of the last two Administrations have been expert at exploiting the climate of fear that you mention. The surveillance state is now a bipartisan principle that only a few members of Congress dare (or care) to oppose in any meaningful way. What's more, even if the courts were to rule one or more of these spying programs unlawful (as I believe they should) there is no oversight, as you mention. They can, and will, lie and say that we no longer spy on Angela Merkel, or whomever. And, of course, both the Bush and Obama Administrations have had, I think, an unbroken record of success in preventing the courts even hearing most cases on "standing" grounds. In short, I agree with your analysis while I don't hold out much hope for improvement. (And, like you, I see the keen irony of the USG's China bashing, which, however well-founded it may be in this regard, is definitely the pot calling the kettle black.)
Kelly Cameron
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