The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts - Part II

(This is part 2 of a series.  The first post is here.)

So Everything Was Super

FISA, passed in 1978, set up safeguards to protect U.S. citizens from spying activity, and putting a system in place to allow court and Congressional oversight if these things.  And, more or less, that was the deal.

Until September 11, 2001.

The intelligence community's reaction - like that of every person and institution on the planet - was extreme and visceral.  By the beginning of October, 2011, President George W. Bush asks his advisers about the various interpretations of what would be possible in leveraging the existing intelligence collection infrastructure to apply to more generally targeted (i.e. domestic) targets and sources. He gets an earful.  Within days, he has authorized an expansion of NSA authority well beyond anything documented to that time.  Effectively, authority is granted to collect data about the activities and communications of U.S. citizens, including those taking place entirely within the borders of the U.S.

Without going into the details, which are well-documented in several places, including as evidence in EFF's legal cases, a series of legal interpretations escalate into virtually unfettered surveillance power, to the point where taps are placed on the core fiber switch points throughout the U.S.  As the costs of mass storage continue to drop in accordance with Moore's Law, and as unlimited funding for "the war on terror" continues to appear from many sources, a system takes shape that is capable of capturing and preserving almost every aspect of communication: spoken or written, direct or deduced, that has come within reach of anything digital.  This includes your land and cell phone calls, every email and fax, every web page you've visited (on purpose or not), every search term you've ever entered, every cable channel you've flipped through, every book listing you looked at on Amazon, every toll booth you've taken your car through, every stop light you've driven through.

"Just smile and wave, boys.  Smile and wave."

In the follow-on, through revisions of FISA, including extensive revisions in 2007 - our representatives in Congress granted legitimacy to most of this, to one degree or another.  By "granted legitimacy",I'm talking about the granting of retroactive immunity to telecom companies and other tech companies who have cooperated with the NSA and other agents of the federal government.

The people theoretically elected to provide the oversight, and the voice of the citizenry in the government made this call:  That the concept of security was more significant than the rights of individual citizens.

I Don't Have a Tin-Foil Hat

Not me.  Really.

Before going any further, most of those who know me and are reading this are aware that I'm not a conspiracy-theorist type. I'm an information sponge, and to understand the realities and motivations of the individuals involved to come to an understanding of the situation.  I'm open to additional evidence on most questions, though there are certainly those who feel my standard of evidence are rather strict.  That's OK: I don't share their taste in hats, either.

So, to say that I find nothing revealed in the last week shocking may come as a surprise.  But the fact of the matter is that what we're seeing are just the details of the specific plans and authorizations that have been available to us for years.  But, for the most part, we don't care.

We don't care because some of it is difficult to understand and because, even when understood, it's a difficult set of questions to confront.  It's a little embarrassing, and it requires that we tread on uncomfortable ground personally, and as a nation that claims to be a bold experiment in democracy and Enlightenment values.  It's sort of like having to have "that talk" - but with the government instead of with a child.

How we handle that uncomfortable talk will probably determine what kind of country the next generations will live in.  More depth on that in Part III.

As always, thoughtful commentary is welcome.  Trolls and those seeking therapy or metallic wardrobe advice need not apply.


Back to Part I                 On to Part III

The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts - Part I

Everything Old Is New Again (unrelated link)

Having been in this game for a while, it really is inevitable that I would be asked by several people "What's the deal?" with respect to the NSA / PRISM / privacy "news" over the last week or so.  So, before my voice (and fingers) give out, here's the short (not) recap of some facts, much opinion, and some modest proposals. I'll do this as a series, so that people googling into the middle won't be burdened with context.

Those graced (or cursed) by following me on Twitter may have already seen Jason Purlow's excellent re-cap of NSA-related un-privacy history, including ECHELON, the policy decisions - back to Truman - that enabled it and it's successors. If not, it's a good read.  (From a historical perspective, if not a gastronomic one.)

My generational cohort - whose technical growth came of age in the 70s and 80s - find none of this to be remotely surprising.  Not due to a penchant for unsupported conspiracy theories, but from the perspective that many of us have worked for, or provided tools and support to, the endeavors at Fort Meade to varying degrees. In the minds of many, this was the equivalent to getting a job in the BatCave.  The U.S. has almost always spend lavishly and secretly to leverage technology as a means of national defense.

Compromising on Being Compromised

The trade-off has been - at least in theory - that the missions of the folks with the amazing deep tech were focused on international issues:  Capturing conversations between foreign nationals, breaking supposedly-secure messaging channels, and processing and linking data in what has always been a war of technology.  (The stories are legend of bounding infrared lasers off of embassy windows to capture sound vibrations - and the conversations within, or of using the radiation patterns emitted by display screens to determine what was being displayed on them.  Very "Q" sort of stuff, and most of it real.)

Would you like to play a game?

And, really, as Americans, we liked this.  As long as nobody was using it for domestic reasons, it seemed a completely acceptable compromise between privacy and security.  (Keep in mind, that this was the age of Reagan, where a recurring theme of politics and popular entertainment revolved around Global Thermonuclear War as an imminent possibility.)

At that time, the risk seemed low:  For "the authorities" to utilize this kind of data against U.S. citizens would require revealing blatantly illegal activity on the part of the NSA, the Congressional oversight process, and whichever of the domestic "authorities" were coming for you...  Pretty unlikely, in a time where "hackers" were pursued for things like stealing long-distance phone service or smackdown of inter-campus e-mail "to see if it could be done."

In Part 2, we'll see how things changed.  

In the mean time, feel free to share reminiscences of those early days in the comments.