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.