Privacy Part II: Truth Distortion.
Issue:
President Obama, Congress, the courts and the telecommunications and internet companies including Apple, Microsoft, ATT, Verizon, Facebook and Google are falling all over themselves to explain their complicity in the government's invasion of our privacy. Take your pick: they were unaware of the spying; the spying is minimal; the spying is legal but they are not allowed to discuss it; the spying is only done on foreign communications; the spying is necessary for national security despite its unconstitutional provisions.
Deception:
Numerous deceptions are in play on this issue, including these:
1. "Nobody is listening to anyone's phone calls." - President Obama.
2. "We do not provide any government organizations with direct access to our servers." - The internet companies.
3. "This spying is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil." - paraphrasing almost every defender of the government's domestic spy program.
Reality:
When you are being lied to it can be difficult to get at the truth. Fortunately, the lies in this situation are utterly transparent.
Part I of this post discussed the government's overall privacy deprivation program. This post explains:
• The distortions as to the truth of the program's operation.
• How your data is collected.
• How your data can be used.
• Why your data is not essential for national security.
• Why you should be outraged.
And if you are still not outraged, watch for the upcoming post The Value of Privacy.
"Nobody's listening to anyone's phone calls."
This is President Obama dismissal of opposition to the government's spying. What is important here is what is not being said: the government does not need listen to our actual conversations (although they do) to get the information they want, they just need to know who we are calling and when and where, because they are looking at patterns first, conversations second. As voice communication is now digital, not analog, it can be easily captured and stored electronically without the need for real-time listening or recording - and much voice is carried over the internet which can be intercepted through the government's spying program "PRISM" (explained in Privacy: Background).
Obama is also not admitting that they are able to see all of our visual data - and the vast majority of our communication is no longer voice or sound per se but visual. They can see our text messages, web browsing, photos, videos and virtually every other piece of digital data we generate or receive including purchases of goods and services and business communications. They can track our interests; our health; who we associate with and who we spend time with whether on the phone, online or in person; our movements both on the street and within our own homes and workplaces. They capture the data to track almost all aspects of our lives. Like internet voice, much of this information is obtained through PRISM, while the rest is tracked through everything from license plate readers to GPS devices to cameras everywhere.
The government only needs a relatively small amount of data on any given person to learn all they want to know, thanks to the increasingly sophisticated software programs that allow highly accurate analysis of our behaviors and associations as gleaned from our data. Yet they are collecting every bit they can. They are doing it with the help of the telecommunications and internet companies by taking access to, under threat of duress to those companies, the data we generate. While they are probably not looking at your actual photo files or correspondence unless you come under suspicion, they can. What they are looking at is the patterns we generate, and that is enough to regularly ensnare innocent people. We are entering the fantastical future of precrime: arresting people not for what they have done but for what the government or its contractors assume or predict they will do based on electronic algorithms and with whom they associate.
"We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers."
This is how the internet companies provide a plausible denial of their participation: because the government is taking this data by fiat (government force), these companies can technically claim that they are not "providing" the data because the government is simply "taking" it. When your house is burglarized you are not providing your possessions, they are being taken. Does this wordplay sound like a stretch? Actually it is how our legal system works, for better or worse - language is vitally important in a nation of laws, where every word and comma is precisely chosen to convey a particular intent. When done for clarity it provides a public service - but when done to cloud and obscure the truth, only the losers win.
The government's program for seizing internet data is named PRISM. The word "prism", which means capturing a beam of light and breaking out its elemental colors, is also used as a term for a specialized technical device that is installed on an internet trunk line to siphon off and capture massive amounts of data. The companies can say they have never heard of PRISM and can say they are not cooperating with the government because they are forbidden by government decree from admitting it - and all the while a prism is siphoning the data off a trunk line down the hall. The government is not about to prosecute corporate CEOs for covering up the government's own illegal activities.
The government has given the internet companies the language to use, or they have colluded with each other on a statement, because this is readily apparent in the virtually verbatim statements coming out of every company:
"We do not provide any government organizations with direct access to our servers."
Let us parse this statement as lawyers do:
"We do not provide...": An internet company can plausibly claim they are not providing the data because the government is taking it by fiat.
"...any government organizations..": A company can provide this data to a third-party contractor hired by the government and still plausibly make this claim.
"...with direct access...": Direct access is not always necessary, as the government can siphon off the data using a prism outside of the company's immediate view or property. Yet direct access to the company's servers is still available through a third-party contractor or company employees sworn to secrecy, even perhaps without the knowledge of the company.
"...to our servers.": Again, the access can be elsewhere in the network beyond the servers.
How Your Data Is Collected:
Virtually all of our communications and movements are carried by the internet and telephone systems on networks that span the globe and which are wholly interconnected. They carry the most intimate details of our lives and can be readily accessed almost anywhere by people with the right knowledge, the right access, enough money or enough power. The U.S. government has figured out how to access and obtain this information without ready detection and without spending very much money relative to the bonanza they receive:
1. We routinely and readily provide details on virtually all aspects of our lives through use of telephones (especially smart phones) and the internet. Whether it be who we associate with or what we buy, where we go or what we research, our medical and education records or our routine personal and business correspondence - all of it is transmitted digitally across the networks and readily accessible.
2. Whether this data is transmitted through the portals of private companies (ATT, Verizon, Apple, Google etc.) or the government, all of it is as accessible to the government as water flowing from the tap. This is where it gets especially ugly, and especially because the Obama Administration, Congress and the internet providers are all adamantly denying the truth: the government intercepts this data and anyone involved in the process is under orders to keep the process secret under threat of being charged with a crime, potentially treason which is a capital (death sentence) offense - on the grounds that any admission would be a danger to national security.
How Your Data Can Be Used:
We all know that knowledge is power, and it follows that the knowledge of your life in the wrong hands can effectively be used against you. This, you see, is perhaps the very worst of it: you may be comfortable enough with the government spying on your life today, but digital data can exist at least as long as you do. If the government does not use it today to investigate, indict or inhibit you, a future administration or government with whom you may have a less-than-blissful relationship can potentially use your data for any purpose. Or, due to the fragile security of internet and data security, which borders on the non-existent, other parties may access the data and use it for any purpose. Businesses, hackers, foreign governments, thieves, terrorists - use your imagination because if you can imagine it, it can happen.
Your Data is not Essential for National Security:
As outlined in Part I, the government has failed to produce solid evidence that this spying has prevented terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, nor that it is necessary in light of the multitude of other tools available. The government has painted itself into a corner on this matter as it will neither release details of the spying program nor hard evidence of stymied attacks, claiming they are both top-secret and thereby insulating itself from the necessity of providing proof to the public.
The only example produced, that of the Colorado coffee vendor "backpack bomber" (term used by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper) who was intercepted on his way to New York City, was due to traditional means of investigation - the closest it came to the program under discussion here was the monitoring of a foreign e-mail address, reported to the U.S. by the British as belonging to a terrorist, and which received an e-mail from the Coloradan indicating his intent to build bombs. Monitoring U.S. e-mail traffic to a foreign account was already legal without a need for resorting to this program. Besides: the suspect had no backpack and only partially-constructed bombs. That point is irrelevant except for its illustration of James Clapper's predilection for distorting the truth - a practice rampant in the government today - including Clapper's comment to Congress while under oath that the government is not monitoring its citizens.
Why You Should Be Outraged:
As noted in Part I, your life data is being archived on government computers indefinitely and can be called up anytime for any purpose, ostensibly by anyone. Your Fourth Amendment right to privacy and government snooping into your private affairs is vastly diminished after two centuries of solid protection. You have virtually no recourse because nobody involved in this domestic spying on citizens can admit to any of it because the program is secret and violation of that secrecy is cause for prosecution.
This is the "catch-22", the ultimate deception that traps us all in this nightmare. Nobody involved - NOBODY - is allowed to talk about what is really happening. For this reason if no other, we must assume the worst until the government opens the program to public oversight, either by court order or public demand.
There is no need for government secrecy regarding the domestic spying program in today's world. The average terrorist organization knows as much as they need about our government's operations because the global data stream is so vulnerable to hacking that it might as well be carried on the wind. In our government's desperate attempt to retain control of its own secrecy it has destroyed ours.
So this is where we are, sadly: our government has effectively built a surveillance police state that can operate at will because anyone who admits to its secret spying on citizens can be arrested and prosecuted for divulging the truth. We are less safe, and far less free, as a result. This puts us in more danger than we can conceive.
President Obama, Congress, the courts and the telecommunications and internet companies including Apple, Microsoft, ATT, Verizon, Facebook and Google are falling all over themselves to explain their complicity in the government's invasion of our privacy. Take your pick: they were unaware of the spying; the spying is minimal; the spying is legal but they are not allowed to discuss it; the spying is only done on foreign communications; the spying is necessary for national security despite its unconstitutional provisions.
Deception:
Numerous deceptions are in play on this issue, including these:
1. "Nobody is listening to anyone's phone calls." - President Obama.
2. "We do not provide any government organizations with direct access to our servers." - The internet companies.
3. "This spying is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil." - paraphrasing almost every defender of the government's domestic spy program.
Reality:
When you are being lied to it can be difficult to get at the truth. Fortunately, the lies in this situation are utterly transparent.
Part I of this post discussed the government's overall privacy deprivation program. This post explains:
• The distortions as to the truth of the program's operation.
• How your data is collected.
• How your data can be used.
• Why your data is not essential for national security.
• Why you should be outraged.
And if you are still not outraged, watch for the upcoming post The Value of Privacy.
"Nobody's listening to anyone's phone calls."
This is President Obama dismissal of opposition to the government's spying. What is important here is what is not being said: the government does not need listen to our actual conversations (although they do) to get the information they want, they just need to know who we are calling and when and where, because they are looking at patterns first, conversations second. As voice communication is now digital, not analog, it can be easily captured and stored electronically without the need for real-time listening or recording - and much voice is carried over the internet which can be intercepted through the government's spying program "PRISM" (explained in Privacy: Background).
Obama is also not admitting that they are able to see all of our visual data - and the vast majority of our communication is no longer voice or sound per se but visual. They can see our text messages, web browsing, photos, videos and virtually every other piece of digital data we generate or receive including purchases of goods and services and business communications. They can track our interests; our health; who we associate with and who we spend time with whether on the phone, online or in person; our movements both on the street and within our own homes and workplaces. They capture the data to track almost all aspects of our lives. Like internet voice, much of this information is obtained through PRISM, while the rest is tracked through everything from license plate readers to GPS devices to cameras everywhere.
The government only needs a relatively small amount of data on any given person to learn all they want to know, thanks to the increasingly sophisticated software programs that allow highly accurate analysis of our behaviors and associations as gleaned from our data. Yet they are collecting every bit they can. They are doing it with the help of the telecommunications and internet companies by taking access to, under threat of duress to those companies, the data we generate. While they are probably not looking at your actual photo files or correspondence unless you come under suspicion, they can. What they are looking at is the patterns we generate, and that is enough to regularly ensnare innocent people. We are entering the fantastical future of precrime: arresting people not for what they have done but for what the government or its contractors assume or predict they will do based on electronic algorithms and with whom they associate.
"We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers."
This is how the internet companies provide a plausible denial of their participation: because the government is taking this data by fiat (government force), these companies can technically claim that they are not "providing" the data because the government is simply "taking" it. When your house is burglarized you are not providing your possessions, they are being taken. Does this wordplay sound like a stretch? Actually it is how our legal system works, for better or worse - language is vitally important in a nation of laws, where every word and comma is precisely chosen to convey a particular intent. When done for clarity it provides a public service - but when done to cloud and obscure the truth, only the losers win.
The government's program for seizing internet data is named PRISM. The word "prism", which means capturing a beam of light and breaking out its elemental colors, is also used as a term for a specialized technical device that is installed on an internet trunk line to siphon off and capture massive amounts of data. The companies can say they have never heard of PRISM and can say they are not cooperating with the government because they are forbidden by government decree from admitting it - and all the while a prism is siphoning the data off a trunk line down the hall. The government is not about to prosecute corporate CEOs for covering up the government's own illegal activities.
The government has given the internet companies the language to use, or they have colluded with each other on a statement, because this is readily apparent in the virtually verbatim statements coming out of every company:
"We do not provide any government organizations with direct access to our servers."
Let us parse this statement as lawyers do:
"We do not provide...": An internet company can plausibly claim they are not providing the data because the government is taking it by fiat.
"...any government organizations..": A company can provide this data to a third-party contractor hired by the government and still plausibly make this claim.
"...with direct access...": Direct access is not always necessary, as the government can siphon off the data using a prism outside of the company's immediate view or property. Yet direct access to the company's servers is still available through a third-party contractor or company employees sworn to secrecy, even perhaps without the knowledge of the company.
"...to our servers.": Again, the access can be elsewhere in the network beyond the servers.
How Your Data Is Collected:
Virtually all of our communications and movements are carried by the internet and telephone systems on networks that span the globe and which are wholly interconnected. They carry the most intimate details of our lives and can be readily accessed almost anywhere by people with the right knowledge, the right access, enough money or enough power. The U.S. government has figured out how to access and obtain this information without ready detection and without spending very much money relative to the bonanza they receive:
1. We routinely and readily provide details on virtually all aspects of our lives through use of telephones (especially smart phones) and the internet. Whether it be who we associate with or what we buy, where we go or what we research, our medical and education records or our routine personal and business correspondence - all of it is transmitted digitally across the networks and readily accessible.
2. Whether this data is transmitted through the portals of private companies (ATT, Verizon, Apple, Google etc.) or the government, all of it is as accessible to the government as water flowing from the tap. This is where it gets especially ugly, and especially because the Obama Administration, Congress and the internet providers are all adamantly denying the truth: the government intercepts this data and anyone involved in the process is under orders to keep the process secret under threat of being charged with a crime, potentially treason which is a capital (death sentence) offense - on the grounds that any admission would be a danger to national security.
How Your Data Can Be Used:
We all know that knowledge is power, and it follows that the knowledge of your life in the wrong hands can effectively be used against you. This, you see, is perhaps the very worst of it: you may be comfortable enough with the government spying on your life today, but digital data can exist at least as long as you do. If the government does not use it today to investigate, indict or inhibit you, a future administration or government with whom you may have a less-than-blissful relationship can potentially use your data for any purpose. Or, due to the fragile security of internet and data security, which borders on the non-existent, other parties may access the data and use it for any purpose. Businesses, hackers, foreign governments, thieves, terrorists - use your imagination because if you can imagine it, it can happen.
Your Data is not Essential for National Security:
As outlined in Part I, the government has failed to produce solid evidence that this spying has prevented terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, nor that it is necessary in light of the multitude of other tools available. The government has painted itself into a corner on this matter as it will neither release details of the spying program nor hard evidence of stymied attacks, claiming they are both top-secret and thereby insulating itself from the necessity of providing proof to the public.
The only example produced, that of the Colorado coffee vendor "backpack bomber" (term used by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper) who was intercepted on his way to New York City, was due to traditional means of investigation - the closest it came to the program under discussion here was the monitoring of a foreign e-mail address, reported to the U.S. by the British as belonging to a terrorist, and which received an e-mail from the Coloradan indicating his intent to build bombs. Monitoring U.S. e-mail traffic to a foreign account was already legal without a need for resorting to this program. Besides: the suspect had no backpack and only partially-constructed bombs. That point is irrelevant except for its illustration of James Clapper's predilection for distorting the truth - a practice rampant in the government today - including Clapper's comment to Congress while under oath that the government is not monitoring its citizens.
Why You Should Be Outraged:
As noted in Part I, your life data is being archived on government computers indefinitely and can be called up anytime for any purpose, ostensibly by anyone. Your Fourth Amendment right to privacy and government snooping into your private affairs is vastly diminished after two centuries of solid protection. You have virtually no recourse because nobody involved in this domestic spying on citizens can admit to any of it because the program is secret and violation of that secrecy is cause for prosecution.
This is the "catch-22", the ultimate deception that traps us all in this nightmare. Nobody involved - NOBODY - is allowed to talk about what is really happening. For this reason if no other, we must assume the worst until the government opens the program to public oversight, either by court order or public demand.
There is no need for government secrecy regarding the domestic spying program in today's world. The average terrorist organization knows as much as they need about our government's operations because the global data stream is so vulnerable to hacking that it might as well be carried on the wind. In our government's desperate attempt to retain control of its own secrecy it has destroyed ours.
So this is where we are, sadly: our government has effectively built a surveillance police state that can operate at will because anyone who admits to its secret spying on citizens can be arrested and prosecuted for divulging the truth. We are less safe, and far less free, as a result. This puts us in more danger than we can conceive.