The recent terror attacks in France, while tragic, have given governments around the world — the U.S. government, in particular — new excuses for encroachment on the personal liberties of its citizens.
Not a day after the attacks in Paris happened, U.S. intelligence officials began blaming Edward Snowden — and, by implication, the free press that published his information — for compromising surveillance techniques that the U.S. and its allies used to gain access to virtually anyone at any time anywhere.
They asserted that terrorists learned how the programs operated and skirted those channels when communicating.
This type of story coming from official government sources lends credibility to the assertions.
The government wouldn’t say these things if it weren’t true, would it?
Well, it depends on what the goal of saying it is.
And in this case it’s to provide cover for domestic surveillance programs targeted on the U.S. citizenry. It’s also no small coincidence that the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone surveillance program officially ended at the end of November, much to the chagrin of many in the intel community.
The phone companies will still collect the data, but the NSA has to ask for specific data. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but I’m no more comfortable with AT&T having my information than the NSA. And given the data breaches at companies like AT&T, I’m fairly certain our information is at more risk now than it was before.
As for the terrorists, one of their “sophisticated” strategies for communicating was messaging and talking to each other while playing networked video games. Numerous players can join in from the PlayStations in their home and play against people all around the world. The communication inside each shared game is encrypted, and no security agency pays any attention to these conversations.
The biggest challenge Western intelligence has regarding terrorists is a lack of imagination. Both 9/11 and Paris were carried out by people with relatively low-tech plans. Box cutters were enough to hijack three planes. All but one of the Paris victims were killed by gunfire, not bombs.
In a new Showtime documentary on the CIA, one of the directors says of the U.S. reaction to news of al-Qaida’s rise and imminent threat on America: “[The politicians] kept thinking these were terrorists from decades past — Euro-lefties who bombed by day and drank champagne and went to the casino at night.’
That’s another point: There’s a significant division between government intel agencies and the politicians who listen to them. To a man, all the recent directors said: “You can’t kill your way out of this.” But seeming tough on terrorism is what sells for politicians.
Human intel is expensive and time-consuming. Drones make for better TV. And blowing things up on TV is something politicians love to give their constituents — even if it does nothing to restore, peace, liberty and privacy.
It’s important to make the distinction between what our security services do and what politicians allow them to do. You can’t blame the dog if the master doesn’t know how to train it.
There will always be a push-pull about privacy online even among average people, much less policymakers and corporate executives.
Your best bet is to assume someone somewhere is accessing what you do and what you say online or over any digital network. Act accordingly.
–GS Early
The post Bulk telephone metadata collection by NSA ends … and what begins? appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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