Tag: United States

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Links Quotations

There are two types of laws in the U.S., each designed to constrain a different type of power: constitutional law, which places limitations on government, and regulatory law, which constrains corporations. Historically, these two areas have largely remained separate, but today each group has learned how to use the other’s laws to bypass their own restrictions. The government uses corporations to get around its limits, and corporations use the government to get around their limits.

This partnership manifests itself in various ways. The government uses corporations to circumvent its prohibitions against eavesdropping domestically on its citizens. Corporations rely on the government to ensure that they have unfettered use of the data they collect.

Here’s an example: It would be reasonable for our government to debate the circumstances under which corporations can collect and use our data, and to provide for protections against misuse. But if the government is using that very data for its own surveillance purposes, it has an incentive to oppose any laws to limit data collection. And because corporations see no need to give consumers any choice in this matter – because it would only reduce their profits – the market isn’t going to protect consumers, either.

Schneier’s article, “The Public/Private Surveillance Partnership,” does a terrific job in striking to the heart of the ‘arrangements’ between our corporate partners and America’s governing bodies.
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Quotations

2013.7.30

Obama’s first director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, wanted the CIA to use its [drone strike] capability more strategically. His reading of the intelligence suggested that the collateral harm of the operation–the anger that the strikes caused among Pakistanis, even though the targeting was precise–was damaging to U.S. security interests. The CIA, in a deft bureaucratic move, simply stopped providing Blair’s office with advance notice of strikes. The dispute went all the way to the Office of the Vice President, which sided with the CIA, although Blair “won” the ability to have a director of national intelligence representative at CIA covert action briefings at the White House.

Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady, Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry
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Writing

New Zealand Reveals the ‘Five Eyes’ Spying on Each Other

In an interesting bit of news, it seems we can certifiably state that the NSA spied on a New Zealand journalist at the behest of the New Zealand government. The government has apparently classified journalists alongside foreign intelligence services and ‘organizations with extreme ideologies’ (read: terrorists). The government’s defence security staff “viewed investigative journalists as ”hostile“ threats requiring ”counteraction“. The classified security manual lists security threats, including ”certain investigative journalists“ who may attempt to obtain ”politically sensitive information“.”[1]

So, while the information about the surveillance is shocking in its own right, there is also an important tidbit of information that can derived from the US intelligence services’ actions: despite the supposedly sacrosanct prohibition the Five Eyes partners not spy on one another, this prohibition was broken in this instance. Though Canadian experts have previously stated that such surveillance on Five Eyes partners would be an extreme exception, it’s striking that surveillance mechanisms designed to counter the FSB are being brought to bear on investigative journalists. That the NSA and other American intelligence services turned their ‘ears’ towards a journalist at the New Zealand government’s behest suggests that, despite protestations to the contrary, ‘friendly’ intelligence services do ‘help’ one another spy on people and groups that domestic intelligence services are prohibited from monitoring for either legal or technical reasons.

Reasonable people can disagree on how and why intelligence services operate. However, the routine (mis)information that has been put forward by Western agencies concerning governmeing spying has significantly undermined any foundation for a genuine democratic debate to arise around such spying. When the United States’ Director of National Intelligence asserts that he was providing the “least untruthful” answers to elected officials questioning dragnet surveillance, and supposed ‘red lines’ are being crossed in secret to target journalists tasked with providing truthful reporting to citizens, then the ability to support or even reform intelligence practices is undermined: why shouldn’t we, the people, radically and unilaterally curtail surveillance practices if the same services and their administrative officers won’t truthfully disclose even their most basic operational guidelines?

  1. I should note that, following the revelations that the NZ government is monitoring journalists and classed them alongside foreign intelligence sources and extremist organizations, the government has publicly come out against these allegations.  ↩
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Links Writing

The Significance of a ‘Three Hop’ Analysis

Washington’s Blog has an excellent, if somewhat long, post that outlines the significance of the NSA’s ‘three hop’ analysis. It collects and provides some numbers behind basic communications network analyses, and comes to the conclusion that upwards to 2.5 million Americans could be “caught up in dragnet for each suspected terrorist, means that a mere 140 potential terrorists could lead to spying on all Americans. There are tens of thousands of Americans listed as suspected terrorists … including just about anyone who protests anything that the government or big banks do.”

Go read the full post. Some of the numbers are a bit speculative, but on the whole it does a good job showing why ‘three hop’ analyses are so problematic: such analyses disproportionately collect data on American citizens the basis of the most limited forms of suspicion. Such surveillance should be set aside because it constitutes an inappropriate infringement on individuals’ and communities’ reasonable expectations of privacy; it runs counter to how a well ordered and properly functioning democracy should operate in theory and in practice.

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Humour Links Writing

Definitions for the American Surveillance State

David Sirota of Salon has developed an excellent set of terms to speed along discussions about the contemporary American surveillance state. My own favorites include:

Least untruthful: A new legal doctrine that allows an executive branch official to issue a deliberate, calculated lie to Congress yet avoid prosecution for perjury, as long as the official is protecting the executive branch’s political interests. Usage example: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper avoided prosecution for perjury because he insisted that the blatant lie he told to Congress was merely the “least untruthful” statement he could have made.

And:

Modest encroachment: A massive, indiscriminate intrusion. Usage example: President Obama has deemed the NSA’s “collect it all” surveillance operation, which has captured 20 trillion information transactions and touches virtually all aspects of American life, a “modest encroachment” on citizens’ right to privacy.

The full listing of terms is depressingly cynical. However, the persistent – if often humorous – turn to cynicism may ultimately limit how politicians address and respond to Snowden’s surveillance revelations. What Snowden confirmed raises existential challenges to the potential to imagine, let alone actualize, a deliberative democratic state. The accompanying risk is that instead of addressing such challenges head on, citizens may retreat to cynicism rather than engaging in the hard work of recuperating their increasingly-authoritarian democratic institutions. We’re at a point where we need a more active, not more withdrawn and bemused, citizen response to government excesses.

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Links

On the Zimmerman verdict …

politicalprof:

So let me see if I have this straight:

In Florida, I can follow an otherwise law-abiding person around on a dark and rainy night, and if they decide I am a threat and respond, I get to shoot and kill them if I start losing the fight.

I am sure the people of Florida are sleeping much more secure in their beds knowing that this could never happen to their child or in their neighborhood.

Quality work all around.

Legalizing lethal stalking: a really great decision…

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Aside

Firearms vs Tampons

chartier:

Jessie Jessup

context

They were off the deep end a while back: I think that the Republicans are now drilling for oil at the bottom of the pool…

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Links Writing

DHS, Drones, and Domestic Surveillance

In the name of efficiency and good long-term planning, DHS is ensuring that its Predator Drones over the USA are able to distinguish persons from animals, evaluate whether such persons are armed, and are also integrating signals intelligence systems into the vehicles. From the article:

Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

The analysis and interdiction capabilities being integrated into drones may – prospectively – be considered legal. If they are legal then it should be clear that ethical and normative (to say nothing of constitutional) claims should be brought to bear on the basis that such expansions of government surveillance are almost certain to be used inappropriately and to the disadvantage of American citizens and residents alike.

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Links Quotations

When the Whole World Has Drones

The proliferation of drone technology has moved well beyond the control of the United States government and its closest allies. The aircraft are too easy to obtain, with barriers to entry on the production side crumbling too quickly to place limits on the spread of a technology that promises to transform warfare on a global scale. Already, more than 75 countries have remote piloted aircraft. More than 50 nations are building a total of nearly a thousand types. At its last display at a trade show in Beijing, China showed off 25 different unmanned aerial vehicles. Not toys or models, but real flying machines.

When the Whole World Has Drones
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Aside Quotations

Government photograph databases form the basis of any police facial recognition system. They’re not very good today, but they’ll only get better. But the government no longer needs to collect photographs. Experiments demonstrate that the Facebook database of tagged photographs is surprisingly effective at identifying people. As more places follow Disney’s lead in fingerprinting people at its theme parks, the government will be able to use that to identify people as well.

In a few years, the whole notion of a government-issued ID will seem quaint. Among facial recognition, the unique signature from your smart phone, the RFID chips in your clothing and other items you own, and whatever new technologies that will broadcast your identity, no one will have to ask to see ID. When you walk into a store, they’ll already know who you are. When you interact with a policeman, she’ll already have your personal information displayed on her Internet-enabled glasses.

Soon, governments won’t have to bother collecting personal data. We’re willingly giving it to a vast network of for-profit data collectors, and they’re more than happy to pass it on to the government without our knowledge or consent.

Bruce Schneider, “The Public/Private Surveillance Partnership”

It’s the ability for government to prospectively combine public and private data that makes American laws such as CISPA, which would permit the disclosure of private information to public bodies without absent warrant requirements, so significant. Privacy legislation serves as a necessary friction to delay, limit, and prevent governments from accessing citizens’ and resident aliens’ personal information unless such access is absolutely necessary: we need to strengthen such laws to preserve basic democratic freedoms, not weaken or erode them.