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TechnoratiThe Banality of the Surveillance State
Independent of revelations yesterday that the FBI has been abusing its NSL powers for years, it was also reported that the Federal Government is now launching "a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information." The system will store broad new categories of data about the behavior of Americans -- from the mildly suspicious to the perfectly innocuous -- and will create "new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues."
When asked yesterday during her weekly chat about the dangers of this new system, The Washington Post's intelligence reporter Dana Priest, one of the country's few truly great investigative journalists, said this:
Savannah, Ga.: Dana, what's the flap about this new info sharing system? From what I read in the article, it only shares existing data. . . . Anyway, this seems to be merely a case of reality catching up to Hollywood . . . after all, we've been watching "CSI" and "NCIS" for years where they make a few keystrokes and a suspect's entire life comes pouring out. This was supposed to be one of the things put in after Sept. 11, correct?
Dana Priest: Ah ha -- but was is "legal" information? Sure, if you get arrested that's one thing; or even picked up as a suspect in a crime. Let's use the example in the story: You have a flat tire near a nuclear power plant. The cop puts that into the data bases and discovers you've had three flat tires outside nuclear power plants in the last year. Now that's interesting and worth looking into, right?
But does that mean something as simple and innocent as a flat tire gets added into the data base. Would that be legal? Switch out "flat tire" for "defaulting on a loan" or "attending a political rally" or "gun purchases" -- all legal things. Does it bother you that the police could link up your political rally attendance if they had some other reason to query your information? You see where it's going . . . . lots of questions. Would have to have safeguards to make it acceptable, I'm certain.
The amount of data which the Federal Government now collects and stores regarding the behavior of innocent American citizens is truly staggering. It is just literally true that the Government now maintains sweeping digital dossiers on its citizens, including ones who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any wrongdoing of any kind. And without much debate or attention of any kind, the amount of monitoring and the scope of the data just keeps growing. Since when was sweeping domestic surveillance and keeping records about innocent Americans ever supposed to be a function of the Federal Government?
The grave dangers from this growing Surveillance State don't require nefarious, cartoon-like government plots. The most genuine dangers are far more banal than sinister. Just as Priest suggests, it doesn't take cackling, Lex-Luthor-like government villains to cause serious abuse. Particularly given the almost complete lack of oversight in how the executive branch functions, it's very easy to imagine the definition of what's "relevant" and "appropriate" slowly (though inexorably) being moved increasingly outward even by well-intentioned though overzealous law enforcement officials, to say nothing of the ones who aren't well-intentioned. In fact, it's almost impossible to imagine that not happening.
It's extremely easy to find people who believe that attendance at a political rally, or membership in certain political groups, or even more pedestrian conduct referenced by Priest, constitutes reasonable grounds for "suspicion." That mentality is obviously prevalent among some substantial segment of federal government employees and intelligence and other law enforcement agents. The decades of intelligence abuses leave no doubt about that.
People who think that way, and who are empowered to maintain dossiers on Americans and investigate them, don't think they're doing anything wrong by using those activities to consider certain American suspicious and to spy on them or investigate them further. They think they're doing their jobs, battling dangers. And as is true for all government power, the greater the scope of the domestic dossiers, the larger it will grow, the more uses that will be found for it. And that's true regardless of the good faith of the Government at any given moment or its party or ideology. Variables like ideology or bad faith can simply make those dangers even more pronounced.
The danger comes from ineptitude and the inevitably creeping nature of unchecked government power at least as much as it does from more dramatic, malicious spying plots. As one blogger put it yesterday in commenting on the new domestic spying data base:
I fear a surveillance society not because I think that the government will actually catch me in my subversion, but because I fear that it will think that it's caught me in my subversion. The pressure to "produce results" leads to the issuance of too many traffic tickets. Imagine what it will do when someone has to justify spending a bajillion dollars on some kind of algorithmic AI that's supposed to psychohistorically predict when a new 9/11 will change everything all over again forever. The more I order from Amazon, the kookier its recommendations for me. Entrail-reading isn't science, no matter how much one wishes it were so.
The real problem here, as is true for virtually every one of the political developments that actually matter, is that these issues are almost completely removed from establishment political discourse. This is all justified by the all-purpose Magic Word -- "Terrorists" -- and so very few political figures are able or willing to oppose any of it or articulate the reasons why it's a concern.
The political faction which forever claimed to stand for limitations on federal power (the "conservative" movement) is its principal cheerleader, while the "opposition party" either supports it just as much or doesn't care nearly enough to talk about it. Thus, outside of a few advocacy groups and other scattered commentators, the dangers posed by these developments are virtually never heard, let alone considered. So the Surveillance State just continues not only to grow and grow, but does so without any real attention, oversight, or limitations. As usual, there is an inverse relationship between the most consequential matters and the attention such matters receive in mainstream political debates.
UPDATE: Speaking of the inverse relationship between significance and media attention, there was this fleeting, ignored moment from last November:
As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information. . . .
"Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms," [EFF Senior Staff Lawyer Kurt] Opsahl said. "The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together."
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties," he said. "We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy. It's just another 'trust us, we're the government," he said.
The Bush administration announces that we better change our definition of "privacy" -- no more anonymity from our own government. That seems like a significant announcement, and it thus received no attention. I wonder if a single television news or cable show mentioned it.
Equally significant: the administration says that we have no chance of keeping information about what we do from the Government, and instead, our only hope is that oversight and safeguards prevent abuse. That's the same administration which then demands that Congress provide it more and more spying powers without oversight or safeguards, and the Congress continuously complies. By their own premises, there are no safeguards against abuse of the virtually limitless reach of the Surveillance State.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
© Salon.com
23 Comments so far
Show All@flimsysanity:
You have dynamic IP. That's quite normal for domestic internet access: your IP address is 'leased' to you by your ISP for a certain period of time. After the lease expires, your modem automatically requests and receives a new IP address. Often the new IP address is the same as the old one, but there is no guarantee that it will be so.
Truthmonger said: "Sad that cheney/bush are spending more time monitoring us than terrorists"
There ARE no terrorist besides the Governments. Bush and Cheney ARE the terrorist, and YOU are the terrorized.
Did I mention Rome is falling
When I was a child, I thought neighbors listening in to my phone conversations on a phone party line was an invasion of privacy. What has happened in this Bush-Cheney Paranoid Surveillance society is beyond comprehension. I am glad I am an old man, but I have pity for my children and grandchildren for having to live in a world in which our country has been so tainted by the actions of the worst administration in the history of this nation. It is as if the novel 1984 has come to life. If the founders of this country came back today, they would not be able to stop vomiting upon seeing what has happened to the rights and freedoms of the US citizens. Who will be the first to disappear in the detention camps for conspiracy or thought crimes?
A big danger is the willful illegal use of information.
Someone who decides they have it in for you.
Someone who decides they want what you have.
Someone who is bored and decides to ruin your life.
Someone who knows all about you.
And you don't know who they are. Ever.
OK, I admit I don't know how the internet works. I signed up for StatCounter to see if anyone reads my leftist blog. I thought that every computer had a number that was unique to it called an IP address. Well, mine changes all the time. I live in Albert Lea,MN but the IP jumps around from Austin, to Owatonna to St Paul and for a time, the location was just listed as United States - I have a cable connection with Charter.
This is what is really weird. When my address changed to just United States, I went to the map feature and it showed that I was at a building in Washington DC (between 15 and 16 St NW and where Desales Street would be if it wasn't covered with buildings). Yesterday, my Illinois reader's address also showed up as just United States and I went to the map and although his service provider is Comcast, the map showed he was also located at the same Washington DC building.
I understand that AOL addresses do not have any relation to actual location - all the viewers from Reston Virginia (who all come from the same IP but have many different browsers, screen resolutions etc show they come from a field northeast of Wichita Kansas). If you want to test this, write a little about Infragard and they show up like flies to crap.
See you at the camps.
With a alliterative tip of the cap to Hannah Arendt, Greenwald has explicated nicely an important facet of the most naked power grab by a single political party since the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. What makes the power grab even more scary is the Third World level of incompetence amongst those who charged with "protecting" us.
Hello all, Call me 'Rover' because every Dog has his day, someone you may have forgotten about while you were caught up in complaining about the price you paid for that tank of gas which by some magic known as uncoerced economic interaction ended up out of your hands. Quite disgusted with how I was being treated by politicians, and the 'Foundation Syndicate' and its special interests groups funded through the 'green mafia', I decided the best course of action was to tell you who? why? where? and what? of their operations through the "Internecine Matrix:
http://groups.msn.com/INTERNECINEMATRIX/
GG missed the even scarier part:
"For all practical purposes, effective control of the NSA is with private corporations, which run its support and management functions. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported last year, more than 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon's newest intelligence unit, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), is made up of corporate contractors. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) lawyers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51 percent of the staff in DIA offices. At the CIA, the situation is similar. Between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence, is composed of employees of for-profit corporations."
IOW, our patriot friends like Blackwater are the ones supplying the Pentagon with info-for-a-fee.
GG also fails to point out the ways we've already seen how such intense, illegal spying can be put to good use - like when a Senator wakes up one day and suddenly votes AGAINST the bill he himself co-authored. Or when a Congressperson announces impeachment is "off the table" without explanation. Or how just when yet another expose of soldier-killing lies is published a Very Important Person is suddenly found doing something PERVERTED followed by the "leaking" of more VIP secrets before said VIP disappears into "rehab."
The "call in the middle of the night" is all "they" are interested in at the moment. We The People are but a nuisance...
Glenn's a great writer, keep 'em coming.
But we shouldn't limit our critique of the surveilled society to government monkeying around with ordinary citizens. Put yourself in the position of a James Bond antagonist, a mad megalomaniac who wants to take over the world. He couldn't care less about ordinary people -- little better than ants or fleas to him.
What a guy like that would do with omniscience is sit on a goldmine of corporate espionage, insider trading information, etc. And perhaps sell it to the highest bidder. Create a whole new -- and wholly corrupt -- shadow economy. Information = money. Big information = big money.
Let's hope they're more honest than they look.
England just rolled out its plan for an $11 BILLION national identity card programme:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/06/europe/brits.php
Coming soon across the pond.
It'll just be another huge transfer of our tax dollars to the corporate elite who will generate the cards and review the data. They already have access to all of the data they could want or use. The ID cards are simply their way to get more of our money.
When will they have enough? When they're the only ones left? Thankfully, Mother Earth Goddess will take them, too.
The answer is so obvious. Microchip every human at birth!
This will allow all Government departments to monitor what each person is thinking and doing 24 hours a day.
The microchip could also have a small component that allowed the government department to zap the person should he or she have a bad thought about the Government or the President. It could operate on just a few volts for thinking that...say, George wasn't very bright right up to a prolonged 100 volts for thinking the George was the Village Idiot and a danger to the world.
Should I patent my idea?
www.dangerouscreation.com
Moderator, I only want to post my reply to Neomunk once. But if you won't will you give or post my email address to him so I can reply in private if you don't want this in your discussion here.
I can reply to Neomunk by email if you want
I'm at echoes44442002@yahoo.com
What would happen if there was a deliberate attempt to overwhelm the government spy system? I am thinking of a million or so people sending Homeland Security lengthy summations of each other's talk and actions evey few days. The computers might be good but not that good.
Kathy, I would very much like a few links to what you consider to be the best information sources available regarding thought reading technology.
The web is a big place, and sometimes can be a difficult sift. Thank you.
I'll say it again, the government has thought reading technology.
'Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence."
Donald Kerr said we need to 're-think' our definition of privacy. I have it quoted in the letter I send out about my experiences since 1994 (Bill Clinton's second year in office.)
Actually, Mr. Kerr was being candid. The American people are completely unaware and unbelieving of something that this government official takes for granted. After all, they've been using it for at least 14 years.
Banal and dangerous.Computers and cell phones have made every person a subject of surveillance and suspicion.It has always been dangerous to even seem to dissent from official policy in the U.S. As absurd as it seems, Helen Keller was under surveillance by the F.B.I for decades because she belonged to the American Red Cross, and advocated peace rather than war. The government was outraged that they could not find ways, although they tried, to tap her phone since she was blind, deaf and mute, and did not have a regular phone that the FBI could listen in on. This was not the only laughable absurdity then or now.
I agree that there already is a substantial file on everyone in the country. Sad that cheney/bush are spending more time monitoring us than terrorists. Seems like it won't be long until the secret prisons are filled with innocent people and criminals rule. I used to hear the good 'ole boys at local restaurants complaining about "big brother" keeping tabs on us and those most prevalent 3 words on our products -"Made in China." Of course, that was when Clinton was president. Where did all the good 'ole boys go? There is 100X more surveillance and Chinese products under this administration.
Golddogs is right except it's not that there "will be" a file on every American, there already is. Every thing we do that interacts with a network is recorded and accessible -- buy groceries using a debit card, tell your doctor something that's entered into an HMO database (that's supposed to be protected with "confidentiality"; but do you doubt for one moment that Homeland Security could get in there and look at it if it felt it had a reason).
My prediction has always been that soon we'll be monitored for "patriotic purchasing" -- buy the wrong stuff, or not enough stuff, and it will come to the attention of someone in an institution somewhere. There will certainly be a digital dossier kept on all of us who post on places such as this (ask the "child predators" if the seeming anonymity of the internet is real).
Whether the Powers That Be will be able to turn this uber-Orwellian cyber world into an effective total global tyranny before environmental problems turns everything into an uninhabitable dung heap remains to be seen. Which crappy future would you prefer?
Of course, as always, I hope I'm wrong and that everything will work out OK somehow.
This abuse of power by the government is why we used to have a Bill of Rights.
I find it interesting that the right wingers who scream the loudest about how they fear the government are also pro military, pro police and anti ACLU,
Now who the hell do they think is going to come take them to the concentration camps - the ACLU? They've really got some cognitive dissonance going on there.
Time to recognize that just as the military/industrial complex drums up business for itself, so does the law enforcement/"intelligence gathering"/surveillance infrastructure.
Its pretty obvious that with computers so prevalent, networking and data storage cheap that there will be a file on every American, and soon the world.
You can bet all newer computers have build in id's, spyware and a reserved partition on the hard drive. Notice that built in microphone?
What is going on now makes the Watergate incident look like children selling lemonade.
This administration/Republicans are using the data for its own survival and dirty tricks. Why do you think the Dems have been nurtured? they have every little spec of dirt on all of them.
A powerful and poignant article, placing a intellectually challenging subject into a frame that is easily accessible by everyone.
To interject my personal observations on the subject, I personally feel that the "legal" system (sic) in this country is nearly completely broken in regards to liberty/safety balances. I am highly thankful that some bright individuals a few decades ago came up with the "open source" concept. This concept, along with the "Open Source movement" that it later spawned may have provided us with the tools we need to ensure our OWN privacy, anonymity and secure person-to-person communications.
Mind you, I'm also of the opinion that it's probable that No Such Agency can crack our modern 128 and 256 bit encryption in REAL TIME. Even so, those using even SUPERIOR tools to our own are still monkeys like us, monkeys that can be tricked or downright confused.
If you know a liberal network/linux/programming guru, chat with them about the things talked about in this article. Chances are said guru will be able to offer you some common solutions to your privacy needs, if not offering to roll you one him/herself.