| The
recent disclosure of the National Security Agency (NSA)
information that most digital communications, in one
form or another, are monitored and their
"metadata" retained for ALL communications is
quite disturbing.
There are
two schools of thought in this (and likely shades of
gray between them).
The first
school of thought is by those who believe that all data
should be tracked under the guise of protecting the
nation from terrorist attacks. Those people
who subscribe to this belief would have you believe that
the "snooping" on digital communications is
only being conducted on "incoming"
communications from foreign sources to those in the
United States (or insert your country depending on where
you live). This slight of hand
declaration that the NSA is only monitoring inbound
communication from foreign countries sounds very
reassuring. After all, there shouldn't be
any harm in monitoring the communications of ALL FOREIGN
communications when it comes to trying to track SOME
individuals or groups of individuals.
In my
eyes, there is a critical flaw in this reasoning that is
only exacerbated when you consider the other school of
thought's belief that the NSA is monitoring ALL
communications - even if it is just restricted to
"metadata". Even if the
first school of thought based on monitoring
"foreign" communications is actually what is
going on, there is still a wide dragnet of scrutiny
being conducted that unreasonably snags innocent and
harmless communications in order to snag the potentially
harmful ones.
In this
era of highly effective and efficient computer systems
that can monitor up to pentaflops of data in short
periods of time, it seems inefficient and ludicrous to
monitor ALL communication (whether it is aggregate or
metadata) of citizens when you have specific targets
whom you are tracking.
It is
true that the Government technically in the United
States has to present a "case" for monitoring
to a court, herein referred to as FISA.
Technically, the Government presents their finds and
asks for additional monitoring, but the proceedings are
ENTIRELY ONE SIDED. The Government is
the only one who presents a case and there is no
advocate for the "suspected" party to argue
the case - there is in fact no "advocate" for
even the population at large to present a counter
argument in the traditional adversarial judicial system
that we cling to like Charlton Heston and his
guns. This FISA court is not set up to
present real facts - it is all based on the supposition
of the Government and then the only BARRIER to
infringing on individual liberties is having the Judge
to act as both Judge and hopefully the adversary to the
Government.
On the
other hand, we must understand that the recent
"leaks" of what is REALLY happening shows that
the Government is lying about only monitoring INBOUND
communications.
You see,
we know as FACT that Verizon and scores of internet
based communications companies (as well as telecoms) are
providing the NSA with metadata which includes dates and
times, number called, originating numbers, but
supposedly not the actual communications.
This data is collected ON ALL communications - this is
billions of transactions per day and there is a new data
facility being constructed to help facilitate even more
communication interception. |
It
is said that because only the metadata of the
communications is being intercepted and RETAINED, this
is not an invasion of privacy.
Suppose
you called an AIDS or SUICIDE hotline - that you visited
a gay website or called a gay organization, this
information can easily be turned into potentially
harmful (for you) situations. And
while the website address and phone number of the
organization/company you visited is basically all they
have, it is almost 5th grade level to reverse lookup
what that website address and phone number is associated
with. So if you have a pattern
of visiting gay sites, guess what? You
are known to be gay - or you might have visited AIDS
sites - you might have AIDS.
Read
here how MetaData could have snagged Paul Revere on
his ride.
Even to
this point, just using meta data has a potentially
chilling effect. We already know that this
current administration will use government agencies to
target political adversaries. Whether
it is the use of the IRS to harass and to prevent
conservative and libertarian groups, or the even more
insidious cross application of using OSHA and EPA
investigations on the same groups from data collected by
the IRS, we know we cannot trust this current
administration.
As a
Libertarian, I have long noted that Government should
never be trusted. Always assume that
Government will do the evil and dishonest
thing. That is why those like me always seek
the smallest Government with the least influence on our
lives. Having such a monster of a Government
as we have now with its tentacles in everything only
means that the Tyrant we currently have will be able to
easily eliminate and to neutralize his enemies and to
quell the ability of his opponents to push back on his
insidious dishonest and unethical conduct.
Even if
individual calls are not monitored for content, we
cannot allow even the use of meta data searches on ALL
AMERICANS to be allowed to continue.
The spying on ALL AMERICANS is not what FISA was
established to permit. If there is a
compelling case of danger that can be established, then
have each case presented before FISA and those records
and ONLY THOSE RECORDS being the ones which are
monitored and reviewed. It makes no
logical sense to retain all meta data from innocent
folks and it seems to create an even tougher job to sift
through useless data just to find the pin.
And since the Government has no opposition in FISA,
their general threshold to get permission to snoop is
woefully low.
And if
the Government is monitoring a potential terrorist and
cell, it can ask for the data on the numbers that are
called by those individuals and the rest of the 99.99%
of Americans data is worthless and should never be
monitored nor retained.
And while
some people implicitly trust their Government, we have
learned that sometimes we elect dishonest men like
Richard Nixon and Barack Obama who are hell bent to wage
political war using all of the resources of the Federal
Government. It is better that we
restrict the pool of data that such a potential
Government should have than to take the easy way out and
capture all data to save Federal Enforcement Agencies 15
minutes worth of time to present a case before FISA!
And maybe Obama is not as insidious as he seems, but do
you leftists want another Nixon looking at you? |
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