Tag: Snowden

Terrorism: Security vs. Privacy

We all care about our personal and national security and about our individual freedom, of which our privacy is an important element. Measures that serve both are win win and thus uncontroversial, but often measures that enhance one diminish the other. How and when to use such measures (tools) involve agreement on the balance of risks between security and privacy. Striking the best balance requires public review and debate and constant monitoring as I have discussed before. https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/fighting-terrorists-part-ii/

Tools that enable our government to collect information on and track individuals can enhance our security by detecting and hopefully interrupting plans to carry out terrorist attacks. The existence of such capabilities, e.g., to monitor phone calls, emails, payments, and physical movements, also create the capability of collecting such information on people for other purposes, e.g. for commercial or political espionage. Governments through out the world have used such tools to monitor and suppress the “undesirable” activities of their foreign enemies and sometimes of their own citizens. Limits and safeguards on the use of such tools can mitigate the risk that they can be misused to get private information on individuals for other unwarranted purposes.

Finding the best balance between security and privacy is difficult but important for our freedom. We know or assume that we know how Russia, for example, uses surveillance tools on its own citizens. We generally believe that our own government only uses such tools to enhance our security. But the risks of and the growing actual misuse of government powers for political ends (e.g., targeted IRS audits on political enemies, illegal surveillance of a government employee’s girl friend or wife, etc.) are challenging our, perhaps, naïve faith in the honestly of our government. Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified email and Russian theft of U.S. government personnel records are nothing compared to the temptation to steal historical data on the activities of Donald Trump and Mrs. Clinton.

The credible rule of law is one of the critical foundations of our personal freedom. It both protects and limits the extent and domain of our privacy. The principle of “Innocent until proven guilty” is an essential element of the rule of law. It evaluates whether an act has violated the law. In a free society people are not punished for acts contemplated but not committed. Acting against people the state believes might be likely to or inclined to violate the law, for example, that it thinks are likely to commit a terrorist act, would violate this fundamental principle of a free society. An exception to this general rule would be the arrest of a person having the instruments and ingredients for making a bomb and supported by evidence that he plans to make and use the bomb.

Following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC on 9/11, public sentiment shifted its balance between security and freedom in favor of security. The so-called PATRIOT act signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, reflected that shift by infringing on our privacy and traditional rights in ways that would not have been accepted earlier. Moreover, measures that were initially considered temporary and emergency in nature have become increasingly accepted as normal. Even after a slight curtailment of the provisions of the PATRIOT act when it was renewed in 2015 most of these measures were left in place. No one seems shocked today that the government maintains a “No Fly” list based on suspicions that certain people who have committed no crimes might be potential terrorists. Such profiling unsurprisingly results in Middle Eastern Muslims dominating the list, a racial and religious discrimination that violates existing anti discrimination laws and would not have been tolerated before 9/11.

It is not unusual today to hear people who claim to appreciate the importance of the First Amendment to the US Constitution (freedom of speech) suggest that radical Islamist websites that attempt to recruit ISIS Jihadists should be blocked. Most of my friends are too young to remember the anti-communist witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy of the 1950s from which we coined the term McCarthyism. It was a time when a frightened public saw communists under every bed. Soviet spies, a legitimate target for arrest and punishment, were often confused with Marxists (communists), who espoused an economic system now rightly discredited. Those of us who still support freedom of speech believe that bad and pernicious ideas are best defeated with reasoned counter arguments. We believe that it is potentially dangerous to our freedom to allow our government to determine what we can read, hear, or see.

Edward Snowden did our country a great service by forcing a public discussion of what safeguards are needed to strike the balance desired by the public between their security and their privacy. I have written about Snowden before:  https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/the-year-of-edward-snowden/    I recently viewed the movie “Snowden” and the documentary about the same events called “Citizenfour” and highly recommend both. The Heritage Foundation has contributed to this discussion in the following half-day seminar. http://www.heritage.org/events/2016/10/cybersecurity I particularly recommend the opening session with Michael Hayden, who makes a number of interesting and thoughtful observations.

The level of discussion, which is to say the lack of serious discussion of these issues, in the American Presidential campaign is distressing. I am reassured that some very bright and thoughtful people are discussing them. In addition to the Heritage seminar cited above, the New American Foundation recently held an all day seminar on these issues that started off with an excellent presentation by Andrew J. Bacevich (starting at about 24 minutes into the video)

https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/events/next-presidents-fight-against-terror/

We can not remind ourselves often enough that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” And, we should add, courage.

More on the balance between the public and private sectors

Private sector rights.

I strongly support the right of the Boy Scouts of America’ to define who it will accept as members (i.e. its right to exclude gays). I don’t have to agree with how people use their freedom to believe passionately in their right to be free including who they join with in clubs. I was happy to see that organization relax its rules and open its doors to gay boys. But that door was not opened very wide and the BSA still has a way to go. I was thus very happy to see Lockheed-Martin end its donations to the Boy Scouts until remaining discriminations are ended.

Richard “Guglielmetti, 66, who led Troop 76 in Simsbury, Conn., for a dozen years until 2005, said leaders and members of his troop ignored the national organization’s prohibition on gays as scouts or leaders because they felt it was wrong.” (US Today, January 28, 2013)  It would have been counterproductive and morally wrong in my view for the government to have forced this result or to push it further.

As another example, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson (I never heard of him) said some perfectly ignorant and offensive things about gays. We should all defend his right to say what he wants to. We should also defend the right of A&E to suspend his show, though I am not particularly happy about mixing up commerce and politics or moral issues. Fortunately, A&E is a cable show. Cable programs are not subject to the government regulations covering over-the-air shows and are free to pretty much do what they want. This helps explain why cable shows are often much more interesting.

A process of public discussion and education best sorts out touchy issues such as these. The government is not needed or wanted here.

Domestic spying

Whistle blower Edward Snowden received further confirmation of the legitimacy of his belief that the government has over reached in its domestic personal data collection (see my several earlier blogs on this subject). In ruling that NSA’s massive metadata collection for all domestic phone calls (numbers called, date/time, and duration) was unconstitutional, Federal Judge Richard J. Leon stated that the government had failed to “cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack.” (Washington Post, December 20, 2013).

Equally damning was the just released report of a panel appointed by President Obama to investigate charges of NSA abuse, which included among its members former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morrell. The review panel said the program “was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”

Snowden has performed an enormous public service at great personal risk. Thank you Mr. Snowden

Maybe our ship is starting to right itself.

Spying

Two articles on the same page of Tuesday’s Washington Post reported on similar activities from opposite perspectives. In one, “A 28-year-old British man whom prosecutors described as a ‘sophisticated and prolific computer hacker’ has been charged in connection with cyberattacks in which he illegally accessed the personal information of U.S. soldiers and government employees, and obtained other information about budgets, contracts and the demolition of military facilities, authorities said Monday.” Why did he do it? Why do such people do such things? For commercial/financial gain? In this case, it seems, the motivation was political, though I am not sure what the political point was. “British-man-described-as-prolific-hacker-indicted-in-cyberattacks-on-us-agencies/2013/10/28/”

The second article discussed the NSA program to eavesdrop on friendly heads of state, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, launched in 2002. President Obama apparently did not know the extent and details of such surveillance until very recently nor did Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who oversees the NSA as the Senate Intelligence Committee chair. Why did they do it? “Their [NSA staff] job is to get as much information for policymakers as possible,” a senior administration official said. “They’re used to coming at this from the other direction — that is, being criticized for not knowing enough. This is a new dynamic for them.” “Obama-didnt-know-about-surveillance-of-us-allied-world-leaders-until-summer-officials-say/2013/10/28/”

In the first case, we were angry and in the second case Chancellor Merkel and most of Europe were angry and both with good reasons. We want our intelligence agencies to collect all of the information needed to protect us from harm. All countries spy on each other, but the tools and activities of espionage agents are potentially double-edged swords. Because of the potential dangers of turning these tools on our own citizens (and friends) for political advantage, strict limits have been placed on domestic surveillance and our allies might have assumed they were spared as well.  Unfortunately following the 9/11 attacks many American’s were more concerned about security than privacy and liberty and willing to move the balance away from protecting privacy.

When these systems of spying were first developed, those using them had (I assume) the best of intentions—gathering information from and on enemies to help protect the nation. And this is exactly what we wanted from them. Whether it is really possible to detect useful information from the millions upon millions of messages (verbal and electronic) being collected is an interesting question, however. Targeting specific individually is dramatically easier than looking for needles in massive data haystacks, but the heads of state of our allies?

Those who work for the NSA and other intelligence agencies are surely motivated by the highest objectives. But what do good people do when they have such access to information on the private activities of those they don’t like politically—republican’s able to browse around in the private affairs of democrats and visa versa?  IRS agents abusing their power against Tea Party organizations comes to mind, for example. Snowden has shown us that as time has gone on the temptation to use more widely the enormous capability available to our intelligence agencies has grown. And not one hundred present of our government officials are always honorable to begin with.  In the following article in The Washington Post, Harold Meyerson quotes the WSJ as follows: “The agency [NSA] has been rebuked repeatedly by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for misrepresenting the nature of its spy programs and for violating the court’s confidential orders.” “A-turbulent-spy-agency/2013/10/29/”

On top of this, the government’s insistence that American Internet access providers and large data collectors leave back doors through which the NSA can enter to collect data, has reduced Net security against the likes of the British hacker mentioned in my opening paragraph. Fortunately, once again, when things go too far there is a backlash. Even Senator Feinstein is saying stop.

Abuse of Power

If I had more energy, I would gather together all of the recent ways in which the Obama administration has abused presidential authority and lied to us. That would make reading this blog worthwhile. I apologize. I just returned from a very enjoyable week with my two children and six of my grand children. The seventh grandchild, Bryce Davidson, left for college the day before I arrived. The week included all four opera’s of Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen. So, as all dialogs seem to begin these days, I will just let loose my diatribe at the latest two disturbing atrocities of Big Brother.

We have enemies who wish us harm. We need the best information possible on their plans to harm us. But the technical ability of our government (of any government) to spy on our enemies and thus potentially on each of us (especially those the administration doesn’t like) is also dangerous. Checks and balances and clear limits are needed on the government’s use of these powers. President Obama increasingly demonstrates a lack of interest in limiting his actions to the law. For one of many examples, read my blog on his refusal to call the military coup in Egypt by its obvious real name because he doesn’t like the legal consequences of doing so: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/the-egyptian-coup/

When Edward Snowden first leaked a number of NSA documents reveling that the National Security Agency (NSA) was illegally collecting massive amounts of data on American citizens, the government fought back by claiming that 50 some odd potential attacks on America had been prevented by such information, thus justifying “stretching” the law. Deeper scrutiny revealed that at most one instance of such data might have materially helped (along with other information) prevent such an attack. Many would say that one instance is enough to justify any risk of government abuse of its access to private information on Americans. But many of us are not comfortable with Big Brothers potential use of such powers.

For starters it is difficult to know the truth of the potential benefits and risks of NSA and other government agencies’ spying activities. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, later admitted that he had lied to Congress when he testified that the NSA doesn’t collect data on “millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

When asked what it would take for Congress to hold James Clapper accountable for lying to Congress, Congressman Dennis Kucinich told Cullen Hoback, the director of the documentary on data privacy “Terms and Conditions May Apply:”

Well, you know it’s illegal to lie to Congress, but everyone lies to Congress. As soon as they raise their right hand, watch out! Clapper should be held responsible, but he won’t be, because that’s the condition we’re in right now. In a just world, Snowden, we’d be having ticker tape parades for him. But that’s not what’s going to happen.

President Obama and security officials then attempted to reassure us that they only overstepped the limits of the law a few times. Then last week Snowden released another round of damning documents. As reported in The Washington Post an NSA internal audit and other secret documents provided by Snowden showed the agency “has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.”

A few true believers in Leviathan have suggested that no one—no innocent person—has been harmed or abused by these NSA violations of the law. Step forward David Maranda, the Brazilian partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist through whom Snowden has been providing leaked documents to the British news paper, The Guardian. Changing planes in London’s Heathrow airport on his way from Berlin (on assignment for The Guardian with regard to Edward Snowden) to his home in Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Maranda was detained for nine hours of interrogation under the British Terrorism Act of 2000. According to Neil Wallis, former executive editor, News of the World: “This is an appalling, blatant breach of press freedom.” U.S. officials acknowledged that they were aware of Mr. Maranda’s detention but claimed that they had not requested it. Right! We believe every thing our government tells us. Right?

How far do the abuses of power by the Obama administration have to go before we become concerned enough to put a stop to them?