Tag: surviellance

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.

Strengthening National Security

On March 10, Edward Snowden was interviewed via videoconference at the annual conference of SXSW Interactive: “Conversation with Edward Snowden” It is an absolutely brilliant discussion of the issues first raised by Snowden last year with emphasis on protecting our privacy. I had not viewed it yet when I posted my last blog on the slippery slop of government expansion, but it provides another powerful set of examples. I strongly urge anyone to view it who is interested in and concerned about how to strengthen our security against criminals and enemies without eroding the checks and limits on the scope and power of our government that is one of the foundations of our successful democracy built into our constitution.

Snowden is surprisingly articulate. He understands economics almost as well as cryptology. I will repeat here just two of the many brilliant points he made and urge you to watch it all.

No one in the discussion of surveillance and national security raised by Snowden wishes to impede the ability of the NSA or the government to gather information on targeted individuals under court orders with proper oversight. Sounding like an economist (and of course we all love economists) Snowden notes that the billions of dollars that have been wasted on mass (as opposed to targeted) data collection and analysis (it has produced virtually no useful information) has taken valuable resources away from improving the collection and analysis of targeted information. Thus, for example, the underwear bomber and the Boston marathon bombers probably could have been stopped if our government had used its intelligence resources more wisely. In short, mass surveillance programs have reduced our security in many ways.

When asked why the NSA and other government security agencies persist in hanging on to worthless and wasteful (and potentially dangerous) programs, Snowden presents a proper public choice answer that is very similar to the special interest defense of wasteful and harmful tax loop holes I criticized a few days ago. Individuals and companies benefit from the huge amounts spent on these programs. They acquire a self-interest in their preservation. In addition, bureaucrats are naturally self-protective and slow-moving. You really should listen to Snowden’s own words.

As I have said a number of times previously, the disclosures of confidential government documents and internal discussions by Chelsea (AKA Bradley) Manning are harmful to the effective functioning of government. I am glad that she is in jail, though a hospital would probably be more appropriate. Snowden, on the other hand is a full-blown hero and patriot. It took me a while to fully embrace this view, but it is clear now that our personal and national security have already improved and should improve further in the future because of him (and others working in the same direction). I am very grateful for the huge personal sacrifice he has made for me and for our country. I hope that our government will find a way to welcome him back home soon.

Turning a corner on the invasion of privacy?

In a small step to improve transparency, the U.S. government has released a two-year-old opinion by its secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealing that “the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans” The Washington Post, Aug 22, 2013. Perhaps it was pushed to preempt Edward Snowden from doing so before it did. But it was also in response to a year old Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“It’s unfortunate it took a year of litigation and the most significant leak in American history to finally get them to release this opinion,” said foundation staff attorney Mark Rumold, “but I’m happy that the administration is beginning to take this debate seriously.”

In the October 3, 2011, opinion, John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote: “The court is troubled that the government’s revelations regarding NSA’s acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program…. NSA’s knowing acquisition of tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications through its upstream collection is a cause of concern for the court.” Bates also noted that the court’s authorization of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone-call records was “premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA” uses the data. “This misperception by the FISC existed from the inception of its authorized collection in May 2006, buttressed by repeated inaccurate statements made in the government’s submissions, and despite a government-devised and court-mandated oversight regime.”

That is a mouth full and it is encouraging that the government has finally shared the court’s opinion with the public. It is in sharp contrast with the disclaimers of any wrong doing it was issuing a few weeks ago.