PRISM, that strange acronym that symbolizes the Orwellian development of technology by the government of the United States, has morphed into a gigantic apparatus, whose scope seems to widen each year, and risks to devour not only the civil and privacy rights at home but also those of people abroad.
What started as a program to intercept conversation from foreign national to the US, and vice versa, within the scope of a terrorist investigation, has now become an all consuming and encompassing effort to create a worldwide database of all internet interactions. Almost like an x-ray of a patient, taken as a baseline, to be compared with future actions and happenings.
The headquarters built in Utah at incredible expense for the NSA, has the capability of storing an immense cache of data, at least 5 billion gigabytes. The energy to cool and store the information systems alone will top 40$ million dollars a year.
Furthermore, the system has been developed to not only capture data but also to store it indefinitely.
The amount of data borders on the ridiculous. Not only are posts and email stored, but also trivial things like skype conversations, youtube videos, facebook posts, bank transfers, credit card transactions, emails, google searches and so on. Nothing of what a person does, its personal internet and communication, electronic trace, seems to be lost.
The problem with this immense databank, is that there is no knowledge as to who might oversee the management or 'mismanagement' of the data. This also leaves great questions as to the security aspect of it. But more importantly, who decides what to do with it, and who, if anyone, oversees the data management to ensure that it is not misused by law enforcement or the federal authorities.
Although the director of the NSA asserts that the program does not target Americans, because by law they are supposedly prohibited from doing so, the smart money is on the ability and willingness to capture 'everything' that goes on on the internet and then store it for future use, i.e. without touching it, they are not breaking the law. The parsing of the word surveillance is just that. By saying that Americans are not spied upon, just means that the data is stored without scrutiny. But it is still collected for future use. And the way they get around the problem of the law, is that in the future, if a court warrants that under the scope of a 'terrorism' or other pretext investigation it can be be retrieved and analyzed, such data can then become lawfully obtained for scrutiny and used. But the data, make no mistake, is collected.
The first company to willingly abide by the NSA's request for collection of data, or data mining, was Microsoft. Soon Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Youtube, Skype and Aol followed. Apple capitulated in 2012, after years of trying to avoid being included. The only company that apparently has mounted a successful resistance to the request for 'information' is Twitter, for reasons that remain undisclosed, although that too is questionable.
But through these internet operators, search engines, and servers, the NSA can not only collect information from Americans, but from everyone in the world. In fact, the UK just this week admitted it was allowing the data collection through the American agency.
Germany however, is not too happy with this. Chancellor Merkel has already signified that she intends to address the issue with President Obama during this week's visit to her country. Green Party Chairman Volker Beck has already complained that 'total surveillance of all German citizens is completely disproportionate'. However, German authorities and police have long collaborated and made use of the information collected by the NSA for their investigations.
With Prism however, the NSA has reinterpreted the legal basis for its actions. The procedure in the past had been that a special court would issue an order with precise specifications on the scope and cause of the investigations for which the information was sought. Now however, all the NSA needs to do is show 'reasonable evidence' that someone outside the US is communicating with someone in the US, or vice versa, to get a free stamp of approval on just about any request.
The data mining collected by the NSA in Utah however, does not stop at communications and internet traffic, it also gathers and cross references data obtained through high tech satellites, drones and other forms of surveillance.
The problem then is why should the NSA alone be the recipient and the manager of such a dearth of information? And even with 40,000 people working on this project alone, can the data truly be managed efficiently, if not legally?
While computers store and analyze most of the data themselves and pick through terabytes of information by using paradigms and algorithms that connect bit and pieces to 'suspicious' activity, at the same time, these machines are connecting transactions as disparate as credit card transactions with phone data, videos and immigrations and customs information.
The problem with an algorithm driven assembly of a meaningful body of information, is what does the person who is supposed to analyze them do with it? Does it decide that the matter is automatically to be included in an investigation, without scrutinizing possible errors, redundancies, and other issues that would disallow for an investigation, or do they simply rubber stamp the machine's analysis and begin actions in earnest? How is the citizen, here and abroad protected from possible lack of scrutiny or faulty analysis of computer generated information?
What is more absurd however, is the fact that all this data collection is more aimed at predicting future behavior, especially when it comes to mass communications as is the case in an uprising or demonstration, or any kind of social protest. Of course, then it might also marginally serve to predict terrorist behavior in the future. Or does it?
Again, we must make reference to the Tsarnaev case. How did this incredible apparatus miss the coming and goings, the rantings, the videos, the pictures, the accessing of extremist sites that he was constantly looking at, the travels abroad and the information given by foreign governments about his shady dealings? It apparently did, but nothing was done with it. If the dearth of information collected is supposed to predict behavior, what then happened in that case? Why was he not under surveillance that would have originated through the endless rotations and whirring of machines, and evinced the exact pattern that he was following and alert authorities to the imminent danger? Well, we know the rest of the story.
But the agency defends itself by saying that many cases of terrorism have been foiled, but they just can't tell us about it. That too, is useless to the common man. Some information must be revealed, for the public to have any faith at all in the gargantuan appetite the government has for our information.
But the agency defends itself by saying that many cases of terrorism have been foiled, but they just can't tell us about it. That too, is useless to the common man. Some information must be revealed, for the public to have any faith at all in the gargantuan appetite the government has for our information.
Be as it may that the system might have worked in some instances, it is doubtful that terrorists who are truly serious about their criminal intent are unaware of the perils of communications and are not taking measures to protect themselves from that scrutiny. Indeed, is this system truly worth it, and more importantly, what are the true aims behind the construction of such a behemoth? There is no reason not to believe that Prism, like many other surveillance tools in place, are more about predicting the behavior of the masses in general, than just to apprehend future terrorists. In fact, there are on the Internet solution aplenty, that the sites say can bar from government scrutiny. If that is true, then all this money spent to create this behemoth is thrown to the wind.
What is even more disturbing is the CIA's own admission that they are seeking even more sophisticated parameters and algorithms to collect everything and hang on to it, in the words of Gus Hunt, CIA's chief technology officer. He also adds that "it is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human-generated information"
Of course this sounds very much like the stone that finally obliterates the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy.
But Hunt, in all his technological hubris, realizes that he must make amends and offers this little quip at the end: "Technology in this world is moving faster than government or law can keep up." And there might just lie your answer. Since government realize they might be losing control of the incredible amount of technology at our disposal, their reaction is collect everything, sit on it, and see what happens.
But is it really feasible to have all this information and do something meaningful with it? It seems that answer will elude us, since all answers are, of course, 'secret'.
But is it really feasible to have all this information and do something meaningful with it? It seems that answer will elude us, since all answers are, of course, 'secret'.
Op_Ed
Partial Source : Spiegel / 6.11.13
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