Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Dialing back the national security state ... by gimleteye

Commentator/ TV producer and writer David Simon makes a passionate defense of data collection by national security agencies, using the example of Baltimore thirty years ago, when police investigators began collecting records of pay phone calls in order to intercept and interrupt drug traffickers. His point: just because government collects the information, doesn't mean that government agents are actually listening to all the conversations. It is all about assembling patterns of contact, according to Simon; a worthy pursuit of technologies where adversaries hide their intent in trillions of bits of data.

The difference between Simon's Baltimore, thirty years ago, and today is that nearly one million civilians have top security clearance designation. The national security state, in other words, is not a "virtual" state. It is literally a state. It is a state formed out of tens of thousands of corporations, each with allegiance to shareholders and top executives; themselves the happy result of privatization of government and outsourcing that acquired momentum during the Bush terms.

With disclosures by a former Booz Hamilton consultant, the emperor has no clothes. But there is no imperative to dial back the national security state, unless citizens force the issue with Congress and the White House to ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to protect citizens' right to privacy.

Unless voters intervene -- supporting political candidates willing to run for office on a platform of dialing back the national security state -- what is likely to happen is that the national security state will bury itself further in the high weeds of technologies; tightening down "supervision" of those with top security clearance. One could even imagine (as science fiction has long done) that computers will now filter the filterers; in other words, putting humans at a distant end of decision matrixes because -- the thinking goes, embedded in algorithms -- we simply can't be trusted to reach reasonable conclusions about others' behavior, much less our own.

It is time for common sense and judgment to manage our way back from the massive invasion of privacy that constitutes a parallel, separate reality from our daily lives entwined with data. The result, otherwise, is certain abuse.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Folks, look at the history of The Patriot Act. At the time of its implementation, the Act was lauded by supporters. Many complained. The response was "if you're not doing anything illegal, why are you worried?" Many of the same who supported this are now the ones who are whining. Why? The answer is clear. They don't like the President. Why they trusted Bush 43 and not Obama is beyond my comprehension.

Anonymous said...

Our civil liberties should not be viewed through the prism of who is in the White House. We need to set and be comfortable with the standards and whoever is President works within those standards. It is difficult for some to understand this, but everything can't be viewed as either Democratic or Republican. Somethings have to be viewed as American. Our civil liberties are one such thing as they define who we are. Our civil liberties are much bigger than any one President.

Anonymous said...

Dailing back is one issue, but another is "who is in control?". Most of the people who should know seem to know nothing. But three-month contract employee, GED Snowden seems to know and control a lot. How many more Snowdens are there and exactly what powers do they have? Why are these positions and this much power contracted out? Why isn't the military in control of these powerful hands-on positions? Why aren't these powerful positions assigned to military personnel or at least to civilian governmental employees instead of outsiders? Lots of questions keep coming. . .

Anonymous said...

Is the government a pass-through using its powers to secure info and data, and giving it all to private contractors? Do private contractors have possession of all the data and information and therefore have all the power and information on us? Who are these private contractors?