Privacy’s protectors
We have a choice in how we respond to state surveillance, writes SHANNON GORMLEY.
Two months ago, the world met Edward Snowden, the government spook who spooked his government by revealing the inner machinations of the modern American surveillance apparatus. We’ve learned a lot since then.
We’ve learned that sophisticated surveillance programs don’t pick away at the global buffet of personal communications, taking only what they need to help us survive; they devour our information gluttonously.
That the word “PRISM” no longer signifies a benign geometric figure that you learn to draw in fourth grade, but a topsecret program that grabs communication data from servers of companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
That through secret relationships with companies such as Verizon Wireless and secret programs like XKeyscore, America’s National Security Agency has people’s chat histories, call histories, browsing histories — personal histories.
That the NSA shares our histories with other governments.
That it might access your emails because it thinks that recipe your best friend sent you was for a Molotov cocktail instead of a Mad Men-style cocktail.
That it seldom feels like being transparent.
That it seldom feels like getting a warrant.
That if it knows your email address, your IP address, or even just your name, it can know everything that matters.
But by deliberately revealing his personal identity as well as surveillance technologies, carefully selecting what information to share and what to keep secure, giving this information to journalists rather than selling it to foreign governments, and giving up everything he had in the process, Snowden taught us something else: somewhere in the cracks of a seemingly airtight surveillance system, there is room for human ethics and agency.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke most of the NSA stories, told the New York Times, “there’s this mammoth system that you try and undermine and subvert and shine a light on — but you usually can’t make any headway.”
To make headway, today’s heroes fall not on their swords, but on their hard drives, their accounting books and their press badges. Their choices are grim.
While the American government was apparently demanding access to his email company’s servers, Lavabit CEO Ladar Levison chose to torpedo the organization he built rather than become “complicit in crimes against the American people.” Silent Circle followed suit hours later, saying “the writing is on the wall.”
While British agents looked on, the Guardian’s editor-inchief, Alan Rusbridger, chose to order his staff to hammer the newspaper’s MacBooks to smithereens rather than hand the hard drives over to a government that had told him: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”
And while his partner recovered from nine hours’ detention at Heathrow without a lawyer, a translator or even a notepad, in what Amnesty International called a “petty, vindictive” display of macho government muscle-flexing, Greenwald chose to warn the British bullies that they “will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively,” rather than be cowed into silence.
Systemic change demands individual courage, but the enablers of intrusive surveillance programs are denying personal agency.
On the corporate side, major American telecommunications and Internet companies have suggested that the government tied their hands with their own cables. But in an industry where privacy is currency, they’ve bankrupted the public’s trust. Tiny Lavabit is standing up to the NSA; Goliath Google is making excuses for lying down.
On the judicial side, Snowden warned that American privacy rights are protected only by a rubber stamp-happy court that oversees a bug-happy government. President Barack Obama countered that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a “robust check” on the NSA. But presiding judge Reggie Walton admitted that he has no investigative powers: this oversight court only sees what the government wants it to see. Balking at the NSA’s nasty habit of scooping up tens of thousands of domestic American emails (in addition to the foreign communications that it collects with impunity), the secretive court that lets the government in on everyone’s secrets was somehow surprised that the NSA has repeatedly presented a “flawed depiction” of surveillance activities to judges.
And on the political side, authors of bills that don’t respect privacy are seemingly appalled that those bills have been used to violate privacy. Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner introduced the Patriot Act, but blames President Obama for taking it to its naturally invasive conclusion, insisting “our law was designed to protect liberties.” Lord Falconer of Thoroton helped introduce Britain’s Terrorism Act of 2000, but is shocked that Schedule 7, which allows authorities to detain someone on terrorism suspicions without grounds for suspicion, was used by authorities to detain Greenwald’s partner without grounds for suspicion.
To the corporate, judicial and political enablers and enforcers of mass surveillance: Please. Spare us your surprised indignation.
Those who helped build the modern surveillance system may now fear the data-hungry monster they created. Fair enough. But their earlier promises to protect citizens’ privacy were made to be broken, and these surveillance programs were designed to be abused.
So if these revelatory months teach us only one thing, let it be this:
Our privacy rights are under siege — but our personal responsibility isn’t dead.