If PRISM Is Good Policy, Why Stop With Terrorism?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/if-prism-is-good-policy-why-stop-with-terrorism/277531/


Why bother with these gentlemen? (Associated Press)


"There are more instance of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison, 1788
My first day in college, the professor for Public Policy 101 asked a 200-person class, "If there were a policy that saved over 20,000 lives, reduced carbon emissions by 20 percent, reduced gasoline usage by 20 percent, decreased average insurance costs by 75 percent, and which would increase revenues to the federal government and not cost any additional money to implement -- who in this room would support this policy?" Of course, everyone's hands went up.

The policy solution that he was referring to, he soon revealed, was to cap national speed limits at 40 miles per hour. The room, filled mainly with 18-to-20-year-olds, was horrified at the prospect of never being able to drive their car above 40 mph on the highway. Individual freedom is difficult to quantify in public-policy analysis until its real costs are clear, but it has to be part of the conversation.

The government's policies in the NSA's PRISM program reflect perhaps the perfect storm of public-policy conundrums. This surveillance seems to offer short-term advantages, with the real costs hidden, diffuse, unknown, and, seemingly, far in the future. What, many ask, is the real price of giving up privacy? The government has presented PRISM, and other similar surveillance programs, as a solution to a danger and fear -- terrorism -- which is almost impossible to comprehend: Terrorism is everywhere and nowhere; the battlefield is across the globe; the threat is omnipresent. It is difficult for the average person to perceive and understand until it is splashed across television screens. Terrorism is by definition designed to "shock and awe." It is theatre of the macabre.

The government has used this fear to justify unprecedented intrusions into our privacy, including monitoring who we call, our location data, and allegedly even the contents of our communication (if there is a 51 percent chance that one party to the communication is foreign). Our personal calling data, emails, letters, credit-card transaction data -- everything seems fair game. The fact that the NSA wants this much information shouldn't be surprising. The old maxim that to a hammer every problem looks like a nail is appropriate here. A spy agency specializing in "signals" intelligence is always looking for more phone calls, emails, and other signals-based data to analyze. The more data NSA receives, the more powerful it becomes.

[leveymg]

1. Who says they do stop at terrorism? Look at what happened to Eliot Spitzer?

A warrantless review of his credit card records led to wiretaps and hookers, and then a Grand Jury Indictment. End of one particularly aggressive nuisance to Wall Street.

[nashville_brook]

4. traditionally this sort of unchecked power leads to targeting journalists, academics

and anyone who threatens the power elite.

there's nothing noble in any of it. it's always used against the masses.

[Catherina]

9. +1,000,000 n/t

[HardTimes99]

11. Russell Tice (one of the NSA whistleblowers) says the NSA was wiretapping Obama

himself as early as 2004. It's not a quantum leap to jump from wiretapping to political blackmail (my theory for the non-economic purpose of the surveillance state).

[treestar]

2. And apply it to what?

Crime investigation? Fourth Amendment law is different when that is the purpose. The exclusionary rule would block the evidence.

[rhett o rick]

6. What 4th Amendment? We no longer have a 4th amendment. The right-wing, the conservative Democrats,

and the 1% have killed it.

[treestar]

7. Insane

Not even "hyperbole."

[rhett o rick]

8. I am fighting for transparency, what are you fighting for? nm

[treestar]

10. Rationality

Like recognizing a Fourth Amendment issue without declaring the amendment "dead." And leaving transparency to other things, not national security.

[MNBrewer]

12. Looks more like rationalization to me.

[rhett o rick]

15. So you choose security over transparency w/r to national security. Ben Franklin cries.

The Patriot Act and the FISA Law both violate the 4th Amendment and it looks like the current spy agencies are even violating those laws, and you call it "a Fourth Amendment issue"???

Transparency is essential for democracy, including national security. The collected data is a very useful tool for a tyrant.

[treestar]

16. Now you're creating the straw man.

Did you not see recognizing a Fourth Amendment issue without the amendment being dead?

Did you not see that there can be some state secrets for national security? Ben Franklin would have agreed with that?

Please get beyond sloganeering.

[Life Long Dem]

3. Then there is cyberwarfare

The NSA doesn't only cover terrorism. They also cover cyberwarfare.

Cyberwarfare

Cyberwarfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare,[1] and in 2013 was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al Qaeda or terrorism, by many U.S. intelligence officials.[2]

U.S. government security expert Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), defines "cyberwarfare" as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption."[3]:6 The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare,"[4] and William J. Lynn, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, states that "as a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . [which] has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space.

In 2009, President Barack Obama declared America's digital infrastructure to be a "strategic national asset," and in May 2010 the Pentagon set up its new U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), headed by General Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), to defend American military networks and attack other countries' systems. The EU has set up ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) which is headed by Prof. Udo Helmbrecht and there are now further plans to significantly expand ENISA's capabilities. The United Kingdom has also set up a cyber-security and "operations centre" based in Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA. In the U.S. however, Cyber Command is only set up to protect the military, whereas the government and corporate infrastructures are primarily the responsibility respectively of the Department of Homeland Security and private companies.[4]

In February 2010, top American lawmakers warned that the "threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and computer networks was sharply on the rise."[6] According to The Lipman Report, numerous key sectors of the U.S. economy along with that of other nations, are currently at risk, including cyber threats to public and private facilities, banking and finance, transportation, manufacturing, medical, education and government, all of which are now dependent on computers for daily operations.[6] In 2009, President Obama stated that "cyber intruders have probed our electrical grids."[7]

More... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare

[RC]

5. The Secret War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023166576

INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM. FOR YEARS, FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.

Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.

>SNIP<

Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/?p=58188

Few seem to care because it, because so far, this has not personally affected them. Plus the fact most people don't have much of a clue as how the internet actually works or the Constitution, for that matter.

[Cleita]

13. My big problem with these programs that have been put in place, from the Patriot Act on forward,

is that, we the people, had practically nothing to say about their implementation and now they are being done in secret. None of us heard of PRISM until Snowden revealed it. Maybe there are times we are willing to make sacrifices in privacy for more security, but damn it at least let me vote on it.