Tag: surveillance

Apple v FBI Doesn’t Address the Real Challenge

In a story that appeared Monday in The Guardian, writer Danny Yadron projects a hypothetical, but not technically unrealistic, future scenario in which we imagine our driverless car hijacks a run to the grocery store, transporting us instead to a police station because face-recognition software resulted in our being wanted for questioning in an investigation.  The eerie itself, Yadron reports, comes from engineer and former US government privacy policy consultant  Ashkan Soltani, who warns that this kind of circumstance could become reality if Apple loses its fight with the FBI over whether or not it must write code to circumvent the security system of San Bernardino terrorist Sayed Farook’s iPhone.

Of course, it is not farfetched to anticipate new forms of abuse in our increasingly networked lives, and it is prudent to seek remedies in policy and caselaw precedent that may preempt such scenarios; but I’m not sure that a ruling one way or another in the Apple case would be quite so prophetic as some observers suggest.  In fact, assuming we do become increasingly networked and adapt to the holistic Internet of Things as effortlessly and rapidly as the technologists expect us to, the matter of protecting civil liberties in this future society seems increasingly paradoxical. After all, government agencies are supposed to be our hedge against the excesses of private enterprise that might invade our privacy or run afoul of anti-trust restrictions; or government agencies are meant to protect us from criminal abuse of the same systems. But do we simultaneously expect private enterprise or “white hat” hackers to protect us from the overreach of government?

Yadron’s article addresses several aspects of this challenge, citing competing points of view from the policy, law-enforcement, and technology sectors.  And there are no easy answers.  For one thing, the current Apple case involving the cell phone of a known terrorist and a warrant issued by court order may be too specific to beg the broader question as to who controls the code that runs our day-to-day lives.  As of yesterday morning, the FBI announced that they may be able to crack the iPhone without Apple’s help; but even if the presently-suspended legal case were to proceed, Yadron notes that the court could rule in the FBI’s favor in this one extraordinary instance while remaining silent on the much larger question.

My own assumption is that, with regard to cases involving law enforcement, the public is still served by the courts and due process and that new legislation may not be necessary to adapt to new technology. For instance, as dramatic as the futuristic arrest by driverless car scenario may sound, it would be an illegal detention according to existing statute, at least the way Soltani imagines it.  But if similar automation were one day used to capture a wanted criminal based on evidence and an arrest warrant, due process would not necessarily suffer just because the arrest would be partly effected via code. Particularly as we anticipate an inevitable increase in automated law enforcement practices, if we cannot continue to invest faith and power in judicial oversight, we’re basically hosed.

With regard to living day-to-day in a networked society, though, we probably have to imagine scenarios more subtle than the automated arrest by our own robot vehicles—like undetectable invasions that track habits and behaviors, all organized into data that could be used to manipulate or determine opportunities for jobs, education, healthcare, insurance, credit, and so on.  The opportunities these encroachments provide for mischief by corporate, criminal, or government entities are indeed new territory—much more so it seems than the Apple/FBI case—and could easily demand new legislation.

Yadron quotes science fiction writer Bruce Bethke, who gives examples like your cellphone notifying your health insurance provider when you enter a tobacco shop. Users of Google Now on their Android phones have opted into a “service” that cross-references search, GMail content, location, etc. to anticipate their wants and needs and then provides suggestions via  Cards.  Why anyone finds this more helpful than creepy is a mystery to me. All I imagine is Montag’s doe-eyed wife, subservient to the system in Fahrenheit 451, when I contemplate the capacity for this technology to push behaviors, including political or social beliefs. Even at its most benign, it just sounds annoying, like they should have called it Google Nag instead of Google Now.

Meanwhile, we should expect to see a growing market for anti-surveillance products and services for what can only become an increasingly paranoid world in which we are voluntarily spying on ourselves.  As AlterNet reports, English designer Adam Harvey is making wardrobe that will shield against thermal imaging, and he’s demonstrating makeup techniques that will confound face-recognition software. Such efforts are endorsed by organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future because the presumed abusers of surveillance technology will be government agencies, but what about the more subtle private-enterprise promises of the networked society?

Will we live in “smart” homes enjoying their many conveniences but always sure to wear our cloaking PJs?   Will we need to buy and vigilantly update an array of countermeasures to protect our privacy inside our own walls because now they really do have ears?  As we interact with our own homes and vehicles and with one another, we will constantly be sending data to somebody’s servers somewhere.  We are already doing this, though not as holistically as the Internet of Things implies.  How do we write legislation that protects against corporate, government, or criminal abuse of these data and systems?  Or more immediately, whom can we expect to represent civil liberties in this context?

Because I think organizations like EFF and Fight for the Future are often haggling over small potatoes while getting nowhere near the larger question.  These digital rights activists—who are dependent upon Silicon Valley support by the way—make a lot of noise about our “right” to jailbreak these disposable, hand-held devices—something very few of us will ever bother to do—without coming close to having the real discussion about whether or not public agency oversight will be able to protect consumers in a fully-networked future.  When too much of the emphasis on anti-surveillance assumes “government” will be the only abuser, we forget that there is a profit motive in all this monitoring by private enterprise.  Meanwhile, as Google’s presence in Washington increases considerably, are legislators and executive branch officials getting advice from Google on how to protect us from Google?  Because one way or another, we seem to be voluntarily becoming a surveillance society, and I wonder if there will ultimately be an opt out button.

Reconciling the New Surveillance State

I’ve said it several times, but it is still astonishing to watch Americans use social media to air their fears about agencies like the NSA while ignoring the fact that it’s the social media company itself watching us more intimately than any government agency ever will. In a recent editorial for Newsweek, Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) calls attention to the fact that not only do Americans seem paradoxically to distrust government agencies more than private companies with a profit motive for domestic surveillance, but that this contradiction also skews rational debate in Congress with regard to the still-relevant national security role of the intelligence community. Writes Senator Whitehouse:

“I contend that a corporate-backed, ideology-fueled effort to deride and diminish the government of the United States exists and has gotten out of hand. I contend that the consequences of that corporate-backed effort of derision and diminution play out in the way America views the service of NSA personnel, and in the way Congress debates NSA programs.”

On the other hand, as reported in The New York Times, a recent study by the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, indicates that Americans are uncomfortable with the amount of data they increasingly recognize as the hidden cost of “free” Internet services. But the study also indicates that we are not entirely sure what to do about it. Writes Josesph Turow, professor at the Annenberg School:

“Companies are saying that people give up their data because they understand they are getting something for those data, but what is really going on is a sense of resignation. Americans feel that they have no control over what companies do with their information or how they collect it.”

So, where might that control come from? We could post memes and declarations on social media about how we demand control over data gathering by Google and Facebook and other platforms, but whom would we be petitioning? Exactly. So, when a representative, like maybe Senator Whitehouse, proposes legislation to regulate data mining as a means of consumer protection, are we going to fall for the hysteria again when the Internet industry tells us such “draconian measures will break the Internet”?

More broadly, though, this quote from Senator Whitehouse points to a much larger political and ideological challenge:

“It is ironic that some of the loudest voices in the debate about surveillance reform are corporations that make billions of dollars mining the personal information of their customers. It is also ironic that those who guard our liberty are challenged in the name of liberty.”

Efforts by Silicon Valley-funded organizations to leverage public concern over government surveillance while purposely ignoring private industry surveillance are driven both by profit and by ideology. And at some point, we crossed a very important line. While much of American policy has always been an attempt to balance the natural tensions between private and public interests, no other industry has ever been able to so successfully position itself as an alternative state the way the Internet industry has.

Listen to the refrain in geo-political statements by industry leaders like Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and you hear the rhetoric of stateless, global utopianism. To quote a recent WSJ article reporting on Schmidt’s address to European leaders, “Regarding regular clashes with European regulators on issues ranging from data protection to anti-competitive charges, Mr. Schmidt said that Google was listening to European leaders, but that the situation would be helped if Europe spoke with one voice on digital matters.” That might sound reasonable on the surface, but it is consistent with the smug tone of inevitability adopted by presumptive technocrats. Or to quote Schmidt directly, “There’s an old way and a new way; the new way is global and digital, the old way is local and proud, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but the old will be displaced.” Indeed, these pesky individual nations with their quaintly distinct cultures and laws should wise up and make things easier for Google, bearer of the future.

Of course, it isn’t just Europe. The rhetoric of the Internet industry consistently plays havoc with the American political psyche by claiming to provide the ultimate technological defense against government overreach, which means any attempt to regulate that industry’s practices will be described as a government threat to the existence of said technological defense against government. Presumably, this feeds a sense of obsolescence about states in general, and if we are truly stuck in that logical vortex, it’s no wonder Americans are going to feel resigned to the condition of rampant data mining by these companies. (By the way, this is the parable of the computer that goes haywire and then kills its own makers because it is programmed to protect itself at all cost.)

I think only two kinds of people believe earnestly in a stateless, global society: fools who think we’re just one big group-hug away from world peace; and greedy-as-fuck leaders of multi-national companies, who seek every opportunity to avoid regulation by damnable governments. So, I’m all for oversight of the NSA and such, but it’s probably worth keeping in mind that intelligence agencies track terrorists, drug dealers, human traffickers, cyber-criminals and hackers, and crazy-ass domestic hate groups while companies like Google sell ads against the videos those groups put on social media. Hence, to Senator Whitehouse’s point, it might be necessary to restore some balance to the debate.

Thanksgiving and Techno-Exceptionalism

As Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, thoughts turn to the subject of American exceptionalism, seeded by those zealous pilgrims who set out from England to establish their New Jerusalem on the American continent. I don’t mean the supposedly freedom-seeking, mythological caricatures with the dumb hats the kids are told about in school, but the flesh-and-blood puritans whose presumptively divine chosen-ness still reverberates in American political rhetoric to this day.

If you are unfamiliar with historian Sarah Vowell, I recommend her book The Wordy Shipmates in either text or audio form on this subject. Vowell is dry to the point of coarse, and with a childlike reading voice reminiscent of Linus from the Peanuts cartoons, she recounts a tale that seeks to balance the nobility and brutality of the puritan adventure as embodied in John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, who set out for the American continent in 1630 on the flagship Arbella.

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea, is a belief…” begins Vowell, as she proceeds in Chapter One to connect John Cotton’s Old Testament-inspired send off of the puritans to the recurring theme of divine permission which is an oft-implied justification for America’s semi-imperial role in the world.  “The New Testament is to the puritans what the blues was to the Rolling Stones,” writes Vowell, referring in particular to Matthew 5:14 whence comes the many references to the United States as a “city on a hill.”  Or as Ronald Reagan said, “A shining city on a hill.”

I agree with Vowell that belief can be very dangerous because it’s hard for large populations to subscribe to any orthodoxy without someone getting hurt. Consider then that the orthodox view of the digital age is that technology will set us free, particularly social media, if we simply enter into a covenant with its commandments (see Terms of Service). Consider further the evangelism of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who preaches the open flow of information as though, like the word of God, it can only bring about universal enlightenment and tear down the tyranny of nation-states (and also make Google wealthier and more powerful, but let’s not worry about that now).

In an older post, I criticized an excerpt from Schmidt’s book, co-authored with Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age:  Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business, which warns against balkanization of the internet.  While it is right from our perspective to hope for repressive societies like China or Iran to become less so, I think it is over simplistic to believe that information technology alone must inevitably breed democratic reform like John Winthrop believed his flock of New Israelites would fruitfully multiply out of Boston Harbor. Turns out human history is more complex than that — that “information” isn’t  even information because one man’s truth is another’s heterodoxy.

As reported recently here by Bloomberg, Schmidt proclaimed, “We can end government censorship in a decade.  The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.”  On one hand, Schmidt is referring again to societies like China where real suppression of information and speech exists, and he offers what again sounds like an oversimplified proposal that encrypted communications will magically seed democratic reform in China, as though the long, complex history of the Chinese people simply didn’t exist. It’s a form of techno-exceptionalism reminiscent of crusaders or pilgrims or missionaries, who presume to bring “the word” to cultures whose frames of reference are misunderstood or ignored. Take for instance the political power of Vladimir Putin and the hideous trend toward mistreatment of homosexuals in Russia. These crimes don’t persist due to a lack of information, but because Putin enjoys massive support from a base within the Russian Orthodox Church.  Tyranny is most often not the result of populations who live in ignorance, but rather the result of populations who freely choose to follow tyrants.

In his prediction about encryption, Schmidt is of course playing to the sentiments of Americans and other westerners who feel our intelligence community has run amok, and that we’re all now under the government microscope slipping toward a police state.  In either case, Schmidt implies that if we simply put our faith in technology companies to provide technological panaceas like encryption, we will not only become a freer America, but a freer world. It’s a message that might play well among a generation of nascent technophiles who have good reason to be frustrated by existing systems of governance, but it’s also big business SOP — a populist-sounding idea that serves a corporate bottom line.

In much the same way the English puritans felt Christianity had been bastardized by the Church of England, and worse by Rome, it is not unreasonable I think to say that many Americans believe democracy could be made “more pure” through technology. It’s a tempting notion, but it is a transfer of power that may be more insidious than it sounds. Schmidt, of course, makes no mention of what tech companies themselves might be allowed to do in ten years with our encrypted communications, although it is certainly true that at this moment, the content of your Gmail is scanned in order to deliver “relevant” ads to your online experience. But this is merely an annoying hypocrisy compared to the potentially regressive world view Schmidt is projecting.

Ultimately, I don’t think Schmidt is just talking about eradicating “government surveillance” but about eradicating the concept of government as we know it and starting over as techno-Israelites destined to cross the event horizon of the singularity, as unsure of our fate as the puritans sailing across the Atlantic.  Why?  Because his prediction cannot come true without shifting our faith from human oversight to computer oversight; and human oversight is the foundation of our republic.

You might counter that, sure, orthodoxy can be dangerous, but those 17th century puritans seeded a whole nation; but I’d point out that the America you probably love — the America that produces rock-n-roll and pluralism and Hunter Thompson and even Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin — owes more to the free-trading, tolerant Dutch of New Amsterdam than the devout and utopian New Englanders. The point is that our functioning, democratic republic is an exceptional and very rare thing predicated on no single belief or mechanism; and we should be truly thankful every year that it continues to exist for all its imperfections. Yes, it feels dysfunctional much of the time, and I will argue that’s because it’s still human. And just as we get together at this time of year with friends and relatives with whom we may find fault or argue, we maintain the ritual because, for better or worse, we’re family.  By the same token, I prefer to put my faith in other humans to address a problem like surveillance overreach than I would subscribe to the blind hope that some corporation’s algorithm will flawlessly look out for our best interests.

Happy Holidays.