Even if your magic terrorist-catching machine has a false positive rate of 1 in 1000 – and no security technology comes anywhere near this – every time you asked it for suspects in the UK it would flag 60,000 innocent people.
Archive | surveillance
Report suggest: NSA mass surveillance is a waste of resources (and will make us less safe)
We already know that–this far–NSA mass surveillance has led to no convictions of any actual terrorists in a U.S. court of law.
Now, an New America Foundation study (PDF) shows that the vast majority of terrorist investigations in the U.S. are initiated by information from other sources than NSA.
Only 1.8 per cent of terrorist investigations in the U.S. are initiated after “NSA Bulk Collection under Section 215”. 4.4 per cent after “NSA Surveillance Targeting Non-U.S. Persons under Section 702”. And 1.3 per cent after “NSA Surveillance under an Unknown Authority”.
Most investigations are conducted after tips from community and families, informants or traditional human intelligence and police work.
The report states…
“Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terroristrelated activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group.”
Obvious to all, this do not correspond with the picture the U.S. administration is trying to sell to the public.
And it confirms that more information from mass surveillance (a bigger haystack) only will make a system already under information overload to work even worse…
“Finally, the overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques.”
So it seems that shifting resources from traditional (human) intelligence and law enforcement work to automated mass surveillance might make us all less safe from terrorists.
But then again, this is not about terrorism. It’s about power and control.
/ HAX
Link: Do NSA’s Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists? (PDF) »
What Snowden exposed was already known. But nobody cared.
In the blog post below, you can see a video from the 31c3 conference with Caspar Bowden. In the second part of his speech, he describes how he warned about specific mass surveillance issues long before Edward Snowden came along.
The Snowden files do, in essence, confirm everything Bowden warned us about.
The thing is–at the time, nobody cared.
The European Commission and the European Parliament was informed. But people didn’t take in the information. The information lay open for the media. But no journalists bothered. Bowden explained his findings for various net activist and civil rights groups–but nothing happened.
And I must admit that prior to the Snowden revelations, I my self had no idea that this information existed–even though I used to work in the European Parliament. I’m very interested in these issues, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
This points to an information and communication problem. Most of what’s going on is out there. You just have to know what to look for. And whom to listen to.
An important component in internet and civil rights activism is to simply take what’s already out there and make it understandable, to serve it up in digestible pieces. And to listen to the real experts, to find the golden nuggets in their extensive research material.
To hack politics to win, you must know. And you must be right. That is within reach–because politicians and bureaucrats often doesn’t care enough to do their homework.
/ HAX
Caspar Bowden @ 31c3: The Cloud Conspiracy
This is a very central talk at the 31c3 conference. Caspar Bowden gives us a thorough lecture on why US software and cloud services cannot be trusted, when it comes to NSA mass surveillance. He also tells the absolutely frustrating story about how he tried to make the EU (and civil society) understand the risks pre-Snowden. | Youtube »
New Snowden files on NSA and VPN
The latest from the 31c3 conference in Hamburg, via Spiegel Online:
Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security »
NSA Documents: Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor »
NSA Powerpoint on VPN (PDF) »
This ought to give you a rather detailed picture.
NSA and the God effect
In a way, it’s strange that governments are so secretive about mass surveillance.
For thousands of years religion has been used to control peoples behaviour. The notion of an omnipresent, all-seeing, all-knowing entity has been used to make people follow different sets of rules.
He knows if you have been bad. So you better behave.
The same can be said about blanket mass surveillance. If you break the rules, government might know–and go after you. So you better co-operate, participate and obey.
Obviously, this has a downside. It will kill a free and open conversation, it will dampen opposition, it will discourage protests and it will deter free and investigative journalism. It will lead to self-censorship and it will foster a nation of spineless serfs.
So… governments ought to love that the cat is out of the bag.
/ HAX
Friend or foe in the surveillance state?
In Norway and Sweden, false mobile telephone base stations of unknown origin have been discovered in government quarters. In both cases the media, not the authorities, has been behind the discovery.
The question is who? And why?
The prime suspect is Russia. Lately, the country has been military active in the Scandinavian neighbourhood. And what good are military provocations, if you cannot get feedback about the reactions?
Another possibility is the US and the NSA. If they can listen in on German politicians–why not Norwegian and Swedish ones?
Then there is a chilling possibility that national intelligence organisations are spying on their own governments. (The Swedish police has got the equipment to set up false base stations. Probably the Norwegian has, as well.)
These days it’s not a given who is friend or foe.
/ HAX
Mass surveillance, power and control
There seems to be an irreversible flow of power–from the people to the government.
It happens all over the world, on all levels. In the EU there is also a flow of power from member states to Bussels. And power moves from democratic institutions to non-elected officials and bureaucrats.
Whilst this is a general problem–blanket mass surveillance makes it even more severe. It accentuates and accelerates the ongoing power shift.
Politics is the business of power. In principle, no one in a leading political position would be there unless he or she is willing to fight and outmaneuver others. Politicians are appointed by a method of selection by domination that rewards characteristics that are disagreeable, objectionable and dangerous. The same goes for career bureaucrats and most high functionaries.
Giving such people a tool like mass surveillance is unwise. They will use it for their own purposes. Because they can.
This is not about fighting terrorism or criminals. It’s all about power. And it works in two different ways.
The first is because information is power: Controlling and tapping into the flow of information is a source of power in it self.
The second is control: Mass surveillance is there to make sure that people obey. To identify and to stifle dissent. To protect the people in power from the general public. In the name of some supposed “national interest”.
This is not how things are supposed to be in a democracy.
/ HAX
Taking the fight against mass surveillance to the next level
I just read Rick Falkvinges piece “You Can’t Have Consent Of The Governed Without Privacy” at Privacy Online News. He points at something very serious and all to obvious: blanket mass surveillance is incompatible with democracy.
Apart from some small semantics I couldn’t agree more. I guess you will as well.
Rick has published a lot of texts along these lines. I have too. And so have countless others. Still, the seriousness of the matter doesn’t seem to sink in with people. I guess it’s too abstract.
To some extent the same is true for the Snowden files. They are hard evidence, from inside the NSA. But still, most people seems to be unable to relate to this information.
To make people listen–and react–mass surveillance and it effects must feel real to the common man.
We need to be on the lookout for stories like this one: Looks like Chicago PD had a stingray out at the Eric Garner protest last night »
We need to find the people who have had their lives messed up by warrantless mass surveillance. They are out there and we must tell their story.
To do this we shouldn’t just look at the NSA, GCHQ and other organisations collecting information–but at their “customers”. Where do the information go? And how is it used?
In Sweden, we know that our local NSA/GCHQ partner FRA relays information not only to the military, some branches of the police and the counter espionage–but also to the government, to the political administration. But still we don’t know what kind of information or how it is being used.
We also know that the FRA has access to NSA “Spy Google” data base XKeyscore. And it is pretty obvious that it contains information about our own nationals and domestic Swedish matters. It’s at our governments fingertips. But then secrecy kicks in. We don’t know how XKeyscore is used. We don’t even know the legal basis–or where the legal mandate comes from.
This is the kind of things we must look into. Now, when we know that mass surveillance exists (told you so) we must start to find out how it is being used. That’s when it all gets really interesting. And ugly, for sure.
Mass surveillance is not “just” a fact. It is not “only” something to have theoretical discussions about. It has real implications.
/ HAX
A never ending struggle
By HAX on December 4, 2014 in Big Government, Data Protection, Democracy, EU, Hacktivism, Internet, Privacy, surveillance, Sweden
For some days I have been a complete political news junkie–as the latest Swedish government just went down in flames. Looking forward, naturally I have some general preferences about who should rule my country. (Even if a lame duck administration as the present one isn’t all that bad. Hopefully it will not be able to do a lot of stupid stuff.)
But when it comes to some of my favourite issues, I’m frustrated.
We have the centre-right parties (in power until September 2014)–being really bad on surveillance, ignorant at best when it comes to data protection and in the grip of the copyright industry.
Then we have the socdem-greens (that, in practice, fell from power yesterday). The Social Democrats are just as bad as the centre-right people in these matters. And the Greens are selling out on the same issues, just for the grandeur of being in government. (Come on, give the Ring back to the nice Mr. Frodo.)
The third group (causing most of the stir) are some nationalist, xenophobic and semi-populists. Again, they are just as bad. (I guess that they haven’t realised that they are a given target for government surveillance.) And in general they are occupied with nostalgia rather than issues concerning the future.
Finally we have the Pirate Party, not even in the Swedish parliament with only 0.43 per cent of the votes in the latest elections. (So I guess the general population doesn’t bother about these issues either…)
Still, the surveillance issues are important–and rather pressing. What the government does in the EU is important as we are in the process of hammering-out new European data protection rules. And an European copyright reform.
In the bigger picture a free and open Internet is essential for democracy, culture, business, science and education. Yet, in Sweden 99,57 per cent of the votes are casted on political parties more or less uninterested, ignorant or plain evil when it comes to Internet and surveillance matters.
And it seems that Sweden isn’t unique. The picture is the same in most countries.
In dark moments I think this might be just as well. There are no guarantees that politicians will do the right thing, even if they are interested. So it might be better to trust spontaneous order, peoples creativity, the market and net freedom activists to be one step ahead and to raise objections if politicians go wrong.
The problem is, politicians go wrong about the Internet, surveillance, data protection, copyright and civil liberties all the time. The fact that they are uninterested or ignorant doesn’t stop them. In most cases they just rubber stamp papers that government officials hand them, anyway. Politics is in the equation, like it or not.
So we need to apply a constant external pressure on politics. To show the way, to campaign and to hit politicians and government officials hard when they do something stupid or dangerous.
It’s a never ending struggle.
/ HAX