Personal Privacy is History.

My entire understanding of the world has been irrevocably changed since Glen Greenwald and Edward Snowden lifted the veil on the American intelligence complex’s data and communications dragnet.

In my naiveté I believed that intelligence services world wide were able to spy on and follow anyone who came onto their radar. This would include terrorists, drug lords and oppressive regimes. So if I make calls to a drug lord, or preach hatred based on race or religion I would paint a great big target on my back. If however I remained plain old Albert Sjoberg, working nine to five and watching my child’s school play, my life would remain invisible. If I have a penchant for pornography or a gambling, drinking or drug problem or perhaps drive a little faster than the speed limit and download a movie or two, life will continue unchanged. Victimless crimes are after all victimless, no one gets hurt so the No Harm, No Foul rule must apply.

WRONG!

In this post-PRISM and BOUNDLESS INFORMANT era, there is nothing that remains hidden from big data and big brother. Every email I write, every web page I visit and every place I go is recorded and stored. Every phone call I make and every text message I send is recorded. Every Skype call I make and every time I tweet, is recorded.

If anyone is in any doubt that this is the case, they have not read any of the information put out in the Guardian about the whistle blower Edward Snowden.

The data is all collected and stored indefinitely. It is then processed by computer to build up a profile of every asset you own, every place you visit, every person you talk to, every credit card purchase, every film you download. This analysis is not done by humans but with computer algorithms.

There are several programs and initiatives that feed personal data into the system.

Number Plate Recognition.

Many countries have bought into Number plate recognition systems. These allow law enforcement and transport authorities to scan and recognise number plates with unprecedented speed and accuracy. This helps police fines and registrations and is a good thing for all of us law abiding citizens. There are fixed cameras at specific locations, as well as cameras on police cruisers that will make us of GPS coordinates to track where a license plate is spotted. These systems make use of cloud computing to transmit the data from the cameras to the database. We now know that PRISM is scooping up all internet traffic passing through the US and the NSA is storing the data in a massive data centres like the new one under construction in Utah. This will provide a wonderful resource of every trip you make and every place your car is spotted.

Facial Recognition.

You know that you are not supposed to smile for your passport, drivers license and Identity photographs. This is to improve the success of Facial recognition systems. Australia adopted the ePassport in October of 2005. This is why when you present yourself at customs or border control you are asked not to smile. This non smiling relaxed face is what they try to match against the biometrics on file.

The government website is at pains to point out that this information is protected by the Privacy act 1988 But this act prevents a government employee from revealing the data except in performing their duty. What about when their duty is to hand over your information to an allied government like the government of the United States of America?

Banking details.

Every time you make a purchase the merchant’s details are logged with the transaction. This data is stored and reproduced on your statements that are usually emailed to you. Apart from the fact that PRISM will capture and store the emails and so have your statements, they will also capture the transactions as they occur assuming there is an internet component to the transaction and  if the bank makes use of any cloud based storage that too will be completely accessible.

Everything you do on the Internet.

Every single action on the internet is similarly scooped up in this dragnet. As is the nature of the internet protocol, data is routed via the best path, not necessarily the shortest path. As a result most of the internet traffic routes via the US, purely because they have the most bandwidth available. The slide called Monitoring a Target’s communication on the Washington Post website depicts this very clearly. But what information do they get from tweet about morning coffee? The packet of data when you send the tweet, or click a link contains your internet address and time information. That internet address can be linked to a specific location. Simply visit http://www.iplocation.net to see how this works. It is far more accurate in the US than here in Australia, but that will be changing over time.

Smartphones and mobile computing.

My phone can report position data augmented by GPS, Accelerometer and gyroscope. This allows applications to see if I am moving, jumping, bouncing, falling, twirling at any location on the earth or in the air. I have friends who tweet when they arrive at work, the shops, school or the dentist with GPS accuracy. This is all possible because of the smart phones. On the Apple iOS devices this adds the “Find iPhone” app that allows you to locate a missing device and play a sound, lock the device or erase it completely. This is absolutely great when you misplace your iPhone or your iPad is stolen, but it obviously means that Apple is able to locate their devices geographically. Since the Snowden papers reveal that Apple came onboard with PRISM in October 2012 it is a pretty good bet that when the NSA asks for data from Apple, they receive this too. Microsoft and Google are also onboard, so this includes all smartphones and tablets running Android. Google bought Android in 2005.

So why does this matter? If I have got nothing to hide, why should I care what information is stored about my comings and goings? Are privacy concerns unfounded? In this twenty first century where so many people are sharing their lives on Facebook and Twitter, are we really concerned about privacy? Where ‘reality TV’ consumes hours of  programming on TV and satellite channels. There appears to be an insatiable appetite to find out what other people are doing. Media companies are paying fortunes for photos of celebrity babies. Those media companies are kept in business because society spends money on the tabloids. Perhaps privacy is not a big thing anymore.

Let us consider that you visit a friend who lives near a children’s playground. Since your location is so well known, if you are ever accused of child molestation, the fact that you spend time near a child’s playground adds to the presumption of guilt; even if you are never convicted. If your neighbours are made aware of the proximity and the charges, what do you think they will believe?

Get pulled over and found with a blood alcohol level higher than allowed, the fact that you have frequented bars or pubs shows you are an alcoholic. This will impact your employment prospects and promotion prospects.

Remember the data is collected on everyone, not only those who are part of an active investigation.

In this age of “War on Terror” governments appear to be able to get away with locking suspects up for years without lawyers and trials, do a Google search for Bradley Manning.

Finding this data is as simple as a computer search for an analyst. Gone are the days of having to sift through mountains of dusty archives in hundreds of different jurisdictions, it is all available in one big NSA database.

I hear you say: “But this database is hidden in an American government data centre, why will that have any impact on me?” Well look at the smear campaign launched against Glen Greenwald. He has done something to upset the US establishment. Suddenly several media outlets contact him about the same incidents from his distant past. They asked about his tax records and a lawsuit a company he was involved with fought almost a decade ago. Does anyone think this is purely a coincidence?

Think about your life. Is there anything anywhere in your distant or immediate past that could conceivably be viewed in a bad light? Understand that the data is now being stored in a massive database that is searchable with the speed of a Google search.

Consider that the analysts are instructed to dig through two degrees of separation of each target. If you normally interact with around 100 people in any given year. Obviously this is conservative since you have work colleagues, facebook and twitter friends and followers and your email and phone contact lists. If each person in your contact list is subjected to the same scrutiny that is 100 (your contacts) x 100 (Second tier contacts) = 10,000 people being scrutinised simply because you popped on their radar. According to the data released by Edward Snowden there were at least 117,675 active surveillance targets. At ten thousand associates each that equates to 1.17 trillion blips on the NSA’s surveillance radar. Okay so there will conceivably be lots of commonality between them so perhaps they are not looking at one seventh of the worlds population but a large number of sovereign individuals will fall under big brothers all seeing eyes.   

But this is only relevant to the 313 million folk in America. It is their constitution violated, it is their first and fourth amendment rights that are on the line. The US does not affect me in Australia, or Africa. Does it?

Let me break this down as best I can. The government of the United States of America is not at all secretive about its willingness to spy on the rest of the world. 

“Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed recently that the NSA "targets foreigners located overseas for a valid foreign intelligence purpose." And this is done with the knowledge and apparent blessings of the foreign governments.

Australia is so enthusiastic about the spying that we are allowing the US to build a data centre in Melbourne. Presumably the payoff for Australia is sharing in intelligence obtained by these programs.

The company, Verizon has dealings in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Japan, and Africa. Verizon is but one of the companies that the NSA has ordered to hand over “an electronic copy … of all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ for all calls…” that either originate or terminate in the United States.

Anyone that believes “the government of the day can be trusted” has not watched the knifing and chaos that has characterised the Australian politics this last term. We are on track to have had three prime ministers this year alone. Promises made before elections are quickly forgotten after elections. None of this bodes well for the future where “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength”.

Let me know what you think. Do you share my concerns? Am I simply a conspiracy theorist? Are you unconcerned about your privacy?  Feel free to comment. 

PRISM, Snowden and Paranoia.

This last week has been very interesting. The revelation that the US is spying must surely not have come as any surprise. No sane person would believe that the NSA, CIA or FBI are anything other than intelligence machinery created to spy. I believe this is more a case that innocence has been lost.

We have understood that intelligence agencies will spy on the bad guys. That is a good thing because it will keep me safe. I do not however want these agencies looking too closely at my personal activities. I don't  want them looking at my online purchases, knowing what I say after a couple of beers at the bar or when I speculate about alien life. Heaven forbid they see what dark corners of the internet I browse from the privacy of my lounge. What about the silly prank calls my teenager makes to a random number for a yarn or the drunken calls or tweets after the world cup match?

Even more concerning is that the court that issues the warrants for this, FICA, is not subject to oversight. The court proceedings are secret and closed to the public. They are a power unto themselves.

This is exactly what Edward Snowden has told us is happening. The information he has provided shows that the US government is actively collecting data about where a call originates, where that call terminates, how long the call was and when. More than that, the IMSI numbers of the phones involved. The IMSI ties the call to specific handsets.

This surveillance is not just for a few persons of interest either, but for every user on the Verizon and AT&T networks. This includes international calls, so a distant cousin in England or Australia is included in this indiscriminate eavesdropping simply because of their association with someone in the US.

Snowden’s PRISM revelations indicate further that companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Skype may give the N. S. A. access to their servers; to users emails, pictures, files, online chats, videos or anything else. This casts a shadow over the security or at least privacy of cloud computing. Since the Internet routing is based on the least cost rather than shortest path the bulk of Internet traffic worldwide is routed via the US.

This is where the intelligence gathering efforts bleed into the homes of users in the rest of the world. Add to this the Department of Homeland Security’s document “Analyst’s Desktop Binder.” This binder includes keywords and search terms that are on the DOHS’s radar. Generic terms like drill, exercise, facility, leak, virus, pork, port, power, metro and bust. The result is they could be gathering the data, pictures and emails from every electrician, middle aged man concerned about his weight, soccer mom planing dinner, plumber and student trying to get to class; worldwide.

Considering the number of these keywords and the concentration in this blog post, I may have trouble securing a Visa to visit the US in future. 

Whether Edward Snowden is a traitor or a hero will depend on the outcome of this debacle. If this gives the American’s sufficient pause to have their government return to accountability and democracy or continue with the autocracy; that appears to be a hallmark of American policy post 9/11, remains to be seen.

I see shades of the 1985 John Schlesinger film with Sean Penn "The Falcon and the Snowman."

Please feel free to leave comments; even anonymously if you are not already in the google system. I may not know who left the comment, but the US government will.

Is this purely paranoia? Is it paranoid if they are out to get you? Is Edward Snowden a traitor or a hero? What do you think?

note:
Related article in the Conversation "Nine reasons you should care about NSA's PRISM surveillance."
Related Blog from me about Orwellian Big Brother here.

George Orwell's 1984 may well be here in 2014.

I am usually very skeptical of any thing that remotely resembles a conspiracy. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

The Orwellian concept of big brother has become real to the point of being perfectly acceptable in our own homes with TV shows like 'Person of Interest' and your pick of Reality TV. In many ways this is great and not nearly as scary as the vision of 1984.

In 2010 the Stuxnet worm was discovered. This was a computer worm with a very specific target. The payload was a rootkit for Siemens SCADA controllers running the nuclear facilities in Iran. It is accepted that the worm was developed by the Americans and Israelis to hamper Iran's nuclear aspirations. This is the first instance of a government or governments using cyber warfare against another country. This is also the first instance of a piece of malware spread via Microsoft Windows and the internet targeting a Programmable Logic Controller. You can see a good TED Talk by Ralph Langner on Stuxnet.

Add to this the report from the "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" that is actively seeking changes to legislation to allow companies to take extreme action against hackers and pirates to include; "... photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network." The report is available for download on the commission's own site and is commented on briefly here.
Even the Canadians want in on the act. This is not a new idea though, Sony had their own rootkit issues a short while ago.

The New Xbox One about to be launched will place a camera and microphone in your living room that is always on. As gestures and voice replace the old fashioned 'clicker' or remote, the camera and microphone will remain on 24/7 to ensure the Xbox can respond when you call on it. This sounds great in a geeky sort of way, but when you add to that the requirement that the Internet connection is always available this starts to get more than a little creepy. Aways on Internet, Video and Microphone in my living room, really? You can read a bit about this in this Erik Kain article at Forbes. The Internet is supposedly required because Microsoft wants to eliminate the second hand games market, but that is a whole different rabbit hole. Microsoft would have us believe that the new Xbox is all about TV, Sports and Call of Duty.
Consider the potential for Hollywood to bill you licence fees because the Xbox camera caught your movie night when you and twenty of your mates crammed into the living room to watch a movie together. The always on microphone can report what you are saying and watching at home. do I really need to spell out the gaping pitfalls here?

The voices that would say 'our government is above these sorts of tactics and we have nothing to fear' need to ask themselves if these methods were available, could they not be exploited by anyone? Nothing will be exempt. An article in the Washington Post serves to highlight just how shaky this house of cards is. Do you trust a foreign government? Do you trust a media mogul.

The effect of one of these pieces of implanted malware disabling or destroying the "hacker's" own system when it is a false positive could be mindblowing not to mention the abuse of privacy to a user at home. What if that was a user in an office or on a wider company intranet.

Historically lawmakers have taken their time drafting legislation. This was expected to ensure that we do not fall foul to the unintended consequences of those laws.
In this digital age, technology advances at an astounding pace. These advancements make it easy to pirate software and download the latest episode of Game of Thrones without a second thought as to the copyright holders rights. Many people today are open about their illegal movie and music downloads.  Arguments about the cost of the material being too high and wanting to stick it to 'the man' no longer wash.

There is an interesting phenomenon here. In medieval times, the feudal lord held the power and the uneducated peasant went about his business hoping that the feudal lord would not become too enamoured with one of his daughters or goats and take it for his own. The age of enlightenment has followed and the peasants now enjoy far higher education than ever before, but in this digital age, the peasants need to keep a very close watch or we will all once again be subservient to feudal lords.

One of the challenges of this new millennium is how the lawmakers can keep pace with technological advances. Uncle Ben said "With Great Power comes great responsibility" but the emperor said "Their feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark side".
Edison carter said "Security Systems has its tendrils into every element of our society - the government, our homes, the police, the courts - I'm not gonna spike this story just because it deals with dollar amounts beyond your comprehension! It's too important!"

I would love to know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment.

Note: (added 11 June 2013) A follow-up to this is posted under PRISM, Snowden and Paranoia.