The Case Against NSA

For John, BLUF:  It isn't just Democrats.  People of all stripes.

The case against the NSA is:  Lois Lerner and others of her ilk.

I like the word "ilk".

OpEd by George F Will, in the Wash Post.

Regards  —  Cliff

A View on Freedom vs Metadata

For John, BLUF:  Freedom vs Security.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Here is a very good summation of the argument about NSA, Metadata and PRISM, from my point of view.  At the Kings of War blog, Mr Jack McDonald says "It’s the violence, stupid."  He is a Brit, writing as a Brit, but the fact is that our Government, and our approach to the relationship of the Citizen and his or her Government, comes from that British background.  Here is the lede:

There are many different angles to the NSA/PRISM story.  There’s the nitty-gritty points of law, the bits of the story that don’t add up and the inevitable stonewalling from sections of the security apparatus that don’t want to talk about metadata collection that most commentators consider to be a pretty big deal.  Still, most of the debate is framed in the “Don’t snoop on me”/”A government’s gotta do what a government’s gotta do (to protect you)” dichotomy.

The thing is, metadata analysis leads to people being arrested or killed.  That is the purpose of metadata analysis.  It is to find those individuals and groups the Government believes are a problem to its Citizens and to its own existence.  Metadata analysis is not perfect—it doesn't catch all the possible bad guys.  Metadata analysis can sweep up the innocence with the guilty.  Metadata analysis can be used to control, suppress and manipulate the citizens of a nation.  We are looking for the proper tradeoff.

Here is the last paragraph of the blog post and last caveat:

I put emphasis on ‘potential’ because a) this is a theoretical argument in many respects (given the lack of firm facts) and b) because at current, I’m not too worried about the UK government oppressing large sections of the population, or going after suspected domestic terrorists Baghdad-style.  Furthermore, I think that painting the government in the worst possible light, and ascribing government bureaucrats dubious motives pointlessly blurs the argument.  I’m not worried about the UK government now, but I don’t know what the government will be like in 30-40 years.  I have a good idea, and I suspect that it will continue to amble along like the UK parliamentary system tends to do, but I don’t know. The same goes for the American government.  We can paint them in the worst possible light, but they’re still not quite as bad as, say, China or Russia, who openly coerce sections of the population that disagree with them.  Regardless, I don’t want states (including mine) accumulating metadata, since that might change in future.  Even if any access to metadata databases owned by the government are ‘black boxes’ which can only be accessed by court order, their very existence in government hands represents a latent threat to the population, which remains unrealised only for as long as governments adhere to the rule of law.  Or, more likely, until they pass more laws to enable easier access.

Of course, there’s the valid point that the government has less access to this stuff than the plethora of private companies that do, but the last time I checked, Google didn’t have a paramilitary wing.

Regards  —  Cliff

Accounting

Someone was commenting on the US Congress looking at a bill to require DoD to compare the costs of Active and Reserve forces and gave us this old saw:

And of course we all know that the difference between a good accountant and a great accountant:

When a good accountant is asked "how much is two plus two" the response is "four of course".  The great accountant when asked the same question (how much is two plus two), responds with "What would you like it to be ?"

Regards  —  Cliff

Men in Skirts

For John, BLUF:  Clever protests can work.

From Forbes we have a follow-up article on "Men In Skirts:  Swedish Train Workers Ditch Pants In Heat Wave", with a picture.  This was a protest movement and when it turned out the Swedish People weren't upset by the men in skirts, the transit company being protested, Arriva, folded like fresh laundry and at the same time temperatures in Sweden fell (CAGW).

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

Its About the Data, Not the Computer

For John, BLUF:  With enough PostIt notes you can analyze anything.

On the 9th of June this item—Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere—appeared at the blog of Associate Professor in Sociology (Duke) Kieran Healy.  The point of the paper is that with just a little bit of work (in this case, the work of David Hackett Fischer of Brandeis University) one can isolate the trouble makers, in this case, Paul Revere.

Metadata isn't just about cell phones and the internet.  As this paper points out, data is data, even if it is 1775.

I admit that, in addition to the possibilities for finding something interesting, there may also be the prospect of discovering suggestive but ultimately incorrect or misleading patterns.  But I feel this problem would surely be greatly ameliorated by more and better metadata.  At the present time, alas, the technology required to automatically collect the required information is beyond our capacity.  But I say again, if a mere scribe such as I—one who knows nearly nothing—can use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.

You don't need computers, you just need the data.  Just ask the Stasi.

Regards  —  Cliff

What Keeps Us Safe

For John, BLUF:  There are no security guarantees.

As we all know, PRISM is the NSA (No Such Agency) program for gathering and sorting METADATA about our cell phone calls, and all our other communications.

Connected to the previous post, about the EU challenging Mr Holder regarding US intelligence gathering from citizen communications, is this blog post from Kings of War blog.  The title is "Prism and the making of our idiocracy" and the author is Rob Dover.  The publication date is 10 June 2013.  Here is the lede:

This is not the time for cliché or sound bite, but to paraphrase Tony Blair, I feel the hand of history (or the all-seeing electronic eye) just to the right of this keyboard.  And your keyboard actually.  And your webcam.  Oh, and your telephone.  Indeed, if your toaster has acquired the ability to engage in two-way communications, the all-seeing electronic eye probably knows how you like your toast.  And your crumpets.  It has probably told its all-seeing master (or mistress). And they have made a micro-judgment about the fact that your toast is underdone (an unsound choice unless matched with slightly underdone bacon) and that your crumpets are ever so slightly rubbery.

So, right now we are being surveilled to a faretheewell.  It will not guarantee us safety from terrorists or anarchists.  For example, the Boston Marathon Bombing.

So, is there a solution?  There is no utopia out there, but I believe Professor Dover wraps up with good advice.

Well, nothing will change.  So forget any notion that this seismic event will generate change. It will generate a lot of political hot air, and a lot of protests.  But no-one will dare challenge the myth of absolute security, and it is on that premise that the whole system sits.

Security is created by economic growth, and the access to the benefits of and means by which economies grow. There will always be those who want a fight. No matter how good life is.  We should pay these people negative attention.  But we won’t need to worry about the mass of population if we know that there is an absence of grievance.  And economic growth cures most grievances.  Just as in COIN, the aim should be to reduce the fighting core to the smallest number, not to label the largest number of people as combatants.  The best thing the politicians of the US, UK and the rest of Europe could do in response to this crisis is get their economies motoring again.

Leave the toasters to do their business in peace….

Let us not put our faith in an all seeing, all knowing domestic intelligence surveillance state.  In that direction is a loss of freedom.  Rather, let us spread prosperity across the fruited plain and around the world.  That will greatly reduce the number of disaffected men and women and create a vast net of people who wish to save what they have.

Regards  —  Cliff

Poor Mr Holder

For John, BLUF:  The EU equivalent of the US Attorney General wants answers.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

In yesterday's International Herald Tribune is an article, " E.U. Official Pushes U.S. to Explain Its Surveillance, about Dr Viviane Reding,♠ the EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, sending a letter to Mr Eric Holder, our Federal Attorney General.  In the letter, as described by reporter James Kanter, Ms Reding poses nine questions and asks for serious answers.  Here is the first part of the longish article:

BRUSSELS — Amid a growing outcry over American snooping on foreigners that threatens to cloud European-U.S. trade talks and President Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, the European Union’s top justice official has demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week.

Viviane Reding, the Union’s combative commissioner of justice, told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter sent on Monday evening that individual citizens of European countries had the right to know whether their personal information had been part of intelligence gathering “on a large scale.”

In the letter, seen Tuesday by the International Herald Tribune, she also asked what avenues were available to Europeans to find out whether they had been spied on, and whether they would be treated similarly to U.S. citizens in such cases.

“Given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic, you will understand that I will expect swift and concrete answers,” Mrs. Reding wrote.

Speaking for a continent where snooping carries ghastly echoes of fascist or communist regimes, Mrs. Reding challenged Mr. Holder to answer a list of detailed questions by Friday, when they are expected to speak face-to-face in Dublin at a ministerial meeting scheduled before the Prism spy operation came to light.

One might well ask what cudgel the EU has to bring Mr Holder to actively respond.  The answer is trade agreements.  That and President Obama's upcoming trip to Europe.

In Berlin, where Mr. Obama will speak next week before the Brandenburg Gate, privacy is a highly sensitive political issue and the Prism revelations have stirred a furor.

“You can be sure that this will be one of the things the chancellor addresses when President Obama is in Germany,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Angela Merkel, who grew up in the former Communist East.

Germany’s interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, said his ministry wants to establish whether any Germans’ right to privacy had been infringed and is preparing a “catalog of questions” for its American counterparts.

The views of the Europeans will not likely influence decisions of the US Administration and the US Congress, although jurists such as former Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall have urged US Courts to consider the views of judiciaries overseas.  But, it will complicate diplomacy and international trade.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  A Doctorate from the Sorbonne, in human science.  Her career before going into politics was journalism.