Tag: NSA

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

How to Protect Yourself from Spying

We value our privacy.

No wonder we’re nervous. The National Security Agency, in blithe disregard of our constitutional right against unwarranted search and seizure, has been indiscriminately scooping up data (“meta” data) about our communications (among other covert acts that have compromised the security of our transactions).

However the controversies triggered by the scandals play out, it’s clearer than ever that you can’t trust the government to respect your right to privacy. Your line of first defense has to be you.

Even before the NSA scandal broke, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was on the case, explaining how to reduce your risk when saving data to your computer, sending the data elsewhere, and entrusting it to third parties. Their Surveillance Self-​Defense site spells out what the government can legally do to spy on you and what you can legally do to protect yourself. The discussion includes nitty-​gritty stuff like advice on the proper use of passwords and encryption, protecting yourself against malware, and lowering the risk of eavesdropping on confidential conversations.

That’s right, SSD talks about “what the government can legally do” to breach your data or listen in on your life, not so much about what it can do illegally. A banner atop the home page notes that the site “has not yet been updated to reflect the 2013 revelations about the NSA.…”

Updates are coming. Meanwhile, we can fill in some of the blanks ourselves.…

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Illustration by ocularinvasion used under a Creative Commons license.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Something to Protect

Blasé about sweeping government surveillance? Think you have “nothing to hide”?

I bet you do.

Ever draw curtains? You have “something to hide.” If you balk when a con man says, “I need your birthday and Social Security Number,” you have “something to hide.” When you feel comfortable giving certain information about yourself to some persons but not others, you demonstrate your preference to hide some things from some people.

That’s not nothing.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger, however, says he is not worried. “I have no secrets. Those who raise the specter of Big Brother are not on a wrong basic premise, but they are being unrealistic: when and if we fall into the grip of totalitarianism, there will be nothing to stop the dictatorship from spying on us by any means it wishes. Such a regime does not require that the tools have been set up in advance.” Some reining in may be appropriate, but “alarmism” is unwarranted.

It’s warranted.

Totalitarianism doesn’t happen with a flip of the switch. Tyranny works from precedents. Daily encroachments help establish it.

And our government violates our rights in the here and now, in days prior to any fully Orwellian dystopia. The tools usable tomorrow by an American-​style GPU or Gestapo to violate our rights can be thus used today by an IRS or NSA.

Our governments snoop on us unwarrantedly today. They hide the extent of their spying on innocent people, today. They have motives to use what they get by their spying — today.

It should stop.

Today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies too much government

The Tyrants’ M.O.

Somewhere, recently, I saw the Lord Acton maxim about power (how it corrupts, and, if absolute, corrupts absolutely) referred to as a “cliché.”

Just because a phrase is common doesn’t mean it’s cheapened by repetition. Some expressed truths are that profound.

If anything, we need to repeat the Acton Axiom more often, and louder. For we live in a time when the federal government usurps power, denigrates, evades and undermines the rule of law, and appears “hell bent” (now that’s a cliché) on accumulating power in concentrated form … you know, like Sauron did with the ring of power in The Lord of the Rings. (Another possible cliché, eh?)

The NSA spying program story, as it unfolds, exemplifies the typical pattern:

  1. Information gets leaked.
  2. The government denies it.
  3. Further information comes out, establishing the lying nature of the denial and
  4. Adding more details of even more shocking nature.
  5. The government makes further denials …

And repeat ad nauseam.

Retired Lieutenant General James R. Clapper still serves the president as Director of National Intelligence, even after lying directly to Congress about the existence of NSA “metadata” collection system.

Meanwhile, the long arm of the secrecy establishment has retaliated against journalist Glenn Greenwald (who helped break Snowden’s first and subsequent leaks) by detaining the journalist’s partner without charge for the legal maximum of nine hours in Great Britain, upon coming home from a trip.

And the gentleman I reported on last week, who shut down his encrypted email service and erased his records rather than fork it all over to the government, says he has been repeatedly threatened with imprisonment.

Typical modus operandi of tyrant wannabes. Don’t worry about “cliché”; worry about tyranny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Philosophy of the Fig Leaf

The temptation to cover up a bit of ugliness with the proverbial fig leaf will always be with us.

According to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D‑Calif.), that is just what the U.S. House did when it squashed Justin Amash’s amendment to the 2014 defense bill, replacing it with a weaker measure dredged up from the abyss known as Business As Usual by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R‑Kansas). Though 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats supported the Justin Amash (R‑Mich.) position, the measure went down by twelve votes.

Business As Usual continues its reign in Washington; there will be no reining in of the NSA.

Or, as Amash said before the vote, “We are here to answer one question. Do we oppose the suspicion-​less collection of every American’s phone records? When you had the chance to stand up for Americans’ privacy, did you?”

Amash’s amendment would have de-​funded NSA’s collection of data of individuals not under investigation. Pompeo’s amendment merely reiterated current law about not targeting Americans in their surveillance — assurances that have as much efficacy as the rules limiting partisanship in IRS activities.

Behind Pompeo, and working against Americans’ privacy, was the Obama Administration, which went to great lengths Tuesday to make sure Amash’s attack on NSA surveillance wouldn’t “hastily” be put into action.

Administration spokespeople continued to press the figgy and leafy line about “welcoming debate” and “continuing to discuss” the issue of homeland surveillance.

Blah, blah, blah. No wonder Lofgren used the term “fig leaf.” The ugliness of Big Government surveillance remains. Congress has done nothing to curtail it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment government transparency

Welcome Debate?

As the weekend began, we learned that the Obama Administration had formally charged Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and stealing cable TV. Snowden is the guy who leaked classified information about massive and unconstitutional National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs and then fled to Hong Kong.

President Obama said he welcomed the debate touched off by Snowden’s disclosures to The Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian in London . . . but apparently not enough to welcome the man himself.

Sunday, we awoke to hear of Snowden’s new travel plans. Clearly, there is surveillance! Snowden left Hong Kong and flew to Moscow. From there, he appears headed to Ecuador, where he is requesting asylum.

Having just turned 30, Mr. Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency employee, then employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a contractor for the NSA, remains mysterious. Whatever we learn about Snowden, though, I agree with Greenwald’s judgment: “What he has done is an immense public service, an act of real patriotism, to inform his fellow citizens about things the government has been doing of great consequence in the dark . . .”

A separate story over the weekend drives that point home: “President Obama held his first-​ever meeting Friday with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — the group charged with ensuring that the executive branch balances privacy and civil liberties needs with its national security efforts.”

Were it not for that Snowden fellow, would this group “charged with ensuring” our rights and privacy have ever even met?

Don’t bother asking. The story reports, “The White House declined to comment on the meeting.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.