Mass Surveillance: Can We Blame It All On the Government?

Nicola Hahn writes Yet another news report has emerged detailing how the CIA is actively subverting low-level encryption features in mainstream hi-tech products. Responding to the story, an unnamed intelligence official essentially shrugged his shoulders and commented that "there's a whole world of devices out there, and that's what we're going to do." Perhaps this sort of cavalier dismissal isn't surprising given that leaked classified documents indicate that government intelligence officers view iPhone users as 'Zombies' who pay for their own surveillance.

The past year or so of revelations paints a pretty damning portrait of the NSA and CIA. But if you read the Intercept's coverage of the CIA's subversion projects carefully you'll notice mention of Lockheed Martin. And this raises a question that hasn't received much attention: what role does corporate America play in all of this? Are American companies simply hapless pawns of a runaway national security state? Ed Snowden has stated that mass surveillance is "about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." A sentiment which has been echoed by others. Who, then, stands to gain from mass surveillance?

Comments

depressed

[Noah Haders]

It's depressing. As a privacy-aware and generally technologically literate but not super savvy about encryption protocols, etc, I don't know what to do. I want to have some measure of privacy, but I don't want to step out of the mainstream phone ecosystem. These days is it mandatory for me to put my tinfoil hat on to get a bit of space to myself?

Re:depressed

[darkmeridian]

The only way to avoid technical surveillance is to keep everything sensitive away from email or phone calls or instant messages. There is no way to avoid being the target of the NSA and CIA if they really want to get your data. None at all. The NSA and CIA are creating these techniques against countries such as Russia, China, and Iran with devastating success. (Look at the Iranian nuclear weapons program getting hacked by Stuxnet.) You have no way to avoid the hacking of your data if they are really set in doing it.

Now, you can try to make your data so computationally intensive that the CIA/NSA hopefully will not go out of their way to hack your accounts. Email is NOT secure. But you can use PGP or whatever to try to encrypt your emails. You can encrypt your hard drives to try and avoid hacking. You can avoid the iPhone and move to an open source cell phone firmware such as Cyanogenmodâ"at least you have a CHANCE of someone finding any NSA/CIA backdoor. Use anonymous VPN religiously to avoid having the same IPs.

Otherwise, there's nothing much you can do except to decrease your electronic footprint. Everything you put out there is hackable.

Re:Blame it on those who BUY OFF Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

Those with the money decide who we get to vote for, and what they do once they get into office.

Democrat or Republican, both wings of a single party: the corporate party.

i'm going to say something potentially unpopular

[circletimessquare]

it's not possible to put something out on a wire and expect it to be private

i don't walk down main street naked and expect privacy

same problem

passing some law insisting everyone look away is going to be effective you think? that's your protection?

if you want privacy, go walk with someone on the beach next to the crashing surf (to drown out the telescopic mics)

otherwise, if you or what you are saying is interesting, someone can eavesdrop. that's not a new problem. it's always been that way

what is new is this bizarre psychological trick we play on ourselves that sitting in front of our computer connected to a network is magically somehow an intimate private experience. how? why does anyone expect that? it never was, and it never will be

never mind the government. you have snooping family members or friends who swipe your credentials. you have your internet provider, and every company who owns every node from here to your destination: they all can snoop. if the info you share is innocuous, who cares. that's the extent of my realistic expectations. if the info is important to you: why are you amazed and aggrieved that nodes on a public network is not magically private? the only problem is people's inability to look at the reality of the communication conduit and make peace with it's unavoidably public nature

why did we ever expect privacy on the internet? how did that trick of the mind ever come to be?

if you want privacy:

1. get off the Internet, or

2. invest in serious encryption. oh, it's a hassle? you want privacy on a public network and you expect it to be hassle free? what is wrong with you?

those are your only two choices

because just expecting government, corporations, or interested people not to snoop is just never going to happen, ever. disrespect is the norm. are you some sort of naive inexperienced fool to the pitfalls of basic human nature?

the problem is expecting no one to spy, or that you can enforce that, and expecting that something goes out on a public wire and is magically private. it's thinking about the nature of the problem all wrong. you think some law somewhere is going to give you protection?

now mod me a troll and continue the indignant outrage about a problem you can't solve and no one ever will

Sousveillance

[kulervo]

A discussion about surveillance and no one has said "Sousveillance"? Or mentioned David Brin?

As a purchaser of surveillance data, I can tell you that the answer to the question of the original post is a resounding: No.

A previous poster mentioned his license plate being tracked by the civil authorities. Well, I can tell you that corporations do that too. Tow trucks now come with cameras to read your plate to see if there is a repossession order out for your car. And when they OCR your car, they dump it into a database with a geotag, and then they SELL that data. To people like me. I won't tell you what I do with it, but it's to your economic detriment.

So, yes, people with power, the government, the corporations, the wealthy, are all going to use information to try to rule you. What are you going to do about it? Complain about tech un-savvy idiots? Hide like discrete rams among the sheep? Or are you going to stand up and look back?!

There's a lot of smug above this in the comments, so if you are really so much better than everyone else: Prove It. If you've got the Talent, pick up the tools and fight for what you think is right.

Re:It is *also* about security.

[MobSwatter]

The 9/11 attacks killed around the same number of people that Pearl Harbor did and how did we eventually respond then? The US has been on a path since the 50's that will eventually bring us all to a point where collapse is the only option to move forward. One might ask as to what happened back then to produce such a strong side effect of self destruction. Hint; paperclip, breach, assassination.