January 29, 2012
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Your Private Information
“I have read that when the page is blank and you are at a loss, you should write about what you know. I wonder this and think , what do I know? Or rather what do I know that I care to write about or share.
One thing that I’m not sure that I know but I believe I am more aware of than most is, as we work, wander and play around here on the Internet, am I the only one that wonders about all of the information about ourselves that we are putting out there on Google’s and other’s servers?
You know when I got my first (landline) telephone number and started using it, I was very confident that what information I was putting out on the telephone network was private. Unless someone tapped my lines illegally or law enforcement obtained a warrant to tap or collect my phone records, my business was safe from prying ears. It was my legal right guaranteed in our Constitution, one of the amendments about government and privacy intrusion, search and seizure. When and where did that right go away on the Internet, the Internet that we the citizens built with our tax dollars?
When did corporations like Google, Microsoft and our own government agencies like the NSA get the idea our business on the internet was free information for them to garner, distribute, and correlate. Just because it is there doesn’t mean everyone has a right to it. HTTPS has lost its security if information gathered while on a secure server is distributed among many companies, I’m talking credit card numbers, addresses, phone numbers, financial records, the most private details that you must share with companies in order to do business over the web.
Consequently information we give companies non internet related, like paying bills personally and other records are placed on those same internet servers. These records are shared also. Read the new Google privacy policy, the information you give any of their companies, which are many and enormous, is shared across their entire corporation. They own hundreds of companies that we are unaware of or companies we choose not to deal with perhaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if this may be challenged in the Supreme Court as early as this year. I could go on for pages about this but I think we need to know about this. Large private Corporations, like my own, are spending billions of dollars to protect themselves against these intrusions, private citizens should too. There will soon be a worldwide breach in the private information companies like Google are telling us they are securing, which will change the way business will be done for decades to come. Just beware the Android.
It seems the definition of privacy has been changed to “why are you worried, what do you have to hide”. Well, there is a big difference between the words ”hiding” and “privacy”. We should wake up.”
What you just read, I wrote on a Sunday, 29 January 2012. Today, July 1, 2013, we continue to read, hear and wonder about what the outcome of the Edward Snowdon security breach will amount to. Is there really anyone out there that is truly surprised that the NSA is collecting all of our telephone records. The Patriot Act has been enacted and extended at least three times since 9/11/2001. You would have to be stationed at the North Pole for the last 12 years with no access to any communications if you didn’t know that the Patriot Act allows exactly what the NSA is doing. Basically spying on American citizens in the name of terrorism. And as we learn more, European, British, Canadian, Japanese and China’s citizens. Pretty much everyone on the Earth. The internet and telephone landline and wireless network has very thin borders.
Corporations are in on this also. Google, Verizon, ATT, you name them and they are spewing private information about their customers like teenage drinkers with the dry heaves. When we say the government’s agency, the NSA, we must include the private corporations that the NSA has subcontracted to do their dirty work. Booz Allen Hamilton being the most notable as the employer of whistleblower Snowdon. We now must decide whether he is whistleblower, spy, traitor, hero or patriot.
I find it hard to call him a whistleblow when as I said, anyone with a brain has heard of the Patriot Act and the debates that have gone on mostly unnoticed. How can you whistleblow when so many in this country have already stood by silently as this ridiculous act was passed and extended so many times. No one, no one in this country should be surprised that the NSA has overstepped into the intrusion of our personal lives in the name of terrorism. Perhaps we have met the enemy and found that he is us.
I agree whole hearted with my friend Steve Wozniac and what he said last week about this Edward Snowdon affair. You may want to read The Woz’s statement here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/steve-wozniak-edward-snowden_n_3505727.html
I would have to go a long way to call Snowdon a Hero, but I would call him an expeditor, he has delivered a cold slap in the face to America, waking us up and someone must say “thanks we needed that!”.
Seizing phone records and other information of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American and should be stopped immediately.
E.
Comments (16)
Though I understand your concern I can’t say I am a fan of Snowden. He is known by friends as being anti-government but even Rand Paul has taken a step back from defending Snowden outright…not that Rand Paul’s opinion is worth much to me but Paul is anti-government, even critical of the government putting an end to Jim Crow laws and the government enacting voter and civil rights.
It appears Snowden applied to Booz Allen in the hope of exposing national security information. So he exposed it to Al Qaeda, the Chinese government, the Russian government. He is hoping to take refuge in Venezuela. China, Russia and Venezuela are countries known for suppressing the press and information.
As for phone information, you probably know by now only data…phone numbers and the duration of phone calls is gathered by NSA on the phone front. Conversations are not recorded without court warrants. Dozens of terrorist attacks were averted at least in part to this collection of phone data. If this data was not collected and for example the thwarted NYC subway system attack was not thwarted would we be asking why the government didn’t do more? Probably. It’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation when it comes to protecting citizens from terrorist attacks.
Corporations knowing everything about us is much different and far more extensive than anything the government does. Businesses are increasingly using facial recognition programs to track us and our habits. Stop to look at a what a mannequin wearing and the chance your face is being photographed without your knowledge and thrown into a database is an increasing probability.
Posting a blog or opening an account on the internet is agreeing to hand over one’s privacy. That horse left the barn a long time ago and let’s face it. Even if laws were put in place to stop all of the privacy invasions on the internet how can it be enforced? Who could one really trust to enforce those laws? It’s the worldwide web. Even on Xanga we’ve seen amateur hackers with minimal knowledge expose the identity and whereabouts of other Xangans. I’ve visited Xanga sites that have IP trackers installed. Some Xangans have used even that program for nefarious purpose. At least our government uses the information gathered in the purpose of protecting us from terrorist and other attacks. More than I can say for certain Xangans much less the rest of the internet world.
I meant Ecuador, not Venezuela although I might have heard Snowden was also seeking asylum from Venezuela.
@TheSutraDude - You do not need a telephone conversation to track, spy or find out about habits and associations with people. Give me the telephone numbers of your inbound and outbound calls and I can get a pretty good idea of what you did on any given day. According to what I have read about the NYC subway case, the results would have been the same if law enforcement had used the same techniques that they used 20 years ago by tracing calls etc, thru legally obtained court issued warrants. There was nothing gained by collecting everyone’s numbers in NYC. The notion that my life is being protected by invasions into my privacy without me knowing it is sickening to me. “It’s for our own good” is a feeble excuse or reason. In courts, telephone records(data), are usually the evidence used. Not conversations, yes I’m aware of that. Surely you are too.
Distribution of my credit card numbers by corporations without me knowing who to in the longest of leaps is wrong. I don’t care what their disclaimers say on their splash page. And yes I conduct internet business differently now that I know my information is shared or sold to other companies.
Yes, security of your information can be protected and policed on the Internet. Corporations and smart private citizens do it all the time. And spend billions doing it and for good reason. The crime is the software developers have made it necessary.
@TheSutraDude - I believe what and where Snowdon is, is not the issue. The issue is, the subcontractor was responsible to keep the data that they collected secret and secure. That contractor failed miserably. I don’t care how many security cleared employees they have. Measures have to be in place to prevent those employees from walking off with it. The Patriot Act states in no uncertain terms that the NSA or any other gov agency must keep the information they receive secure. They have not either through their agency or their sub contractor. When a 26 year old amateur can walk off with that kind of data, that company has a very big security problem. They, Booz Allen Hamilton , will try to put all the blame on Snowdon, but his employer is as much to blame and has done as much harm as he.
You are missing something or being misinformed. Data is gathered by Verizon and probably by other phone companies. That’s a given. The moment you use your phone that inbound/outbound data is recorded and stored by phone companies. The difference between a phone company having your data and NSA having it is NSA needs to get a court warrant to look at any data whatsoever. Verizon does not.
The results for in the case of the NYC subway case might have been the same 20 years ago but intelligence gathering would have been much slower and possibly too late. Also, legally obtained warrants were necessary to obtain for that case today. The only difference was once warrants were obtained the information was more rapidly available than would have been 20 years ago.
Here is the unfortunate part regarding trust on the internet. I’ll use the cases of Snowden and Madoff. Snowden signed an oath, promising not to disclose information he would, if hired, have access to. For his own purposes he broke that oath. People on Wall Street trusted Bernie Madoff to the extent he was for a time the CEO of NASDAQ even though he was not qualified. He lied his way through Wall Street and was trusted. Had it not been for the crash he might still be scamming clients today.
Sharing your information over the internet in even the securest way will not protect you. All it takes is one Snowden working for the internet security firm or one Madoff owning it and all security bets are off.
The difference in this government program is there is Congressional and Judicial oversight. Congress reestablishes the program every two years I believe.
I disagree that “It’s for your own good” is a feeble excuse for two reasons. One of the reasons is people who say that would likely be singing a different tune if their loved ones were hurt or killed by people who want to do harm to the citizens of this country. The other reason is we vote for our legislators. We have input. We have no real input into private industry.
Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world. We can rely on old WWII techniques for gathering intelligence but you can bet other countries do not including those Snowden has put his faith in, and Al Qaeda does not either.
@Iamsurrounded - I agree but there again we are faced with the human factor. Before Lehman Brothers hired me I had to sign an oath stating I would not share information about which I was to be privy to with colleagues, friends, family the press or anyone. As a computer graphics specialist I was given access to information on both sides of the “Chinese Wall” which separates information about deals in the making from stockbrokers. Had I shared information I had with anyone I would have, if caught, been arrested for facilitating insider trading. I could have. I didn’t. Unfortunately not everyone is so honest when they think there is a buck to be made.
Personally I don’t think we should be using outside contractors for national security, a practice that was initiated under the Reagan administration. Reagan naively thought everything should be privatized. I’m not sure I would blame Booz Allen for Snowden’s leak any more than I would blame Lehman if I had sneaked off with insider trading information. They can’t keep employees under ball and chain.
@TheSutraDude -Dude, I’m in the business. I know how Verizon keeps call delay records. And I know how they did it a few years ago. It isn’t that difficult and doesn’t take that much time now or even 20 years ago. And that is how I want it, the government must have a warrant to see the records.
There are secure firewalls , encryptions and VPN tunnels that are used successfully daily. It can be secured and policed.
Unfortunately, government oversight didn’t include many of our lawmakers even reading the Patriot act before they voted for it. And they have bragged about it. Somehow that doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling. The warrant that they were operated from to obtain Verizon data was automatically renewed every 90 days with little review.
@Iamsurrounded - The government does need a warrant to go into records. If the data was kept in the hands of Verizon it’s one step removed which would then take more time even if little more time to access that information.
The information was made available to lawmakers. That many don’t bother reading half of the information they receive is unfortunate but no different than what we see in the private sector. Just look at how many characterized and still characterize healthcare reform as a plan to kill grandma. Yeah…many of them read and lie, just as we see in big business.
We do have an appointed intelligence committee who read these things and approve or disapprove of them.
The number one priority of the federal government is to protect the country from foreign attack. That is the number one priority of the Presidency as well. Now imagine if the government was spending time getting warrants to listen into calls I have with my ex wife or my friends, calls I make to order pizza and Chinese food. Multiply that by the number of phone calls made per day. NSA would have to hire virtually everybody in the country to listen in on all those calls and Al Qaeda calls would not get the attention they deserve. Sure one can argue issues of complete privacy but if we are to have complete privacy we have to accept the 9/11s along with it.
Warrants are required by the government to look at phone calls in the database. Warrants are required by local law enforcement to go after criminals. They were required in NYC and NJ to phone tap in going after organized crime. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with expediency in getting to information valuable in protecting citizens. Btw, I wouldn’t trust Verizon as far as I could throw their headquarters either.
@TheSutraDude - Any landline or cellular telephone company that I have worked for has taken the privacy of their customer’s records very seriously. As a switch tech and network control supervisor we had warrants to trace calls and record call data details (not conversations) routinely. but what we gave them were only records for the telephone number that they had a warrant for. We did not turn over the complete detail for every one of our customers on the switches. That evidently is what the telephone companies have been asked to do since the patriot act. In years passed if a company was asked to do that they would not do it. That’s the difference. I don’t have a problem with turning over records for a specific telephone number if the court has issued a warrant. But there is no reason to turn over the entire customer data base.
It doesn’t take that long to get a warrant, and seldom do requests come up unexpectantly, it is usually after an investigation. If one is needed quickly, they can get it but it is reviewed very soon afterwards. There are very few instances were an officer or agent is waiting impatiently outside of a judge’s door for a warrant. The warrants are usually a result of a very long and thoughtful investigation.
@Iamsurrounded - The data in these banks is only that, records of telephone numbers without names attached. At 10 MB/minute for wav files Verizon would not have the capacity to record conversations given the billions that occur per day in the U.S. alone.
Again and how many times need this be stated…specific phone data from the NSA database can only be accessed after a warrant is requested and issued and they are issued after a thorough investigation by the intelligence community.
I’ll pose another question. What if an enemy sympathizer works for Verizon and gets wind of a warrant? National security has been a secretive process since WWII for good reason in my opinion. Imagine if national security was an open book for all the press to see as some want. Bin Laden and the Pakistani government would have been waiting for Navy Seal Team 6. How well would that have gone down? It was only a few months ago the press was all up in arms because they weren’t given access to a friendly golf game between President Obama and Tiger Woods.
I can tell you from personal experience that landline and cellular telephone customer privacy is not taken very seriously. Phone scammers get my mom’s phone number no matter how many times she changes it and asks her phone company not to publish the number.
I’ll give you another example of the type of thing that happens in the private industry. When I worked in sales a coworker of a saleswoman took note of her phone calls. The coworker then called a competitor to give the competitor the leads and the coworker in turn got paid for those leads. I’m sure you’re honest where you work. Not everyone is.
@Iamsurrounded - And I really wouldn’t want Verizon and it’s employees to be privy to national security investigations. The potential for leaks would be out of control, literally.
And that is probably the bottom line. By requiring the NSA to serve a warrant on a phone number from Verizon and other providers we would be letting them in on issues of national security.
@TheSutraDude - You are making my points. The entire idea of what Big Brother is doing is madness. And quit saying that I think conversations are all digitally saved. I am not saying that. Only call detail records are seized. The conversations are not needed and if they are, the warrant enables NSA to monitor it, that is basically what they do. And as long as private corporations own and operate the telephone network, any call records on their equipment are available to those corporations that operate it. And that is a trust that we have placed on them until now. If you think that it is a national security interest that call detail records of every private citizen in the U.S. be given to the NSA your idea of national security is very interesting. or perhaps you believe that the entire network operation be turned over to the NSA and their subcontractors. We probably should burn every copy of Orwell’s 1984 also while we are at it.
@Iamsurrounded - I”m not making your points. What I said is if NSA is required to inform Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint etc. each time they have strong reason to suspect persons of plotting an attack the cat is out of the bag and into the public sector and thereby national security information is possibly compromised. I’ve also pointed out that our personal information is far more compromised by the public sector than by the government. Companies have far more information on us than the government does and companies use that information with no warrant or permission required. All I have to do is open my mailbox to see how and by whom I’m being targeted. Facial recognition technology now used in stores and malls is what is Orwellian if we’re now pulling 1984 out as an argument. As for trusting phone companies, I’ve used Verizon and T-Mobile for cellular service. In both cases I’ve continuously received text messages from advertisers and weird people I’ve never heard of selling their wares.
Some people and much of the press believe they should be granted access to everything regarding national security. I disagree. We pay the government to use all of the tools at our disposal legally to keep us safe from attacks, foreign and domestic. The Bush administration went too far by secretly and illegally using wiretaps without first obtaining court warrants. That was stopped.
If some people are happy that Al Qaeda, China, Russia and the rest of the world now knows how we use today’s technology to uncover terrorist plots against us and our allies that’s up to them to argue. If some people prefer we go back 20, 30, 40 years and continue using antiquated programs to uncover plots that’s up to them to argue but other countries are not about to follow their lead.
I’ve spoken my peace on this. We’re beating a dead horse between us.
I typed “the cat is out of the bag and into the public sector”. I meant the private sector and therefore the public.
I have spoken my peace also. What I have written in my blog says how I feel and it is not far from what you have just said. I guess I’m am less suspicious of plots against us than you. And I worry as much about domestic infringement on our rights as I do foreign.
This has been a simulating conversation, I have enjoyed it.