It used to be that it was conservatives of the strict constructionist type who held a truly superstitious view of the Constitution of the United States. They believe that it is some kind of infallible document which, in its pure and pristine form, held in the minds of the supernatural figures called "The Founding Fathers" -all dead in the pre-electronic past- was mystically inerrant, a potent magical talisman against all that is evil and taboo. But those times are past. Not that that isn't the current ahistorical and nonsensical assertion of "strict constructionists" or the various other cults that go by different names but boil down to about the same superstition, it's that the delusion has spread throughout those who believe themselves to be liberals, though, as I've said before, a lot of them are a lot closer to conservatives than true liberals. When the great Barbara Jordan thundered that her faith in The Constitution "is whole; it is complete; it is total", she didn't mean that kind of thing.
I've had several comments on what I've written about the Snowden affair that seem to not realize that none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights is going to protect their online communications in other countries through which they physically pass and in which copies of those are retained on servers. Which is not only stunning but potentially dangerous naivety. The United States Bill of Rights does not apply in those countries, it isn't going to magically prevent the governments in those countries from reading and revealing your e-mails and nothing is going to keep internet companies in those countries from fully complying with demands or even requests to hand those over. And even your e-mail to the person in the next room can pass through lines and servers all over the world, or so I've read over and over again. Those are not protected by the patron saints Jefferson, Madison and Mason from being retrieved. They're not even going to be really protected from countries friendly to the United States - and by "countries friendly" when it's one government to another you should understand that to mean "governments who think they can trade information for something they want a lot more than protecting your privacy."
Do you think that your messages aren't being collected by any government outside of the United States and, in those countries with sufficient technical ability, analyzed for their own purposes, including sharing information they find therein with some branch of the United States government? How much do you want to bet that that isn't being done right now? Just how many cookies do you have on your computer right now? Do you know what they are and, really, where those come from? Do you think that, in addition to companies and those terrifyingly knowledgeable and potent computer gangsters (many of the most able and equipped, by the way and apropos of the Snowden affair, located in Russia) the governments in which those are would not have the ability to stealthily get right into your computer now?
The convenience of pretending that the privacy that always depended on mutually held beliefs in honor and morality being generally held in societies holds in online communications doesn't do anything to change the fact that by putting information online exposes it to people who don't have that or, in many cases, any code of honor and no moral restraints on their stealing your information and using it in what ever way they want or see as more important than your privacy. When you put even encrypted messages online you're trading convenience and speed for increased possibilities that the message, or copies of it routinely held in who knows where, can be retrieved and decoded. And the abilities that the NSA have to do that with computers will, very soon, be available to many other governments and many large corporations, the very companies that develop the encryption you rely on will probably sell them the keys. If there's one thing you shouldn't rely on, it's the honor and morality of people who can make a lot of money by violating even the moral code they, themselves claim to follow. That's business, especially in the absence of legal regulation. Ah, legal regulations and the judges who get to decide on those, you can't get away from that weak link in the chain of privacy.
If you want a secret held in absolute security, don't tell anyone, not even those you trust. Especially don't write it down, paper is no guardian of a secret, it will spill your guts to anyone who looks at it. As soon as you either tell a trusted friend or put it on paper, you've already compromised its security. And when you send it online you've put your secret in so many other hands, in so many other lands and you've also created many copies of it stored in places you don't even know exist. You don't only have to depend on the United States government to follow your idea of the law to prevent them copying it and reading it, you've got to depend on judges and "justices" agreeing with your idea of the law and, trust me, they often won't. And, as I said above, those won't protect you from other countries, even those who follow their own laws. Of course, none of them will protect you from people outside of governments who successfully break laws. They also won't protect you from the company that provides you your browser in exchange for their use of your information, including, it seems, selling what of that they find it in their interest to sell, here and abroad. You get to vote for the United States government and have the minimal amount of control that that fact provides, you're at the mercy of the internet providers. You do what they demand to get online or you stay off line. And they demand that you hand over some of your privacy. You've already agreed to give that up.
So, can we at least get that nonsense out of the way? By your putting your information online you've already given away your 4th 5th amendment protections and all other protection to privacy under the Bill of Rights? Because if you think its power extends that far, you are thinking magically, no matter how much you insist you don't do that. If you want a good example of what can happen to even the most heavily protected secrets look at what Snowden made off with, which I'm just about 100% sure Chinese and Russian intelligence has already had from him, while he slept or in exchange for keeping him out of the hands of .... how did Putin put it? "our American partners." Ian Flemming couldn't have said it with more deliciously insincere, and self-serving hypocrisy. Would you like to be in Snowden's position of having to trust Putin's sense of honor and morality? Snowden has got whatever information he purloined. Snowden has got nothing else that they'd want more than they'd want the U.S. government to owe them one. I wouldn't be surprised if his passage from Hong Kong to Moscow wasn't in accord to some trade between the Chinese and Russian governments, conveying the carrier of information they both wanted and what the Chinese government didn't mind each other having. I think Snowden figured on gaming the Chinese government for his own gain like the plot of a spy novel, or, more likely movie or video game. His travel itinerary has no other explanation. He'd have gone directly to Venezuela or Ecuador and communicated with Greenwald directly and privately if he hadn't been playing some kind of game like that. He really believed he could work it his way. The guy is a total idiot anyway you look at it. The privacy of your online information depends on people like him.
There are two issues in this topic: one, technology; two, U.S. Constitutional law.
ReplyDeleteNeither, it seems, is what many people think they are.
I remember early on being told that you had no privacy left, that all your data was publicly available. Because you sent an e-mail, or bought something from Amazon? It seemed it was there even if you never used your Social Security number for any purpose whatsoever. Your data had escaped, the barn door was open, the barn had burned down. Get used to it.
Whether that was ever true or not, we were warned form the beginning that electronic communications meant privacy was a joke. About that I can't say, as it's not my area of expertise. But the technology does affect the Constitutional questions.
You have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in your mail (the "snail" kind); and in telephone calls. Not necessarily cell phone calls, however, which are easier to tap than landlines. I have a vague memory of a case to that effect; but I could be wrong.
E-mails? You want to write something the world could see, put it in an e-mail. You send it to me, I could easily forward it to tout le monde (remember those dreadful chains of jokes, get rich quick schemes, and "warnings" of viruses that used to clog the in-box?) Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your e-mails? Not at work, because the employer owns the computers. At home? I kinda doubt it, because they are so easily forwarded.
I might repeat what you told me on the phone, but I can easily relay exactly what you said in an e-mail, and you know it. Nothing less private than an e-mail. Passing along a letter is rude; passing along an e-mail is as easy as "oops, I didn't mean to hit 'Reply All.'"
Your phone calls are private, but the records of your phone calls (which was the first Snowden revelation) are not; haven't been since long before PRISM, et al. There are a lot of communications that are not private, though you might think they are. And if they aren't, the 4th Amendment doesn't apply. Period. End of discussion.
So how much of what the NSA (never mind foreign governments) is doing is unconstitutional? Probably less than is commonly imagined. Just because you don't want 'em to do it, doesn't mean the Constitution stops 'em from doing it.
There is an alternative explanation for why Snowden is in Russia. It's no more than an assertion, but food for thought:
ReplyDeleteAssange insinuated himself into the situation and sent Snowden to Ecuador (the country granting him asylum) through Russia (his great friend).
Seeing as how Wikileaks was in Russia waiting to help Snowden, this makes sense.
Ioffe also argues Snowden could have been retrieved if Obama hadn't wrongfooted the whole thing by being so public about demanding him back. I'm not sure that was possible domestically, though; just as Putin can't just hand him over in response to U.S. demands, Obama couldn't be coy and act like we didn't really care what happened to Snowden. Still, I expect at some point when nobody's really paying attention anymore a quiet deal will be struck like the exchange in Vienna she mentions, and Snowden will be returned to face trial for what he did.
Not that being forced to live in Russia is any inducement for someone else to follow in his footsteps.....
Maybe, but Snowden got there from Hong Kong and he got to Russia from Hong Kong carrying computers with who knows how much information on them, all of which, no doubt, China would love to have for themselves or at least to see. And Snowden, by making himself known turned himself into a commodity to be traded by the Chinese government or the Russian government, neither of which have reliable civil liberties that would have allowed him to escape being traded to the U.S. or to another country that wanted what he had.
ReplyDeleteMy theory of Putin's "our American partners" statement was pressure on Snowden to give them the rest of what he had, including any encryption keys he may have been able to hold back. After that and with the coverage he'd gotten in both the west and in Russia, his residual value was to be used for propaganda purposes and allowing him to stay in Russia would enhance that. A trial could have risked Snowden being exposed as a criminal stealing stuff to sell to China as well as what he gave his good buddy, Greenwald, destroying their and the stories propaganda value. I can't see any other explanation for things. If Snowden was relying on Wikileaks after the way they left Bradley Manning to hang out to dry, he's an even bigger idiot than I've come to conclude he is.
The greatest irony is that all of these folks who are frantic about their phone records - not even the contents but just the records of calls to other countries - in the hands of the NSA have no way to know what Snowden took with him, including, possibly, all of their information they're concerned about, including the keys to its encryption, including the methods and codes that allowed the NSA to do what they are afraid of, all of which is almost certainly in the hands of the Chinese and Russian governments. Now they'll be able to reproduce the same programs. Just think of what a Chinese or Russing Turing could do with the information that Snowden carried there on his laptops, protected only by his wiles while in the hands of those governments and whatever encryption he relied on to keep it from them, to which he would have had to have had the key while in their hands.
I don't get the feeling most Snowden fans have thought much about this stuff.
I don't disagree with you about Snowden's movements; just found Ioffe's an interesting explanation of how he wound up in Russia. Snowden has displayed amazing stupidity in his movements, and is clearly out of his depth in all of this (including releasing the info. thinking it would spark a revolution that he and Greenwald apparently would like to see). So I don't doubt he relied on Wikileaks at all.
ReplyDeleteWhereas I would stick my hand out a window if Assange told me it was raining.
No doubt, whatever Snowden had, Russia and China now have it. So I wonder what kind of "whistle blower" he actually is?