You’ve read the stories, heard the interviews, and downloaded the docs and you’re shocked, SHOCKED to find that one of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies has migrated from collecting digital tons of data from radio waves and telephone cables to the Internet. You’re OUTRAGED at the supposed violation of your privacy by these un-elected bureaucrats who get their jollies listening to your sweet nothings.
Except you’re not.
Not really.
Are you really concerned about your privacy? Let’s find out:
- Do you only ever pay for things with cash (and you don’t have a credit or debit card)?
- Do you have no fixed address?
- Do you get around town or strange places with a map and compass?
- Do you only make phone calls using burner phones (trashed after one use) or public phones (never the same one twice)?
- Do you always go outside wearing a hoodie (up) and either Groucho Marx glasses or a Guy Fawkes mask?
- Do you wrap all online communications in encryption, pass them through TOR, use an alias and only type with latex gloves on stranger’s computers when they leave the coffee table to use the bathroom?
- Do you have any kind of social media presence?
- Are you reading this over the shoulder of someone else?
The answer key, if you’re serious about not having “big brother” of any sort up in your biznaz is: Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, N, Y. Obviously not a comprehensive list of things you should do to stay off anyone’s radar, but anything less and all your efforts are for naught.
People complain about their movements being tracked and their behaviors being examined; but then they post selfies to 1,000 “friends” and “check in” at bars and activate all sorts of GPS-enabled features while they shop using their store club card so they can save $.25 on albacore tuna. The NSA doesn’t care about your daily routine: the grocery store, electronics store, and companies that make consumer products all care very, very much. Remember this story? Of course you don’t because that’s just marketing, the NSA is “spying” on you.
Did you sign up for the “do not call” list? Did you breathe a sigh of relief and, as a reward to yourself, order a pizza? Guess what? You just put yourself back on data brokers and marketing companies “please call me” list. What? You didn’t read the fine print of the law (or the fine print on any of the EULAs of the services or software you use)? You thought you had an expectation of privacy?! Doom on you.
Let’s be honest about what the vast majority of people mean when they say they care about their privacy:
I don’t want people looking at me while I’m in the process of carrying out a bodily function, carnal antics, or enjoying a guilty pleasure.
Back in the day, privacy was easy: you shut the door and drew the blinds.
But today, even though you might shut the door, your phone can transmit sounds, the camera in your laptop can transmit pictures, your set-top-box is telling someone what you’re watching (and depending on what the content is can infer what you’re doing while you are watching). You think you’re being careful, if not downright discrete, but you’re not. Even trained professionals screw up and it only takes one mistake for everything you thought you kept under wraps to blow up.
If you really want privacy in the world we live in today you need to accept a great deal of inconvenience. If you’re not down with that, or simply can’t do it for whatever reason, then you need to accept that almost nothing in your life is a secret unless it’s done alone in your basement, with the lights off and all your electronics locked in a Faraday cage upstairs.
Don’t trust the googles or any US-based ISP for your email and data anymore? Planning to relocate your digital life overseas? Hey, you know where the NSA doesn’t need a warrant to do its business and they can assume you’re not a citizen? Overseas.
People are now talking about “re-engineering the Internet” to make it NSA-proof…sure, good luck getting everyone who would need to chop on that to give you a thumbs up. Oh, also, everyone who makes stuff that connects to the Internet. Oh, also, everyone who uses the Internet who now has to buy new stuff because their old stuff won’t work with the New Improved Internet(tm). Employ encryption and air-gap multiple systems? Great advice for hard-core nerds and the paranoid, but not so much for 99.99999% of the rest of the users of the ‘Net.
/* Note to crypto-nerds: We get it; you’re good at math. But if you really cared about security you’d make en/de-cryption as push-button simple to install and use as anything in an App store, otherwise you’re just ensuring the average person runs around online naked. */
Now, what you SHOULD be doing instead of railing against over-reaches (real or imagined…because the total number of commentators on the “NSA scandal” who actually know what they’re talking about can be counted on one hand with digits left over) is what every citizen has a right to do, but rarely does: vote.
The greatest power in this country is not financial, it’s political. Intelligence reforms only came about in the 70s because of the sunshine reflecting off of abuses/overreaches could not be ignored by those who are charged with overseeing intelligence activities. So if you assume the worst of what has been reported about the NSA in the press (again, no one leaking this material, and almost no one reporting of commenting on it actually did SIGINT for a living…credibility is important here) then why have you not called your Congressman or Senator? If you’re from CA, WV, OR, MD, CO, VA, NM, ME, GA, NC, ID, IN, FL, MI, TX, NY, NJ, MN, NV, KS, IL, RI, AZ, CT, AL or OK you’ve got a direct line to those who are supposed to ride herd on the abusers.
Planning on voting next year? Planning on voting for an incumbent? Then you’re not really doing the minimum you can to bring about change. No one cares about your sign-waving or online protest. Remember those Occupy people? Remember all the reforms to the financial system they brought about?
Yeah….
No one will listen to you? Do what Google, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon and everyone else you’re angry at does: form a lobby, raise money, and button hole those who can actually make something happen. You need to play the game to win.
I’m not defending bad behavior. I used to live and breath Ft. Meade, but I’ve come dangerously close to being “lost” thanks to the ham-handedness of how they’ve handled things. But let’s not pretend that we – all of us – are lifting a finger to do anything meaningful about it. You’re walking around your house naked with the drapes open and are surprised when people gather on the sidewalk – including the police who show up to see why a crowd is forming – to take in the view. Yes, that’s how you roll in your castle, but don’t pretend you care about keeping it personal.