In the aftermath of the September 11th
terror attacks, the American government enabled itself with broad,
discretionary powers to identify, investigate, prevent and combat global
terrorism. Unfortunately, accountability became distracted by accusation. Fear
eviscerated measured logic and response. Security trumped liberty. Historical
analysis of this reflexive reaction in the aftermath of the attacks (made
possible only by whistleblower) reveled an amazing lack of oversight producing
seemingly unchecked overreach.
The primary authority and jurisdiction of the government stemmed from
the Patriot Act (50 USC 1861), especially Section 215 and its targeting of
“business records”. The resulting ostensibly boundless cornucopia of data upon
which the intelligence community, particularly the National Security Agency
(NSA), could dine indefinitely was to be scoured in an attempt to “discover an
individual’s network of associations and communication patterns” (Greenwald,
2013) .
Trend analysis of this metadata promised to reveal “whom a terrorist had been
in contact with, when they have been in contact with these individuals, how
often, and where they and their contacts are located” (Stair &
Reynolds, 2014) .
What alluded the American public, and remained hidden until Edward
Snowden leaked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court warrant, was the
vast scope of information to being collected without
contest on U.S. citizens. As specified in the FISA warrant, Verizon was to
provide:
“"telephony metadata"…(i) between the United States and
abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone
calls…metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information,
including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating
and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity
(IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number,
etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration
of call” (Spiering, 2013) .
Personally
Identifiable Information (i.e. subscriber names, addresses, and message
content) remained outside the scope of the warrant. In November 2015, the NSA
lost such indiscriminate powers with the expiration of the Patriot Act. However,
the USA Freedom Act (50 USC 1801) quickly reestablished the government’s
capabilities with increased external oversight of government surveillance
programs and limited the acquisition of telephone metrics (Note: Internet and
social media still remain open sources for data mining).
Yet the quagmire remains - should the NSA continue to collect or, as
written under current law, force business to preserve metadata? Oppositional
voices espouse that such intelligence initiatives are not supported by a
cost-benefits analysis which is to say that the costs associated with such
programs do not produce or support the effort and supposed results. This claim,
specifically regarding the collection of bulk telephone data, has been bolstered
by independent review. Furthermore, Americans remain fearful of a loss of
privacy as well as the potential for misuse of collected data.
Conversely, intelligence programs, such as Prism and Bullrun, resolutely
demonstrate a posture of increased threat awareness while enabling a
sufficiently increased response apparatus. Trend-analysis, if not prior to an
incident but certainly after-the-fact, fosters that response as well. Without preservation
of data, intelligence gathering efforts would not be able to support ongoing investigative
endeavors. Mass surveillance, or metadata collection, is an everyday aspect of
the technologically-connected society. Think
with Google resulted from such collections. Advertising via social media
feeds is a result of such collections. No one cares about Google or Twitter but
when the Government does it we suddenly become convinced that Orwell was
Nostradamus. In a post-9/11 environment, the fact remains that surveillance is
a necessary evil.
Reference
List
Greenwald, G. (2013). NSA Collecting Phone Records
of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily. Retrieved from The Guardian.
Spiering, C. (2013). Full Text: The FISA Court Order Forcing Verizon
to Hand over Data. Retrieved from Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/full-text-the-fisa-court-order-forcing-verizon-to-hand-over-data/article/2531272
Stair, R. M., & Reynolds, G. W. (2014). Fundamentals of
Information Systems (8th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.
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