Dear All,
I am not sure that the NSA (or anyone else) will ever be able to square that circle. They are chasing the modern illusion of omniscience. However, they have to try because once the state cannot maintain the strategic high ground in the internet, the state system becomes endangered. The local governance and security we take for granted becomes under threat. http://lawrenceserewicz.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/when-the-nsa-cannot-decrypt-the-seeds-of-the-electronic-state-of-nature-are-planted/
On the issue of recording keeping, I am also reminded that the USG has copies of all the old census data as does the UK government. I doubt that much work is going to be done looking backwards over this collection of data except in circumstances where the organisation is trying to connect the dots going backwards. The NSA are only going to be larger than Google is at the moment.
As a point of clarification, no one (aside from God for those who believe) can connect the dots going forward (even the person acting). Even if we knew the future, it would not tell us how we needed to act to bring about that future state. (heisenberg's principle at a minimum starting point for showing why that is not possible).
However, like many law enforcement agencies (ANPR is a good example,) the NSA wants to be able to connect the dots backwards if necessary. Even then they are simply running to the horizon, they can try to collect everything, or a lot of things, but that will not give them real time nor stable data. In a philosophical sense, we are more than the sum of our electronic interactions or the records that exist about us. http://lawrenceserewicz.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/does-the-nsa-want-to-collect-everything-lets-check-the-facts-and-then-decide/
However, the post raises a deeper problem, especially for the archives (records offices) and the DPA. If archives become digitised and people can search between them, then it would be possible to rapidly recreate the live of a person as they crossed a small area, like the UK, with the records stored in archives. We see this in slow motion with "who do you think you are", but imagine this on steroids and in real time. Will it happen exactly like that? No. Will it be very similar yes? Are archivists worried about the data protection implications? Yes.
The early stages of this are starting to occur with big data and crime prevention as law enforcement (read HMRC as well) use the data they have collected to cross reference with other data sets to track tax evaders. I did a blog about this idea with a reference to the Jimmy Savile case and I explained how archivists and genealogist could become forensic detectives. http://lawrenceserewicz.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/finding-jimmy-savile-the-shaw-report-haunts-englands-archives/ However, the wicked need not fear much because the records that were kept were so poor. (Clio blushes at the shame.) However, things are starting to change slightly online.
What we are seeing is nothing new and it has been implicit in the modern state and record keeping since the birth of the modern state. As I repeat often, technology defeats technology. The more we turn to technology to stop technology, the more we live within the horizon that is defined by the modern state. To put it another way, your rights and your person, the way you conceive of yourself and your existence, is shaped definitively by the modern state system. Our talk of rights is an outgrowth of the modern state. My ability not to fear religious or ethnic persecution is an outgrowth of the modern state. If we wish to leave this world of comfortable self-preservation (locke's great success in the Two Treatise on Government) we need to follow Edward Snowden (attentive readers will note he stated explicitly that he wanted to wake us up from our comfortable self-preservation) and turn off the government's surveillance. Alas, I do not wish to live in that digital state of nature because I know that the Leviathan keeps the more dangerous monsters at bay.
To me this is not an academic argument about the state of nature. To me this is Homs (Syria), or Rwanda, or people like who make the internet a digital state of nature rather than a nice happy play ground like these: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/ Once we have a society where we do not want to be safe (the government's first priority to its citizens) we can turn off the state. Alternatively, we can arrive at a point where human nature has become good and man is no longer wolf to man. Until that time, I fear that the modern state will continue to do what it needs to do. I do not want to turn off the state (I am one of the weak in the digital state of the nature) because I do not believe the latter will occur.
The only way forward is to follow what Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau started (in their own different ways) by working to keep the rule of law in place and maintain a strong respect for law abidingness so that we can hold the government to account for its promises and its constitutional limits.
Best,
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Grimbaldus
Sent: 11 October 2013 17:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [data-protection] A footnote on PRISM
If anyone still harbours doubts about the National Security Agency's capability to intercept and analyse the vast amount of traffic that spills continuously through the Internet, consider the new data center they are constructing in Bluffdale, Utah. It is expected to be the main facility for storing, decrypting and analyzing the vast amounts of data the NSA collects through surveillance programs such as PRISM.
The data center has cost a reported $1.4 billion excluding the computer hardware. It covers more than one million square feet and continuously consumes 65 MW of electricity at a cost of more than USD 1 million every month.
M
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