NSA and Privacy

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the continuing and almost continuous drip of NSA revelations over the last few months has starkly revealed the massive erosion of privacy that has taken place in the last 10 years. This is a major and in my view massively negative development.

Our societies are built on an expectation of a reasonable amount of privacy. While all of us recognize that communal living precludes total anonymity, we don't expect all our conversations, messages, emails, thoughts, whatever to be accessible to total strangers. The expectation is that whatever aspect of our personal and family lives we choose to share is done on a voluntary basis. The freedoms that Western societies take for granted and that people in many parts of the world aspire to are contingent on this  minimum expectation of the levels of privacy available to us. When these levels are breached, people feel betrayed and violated. So why is this notion of privacy so important? The answer lies in the kind of society we want to live in.

Democratic societies have massive flaws. They can be paralyzed and even hijacked by determined special interests. It is a pure myth that they are by nature peaceful. Some of the most destructive wars seen on the planet have been launched by democracies. However, they are also inherently robust and stable. When they largely function as they are supposed to, they tend to allow space to the people living in them to develop their own opinions and be able to voice them in reasonable safety. There is a level of trust present between citizens and between citizens and the state that translates into all areas of social, political and economic life. This trust is present because citizens in such societies have reasonable expectations of privacy.

Quasi democracies, absolute monarchies, dictatorships etc. on the other hand are much less robust and stable. As a result, they are also largely paranoid. This paranoia results because the man at the top of the heap always fears for his position. These societies tend to to be intrusive and try to minimize or ideally eliminate all notions of privacy for their citizens. As a result, there is a much lower level of trust between citizens and between citizens and the state. This lack of trust is reflected in turn in all areas of social, political and economic life.

The actions of the NSA have breached this level of trust. Granted that all nations have a duty to protect their citizens from external threats and in today's society, these threats also emanate in the digital realm. But the response to perceived threats is totally disproportionate to its magnitude. The type of violence that most countries in the world face is not sufficient to threaten their existence. So when governments behave as though all threats are existential - in other words when they become paranoid - they act to reduce both the level and the expectation of privacy amongst their citizens. Inevitably, this will result in lower levels of trust among the citizenry which will ultimately impact all aspects of society. The paradoxical effect is that efforts designed to preserve cherished freedoms and a hallowed and traditional sense of society and of one's place in it will result in undermining those same freedoms and that sense of self.

Related articles

• NSA's Secret War Against Online Privacy Seekers (sgtreport.com)
• Edward Snowden and NSA (rihara09.wordpress.com)
• Privacy Matters! (singingsanoritta.wordpress.com)
• The Internet: The NSA Circumvents User Privacy (guardianlv.com)

Loss of Privacy

1984 by George Orwell is a fascinating book. It is an account of a totalitarian world in which every action and thought is controlled by an all powerful state. Reading it today, it can seem a bit over the top. I bring this book up because our headlong rush into a brave new digital world may inadvertently be creating conditions conducive to something akin to the situation described there. The interconnectedness engendered by the Internet has resulted in a dramatic reshaping of industries and our expectations. Exciting new products and services are popping up almost daily. Existing business models are being mercilessly destroyed. In many cases, it is not certain which new business model will replace the old obsolete one and how long that will last. But what is really of concern is that we as a society are accepting a loss of privacy that would have horrified an earlier generation.

Take cell phones as an example. These devices are now ubiquitous in most parts of the world. Their growth rate has been extremely sharp in developing countries where they have been taken up as an alternative to a usually dysfunctional land line system. However, mobile phones also give governments the power to pinpoint the locations of anyone who uses them. This is a loss of privacy that we as consumers have willingly given up for the convenience in communications that the mobile represents. Credit cards are another good example. Each time we use a credit card to make a purchase, we leave behind an electronic trail - a trail that can be used to determine our likes, dislikes, habits perhaps even modes of thinking. Any website that asks for registration is yet another example. Each website that we register on is another strand of our personality profile that we voluntarily weave.

Together all these developments enable governments to increasingly closely monitor us at an individual level. This is a frightening level of control. Previous governments were constrained by the level of technology available. Today this constraint is being increasingly lifted due to developments in hardware and software. Already, the US government can monitor millions of phone calls in real time. Imagine the level of control that developments in the future can bring. This concern can be countered by saying that democratic governments would never abuse (or at least seriously abuse) the increasing invasion of privacy that technology has enabled. It can also be said that consumer groups and the the rule of law would ensure that citizen's privacy is not violated. The counter to this is Hitler. The Nazi government was democratically elected in what was considered to be one of the most civilized countries in Europe. That government subverted the entire democratic process and marched the country straight into the misery and anarchy of World War II and the horror of the holocaust. The degree of control exercised by the Nazis was astonishing and remember that this was using primitive technology. Of course it can be said that we have learned a lesson from that time and such an event would never be allowed to be perpetrated by a modern, democratic government. But then, what about the reaction of the US after 9/11? The country descended into mass hysteria. The PATRIOT act was passed which would have been impossible in an earlier time. US citizens were required to go for special registration simply based on their place of birth and their religion. Many of these people had been living in the country for decades. Nearly all of them were exemplary citizens. None of that mattered. All this happened in a country with some of the strongest institutions in the world. Take the case of India. In 2002, there was an attack on the Indian parliament. The entire country descended into paranoia and a major war almost started. What about the massacres in Gujarat shortly thereafter? A religious group was deliberately targeted using fairly primitive technology.

Who is to say what will happen in the future. To say that the technologies that allow for loss of privacy will never be used in that fashion is to make an unwarranted assumption. How can we ensure that a demagogue along the lines of say Hitler or Stalin will not rise in the future? Given enough time, the horror of the holocaust will lose its shock value. It will eventually became an event that happened in history. The emotional connection to the event will be lost. This is inevitable because the generation that directly experienced it has largely passed away. The next generation is in its senior years. Another 20 - 30 years and they too will be gone. After that will come generations that will have read about these event only in history books. Like us today, they will insist that such events can never happen - until they do.