The clocks have struck 13.
Governments around the world are implementing surveillance programs designed to keep tabs on their populace in the name of combating crime and terrorism.
The European Union has the INDECT project, a software research project designed to monitor closed circuit videos for “threat detection” and take action.
In the United States, a program known as TrapWire has made waves across social media. Like INDECT, it is a closed circuit surveillance system that attempts to identify threats based on facial recognition and even the way someone walks.
While there are currently no plans to make these projects nationwide, it is likely that, without the proper protections, such programs will be implemented in a vast scope as the technology and time progresses.
These are the first steps in the creation of a surveillance state that would make George Orwell’s jaw drop. They are the beginnings of technological systems in which guilt is presupposed over innocence, and all citizens are subject to the watchful eyes of their government.
And that’s only your outside behavior.
Your private communications, your digital profiles, may be sitting in a National Security Agency (NSA) data storage facility somewhere, according to a NSA whistleblower.
William Binney, a former NSA “crypto-mathematician” with 32 years of experience, has come out in the last year detailing the NSA’s domestic spying programs. Binney has estimated that 15 to 20 trillion “transactions” have been collected by the NSA, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he has publicly stated that he believes the agency has copies of “most” emails in the United States.
“Right now, the government is collecting a digital dossier on Americans,” said Rebecca Jeschke, media relations director and digital rights analyst at the EFF. “Who knows when and how that information might be used?”
When Senators Ron Wyden, D – Ore., and Mark Udall, D – Colo., asked the NSA for an estimate of how many Americans have been spied on, Charles McCullough, inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, wrote back in a letter that revealing such information “would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”
Wrap your head around that.
Now, I can already hear the defense for these programs: If you don’t have anything to hide, then you have nothing to fear.
Yet, I think this attitude fails to take the past actions of our government into account.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert FBI projects aimed at monitoring and infiltrating domestic political groups involved in activities ranging from the civil rights movement to Vietnam protests.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was initially used to arrest those who spoke out against World War I.
Our government has a history of silencing and monitoring dissidents, activists and journalists.
These new surveillance technologies would only serve to add ammunition to their arsenal, regardless of whether the official reason is to stop “terrorists” or “child pornography.”
Our rights to privacy must be protected and updated for today’s digital age.
The first step is to pressure developers into placing privacy protections in their technology from the start.
“We can and should demand privacy protections from hardware and software developers that are clear and easy to understand,” Jeschke said. “I don’t want a future where if I’m not constantly super-vigilant, then I lose all my privacy.”
But we must also work at reforming our laws.
I don’t see this being discussed on television news, and I definitely don’t expect these practices to be debated during the presidential race.
We need to take steps to ensure that our rights are protected or else we’ll wake up one day and find they are already gone.
When Big Brother comes, it will be because a Brave-New-World-type populace was too distracted to stop it.
David Scheuermann is a 20-year-old mass communication and computer science junior from Kenner.
____
