In response to Ed Snowden and him revealing some of America’s deepest secrets, I am in favor of public surveillance to an extent. Although there should be limits as to what type of data the government can collect and what they can use it for, I do believe that they should have access to it to ensure the safety of our nation. Increased surveillance and using more advanced data analytics techniques on the massive amounts of data transmitted everyday can help make sure that similar horrible incidents like the ones in Paris, San Bernardino, Brussels, etc. do not happen again. Many of the people who are against some of the government surveillance occurring and the future propositions, would not have those same feelings if they were in a situation where it could have saved theirs of their family’s life. I am a firm believer that most people in government are for the most part good people and their intentions are none other than to keep the people in this nation safe and secure. If the government could have used some of the great data analysis tools available and had access to more data, they could have detected the constant visits to terrorist-related websites, the down-right psychotic social media posts, and sketchy bank transactions of the cereal killers in San Bernardino. Along with other terrorists attacks, if the government had more access to phone messages then they would have been able to see that many of those terrorists were in contact with well-known Al-Queda, ISIS, and other terrorist group leaders in the middle east.
Both sets of terrorist groups involved in the San Bernardino and Paris attacks were influenced and trained through the internet but due to privacy laws the government could not use advanced analytics to find out what they were up to. Only after the incidents occurred and many people were killed was the government able to show the public the similarities in their communication behaviors to past terrorists. The government could have easily stopped these attacks if they could have accessed more data and advanced tools, spotted those trends, and intervened before it happened and many people were killed. Despite all of the evidence proving that these horrible events could have been avoided through increased government surveillance, restrictions and regulations are only getting worse. To me, this evidence would only prove that the government should be able to surveillance more forms of communication and have access to more advanced analytical tools. This in itself is a strong reflection of the pure stupidity that exists in American society today.
Many of those who are in the fight against much of the government surveillance occurring say that if the government was given “backdoor access”, it would be useless because the terrorist groups would switch to another form of communication and a different type of encryption they built on their own. What people do not realize is that if the government forced these terrorist groups into home-made encryption channels instead of the premium channels constructed by top businesses and the world’s experts, then they would not be able to operate as effective as they do now. This would complicate and deteriorate the transmission protocols and minimize their data communications, which is known as “virtual attrition”. This also gives the government an immediate alert of terrorist activity if personal communications are overly-encrypted, because they know that those on that line of communication are trying to hide something.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/time-for-a-rigorous-national-debate-about-surveillance-1451856106
Good article, but the arguments are not really based on the evidence. First, here in the U.S., we do not have privacy laws, unlike other countries. Encryption is not a privacy issue, just a way to protect from others looking. Paris and Brussels took place in other countries, and it has less to do with surveillance (though Turkey warned about the Brussels attackers) than a variety of other factors (e.g., poor neighborhoods, denied job prospects, ethnic bias, etc). It's easy to point to not linking the dots, but this is one of them.
ReplyDeleteSome commentators think that if you collect too much information, it's hard to know what you have and what you don't have. No terrorists (bad guys) were found from government surveillance. The Apple-FBI issue is not related to finding terrorists, but about seeing what was on the phone of the SB terrorist (after it happened).
I agree with the article that a debate is worth having. We are still having it.