FREE PASS!

I will be using the free pass that the glorious Queen Gloria, may she reign forever and true, gave me.

Thoughts on Discussion Last Class

I enjoyed our class discussion on Tuesday.  I think it was interesting how there became two clear opposing sides concerning the "tug of war" between individual privacy and public safety.  Some said that they would be willing to give up some level of privacy to ensure safety, while others said they would not.  I can understand the argument positing that if an individual has nothing to hide, why should he worry about allowing the government to monitor his activity.  However, I think this is a somewhat dangerous idea and a slippery slope.  More than anything, this issue is a matter of principle--it's not about whether an individual has anything to hide, or even whether a particular individual is willing to give up his or her "right" to privacy; rather, it's about what the government has the right to do and what the government does not have the right to do.  As technology improves in the future, there is no question that novel technologies will be developed that will allow government to monitor every aspect of individuals' lives, perhaps without their knowledge.  As this technology becomes available, it will become necessary for individuals in society to decide where to “draw the line in the sand” when it comes to government monitoring and invasion of privacy.  And as history, shows us, the term “slippery slope” is definitely applicable to this argument.  All we need to do is look back to the Red Scare to see an example of government monitoring run amok in our own country.  A witch hunt of sorts came about as the government initiated an investigation to find so-called “communists” in the U.S.  Individuals’ “right” to privacy was simply “thrown out the window” in many cases and uncovered information was taken out of context.  Reputations were wrongfully smeared and individuals were unfairly fired or even blacklisted.  And today, since 9/11, we are beginning to see a new type of witch hunt targeted at Muslim Americans.  Racial profiling in airports is something considered acceptable by some, as long as it is “in the name of safety.”  I think the question is not whether or not an individual is inconvenienced by certain “safety” measures, but whether the government has the right to profile, and whether it has the right to impose those measures on individuals, who may or may not be deemed “high risk.”

On the topic of the last class discussion I am strongly opposed to the "Big Brother" mentality of having my privacy be no more under cryptography and hacking as a guise of public safety. This gives unyielding and near absolute power to those who have little or no moral compass. I feel the ethical implications of cryptography are overlooked or swept under the rug by terroristic hoopla and groups of people creating mass hysteria over it. It is then easy to throw privacy into the wind with the exacerbated threat that anyone could be a terrorist when the truth is that most people aren't. The next extreme to listening in on people would be how to identify a terrorist. Like I said in class I hunt, if I look up guns and ammo on the internet that could be taken as a possible terrorist movement and next thing I know is that I disappear (Latin American History under the dictator Trujillo?). I don't like the invasion of privacy for safety, everyone becomes a terrorist at some point under this viewing.

As a class whole. I found it fun wrapping history, math, and ethics and their impact on culture.

On Claims by William Binney and NSA civilian spying.

I mentioned in class that NSA whistle blower, William Binney, claims that the NSA monitors phone calls and email traffic of every citizen of the United States. You can see what he has to say about it here. Now, I think it is safe to say they cannot monitor EVERY single email and phone call for reasons Will outlined in his post below. Still, it is unlikely that a significant percentage of the estimated 245 million internet users in the United States operate on anonymous browsing servers like TOR. So, with that many people one might laugh and say that the amount of data storage needed to do this kind of monitoring is outside of technological capabilities of a program like the NSA (i.e. Sophie's father's claim).

First we need to know a few things about the size and number of messages sent daily (right now I'll focus on email). Supposing that the 'average' email is 100KB and the 'average' user sends/receives 100 emails per day (i'm trying to provide an upper bound... so these numbers will seem a bit on the large end) that means the "average' person in the United States transmits (by sending or receiving  9.7 MB of emails per day totaling 2.2 petabytes (or over 2000 terabytes) per day!

Now it is unlikely the NSA would want to keep copies of every single email. Perhaps they cut out retail advertisements (sites like amazon.com definately spam my inbox). This will lower the data per user significantly as advertising emails are often much larger as they contain pictures among other formatting features that would increase the number of bytes the message takes up. Say that knocks down the total data per person to somewhere around 8 MB per person per day. That still 1.8 petabytes data per day to make copies of all the emails sent in the United States.

Meet the NSA's shiny new data center in Bluffdale, Utah. To summarize Wired.com's article on the NSA's new data mining center i'll just note the following points:

1. The construction of the building has a budget of ~2 billion dollars.
2. It's power requirements are estimated at 65 Megawatts (that is enough power to keep around 50-60 thousand homes running assuming they draw 1-1.2 kilowatts).
3. 100,000 square feet of servers which will push the Pentagon's Global information grid to around 1 yottabyte of data storage capabilities.

That last point probably means nothing to you, (as it did to me until I looked it up). One yottabyte is 1,073,741,824 PETABYTES! That means such a grid could potentially store copies of everyones non-spam email for 596,523,235 consecutive DAYS. For those of you keeping track at home, that's 1,634,310 years of emails at todays data transmission rate (based on what I think are upper end estimates). Note that it is impossible to imagine that the Pentagon is going to dedicate its global information network to just storing data on US citizens. However, if they allocate even 0.1% of this data storage capacity to such a task they could store 160 years of data. 

So, is it really that hard to imagine that the NSA could store copies of everyones online messaging data? 

Discussion on Cryptography

I found our discussion on cryptography very interesting and although I enjoy my freedom and privacy just as much as the next guy, I think the government's hand in monitoring our internet activity is a bit overplayed.  Due to the very size of our country it is simply improbable to go sifting through everyone's email with the hope of finding something bad.  It is safe to assume certain people are targeted by government organizations just as some of us have a more difficult time getting through airport security.  You can call it racism or stereotyping but this is a part of our nations security system.  When we can trust no one we make assumptions and weigh likelihood or probable cause.  I think it is also important to not jump to conclusions.  You may get stopped in the airport due to random scanning with no connection to your race, name, or physical appearance.  Furthermore, the very structure of the web allows organizations, not just the government, to track and monitor Internet activity and this will continue to be true regardless of policy or law.

I also want to point out a number of groups use the web anonymously and do so with ease.  Nearly 75% of the webs content is not visible through the browsers we use and there is always a way to go unnoticed.  The TOR network is an excellent example of this.  TOR (the onion router) enables anonymous browsing through the use of volunteer servers worldwide that allow for layers of encryption to disguise a users location and IP address.  Despite its initial intentions the TOR network is in many ways the dark side of the internet, allowing criminal organizations to thrive on the web.  It is used for black market sales, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.  If the entire web were to go anonymous imagine the potential damage that would follow.  I think people often forget they are accountable for their actions on the web.  I won't say I like the idea of someone looking at my personal information, regardless of legality, but at what point we will be able to demand the government takes a stand against the corruption of the web when all this time we argue for our privacy and freedom?

Space Flight: Like Driving a Car

Just a quick comic I found that made me think of class. Enjoy!

http://xkcd.com/1133/

Cryptography

The article "The Ethics of Cryptography" can essentially be summarized in the following sentences:  Cryptography in and of itself is not evil, but people can use it for bad purposes as well as good. Furthermore, cryptography should not be withheld from the public because it is necessary to preserve confidentiality, transfer data with integrity, and to authenticate the identity of the reader/sender. My first thought after finishing the article was... duh. The whole "cryptography is only as bad as the people who use it" stance the author takes seemed, to me, painfully obvious. But, as I continued to think about it/read through the other articles, I realized that this statement is probably not as obvious to someone who has has their email account hacked/phones lines tapped. Cryptography allows us to preserve our privacy through the use of check cards and computer passwords and facilitates secure communication, among other functions. All of these seem like wonderful things (we are Americans after all and we value out personal freedom), but what if you knew that a terrorist was using cryptographic techniques to plan an attack? Or a swindler was using cryptography to hide the evidence of his crimes? Is the government justified in using wire tapping with national safety as an excuse, or is personal liberty more important? Should we teach cryptography to foreign students who might then return to apply the techniques in their homelands?

Like many other issues facing the government today I don't think the debate over cryptography is an either/or issue, and I doubt any one side has it completely right. Although we all value "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," our opinions on cryptography and government wire tapping likely depends on whether we place more emphasis on the life or more emphasis on the liberty. There is no doubt in my mind that much, if not most, of the wire tapping that has been done by the Bush/Obama administrations has been unjustified. Yet, if this clear violation of our rights as Americans has prevented  even one act of violence or facilitated the capture of criminals, is it worth it? Assuming that these violations of human liberty have been beneficial, I am tempted to say that it is worth it until I am reminded of George Orwell's 1984. This issue would be much easier to debate if it were black and white, but unfortunately it is not and where to draw the line as "justified cryptography to preserve freedom and facilitate scientific development" and "a risk to national security" is unclear.