In June of 2013, former NSA contractor Edward

Joseph Snowden obtained classified documents that

revealed a secret government surveillance program being

carried out by the National Security Agency. Through

these disclosures, we have come to learn that the NSA is

routinely collecting and storing the phone and internet

records of millions of American citizens on a daily basis.

The initial story reported by Glenn Greenwald of The

Guardian showed us that a top secret court order issued

in April of 2013 requires Verizon on an ongoing, daily

basis to give the NSA information on all telephone calls

in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the

U.S. and other countries (Greenwald, 2013). The result

of this and further revelations has elicited widespread

debate between proponents and critics of this system

on both ends of the political spectrum; civil liberties

advocates expressed their outrage over the blatant attacks

on their right to privacy, while proponents of this system

have expressed their opinions as to how a program like

this is a vital necessity to national security and protecting

American interests abroad.

However, this claim is often found to be

unsubstantiated. A recent review published by the

New America Foundation has shown that the NSAs

domestic surveillance program plays a minimal role in

the prevention of terrorist-related attacks. An in-depth

analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a

like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaedas ideology,

and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism

since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative

methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local

communities, and targeted intelligence operations,

The Ethics of Mass Surveillance in the Digital Eraby Cole Barrow

provided the initial impetus for investigations in the

majority of cases, while the contribution of NSAs bulk

surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. NSA

surveillance under an unidentified authority played a

role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined (Bergen,

Sterman, Schneider, & Cahall, 2014).

Another common argument I often hear from

those that sympathize with this program is: If I have

nothing to hide, why should I be worried? Well, when

we are kept in the dark about certain policies, we will

never have the opportunity to have an open and honest

discussion about the issues at hand. We therefore lose

our ability to make important decisions as an informed

publicand as a result, systematic government abuse

goes unanswered. A much greater political thinker than

myself, John F. Kennedy, expressed the importance and

ever-present need for government transparency in his

famous speech The President and the Press. He states,

The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open

society; and we are as a people inherently and historically

opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret

proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of

excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts

far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it

(Kennedy, 1961). Throughout the following paragraphs,

I will be discussing what we have come to know from

the revelations thus far and attempt to illuminate some

of the risks that an unrestricted dragnet surveillance

apparatussuch as the one we have nowposes to us as

a nation, and to our global society.

The implementation of some of the NSAs most

valuable data collection programs can be traced back

The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. John F. Kennedy, 1961.

to 2001, appearing in the immediate aftermath of

the September 11th terrorist attacks. As the result of

a secretive order signed by former president Bush on

October 4, 2001, the NSAs domestic spying program

officially comes into being. This initial data collection

programgiven the code name Stellar Wind

gave the NSA the ability to spy on the phone calls and

e-mails of American citizens without first acquiring a

warrant (The Guardian, 2009). This program later paved

the way for others to be established in what is part of a

collect it all maxim coined by former NSA chief Keith

Alexander (Nakashima & Warrick, 2013). Soon after

Stellar Wind was introduced, other similar programs

were coalesced into what would result in the dragnet

surveillance apparatus we have today: programs such

as XKeyscore, which allows analysts to search with no

prior authorization through vast databases containing

e-mails, online chats and the browsing histories of

millions of individuals (Nakashima & Horwitz,

2013); MYSTIC, which enabled the NSA to record all

conversations across [an] unidentified foreign country

and store billions of them for 30 days (Daily Mail

Reporter & Associated Press, 2014); and the NSAs most

valuable asset: PRISM, which gives the agency direct

access to the servers of Google, Facebook, Apple and

other U.S. internet giants (Greenwald & MacAskill,

2013). Soon after the PRISM story was published, these

tech companies denied any previous knowledge of the

PRISM program; which means either someor all

of these companies were complicit in handing over user

information to the NSA and were coerced into remaining

silent on the matter, or this was carried out without the

consent of these companies and without the knowledge

of their users. This practicein clear violation of the

fourth amendmentis being allowed to take place due

in part to section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which

allows the government to require businesses to hand over

records of any tangible things for an investigation to

protect against international terrorism (USA PATRIOT

Act, 215). The FISA court oversees this provision, which

I will discuss in the next paragraph.

Now that we are aware that these communications

are in the hands of intelligence officials, through

what process is the authority to target an individual

established? Short answer: in secret, through a secret

court. The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)

court is a secret court which gives the authority for the

NSA to target a specific individual for surveillance. The

process itself is highly secretive and conducted with very

little oversight. When it is time for the NSA to obtain

FISA court approval, the agency does not tell the court

whose calls and e-mails it intends to intercept. It instead

merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are

used by its analysts to determine which individuals they

can target, and the FISA court judge then issues a simple

order approving those guidelines (Greenwald, 2013).

When the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was

originally enacted in 1973, its intention was to limit the

authority given to government agencies that we now see

being exercised today. Its primary purpose was to ensure

that the U.S. government would be barred from ever

monitoring the electronic communications of Americans

without first obtaining an individualized warrant from the

FISA court, which required evidence showing probable

cause that the person to be surveilled was an agent of a

foreign power or terrorist organization. As of 2008, the

act was revised to state that no individualized warrants

would be required to carry out this kind of surveillance

(Greenwald, 2013). According to constitutional law, this

is blatantly illegal; as it is in clear violation of the fourth

amendment. To put things into even clearer perspective,

weve just recently learned that even members of Congress

are barred from accessing these FISA court orders (Fang,

2015). This should raise a major red flag; as it leaves room

for little to no congressional oversight whatsoever. It is

a practical impossibility for members of the House of

Representatives to do [an] effective job of oversight of the

intelligence community given the current structure of

the House and its rules (Eddington, 2015). What this in

turn does, is it essentially erodes our checks and balances

system that is so principal to our political process and

allows for a disproportionate amount of power to be

continually placed in a government institution engaging

in unconstitutional practices.

Now that weve established the legal justifications for

these practices being allowed to continue unchecked, lets

look at some of the ways in which the mass surveillance

program is being abused by those in power. According

to NSA documents leaked by Snowden, it was revealed

that the United States had been actively monitoring

Brazilian president Diana Rousseffs phone calls, as well

as monitoring Brazilian embassies and spying on the

state oil corporation, Petrobras. Rousseff condemned the

acts in a scathing speech given at the U.N. shortly after

becoming aware of the eavesdropping. Personal data

of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate

informationoften of high economic and even strategic

valuewas at the center of espionage activity (Rousseff,

2013). This was not an isolated incident; in another case

of economic espionage, a leaked NSA PowerPoint slide

showed U.S. involvement in monitoring the government

and personal e-mails of the top 10 Venezuelan economic

officials. A stated goal in this presentation was preventing

Venezuela from achieving its regional leadership objectives

and pursuing policies that negatively impact U.S. global

interests. An NSA officer in Texas, in other words, was

paid each day to peruse the private messages of obscure

Venezuelan bureaucrats, hunting for tidbits that might

offer some tiny policy edge (Shane, 2013). Of course, any

unethical behavior of this scope must be almost invariably

accompanied by self-vindicating rhetoric. Perhaps it

should come as no surprise then that just as of March

2015, president Obama formally declared Venezuela

to be a national security threat (Mason & Rampton,

2015). This unwarranted spying is not only restricted to

South American officials, but to our European political

allies as well, such as was the case with our eavesdropping

on the phone conversations of German chancellor Angela

Merkel (Pengelly, 2014). At this point, the ulterior

motives guiding our foreign surveillance activities are

clear. This reckless abuse of power undoubtedly subverts

our status as a constitutional republic and transforms us

into an omnipotent hegemonysubsequently operating

as exempt from international law.

Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate informationoften of high economic and even strategic valuewas at the center of espionage activity (Rousseff, 2013).

Drawing from what we know about our surveillance

powers being used in the past to monitor activists and

social movements, we could infer that these powers are

currently being used to monitor well-intentioned citizens

domestically. It is well-documented that intelligence

agencies in the United States, such as the FBI, have used

their surveillance capabilities in the past to monitor

political activists, peaceful social movements, and

important political figures. Two such instances that come

to mind are the FBIs monitoring of Dr. Martin Luther

King, Jr. in the 1960s (Christensen, 2008), and the

Watergate scandal in which former President Nixon was

implicated in the phone-tapping of key political figures

with the aid of the FBI, CIA, and the IRS (Perlstein,

2015). One cause for concern is the wide-ranging technical

capabilities of this program, and the ability for the NSA

to effortlessly target those it deems as a threat in their

own loose interpretation. According to a recent article

published by The Intercept, recently obtained classified

government documents show that Nearly half of the

people on the U.S. governments widely shared database

of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known

terrorist group. Of the 680,000 people caught up in the

governments Terrorist Screening Databasea watch list

of known or suspected terrorists that is shared with local

law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign

governmentsmore than 40 percent are described by

the government as having no recognized terrorist group

affiliation. That category280,000 peopledwarfs

the number of watch-listed people suspected of ties to

al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined (Scahill &

Devereaux, 2014). Imagine, if you will, a scenario in which

political dissent is categorized by the U.S. government as

a threat. This could then be used specifically to place

innocent Americans on a government watch list; which

will in turn allow agencies such as the NSA to monitor

and discredit political activists, and even intimidate or

silence investigative journalists that may be working on

highly sensitive stories that implicate powerful figures.

Given what we know already, my supposition is that this

will beand possibly already isused domestically for

this exact purpose.

With geopolitical change and technological

advancement accelerating at such a rapid pace, this kind

of unrestricted surveillance apparatus can be left open

to even greater abuse in the future; potentially serving

as a mechanism for complete social and political control.

Zbigniew Brzezinskia former national security advisor

and counsellor to presidents Lyndon Johnson, John F.

Kennedy, and Jimmy Carterseems to agree that this is

a very possible outcome. In Zbigniew Brzezinskis book

Between Two Ages: Americas Role in the Technotronic

Era, Brzezinski postulates a scenario where a dystopian

future may be well in our midst; one where total social

control is not only possible, but inevitable. In one

particular passage he seems to be alluding to the exact

kind of dragnet surveillance apparatus that we have now.

Brzezinski states, The technotronic era involves the

gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a

society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by

traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost

continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain

up-to-date complete files containing even the most

personal information about the citizen. These files will

be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities

(Brzezinski, 1970).

It goes without saying that we need some system

of surveillance in place to protect against foreign and

domestic threats; the problem is in regards to the efficacy

of some of these surveillance programs and what they are

actually being used for. We must find a way to balance

our need for security without sacrificing our individual

liberties in return. Going up against such a powerful

adversary may leave many opponents feeling despondent

and powerless in what they can do on a macro level,

but certain measures can be taken immediately to

help safeguard your personal privacy, such as using

encrypted communication services, and boycotting

tech companies that remain complicit in these abuses;

this, in itself, is a form of protest. As a result, this could

potentially encourage companies to speak out and take

action against warrantless surveillance. Thankfully, some

companies and organizations have recently come forth

to challenge the NSAs illegal data collection practices

such as Wikipedia, and the ACLU (Ingram, 2015). By

taking personal responsibility to ensure our right to

privacy, together we can reclaim our constitutional rights

and force meaningful change as we move forward in the

digital era.

words & design

COLE BARROW

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