ICE Will Surveil License Plates Across the United States
Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") surveillance has caused apoplexy among right-to-privacy advocates. Any unchecked surveillance by this Government should rightly cause alarm. The United States citizens' right to privacy is sacrosanct having been a core founding principle of the Republic.
This author concurs that there is cause for concern.
Nonetheless, he is less concerned compared to the intrusions of private enterprise. The Government already tracks license plates. It is 'de rigeur' when paying tolls on federally or state-funded highways. It is the cost of convenience. What is far more troublesome is the enormous power that we abrogate to private enterprise by virtue of our mobile devices and social media. We volunteer our 'privates' to these tracking devices without a second thought. They thus become eyes and ears on everything we do and we provide it willingly, but often unwittingly.
So the Government is not the egregious offender. It is private enterprise. Technology surreptitiously wrests privacy from our control, by default. We invite Alexa, Siri and "OK Google" into our homes, providing them access to every word we say. Then tech companies turn these conversations into commercializable moments, nudging us with curated advertisements to purchase goods and services from their clients. It is incredible that Americans, above all, offer the most intimate of private data: facial recognition on Apple products; fingerprint recognition to unlock our phones or verify on-mobile transactions; allow Google to read every one of our emails. These data collectively feed the repository of Big Data, and ultimately Artificial Intelligence (AI) so that AI 'learns' human behavior by voluminous, interactive real-time input of how we live. With your face, facial expressions, turns of phrase, reactivity to feeds' and information. Once learned and enabled, Artificial Intelligence will render an ominous new world order.
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The author is no fan of a big and unaccountable government, but governmental intrusions are less worrisome than those of private enterprise primarily because government's purpose is to enforce the law, and the Government is generally held to account. Yes, there are occasional abuses, but eventually the Government would be held accountable. If one abides the law, the probability is that one would be less likely to be surveilled by the Government. Do not break the law and Government's scope of 'snoop' is reduced if not eliminated.
Private enterprise is another matter. The fact, for example, that the biggest and best technology companies openly 'hack our brains' and those of our children to drive revenue and addiction is tantamount to a crime against humanity. The crafty ways in which they can wield surveilled information is dangerous to our perceptions of reality and of each other. Technology, in this vein, is indeed a disrupter: of civilization as we know it. It is what has given rise to #fakenews and "augmented reality," neither of which is particularly fecund to the human condition. A handful of powerful technology entrepreneurs influences our thoughts, infiltrates our homes and separates us from what it means to be preternaturally human. Private enterprise' assault on our core rights to privacy is a siren call.
The UK Will Install Free WiFi Kiosks for the Public
What's App is, for example, far more invasive than the government. The app enjoys a reputation to offer users encrypted conversations while, all the while, each message is ultimately de-encrypted once it lands on the phone. Which makes it vulnerable to reading by every other app on your phone, including Facebook, its enterprise software and other electronic snoopers. I sent a What's App message to a friend to ascertain whether he was staying at the Arlo Hotel, a little known Manhattan hotel. Hours later, on my laptop, the commercial banners to my Chrome browser were advertising Arlo Hotels. Co Inky Dink? I think not.
So much for those private champions of encryption and the supposed safe harbor in commercial apps. Commercial exploiters are already doing routinely for that which the government intelligence agencies are being protested. Consumers have brought a paper napkin to a knife fight to control their information.
(c) 2013 Summers, Tribune Content Agency
There are upsides, however. In New York alone, there are some thirty-five terrorist attacks that have been foiled as a result of surveillance. Clearly an occasional event is missed, such as when a deranged terrorist in 2017 ran over people on the West Side with his car, but we would be significantly worse-off if the other 35 had come to success.
Certainly one would also concede that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) authorities would have more information than less if they were able to access target mobile phones on 'demand.' And certainly one would agree that more information is always better than less information when navigating a decision tree. Thus the ability for a would-be criminal to evade detection is a societal cost. And surveilling them possibly saves lives. We must therefore balance the preternatural American right to privacy, against the responsibility to keep our country and communities safe, particularly when we already give away the same information to private enterprise for free.
Russia Has Turned Kaspersky Software into a Tool for Spying
Many are conflicted on this issue, including this author. The fact that encryption did not stop some very bad actors from doing harm, strongly suggests that the Government needs stronger tools in its arsenal that are superior to those of the bad guys. However it is not lost that, not infrequently, the Government has shown that it is not a reliable steward of this capability. The Government has demonstrated the Government can also be a bad actor. The latter point is most unfortunate, and there is no joy in writing it. The concept of today's FISA court is the proposed compromise. But as recently evidenced by the dueling Republican and Democratic 'Memos' regarding the "Russian Interference Investigation," the Government can become an instrument of politics and therefore a weapon against citizens' right to freedom and privacy.
Aside: What if the enigma were unCrackable? How a Nazi Enigma Machine Works
Encryption to maintain privacy is critical, if not ineffectual. And anyway, it can and should be breached when there are dire or imminent circumstances that would warrant (emphasis on warrant) compromising it.
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This author has come to accept that resistance is futile, unless one is prepared to live without communications technology. Or, simply, use an old-fashioned flip-phone. Predatory private technology is simply too pervasive to harbor the illusion that the populace will have any privacy. Mark Zuckerberg said it himself at the Crunchie Awards Jan 2010: "Privacy is no longer a 'social norm.'" And people do not possess sufficient technical proficiency to fight it. Nay, they may even invite the intrusions whether by design or incidence. We have reached a point where technology is so advanced that we have no alternative but to acquiesce.