Wednesday, August 07, 2013

The worldwide surveillance and privacy war (which you already lost)

For years, Congress tolerated or encouraged telephone and internet surveillance of Americans in the US by US government agencies. We all – and that includes the Chinese, for example – now know that, thanks to NSA leaker extraordinaire Edward Snowden. But on Wednesday, Congress was tricked into going on record.

The instigators were two unlikely bedfellows from Michigan, Rep. Justin Amash, a young Republican with a libertarian bent, and Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat who at 84 is the second longest-serving member of Congress. Their proposal would have restricted the NSA’s surveillance activities. And Congress voted 217 to 205 to give the NSA a free hand. Here is the roll call if you want to know how your rep stacked up in the battle over surveillance and privacy.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon. The Snowden leaks have shown that European governments pursue it assiduously [my take... ‘Total Surveillance’ Officially Brushed Off In Germany]. And China’s internet surveillance and controls, among the most extensive and sophisticated in the world, are being pushed to the next level by the new Communist Party leadership, according to a report that Freedom House just released. It points out that “an extraordinary range of tools to contain critical conversations” have been developed by internet service providers and other companies that chase profits in the Chinese market and are trying to stay ahead of the government. And it’s spreading from there. China “serves as an incubator” for these technologies, the report states, and as “a model for other authoritarian countries.”

In the US too, companies do most of the heavy lifting in these data collection and surveillance efforts: internet service providers that use deep-packet inspection to get at everything that isn’t encrypted; email providers that read and store emails; companies like Skype that access even encrypted conversations; or sites like Facebook that have become vast depositories of personal data that users submit voluntarily without ever being able to delete it (though they can keep the public from seeing it). From tiny app makers to giants like Apple or stalwarts like AT&T and Verizon, they’re all part of Big Data. Data is money. And more than money, if governments get it. They all chase after these billions by collecting, storing, analyzing, and using your personal data. And selling it, too. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. ‘Facebook is a monstrous surveillance engine’
  2. Tomorrow's surveillance: everyone, everywhere all the time...
  3. The Internet is a surveillance state...
  4. Facebook's Zuckerberg runs a giant spy machine in Palo Alto, California...
  5. Every picture you take is secretly encoded with your GPS location...
  6. India to let government officials access private phone calls and emails...
  7. Forget Prism and the NSA. The real threat to your privacy is YOU...

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