One thought on Edward Snowden and the new reality

[drwex]

There's obviously a lot to say, much of which I'm still mulling. However, I came to realize something in a private mailing list discussion and I want to plagiarize myself and put the thought out here.

I think that two fundamentally distinct concepts are being confused in discussions of the ongoing surveillance:
1. any electronic communication can be read
2. all electronic communication will be read

I hear this confusion a lot from people who are technical enough to understand the open nature of most electronic communication. We've all more or less accepted the first as true since we looked at the problem seriously. Even back in the days when NSA didn't have the best crypto around - or it wasn't abundantly clear they could break any crypto available - they could employ courts, subversion/bribery, or "rubber hose cryptography" to get the information they wanted.

(Aside: one of the great moments in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon involves a character generating a very strong crypto key and explaining how less strong crypto can be broken by brute force but the time to break goes up as you improve the key. The question is asked, "How long do you want this to be secure?" and the answer is "Until men are no longer capable of evil." It seems very apropos to the current historical moment.)

Statement two is fundamentally different from one in that two implies a pervasiveness, a panopticon of previously unexpected proportions. Yes, we knew that someone who wanted to could read our communications, because we could all imagine technical or system weaknesses that would give a determined adversary access to the secrets. But previously we could reason "who would want to?" Most of us are not Edward Snowden and are not privy to things that are of interest to any government. We are not holders of state secrets nor public figures whose indiscretions titillate the tabloidistas. The question "why would anyone care?" and the aphorism that "you are not that important" were true. The assumption was that if you did not come to the attention of those with the power, your stuff wouldn't be read. Not for technical reasons, but because that wasn't how the world worked, or so we thought.

What we've endured is a phase change, to a state in which everyone must now assume that every mundane shopping list, auto-generated calendar reminder, party invitation, social media notification, etc is in fact being read by the great Western Stasi. Not only are all of these things being read, they are being merged with an analysis of every human connection you have; with what you buy, read, listen to, and watch; with every place you've been and everything you did there; with everything you did in sight of a public security camera or a private webcam; with every conversation you've had in range of a cellphone. And that's Just Fucking Wrong.

I believe it's sufficiently Fucking Wrong that it will likely, probably, get some attention. What I can't predict is what shape that attention will take. I think the UK services' recent ham-fisted moves will provide enormous opportunity for Labor to make hay and that's going to keep things stirred up over there. Here in the US I'm less sure, but I'm willing to wait and see. We have no effective opposition party, but we do have powerful corporate interests who will use any excuse to get out of a regime that they think is hurting their bottom lines. If we make it hurt, they'll notice. If they notice, they may lean on their pet Congresscritters to change things.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I think this is just the beginning. In a few decades a half-millimeter robot can sit on your shoulder relaying video of everything you're looking at. A few more decades after that high schoolers will be creating nano-bots that can travel to your optic nerve and relay images before they've gotten to your brain. See Brin's Transparent Society.

What we need is more sousveillance--getting to see what the movers and shakers are actually up to.