The
exposure of the biggest intelligence scandals ever, the U.S.A’s PRISM and Great
Britain’s Tempora have shocked me. I knew the Intelligence services were have
access to online communication data, but I wasn´t aware of the extent.
I know that
this is not only a problem of these countries, others will surely do or try the
same, but I find it especially sad if
you compare this to their own high standards as the U.S.A. but also Great
Britain have traditionally been democratic countries where liberty has been
held high.
The central
question to me is, whether we can rightly call ourselves democratic societies
any more. The term democracy means rule of the people. In order to rule (that
is, to express one's will through elections and voting) it is essential for the
people to have enough information to explicitly and informedly vote for or against a specific course of
action. We now live in a world where the governments know or at least could know everything about the ordinary people
while the people know ever less about what the government is doing and their
reasons for doing it. It´s a sorry state of affairs if the only thing you
legally are supposed to know is, that there are intelligence agencies and they
do *stuff*. Everything else is kept secret and whistleblowers face harsh
penalties (in the US up to the death penalty for “spying”; a joke if it weren´t
so severe).
The
exposure of all this is at least an opportunity for societies all over the
world to have a good look at the details and decide if we really want this to
go on. Just ask yourself what information you and others give about yourself on
the telephone and on the web and imagine what it tells about yourself if it is
combined. A few examples:
-
Do you
use twitter under your real name? What
do you tell your friends or the world about you?
-
If you
use facebook, you´re supposed to give your real name and address. Even things
that are not on public display, can be accessed.
-
Whom
do you call on the phone and how often? A doctor, a lawyer? What does that tell
about you?
-
Do you
carry a mobile (cell) phone 24/7? Then your whereabouts can be tracked all of
the time.
-
What
do you order from or look at in internet shops?
-
What
do you search for on google? What kind of websites do you visit?
-
If
your doctor takes blood or other samples from you and has them analyzed, the
results will most likely come by E-mail, and can be read.
-
If you
travel by plane, all the informations associated with that will be stored (even
what food you ordered)
-
Banking
informations will also be stored
Taken
together these things will tell the governments virtually everything about you:
Your name,
address, age, religion and how/if you practice it, friends, relatives,acquaintances; occupation, preferred music, food,
films, cars, books, sports, political affiliations in general as well as views
on specific topics, sexual orientation, illnesses, travels, financial status,
legal quarries and so on.
If the government wants something from you,
they’ll know the best way to either bribe or blackmail you “Wouldn’t it be a
shame if anyone found out about your extramarital affair/ illegal gambling/
alcohol problem/ racist comments/ con brother/ std/ abortion/ drug abuse/debt…..” Or how about your name turning up in a
no-fly list because an NSA algorithm combined some information (mobile phone
was located in the vicinity of a radical mosque& has booked a flight to
Pakistan& bought a Koran& posted comments that criticized the war on
terror).
How will it alter your behavior, now that you
know you´re being watched? Do you refrain from critical comments or actions? Do
you withhold information from others because you fear it might be turned
against you in the future? For who can say which information might get
relevant. These days it´s all about radical muslims; what if it`ll change to communists
yet again in 20 years? Or christians or civil liberties activists? Will it harm you to buy a book on Marx and attend the
Occupy camps? With their new data storage centers built, the NSA will be able
to store data in the range of terabytes ON EACH LIVING HUMAN BEING. You can´t
count on anything you ever wrote or did to be forgotten.
We simply
can´t have a free and democratic society if we have to fear that our government
(and other governments) know everything about us and can turn every bit of
information against us. It´s on us to watch our governments, not the other way
round.
