Happy Canada Day! And almost 4th of July. Some shock and outrage to go with the fireworks. Don’t worry, I’m not entirely serious. The contrarian in me made me do it.

government lies

First we learn the NSA PRISM program has been spying on all Americans. Then we learn a more precise number is 117,675 people. All these years the Census Bureau has been leading me to believe the US population was in the hundreds of millions, and now I discover it’s in the low six figures. I’m shocked and outraged!

what do you know deutschland

Elsewhere, German officials are shocked and outraged that the US has been spying on them and the rest of the EU. I am reminded of the Gulf War, when the Iraqi army monitored US troop movements by watching CNN. If you are just learning about the spies operating in your country by reading the Washington Post, you are, to put it bluntly, gefickt. Pardon my French.

Does anyone think the NSA is the only party interested in what happens inside EU offices? There are lots of other players in the game, and their interests may not be “allied” with EU interests either. I think I’d spend more effort finding out who else bugged my offices than trying to wring an apology from the US. Or not. I’m not running for election any time soon.

privacy please

This is hardly the first time the US government has invaded the privacy of another country’s citizens. Back in the day, they planted a hidden camera in the Soviet embassy’s Xerox machine. Of course, this was a gross violation of the privacy of the embassy employees. Imagine, for instance, somebody was making a copy of a receipt for Valtrex to submit along with their health care plan reimbursement form. These are personal and sensitive medical documents!

in other news

The same week the US Supreme Court strikes down DOMA, Putin signs a law making it illegal to talk about homosexuality.

where in the world

Where is Edward Snowden? He’s on the plane! He’s not on the plane! Why is this the top ranked social news story, and not the leaks? Obviously the government is running interference to bury the real story, but why is the too smart for that Hacker News crowd voting it up? Is the next bombshell to drop a massive NSA voting ring?

special requests

One of the details I love about the leaked NSA slides is that in addition to email, videos, and photos, etc., the analyst may also receive “Special Requests”. I would have thought that the NSA would be making special requests, but apparently not. I’d be fascinated to know what kinds of special requests Google sends to the NSA.

nothing to hide

Basically, the nothing to hide argument. Let’s postulate two worlds. In the first, you have nothing to hide and no way to hide it. In the second, you have something to hide and some way to hide it. I argue the first is preferable. The flaw with the second is the “some way to hide”. Unless you have some perfect, always reliable means of hiding things (and I don’t think that’s possible), secrets will get out.

A software security analogy would be building programs that run with reduced privileges. It’s generally accepted that running with powerful privileges and hoping that there are no security flaws is the wrong approach. Instead, we build things such that the inevitable flaws have less impact. Similarly, building a society where you are neither imprisoned nor ostracized for your secrets seems more complete than building better ways to protect those secrets. As they say, privacy is dead. We should be moving forwards, not backwards.

dystopian doomsday

Which brings us to back to why I should be concerned, personally. The theory, such as I have gathered from online blogs and comments, is that I might send an email containing the word glycogen (or whatever). Five years from now, the monolith of malevolence that is out government decides it wants me dealt with. So Congress passes a law making it illegal to posses glycogen, and the NSA digs up my old email. Boom, busted. Ex post facto be damned, obviously. Why the man would go to so much trouble to oppress me is a mystery. Seems a lot simpler to get an “anonymous tip” that I’ve got some five inch lobsters in my freezer, get a search warrant, come visit my house while I’m out shopping, and then “discover” a cache of five inch lobsters in my freezer. Boom, busted.

Or maybe I’m running for political office and my opponent calls up his buddy at the NSA. Apparently I’ve sent some emails critical of the gluten free diet fad and the release of these emails to Fox News will cost me the critical gluten free voter support. Still, I wonder why anyone would believe this story. Any attempt at proving the emails are authentic would likely be far more damning to the people responsible for the leak. Talk about sinking your own battleship. If somebody is going to reach into their bag of dirty tricks, why limit oneself to only legit emails? Why not forge a few emails connecting me to a company that manufactures baby mulching machines? Or question the legitimacy of my birth certificate?

Apparently the naughty folks at the NSA went to the same Institute for the Study of Advanced Evil as James Bond villains. There’s basically nothing they won’t stoop to, except for forging evidence, which is why they need a massive spy program to gather otherwise innocuous evidence to convict me of dubious crimes.

For serious, I think this article about data gathering and analysis is far more troublesome than any scenario where I am singled out as an individual.

fourth amendment

Alternative interpretation of the Fourth Amendment: You don’t have a right to privacy, you have the right not to be annoyed by your government. Basically, if the government reads your email, but you don’t know about it, it’s all good. I’m not entirely convinced, but in historical context, I think the intention was more concerned with the inconvenience and harassment involved with unreasonable searches than the breach of privacy. See also the Third Amendment.

I was just reminded that the Supreme Court basically ruled this way in February. If you don’t know if you’ve been harmed, maybe you haven’t.