Bulk surveillance programs do not
provide the benefits to national security commensurate with their harms to privacy.
Throughout the duration of this course, class debates around bulk surveillance seemed
to revolve around the trade-offs Americans should be willing to make in order
to afford a greater degree of national security – are we willing to give up
privacy in order to make ourselves safer? After reading authors like Greenwald,
Harris, and Newmann, I think most of us have a good idea about what kind of
data both governments and private corporations are able to find out about us,
whether that information is illegally obtained or whether we give it away
freely. While even proponents of NSA
surveillance acknowledged the programs’ harms to privacy, they said that they
would be willing to accept that harm in order to make the United States safer.
But after reading Bergen’s analysis of the NSA’s bulk surveillance program, I
hope that these students would reconsider their views. Bergen finds scant evidence
that these surveillance programs contribute to the security of our nation, and
given this analysis, it seems like the NSA harms our civil liberties without
providing benefits which justify the programs themselves. I hope to offer a
brief framing of my views on the bulk surveillance debate, and in the process
try to offer a convincing case as to why we should be seriously concerned about
the continuation of these programs in their current forms.
First, bulk surveillance
undermines our Fourth Amendment rights. The text of the Fourth Amendment is as
follows: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and
the persons or things to be seized.” Bulk surveillance constitutes an
unreasonable search. Many people who fall under the NSA’s spying programs are
everyday citizens who are not guilty of anything. They did not consent to these
searches, nor were they even aware that these searches were happening.
Bulk surveillance
also undermines our ability to control our own information, which has been commodified
ever since advertising became the primary means of business on the internet
(see Zuckerman’s article about “The Internet’s Original Sin”). Insofar as this
is the case, we should be able to have control over our own information, which
is treated like a good. Every piece of data that exists about you exists because of you, almost as product of
your labor, if you will. Individuals exchange their information for free
services on the internet, but this exchange is voluntary and consensual.
Despite this, 91% of adults “’agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that consumers have
lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies”
(1).
This statistic should be unsurprising, as the US government places a large
burden on corporations themselves to collect much of the data collected under
its surveillance programs.
The NSA’s programs
have undermined trust in government, which is hovering around historic lows – only
24% of Americans indicate that they trust the government (2).
While a cursory internet search didn’t reveal from a statistical perspective
the impact of Snowden’s shocking revelations, it seems clear that the NSA’s
bulk surveillance programs undermined citizen’s capacity to trust the United
States government. A Reuters article from the beginning of 2014 indicates the
NSA revelations as one of the key contributors to the public’s declining trust
in government (3).
I haven’t gotten
the sense that the above points were terribly controversial, at least within
the context of this class. People might have disagreed in terms of the degree of privacy harm caused by NSA
surveillance, but even defenders of the NSA mostly tried to explain why these
harms were mitigated by security benefits, rather than show that privacy concerns
were altogether misplaced.
However,
these mitigating arguments seem lacking after reading the Bergen article. NSA
surveillance only played a role in 1.3% of anti-terrorism cases the researchers
examined, and these cases were either insignificant, or ones where NSA
surveillance played a marginal role at best. For example, Basalay Maolin was
discovered through unwarranted interception of telephone data to have donated
$8,500 to al-Shabaab. Of course, it’s a good thing that we caught Maolin, but
arresting him hardly prevented “the next 9/11.” David Headley was found
plotting an attack against a Danish newspaper, but the information relevant to
his arrest came from British intelligence, not the NSA. The government cannot
give us any concrete evidence that their overreaching data-gathering programs
are, in fact, effective. How then, can the government make the case that bulk surveillance
is critical to the national security apparatus? How can it make the case that
such a small impact on terrorist activity is worth the massive abrogation of
our liberties?
I
know that it might be a bit unfair for me to take such an adversarial stance on
the last blog post, when no one will comment on the statements that I’ve made (probably).
But I feel like Bergen’s paper should be the deciding factor for anyone who’s
still on the fence regarding the bulk surveillance debate. At the beginning of
class, we talked about how we have to make trade-offs in order to get more
security; how policymakers need to evaluate how much they’re willing to
sacrifice in order to achieve that security. If the benefits to security are
marginal, then what we sacrifice should be marginal as well. The NSA’s bulk
surveillance programs, however, have a frightening impact upon our privacy.
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