By: It looks obvious » Blog Archive » Call records, and then what?

It looks obvious » Blog Archive » Call records, and then what? — Mon, 15 May 2006 23:50:02 +0000

[...] During the weekend I was reading very well drafted opinions about how the government, and the telecom companies, did not do anything wrong obtaining the call record of the entire population. Chris argued that not only the actions discussed were completely legal but they did not violate any right. His assay is, by the way, very well written and argued, and although I disagree with his moral argument I recommend reading. Jeff Jarvis argued that our call record aggregate data belong to the public, and therefore: If the people own it, then one could argue that the government, acting as the people, may seek and use that data unless we, the people, forbid it through law. There is, of course, a proper debate about whether the law does allow it. There is also a proper debate over whether this is a necessary and prudent weapon in finding terrorists (and whether that is being done effectively). Indeed, a Washington Post poll says that 63 percent of Americans consider this an “acceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism.” And didn’t we protest that our government did not do a good enough job analyzing data and intelligence to prevent 9/11? If someone had been analyzing patterns of enrollment in flight schools — hmm, why are an abnormally high number of Saudis suddenly learning how to fly passenger jets? — then could we have stopped them? A further question is whether we have a right to know that all this is going on or whether that public knowledge cripples this investigation and our safety. Finally, it is not clear that releasing aggregate data necessarily violates individuals’ privacy. My point is that this isn’t as simple as raising the tattered-from-overuse privacy flag. Neither is this as simple as raising the also tattered war-on-terrorism flag. But my fears of the government’s, yet another, invasion into another method of obtaining information about its citizens weren’t calmed by these arguments. Today’s news about the government tracking reporters’ calls to identify their sources confirmed my worries. I don’t know if the call records served to track the reporters’ calls obtained from the NSA database, however it represent the same disregard for the same liberties it pretend to protect. And Josh Marshal’s sums it very well: I think part of the issue for many people on the administration’s various forms of surveillance is not just that some of activities seem to be illegal or unconstitutional on their face. I think many people are probably willing to be open-minded, for better or worse, on pushing the constitutional envelope. But given the people in charge of the executive branch today, you just can’t have any confidence that these tools will be restricted to targeting terrorists. Start grabbing up phone records to data-mine for terrorists and then the tools are just too tempting for your leak investigations. Once you do that, why not just keep an eye on your critics too? After all, they’re the ones most likely to get the leaks, right? So, same difference. The folks around the president don’t recognize any real distinctions among those they consider enemies. So we’d be foolish to think they wouldn’t bring these tools to bear on all of them. Once you set aside the law as your guide for action and view the president’s will as a source of legitimacy in itself, then everything becomes possible and justifiable. freedom of speech, Human Rights, liberal democracy, Privacy, Telecom [...]

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By: It looks obvious » Blog Archive » Call records, and then what?