Of course the other 7.2 billion people in the world are also routinely monitored, but since this is an action on foreign territory, these 7.2 billion people have no recourse against this practice.
Something often ignored: The intelligence agencies of other countries are likely to be doing the same thing. It has already been shown that BND and GCHQ engage in similar behavior with regards to upstream and satellite signals interception, but it seems foolish to assume that other countries are not engaging in this type of intelligence collection.
The everyone else is doing it defence does not change the unethical nature of the action.
If a technology exists it's going to be used, within the normal variations of supply and demand. You might prefer to abstain from using a particular technology, but there's also the possibility that it will get used on you. From a governmental perspective, a country has a requirement to be as aware of its political environment as it can for the sake of its citizens' safety.
- Should NGA not use imaging satellites to keep track of national disasters and environmental issues?
- Should NGA not use imaging satellites for nuclear non-proliferation monitoring?
- Should DoD not have digital sensors at the egress points of their networks to gather information on attacks by foreign actors?
- Should NSA not monitor the communications of foreign adversaries to determine their intentions on the battlefield?
- Should NSA not investigate adversarial nations launching attacks and information-gathering operations against DoD infrastructure as well as US private industry?
- Should our military intelligence branches not monitor weapons development of adversarial nations (using ELINT measurements, imaging satellites, along with other forms of intelligence gathering to determine their offensive/defensive capabilities)
- Should we not use SIGINT sensors and capabilities to detect an incoming attack on the USA or an ally?
- I can add a whole lot more to this list if interested.
The act of "spying" is far more than just SIGINT collection and processing of internet data. Can you elaborate on what you specifically take issue with? Do you take issue with all intelligence collection as a whole, or specifically SIGINT collection, or more specifically SIGINT collection of internet data or phone records? I am curious and like to keep an open mind about these things, so am being genuine when I ask this.
> Can you elaborate on what you specifically take issue with?
I'm always interested in what people think the intel agencies do or should be doing. Personally I agree with you, targeted intelligence is more valuable than blanket intelligence but today with "big data" this may be changing.
This is analogous to what the government is doing with privacy rights. The US can't say we're a nation rooted in innate human rights but then dismiss those rights when dealing with the rest of the world.
To the contrary, the US should be supporting countries that don't spy on their citizens and punishing those that do. We should want to encourage liberal free societies, and not become a global threat to freedom.
I have trouble understanding how this analogy relates, do you have a different one which can illustrate your point? (It may be a good point so I would like to understand it)
> To the contrary, the US should be supporting countries that don't spy on their citizens and punishing those that do. We should want to encourage liberal free societies, and not become a global threat to freedom.
How would we go about doing this? Would we trust other nations if they said that they do not conduct any of intelligence gathering operations, or would we use a more covert manner of discovering and verifying that they indeed are not engaged in such activities?
Additionally, how would we be able to continue to ensure the safety of our allies if we removed all sensors responsible for detecting an incoming attack from an enemy?
Interesting as that is exactly what China and Saudi Arabia are doing in the US.
Because it's a massive human rights violation. Just because the agencies job is to gather intelligence doesn't mean it can trod all over the rights of non-US citizens.
It could be also argued that it's a violation of our right to freedom of expression. Personally I have started to self-censor anything I post online.
The CJEU also recently ruled against mass data collection that the UK was doing and I believe that sharing data with agencies outside Europe was also ruled illegal.
I'm not saying that wiretapping someone with a warrant or monitoring someone within the law is a human rights violation. It's specific to bulk collection.
> I'm not saying that wiretapping someone with a warrant or monitoring someone within the law is a human rights violation.
As the communications of targets now mostly flow through the same "pipes" as the communications of normal citizens who are not of interest, I am curious how effective intelligence gathering could be conducted on actual targets without bulk collection. For example, the IC cannot quite get a warrant to secretly monitor non-state actors such as members of ISIS, al-Shabaab, AQAP, etc. Nor could the IC easily get a warrant to breach PLA computer systems to investigate the party responsible for breaching DoD networks.
It is very possible that I am not seeing this the right way, but I don't like the idea of the USA being the only country in the world who is suddenly in the dark with regards to intelligence. It puts us at a disadvantage with regards to our own defense as well as the defense of our close allies. I am genuinely curious if there is a counter-argument for this?
My point on warrants wasn't well thought out. You make some good points there.
As for the USA being in the dark I think my points are relevant to most countries so the idea is not to disadvantage anyone but that there is a level playing field that respects everyone's rights. Obviously some countries are going to violate human rights but it shouldn't be highly developed democratic nations just because the right is less glamorous than others.
It's very hard to have a useful debate on this when we don't actually have data showing how useful bulk data collection is. If we were able to say 'x' lives have been saved because of it I might more readily be willing to cede some privacy. I think that number would have to be quite high though as I believe privacy is fundamental to a democratic society and should be treated more seriously than it generally is.
Well this is close to what is happening. As I understand it, to indefinitely store data the system would need to be tasked to track certain targets of interest. That said, I would be curious to see the success stories for data derived from specific targeting versus those which required past data that was only available due to the "rolling buffer" of data/metadata (I am assuming that this is what you're referring to when you say "indiscriminately"). The "rolling buffer" setup could not have been very easy to create versus the "retain data only for certain targets and drop other data" methodology, so there must have been some intelligence need for it at some point, but with the prevalence of HTTPS I'm not so sure it'd be useful. Could be wrong though, surely at least an interesting way this could be reconciled.
> As for the USA being in the dark I think my points are relevant to most countries so the idea is not to disadvantage anyone but that there is a level playing field that respects everyone's rights. Obviously some countries are going to violate human rights but it shouldn't be highly developed democratic nations just because the right is less glamorous than others.
I just find it incredibly hard to believe that nearly all other countries are not performing similar forms of SIGINT collection in the same way we are. I believe that it is just USA and the UK who are in the spotlight for this due to the leaks in 2013. That said, I absolutely admit that I don't have much to stand on without the ability to point to public evidence of this.
> It's very hard to have a useful debate on this when we don't actually have data showing how useful bulk data collection is.
You are absolutely correct here, the current "trust us" reasoning is unhelpful. Solid statements such as "By performing bulk monitoring of internet traffic flows, we were able to task the system to capture all traffic from selectors (phone number, e-mail, IP, etc) associated with BadGuy X1 X2 and X3, who were planning Y attack on Z and we were able to have AlliedMilitary thwart it" would be a far more productive way to have a clear discussion on the topic at hand. The IC has an aversion to publicizing information regarding this sort of thing presumably due to fear that enemies would figure out how they got the required intelligence and then change their tradecraft accordingly. I think that concern is a valid one as well, and I truly hope that we can figure out a decent way to reconcile it so there can be a middle ground. Perhaps it could even be helpful to provide aggregate information at an unclassified level and have cleared representatives publicly confirm the accuracy by reviewing the case by case (specific) classified details.
I do not understand what you mean by this. I am assuming you do not believe there is an analyst looking at every bit of data that flows through the internet backbone, so could you elaborate here? Are you referring to intelligence collection?
The parent comment seemed to imply that the goal/job of an intelligence agency ought to be to spy as much as possible on as many people as possible. I expressed doubt.