In The Watchers, Shane Harris describes the birth of the modern technological American surveillance state. He follows the exploits of John Poindexter, the NSA head during the Reagan Administration, while weaving in details about computer programs designed to capture data and come up with patterns that would detect terrorist cells. Programs such as Able Danger and others that existed before 911 would find patterns that suggested Al Qaeda had a global terror network with cells in the US, Europe, the Middle East and SE Asia before the CIA had this information. They combined Internet searches with proprietary government data bases to develop possible leads for terrorists. Repeatedly, the analysis of these data bases had to be destroyed because program produced inadvertent co mingling of US citizens with foreign terrorists. This violated US privacy laws and laws governing US military surveillance.
The book covers the topic with empathy towards the surveillance staff attempting to protect America from foreign terrorists while complying with laws that made their task extremely difficult. I am interested in how America will balance the competing interest of privacy and security in the future. It is also fascinating to learn how the NSA attempts to make some sense of the vast amounts of data it retrieves. Prior to 911 the analysis of the data was not systematic and led to a fragmented response.
Speeches and interviews of Shane Harris.
Presidential candidate, Barak Obama, offers his opinion on privacy vs security in 2007
His current opinions on this appear to have changed according to a June 7, 2013 Washington Post article .
The Guardian reports that US technology companies are confused about the reports of the NSA PRISM program and seem unaware about nonspecific data mining June, 2013.
Presidential candidate, Barak Obama, offers his opinion on privacy vs security in 2007
His current opinions on this appear to have changed according to a June 7, 2013 Washington Post article .
The Guardian reports that US technology companies are confused about the reports of the NSA PRISM program and seem unaware about nonspecific data mining June, 2013.
The book, The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State is available from Amazon.com
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I note that the general response since 9/11 has been to ignore laws and Constitutional protections when constructing surveillance databases. Not necessarily the direction American citizens would want.
ReplyDeleteThe IAO's logo is chilling to those of us with a knowledge of common conspiracy theory, It's like they're outright boasting.
Thanks for your comment. The author covers the development of the TIA logo. They did not run it through a focus group before putting it out in public. I found the attempt to balance privacy and security an interesting topic in the book. Early on the surveilance laws were really antiquated as evidenced by the destruction of the research done during Able Danger prior to 9/11/2001. Now they are quite permissive. I don't think privacy can be assumed.
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