Forum Post: Destroying the Right to Be Left Alone: Government Agencies Exploit Technology to Make Privacy Obsolete

Destroying the Right to Be Left Alone: Government Agencies Exploit Technology to Make Privacy Obsolete

Monday, 23 September 2013 10:15 By Matthew Harwood, TomDispatch | News Analysis

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19000-destroying-the-right-to-be-left-alone-the-nsa-isnt-the-only-government-agency-exploiting-technology-to-make-privacy-obsolete

For at least the last six years, government agents have been exploiting an AT&T database filled with the records of billions of American phone calls from as far back as 1987. The rationale behind this dragnet intrusion, codenamed Hemisphere, is to find suspicious links between people with “burner” phones (prepaid mobile phones easy to buy, use, and quickly dispose of), which are popular with drug dealers. The secret information gleaned from this relationship with the telecommunications giant has been used to convict Americans of various crimes, all without the defendants or the courts having any idea how the feds stumbled upon them in the first place. The program is so secret, so powerful, and so alarming that agents “are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” according to a recently released government PowerPoint slide.

You’re probably assuming that we’re talking about another blanket National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program focused on the communications of innocent Americans, as revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. We could be, but we’re not. We’re talking about a program of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a domestic law enforcement agency.

While in these last months the NSA has cast a long, dark shadow over American privacy, don’t for a second imagine that it’s the only government agency systematically and often secretly intruding on our lives. In fact, a remarkable traffic jam of local, state, and federal government authorities turn out to be exploiting technology to wriggle into the most intimate crevices of our lives, take notes, use them for their own purposes, or simply file them away for years on end. "Technology in this world is moving faster than government or law can keep up," the CIA’s Chief Technology Officer Gus Hunt told a tech conference in March. "It's moving faster I would argue than you can keep up: You should be asking the question of what are your rights and who owns your data."

Hunt’s right. The American public and the legal system have been left in the dust when it comes to infringements and intrusions on privacy. In one way, however, he was undoubtedly being coy. After all, the government is an active, eager, and early adopter of intrusive technologies that make citizens’ lives transparent on demand. Increasingly, the relationship between Americans and their government has come to resemble a one-way mirror dividing an interrogation room. Its operatives and agents can see us whenever they want, while we can never quite be sure if there’s someone on the other side of the glass watching and recording what we say or what we do -- and many within local, state, and federal government want to ensure that no one ever flicks on the light on their side of the glass.

So here’s a beginner’s guide to some of what’s happening on the other side of that mirror.

You Won’t Need a Warrant for That

Have no doubt: the Fourth Amendment is fast becoming an artifact of a paper-based world.

The core idea behind that amendment, which prohibits the government from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” is that its representatives only get to invade people’s private space -- their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” -- after it convinces a judge that they’re up to no good. The technological advances of the last few decades have, however, seriously undermined this core constitutional protection against overzealous government agents, because more and more people don’t store their private information in their homes or offices, but on company servers.

Consider email.

---

Police Can Search Your Phone Without a Warrant

Sunday, 22 September 2013 10:35 By Kevin Mathews, Care2 | Op-Ed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18983-police-can-search-your-phone-without-a-warrant

Police officers can’t just come into your home and start searching through your belongings without a warrant, but that same protection does not extend to your cellphone, apparently. As Mother Jones reports, in most states, cops are permitted to start reading your text messages and other personal information on your phone at their discretion, Fourth Amendment protections and privacy rights be damned.

Currently, police who apprehend someone for even the pettiest of crimes (jaywalking, for example) believe they are entitled to then search the phone that was in the arrestee’s pocket. Presumably, the hope is that the phone will contain incriminating information that may lead to larger charges.

Considering that most Americans carry their phones on their person at all times, this precedent is frightening. Moreover, as technology rapidly advances, smartphones now store an increasing amount of personal information. Beyond text messages and call logs, many people now keep email, Facebook and Twitter accounts on their phones as well. It’s the type of information we’d expect police to obtain a warrant before searching, and that procedure shouldn’t be ignored just because it’s now available on a cellphone.

If you think a password lock will keep your content secure, think again. Major phone manufacturers will generally help police officers with tricks to get around the passcodes. It’s no surprise, bearing in mind that the same companies already collude with law enforcement authorities to turn your cellphone into a tracking device.

Thus far, only Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ohio and Rhode Island have banned unwarranted police searches of cellphones for being unconstitutional. Out of the remaining 44 states, about half have ruled in favor of these searches, while the other half has not yet had the practice challenged in the court.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court may take on the issue in its next session. Currently, the nation’s highest court is considering hearing two cases (though they’ll likely only choose one) in which an arrested person’s phone was searched without a warrant to subsequently tie the person to larger crimes.

The Obama administration has made itself clear on this issue: it believes police should have the right to conduct these searches. Of course, that’s to be expected from a team that has thrown its full support to similar mass warrantless searches performed by the NSA. In the police’s case, however, information collected would not (purportedly) be restricted to track terrorists.

The NSA is actually incredibly important to keep in mind in relation to this topic. To the best of our knowledge, the NSA is already collecting all of that information available on your cellphone without a warrant. As it stands, however, the United States allegedly uses that content solely for the purpose of terrorism and national security, not thwarting other crimes.

However, say NSA employees were to tip off local police authorities with the information they were obtaining… perhaps the police could then arrest the suspects on minor or fabricated charges and use that opportunity to search the cellphone. Magically, the police could discover the incriminating information that they knew would be on the phone all along and legally use it as evidence to convict that person. Suddenly, all of that warrantless tracking wouldn’t be as “innocent” as authorities would want you to believe.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.