I Think I Liked It Better When Churches Thought Technology Was The Mark Of The Beast

Using Gmail and  Blogger means I have to deal with Google's invading my privacy and the NSA getting data from a back door in Google's servers. I'm not sure I want churches to take a page from that playbook. From today's Washington Post:

Could Big Brother be coming to a church near you? One software company is now providing churches with facial recognition software to better track who shows up at their worship services.

Later in the article,

Greenshpan said about 40 churches have signed on, including eight in the United States, although he declined to name any of them. He also declined to say how much the churches pay for the software. He said the churches that use the software range in membership from 100 to 3,000.

A church will upload a database of photos of its members, and they usually use security cameras they already have in place to match the video with existing photos. Churches could use it to track regular attendance or see who’s missing.

“It’s simple to see if a member isn’t attending three or four events. Then they can give the member a call and say something like, ‘See you on Sunday,'” Greenshpan said.

I take it as an article of faith that God is omniscient and omnipresent. I also take it on faith that believers "are surrounded by . . .a great cloud of witnesses." I believe most Christians also hold those beliefs, so why do forty churches feel the need to track parishioners when God seems perfectly capable of doing that?

Microsoft As An Evil Empire

I really didn't need a reason to despise corporatism, but the new revelations about Microsoft's eager desire to give away their customers privacy did make the morning coffee taste bitter. (I missed it yesterday.) From this Guardian article:

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

• Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

Of course, Apple and Google are just as bad:

In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

I suppose the companies will soon want a law making it illegal to unplug from the grid. 

America The Hypocritical

The Washington Post has published a poll that shows that most Americans support NSA surveillance of private communication.

Steve Benen puts together this chart that compares Republican and Democratic attitudes now and in 2006.

In short, Republicans trusted Bush and Democrats trust Obama.

Benen puts a bit of a partisan spin on the numbers. The Democrats were opposing something when it was illegal but now it's legal.

So, much of the country is guilty of shameless hypocrisy? There's certainly something to this, though there's one caveat to keep in mind.

Clearly, Democrats are more comfortable with NSA surveillance under a Democratic administration, and Republicans are more comfortable with NSA surveillance under a Republican administration. There is, however, one small catch -- it's not an apples to apples comparison.

In 2006, the poll question dealt with a warrantless surveillance program in which the Bush administration exceeded its legal authority with no judicial check or congressional approval. In 2013, the Obama administration, at least given what we know now, appears to be acting within its legal authority, relying in part on the courts, and acting within a law approved by bipartisan majorities. 

For critics of government snooping, that's cold comfort, but when it comes to gauging public attitudes, the bipartisan hypocrisy comes with an asterisk.

The asterisk is, of course, an allusion to the asterisk that accompanied Roger Maris's record breaking 61 home runs because he played a 162 game season while Babe Ruth played only 154 season. That asterisk was unwarranted in 1961. Benen's is unwarranted now.

Republicans claim to be the party of small government. It's difficult to understand how an alleged party of small government and strict interpretation of the Constitution can support the security state. I fail to understand Democrats supporting something merely because it's legal. There have plenty of legal but terrible laws.

Benen is correct when he writes "with results like these, the political appetite for changing the law will likely be non-existent."

CISPA Needs To Be Stopped

I thought I should vent about this at least one more time this week. This infographic explains it all.

Update: This FAQ adds details

CISPA Proves Guns Never Will Be The Answer

PNR points to a story about an Amish farmer who was arrested by a SWAT team of federal agents because he dared sell raw milk. I must confess that I had no idea consuming raw milk was a crime nor do I know if I am a wanted criminal because I consumed thousands of gallons of raw milk from 1957 until 1975. I may have even delivered some raw cream for my mother who sold the dangerous product for the obscene sum of 50 cents a quart. I feel pretty healthy for a 55 year old. At any rate, I hope the statute of limitations has lapsed.

PNR uses the story not to extol the virtues of raw milk but to illustrate the need for the 2nd Amendment. According to PNR, the incident illustrates that citizens need guns to defend themselves from overzealous government officials.

Let's begin with some basics. the government doesn't need a SWAT team to take down Amish farmers. Armed citizens who shoot at federal agents will not fare well. I hope both statements are uncontroversial

More importantly, no gun will defend a citizen from agents acting under the ridiculously broad guidelines of CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing And Protection Act. When CISPA first came on the scene last year, Lifehacker reported:

Essentially, CISPA makes it possible for private companies to share potential cyber threat information with the government if the government concludes it needs it for cyber security information (and vice versa) immediately, without a complicated process.

That "complicated process" involves a minor thing called a warrant, something the SWAT team had, although the "no knock" component of the warrant in the Amish farmer incident is ludicrious. Lifehacker continues:

The privacy implications of the broadly defined "cybersecurity threat" is the cause for concern among CISPA's opposition. It's feared the information gathered would be released too easily and would violate the Fourth Amendment because it offers a simple, warrantless means to acquire personal data.

Several other advocacy groups echo this sentiment, including the American Library Association, which has this to say:

The ALA is concerned that all private electronic communications could be obtained by the government and used for many purposes–and not just for cybersecurity activities. H.R.3523 would permit, and sometimes even require, Internet service providers and other entities to monitor all electronic communications and share personal information with the government without effective oversight by claiming the sharing is for "cybersecurity purposes."

Today Computerworld reports that the legislation which was stopped last year has been re-introduced and reminds readers that the law protects both the government and Internet giants like Facebook:

CISPA also overrides existing privacy law and would grant broad immunities against lawsuits and liabilities to participating companies, EFF policy analyst Mark Jaycox wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Importantly, there are few transparency provisions in the legislation, Jaycox wrote. Information collected by private companies and provided to the government would be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests, he noted. There is also nothing in the bill that would require companies to inform users if their information is shared with the government, he said.

There are 310 million guns in the US. There's not a single one of them that will protect anyone from governmental overreach like CISPA. Of course the 2nd Amendment only crowd will continue to ignore encroachments on the 4th Amendment so they can protect themselves from roaming Latino gangs, an assertion that causes one to wonder if Wayne Lapierre could pass a background check.

Mitt Romney And Values: The Only One That Matters To Him Is Cash

In an election that some claim is about values, these paragraphs from the AP stand out:

Mitt Romney's success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a secretive data-mining project that sifts through Americans' personal information - including their purchasing history and church attendance - to identify new and likely, wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned.

For the data-mining project, the Republican candidate has quietly employed since at least June a little-known but successful analytics firm that previously performed marketing work for a colleague tied to Bain & Co., the management-consulting firm that Romney once led.

In short, Mitt Romney sees humnan beings as nothing more than a means to make money. They are not ends unto themselves; they have not right to privacy; they are merely cash cows.

I'll be interested to see in any freedom loving Republicans raise an alarm about Romney's use of data mining. I would love to hear one of them explain how any American is supposed to believe that he will not undermine civil liberties when given the reins of power if he sees personal data as noting more than a source of income.

A Minor Musing About Expanding Government Power

The local blogosphere on both the right and the left is hashing out Obama's immigration executive order; the local tea party is concerned about the rising numbers of corporations that are being crucified.  After all, some on the far right believe corporations are people whose life begins at the moment of incorporation.

The imperial presidency is a perpetual danger.  I wish the right had expressed more concern about the abuse of executive orders when George W. Bush expanded their use.  I also wish the tea party folk were more concerned about torturing actual human beings rather than the use of a hyperbolic metaphor about a corporation.

Meanwhile, both ends of the political spectrum should be worried about the government's seemingly insatiable demand for citizens' data.  Forbes reports,

In the second half of 2011, Google received 6,321 requests that it hand over its users’ private data to U.S. government agencies including law enforcement, and complied at least partially with those requests in 93% of cases, according to the latest update to the company’s bi-annual Transparency Report that it planned to release Sunday night.

That’s up from 5,950 requests in the first half of 2011, and marks a 37% increase in the number of requests over the second half of 2010, when Google received only 4,601 government requests and complied to some degree with 94% of them. And compared with the 3,580 requests for its data it received from U.S. agencies in the second half of 2009, the first time Google released the request numbers, the latest figures represent a 76% spike.

More alarmingly, the article continues, "Whether firms like Facebook, Microsoft, Comcast, AT&T and others have seen a parallel rise in requests can’t be determined."

Other governments are also increasing their requests for data:

Total government requests for users’ data from outside the U.S. have also been increasing steadily, spiking sharply to 11,936 in the second half of 2011 compared with 9,600 in the same period last year and 8,959 in the second half of 2009. And the number of foreign requests may be growing even faster than they appear to. Because mutual legal assistance treaties allow some countries to pass on their requests through U.S. government agencies, some portion of those foreign requests are lumped together with the U.S. requests.

Thankfully:

Google has a far lower rate of complying with foreign requests, however. It only fulfilled 64% of U.K. requests and 45% of German requests, for instance, and complied with none of the requests from Russia or Turkey.

Most of these requests probably claimed the information was necessary for national security, so the political right will smile, nod, and go along with these warrantless searches even though those information requests are as unconstitutional abusive executive orders.  Pat Buchanan had a broken clock moment when he asserted that the U.S. should be a republic not an empire.  Critics of a President as emperor should should be vigilant and condemn all imperial actions even if the actions institute policies the critics support.

How Is The Tea Party Like Othello?

Answer:  Both "will as tenderly be led by the nose /As asses are." (Othello, Act I, sc 3, ln 401-02)

For evidence about how the villain Iago leads Othello, read the play.  For evidence about how the Tea Party Allows itself to be lead, reference it's response to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act  (CISPA), legislation that Gizmodo calls the "worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced."

Erik Kain reports on some math.

“The complete roll call shows 206 Republicans voting for the bill, 28 against,” writes reason’s Tim Cavanaugh. “Democrats went 42 to 140 in the opposite direction.”

Of these Republicans, “47 of the 66 members of the House Tea Party Caucus” also supported the bill, notes Patrick Cahalan.

“For those tricky with the math,” Cahalan continues, “this means 88% of the overall GOP members (casting a vote) voted yea, 23% of the Dems (casting a vote) voted yea, and 71% of the Tea Party (casting a vote) voted yea (Paul and Pence didn’t cast a vote).”

Kain adds that

TechDirt’s Leigh Breadon points out that under the final version of CISPA the, “government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all.”

The Fourth Amendment, for the Tea Party readers who believe that the Constitutional amendment numbering system goes 2, 10, and then that one about prohibition that got repealed, reads

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.

What could cause freedom loving, card carrying Tea Party members to support the "the worst privacy disaster" the United States has ever faced and remove 4th Amendment protections from any online activity?  Kain succinctly illustrates the ring that was placed in the Tea Party's nose:

One important thing to glean from this, especially when held up in contrast with the defeat of SOPA and PIPA, two bills aimed at combating online piracy, is that once you tack the word “security” onto a bill it becomes far more toxic to oppose.

The Tea Party may be the small government wing of the Republican Party, but when it comes to national security suddenly limiting the state becomes far less critical. If SOPA had been billed as a cybersecurity law, it may have found a great deal more support in congress, and had a better time resisting internet backlash. For opponents of anti-piracy laws, this is an important thing to bear in mind.

That's it?  The word "security" means that Tea Party folk can willingly be lead around by the nose? I know being protected from unreasonable search and seizure doesn't have the same rhetorical shock value as losing the freedom to use a loud speaker to say a prayer when hanging up a print of the 10 Commandments on a courtroom wall while wearing clothes that allow one to conceal one's gun fashionably.  And President Obama has threatened to veto it, so it's probably good legislation, not a threat to freedom like Obamacare, the legislation that requires people to buy health insurance and allows parents to keep their child on a policy until the child turns 26.  Still, eviscerating the Fourth Amendment should evoke outrage not support from 88% of a caucus that claims to love freedom.

If big boy bloggers' concern and my sarcasm aren't enough to prompt concern, Conor Friedersdorf provides a little recent history.

Critics of CISPA are right to be wary, for all of the aforementioned reasons specific to the legislation -- but also because of the abysmal record that government and industry have amassed lately. The Bush Administration engaged in illegal warrantless wiretapping for years. All the while, the National Security Agency collaborated with America's major telecommunications companies. AT&T gave government officials unsupervised access to all data flowing through major hubs, including email messages, phone calls, web-browsing data, and private network traffic.

When the NSA program was finally revealed, Bush Administration officials weren't prosecuted and jailed. In fact, Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower who complained about a separate warrantless surveillance project, was prosecuted by both the Bush and the Obama Administrations.

He concludes,

Before the Bush Administration's illegal spying, it was easy to imagine that the legal penalties for exceeding the bounds of the law would be one check on government officials and corporate leaders tempted to abuse their access to data. We now know that when national security is invoked, these people are treated as if they're above the law. If legal violations aren't going to be punished after the fact, it's prudent for concerned citizens to push for even more elaborate preemptive safeguards.

The Tea Party is a prime example of people who have forgotten the mistakes of history so they are doomed to repeat them.  In this case, they are willing to trade essential liberty for "security," a trade that will leave them neither free nor secure.

UPDATE: Carter has posted a a link to an on-line petition in the comments.  Demand Progress allows one to send an quick message to senators.

Businesses Threaten Privacy For Profit

The Daily Beast points to a Wall Street Journal article which is hidden behind a paywall.  The Beast reports,

Major websites have developed a new—and legal—technique to track users’ online activities, known as a “supercookie,” a powerful device that is impossible for computer users to detect, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, said Wednesday. Supercookies are capable of re-creating user profiles even after people delete the regular cookies, researchers said. While many companies have been criticized for the selling of private data online, some sites that use supercookies said the supercookie tracking was inadvertent and they would cease using it. MSN and Hulu, who were both notified that they had been using supercookies, announced Wednesday they would immediately investigate the technique.

Today is going to be rushed, so I'll do four quick hits about this story.  First, unless one is reasonably suspected of committing a major crime or cheating on a spouse, a person should not be tracked surreptitiously by either business or government.

Second, governments allegedly need a warrant to perform this sort of tracking.  Businesses need only a customer.  I know many people claim to love their country but fear the government.  In this case I fear the business model.  As a quick side note, I'm willing to bet that these companies won't tell me the names of their customers because they want to protect the cusomers' privacy even as they sell them surreptitiously gained private data.  I'm much more fearful of private enterprise's standard operating procedure that government standard operating procedure in this instance.

Third, many philosophers and sociologists claim that privacy is dead.  They may well be right, but courtesy ought to demand that people be informed that their privacy is being taken.  My Motorola Droid informs me every time some new app allows my location to be tapped.  I see no reason that these websites can't do the same.

Finally, in light of the previous point, tell consumers that they are being tracked and how to remove the cookies,  Many won't care that their data will be sold.  Others will be too lazy to remove the "supercookies."