Buying into Big Brother

BOOK REVIEW

Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, Author: Nicholas Wapshott.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, Author: George Orwell.

By Nicholas Wapshott – Some, like Google and Facebook, pose primarily as software companies when their main revenue source, and their main business, is to mine data and sell advertisers access to customers. We knew this already, of course, though it seems many of us would prefer to forget the true nature of the technology firms that have boomed in the last decade. Seduced by their dazzling baubles, we have bought in to Big Brother without truly understanding the true price we are paying and will continue to pay for access to their brave new world.

We all use George Orwell’s phrase “Big Brother” to describe an overweening state. Just as telling about the way big government and big business treat small people, however, is Orwell’s satire on fake democratic slogans: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” more> http://tinyurl.com/nxqh6h7

Related>

• Updates from Senator Bernie Sanders ↓
• You Probably Agreed to NSA Snooping When You Accepted That Website’s Terms of Service →
• How Big Is the NSA Police State, Really? ←
• Would Ben Franklin Trade Liberty for Wiretapping? Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution
• Secret Court Ruling Put Tech Companies in Data Bind, Claire Cain Miller, NYTimes.com
• Edward Snowden shows evolution of smuggling secrets, Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times
• T-Mobile, Verizon not under U.S. data watch due to foreign ties: WSJ, Reuters
• Feds hunted for Snowden in days before NSA programs went public, Mark Hosenball, Reuters/Yahoo
• Utah home to NSA’s new mega-warehouse for data, Brady McCombs, AP
• NSA surveillance retrospective: AT&T, Verizon never denied it, Declan McCullagh, CNET News
• Response to Revelations of NSA’s Data Collection Program: From Denial to Nonchalance, Andrew Katz, TIME
• Big Brother Is Watching You Swipe: The NSA’s Credit Card Data Grab, Martha C. White, TIME
• The Real Reason Telecoms Cooperate on National Security? Money, Ira Stoll, TIME

How Big Is the NSA Police State, Really?

By Philip Bump – According to Cisco, North Americans moved 13.1 exabytes around the Internet each month. You’re familiar with kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes. You’re maybe familiar with terabytes, the next largest unit of electronic storage, each about 1,000 times larger than the last. Next comes petabytes, 1,000 times a terabyte. Then we get to exabytes. Put another way, 13.1 exabytes is the equivalent of 4,367,000,000,000 song files. That’s what we move monthly. It’s not the same figure as what is stored.

It’s a broadly distributed system of servers throughout the world. In other words, it’s the NSA cloud. When such a system exists, Facebook, Apple, and the other companies involved in PRISM can become nodes on that network. If the system exists, they probably already are; The Week‘s Mark Ambinder explains how it likely works. But the tech companies continue to deny it, obliquely. more> http://tinyurl.com/mdp7y6m

Related>

• Palmer Raids Redux: NSA v civil liberties ↓
• Buying into Big Brother →
• Our Reflection in the N.S.A.’s Prism ←
• NSA surveillance: The US is behaving like China, Ai Weiwei, Guardian
• Here’s What China Thinks of Ed Snowden and the NSA, Alexander Abad-Santos, Atlantic Wire
• Russia Offers to Play Host to Snowden the ‘Defector’, Philip Bump, Atlantic Wire
• Will China Hand Over The NSA Whistleblower? Jonathan Galaviz, Forbes
• Big Data Is Not Our Master, Chris Hughes, New Republic
• Most Digital Data Will Bore The NSA — And Overwhelm Heirs, Deborah L. Jacobs, Forbes
• Asking the U.S. government to allow Google to publish more national security request data, David Drummond, Google
• Google, Facebook, Microsoft seek right to tell users what is going on, Brendan Sasso, Hill
• Across U.S., nearly half say government spying OK within limits: Poll, Andy Sullivan, Reuters

Building America’s secret surveillance state

By James Bamford – Today the NSA is the world’s largest spy organization, encompassing tens of thousands of employees and occupying a city-size headquarters complex on Fort Meade in Maryland. But in 1920, its earliest predecessor, known as the Black Chamber, fit into a slim townhouse on Manhattan’s East 37th Street.

For roughly 100 years, whenever the government knocked on the telecommunications industry’s door and asked them to break the law and turn over millions upon millions of private communications, the telecoms complied. Why not, since they knew that nothing would ever happen to them if they broke the law. more> http://tinyurl.com/pnjeydy

Related>

• Does Google Have an Ethical Obligation Not to Spy? ↑
• NSA whistleblower reveals his identity, Daniel Strauss, Hill

Does Google Have an Ethical Obligation Not to Spy?

By Christopher Flavelle – Many Americans are outraged at the government for mining user data from Apple, Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants. What about the actions of the companies themselves — have they met their ethical obligations to their customers and society as a whole? Do they even have any?

Take the recent case of Apple’s use of Irish subsidiaries with no tax residency to avoid U.S. taxes; the tactics may be legally sound, but ethically dubious. Now turn that around: If companies are willing to go to such lengths to get around U.S. tax law, is it too much to ask that they apply the same creativity to avoiding the surrender of their customers’ private information? more> http://tinyurl.com/malrkq2

Related>

• Building America’s secret surveillance state ↓
• Our Reflection in the N.S.A.’s Prism →
• Verizon scandal: Barack Obama’s national security state is now beyond democratic control ←
• How could Verizon have fought the NSA and won? Tim Kern, Washington Times
• If I Were a Verizon Customer, Scott Mayer, americanthinker.com
• Could the Verizon-NSA Metadata Collection Be a Stealth Political Kickback? Patrick Durusau, naked capitalism
• US government collects Verizon customers’ phone metadata … So what? Mark Gibbs, Computerworld
• NSA’s Verizon Spying Order: Fourth Amendment And Big Data On A Collision Course, Anthony Wing Kosner, Forbes
• NSA whistleblower reveals his identity, Daniel Strauss, Hill
• Google, Facebook CEOs downplay ties to PRISM program as companies perform linguistic tango, Associated Press/Washington Post
• What the …? Larry Page and David Drummond, Google
• Google Adword: time to close the ‘rogue sites’ loophole, Miles Brignall, Guardian
• Bashed by liberals and the GOP, White House launches three-pronged defense, Justin Sink, Hill
• Republicans see an ‘arrogance of power’ in Obama White House, Megan R. Wilson, Hill

Why Is Barack Obama More Mired In Scandals Than Bill Clinton?

By J.T. Young – The difference in scandals’ threats to their presidencies – the ones Clinton actually faced and the ones Obama now potentially could – is this: Clinton’s scandals were directed at his presidency’s weakness, while Obama’s are potentially directed at his presidency’s strength.

Clinton’s scandals simply reinforced the perception America already had of him, without changing it. In contrast, the potential for the scandals Obama now faces is their targeting of his presidency’s strength. If any of these are more than just mistakes, reaching beyond their departments back into the White House, then they are far from simple errors. more> http://tinyurl.com/mmf9lng

Related>

• America noir: The biggest ‘gate’ of all, Neal Gabler, Reuters
• Democrats must overcome Clinton nostalgia, Robert L. Borosage, Reuters
• Did Boehner Spoil the GOP by Sparing the Rod? Elspeth Reeve, Atlantic Wire
• How Obama Can Escape the Scandal Cloud, Jonathan Chait, nymag.com