According to the NSA, the project is intended to improve its ability to monitor and adequately respond to potential cyber threats. The facility will also provide support to national-defense and civilian-agency networks.
Glenn Gaffney, NSA’s deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said in a statement that the new facility will provide better intelligence on potential threats affecting the U.S. and its citizens.
Some government politicians on the federal level are excited about this project. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) wrote in a statement supporting the endeavor that "as we rely more and more on our communications networks for business, government and everyday use, we must be vigilant and provide agencies with the necessary resources to protect our country from a cyber attack."
But not everyone is excited. Civil libertarians are concerned that the NSA’s project could infringe on freedoms.
Mark Everett Hall recently wrote that the new data center will house "trillions of phone conversations, e-mail messages, and whatever other private communications the secret intelligence agency can snag from around the world." Hall went on to say that he believes "it will also include messages to and from U.S. citizens inside the nation's borders, which is against the law. But no one really cares."
For its part, the NSA said in a statement that the data center won't infringe on civil liberties. Gaffney said it will operate in "full compliance with the U.S. Constitution and federal law." All operations in the data center will, according to Gaffney, "protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people."
That may well be the case. But at this point, there's really no way to tell for sure. And there's no debating that the federal government is getting more involved in the Web. That's putting many Web users -- those who have enjoyed their Web privacy for quite awhile -- in an uneasy position.
Just last month, In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence Agency's venture-funding arm, announced an undisclosed investment in Visible Technologies, a company that culls data from the Web, providing clients with the text of every social-media discussion on a particular topic.
In-Q-Tel said in a statement that, although it will be using Visible Technologies' service to monitor social discussions, it will only engage in the activity on foreign transmissions. That also raised some eyebrows and animated civil libertarians.
It's entirely possible that the federal government will maintain a separation between civil liberties and intelligence, but it's understandable that Web users are concerned. There's little debating that there are real threats on the Web that need to be dealt with. And as the old saying goes, if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.
But that logic only makes sense for so long. As more federal agencies move their operations to the Web, it will undoubtedly unleash a firestorm of controversy over what the agencies are really doing.
Ultimately, the Internet is guided by two key principles: privacy and anonymity. Most Web users don't like to be identified -- why do you think there are so many unique user names? They also want to believe that when they're surfing the Web, they're doing so in private, away from the government's grasp. It's an unfortunate expectation. And it breeds dishonesty.
In the end, we just don't know what the government has up its sleeve. We should also acknowledge that our simple gripes won't stop it. At this point, we have to wait and see if the NSA and the CIA live up to their word. If not, something will need to be done. And fast.
—Don Reisinger is a technology and video game columnist.
Don, I personally don't think that we can draw a line here. With all the data held in warehouses and relational engines within a click's reach, it is bound to make even the morally strong reach out for information they should not have access to...
I think perhaps it is best that we accept the fact that staying connected is synonymous with being monitored. Sure this would give rise to a lot of unwanted paranoia but then again we are living in times where fear is driving decisions.
As far as governing principles for the Internet, privacy and anonimity certainly aren't on the list for me. Information sharing and connectivty might be. But even then, it is really a judgement call on someone else's part to say that what I share on the net even qualifies as information.
Communications channels have always carried the risk of information leakage or interception, intentional or otherwise. If you are using a communications medium, you are at best a court order away from direct monitoring aggregious enough to send the most feint-hearted of Libertarians off of the grid for years.
The bits of intelligence that we leave as we wander about cyberspace, known and unknown, are really our own doing. When was the last time you gave you SSN, the whole number, over the phone? For that matter, when was the last time you gave out your complete birthdate over the phone. I did that one just today, and even though I knew the organization I was dealing with, and why they wanted the information, I still blanched.
We don't fill out the warranty registration cards anymore--we learned the hard way what happens to that information. And yet every day, more people than we'd like to admit--some our closest friends and colleagues maybe, fill out an online form on a website effectively handing our identities to the bad guys.
Personally, I don't think they need a million and a half square feet out west. Heck, why not just harvest a botnet or two, or do like SETI and distribute the processing out on our private systems on a subscription basis. But to imagine that it isn't being done already is naive to say the least.
What Cyber Threats (tm) will NSA be looking at? There's the real question.
Great points all around. Where do we draw the line? At this point, we don't know. And at the same time, there's no reason to believe that they won't hold up their end of the bargain.
Since when is Google no longer doing no evil. Wanting to digitize every book, with no one else allowed it seems, paying authors a pittance or nothing at all, seems evil to me. Following every move you make on their site, putting cookies on your computer to follow the rest of your moves, also seems evil.
The company is not altruistic. It is in business to make money and to make money it needs advertising and click-throughs. To get those click-throughs it has targeted ads.
That's not to say that Bing, Yahoo or Ask don't do the same thing but at least they tell you exactly how long they keep your information. All Google says us that they keep your info for two years, generally. I take that to mean forever if the company wants to. Evil is evil, no matter mottos.
Maybe Google wasn't evil in the beginning but I sure as heck don't trust them now with anything and won't use any of their services.
Sorry for that diatribe.
As for the Feds. I was in Intel during the Vietnam War. We did nothing against Americans, or anyone in America. It was against the law then just as it is now. We didn't break the law. Or at least in my part of it, Operations, and those of us in that part of it were privy to everything and anything we wanted to see or use. We kept track of Foreign Intel, no more and no less. Now, since Bush, or 43 as a cousin of mine calls him, and Cheney decided that the Constitution only meant what it meant to them, well privacy has gone to hell in a hand basket.
Sure the NSA will keep track of American citizens, just as they will non-Americans. But the amount of information, something that we had to deal with, is going to be enormous. And computers will be needed to analyze what other computers capture. Of course, with Virtulization it's pretty easy to have enough computers. We had to have people who did nothing but sift through the crap to get to the gold. This isn't going to change.
As for privacy on the Web. Well, privacy has never been there on the Web, even when it was just a few million of us around the world, paying by the hour. Just as virtulization is nothing new, now over a decade old. It was called a panacea then, just as now. But the people who use it will be small and medium businesses for the public cloud and large ones will have private clouds, basically virtualizating their information.
The problem, which the NSA I'm sure is aware of, is security. No matter how hard the NSA, or any company for that matter, tries there's going to be breaches. We had spies on the other sides that gave us information and spies on our side that gave them information. It happens. Much like data breaches happen today.
Sure there can be checks for thumb drives and so forth, but the NSA employees are bright people and can and do remember information. Microfiche is still around and can be used. Hell, I remember information, useless now I think, from my days in Intel.
Clouds can be and are by their very nature insecure. Virtulization can be gotten into, but with more work. Nothing is secure. And that's where the problem is.
What I've posted here is out in the wild. It's not secure. What anyone posts on an open forum, or a closed one for that matter, is in the wild.
Remember, eventually evil will be done and security is and always has been non-exstant. It's really as simple as that.
You would have loved Ira's presentation at RSA 2009 about whether Google is Evil and how as you stated, the users of the Internet freely give Google their information in many ways through their free products without batting an eye, but in the very next breath would bring class action suits against the federal government for mining the same data crossing the ether.
Firstly; I want to congratulate you on an insightful and well balanced article. I wholeheartedly agree with the positions you laid out. As a Libertarian at heart I cannot help but cringe for the way our beloved series of tubes [Internet] are headed. I find it personally difficult to comprehend the sheer amount of information that makes up the "trillions of phone conversations, e-mail messages", as Mark Everett Hall eloquently stated.
While it can give us a sense that Big Brother is watching, and believe me they are, it can also make us feel like just another number. No amount of staff resources or Echelon Signals Intelligence, in my opinion, can accurately and 100% pin-point and categorize the daily lives of each and every one of us unless we were specifically targetted by THE agency. I sincerely believe "they" are not interested in irrelevant conversations like partisan-politics and nonchalant topics like the weather and those World Series statistics... sorry sports fans.
It is now long overdue, long past the expiration date for people of this great tube-o-sphere to step back and realize that their information is out there and that the only way to preserve even an ounce of it is to be more careful how it is broadcasted. Use PGP (GnuPG is a free and open source alternative) in sensitive e-mails, surf questionable web-sites using Tor and/or I2P, tighten up the privacy settings on your Facebook account (Canadians; Facebook is now complying with The Privacy Commissioner of Canada), or simply step out of that social networking trap altogether and attempt to harness even a little bit of your privacy while you still have it. There are ways to control some of your information... even in ways so the FEDS don't see it. Not that they necessarily cared to begin with. ;-)
- Nathan Wosnack
p.s.
You even even encrypt telephone conversations with some VoIP providers using SIPS/MIKEY/SRTP, and IPSec encryption for SIP signaling and the RTP traffic.
Only half jokingly, I ask "Rather than spend the money to build, why can't they just outsource this to Google since Google essentially alreay has this database." Plus Google is already commited to doing no evil!
But seriously, while I do have some worries about how the government uses data - I can't see any reason why they should use the data less than search and e-commerce sites. Internet search, ecommerce or national security. Hmmm, how can you say it is okay for Google to use the data (that people publicly post) but the government should not use the same data?
The actual data center will only occupy about 10 percent of the square footage (~100k sq ft), according to this account. And if consolidation of existing capabilities or personnel is all it takes to make civil libertarians shudder, they need to get over themselves (and the sooner, the better). Forget out tweets and Facebook updates and phone calls -- turning on our cell phones, using credit cards -- hell, even just having an IP address would tell tales on any citizen in any country across the globe.
All the things you are worried about are entirely possible right now. The data center is just a point of consolidation. Having the data at one location may allow data mining to be more efficient, but that's about the only change I see.
As for the CIA and Visible Technologies, I suggest that is a good thing. I wrote a piece about that last week. Anything that they are capturing, you or I could as well. Isn't it better that they are at least aware of what is passing over public pipes?
For example, would it be a good thing if the authorities learned that someone was sending tweets about every B-2 that left North Dakota?
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
A recent report from Web marketing application vendor Net Applications has found that Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)’s Internet Explorer once again reigned supreme in the browser market in January -- accounting for 62 percent of the worldwide browser market.
When the organization StopBadware started four years ago at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, its founders hoped to use a community-based approach to fight software that "maliciously or otherwise, fails to respect a user's right to make informed decisions about how his/her computer or network connection will be used."
The New York Times recently reported that the United States and Russia have been in talks to form an agreement on how they will work together to handle cybercrime.
Although the story out of Denmark is centered more on nefarious details of stolen emails, the real focus of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP 15) is to determine the state of climate change and to assess what can be done to counteract it.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Data mining of social networks means people might face unforeseen consequences as a result of their seemingly innocuous personal choices and associations.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
It is 20 years since the invention of the World Wide Web, and the Internet has changed beyond recognition since then. Steve Saunders peers into the future to predict what the Web will look like in another 20 years time – and he doesn’t like what he sees.
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
Some of the "cool" people are testing a new Web service: Blippy. It could be a great data source for corporations to glean info about customers’ credit card purchases. But it has all sorts of possible privacy and security problems. Buyer beware!
Both the federal intelligence agencies and the metropolitan police forces are likely monitoring your social networks. So should you lay low, or make it worth their while?
Research shows that the youth of today like Facebook – but not blogging or Twitter. Does that mean Facebook has won, or just that it's not yet out of favor? Will all the services we see today fade into Ovaltine-or-Wheaties status in just a few years?
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
Ray Kurzweil's Blio and Apple's iPad tablet will make it easier than ever to have books "read" to us, says Dr. Kim, who believes that talking tablets will become interwoven into our consciousness as we "merge" with the increasingly elegant machines we hold in our hands.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
TWEET THIS
