PRISM: Submit to Living Your Life out in the Open

The last week saw considerable controversy over the PRISM surveillance scandal all over the world. The issue here is not that a major country like the U.S. is violating the basic principles it has been so proud of over the years. That ended in one great blow after 9/11. In my opinion, the issue is that humanity suddenly awoke to be confronted with one of the most difficult challenges it has faced in our modern history. Now that technology has become a part of our lives, life without Internet, email, social networks and mobile apps seems impossible. With this tremendous reliance on technology, mankind is discovering that this means, without exaggeration, that everything we do can be monitored in full detail; it can be analyzed and you can be punished if “Big Brother” is not pleased with it.

One can easily come to the conclusion here that there is almost no escape from this ordeal. We cannot stop using technology, and there is no legal or ideological framework that may prevent a government, like the U.S. government, from examining every secret in our lives. The Internet has suddenly turned into an enormous trap, into which humanity has fallen for the benefit of the state that invented it, supported it technologically and financially, and turned it into a magnet that we are sucked into whether we liked it or not.

What most people do not know or imagine is how these systems that gather and analyze our information work. I once had an opportunity to take a look at a massive project in the U.K. for constructing one of these systems, and I remained in a state of shock for a while afterward. These systems not only gather data coming from all forms of communication into an enormous database, but they are also capable of intelligently linking it to the person who is the source of these communications, whether via phone, email, or even just through web surfing or video watching on YouTube. Then, over the course of minutes, they can build a complete profile on that person through techniques that most people do not yet know exist. On top of that, these systems have the ability to convert voice into script then do a smart search, exceeding the searchability that we see on free sites such as Google, in all languages, including Arabic, and all dialects and to then generate a full data report in only minutes.

The scandal that occurred in the U.S. is due to a specific data leak from the intelligence-gathering program PRISM, and it has not fully come to light yet. The National Security Agency has denied gathering information in general through major company servers such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple’s, and states that it engaged only in requesting data on persons for whom it was granted court permission to do so. According to anti-conspiracy theory reporters, this explains why all the major companies unanimously denied knowledge of the PRISM program, as they provide data on those persons for whom U.S. courts have granted permission to release information to U.S. intelligence. And here I would like to point out a few observations:

1) Those who are familiar with the history of U.S. courts know that their requests are rarely denied, particularly those pertaining to foreigners or to counterterrorism programs. The reasons for this are numerous, and this is not the place to discuss them, but this is indeed the truth.

2) Whenever intelligence agencies request permission from a judge to obtain information on a certain person, they may ask for a long list of email addresses and accounts suspected to be associated with this person, which usually permits the intelligence agencies to inspect any accounts they wish.

3) U.S. intelligence apparatuses are subject to strict information monitoring restrictions inside the U.S. per laws that protect U.S. citizens from surveillance. But U.S. intelligence agencies are able to simply do as they like when outside the country and work with external servers or in coordination with other intelligence apparatuses.

4) The NSA has another similar and controversial project, ECHELON, on which it collaborates with the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand to monitor global communications. PRISM appears to be a natural extension of ECHELON, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s book on this program confirms that it encompasses Internet surveillance.

5) Twitter refused to cooperate with the program, and it confirmed this again last week. This contradicts the NSA’s statement, since companies are not permitted to refuse court orders. This means that companies give the NSA more than the courts allow.

In the coming weeks, we will be hearing more about this program and more facts will come to light, particularly with the insistence of the hacker group Anonymous that leaked the document revealing more information, as well as the persistence of The Guardian and The Washington Post sources on the same matter. Perhaps this scandal will push the U.S. Congress toward drafting more stringent legislation, but this will be in protection of U.S. citizens only, according to the Constitution.

The age of roaming the Internet as the cowboys did in the American desert, in absolute freedom and with no restrictions, has come to end. Everyone should be aware that somebody is reading your thoughts and knows your secrets, and that their knowledge may exceed what a wife knows about her husband, and a child about his father. Humanity must know that we are living exposed in the open as long as we depend on technology.