How the NSA Is Becoming a Threat to Democracy

Have you heard this one? No, it’s not a joke, it’s something completely different. It’s a YouTube clip currently on the Internet. A young man takes his iPhone, turns off the location services and then asks “Siri” — that’s an Apple software feature that recognizes spoken requests — for information on several major world religions. He first asks about Christianity and is advised that Siri has found information for him; Siri displays the Wikipedia entry. He then asks about Buddhism and receives the Wikipedia entry for that subject. Finally, he asks about Islam. Siri asks him to first reveal his geographic location, advising him to activate the iPhone’s GPS function and then to activate Siri from within that level. Strange, isn’t it? Only when you ask about Islam.

But of course that all means absolutely nothing, right? What happens in cyberspace has nothing to do with us, right? It’s all just conspiracy theory and the reality looks entirely different. Digital doesn’t mean deadly.

Really?

It’s the function of the intelligence services to keep track of America’s enemies. Since no one knows in advance what evil lurks their hearts, the whole world has to be spied upon. That’s the drill as described by General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. He says the NSA will continue to eavesdrop on the whole world to the extent technically possible.

The NSA is capable of detecting and collecting everything — and storing what they collect as well. Because of the huge volume of data, the mega-intelligence agency is going to open a new $1.5 billion data center in the vicinity of Salt Lake City, Utah. The tech magazine Wired reported the over 1 million square foot facility will consume some 65 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the consumption of a small city. The opening date, projected for Sept. 24, was postponed because of power supply problems, not due to any lingering doubts as to the legitimacy of the operation.

The NSA sees itself as being in the right. Its motto is “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” But we probably do. For several years, U.S. intelligence has had supercomputers, the fastest computers in the world, under its control. Now it wants a new supercomputer. When they get it, what experts have been predicting will be reality: The capability to collect huge amounts of data will enable the classification of individuals, to predict what they will do based on theoretical gaming models and in a worst case scenario, control them. This corresponds with the news that by the year 2020, there will be more than 50 billion items connected to the Internet, items we willingly connect — not only smart phones and tablets, but everything imaginable. The presence of so much available information from sources both analog and digital, and a data bank that contains corporate Internet information as well as data gleaned by hackers on other networks, will be the ultimate temptation for snoopers to look for patterns.

Does an Uncontrollable Global Police State Loom in the Future?

The NSA was founded by President Harry S. Truman to counter the communist threat. Now the NSA itself is the threat. Gerhart Baum, the former German liberal minister of the interior and a lawyer, has warned for some time about a “move-in ready totalitarian state,” an uncontrollable global police state that flouts the law. He calls for a “World Conference on Human Rights” similar to conferences on the environment, global finances and nuclear weapons. More and more scientists warn of the danger that democracy is threatened with burial. They argue that the wholesale collection of global online communications data amounts to a presumption of guilt rather than a presumption of innocence.

Maybe we would be safer asking our friends about Islam.