I have kept rather quiet over the recent international
current affairs, despite their huge significance. I have not said anything
about the Guardian publishing the story about PRISM or the National Security
Agency, and gloating about it, and I have not commented in the slightest about Edward Snowden who has
just been granted asylum in Russia - apparently, the place to go if you want to protect your liberty (it's not like the Cambridge Five, who thought they were Marxists and arrived in Moscow, very disappointed). I have simply watched and observed, and I
have glanced over the pages and pages of information and comment columns that
have been released in the newspapers. And so, I have come to these three
conclusions.
Firstly, the scandal is part of a realisation that the World
Wide Web has changed dramatically since its inception. First, it was seen as a
place only for the recluses and geeks, who bothered to go and buy a computer
and a modem; a place where they would talk about computer games or Dungeons and
Dragons, far away from the eyes of Joe Bloggs. But when consent was given to
allow the internet to become a medium for commercial transactions was the
moment which created the internet that we know today. Amazon, eBay and Ocado
led to Myspace, Facebook and Twitter in showing that the internet was
profitable by getting everyone and anyone to buy a computer, to get connected,
and let them shop from their own homes, where they would be then hooked onto
this new technology, making social networking viable. So, compare: the dens of
nerds and geeks; the virtual public forum. The internet has evolved in less
than twenty years into something out of a 1960s prediction of the future - we have Skype and FaceTime and we really never need leave the house to complete
errands. However, the public forum nature of the internet means that it
contains the sinister nature of the public forum, bringing me onto my next
point.
The world of military intelligence has changed with the internet,
and rightly so. When the latest in telecommunications was the
telephone, MI6 and the CIA were phone-tapping, as they should have done, and as
was required by them. When we were writing letters, we were intercepting them,
as what should have been done. Spies continue to park outside people’s houses, following
people on the streets, take pictures of them entering and leaving buildings,
and we have accepted this as a means to stop crime being committed, be it child
sex gangs, huge drug networks spanning the globe, or human trafficking. And so,
when the internet appears to be an efficient means of communication for transferring
files and documents, it is only logical to profit from the cracks in the
security of the internet, this one being that the majority of data flows
through the United States due to its de facto position as “Head of the Internet”.
I’m not going to go into specific details on the efficiency of the
intelligence-gathering, but I would say this: the mass collection of metadata
as seen through PRISM was not done to keep tabs on every single person, but
because it was cheaper; maximum
efficiency for a smaller price. I can imagine the conversation in the Oval
Office when it was decided.
“Mr President, we have two options in order to monitor the
flow of data in and out of US territory, so that we can ensure the security of
the State. The first option is that we force the telecommunications networks
through the courts to allow us to access all of the metadata, and we survey it
in case anything we see as dangerous comes up. The second option is that we
pick through the specific metadata in separate instances. However, this option
is much more costly.”
“So the first one is cheaper?”
“Yes, Mr President.”
“I would choose the first option.”
The third thing that I have noticed is that the majority of
Americans, regardless of political stance, are seriously deluded. They are
absolutely certain that their country has never been on the wrong side of any
conflict; that every conflict is like the Second World War: fighting those bad
guys over there (I’ll give them that – the Nazis were properly bad), and
protecting the liberty and freedom of the world. They are convinced that the
United States is the best country in the world for everything. Every single
Op-Ed piece has criticised either the Obama administration, either because he
was the enemy of America and a terrorist, or because he was supposed to save us
from Bush-style foreign policy, or they have cited a return to American “liberty
and justice for all”. It is this mantra that has led to the incredibly naïve reaction
from the internet to PRISM, who think that the internet should be stuck in its own little box,
away from any real-world problems. We hear of people immediately jumping to encrypt
their data, which is a bit like wearing plate armour in public: people immediately
notice you and think you have something to hide, which ultimately defeats the
purpose, and it becomes such a pain to wear that you just give up. The fact
that the US is the “head of the internet” leads to the incredibly stupid
circle-jerking when we talk about this; all these people reciting the American
Constitution to show that it is wrong, when compared to the Stasi, where 1 in
50 people were informants in a country of around 16 million, this all looks a bit tame.
So, what do I propose to challenge the way we look at the
internet? Firstly, let’s treat the internet differently, not drastically, but because we respect the changing nature of the internet. Don’t go encrypting everything
and anything, but think about what you post and say as if you were shouting it out loud. If you were to shout on
Trafalgar Square “There’s a bomb and you’re all going to die,” and someone was concerned, what will happen - possible arrest and mass evacuation of a busy place in London? Likewise, don’t show your genitals on
the internet, just as you would not in a public square. Secondly, get real: espionage
has existed in every single civilisation. We are no better morally than any
civilisation before us. It’s a case of plus
ça change. Thirdly, and most importantly, the Americans need to realise
this: they are just another power like the Soviet Union, like Great Britain,
like France, like Spain, like the Romans, like the Greeks, and like China will
be; the fear of losing power and cold-hearted pragmatism always triumphs any
moral conscience or romantic values, because we’re human. And humans are
bastards.
