WHY DO WE TRUST THE TECHNICIANS TO DO THE RIGHT THING?

         Some time ago, the then President Judge of Washington County scheduled a seminar to introduce the new digital electronic system, designed to replace stenographers in the courtroom, to the lawyers.  To explain the bells and whistles of the installation she invited a technician from Beaver County, where the same system was in use, to discuss the Beaver County experience.  It was discovered during the presentation that technicians sitting in the control room to monitor the system could overhear conversations in the courtrooms even when the system was not recording, an operational detail not known by the lawyers or even the judges.  When the Beaver technician was asked about this, his incredulous response was: “well when it comes to protecting privileged information we are not permitted to hear, obviously you have to trust us to do the right thing.”

         I keep thinking of this response from a technician, operating under little legal or administrative oversight, as our country continues its post 9/11 journey into the new age of high tech surveillance.  When it comes to  reviewing constitutionally protected personal data, who do we trust to do the right thing?  What are the actual parameters of the surveillance that would differentiate between legal civil disobedience and illegal terrorism?  What is the screening process and when are the hits on innocent citizens deleted? Are the nuts and bolts of American national security policy kept secret from us for protection, or to keep illegal conduct from coming to light? If neither the so called war on terror nor the Patriot Act affects most of us, should we even care, as long as security concerns are limited to information and do not take away our right to bear arms.

         Surveillance technology is expanding at breakneck speed.   Constructing a real time representation of the world, no doubt the ultimate goal of the NSA and other security organizations, requires a large and growing amount of data (big data) and a system to give meaning to the data (algorithms).  Big data has involved the universal collection of phone and computer records for some time. As reported in a recent Foreign Affairs article, The Violence of Algorithms, Taylor Owen, 5/25/15, data collection is now also enhanced by:  “a network of 100 toaster sized satellites that will take daily high resolution images of everywhere on earth. The goal is to launch thousands- a persistent real time surveillance tool.” Regarding algorithms the author points out: “If they (algorithms) are biased, flawed, or based on incorrect data, then the human will be just as wrong as the machine.”

         So even the technician who means well may make bad choices and come down on the wrong side of our civil liberties if an algorithm exposes an innocent individual. Consider the farmer in Iowa who plugs the word “Isis” into Google (another algorithm) to learn more about the organization because his son is doing humanitarian work in the Mid East.  The same day, big data picks up an e-mail conversation with his son; “we need to eliminate all the weeds and buy a half ton of nitrates for next year’s crops.”  This pattern matches a well thought out terrorist algorithm and all of the farmer’s conversations, bank statements and travel plans are monitored and read by a young technician in Alexandria Virginia.  Should the farmer just “trust him” to do the right thing?

         How about the technician who is working for an executive who does not mean well?  It was not that long ago that Richard Nixon and J Edgar Hoover sought to gain as much information as possible about their perceived enemies through any means possible.  Would anyone feel comfortable with these new technologies in their hands?

          Some are not happy with this new reality.  It has been reported that in Germany, as troublesome as the East German Stasi and Soviet KGB were during the cold war, the German government felt more secure from spying in the past than during the recent surveillance intrusions from their allies, the Americans.

                  Our own citizens do not seem to have the same doubts or concerns as new and more invasive spy techniques are revealed. Why are we willing to give up protected information concerning our private lives to technicians in secret control rooms on the slim chance of avoiding an Islamist plot?

          I believe several factors are in play. First, many buy into the claim that we are at war and believe it is patriotic to cooperate since we have  “nothing to hide”.  Second, the pervasive use of social media has degraded privacy concerns and surveillance is often viewed as harmless national data sharing.  Third, everyone gets to keep their firearms, no matter how onerous the data collection.

         There is great irony in the fact that in dangerous times to the homeland, gun ownership is not restricted. We insist that we be permitted to keep unfettered, the one instrumentality that causes a thousand times more carnage than terrorism. Even knowing that a bad guy is more likely to use a gun against an innocent rather than blown him/her up, firearms get a pass.  It remains an open question whether more gun restriction and less surveillance would lower the number of attacks inspired by radical ideologies.

         In the United States, the right to bear arms is sacrosanct and this is not about to change until fiscal conservatives realize that curtailing guns will save millions in social welfare and make us safer. In the mean time, If big brother gets out of hand with this surveillance stuff, we can always shoot him.