Notes from the Editor
by Larry Kerschner
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in early December would stop the sale of surveillance technologies by American companies to regimes considered repressive by our regime. A recent Bloomberg News report showed how western technology suppliers used Tunisia as a testing ground as that government used surveillance technologies to track, mis-inform, interrogate and intrusively try to chill the free flow of political discussion.
Maybe we should request a bill that would stop these companies from selling this technology to our government. The vast majority of computer surveillance involves monitoring various types of communication on the Internet. Under the U.S. Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CAFLEA), all phone calls and broadband internet traffic are required to be available for real-time monitoring by government agencies. Computers communicate by breaking up dada into small chunks called “packets.” “Packet sniffing” is monitoring Internet traffic. Under CAFLEA, all U.S. telecommunication providers are required to install packet sniffing programs to allow the government law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers Internet traffic, including the collection of any passwords. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, this is being done without judicial warrants. Given that a large part of the effectiveness of the Arab Spring and the current Occupy Movement derives from its decentralized, essentially leaderless organization style, it isn’t surprising that U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Security Agency and the Homeland Security Agency are investing in research that involves social network analysis. Recently Homeland Security was testing a prototype screening program that profiles people based on algorithms that considered body movement, voice pitch change, body heat change and breathing patterns. HSA suggests it would use this new screening tool at border crossings, large public events and airports. So if you begin to think that Big Brother may be watching you, he is!