Investigating mass surveillance

Investigating mass surveillance (How) Is Big Brother Watching Us? Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwells dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which tells the story of one mans attempt to rebel against the totalitarian state in which he lives. In the society that Orwell describes, everybody lives under complete twenty-four hour surveillance by the governing authorities. Since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the phrase Big Brother has entered the English language, to describe any attempts by governments to use mass surveillance.[1] The main surveillance tool described in Orwells novel is the imaginary telescreen, a cross between a television and a security camera[2], and in the past decade growing comparisons have been drawn between the imaginary telescreen and the Internet-connected personal computer that is in many modern homes. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the mass surveillance of Internet communications carried out by western governments today, and the technologies used to carry out that surveillance. The essay will first look at the current privacy landscape in the USA, the European Union, and the UK, in terms of policies and legislation. Then it will discuss some of the most interesting technical methods used to carry out mass Internet communications surveillance. The terrorist attacks on New Yorks World Trade Centre, of September 11th 2001, heralded the dawn of a new global political era. Following those atrocities and subsequent attacks in Egypt, the United Kingdom, Spain, Bali, Russia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, governments around the world have responded by tightening existing legislation and creating new anti-terror laws. Many of the countries that changed their laws to combat terrorist threats also increased the powers of their law enforcement and national security organisations to perform communications surveillance and carry out electronic data search and seizure. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, more commonly known as The Patriot Act, was signed into law less than seven weeks after the Twin Towers attacks. The Act is organised into ten titles, including Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures, and Title IX: Improved intelligence. The Patriot Act, which was Americas legislative response to the September 11th attacks, hugely increased American law enforcement and national security services authority both in the USA and abroad. The Patriot Act strengthened immigration, banking, and money laundering laws. The Patriot Act also amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which includes subchapters covering electronic surveillance and trap and trace devices (used to capture non-content information regarding electronic communication). FISA was also expanded by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.[3] In July of 2002 the European Union passed the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications'[4]. This directive was amended in 2005 by the Electronic communications: personal data protection rules and availability of traffic data for anti-terrorism purposes directive.[5] These directives will lead to European telecom firms being required to store data regarding the time and duration of all fixed line, internet, and mobile telephone calls, the location of mobile telephone calls, and details of all internet connections and e-mail messages (although e-mail content is not recorded). The UK government was the prime mover in lobbying for this directive, stating that data was the golden thread in terrorist investigations.[6] We have seen then that current privacy landscape has been heavily influenced by the changing global political situation with specific reference to global terrorism. We know that legislation exists that allows western governments to carry out mass surveillance, but what do they actually do and how do they do it? Mass surveillance can take many forms, including physical surveillance in the form of identity systems, audio, video, RFID and satellite surveillance. Data surveillance can also be used in the areas of electronic commerce and public records.[7] For the purpose of this essay we will look specifically at some of the most interesting technologies (allegedly) used by government organisations to carry out mass surveillance of Internet communications. One of the most infamous alleged mass electronic communication surveillance technologies is ECHELON, a top-secret Anglo-American collaboration tasked with gathering signals intelligence around the world. Although its existence is still officially denied the European Parliament commissioned a report in 2001 entitled on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)'[8]. They were sufficiently convinced of ECHELONs capabilities to recommend that European citizens and businesses should routinely encrypt their communications in order to maintain privacy[9]. The idea of the ECHELON network was supposedly agreed between London and Washington as far back as 1948, although its existence was not brought to public attention until the publication of New Statesman article in 1988. ECHELONs capabilities are the subject of much debate; some estimates report that it can sift through 90% of Internet traffic, though the European Union found that the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive. The hardware used to collect the information also remains something of a mystery, with some sources claiming that ECHELON controls over one hundred satellites and dozens of ground based listening stations. Others point out that very little (