Too Paranoid or Paranoid Enough?

Living in this viral world, we depend on Internet in so many aspects of our life. It is easy to just expect it to be safe and ok – I know I usually do. My general attitude is “when everybody does it, it must be safe”. The government will take action if somebody is endangering my privacy. As long as you don’t click on those “obviously dodgy pop up ads”, and don’t share all your private information with the public, your fine.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine shared an paper article from a pretty reliable Norwegian newspaper with me (Dagens Næringsliv). Despite the credible newspaper that obviously had a reliable source, I had a really hard time believing it. Just because these facts where so shocking! I feel the need to share it with you guys because if this is the reality, I believe everybody should be aware of it.  

The article was based on an interview with a former employee of the United States National Security Agency (NSA). William Binney was part of building the nations communication surveillance, and in the five page long article he explained how he quit because of what he believed to be unethical practice and extreme surveillance violating people’s privacy. Maybe you already have heard of this. I have however translated some of the facts that I found most sticking. 

-          The storage capacity of NSA's planned infrastructure matches purely mathematical to store ALL electronic communication. It will be measured in yottabytes, a byte with 24 zeros after it! With current capacity they will be able to store at least 100 years of communication.

-          They do not need a reason or a permission to record your phone conversation, read your texts or go through your emails.

-          Binney can inform us that they already have the keys to everything. They already have all algorithms figured out. He says that nothing you do online is safe. Everything from facebook to emails, what you buy on Amazon, what you search for on google, how much money you have in your banking account and what you spend the money on, absolutely everything…

This is absolutely scary, but the terrifying part is how much power the person in charge of this information has. Because what does KGB, Stasi and Gestapo and any other dictators have in common? They figure out what their public is up to, and basically get rid of any resistance. When you have access to every little detail in almost every people’s lives all over the planet, your power is unlimited according to William Binney. This is an extremely powerful political weapon, and can for example be used to affect the public opinion by leaking certain information to the press about any opponent. 

I have to apologies for the loooooong and pretty heavy post, but this is such a complex and a huge field of information, so I encourage you to do some further research on your one, from several sources. This might not be something we can protect ourselves from; at least I don’t have any good suggestions other than perhaps moving out to an abandon cabin in the woods without cellphones, Internet or electricity perhaps. (Yeah, not going to happen) But regardless of what’s true and not, I believe it might be our own responsibility to keep ourselves informed, and maybe this is a good reminder that we shouldn’t always assume that the government have every single person’s best interest in mind, and that they are not always there to protect our privacy.

Hope you all have an amazing spring week, almost May! :)

- Lise