SubscribeI’ve mentioned the Government-Private partnership on snooping before, in particular a speech given by Michael Chertoff who was remarkably candid on how the government and the private sector can work together, whereby the private sector can “create a marketplace for the technology and a marketplace for the systems”. He was talking specifically about screening travellers, but they apply equally well to the current NSA scandal. Business Week recently reported that purchasing “commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules”.
It seems the NSA snooping scandal has taken a little twist. ABC News journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito have claimed that a federal source told them “the government is tracking the phone numbers we … call in an effort to root out confidential sources.”
“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committedâ??would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paperâ??the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
- George Orwell, 1984
Orwell, were he still alive, would have been rather fascinated at the technological advances that now allow governments to spy on their citizens. He would probably also be amazed to realise that it no longer requires a physical person to connect the dots to suspect someone of being a possible terrorist, or to monitor thought crime. The Great Firewall of China is an excellent example how an increasingly technological age allows for greater methods of control and surveillence.