How Is Big Brother Watching Us Media Essay

How Is outstanding pal reflexion Us Media EssayBig Brother is a fictional character in George Orwells dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which tells the drool 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 command 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.1The main surveillance tool described in Orwells novel is the imaginary telescreen, a muff between a television and a security camera2, and in the past decade growing comparisons have been drawn between the imaginary telescreen and the Internet-connected individual(prenominal) calculating machine 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 t oday, and the technologies employ to pack out that surveillance. The essay will first look at the current privateness landscape in the USA, the European Union, and the UK, in terms of policies and legislation. wherefore it will discuss some of the intimately interesting technical methods apply to carry out mass Internet communications surveillance.The terrorist attacks on New Yorks macrocosm Trade Centre, of September 11th 2001, heralded the dawn of a new global political era. Following those atrocities and subsequent attacks in Egypt, the linked Kingdom, Spain, Bali, Russia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, governments roughly the world have responded by tightening existing legislation and creating new anti-terror fairnesss. Many of the countries that changed their laws to combat terrorist threats also increase the powers of their law enforcement and national security organisations to accomplish communications surveillance and carry out electronic data search and seizure.The Un iting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and baffle Terrorism Act of 2001, more commonly issuen as The patriot Act, was signed into law less than seven weeks afterward 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 2004.3In July of 2002 the European Union passed the Directive on Privacy and electronic Communications4. This directive was amended in 2005 by the Electronic communications personal data protection rules and availability of traffic data for anti-terrorism purposes directive.5These directives will jumper lead to European telecom firms being required to store data regarding the time and duration of all fixed line, internet, and mobile band calls, the location of mobile telephone calls, and details of all internet connections and e-mail messages (although e-mail content is non recorded). The UK government was the prime mover in lobbying for this directive, stating that data was the golden thread in terrorist investigations.6We 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 ac tually do and how do they do it? Mass surveillance can render 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.7For 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 coaction tasked with gathering signals intelligence around the world. Although its human beings is still officially denied the European Parliament commissioned a report in 2001 entit guide on the mankind of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)8. They were sufficiently convinced of ECHELONs capabilities to recom mend that European citizens and businesses should routinely encrypt their communications in cabaret to maintain privacy9.The idea of the ECHELON network was supposedly agreed between capital of the United Kingdom and Washington as far back as 1948, although its existence was non 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 screen out through 90% of Internet traffic, though the European Union found that the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive. The computer 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 blame out that very little (10111213The alleged widespread use of packet sniffing systems first came to light during congressional testimony in April 2000, when the FBI was forced to admit the existence of its Carnivore system, so called for its ability to get to the meat of intercepted emails14. Carnivore was later revealed to have grown from an ahead FBI project called Omnivore, reportedly began in February 1997 but Omnivore itself probably grew from an even earlier project that still remains secret. Carnivore could be used in conjunction with two other pieces of software, called Packeteer and CoolMiner, the three together being known by the FBI as the DragonWare suite15. Carnivore was reportedly used to sift through the data of ISPs following the 9/11 outrages, although by this time it had been renamed to DCS1000 following adverse publicity16. It is largely thought that, if Carnivore was used at this time, it was coming to the end of its useful life as the FBI moved onto commercially available software, probably the NarusInsight suite17.Narus is an American community that describes itself as a leader in providing the real-time traffi c insight essential to profitably manage, secure and deliver Services over IP. However, Narus gained notoriety after its STA 6400 system was named in the Room 641A scandal18. In May 2006 Mark Klein, a former ATT technician, released statements alleging that he had discovered an illegal intercept facility, operated by the NSA, in room 641A of the ATT building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco19. Mr Klein alleged that in 2003 ATT built secret rooms in its premises in various American cities to house computer systems capable of allowing the American government to tap into ATTs WorldNet service and the entire Internet. Mr Klein stated in his testimony It appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet, whether that be peoples e-mail, Web surfing or any other data. USA Today later claimed that after 9/11, the NSA asked the large American telecommunications companies for access to their call records, and that at least the three largest, ATT, Verizon, and BellSouth, had agreed. Although not listening to, or recording, the content of the calls, the NSA was allegedly tracking call data in order to analyse patterns for suspicious activity. The story alleged that the NSAs goal was to create a database of every call ever made inside America20.Although the nature of the governmental mass communications surveillance means that many of the claims made are alleged rather than fact, it is certain that mass Internet communications surveillance does take place. However, anyone who is familiar with modern cryptanalysis might ask What is the point? After all, easily available software such(prenominal) as PGP is described by security expert Bruce Schneier as the walk-to(prenominal) youre likely to get to military-grade encryption21. Wouldnt any intelligent lawbreaker, especially an international terrorist plotting some outrage, simply encrypt their communications using a good privacy tool, such as PGP, a nd a 128-bit key (the maximum size allowed by US Government export policy)? According to accepted mathematical theory the figure power required to try all possible 128-bit keys in a brute force attack on an asymmetric key encryption algorithms is not only impossible, but will remain so for the foreseeable future22. Of course, in fact on average only half of those keys would be tried before the correct one is found, but again any terrorist or criminal could use a key size of 256-bits or even larger.such(prenominal) arguments have led to much speculation, on the Internet especially, as to the NSAs ability to crack asymmetric keys. In subprogramicular, the hypothetical hardware devices TWINKLE and TWIRL, proposed by Adi Shamir of the Weizmann plant of Science, would enable the factorisation of 1024-bit numbers in one year, if they were built2324. Rumours of the existence of such machines are fanned by reports that the United States has broken modern ciphers used by, amongst others, the Iranian intelligence service25. Although the European parliament report on ECHELON recommended that organisations and individuals use encryption to guard their communications against electronic eavesdropping26, the report also led to the establishment of SECOQC27, an organisation working for the Development of a Global Network for Secure Communication based on Quantum Cryptography. This seems to suggest that the European Union does not see conventional cryptography as the answer to secure communication, at least in the future.So, in conclusion, it seems that the answer to the question Is Big Brother Watching Us, is quite simply yes. More pressingly, should we be worried about this mass surveillance, or are our governments only interested in protecting us from attacks such as those that shocked the world on September 11th 2001? Few people can argue that much of the legislative changes mentioned in the first part of this essay will make it more difficult for large-scale terror or ganisations to function. However, many of those new policies and laws also affect privacy and civil liberties. In the United Kingdom, for example, the threat of terrorism has been used to justify the introduction of national identity cards28, even though the home secretary at the time of the London bombings, which killed more than 50 people in July 2005, admitted that I.D. cards would not have prevented them.29.Opponents of such laws argue that reduced authorisation requirements often weaken due process. At the start of this year Britains Internet Service Providers Association (Ispa) singled out the UK for its role in pushing for Europe-wide data retention laws.30On the 10th of January 2006, then root word Secretary Charles Clark stated Agreement on retaining communications data places a vital tool against terrorism and serious crime in the hands of law enforcement agencies across Europe. However, the UK government had originally proposed this policy in 2000 (over a year before the twin towers attacks) and at the time had been accused of deceiving the public over their proposals and of untruth for lobbying for the law change in Europe, yet publicly denying that it was seeking such sweeping powers.31The United Kingdom is widely regarded as the Western democracy that subjects its citizens to the most surveillance.32In a graphic published by the Daily Telegraph on November 2, 2006, showing Privacy Internationals rankings of privacy protection around the world, Britain is described as the worst-performing western democracy. In fact we manage to achieve the worst ranking available, classing the UK as an endemic surveillance society. We share this dubious honour with Russia, China, and Malaysia, and achieve a worst countries ranking in no less than six out of thirteen invasive national practices.33Recent history has shown us that can and do abuse human rights. Although there is a clear and present need to fight terrorism we must have balance and control at the id entical time to ensure that democratic and legal due process is not weakened.