If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

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If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby Username » Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:40 am

~
As our right to privacy continues to be eroded by the ever increasing technologies and abilities for surveillance, and the need for more surveillance is seen as necessary to guard and protect us from evil-doers, terrorists, vampires and the like, I'd like to take this opportunity to shout out, from the belly of the RI General Discussion Forum, how ridiculous and infuriating it is to hear people say these words as if they were clever, as if they weren't brain-dead zombies mouthing what certain others might deem the proper and acceptable response to their more conspiratorial contemporaries who happen to be concerned over the invasion of our privacy by the corporate government.

The thought police have nothing on them, nosireebob.

All I can say is, they're lucky I am unable write like Barracuda or Starmanskye, or I'd surely tear them a new one. For now I'll be content to search out a few sites of like-minded authors to help me understand why I get so ticked-off when I hear someone regurgitate - "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about."

This first person, from reddit, sounds like I feel, and is followed by 143 comments, a couple of which, I'll bring up here.


reddit

Looking for a response for "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"

I've been running into this as an argument a lot lately and frankly, it frightens me. It's often thrown out as a conversation stopper. After all, you wouldn't argue the point unless you have something to hide is often one of the implied messages.

In an era of ever increasing invasions into our privacy (body scanners, data mining, online and offline surveillance) mixed with more and more restrictions on watching the watchers - this attitude, at least to me, is dangerous. We're seeing more and more bolder violations of power by police and have fewer and fewer means to legally challenge them. On top of that - when something comes up in conversations with some around me - I get "Well, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about."

I'm looking for some ideas, long and short, for responses to this maddening phrase. Sometimes there's time for a more in depth explanation - but many times there isn't and for some reason this phrase causes brain freeze for me. I've read some fantastic posts here and figured this was probably the best forum I could think of to ask.


(voted the best response from lawstudent2 49 points)

* Supreme Court Justices Warner & Brandeis on the importance of the right to privacy. Fundamentally, privacy is important for the same reason that clothing is: you choose what part of yourself to expose to the public, and saying you don't need privacy is like saying you should just walk around naked all day. It is also important for political reasons: the right to gather anonymously is important, and this was abused many times by racist southern cops to try and break up civil rights rallies, among other things. Further, you should be able to criticize people or institutions among your friends, and then have the reasonable expectation that this criticisms will remain private. Think about it: if you have no right to privacy, then you have no right to think that what the government is doing wrong, and hide it from the government. How is that even remotely beneficial?

* It confuses criminality with ethics. Simply because someone thinks someone is unethical doesn't mean, nor should it mean, it is illegal. You can, and should, have the right to prevent other people from finding out about things about yourself that they may think is unethical, but you do not. I do not mean things like theft, adultery or murder; I mean like voting Republican when you say you are a Democrat, what organizations you donate your money to, etc. Without a right to privacy, privacy 'invasions' will result in people who are in positions of power being able to identify classes of people they merely disagree with, but are not doing anything wrong, in order to harass them, and, then, incrementally, dig so deep into their lives as to bankrupt them.

* To quote (potentially apocryphally) Cardinal Richelieu: If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. See the point above.


Submitting what is here now, so that The Blue Screen of Death doesn't eat my post.
Back in a bit.


%$#*@#---grrrrrr. damn comp. ate the second half of my post.

Here we go again. >.<

edit #6 (I seem to have lost the transition from reddit to metafilter. So it goes. Just dropped in, one more time, to provide the link to metafilter.)

Anyway, Metafilter had this comment:

Misbehaving or not, our behavior is shaped by the knowledge that we are being watched. Read Foucault on the panopticon.
posted by pickypicky at 6:22 PM on February 18


Foucault and His Panopticon

>snip<

One of the techniques/regulatory modes of power/knowledge that Foucault cited was the Panopticon, an architectural design put forth by Jeremy Bentham in the mid-19th Century for prisons, insane asylums, schools, hospitals, and factories. Instead of employing the violent methods and dungeons that were used to control individuals under a monarchial state, the new modern and supposedly democratic state needed a different sort of system to regulate its citizens. The Panopticon offered a powerful and sophisticated internalized coercion through the constant observation of prisoners, each separated from the other and allowed no interaction. The modern structure would allow guards to continually see inside each cell from their vantage point in a high central tower, unseen. The constant observation was seen to act as a control mechanism a consciousness of constant surveillance is internalized.

The Panopticon was a metaphor that allowed Foucault to explore the relationship between systems of social control and people in a disciplinary situation, and the power-knowledge concept, since, in his view, power and knowledge comes from observing others. It marked the transition to a disciplinary power, with every movement supervised and all events recorded. The result of this surveillance is acceptance of regulations and docility -- a normalization of sorts -- stemming from the threat of discipline. Suitable behaviour is achieved not through total surveillance, but by panoptic discipline and inducing a population to internalize that surveillance. The actions of the observer are based upon this monitoring and the behaviours he sees exhibited; the more one observes, the more powerful one becomes. The power comes from the knowledge the observer has accumulated from his observations of actions in a circular fashion, with knowledge and power reinforcing each other. Foucault says that "by being combined and generalized, they attained a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase in power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process."

For Foucault, the real danger was not necessarily that individuals are repressed by our social order but that they are "carefully fabricated in it" (Foucault, Panoptican) and because there is a penetration of power into the behaviour of individuals. Power becomes more efficient through the mechanisms of observation, with knowledge following suit, always in search of "new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised." (Foucault, Panoptican)
>snip<


(small bites and 1000 edits.)

Another comment from Metafilter:


Simple answer - The lives of others... WATCH IT.

The level of government intrusion displayed there was based on 1980’s technology, RUSSIAN tech at that! Imagine what we can do today. And don’t think that being a law abiding citizen will save you. You have no idea how you might play into some petty mid-level intelligence officer’s, politician’s or bureaucrat’s agenda… as a pawn, an opponent, or perhaps just collateral damage.
posted by DetonatedManiac at 6:52 PM on February 18


Ok



:popcorn:

Lastly, a name that came up several times at both websites, Bruce Schneier.

LINK

The Eternal Value of Privacy

By Bruce Schneier
Wired News
May 18, 2006


The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.


DONE
~
Last edited by Username on Tue Mar 30, 2010 6:35 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:59 am

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about"...

But, you see, it's not what I have, it's what they are looking for. Sure, they look for criminal intent, and criminal transgressions, but there's more. They are looking for a pattern.

Hierarchy seeks out anarchist-tendencies in an effort to diffuse their decentralization effects. This is a natural consequence of centralized power. Your perfectly innocent thought crime of approval for pro-liberty, pro-freedom, pro-independence is what destabilizes hierarchies and makes centralized powers, less centralized. This is the threat. This is what they look for. This is what they blacklist for.

This is why we should worry. When someone makes a comment like, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about"... It's because they don't understand that centralized hierarchy behaves in this way. There is a disconnect between what they consider as security screening, and what is necessary for employment of the decentralized-tendencies - both organized and unorganized.

"They look at everybody's shit because they have something to hide, and every reason to worry."

The multitude are potentially a leviathan and highly unpredictable, afterall. As of current they conform themselves to the societal hierarchies. It needs to be monitored for potential of decentralizing deviation and the formation of their own separate and unmonitored hierarchies.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby 82_28 » Tue Mar 30, 2010 5:50 am

It's that we have figured them out, despite all of the para-military power they have at their disposal. There frankly, are people who have figured them out just by looking in their eyes and witnessing their behavior. This shall be illegal and we are the ones who know it.

We know we are committing crimes by seeing through this shit -- hence the need to create the need for "suicide bombers" et al. Nobody benefits more from a suicide bombing more than a corporatist nation-state. It benefits nobody of meager means. It is a pure scam played upon those who happen to have more empathy than they do ego.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:03 am

Thanks for posting this Username, as it is a topic very dear to me. I'm sorry you're having difficulty. I just want you to know your efforts are appreciated. :D

Bruce Schneier is a great computer security guy to read. Much of his work is readily understandable even by non-computer people, as the above article illustrates. Here's his homepage.

I wonder at the fact that PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and Open PGP never took off for email. I mean, we put letters in envelopes with some expectation of privacy before we mail them. I have no doubt that PGP is crackable by the fabled quantum computers at Forte Meade, but that doesn't mean we should make it easy, or that we shouldn't use up their processor cycles decrypting our pictures of cats that we send to each other!

IF you are interested in learning about using encryption on your email, here are some places to start.

André Bacard's "(Non-Technical) PGP F.A.Q. (Really basic - what is PGP, etc; although it is ancient, the idea remains the same today)

A simple interface for OpenPGP email security (using freeware Mozilla Thunderbird)

GnuPG and Enigmail tutorial (screenshots)


And this gives me some reason to post panopticon pictures. Think of the NSA blackboxes attached to the major network providers (Level3/Cogent, etc) as the guard tower below, and each of those prison cells as our computers, and you can easily imagine that the Internet is the ultimate panopticon.

Image
Image
Image
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby 23 » Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:34 am

The comment is premised on a core assumption, as many of our personal conclusions are.

That assumption being: valuing/respecting privacy = an interest in hiding something.

It's a manipulative form or mechanism of devaluing privacy.

Similar to, "if you love me than you wouldn't do this or that".

What they both have in common is... they usually come from a source that is experiencing a certain level of insecurity.

So to feel more secure, they effort to manipulate you to prove to them that their insecurity is unfounded.

Many marital relationships possess this dynamic, so it may be more of a cultural aspect than a strictly a political one.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby NaturalMystik » Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:53 pm

Occult Means Hidden wrote:"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about"...

"They look at everybody's shit because they have something to hide, and every reason to worry."


It also helps them to determine the current maladies of society and what they should deem as wrong... It's all so subjective... The same people who would quote the subject of this thread are also the same people who always fall in line even when it doesn't make sense. Why can't I make that left hand turn, even though there is no other traffic, because some a$$hole in the courthouse decided that it is wrong to do?

Everyday I get a little more disappointed with my society, and see less and less room for good, honest, free thinking, logical folks... One rotten apple really does spoil the rest...
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Wed Mar 31, 2010 7:34 am

"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about."


Fundamental to the nature of an open democracy and the rule of law in common law countries is the idea of someone being innocent until proven guilty.

Thats the basic assumption. If there's a crime, evidence is gathered suspects sought, charged tried and then convicted or not depending on the evidence. (Apparently this even happens sometimes. Actually more often than not imo, how often it happens when its really important tho - thats the real issue.)

Anyway given all that, the state doesn't go looking for evidence till a crime is committed.

Its fundamental to the nature of a democracy that citizens are law abiding and therefore responsible enough to vote. To assume citizens are criminals ... where does that lead? To shitsville.

Anyway given that its fundamental to democracy that "if you've got nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" misses the point that actually being treated like criminal for being a citizen is something to worry about.

If the state can't trust its own citizens (when its sposed to represent the people,) then obviously it can't trust itself and shouldn't be given the sort of power its trying to get when "if you've got nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" is the argument it uses.

Whatever that power.

Plus - don't Americans have constitutional rights to privacy and protection from unlawful search and seizure. (In theory anyway.)
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby Elvis » Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:48 pm

I put it right back in their face:

"If the government hasn't done anything wrong, then they should have no reason to hide anything."

Yet the government is highly secretive. THEY want to know as much as possible about US, while wanting US to know as little as possible about THEM.

We should turn the cameras way from US and zoom in on THEM.

What would happen if we abolished secrecy in government? No secret meetings, secret hearings, secret negotiations, no secret agents, no secrets.

(I'm tempted to add, "of course there would be exceptions" but for the purposes of a thought experiment, I'll stick with no secrets. I'll probably regret not thinking it through further.)

What would happen if we required officials (especially elected ones) to be under constant, public surveillance -- video and audio, telephone and e-mail etc. No opportunities for secret meetings, secret deals. Don't like being under contant watch? Then don't be a government official.

Everything government officials do and say, of course, would be saved in a giant data warehouse for later scrutiny as needed.

Meanwhile, regular folks' personal privacy would be assured, by legal and technological means.

I know -- A) that will never happen, and B) yes, I'm on drugs. But I've been toying with the idea of putting the government in the Panopticon. The "guard tower" will be millions of PC screens, peeking, say, into the Commerce Department's many cells, I mean offices.

I kid around a lot, so in case there's any question, I'm being completely serious about this.


--------

Ever see a film of the "breaking" of wild elephants? It works the same with people, and the super-snoopers are breaking our will to care. If this isn't turned around before another generation grows up, we're fucked.

--------

Edited to add: I use "government" above as a generality; insert "national security state" or whatever suits.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby Hunter » Fri Jun 14, 2013 1:08 am

You can take bits and pieces of anyone's life, out of context, and make a case that they are a wrongdoer and even convince yourself of it, even though they are not even remotely so, and that is what the NSA is capable of doing exactly, they can look at a website you visited here or there, an email you sent a time or two, someone you spoke to on occasion and make it appear that youre a bad guy when in fact all you really did was look at a questionable website for some research purposes, sent an email or two that is an inside joke among friends only but can be completely misunderstood by an outsider, and spoke to someone whom you had no idea was up to something unsavory behind the scenes. This, all put together and packaged nicely, completely out of context, can be made to make you look like you are doing something wrong. That is why it matters, and it matters in a big way. Even if you have nothing to hide, it matters, a lot.


This is why the information they have is, at the same time, too much, and not enough. Too much because essentially none of it is any of their business but not enough because they dont have all the details in between and are only seeing a small part of your life, out of context and which can be interpreted in many and various ways.


This is what we in the legal profession refer to as circumstantial evidence, it can be explained in many different ways if not understood in proper context. I have defended people where there is lots of circumstantial evidence that makes them look very very guilty, but upon closer examination and investigation as well as speaking with them for explanation and context, you see it in a completely different light and realize they are not guilty at all. This is what causes a lot of innocent people to be wrongly convicted and imprisoned and it is why you need a good attorney fighting for you if you are ever falsely accused of something you didnt do.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby thatsmystory » Fri Jun 14, 2013 1:26 am

Where do you hide when the government criminalizes dissent? That is a key aspect of this and explains government use of the Espionage Act. How do you get real information when the government is spying on sources to prevent journalists from reporting?
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby stickdog99 » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:24 am

"If you have no beliefs or convictions, then you have nothing to worry about."
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby Hunter » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:38 pm

stickdog99 » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:24 am wrote:"If you have no beliefs or convictions, then you have nothing to worry about."

Brilliant, well said, Dog.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby Hunter » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:45 pm

thatsmystory » Fri Jun 14, 2013 1:26 am wrote:Where do you hide when the government criminalizes dissent? That is a key aspect of this and explains government use of the Espionage Act. How do you get real information when the government is spying on sources to prevent journalists from reporting?

This is something that cannot be stressed enough, the ability to speak out against your government, expose corruption and have a press that is willing and able to help you do such is the very bedrock upon which a free society is built, without it there is no free society and we are very close to that point, very very close.

In this country right now we are handing out stiffer criminal penalties to whistle-blowers, leakers, politcal dissidents and activists than we are murders and rapists and that is a major, major problem. The Obama administration in particular has taken a harder line against these types of people than any other administration in recent memory and they are setting some very dangerous precedents in doing so.
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby brekin » Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:38 pm

If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about.


That is a pretty easy one. Next time some one says that just ask them for their email password, their house key or to look through their wallet, etc.
If they balk just tell them "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about."
So ask them again. The dialogue will probably go like this.

"Let me have your email password."
"But I don't want to."
"Why, do you have something to hide?"
"No."
"Then you have nothing to worry about, let me have your email password."
"I don't want to."
"Then you have something to hide."
"No, it just isn't any of your business, it's private."
"But if I worked for the government it would be ok, right?"
"Well, um...
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Re: If you have nothing to hide . . . nothing to worry about

Postby Hunter » Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:30 am

Good article here, right along the lines of what I posted upthread about them taking small bits and pieces of a person's life and painting what could be a very inaccurate and disturbing picture with them.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... aw-abiding




Yes, NSA surveillance should worry the law-abiding.

The books you read, the emails you send, the TV shows you watch – 'big data' could jump to conclusions about your life

Many internet users will be feeling slightly bemused by the worldwide reaction to the revelations about US surveillance technology. As President Obama, the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, and many other senior politicians have said, what do the innocent have to fear? Why would the National Security Agency (NSA), or anyone else, care about your search history, Facebook updates, Skype calls, emails, instant messages, and so on?

Data mining tools have developed quickly over the past decade, and a detailed picture can now be painted of people's lives with even small amounts of such information. This picture can ultimately have real-world consequences. Ever had problems getting an electronic visa to travel to countries such as the US and Australia, who pre-screen foreign visitors, or had to go through lengthy additional security at the airport? Thought about getting a job with a government agency or contractor that will do background checks first? Or perhaps you've had difficulty getting medical insurance or credit despite a healthy lifestyle and prompt payment of your bills?

So-called "big data" approaches are revolutionising the way these processes work, in government and the private sector. By crunching through large quantities of data, all sorts of interesting patterns can be found inside people's everyday activities. You might already realise that fatty and sugary foods showing up on your supermarket loyalty card could be interesting to insurers, financial service providers, and even employers concerned about sick days – but did you know significant time spent commuting and watching television are also good predictors of a shorter lifespan?

One phone call to a country such as Pakistan might not in itself say much, but what if three of your own phone and email contacts had made one in the past year, and you also browsed through some quite radical websites protesting at the "war on terror" last month? Or bought three philosophy and history books that have previously been found in the collections of terrorism suspects? Much more complex patterns are generally being sought out by data analysts, in the way that Google (for example) uses more than 200 different "signals" about the quality of a web page to generate its search rankings.

These approaches need huge amounts of both computing power and data. We know that the NSA has both, with its new $2bn Utah Data Centre, due to open in September, reportedly capable of processing trillions of terabytes. Former NSA staff members have explained that the agency has systems that can process trillions of data points to test the strength of connections between them. This explains why Verizon and seemingly other telephone companies have been ordered to hand over complete lists of all telephone calls made – to find suspicious patterns, especially of individuals linked over time to people that have come under suspicion in other ways.

Other such similarly large collections of data about communications ("metadata") are no doubt being analysed by intelligence agencies. Who is talking to whom when, from which location, combined with data about websites visited, can be just as revealing as intercepts of call and email contents, but generally receives much lower legal protection. It is unclear precisely how the Prism system is being used to access data held by companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple, but US law regarding foreign surveillance is entirely clear: non-US persons outside the US are fair game, with no constitutional protections. Nor is such monitoring limited to narrow national security and counter-terrorism purposes.

The Guardian's revelations have made clear that we now need a global debate about just how far intelligence agencies should go in undertaking this very broad surveillance and analysis, and what legal protections and oversight mechanisms should be in place – beyond behind-closed-doors scrutiny by officials, secret courts and security-cleared committees. Is it acceptable that one of the main authors of the US Patriot Act, Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, thinks the order to Verizon is not consistent with that act? What should the rest of the world think about their data being held in a country that gives almost no legal protections against government surveillance?

It may no longer be true that "gentlemen don't read each other's mail", as the former US secretary of state Henry L Stimson said. We are certainly unlikely to see a repeat with the NSA of Stimson's 1929 closure of the US Cipher Bureau. But we need much better mechanisms for reassurance that data collection and analysis does not go beyond that required for legitimate government responsibilities, such as preventing future terrorist attacks.
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