Internet Surveillance: Catching Terrorists
Obama speaking on US government surveillance programs, specifically how some privacy must be sacrificed in order to be protected.
After the 9/11 attacks in New York City, President Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act. Among many protections, this bill allowed increased surveillance techniques like wiretapping, warrantless searches, and wider surveillance limits. Many critics condemn this legislation, claiming encroachment of innocent people’s right to privacy, which is outlined by the twelfth article of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This article states, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy... Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” The USA PATRIOT Act may hug the line of these described rights, but duty to protect the public is highly valued in the U.S. as well. The increase in frequency and severity of U.S. domestic terrorist attacks since the advent of the Internet reflect the need for more cyber surveillance and monitoring to prevent further attacks. This topic sparks a controversial discussion of civilians right to online privacy and the government's duty to protect citizens from invasion and danger.
Figure 1 - Extremist Terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are adapting to recruit members in new ways. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/al-qaeda-leader-ayman-al-zawahiri-isis-madness-lies-extremism-islamic-state-terrorist-groups-compete-a7526271.html)
Since its founding in the eighteenth century, the U.S. government has described its duty to citizens: citizens receive protection and benefits in exchange for paying taxes. In the face of terrorism though, governments today struggle to provide this protection, especially from intenral threats. “Prominent terrorist groups are demonstrating an understanding that strength lies in numbers,” explains Kunkle, “and greater numbers of grassroots terrorists develop a greater capacity to successfully attack the United States from within” (Kunkle, 5). So how can governments protect its citizens while still recognizing the human right to privacy and continuing technological advancement? Aharon Barak said, “on occasion, democracy fights with one hand tied” (Gross, 4). Terrorism fundamentally threatens innocent people “for political ends and includes any use of violence for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in fear”, according to the English Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1989. Over the last 50 years, 20% of mass shootings (not including bombings or other attacks) occured within just the last five years, according to an L.A. Times study funded by the National Institute of Justice (Densley and Peterson).
Figure 2 - Brenton Tarrant, the 2019 New Zealand mosque shooter, posted his intents on 8chan before the attack. (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ico_Maly/publication/332495667_White_terrorism_metapolitics20_and_the_great_replacement_Diggit_Magazine/links/5cb822d4a6fdcc1d499c6855/White-terrorism-metapolitics20-and-the-great-replacement-Diggit-Magazine.pdf)
This increase is widely due to the growth of the Internet. People with destructive ideas can simply use a google search to transform their thinking into that of a mass shooter. Joseph Kunkle of the Office of Security Technology for the TSA explained,
“The terrorist’s social media framework is targeting disenfranchised youth with convoluted, fictional information and creating grassroots terrorists within the U.S. borders… capitaliz[ing] on homegrown jihadists’ willingness to sacrifice life in prison or perform martyrdom operations” (p 1-2).
Extremists like Anders Behring Brivik and the El Paso shooter often post manifestos or threats online before attacks and are active in online discussion forums (Ravndal, Arango). Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealand mosque shooter of 2019, used Facebook, Twitter, and 8chan to post his intents, manifestos, and calls to action (Figure 2)(Maly). Ico Maly wrote of Tarrant, “in his manifesto, he wants to persuade other white men to become soldiers”. Surveillance is an opportunity to foil these plans before they occur, like a series of mass shootings that police and the FBI were able to stop in the two weeks after the 2019 El Paso shootings (Levin). While most thwarted attacks are due to noble civilians who report concerning posts, the role of social media in many terrorists lives presents an opportunity for increased surveillance to prevent attacks.
Figure 3 - President George W. Bush signing the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/USA-PATRIOT-Act)
“Prior to 9/11,” recounts Graves, “the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allowed the government to secretly wiretap Americans and obtain access to their electronic communications.” This was based on a judge’s decision if there is probable cause that the person purposely aided a foreign government or terrorist (Graves). The USA PATRIOT Act, signed by President Geroge W Bush after the 9/11 attacks, changed that. It allocates increased resources to law enforcement in order to catch terrorists. The name literally stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”. Title II of the act outlines all of these “enhanced surveillance procedures”, like allowing federal officers the ability to use roving wiretaps to track terrorist suspects (Pub. L. 107-56). These increased allowances may seem concerning to everyday Americans who don’t want to be “spied on”, but the government only seeks to defend citizens from threats like those outlined above. The twelfth article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects someone’s privacy, is often used as a defense to these concerns. That said, privacy from government monitoring is not exactly protected. Prashant Iyengar explained, “one of the failings of the concept of privacy... is that it doesn’t exist as a positive right, but is merely a resistive right against targeted intrusion”.
Figure 4 - Edward Snowden is a large critic of government surveillance. (https://www.axios.com/snowden-biden-told-countries-not-to-grant-asylum-50e560aa-14b0-41ad-9e6d-fe7a14ca3231.html)
“Targeted intrusion” could be interpreted to mean direct surveillance of a specific person for a specific reason, namely without a court-approved warrant. This doesn’t include mass surveillance, hence no targeting. With this rhetoric, the U.S. has grown its monitoring tools to include millions of people. Facebook, Google, and other huge corporations store months of data of their users, often which are available publicly or through a subpoena. “Before 2013 if you said there is a system watching everything you do, the government is collecting records of every phone call in the United States, even for those people who are not suspected of any crime, it was a conspiracy…” explains Edward Snowden, the famed CIA contractor turned whistleblower, “[in] the world after 2013, we know that this is happening” (Snowden Interview, 13:45). Private information such as text messages and calls are able to be screened for information pertaining to violent crimes against the public (Levinson-Waldman). In recent years, the huge increase in encryption of wireless communications has limited these abilities, but not halted them, as monitoring techniques continue to develop. Surveillance continues to grow as a powerful tool used not only in the US, but around the world.
Figure 5 - Gary Margolis, Social Sentinel’s CEO. Social Sentinel is contracted by schools for monitoring and surveillance in order to detect possible school shootings. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/21/social-sentinel-monitors-social-media-threats/14390113/)
Surveillance is a strong tool around the world, but “more often than not, law enforcement officers are doing their work manually” (Mateescu, 3). With such a huge amount of information published every minute, and the presence of sarcasm and millennial humor, it can be difficult for artificial intelligence to distinguish between a legitimate threat and a joke. This is why, more often than not, attacks are stopped by random civilians reporting concerning online activity. That said, democratic governments and private companies alike are still working to use AI to scan the Internet for threatening messages. For example, in the US, the Vermont company Social Sentinel works with schools to survey students’ and locals’ social media activity for threats using algorithms that search for violent keywords and alert the proper channels upon a match to a threat. “We’re a carbon monoxide detector,” said Gary Margolis, Social Sentinel's CEO (Leibowitz). One issue with these types of systems is the sheer amount of data that must be vetted. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime explicitly delineates quantity from quality, explaining that the quality of the surveillance materials and its analysis is the most important aspect of catching terrorists (UNODC).
Figure X - Smart cities are a concept to increase societal well being, education, and surveillance. (https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/smart-city)
Countries are finding new ways to monitor the Internet for threats without wasting resources on invaluable queries, because “the free world realizes that terror is not limited to the Middle East or Asia, but spreads all over” (Gross, 1). The reality is that countries need to develop their technology quickly to keep up with the growing threat of terrorism and domestic attacks. Kunkle explains that the “trend of using social media as a learning platform to grow technical capabilities is creating new ways for homegrown jihadists to harness skills”, and launch more frequent and deadly attacks (Kunkle, 3). Emerging technologies are growing, such as the Smart City framework that seeks to assist in daily life and prevent crime in large cities. Wide-spread surveillance like this can run into many issues, like “the potential for any gathered information to be too intrusive or extensive in nature” (UNODC). IoT technology and the ability to monitor not only written words on public forums, but locations, spending habits, and more can result in two things: catching terrorists and violating people’s right to privacy.
Figure X - Metadata is often captured by government surveillance when content can’t be. This includes locations, time stamps, and the people sending the communication. (https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/metadata.html)
Suffice to say, there are a lot of critics of governmental surveillance. Edward Snowden, as mentioned previously, is a huge critic, even saying, “these programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power” (Snowden). While Snowden fails to recognize the level of protection that surveillance offers in the US, he still seeks asylum in Russia, which is a highly monitored country with extreme human rights violations. Lyon contradicts Snowden, saying, “sheer social control is seldom a motivation for installing surveillance systems even though that may be an unintended or secondary consequence of their deployment” (Lyon, 673). Many critics, including Snowden, are also outraged that even if the government isn’t viewing or collecting the contents of communications, it is common practice to collect metadata of communications, like timestamps and locations. The UN even recognizes a 2017 poll found that 75% of U.S. adults “opposed sharing their metadata with the intelligence agency to help thwart terrorist plots” (UNODC). People like Snowden use the media to build opposing cases to surveillance based on exaggerations and the failure to recognize the limits of the constitution and how much surveillance can protect civilians.
Figure X - Chinese surveillance is some of the most strict in the world. (https://boingboing.net/2017/05/30/spy-and-retain.html)
Despite all of this, surveillance is obviously going to continue to grow and reach more individuals. People of the western world look on places like China and North Korea with pity and fear of the grasp of their surveillance systems. The U.S. and most of Europe have safeguards in place, while also developing their monitoring techniques in the face of terrorism. A European court explained that “whatever system of surveillance is adopted, there exist adequate and effective guarantees against abuse” (ODIHR, 202). And these systems are not new. “They are all devices and systems with a track record. By and large they extend [or] enhance” current technology, explains Lyon (672). Not much is known about current surveillance techniques in the US, but legislature like the USA Freedom Act continue to extend the life and scope of these measures even in the face of human rights concerns and developing technology.
Figure X - ISIS uses social media as one of their largest recruitment methods (https://www.wsj.com/articles/blacklisted-terrorism-financiers-still-active-on-social-media-1461556861)
“Today, terrorist groups are recruiting, inspiring, and guiding global strategies not just by Internet operations,” explains Kunkle, “but through an organized, steady infusion of propaganda videos and call-to-action messages circulated via social media platforms, such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter” (Kunkle, 1). The Internet is a powerful tool that allows for interconnection of terrorists, recruitment of new extremists, and the ability to catch these criminals before they act. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 increased measures to allow more surveillance in order to stop terrorist attacks, and the 2015 USA Freedom Act extended these measures. It’s a fact that terrorists use social media to recruit. It’s a fact that extremists often post their plans or manifestos online prior to action. It’s a fact that increased surveillance can prevent these attacks.
References
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