NSA On My Mind

I remember 1968. I was living near Chicago at the time and watched the Democratic National Convention on our new Zenith black-and-white TV. If you are old enough to remember that time, you might still have images in your minds about the Hippies and the Hard-hats, the war, the protesters, and the police.

 

Imagine you are there right now in the midst of it all. Then imagine that in the front, Richard Nixon stands up to address the crowd and says: “You will all be given a device that you are required to wear at all times. This device will track your every movement to within 32 feet of your actual location. It will record every communication, message, and purchase. And if you look up any information, computers will track your every search, and government analysts and marketing professionals will track your every move and make decisions about what you can see and what you should buy.”

 

“And best of all, you will stand in line for hours – even overnight – just for the privilege of being one of the first to purchase this device.”

What do you think would happen next? Pandemonium? Riots? Or subservience?

 

Forthy-five years later, the Smart Phone is all the rage and tracking your every move is exactly what it is designed to do. Yet, this should not come as a great surprise. We have known for years that devices on the Internet have been tracking searches, purchases, and such; and the massive amounts of data gathered is used to customize marketing, guide political campaigns, and determine what kinds of foods you like. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) monitors Google searches to determine where viral outbreaks are occurring – seriously. And amazingly, people seem to be willing to share their most intimate thoughts on a variety of social media. In Web Design, we call this “folksonomy” where the actions of the “folks” are monitored to make predictions (using analytics) about what the “folks” are likely to do next.

 

So, it should be no surprise that the federal agencies assigned to provide our protection, would use the very same tool for capturing terrorists that marketing people have been using to capture sales. In fact, it is surprising that people are surprised. And of you are concerned about the loss of your civil liberties, forget about it. Take one look at your cell phone and realize our civil liberties were not taken from us – we purchased the product that gave them away.

 

Thus, when one considers the impact of agencies like the NSA purchasing hacker tools on the black market, one has to wonder “do the ends really justify the means”? After all, the tools were used to catch child pornographers. Today, young girls are safe because of it. Think like this: if the NSA is mandated to provide security, and we are in a time of limited budget and staff. So, if a tool is needed one basically has two choices: build it or buy it. Building it would be expensive and maybe outside of the skill sets of your team. And, if you buy it, well, you won’t find many good hacking tools at Office Depot.

What would you do?