PRISM
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When Obama said last week "no one is listening to your calls" he was parsing his message. He has emphasized that the NSA doesn't listen in on domestic US calls without a warrant from FISA. But no one has denied that the NSA is being allowed to indiscriminately spy on foreign electronic communictions. All the responses by US officials have treated targeting of foreigners as fair game. That includes every Canadian with a facebook, skype, or gmail account. (The latest leaks reported by the Guardian provide new troubling details and cast doubt on Obama's defence.)
With an open admission of mass espionage targeting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, I think it's the duty of our elected officials to tell the US government at the very least that Canada does not consent. Indeed, the admission could violate treaties and agreements held between our governments. For example, the WTO treaty TRIPS on intellectual property.
Shouldn't this case be made to our MPs and MLAs? Shouldn't we identify what are the legal implications of this admission for the various agreements between Canada and the US?
Why is this on-topic for this list? One month after Obama issued an open data directive, it is revealed that he believes the spirit of open data should be applied to the private communications of civilians. Incidents like this give fodder to those who would argue against open government. In one month, the slippery slope became a precipice. That is why open data supporters should lead the way in drawing the lines of right and wrong on opening information.
Ted
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>it is revealed that he believes the spirit of open data should be applied to the private communications of civilians
I do not see any connection between Prism and the spirit of Open Data. -Glen Newton On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Ted Strauss <[hidden email]> wrote: > When Obama said last week "no one is listening to your calls" he was > parsing his message. He has emphasized that the NSA doesn't listen > in on domestic US calls without a warrant from FISA. But no one has denied > that the NSA is being allowed to indiscriminately spy on foreign electronic > communictions. All the responses by US officials have treated targeting of > foreigners as fair game. That includes every Canadian with a facebook, > skype, or gmail account. (The latest leaks reported by the Guardian provide > new troubling details and cast doubt on Obama's defence.) > > With an open admission of mass espionage targeting hundreds of millions of > people worldwide, I think it's the duty of our elected officials to tell the > US government at the very least that Canada does not consent. Indeed, the > admission could violate treaties and agreements held between our > governments. For example, the WTO treaty TRIPS on intellectual property. > > Shouldn't this case be made to our MPs and MLAs? > Shouldn't we identify what are the legal implications of this admission for > the various agreements between Canada and the US? > > Why is this on-topic for this list? > One month after Obama issued an open data directive, it is revealed that he > believes the spirit of open data should be applied to the private > communications of civilians. Incidents like this give fodder to those who > would argue against open government. In one month, the slippery slope became > a precipice. That is why open data supporters should lead the way in drawing > the lines of right and wrong on opening information. > > Ted > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss -- - http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/ - _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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Glen, Here is the connection I see between Obama issuing an Open Data directive and the exposure of PRISM. Open data is commonly used by politicians as a way to sell themselves as promoters of transparency, accountability, and technical sophistication in government. If their policies end up failing to live up to their promises, then it does harm to pursuit of openness, because it turns into one more corruptible buzz word that can be used for political ends. Tracy's commentary to the CBC is an example of this line of critique.
The Obama open data directive touts the US commitment to open principles, incuding respect for individual privacy. In the memorandum, the word privacy is used 22 times, as here (p.9): "Strengthen measures to ensure that privacy and confidentiality are fully protected and that data are properly secured"
The revelations about PRISM seriously undermine the administration's credibility with respect to valuing individual privacy, since they are intercepting private communcations of people and using them in untold ways. This contradicts the aims set out in the open data directive, and in turn undermines those principles.
If a tabacco company set up a hospital to treat lung cancer, would you go to that hospital? Would you trust the research they did? -- I have posted my original message to odx.io, in case this topic is not right for this list.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Glen Newton <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Ted Strauss [2013-06-21T14:13]:
> The revelations about PRISM seriously undermine the administration's credibility with respect to valuing individual privacy, since they are intercepting private communcations of people and using them in untold ways. This contradicts the aims set out in the open data directive, and in turn undermines those principles. This one is juicy too http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa -- Karl Dubost http://www.la-grange.net/karl/ _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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Ted;
It is not that this is not a topic of interest to open data, and there is a need for critical linkages to be made and people need to be cognizant of the issue, which many on this list are, it is just that open data is about access to public data, and this issue is about access to private citizen data which open data is not advocating for. Open government on the other hand, is about transparency, FOI, disclosure and to some extent open data, but open gov is law and policy, not completely, but mostly, and open gov tangentially deals with this. There are groups who specialize on the topic of government surveillance and technology democracy watch dogs, who do have this issue as their area of action.
Folks like Canadian Internet Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), The Centre for Law and Democracy (mostly open gov), and the Munk Centre for International Studies (http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/), Ronald Deibert (http://deibert.citizenlab.org/), Michael Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/62/128/) and faculty at the Centre for Technology Law, Society and Policy (http://www.techlaw.uottawa.ca/en/programs/technology-law/home.html), and Quebec and Canada experts that some of you may want to add to this list, are much better equipped at dealing with this issue. You can find faculty scattered here and there who are surveillance experts (http://www.sscqueens.org/projects/the-new-transparency).
Other institutions that are doing some work here, and are our advocates, are the Information and Privacy Commissioners Ann Cavoukian ( see privacy by design http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/Home-Page/ and see resources, esp. the discussion papers - http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/resources/?orderTypeOR=&legislationOR=&subjectOR=&topicOR=&resourceTypeOR=&PHIPAIndices=&FIPPAIndices=&MFIPPAIndices=&publishedFrom=&publishedTo=&orderNum=&keywords=&origKeywords=&pageNum=1&pageSize=10&order=0&classificationTypeOR=&resourceType=4&classificationType=0&orderType=0&subjectAND=&topicAND=§ionAND=&onlyJudicialReviews=False&refineTrail=resourceType*%5e_4%5e_*Discussion+Papers_*%5e&SEARCHTYPE=2) also, see reports and publications here (http://www.priv.gc.ca/information/index_e.asp).
This also falls into the realm of 'big data' and the talk I have seen so far in this area is about managing privacy in social media, and managing your vices with cash and offline if you do not want to be watched. In this space, from what I have been exposed to so far, there seems to be a worry about corporations mining public social media feeds. At the moment the mining of social media is being done by about 200+ companies worldwide and the dineros are in the development of effective algorithms you can repurpose for your clients (e.g. Target, etc,.) to get to know you, find you and sell to you. The state is getting interested in the topic of big data in areas of public health and so on and of course, so is science but less so than the science of data talk.
The new talk of the town 'science of data,' which is showing up in universities who are starting to develop new programs, mostly pragmatic and in comp sci. These folks seem to want to develop Canadian capacity in these areas and policy and law are not always prevalent here yet. See a prelim post on the topic here (http://datalibre.ca/2013/04/29/data-science/).
Also, people like Glen (http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/) and Karl Dubost (http://www.w3.org/People/karl/) on this List, others who may be lurkers such as SCILIB (http://scilib.typepad.com/) are the experts on these and related topics (e.g., research data, semantics, electoral elections and fraud, so on).
What you did point out however, is an issue, I and some others have been discussing for close to a decade, and that is the fact that we do not have the means to all work together and to make effective linkages on a civil society side, between and amongst each other. We still primarily rely on well placed individuals and their specialized expertise and focus and there is no, for lack of a better term, 'movement' bringing it all together so that we may collectively respond and also do education, outreach and capacity building. Most academic associations dealing with data for instance do not consider these issues, remote sensing experts for example want to play with drones (un peopled vehicules) for data collection, but do not consider the privacy issues related to the fine grained geo data about you and me they are collecting.
So, how do we, with ease, address surveillance, social media data mining, open data, open access (publishing), archiving, open government, transparency, democratic deliberation and evidence based decision making? Right now, we cannot do it all, but we know, that some people and orgs are on those files, and it would be really great to have a wad of cash, that we could toss, with no strings attached, toward a meeting, and get people and groups together and work towards common approaches to all of these issues? Ultimately, we need to find a way to meet for a couple of days and really try and come up with a way to collaborate, integrate what we do and build and interoperate.
In other words, it is an open data issue, but we have limited capacity to deal with it, and we would have to, at a federal level, see if tbs and defence are surveilling us. Defence & security most likely are, tbs and the open data file folks I am not so sure. I wish, health and public health were doing better at their form of surveillance, but that is another matter. And I am not so sure that the surveillance data folks are the same as the open data folks in gov, nor are they the same politicians, and at the moment, until which time we actually see those linkages, I would be reluctant to point any fingers or suggest there is an explicit connection, even though theoretically and conceptually, these are related.
Cheers t On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Karl Dubost <[hidden email]> wrote: Ted Strauss [2013-06-21T14:13]: Tracey P. Lauriault Post Doctoral Fellow Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
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Just as a follow-up, this just came to my desktop, and it mixes big data, the science of data, and surveillance - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-are-the-nsa.
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote: Ted; Tracey P. Lauriault Post Doctoral Fellow Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
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In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
Agreed with Tracey,
Tracey P. Lauriault [2013-06-25T13:09]: > So, how do we, with ease, address surveillance, social media data mining, open data, open access (publishing), archiving, open government, transparency, democratic deliberation and evidence based decision making? Just for reframing a bit, PRISM is not new. There's a whole lexicon of terms for the surveillance society. Search for * Echelon * Magic Lantern * Minaret * Shamrock * Stellar Wind * Thinthread * Trailblazer * Turbulence * etc. etc. etc. This doesn't remove the interesting events of these last few days. Any kind of open data, in the wrong context, can be harmful at a point. Take a massive statistics about some disease and you are able to decipher the spread of a virus and its origin, investigate and possibly find a remedy for it. But you can also use that for deciphering business schemes, isolating some countries because you consider a threat to your own country, or targeting individuals with their insurance policy. Data are used, will be used in many ways. The capabilities of network and computing help quickly to determine their usage (good and bad). Good and bad here are also highly dependent on the ethics and moralistic contexts of the persons, groups using these data. So I don't think we can say that "Open data is bad" or "Open data is good". But it has definitely consequences. It's where I believe into the civil society (contrat social included), we decide together of the laws (aka the silos, the shelter) in which we want to operate with this data. What we (massive number of people) are currently realizing is that the data can be easily abused in the context of the legal silos/shelters which have been built. The state becoming rogue, destroying the trust, and operating in a context of borders (let's target foreigners, when data do not have borders). This needs to be modified. It also means in some circumstances we will need to modify our behavior, such as encryption of personal data (or if you prefer a portable camouflage for some data). Think about it a simple paper letter is becoming more inaccessible than… a mail. We need digital envelops. In the past it was the glue or the wax seal. :) -- Karl Dubost http://www.la-grange.net/karl/ _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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+1 Karl
« Le prix de la liberté, c'est la vigilance éternelle » Thomas Jefferson 1802. Je relie Michael Polanyi (1942) La logique de la liberté. Diane Le 2013-06-25 15:07, Karl Dubost a écrit : Agreed with Tracey, Tracey P. Lauriault [2013-06-25T13:09]:So, how do we, with ease, address surveillance, social media data mining, open data, open access (publishing), archiving, open government, transparency, democratic deliberation and evidence based decision making?Just for reframing a bit, PRISM is not new. There's a whole lexicon of terms for the surveillance society. Search for * Echelon * Magic Lantern * Minaret * Shamrock * Stellar Wind * Thinthread * Trailblazer * Turbulence * etc. etc. etc. This doesn't remove the interesting events of these last few days. Any kind of open data, in the wrong context, can be harmful at a point. Take a massive statistics about some disease and you are able to decipher the spread of a virus and its origin, investigate and possibly find a remedy for it. But you can also use that for deciphering business schemes, isolating some countries because you consider a threat to your own country, or targeting individuals with their insurance policy. Data are used, will be used in many ways. The capabilities of network and computing help quickly to determine their usage (good and bad). Good and bad here are also highly dependent on the ethics and moralistic contexts of the persons, groups using these data. So I don't think we can say that "Open data is bad" or "Open data is good". But it has definitely consequences. It's where I believe into the civil society (contrat social included), we decide together of the laws (aka the silos, the shelter) in which we want to operate with this data. What we (massive number of people) are currently realizing is that the data can be easily abused in the context of the legal silos/shelters which have been built. The state becoming rogue, destroying the trust, and operating in a context of borders (let's target foreigners, when data do not have borders). This needs to be modified. It also means in some circumstances we will need to modify our behavior, such as encryption of personal data (or if you prefer a portable camouflage for some data). Think about it a simple paper letter is becoming more inaccessible than… a mail. We need digital envelops. In the past it was the glue or the wax seal. :) -- Dre Diane Mercier Ph.D. Sciences de l'information Ambassadrice de l'Open Knowledge Foundation - Groupe local au Canada Profil : http://okfn.org/members/dianemercier Blogue : http://ca.okfn.org Liste de discussion : http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-ca Meetup : http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/Montreal-CA Twitter : @okfnca Chargée de projet sur les données ouvertes de la Ville de Montréal Blogue : http://dianemercier.com LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/dianemercier Skype : dianemercier Zotero : http://www.zotero.org/dmercier « Pas de données ouvertes, sans logiciel libre ni formats ouverts» _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
Tracey ...
This is a bit late to the discussion. I wanted to add you make a lot of good points and also wanted to add this link to the NYT: "Privacy and the Threat to the Self" http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/privacy-and-the-threat-to-the-self/?_r=0 I think this presents a well written philosophical view of the issue. ... ggt On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote: Ted; _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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