Big Data, Big Brother and Donald Sterling

This week I read an article about a Princeton sociology professor, Janet Vertesi, who tried to hide the fact that she was pregnant from those who use 'big data', which sounds really scary but is really just a silly neologism for an old concept - trawling databases to find correlations that are useful to marketing people, researchers, intelligence agencies and the like. This woman seemed to be most concerned about marketers targeting her with product offers, but that is not something that particularly worries me. The worst that can result from receiving emails or telephone calls from people trying to sell you things is that you buy something.

The real concern is not big data but Big Brother, such as when Vertesi's husband tried to buy $500 worth of Amazon gift vouchers on her behalf and was told the transaction would be reported to the authorities. I am aware that in New Zealand any financial transaction of more than $10,000 is required to be reported to government under the AML-CFT (Anti-Money Laundering - Counter-Financing of Terrorism) laws and I understand this is the same in most Western countries, but obviously in America the threshold is now so low it covers transactions that are the equivalent of a modestly-priced suit of clothing or a good restaurant dinner.

Why would the government be interested in such trivial transactions? In this case it was clearly the anonymity of the transaction that led to the government's interest. The purpose of AML-CFT laws, as the name suggests, is terrorism and money laundering, but as we know from the recent revelations of the likes of Edward Snowden the US Government has used the powers it has garnered under anti-terrorism laws for all manner of purposes. Initially the expanded purview of such laws was serious crime such as drug trafficking, but ultimately governments cannot resist using such powers for any purpose they deem fit. In the case of Kim Dotcom, we saw the full power of New Zealand's state security apparatus including our GCSB spy agency used in a case of alleged copyright infringement.

Another interesting case this week was that of Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Sterling came to our attention because his mistress released private communications in which Sterling objected to her bringing black men to Clippers' games. Clearly Sterling is a racist and, by all accounts, a sterling asshole, but as Mark Steyn points out in his blog, as bad as the comments Sterling made were, what the National Basketball Association has done to him is worse. Sterling made the comments in private and the NBA (which has fined him $2.5m and banned him from attending his own team's games for life) should have no interest in the matter. Neither should the media, especially the New Zealand media (many of which ran the story as their lead).

In the novel 1984, Winston Smith discovered that there is no freedom without privacy. If you cannot express your thoughts even to those whom you most trust without fear that you will be subject to a public witchhunt, or make a small, innocent purchase without inviting the surveillance of the authorities, then you don't have the freedom to think at all. And everything follows from that.

1984 is coming

I'm going through a George Orwell phase at the moment, rediscovering his books that I first read as a high school student. Perhaps it is the fact that I am re-reading them with an additional 30 years of experience of the world, or perhaps it is that the world has changed considerably since the first reading, but Orwell's books now resonate with a prescience that they did not back then. 1984, in particular, is scary in its parallels to life in the Western world today.

We have all heard of the comparison of Newspeak, the redacted language of the fictitious state of Oceania, with modern politically-correct language and its euphemistic elimination of any words considered to be insensitive or too permissive (e.g. "differently-abled" for disabled, "Afro-American" for Negro, etc.) But this is the least of the similarities.

The constant electronic surveillance by which Big Brother watches his subjects is reality today.  In the book the surveillance is conducted by the somewhat primitive means of two-way television sets, whereas today it is conducted much more surreptitiously by the likes of the US National Security Agency (which surely would be part of the antonymically named Ministry of Love in the book) simply by demanding all the telephone and internet records of every American be handed over for scrutiny. The fact that the NSA does this it in complete disregard of the law (as indeed did New Zealand's own Government Communications Security Bureau did in the Kim Dotcom case) is, again, portended in the book when the protanganist Winston Smith points out, "nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws".

The scariest part of the absolute totalitarianism portrayed in the book is Big Brother's ability to not only rewrite history but to recreate the "truth" by erasing any information that is contrary to its view of the world.  In New Zealand we have an obvious example of this in Treaty of Waitangi settlements for historic Maori grievances that include the government's agreement to issue an official version of the historical facts in issue that suit the claimants' version of events.  Government bureaucrats decide what history should be and then attempt to create an accepted version.  Anyone who tries to maintain a contrary version is branded a racist, just as in 1984 anyone who contradicts the official version of events is guilty of thoughtcrime.

Fortunately, we still live in a world that is at worst a very diluted version of 1984, but the trend in most Western countries is very much towards a more concentrated version of Orwell's distopia.

A Sad Day for New Zealand

Today, if Prime Minister John Key gets his way, the GCSB Amendment Bill and Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, will pass their final reading in the New Zealand Parliament and become law.  For those overseas folk who have not been following the progress of these prospective laws, they have been introduced by the Prime Minister (who is also the cabinet minister in charge of the security services) because it was discovered that our Government Communications Security Bureau (NZ's equivalent of America's NSA and Britain GCHQ), had been illegally spying on New Zealand citizens and residents.

GCSB is part of the "Five Eyes" close community of anglophone government security officials that includes USA, Britain, Canada and Australia.  We know from the revelations of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning that the United States and its intelligence allies have been circumventing their own laws by spying on their citizens without warrants or with unconstitutionally broad warrants from patsy judges.  We know, for example, that these agencies have used each other to spy on each other's citizens, thereby avoiding legal restrictions on domestic surveillance.  In the case of New Zealand, it was revealed that the GCSB was illegally spying on Kim Dotcom, a New Zealand resident, at the behest of the US authorities - as well as many other New Zealanders.  The response of our Prime Minister and Government was not to prosecute those security agency officials involved but rather to change the law to allow GCSB to spy on New Zealanders. The only oversight will be that of the Prime Minister and an official he appoints.

There is something very worrying about a government changing the law to make legal that which is has been caught doing illegally.  It completely subverts the principles of the Rule of Law and makes a mockery of the law itself.  Why would anyone have respect for the law if the government itself does not?

The Prime Minister has justified the change on two main grounds, firstly because of some vague threat from New Zealanders being trained by Al Qaeda, and secondly because he says he will apply it judiciously.  In regards to the first justification, I simply do not believe there is a credible and immediate threat to New Zealand from Al Qaeda. I am sure John Key has been told there is by US intelligence agencies but they would tell him that, wouldn't they?  In regards to the second justification, why would we trust his discretion in a matter where it is clear he knew about the law-breaking in the first place (at least in the case of Kim Dotcom)?  In any event, such grounds do not begin to justify the sort of wholesale invasion of innocent citizens' privacy we have already seen in the US and now increasingly in this country.

We live in a Westminister democracy.  The Prime Minister is accountable to Parliament, not the other way around.  These bills will pass today with a majority of one vote unless someone in the governing National Party or its allied MPs John Banks and Peter Dunne choose to vote against it.  I think it is a forlorn hope that one of them has the principles and gumption to cross the floor on the final vote.  It will be a sad day for New Zealand if none of them does.

NZ Government Joins the Paranoids

I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded” ~ Edward Snowden

In my last post I wrote about the death of free speech and privacy in America.  This post is about the same thing happening in New Zealand.

New Zealand has always been a relatively free country, at least in terms of political and social liberties.  We were one of the first countries to give women the vote, we treated our conscientious objectors reasonably during the world wars, we decriminalised homosexuality before most other Western nations and from time to time we have tolerated a fair amount of political dissent with equanimity.  We have been relatively immune to the paranoia about national security that has infected America and other major Western nations since 9/11, an infection that has led to an unparalleled and unconstitutional expansion of government powers and made every petty bureaucrat and policeman believe he has a mandate to act like a school yard bully. Unfortunately the New Zealand Government finally has been infected with this craziness and is set to expand the powers of its Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to include surveillance of New Zealand citizens.

The GCSB Amendment Bill is being enacted because the Bureau was found to have acted illegally in monitoring the communications of Kim Dotcom, a New Zealand resident.  The Government's response to this crime was not to prosecute those responsible in the GCSB but rather to make what they were doing legal.  The new Bill allows the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders not only for matters of national security but also for the "international relations and well-being of New Zealand" and the "economic well-being of New Zealand." Furthermore, it allows the GCSB to do so on behalf of any other NZ Government agency or any "public authority (whether in New Zealand or overseas)" or "any other entity authorised by the Minister [in charge of the agency]". This is a hugely broad mandate and, given that the GCSB has already proven it will interpret the law to the point of breaking it, I think it is safe to assume it will be following the Americans' practice of monitoring all domestic and international communications that passes through any NZ telecommunications network. The only other person involved in reviewing such warrants (and only in the case of domestic surveillance) is the Commissioner of Security Warrants, a bureaucrat appointed by the Government.

I have heard commentators from both the political left and right say that if you have nothing to fear if you are innocent, but that misses the whole point.   The fact that some people commit crimes is not a reason to assume everyone does and that all of us should be watched and listened upon by the government.  Such is the culture of the former Soviet Union and Communist East Germany and that prevails in North Korea today.  As US historian and political commentator Dan Carlin said in a recent podcast on the subject, the reason we have our toilets in the bathroom rather than the living room is because we expect privacy when we go to the toilet.  It is not just a personal freedom but requisite of self-respect to go to the bathroom in private. Prisoners are often denied this right for the very reasons that it emphasises their loss of freedom and destroys their self-respect.

We shouldn't have to justify our right to privacy, whether it is the privacy of going to the toilet or the privacy of our communications.  The government derives its just powers from the people, not the reverse.  It is not the legitimate role of the state to know our every move, conversation, opinion or whether we are having an affair with our best friend's wife.  Until and unless the state has probable cause that we have committed, or will imminently commit, a serious crime, it has no business invading our privacy.  And to have any meaning, 'probable cause' must be assessed by an independent judicial authority, not the bureaucrat carrying out the invasion of privacy or the prime minister authorising it.  The process of issuing such warrants and ultimately the warrants themselves should be open to public scrutiny.

The GCSB Amendment Bill is an unnecessary and imprudent expansion of the surveillance powers of the state in this country.  Like Edward Snowden, I do not want to live in a world where everything I say or do is recorded by government bureaucrats.  I thought New Zealand was relatively immune to the madness that has infected the rest of the world.  I'm ashamed and a little frightened to discover I was wrong.