Complexity and Social Networks Blog

Second, there is the possibility that these data could be used for political purposes. Consider the value of tracking the communication and location of the news media and political opponents. One could see which opponents were talking with each other, which of your erstwhile allies were talking with opponents. If one suspect an opponent was having an affair, you could correlate their locations and communications with those of other people, etc.

In a political culture which is increasingly polarized, where the “other side� is increasingly demonized, it is plausible that such tactics in the future could be rationalized by those in power, if they felt that there was a sufficiently low probability of being caught.

Just the possibility of such abuses, arguably, is damaging to our discursive space—potentially undermining our news media, discouraging communications with certain people because it might provoke enhanced scrutiny from the government, etc.

The questions that this significant “dark side� to the data sweeps highlights are (1) restrictions should be placed on the government in their access to the data like these, and (2) what are the necessary governance structures to assure accountability. Currently, there are no apparent limits, and no governance structures to deal with these data sweeps. The claim of the administration is that they have dominion over any bit of data that they believe has some positive probability of being useful in fighting terrorism. This principle, however, allows no accountability, and points to no boundary between what data government should and should not “sweep up.�

While the NSA data collection has not provoked a massive popular uproar, it should be the political class (of both parties) that should be most concerned about these data sweeps, because their dirty laundry is also being swept up. Should there be abuses, it would be their lives that would come under scrutiny first. I should hope, therefore, that the political class can produce a governance structure that simultaneously assures our security, but provides sufficient limits on data mining to assure individual freedom.

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A small point that did not fit in with the above, but which I wanted to make before I left this thread. A number of places in news reports, unnamed defenders of the data sweeps have claimed that having computers monitor communications was less intrusive than having people do so. This is not necessarily so. Given a choice between two FBI agents listening to my conversations, and taping on an analog tape that would go in a file somewhere, and a digital recording, I would go with the FBI agents in a moment. The digital recording, with voice recognition, provides an easily searchable and recallable data source, which would be a lifelong intrusion, whereas the analog tape would not be easily searchable, and the memories of the agents would fade over time. This is not to say, however, that this is what the NSA is doing (but it is consistent with what information we have received about their activities).