Thank You, Edward Snowden

Six and a half years after the Snowden leaks, what has changed?

In terms of USIC secret dragnet collection and abuses enabled by same, not much. But in terms of citizen awareness, quite a lot! See for example:

eff.org
Fancy New Terms, Same Old Backdoors: The Encryption Debate in 2019
Joe Mullin
26 Dec 2019

> Almost every week, we hear about another corporate data breach or government attack on privacy. For anyone who wants real privacy online, encryption is the essential component. Governments around the world keep trying to break encryption, seeking to enhance the power of their law enforcement agencies. They’ve tried for years to require companies to build backdoors into encrypted software and devices, which would enable them to listen in on potentially any digital conversation. The FBI has coined a phrase, “going dark,” that it has used since the late '90s to describe their “problem”—the lack of an omnipresent, all-powerful surveillance tool.

eff.org
Surveillance Self-Defense: Year in Review 2019
Lindsay Oliver
1 Jan 2020

> Here at EFF, we maintain a repository of self-help resources on circumventing surveillance across a variety of different platforms, devices, and threat models. We call it Surveillance Self-Defense, or SSD for short. SSD covers myriad topics, and is broken up into four main sections:...

The biggest question begged by the 2013 leaks has always been: just how does the USG plan to use the data gathered by the dragnet?

The answer? "Pre-crime".

Let me explain. Even before 9/11, the US National Labs (in particular, Los Alamos and its partner, Sante Fe Institute) were quietly crafting a system of sophisticated population suasion and control which in some ways goes far beyond China's horrifying "social credit" system, and which unlike the Chinese system of open intimidation and retaliation against anyone who "sticks out" or diverges from government approved opinions or behavior, operates in deep secrecy, but which is no less invasive or anti-democratic.

The US population control system operates iteratively, repeatedly stepping through four stages:

Step One: gather up all the "data exhaust" emitted by every US resident, pulling in everything held on each person in literally hundreds of government and corporate databases--- banking records, financial transactions, medical files, educational records, travel itineraries, rental histories, encounters with law enforcement, emails, text messages, web-browsing logs, search histories, and more, and place the data in enormous data warehouses.

Step Two: apply machine learning techniques adapted to Big Data warehouses to develop "pattern of life" profiles for each resident.

Step Three: feed these pattern of life profiles into complicated super-computer models which attempt to model the individual behavior of every resident of the one hundred largest US cities, together with relations with family, friends, employers, and government agencies (such as the police). To get an idea of the level of detail, the modelers want to know not only which school the kids attend, but the exact route the parents take when they drop their kids off at school. They want to know not only whether you keep a dog, but when and where you walk the dog. The models also incorporate alternative government actions, running from PSAs to specific actions targeting prominent opposition figures.

Step Four: run the computer model and evaluate some measure of how "good" the outcome is for the government, where desired outcomes might range from more tax revenue to a decreased attendance at May Day parades. Now change some government action and run the model again. Repeat until the government's "utility function" has been optimized. Advise USG officials on what policies to adopt, what course of action to take, etc, based upon the modeling results.

This kind of modeling has been extensively applied to prosecute the War on Terror in countries such as Iraq. The results there have not been particularly favorable to the USG--- the government of Iran, not USG, seems to have been the primary beneficiary of USG's failed attempts to build nations in the Middle East, an outcome which may have played some role in Drump's decision to initiate a war with Iran.

But the vision of quietly manipulating American voters/consumers/taxpayers into acting against their own best interests in order to advance the interests of the socioeconomic/political elite is so enticing that the US "Deep State" continues to develop these social control systems, and unfortunately for the world at large, companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft (all of which have been major contractors for this kind of work), have been enthusiastically marketing similarly sophisticated social control systems to foreign governments.

While the US social control program has been operating under great secrecy, some of the LANL scientists who have been involved in such detailed population modeling are beginning to speak openly to "friendly" reporters, at least about some seemingly "benevolent" applications of their "suasion"-enabling supercomputing models. For example:

https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-know-how-youll-respond-to-nuclea…
Scientists Know How You’ll Respond to Nuclear War—and They Have a Plan
Using data from smartphones, satellites, remote sensors, and census surveys, modelers can create synthetic populations—and watch what they do in a disaster.
Megan Molteni
13 Fed 2018

I need to explain one other point you might notice if you read the Wired story (I hope you will!): LANL scientists are very proud of a modeling innovation they call "synthetic populations". Basically, this means that the above outline is supplemented with an intermediate computation:

Step Two-and-a-Half: use the pattern of life data describing each person to construct synthetic populations of imaginary people who exist only in the computer, such that the synthetic populations of the modeled cities behave, statistically, exactly the same way (movements, relationships, transactions) as the real people. Then use the pattern of life data of the imaginary people for the model runs, not the pattern of life data on the real people.

Cute. But make no mistake, when NCTC or FBI--- which was the agency which was always the most enthusiastic about this kind of social control system, even before 9/11--- get their modeling results, they insist upon using the pattern of life data on real people--- We, The People--- not the imaginary people who exist only in the computer simulation.

What can we do? The very first thing you can do right this minute is to start reducing your emission of data exhaust, by using Tor Browser for all your internet activities. That won't stop the modelers in their tracks, but it will at least send a strong signal that you care about protecting personal privacy, and further, about protecting democracy itself.

Are we to be The People, or the Pawns? That is the question.