Defeating the modern Leviathan [telecom]

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Defeating the modern Leviathan of corporate-government data collection

Individuals face an unholy alliance of data-hungry private firms and public agencies. Only citizen action can win back our privacy

by Bruce Schneier

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.

If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook Inc. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our email to Google Inc, Microsoft Corp or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and Sprint Corp; and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter Inc, Facebook, LinkedIn Corp or whatever other site is hosting them.

The primary business model of the internet is built on mass surveillance, and our government's intelligence-gathering agencies have become addicted to that data. Understanding how we got here is critical to understanding how we undo the damage.

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