U.S. Intelligence Official: Privacy Is a Soviet Style Bureaucracy That Knows Everything About You

Cryptogon
November 12th, 2007

In other words, anonymity is out, but trust us to implement, “a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured.”

You can already see where this is going: We don’t want to do this, but the terrorists give us no choice. Besides, you have no anonymity anyway. (Read the full transcript.)

This isn’t a question of some theoretical, far out situation in the future.

It’s built. Done. Operational:

NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite

Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance

Mark Klein on AT&T/NSA Domestic Surveillance Program: “The NSA is Getting Everything.”

The Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity

Anyone who doubts it hasn’t been paying attention.

Via: Arstechnica:

Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government, says that citizens need to change their definition of privacy to match the government’s definition, the AP reports. Appointed Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 2005, Kerr is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Kerr is one of many in the intelligence community who finds Americans’ views on privacy to be antiquated and unreasonable.

Kerr echoes the view that privacy is not synonymous with anonymity. Americans who want to see anonymity at the center of privacy policies need to give up this notion, he says. “Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture… but in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity - or the appearance of anonymity - is quickly becoming a thing of the past,” Kerr said according to a PDF transcript of his comments.

Americans need to shift their definition of privacy to center instead on the proper maintenance and protection of personal data by government and business entities. Kerr said that “privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.”