How Is Big Brother Watching Us Media Essay

How Is good-looking Brother Watching Us Media EssayBig Brother is a fictional character in George Orwells dystopian saucy Nineteen Eighty-Four, which tells the story of one mans attempt to rebel against the totalitarian republic in which he lives. In the society that Orwell describes, everybody lives under complete 24 hour surveillance by the governing authorities. Since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the vocalise Big Brother has entered the English language, to describe both attempts by giving medications to drug ab habituate up deal surveillance.1The main surveillance tool described in Orwells legend is the imaginary telescreen, a cross between a television and a security camera2, and in the past decade growing comparisons brook been drawn between the imaginary telescreen and the meshwork-connected personal computer that is in numerous a(prenominal) groundbreaking homes.The purpose of this sample is to investigate the mass surveillance of Internet communi cations carried verboten by western sandwich governments today, and the technologies utilize to ingest out that surveillance. The essay bequeath first look at the flow rate privacy landscape in the regular army, the European Union, and the UK, in terms of policies and faithfulnessmaking. Then it go away discuss whatever of the around interesting practiced methods utilise to carry out mass Internet communications surveillance.The terrorist attacks on New Yorks human race Trade Centre, of September 11th 2001, heralded the dawn of a tonic global political era. Following those atrocities and subsequent attacks in Egypt, the unify Kingdom, Spain, Bali, Russia, Morocco, and Saudi-Arabian Arabia, governments around the world perk up responded by tightening existing legislation and creating new anti-terror laws. Many of the countries that diverged their laws to combat terrorist threats also increased the powers of their law enforcement and matter security organisations t o perform communications surveillance and carry out electronic info search and seizure.The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing impound Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism roleplay of 2001, more unremarkably known as The Patriot Act, was signed into law less than vii weeks afterward the Twin Towers attacks. The Act is organised into ten titles, including Title II Enhanced Surveillance Procedures, and Title IX Improved intelligence. The Patriot Act, which was Americas legislative response to the September 11th attacks, hugely increased Ameri sack up law enforcement and national security serves authority both in the USA and abroad. The Patriot Act strengthened immigration, banking, and money laundering laws. The Patriot Act also amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which includes subchapters screening electronic surveillance and trap and trace devices (used to capture non-content information regarding electronic communicati on). FISA was also expanded by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism legal profession Act of 2004.3In July of 2002 the European Union passed the Directive on confidentialness and electronic Communications4. This directive was amended in 2005 by the Electronic communications personal information protection rules and availability of traffic data for anti-terrorism purposes directive.5These directives will lead to European telecom firms being required to computer memory data regarding the clock time and duration of solely fixed line, internet, and mobile speech sound c completelys, the location of mobile telephone calls, and details of all internet connections and electronic mail messages (although e-mail content is non recorded). The UK government was the prime mover in lobbying for this directive, stating that data was the golden thread in terrorist investigations.6We have seen then that current privacy landscape has been heavily influenced by the changing global political situation with specific reference to global terrorism. We know that legislation exists that allows western governments to carry out mass surveillance, nevertheless what do they actually do and how do they do it? Mass surveillance can take numerous forms, including physical surveillance in the form of indistinguishability systems, audio, video, RFID and satellite surveillance. entropy surveillance can also be used in the areas of electronic commerce and public records.7For the purpose of this essay we will look specifically at some of the most interesting technologies (allegedly) used by government organisations to carry out mass surveillance of Internet communications.One of the most infamous alleged mass electronic communication surveillance technologies is ECHELON, a top-secret Anglo-American collaboration tasked with gathering signals intelligence around the world. Although its creation is free officially denied the European Parliament commissioned a score in 2001 entitled on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)8. They were sufficiently convinced of ECHELONs capabilities to recommend that European citizens and businesses should routinely encrypt their communications in order to maintain privacy9.The imagination of the ECHELON network was supposedly agreed between London and Washington as far back as 1948, although its existence was non brought to public attendance until the publication of New Statesman article in 1988. ECHELONs capabilities are the face of much debate some estimates herald that it can sift through and through 90% of Internet traffic, though the European Union found that the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive. The ironware used to collect the information also remains something of a mystery, with some sources claiming that ECHELON controls over one hundred satellites and dozens of ground based earreach st ations. Others point out that very little (10111213The alleged widespread use of packet sniffing systems first came to light during congressional testimony in April 2000, when the FBI was coerce to admit the existence of its Carnivore system, so called for its ability to get to the meat of intercepted emails14. Carnivore was later revealed to have grown from an earlier FBI project called Omnivore, reportedly began in February 1997 but Omnivore itself probably grew from an even earlier project that still remains secret. Carnivore could be used in conjunction with two other pieces of computer software, called Packeteer and CoolMiner, the three in concert being known by the FBI as the DragonWare suite15. Carnivore was reportedly used to sift through the data of ISPs following the 9/11 outrages, although by this time it had been renamed to DCS1000 following adverse publicity16. It is generally thought that, if Carnivore was used at this time, it was coming to the end of its useful li fe as the FBI go onto commercially available software, probably the NarusInsight suite17.Narus is an American company that describes itself as a leader in providing the real-time traffic insight requisite to profitably manage, secure and deliver Services over IP. However, Narus gained notoriety after its STA 6400 system was named in the Room 641A scandal18. In May 2006 fling Klein, a former ATT technician, released statements alleging that he had discovered an illegal intercept facility, operated by the NSA, in room 641A of the ATT building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco19. Mr Klein alleged that in 2003 ATT construct secret rooms in its premises in various American cities to house computer systems capable of allowing the American government to tap into ATTs WorldNet service and the entire Internet. Mr Klein stated in his testimony It appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet, whether that be p eoples e-mail, Web surfing or any other data. USA Today later claimed that after 9/11, the NSA asked the super American telecommunications companies for access to their call records, and that at least the three largest, ATT, Verizon, and BellSouth, had agreed. Although not listening to, or recording, the content of the calls, the NSA was allegedly tracking call data in order to analyse patterns for suspicious activity. The story alleged that the NSAs aim was to create a database of every call ever made wrong America20.Although the nature of the governmental mass communications surveillance heart and soul that many of the claims made are alleged rather than fact, it is certain that mass Internet communications surveillance does take place. However, anyone who is familiar with modern cryptograph might ask What is the point? After all, easily available software such as PGP is described by security expert Bruce Schneier as the closest youre likely to get to military-grade encryptio n21. Wouldnt any intelligent lawbreaker, specially an international terrorist plotting some outrage, simply encrypt their communications using a good privacy tool, such as PGP, and a 128-bit key (the maximum size allowed by US Government export policy)? According to pass judgment mathematical theory the computing power required to try all possible 128-bit keys in a brute force attack on an asymmetric key encryption algorithms is not all impossible, but will remain so for the foreseeable future22. Of course, in fact on average only half of those keys would be tried before the set up one is found, but again any terrorist or criminal could use a key size of 256-bits or even larger.Such arguments have led to much speculation, on the Internet especially, as to the NSAs ability to crack asymmetric keys. In particular, the hypothetical hardware devices TWINKLE and TWIRL, proposed by Adi Shamir of the Weizmann install of Science, would enable the factorisation of 1024-bit numbers in o ne year, if they were built2324. Rumours of the existence of such machines are fanned by reports that the coupled States has broken modern ciphers used by, amongst others, the Iranian intelligence service25. Although the European parliament report on ECHELON recommended that organisations and individuals use encryption to guard their communications against electronic eavesdropping26, the report also led to the establishment of SECOQC27, an organisation working for the Development of a Global Network for Secure Communication based on Quantum Cryptography. This seems to raise that the European Union does not see conventional cryptography as the dissolver to secure communication, at least in the future.So, in conclusion, it seems that the answer to the question Is Big Brother Watching Us, is quite simply yes. more pressingly, should we be worried about this mass surveillance, or are our governments only interested in protecting us from attacks such as those that shock the world on September 11th 2001? Few people can argue that much of the legislative changes mentioned in the first part of this essay will make it more difficult for large-scale terror organisations to function. However, many of those new policies and laws also affect privacy and civil liberties. In the United Kingdom, for example, the threat of terrorism has been used to justify the introduction of national identity cards28, even though the home secretary at the time of the London bombings, which killed more than 50 people in July 2005, admitted that I.D. cards would not have prevented them.29.Opponents of such laws argue that reduced authorisation requirements often ruin due process. At the start of this year Britains Internet Service Providers friendship (Ispa) singled out the UK for its role in pushing for Europe-wide data retention laws.30On the 10th of January 2006, then Home Secretary Charles Clark stated Agreement on retaining communications data places a vital tool against terrorism a nd effective crime in the hands of law enforcement agencies across Europe. However, the UK government had earlier proposed this policy in 2000 (over a year before the twin towers attacks) and at the time had been accused of deceiving the public over their proposals and of duplicity for lobbying for the law change in Europe, yet publicly denying that it was seeking such sweeping powers.31The United Kingdom is widely regarded as the Western democracy that subjects its citizens to the most surveillance.32In a graphic published by the Daily Telegraph on November 2, 2006, showing Privacy Internationals bes of privacy protection around the world, Britain is described as the worst-performing western democracy. In fact we manage to reach the worst ranking available, classing the UK as an endemic surveillance society. We share this dubious honour with Russia, China, and Malaysia, and achieve a worst countries ranking in no less than 6 out of thirteen invasive national practices.33Recent history has shown us that can and do abuse human rights. Although there is a agnize and present need to fight terrorism we must have remnant and control at the same time to ensure that democratic and legal due process is not weakened.