Maybe its because I started in the ICT business working for the telephone company. And in the 80’s when electromechanical frames still existed in LSOs, ‘stray’ pairs interconnected and not registered in the trunk database always ‘turned’ up. It was not unusual to ‘facilitate’ the government. In fact, the guy was usually an old hand and friend of almost every engineer and plant man. This was a huge private company. Unlike the situation in this region where the phone companies were, by and large, then government-owned and operated, wink wink! In less than 3 months on the job, a co-worker demonstrated that even if the number was ‘private’, its plaintext was available to us. That was the cue I needed to stop paying for ‘private listing’ for always.

Back in those days of circuit-switched traffic, overseas traffic exited and entered the US at certain points. We who were long-distance circuit engineers knew where those were. It was dead easy to monitor; that eventually became on of my jobs. And if any telephone company anywhere in the world had a switch design that originated in Bell Labs, especially those on the ESS-chassis, we could easily access that call data. We knew how to download them then to mainframe-connected direct access storage devices. By the late 80’s we were writing that data to cassette tapes. And I spent many nights running a 32-unit string, watching them pop at once and giving the ops man exactly 3 mins to clear and reload. Now with connection-less IP-enabled traffic, it is even easier to monitor, capture and store call data. Enough said of the sleight-of-hand misinformation about metadata and content, in extant case a distinction without a difference.

Here’s the thing. The Internet has spawned a host of technologies and practices that makes monitoring and collecting content, metadata or otherwise, pro forma. Google, Twitter and Facebook have built multibillion-dollar businesses where monitoring and collection of content are central to success of the business model. Sure, they have a different objective for the action. But if you know this, it is foolish to believe that governments do not have access to the same tools; these generally exist in the ‘black’ world long before they are commercialised. Failing their own farming operation and by using the powers vested in the national security state, not have access to same from your ‘friendly’ service provider. You must credit Google and the rest for fighting to reveal what the government asks of them. Goes to show, you need power to pushback against the government.

What is not generally understood is that in the US, all three branches of the government are aligned on this matter; the executive branch requests, the court grants and the legislative branch which is suppose to have oversight for the people’s sake nods in response. Here, IMO, is the best caption I’ve heard on the entire affair. It comes from John Oliver on the Daily Show responding to comments from President Obama: “No one is saying that you break any laws. We’re just saying its a little bit weird that you didn’t have to”.

Match point, set and game over.

Glad there is discussion on this topic, because this one now goes beyond “taking necessary care to safeguard one’s privacy”. The implications of all this are that:

Can the US continue to hold the moral high ground to criticise other countries ( eg China, Russia ) that have reportedly been persistent at doing this?

And if the US does not criticise, won’t it be a “free-for-all” countries to snoop into all conversations and communications under the guise of national security.

But even of more concern, is if the information so extracted falls ( not in the wrong, but ) in the “right” hands, eg the insurance company. ( There are lots of incidents – eg New Zealand – when government/public employees have, from time to time, mistakenly e/mailed personal information to the wrong people). Take the conversations quoted above for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Having privy to certain indicative information the insurer will have difficulties making a claim pay out or, conversely, be compelled to revise its premiums or underwriting.

Perhaps it’s time we all accept that the era when private information was “private” is gone.