Smartphones Have Privacy Risks.docxSmartphones Have Privacy Ri.docx

Smartphones Have Privacy Risks.docx
Smartphones Have Privacy Risks
Smartphones, 2013
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Around the turn of the century, the FBI [Federal Bureau of
Investigation] was pursuing a case against a suspect—rumored
to be Las Vegas strip-club tycoon Michael Galardi, though
documents in the case are still sealed—when it hit upon a novel
surveillance strategy.
The suspect owned a luxury car equipped with an OnStar-like
system that allowed customers to "phone home" to the
manufacturer for roadside assistance. The system included an
eavesdropping mode designed to help the police recover the
vehicle if it was stolen, but the FBI realized this same antitheft
capability could also be used to spy on the vehicle's owner.
When the bureau asked the manufacturer for help, however, the
firm (whose identity is still secret) objected. They said
switching on the device's microphone would render its other
functions—such as the ability to contact emergency personnel in
case of an accident—inoperable. A federal appeals court sided
with the company; ruling the company could not be compelled
to transform its product into a surveillance device if doing so
would interfere with a product's primary functionality.
The specifics of that 2003 ruling seem quaint today [in 2012].
The smartphones most of us now carry in our pockets can easily
be turned into surveillance and tracking devices without
impairing their primary functions. And that's not the only
privacy risk created as we shift to a mobile, cloud-based
computing world. The cloud services we use to synchronize data
between our devices increase the risk of our private data falling
prey to snooping by the government, by private hackers, or by
the cloud service provider itself. And we're packing ever more

private data onto our mobile devices, which can create big
headaches if we leave a cell phone in a taxicab.
What to do about it? In this [viewpoint], we'll explore the new
privacy threats being created as the world shifts to an
increasingly mobile, multi-device computing paradigm. Luckily,
there are steps both device makers and lawmakers can take to
shore up privacy in the mobile computing age.
Cloudy with a Chance of Snooping
Law enforcement loves cloud computing. We don't know
exactly how much information the government collects from
online service providers, but Google alone fields thousands of
requests from the US government each year for private customer
data. Other providers have been less transparent, but they
presumably experience similar request volumes.
Shifting data to a remote server makes life easier for mobile
users, but it also makes life easier for people who want to
access their data with or without permission. Data stored on
third-party servers is much more vulnerable to surreptitious
snooping not only by the government but also by hackers and
the service provider itself.
Google's new privacy policy, which allows Google to more
freely swap data among Google products, has attracted criticism
from privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information
Center. Last year, Dropbox revealed it had accidentally left
some of its users' data exposed to casual snooping for a few
hours. Sony also had trouble safeguarding the data of
PlayStation users.
A FreedomBox Future?
What can we do to avoid the privacy problems created by third-
party storage? Ars Technica talked to Eben Moglen, a law
professor at Columbia University and chairman of the Software
Freedom Law Center. He argued the only way for users to truly
safeguard their privacy is not to relinquish control of personal
information in the first place.
The best approach, Moglen argued, is for "storage and sync
service to be provided in a form which deliberately disables

computation on that data on the storage provider." Under
Moglen's preferred model, services like Amazon's S3 might help
users store their data in encrypted form, but computation using
unencrypted data would only occur on devices physically under
the control of the data's owner.
Moglen is a driving force behind the FreedomBox, a project to
build a user-friendly home server that would allow ordinary
users to provide many of the computing and communications
services currently offered by firms like Google and Facebook.
Moglen acknowledges it's a big technical challenge to make the
FreedomBox a reality. Free web servers, mail servers, content
management systems, and other software exists, but currently
requires far too much user configuration to provide a plausible
alternative to managed services for the average user.
Improvements in reliability are also needed. And even federated
social networking services like Identi.ca have failed to gain
significant traction against centralized services like Twitter and
Facebook.
But while progress has been relatively slow, Moglen believes
his model will prevail eventually. "What we're talking about is
what's going to affect the nature of humanity in the long run,"
he told us. "The important question is can we do it at all. We've
never met a problem we can't solve"—given enough time.
Fixing the Third-Party Doctrine
While Moglen and his colleagues work on a user-friendly
alternative to the cloud, users are entrusting a growing amount
of information to cloud providers. Under a legal principle called
the third-party doctrine, this data does not enjoy the same
robust Fourth Amendment protections available to data
physically controlled by a user. That means that the government
may be able to obtain access to your private Facebook posts and
even the contents of your Dropbox folder without getting a
warrant.
There have been some moves toward extending full Fourth
Amendment protections to online services. In 2010, the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that remotely

stored e-mail is protected by the Fourth Amendment. And in
January, Supreme Court justice [Sonia] Sotomayor called the
third-party doctrine "ill-suited to the digital age." In the future,
she may convince a majority of her colleagues to embrace the
Sixth Circuit's arguments. For now, data stored in the cloud
lacks full Fourth Amendment protections in most jurisdictions.
In the meantime, Congress could update federal privacy law to
give cloud services stronger statutory protections than the
constitutional minimum established by the courts. The last time
Congress rewrote electronic privacy law was in 1986.
Obviously, communication technologies have changed
dramatically in the last quarter-century. The legal categories
Congress established then don't necessarily make much sense
today.
My Phone, the Spy
Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia issued
laptops to its 2300 students in the fall of 2009. Freshman
Katarina Perich soon noticed the green light next to the camera
on her school-issued MacBook was turning on for no apparent
reason. "It was just really creepy," she told USA Today.
Perich's concerns were justified. The district eventually
admitted it had installed an antitheft system that included the
ability to remotely activate laptop cameras. The system had
been activated and thousands of pictures of students' homes
were taken and transmitted back to the district's servers. School
district officials contend the surveillance was due to a technical
glitch, and the authorities ultimately decided not to press
charges. A civil lawsuit brought by some students was settled
for $610,000.
A growing number of mobile devices have built-in cameras,
microphones, and GPS [global positioning system] sensors. This
means law enforcement agents no longer have to take the risk of
physically invading a suspect's property to install a bug or
tracking device. They can simply order whichever company is in
charge of the target device's software to modify it to enable
remote surveillance and tracking. And because most mobile

devices do not have hardwired LED indicators like those on
laptop cameras, the owners of these devices are none the wiser.
In repressive regimes, the danger of government spying is
already considered severe. Removing batteries from cell phones
is a common practice among dissidents. As the Washington Post
reported last year, "The practice has become so routine that
Western journalists sometimes begin meetings with Chinese
dissidents by flashing their batteries—a knowing nod to the
surveillance risk."
The Need for Notification
Chris Soghoian, a privacy researcher and fellow at the Open
Society Foundations, argues all device manufacturers should
follow the good example set by laptop cameras. A user-visible
LED should be hardwired to every camera, microphone, or GPS
sensor on every mobile device. Soghoian argues LEDs have
become cheap enough in bulk that the cost of adding two or
three LEDs to every mobile device would be trivial.
But LEDs cannot help against another, related privacy threat:
the use of cellular tower records to track a device's location.
This location tracking is inherent to the way cellular networks
work; your cell phone provider needs to know which cell phone
tower you're close to in order to deliver information to you. On
the other hand, cell-site location data is much less precise than
the location data collected by GPS sensors. The privacy risk is
somewhat reduced.
As with so many aspects of privacy law, the rules for law
enforcement access to cell-site location records have not been
clearly established. Some courts have ruled the government can
obtain this data without a warrant; others have disagreed.
January's GPS tracking decision at the Supreme Court suggests
that several justices are concerned about protecting location
privacy, but the high court has not ruled clearly on whether
cell-site location records are protected by the Fourth
Amendment.
Crypto
We use our smartphones to send and receive e-mail, take

photographs, store lists of contacts, access social networks, and
much more. As our mobile devices become increasingly packed
with personal information, the potential harms from losing our
phones grow accordingly....
There's a well-known solution to this problem: disk encryption.
If the data on a mobile device were properly encrypted, then a
lost or stolen device wouldn't create privacy problems. The new
owner simply wouldn't be able to access the previous owner's
data.
Unfortunately, full-disk encryption on mobile platforms is still
a work in progress. One obstacle to effective disk encryption is
the difficulty of entering a password with sufficient entropy
using a touch-screen interface. On the desktop we commonly
use passwords consisting of eight ASCII characters. But the
"bandwidth" of our fingers is reduced on a touch screen, so
smartphone password systems tend to be simpler, employing a
4-digit PIN [personal identification number] number or a
sequence of simple "swipes." Yet these systems have few
enough possible combinations—10,000 for a 4-digit PIN, for
example—that an attacker can write software to simply try all
possible combinations until he finds the right one.
Theoretically, mobile users could enter longer passwords. For
example, a 14-digit number has about as much entropy as an 8-
character alphanumeric password. But the average user is
unlikely to have the patience to enter a 14-digit password every
time she pulls out her cell phone. Soghoian tells Ars that
finding more efficient ways to enter secure passwords using a
touch screen is an "open research problem."
Still, Soghoian says smartphone vendors should at least offer
their users the option to encrypt the storage on their mobile
devices. Encryption with low-entropy passwords is better than
no encryption at all, and users who particularly care about the
privacy of their data do have the option of entering 14-digit
passwords.
Making Privacy a Priority
This isn't the first time firms pioneering a new computing

paradigm have failed to pay adequate attention to security and
privacy. For example, it took several embarrassing malware
incidents before Microsoft began taking desktop security more
seriously. It may take a series of similar privacy disasters on
mobile platforms before leading mobile vendors make security a
top priority.
The stakes are higher today than they were in the 1990s. Users
carry their phones with them everywhere, and use them for more
purposes than they used their desktop computers for a decade
ago. It would be a mistake to wait for disaster to strike before
acting. Taking proactive steps now—like supporting full-disk
encryption and adding LEDs to input devices—could avoid
major embarrassment later.
Policy makers also have work to do. The Supreme Court should
heed Justice Sotomayor's call to reconsider the third-party
doctrine. And whether or not the court extends the Fourth
Amendment to cloud services, Congress should overhaul
electronic privacy law to ensure people enjoy the same robust
privacy rights on 21st-century communications platforms as
they do for 20th-century ones.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2013 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale,
Cengage Learning.
Source Citation
Lee, Timothy B. "Smartphones Have Privacy Risks."
Smartphones. Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press,
2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "My Smartphone, the
Spy: Protecting Privacy in a Mobile Age." 2012. Opposing
Viewpoints In Context. Web. 15 Aug. 2013.
Cybercriminals Use Personal Information on Social Networking
Websites.docx
Cybercriminals Use Personal Information on Social Networking
Websites to Commit Crimes
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More than 5 million online U.S. households experienced some

type of abuse on Facebook in the past year [2010], including
virus infections, identity theft, and for a million children,
bullying, a Consumer Reports survey shows. And consumers
are at risk in myriad other ways, according to our national State
of the Net survey of 2,089 online households conducted earlier
this year [2011] by the Consumer Reports National Research
Center. Here are the details:
· Overall, online threats continue at high levels. One-third of
households we surveyed had experienced a malicious software
infection in the previous year. All told, we estimate that
malware cost consumers $2.3 billion last year and caused them
to replace 1.3 million PCs [personal computers].
· Millions of people jeopardize bank information, medical
records, and other sensitive data they store on mobile phones,
we project. Almost 30 percent in our survey who said they use
their phone in such ways didn't take precautions to secure their
phones.
· Many active Facebook users take risks that can lead to
burglaries, identity theft, and stalking. Fifteen percent had
posted their current location or travel plans, 34 percent their
full birth date, and 21 percent of those with children at home
had posted those children's names and photos. Moreover,
roughly one in five hadn't used Facebook's privacy controls,
making them more vulnerable to threats.
· Twenty-three percent of active Facebook users didn't know
some of their "friends" well enough to feel completely
comfortable about their own or their family's security or safety.
An additional 6 percent admitted to having a friend who made
them uneasy about those things. That means almost one in three
Facebook users aren't fully comfortable with all their friends.
· The persistence of Internet threats makes it important to use
security software. In our tests, we found that free anti-malware
programs should provide adequate protection for many people.
Facing Up to Facebook
If you're like some 150 million Americans, you share the details
of your life on Facebook, assuming that you and other users are

its main customers and that it's accountable to you. But Bruce
Schneier, chief security technology officer at security firm BT
Global Services, says you're not Facebook's customer. "You are
Facebook's product that they sell to their customers," he says,
referring to the network's advertisers.
With "Find us on Facebook" tags popping up in malls, on
popular TV shows, and elsewhere, Facebook has a lot of product
to sell. And with no comparable alternative service, consumers
are left as fodder for Facebook's advertisers and app
[application] developers. "You are on Facebook because
everybody else is," Schneier says. "You can say 'I don't like
Facebook, I'm going to LiveJournal,' and suddenly you're
alone."
Its position as the king of social networks has made Facebook
the custodian of arguably the nation's largest collection of
details about consumers' personal lives. "Any time you have a
party with such a large amount of data, there's reason for
concern," says Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy
for the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.
Access to Data by Outsiders
Already, use of that data by outsiders is widespread. It might
not be news that people have been fired because they posted ill-
considered status updates or photos. But job recruiters might
check Facebook to find out who people are connected to.
One recruiter told us that headhunters have used social network
data to make sure job candidates are a fit with their clients. So
if you lost out on a job because of Facebook, it might not have
been because of just one indiscretion. You might have been
rejected because an employer or recruiter found telling details
in your postings, even though such a rejection might constitute
discrimination.
Facebook posts are also widely used as evidence in divorce and
family-law cases. Randall Kessler of Kessler, Schwarz &
Solomiany, chair-elect of the American Bar Association's
family-law section, says he advises new clients to "consider a
cyber vacation."

"Facebook makes our lives so much easier as divorce lawyers,"
he adds. "Some people give it to us on a silver platter. There are
spouses who list themselves as single while they are still
married."
Lawyers and recruiters aren't alone in tapping into Facebook's
vast database. Despite the uproar last year over Facebook's
sharing of user data with some websites, the service recently
proposed allowing developers of its more than 550,000 apps to
request and obtain users' home addresses and phone numbers.
The proposal prompted howls from several members of
Congress.
Concerns About Privacy
"This information is extremely sensitive, and the policy
Facebook proposed would force users to give up this info if they
want an app," says Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who heads the
new Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.
"The potential for fraud is just too great." Franken and three
other senators noted in a letter to Facebook that a phone number
and a home address, coupled with a small fee paid to a "people
search" website, could yield enough information to complete a
credit card application in someone else's name.
Franken told us that he's particularly concerned about the
potential violation of children's privacy if Facebook implements
that policy. "Kids should not be able to give that information
away to strangers even if they wanted to."
Facebook recently began testing a program to use status updates
and other information to deliver highly targeted ads. So if you
post that you're looking for a car, you might find ads from auto
dealers peppering the screen. Some might welcome such
customization, but others might consider it an invasion of
privacy. Regardless, such plans raise questions about what else
the service hopes to do with the immense database of personal
information it controls. Consumers' concerns might be allayed if
they had more of a say in what Facebook does with their
personal information.
Facebook publishes privacy policies like other companies do,

but as a private corporation it needn't file the annual reports and
other disclosures required of publicly held firms such as
Microsoft and Google, which can provide even more
information about a company.
Whatever the company's obligations, Franken told us,
"Facebook needs to make its users' privacy a top priority."
Cengage Learning.
Source Citation
"Cybercriminals Use Personal Information on Social
Networking Websites to Commit Crimes." Cybercrime. Ed.
Louise I. Gerdes. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing
Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Online Exposure: Social Networks,
Mobile Phones, and Scams Can Threaten Your Security."
Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 15 Aug. 2013.
Edward Snowden Is Completely Wrong.docx
Edward Snowden Is Completely Wrong
National Journal, June 13, 2013
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Byline: Michael Hirsh and Sara Sorcher
Is he a hero--the most important whistle-blower in U.S. history,
as Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg called him? Or is
Edward Snowden a flat-out traitor and a very deluded young
man? The 29-year-old contractor at the center of the biggest
national security scandal in years is eloquent and impressively
intelligent, having risen from high school dropout and security
guard at the National Security Agency to uber systems
administrator at the CIA. Snowden also appears to have acted
genuinely out of conscience, because it's clear he could have
sold what he knows for quite a lot of money, taken down "the
surveillance structure in an afternoon" (as he declared in an
interview), or revealed undercover assets that might "have cost
lives. Instead, Snowden, a product of the federal government
ecosystem who grew up in the D.C. suburbs, says he has

sacrificed his own "very comfortable" life to expose what he
calls Washington's "architecture of oppression."
What's not clear is why Snowden thought that revealing the
NSA's surveillance methods would change very much in our
government or society, except to make it much harder for the
NSA, the CIA, and defense and intelligence contractors to hire
anyone like him in the future.
That process, if little else, must now change. Snowden will
likely be charged with espionage, or worse. Washington will
massively revamp its vetting procedures, especially for giant
contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, which has grown fat
on a diet of government work and appeared to hire Snowden in
Hawaii at a generous salary of $120,000 almost as an
afterthought. Contracts like the one he worked on--to help the
government analyze an overwhelming stream of data--
represented 99 percent of its revenue, most of them related to
the NSA.
Other than tightened security clearances, though, the startling
revelations of the past several days will probably alter very
little in the lives of Americans or the way the government works
in a data-driven world. That's not just because, apart from a few
outraged senators--Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark
Udall of Colorado and libertarian Republican Rand Paul of
Kentucky--almost the entire U.S. government, from the White
House to Congress to the judiciary, has come out in support of
the NSA program of collecting troves of telephone data and
personal Internet information, using the servers and
telecommunications systems of America's biggest companies. If
the mandarins of official Washington don't amend their conduct,
it's because Americans aren't asking them to.
A NEW CONCEPT OF PRIVACY
The reason may not be entirely obvious at first. In the past
decade, our very concept of privacy has changed to the point
that we're less likely to see information-sharing as a violation of
our personal liberty. In an era when our daily lives are already
networked, we have E-ZPasses that give us access to the fast

lane in exchange for keeping the government informed about
where we drive. We shop online despite knowing that the
commercial world will track our buying preferences. We share
our personal reflections and habits not only with Facebook and
Google but also (albeit sometimes inadvertently) with thousands
of online marketers who want our information. All of this means
Americans are less likely to erupt in outrage today over one
more eye on their behavior. "One thing I find amusing is the
absolute terror of Big Brother, when we've all already gone and
said, 'Cuff me,' to Little Brother," jokes John Arquilla, an
intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, Calif.
The latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll
bears this out. Americans are vaguely aware of these slowly
eroding walls of privacy, and 55 percent say they are worried
about the overall accumulation of personal information about
them "by businesses, law enforcement, government, individuals,
and other groups." The survey also found that an overwhelming
majority of Americans believe that business, government,
social-media sites, and other groups are accessing their most
personal information without their consent. Even so, for the
most part, they accept it as an unavoidable modern
phenomenon. Most younger and college-educated people--in
contrast to Snowden--take a benign view of these changes.
Despite the press treatment of the NSA story, which judging
from editorial opinion has come out largely on Snowden's side,
most Americans appear relatively unperturbed. A Pew Research
Center/Washington Post poll conducted last weekend found that
56 percent of Americans believe NSA access to the call records
of millions of Americans is an "acceptable" way for the federal
government to investigate terrorism. An even bigger majority,
62 percent, said it was more important for the government to
investigate terrorist threats than it was to safeguard personal
privacy. That explains why soft queasiness has not congealed
into hard political outrage.
Another problem for the alarmists: No evidence suggests that

the worst fears of people like Snowden have ever been realized.
In his interview with The Guardian, which broke the story along
with The Washington Post, Snowden warned that the NSA's
accumulation of personal data "increases every year consistently
by orders of magnitude to where it's getting to the point where
you don't have to have done anything wrong. You simply have
to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody."
In a state with no checks and balances, that is a possibility. But
even the American Civil Liberties Union, which has called NSA
surveillance "a stone's throw away from an Orwellian state,"
admits it knows of no cases where anything even remotely
Orwellian has happened. Nor can any opponent of NSA
surveillance point to a Kafkaesque Joseph K. who has appeared
in an American courtroom on mysterious charges trumped up
from government surveillance. Several civil-liberties advocates,
asked to cite a single case of abuse of information, all paused
for long seconds and could not cite any.
There is also great misunderstanding about how the NSA system
works and whether such abuse could even happen in the future.
It's unclear if the government will be capable of accessing and
misusing the vast array of personal data it is accumulating, as
Snowden predicts. The NSA appears primarily to use computer
algorithms to sift through its database for patterns that may be
possible clues to terrorist plots. The government says it is not
eavesdropping on our phone calls or voyeuristically reading our
e-mails. Instead, it tracks the "metadata" of phone calls--whom
we call and when, the duration of those conversations--and uses
computer algorithms to trawl its databases for phone patterns or
e-mail and search keywords that may be clues to terrorist plots.
It can also map networks by linking known operatives with
potential new suspects. If something stands out as suspicious,
agents are still required by law to obtain a court order to look
into the data they have in their storehouses. Officials must show
"probable cause" and adhere to the principle of "minimization,"
by which the government commits to reducing as much as
possible the inadvertent vacuuming up of information on

citizens instead of foreigners--the real target of the NSA's
PRISM program. The program, according to Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, has had success. He told
NBC that tracking a suspicious communication from Pakistan to
a person in Colorado allowed officials to identify a terrorist cell
in New York City that wanted to bomb its subway system in the
fall of 2009.
Indeed, the scandal is perhaps narrower in scope than it's made
out to be. "The only novel legal development that I see in that
area is the government says, 'We know there's relevant
information in there--if we don't get it now it will be gone; we
won't be able to find it when we need it. So we'll gather it now
and then we'll search it only when we have a good basis for the
search to be done,' " says Stewart Baker, who was the first
assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security
Department and is a former NSA general counsel. "The courts
are still involved. They say, 'You put it in a safe place, lock it
up, come to me when you want to search it.' If you're serious
about ways to make [counterterrorism] work and still protect
privacy, it seems like a pretty good compromise."
Baker says the government built in as many controls and
oversights as it could think of. "Two different presidents from
two different parties with very different perspectives. Two
different Intelligence committees led by two different parties. A
dozen judges chosen from among the life-appointed judiciary.
None of them thought this was legally problematic," Baker says.
"And one guy says, 'Yeah, I disagree, so I'm going to blow it
up.' If the insistence is, 'It only satisfies me if it's out in public,'
then we're not talking about intelligence-gathering. We're not
even talking about law enforcement. We're talking about
research. And I'm not sure you can run a large country in a
dangerous world just by doing open-source research."
Other advocates of the NSA operation say the sheer vastness of
the program is what helps shield citizens. "Individuals are
protected by the anonymity granted by the quantity of
information," says Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law

professor. "It's just too difficult to spy on such a vast number of
people in a way that's meaningful."
THE CULTURE OF INTRUSION
Behavioral research shows that, like the proverbial frog in the
pot of water who doesn't notice the rising temperature,
Americans have grown inured to the "culture of intrusion" in
today's world of continuous data exchange. "There are
undeniable changes in behavior we have been observing in the
past 10 years or so, with the birth and rise of social media,"
says Alessandro Acquisti, an economist at Carnegie Mellon
University who has studied the effects. "There is evidence that
people will give away personal data for very small rewards,
such as the psychological benefit of sharing with others, or even
for a discount coupon," he says. "For instance, on social media,
people quite openly talk, without containing their audience only
to their Facebook friends, about dating, eating, going out,
success, and failures--something that 10 years ago you would
have disclosed only to your direct friends."
The Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, which conducts
independent research on privacy and data collection, has found
that a relatively small number of Americans, only about 14
percent, care enough about their privacy on a consistent basis to
change their behavior to preserve it. These are the people who
will not buy a book on Amazon because they would have to
surrender information about themselves, or don't go to certain
websites if they fear they're going to be behaviorally profiled,
or won't contribute to political campaigns for the same reason.
By contrast, a substantial majority of Americans, about 63
percent, say they care about their privacy, but "there's no
evidence to suggest they're going to do anything different to
preserve it," says Larry Ponemon, who runs the institute. (Some
23 percent care so little about the issue they are known as
"privacy complacent," Ponemon says.)
People are blithe even as they discover how much their online
behavior can hurt them personally, on everything from job and
college applications to terrorist investigations. "People are

losing jobs because of things they posted on their Facebook
page," says Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the
Lexington Institute, who refuses to use Facebook or Twitter or
even conduct potentially controversial searches on Google. "I
just had a feeling all along that by the time people realized how
vulnerable they were, it would be too late. There would be too
much information about them online."
There is a difference, to be sure, between government and
private-sector abuses of privacy. "Even I recognize that it's one
thing for Google to know too much, because they aren't putting
me in jail. It's another thing for government, because they can
coerce me," says Michael Hayden, who as director of the NSA
from 1999 to 2006 was a primary mover behind the agency's
transformation from Cold War dinosaur to a post-9/11 terror-
detection leviathan with sometimes frightening technical and
legal powers. "But if we weren't doing this, there would be holy
hell to raise."
That is likely true, too. Defenders of the program say, as
Hayden does, that the government had no choice. "This is about
taping foreign telecommunications transmissions that just
happen to pass through the United States because of the way the
Internet architecture is designed," Thompson says. "It really
doesn't have anything to do with spying on Americans; it's
about spying on foreigners the easy way." At first this meant
finding the right communications hardware. The USS Jimmy
Carter, a Seawolf-class submarine, was modified to tap into the
trunk lines, but there are really only a handful of major Internet
conduits to the Middle East, Thompson says. Eventually,
someone probably said, "Jeepers, most of this traffic passes
through the U.S. anyway. Why don't we just talk to Verizon?"
Hayden admitted this, surprisingly, in an open session of the
House Intelligence Committee way back in 2000, telling the
members that this monitoring was needed to enable the NSA to
get in front of the data. No one listened right way, but after
9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the mood shifted
dramatically in favor of more aggressive surveillance. "This

agency grew up in the Cold War. We came from the world of
Enigma [the Nazi encryption device whose code was broken by
the Allies], for God's sake. There were no privacy concerns in
intercepting German communications to their submarines, or
Russian microwave transmissions to missile bases," Hayden
says today. Now, "all the data you want to go for is coexisting
with your stuff. And the trick then, the only way the NSA
succeeds, is to get enough power to be able to reach that new
data but with enough trust to know enough not to grab your
stuff even though it's whizzing right by." The demonization of
the NSA now is ironic, he says, considering that in late 2002 the
Senate Intelligence Committee (which included Wyden), in its
joint 9/11 report with the House, criticized the agency for its
"failure to address modern communications technology
aggressively" and its "cautious approach to any collection of
intelligence relating to activities in the United States."
Most Americans, based on the polls, seem willing to make the
trade-off between what President Obama called "modest
encroachments on privacy" and safety from terrorists. "There is
a lot of authoritarian overreach in American society, both from
the drug war and the war on terror," David Simon, the writer
and producer of the hit HBO shows The Wire and Treme, wrote
in his blog this week, in a scathing blast at Snowden and the
pundits who have lionized him. "But those planes really did hit
those buildings. And that bomb did indeed blow up at the finish
line of the Boston Marathon. And we really are in a continuing,
low-intensity, high-risk conflict with a diffuse, committed, and
ideologically motivated enemy. And for a moment, just imagine
how much bloviating would be wafting across our political
spectrum if, in the wake of an incident of domestic terrorism, an
American president and his administration had failed to take
full advantage of the existing telephonic data to do what is
possible to find those needles in the haystacks."
HOW WE SURRENDER PRIVACY
Every time you go online, you're a target. Advertisers are
searching for you--maybe not by name, but through your

interests and your assessed income and even your health
symptoms, all based on your search-engine terms and the
cookies deposited on your computer to watch you surf the
Internet and report back on your habits. Sites may have an
agreement with advertisers, which can target their messages to
you. And they likely sell this information to third-party brokers
who can do what they want with it.
A sweeping Wall Street Journal investigation in 2010 found that
the biggest U.S. websites have technologies tracking people
who visit their pages, sometimes upwards of 100 tools per site.
One intrusive string of code even recorded users' keystrokes and
transmitted them to a data-gathering firm for analysis. "A
digital dossier over time is built up about you by that site or
third-party service or data brokers," says Adam Thierer, senior
research fellow at the Mercatus Center's Technology Policy
Program at George Mason University. "They collect these data
profiles and utilize them to sell you or market you better
services or goods." This is what powers the free Internet we
know and love; users pay nothing or next
to nothing for services--and give up pieces of personal
information for advertisers in exchange. If you search for a
Mini Cooper on one website, you're likely to see ads elsewhere
for lightweight, fuel-efficient cars. Companies robotically
categorize users with descriptions such as "urban upscale" to
"rural NASCAR" to tailor the advertising experience, says Jim
Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute. "They'll use ZIP codes
and census data to figure out what their lifestyle profile is."
As a result of these changes, the government's very concept of
privacy has grown ever narrower and more technical. "Too
often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it's an idea
that is deeply rooted in American culture," Donald Kerr, the
principal deputy director of national intelligence, said in 2007
as Congress was busy debating new rules for government
eavesdropping. That's quickly fading into history, Kerr said.
The new version of privacy is defined by enough rules affecting
the use of data that Americans' constitutionally enumerated

rights (privacy not among them) will be safe. "Protecting
anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in
their name on Google understands that." We've already given up
so much privacy to the government, Kerr said back then, that it
can be protected only by "inspectors general, oversight
committees, and privacy boards" that have become staples of
the intelligence community.
Clapper seems to be relying on a similar concept. The United
States, he said in an interview with NBC, can put all the
communications traffic that passes through the country in a
massive metaphorical library. Presumably, the "shelves" contain
the phone numbers of Americans, the duration of their calls, and
their e-mail correspondence. "To me, collection of U.S. persons'
data would mean taking the book off the shelf, opening it up,
and reading it," Clapper said. Instead, the government is "very
precise" about which "books" it borrows from the library. "If it
is one that belongs or was put in there by an American citizen
or a U.S. person, we are under strict court supervision, and have
to get permission to actually look at that. So the notion that
we're trolling through everyone's e-mails and voyeuristically
reading them, or listening to everyone's phone calls, is on its
face absurd. We couldn't do it even if we wanted to, and I
assure you, we don't want to."
Critics say the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, designed to
guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, should
impede the government's access to personal data--even if that
information is available in the commercial sphere. "If Google
has it, that says nothing about whether the government should
have it," says Cato's Harper. "It's not reasonable to collect
information without probable cause or reasonable suspicion."
For most Americans, the reassurance that the government won't
gratuitously pursue them may well be enough. For Snowden and
his defenders, it clearly is not. In explaining his daring act, he
said he hoped to provoke a national debate about surveillance
and secrecy, and added: "The greatest fear that I have regarding
the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing

will change."
That fear is likely to be realized. Snowden offered a valuable
window into a top-secret world The Washington Post wrote
about in great detail three years ago, when it published a series
on a clandestine intelligence-industrial complex that "has
become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one
knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs,
how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many
agencies do the same work." Perhaps the country should thank
Snowden for reopening that issue, even as it prosecutes him for
what is plainly a violation of his oath of secrecy. But after the
thanks are offered, we will probably just get back to business.
Michael Hirsh and Sara Sorcher
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2013 Atlantic Media, Inc.
http://www.atlanticmedia.com/
Source Citation
Hirsh, Michael, and Sara Sorcher. "Edward Snowden Is
Completely Wrong." National Journal (2013). Opposing
Viewpoints In Context. Web. 15 Aug. 2013.
Security Requires that Civil Liberties.docx
Security Requires that Civil Liberties, Including Privacy, Not
Be Absolute
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
"There are those who once again want to implement a wall that
would place civil liberties ahead of national security and
Americans' safety."
In the following viewpoint, Elise Cooper argues that it is a
mistake to privilege civil liberties above national security.
Cooper describes a metaphorical wall built to prevent law
enforcement from sharing information with intelligence in an
attempt to protect civil liberties, including privacy. In the
interest of security, she claims, the wall was eradicated after
9/11. However, she expresses concern that a resurgence of the

wall is once again threatening national security. Cooper is a
columnist and assistant publicist.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1. According to the author, what act was passed in response to
the intelligence scandals of the mid-1970s?
2. The author expresses concern that a wall is being built by
privacy groups in what realm of possible future warfare?
3. What political entity is refusing to share passenger
information with the United States, according to Cooper?
The 9/11 attacks occurred in part because the intelligence on
terrorist dangers was suppressed as a result of a policy known
as "the wall." This policy prevented the intelligence and
prosecution sides from sharing information. On April 13, 2004,
Attorney General [John] Ashcroft told the 9/11 Commission that
the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence was
responsible for many of the failures.
The Wall Between Law Enforcement and Intelligence
FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) was brought into
existence during the [Jimmy] Carter administration in response
to the intelligence scandals of the mid-1970s because of the
assumption that the intelligence agencies acted improperly. A
set of rules was written for intelligence-gathering in the states
to make sure wiretaps and surveillance were carried out in
accordance with the law. The rules that apply to law
enforcement wiretaps were not appropriate for intelligence
wiretaps, which require more flexibility.
The idea behind FISA was that the contact between prosecutors
and intelligence wiretaps should be kept to a minimum to
prevent American liberties from being eroded. The "wall" would
keep the prosecution side and the intelligence side separate. All
that could be given to the prosecutors was a tip to start an
investigation, but not the details of the intelligence. Prior to
9/11, there were warning signs which Stewart Baker, former
assistant secretary for homeland security, called a "failure of
imagination. Frances Townsend [who spearheaded the FISA
intelligence investigations] tried to break down the wall. She

tried to make a lot of changes for the good. She was more open-
minded and aggressive." Unfortunately, she was dismissed
because of her efforts.
After 9/11, "the wall" was formally eradicated by Congress and
the Court of Appeals. However, there are still barriers today,
walls that are less pronounced. Baker, who recently wrote the
book Skating on Stilts, notes that
even after the 9/11 attack people are suspicious of limits to
their civil liberties, are pushing back the pendulum in the other
direction, and still have the assumption that the threats have
been overstated by government agencies that want to yield more
power.
Civil Liberties vs. Security
One example is the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]
lawsuit asking a federal judge to halt an alleged [Barack]
Obama administration plan to kill an American citizen cleric.
The cleric is living in Yemen and encourages radicalized
Americans to initiate terrorist attacks. The suit alleges that the
targeted-killing program violates Anwar al-Awlaki's Fourth
Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure and his
Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life without due
process. There are those who once again want to implement a
wall that would place civil liberties ahead of national security
and Americans' safety.
Will cyber warfare be the next area of attack? A wall is being
built by the privacy groups and the cyber industry because they
do not want any form of regulation. Jim Roth, the former New
York Chief Division Council of the FBI who was heavily
involved in FISA, wants a balance between national security
concerns and the internet. He strongly believes that "the side of
national security must win during any emergency since our First
Amendment rights are not absolute. You can't yell fire in a
movie theatre."
America's cyber infrastructure is not well-protected, and it is
possible that an attack would bring this nation to its knees.
Baker says the cyber-industrial complex does not want to be

regulated, so they play off the civil liberties side, claiming that
any regulation, even for security measures, would be a civil
liberties disaster. Townsend suggests that this cyber wall can be
easily demolished if the government changes its perspective.
According to Townsend, the government must initiate a private-
public partnership since so much of the "intellectual capital
with cyber resides in the private sector. The government should
change its thinking process and involve the private sector in the
policy generated process not after."
The Need for Balance
Another wall has been created by the European Union. They
refuse to share any passenger name recognition data because of
their perceived threat to civil liberties. The Europeans are
attempting to limit the kind of information that is passed on to
the U.S. and will allow only Homeland Security to use it. They
do not want it passed on to other agencies, such as the FBI.
Baker emphasized that the data is needed to improve passenger
screening. For example, if a European flies to Pakistan and back
to Europe and then some time later flies to the U.S., the first leg
of the trip is not passed on; thus, the Europeans are preventing
the U.S. from connecting the dots. According to Baker, "The EU
will forbid airlines from giving the information to the third
country (the U.S.) if the third country doesn't dance to their
tune: the European supervision on privacy issues." To break
down this wall, Baker proposes that the U.S. might consider
talking directly with individual countries and bypassing the EU.
He also believes that the U.S. might want to limit the "sharing
of terrorism data with countries that restrict our ability to
collect such data. It makes no sense that the Europeans are
trying to limit the kind of information needed to make sure
people don't get on planes and blow themselves up over the
U.S."
All interviewed agree that there must be an honest dialogue
sooner rather than later. Michael Hayden, the former CIA
[Central Intelligence Agency] Director, feels that the balance
between the concerns of the civil libertarians and national

security "should lead to an honest conversation of what do we
want to do and what don't we want to do. Some of the decisions
of what not to do will increase the risk."
Cengage Learning.
Source Citation
Cooper, Elise. "Security Requires that Civil Liberties, Including
Privacy, Not Be Absolute." Civil Liberties. Ed. Noël Merino.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt.
from "The 'Wall' Continues to Hamstring Anti-Terror
Activities." American Thinker. 2012. Opposing Viewpoints In
Context. Web. 15 Aug. 2013.
POLS 3313 – Judicial Process Fall 2017
Page 1 of 4
Court Observation Analysis
You will observe two different kinds of courtroom proceedings
and each submit an argumentative essay,
6-7 pages in length (excluding Works Cited), that describe the
interactions and process which occur in
each, compare the courtroom activities, and analyze them using
the readings from the course. While you
are all capable of completing this assignment individually,
visiting the courts in small groups enables you
to share the experiences as well as to feel less abashed at asking
questions. Once groups are formed, I can

assist you in determining which combination you plan to attend
(e.g., criminal v. civil, trial v. appellate,
municipal court v. county court).
In Beaumont, you have a choice of federal district courts, state
appellate courts, state district courts,
county courts, and municipal courts. The federal district court
and state appellate courts hold hearings at
irregular hours. While you can count on the state district courts
and some justice courts meeting regularly
during regular business hours Monday through Friday from 9
a.m. through the early afternoon, you
should confirm the courts’ calendars before you go.
In choosing your two courts, think about how you will construct
your paper. A federal criminal
proceeding contrasted with a state criminal proceeding is a more
focused paper than comparing a federal
civil trial with a magistrate's criminal intake court (where a
defendant makes the first appearance in all
criminal and traffic proceedings). You should observe each of
these courtrooms for a minimum of two
hours.

Take a notepad and make detailed notes of your observations.
You will also find that many judges and
prosecutors will ask you why you are there – if you tell them
that it's a class project they will often take
additional time to speak with you about the proceedings. Keep
note of everyone with whom you speak as
well as their role.
Court Links:
Municipal Court of Beaumont:
http://www.cityofbeaumont.com/finance_municourt.htm
Jefferson County – County Courts:
County Court at Law No. 3
Jefferson County – District Courts:
http://co.jefferson.tx.us/distcrts/dcourts_home.htm
Ninth Court of Appeals of Texas:
http://www.9thcoa.courts.state.tx.us/
(located on the far right side of screen
under "Case Information"). Oral arguments occur about once or
twice a month so plan
accordingly. Court begins at 9 a.m. on the 3rd floor and each
case lasts about an hour.

United States District Court – Eastern District of Texas:
http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/page1.shtml?location=info:divisio
n&division=beaumont
http://www.cityofbeaumont.com/finance_municourt.htm
http://www.co.jefferson.tx.us/ccourts/cc1.htm
http://co.jefferson.tx.us/distcrts/dcourts_home.htm
http://www.9thcoa.courts.state.tx.us/
http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/page1.shtml?location=info:divisio
n&division=beaumont
Page 2 of 4
Organization:
Writing and organization are important. Your introductory
paragraph should include an argumentative
thesis statement where you are expected to take a position or
develop a claim. This assignment calls for
an amount of analysis equal to the amount of description of the
proceedings. In a sense, you are also
there to test our classroom work against reality. Use the
introduction to focus your courtroom

observations and indicate your conclusions about the operation
of the judicial system to your reader. Your
concluding paragraph should sum up those observations and
bring together your analysis. Please don't tell
me how educational or fun the experience has been.
Establish setting - date, place, judge's name, nature of business
(civil trial, criminal arraignments, etc.). If
observing criminal proceedings list, and describe the charges,
and whether there are dispositions while
you are observing the penalties. If observing civil hearings,
describe the damages sought and subject of
the disputes. Remember to cite parenthetically and reference all
of your sources.
When describing the proceedings, avoid a strictly chronological
approach. "First, then, after that, and
then, and after that, consequently, Following this, Thirdly ..." It
is truly painful to read and does not lend
itself to thoughtful reflection. Organize your paper around types
of behavior which you observe (i.e.,
How did the attorneys address the judge? How did defendants or
witnesses conduct themselves?).
Compare what we have done in class with what you observe.

How similar were our readings and
lecture to the courtroom experience? Which readings/lectures
were closest or most dissimilar from your
experience?
Be respectful of proceedings and avoid personal commentary
that does not contribute to a proper analysis.
I do not care for comments about the "prosecutor's cheap suit"
or how "drunk" the defendant appeared
(unless it is relevant to the proceedings). The effectiveness and
demeanor of the parties, their attorneys,
and the judge are proper subjects for comment, their hair or
dress is not.
Finally, enjoy your visit to court. While obligatory, this is one
of the least painful ways to observe the
judicial system in action.
Format:
Your 6-7-page paper (excluding Works Cited) (double-spaced,
1” margins, 12 point Times New Roman
font) should follow the five-paragraph essay structure1 and
should be written in a consciously chosen and
approved style (APSA, APA, MLA), while observing the rules
of correct spelling and sentence structure.

Papers are due via SafeAssign in Lu Learn by 9:00 a.m.,
Tuesday, December 5th, 2017. I will not
accept assignments sent via email, paper copies, or late
assignments.
PLEASE NOTE: SafeAssign restricts submissions to specific
file formats such as PDF, DOC, DOCX,
ODT, and RTF. You will need to confirm that your document is
one of the acceptable file formats listed
on the file upload screen. Note: If using the Apple software
Pages, the document will need to be exported
as a .doc file before uploading to SafeAssign.
Academic Honesty:
In completing this assignment, you personally are expected to
observe at least 2 different courtroom
proceedings. Because of the specific nature of the assignment,
you may not use other proceedings you've
observed before that time. In addition, you may not rely on
other people's descriptions of what went on in
court, or the edited versions of courtroom proceedings that are
available online. I expect the observation
1 A five paragraph essay structure guide is located via the

‘Writing Assignment Links and Resources’ link in
Blackboard Learn.
Page 3 of 4
and the paper to be entirely your own work. Failure to fulfill
any of these conditions constitutes academic
dishonesty. Any student who is found guilty of academic
dishonesty in this course will fail
the assignment and the course itself.
Page 4 of 4
Student 1
Student_______________
Instructor____________
English 1301 - _________
Date
Title your Argumentative/Personal Responsibility essay.
Write an argumentative essay of four full typed pages (double

spaced) that answers an ethical question pertaining to one of
these topics:
· Does the government have a right to collect whatever
information it wants, to use however it sees fit?
· To what extent does the government have a right to collect
information about its citizens?
· What rights and responsibilities do Food companies have when
it comes to labeling?
· What responsibilities does Facebook have in monitoring their
web pages? Address safety and security concerns.
As always, the answer to the question--your thesis--should be
defended with three topics.
Evaluation criteria follow:
Ethical Choices: Student thoroughly discusses at least two sides
of an ethical choice to be made.
· Decision Making: Student states a position on the issue based
on at least three points and offers an opposing view and
counterargument supported with database sources.
· Consequences: Student identifies consequences and
demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the scope,
complexity, and/or magnitude of the consequences.
· Evidence: Student includes a Works Cited page that lists at
least three database sources. The body of the essay includes a
total of at four citations from sources.
The essay should demonstrate the following ENGL 1301
outcomes:
· College level spelling and punctuation skills
· MLA format for margins, header, personal information,
paragraph indention, double spacing
· In-text citations
· Works Cited page
· Clearly stated thesis statement
· Topic sentences that flows from thesis statement
· Sentence variety

· No egregious grammar mistakes

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