The price of security

       In the midst of continuing revelations about surveillance conducted on citizens by the United States (among other countries) it has become clear just how simple it is to become caught up in the drag net of the various three lettered organizations. While it is understandable to all that by searching for certain terms relating to terrorist tied message boards or on procurement of explosive or toxic substances can get a user’s traffic flagged but these only account for a small portion of the terms used. What is not to be expected is the harassment of web publications and their subscribers by the US government.

What makes one an extremist, then, in the eyes of the watchers? The most likely way the average citizen may be flagged as dangerous is to search for terms relating to internet security. Recently the readers of the LinuxJournal (a publication aimed at Linux system administrators) learned of XKEYSCORE, a tools which had been used by the NSA, for an undetermined amount of time, to flag visitors for extra surveillance. Searching for or using products such as DARPA’s Tor network (which attempts to mask a user’s traffic by randomly piping it through a mesh of other users’ computers) or the TAILS linux distribution would also quickly get a user flagged. Terms as broad as linux, usb, secure desktop, IRC, or truecrypt are among those used to attempt to identify potential targets. 

Does it make sense to continue such broad surveillance? Intelligence agencies such as England’s GCHQ have used the revelations by Edward Snowden to make the argument that terrorist groups were increasingly using secure communication tools and encryption and thus greater means of surveillance were necessary. A counter report by an Intel affiliated company, Flashpoint Partners, countered that increased use was instead attributed to an increase in software developed and distributed by al-Qaeda. Further analysis of statistical usage of certain terms within message boards pointed to little interest in the Snowden revelations, of which terrorist groups had long assumed the existence, but rather related talk of internet security to the release of new software.