10 June, 2013

Trust and Taps | RedState

Trust and Taps | RedState: The government, in the twenty-first century, is trying to come to terms with a society that transmits information differently from the postal service. Extrapolating the boundaries of the mail, the government has decided to start collecting the metadata of emails and phone calls, e.g. who is contacting whom, from where, to where, the size of files, the length of phone calls, etc.

Superficially, it may make sense. In fact, many national security professionals on the left and right think it is necessary. The content of the messages and phone calls is not revealed, the documents themselves being transmitted are not revealed, just the metadata — the data from which the underlying phone call, email, or document passes through the series of tubes known as the internet. We know, however, mistakes have been made in the handling and processing of the data.

There is one key issue here — unlike the postal service, private companies control the series of tubes through which the data travels. The private companies are either complicity working with the government (most likely) or are being hacked in some way by the government (least likely).