Για αρκετά χρόνια, οι μεγάλες Companies του Διαδικτύου όπως το Twitter το Facebook, η Google και άλλες, καταθέτουν “εκθέσεις διαφάνειας” που εμφανίζουν πόσο συχνά ζητάει η κυβέρνηση δεδομένα των χρηστών τους. Από χθες Παρασκευή, άρχισε να εκδίδει “εκθέσεις διαφάνειας” και η Εθνική Υπηρεσία Ασφαλείας των ΗΠΑ. Η υπηρεσία πληροφοριών first released this Friday (PDF), with full dialetterthose that present its goals NSA.
The report came from the office of the director of the National Security Service after commands του προέδρου Barack Obama, ως απάντηση στις διαρροές από τον Edward Snowden. Βέβαια εξακολουθεί να αφήνει πολλά σκοτεινά σημεία – και οι αριθμοί που δεν αποκαλύπτει μπορεί να κρύβουν πολύ περισσότερα από αυτούς που αποκαλύπτει.
"This report is inherently unreliable," said Amie Stepanovich, senior policy adviser on the Digital Access Rights Group. "Each number in this report could be much smaller than it actually is, or changed to protect the intelligence community, their methods and resources."
The report states that (according to the government), the agency was monitoring more than 90.000 foreign targets in 2013 under the disputed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill. The government also said it was monitoring 248 U.S. citizens or residents who had information stored on telecommunications companies.
But none of these numbers represent how many people are actually being monitored by the NSA. In NSA parlance, the word "target" can include individuals, groups, or wholes countries. The agency also uses an executive order to spy on foreigners en masse, and if it believes there is a reason it can collect information from Americans' communications. Of course, there is no indication of how many records are being collected under this executive order.
"The actual number of people whose information has been exposed could be incredibly large because of the word 'target' they use," Stepanovich said.
An interesting point that the report does not seem to reveal is that all 90.000 foreign targets were monitored with a single mandate issued by the Foreign Intelligence Court and supervised by a large number of NSA's (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).
"How can one track 90.000 targets with just one court order?" wonders Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. "It really raises questions about what this court approves"
Stepanovich also mentioned, is that the NSA runs a huge program mass data collection to spy on a relatively small number of Americans. He rightly wondered why a more targeted data collection program couldn't work.
The government, however, with this report, has done what it promised, and probably needs a good will from us to believe the data given to the public by a secret service.
It is very natural for the government to make moves to reassure the public after Snowden's leaks. The question that arises, however, is whether there are still people who trust them….
