Για αρκετά χρόνια, οι μεγάλες εταιρείες του Διαδικτύου όπως το Twitter το Facebook, η Google και άλλες, καταθέτουν “εκθέσεις διαφάνειας” που εμφανίζουν πόσο συχνά ζητάει η government 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 charts showing its goals NSA.
The report came from the office of the director of the National Security Agency following orders from President Barack Obama, in response to leaks by Edward Snowden. Of course, it still leaves a lot of dark spots - and the numbers it does not reveal can hide much more than those it does reveal.
"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."
Η έκθεση αυτή αναφέρει ότι, (σύμφωνα πάντα με την κυβέρνηση), η υπηρεσία παρακολουθούσε περισσότερους από 90.000 ξένους στόχους το 2013 βάσει του επίμαχου νομοσχεδίου Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Η κυβέρνηση ανέφερε επίσης ότι παρακολουθούσε 248 Αμερικάνους πολίτες ή κάτοικους που είχαν πληροφορίες αποθηκευμένες σε εταιρείες τηλεπικοινωνιών.
But none of these numbers express how many people are actually being monitored by the NSA. In the NSA dialect, the word "target" can include individuals, groups, or entire countries. The service also uses an executive order to spy on foreigners en masse, and if it believes there is a reason it can gather information from American communications. Of course there is no indication as to how many records are 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).
“Πώς μπορούν κάποιοι να παρακολουθούν 90.000 στόχους μόνο με με μία δικαστική εντολή;” αναρωτιέται ο Jennifer Granick, διευθυντής των πολιτικών ελευθεριών στο Stanford Center for Internet and Society. “Πραγματικά προκαλεί ερωτήματα για το τι εγκρίνει αυτό το δικαστήριο”
Stepanovich also mentioned, is that the NSA runs a massive mass data collection program to spy on a relatively small number of Americans. He also questioned why a more targeted data collection program could not 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….
