I keep thinking how in 2008’s The Dark Knight, during the frantic city-wide search for the Joker, Lucius Fox says to Bruce Wayne:

“You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong…This is too much power for one person.”

I think that ethical question raised in the movie was brilliant and it parallels the case of PRISM and the Verizon news.  These topics are smack dab in the middle of political implications on all sides.  There is no avoiding that.  At issue is the question of to what extent the government can set up shop in such a way as to secretly and forcefully collect and monitor the data of private law-abiding citizens.  There are all kinds of reports out there right now, there’s on that says Google complied after much initial resistance, another that says the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters has had access to this private information for years, and there are many more reports surely on the way .  The reach of the PRISM program is without a doubt extensive, and perhaps over-reaching.  The potential for abuse is really too much to fathom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8BTs9x-1cA

President Barack Obama made his first public comments on the issue just a bit ago and if I had to summarize it, he predictably said ‘It wasn’t me’.  “These are programs that have been authorized by broad bipartisan majorities since 2006,” (the Bush Era).  He also added that Congress knew about this and it was approved by “your duly elected representatives (which) have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing.”

Notice first of all, that he didn’t deny the existence of the Verizon data grab or the existence of PRISM.  How could anyone expect him to at this point?  The administration has been losing credibility in the wake of a number of cascading scandals throughout which they have been accused of being less than open, politically driven, and even misleading throughout the public discourse.  He also managed yet again in one statement to not only pull in the previous administration, but pulled Congress into the spotlight as well.

The program has been out there for a while.  Has anyone’s life really changed?  Have we caught any more terrorists with it?  I can’t really be sure but it would seem the answer to both would be “no”.  Data gathering and data intelligence are going on all the time.  Jeff Kelly today pointed out in his excellent piece on how Accumulo operates with data on this scale and its place among technologies that can actually maintain your individual privacy by reducing false positives, producing better results – that is if there is no reason to be under suspicion of anything.  Points I completely agree with and are impossible to deny.  If we take a historical look at espionage, it’s always been a technological advantage that has given the US its edge.  This is no different in that respect, and there are threats that require deep intelligence.  The threats are worldwide and come from industry, state, criminal groups, and yes – sometimes they have a domestic element.  For these reasons we should take a step back and take in what it actually all means to the individual.  Is this a giant privacy threat?  Yes, it is.  Is it a giant privacy compromise?  No, not yet.  There’s no evidence of that.  Just think that this has been going on for a while and in that time we’ve seen a number of actual attacks play out.  Those people fell through the cracks.

In a statement released last night, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper blasted the information leaks that led to this emerging public knowledge and growing outrage.  He states that the programs are legal, limited in scope, and necessary to detect terrorist threats. 

I believe it is important for the American people to understand the limits of this targeted counterterrorism program and the principles that govern its use. In order to provide a more thorough understanding of the program, I have directed that certain information related to the “business records” provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be declassified and immediately released to the public.

He argues that the impact of this program is completely in the realm of national security.   The release of information to the public to understand what it is that is going on is great, but here’s where these things are going to continue to be a problem: the White House is in direct control of Clapper’s office.  While on some level I personally support the legal means of investigation directed at terrorists and criminals (a job that hasn’t really been done all that well), in light of an IRS abuse scandal that is looking more and more like it ties back to Washington, – then all bets are off.  The IRS exploited information about political parties and private citizens that had certain opinions – they admitted that.  Imagine if you will, let’s just call it another ‘rogue’ party with as the PRISM documents indicate – “direct access” to all that data.  “/imagine off”  Did you see that?  It should be clear that your data is not safe and that may just have to be something that we live with.  One of the reasons why people are outraged by all these controversies is the direct parallels to the mysterious and admitted abuses that are coming out of the IRS scandal, the unfulfilled promise that we would have a transparent government, and the avoidance of facts that we have consistently witnessed over and over again.  There is also a broken trust factor.  I don’t go about reading every Terms of Service for every service I sign up for to the last line, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing out there that says, oh by the way, the federal government can read everything, and they certainly analyze everything.  If as the president says this has been there all along, then tell us where the oversight is, if there is any.  “Who watches the watchers?”