Information Literacy, Privacy, & Risk
What Are the Implications of Mass Surveillance for Libraries?
Gabe Gossett, Librarian for Extended Education, Western Washington University �Rebecca Wilder, Attorney (Washington State), Research Paralegal, former Adjunct Instructor
Brian Davidson, Career and Academic Advisor, Whatcom Community College
Online Northwest, 2014
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Outline
This presentation is for educational purposes only – this is NOT legal advice
Framing questions
Framing questions
Framing questions
Should we take more steps to support our patrons in developing a better understanding of how to manage their information?
Info lit standards
ACRL standards currently distinguishes between information literacy and information technology fluency, while acknowledging an overlap between the two:
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. ACRL Guidelines & Standards. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency
Info lit standards
Standard 5: “The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.”
The first learning outcome for the standard: “Identifies and discusses issues related to privacy and security in both the print and electronic environments”
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. ACRL Guidelines & Standards. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency
Recent Revelations: Government and Corporate Surveillance�
Alex Tabarrok. (2013, December 7). Not From the Onion-NROL 39. Marginal Revolution. Retrieved from http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/not-from-the-onion-nrol-39.html (citing National Reconnaissance Office. (2013). NROL-39 Scheduled to Launch with GEMS at Auxiliary Payload (No. 04-13). Retrieved from http://www.nro.gov/news/press/2013/2013-04.pdf) via John Struan. (2013, December 7). When the history of how the United States became a dystopian, surveillance state is written no one will be able to say that we were not warned. Super Punch. Retrieved from http://www.superpunch.net/2013/12/when-history-of-how-united-states.html
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Timberg, C. (2013, July 10). The NSA slide you haven’t seen. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-nsa-slide-you-havent-seen/2013/07/10/32801426-e8e6-11e2-aa9f-c03a72e2d342_story.html
"It's now a matter of public record that the NSA collects and stores the calling records of domestic phone calls, tracks the location of millions of mobile devices worldwide, infiltrates the data links between the data centers of tech companies used by millions of Americans, piggybacks onto commercial tracking mechanisms, collected potentially sensitive online metadata for years and actively worked to undermine the privacy and security measures that underpin the Internet.
And considering the purported size of the Snowden cache, that could be the tip of the metaphorical iceberg."
Peterson, A. (2013, December 28). 2013 is the year that proved your “paranoid” friend right. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/28/2013-is-the-year-that-proved-your-paranoid-friend-right/
See also Rushe, D., Ackerman, S., & Ball, J. (2013, October 30). Reports that NSA taps into Google and Yahoo data hubs infuriate tech giants. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-reports-nsa-secretly-intercepts-data-links (“The types of information sent ranged from "metadata", indicating who sent or received emails, the subject line and where and when, to content such as text, audio and video.”)
“On its website, the NSA presents its vision of how it wants to manage information: the Global Information Grid. More of a concept than an actual technical plan, the GIG is a "net-centric system operating in a global context to provide processing, storage, management, and transport of information.””
Bump, P. (2013, June 11). How big is the NSA police state, really? The Wire. Retrieved from http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/06/nsa-datacenters-size-analysis/66100/ (citing Global Information Grid - NSA/CSS. (2012, April 23). nsa.gov. Retrieved from http://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/global_information_grid/index.shtml)
Xiao, E. (2013, June 13). Man redesigns “hideous” NSA presentation slides. DesignTAXI.com. Retrieved from http://designtaxi.com/news/358404/Man-Redesigns-Hideous-NSA-Presentation-Slides/
"Getting the data has always been easier than making sense of it. So the NSA developed its own tools to tap the vast pools of information.
In 2008, agency engineers created Accumulo, a data storage and retrieval system based on Google's Big Table system. Sqrrl Data, a start-up company in Cambridge, Mass., this month began a commercial version of Accumulo for real-time data mining. Most of the founders of Sqrrl Data are former NSA employees.
Accumulo allowed the NSA to examine disparate data sets and find connections, said a former NSA operator who worked with it.”
Dilanian, K. (2013, July 8). Digital age expanded the NSA’s mission. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/08/nation/la-na-nsa-internet-20130708
Image via Sqrrl. (n.d.). SQR_Diagrams-01.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 486 pixels) - Scaled (50%). sqrrl.com. Retrieved from http://sqrrl.com/media/SQR_Diagrams-01.jpg
Ingest
"With assistance from private communications firms, the NSA had learned to capture enormous flows of data at the speed of light from fiber-optic cables that carried Internet and telephone traffic over continents and under seas.
According to one document in Snowden’s cache, the agency’s Special Source Operations group, which as early as 2006 was said to be ingesting “one Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds”
Gellman, B. (2013, December 25). Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html (citing Timberg, C., & Gellman, B. (2013, September 3). NSA paying U.S. companies for access to communications networks. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-paying-us-companies-for-access-to-communications-networks/2013/08/29/5641a4b6-10c2-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html)
Rovio Entertainment Ltd. (2014). Rovio does not provide end user data to government surveillance agencies [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.rovio.com/en/news/press-releases/450/rovio-does-not-provide-end-user-data-to-government-surveillance-agencies
Image via Gibbs, S. (2014, January 30). Angry Birds site defaced with “spying birds” spoof after NSA revelation. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/30/angry-birds-defaced-nsa-spying-birds-user-data
See also Ball, J. (2014, January 27). US and UK spy agencies scoop up private data from “leaky” phone apps. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/nsa-gchq-smartphone-app-angry-birds-personal-data
"The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial web sites and mobile applications across all industries. If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled websites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance."
Ingest
“once they obtain the information, they process it ... it goes through these various processes and then ends up in the database, where it can be retrieved later.”
Opsahl, K. [EFF attorney] (2013, Dec 30). Through a PRISM, Darkly - Everything we know about NSA spying [30c3]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMwPe2KqYn4&feature=youtube_gdata_player (at 23:40)
Secure/Index?
“According to the NSA’s director of compliance, the agency queries its databases about 20 million times each month“ (at 6)
“In the process, information has been folded into a “Threat Matrix,” an itemized catalogue of all the “threats”— or more accurately “leads”— needing to be followed up.
As Garrett Graff explains, the government pursues “upwards of 5,000 threats per day.”” (at 10)
Mueller, J. & Stewart., M. G. (2014). Secret without reason and costly without accomplishment: Questioning the National Security Agency’s metadata program. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. Retrieved from http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/NSAshane3.pdf (citing Graff, G. M. (2011). The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror. New York: Little, Brown.
See also: Savage, C. (2013, August 16). N.S.A. calls violations of privacy “minuscule.” The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/nsa-calls-violations-of-privacy-minuscule.html via Drum, K. (2013, August 18). The NSA makes 600,000+ database queries every single day. Mother Jones. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/nsa-surveillance-database-queries
See also Opsahl, K. (2013, Dec 30). [at 14:50 citing Lichtblau, E., & Risen, J. (2005, December 24]. Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html
Query
“Explains Walter Pincus, if operatives at NSA, sorting through their 215 metadata collection or other sources, uncover “a questionable pattern” such as “calls to other suspect phones,” they send a report to the FBI for investigation.
In NSA this process has sometimes been called “We Track ‘Em, You Whack ‘Em.” The FBI, then, is routinely supplied with what Graff calls “endless lists of ‘suspect’ telephone numbers.”
When followed up, these “leads” virtually never go anywhere: of 5000 numbers passed along, only 10—two-tenths of one percent—“panned out enough for the bureau to bother” to get court permission to follow them up.
At the FBI, the NSA tips are often called “Pizza Hut” leads because, following them up, FBI agents “inevitably end up investigating the local pizza delivery guy.”
There is, in other words, nothing to “whack.” At one point, the generally diplomatic Robert Mueller bluntly told NSA director Alexander, “You act like this is some treasure trove; it’s a useless time suck.”” (at 13)
Mueller, J., & Stewart, M. G. (2014). Secret without Reason and Costly without Accomplishment: Questioning the National Security Agency’s Metadata Program. In I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. Retrieved from http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/NSAshane3.pdf (citing Walter Pincus,“NSA should be debated on the facts,” washingtonpost.com, July 29, 2013)
See also Priest, D., & Arkin, W. (2010, July 19). A hidden world, growing beyond control. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
See also Harris, S. (2013, September 9). The Cowboy of the NSA. Foreign Policy. ("He had all these diagrams showing how this guy was connected to that guy and to that guy," says a former NSA official who heard Alexander give briefings on the floor of the Information Dominance Center. "Some of my colleagues and I were skeptical. Later, we had a chance to review the information. It turns out that all [that] those guys were connected to were pizza shops.“)Retrieved from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/08/the_cowboy_of_the_nsa_keith_alexander
"Multiple databases consolidated and cross–referenced, with incidental details linking previously disconnected bodies of information, produce a far more significant whole than any one part would suggest: identities, tendencies, groups and patterns with both historically revelatory and predictive power"
Brunton, F. & Nissenbaum, H. (2012). Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation. First Monday, 16(5). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3493
Why Ingest, Secure, Index & Query?
“In Uncharted, Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel tell the story of how they tapped into this sea of information to create a new kind of telescope: a tool that, instead of uncovering the motions of distant stars, charts trends in human history across the centuries. By teaming up with Google, they were able to analyze the text of millions of books. The result was a new field of research and a scientific tool, the Google Ngram Viewer”
Aiden, E. & Michel, J-. B. (n.d.). Uncharted: Big Data as a lens on human culture | IndieBound. Retrieved from http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594487453
Historical Trends
"The company is continuing to try to learn more about individual users so that it can provide personalized services such as Google Now, which tries to provide information to people before they even search for it, such as alerting them to traffic updates before their scheduled meetings."
"As a general theme we’re trying to move beyond just searching to actually knowing about things.
We think this is essential because we want to understand what you’re trying to do and give you some help.
Google Now is an example of a product that is trying to figure out the state that you’re in and make a suggestion to you."
Efrati, A. (2013, July 31). Google’s data-trove dance. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324170004578635812623154242
Image via http://derekrousseau.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/google-now-Logo.jpg
Simonite, T. (2014, January 27). Google looks to Knowledge Graph to help its products to understand people. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523846/how-a-database-of-the-worlds-knowledge-shapes-googles-future/ (quoting John Giannandrea, vice president of engineering at Google and a Metaweb cofounder)
See also e.g. Naughton, J. (2014, February 1). Facebook’s first 10 years: Is it now in danger of swallowing the Web? The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/01/facebook-first-10-years-mark-zuckerberg
Predictive Power
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”
Brunton, F. & Nissenbaum. H. (2012). Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation. First Monday, 16(5). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3493 (“For Eric Schmidt’s remark, see his interview with CNBC on 3 December 2009, as excerpted in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew)
“U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books.”
Taylor, M. (2013, November 14). Americans’ personal data shared with CIA, IRS, others in security probe. Retrieved from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html
What can we do?
Yelton, A. (2014, January 3). #libtechgender: Conference codes of conduct as seen from your world and mine. Andromeda Yelton. Retrieved from http://andromedayelton.com/blog/2014/01/03/libtechgender-conference-codes-of-conduct-as-seen-from-your-world-and-mine/
See also Hess, A. (2014, January 6). The next civil rights issue: Why women aren’t welcome on the Internet. Pacific Standard. Retrieved from http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/
See also “Isis the Scientist.” (2014, January 20). Be Not Afraid... Isis the Scientist. Retrieved from http://isisthescientist.com/2014/01/20/be-not-afraid/ (“There’s no point in getting through doors if you can’t help others find them and walk through them with you.”)
What can we do?
See also Opsahl, K. [EFF attorney] (2013, Dec 30). Through a PRISM, Darkly - Everything we know about NSA spying [30c3]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMwPe2KqYn4&feature=youtube_gdata_player [at 42:00] "What We Can Do About It“
NSA operation ORCHESTRA: Annual Status Report. (2014). [30:00] “This is not a technical problem. This is a political problem. It must be solved by political means” Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk&feature=youtube_gdata_player via http://www.metafilter.com/136578/NSA-operation-ORCHESTRA-Annual-Status-Report-FOSDEM-Keynote
Tools
Larson, N. P., Jeff, & Shane, S. (2013, September 5). N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html
Ball, J., Borger, J., & Greenwald, G. (2013, September 5). Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
Ball, J., Schneier, B., & Greenwald, G. (2013, October 4). NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/nsa-gchq-attack-tor-network-encryption
Dennis Fisher. (2014, February 7). The Internet is Owned—Act Accordingly. ThreatPost. Retrieved from http://threatpost.com/the-internet-is-broken-act-accordingly/104141
Back to the questions
Thanks!
This presentation is for educational purposes only – this is NOT legal advice
Research materials available at http://www.zotero.org/groups/225433