"Our application is End-to-End encrypted, What goes on in the middle is not our problem".

 

In 2003, Two years after 9/11, National Security Agency (NSA) reached out to American Telephone And Telegraph (AT&T) company and said "Hey! So we were thinking, it'd be real nice if you can let us listen in on a few phone calls and monitor some internet activity - you know, for national security and all." AT&T replied "Hmm - you make a very convincing argument, well, how much of it are you planning to monitor?" NSA replied back: "We did our research and conducted investigations, according to us, monitoring 100% of online and on-phone activity inside and outside of US will make us feel much better!"

AT&T shook hands.

Enter: Room 641A.

Or actually don't - it's not safe. Room 641A was one of the most secretive telecommunication interception facility commencing operations in 2003 as part of the warrantless surveillance program, authorized by the Patriot Act. It was largely kept secret until the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006 upon which the existence of the room became public news. Decades after the "outing" of this state secret, many people still don't believe in it's existence. But these people fail to look beyond just the room. The equipment that was allegedly used in these rooms to feed any incoming internet and phone traffic to the government has been in use for years now. The NSA warrantless surveillance program itself admitted to 'over-collection' of data in excess to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) authority  in 2009 three months into the Obama administration. Fiber optic taps were used as network joints directing incoming traffic parallel to AT&T and NSA. Imagine a miscommunication over internet resulting in someone (mostly the government) misinterpreting your conversation and flagging you. Borat (2006) film had a scene where Borat and his friend were flying in an airplane with two white Americans sitting next to them. The Americans did not speak Borat's language and Borat and his friend started discussing the vehicle, Porche 911. This was misinterpreted by the other passengers who did not spoke Borat's language and misinterpreted his actions and the mention of 911 as potential terrorist activity. However largely exaggerated for real life situations, this can definitely be a reality over the internet. Misinterpretation of things said and done on the Internet can result in false arrests and convictions. 

On the flip side, tapping all domestic and international conversations will put the absolute burden of preventing any future attacks on the state. Since they have access to and are listening in on every mode of communication, they should technically have no problems identifying harmful or illegal activity. Will it protect the state? It would definitely add to the protection. But it comes at a very dangerous cost. The privacy of everyone connected. Once on the internet, always on the internet. Unfortunately, this also applies to your private information even if you've never disclosed it online. If I don't want my DNA in circulation but one of my cousins sends a DNA sample to ancestry.com, I am in the system without choice. My DNA or my blood network is in the system and the government has partial control over it. I will discuss this more in another blog post but the point I'm raising here is that of government's access to our information regardless of our consent over its circulation.