MOSCOW — TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously
in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the
revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly
every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those
journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic
governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who
had done nothing wrong.
Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges
against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised
by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United
States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.
Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would
react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.
Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.
Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the
N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and
disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board
investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist
attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its
disclosure has now ordered it terminated.
This is the power of an informed public.
Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot
Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the
latest product of a change in global awareness. Since 2013, institutions across
Europe have ruled similar laws and operations illegal and imposed new
restrictions on future activities. The United Nations declared mass
surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights. In Latin America, the
efforts of citizens in Brazil led to the Marco Civil, an Internet Bill of
Rights. Recognizing the critical role of informed citizens in correcting the
excesses of government, the Council of Europe called for new laws to protect
whistle-blowers.
Beyond the frontiers of law, progress has come even more quickly.
Technologists have worked tirelessly to re-engineer the security of the devices
that surround us, along with the language of the Internet itself. Secret flaws
in critical infrastructure that had been exploited by governments to facilitate
mass surveillance have been detected and corrected. Basic technical safeguards
such as encryption — once considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled
by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that
even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such
structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond
borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of
anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.
Though we have come a long way, the right to
privacy — the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of
Rights — remains under threat. Some of the world’s most popular online services
have been enlisted as partners in the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs, and
technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world to
work against their customers rather than for them. Billions of cellphone
location records are still being intercepted without regard for the guilt or
innocence of those affected. We have learned that our government intentionally
weakens the fundamental security of the Internet with “back doors” that
transform private lives into open books.
Metadata revealing the personal associations and
interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored
on a scale unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States
government makes a note.
Spymasters in Australia, Canada and France have
exploited recent tragedies to seek intrusive new powers despite evidence such
programs would not have prevented attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron of
Britain recently mused, “Do we want to allow a means of communication between
people which we cannot read?” He soon found his answer, proclaiming that “for
too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: As
long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”
At the turning of the millennium, few imagined
that citizens of developed democracies would soon be required to defend the
concept of an open society against their own leaders.
Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift.
We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a
worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from
reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory,
with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than
fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it
hides, but in what it protects.
No comments:
Post a Comment