**Freedom Act – Aff - All
Constructing your 1AC
Opening notes to students
How to build a 1AC from this file
One of our major goals at camp is to teach many different aspects that pop-up in contemporary
surveillance debates.
At first, this can be daunting as this document has a lot of moving parts. But hopefully the first few
pages of this file will make it all a little less overwhelming.
Here are some tips:
First – start by choosing a plan text
There are ten options included. Some options are more strategic than others. We will discuss the
upsides and downsides of each in lab time.
When choosing a plan text, one big question you’ll want to consider is whether to have a “narrow” plan
text (tackling a small number of current surveillance practices) or a “broader” plan text (tackling several or all current
surveillance practices).
Second – read (only) one of the two “inherency and solvency” options
There’s one if your plan is broad… and another one if your plan is narrow. Most of the time, this will be
presented in the opening portion of the 1AC – before you read the advantages (but that’s up to you).
Third – Here’s list of the advantages in the packet.
No one will have time to read all of the advantages in an 8 minute 1AC, so you’ll need to pick and choose
your favorites. Some advantages have “longer” and “shorter” version to assist with time allocation.
Other advantages have different impact modules. At camp, consider mixing it up and reading different
advantages and modules in the various practice debates.
Conceptually, here is a good way to think about the 1AC advantage options:
 Quality of Life advantages
o Privacy advantage – longer version
o Privacy advantage – shorter version
o Bigotry advantage – longer version
o Bigotry advantage – shorter version
 The Journalism advantage – designed to give an nice angle if you think your opponent may
go for the Kritik.
 Advantages involving US image:
o India advantage – financial markets impact
o India advantage – cyber impact
o India advantage – Democracy impact
o Global Internet Advantage – economy impact
o Global Internet Advantage – democracy impact
Please note that a few of the cards in the India and Global Internet Advantages overlap. If you are
reading both of those advantages in the same 1AC, take a moment to double-check and confirm that
you are not reading the same piece of evidence more than once.
Glossary and Important Note
Note to students
The next page presents a glossary.
Glossaries are often important for topic familiarization – but especially so for this year’s topic. Here’s
why:
There are many different ways that the Aff could argue that current laws protecting against surveillance
are insufficient.
I will use the example of the USA FREEDOM Act. The Freedom Act became a Law very recently – it
passed on June 2nd, 2015. It was designed to enhance privacy protection against federal surveillance. In
order to pass the Congress, the Freedom Act went through many changes. Many privacy advocates
argue that the “new” Freedom Act fails – especially in relation to the original version of the bill.
In some instances, the author of an article will rattle off four or five different reasons that they feel the
current Freedom Act will not work. Then, in another article, a different author may rattle off a different
laundry list of five items where three items overlap with evidence you’ve already read – but two items
do not.
For debaters, this presents three concerns:
First – unnecessary duplication.
The Affirmative doesn’t want to read a 3rd card saying the Freedom Act fails “because it lacks sufficient
Pen Register protections”. Once will usually be enough.
Second – strategic consistency.
Affirmatives will want to avoid reading inherency cards that say “Freedom Act fails due to lack of Pen
Register protections” if the version of the Affirmative plan being read fails to change Pen Register
protections.
Third – confusion.
Honestly, there are so many laws and investigative tools about privacy that this can all turn into
acronym soup. A familiarized Affirmative might be able to digest it all – but it could be puzzling to an
unfamiliar judge or to a new novice on the team.
Organizationally, I cooked-up with the following solution:
For each piece of evidence in “Inherency Solvency” backline section, I use a set of acronyms in the F6
header (the “block header” – but not in the F7 tag).
Hopefully, this allows the student quickly differentiate between the different reasons why the Freedom
Act fails. But, it should also avoid situations where the student is verbally presenting five confusing
acronyms into the tag of a 2AC card.
In order to understand what each acronym means, I have placed a “Glossary” on the next page.
Glossary
If the F6 block header has one or more of the following acronyms, here is what it referencing:
The USA FREEDOM ACT – A recently passed bill that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by
Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act”. The Act
implemented many reforms – but most prominently it (arguably) ended the ability of federal intelligence
agencies to store certain phone data (“phone metadata” – see below). Instead, it required phone
companies, not government agencies, to hold on to that data. Federal intelligence agencies can search
the phone company records if they granted a warrant authorizing their request. The Affirmative in this
packet will argue that current Freedom Act is insufficient and that the original draft of the Freedom Act
provided better safeguards.
The PATRIOT ACT – Its official title is the USA PATRIOT Act – an acronym that stands for "Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act
of 2001". The Patriot Act is an act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush in
October of 2001. It is widely viewed as a reaction to the events of September 11th, 2001. The Patriot Act
does many, many things – but, on this topic, it is perhaps most relevant because it increased the
authority of intelligence agencies to engage in surveillance.
EO 12333 – This stands for “Executive Order” 12333. It was signed by President Ronald Reagan and
established broad new surveillance authorities for the intelligence community, outside the scope of
public law. It was amended three times by President George W. Bush. These cards will argue that the
Status Quo fails because EO 12333 creates a loophole permitting excessive surveillance.
FAA or “FAA-Section 702” – “FAA” stands for the “FISA Amendments Act of 2008”. This an acronym
within an acronym. So, a little backstory:
o
o
o
The F.I.S.A. is an acronym standing for The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
That act does many things – but is most apt to come-up because it created a separate
set of "secret courts" called the “FISC” (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts). Its
hearings are closed to the public – but it handles many requests for surveillance
warrants from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The F.I.S.A. law itself passed in 1978 – but it has often been amended since then.
One reason that the FAA of 2008 comes up is Section 702 of the FAA. Section 702
authorizes PRISM (explained below). Section 702 is designed to gather intelligence on
foreign citizens, but is often accused of gathering intelligence on US citizens. Many
argue that because Section 702 is understood to permit gathering information “about” a
foreign person, it can be used to gather information regarding US persons.
Language – argues that the Status Quo fails because the language or definitions of current laws are not
strict enough. Here, the Affirmative would usually argue that when language has “wiggle room” federal
agencies will seek to gain as much intelligence a possible – often at the expense of privacy. The most
common example of insufficient language is “SST” – which is explained below.
Meta-data. Metadata is traditionally defined as “data about data.” Translation: The NSA probably isn’t
listening to your phone calls or reading your email. Instead, the metadata program givs intelligence
access to information about phone calls. That includes the phone numbers of both caller and recipient,
the number of any calling cards used, the time and duration of calls and the international mobile
subscriber identity (a unique identifier embedded in a phone SIM card) number. Email metadata
includes each message’s to, from, cc and timestamp information. It also includes the IP address each
email was sent from, which reveals where a computer is located. Status quo metadata programs do not
allow the Government to listen in on phone calls or read emails. The information acquired does not
include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber.
Minimization – argues that the Status Quo fails because so-called “super-minimization” procedures are
not in place. Super-minimization requires intelligence agencies to delete all information gathered on
persons that are subsequently determined to have not been relevant to the federal investigation at
hand. Absent these super-minimization protections, intelligence agencies could arguably retain that
information and use it in different investigations.
Multiple Authorities - argues that the Status Quo fails because of several different programs that
authorize surveillance. These cards are probably best run in conjunction with an Affirmative plan that
seeks to ban or eliminate many surveillance programs.
NSL’s - National Security Letters. These cards will argue that the Status Quo fails because the FBI
currently has the authority to issue NSL’s. These letters are served on communications service providers
(like phone or internet companies) by the FBI to compel provision of communication or Internet activity.
An NSL cannot demand the content of a call, but can compel provision of metadata. Recipients of NSLs
may be subject to a gag order that forbids them from revealing the letters' existence to the public. No
approval from a judge is required for the FBI to issue an NSL, but the recipient of the NSL can still
challenge the nondisclosure requirement in federal court.
Pen Register or Trap and Trace device - A device that decodes or records electronic information – like
outgoing numbers from a telephone. A “pen register” technically was a device that recorded data from
telegraph machines. But the term has survived and applies to modern communication. These cards will
argue that the Status Quo fails because the law provides insufficient protection against bulk collection of
data obtained from “Pen Register or Trap and Trace” devices.
PRISM – PRISM is a US surveillance program under which the National Security Agency (NSA) collects
Internet communications from at least nine major US Internet companies. PRISM requests for internet
data are authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (see FAA or “FAA-Section
702” – above). The program is intended to identity foreign citizens – but the program is often accused of
inadvertently gathering intelligence on US citizens. According to The Washington Post, US intelligence
analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify targets whom the analysts suspect with at
least 51 percent confidence to not be U.S. citizen.
Signal Args – these cards speak to the image or perception of the law as seen by the US public or foreign
countries.
SST - “Specific Selector Terms”. These cards will argue that the Status Quo fails because the law allows
searches to be conducted with “broad selector terms” – like a zip code, an area code, or the IP address
of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites. These broad searches stumble onto much
more data. Some privacy advocates want to demand an SST – which would require searches that are
much more narrow (i.e. an individual’s name).
***For summer camp students – I also want to talk about two more programs.
(please take notes here:)
1AC Inherency and Solvency Section
1AC Version if the plan is narrow
Contention One
Contention One – the Status Quo fails, and the Aff solves.
The Freedom Act recently became Law. This new Freedom Act won’t substantially
reduce bulk surveillance. Safeguards from the original Freedom Act are needed.
New York Times ‘15
(editorial board of New York Times – The Opinion Pages of New York Times – “More Excuses on the Patriot Act “ - May 1st http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/opinion/more-excuses-on-the-patriot-act.html?smid=fb-share&_r=2)
Software designers
have a term — “minimal viable product” — to describe early versions of things like iPhone
apps that they can rush to market. The idea is to get something out and refine it as they go along. That’s the
argument being made for a measure in Congress that would modify the Patriot Act to make it somewhat harder
for the government to conduct mass surveillance of Americans without regard to whether they
committed any misdeeds. Sure, there are compromises, Americans are told, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The bill is a
“critical first step toward reining in” surveillance by the National Security Agency and is a basis for more reform, said Human Rights Watch.
Constitution is not Candy Crush.
Except the
The same idea — let’s do what we can and improve it later — was used to shove the original Patriot
Act through Congress. It was used to justify the inadequate changes later made to the act, many of which made it more intrusive on Americans’ rights. In 2008, we
got a “reform” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that provided retroactive cover for the illegal surveillance of innocent Americans conducted
under President George W. Bush behind the false flag of counterterrorism. The
new bill, the USA Freedom Act, was passed by the House Judiciary
contain useful changes to
Committee on Thursday in a 25-to-2 vote and sent to the floor for what seems like near-certain approval. It does
Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was cynically misinterpreted by the Bush administration to cover the collection of millions of telephone records in the
United States and elsewhere. Section 215 will expire on June 1 if Congress does not act, but that is unlikely. The new bill would narrow the kinds of records,
including so-called metadata from phone calls, that the intelligence agencies can collect without bothering to obtain a warrant even from the obliging FISA court,
which virtually always grants one. It adds transparency measures related to government surveillance programs, and provides for more oversight of those programs.
But many of those provisions are weaker than in earlier versions of the bill , and weaker than they
need to be. The House committee rejected amendments designed to provide greater safeguards for civil liberties — including one from a Republican that
would have required the government to get a warrant before searching collected communications for information about Americans. The
bill does not
end the bulk collection of surveillance data under Section 215. Rather, it limits those
operations, which, in addition to eroding the Bill of Rights, have been shown to be worthless in protecting America. The American Civil Liberties Union
believes the
bill doesn’t sufficiently tighten the definition of the terms used to justify data
collection , or properly limit the retention of information about people who are not
suspected of wrongdoing, or require meaningful disclosure of so-called “backdoor” searches of databases by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. It does not appoint an advocate to argue before the FISA court on behalf of civil liberties; instead, it simply appoints a panel of experts to advise the
court, where only the government is allowed to present a case, in secret.
The new Freedom Act fails. Pen register, super-minimization, and SST standards from
the original draft of the Freedom Act would solve.
Greene ‘15
(et al; David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. David is also an
adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law
and an instructor in the journalism department at San Francisco State University. David has significant experience litigating First
Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts and is one of the country's leading advocates for and
commentators on freedom of expression in the arts. “ACLU v. Clapper and the Congress: How The Second Circuit’s Decision
Affects the Legislative Landscape” - Electronic Frontier Foundation - May 11, 2015 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/aclu-v-clapper-and-congress-how-second-circuits-decision-affects-legislative)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v. Clapper has determined that the NSA’s telephone records program went far beyond
what Congress authorized when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act in 2001. The court unequivocally rejected the government’s secret
reinterpretation of Section 215. Among many important findings, the court found that Section 215’s authorization of the collection of business
records that are “relevant to an authorized investigation” could not be read to include the dragnet collection of telephone records. The court
also took issue with the fact that this strained application of the law was accomplished in secret and approved by the secret and one-sided
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court). EFF filed amicus briefs in this case in both the district and circuit courts, and we
congratulate our colleagues at the ACLU on this significant victory. The Second Circuit’s opinion stands as a clear sign that the courts are ready
to step in and rule that mass surveillance is illegal. That’s great news. The
significant change
Second Circuit’s decision , however, also marks a
in the context of the ongoing legislative debate in Congress. Above all, it is clear that
Congress must do more to rein in dragnet surveillance by the NSA. Clean Reauthorization First, the Second
Circuit’s opinion should stop the idea of a "clean reauthorization" (a reauthorization with no reforms) of Section
215, which is set to expire June 1. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr
introduced S. 1035, a bill that would extend the current language of Section 215 through 2020, thereby continuing the mass spying rubberstamped by the FISA Court. The morning of the Second Circuit decision, both Senators took to the Senate floor to vehemently defend the bulk
collection program and push for a clean reauthorization. But a clean reauthorization is much more complicated now. Congress can’t pretend
that the Second Circuit's narrow reading of “relevant to an authorized investigation” doesn’t exist. It’s likely that if Congress merely does a
“clean” reauthorization of Section 215, then the district court in ACLU v. Clapper will enjoin the government from using Section 215 as
authorization for the call records dragnet, because the district court is bound by the Second Circuit decision. However, if a reauthorization
made it clear that Congress intended to reject the Second Circuit’s narrow reading of the law, it could cause further confusion and the
government could argue that Congress has fully embraced the dragnet. We’re encouraging people to call Congress and tell their lawmakers to
reject Senator McConnell's clean reauthorization in order to avoid the risk that Congress might reject the Second Circuit’s decision
USA Freedom Act Must Be Strengthened
In light of the Second Circuit’s decision, EFF
The
asks Congress to
strengthen its proposed reform of Section 215, the USA Freedom Act. Pending those improvements, EFF is withdrawing our
support of the bill. We’re urging Congress to roll the draft back to the stronger and meaningful reforms
included in the 2013 version of USA Freedom and affirmatively embrace the Second Circuit’s opinion on the limits of Section
215. Most importantly, the Second Circuit’s correct interpretation of the law should be expressly embraced by Congress in order to
avoid any confusion going forward about what the key terms in the statute mean, especially the terms “relevant” and
“investigation.” This recognition could be in the bill itself or, less preferably, in legislative history. The House Judiciary Committee has already
included such language in its report to the full House of Representatives, but now the Senate must include the language in the bill or in its own
legislative history. This easy task will make sure that the law is not read as rejecting the Second Circuit’s reading and will help ensure
that the USA Freedom Act actually accomplishes its goal of ending bulk collection. The House Report
on USA Freedom, issued today, takes a step forward by stating that: Congress’ decision to leave in place the ‘‘relevance’’ standard for Section
501 orders should not be construed as Congress’ intent to ratify the FISA Court’s interpretation of that term. These changes restore meaningful
limits to the ‘‘relevance’’ requirement of Section 501, consistent with the opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v.
Clapper. Ensuring that the Senate doesn't move away from the legislative history should be a top priority as the bill moves forward. But that’s
the bare minimum Congress must do. The Second Circuit, and especially Judge Sack’s concurrence, noted a lack of both transparency and a true
adversary in the FISA Court. The 2014 and 2013 USA Freedom Act had stronger FISA Court reforms, particularly around the creation of a special
advocate who would argue against the government in the FISA Court. The Second Circuit’s opinion also emphasizes that typical subpoenas seek
only records of "suspects under investigation, or of people or businesses that have contact with such subjects." Under the current USA Freedom
Act, the government can collect records of a "second hop,"—the numbers, and associated metadata, that have been in contact with the
numbers collected initially—without any additional authorization. The bill should be changed so that the government must file another
application for any further records it wants to collect. Automatically obtaining a "second hop" is unacceptable because it sweeps in too many
current USA Freedom Act is also out-of-sync with the court’s narrow view of
permissible collection of records because it lacks a rigorous definition of the " specific selection
term" the government can use to identify the records it wants to collect. This can be addressed by two
changes: (1) drawing upon last year's definition in the USA Freedom Act ; and, (2) closing down potential
loopholes like the definition of "address" or the use of a "person" to include a corporate person. Restoring Important Parts
of 2013’s USA Freedom Act This is also an opportunity and a new context for Congress to address the
shortcomings of the new ly introduced USA Freedom Act that we previously wrote about. Congress should put
people’s records. The
back key provisions that were dropped along the way as well as remove those that were introduced at the behest of the
intelligence community. First,
the "super minimization" procedures , which were key privacy
procedures that mandated the deletion of any information obtained about a person not connected to
the investigation, should be reintroduced. Key provisions establishing a higher legal standard and
compliance assessment for the use of pen register/trap-and-trace devices , legal standing to sue the government
over surveillance practices, and the original transparency provisions allowing government and corporate disclosure of surveillance orders
should also be resuscitated.
1AC Version if the plan broader (and “ends”
surveillance)
Contention One
Contention One – the Status Quo fails, and the Aff solves.
The Freedom Act recently became Law. The new Freedom Act won’t substantially
reduce surveillance. Pen register, super-minimization, and SST standards from the
original draft of the Freedom Act are needed.
Greene ‘15
(et al; David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. David is also an
adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law
and an instructor in the journalism department at San Francisco State University. David has significant experience litigating First
Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts and is one of the country's leading advocates for and
commentators on freedom of expression in the arts. “ACLU v. Clapper and the Congress: How The Second Circuit’s Decision
Affects the Legislative Landscape” - Electronic Frontier Foundation - May 11, 2015 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/aclu-v-clapper-and-congress-how-second-circuits-decision-affects-legislative)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v. Clapper has determined that the NSA’s telephone records program went far beyond
what Congress authorized when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act in 2001. The court unequivocally rejected the government’s secret
reinterpretation of Section 215. Among many important findings, the court found that Section 215’s authorization of the collection of business
records that are “relevant to an authorized investigation” could not be read to include the dragnet collection of telephone records. The court
also took issue with the fact that this strained application of the law was accomplished in secret and approved by the secret and one-sided
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court). EFF filed amicus briefs in this case in both the district and circuit courts, and we
congratulate our colleagues at the ACLU on this significant victory. The Second Circuit’s opinion stands as a clear sign that the courts are ready
to step in and rule that mass surveillance is illegal. That’s great news. The
significant change
Second Circuit’s decision , however, also marks a
in the context of the ongoing legislative debate in Congress. Above all, it is clear that
Congress must do more to rein in dragnet surveillance by the NSA. Clean Reauthorization First, the Second
Circuit’s opinion should stop the idea of a "clean reauthorization" (a reauthorization with no reforms) of Section
215, which is set to expire June 1. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr
introduced S. 1035, a bill that would extend the current language of Section 215 through 2020, thereby continuing the mass spying rubberstamped by the FISA Court. The morning of the Second Circuit decision, both Senators took to the Senate floor to vehemently defend the bulk
collection program and push for a clean reauthorization. But a clean reauthorization is much more complicated now. Congress can’t pretend
that the Second Circuit's narrow reading of “relevant to an authorized investigation” doesn’t exist. It’s likely that if Congress merely does a
“clean” reauthorization of Section 215, then the district court in ACLU v. Clapper will enjoin the government from using Section 215 as
authorization for the call records dragnet, because the district court is bound by the Second Circuit decision. However, if a reauthorization
made it clear that Congress intended to reject the Second Circuit’s narrow reading of the law, it could cause further confusion and the
government could argue that Congress has fully embraced the dragnet. We’re encouraging people to call Congress and tell their lawmakers to
reject Senator McConnell's clean reauthorization in order to avoid the risk that Congress might reject the Second Circuit’s decision
USA Freedom Act Must Be Strengthened
In light of the Second Circuit’s decision, EFF
The
asks Congress to
strengthen its proposed reform of Section 215, the USA Freedom Act. Pending those improvements, EFF is withdrawing our
support of the bill. We’re urging Congress to roll the draft back to the stronger and meaningful reforms
included in the 2013 version of USA Freedom and affirmatively embrace the Second Circuit’s opinion on the limits of Section
215. Most importantly, the Second Circuit’s correct interpretation of the law should be expressly embraced by Congress in order to
avoid any confusion going forward about what the key terms in the statute mean, especially the terms “relevant” and
“investigation.” This recognition could be in the bill itself or, less preferably, in legislative history. The House Judiciary Committee has already
included such language in its report to the full House of Representatives, but now the Senate must include the language in the bill or in its own
legislative history. This easy task will make sure that the law is not read as rejecting the Second Circuit’s reading and will help ensure
that the USA Freedom Act actually accomplishes its goal of ending bulk collection. The House Report
on USA Freedom, issued today, takes a step forward by stating that: Congress’ decision to leave in place the ‘‘relevance’’ standard for Section
501 orders should not be construed as Congress’ intent to ratify the FISA Court’s interpretation of that term. These changes restore meaningful
limits to the ‘‘relevance’’ requirement of Section 501, consistent with the opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v.
Clapper. Ensuring that the Senate doesn't move away from the legislative history should be a top priority as the bill moves forward. But that’s
the bare minimum Congress must do. The Second Circuit, and especially Judge Sack’s concurrence, noted a lack of both transparency and a true
adversary in the FISA Court. The 2014 and 2013 USA Freedom Act had stronger FISA Court reforms, particularly around the creation of a special
advocate who would argue against the government in the FISA Court. The Second Circuit’s opinion also emphasizes that typical subpoenas seek
only records of "suspects under investigation, or of people or businesses that have contact with such subjects." Under the current USA Freedom
Act, the government can collect records of a "second hop,"—the numbers, and associated metadata, that have been in contact with the
numbers collected initially—without any additional authorization. The bill should be changed so that the government must file another
application for any further records it wants to collect. Automatically obtaining a "second hop" is unacceptable because it sweeps in too many
current USA Freedom Act is also out-of-sync with the court’s narrow view of
permissible collection of records because it lacks a rigorous definition of the " specific selection
term" the government can use to identify the records it wants to collect. This can be addressed by two
changes: (1) drawing upon last year's definition in the USA Freedom Act ; and, (2) closing down potential
loopholes like the definition of "address" or the use of a "person" to include a corporate person. Restoring Important Parts
of 2013’s USA Freedom Act This is also an opportunity and a new context for Congress to address the
shortcomings of the new ly introduced USA Freedom Act that we previously wrote about. Congress should put
people’s records. The
back key provisions that were dropped along the way as well as remove those that were introduced at the behest of the
intelligence community. First,
the "super minimization" procedures , which were key privacy
procedures that mandated the deletion of any information obtained about a person not connected to
the investigation, should be reintroduced. Key provisions establishing a higher legal standard and
compliance assessment for the use of pen register/trap-and-trace devices , legal standing to sue the government
over surveillance practices, and the original transparency provisions allowing government and corporate disclosure of surveillance orders
should also be resuscitated.
The current Freedom Act is too narrow. It’s limited to phone collection and not other
bulk collection programs.
Kopstein ‘15
Joshua Kopstein is a journalist and researcher. His work focuses on Internet law and disorder, surveillance and government
secrecy. He has written pieces for Slate Magazine and The New Yorker. “USA Freedom Act gives NSA everything it wants — and
less” - Al Jazeera America’s The Scrutineer – June 2nd – http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2015/6/2/usa-freedomact-gives-nsa-everything-it-wants--and-less.html
Obama signed the Freedom Act into law later
this evening. While far from what most would recognize as “reform,” at the end of the day, the bill is probably more of a victory for transparency than it is for privacy. That's because the Freedom Act has
focused almost exclusively on ending one single National Security Agency program under one single authority: The
secret bulk collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, revealed almost exactly two years ago by Edward Snowden. Section 215
and two other “emergency” post-9/11 surveillance provisions briefly lapsed Sunday night after the Senate failed to reauthorize them. The new law replaces the NSA’s bulk data
The Senate adopted the House version of the bill, which had been watered down at the behest of intelligence agencies, and President
collection with a program that requires telecom companies to retain the data and grant access to
intelligence agencies through more targeted court orders. The other surveillance powers — roving wiretaps and the so-called lone wolf provision — remained
unused even as surveillance hawks raised apocalyptic warnings about letting them expire. Two independent White House panels have found that the metadata collection program has never helped to foil a terrorist plot. A major
appellate court decision also ruled the program was illegal, and that it merely served to create a “vast data bank” of extremely sensitive information — specifically, phone numbers and when and how often they were called —
about millions of innocent Americans. In other words,
the bulk phone records program was on its way out no matter what. The court
ruling could have been a big opportunity to push for an end to all domestic bulk collection
not just phone records. But additional privacy protections had been negotiated away in the House,
under the Patriot Act,
and Senate advocates were not given a chance to add them back. The result renders the Freedom Act a
missed opportunity to address countless other NSA authorities, such as Executive Order 12333 and Section
702 of the F ISA A mendments A ct, ones we know (again, thanks to Snowden) continue to collect many other types of data.
The new Freedom Act will fail – definitions are too watered-down to check mass
surveillance. The original Freedom Act solves.
Tummarello ‘14
Internally quoting Harley Geiger, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology and Kevin Bankston, policy
director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute. Kate Tummarello is a technology reporter for POLITICO
Pro. Previously, she has written about technology for The Hill, Communications Daily and Roll Call. She's a graduate of Hamilton
College, where she studied public policy. “NSA reform legislation 'watered down'?” - The Hill - 05/20/14 http://thehill.com/policy/technology/206686-privacy-advocates-pull-support-for-watered-down-usa-freedom
Privacy advocates who have pushed for legislation to reform U.S. government surveillance are backing
away from a House bill that they say has been "watered down" as it heads to the floor. Though the original
legislation intended to end sweeping surveillance programs, the bill the House will vote on as early as this week
allows for “mass surveillance on a slightly smaller scale,” according to Harley Geiger, senior counsel at
the Center for Democracy and Technology. The bill — the USA Freedom Act, sponsored by Patriot Act author Rep. James
Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) — was
originally written to prohibit the U.S. government's sweeping surveillance
program. But after moving through the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, where it saw some changes but retained the support of privacy
advocates, last minute negotiations between House leadership and the Obama administration have left the bill with weakened language
when it comes to banning mass surveillance , advocates say. On Tuesday, Sensenbrenner filed a manager’s amendment at the
House Rules Committee to be considered on the floor in place of the bill that passed the Judiciary and Intelligence committees. Sensenbrenner’s
amendment still prohibits bulk collection but would allow government officials to search for records using “a
discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the Government to limit the scope of the
information or tangible things sought.” While the standard in Sensenbrenner's amendment is more specific than the one under current law, it leaves
too much room for interpretation, as opposed to earlier versions of the bill , Geiger said. It may keep the
intelligence community from sweeping surveillance on a national level, but “it is ambiguous enough to allow for large scale
collection,” he said. “Ambiguity is what got us into this mess in the first place,” he said, referring to a controversial National
Security Agency program that collected information about Americans’ phone calls. The U.S. government determined that data about
all Americans’ phone calls was “relevant” to intelligence investigations under current surveillance
laws and, therefore, could be collected. "We cannot in good conscience support this weakened version
of the USA Freedom Act, where key reforms — especially those intended to end bulk collection and increase
transparency — have
been substantially watered down ," Kevin Bankston, policy director of the New America Foundation's Open
Technology Institute, said. Bankston said his group is "gravely disappointed that, rather than respecting the wishes of the unanimous Judiciary and Intelligence
committees, the House leadership and the Obama Administration have chosen to disrupt the hard-fought compromise that so many of us were willing to support
just two weeks ago." Geiger also expressed frustration at the way last minute negotiations have led to a weaker bill. He pointed
to bipartisan support
for the original USA Freedom Act and the international backlash that came after last year’s revelations
about U.S. surveillance. “Despite all of that, the bill has been watered down to provide only mild reform,”
he said.
Plan text options
Choose a plan text that you like
Plan options
Plan Option #1:
The United States federal government should pass the original version of the USA FREEDOM Act
(H.R.3361)
Plan Option #2:
The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance by
strengthening the USA FREEDOM Act to:
 require use of a “specific selection term” to satisfy the “reasonable, articulable suspicion
standard”
 require that information collected through “pen register or trap and trace devices” via
emergency authorizations be subject to the same procedural safeguards as non-emergency
collections.
 require “super minimization" procedures that delete information obtained about a person not
connected to the investigation.
Plan Option #3:
Regarding its monitoring of United States persons, the United States federal government should:
 require use of a “specific selection term” to satisfy current “reasonable, articulable suspicion
standards”
 require that information collected through “pen register or trap and trace devices” via
emergency authorizations be subject to the same procedural safeguards as non-emergency
collections.
 require “super minimization" procedures that delete information obtained about a person not
connected to the investigation
Plan Option #4:
Bulk collection of domestic metadata by United States federal intelligence agencies should cease.
Plan Option #5:
In the absence of an individually-tailored warrant obtained via use of a specific selector term, federal
intelligence agencies should cease collection of domestic phone, internet, email, and-or associated
electronic records.
Plan Option #6:
In the absence of an individually-tailored warrant obtained via use of a specific selector term, federal
intelligence agencies should cease collection of domestic phone, internet, email, and associated
electronic records. This should include, but not be limited to, ending the monitoring of United States
persons under Sections 214 and 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act; Executive Order 12333; and Section 702 of
the FISA Amendments Act.
Plan Option #7:
The United States Supreme Court should hold that domestic surveillance conducted by federal
intelligence agencies cannot meet the “reasonable, articulable suspicion standard” without having used
a “specific selection term” and that domestic surveillance conducted by federal intelligence agencies is
in violation of the 4th Amendment if:
 it collects information through “pen register or trap and trace devices” via emergency
authorizations that were not subject to the same procedural safeguards as non-emergency
collections; and-or
 if it fails to delete information obtained about a person not connected to the investigation.
Plan Option #8:
The United States Supreme Court should hold that domestic surveillance conducted by federal
intelligence agencies violates the 4th Amendment if it collects domestic phone, internet, email, and-or
associated electronic records in the absence of an individually-tailored warrant obtained via use of a
“specific selector term”.
Plan Option #9:
The United States federal government should hold that domestic surveillance conducted by federal
intelligence agencies violates the 4th Amendment if it collects domestic phone, internet, email, and-or
associated electronic records in the absence of an individually-tailored warrant obtained via use of a
“specific selector term”.
Plan Option #10:
The United States Supreme Court should hold that no statute presently authorizes federal intelligence
agencies to engage in bulk collection of domestic phone, internet, email, and-or associated electronic
records.
1AC - Privacy Advantage
Privacy Advantage – 1AC, longer version
Privacy Advantage – longer version
Contention # ____ is Privacy
Privacy outweighs.
- Utilitarian impact calc is skewed; and
- Reject Surveillance as a structural matter of power – even when its
“reformed”, innocents are powerless unless neutral oversight’s in place.
Solove ‘7
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article ““I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” - San Diego Law Review, Vol.
44, p. 745 - GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289 – available from download at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
It is time to return to the
nothing to hide argument . The reasoning of this argument is that when it comes to
government surveillance or use of personal data, there is no privacy violation if a person has nothing sensitive,
embarrassing, or illegal to conceal. Criminals involved in illicit activities have something to fear, but for the vast majority of
people, their activities are not illegal or embarrassing. Understanding privacy as I have set forth reveals the flaw of the nothing to hide argument at its roots. Many
commentators who respond to the argument attempt a direct refutation by trying to point to things that people would want to hide. But the problem with the
nothing to hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. Agreeing
with this assumption concedes far
too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide. As Bruce
Schneier aptly notes, the nothing to hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a
wrong.”75 The deeper problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy. But understanding
privacy as a plurality of related problems demonstrates that concealment of bad things is just one among many problems caused by government programs such as
the NSA surveillance and data mining. In the categories in my taxonomy, several problems are implicated. The
NSA programs involve problems of
information collection, specifically the category of surveillance in the taxonomy. Wiretapping involves audio surveillance of people’s conversations.
Data mining often begins with the collection of personal information, usually from various third parties that possess people’s data. Under current Supreme Court
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, when the government gathers data from third parties, there is no Fourth Amendment protection because people lack a
“reasonable expectation of privacy” in information exposed to others.76 In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court concluded that there is no reasonable
expectation of privacy in bank records because “[a]ll of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information
voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business.”77 In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that people
lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial because they “know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company,”
and therefore they cannot “harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain secret.”78 As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the lack of
Fourth Amendment protection of third party records results in the government’s ability to access an extensive amount of personal information with minimal
limitation or oversight.79 Many scholars have referred to information collection as a form of surveillance. Dataveillance, a term coined by Roger Clarke, refers to the
“systemic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons.”80 Christopher Slobogin has
referred to the gathering of personal information in business records as “transaction surveillance.”81 Surveillance
can create chilling effects
on free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.82 Even
surveillance of legal activities can inhibit people from engaging in them. The value of protecting against
chilling effects is not measured simply by focusing on the particular individuals who are deterred from
exercising their rights. Chilling effects harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of
viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity. The nothing to hide
argument focuses primarily on the information collection problems associated with the NSA programs. It contends that limited surveillance of lawful activity will not
chill behavior sufficiently to outweigh the security benefits. One can certainly quarrel with this argument, but one of the difficulties with chilling effects is that it is
often very hard to demonstrate concrete evidence of deterred behavior.83 Whether the NSA’s surveillance and collection of telephone records has deterred people
from communicating particular ideas would be a difficult question to answer. Far too often, discussions of the NSA surveillance and data mining define the problem
solely in terms of surveillance. To return to my discussion of metaphor, the problems are not just Orwellian, but Kafkaesque. The
NSA programs are
problematic even if no information people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited
behavior, but rather
a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system’s use of
personal data and its exclusion of the protagonist from having any knowledge or participation in the process. The harms consist of those created by
bureaucracies—indifference, errors, abuses, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges
from the combination of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.84 When combined, the information becomes much more telling about a person. For the person
who truly has nothing to hide, aggregation is not much of a problem. But in the stronger, less absolutist form of the nothing to hide argument, people argue that
certain pieces of information are not something they would hide. Aggregation, however, means that by combining pieces of information we might not care to
conceal, the government can glean information about us that we might really want to conceal. Part of the
allure of data mining for the
government is its ability to reveal a lot about our personalities and activities by sophisticated means of analyzing data. Therefore,
without greater transparency in data mining, it is hard to claim that programs like the NSA data mining program will not
reveal information people might want to hide, as we do not know precisely what is revealed. Moreover, data mining aims to be predictive
of behavior, striving to prognosticate about our future actions. People who match certain profiles are deemed likely to engage in a similar pattern of behavior. It is
quite difficult to refute actions that one has not yet done. Having nothing to hide will not always dispel predictions of future activity. Another
problem in
the taxonomy, which is implicated by the NSA program, is the problem I refer to as exclusion.85 Exclusion is the problem caused when people are
prevented from having knowledge about how their information is being used, as well as barred from being able to access and correct errors in that data. The NSA
program involves a massive database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, the very existence of the program was kept secret for years.86 This kind
of information processing, which forbids people’s knowledge or involvement, resembles in some ways a kind of due process problem. It is a structural problem
involving the way people are treated by government institutions. Moreover, it creates a power imbalance between individuals and the government. To what extent
should the Executive Branch and an agency such as the NSA, which is relatively insulated from the political process and public accountability, have a significant
power over citizens? This
issue is not about whether the information gathered is something people want to
hide, but rather about the power and the structure of government. A related problem involves “secondary use.” Secondary
use is the use of data obtained for one purpose for a different unrelated purpose without the person’s consent. The Administration has said little about how long
the data will be stored, how it will be used, and what it could be used for in the future. The potential future uses of any piece of personal information are vast, and
without limits or accountability on how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data being in the government’s control. Therefore,
the problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or
surveillance—and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets
important to distinguish here between two ways of
the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive. It is
justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance
and data mining program. The first
way is to not recognize a problem. This is how the nothing to hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such
a program is
to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh
the privacy harms . The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem.
The key misunderstanding is that the nothing to hide argument views privacy in a particular way—as a form of secrecy, as
the right to hide things. But there are many other types of harm involved beyond exposing one’s
secrets to the government. Privacy problems are often difficult to recognize and redress because they create a panoply of types of harm. Courts,
legislators, and others look for particular types of harm to the exclusion of others, and their narrow focus blinds them to seeing other kinds of harms. One of the
difficulties with the nothing to hide argument
is that it looks for a visceral kind of injury as opposed to a
structural one . Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is shared by both those advocating for greater privacy protections and those arguing
in favor of the conflicting interests to privacy. For example, law professor Ann Bartow argues that I have failed to describe
privacy harms in a compelling manner in my article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, where I provide a framework for understanding the manifold different privacy
problems.87 Bartow’s primary complaint is that my taxonomy “frames privacy harms in dry, analytical terms that fail to sufficiently identify and animate the
compelling ways that privacy violations can negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease.”88 Bartow
claims that the taxonomy
does not have “enough dead bodies” and that privacy’s “lack of blood and death,
or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other categories of tort law. Most
privacy problems lack dead bodies. Of course, there are exceptional cases such as the murders of Rebecca Shaeffer and Amy Boyer. Rebecca
Shaeffer was an actress killed when a stalker obtained her address from a Department of Motor Vehicles record.90 This incident prompted Congress to pass the
Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.91 Amy Boyer was murdered by a stalker who obtained her personal information, including her work address and Social
Security number, from a database company.92 These examples aside, there is not a lot of death and gore in privacy law. If this is the standard to recognize a
problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Horrific cases are not typical, and the purpose of my taxonomy is to explain why most privacy problems are
still harmful despite this fact. Bartow’s objection is actually very similar to the nothing to hide argument. Those
advancing the nothing to hide
argument have in mind a particular kind of visceral privacy harm, one where privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or
discrediting is revealed. Bartow’s
quest for horror stories represents a similar desire to find visceral privacy harms. The problem is that not all
privacy harms are like this. At the end of the day, privacy
is not a horror movie, and demanding more palpable harms will be difficult in many cases.
Yet there is still a harm worth addressing, even if it is not sensationalistic.
In many instances, privacy is
threatened not by singular egregious acts, but by a slow series of relatively minor acts which gradually begin to add up. In this way, privacy problems resemble
certain environmental harms which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Bartow wants to point to a major spill, but gradual pollution by
a multitude of different actors often creates worse problems. The law frequently struggles with recognizing harms that do not result in embarrassment, humiliation,
or physical or psychological injury.93 For example, after the September 11 attacks, several airlines gave their passenger records to federal agencies in direct
violation of their privacy policies. The federal agencies used the data to study airline security.94 A group of passengers sued Northwest Airlines for disclosing their
personal information. One of their claims was that Northwest Airlines breached its contract with the passengers. In Dyer v. Northwest Airlines Corp., the court
rejected the contract claim because “broad statements of company policy do not generally give rise to contract claims,” the passengers never claimed they relied
upon the policy or even read it, and they “failed to allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach.”95 Another court reached a similar
conclusion.96 Regardless of the merits of the decisions on contract law, the cases represent a difficulty with the legal system in addressing privacy problems. The
disclosure of the passenger records represented a “breach of confidentiality.”97 The problems caused by breaches of confidentiality do not merely consist of
individual emotional distress; they involve a violation of trust within a relationship. There is a strong social value in ensuring that promises are kept and that trust is
maintained in relationships between businesses and their customers. The problem of secondary use is also implicated in this case.98 Secondary use involves data
collected for one purpose being used for an unrelated purpose without people’s consent. The airlines gave passenger information to the government for an entirely
different purpose beyond that for which it was originally gathered. Secondary use problems often do not cause financial, or even psychological, injuries. Instead, the
harm is one of power imbalance. In Dyer, data was disseminated in a way that ignored airline passengers’ interests in the data despite promises made in the privacy
policy. Even if the passengers were unaware of the policy, there is a social value in ensuring that companies adhere to established limits on the way they use
personal information. Otherwise, any stated limits become meaningless, and companies have discretion to boundlessly use data. Such a state of affairs can leave
nearly all consumers in a powerless position. The harm, then, is less one to particular individuals than it is a structural harm. A similar problem surfaces in another
case, Smith v. Chase Manhattan Bank.99 A group of plaintiffs sued Chase Manhattan Bank for selling customer information to third parties in violation of its privacy
policy, which stated that the information would remain confidential. The court held that even presuming these allegations were true, the plaintiffs could not prove
any actual injury: [T]he “harm” at the heart of this purported class action, is that class members were merely offered products and services which they were free to
decline. This does not qualify as actual harm. The complaint does not allege any single instance where a named plaintiff or any class member suffered any actual
harm due to the receipt of an unwanted telephone solicitation or a piece of junk mail.100 The court’s view of harm, however, did not account for the breach of
confidentiality. When
balancing privacy against security, the privacy harms are often characterized in terms of
injuries to the individual, and the interest in security is often characterized in a more broad societal way. The
security interest in the NSA programs has often been defined improperly. In a Congressional hearing, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales stated: Our enemy is listening, and I cannot help but wonder if they are not shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would
imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even
unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror.101 The balance between privacy and security is often cast in terms of whether a particular
government information collection activity should or should not be barred. The
issue, however, often is not whether the NSA or other government
agencies should be allowed to engage in particular forms of information gathering; rather, it is what kinds of
oversight and accountability we want in place when the government engages in searches and seizures. The government can
employ nearly any kind of investigatory activity with a warrant supported by probable cause. This is a mechanism of oversight—it
forces government officials to justify their suspicions to a neutral judge or magistrate before engaging in the tactic. For
example, electronic surveillance law allows for wiretapping, but limits the practice with judicial supervision, procedures to minimize the breadth of the wiretapping,
and requirements that the law enforcement officials report back to the court to prevent abuses.102 It is these procedures that the Bush Administration has ignored
by engaging in the warrantless NSA surveillance. The question is not whether we want the government to monitor such conversations, but whether the Executive
Branch should adhere to the appropriate oversight procedures that Congress has enacted into law, or should covertly ignore any oversight. Therefore, the security
interest should not get weighed in its totality against the privacy interest. Rather, what should get weighed is the extent of marginal limitation on the effectiveness
of a government information gathering or data mining program by imposing judicial oversight and minimization procedures. Only in cases where such procedures
will completely impair the government program should the security interest be weighed in total, rather than in the marginal difference between an unencumbered
program versus a limited one. Far too
often, the balancing of privacy interests against security interests takes place in a
manner that severely shortchanges the privacy interest while inflating the security interests . Such is the
logic of the nothing to hide argument. When
examined
the argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions
can see how it shifts the debate to its terms , in which it draws power from its
unfair advantage. It is time to pull the curtain on the nothing to hide argument. Whether explicit or not, conceptions of privacy underpin
and challenged, we
nearly every argument made about privacy, even the common quip “I’ve got nothing to hide.” As I have sought to demonstrate in this essay, understanding privacy
as a pluralistic conception reveals that we are often talking past each other when discussing privacy issues. By focusing more specifically on the related problems
under the rubric of “privacy,” we can better address each problem rather than ignore or conflate them. The nothing to hide argument speaks to some
problems, but not to others. It represents
a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding
consideration of the other problems often raised in government surveillance and data mining
programs. When engaged with directly, the nothing to hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But
when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond
surveillance and disclosure, the nothing to hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.
Put privacy before security. The ballot should create a side constraint where ends
don’t justify the means. This is especially applies to data collection in the absence of
probable cause.
Albright ‘14
Logan Albright is the Research Analyst at FreedomWorks, and is responsible for producing a wide variety of written content for
print and the web, as well as conducting research for staff media appearances and special projects. He received his Master’s
degree in economics from Georgia State University. “The NSA's Collateral Spying” – Freedom Works - 07/08/2014 http://www.freedomworks.org/content/nsas-collateral-spying
In short, the report, based on information obtained by Edward Snowden, reveals that during the course of its ordinary, otherwise legal surveillance operations,
the NSA also collected data on large numbers of people who were not specifically targeted. The agency
calls this practice “incidental surveillance.” I call it “collateral spying.” The report found that, on average, 9 out of every 10 people
spied on were not the intended target. The NSA has the legal authority to obtain a warrant based on
probable cause in order to surveil an individual. No one is disputing that. But when this targeting results
in collateral spying on vast numbers of innocents, in the absence of probable cause and the corresponding warrants, that is a
major problem. The NSA has asserted that such incidental data collection is inevitable, and to a certain extent that’s likely true. It is
should obviously be
minimized as far as possible , and at the very least the information should be immediately
purged from government databases , not stored for years on end. In any case, the whole situation is indicative of
understandable that in some situations the NSA may learn information about people other than the direct target, but this
the agency’s cavalier attitude towards individual rights. While
national security is a concern we all share, the ends do not justify
the means when those means involve violate the constitutional protections afforded to citizens by our nation’s founders. It is
not okay to violate the rights of an innocent in the process of achieving a broader goal, even
if that goal is noble. The way the NSA has been behaving is Machiavellian in the most literal sense. In his 16th century
political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli recognized a harsh reality of politics that still plagues us half a millennium later, writing, “A prince wishing to keep
his state is very often forced to do evil.” Taking Machiavelli’s advice as a
green light for immoral behavior has been the problem with
governments throughout history, a problem the founding fathers sought to avoid by setting down precise guidelines for what the government could and could not
do in the form of a Constitution. The disregard of these rules, and the
argument that there should be a national security
exception to the Fourth Amendment, undermines the entire purpose of the American experiment, and restores the European-style
tyrannies the revolutionaries fought against.
Even within a utilitarian framework, privacy outweighs for two reasons:
First – Structural bias. Their link inflates the security risk and their impact’s an
epistemologically wrong.
Solove ‘8
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article: “Data Mining and the Security-Liberty Debate” - University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 74, p. 343,
2008 - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990030
Data mining is one issue in a larger debate about security and privacy. Proponents of data mining justify it as an
essential tool to protect our security. For example, Judge Richard Posner argues that “[i]n an era of global terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the government has a
compelling need to gather, pool, sift, and search vast quantities of information, much of it personal.”9 Moreover, proponents of security measures argue that we must provide the executive branch with the discretion it needs to
protect us. We cannot second guess every decision made by government officials, and excessive meddling into issues of national security by judges and oth-ers lacking expertise will prove detrimental. For example, William Stuntz
contends that “effective, active government—government that innovates, that protects people who need protecting, that acts aggressively when action is needed—is dying. Privacy and transparency are the diseases. We need to
find a vaccine, and soon.”10 Stuntz concludes that “[i]n an age of terrorism, privacy rules are not simply unaffordable. They are perverse.”11 We live in an “age of balancing,” and
and civil liberties are not absolute.12 Thus,
how the balancing occurs
the prevailing view is that most rights
liberty must be balanced against security. But there are systematic problems with
that inflate the importance of the security interests and diminish the value of
the liberty interests .
In this essay, I examine some common difficulties in the way that liberty is balanced against security in the context of data mining. Countless discussions about the tradeoffs
liberty interests are cast as individual
rights and balanced against the security interests, which are cast in terms of the safety of society as a whole. Courts and
between security and liberty begin by taking a security proposal and then weighing it against what it would cost our civil liberties. Often, the
commentators defer to the government’s assertions about the effectiveness of the security interest. In the context of data mining, the liberty interest is limited by narrow understandings of privacy that neglect to account for many
privacy problems.
As a result, the balancing concludes with a victory in favor of the security interest. But
as I will argue,
privacy concerns are significantly greater than
acknowledged. These problems undermine the balancing process and skew results toward
the security side of the scale.
important dimensions of data mining’s security benefits require more scrutiny, and the
have
currently
d
ed the
Debates about data mining begin with the assumption that it is an essential tool in protecting our security. Terrorists lurk among us, and ferreting
them out can be quite difficult. Examining data for patterns will greatly assist in this endeavor, the argument goes, because certain identifiable characteristics and behaviors are likely to be associated with terrorist activity. Often,
little more is said, and the debate pro-ceeds to examine whether privacy is important enough to refrain from using such an effective terrorism-fighting tool. Many discussions about security and liberty proceed in this fashion. They
commence by assuming that a particular security measure is effective, and the only remaining question is whether the liberty interest is strong enough to curtail that measure. But given the gravity of the security concerns over
terrorism, the liberty interest has all but lost before it is even placed on the scale. Judge Richard Posner argues that judges should give the executive branch considerable deference when it comes to assessing the security measures
it proposes. In his recent book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency,13 Posner contends that judicial restraint is wise because “when in doubt about the actual or likely consequences of a measure,
the pragmatic, empiricist judge will be inclined to give the other branches of government their head.”14 According to Posner, “[j]udges aren’t supposed to know much about national security.”15 Likewise, Eric Posner and Adrian
Vermeule declare in their new book, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts,16 that “the executive branch, not Congress or the judicial branch, should make the tradeoff between security and liberty.”17 Moreover,
Posner and Vermeule declare that during emergencies, “[c]onstitutional rights should be relaxed so that the executive can move forcefully against the threat.”18 The problem with such deference is that, historically, the executive
branch has not always made the wisest national security decisions. Nonetheless, Posner and Vermeule contend that notwithstanding its mistakes, the executive branch is better than the judicial and legislative branches on
institutional competence grounds.19 “Judges are generalists,” they observe, “and the political insulation that protects them from current politics also deprives them of information, especially information about novel security
threats and necessary responses to those threats.”20 Posner and Vermeule argue that during emergencies, the “novelty of the threats and of the necessary responses makes judicial routines and evolved legal rules seem
inapposite, even obstructive.”21 “Judicial routines” and “legal rules,” however, are the cornerstone of due process and the rule of law—the central building blocks of a free and democratic society. At many times, Posner,
Vermeule, and other strong proponents of security seem to focus almost exclusively on what would be best for security when the objective should be establishing an optimal balance between security and liberty. Although such a
balance may not promote security with maximum efficiency, it is one of the costs of living in a constitutional democracy as opposed to an authoritarian political regime. The executive branch may be the appropriate branch for
developing security measures, but this does not mean that it is the most adept branch at establishing a balance between security and liberty. In our constitutional democracy, all branches have a role to play in making policy. Courts
protect constitutional rights not as absolute restrictions on executive and legislative policymaking but as important interests to be balanced against government interests. As T. Alexander Aleinikoff notes, “balancing now dominates
major areas of constitutional law.”22 Balancing occurs through various forms of judicial scrutiny, requiring courts to analyze the weight of the government’s interest, a particular measure’s effectiveness in protecting that interest,
and the extent to which the government interest can be achieved without unduly infringing upon constitutional rights.23 For balancing to be meaningful, courts must scrutinize both the security and liberty interests. With
deference, however, courts fail to give adequate scrutiny to security interests. For example, after the subway bombings in London, the New York Police Department began a program of random searches of people’s baggage on the
subway. The searches were conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. In MacWade v Kelly,24 the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the program against a Fourth
Amendment challenge. Under the special needs doctrine, when exceptional circumstances make the warrant and probable cause requirements unnecessary, the search is analyzed in terms of whether it is “reasonable.”25
Reasonableness is determined by balancing the government interest in security against the interests in privacy and civil liberties.26 The weight of the security interest should turn on the extent to which the program effectively
improves subway safety. The goals of the program may be quite laudable, but nobody questions the importance of subway safety. The critical issue is whether the search program is a sufficiently effective way of achieving those
goals that it is worth the tradeoff in civil liberties. On this question, unfortunately, the court deferred to the law enforcement officials, stating that the issue “is best left to those with a unique understanding of, and responsibility
for, limited public resources, including a finite number of police officers.” 27 In determining whether the program was “a reasonably effective means of addressing the government interest in deterring and detecting a terrorist
attack on the subway system,”28 the court refused to examine the data to assess the program’s effectiveness.29 The way the court analyzed the government’s side of the balance would justify nearly any search, no matter how
ineffective. Although courts should not take a know-it-all attitude, they should not defer on such a critical question as a security measure’s effectiveness. The problem with many security measures is that they are not wise
expenditures of resources. A small number of random searches in a subway system of over four million riders a day seems more symbolic than effective because the odds of the police finding the terrorist with a bomb are very low.
The government also argued that the program would deter terrorists from bringing bombs on subway trains, but nearly any kind of security measure can arguably produce some degree of deterrence. The key issue, which the court
did not analyze, is whether the program would lead to deterrence significant enough to outweigh the curtailment of civil liberties. If courts fail to question the efficacy of security measures, then the security interest will prevail
nearly all the time. Preventing terrorism has an immensely heavy weight, and any given security measure will provide a marginal advancement toward that goal. In the defer-ence equation, the math then becomes easy. At this
point, it is futile to even bother to look at the civil liberties side of the balance. The government side has already won. Proponents of deference argue that if courts did not defer, then they would be substituting their judgment for
that of executive officials, who have greater expertise in understanding security issues. Special expertise in national security, however, is often not necessary for balancing security and liberty. Judges and legislators should require
the experts to persuasively justify the security measures being developed or used. Of course, in very complex areas of knowledge, such as advanced physics, nonexperts may find it difficult to understand the concepts and
comprehend the terminology. But it is not clear that security expertise involves such sophisticated knowledge that it would be incomprehensible to nonexperts. Moreover, the deference argument conflates evaluating a particular
security measure with creating such a measure. The point of judicial review is to subject the judgment of government officials to critical scrutiny rather than blindly accept their authority. Critical inquiry into factual matters is not
the imposition of the judge’s own judgment for that of the decisionmaker under review.30 Instead, it is forcing government officials to explain and justify their policies. Few will quarrel with the principle that courts should not
“second guess” the decisions of policy experts. But there is a difference between not “second guessing” and failing to critically evaluate the factual and empirical evidence justifying the government programs. Nobody will contest
the fact that security is a compelling interest. The key issue in the balancing is the extent to which the security measure furthers the interest in security. As I have argued elsewhere, whenever courts defer to the government on the
effectiveness of a government security measure, they are actually deferring to the government on the ultimate question as to whether the measure passes constitutional muster.31 Deference by the courts or legislature is an
abdication of their function. Our constitutional system of government was created with three branches, a design structured to establish checks and balances against abuses of power. Institutional competence arguments are often
made as if they are ineluctable truths about the nature of each governmental branch. But the branches have all evolved considerably throughout history. To the extent a branch lacks resources to carry out its function, the answer
should not be to diminish the power of that branch but to provide it with the necessary tools so it can more effectively carry out its function. Far too often, unfortunately, discussions of institutional competence devolve into broad
generalizations about each branch and unsubstantiated assertions about the inherent superiority of certain branches for making particular determinations. It is true, as Posner and Vermeule observe, that historically courts have
been deferential to the executive during emergencies.32 Proponents of security measures often advance what I will refer to as the “pendulum theory”—that in times of crisis, the balance shifts more toward security and in times of
peace, the balance shifts back toward liberty. For example, Chief Justice Rehnquist argues that the “laws will thus not be silent in time of war, but they will speak with a somewhat different voice.”33 Judge Posner contends that the
liberties curtailed during times of crisis are often restored during times of peace.34 Deference is inevitable, and we should accept it without being overly concerned, for the pendulum will surely swing back. As I argue elsewhere,
however, there have been many instances throughout US history of needless curtailments of liberty in the name of security, such as the Palmer Raids, the Japanese Internment, and the McCarthy communist hearings.35 Too often,
such curtailments did not stem from any real security need but because of the “personal agendas and prejudices” of government officials.36 We should not simply accept these mistakes as inevitable; we should seek to prevent
them from occurring. Hoping that the pendulum will swing back offers little consolation to those whose liberties were infringed or chilled. The protection of liberty is most important in times of crisis, when it is under the greatest
threat. During times of peace, when our judgment is not clouded by fear, we are less likely to make unnecessary sacrifices of liberty. The threat to liberty is lower in peacetime, and the need to protect it is not as dire. The greatest
need for safeguarding liberty is during times when we least want to protect it. In order to balance security and liberty, we must assess the security interest. This involves evaluating two components—the gravity of the security
It is often merely assumed without question that the secu-rity threat from terrorism is one
of the gravest dangers we face in the modern world. But this assumption might be wrong. Assessing the risk of harm from terrorism is very difficult
threat and the effectiveness of the security measures to address it.
because terrorism is such an irregular occurrence and is constantly evolving. If we examine the data from previous terrorist attacks, however,
severely overstated.
the threat of terrorism has been
For example, many people fear being killed in a terrorist attack, but based on statistics from terrorism in the United States,
the risk of dying from
terrorism is miniscule. According to political scientist John Mueller, [e]ven with the September 11 attacks included in the count . . . the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late
1960s (which is when the State Department began its accounting) is about the same as the number killed over the same period by lightning, or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.37 Add up
the eight deadliest terrorist attacks in US history, and they amount to fewer than four thousand fatalities.38
In contrast, flu and pneumonia deaths are estimated to be around sixty thousand per year.39 Another forty thousand die in auto accidents each year.40 Based on our experience with terrorism thus far, the risk of
dying from terrorism is very low on the relative scale of fatal risks. Dramatic events and media attention can cloud
a rational assessment of risk.
The year 2001 was not just notable for the September 11 attacks. It was also the summer of the shark bite, when extensive media coverage about shark
bites led to the perception that such attacks were on the rise. But there were fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000 and fewer deaths as well, with only four in 2001 as compared to thirteen in 2000.41 And regardless of which
year had more deaths, the number is so low that an attack is a freak occurrence. It is certainly true that our past experience with terrorism might not be a good indicator of the future. More treacherous terrorism is possible, such
as the use of nuclear or biological weapons. This complicates our ability to assess the risk of harm from terrorism. Moreover, the intentional human conduct involved in terrorism creates a sense of outrage and fear that ordinary
deaths do not engender. Alleviating fear must be taken into account, even if such fear is irrationally high in relation to other riskier events such as dying in a car crash. But enlightened policy must not completely give in to the panic
most policymakers find it quite difficult to
assess the threat of terrorism modestly. In the face of widespread public panic, it is hard for government officials to make only moderate changes. Something dramatic must be done,
or political heads will roll. Given the difficulty in assessing the security threat in a more rational manner, it is imperative that the courts meaningfully analyze the effectiveness of security measures. Even if panic and fear
might lead to the gravity of the threat being overstated, we should at least ensure that the measures taken to
promote security are sufficiently effective to justify the cost. Unfortunately, as I will discuss in the next section, rarely do discussions about the sacrifice of civil liberties explain the corresponding
security benefit, why such a benefit cannot be achieved in other ways, and why such a security measure is the best and most rational one to take. Little scrutiny is given to security
measures. They are often just accepted as a given, no matter how ill-conceived or ineffective they might be. Some ineffective security measures are largely symbolic,
and irrational fear of the moment. It should certainly attempt to quell the fear, but it must do so thoughtfully. Nevertheless,
such as the New York City subway search program. The searches are unlikely to catch or deter terrorists because they involve only a miniscule fraction of the millions of daily passengers. Terrorists can just turn to other targets or
simply attempt the bombing on another day or at another train station where searches are not taking place. The vice of symbolic security programs is that they result in needless sacrifices of liberty and drain resources from other,
more effective security measures. Nevertheless, these programs have a virtue—they can ameliorate fear because they are highly visible. Ironically, the subway search program’s primary benefit was alleviating people’s fear (which
was probably too high), albeit in a deceptive manner (as the program did not add much in the way of security).
Data mining represents another kind of security measure, one that currently has little
proven effectiveness and little symbolic value. Data mining programs are often not visible enough to the public to quell much fear. Instead, their benefits come primarily from their actual effectiveness in
reducing terrorist threats, which remains highly speculative. Thus far,
data mining is not very accurate
in the behavioral predictions it makes. For example, there are
approximately 1.8 million airline passengers each day.42 A data mining program to identify terrorists with a false positive rate of 1 percent (which would be exceedingly low for such a program) would flag eighteen thousand people
as false positives. This is quite a large number of innocent people. Why is the government so interested in data mining if it remains unclear whether it will ever be very accurate or workable? Part of the government’s interest in
data mining stems from the aggressive marketing efforts of database companies. After September 11, database companies met with government officials and made a persuasive pitch about the virtues of data mining.43 The
just because data mining might
be effective for businesses trying to predict customer behavior does not make it effective for the
government trying to predict who will engage in terrorism. A high level of accuracy is not necessary when data mining is used by businesses to target
technology sounds quite dazzling when presented by skillful marketers, and it can work quite well in the commercial setting. The problem, however, is that
marketing to consumers, because the cost of error to individuals is minimal. Amazon.com, for example, engages in data mining to determine which books its customers are likely to find of interest by comparing bookbuying
patterns among its customers. Although it is far from precise, it need not be because there are few bad consequences if it makes a wrong book recommendation. Conversely, the consequences are vastly greater for government
I do not believe that the case has been made that data mining is a wise expenditure of
security resources. Those who advocate for security should be just as outraged as those on the liberty side of the debate. Although courts should not micromanage which security measures the government
data mining. Ultimately,
chooses, they should examine the effectiveness of any given security measure to weigh it against the liberty costs. Courts should not tell the executive branch to modify a security measure just because they are not convinced it is
The very point of protecting liberty is to
demand that sacrifices to liberty are not in vain and that security interests, which compromise civil
liberties, are sufficiently effective to warrant the cost.
the best one, but they should tell the executive that a particular security measure is not effective enough to outweigh the liberty costs.
Second - Relative certainty. The disad only may cause violence - surveillance definitely
does. Privacy is paramount for dignity and protecting our unique individuality.
Schneier ‘6
Bruce Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New
America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the CTO of Resilient Systems. He is the author of Beyond Fear: Thinking
Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. Commentary, “The Eternal Value of Privacy”, WIRED, May 18, 2006,
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and
other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to
hide?" Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."
"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong
with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise
that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for
maintaining
the human condition with
dignity and respect. Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches
the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six
lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to
arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy
is important because without it, surveillance information will be
abused : to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time. Privacy protects us from
abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. We do nothing wrong
when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private
journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them.
Privacy is a basic human need.
A
future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit
right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act
so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the
concept of liberty. For
if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment,
criticism, even plagiarism
of our own uniqueness . We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful
that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate
us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose
our individuality , because everything we do is observable and recordable. How many of us have paused
during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it
was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe
the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be
taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our
words are subtly altered. This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives. Too many wrongly characterize the
debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises
under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still
tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very
definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
The 4th Amendment outweighs. An ethical ballot can’t even consider their security
impact. That would treat privacy as mere inconvenience – obliterating liberty.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The government argues that it would be more convenient for law enforcement if the courts established
a bright-line rule that extinguished all privacy in information shared with others. See Gov’t Br. 40. The government is
surely right about this. The Bill of Rights exists, however, not to serve governmental efficiency but to safeguard
individual liberty. Cf. Bailey v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 1031, 1041 (2013) (“ ‘[T]he mere fact that law enforcement
may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth
Amendment .’” (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393 (1978))); Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2493 (“Our cases have historically recognized that the
warrant requirement is ‘an important working part of our machinery of government,’ not merely
‘an inconvenience to be somehow “weighed” against the claims of police efficiency. ’”
(quoting Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 481 (1971))). Notably, the government made the same appeal for a bright-line rule in Jones and Maynard, see,
e.g., Brief for the United States at 13, Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, but the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit rejected it.
Reject those privacy violations as an a priori imperative. Also proves that the disad’s
all hype.
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden and Udall sat on the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program. “BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON
WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - Appeal
from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No.
2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE
LLP. This pdf can be obtained at: https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
Respect for Americans’ privacy is not a matter of convenience, but a Constitutional imperative .
Despite years of receiving classified briefings and asking repeated questions of intelligence officials in both
have seen no evidence that bulk collection accomplishes anything
that other less intrusive surveillance authorities could not. Bulk collection is not only a significant threat
to the constitutional liberties of Americans, but a needless one.9
private and public settings, amici
Reject utilitarianism. It shatters all ethics and justifies the worst atrocities.
Holt ‘95
(Jim Holt is an American philosopher, author and essayist. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New York Times
Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and Slate. He hosted a weekly radio spot on
BBC for ten years and he writes frequently about politics and philosophy. New York Times, “Morality, Reduced To Arithmetic,”
August 5, p. Lexis)
Can the deliberate massacre of innocent people ever be condoned? The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 to 250,000
Japanese by incineration and radiation poisoning. Although a small fraction of the victims were soldiers, the great majority were noncombatants -- women, children, the aged. Among the
justifications that have been put forward for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the bomb, only one is worth taking seriously -- that it saved lives. The alternative, the reasoning goes,
was to launch an invasion. Truman claimed in his memoirs that this would have cost another half a million American lives. Winston Churchill put the figure at a million. Revisionist historians
have cast doubt on such numbers. Wartime documents suggest that military planners expected around 50,000 American combat deaths in an invasion. Still, when Japanese casualties, military
and civilian, are taken into account, the overall invasion death toll on both sides would surely have ended up surpassing that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scholars will continue to argue over
whether there were other, less catastrophic ways to force Tokyo to surrender. But given the fierce obstinacy of the Japanese militarists, Truman and his advisers had some grounds for
believing that nothing short of a full-scale invasion or the annihilation of a big city with an apocalyptic new weapon would have succeeded. Suppose they were right. Would this prospect have
In the debate over the question, participants on both sides have been playing the
numbers game. Estimate the hypothetical number of lives saved by the bombings, then add up the actual lives
lost. If the first number exceeds the second, then Truman did the right thing; if the reverse, it was wrong to have dropped the bombs. That is one approach to the matter -- the utilitarian
approach. According to utilitarianism, a form of moral reasoning that arose in the 19th century, the goodness or evil of an action is determined
justified the intentional mass killing of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
solely by its consequences. If somehow you can save 10 lives by boiling a baby, go ahead and boil that
baby . There is, however, an older ethical tradition, one rooted in Judeo-Christian theology, that takes a quite different view. The gist of it is
Some actions, this tradition holds, can never be justified by
their consequences; they are absolutely forbidden. It is always wrong to boil a baby even if lives are
saved thereby. Applying this absolutist morality to war can be tricky. When enemy soldiers are trying to enslave or kill us, the principle of self-defense permits us to kill them
expressed by St. Paul’s condemnation of those who say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.”
(though not to slaughter them once they are taken prisoner). But what of those who back them? During World War II, propagandists made much of the “indivisibility” of modern warfare: the
idea was that since the enemy nation’s entire economic and social strength was deployed behind its military forces, the whole population was a legitimate target for obliteration. “There are no
civilians in Japan,” declared an intelligence officer of the Fifth Air Force shortly before the Hiroshima bombing, a time when the Japanese were popularly depicted as vermin worthy of
extermination. The boundary between combatant and noncombatant can be fuzzy, but the distinction is not meaningless, as the case of small children makes clear. Yet is wartime killing of
those who are not trying to harm us always tantamount to murder? When naval dockyards, munitions factories and supply lines are bombed, civilian carnage is inevitable. The absolutist moral
tradition acknowledges this by a principle known as double effect: although it is always wrong to kill innocents deliberately, it is sometimes permissible to attack a military target knowing some
noncombatants will die as a side effect. The doctrine of double effect might even justify bombing a hospital where Hitler is lying ill. It does not, however, apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Transformed into hostages by the technology of aerial bombardment, the people of those cities were intentionally executed en masse to send a message of terror to the rulers of Japan. The
practice of ordering the massacre of civilians to bring the enemy to heel scarcely began with Truman. Nor did the bomb result in casualties of a new order of magnitude. The earlier bombing of
Tokyo by incendiary weapons killed some 100,000 people. What Hiroshima and Nagasaki did mark, by the unprecedented need for rationalization they presented, was the triumph of
utilitarian thinking in the conduct of war. The conventional code of noncombatant immunity -- a product of several centuries of ethical progress among nations, which had
been formalized by an international commission in the 1920’s in the Hague -- was swept away. A simpler axiom took its place: since war is hell, any means necessary may be used to end, in
Churchill’s words, “the vast indefinite butchery.” It
is a moral calculus that, for all its logical consistency, offends
our deep-seated intuitions about
the
sanctity of life -- our conviction that a person is always to be treated as an end, never as a means. Left up to
the warmakers, moreover, utilitarian calculations are susceptible to bad-faith reasoning: tinker with the
numbers enough and virtually any atrocity can be excused in the national interest. In January, the
world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where mass slaughter was committed as an end in itself -- the ultimate evil. The moral nature of Hiroshima is
the bomb’s sinister legacy is
plain: it has inured us to the idea of reducing innocents to instruments and morality to arithmetic.
ambiguous by contrast. Yet in the postwar era, when governments do not hesitate to treat the massacre of civilians as just another strategic option,
Privacy Advantage 1AC – shorter version
Privacy Advantage – shorter version
Contention # ____ is Privacy
Privacy outweighs.
- Utilitarian impact calc is biased. It inflates the disad’s risk; and
- Reject Surveillance as a structural matter of power – even when “reformed”,
innocents experience powerless unless neutral oversight’s in place.
Solove ‘7
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article ““I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” - San Diego Law Review, Vol.
44, p. 745 - GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289 – available from download at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
It is time to return to the
nothing to hide argument . The reasoning of this argument is that when it comes to
government surveillance or use of personal data, there is no privacy violation if a person has nothing sensitive,
embarrassing, or illegal to conceal. Criminals involved in illicit activities have something to fear, but for the vast majority of
people, their activities are not illegal or embarrassing. Understanding privacy as I have set forth reveals the flaw of the nothing to hide argument at its roots. Many
commentators who respond to the argument attempt a direct refutation by trying to point to things that people would want to hide. But the problem with the
nothing to hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. Agreeing
with this assumption concedes far
too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide. As Bruce
Schneier aptly notes, the nothing to hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a
wrong.”75 The deeper problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy. But understanding
privacy as a plurality of related problems demonstrates that concealment of bad things is just one among many problems caused by government programs such as
the NSA surveillance and data mining. In the categories in my taxonomy, several problems are implicated. The
NSA programs involve problems of
information collection, specifically the category of surveillance in the taxonomy. Wiretapping involves audio surveillance of people’s conversations.
Data mining often begins with the collection of personal information, usually from various third parties that possess people’s data. Under current Supreme Court
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, when the government gathers data from third parties, there is no Fourth Amendment protection because people lack a
“reasonable expectation of privacy” in information exposed to others.76 In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court concluded that there is no reasonable
expectation of privacy in bank records because “[a]ll of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information
voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business.”77 In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that people
lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial because they “know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company,”
and therefore they cannot “harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain secret.”78 As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the lack of
Fourth Amendment protection of third party records results in the government’s ability to access an extensive amount of personal information with minimal
limitation or oversight.79 Many scholars have referred to information collection as a form of surveillance. Dataveillance, a term coined by Roger Clarke, refers to the
“systemic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons.”80 Christopher Slobogin has
referred to the gathering of personal information in business records as “transaction surveillance.”81 Surveillance
can create chilling effects
on free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.82 Even
surveillance of legal activities can inhibit people from engaging in them. The value of protecting against
chilling effects is not measured simply by focusing on the particular individuals who are deterred from
exercising their rights. Chilling effects harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of
viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity. The nothing to hide
argument focuses primarily on the information collection problems associated with the NSA programs. It contends that limited surveillance of lawful activity will not
chill behavior sufficiently to outweigh the security benefits. One can certainly quarrel with this argument, but one of the difficulties with chilling effects is that it is
often very hard to demonstrate concrete evidence of deterred behavior.83 Whether the NSA’s surveillance and collection of telephone records has deterred people
from communicating particular ideas would be a difficult question to answer. Far too often, discussions of the NSA surveillance and data mining define the problem
The NSA programs are
problematic even if no information people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited
solely in terms of surveillance. To return to my discussion of metaphor, the problems are not just Orwellian, but Kafkaesque.
behavior, but rather
a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system’s use of
personal data and its exclusion of the protagonist from having any knowledge or participation in the process. The harms consist of those created by
bureaucracies—indifference, errors, abuses, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges
from the combination of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.84 When combined, the information becomes much more telling about a person. For the person
who truly has nothing to hide, aggregation is not much of a problem. But in the stronger, less absolutist form of the nothing to hide argument, people argue that
certain pieces of information are not something they would hide. Aggregation, however, means that by combining pieces of information we might not care to
conceal, the government can glean information about us that we might really want to conceal. Part of the
allure of data mining for the
government is its ability to reveal a lot about our personalities and activities by sophisticated means of analyzing data. Therefore,
without greater transparency in data mining, it is hard to claim that programs like the NSA data mining program will not
reveal information people might want to hide, as we do not know precisely what is revealed. Moreover, data mining aims to be predictive
of behavior, striving to prognosticate about our future actions. People who match certain profiles are deemed likely to engage in a similar pattern of behavior. It is
quite difficult to refute actions that one has not yet done. Having nothing to hide will not always dispel predictions of future activity. Another
problem in
the taxonomy, which is implicated by the NSA program, is the problem I refer to as exclusion.85 Exclusion is the problem caused when people are
prevented from having knowledge about how their information is being used, as well as barred from being able to access and correct errors in that data. The NSA
program involves a massive database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, the very existence of the program was kept secret for years.86 This kind
of information processing, which forbids people’s knowledge or involvement, resembles in some ways a kind of due process problem. It is a structural problem
involving the way people are treated by government institutions. Moreover, it creates a power imbalance between individuals and the government. To what extent
should the Executive Branch and an agency such as the NSA, which is relatively insulated from the political process and public accountability, have a significant
power over citizens? This
issue is not about whether the information gathered is something people want to
hide, but rather about the power and the structure of government. A related problem involves “secondary use.” Secondary
use is the use of data obtained for one purpose for a different unrelated purpose without the person’s consent. The Administration has said little about how long
the data will be stored, how it will be used, and what it could be used for in the future. The potential future uses of any piece of personal information are vast, and
without limits or accountability on how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data being in the government’s control. Therefore,
the problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or
surveillance—and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets
important to distinguish here between two ways of
the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive. It is
justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance
and data mining program. The first
way is to not recognize a problem. This is how the nothing to hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such
a program is
to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh
the privacy harms . The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem.
The key misunderstanding is that the nothing to hide argument views privacy in a particular way—as a form of secrecy, as
the right to hide things. But there are many other types of harm involved beyond exposing one’s
secrets to the government. Privacy problems are often difficult to recognize and redress because they create a panoply of types of harm. Courts,
legislators, and others look for particular types of harm to the exclusion of others, and their narrow focus blinds them to seeing other kinds of harms. One of the
difficulties with the nothing to hide argument
is that it looks for a visceral kind of injury as opposed to a
structural one . Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is shared by both those advocating for greater privacy protections and those arguing
in favor of the conflicting interests to privacy. For example, law professor Ann Bartow argues that I have failed to describe
privacy harms in a compelling manner in my article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, where I provide a framework for understanding the manifold different privacy
problems.87 Bartow’s primary complaint is that my taxonomy “frames privacy harms in dry, analytical terms that fail to sufficiently identify and animate the
compelling ways that privacy violations can negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease.”88 Bartow
claims that the taxonomy
does not have “enough dead bodies” and that privacy’s “lack of blood and death,
or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other categories of tort law. Most
privacy problems lack dead bodies. Of course, there are exceptional cases such as the murders of Rebecca Shaeffer and Amy Boyer. Rebecca
Shaeffer was an actress killed when a stalker obtained her address from a Department of Motor Vehicles record.90 This incident prompted Congress to pass the
Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.91 Amy Boyer was murdered by a stalker who obtained her personal information, including her work address and Social
Security number, from a database company.92 These examples aside, there is not a lot of death and gore in privacy law. If this is the standard to recognize a
problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Horrific cases are not typical, and the purpose of my taxonomy is to explain why most privacy problems are
still harmful despite this fact. Bartow’s objection is actually very similar to the nothing to hide argument. Those
advancing the nothing to hide
argument have in mind a particular kind of visceral privacy harm, one where privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or
discrediting is revealed. Bartow’s
quest for horror stories represents a similar desire to find visceral privacy harms. The problem is that not all
privacy harms are like this. At the end of the day, privacy
is not a horror movie, and demanding more palpable harms will be difficult in many cases.
Yet there is still a harm worth addressing, even if it is not sensationalistic.
In many instances, privacy is
threatened not by singular egregious acts, but by a slow series of relatively minor acts which gradually begin to add up. In this way, privacy problems resemble
certain environmental harms which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Bartow wants to point to a major spill, but gradual pollution by
a multitude of different actors often creates worse problems. The law frequently struggles with recognizing harms that do not result in embarrassment, humiliation,
or physical or psychological injury.93 For example, after the September 11 attacks, several airlines gave their passenger records to federal agencies in direct
violation of their privacy policies. The federal agencies used the data to study airline security.94 A group of passengers sued Northwest Airlines for disclosing their
personal information. One of their claims was that Northwest Airlines breached its contract with the passengers. In Dyer v. Northwest Airlines Corp., the court
rejected the contract claim because “broad statements of company policy do not generally give rise to contract claims,” the passengers never claimed they relied
upon the policy or even read it, and they “failed to allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach.”95 Another court reached a similar
conclusion.96 Regardless of the merits of the decisions on contract law, the cases represent a difficulty with the legal system in addressing privacy problems. The
disclosure of the passenger records represented a “breach of confidentiality.”97 The problems caused by breaches of confidentiality do not merely consist of
individual emotional distress; they involve a violation of trust within a relationship. There is a strong social value in ensuring that promises are kept and that trust is
maintained in relationships between businesses and their customers. The problem of secondary use is also implicated in this case.98 Secondary use involves data
collected for one purpose being used for an unrelated purpose without people’s consent. The airlines gave passenger information to the government for an entirely
different purpose beyond that for which it was originally gathered. Secondary use problems often do not cause financial, or even psychological, injuries. Instead, the
harm is one of power imbalance. In Dyer, data was disseminated in a way that ignored airline passengers’ interests in the data despite promises made in the privacy
policy. Even if the passengers were unaware of the policy, there is a social value in ensuring that companies adhere to established limits on the way they use
personal information. Otherwise, any stated limits become meaningless, and companies have discretion to boundlessly use data. Such a state of affairs can leave
nearly all consumers in a powerless position. The harm, then, is less one to particular individuals than it is a structural harm. A similar problem surfaces in another
case, Smith v. Chase Manhattan Bank.99 A group of plaintiffs sued Chase Manhattan Bank for selling customer information to third parties in violation of its privacy
policy, which stated that the information would remain confidential. The court held that even presuming these allegations were true, the plaintiffs could not prove
any actual injury: [T]he “harm” at the heart of this purported class action, is that class members were merely offered products and services which they were free to
decline. This does not qualify as actual harm. The complaint does not allege any single instance where a named plaintiff or any class member suffered any actual
harm due to the receipt of an unwanted telephone solicitation or a piece of junk mail.100 The court’s view of harm, however, did not account for the breach of
confidentiality. When
balancing privacy against security, the privacy harms are often characterized in terms of
injuries to the individual, and the interest in security is often characterized in a more broad societal way. The
security interest in the NSA programs has often been defined improperly. In a Congressional hearing, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales stated: Our enemy is listening, and I cannot help but wonder if they are not shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would
imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even
unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror.101 The balance between privacy and security is often cast in terms of whether a particular
government information collection activity should or should not be barred. The
issue, however, often is not whether the NSA or other government
agencies should be allowed to engage in particular forms of information gathering; rather, it is what kinds of
oversight and accountability we want in place when the government engages in searches and seizures. The government can
employ nearly any kind of investigatory activity with a warrant supported by probable cause. This is a mechanism of oversight—it
forces government officials to justify their suspicions to a neutral judge or magistrate before engaging in the tactic. For
example, electronic surveillance law allows for wiretapping, but limits the practice with judicial supervision, procedures to minimize the breadth of the wiretapping,
and requirements that the law enforcement officials report back to the court to prevent abuses.102 It is these procedures that the Bush Administration has ignored
by engaging in the warrantless NSA surveillance. The question is not whether we want the government to monitor such conversations, but whether the Executive
Branch should adhere to the appropriate oversight procedures that Congress has enacted into law, or should covertly ignore any oversight. Therefore, the security
interest should not get weighed in its totality against the privacy interest. Rather, what should get weighed is the extent of marginal limitation on the effectiveness
of a government information gathering or data mining program by imposing judicial oversight and minimization procedures. Only in cases where such procedures
will completely impair the government program should the security interest be weighed in total, rather than in the marginal difference between an unencumbered
program versus a limited one. Far too
often, the balancing of privacy interests against security interests takes place in a
manner that severely shortchanges the privacy interest while inflating the security interests . Such is the
logic of the nothing to hide argument. When
examined
the argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions
can see how it shifts the debate to its terms , in which it draws power from its
unfair advantage. It is time to pull the curtain on the nothing to hide argument. Whether explicit or not, conceptions of privacy underpin
and challenged, we
nearly every argument made about privacy, even the common quip “I’ve got nothing to hide.” As I have sought to demonstrate in this essay, understanding privacy
as a pluralistic conception reveals that we are often talking past each other when discussing privacy issues. By focusing more specifically on the related problems
under the rubric of “privacy,” we can better address each problem rather than ignore or conflate them. The nothing to hide argument speaks to some
problems, but not to others. It represents
a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding
consideration of the other problems often raised in government surveillance and data mining
programs. When engaged with directly, the nothing to hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But
when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond
surveillance and disclosure, the nothing to hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.
Reject utilitarianism and put privacy before security. The ballot should create a side
constraint where ends don’t justify the means. This is especially applies to data
collection in the absence of probable cause.
Albright ‘14
Logan Albright is the Research Analyst at FreedomWorks, and is responsible for producing a wide variety of written content for
print and the web, as well as conducting research for staff media appearances and special projects. He received his Master’s
degree in economics from Georgia State University. “The NSA's Collateral Spying” – Freedom Works - 07/08/2014 http://www.freedomworks.org/content/nsas-collateral-spying
In short, the report, based on information obtained by Edward Snowden, reveals that during the course of its ordinary, otherwise legal surveillance operations,
the NSA also collected data on large numbers of people who were not specifically targeted. The agency
calls this practice “incidental surveillance.” I call it “collateral spying.” The report found that, on average, 9 out of every 10 people
spied on were not the intended target. The NSA has the legal authority to obtain a warrant based on
probable cause in order to surveil an individual. No one is disputing that. But when this targeting results
in collateral spying on vast numbers of innocents, in the absence of probable cause and the corresponding warrants, that is a
major problem. The NSA has asserted that such incidental data collection is inevitable, and to a certain extent that’s likely true. It is
should obviously be
minimized as far as possible , and at the very least the information should be immediately
purged from government databases , not stored for years on end. In any case, the whole situation is indicative of
understandable that in some situations the NSA may learn information about people other than the direct target, but this
the agency’s cavalier attitude towards individual rights. While
national security is a concern we all share, the ends do not justify
the means when those means involve violate the constitutional protections afforded to citizens by our nation’s founders. It is
not okay to violate the rights of an innocent in the process of achieving a broader goal, even
if that goal is noble. The way the NSA has been behaving is Machiavellian in the most literal sense. In his 16th century
political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli recognized a harsh reality of politics that still plagues us half a millennium later, writing, “A prince wishing to keep
his state is very often forced to do evil.” Taking Machiavelli’s advice as a
green light for immoral behavior has been the problem with
governments throughout history, a problem the founding fathers sought to avoid by setting down precise guidelines for what the government could and could not
do in the form of a Constitution. The disregard of these rules, and the
argument that there should be a national security
exception to the Fourth Amendment, undermines the entire purpose of the American experiment, and restores the European-style
tyrannies the revolutionaries fought against.
Even in a utilitarian framework, privacy outweighs due to relative certainty. The disad
only may cause violence - surveillance definitely does. Privacy is paramount for dignity
and protecting our unique individuality.
Schneier ‘6
Bruce Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New
America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the CTO of Resilient Systems. He is the author of Beyond Fear: Thinking
Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. Commentary, “The Eternal Value of Privacy”, WIRED, May 18, 2006,
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and
other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to
hide?" Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."
"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong
with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise
that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for
maintaining
the human condition with
dignity and respect. Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches
the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six
lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to
arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy
is important because without it, surveillance information will be
abused : to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time. Privacy protects us from
abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. We do nothing wrong
when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private
journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them.
Privacy is a basic human need.
A
future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit
right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act
so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the
concept of liberty. For
if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment,
criticism, even plagiarism
of our own uniqueness . We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful
that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate
us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose
our individuality , because everything we do is observable and recordable. How many of us have paused
during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it
was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe
the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be
taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our
words are subtly altered. This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives. Too many wrongly characterize the
debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises
under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still
tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very
definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
1AC – Bigotry Advantage
Bigotry Advantage 1AC – Longer version
Bigotry Advantage – long version
Contention # ____ is Bigotry
Warrantless surveillance boosts a distinct form of racial, religious, and ethnic
discrimination. The Neg’s security interests only drive this racialized violence.
Unegbu ‘13
Cindy C. Unegbu - J.D. Candidate, Howard University School of Law - NOTE AND COMMENT: National Security Surveillance on
the Basis of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Constitutional Misstep - Howard Law Journal - 57 How. L.J. 433 - Fall, 2013 – lexis;
lawrev
Picture this: you live in a society in which the government is allowed to partake in intrusive surveillance
measures without the institutionalized checks and balances upon which the government was founded. In this society, the
government pursues citizens who belong to a particular race or ethnicity, practice a certain religion, or have affiliations with
specific interest groups. Individuals who have these characteristics are subject to surreptitious monitoring, which
includes undercover government officials disguising themselves as community members in order to attend various community events and programs. The government may
also place these individuals on watch lists, even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. These watch lists classify
domestic individuals as potential or suspected terrorists and facilitate the monitoring of their personal activity through various law enforcement agencies for an extended period of time.
This "hypothetical" society is not hypothetical at all; in fact, it is the current state of American
surveillance. The government's domestic spying activities have progressed to intrusive levels,
primarily due to an increased fear of terrorism . n1 This fear has resulted in governmental intelligence
efforts that are focused on political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants. n2 [*435] The
government's domestic surveillance efforts are not only geared toward suspected terrorists and those partaking in criminal activity, but reach any
innocent, non-criminal, non-terrorist national, all in the name of national security. The government's power
to engage in suspicionless surveillance and track innocent citizens' sensitive information has been granted through the creation and revision of the National
Counterterrorism Center n3 and the FBI's (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. n4 The grant of surveillance power has resulted in many opponents,
including those within the current presidential administration, who challenge the order for numerous reasons. n5 These reasons include the inefficiency of storing citizens' random personal
information for extended periods of time, n6 the broad unprecedented authority granted to this body of government without proper approval from Congress, n7 and the constitutional
violations due to the deprivation of citizens' rights. n8 [*436] This Comment argues that the wide-sweeping surveillance authority granted to the government
results in a violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause due to far-reaching domestic monitoring practices. Surveillance practices, such as posing as members of the community and placing
individuals on watch lists without suspicion of terrorist activity, result in the
impermissible monitoring of individuals on the basis of their
race or ethnicity . These practices, although done in the name of national security, an established compelling government interest, violate the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment because they are not narrowly tailored to the stated interest.
The procedures are not narrowly tailored to the
interest of national security because of the over-inclusiveness of the measures .
Warrantless mass surveillance is racist. Vote Aff to prioritize these under-represented
impacts in public debates.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
Beginning in June 2013, a series of news articles
based on whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s collection of documents from the
National Security Agency (NSA) took the world by storm. Over the course of a year, the Snowden material provided a
detailed account of the massive extent of NSA’s warrantless data collection . What became clear was
that the NSA was involved in the mass collection of online material. Less apparent was how this data was actually used by the
NSA and other national security agencies. Part of the answer came in July 2014 when Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain
published an article that identified specific targets of NSA surveillance and showed how individuals were being
placed under surveillance despite there being no reasonable suspicion of their involvement in criminal
activity.1 All of those named as targets were prominent Muslim Americans. The following month, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan
Devereaux published another story for The Intercept, which revealed that under the Obama administration the number of people
on the National Counterterrorism Center’s no-fly list had increased tenfold to 47,000. Leaked classified documents showed that the NCC
maintains a database of terrorism suspects worldwide—the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment—which contained a million names by 2013, double the
number four years earlier, and increasingly includes biometric data. This
database includes 20,800 persons within the United
States who are disproportionately concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, with its significant Arab
American population.2 By any objective standard, these were major news stories that ought to have attracted as much attention as the earlier
revelations. Yet the stories barely registered in the corporate media landscape. The “tech community,” which had earlier expressed outrage at the NSA’s mass
digital surveillance, seemed to be indifferent when details emerged of the targeted surveillance of Muslims. The explanation for this reaction is not hard to find.
While many object to the US government collecting private data on “ordinary” people, Muslims tend to be
seen as reasonable targets of suspicion. A July 2014 poll for the Arab American Institute found that 42 percent of Americans think it is
justifiable for law enforcement agencies to profile Arab Americans or American Muslims.3 In what follows, we argue that the
debate on national
security surveillance that has emerged in the United States since the summer of 2013 is woefully inadequate, due
to its failure to place questions of race and empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the
basis for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed, racist fears that are whipped up to
legitimize this surveillance to the American public, and the disproportionately targeted racialized groups that have been most effective in making
sense of it and organizing opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race and state surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism.
Likewise, we argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United States is inseparable from the history of US colonialism and empire.
Most everyone violates some law from time-to-time. Mass surveillance results in
selective enforcement that disproportionately impacts those lacking privilege.
Stanfill ‘13
Mel - The author now holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Communications and Media. The
Author was working on that PhD at this time of this writing. When this piece was written, the author held an M.A. from
California State University, East Bay in Media and Cultural Studies and had Graduate minors in Gender and Women’s Studies
and Queer Studies. The author also held a B.A. from University of California, Berkeley - English with Distinction in General
Scholarship. At the time of this writing, the author had published several Peer-Reviewed Publications. The author is internally
quoting Daniel J. Solove is the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law
School. “NSA Prism Part III: Due Process and Presumed Guilty” - July 1, 2013 – http://www.melstanfill.com/nsa-prism-part-iiidue-process-and-presumed-guilty/
Posing this as a due process question could be the way to get some traction in light of the nonchalance about privacy discussed last week: The problem with NSA
PRISM is that we are all being treated as guilty until proven innocent. This has been going on since 9/11, of course, with airport security being one highly visible
iteration, but there’s a chance that this new level of awareness of just how much everyone is being treated as criminal without due process of law could be the
straw. Solove describes the stakes well: “Even
if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have
to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom
is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.” Crossing this line into blanket assumption of guilt is what
animates the Stop Watching US petition, which says “the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion
of crime or association with a terrorist organization,” though they tie their concern to the 1st and 4th amendment and “citizens’ right to speak and associate
anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy” without mentioning due process. (That people feel due process
has gone out the window is clear from the fact that RootsAction sent me a petition to President Obama “not to engage in any abduction or other foul play against
Snowden,” ironic when the administration’s line on why they’re disappointed that Hong Kong let him leave is that they want there to be rule of law.) Wired perhaps
elaborates the worst-case-scenario best: “Police
already abuse the immense power they have, but if everyone’s every
action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then
punishment becomes purely selective . Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish
anyone they’d like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all.” Of course, black and Latino citizens have
been living under presumed-guilty, surveilled-within-an inch-of-their-lives, selectively-punished conditions for decades:
they’re more likely to get caught at things white folks also do and be punished more
harshly for them, even as early as middle school (see Ann Ferguson’s Bad Boys). Muslim and Arab citizens have been living
under it since 9/11.
Reject this discrimination as an unacceptable wrong that must be rejected as an end
onto itself.
Shamsi ‘14
(et al; Hina Shamsi is a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches a course in international human rights. She is
also the Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, which is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and
practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights. She has litigated cases upholding the freedoms
of speech and association, and challenging targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, and post-9/11 discrimination against
racial and religious minorities. Her work includes a focus on the intersection of national security and counterterrorism policies
with international human rights and humanitarian law. She also served as Senior Advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial Executions. Hina is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Northwestern University School of Law. “The
Perversity of Profiling” – April 14th – available at the ACLU website - https://www.aclu.org/blog/perversity-profiling)
Using expanded authorities that permit investigations without
actual
evidence of wrongdoing , the FBI
has also targeted minority communities for interviews based on race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion. It
has used informants to conduct surveillance in community centers, mosques, and other public gathering places and against people exercising their First Amendment
right to worship or to engage in political advocacy. And among
America’s minority communities, “flying while brown” soon
joined “driving while black” as a truism of government-sanctioned discrimination and stigma. It’s hard to
overstate the damage done to the FBI’s relationship with minorities, particularly American Muslims. The damage,
spread further. When federal law enforcement leads in discriminatory profiling, state and local
law enforcement will follow. Nowhere is that clearer than in New York City, where the NYPD – which is twice the size of the
however, has
FBI – launched
a massive program of discriminatory surveillance and investigation of American Muslims,
mapping the places where they carry out daily activities and sending informants to spy on mosques and Muslim community organizations, student groups, and
businesses. After the Associated Press broke a series of stories describing this program in stark and shocking detail, the
NYPD defended itself,
arguing that it was only doing what the FBI was permitted to do. Again, it’s hard to overstate the harm.
From the ACLU’s work with New York’s Muslim communities, we know that a generation of youth is
growing up fearful of its local police force, scared to exercise the rights to freedom of worship, speech, and
association. Fortunately, the issuance of the revised Guidance on Race has been delayed and both the Justice Department and the civil rights community
have a crucial opportunity to put a spotlight on the FBI, which vigorously opposes those fighting for equality. According to the New York Times, the FBI’s
argument seems to be that it needs to identify where Somalis live to investigate potential Somali terrorism suspects.
But that argument must be rejected for the same reason that we reject it in other contexts .
Many mass shooters are young white males, yet we rightly don’t map where whites live or send informants to
majority white communities to ferret out potential mass shooters. Put another way, the FBI’s argument presumes what the Ashcroft
Guidance “emphatically rejects”: that
crime can be prevented by the mass stereotyping of entire communities. Not only is
that wrong , it is a ham-handed approach that squanders resources that should properly be devoted to
investigating actual wrongdoing.
We reject the racialized notions of Surveillance and Security. These practices falsely
construct threats and shut-down dissent in many forms.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
In the second part, we
turn our attention to the current conjuncture in which the politics of the War on Terror shape
national security surveillance practices . The intensive surveillance of Muslim Americans has been
carried out by a vast security apparatus that has also been used against dissident movements such as
Occupy Wall Street and environmental rights activists, who represent a threat to the neoliberal order.
This is not new; the process of targeting dissenters has been a constant feature of American history. For instance, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s were
passed by the Federalist government against the Jeffersonian sympathizers of the French Revolution. The British hanged Nathan Hale because he spied for
surveillance regimes have always sought to monitor and penalize a wide range
of dissenters, radicals, and revolutionaries. Race was a factor in some but by no means all of these cases. Our focus here is on the production of
racialized “others” as security threats and the ways this helps to stabilize capitalist social relations. Further, the current system of mass
surveillance of Muslims is analogous to and overlaps with other systems of racialized security surveillance that
feed the mass deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration and that disproportionately target African
Americans, contributing to their mass incarceration and what Michelle Alexander refers to as the New Jim Crow.4 We argue that
racialized groupings are produced in the very act of collecting information about certain groups deemed
Washington’s army in the American Revolution. State
as “threats” by the national security state— the Brown terrorist , the Black and Brown drug
dealer and user, and the immigrant who threatens to steal jobs. We conclude that “ security” has become one of
the primary means through which racism is ideologically reproduced in the “post-racial,” neoliberal
era. Drawing on W. E. B. Dubois’s notion of the “psychological wage,” we argue that neoliberalism has been legitimized in part through racialized notions of security
that offer a new “psychological wage” as compensation for the decline of the social wage and its reallocation to “homeland security.”
Surveillance is racist – it’s the modern COINTELPRO. Reject the security justifications
that prop-up these forms of violence.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
As of 2008, the
FBI had a roster of 15,000 paid informants and, according to Senator Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, the bureau had 10,000 counterterrorism intelligence analysts in 2013.63 The proportion of these informants and analysts who are
assigned to Muslim populations in the United States is unknown but is likely to be substantial. The kinds of infiltration and provocation tactics that
had been practiced against Black radicals in the 1960s are being repeated today. What has changed are the
rationales used to justify them: it is no longer the threat of Black nationalist subversion, but the threat of
Muslim radicalization that is invoked. With new provisions in the Clinton administration’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
the FBI can launch investigations of a suspected individual or organization simply for providing “material support” to terrorism—a vague term that could include
ideological activity unrelated to any actual plot to carry out violence. While
COINTELPRO violated federal laws, today similar kinds
of investigation and criminalization of political dissent can be carried out legitimately in the name of
countering terrorism.
Bigotry Advantage 1AC – Shorter version
Bigotry Advantage – shorter version
Contention # ____ is Bigotry
Warrantless surveillance boosts a distinct form of racial, religious, and ethnic
discrimination. The Neg’s security interests only drive this racialized violence.
Unegbu ‘13
Cindy C. Unegbu - J.D. Candidate, Howard University School of Law - NOTE AND COMMENT: National Security Surveillance on
the Basis of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Constitutional Misstep - Howard Law Journal - 57 How. L.J. 433 - Fall, 2013 – lexis;
lawrev
Picture this: you live in a society in which the government is allowed to partake in intrusive surveillance
measures without the institutionalized checks and balances upon which the government was founded. In this society, the
government pursues citizens who belong to a particular race or ethnicity, practice a certain religion, or have affiliations with
specific interest groups. Individuals who have these characteristics are subject to surreptitious monitoring, which
includes undercover government officials disguising themselves as community members in order to attend various community events and programs. The government may
also place these individuals on watch lists, even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. These watch lists classify
domestic individuals as potential or suspected terrorists and facilitate the monitoring of their personal activity through various law enforcement agencies for an extended period of time.
This "hypothetical" society is not hypothetical at all; in fact, it is the current state of American
surveillance. The government's domestic spying activities have progressed to intrusive levels,
primarily due to an increased fear of terrorism . n1 This fear has resulted in governmental intelligence
efforts that are focused on political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants. n2 [*435] The
government's domestic surveillance efforts are not only geared toward suspected terrorists and those partaking in criminal activity, but reach any
innocent, non-criminal, non-terrorist national, all in the name of national security. The government's power
to engage in suspicionless surveillance and track innocent citizens' sensitive information has been granted through the creation and revision of the National
Counterterrorism Center n3 and the FBI's (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. n4 The grant of surveillance power has resulted in many opponents,
including those within the current presidential administration, who challenge the order for numerous reasons. n5 These reasons include the inefficiency of storing citizens' random personal
information for extended periods of time, n6 the broad unprecedented authority granted to this body of government without proper approval from Congress, n7 and the constitutional
violations due to the deprivation of citizens' rights. n8 [*436] This Comment argues that the wide-sweeping surveillance authority granted to the government
results in a violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause due to far-reaching domestic monitoring practices. Surveillance practices, such as posing as members of the community and placing
individuals on watch lists without suspicion of terrorist activity, result in the
impermissible monitoring of individuals on the basis of their
race or ethnicity . These practices, although done in the name of national security, an established compelling government interest, violate the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment because they are not narrowly tailored to the stated interest.
The procedures are not narrowly tailored to the
interest of national security because of the over-inclusiveness of the measures .
Most everyone violates some law from time-to-time. Mass surveillance results in
selective enforcement that disproportionately impacts those lacking privilege.
Stanfill ‘13
Mel - The author now holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Communications and Media. The
Author was working on that PhD at this time of this writing. When this piece was written, the author held an M.A. from
California State University, East Bay in Media and Cultural Studies and had Graduate minors in Gender and Women’s Studies
and Queer Studies. The author also held a B.A. from University of California, Berkeley - English with Distinction in General
Scholarship. At the time of this writing, the author had published several Peer-Reviewed Publications. The author is internally
quoting Daniel J. Solove is the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law
School. “NSA Prism Part III: Due Process and Presumed Guilty” - July 1, 2013 – http://www.melstanfill.com/nsa-prism-part-iiidue-process-and-presumed-guilty/
Posing this as a due process question could be the way to get some traction in light of the nonchalance about privacy discussed last week: The problem with NSA
PRISM is that we are all being treated as guilty until proven innocent. This has been going on since 9/11, of course, with airport security being one highly visible
iteration, but there’s a chance that this new level of awareness of just how much everyone is being treated as criminal without due process of law could be the
straw. Solove describes the stakes well: “Even
if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have
to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom
is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.” Crossing this line into blanket assumption of guilt is what
animates the Stop Watching US petition, which says “the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion
of crime or association with a terrorist organization,” though they tie their concern to the 1st and 4th amendment and “citizens’ right to speak and associate
anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy” without mentioning due process. (That people feel due process
has gone out the window is clear from the fact that RootsAction sent me a petition to President Obama “not to engage in any abduction or other foul play against
Snowden,” ironic when the administration’s line on why they’re disappointed that Hong Kong let him leave is that they want there to be rule of law.) Wired perhaps
elaborates the worst-case-scenario best: “Police
already abuse the immense power they have, but if everyone’s every
action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then
punishment becomes purely selective . Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish
anyone they’d like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all.” Of course, black and Latino citizens have
been living under presumed-guilty, surveilled-within-an inch-of-their-lives, selectively-punished conditions for decades:
they’re more likely to get caught at things white folks also do and be punished more
harshly for them, even as early as middle school (see Ann Ferguson’s Bad Boys). Muslim and Arab citizens have been living
under it since 9/11.
Reject this discrimination as an unacceptable wrong that must be rejected as an end
onto itself.
Shamsi ‘14
(et al; Hina Shamsi is a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches a course in international human rights. She is
also the Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, which is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and
practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights. She has litigated cases upholding the freedoms
of speech and association, and challenging targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, and post-9/11 discrimination against
racial and religious minorities. Her work includes a focus on the intersection of national security and counterterrorism policies
with international human rights and humanitarian law. She also served as Senior Advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial Executions. Hina is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Northwestern University School of Law. “The
Perversity of Profiling” – April 14th – available at the ACLU website - https://www.aclu.org/blog/perversity-profiling)
Using expanded authorities that permit investigations without
actual
evidence of wrongdoing , the FBI
has also targeted minority communities for interviews based on race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion. It
has used informants to conduct surveillance in community centers, mosques, and other public gathering places and against people exercising their First Amendment
right to worship or to engage in political advocacy. And among
America’s minority communities, “flying while brown” soon
joined “driving while black” as a truism of government-sanctioned discrimination and stigma. It’s hard to
overstate the damage done to the FBI’s relationship with minorities, particularly American Muslims. The damage,
spread further. When federal law enforcement leads in discriminatory profiling, state and local
law enforcement will follow. Nowhere is that clearer than in New York City, where the NYPD – which is twice the size of the
however, has
FBI – launched
a massive program of discriminatory surveillance and investigation of American Muslims,
mapping the places where they carry out daily activities and sending informants to spy on mosques and Muslim community organizations, student groups, and
businesses. After the Associated Press broke a series of stories describing this program in stark and shocking detail, the
NYPD defended itself,
arguing that it was only doing what the FBI was permitted to do. Again, it’s hard to overstate the harm.
From the ACLU’s work with New York’s Muslim communities, we know that a generation of youth is
growing up fearful of its local police force, scared to exercise the rights to freedom of worship, speech, and
association. Fortunately, the issuance of the revised Guidance on Race has been delayed and both the Justice Department and the civil rights community
have a crucial opportunity to put a spotlight on the FBI, which vigorously opposes those fighting for equality. According to the New York Times, the FBI’s
argument seems to be that it needs to identify where Somalis live to investigate potential Somali terrorism suspects.
But that argument must be rejected for the same reason that we reject it in other contexts .
Many mass shooters are young white males, yet we rightly don’t map where whites live or send informants to
majority white communities to ferret out potential mass shooters. Put another way, the FBI’s argument presumes what the Ashcroft
Guidance “emphatically rejects”: that
crime can be prevented by the mass stereotyping of entire communities. Not only is
that wrong , it is a ham-handed approach that squanders resources that should properly be devoted to
investigating actual wrongdoing.
1AC – Journalism Advantage
Journalism Advantage - 1AC
Journalism Advantage
Contention # ____ is Journalism
Status quo mass surveillance chills journalism and crushes government accountability.
Wong ‘15
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – From the essay: “Internet at a
Crossroads: How Government Surveillance Threatens How We Communicate” - http://www.hrw.org/worldreport/2015/essays/internet-crossroads
A joint report published by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union in July 2014 documented the insidious effects of
large-scale surveillance on the practice of journalism and law in the US. Interviews with dozens of journalists
showed that increased surveillance, combined with tightened measures to prevent leaks and government contact with media, are
intimidating sources, keeping them from talking to journalists (even about unclassified topics of public concern) out of fear that they could face
retaliation, lose their security clearances or jobs, or even face prosecution. Ultimately,
this is having a detrimental impact on the
coverage, particularly on matters related to national security, intelligence, and law
enforcement. This effect undermines the role of the fourth estate in holding government to account.
amount and quality of news
Steve
Coll, staff writer for the New Yorker and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, explained: “ Every
national security
reporter I know would say that the atmosphere in which professional reporters seek insight into policy
failures [and] bad military decisions is just much tougher and much chillier.” Public understanding of
national security policies that are carried out in our name is essential to the functioning of healthy democracies and open
societies.
Indiscriminate collection is the vital internal link. It hampers aggressive journalism on
bad national security decisions.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. This card also internally quotes Steve Coll, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia
University. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law and
American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence, national
security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. JULY 2014 –
available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Every national security reporter I know would say that the atmosphere in which professional reporters seek
insight into policy failures [and] bad military decisions is just much tougher and much chillier. — Steve Coll, staff
writer for The New Yorker and Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, February 14, 2014
Numerous US-based journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement describe the current reporting landscape
as, in some respects, the most difficult they have ever faced. “This is the worst I’ve seen in terms of the government’s efforts to control
information,” acknowledged Jonathan Landay, a veteran national security and intelligence correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers.68 “It’s a terrible time to be
covering government,” agreed Tom Gjelten, who has worked with National Public Radio for over 30 years.69 According to Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and
executive editor of The Associated Press, “We say this every time there’s a new occupant in the White House, and it’s true every time: each is more secretive than
the last.”70 Journalists are struggling harder than ever before to protect their sources, and sources are more reluctant to speak. This environment makes reporting
both slower and less fruitful. Journalists interviewed for this report described
the difficulty of obtaining sources and covering
sensitive topics in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the range and effect of the government’s power over them. Both surveillance and leak
investigations loomed large in this context—especially to the extent that there may be a relationship
between the two. More specifically, many journalists see the government’s power as menacing because they know little about when various government
agencies share among themselves information collected through surveillance, and when they deploy that information in leak [what they] will do with it,” observed
James Asher, Washington Bureau Chief for McClatchy Co., the third largest newspaper group in the country.72 One Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for a newspaper
noted that even a decrease in leak prosecutions is unlikely to help, “unless we [also] get clear lines about what is collectable and usable.”73 Others agreed. “I’m
pretty worried that NSA information will make its way into leak investigations,” said one investigative journalist for a major outlet.74 A reporter who covers national
defense expressed concern about the possibility of a “porous wall” between the NSA and the Department of Justice, the latter of which receives referrals connected
to leak investigations.75 Jonathan Landay wondered whether the government might analyze metadata records to identify his contacts.76 A national security
reporter summarized the situation as follows: “Do we trust [the intelligence] portion of the government’s knowledge to be walled off from leak investigations?
That’s not a good place to be.”77 While most journalists
said that their difficulties began a few years ago, particularly with the increase in
leak prosecutions, our interviews confirmed that for many journalists largescale surveillance by the US government
contributes substantially to the new challenges they encounter. The government’s largescale collection of metadata and communications makes it significantly more difficult for them to
protect themselves and their sources, to confirm details for their stories, and ultimately to inform the public.
This erodes meaningful checks on inappropriate government officials. It spills beyond
national security into many policy issues.
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
In a report that former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. wrote for the Committee to Protect Journalists, numerous
journalists
said surveillance programs and leak prosecutions deter sources from speaking to them. Comm. To Protect Journalists, The
Obama Administration and the Press: Leak Investigations and Surveillance in Post-9/11 America 3 (Oct. 10, 2013), http://bit.ly/1c3Cnfg. In the report, Associated
Press senior managing editor Michael Oreskes commented: “There’s
Sources are more jittery and more standoffish, not
no question that sources are looking over their shoulders.
just in national security reporting. A lot of skittishness is at the more routine level.” Id.
One of the most pernicious effects is the chilling
effect created across government on matters that are less sensitive but certainly in
the public interest as a check on government and elected officials. ” Id. Discussing the NSA
Washington Post national security reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran said: “
surveillance programs, New York Times investigative reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow stated, “I have
absolutely
no doubt whatsoever that stories have not gotten done because of this. ” Jamie Schuman, The Shadows
of the Spooks, The News Media and the Law, Fall 2013, at 9.
Aggressive press is vital to check corrupt governance practices. It builds more
accountable governance.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This card also internally quotes Steve Coll, Dean of the Graduate School of
Journalism at Columbia University. This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence,
national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. JULY
2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
In recent decades,
the press has played an important role in checking government , and in particular,
the intelligence community .
225 That has not always been the case. Betty Medsger, a former Washington Post reporter whose series of stories in 1971 first revealed the FBI’s targeting
of dissenters, recalled that there was “very little investigative work” before her articles appeared.226 Even her FBI stories derived from documents stolen by activists, rather than through Medsger’s cultivation of sources inside the
intelligence community. “I was given these files. I didn’t have clever techniques. Nobody was trying to develop inside sources until then.”227 Tim Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, who also won a
National Book Award for his history of the CIA, offered an earlier timeline for the development of investigative journalism on the intelligence community, observing that “serious investigative reporting into the CIA started in the
mid-1960’s, and then seriously expanded a decade later.”228 Phil Bennett elaborated:
The growth of the intelligence community and of a more critical, more
adversarial press occurred in tandem, on overlapping timelines. Although there have been state secrets since the founding of the Republic, the current institutional structure that
manufactures and protects those secrets emerged near the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. For the most part, at first journalists did little to contest the government's monopoly on secrets. But the
Vietnam War led some journalists to see secrecy as a tool for the government to deceive the public. The
Pentagon Papers case ratified this view. Disclosing government secrets then became a central part of the birth of modern
investigative reporting. This has carried over to the digital era.229 Ultimately, the government’s own
investigations into the intelligence community in the mid-1970s—most famously among them, the Church
Committee in the Senate—provided a sound basis for ongoing and active investigative work by journalists on the
intelligence community ever since.230 Those inquiries revealed significant and widespread misconduct by the
intelligence community
dating back decades. By offering the public significant and early insight into objectionable practices by the FBI, Medsger’s stories formed a major part of the
environment that gave rise to those investigations,231 complementing pressure resulting from the Vietnam War and Seymour Hersh’s 1974 reporting on the CIA.232
intelligence community has recently
(once again)
But coverage of the
become more challenging to undertake. “It seems to me that at some point it became very difficult
again to cover these institutions and get inside sources,” Medsger observed.233 Many journalists who spoke to us expressed a strong commitment to their work, and were unwilling to be dissuaded from continued efforts to cover
increasingly difficult beats. “I’m not in any way going to stop reporting,” remarked Adam Goldman. “In most cases, I am not the vulnerable one,” added Steve Aftergood.234 Peter Maass also identified a silver lining: “Even though
it’s harder, it’s also very exciting. We’re being given an amazing opportunity to do exciting work that could help shape society for years to come.”235 Nevertheless,
surveillance
and leak investigations
the effects that
have had on coverage are working to undermine effective
democratic
participation
and governance. “ What makes government better is our work exposing information ,” argued Dana
It makes the country less
safe. Institutions work less well, and it increases the risk of corruption. Secrecy works
against all of us.”
National security journalism is especially important for a
functioning,
accountable system
There’s a real loss to the public
Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter at the Washington Post.236 “It’s not just that it’s harder for me to do my job, though it is.
also
237 Charlie Savage added, “
democratically
.”238 Steve Coll agreed as well, noting, “
,
It is thus inherently important for journalists to seek out certain
information that the government treats as sensitive and, when appropriate, share it with the public. Kathleen Carroll also emphasized the responsibility typically
demonstrated by journalists who work on national security topics. “This is not a bunch of bratty journalists trying to undermine legitimate
government operations,” she argued. Moreover, though she believes “that a government’s actions on behalf of the people it serves should be public, [m]ost news organizations [including her outlet, the
Associated Press] will recognize that certain things the government is doing need to remain secret, at least for now. The disputes take place because the government
the voters. For James Asher, “The role of the press is to be challenging and critical.”240
idea of what should remain secret is much more sweeping.” 241
Building more accountable government – not sweeping rejecting it – is vital to check a
laundry list of existential risks.
Eckersley ‘4
Robyn, Reader/Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne, “The Green State:
Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty”, MIT Press, 2004, Google Books, pp. 3-8
While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nation- state, and the limitations of state-centric analyses of global ecological
degradation, I
seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might increasingly play, in
global and domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago, Hedley Bull (a proto-constructivist and leading writer in the English school)
outlined the state's positive role in world affairs, and his arguments continue to provide a powerful challenge to those who
somehow seek to "get beyond the state," as if such a move would provide a more lasting solution to the
threat of armed conflict or nuclear war , social and economic in justice, or environmental
degradation. 10 As Bull argued, given that the state is here to stay whether we like it or not, then the call
to get "beyond the state is a counsel of despair, at all events if it means that we have to begin by abolishing or
subverting the state, rather than that there is a need to build upon it.""¶ In any event, rejecting the "statist frame" of
world politics ought not prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory potential of the state as a crucial "node"
in any future network of global ecological governance. This is especially so, given that one can expect states to persist as major
sites of social and political power for at least the foreseeable future and that any green transformations of the present political
order will, short of revolution, necessarily be state-dependent. Thus, like it or not, those concerned about ecological destruction must contend
with existing institutions and, where possible, seek to "rebuild the ship while still at sea." And if states are so implicated in ecological
destruction, then an inquiry into the potential for their transformation even their modest reform into something that is at least more conducive
to ecological sustainability would seem to be compelling.¶ Of
course, it would be unhelpful to become singularly fixated
on the redesign of the state at the expense of other institutions of governance. States are not the only institutions that
limit, condition, shape, and direct political power, and it is necessary to keep in view the broader spectrum of formal and informal institutions
of governance (e.g., local, national, regional, and international) that are implicated in global environmental change. Nonetheless,
while
the state constitutes only one modality of political power, it is an especially significant one because of its
historical claims to exclusive rule over territory and peoples—as expressed in the principle of state sovereignty. As Gianfranco Poggi explains,
the political power concentrated in the state "is a momentous, pervasive, critical phenomenon. Together with other forms of social power, it
constitutes an indispensable medium for constructing and shaping larger social realities, for establishing, shaping and maintaining all broader
and more durable collectivities."12 States play, in varying degrees, significant roles in structuring life chances, in distributing wealth, privilege,
information, and risks, in upholding civil and political rights, and in securing private property rights and providing the legal/regulatory
framework for capitalism. Every one of these dimensions of state activity has, for good or ill, a significant bearing on the global environmental
crisis. Given that the
green political project is one that demands far-reaching changes to both economies and societies,
it is difficult to imagine how such changes might occur on the kind of scale that is needed without the
active support of states. While it is often observed that states are too big to deal with local ecological problems and too small to deal with
global ones, the state nonetheless holds, as Lennart Lundqvist puts it, "a unique position in the constitutive hierarchy from individuals through
villages, regions and nations all the way to global organizations. The state is inclusive of lower political and administrative levels, and
exclusive in speaking for its whole territory and population in relation to the outside world."13 In short, it seems to me inconceivable to
advance ecological emancipation without also engaging with and seeking to transform state power.¶ Of course, not all states are democratic
states, and the green movement has long been wary of the coercive powers that all states reputedly enjoy. Coercion (and not democracy) is
also central to Max Weber's classic sociological understanding of the state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."14 Weber believed that the state could not be defined sociologically in terms of its
ends* only formally as an organization in terms of the particular means that are peculiar to it.15 Moreover his concept of legitimacy was merely
concerned with whether rules were accepted by subjects as valid (for whatever reason); he did not offer a normative theory as to the
circumstances when particular rules ought to be accepted or whether beliefs about the validity of rules were justified. Legitimacy was a
contingent fact, and in view of his understanding of politics as a struggle for power in the context of an increasingly disenchanted world,
likely to become an increasingly unstable achievement.16 In contrast to Weber, my approach to the state is explicitly normative and explicitly
concerned with the purpose of states, and the democratic basis of their legitimacy. It focuses on the limitations of liberal normative theories of
the state (and associated ideals of a just constitutional arrangement), and it proposes instead an alternative green theory that seeks to redress
the deficiencies in liberal theory. Nor is my account as bleak as Weber's. The fact that states possess a monopoly of control over the means of
coercion is a most serious matter, but it does not necessarily imply that they must have frequent recourse to that power. In any event,
whether the use of the state's coercive powers is to be deplored or welcomed turns on the purposes for which
the manner in which it is exercised , and whether it is managed in
public , transparent, and accountable ways —a judgment that must be made against a background of changing problems,
practices, and under- standings. The coercive arm of the state can be used to "bust" political
demonstrations and invade privacy. It can also be used to prevent human rights abuses, curb the
that power is exercised,
excesses of corporate power, and
protect the environment. In short, although the political autonomy of states is widely believed to
are still few social institution that can match the same degree of capacity and potential legitimacy that
states have to redirect societies and economies along more ecologically sustainable lines to address ecological problems
be in decline, there
such as global warming and pollution, the buildup of toxic and nuclear wastes and the rapid erosion of the earth's biodiversity. States—
particularly when they act collectively—have the capacity to curb the socially and ecologically harmful consequences of capitalism. They are
also more amenable to democratization than cor- porations, notwithstanding the ascendancy of the neoliberal state in the increasingly
competitive global economy. There are therefore many good reasons why green political theorists need to think not only critically but also
constructively about the state and the state system. While the state is certainly not "healthy" at the present historical juncture, in this book I
nonetheless join Poggi by offering "a timid two cheers for the old beast," at least as a potentially more significant ally in the green cause.17
Unlike the current Freedom Act, the original Act is perceived by sources as sufficient
to restore trust.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA
Freedom Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data
collection. The version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was
designed to end bulk collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost
universally condemned by all but the US security establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of
Internet users in the US and around the world,” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at
Human Rights Watch. “ Until Congress passes real reform, US credibility and leadership on
Internet freedom will continue to fade .” The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk
collection by the government of business records, including phone metadata. The bill only addressed one component
of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record
collections. However, it
had broad support as a first step, including from Human Rights Watch. On
May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee approval on
May 8. While better than alternative bills offered, the
version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
1AC - Global Internet Freedom Advantage
Global Internet Advantage - 1AC Econ module
Global Internet Advantage – Econ module
Contention # ____ is Global internet freedom
New Freedom Act fails to restore US’s global credibility on Internet freedom. The
original version solves by closing SST loopholes.
Brinkerhoff ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. Noel Brinkerhoff is a Political reporter and writer covering state and national politics
for 15 years. “With Support of Obama Administration, House NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Includes Gaping Loopholes” – AllGov
– May 26th - http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/with-support-of-obama-administration-house-nsa-surveillance-reformbill-includes-gaping-loopholes-140526?news=853242)
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives claim they have addressed the problems of the National Security Agency’s (NSA)
notorious bulk collection of data, made so famous last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the
legislation adopted to end this controversial practice contains huge loopholes that could allow the
NSA to keep vacuuming up large amounts of Americans’ communications records, all with the blessing of the Obama
administration. Dubbed the
USA Freedom Act, the bill overwhelmingly approved by the House (303 to 121) was criticized
for not going far enough to keep data out of the hands of government. “This so-called
reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the U.S. and around the world,” Cynthia Wong,
senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. “Until Congress passes real
reform , U.S. credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.” Julian Sanchez, a
researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, warned that the changes could mean the continuation of bulk collection of phone records by another name.
“The
core problem is that this only ends ‘bulk’ collection in the sense the intelligence community uses
that term,” Sanchez told Wired. “As long as there’s some kind of target , they don’t call that bulk collection,
even if you’re still collecting millions of records…If they say ‘give us the record of everyone who visited
these thousand websites,’ that’s not bulk collection, because they have a list of targets.” HRW says the bill,
which now goes to the Senate for consideration, contains ambiguous definitions about what can and cannot be collected by the agency. For
an earlier version more clearly defined the scope of what the NSA could grab under Section 215 of the
Patriot Act, which has formed the legal basis for gathering the metadata of phone calls. “Under an earlier version of the USA
instance,
Freedom Act, the government would have been required to base any demand for phone metadata or
other records on a “ specific selection term” that “uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Under
the House version, this definition was broadened to mean “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a
person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the government to limit the scope” of information sought,” according to Human Rights Watch. “This
definition is too open-ended and ambiguous to prevent the sort of creative interpretation by intelligence agencies that has been used to
justify overbroad collection practices in the past,” the group claims. The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is similarly
disappointed in the final House bill. “Taken together,” the Institute wrote, “ the changes to this definition may still allow for massive
collection of millions of Americans’ private information based on very broad selection terms such as a
zip code, an area code , the physical address of a particular email provider or financial institution , or
the IP address of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites.”
The US can alter global practices that threaten internet freedom – but only when US
image is seen as less hypocritical.
Wong ‘13
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of
Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom
Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content
of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is
collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring
contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically
denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides,
the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human
rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account
information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government
forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident
catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for
user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then , but it
is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged
the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It
will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as
complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the
same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local
presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to
worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized
system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on
safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last
few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the
government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify
individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back in
India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret, mass
surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector.
(Note to students: “conscripting” means compulsory enlistment of companies for state service.)
Washington will inevitably push for global Internet freedom – but US image is vital.
The Internet freedom agenda’s key to the Global Economy.
Kalathil ‘10
Shanthi Kalathil - Adjunct Faculty and Adjunct Lecturer in the Communication, Culture, and Technology (CCT) Master of Arts
Program at Georgetown University. Kalathil has extensive experience advising the U.S. government, international organizations
and nonprofits on supporting civil society, independent media, technology, transparency and accountability. Previously a senior
Democracy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development and she has authored or edited numerous policy and
scholarly publications, including the edited volume Diplomacy, Development and Security in the Information Age. She has
taught courses on international relations in the information age at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and
Georgetown University. Kalathil holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Political Science –
“Internet Freedom: A Background Paper” – October 2010 - Available via:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/images/Internet_Freedom_A_Background_Paper_0.pdf
As use of the Internet has grown exponentially around the world, so too have concerns about its defining
attribute as a free and open means of communication. Around the world, countries, companies and citizens are
grappling with thorny issues of free expression, censorship and trust. With starkly different visions for the Internet
developing, this era presents challenges—and also opportunities—for those who wish to ensure the Internet
remains a backbone of liberty and economic growth. U.S. officials have made clear their
vision for the Internet ’s future. President Obama, in a speech before the UN General Assembly, said that the U.S. is
committed to promoting new communication tools, “so that people are empowered to connect with one
another and, in
repressive societies, to do so with security. We will support a free and open Internet, so individuals have the information to make up
their own minds.” His words were reinforced by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: “ It is essential that we preserve the open Internet and
stand firmly behind the right of all people to connect with one another and to exchange ideas freely and without fear.”1 Indeed, a free, widely accessible
Internet stands at the heart of both global communication and global commerce. Internet freedom enables
dialogue and direct diplomacy between people and civilizations, facilitating the exchange of ideas and culture while bolstering trade and economic
growth. Conversely, censorship and other blockages stifle both expression and innovation. When arbitrary rules
privilege some and not others, the investment climate suffers. Nor can access be expanded if end users have no trust in the network. However, making reality live
up to aspirations for Internet freedom can prove difficult. Numerous global
initiatives—spearheaded by governments, private sector and civil society—are
attempting to enshrine the norms, principles and standards that will ensure the Internet remains a public space for free
expression. At the same time, other norms are fast arising—particularly those defined by authoritarian
countries that wish to splinter the Internet into independently controlled fiefdoms. Even as Internet access has expanded around
the world, many governments are attempting to control, regulate and censor the Internet in all its forms: blogs, mobile
communication, social media, etc. Such governments have devoted vast resources to shaping the Internet’s
development within their own borders, and they are now seeking to shape the Internet outside their
borders as well. Indeed, Internet experts are worried that national governments of all stripes will increasingly seek to extend their regulatory authority over the
global Internet, culminating in a balkanized Internet with limited interoperability. Hence, the next few years
present a distinct window of opportunity to elevate the principles of the free exchange of ideas, knowledge and commerce on
the Internet. While U.S. leadership within this window is vital, a global effort is necessary to ensure that these norms
become a standard part of the Internet’s supporting architecture.
Global economic decline risks nuclear war.
Merlini ‘11
[Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian
Institute for International Affairs (IAI) in Rome. He served as IAI president from 1979 to 2001. Until 2009, he also occupied the position of
executive vice chairman of the Council for the United States and Italy, which he co-founded in 1983. His areas of expertise include transatlantic
relations, European integration and nuclear non-proliferation, with particular focus on nuclear science and technology. A Post-Secular World?
DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2011.571015 Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions Published in: journal Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2
April 2011 , pages 117 - 130 Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Download PDF Download PDF (~357 KB) View Related Articles To cite
this Article: Merlini, Cesare 'A Post-Secular World?', Survival, 53:2, 117 – 130]
Two neatly opposed scenarios
for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of
oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the acute tensions
apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use
of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial
system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with
consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of
national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified, emptying,
perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran
or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of
creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or
converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.
The new Freedom Act won’t solve US image. Protections from the original version do
solve, even without protections for persons outside the US.
Ries ‘14
(Internally quoting Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program. Also internally quoting
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Also internally quoting Center for
Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger – Brian Ries is Mashable’s Real-Time News Editor. Prior to working at
Mashable, Brian was Social Media Editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, responsible for using Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
to cover revolutions, disasters, and presidential elections. During his time at The Daily Beast, he contributed to a team that won
two Webby Awards for “Best News Site”. “Critics Slam 'Watered-Down' Surveillance Bill That Congress Just Passed” - Mashable May 22, 2014 – http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/congress-nsa-surveillance-bill/)
As a result, many
of its initial supporters pulled their support. “We supported the original USA Freedom
act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty
International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote. He described the
original version as “a good step to end bulk collection. ” However, in its current version, it's
not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the
bill — something he said is a real problem. "Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the
administration to exploit it," Johnson said. However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more
positive view of the bill. "While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a
statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would
be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law." The
Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform." “ The
ban on bulk collection was deliberately
watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We
withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale,
untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.” And
Cynthia Wong , senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore
the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S.
credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”
Unlike the current Act, the original bill does solve US image. This holds even if plan’s
about bulk collection – instead of every surveillance practices.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA Freedom
Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data collection. The
version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed to end bulk
collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned by all but the US security
establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the
world, ” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch . “Until Congress
passes real reform , US credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade .”
The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government of business records, including phone
metadata.
The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections.
Human Rights Watch.
However, it had broad support as a first step, including from
On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee
the version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered,
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
Global Internet Adv - 1AC Democracy version
Global Internet Advantage – Democracy module
New Freedom Act fails to restore US’s global credibility on Internet freedom. The
original version solves by closing SST loopholes.
Brinkerhoff ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. Noel Brinkerhoff is a Political reporter and writer covering state and national politics
for 15 years. “With Support of Obama Administration, House NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Includes Gaping Loopholes” – AllGov
– May 26th - http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/with-support-of-obama-administration-house-nsa-surveillance-reformbill-includes-gaping-loopholes-140526?news=853242)
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives claim they have addressed the problems of the National Security Agency’s (NSA)
notorious bulk collection of data, made so famous last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the
legislation adopted to end this controversial practice contains huge loopholes that could allow the
NSA to keep vacuuming up large amounts of Americans’ communications records, all with the blessing of the Obama
administration. Dubbed the
USA Freedom Act, the bill overwhelmingly approved by the House (303 to 121) was criticized
for not going far enough to keep data out of the hands of government. “This so-called
reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the U.S. and around the world,” Cynthia Wong,
senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. “Until Congress passes real
reform , U.S. credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.” Julian Sanchez, a
researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, warned that the changes could mean the continuation of bulk collection of phone records by another name.
“The
core problem is that this only ends ‘bulk’ collection in the sense the intelligence community uses
that term,” Sanchez told Wired. “As long as there’s some kind of target , they don’t call that bulk collection,
even if you’re still collecting millions of records…If they say ‘give us the record of everyone who visited
these thousand websites,’ that’s not bulk collection, because they have a list of targets.” HRW says the bill,
which now goes to the Senate for consideration, contains ambiguous definitions about what can and cannot be collected by the agency. For
an earlier version more clearly defined the scope of what the NSA could grab under Section 215 of the
Patriot Act, which has formed the legal basis for gathering the metadata of phone calls. “ Under an earlier version of the USA
instance,
Freedom Act, the government would have been required to base any demand for phone metadata or
other records on a “ specific selection term” that “uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Under
the House version, this definition was broadened to mean “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a
person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the government to limit the scope” of information sought,” according to Human Rights Watch. “ This
definition is too open-ended and ambiguous to prevent the sort of creative interpretation by intelligence agencies that has been used to
justify overbroad collection practices in the past,” the group claims. The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is similarly
disappointed in the final House bill. “Taken together,” the Institute wrote, “ the changes to this definition may still allow for massive
collection of millions of Americans’ private information based on very broad selection terms such as a
zip code, an area code , the physical address of a particular email provider or financial institution , or
the IP address of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites.”
The US can alter global practices that threaten internet freedom – but only when US
image is seen as less hypocritical.
Wong ‘13
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of
Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom
Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content
of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is
collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring
contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically
denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides,
the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human
rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account
information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government
forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident
catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for
user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then , but it
is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged
the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It
will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as
complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the
same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local
presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to
worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized
system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on
safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last
few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the
government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify
individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back in
India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret, mass
surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector.
(Note to students: “conscripting” means compulsory enlistment of companies for state service.)
US global democracy promotion is inevitable. Success in the internet freedom agenda
is key to a successful push.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
The United States has a long history of providing diplomatic and financial support for the promotion of human
rights abroad, including the right to free expression. While each presidential administration emphasizes human rights to differing
degrees, during recent decades they have all consistently held that human rights are a key U.S. interest. Promoting
freedom of the Internet expands human rights support into cyberspace, an environment in which an
ever-greater proportion of human activity takes place. The United States advocates for freedom of the Internet because it accords not
only with American values, but also with rights America believes are intrinsic to all humanity. For years, the U.S. government has
programmatically and rhetorically supported democracy promotion abroad. The State Department
routinely disburses millions of dollars in funding for democracy-building programs around the world, many
of which are aimed explicitly at expanding free expression. Presidential and other speeches regularly refer to the American belief
in the universality of this right; to cite but one example, a March 2011 White House statement on Syria noted that, “The United States stands for a
set of universal rights, including the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”8 The Obama administration’s 2010 National Security Strategy specifically called
for marshaling the Internet and other information technologies to support freedom of expression abroad,9 and the Bush administration adopted a policy of
maximizing access to information and ideas over the Internet.10 America’s interest in promoting freedom via the Internet comes from the same fundamental belief
in democratic values and human rights. Despite inevitable inconsistencies and difficult
tradeoffs, the United States continues to
support democracy. The Bush administration’s 2006 National Security Strategy committed to support democratic institutions abroad through
transformational diplomacy.11 President Obama, after entering office with an evident desire to move away from the
sweeping tone of his predecessor’s “freedom agenda,” nevertheless told the U.N. General Assembly in 2009 that “there are basic
principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident – and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts
to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.”12 To the extent that
supporting Internet freedom advances America’s democracy-promotion agenda, the rationale for promoting
online freedom is clear. However, cause and effect are not perfectly clear and the United States must choose its policies under conditions of
uncertainty. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have wagered that by promoting global Internet freedom the
United States will not only operate according to universal values but will
promote tools that
may, on balance,
benefit societies
over the autocrats that oppress them . Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged countries to “join us in the bet we have
made, a bet that an open Internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries.”13 Given the evidence we discuss
throughout this report, this bet is one worth making.
Global democracy consolidation checks inevitable extinction.
Diamond ‘95
(Larry, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/fr.htm)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the
stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common
Nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears
increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by
the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion
do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify
their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much
less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They
do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable,
open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally
responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets
cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones.
to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable
foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights,
The new Freedom Act won’t solve US image. Protections from the original version do
solve, even without protections for persons outside the US.
Ries ‘14
(Internally quoting Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program. Also internally quoting
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Also internally quoting Center for
Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger – Brian Ries is Mashable’s Real-Time News Editor. Prior to working at
Mashable, Brian was Social Media Editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, responsible for using Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
to cover revolutions, disasters, and presidential elections. During his time at The Daily Beast, he contributed to a team that won
two Webby Awards for “Best News Site”. “Critics Slam 'Watered-Down' Surveillance Bill That Congress Just Passed” - Mashable May 22, 2014 – http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/congress-nsa-surveillance-bill/)
As a result, many
of its initial supporters pulled their support. “We supported the original USA Freedom
act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty
International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote. He described the
original version as “a good step to end bulk collection. ” However, in its current version, it's
not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the
bill — something he said is a real problem. "Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the
administration to exploit it," Johnson said. However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more
positive view of the bill. "While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a
statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would
be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law." The
Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform." “The
ban on bulk collection was deliberately
watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We
withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale,
untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.” And
Cynthia Wong , senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore
the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S.
credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”
Unlike the current Act, the original bill does solve US image. This holds even if plan’s
about bulk collection – instead of every surveillance practices.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA Freedom
Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data collection. The
version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed to end bulk
collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned by all but the US security
establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the
world, ” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch . “Until Congress
passes real reform , US credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade .”
The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government of business records, including phone
metadata.
The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections.
Human Rights Watch.
However, it had broad support as a first step, including from
On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee
the version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered,
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
1AC - India advantages
India Adv - 1AC - financial markets scenario
India Advantage - financial markets scenario
Contention # ____ is India
The US can alter India’s surveillance practices by pressuring global internet companies
to demand privacy. But, this only works when US is less hypocritical.
Wong ‘13
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of
Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom
Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content
of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is
collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring
contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically
denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides,
the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human
rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account
information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government
forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident
catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for
user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then , but it
is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged
the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It
will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as
complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the
same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local
presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to
worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized
system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on
safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last
few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the
government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify
individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back
in India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret,
mass surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector.
(Note to students: “conscripting” means compulsory enlistment of companies for state service.)
Independently, US bulk surveillance sets precedent that causes indiscriminate
surveillance in India.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The questions raised
by surveillance are complex. The government has an obligation to protect national security, and in some
cases, it is legitimate for government to restrict certain rights to that end. At the same time, international human rights and
constitutional law
set limits on the state’s authority to engage in activities like surveillance, which have the potential to
large-scale , often indiscriminate US approach to surveillance
carries enormous costs. It erodes global digital privacy and sets a terrible example for other countries
like India , Pakistan, Ethiopia, and others that are in the process of expanding their surveillance capabilities. It
also damages US credibility in advocating internationally for internet freedom, which the US has
undermine so many other rights. The current,
listed as an important foreign policy objective since at least 2010. As this report documents, US surveillance programs
are also doing damage to some of the values the United States claims to hold most dear. These include freedoms of
expression and association, press freedom, and the right to counsel, which are all protected by both international human rights law and the US
Constitution.
India’s surveillance is not narrowly-targeted. This indiscriminate, bulk collection hurts
India’s financial markets.
Trivedi ‘13
Anjani Trivedi. The author holds a Master Degree in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong and a Bachelor’s Degree in
Mathematics from MIT. The author has previously held internships at the New York Times and CNN International. This piece
internally quotes Meenakshi Ganguly, The South Asia director for Human Rights Watch; Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy
Project; and Sunil Abraham, executive director of India’s Centre for Internet and Society. “In India, Prism-like Surveillance Slips
Under the Radar” – Time Magazine – 6-30-13 - http://world.time.com/2013/06/30/in-india-prism-like-surveillance-slips-underthe-radar/#ixzz2YpWhRsrB
CMS is an ambitious surveillance system that monitors text messages, social-media engagement and phone calls on landlines and
cell phones, among other communications. That means 900 million landline and cell-phone users and 125 million Internet users. The project, which is being implemented by
the government’s Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), is meant to help national law-enforcement agencies save time and avoid manual intervention, according to the Department of Telecommunications’ annual report.
This has been in the works since 2008, when C-DOT started working on a proof-of-concept, according to an older report. The government set aside approximately $150 million for the system as part of its 12th five-year plan,
although the Cabinet ultimately approved a higher amount. Within the internal-security ministry though, the surveillance system remains a relatively “hush-hush” topic, a project official unauthorized to speak to the press tells
TIME. In April 2011, the Police Modernisation Division of the Home Affairs Ministry put out a 90-page tender to solicit bidders for communication-interception systems in every state and union territory of India. The system
requirements included “live listening, recording, storage, playback, analysis, postprocessing” and voice recognition.
Civil-liberties groups concede that states often need
to undertake targeted- monitoring operations. However, the move toward extensive “surveillance capabilities enabled by digital communications,”
suggests that governments are now “casting the net wide, enabling intrusions into private lives,” according to Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. This extensive communications surveillance through
the likes of Prism and CMS are “out of the realm of judicial authorization and allow unregulated, secret surveillance, eliminating any transparency or accountability on the part of the state,” a recent U.N. report stated. India is no
stranger to censorship and monitoring — tweets, blogs, books or songs are frequently blocked and banned. India ranked second only to the U.S. on Google’s list of user-data requests with 4,750 queries, up 52% from two years
back, and removal requests from the government increased by 90% over the previous reporting period. While these were largely made through police or court orders, the new system will not require such a legal process. In recent
times, India’s democratically elected government has barred access to certain websites and Twitter handles, restricted the number of outgoing text messages to five per person per day and arrested citizens for liking Facebook
posts and tweeting. Historically too, censorship has been India’s preferred means of policing social unrest. “Freedom of expression, while broadly available in theory,” Ganguly tells TIME, “is endangered by abuse of various India
laws.” There is a growing discrepancy and power imbalance between citizens and the state, says Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project. And, in an environment like India where “no checks and balances [are] in place,” that
is troubling. The potential for misuse and misunderstanding, Kovacs believes, is increasing enormously. Currently, India’s laws relevant to interception “disempower citizens by relying heavily on the executive to safeguard
individuals’ constitutional rights,” a recent editorial noted. The power imbalance is often noticeable at public protests, as in the case of the New Delhi gang-rape incident in December, when the government shut down public
transport near protest grounds and unlawfully detained demonstrators. With an already sizeable and growing population of Internet users, the government’s worries too are on the rise. Netizens in India are set to triple to 330
million by 2016, according to a recent report. “As [governments] around the world grapple with the power of social media that can enable spontaneous street protests, there appears to be increasing surveillance,” Ganguly
explains. India’s junior minister for telecommunications attempted to explain the benefits of this system during a recent Google+ Hangout session. He acknowledged that CMS is something that “most people may not be aware of”
because it’s “slightly technical.” A participant noted that the idea of such an intrusive system was worrying and he did not feel safe. The minister, though, insisted that it would “safeguard your privacy” and national security. Given
the high-tech nature of CMS, he noted that telecom companies would no longer be part of the government’s surveillance process. India currently does not have formal privacy legislation to prohibit arbitrary monitoring. The
new system comes under the jurisdiction of the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, which allows for monitoring communication in the “interest of public safety. The surveillance system is not
only an “abuse of privacy rights and security-agency overreach,” critics say, but also counterproductive in terms of
security. In the process of collecting data to monitor criminal activity, the data itself may become a
target for
criminals a “honeypot,” according to Sunil Abraham, executive director of India’s
Centre for Internet and Society. Additionally, the wide-ranging tapping undermines financial
markets , Abraham says by compromising confidentiality, trade secrets and intellectual property
terrorists and
—
,
. What’s more,
Whether the nation’s patchy infrastructure will be able to
handle a complex web of surveillance and networks, no one can say. That, Abraham contends, is what attackers will target.
vulnerabilities will have to be built into the existing cyberinfrastructure to make way for such a system.
Financial markets key to India’s Economy.
Goyal ‘14
Dr. Sakshi Goyal, former Faculty member at the Kaling Institute of Management Studies, Faridabad, Haryana (India). “Indian
Financial Markets: A Global Perspective” - Journal of Business Management & Social Sciences Research (JBM&SSR) - Volume 3,
No.6, June 2014 - ISSN No: 2319-5614. Available at:
http://www.borjournals.com/a/index.php/jbmssr/article/viewFile/1729/1078
Financial markets are a vital part of an economy making it possible for industry, trade and commerce to
flourish without any obstacle in terms of resources. Today most economies around the world are judged by the performance of
their financial markets. The financial markets have indicators in place that reflect the performance of companies whose securities are traded in those markets. The financial markets also serve a vital
purpose in the growth and development of a company, which wants to expand. Such companies with expansion plans and new projects are in need of funding and the financial market serves as the best platform from which a
company can determine the feasibility of such possibilities
Krishnan (2011) mentioned that, the economic literature acknowledged that efficient and developed financial markets could lead to
increased economic growth by improving the efficiency of allocation and utilization of savings in the economy. Better functioning financial systems ease the external financing constraints that impede firm and industrial expansion.
“
There is a growing body of empirical analyses, including firm-level studies, industry-level studies, individual country
studies, and cross-country comparisons, which prove this strong, positive link between the functioning of the
financial system and long-run economic growth.
they better allocate resources, monitor managers and
exert corporate control, mobilize savings, and facilitate the exchange of goods and services”. A capital market is a market for securities (debt or equity), where business
In addition,
enterprises (companies) and governments can raise long-term funds. It is defined as a market in which money is provided for periods longer than a year as the raising of short-term funds takes place on other markets (e.g., the
money market). The capital market includes the stock market (equity securities) and the bond market (debt) The capital market of a country can be considered as one of the leading indicators in determining the growth of its
economy. As mentioned by C.Rangarajan, Ex Governor, RBI (1998), “The growth process of any economy depends on the functioning of financial markets which also helps to augment its Capital formation. According to Professor
Hicks, the industrial Revolution in England was ignited more by the presence of liquid financial market than the technological investment”. He writes interestingly- “What happened in the Industrial Revolution is that the Range of
fixed capital goods that were used in production Began noticeably to increase. But fixed capital is sunk; it is embodied in a particular form, from which it can only gradually be released. In order that people should be willing to sink
large amounts of capital it is the availability of liquid funds which is crucial. This condition was satisfied in England ...by the first half of the eighteenth century The liquid asset was there, as it would not have been even a few years
earlier “ Thus, liquidity is a very important component of Financial Market and plays a very vital role in the long run economic development of any country as it helps not only in promoting the savings of the economy but also to
adopt an effective channel to transmit various financial policies by creating liquidity in the market. Therefore Financial System of any country should be well developed, competitive, efficient and integrated to face all shocks. The
financial system and infrastructure of any country at any time can be considered as the result of its own peculiar historical evolution. This evolution is resulted by continuous interaction between all the participants existing in the
system and public policy interventions. The evolution of Indian financial markets and the regulatory system has also followed a similar path. India began with the central bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as the banking sector
regulator, and the Ministry of Finance as the regulator for all other financial sectors. Today, most financial service providers and their regulatory agencies exist. The role of regulators has evolved over time from that of an
instrument for planned development in the initial stage to that of a referee of a relatively more modern and complex financial sector at present. Over this period, a variety of financial sector reform measures have been undertaken
in India, with many important successes. An important feature of these reforms has been the attempt of the authorities to align the regulatory view the needs of the country and domestic factors. These reforms can be broadly
classified as steps taken towards: a) Liberalizing the overall macroeconomic and regulatory environment within which financial sector institutions function. b) Strengthening the institutions and improving their efficiency and
competitiveness. c) Establishing and strengthening the regulatory framework and institutions for overseeing the financial system.The history of Indian capital markets spans back 200 years, around the end of the 18th century. It
was at this time that India was under the rule of the East India Company. The capital market of India initially developed around Mumbai; with around 200 to 250 securities brokers participating in active trade during the second half
of the 19th century. There are a number of factors that have paved path for India market growth. After the economic liberalization, policies were undertaken in the 1990s, the economy of the country has been steadily rising which
has led to more demands and supply circles. This has introduced diverse market sectors and industries in the country, which has led to a competitive consumer market. Through this research paper, an attempt is made to
understand the evolution of Global financial system with more emphasis on Indian markets. It also aims to study the global perspective of financial markets of any country and to understand that how a country’s financial markets is
integrated with the other world markets. Also the concept of efficiency is highlighted which says that a country whose financial markets are well integrated with the world markets are more efficient as compared to one whose
financial markets are not very well integrated. Lastly the paper concludes by leaving scope and opportunities to understand these global concepts in an easier way to the reader and further can be used for extensive research. A
the areas of surplus to the areas of deficit. A Financial System is a composition of various institutions, markets, regulations
and laws, practices, money manager, analysts, transactions and claims and liabilities. Indian Financial market can be considered as one of the oldest across the globe and is experiencing
financial system or financial sector functions as an intermediary and facilitates the flow of funds from
favorable time during the recent years, which have prospered the economy of the country to a
great extent.
Presently, India is rated by six international credit rating agencies, namely Standard and Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s Investor Services, FITCH, Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS), the Japanese
Credit Rating agency (JCRA), and the Rating and Investment Information Inc., Tokyo( R&I).
Indian economic upheaval sparks nuclear war with Pakistan – risks of accident,
miscalc, and unauthorized theft all increase.
Busch ‘4
Please note that an updated edition of this book was re-released in Feb of 2015, but the original date was placed in the citation.
Dr. Nathan Busch, Professor of Government and co-director of the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport
University. The author holds a Ph.D. in International relations from the University of Toronto and an MA in Political Science
from Michigan State University. The author previously held the position of Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and also held the position of Visiting Faculty, National
Security Office, Los Alamos National Laboratory. This piece of evidence internally quotes George Perkovich, a South Asia expert
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It also internally quotes François Heisbourg. He chairs the Geneva Centre
for Security Policy and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. His career has included positions in
government (member of the French mission to the UN, international security adviser to the Minister of Defence), in the defense
industry (vice-president of Thomson-CSF; senior vice president for strategy at Matra Défense Espace) and in academia
(professor of world politics at Sciences-Po Paris, director of the IISS). He is also a member of the International Commission on
nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and has sat on a number of national and international blue-ribbon bodies. From
the book: No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation - p. 202-209
In addition, because
the Indian military currently has little experience handling nuclear weapons, the risks of
accidental use could be very high during a crisis situation, at least for some time to come. If the order were given to prepare India's
nuclear weapons for possible use, the military (perhaps in conjunction with India's nuclear scientists) would need to assemble the warheads rapidly; mate them to
the deliver)' vehicles (gravity bombs or missiles); and prepare them for use, either by loading them into bombers or by aiming the missiles and preparing them for
launch. All these procedures require training and precision, and, given the early stages of India's new command-and-control arrangements, it is not at all clear that
the Indian military would be able to carry them out safely under extreme time constraints.194 If India decided to develop a rapid-response capability, some of these
dangers would be lessened, but more serious dangers would be introduced. In particular, there would be a significantly increased risk of an accidental launch of
nuclear-armed missiles. India
would need to engage in a great deal of additional research into safety mechanisms
to prevent such an accidental launch, and it is simply not known how much effort India is devoting, or
will devote, to this area.195 Because the Prithvi and the two-stage Agni-I missiles contain a nonstorable liquid fuel, it would be impossible to deploy
the current configuration of either missile to allow for a rapid response. This significantly reduces the likelihood of these missiles being launched accidentally during
normal circumstances, though the
risks of accidental launches would probably increase significantly if they were fueled during a
crisis situation. As noted, however, India has conducted several successful flight tests of the Agni and Agni-II missiles. Because these missiles use a solid fuel, they
could be deployed in a rapid-response state. If India were to choose such a deployment option, the risks of an accidental launch could increase significantly. These
risks would depend on the extent to which India integrates use-control devices into its weapons to prevent accidental launches, but there is little evidence that India
is currently devoting significant efforts to develop such use-control devices.196 Furthermore, even if India intends to develop such use-control devices, if a nuclear
crisis were to arise before India had developed them, it still might be tempted to mate warheads on its missiles. If India does decide to weaponize its arsenal, it still
remains to be seen what type of deployment option it would choose. According to a statement in November 1999 by India's foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, India
would not keep its weapons on a "hair-trigger alert," though he did suggest that these weapons would be dispersed and made mobile to improve their chances of
surviving a first strike.197 If this statement is true, then the risks of accidental launch would be relatively small during normal circumstances.198 But these risks
would increase significantly during crisis situations, when India would presumably mate the warheads to the missiles.199 If the military still has not been given
physical control over the warheads, this would further reduce risks of accidental use during peacetime, though the transfer of nuclear weapons to the military
during a crisis could significantly increase the risks of an accident due to the military's inexperience in handling the nuclear weapons.200 What deployment option
Pakistan might adopt depends in part on India's weapon deployment. It appears that if India were to adopt a rapid-response option, Pakistan would probably adopt
a similar missile deployment, thereby increasing the risks of an accidental launch of its nuclear weapons as well. But even if India were to deploy its weapons (in
field positions) withour the warheads mated, concerns about survivability might nevertheless cause Pakistan to adopt a rapid-response capability. If such an event
were to occur, the risks of Pakistani accidental missile launches could be quite high, especially because it is unlikely that Pakistan currently has the technical capacity
to integrate sophisticated launch controls into its missile designs. Just
as in India, it is also unlikely that Pakistan's nuclear
devices are designed to minimize risks of accidents.201 Because Pakistan's warheads are based on an
early Chinese warhead design, they probably do not contain one-point safety designs, IHE, or fire-resistant
pits. If Pakistan were to assemble its nuclear warheads, there could be an unacceptable risk of an
accidental detonation of its nuclear weapons. Moreover; if Pakistan were to mate nuclear warheads to its missiles, either because it chose
to establish a rapid-response capability or because of an ongoing nuclear crisis, then similar concerns would exist about accidental launches of Pakistani nuclear
risks of unauthorized use of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan are probably relatively
small because they have a very small number of nuclear weapons and those weapons are tightly controlled by their nuclear establishments. But there are a
number of factors that could increase risks of unauthorized use in the future. Although both India and Pakistan currently
weapons. The current
possess nuclear weapons that could be delivered by aircraft, and are both actively developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, none of their weapons appear to
contain sophisticated use-control devices to prevent unauthorized use. Instead, the nuclear
controls in both countries appear to be based on
guards, gates, and guns . As we have seen in the Russian and Chinese cases, while the "3 G's" might be sufficient
during normal circumstances, they are particularly vulnerable during political, economic , and social
upheaval s. The Russian case has demonstrated that severe domestic upheavals can undermine central controls and weaken the
infrastructures that previously maintained the security
for nuclear weapons. In particular, such upheavals can undermine the
loyalty of guards and workers at nuclear facilities, especially if the state collapses economically and can no longer
afford to pay those employees. Neither India nor Pakistan appears to have taken the necessary steps to
prevent such weaknesses from arising in their nuclear controls. Because Indian and Pakistani nuclear controls
rely on the "3 G's" while reportedly lacking personnel reliability programs, there could be a significant risk of thefts
of nuclear weapons during severe upheavals.
The Russian analogy is particularly relevant in the Pakistani case. The
Pakistani state is far from stable. After the nuclear tests in 1998 and the military coup in 1999, the Pakistani economy came close to collapsing and remained quite
unstable for the next several years.202 In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States removed economic sanctions and approved
nearly $1 billion in international foreign aid to Pakistan. But with a debt burden of nearly $39 billion, massive economic disparities, and continuing low levels of
foreign investment, there still is significant cause for concern about the prospects for Pakistan's long-term political and economic stability.203 If the Pakistani state
were to fail, there could be significant risks of a collapse in its nuclear controls. Were such an event to occur, there could be an extreme risk of thefts of nuclear
weapons or of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamic militants.204 In the events following the September 11 attacks and President Musharraf's decision
to support U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan, there were serious concerns about a potential collapse of Pakistani nuclear controls. These concerns were spurred by
reports of public riots, a close affiliation among some elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence community with the Taliban regime and al Qaeda, and the
tenuous hold that Pakistani president Musharraf appears to have in Pakistan.205 In October 2001, President Musharraf took significant steps to centralize his
control by removing high-level military and intelligence officers with ties to the Taliban, but analysts have nevertheless continued to raise concerns about
Musharraf's ability to maintain control.206 Due to the seriousness of these risks, President Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of Pakistan's nuclear
arsenal, and the United States has offered to advise Pakistan on methods for securing its nuclear stockpile. ' If the U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan had extended
for a longer period, Musharraf might have found it increasingly difficult to remain in power and reign in the more extreme elements in his country. One also
cannot rule out the possibility that terrorists might choose to target nuclear facilities in India and Pakistan,
especially if domestic instability were to increase.
Both India and Pakistan have serious problems with domestic
terrorism.208 These terrorists are increasingly well-armed and have targeted critical infrastructures and military bases in the past.209 Although current defenses at
both Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons storage facilities are probably sufficient to defend against most terrorist attacks,210 the physical protection systems at
other nuclear facilities might be less effective.211 Moreover, if the defenses
at the most sensitive facilities were weakened by
domestic upheavals, then the risks of successful terrorist attacks—either for purposes of theft or sabotage—could
increase significantly. But even if such extreme events did not occur, the tightly controlled decision-making and underdeveloped command-and-control
structures in both India and Pakistan could potentially allow unauthorized use, particularly during crises. In India, some of these risks have been minimized by the
formalization of its command structure, though the military units are still fairly inexperienced with handling these weapons.212 Moreover, because
India
probably still lacks clearly defined, detailed operational procedures and established, resilient communication channels, there would
still be a fairly high risk of unauthorized use arising from confusion or miscommunication during a
crisis. These concerns will probably remain for some time to come, though the specific risks could eventually be improved, depending on the training the military
receives and the degree of professionalism among the troops. Because Pakistan is currently under military rule, and its nuclear weapons are controlled by the
military, one would expect a better coordination of nuclear decision-making and command-and-control systems. Nevertheless, there are potential problems with
Pakistani command and control as well. The lack of a clear operational use doctrine, combined with inadequate C3I could increase the risks of unauthorized use
during crises: "there is no enunciated nuclear doctrine, nor are there decision-making and communications systems adequate for either strategic or tactical
command and control in the nuclear environment. Nuclear targeting information could not be passed in time to be of use in a rapidly changing situation, which
would increase the probability of own-troop strikes by tactical [nuclear] missiles."213 The risks or unauthorized use would increase if India and Pakistan were to
deploy their weapons on ballistic missiles. Risks of decapitation and questions about the survivability of the nuclear forces would probably cause both India and
Pakistan to deploy mobile systems if they were to operationalize their nuclear forces. These systems would significantly increase difficulties in command and
control, especially because their weapons lack use-control devices.214 In addition, because of the risks of decapitation, Pakistan is likely to adopt a "delegative"
system, where the authority to launch nuclear weapons is given to a number of military officials.215 As the number of people authorized to launch nuclear weapons
increases, so does the risk of a use of nuclear weapons that has not been commanded by the central authorities.216 The
greatest concerns have
been raised about a possible inadvertent use of nuclear weapons in South Asia. The combined effects of mutual
mistrust, very short flight times for missiles, continual armed conflicts along their borders, and few reliable CBMs make the risks of inadvertent use quite severe,
especially during crisis situations. According
to George Perkovich, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, "Kargil proved that having nuclear weapons would not deter new
conflicts. It also showed that unless such conflicts themselves were prevented, the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear exchange would also
increase given both states' relatively poor systems of intelligence surveillance and nuclear command and control."217 Due
to continual mistrust
between the two countries, each would be likely to misinterpret military movements, missile tests, or accidental
detonations as an impending attack by the other side. The risks of misinterpreting each other's motives are compounded by the
vulnerability of their nuclear forces and the short flight times of the forces to key targets. For example, because the runways at Pakistani Air Force bases could be
destroyed by a conventional air strike or nuclear attack,218 India could effectively eliminate Pakistan's nuclear bomber capability. During
an acute crisis,
Pakistan might be faced with a "use them or lose them" dilemma, in that it would need to attack rapidly
or lose its ability to retaliate altogether. For this reason, Pakistani officials would be extremely
suspicious of any Indian actions that could be interpreted as preparations for an
attack. Because the flight time of Indian bombers is approximately ten minutes, Pakistani leaders would have a very limited amount of time to decide
whether to launch their own attack.219 These conditions thus create an ongoing environment in which inadvertent use is quite possible. In addition, both countries
have unreliable intelligence systems, which have repeatedly misinterpreted the other's intentions. For example, during the Brasstacks incident, Pakistani
intelligence reported that India's exercise was merely a cover for an attack. Meanwhile, Indian intelligence overlooked the defensive nature of the Pakistani troops'
position. These intelligence failures caused each side to escalate the tensions unnecessarily. In addition, their intelligence systems have sometimes failed to detect
major troop movements altogether. As we have seen, during the Brasstacks crisis, Indian surveillance planes did not detect Pakistani troops positioned at their
border for two weeks. And in the 1999 Kargil war, Indian intelligence failed to detect the Pakistani invasion until several months after they had positioned
themselves at strategic locations in the Kargil heights. These intelligence failures could have two consequences. First, if either side were surprised by comparatively
benign actions (such as Pakistan's defensive positioning during the Brasstacks crisis), it would be more likely to overreact and mistakenly conclude that an attack is
imminent. And second, if one side (especially Pakistan) is confident that an invasion would not be detected at first, it might be more likely to launch attacks across
the border: Each of these scenarios would greatly increase the risks of nuclear escalation.220 Presumably owing to the massive intelligence failure prior to the 1999
Kargil war, however, India has recently made significant investments in its intelligence-gathering capabilities, which could reduce risks of such failures by India in the
future.221 The
dangers of miscalculations and intelligence failures are increased by the crude early-warning
systems employed by both countries, particularly Pakistan. Several incidents serve to illustrate this point. First, prior to Pakistan's
nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan reported that it had detected an air force attack on its radars and warned that it had mated a number of warheads to its Ghauri
missiles.222 While this report might have been circulated in order to justify their nuclear tests, circulating such a report could have caused India to mate weapons to
its missiles, greatly increasing the risks of inadvertent use (as well as accidental and unauthorized use). Another, perhaps more troubling, incident occurred prior to
the U.S. missile strike on Afghanistan in August 1998. The United States sent a high-level U.S. official to Pakistan because it feared Pakistan would detect the missile
and interpret it as an Indian strike. Pakistan never even detected the missile, however. Scholars have pointed out that this incident emphasizes not only the U.S.
concern about inadvertent nuclear war between India and Pakistan, but also that Pakistan's early-warning system "has serious flaws, and such shortcomings are
more likely to foster nervousness than calm. To the extent that they lack reliable early-warning systems, India or Pakistan could base launch decisions on unreliable
sources, increasing the chance of mistakes."223 But even if India and Pakistan had reliable early-warning systems, the risks of inadvertent war would still be
extremely high. If Indian or Pakistani radars detected aircraft headed toward them, they would have very little time to decide what to do before the aircraft reached
their targets. In addition, because there would be a great deal of uncertainty about whether attacking bombers carried conventional or nuclear weapons, the
attacked side (especially Pakistan) could
face a "use them or lose them" scenario and be tempted to launch a
nuclear attack to ensure that its nuclear capability was not destroyed.224 Thus, even if India and Pakistan do not deploy
nuclear weapons on missiles, the risks of an inadvertent use in these circumstances could be extremely high. If India and Pakistan were to deploy their nuclear
weapons on missiles (a scenario that is quite likely, given the vulnerability of Pakistani airfields and India's stated need for deterrence against the People's Republic
of China), the risks of inadvertent use would become even worse. Because the flight time for ballistic missiles between the two countries is less than five
minutes,225 Indian and Pakistani leaders would have virtually no time to decide what action to take (or perhaps even to launch a retaliatory strike) before the
missiles hit their targets.226 The psychological effect on the two countries would be tremendous. According
to Francois Heisbourg, once theater
missiles are deployed in South Asia, the strategic
situation will resemble the Cuban missile crisis, except that it "would be
permanent rather than tempo-rary, would occur without adequate C3I in place, and with political leadership located less than
five minutes from mutual Armageddon." 227
(Note to students: “3 G’s” – internally referenced – stands for “guards, gates, and guns” as a security
measure to protect an installation. “C3I” – also internally referenced – stands for “Command, Control,
Communications and Intelligence”).
Even a limited nuclear war between India & Pakistan causes extinction – smoke and
yields prove
Toon ’07
(et al, O. B. Toon -- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University
of Colorado, Boulder, CO, -- “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of
individual nuclear terrorism” – Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics – April 19th -- http://www.atmos-chemphys.net/7/1973/2007/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf)
We assess the potential damage and smoke production associated with the detonation of small nuclear
weapons in modern megacities. While the number of nuclear warheads in the world has fallen by about a factor of three since its peak in 1986, the number of
nuclear weapons states is increasing and the potential exists for numerous regional nuclear arms races. Eight countries are known to have nuclear weapons, 2 are
constructing them, and an additional 32 nations already have the fissile material needed to build substantial arsenals of low-yield (Hiroshima-sized) explosives.
Population and economic activity worldwide are congregated to an increasing extent in megacities, which might be targeted in a nuclear conflict. We
find
that low yield weapons, which new nuclear powers are likely to construct, can produce 100 times as
many fatalities and 100 times as much smoke from fires per kt yield as previously estimated in analyses
for full scale nuclear wars using high-yield weapons , if the small weapons are targeted at city centers. A single
“small” nuclear detonation in an urban center could lead to more fatalities, in some cases by orders of magnitude, than have occurred in the major historical
a regional nuclear exchange involving 100 15-kt explosions (less than 0.1% of the
explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal). We find that such an exchange could produce direct fatalities comparable to all of
those worldwide in World War II, or to those once estimated for a “counterforce” nuclear war between the
superpowers. Megacities exposed to atmospheric fallout of long-lived radionuclides would likely be abandoned indefinitely, with severe national and
international implications. Our analysis shows that smoke from urban firestorms in a regional war would rise into the
upper troposphere due to pyro-convection. Robock et al. (2007) show that the smoke would subsequently rise deep into the stratosphere due to
atmospheric heating, and then might induce significant climatic anomalies on global scales. We also anticipate
substantial perturbations of global ozone. While there are many uncertainties in the predictions we make here, the principal unknowns are
conflicts of many countries. We analyze the likely outcome of
the type and scale of conflict that might occur. The
scope and severity of the hazards identified pose a significant
threat to the global community. They deserve careful analysis by governments worldwide advised by a broad section of the world scientific community,
as well as widespread public debate. In the 1980s, quantitative studies of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between the superpowers provoked international scientific and political
debate, and deep public concern (Crutzen and Birks, 1982; Turco et al., 1983; Pittock et al., 1985). The resulting recognition that such conflicts could produce global scale damage at
unacceptable levels contributed to an ongoing reduction of nuclear arsenals and improvements in relationships between the major nuclear powers. Here we discuss the effects of the use of a
single nuclear weapon by a state or terrorist. We then provide the first comprehensive quantitative study of the consequences of a nuclear conflict involving multiple weapons between the
emerging smaller nuclear states. Robock et al. (2007) explore the climate changes that might occur due to the smoke emissions from such a conflict. The results of this study show that the
potential effects of nuclear explosions having yields similar to those of the weapons used over Japan during the Second World War (WW-II) are, in relation to yield, unexpectedly large. At least
eight countries are capable of transport and detonation of such nuclear devices. Moreover, North Korea appears to have a growing stockpile of warheads, and Iran is suspiciously pursuing
uranium enrichment – a necessary precursor to weapons construction. Thirty-two other countries that do not now have nuclear weapons possess sufficient fissionable nuclear materials to
construct weapons, some in a relatively short period of time. For these nations, a regional conflict involving modest numbers of 15-kiloton (kt, the TNT explosive yield equivalent) weapons to
attack cities could cause casualties that exceed, in some cases by orders of magnitude, their losses in previous conflicts. Indeed, in some case, the casualties can rival previous estimates for a
limited strategic war between the superpowers involving thousands of weapons carrying several thousand megatons (Mt) of yield. Early radioactive fallout from small nuclear ground bursts
would leave large sections of target areas contaminated and effectively uninhabitable. (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked by airbursts, which will not deposit large amounts of local
radiation unless it is raining. They were continuously inhabited.) Because of the smoke released in fires ignited by detonations, there is a possibility that 100 15-kt weapons used against city
centers would produce global climate disturbances unprecedented in recorded human history (Robock et al., 2007). An individual in possession of one of the thousands of existing lightweight
nuclear weapons could kill or injure a million people in a terrorist attack. Below we first discuss the arsenals of the existing, and potential, nuclear powers. We then describe the casualties due
to blast and to fires set by thermal radiation from an attack on a single megacity with one low yield nuclear weapon. Next we discuss the casualties if current and projected arsenals of such
weapons were ever used in a regional conflict. We then discuss the impact of radioactive contamination. Finally, we describe the amounts of smoke that may be generated in a regional scale
conflict. At the end of each of these sections we outline the associated uncertainties.
We have attempted to employ realistic scenarios in
this analysis. However, we do not have access to the war plans of any countries, nor to verifiable data on existing nuclear arsenals, delivery systems, or plans
to develop, build or deploy nuclear weapons. There are obviously many possible pathways for regional conflicts to develop. Opinions concerning the likelihood of a
regional nuclear war range from highly improbable to apocalyptic. Conservatism in such matters requires that a range of plausible scenarios be considered, given
the availability of weapons hardware and the history of regional conflict.
In the present analysis, we adopt two potential scenarios: i) a single small
nuclear device detonated in a city center by terrorists; and ii) a regional nuclear exchange between two newly minted nuclear weapons states involving a total of
most citizens and politicians today are aware of the
potential disaster of an Israeli-Iranian-Syrian nuclear confrontation, or a Indian-Pakistani territorial confrontation. Moreover,
100 low yield (15-kt) detonations. We do not justify these scenarios any further except to note that
as nuclear weapons knowledge and implementation proliferates, the possible number and combinations of flash points multiplies. The fact that nuclear weapons of
the type assumed here have been used in past hostilities substantiates the idea that such scenarios as we propose are executable.
The new Freedom Act won’t solve US image. Protections from the original version do
solve, even without protections for persons outside the US.
Ries ‘14
(Internally quoting Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program. Also internally quoting
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Also internally quoting Center for
Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger – Brian Ries is Mashable’s Real-Time News Editor. Prior to working at
Mashable, Brian was Social Media Editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, responsible for using Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
to cover revolutions, disasters, and presidential elections. During his time at The Daily Beast, he contributed to a team that won
two Webby Awards for “Best News Site”. “Critics Slam 'Watered-Down' Surveillance Bill That Congress Just Passed” - Mashable May 22, 2014 – http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/congress-nsa-surveillance-bill/)
As a result, many
of its initial supporters pulled their support. “We supported the original USA Freedom
act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty
International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote. He described the
original version as “a good step to end bulk collection. ” However, in its current version, it's
not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the
bill — something he said is a real problem. "Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the
administration to exploit it," Johnson said. However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more
positive view of the bill. "While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a
statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would
be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law." The
Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform." “ The
ban on bulk collection was deliberately
watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We
withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale,
untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.” And
Cynthia Wong , senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore
the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S.
credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”
Unlike the current Act, the original bill does solve US image. This holds even if plan’s
about bulk collection – instead of every surveillance practices.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA Freedom
Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data collection. The
version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed to end bulk
collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned by all but the US security
establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the
world, ” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch . “Until Congress
passes real reform , US credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade .”
The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government of business records, including phone
metadata.
The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections.
Human Rights Watch.
However, it had broad support as a first step, including from
On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee
the version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered,
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
India Advantage – 1AC, Cyber-Scenario
India Advantage - Cyber-Scenario
Contention # ____ is India
The US can alter India’s surveillance practices by pressuring global internet companies
to demand privacy. But, this only works when US is less hypocritical.
Wong ‘13
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of
Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom
Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content
of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is
collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring
contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically
denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides,
the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human
rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account
information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government
forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident
catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for
user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then , but it
is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged
the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It
will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as
complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the
same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local
presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to
worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized
system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on
safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last
few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the
government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify
individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back
in India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret,
mass surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector.
(Note to students: “conscripting” means compulsory enlistment of companies for state service.)
Independently, US bulk surveillance sets precedent that causes indiscriminate
surveillance in India.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The questions raised
by surveillance are complex. The government has an obligation to protect national security, and in some
cases, it is legitimate for government to restrict certain rights to that end. At the same time, international human rights and
constitutional law
set limits on the state’s authority to engage in activities like surveillance, which have the potential to
large-scale , often indiscriminate US approach to surveillance
carries enormous costs. It erodes global digital privacy and sets a terrible example for other countries
like India , Pakistan, Ethiopia, and others that are in the process of expanding their surveillance capabilities. It
also damages US credibility in advocating internationally for internet freedom, which the US has
undermine so many other rights. The current,
listed as an important foreign policy objective since at least 2010. As this report documents, US surveillance programs
are also doing damage to some of the values the United States claims to hold most dear. These include freedoms of
expression and association, press freedom, and the right to counsel, which are all protected by both international human rights law and the US
Constitution.
India’s surveillance is not narrowly-targeted. This indiscriminate, bulk collection
becomes a “honeypot” for cyber-targeting.
Trivedi ‘13
Anjani Trivedi. The author holds a Master Degree in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong and a Bachelor’s Degree in
Mathematics from MIT. The author has previously held internships at the New York Times and CNN International. This piece
internally quotes Meenakshi Ganguly, The South Asia director for Human Rights Watch; Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy
Project; and Sunil Abraham, executive director of India’s Centre for Internet and Society. “In India, Prism-like Surveillance Slips
Under the Radar” – Time Magazine – 6-30-13 - http://world.time.com/2013/06/30/in-india-prism-like-surveillance-slips-underthe-radar/#ixzz2YpWhRsrB
CMS is an ambitious surveillance system that monitors text messages, social-media engagement and phone calls on
landlines and cell phones, among other communications. That means 900 million landline and cell-phone users and 125 million Internet
users. The project, which is being implemented by the government’s Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), is meant to help national law-enforcement
agencies save time and avoid manual intervention, according to the Department of Telecommunications’ annual report. This has been in the works since 2008,
when C-DOT started working on a proof-of-concept, according to an older report. The government set aside approximately $150 million for the system as part of its
12th five-year plan, although the Cabinet ultimately approved a higher amount. Within the internal-security ministry though, the surveillance system remains a
relatively “hush-hush” topic, a project official unauthorized to speak to the press tells TIME. In April 2011, the Police Modernisation Division of the Home Affairs
Ministry put out a 90-page tender to solicit bidders for communication-interception systems in every state and union territory of India. The system requirements
included “live listening, recording, storage, playback, analysis, postprocessing” and voice recognition. Civil-liberties
groups concede that
states often need to undertake targeted- monitoring operations. However, the move toward extensive “surveillance
capabilities enabled by digital communications,” suggests that governments are now “casting the net wide, enabling intrusions into private lives,” according to
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. This extensive communications surveillance through the likes of Prism and CMS are “out of the
realm of judicial authorization and allow unregulated, secret surveillance, eliminating any transparency or accountability on the part of the state,” a recent U.N.
report stated. India is no stranger to censorship and monitoring — tweets, blogs, books or songs are frequently blocked and banned. India ranked second only to
the U.S. on Google’s list of user-data requests with 4,750 queries, up 52% from two years back, and removal requests from the government increased by 90% over
the previous reporting period. While these were largely made through police or court orders, the new system will not require such a legal process. In recent times,
India’s democratically elected government has barred access to certain websites and Twitter handles, restricted the number of outgoing text messages to five per
person per day and arrested citizens for liking Facebook posts and tweeting. Historically too, censorship has been India’s preferred means of policing social unrest.
“Freedom of expression, while broadly available in theory,” Ganguly tells TIME, “is endangered by abuse of various India laws.” There is a growing discrepancy and
power imbalance between citizens and the state, says Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project. And, in an environment like India where “no checks and
balances [are] in place,” that is troubling. The potential for misuse and misunderstanding, Kovacs believes, is increasing enormously. Currently, India’s laws relevant
to interception “disempower citizens by relying heavily on the executive to safeguard individuals’ constitutional rights,” a recent editorial noted. The power
imbalance is often noticeable at public protests, as in the case of the New Delhi gang-rape incident in December, when the government shut down public transport
near protest grounds and unlawfully detained demonstrators. With an already sizeable and growing population of Internet users, the government’s worries too are
on the rise. Netizens in India are set to triple to 330 million by 2016, according to a recent report. “As [governments] around the world grapple with the power of
social media that can enable spontaneous street protests, there appears to be increasing surveillance,” Ganguly explains. India’s junior minister for
telecommunications attempted to explain the benefits of this system during a recent Google+ Hangout session. He acknowledged that CMS is something that “most
people may not be aware of” because it’s “slightly technical.” A participant noted that the idea of such an intrusive system was worrying and he did not feel safe.
The minister, though, insisted that it would “safeguard your privacy” and national security. Given the high-tech nature of CMS, he noted that telecom companies
would no longer be part of the government’s surveillance process. India currently does not have formal privacy legislation to prohibit arbitrary monitoring. The
new system comes under the jurisdiction of the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, which allows for monitoring communication in the “interest of public safety.” The
surveillance system is not only an “abuse of privacy rights and security-agency overreach ,” critics say, but
also counterproductive in terms of security. In the process of collecting data to monitor
criminal activity, the data itself may become a target for terrorists and criminals — a “honeypot,” according
to Sunil Abraham, executive director of India’s Centre for Internet and Society. Additionally, the wideranging tapping undermines financial markets , Abraham says, by compromising confidentiality, trade
secrets and
intellectual property. What’s more, vulnerabilities will have to be built into the existing cyberinfrastructure to make way for such a
system. Whether the nation’s patchy infrastructure will be able to handle a complex web of surveillance and
networks, no one can say. That, Abraham contends,
is what attackers will target.
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”.)
A hack on the CMS will eventually succeed. That escalates to mass de-stabilization of
India.
Dilipraj ‘13
Mr E. Dilipraj is a Research Associate at Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. He is also pursuing his PhD at the Centre for
Latin American Studies from JNU, New Delhi. This evidence is internally quoting Sunil Abraham, who is the Executive Director of
the Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society. The Centre for Internet and Society is a nonprofit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with
disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. Sunil Abraham also founded Mahiti in 1998, a company
committed to creating high impact technology and communications solutions. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to
'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004
and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development
Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between
September 2007 and June 2008, he managed ENRAP an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development
projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada. Also internally
quoting Mr. Sachin Pilot, India’s Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology. Modified for potentially
objectionable language. “CYBER WARFARE AND NATIONAL SECURITY” - AIR POWER Journal Vol. 8 No. 3, MONSOON 2013 (JulySeptember) – available at: http://www.academia.edu/7534559/CYBER_WARFARE_AND_NATIONAL_SECURITY__AN_ANALYSIS_OF_INCIDENTS_BETWEEN_INDIA_AND_PAKISTAN
security providers for the cyber space have
always been lacking in vigilance to provide security to their country’s cyber networks and infrastructures. Sunil
Abraham, Executive Director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, said during an interview to ‘Al Jazeera,’ “The Indian
government has a very low level of cyber awareness and cyber security. We don’t take cyber security as
seriously as the rest of the world”. The problem of cyber attacks by the hacking groups would not be a big problem if it
stopped with the hacking and defacing of websites. But, in reality, it moves on to the next stages. The same
people who carry out hacking and website defacing jobs may get involved in cyber espionage and data
mining against their enemies. These people may also volunteer their expert services to the terrorist organisations in return for
While aggression is the only tactic followed by the hacker groups in both countries, on the contrary, the
money and other forms of remuneration.
According to a cyber security professional working with one of India’s
intelligence agencies , We once sat down to check the Delhi [internet] Backbone. We found thousands of systems
compromised. All were government systems, Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence... we don’t realise how
much damage has already happened. The lack of awareness and the lethargic approach in monitoring and providing security to the cyber networks by India led to thousands of compromised
The infection ranges from small Viruses, Botnets to that of Stuxnet level malwares which can
hamper the total operations of the network connected to the compromised computer. It has been observed that out of
computers across the country.
the 10,000 Stuxnet infected Indian computers, 15 were located at critical infrastructure facilities. These included the Gujarat and Haryana Electricity Boards and an ONGC offshore oil rig.
Though Stuxnet reached the networks of these infrastructures, thankfully, it did not activate itself on
them. In other words, India was only a few flawed lines of code away from having its power and oil
sectors crippled (destroyed). The list of new malwares goes on – Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu, etc – and many more are in the process of coding; their abilities to
operate as cyber weapons are incredible and, at the same time, unbearable, if not protected against properly. Assuming that the hacker
groups get access such malwares, then the situation would become extremely dangerous for the national security as it is equivalent
to terrorists getting access to nuclear weapons. While talking about the same, Mr. Sachin Pilot , Minister
of State for Communications and Information Technology said: The entire economies of some countries
have been (destroyed) paralysed by viruses from across the border. We have to make ourselves more
resilient. Power, telecom, defence, these areas are on top of our agenda. A careful study of the series of hacking on one another’s websites
and networks by the private hacking groups of India and Pakistan would reveal a basic fact that something which started as a
small act of hate has now taken on a much different shape in the form of personal revenge, economic profits, a race to show off
technical supremacy, and anti-national propaganda. This was very much evident from one unwanted event that disturbed the internal security of India in August 2012. The Indian
government was alerted by the exodus after thousands of people from the northeast gathered at railway stations in various cities all over the country after being threatened by the rounds of
SMS and violent morphed pictures that were being circulated on more than 100 websites. The SMS threatened the northeastern people living in various cities in India of a targeted attack on
them, asking them to go back to their homeland, whereas the pictures circulated on the internet were images of some violent bloodshed. Out of the various SMS that were in circulation, one
said: It is a request to everyone to call back their relatives, sons and daughters in Bangalore as soon as possible. Last night, four northeastern guys were killed by Muslims in Bangalore (two
Manipuri, two Nepali). Two Nepali girls were kidnapped from Brigade Road. The reports say that from August 20, marking Ramzan, after 2 pm, they are going to attack every northeastern
person. The riot started because of the situation in Assam.32 Another SMS said: Many northeast students staying in Pune were beaten up by miscreants believed to be Muslims following the
Assam riots. Heard that it is happening in Muslim areas like Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Bangalore. At Neelasandra, two boys were killed and one near passport office.33 The Government of
India reacted soon on this matter and a 43-page report was prepared by intelligence agencies along with the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and India Computer Emergency
Response Team (CERT-IN) which traced several doctored images to Pakistan. The origins of these morphed images were later traced back in specific to Lahore, Rawalpindi and other Pakistani
cities by the Indian intelligence agencies. "From all available forensic evidence, we are fairly convinced that all those postings came from Pakistan," said an official of NTRO.
Another
senior official who has been involved in India's Pakistan watch for several years said, It has been happening for several
months now.
This is a low cost, very effective way of destabilising us. They don't need to send terrorists and
explosives to create mayhem. Internet has been a very effective platform for instigating communal
divisions in India. They also have a multiplier effect , first resulting in anger and hatred, then riots and, finally, many taking
to terrorism. This act of unnecessary involvement by Pakistan-based elements is seen as cyber terrorism and cyber psychological warfare against India to cause internal security disturbance
and
eventually to create a huge crisis in the country. This incident which created major turmoil in the internal security of the country is the
biggest example of the adverse effects of wrong use of cyber technology.
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”.)
Mass instability in India sparks nuclear war with Pakistan – risks of miscalc, accidents,
and unauthorized theft all increase.
Busch ‘4
Please note that an updated edition of this book was re-released in Feb of 2015, but the original date was placed in the citation.
Dr. Nathan Busch, Professor of Government and co-director of the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport
University. The author holds a Ph.D. in International relations from the University of Toronto and an MA in Political Science
from Michigan State University. The author previously held the position of Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and also held the position of Visiting Faculty, National
Security Office, Los Alamos National Laboratory. This piece of evidence internally quotes George Perkovich, a South Asia expert
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It also internally quotes François Heisbourg. He chairs the Geneva Centre
for Security Policy and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. His career has included positions in
government (member of the French mission to the UN, international security adviser to the Minister of Defence), in the defense
industry (vice-president of Thomson-CSF; senior vice president for strategy at Matra Défense Espace) and in academia
(professor of world politics at Sciences-Po Paris, director of the IISS). He is also a member of the International Commission on
nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and has sat on a number of national and international blue-ribbon bodies. From
the book: No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation - p. 202-209
In addition, because
the Indian military currently has little experience handling nuclear weapons, the risks of
accidental use could be very high during a crisis situation, at least for some time to come. If the order were given to prepare India's
nuclear weapons for possible use, the military (perhaps in conjunction with India's nuclear scientists) would need to assemble the warheads rapidly; mate them to
the deliver)' vehicles (gravity bombs or missiles); and prepare them for use, either by loading them into bombers or by aiming the missiles and preparing them for
launch. All these procedures require training and precision, and, given the early stages of India's new command-and-control arrangements, it is not at all clear that
the Indian military would be able to carry them out safely under extreme time constraints.194 If India decided to develop a rapid-response capability, some of these
dangers would be lessened, but more serious dangers would be introduced. In particular, there would be a significantly increased risk of an accidental launch of
nuclear-armed missiles. India
would need to engage in a great deal of additional research into safety mechanisms
to prevent such an accidental launch, and it is simply not known how much effort India is devoting, or
will devote, to this area.195 Because the Prithvi and the two-stage Agni-I missiles contain a nonstorable liquid fuel, it would be impossible to deploy
the current configuration of either missile to allow for a rapid response. This significantly reduces the likelihood of these missiles being launched accidentally during
normal circumstances, though the
risks of accidental launches would probably increase significantly if they were fueled during a
crisis situation. As noted, however, India has conducted several successful flight tests of the Agni and Agni-II missiles. Because these missiles use a solid fuel, they
could be deployed in a rapid-response state. If India were to choose such a deployment option, the risks of an accidental launch could increase significantly. These
risks would depend on the extent to which India integrates use-control devices into its weapons to prevent accidental launches, but there is little evidence that India
is currently devoting significant efforts to develop such use-control devices.196 Furthermore, even if India intends to develop such use-control devices, if a nuclear
crisis were to arise before India had developed them, it still might be tempted to mate warheads on its missiles. If India does decide to weaponize its arsenal, it still
remains to be seen what type of deployment option it would choose. According to a statement in November 1999 by India's foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, India
would not keep its weapons on a "hair-trigger alert," though he did suggest that these weapons would be dispersed and made mobile to improve their chances of
surviving a first strike.197 If this statement is true, then the risks of accidental launch would be relatively small during normal circumstances.198 But these risks
would increase significantly during crisis situations, when India would presumably mate the warheads to the missiles.199 If the military still has not been given
physical control over the warheads, this would further reduce risks of accidental use during peacetime, though the transfer of nuclear weapons to the military
during a crisis could significantly increase the risks of an accident due to the military's inexperience in handling the nuclear weapons.200 What deployment option
Pakistan might adopt depends in part on India's weapon deployment. It appears that if India were to adopt a rapid-response option, Pakistan would probably adopt
a similar missile deployment, thereby increasing the risks of an accidental launch of its nuclear weapons as well. But even if India were to deploy its weapons (in
field positions) withour the warheads mated, concerns about survivability might nevertheless cause Pakistan to adopt a rapid-response capability. If such an event
were to occur, the risks of Pakistani accidental missile launches could be quite high, especially because it is unlikely that Pakistan currently has the technical capacity
to integrate sophisticated launch controls into its missile designs. Just
as in India, it is also unlikely that Pakistan's nuclear
devices are designed to minimize risks of accidents.201 Because Pakistan's warheads are based on an
early Chinese warhead design, they probably do not contain one-point safety designs, IHE, or fire-resistant
pits. If Pakistan were to assemble its nuclear warheads, there could be an unacceptable risk of an
accidental detonation of its nuclear weapons. Moreover; if Pakistan were to mate nuclear warheads to its missiles, either because it chose
to establish a rapid-response capability or because of an ongoing nuclear crisis, then similar concerns would exist about accidental launches of Pakistani nuclear
risks of unauthorized use of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan are probably relatively
small because they have a very small number of nuclear weapons and those weapons are tightly controlled by their nuclear establishments. But there are a
number of factors that could increase risks of unauthorized use in the future. Although both India and Pakistan currently
weapons. The current
possess nuclear weapons that could be delivered by aircraft, and are both actively developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, none of their weapons appear to
contain sophisticated use-control devices to prevent unauthorized use. Instead, the nuclear
controls in both countries appear to be based on
guards, gates, and guns . As we have seen in the Russian and Chinese cases, while the "3 G's" might be sufficient
during normal circumstances, they are particularly vulnerable during political, economic, and social
upheaval s. The Russian case has demonstrated that severe domestic upheavals can undermine central controls and weaken the
infrastructures that previously maintained the security
for nuclear weapons. In particular, such upheavals can undermine the
loyalty of guards and workers at nuclear facilities, especially if the state collapses economically and can no longer
afford to pay those employees. Neither India nor Pakistan appears to have taken the necessary steps to prevent such weaknesses from arising in
their nuclear controls. Because Indian and Pakistani nuclear controls rely on the "3 G's" while reportedly lacking personnel reliability
there could be a significant risk of thefts of nuclear weapons during severe
upheavals. The Russian analogy is particularly relevant in the Pakistani case. The Pakistani state is far from stable. After the nuclear tests in 1998 and the
programs,
military coup in 1999, the Pakistani economy came close to collapsing and remained quite unstable for the next several years.202 In the aftermath of the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States removed economic sanctions and approved nearly $1 billion in international foreign aid to Pakistan. But with a debt
burden of nearly $39 billion, massive economic disparities, and continuing low levels of foreign investment, there still is significant cause for concern about the
prospects for Pakistan's long-term political and economic stability.203 If the Pakistani state were to fail, there could be significant risks of a collapse in its nuclear
controls. Were such an event to occur, there could be an extreme risk of thefts of nuclear weapons or of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamic
militants.204 In the events following the September 11 attacks and President Musharraf's decision to support U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan, there were serious
concerns about a potential collapse of Pakistani nuclear controls. These concerns were spurred by reports of public riots, a close affiliation among some elements of
the Pakistani military and intelligence community with the Taliban regime and al Qaeda, and the tenuous hold that Pakistani president Musharraf appears to have in
Pakistan.205 In October 2001, President Musharraf took significant steps to centralize his control by removing high-level military and intelligence officers with ties
to the Taliban, but analysts have nevertheless continued to raise concerns about Musharraf's ability to maintain control.206 Due to the seriousness of these risks,
President Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and the United States has offered to advise Pakistan on methods for
securing its nuclear stockpile. ' If the U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan had extended for a longer period, Musharraf might have found it increasingly difficult to
remain in power and reign in the more extreme elements in his country. One also cannot
rule out the possibility that terrorists might
choose to target nuclear facilities in India and Pakistan, especially if domestic instability were to
increase.
Both India and Pakistan have serious problems with domestic terrorism.208 These terrorists are increasingly well-armed and have targeted
critical infrastructures and military bases in the past.209 Although current defenses at both Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons storage facilities are probably
sufficient to defend against most terrorist attacks,210 the physical protection systems at other nuclear facilities might be less effective.211 Moreover, if the
defenses at the most sensitive facilities were weakened by domestic upheavals, then the risks of successful
terrorist attacks—either for purposes of theft or sabotage—could increase significantly. But even if such extreme events did not
occur, the tightly controlled decision-making and underdeveloped command-and-control structures in both India and Pakistan could potentially allow unauthorized
use, particularly during crises. In India, some of these risks have been minimized by the formalization of its command structure, though the military units are still
fairly inexperienced with handling these weapons.212 Moreover, because
established, resilient
India probably still lacks clearly defined, detailed operational procedures and
communication channels, there would still be a fairly high risk of unauthorized use
arising from confusion or miscommunication during a crisis. These concerns will probably remain for some time to
come, though the specific risks could eventually be improved, depending on the training the military receives and the degree of professionalism among the troops.
Because Pakistan is currently under military rule, and its nuclear weapons are controlled by the military, one would expect a better coordination of nuclear decisionmaking and command-and-control systems. Nevertheless, there are potential problems with Pakistani command and control as well. The lack of a clear operational
use doctrine, combined with inadequate C3I could increase the risks of unauthorized use during crises: "there is no enunciated nuclear doctrine, nor are there
decision-making and communications systems adequate for either strategic or tactical command and control in the nuclear environment. Nuclear targeting
information could not be passed in time to be of use in a rapidly changing situation, which would increase the probability of own-troop strikes by tactical [nuclear]
missiles."213 The risks or unauthorized use would increase if India and Pakistan were to deploy their weapons on ballistic missiles. Risks of decapitation and
questions about the survivability of the nuclear forces would probably cause both India and Pakistan to deploy mobile systems if they were to operationalize their
nuclear forces. These systems would significantly increase difficulties in command and control, especially because their weapons lack use-control devices.214 In
addition, because of the risks of decapitation, Pakistan is likely to adopt a "delegative" system, where the authority to launch nuclear weapons is given to a number
of military officials.215 As the number of people authorized to launch nuclear weapons increases, so does the risk of a use of nuclear weapons that has not been
commanded by the central authorities.216 The
greatest concerns have been raised about a possible inadvertent use of
nuclear weapons in South Asia. The combined effects of mutual mistrust, very short flight times for missiles, continual armed conflicts along their
borders, and few reliable CBMs make the risks of inadvertent use quite severe, especially during crisis situations. According to George Perkovich,
a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Kargil proved that having
nuclear weapons would not deter new conflicts. It also showed that unless such conflicts themselves were prevented, the
possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear exchange would also increase given both states' relatively poor systems of intelligence surveillance and nuclear
command and control."217 Due
to continual mistrust between the two countries, each would be likely to
misinterpret military movements, missile tests, or accidental detonations as an impending attack by the other side. The
risks of misinterpreting each other's motives are compounded by the vulnerability of their nuclear forces and the short flight times of the forces to key targets. For
example, because the runways at Pakistani Air Force bases could be destroyed by a conventional air strike or nuclear attack,218 India could effectively eliminate
Pakistan's nuclear bomber capability. During
an acute crisis, Pakistan might be faced with a "use them or lose them"
dilemma, in that it would need to attack rapidly or lose its ability to retaliate altogether. For this reason,
Pakistani officials would be extremely suspicious of any Indian actions that could be
interpreted as preparations for an attack. Because the flight time of Indian bombers is approximately ten minutes, Pakistani
leaders would have a very limited amount of time to decide whether to launch their own attack.219 These conditions thus create an ongoing environment in which
inadvertent use is quite possible. In addition, both countries have unreliable intelligence systems, which have repeatedly misinterpreted the other's intentions. For
example, during the Brasstacks incident, Pakistani intelligence reported that India's exercise was merely a cover for an attack. Meanwhile, Indian intelligence
overlooked the defensive nature of the Pakistani troops' position. These intelligence failures caused each side to escalate the tensions unnecessarily. In addition,
their intelligence systems have sometimes failed to detect major troop movements altogether. As we have seen, during the Brasstacks crisis, Indian surveillance
planes did not detect Pakistani troops positioned at their border for two weeks. And in the 1999 Kargil war, Indian intelligence failed to detect the Pakistani invasion
until several months after they had positioned themselves at strategic locations in the Kargil heights. These intelligence failures could have two consequences. First,
if either side were surprised by comparatively benign actions (such as Pakistan's defensive positioning during the Brasstacks crisis), it would be more likely to
overreact and mistakenly conclude that an attack is imminent. And second, if one side (especially Pakistan) is confident that an invasion would not be detected at
first, it might be more likely to launch attacks across the border: Each of these scenarios would greatly increase the risks of nuclear escalation.220 Presumably owing
to the massive intelligence failure prior to the 1999 Kargil war, however, India has recently made significant investments in its intelligence-gathering capabilities,
which could reduce risks of such failures by India in the future.221 The
dangers of miscalculations and intelligence failures are
increased by the crude early-warning systems employed by both countries, particularly Pakistan. Several
incidents serve to illustrate this point. First, prior to Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan reported that it had detected an air force attack on its radars and
warned that it had mated a number of warheads to its Ghauri missiles.222 While this report might have been circulated in order to justify their nuclear tests,
circulating such a report could have caused India to mate weapons to its missiles, greatly increasing the risks of inadvertent use (as well as accidental and
unauthorized use). Another, perhaps more troubling, incident occurred prior to the U.S. missile strike on Afghanistan in August 1998. The United States sent a highlevel U.S. official to Pakistan because it feared Pakistan would detect the missile and interpret it as an Indian strike. Pakistan never even detected the missile,
however. Scholars have pointed out that this incident emphasizes not only the U.S. concern about inadvertent nuclear war between India and Pakistan, but also
that Pakistan's early-warning system "has serious flaws, and such shortcomings are more likely to foster nervousness than calm. To the extent that they lack reliable
early-warning systems, India or Pakistan could base launch decisions on unreliable sources, increasing the chance of mistakes."223 But even if India and Pakistan
had reliable early-warning systems, the risks of inadvertent war would still be extremely high. If Indian or Pakistani radars detected aircraft headed toward them,
they would have very little time to decide what to do before the aircraft reached their targets. In addition, because there would be a great deal of uncertainty about
whether attacking bombers carried conventional or nuclear weapons, the attacked side (especially Pakistan) could
face a "use them or lose
them" scenario and be tempted to launch a nuclear attack to ensure that its nuclear capability was not
destroyed.224 Thus, even if India and Pakistan do not deploy nuclear weapons on missiles, the risks of an inadvertent use in these circumstances could be
extremely high. If India and Pakistan were to deploy their nuclear weapons on missiles (a scenario that is quite likely, given the vulnerability of Pakistani airfields and
India's stated need for deterrence against the People's Republic of China), the risks of inadvertent use would become even worse. Because the flight time for
ballistic missiles between the two countries is less than five minutes,225 Indian and Pakistani leaders would have virtually no time to decide what action to take (or
perhaps even to launch a retaliatory strike) before the missiles hit their targets.226 The psychological effect on the two countries would be tremendous.
According to Francois Heisbourg, once theater missiles are deployed in South Asia, the strategic situation will resemble the
Cuban missile crisis, except that it "would be permanent rather than tempo-rary, would occur without adequate C3I in place, and
with political leadership located less than five minutes from mutual Armageddon." 227
(Note to students: “3 G’s” – internally referenced – stands for “guards, gates, and guns” as a security
measure to protect an installation. “C3I” – also internally referenced – stands for “Command, Control,
Communications and Intelligence”).
Even a limited nuclear war between India & Pakistan causes extinction – smoke and
yields prove
Toon ’07
(et al, O. B. Toon -- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University
of Colorado, Boulder, CO, -- “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of
individual nuclear terrorism” – Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics – April 19th -- http://www.atmos-chemphys.net/7/1973/2007/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf)
We assess the potential damage and smoke production associated with the detonation of small nuclear
weapons in modern megacities. While the number of nuclear warheads in the world has fallen by about a factor of three since its peak in 1986, the number of
nuclear weapons states is increasing and the potential exists for numerous regional nuclear arms races. Eight countries are known to have nuclear weapons, 2 are
constructing them, and an additional 32 nations already have the fissile material needed to build substantial arsenals of low-yield (Hiroshima-sized) explosives.
Population and economic activity worldwide are congregated to an increasing extent in megacities, which might be targeted in a nuclear conflict. We
find
that low yield weapons, which new nuclear powers are likely to construct, can produce 100 times as
many fatalities and 100 times as much smoke from fires per kt yield as previously estimated in analyses
for full scale nuclear wars using high-yield weapons , if the small weapons are targeted at city centers. A single
“small” nuclear detonation in an urban center could lead to more fatalities, in some cases by orders of magnitude, than have occurred in the major historical
a regional nuclear exchange involving 100 15-kt explosions (less than 0.1% of the
could produce direct fatalities comparable to all of
those worldwide in World War II, or to those once estimated for a “counterforce” nuclear war between the
superpowers. Megacities exposed to atmospheric fallout of long-lived radionuclides would likely be abandoned indefinitely, with severe national and
international implications. Our analysis shows that smoke from urban firestorms in a regional war would rise into the
upper troposphere due to pyro-convection. Robock et al. (2007) show that the smoke would subsequently rise deep into the stratosphere due to
atmospheric heating, and then might induce significant climatic anomalies on global scales. We also anticipate
substantial perturbations of global ozone. While there are many uncertainties in the predictions we make here, the principal unknowns are
conflicts of many countries. We analyze the likely outcome of
explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal). We find that such an exchange
the type and scale of conflict that might occur. The
scope and severity of the hazards identified pose a significant
threat to the global community. They deserve careful analysis by governments worldwide advised by a broad section of the world scientific community,
as well as widespread public debate. In the 1980s, quantitative studies of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between the superpowers provoked international scientific and political
debate, and deep public concern (Crutzen and Birks, 1982; Turco et al., 1983; Pittock et al., 1985). The resulting recognition that such conflicts could produce global scale damage at
unacceptable levels contributed to an ongoing reduction of nuclear arsenals and improvements in relationships between the major nuclear powers. Here we discuss the effects of the use of a
single nuclear weapon by a state or terrorist. We then provide the first comprehensive quantitative study of the consequences of a nuclear conflict involving multiple weapons between the
emerging smaller nuclear states. Robock et al. (2007) explore the climate changes that might occur due to the smoke emissions from such a conflict. The results of this study show that the
potential effects of nuclear explosions having yields similar to those of the weapons used over Japan during the Second World War (WW-II) are, in relation to yield, unexpectedly large. At least
eight countries are capable of transport and detonation of such nuclear devices. Moreover, North Korea appears to have a growing stockpile of warheads, and Iran is suspiciously pursuing
uranium enrichment – a necessary precursor to weapons construction. Thirty-two other countries that do not now have nuclear weapons possess sufficient fissionable nuclear materials to
construct weapons, some in a relatively short period of time. For these nations, a regional conflict involving modest numbers of 15-kiloton (kt, the TNT explosive yield equivalent) weapons to
attack cities could cause casualties that exceed, in some cases by orders of magnitude, their losses in previous conflicts. Indeed, in some case, the casualties can rival previous estimates for a
limited strategic war between the superpowers involving thousands of weapons carrying several thousand megatons (Mt) of yield. Early radioactive fallout from small nuclear ground bursts
would leave large sections of target areas contaminated and effectively uninhabitable. (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked by airbursts, which will not deposit large amounts of local
radiation unless it is raining. They were continuously inhabited.) Because of the smoke released in fires ignited by detonations, there is a possibility that 100 15-kt weapons used against city
centers would produce global climate disturbances unprecedented in recorded human history (Robock et al., 2007). An individual in possession of one of the thousands of existing lightweight
nuclear weapons could kill or injure a million people in a terrorist attack. Below we first discuss the arsenals of the existing, and potential, nuclear powers. We then describe the casualties due
to blast and to fires set by thermal radiation from an attack on a single megacity with one low yield nuclear weapon. Next we discuss the casualties if current and projected arsenals of such
weapons were ever used in a regional conflict. We then discuss the impact of radioactive contamination. Finally, we describe the amounts of smoke that may be generated in a regional scale
conflict. At the end of each of these sections we outline the associated uncertainties.
We have attempted to employ realistic scenarios in
this analysis. However, we do not have access to the war plans of any countries, nor to verifiable data on existing nuclear arsenals, delivery systems, or plans
to develop, build or deploy nuclear weapons. There are obviously many possible pathways for regional conflicts to develop. Opinions concerning the likelihood of a
regional nuclear war range from highly improbable to apocalyptic. Conservatism in such matters requires that a range of plausible scenarios be considered, given
the availability of weapons hardware and the history of regional conflict.
In the present analysis, we adopt two potential scenarios: i) a single small
nuclear device detonated in a city center by terrorists; and ii) a regional nuclear exchange between two newly minted nuclear weapons states involving a total of
most citizens and politicians today are aware of the
potential disaster of an Israeli-Iranian-Syrian nuclear confrontation, or a Indian-Pakistani territorial confrontation. Moreover,
100 low yield (15-kt) detonations. We do not justify these scenarios any further except to note that
as nuclear weapons knowledge and implementation proliferates, the possible number and combinations of flash points multiplies. The fact that nuclear weapons of
the type assumed here have been used in past hostilities substantiates the idea that such scenarios as we propose are executable.
The new Freedom Act won’t solve US image. Protections from the original version do
solve, even without protections for persons outside the US.
Ries ‘14
(Internally quoting Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program. Also internally quoting
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Also internally quoting Center for
Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger – Brian Ries is Mashable’s Real-Time News Editor. Prior to working at
Mashable, Brian was Social Media Editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, responsible for using Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
to cover revolutions, disasters, and presidential elections. During his time at The Daily Beast, he contributed to a team that won
two Webby Awards for “Best News Site”. “Critics Slam 'Watered-Down' Surveillance Bill That Congress Just Passed” - Mashable May 22, 2014 – http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/congress-nsa-surveillance-bill/)
As a result, many
of its initial supporters pulled their support. “We supported the original USA Freedom
act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty
International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote. He described the
original version as “a good step to end bulk collection. ” However, in its current version, it's
not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the
bill — something he said is a real problem. "Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the
administration to exploit it," Johnson said. However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more
positive view of the bill. "While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a
statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would
be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law." The
Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform." “ The
ban on bulk collection was deliberately
watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We
withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale,
untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.” And
Cynthia Wong , senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore
the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S.
credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”
Unlike the current Act, the original bill does solve US image. This holds even if plan’s
about bulk collection – instead of every surveillance practices.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA Freedom
Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data collection. The
version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed to end bulk
collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned by all but the US security
establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the
world, ” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch . “Until Congress
passes real reform , US credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade .”
The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government of business records, including phone
metadata.
The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections.
Human Rights Watch.
However, it had broad support as a first step, including from
On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee
the version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered,
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
India Advantage – 1AC, Democracy Scenario
India Advantage - Democracy Scenario
Contention # ____ is India
The US can alter India’s surveillance practices by pressuring global internet companies
to demand privacy. But, this only works when US is less hypocritical.
Wong ‘13
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of
Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom
Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content
of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is
collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring
contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically
denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides,
the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human
rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account
information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government
forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident
catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for
user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then , but it
is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged
the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It
will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as
complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the
same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local
presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to
worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized
system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on
safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last
few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the
government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify
individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back
in India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret,
mass surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector.
(Note to students: “conscripting” means compulsory enlistment of companies for state service.)
Independently, US bulk surveillance sets precedent that causes indiscriminate
surveillance in India.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The questions raised
by surveillance are complex. The government has an obligation to protect national security, and in some
cases, it is legitimate for government to restrict certain rights to that end. At the same time, international human rights and
constitutional law
set limits on the state’s authority to engage in activities like surveillance, which have the potential to
large-scale , often indiscriminate US approach to surveillance
carries enormous costs. It erodes global digital privacy and sets a terrible example for other countries
like India , Pakistan, Ethiopia, and others that are in the process of expanding their surveillance capabilities. It
also damages US credibility in advocating internationally for internet freedom, which the US has
undermine so many other rights. The current,
listed as an important foreign policy objective since at least 2010. As this report documents, US surveillance programs
are also doing damage to some of the values the United States claims to hold most dear. These include freedoms of
expression and association, press freedom, and the right to counsel, which are all protected by both international human rights law and the US
Constitution.
Absent surveillance reform that boosts privacy, India’s standing as a leader in
democracy will fall
Kaul ‘14
Mahima Kaul, heads the Cyber and Media Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and is also the editor of its
monthly Cyber Monitor. The Initiative provides a vibrant platform for all stakeholders to discuss internet-related issues in India.
It also runs India's biggest internet policy platform: Cyfy: The India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance, which
brings governments, business, academia and civil society participation from over 12 countries to New Delhi, every October. She
is Member, India Project Advisory Committee Member for Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the European
Union's project "Advancing Internet Freedoms" which looks at internet freedom in India, Pakistan and Malaysia. The author
holds an M.A. Communication Policy, University of Westminster, and a B. A. Political Science & History, McGill University.
“Ensuring Privacy in a Regime of Surveillance” - From the publication: Cyfy - March 30, 2014 http://cyfy.org/ensuring-privacy-ina-regime-of-surveillance/
This paper examines the legality of surveillance structures in India today (including mass surveillance
programmes), and an expanding e-government project, and juxtaposes them against the missing privacy legal framework
that is needed in a liberal democracy such as India. It concludes that accountability mechanisms and laws
are needed to safeguard a society that is increasingly adapting to mass surveillance and the lack of privacy. In India, as is the case globally, there is
no doubt that a necessary argument must and will be made for being able to use the same technologies for policing and security as are used to perpetrate crimes
and acts of terror. With increasing Internet penetration in the country, India released its first Cyber Security Policy in 2013, flagging the biggest areas of concerns for
the country, including protecting critical information infrastructure and training more cyber security personnel. There is also growing concern in the country about
the security of mobile networks given the increasing number of cheap and unverified products entering the market. With the increasing frequency of terror attacks
on Indian soil there is a necessity for law enforcement officials to be able to investigate suspects with speed. At the same time, there is also a need and desire to use
digital technologies to make governance more effective and efficient for the citizenry. Therefore, there are two broad aspects that need to be examined. The first
relates to the surveillance mechanisms that exist via previous legislation, and new mass surveillance schemes that are being built by leveraging current technology.
The second concerns the mass (and secure) collection of citizen data to build governance tools for smoother delivery of public services. A recent NATO publication
flagged the problems with the first issue well: ‘State-sponsored
surveillance tends to be discounted as a “passive” or invisible
intrusion, but when conducted on a pervasive scale, it is an activity that can severely harm rights in several dimensions. First, the invasion
of privacy occurs at the point of intrusion and capture of material, not only at the point of access or use of information. The inability to direct one’s communications
to only those who are intended recipients is a serious loss of control over one’s identity and autonomy; everyone has experienced the sensation of literally “being a
different person” when in public, as opposed to among intimates. The uncertainty over which communications will be accessed when, and by whom, can also chill
the exercise of many rights: freedom of expression, access to information, association with others, religious belief and practice, and assembly, for example.’1 India
has a number of laws that offer a basis for the kinds of surveillance that exists in the country. Some of these are listed below: The Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 was
drafted to cover the use of telegraphy, phones, communication, radio, telex and fax in India. Section 5 of the act allows for legal wiretapping, and the guidelines
state that only the home secretary, either of the Government of India or of a state government, can give an order for lawful interception. The order for the
wiretapping is valid for a period of two months and should not exceed six. The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1993 does not permit anyone to own wireless
transmission apparatus without a license, and in Section 7 gives power to any officer specially empowered by the central government to search any building, vessel
or place if there is reason to believe that there is any wireless telegraphy apparatus which has been used to commit an offence. The Indian Post Office Act of 1898,
Section 26, confers powers of interception of postal articles for the ‘public good’. Section 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, grants other powers to the
police; it states that: ‘Whenever any court or any officer in charge of a police station considers that the production of any document or other thing is necessary or
desirable for the purposes of any investigation, inquiry, trial or other proceeding under this code by or before such court or officer, such court may issue a
summons, or such officer a written order, to the person in whose possession or power such document or thing is believed to be, requiring him to attend and
produce it, or to produce it, at the time and place stated in the summons or order.’ The most recent and currently controversial legislation is the Information
Technology Act of 2000, amended in 2008 after the horrific Mumbai terror attack. Currently, the act contains some sections that require persons to reveal personal
information without much room for recourse. Section 44 lays out punishment and fines in case of failure to furnish any document, return or report to the controller
or the certifying authority. Section 66a lists out punishment upto three years with a fine for sending any communication through electronic means which could be
considered grossly offensive, menacing, false information for annoyance, inconvenience, hatred, ill-will and so on. Section 80 gives police and senior government
officials the power to enter any public place and search and arrest without warrant any person found therein who is reasonably suspected or having committed or
of committing or about to commit an offence under this act. However, in
2013, information about a mass surveillance scheme
being rolled out by the Government of India came to light. The Central Monitoring System ( CMS ) was launched in 2009, but
became public knowledge four years later. According to reports and interviews, the CMS will automate already existing data from other
interception and monitoring programmes, and will have a non-erasable command log of all provisioning activities. Simply put, ‘CMS
targets private information of individuals since it will enable real-time tracking of online activities, phone
calls, text messages and even social media conversations.’2 Further, CMS will not need permission from nodal officers of the Telecommunication
Service Providers (TSPs), and will provision requests from all law and enforcement agencies. It isn’t quite clear what the legal basis of CMS is, but it has been
suggested that it will operate under Section 52 (2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, which as we know allows for interception of (telegraphic) messages for various
reasons including ‘public emergency’ and ‘public safety’. It has not been created by, or answers to, Parliament. According to available information, the CMS can tap
information from various other monitoring and interception schemes across India. These include the Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS),
Lawful Intercept and Monitoring Program (LIM), Telephone Call Interception System (TCIS) and the Internet Monitoring System (IMS). The various
department/agencies that will have access to all this gathered data, through CMS, include the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Defence Intelligence Agency
(DIA), Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Enforcement Directorate, Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau, National Intelligence Agency, Central
Board of Direct Taxes, Ministry of Home Affairs, the Military Agencies of Assam and Jammu & Kashmir, and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). As reported in
The Hindu, ‘The CMS will have unfettered access to the existing Lawful Interception Systems (LIS) currently installed in the network of every fixed and mobile
operator, ISP, and International Long Distance service provider. Mobile and long distance operators, who were required to ensure interception only after they were
in receipt of the “authorization”, will no longer be in the picture. With CMS, all authorizations remain secret within government departments. This means that
government agencies can access in real time any mobile and fixed line phone conversation, SMS, fax, website visit, social media usage, Internet search and email,
including partially written emails in draft folders, of “targeted numbers”. This is because, contrary to the impression that the CMS was replacing the existing
surveillance equipment deployed by mobile operators and ISPs, it would actually combine the strength of two, expanding the CMS’s forensic capabilities multiple
times.’3 At the same time, limited resources to store citizen data are becoming a thing of the past. New technologies like cloud computing have allowed space for
storage to increase exponentially. Therefore, as the capacity of the state to accumulate data increases, for example with MeghRaj, a National Cloud launched by the
Government of India in February 2014, it will be able to expand its e-government services. Therefore, the common refrain among privacy experts and other
stakeholders is that the crux of the matter lies in India passing an all-inclusive privacy law. This, they believe, would take into account not just protection for the
individual viz-a-viz civil and criminal laws in India, but ensure there are privacy safeguards in the ambitious projects that the government of India is undertaking with
regards to citizens private data. These would include the massive rollout of e-governance projects under the National e-Government Programme, which includes 31
mission mode projects that seek to, in the first phase, digitize all available citizen data (such as land records and health records) for respective ministries, and then,
in the second phase, build responsive and efficient government service delivery platforms. In some states this means accessing healthcare through smartcards,
while in others citizens can access and pay their electricity bills online. For example, Bhoomi, an e-government project in Karnataka under the revenue department
has already computerized over 20 million land records of over 6.7 million farmers. These digitized ministries will soon not function as islands. The NATGRID – the
National Intelligence Grid – is a system that will connect several government departments and data-bases to collect ‘comprehensive patterns of intelligence that can
be readily accessed by intelligence agencies.’ While this means a single point to access citizen data from a variety of sources, it also allows a single window to steal
this personal information. Then there is the controversial UID – Universal ID card – that the Government of India plans on issuing to every resident of India, after
collecting his or her biometric data. Simply put, the UID will become a citizen identifier. This means that the government will now be able to confirm that it is indeed
citizen ‘x’ who is making phone calls or sending emails of some interest to the authorities, by immediately identifying the person through biometric data available
with the state. Conversely, this also means that the state now has not just biometric data on its people, but it will be linked to all their communication data in an
easy-to-find manner. All this is happening without a comprehensive privacy law passed by the Indian Parliament. Article 21 of the Indian Constitution declares that
no citizen can be denied his life and liberty except by law, and the right to privacy has been interpreted to be part of that. Further, Article 43A of the IT Act directs
corporate bodies who ‘possess, deal or handle’ any ‘sensitive personal data’ to implement and maintain ‘reasonable’ security practices, failing which they would be
liable to compensate those affected by any negligence attributable to this failure. This must necessarily extend to the government as well. It is instructive to refer to
the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy, chaired by Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court.4 The report suggested a conceptual
framework for privacy regulation in India, touching upon five salient points. Technological neutrality and interoperability with international standards: the privacy
act should not refer to any specific technologies and should be generic enough to adapt to changes in society, helping build trust of global clients and users. Multidimensional privacy: the privacy act must include concerns related to a number of platforms including audio, video, personal identifiers, DNA, physical privacy and
so on. Horizontal applicability: any legislation must extend to the government and private sector. Conformity with privacy principles: this means that the data
controller should be accountable for the collection, processing and use of the data, therefore, guaranteeing privacy. Co-regulatory enforcement regime: establishing
the office of a privacy officer is also recommended as the primary authority for the enforcement of provisions in the act. However, it is also suggested that industry
specific self-regulation organizations also be established. The document also refers to court judgments from Indian courts that have helped shape some form of
privacy safeguards into the system. For example, in the 1997 case, PUCL vs Union of India, the court observed: ‘Telephone-tapping is a serious invasion of an
individual’s privacy. It is no doubt correct that every government, howsoever democratic, exercises some degree of sub rosaoperation as a part of its intelligence
outfit, but at the same time citizen’s right to privacy has to be protected from being abused by the authorities of the day.’ The court then placed restrictions on the
class of bureaucrats who could authorize such surveillance and also ordered the creation of a review committee, which would look at all surveillance measures
authorized under the act. The Shah Report lays out a road map of acts passed by the Indian Parliament that would need to be reviewed for balance between
individual privacy and national security. For example, when reviewing the UID scheme, the report points out that citizens should be informed if their data is
breached. They should also be informed about where and how their data will be used, and notified of any changes in UID’s privacy policy. These and other
suggestions are then placed in a broader regulatory framework that imagines a privacy commissioner for India. At the same time it is pertinent to remember that
there is no privacy law to safeguard citizens, the government itself does not have a legal framework for the kind of mass
surveillance India is moving towards. As pointed out by privacy experts: ‘The two laws covering interception are the Indian Telegraph Act of
while
1885 and the Information Technology Act of 2000, as amended in 2008, and they restrict lawful interception to time-limited and targeted interception. The targeted
interception both these laws allow ordinarily requires case-by-case authorization by either the home secretary or the secretary of the department of information
technology.’5 Where do these competing interests end up? There is no privacy law to shield citizens from upgraded mass surveillance technology and systems,
which themselves constantly need updated legal grounding. Ironically, just before the Snowden revelations, in his April 2013 report to the Human Rights Council of
the United Nations, Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue noted that he was ‘deeply concerned by actions taken by states against individuals communicating via the
Internet, frequently justified broadly as being necessary to protect national security or to combat terrorism. While such ends can be legitimate under international
human rights law, surveillance often takes place for political, rather than security reasons in an arbitrary and covert manner.’6 The report also highlights the fact
that national legal standards that impose little or no judicial oversight, or allow warrantless surveillance powers in the name of national security without any
particular demonstration of a genuine need or threat and that ‘every individual should also be able to ascertain which public authorities or private individuals or
bodies control or may control their files.’ Today, the concept of privacy is also undergoing a sea change due to the increasing ease with which citizens and customers
are handing over data to governments and businesses. This has been seen with information shared on social media – 93 million Indians are on Facebook – and was
seen in the almost unquestioned way in which e-governance projects were welcomed in the early days without any flags being raised about any data security or
privacy safeguards in the design. In his essay, ‘The Real Privacy Problem’,7 writer Evgeny Morozov wrestles with the evolving concept of ‘privacy’. He writes of a
privacy scholar named Spiros Simitis who grappled with data protection in the 1980s, and the three ideas he grappled with. The first was that with virtually every
employee, taxpayer, patient, bank customer, welfare recipient, or car driver handing over their personal data to private companies (and of course, government)
privacy was now everyone’s problem. The second was that CCTV and other recording technologies like smart cards were normalizing surveillance, weaving it into
our everyday life. The third was that by allowing everyday activities to be recorded, citizens were actually allowing ‘long-term strategies of manipulation intended to
mould and adjust individual conduct.’ Ultimately, while technology itself is always faulted for being the cause of privacy failures, the truth is that these gaps enter
the system through poor legislation. As discussed, when projects
are created without thinking of who could have unwarranted access to
the information could be used and abused outside the scope of what it is collected for, is when the problems truly begin.
Privacy safeguards, transparency about the intent and extent of a project (even when it was intended for surveillance) injects accountability
information, or how
into a system that remains static, despite the dynamic leaps in technology. This
is the best way forward should India want to
retain its spirit and label of being a liberal democracy.
If Indian democracy faltered, it would ruin the global democratic model
Gupta ‘13
Deepankar Gupta is an Indian sociologist. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Shiv Nadar University and director, Centre
for Public Affairs and Critical Theory. He was formerly Professor in the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. For a brief period from 1993–1994, he was also associated with the Delhi School of Economics as
Professor in the Department of Sociology. “The importance of being Indian: Despite its warts, India’s democracy has fired global
imagination for over six decades” – The Times of India - Mar 30, 2013 - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/Theimportance-of-being-Indian-Despite-its-warts-Indias-democracy-has-fired-global-imagination-for-over-sixdecades/articleshow/19281689.cms?
When India dared to birth democracy, many thought it was premature and that it would soon be history. Sixty-six
action-filled years
later, India's democracy is now a little too old to die young. What is more, the world
watches every move we make ; in fact, cannot have enough of us. This is not because India is efficient and
affluent - far from it. Rather, it is the way India goes wrong that fires global imagination. In any other country
of comparative vintage and want, ethnicity, once introduced, would have run wild. Indian politici-ans too have repeatedly played this dirty
trick, but our democracy has limited its appeal. The ultra corrupt may be ultra rich but because of
India's judiciary and the press they often wake up in jail to swill bad tea. Even army officers might face court martial if they mess with the
rules. Political bosses, and their cronies, are forever bending and twisting the law, but for all their power and pelf, they can never quite ignore it. Indian
politicians err time and again, but their overbites serve as object lessons because procedures hold. This not
only pulls us out of periodic crises with a just-back-from-the-dentist feel, but also tells the world, the advanced West included, how
easily democracy can be lost. If India had been another underperforming tin-pot dictatorship, it would
not have been the thought experiment it is today.
Take a look at the following: Corruption, assaults and poli-tical
conspiracies happen worldwide, but when they strike India they excite the mind like nothing else. For example, South Africa is a serious centre of gang rapes, or
"jack rolling" in the local lingo, but that does not cause an international stir. Yet the news of the December rape and murder in Delhi ricocheted within minutes
across the world. This was not because the protests were passionate, or because the police should have gone to a finishing school. What was being observed was
whether our Cons-titution would hold. Eventually it did; false cases were withdrawn and, boorish cops notwithstanding, no bullets were fired. Ethnic intolerance
again is an international affliction. When Putin tells Russian minorities to put up or shut up he gets a standing ovation at home and hardly any press abroad. In
Burma, Rohingya Muslims foxhole themselves in fear, but that does not make big news. With India it is different. If the western world was horrified with the 2002
Gujarat killings, it was because our free press and civil society, also gifts of democracy, brought things out in the open. Corruption in China is monumental. It
periodically fells bridges and schools, killing hundreds. Brazil has a homicide rate three times higher than India's and political violence in Russia is just too bad to be
true. The world may condemn all of this, and it does. However, it
is only when India goes wrong that tongues wag the mind just about
everywhere. That India can make this happen again and again is what makes us special. Had we been too
perfect, we would be Scandinavia, and nothing unique. On the other hand, had we been too violent, we would
have been just another Honduras, or maybe Zimbabwe. But because our stubborn demo-cracy has held to its frame, our leadership blunders light
up the sky. This is our real USP! India's imperfections make for its significance. In terms of economic underdevelopment and dodgy politicians, we have a fair
amount in common with many troubled nations, some of whom are our neighbours. But even in the darkest of times, we hardly expect military coups and mass
arrests, as they do. To their credit, millions of Chinese bloggers also noticed that Delhi's anti-rape agitations did not turn Vijay Chowk into a Tiananmen Square.
Advanced democracies too owe us a debt of gratitude. For years India has acted as a not-for-profit
laboratory so that they might remember the fundamentals of citizenship that made them rich and kept them that way. It is now
payback time and they should tell us how exactly they set up universal health and education that served their citizens so well. When democracies
reach out to each other this way, the world becomes a better place and friendships stay secure. This is
something that neither G-20 nor Brics meets can do as it is in the nature of the economic beast to cross wires and compete. For starters, South Africa is as unhappy
with Brazilian chickens flying in as it is with China's promiscuity with other African countries. The distant hope of a Brics Development Bank or of currency swaps will
not blow these fears out of the water.
Democracy checks inevitable extinction.
Diamond ‘95
(Larry, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Coeditor of The Journal of Democracy , “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s”,
December, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/fr.htm)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the
stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common
Nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears
increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by
the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion
do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify
their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much
less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They
do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable,
open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally
responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets
cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones.
to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable
foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights,
The new Freedom Act won’t solve US image. Protections from the original version do
solve, even without protections for persons outside the US.
Ries ‘14
(Internally quoting Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program. Also internally quoting
Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human
Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on
Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular
focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global
Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the
technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights
in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of
expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Also internally quoting Center for
Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger – Brian Ries is Mashable’s Real-Time News Editor. Prior to working at
Mashable, Brian was Social Media Editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, responsible for using Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
to cover revolutions, disasters, and presidential elections. During his time at The Daily Beast, he contributed to a team that won
two Webby Awards for “Best News Site”. “Critics Slam 'Watered-Down' Surveillance Bill That Congress Just Passed” - Mashable May 22, 2014 – http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/congress-nsa-surveillance-bill/)
As a result, many
of its initial supporters pulled their support. “We supported the original USA Freedom
act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty
International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote. He described the
original version as “a good step to end bulk collection. ” However, in its current version, it's
not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the
bill — something he said is a real problem. "Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the
administration to exploit it," Johnson said. However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more
positive view of the bill. "While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a
statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would
be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law." The
Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform." “ The
ban on bulk collection was deliberately
watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We
withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale,
untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.” And
Cynthia Wong , senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore
the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S.
credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”
Unlike the current Act, the original bill does solve US image. This holds even if plan’s
about bulk collection – instead of every surveillance practices.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The version of the USA Freedom
Act that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data collection. The
version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed to end bulk
collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned by all but the US security
establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the
world, ” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch . “Until Congress
passes real reform , US credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade .”
The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government of business records, including phone
metadata.
The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections.
Human Rights Watch.
However, it had broad support as a first step, including from
On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee
the version the House passed could leave the door wide open to
continued indiscriminate data collection practices potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without
approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered,
justification, Human Rights Watch said.
Backlines – Inherency and Solvency
Important Note – Please Read
Note to students
The next page presents a glossary. Glossaries are often important for topic familiarization – but
especially so for this year’s topic. Here’s why:
There are many different ways that the Aff could argue that the current Freedom Act fails. In fact, there
are arguably too many.
In some instances, the author of an article will rattle off four or five different reasons that they feel the
current Freedom Act will not work. Then, in another article, a different author may rattle off a different
laundry list of five items where three items overlap with evidence you’ve already read – but two items
do not.
For debaters, this presents three concerns:
First – unnecessary duplication.
The Affirmative doesn’t want to read a 3rd card saying the Freedom Act fails “because it lacks sufficient
Pen Register protections”. Once will usually be enough.
Second – strategic consistency.
Affirmatives will want to avoid reading inherency cards that say “Freedom Act fails due to lack of Pen
Register protections” if the version of the Affirmative plan being read fails to change Pen Register
protections.
Third – confusion.
Honestly, there are so many laws and investigative tools about privacy that this can all turn into
acronym soup. It might be enough for a familiarized Affirmative to digest – but it could be puzzling to an
unfamiliar judge or to a new novice on the team.
Organizationally, I cooked-up with the following solution:
For each piece of evidence in backline section, I use a set of acronyms in the F6 header (the “block
header” – but not in the F7 tag).
Hopefully, this allows the student quickly differentiate between the different reasons why the Freedom
Act fails. But, it should also avoid situations where the student is verbally presenting five confusing
acronyms into the tag of a 2AC card.
In order to understand what each acronym means, I have placed a “Glossary” on the next page.
Glossary
If the F6 block header has one or more of the following acronyms, here is what it referencing:
The USA FREEDOM ACT – A recently passed bill that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by
Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act”. The Act
implemented many reforms – but most prominently it (arguably) ended the ability of federal intelligence
agencies to store certain phone data (“phone metadata” – see below). Instead, it required phone
companies, not government agencies, to hold on to that data. Federal intelligence agencies can search
the phone company records if they granted a warrant authorizing their request. The Affirmative in this
packet will argue that current Freedom Act is insufficient and that the original draft of the Freedom Act
provided better safeguards.
The PATRIOT ACT – Its official title is the USA PATRIOT Act – an acronym that stands for "Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act
of 2001". The Patriot Act is an act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush in
October of 2001. It is widely viewed as a reaction to the events of September 11th, 2001. The Patriot Act
does many, many things – but, on this topic, it is perhaps most relevant because it increased the
authority of intelligence agencies to engage in surveillance.
EO 12333 – This stands for “Executive Order” 12333. It was signed by President Ronald Reagan and
established broad new surveillance authorities for the intelligence community, outside the scope of
public law. It was amended three times by President George W. Bush. These cards will argue that the
Status Quo fails because EO 12333 creates a loophole permitting excessive surveillance.
FAA or “FAA-Section 702” – “FAA” stands for the “FISA Amendments Act of 2008”. This an acronym
within an acronym. So, a little backstory:
o
o
o
The F.I.S.A. is an acronym standing for The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
That act does many things – but is most apt to come-up because it created a separate
set of "secret courts" called the “FISC” (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts). Its
hearings are closed to the public – but it handles many requests for surveillance
warrants from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The F.I.S.A. law itself passed in 1978 – but it has often been amended since then.
One reason that the FAA of 2008 comes up is Section 702 of the FAA. Section 702
authorizes PRISM (explained below). Section 702 is designed to gather intelligence on
foreign citizens, but is often accused of gathering intelligence on US citizens. Many
argue that because Section 702 is understood to permit gathering information “about” a
foreign person, it can be used to gather information regarding US persons.
Language – argues that the Status Quo fails because the language or definitions of current laws are not
strict enough. Here, the Affirmative would usually argue that when language has “wiggle room” federal
agencies will seek to gain as much intelligence a possible – often at the expense of privacy. The most
common example of insufficient language is “SST” – which is explained below.
Meta-data. Metadata is traditionally defined as “data about data.” Translation: The NSA probably isn’t
listening to your phone calls or reading your email. Instead, the metadata program givs intelligence
access to information about phone calls. That includes the phone numbers of both caller and recipient,
the number of any calling cards used, the time and duration of calls and the international mobile
subscriber identity (a unique identifier embedded in a phone SIM card) number. Email metadata
includes each message’s to, from, cc and timestamp information. It also includes the IP address each
email was sent from, which reveals where a computer is located. Status quo metadata programs do not
allow the Government to listen in on phone calls or read emails. The information acquired does not
include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber.
Minimization – argues that the Status Quo fails because so-called “super-minimization” procedures are
not in place. Super-minimization requires intelligence agencies to delete all information gathered on
persons that are subsequently determined to have not been relevant to the federal investigation at
hand. Absent these super-minimization protections, intelligence agencies could arguably retain that
information and use it in different investigations.
Multiple Authorities - argues that the Status Quo fails because of several different programs that
authorize surveillance. These cards are probably best run in conjunction with an Affirmative plan that
seeks to ban or eliminate many surveillance programs.
NSL’s - National Security Letters. These cards will argue that the Status Quo fails because the FBI
currently has the authority to issue NSL’s. These letters are served on communications service providers
(like phone or internet companies) by the FBI to compel provision of communication or Internet activity.
An NSL cannot demand the content of a call, but can compel provision of metadata. Recipients of NSLs
may be subject to a gag order that forbids them from revealing the letters' existence to the public. No
approval from a judge is required for the FBI to issue an NSL, but the recipient of the NSL can still
challenge the nondisclosure requirement in federal court.
Pen Register or Trap and Trace device - A device that decodes or records electronic information – like
outgoing numbers from a telephone. A “pen register” technically was a device that recorded data from
telegraph machines. But the term has survived and applies to modern communication. These cards will
argue that the Status Quo fails because the law provides insufficient protection against bulk collection of
data obtained from “Pen Register or Trap and Trace” devices.
PRISM – PRISM is a US surveillance program under which the National Security Agency (NSA) collects
Internet communications from at least nine major US Internet companies. PRISM requests for internet
data are authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (see FAA or “FAA-Section
702” – above). The program is intended to identity foreign citizens – but the program is often accused of
inadvertently gathering intelligence on US citizens. According to The Washington Post, US intelligence
analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify targets whom the analysts suspect with at
least 51 percent confidence to not be U.S. citizen.
Signal Args – these cards speak to the image or perception of the law as seen by the US public or foreign
countries.
SST - “Specific Selector Terms”. These cards will argue that the Status Quo fails because the law allows
searches to be conducted with “broad selector terms” – like a zip code, an area code, or the IP address
of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites. These broad searches stumble onto much
more data. Some privacy advocates want to demand an SST – which would require searches that are
much more narrow (i.e. an individual’s name).
Inherency + Solvency Distinctions
Minimization + Language + FAA + EO + Some Signal Args
( ) *** USA Freedom Act is insufficient – must send a broader signal opposing mass
surveillance.
Toomey ‘15
(et al; Patrick C. Toomey is a staff attorney in the ACLU’s National Security Project, where he works on issues related to
electronic surveillance, national security prosecutions, whistle-blowing, and racial profiling. Mr. Toomey is a graduate of
Harvard College and Yale Law School. After graduating from law school, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Nancy Gertner,
United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, and to the Hon. Barrington D. Parker, United States circuit judge
for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. “Flip the Patriot Act’s Kill Switch” – Slate – May 5th http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/05/patriot_act_s_section_215_should_expire_why_we_shoul
d_let_the_law_s_worst.html?wpsrc=sh_all_tab_tw_bot)
The more compelling argument against allowing Section 215 to sunset comes from those who believe that Congress
should leverage the
opportunity presented by the scheduled sunset to enact a broad reform package. But while the proposed bill— the USA
Freedom Act —includes worthwhile elements, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. (The American Civil Liberties Union neither
supports nor opposes it.) It
would allow the government to continue storing innocent people’s records in vast
intelligence databases. It would require the government to be more transparent about its use of some surveillance authorities, but it would allow the
FBI to keep secret some of the information the public needs most. And while it would end the bulk collection of call records under
it would leave the government with the authority to engage in the broad
collection of other kinds of sensitive records. We appreciate the work of the legislators who are championing
Section 215,
the bill—Sens. Patrick Leahy and Ron Wyden and Reps. John Conyers and Jim Sensenbrenner, in particular, deserve credit for their tireless work in the service of
surveillance reform—but they have had to make deep concessions to the intelligence community in order to win its support. We can’t help but
the vague language in the bill’s key provisions will provide a new lease on life to
surveillance programs that haven’t yet been—and may never be—disclosed to the public. We can’t afford to squander the
opportunity that the scheduled sunset of Section 215 affords. Thanks to Snowden, Americans now know that the government’s surveillance activities are
worry that
far more extensive than is defensible in a free society. The current debate in Congress reflects a growing bipartisan consensus that reform is urgently needed.
Unless Congress can coalesce
around much broader reforms than are on the table right now , the best
way to begin the reform effort is by letting Section 215 expire. Letting the provision die wouldn’t itself accomplish all of the changes that are necessary—not even
close. But it would be a first step toward the kind of systemic
reform we desperately need, and it would send an important and
message that the era of unchecked government surveillance—the era of the Patriot Act—is at long last
coming to an end.
overdue
Metadata + Minimization + Language + Multiple Authorities + signal
arguments
**Current Freedom Act is not perceived as a strong privacy protection. Original
protections are a better option.
Shackford ‘15
Scott Shackford is an associate editor at Reason. This article is internally quoting Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation - “Is the USA Freedom Act the Best We Can Expect Right Now?” - Reason - 5/20
http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/20/is-the-usa-freedom-act-the-best-we-can-e
It doesn't appear to be easy to support
the USA Freedom Act. The Act's full real name is the " Uniting and Strengthening
America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online
Monitoring Act." Knowing the full name of the act helps explain why privacy supporters aren't shouting from the rafters over the legislation, even if they are supporting it.
As is the case with many other bills with elaborate names, the USA Freedom Act doesn't actually do what its name states.
The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048) is
Congress' response to the public revelation and the following outrage that the National Security Agency ( NSA ) has
been for years secretly collecting mass amounts of domestic metadata from virtually all Americans as part of its goal of sniffing out terrorists. It has been doing so
under the aegis of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which allows the NSA and FBI to collect all sorts of data and records that are relevant to an ongoing
investigation. But the NSA and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court that oversaw approval of records collection requests took a very, very wide view of what was "relevant," and
that included, among other things, the phone records of every single American. There was an awareness among privacy experts that this was happening, but because the entire process was
classified, the ability for anybody, even members of Congress, to do much about it was limited. Then Edward Snowden came around and released information showing how remarkably
expansive the NSA surveillance actually was. This all came as a surprise to Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who introduced the PATRIOT Act in 2001. He said it was never his intent to
authorize mass collection of the data of Americans in the first place.
The USA Freedom Act, which Sensenbrenner has also sponsored, is intended to reform
these procedures. But what the USA Freedom Act actually does is fairly modest compared to the amount of
surveillance authority the NSA had claimed for itself. It will end the bulk collection of phone metadata collection
under Section 215, but that's not the only avenue by which the federal government
claims authority to collect huge amounts of private information. Furthermore, right now we're seeing the
third attempt to get the act passed, and
the strength of the reforms has been watered down along the way. Indeed, some of the reforms called for in the act
(storing the telecommunications data with the companies rather than the government and requiring the government to request it) came from former NSA Director Keith Alexander. The
support of the Obama Administration has itself given some pause, due to its role in fighting lawsuits against the program and the blatant deception of current Director of Intelligence James
USA Freedom Act is intended to do is end mass domestic
data collection through Section 215, as well as in the secretive National Security Letters, and require
"specific selection terms" to limit mass records requests. It also reforms the FISA court to designate several independent advisors to the court to
Clapper before the Senate about the existence of mass phone record collection. What the
help provide "legal arguments that advance the protection of individual privacy and civil liberties," making the FISA court a slightly more adversarial place rather than the apparent rubber
stamp factory it had been. It will also mandate a declassification review process for FISA court decisions. But
it's also really hard to try to gauge the impact of
the bill as written, and that's coloring perceptions of its value.
Making the situation more complicated is a federal court
ruling that is actually friendly to privacy reformers. On May 7, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Section 215 never actually authorized the NSA to engage in mass phone metadata
collection in the first place. The court ruled that the NSA had stretched the definition of "relevance" and "investigation" too far by scooping up pretty much everything and storing it just in case
it might be useful later. But the court also did not demand any immediate changes, partly because it knew Congress was already working on legislation to deal with the pending sunsetting of
Section 215, which expires June 1. This ruling prompted some rethinking of the USA Freedom Act by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The group had previously endorsed each iteration
of the act, increasingly reluctantly as it was watered down with each session. In response to the court ruling, though, EFF withdrew its support and went neutral, calling for legislators to now
strengthen the act. Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for EFF who has been writing about the USA Freedom Act, still has positive things to say about it, but doesn't want Congress to settle for
less than it has to. It's the first reform of NSA surveillance since the 1970s. There should be more to it. "
The USA Freedom Act should be
stronger," Jaycox says. "Congress should be pushing for more control for themselves and more for the public." EFF would like Congress to
return to the first iteration of the act that called for a stronger adversarial position within the FISA court, not just an adviser. They want
Congress to address other authorizations used to justify bulk metadata collection, not just Section 215 and
National Security Letters. They want better "minimization" procedures to make sure information that isn't directly
connected to an investigation is properly purged. And they want to remove an "emergency exception" that allows the government to snoop on any
"non-United States person" for 72 hours without any court authorization at all. Given that the court ruling determined that the NSA had been operating outside of the law's intent, should we
any attempt to partly rein in surveillance powers without completely eliminating them will
ultimately lead back to more abuse? Who gets to decide what a "specific selection term" is? The same people who determined that every single phone record of
every American was "relevant" to investigating potential terrorist attacks on Americans? Jaycox is aware that this abuse concern helps feed the belief the USA Freedom Act
doesn't go nearly far enough. "We've seen the intelligence community and the administration stretch
definitions," Jaycox says. "We've seen them come up to the line and cross it completely. Section 215 is an example. I think that's where the hesitancy comes from." It's the FISA court
be concerned that
that was supposed to stand in the way of the NSA abusing the language, but that clearly didn't happen. Congress can legislate words to be as narrow as they like, Jaycox notes, "But at the end
of the day it's going to be a judge that's reviewing these orders." And thus, there's the push for more transparency and declassification of FISA court decisions, in the hopes of making it more
clear how the judges themselves are interpreting the law. The modest reforms weren't enough for some privacy-minded House members like Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Rep. Thomas Massie
(R-Ky.), and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). They all voted no. Amash later explained on Facebook that he feared passing the USA Freedom Act in the wake of the court ruling would have the impact
of authorizing bulk data collection rather than restricting it: "H.R. 2048 falls woefully short of reining in the mass collection of Americans' data, and it takes us a step in the wrong direction by
Congress, should demand that Congress
instead pass the original, bipartisan version of the USA FREEDOM Act from 2013, which strengthened—not weakened—
specifically authorizing such collection in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Americans, and members of
Section 215's relevance standard to end bulk collection , while still allowing the government the
flexibility it needs to pursue genuine threats against the United States." And this morning Amash posted a letter signed by him and
58 others in the House who voted no, explaining that their opposition to the USA Freedom Act was tha the surveillance reforms did not go far enough.
Language Distinctions – SST’s and FAA “about”
( ) New Freedom Act has permissive language on SST’s and “about” targets. That
ensures mass collection. Original version’s stricter language solves.
HRW ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. “US Senate: Salvage Surveillance Reform House Bill Flawed” - Human Rights Watch May 22, 2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/22/us-senate-salvage-surveillance-reform)
It is up to the US Senate to salvage surveillance reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The
version of the USA Freedom Act
that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22, 2014, could ultimately fail to end mass data
collection. The version the House passed is a watered-down version of an earlier bill that was designed
to end bulk collection of business records and phone metadata. The practice has been almost universally condemned
by all but the US security establishment. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world,”
said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Until Congress passes real reform, US credibility and leadership on
Internet freedom will continue to fade.” The initial version of the bill aimed to prohibit bulk collection by the government
of business records, including phone metadata. The bill only addressed one component of the surveillance programs revealed by the former
National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, that of US record collections. However, it
had broad support as a first step,
including from Human Rights Watch. On May 7, a diluted version of the bill passed unanimously out of the House
Judiciary Committee, followed by Intelligence Committee approval on May 8. While better than alternative bills offered, the
version the
House passed could leave the door wide open to continued indiscriminate data collection practices
potentially invading the privacy of millions of people without justification, Human Rights Watch said. President Obama, members of
Congress, and two independent review panels had all made public statements to the effect that bulk collection of phone records was not
essential to fighting terrorism and should be halted. However, House leadership weakened the bill even further, partly at the request of the
Obama administration in last minute, closed-door negotiations. The
following are key problems with the bill: Ambiguous
definitions may fail to rein in overbroad collection: House leadership watered down a key
definition that was meant to narrow the scope of what the US government could collect under Section 215 of
the Patriot Act. US intelligence agencies have used Section 215 to justify the collection of phone records of potentially all calls made to, from, or
within the US. Under
an earlier version of the USA Freedom Act, the government would have been
required to base any demand for phone metadata or other records on a “ specific selection term” that
“uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Under the House version, this definition was broadened to
mean “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the government to
definition is too open-ended and ambiguous to prevent the sort of
creative interpretation by intelligence agencies that has been used to justify overbroad collection practices in the past. No real
limit the scope” of information sought. This
safeguards for people outside the US: The House bill lacks serious reforms to safeguard the right to privacy of people outside the US.
Surveillance practices under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act potentially invade the privacy of millions of
people outside the US. The bill only superficially addresses Section 702 surveillance since proposed changes increase privacy protections for
only people in the US, and not people located abroad. For example, nothing in the bill would prevent the government from intercepting all
internet traffic flowing into the US over transatlantic cables, as long as information on people in the US is minimized. Indirectly recognizes
collection of communications “about” a surveillance target: More
problematically, the bill recognizes authority for the
NSA to broadly collect communications “about” a target, which sweeps in communications of people who are not
even communicating directly with a surveillance target.
Section 702 has never explicitly authorized collection of
communications “about” a target. This practice was first revealed in documents released by Snowden in 2013
and involves searching all Internet traffic as it flows over fiber optic cables entering the US to collect
communications that merely mention a target. The bill now indirectly references and acknowledges this
practice. The Senate should restore the safeguards that the House rejected when it takes up its
own version of the USA Freedom Act, and go further to protect the rights of the world’s Internet users, Human Rights Watch said. Instead
Congress should prohibit the collection of communications that
merely mention a surveillance target. “While better than the Intelligence Committee’s bill, the House
of just acknowledging the practice,
compromise bill is a disappointment and ignores a broad consensus that all overbroad collection should
end,” Wong said. “With this capitulation, it is now up to the Senate to pursue much deeper, more genuine reform to
end mass surveillance .”
FAA + NSL’s + Meta-data distinction
Freedom Act doesn’t solve FAA or National Security Letters
Kopstein ‘15
Joshua Kopstein is a journalist and researcher. His work focuses on Internet law and disorder, surveillance and government
secrecy. He has written pieces for Slate Magazine and The New Yorker. “USA Freedom Act gives NSA everything it wants — and
less” - Al Jazeera America’s The Scrutineer – June 2nd – http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2015/6/2/usa-freedomact-gives-nsa-everything-it-wants--and-less.html
But while the
act created much-needed transparency, it barely scratched the surface of the NSA's domestic mass
surveillance programs. While the government will no longer be able to collect phone records in bulk the way it
had under
Section 215, it can still easily gain access to that and other kinds of data without a warrant several
other ways — from National Security Letters to the “incidental” collection that occurs under Section 702 of the
F ISA A mendments A ct. The latter involves “Upstream” collection, the indiscriminate data sweeps of undersea
telecommunications cables that inevitably catch American data in their nets. The NSA is instructed to remove or
“minimize” this data, but it can nevertheless be kept and handed to law enforcement agencies to prosecute crimes under a wide variety of circumstances — all
without a warrant. The
agency can also still perform “backdoor searches” to get data about American citizens
by exploiting a loophole in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, something civil liberties advocates have been warning
about for years. So, perhaps it was not that surprising that civil liberties groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation remained openly neutral during
the recent Freedom Act debate. And many
experts have also rightly questioned the wisdom of focusing on phone records
when so much of our communications now take place over email, Skype calls and smartphone messaging apps
— all of which the NSA is still monitoring. Even people within the NSA have been candidly celebrating the
Freedom Act's surveillance “reforms,” calling it “a nothingburger for the privacy community.” And they might be right —
with so many overlapping and redundant surveillance authorities, it'd be foolish to think the Freedom Act has ended bulk
collection in any significant capacity.
FAA-Section 702 + Meta-data distinction
New Freedom Act won’t solve – doesn’t stop FAA or create strict limits on meta-data
queries.
Cassidy ‘15
John Cassidy is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributor to The New York Review of Books, having previously been an
editor at The Sunday Times of London and a deputy editor at the New York Post. He received his undergraduate education at
University College, Oxford, and holds master's degrees in journalism and in economics from Columbia University and New York
University respectively - “It’s Time to Let Edward Snowden Come Home” – The New Yorker – June 3rd http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy
Now that Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which places some limits on the
domestic-surveillance powers of the National Security Agency, there’s still unfinished business to deal with.
The new legislation, while it is commendable as far as it goes, contains some obvious shortcomings. Barring the
N.S.A. from collecting and holding the phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans was a necessary step, but it won’t
make much difference if the result is that the phone companies hold on to the data and secret courts
enable the N.S.A. to access it virtually at will. The legislation leaves on the books a law from 1986 that allows the government to
change Section 702 of the 2008 F ISA A mendments A ct, which the
N.S.A. has used to justify collecting not just metadata, such as phone records, but the actual contents of communications, such
as e-mails and online chats.
read any e-mail that is more than six months old, and it doesn’t
FAA distinction
Current Freedom Act is insufficient – international surveillance can still be used as a
backdoor to spy on US citizens.
Baker ‘15
(et al; Peter Baker is an American political writer and newspaper reporter who is the White House correspondent for The New
York Times. He won the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Coverage of the Presidency for his reporting on Bush, and the
Aldo Beckman Memorial Award for his coverage of Obama. Baker is a regular panelist on PBS's Washington Week and a
frequent guest on other television and radio programs. “Why the N.S.A. Isn’t Howling Over Restrictions” – New York Times MAY 1, 2015 - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/us/politics/giving-in-a-little-on-national-security-agency-datacollection.html)
For years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even
as the National Security Agency fiercely defended its secret efforts to
sweep up domestic telephone data, there were doubters inside the agency who considered the program wildly expensive
with few successes to show for it. So as Congress moves to take the government out of the business of indiscriminate bulk
collection of domestic calling data, the agency is hardly resisting. Former intelligence officials, in fact,
said Friday that the idea to store the data with telecommunications companies rather than the government
was suggested to President Obama in 2013 by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the N.S.A. director, who saw the change as
a way for the president to respond to criticism without losing programs the N.S.A. deemed more vital.
The limits on bulk collection are the centerpiece of legislation now advancing in the House that would be the
first significant response to the spying revelations by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor. In addition to new restrictions on domestic data sweeps, the
plan would require more transparency and introduce ostensibly independent voices into secret intelligence court proceedings. But as one recently departed
senior intelligence official put it on Friday, “This
is hardly major change.” The legislation would still leave an expansive
surveillance apparatus capable of tracking vast quantities of data. Some of the most sweeping programs
disclosed by Mr. Snowden, particularly those focused on international communications, would remain unaffected.
The N.S.A. could continue efforts to break private encryption systems, and information about Americans could still be swept up if
originating overseas.
SST and “FAA” distinction
Original Freedom Act solves loopholes – better deals with “selector term” and FAA
authorities
Granick ‘14
Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer was the Civil Liberties
Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security,
electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. From
2001 to 2007, Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet intermediary liability,
and Internet law and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings
College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida. “USA Freedom Act:
Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.” – Just Security - May 21, 2014 http://justsecurity.org/10675/usa-freedom-act-oh-wellwhatever-nevermind/
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of
collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information and who knows what else in bulk. Today’s version
would allow broad collection to continue under the guise of reform. The initial version of the bill
would have reinforced existing statutory language requiring a showing of “relevance to an authorized
investigation” before agents can get an order requiring production of business records, dialing and routing
information, and other data, and would have added other limits to ensure massive collection would stop. It also would
have implemented mild reforms to content surveillance under section 702 of the F ISA A mendments A ct, stopping
“back door” searches for Americans’ communications. Last week, a Managers’ Amendment watered those
provisions down, substituting new language that would allow agents to use a “specific selection term” as
the “basis for production”. The bill defined “specific selection term” as something that “uniquely describe[s] a
person, entity, or account.” Given the intelligence community’s success at getting FISA judges to reinterpret obvious language—e.g. “relevance”—in
counter-intuitive ways, people wondered what this new language might mean. There’s deep public mistrust for the intelligence community and for the FISA court,
which conspired to allow bulk collection under spurious legal justifications for years. Worse, there’s deep public mistrust for the law itself, since the intelligence
community’s “nuanced” definitions of normal words have made the public realize that they do not understand the meaning of words like “relevance”, “collection”,
“bulk”, or “target”.
SST distinction
USA Freedom allows ambiguous “selector terms”. Stricter standards from the Original
Bill are key.
Peterson ‘14
Internally quoting Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Andrea Peterson covers technology
policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open
government, Washington Post, 5/22/14 – “NSA reform bill passes House, despite loss of support from privacy advocates” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/22/nsa-reform-bill-passes-house-despite-loss-of-supportfrom-privacy-advocates/
The bill, known as
the USA Freedom Act, would shift responsibility for retaining telephonic metadata from the
government to telephone companies. Providers like AT&T and Verizon would be required to maintain the
records and let the NSA search them in terrorism investigations when the agency obtains a judicial order
or in certain emergency situations. The bill passed on an 303 to 121 vote. But privacy advocates , technology companies and
lawmakers warned that the
version of the bill passed by the House was watered down to the point where they could no longer
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a
member of the House Judiciary Committee who was a co-sponsor of the initial version of the bill. "The result is
a bill that will actually not end bulk collection, regrettably." Lofgren said she was particularly
concerned about the bill's definition of "selector terms," which are the terms that would be used by
the NSA to define the scope of their data request to the phone companies. The initial version of
the bill included a more narrow definition , but some privacy advocates fear the definition in the Freedom
Act passed Thursday could be used to collect broad swaths of information. "If we leave any
ambiguity at all, we have learned that the intelligence community will drive a truck
through that ambiguity, " she said. Others, including Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) also expressed their concern with
support it. "This is not the bill that was reported out of the judiciary bill unanimously," said
the legislation. Holt specifically attacked the bill for using a "weak and inferior standard that does not meet probable cause" as the benchmark for judicial orders to
search phone records.
USA Freedom Act fails because of broad “selector terms” – original draft is a better
option.
Condon ‘14
Stephanie Condon is a political reporter for CBS News – “House passes watered down NSA reform bill” - CBS News- May 22,
2014 - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-passes-watered-down-nsa-reform-bill/
The House on Thursday passed a watered down version of the USA Freedom Act, even though some privacy advocates
say the amended version of the bill may no longer achieve its stated goal of curbing the National Security Agency's bulk data
collection. The new version of the Freedom Act, passed by a vote of 303 to 121, does still prohibit the government's direct bulk
collection of phone metadata. Under the legislation, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) will have to approve any government requests for
phone records data from telecommunications firms. Still, even Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the sponsor of the Freedom Act, acknowledged on the House
floor Thursday, "Perfect is rarely possible in politics, and this bill is no exception." "Let me be clear, I wish this bill did more," the congressman continued. "To my
colleagues who lament changes, I agree with you. To privacy groups who are upset about lost provisions, I share your disappointment... But this bill still deserves
support. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Sensenbrenner said the
bill was amended after "the administration
insisted on broadening certain authorities and lessening certain restrictions," in order to preserve core operations of
intelligence and law enforcement agencies. "The negotiations for this bill were intense, and we had to make compromises," he said. The most controversial change
to the legislation was the tweaked language defining who or what the NSA is allowed to monitor. The bill was altered to greatly expand that definition, privacy
earlier version of the bill said that the government could compel telecoms to hand over
metadata found with search terms "used to uniquely describe a person , entity, or account." The amended
bill leaves the list of potential search terms open-ended by adding the phrase "such as" -- it says NSA
searches must be tied to "a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device."
advocates argue. An
"Congress has been clear that it wishes to end bulk collection, but given
the government's history of twisted legal
interpretations, this language can't be relied on to protect our freedoms," the nonpartisan privacy group the Electronic
Frontier Foundation said in a blog post. Other groups such as the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology warned against the watered down
language. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said on the House floor, "This legislation still allows the government to collect everything
they want against Americans ."
Interpretations of “Selector Terms” will be vital.
Peterson ‘14
Internally quoting Julian Sanchez, a scholar at the Cato Institute and Kevin Bankston the policy director at the New America
Foundation's Open Technology Institute Also internally referencing US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House
Judiciary Committee. Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity,
consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open government, Washington Post, 5/22/14 – “NSA reform bill passes
House, despite loss of support from privacy advocates” - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/theswitch/wp/2014/05/22/nsa-reform-bill-passes-house-despite-loss-of-support-from-privacy-advocates/
But in a blog post, Kevin Bankston the policy director at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute identified
a number of areas
where he says the bill had been weakened, including limiting transparency reporting provisions for tech companies affected by government
data requests and
the selector term issue decried by Lofgren. In a statement to The Washington Post after the bill's passage,
Bankston said it was "still better than the Intelligence committee's competing bill, or no bill at all," but that privacy advocates would have to work hard in the Senate
a lot will turn on
how the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court interprets phrases like “ specific selection
term.”
to reverse the changes that weakened the bill. Julian Sanchez, a scholar at the Cato Institute working on these issues, says
SST and Language Distinction
Current Freedom Act fails – it lacks “Specific Selector” language. That makes it too
watered-down to solve.
Granick ‘14
Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer was the Civil Liberties
Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security,
electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. From
2001 to 2007, Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet intermediary liability,
and Internet law and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings
College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida. “USA Freedom Act:
Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.” – Just Security - May 21, 2014 http://justsecurity.org/10675/usa-freedom-act-oh-wellwhatever-nevermind/
Yesterday, a
new version of the bill was released after, according to the National Journal, “more than a week of intense backdoor negotiations
among House leadership, the White House, and the intelligence community.” The latest version gets rid of the “uniquely describe”
language. Rather “specific selection term” would be defined as: A discrete term, such as a term specifically
identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the Government to limit the scope of the information or tangible things sought pursuant to the
statute authorizing the provision of such information or tangible things to the Government. This
definitional change moved the needle
from might to probably won’t end bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the NSL statutes, and the intelligence
pen/trap statute, as USA Freedom was proposed to do. The new version also codifies a fishy interpretation of law that enables
NSA collection of communications “
community calls them, entail
about” a target under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. These “abouts”, as the intelligence
surveillance when Americans talk with friends overseas about matters of foreign intelligence
interest. Since the definition of foreign intelligence information is quite broad, and includes information related to (A) the national defense or the security of the
United States; as well as (B) the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States, this kind of collection can be quite invasive. Technologically, it also means
collection of purely domestic “about” communications. This is something that needs to end, not receive Congress’ blessing. As
a result, NGOs have
started to withdraw their support for the bill. Reformers are still reluctant to openly oppose USA Freedom. That’s partially because of the
specter of the House Intelligence Committee bill, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act, which would expand surveillance under the mantle of reform.
Privacy groups seem whipsawed between the pale appearance of surveillance reform that is USA Freedom and the actual surveillance expansion that is the Intel bill.
Language Distinction
Current Freedom Act doesn’t solve – language is not strict enough
Timm ‘15
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He is a journalist, activist, and
lawyer who writes a twice weekly column for The Guardian on privacy, free speech, and national security. He has contributed to
The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and Politico. He received his J.D. from
New York Law School. “NSA reform is unavoidable. But it can be undermined if we aren't careful” – The Guardian – May 13 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/nsa-reform-is-unavoidable-but-it-can-be-undermined-if-we-arentcareful
The problem is that the
USA Freedom Act is also a confusing conglomeration of vague clauses and definitions
that some lawyers think could allow the NSA to twist and warp in secret to allow them to continue to abuse the privacy
of the American people. Given the courts have already gutted the NSA’s convoluted legal arguments, Congress now needs to go
much further and remove any doubt from USA Freedom’s language. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
American Civil Liberties Union have both withdrawn support from the House’s version of USA Freedom for this very reason.)
Pen Register Distinction
Current Freedom Act doesn’t solve – metadata can now be re-collected through Pen
Register authority.
Harris ‘15
Shane Harris is a Senior Intelligence and National Security Correspondent for The Daily Beast. He is the author of two books:
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, and The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, which won the
New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Prior to joining The Daily Beast, Shane was
a senior writer at Foreign Policy magazine. He has also written for Washingtonian Magazine, the National Journal and
Government Executive Magazine. Shane is the 2010 winner of the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National
Defense. “Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies” - - The Daily Beast - 05.31.15 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/zombie-patriot-act-will-keep-u-s-spying-even-if-the-original-dies.html
They may be. But they
of Monday, the
are far from the only tools in the counterterrorism arsenal, and though they are no longer law as
U nited S tates still has plenty of authority to collect intelligence on jihadis and foreign spies. For
starters, there will be what’s left of the Patriot Act itself. One former U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast that
Section 214 of the law, which allows “ pen register/trap & trace,” could be used to collect phone and
even email records. That would not only cover the gap from the expiring NSA program that collects the
phone records of Americans ’ landline calls, but potentially expand the government’s
collection. (No wonder the NSA largely views the bill that would reform the Patriot Act as a major win.)
NSL’s Distinction
Current Freedom Act fails – authorities will just shift and increase use of National
Security Letters.
Harris ‘15
Shane Harris is a Senior Intelligence and National Security Correspondent for The Daily Beast. He is the author of two books:
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, and The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, which won the
New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Prior to joining The Daily Beast, Shane was
a senior writer at Foreign Policy magazine. He has also written for Washingtonian Magazine, the National Journal and
Government Executive Magazine. Shane is the 2010 winner of the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National
Defense. “Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies” - - The Daily Beast - 05.31.15 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/zombie-patriot-act-will-keep-u-s-spying-even-if-the-original-dies.html
Then there’s
another powerful tool that the FBI and intelligence agencies have long had in their arsenal and
still will—national security letters. They make it relatively easy for investigators to gather up all kinds of communications records. This
authority can be used to collect phone, Internet, and financial records. National security letters were
actually around before the Patriot Act became law in 2001, but the legislation lowered the standard that the
government must meet to obtain them. They’ll still be comparatively easy to get now that portions of
the Patriot Act are off the books.
A-to “Gradualism solves in the squo”
Gradualism wrong – current Freedom Act won’t build into something more.
Ackerman ‘15
Spencer Ackerman is national security editor for Guardian US. A former senior writer for Wired, he won the 2012 National
Magazine Award for Digital Reporting – “Weakened surveillance reform bill is 'yesterday's news', civil libertarians say” - The
Guardian - April 17th, 2015 -http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/17/surveillance-reform-usa-freedom-act-nsa-civillibertarians
But the question for surveillance reform advocates is whether the result of that wrangling is worth supporting. Some, like Robyn Greene of the Open Technology
Institute, see
the USA Freedom Act as “a first step” on the path of reform. Others consider it a tactical
mistake. “If passed, it’ll be the only step,” predicted Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute, a former House
staffer, since the next expiration date for a major piece of surveillance legislation is 31 December 2017.
Solvency options
Omnibus Solvency – end multiple authorities
An Omnibus bill that ends multiple surveillance authorities solves.
Cohn ‘13
(et al; Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF’s Legal
Director as well as its General Counsel. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in
America. “NSA Spying in Congress: Stop the Intelligence Committee and What to Watch For in Upcoming Bills” - Electronic
Frontier Foundation - October 23, 2013 - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/nsa-spying-congress-stop-intelligencecommittee-and-what-watch-upcoming-bills)
The good bills being proposed are omnibus bills —so-called because they change a variety of different laws.
They try to stop the mass collection of innocent Americans' calling records (using Section 215 of the
Patriot Act), phone calls and emails (using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA)), and try to introduce much needed transparency reforms to the court overseeing the spying, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court). So far,
only S. 1551, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act—sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, Mark Udall, and Rand Paul—has
been released. The bill is a fantastic start. The other, by Senator Patrick Leahy and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, is still being readied, but we’re hopeful based on what
we’ve heard so far. In general, EFF believes that
whatever bill goes through Congress must stop the mass
spying ; either through nullifying the NSA’s interpretation of Section 215, or otherwise. And it should do so in a publicly verifiable way. It goes without saying
that this is, among other things, in addition to reforming the FISA Court process, increasing transparency, and fixing National Security Letters. Direct
path: Forbid Mass Collection There is a direct way to do this. Congress could unequivocally forbid
the government
from the mass collection of phone records. Congress usually does this with the phrase
“notwithstanding any other law.” This is the path EFF strongly recommends. It looks something like below
and includes FISA’s exceptions for wartime and other emergencies. Notwithstanding any other law, no
governmental entity shall engage in the mass collection of records1, unless the collection is authorized
pursuant to sections 1802, 1811, 1843 or 1844 of this chapter.
Complete Elimination is key
Complete Elimination key – retaining some of the program on the books serves to
legitimize warrantless surveillance.
Matthews ‘14
(Kevin Matthews – OpEd writer and contributor at Care2.com and Truthout - “4 Reasons Obama’s NSA “Reforms” Won’t
Change Much” - Care2 - March 25, 2014 - http://www.care2.com/causes/4-reasons-obamas-nsa-reforms-wont-changemuch.html#ixzz3by65iMRe)
It Legitimatizes a Divisive Issue Although the reform is not nearly as meaningful as many Americans had
hoped for, some support it because it seems like better than nothing. However, the administration may
be offering minor concessions on its spying program in an attempt to get unwarranted surveillance on the
books. With many believing that the NSA has been conducting unlawful surveillance, passing this new
legislation would give some legitimacy to the practice. By cementing surveillance into law, it
could further help to squash debate on the subject. Perhaps that’s why Obama is calling on Congress to pass these NSA reforms “quickly.”
(And by “quickly”, he really means nearly a year after Edward Snowden brought these misdeeds to our attention.)
(Note to students: the “it” referenced in this article is the USA Freedom Act)
Signal solvency
Current US Freedom Act does not solve – original version sends a better signal.
ThoughtWorks ‘14
ThoughtWorks is a software company and a community of passionate, purpose-led individuals. Our mission is to better
humanity through software and help drive the creation of a socially and economically just world – The organization is founded
by Roy Singhmane – who, with more than 20 years of technology and executive management experience, is a globally
renowned information technology thought leader. He has authored technology-related columns in various industry
publications, and is a frequent speaker at technology conferences worldwide. “ThoughtWorks Withdraws Support for
Weakened USA FREEDOM Act” -ThoughtWorks - 15 Sep 2014 - http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/thoughtworkswithdraws-support-weakened-usa-freedom-act
ThoughtWorks endorsed the original USA FREEDOM Act in October 2013 as a good first step towards reining in mass
surveillance. Our support was grounded in recognition that the NSA's capricious spying undermined the privacy of US and global citizens, their trust in the Internet,
the capacity of governments to engage with each other, and was having serious and adverse effect on our industry. Since the introduction of the original USA
FREEDOM Act, the public has continued to learn more details about NSA surveillance programs. We have seen a court rule that dragnet phone surveillance activities
are likely unconstitutional. We have received 46 sweeping reform recommendations from the President’s special task force on NSA surveillance. And we have heard
the President himself echo the call for meaningful reforms. Given such momentum for change, we
hoped that USA FREEDOM would be
passed in its original form , or strengthened in response to new revelations and to incorporate new reform proposals. We hoped new bills
focused on surveillance authorities not addressed by USA FREEDOM would be introduced. Instead, in both the House and Senate the behind-the-scenes
compromises required to draft a bill that would reach the floor for a vote have weakened USA FREEDOM so much that we now
believe its passage would actively be counter-productive to meaningful reform. Some reformers claim that
any progress, no matter how small, is worth supporting. We disagree. USA FREEDOM not only fails to enact strong enough
reforms, it codifies some surveillance practices that currently lack statutory basis and it extends the US Patriot Act, the framework
enabling many surveillance and other objectionable activities to be undertaken in the name of US national security. The recent fullthroated endorsement of the Senate version of the act by the Department of National Intelligence, formerly one of its fiercest opponents, clearly indicates what
interests this “reform” will actually serve. Finally, in the current political environment, should
USA FREEDOM pass, we see little chance
of further, stronger reforms being introduced to address the significant problems it does not. More than a year after Edward
Snowden's initial revelations, the US Congress is proving unwilling to govern the massive US surveillance state,
showing how out of step it is with the values and priorities of US citizens and companies, as well as people around the
world .
Original Freedom Act better solves public perception
Original Freedom Act better solves public perception
Granick ‘14
Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer was the Civil Liberties
Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security,
electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. From
2001 to 2007, Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet intermediary liability,
and Internet law and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings
College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida. “USA Freedom Act:
Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.” – Just Security - May 21, 2014 http://justsecurity.org/10675/usa-freedom-act-oh-wellwhatever-nevermind/
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of
collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information and who knows what else in bulk. Today’s version
would allow broad collection to continue under the guise of reform. The initial version of the bill
would have reinforced existing statutory language requiring a showing of “relevance to an authorized
investigation” before agents can get an order requiring production of business records, dialing and routing
information, and other data, and would have added other limits to ensure massive collection would stop. It also would have implemented mild reforms to
content surveillance under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, stopping “back door” searches for Americans’ communications. Last week, a Managers’
Amendment watered those provisions down, substituting new language that would allow agents to use a
“specific selection term” as the “basis for production”. The bill defined “specific selection term” as something that
“uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Given the intelligence community’s success at getting FISA judges to reinterpret
obvious language—e.g. “relevance”—in counter-intuitive ways, people wondered what this new language might mean. There’s deep public mistrust for the
intelligence community and for the FISA court, which conspired to allow bulk collection under spurious legal justifications for years. Worse, there’s
deep
public mistrust for the law itself, since the intelligence community’s “nuanced” definitions of normal
words have made the public realize that they do not understand the meaning of words like “relevance”,
“collection”, “bulk”, or “target”.
Court Precedent Solvency
**Unless courts rejects the Meta-data program on Fourth Amendment grounds,
precedents will spiral to ruin privacy rights. Sanctions bulk collection in other realms.
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden and Udall sat on the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program. “BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON
WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - Appeal
from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No.
2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE
LLP. This pdf can be obtained at: https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
Amici also are concerned that
the district court’s rationale for dismissing plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment challenge is not
limited to telephony metadata and goes much too far, eliminating any Fourth Amendment
claim for the bulk, routinized collection of any records (including hospital and doctor’s records, or all credit card and
checking account data) that was collected, stored or seen by third party providers or billers, even if the statute lacked
any link to international terrorism at all. Congress did not intend – and the Fourth Amendment would in any event not permit – such an
overbroad claim of authority. Amici have previously warned that the government’s authority to collect information on law-abiding Americans is essentially limitless: the Patriot Act’s
surveillance authorities are not limited to phone records. . . . [and] could be used to collect other types of records in bulk as well, including information on credit card purchases, medical
records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects. Press Release, Sens. Ron Wyden & Mark Udall, Wyden, Udall Statement on the
Disclosure of Bulk Email Records Collection Program (July 2, 2013), http://1.usa.gov/1bs6wWa (“Wyden-Udall Bulk Email Release”); see Sen. Ron Wyden, Remarks as Prepared for Delivery for
the Center for American Progress Event on NSA Surveillance (July 23, 2013) http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-on-nsa-domestic-surveillance (“Wyden CAP Speech”).11
Amici have not issued these warnings lightly. As disclosed in July 2013, two of amici were involved in bringing an NSA bulk-collection program focused on internet metadata to an end. See
Wyden–Udall Bulk Email Release, http://1.usa.gov/1bs6wWa (“[W]e spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of [the program’s] effectiveness. They
were unable to do so, and the program was shut down that year.”). Recent disclosures have produced even more reasons to heed amici’s words of caution. For example, one document
released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit publicly revealed that the executive branch has interpreted its authority under section 215 to allow the collection of information about
Americans’ locations. See Letter from [Redacted], Attorney, Office of General Counsel, NSA, to SSCI at 1 (Apr. 1, 2011), http://1.usa.gov/1gWqiy0. And
FISC opinions
continue to refer to still-undisclosed “secret law” interpreting crucial statutory terms in FISA related to bulk collection as well as addressing
the compatibility of bulk collection with the Fourth Amendment. See In re Production of Tangible Things, 2013 WL 5741573, at *6 (FISC
“has previously examined the issue of relevance for bulk collections. See [Redacted].”). Amici have long warned that Americans would be “stunned,” “angry,” and “alarmed” if they were to see
the government’s secret interpretation of section 215. 157 Cong. Rec. S3386, 3389 (daily ed. May 26, 2011) (statements of Sen. Wyden & Sen. Udall). The disclosures to date about
the
NSA’s activities have been significant, and they will surely be transformative .12 But the government’s claimed
authorities are vast, and the Court should treat with skepticism the argument that the unique characteristics of call records cabin the
government’s use of the statute. Moreover, seizing on section 215 to justify the collection of metadata on a huge volume of phone calls made daily in the United States necessarily leads to
results that Congress and the Supreme Court cannot possibly be thought to have sanctioned. As a close reading demonstrates, the district court’s rationale for dismissing plaintiffs’ Fourth
Amendment claim rests on a broad reading of Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979) and its Ninth Circuit progeny. Smith v. Obama, No. 2:13-CV-257, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76344 (D. Idaho
June 3, 2014); ER1-8. Even as the district court relied on Smith, it correctly recognized the existence of “a looming gulf between Smith and this case.” Smith, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76344, at *7;
ER5. The Smith case involved the investigation of a single crime, and the collection of the phone records of a suspected robber over a two-day time period. The district court quoted the
Klayman v. Obama opinion to underscore the danger of expanding Smith so far as to encompass telephone records collected in bulk over a much longer period of time: “
people in 2013
have an entirely different relationship with phones than they did thirty-four years ago
Records that once would have revealed a few scattered tiles of information about a person now
reveal an entire mosaic – a vibrant and constantly updating picture of the person’s life.” Smith, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
76344, at *11; ER7 (quoting Klayman v. Obama, 957 F. Supp. 2d 1, 36 (D.D.C. 2013)). It is hard to imagine that this Court would agree that a
congressional statute requiring bulk submission to the government of hospital and medical records, or of credit card billing and
checking accounts, passed (or was not even subject to) Fourth Amendment review without a tie to international terrorism, merely on the
rationale that private records held by a third party are categorically beyond Fourth Amendment
....
protection. It would appear, then, that the reasonableness (and hence the constitutionality) of such orders necessarily rests on the balance between harm to privacy interests and
governmental need – one informed by the considerations and failures-of-evidence canvassed above in Point I – and not simply on the Smith v. Maryland third-party rationale alone. As Justice
Sotomayor recently wrote concurring in United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 957 (2012), making secrecy (even from telephone providers, internet providers, and entities such as pharmacies
or hospitals) a sine qua non of Fourth Amendment protection is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of
carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond
to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. . . . I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless
disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. . . . I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member
For all the foregoing reasons, the Court should
reverse the judgment below and remand for further proceedings.
of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.
A-to “Must prove Domestic is key”
Domestic surveillance includes meta-data of non-US citizens. US companies keep
records on non-US customers.
Roth ‘14
Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights
organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal
prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown
University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written
extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice,
counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. “World Report 2014” - World
Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human
rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through November 2013.
http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014
Because of the disclosures of whistleblower Edward Snowden, the
world is now aware of the virtually unchecked mass electronic
surveillance that the US government and certain allies, most notably Britain, is conducting. No one questions that national security sometimes
requires governments to use targeted surveillance after making an evidentiary showing. But the US government’s mass surveillance without
such limits has largely eradicated the right to privacy in a modern world that virtually requires electronic
communication. To justify this conduct, the US government has invoked a series of legal assumptions that do not withstand serious scrutiny, even though
most have been ratified by a secret and deferential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that hears only the government’s arguments. For example, the
government feels free to collect metadata about potentially all phone calls in the US because, under woefully
outdated rules, no one is said to have any legitimate expectation of privacy when it comes to this information because they
share it with the phone company. Despite a huge percentage of the world’s Internet and phone
communications passing through the United States, the government has adopted the policy that nonAmericans outside the country have no recognized privacy interest in even the content of their communications. And the
government conveniently claims that the right to privacy is not implicated when it collects communications, only
when it examines them—as if it would be okay for the government to collect and store a video stream from peoples’ bedrooms so long as it purports
not watch the video until it comes up with some compelling reason.
A-to “Aff is insufficient b/c transparency is still missing”
Original Freedom Act had transparency provisions. These will spill up to check Neg’s
alt causes.
Cole ‘15
David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights,
the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is the author of
seven books, and his books have received multiple awards, including the American Book Award for Enemy Aliens: Double
Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. “Reining in the NSA” – The New York Review of Books – June
2nd - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/02/nsa-surveillance-congress-sunset/
The USA Freedom Act also compels the government to report on the number of times it uses certain
surveillance powers annually. But Congress unfortunately dropped a requirement from last year’s
version of the act, which would have required the government to tell us how many Americans it collects
information about under each authority— perhaps the most politically salient fact of all. It’s a fair bet
that if the NSA had reported that it was collecting records on several hundred million Americans, bulk
collection would have ended long ago. Transparency and sunsets are critical because, despite the important victory
on Section 215, much of what the NSA does continues to be unchanged and shrouded in secrecy. The USA Freedom Act says
nothing, for example, about how the NSA should conduct itself overseas. We have learned, again courtesy of Snowden, that the NSA has been voracious in its
surveillance of innocent individuals outside the United States. For example, it has recorded the contents of every single phone call in certain foreign countries. It has
hacked into Internet trunk lines to sweep up billions of messages. It has collected location data, address books, and texts from untold numbers of innocent foreign
citizens. And notwithstanding Snowden’s revelations, the full scope of what the agency is empowered to do and is doing remains secret. Much of this surveillance
does not affect Americans in the same direct way that the Section 215 program did. But foreign nationals have privacy rights, too. Their rights are recognized in legal
treaties that we have signed, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Many foreign citizens are understandably upset with the NSA’s
dragnet surveillance, just as we’d be upset to learn that the Chinese were recording all of the contents of our phone calls. Indeed, Silicon Valley companies report
that they are feeling the effects, as foreign customers turn away from American providers for fear that they will be more vulnerable to US surveillance if they use US
services. And in an age when international communication has become commonplace, much of this surveillance does affect Americans, if they happen to be on one
end of a monitored communication. (Or if the government cannot initially ascertain whether a particular electronic communication involves an American citizen, as
is frequently the case with Internet communications.) The age of digital surveillance has arrived. Congress is only just beginning to catch on, and catch up. Most
Americans have been kept in the dark. Many of the government’s surveillance tools may be necessary, and can be deployed in ways that respect privacy while also
protecting us from criminals and terrorists. But if we are going to ensure that the tools are appropriate to the task, and if
we are to preserve the
privacy so essential to a free and democratic society, we must know what the government is doing, and we must build in regular
Congressional reconsideration. Otherwise, we are in danger of forfeiting our liberties by default.
Backlines – Privacy Advantage
If you read the shorter 1AC version…
…then these are the four cards you didn’t read in the 1AC. They could be useful in the 2AC.
4th Amendment and Side Constraints
The 4th Amendment outweighs. An ethical ballot can’t even consider their security
impact. That would treat privacy as mere inconvenience – obliterating liberty.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The government argues that it would be more convenient for law enforcement if the courts established
a bright-line rule that extinguished all privacy in information shared with others. See Gov’t Br. 40. The government is
surely right about this. The Bill of Rights exists, however, not to serve governmental efficiency but to safeguard
individual liberty. Cf. Bailey v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 1031, 1041 (2013) (“ ‘[T]he mere fact that law enforcement
may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth
Amendment .’” (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393 (1978))); Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2493 (“Our cases have historically recognized that the
warrant requirement is ‘an important working part of our machinery of government,’ not merely
‘an inconvenience to be somehow “weighed” against the claims of police efficiency. ’”
(quoting Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 481 (1971))). Notably, the government made the same appeal for a bright-line rule in Jones and Maynard, see,
e.g., Brief for the United States at 13, Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, but the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit rejected it.
Reject those privacy violations as an a priori imperative. Also proves that the disad’s
all hype.
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden and Udall sat on the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program. “BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON
WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - Appeal
from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No.
2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE
LLP. This pdf can be obtained at: https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
Respect for Americans’ privacy is not a matter of convenience, but a Constitutional imperative .
Despite years of receiving classified briefings and asking repeated questions of intelligence officials in both
have seen no evidence that bulk collection accomplishes anything
that other less intrusive surveillance authorities could not. Bulk collection is not only a significant threat
to the constitutional liberties of Americans, but a needless one.9
private and public settings, amici
Utilitarianism is bad
Reject utilitarianism. It shatters all ethics and justifies the worst atrocities.
Holt ‘95
(Jim Holt is an American philosopher, author and essayist. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New York Times
Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and Slate. He hosted a weekly radio spot on
BBC for ten years and he writes frequently about politics and philosophy. New York Times, “Morality, Reduced To Arithmetic,”
August 5, p. Lexis)
Can the deliberate massacre of innocent people ever be condoned? The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 to 250,000
Japanese by incineration and radiation poisoning. Although a small fraction of the victims were soldiers, the great majority were noncombatants -- women, children, the aged. Among the
justifications that have been put forward for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the bomb, only one is worth taking seriously -- that it saved lives. The alternative, the reasoning goes,
was to launch an invasion. Truman claimed in his memoirs that this would have cost another half a million American lives. Winston Churchill put the figure at a million. Revisionist historians
have cast doubt on such numbers. Wartime documents suggest that military planners expected around 50,000 American combat deaths in an invasion. Still, when Japanese casualties, military
and civilian, are taken into account, the overall invasion death toll on both sides would surely have ended up surpassing that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scholars will continue to argue over
whether there were other, less catastrophic ways to force Tokyo to surrender. But given the fierce obstinacy of the Japanese militarists, Truman and his advisers had some grounds for
believing that nothing short of a full-scale invasion or the annihilation of a big city with an apocalyptic new weapon would have succeeded. Suppose they were right. Would this prospect have
In the debate over the question, participants on both sides have been playing the
numbers game. Estimate the hypothetical number of lives saved by the bombings, then add up the actual lives
lost. If the first number exceeds the second, then Truman did the right thing; if the reverse, it was wrong to have dropped the bombs. That is one approach to the matter -- the utilitarian
approach. According to utilitarianism, a form of moral reasoning that arose in the 19th century, the goodness or evil of an action is determined
justified the intentional mass killing of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
solely by its consequences. If somehow you can save 10 lives by boiling a baby, go ahead and boil that
baby . There is, however, an older ethical tradition, one rooted in Judeo-Christian theology, that takes a quite different view. The gist of it is
Some actions, this tradition holds, can never be justified by
their consequences; they are absolutely forbidden. It is always wrong to boil a baby even if lives are
saved thereby. Applying this absolutist morality to war can be tricky. When enemy soldiers are trying to enslave or kill us, the principle of self-defense permits us to kill them
expressed by St. Paul’s condemnation of those who say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.”
(though not to slaughter them once they are taken prisoner). But what of those who back them? During World War II, propagandists made much of the “indivisibility” of modern warfare: the
idea was that since the enemy nation’s entire economic and social strength was deployed behind its military forces, the whole population was a legitimate target for obliteration. “There are no
civilians in Japan,” declared an intelligence officer of the Fifth Air Force shortly before the Hiroshima bombing, a time when the Japanese were popularly depicted as vermin worthy of
extermination. The boundary between combatant and noncombatant can be fuzzy, but the distinction is not meaningless, as the case of small children makes clear. Yet is wartime killing of
those who are not trying to harm us always tantamount to murder? When naval dockyards, munitions factories and supply lines are bombed, civilian carnage is inevitable. The absolutist moral
tradition acknowledges this by a principle known as double effect: although it is always wrong to kill innocents deliberately, it is sometimes permissible to attack a military target knowing some
noncombatants will die as a side effect. The doctrine of double effect might even justify bombing a hospital where Hitler is lying ill. It does not, however, apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Transformed into hostages by the technology of aerial bombardment, the people of those cities were intentionally executed en masse to send a message of terror to the rulers of Japan. The
practice of ordering the massacre of civilians to bring the enemy to heel scarcely began with Truman. Nor did the bomb result in casualties of a new order of magnitude. The earlier bombing of
Tokyo by incendiary weapons killed some 100,000 people. What Hiroshima and Nagasaki did mark, by the unprecedented need for rationalization they presented, was the triumph of
utilitarian thinking in the conduct of war. The conventional code of noncombatant immunity -- a product of several centuries of ethical progress among nations, which had
been formalized by an international commission in the 1920’s in the Hague -- was swept away. A simpler axiom took its place: since war is hell, any means necessary may be used to end, in
Churchill’s words, “the vast indefinite butchery.” It
is a moral calculus that, for all its logical consistency, offends
our deep-seated intuitions about
the
sanctity of life -- our conviction that a person is always to be treated as an end, never as a means. Left up to
the warmakers, moreover, utilitarian calculations are susceptible to bad-faith reasoning: tinker with the
numbers enough and virtually any atrocity can be excused in the national interest. In January, the
world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where mass slaughter was committed as an end in itself -- the ultimate evil. The moral nature of Hiroshima is
the bomb’s sinister legacy is
plain: it has inured us to the idea of reducing innocents to instruments and morality to arithmetic.
ambiguous by contrast. Yet in the postwar era, when governments do not hesitate to treat the massacre of civilians as just another strategic option,
Neg args biased – inflates the terror risk
( ) Privacy outweighs security. Their link inflates the security risk and their impact’s an
epistemologically wrong.
Solove ‘8
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article: “Data Mining and the Security-Liberty Debate” - University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 74, p. 343,
2008 - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990030
Data mining is one issue in a larger debate about security and privacy. Proponents of data mining justify it as an
essential tool to protect our security. For example, Judge Richard Posner argues that “[i]n an era of global terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the government has a
compelling need to gather, pool, sift, and search vast quantities of information, much of it personal.”9 Moreover, proponents of security measures argue that we must provide the executive branch with the discretion it needs to
protect us. We cannot second guess every decision made by government officials, and excessive meddling into issues of national security by judges and oth-ers lacking expertise will prove detrimental. For example, William Stuntz
contends that “effective, active government—government that innovates, that protects people who need protecting, that acts aggressively when action is needed—is dying. Privacy and transparency are the diseases. We need to
find a vaccine, and soon.”10 Stuntz concludes that “[i]n an age of terrorism, privacy rules are not simply unaffordable. They are perverse.”11 We live in an “age of balancing,” and
and civil liberties are not absolute.12 Thus,
how the balancing occurs
the prevailing view is that most rights
liberty must be balanced against security. But there are systematic problems with
that inflate the importance of the security interests and diminish the value of
the liberty interests .
In this essay, I examine some common difficulties in the way that liberty is balanced against security in the context of data mining. Countless discussions about the tradeoffs
liberty interests are cast as individual
rights and balanced against the security interests, which are cast in terms of the safety of society as a whole. Courts and
between security and liberty begin by taking a security proposal and then weighing it against what it would cost our civil liberties. Often, the
commentators defer to the government’s assertions about the effectiveness of the security interest. In the context of data mining, the liberty interest is limited by narrow understandings of privacy that neglect to account for many
privacy problems.
As a result, the balancing concludes with a victory in favor of the security interest. But
as I will argue,
privacy concerns are significantly greater than
acknowledged. These problems undermine the balancing process and skew results toward
the security side of the scale.
important dimensions of data mining’s security benefits require more scrutiny, and the
have
currently
d
ed the
Debates about data mining begin with the assumption that it is an essential tool in protecting our security. Terrorists lurk among us, and ferreting
them out can be quite difficult. Examining data for patterns will greatly assist in this endeavor, the argument goes, because certain identifiable characteristics and behaviors are likely to be associated with terrorist activity. Often,
little more is said, and the debate pro-ceeds to examine whether privacy is important enough to refrain from using such an effective terrorism-fighting tool. Many discussions about security and liberty proceed in this fashion. They
commence by assuming that a particular security measure is effective, and the only remaining question is whether the liberty interest is strong enough to curtail that measure. But given the gravity of the security concerns over
terrorism, the liberty interest has all but lost before it is even placed on the scale. Judge Richard Posner argues that judges should give the executive branch considerable deference when it comes to assessing the security measures
it proposes. In his recent book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency,13 Posner contends that judicial restraint is wise because “when in doubt about the actual or likely consequences of a measure,
the pragmatic, empiricist judge will be inclined to give the other branches of government their head.”14 According to Posner, “[j]udges aren’t supposed to know much about national security.”15 Likewise, Eric Posner and Adrian
Vermeule declare in their new book, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts,16 that “the executive branch, not Congress or the judicial branch, should make the tradeoff between security and liberty.”17 Moreover,
Posner and Vermeule declare that during emergencies, “[c]onstitutional rights should be relaxed so that the executive can move forcefully against the threat.”18 The problem with such deference is that, historically, the executive
branch has not always made the wisest national security decisions. Nonetheless, Posner and Vermeule contend that notwithstanding its mistakes, the executive branch is better than the judicial and legislative branches on
institutional competence grounds.19 “Judges are generalists,” they observe, “and the political insulation that protects them from current politics also deprives them of information, especially information about novel security
threats and necessary responses to those threats.”20 Posner and Vermeule argue that during emergencies, the “novelty of the threats and of the necessary responses makes judicial routines and evolved legal rules seem
inapposite, even obstructive.”21 “Judicial routines” and “legal rules,” however, are the cornerstone of due process and the rule of law—the central building blocks of a free and democratic society. At many times, Posner,
Vermeule, and other strong proponents of security seem to focus almost exclusively on what would be best for security when the objective should be establishing an optimal balance between security and liberty. Although such a
balance may not promote security with maximum efficiency, it is one of the costs of living in a constitutional democracy as opposed to an authoritarian political regime. The executive branch may be the appropriate branch for
developing security measures, but this does not mean that it is the most adept branch at establishing a balance between security and liberty. In our constitutional democracy, all branches have a role to play in making policy. Courts
protect constitutional rights not as absolute restrictions on executive and legislative policymaking but as important interests to be balanced against government interests. As T. Alexander Aleinikoff notes, “balancing now dominates
major areas of constitutional law.”22 Balancing occurs through various forms of judicial scrutiny, requiring courts to analyze the weight of the government’s interest, a particular measure’s effectiveness in protecting that interest,
and the extent to which the government interest can be achieved without unduly infringing upon constitutional rights.23 For balancing to be meaningful, courts must scrutinize both the security and liberty interests. With
deference, however, courts fail to give adequate scrutiny to security interests. For example, after the subway bombings in London, the New York Police Department began a program of random searches of people’s baggage on the
subway. The searches were conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. In MacWade v Kelly,24 the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the program against a Fourth
Amendment challenge. Under the special needs doctrine, when exceptional circumstances make the warrant and probable cause requirements unnecessary, the search is analyzed in terms of whether it is “reasonable.”25
Reasonableness is determined by balancing the government interest in security against the interests in privacy and civil liberties.26 The weight of the security interest should turn on the extent to which the program effectively
improves subway safety. The goals of the program may be quite laudable, but nobody questions the importance of subway safety. The critical issue is whether the search program is a sufficiently effective way of achieving those
goals that it is worth the tradeoff in civil liberties. On this question, unfortunately, the court deferred to the law enforcement officials, stating that the issue “is best left to those with a unique understanding of, and responsibility
for, limited public resources, including a finite number of police officers.” 27 In determining whether the program was “a reasonably effective means of addressing the government interest in deterring and detecting a terrorist
attack on the subway system,”28 the court refused to examine the data to assess the program’s effectiveness.29 The way the court analyzed the government’s side of the balance would justify nearly any search, no matter how
ineffective. Although courts should not take a know-it-all attitude, they should not defer on such a critical question as a security measure’s effectiveness. The problem with many security measures is that they are not wise
expenditures of resources. A small number of random searches in a subway system of over four million riders a day seems more symbolic than effective because the odds of the police finding the terrorist with a bomb are very low.
The government also argued that the program would deter terrorists from bringing bombs on subway trains, but nearly any kind of security measure can arguably produce some degree of deterrence. The key issue, which the court
did not analyze, is whether the program would lead to deterrence significant enough to outweigh the curtailment of civil liberties. If courts fail to question the efficacy of security measures, then the security interest will prevail
nearly all the time. Preventing terrorism has an immensely heavy weight, and any given security measure will provide a marginal advancement toward that goal. In the defer-ence equation, the math then becomes easy. At this
point, it is futile to even bother to look at the civil liberties side of the balance. The government side has already won. Proponents of deference argue that if courts did not defer, then they would be substituting their judgment for
that of executive officials, who have greater expertise in understanding security issues. Special expertise in national security, however, is often not necessary for balancing security and liberty. Judges and legislators should require
the experts to persuasively justify the security measures being developed or used. Of course, in very complex areas of knowledge, such as advanced physics, nonexperts may find it difficult to understand the concepts and
comprehend the terminology. But it is not clear that security expertise involves such sophisticated knowledge that it would be incomprehensible to nonexperts. Moreover, the deference argument conflates evaluating a particular
security measure with creating such a measure. The point of judicial review is to subject the judgment of government officials to critical scrutiny rather than blindly accept their authority. Critical inquiry into factual matters is not
the imposition of the judge’s own judgment for that of the decisionmaker under review.30 Instead, it is forcing government officials to explain and justify their policies. Few will quarrel with the principle that courts should not
“second guess” the decisions of policy experts. But there is a difference between not “second guessing” and failing to critically evaluate the factual and empirical evidence justifying the government programs. Nobody will contest
the fact that security is a compelling interest. The key issue in the balancing is the extent to which the security measure furthers the interest in security. As I have argued elsewhere, whenever courts defer to the government on the
effectiveness of a government security measure, they are actually deferring to the government on the ultimate question as to whether the measure passes constitutional muster.31 Deference by the courts or legislature is an
abdication of their function. Our constitutional system of government was created with three branches, a design structured to establish checks and balances against abuses of power. Institutional competence arguments are often
made as if they are ineluctable truths about the nature of each governmental branch. But the branches have all evolved considerably throughout history. To the extent a branch lacks resources to carry out its function, the answer
should not be to diminish the power of that branch but to provide it with the necessary tools so it can more effectively carry out its function. Far too often, unfortunately, discussions of institutional competence devolve into broad
generalizations about each branch and unsubstantiated assertions about the inherent superiority of certain branches for making particular determinations. It is true, as Posner and Vermeule observe, that historically courts have
been deferential to the executive during emergencies.32 Proponents of security measures often advance what I will refer to as the “pendulum theory”—that in times of crisis, the balance shifts more toward security and in times of
peace, the balance shifts back toward liberty. For example, Chief Justice Rehnquist argues that the “laws will thus not be silent in time of war, but they will speak with a somewhat different voice.”33 Judge Posner contends that the
liberties curtailed during times of crisis are often restored during times of peace.34 Deference is inevitable, and we should accept it without being overly concerned, for the pendulum will surely swing back. As I argue elsewhere,
however, there have been many instances throughout US history of needless curtailments of liberty in the name of security, such as the Palmer Raids, the Japanese Internment, and the McCarthy communist hearings.35 Too often,
such curtailments did not stem from any real security need but because of the “personal agendas and prejudices” of government officials.36 We should not simply accept these mistakes as inevitable; we should seek to prevent
them from occurring. Hoping that the pendulum will swing back offers little consolation to those whose liberties were infringed or chilled. The protection of liberty is most important in times of crisis, when it is under the greatest
threat. During times of peace, when our judgment is not clouded by fear, we are less likely to make unnecessary sacrifices of liberty. The threat to liberty is lower in peacetime, and the need to protect it is not as dire. The greatest
need for safeguarding liberty is during times when we least want to protect it. In order to balance security and liberty, we must assess the security interest. This involves evaluating two components—the gravity of the security
It is often merely assumed without question that the secu-rity threat from terrorism is one
of the gravest dangers we face in the modern world. But this assumption might be wrong. Assessing the risk of harm from terrorism is very difficult
threat and the effectiveness of the security measures to address it.
because terrorism is such an irregular occurrence and is constantly evolving. If we examine the data from previous terrorist attacks, however,
severely overstated.
the threat of terrorism has been
For example, many people fear being killed in a terrorist attack, but based on statistics from terrorism in the United States,
the risk of dying from
terrorism is miniscule. According to political scientist John Mueller, [e]ven with the September 11 attacks included in the count . . . the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late
1960s (which is when the State Department began its accounting) is about the same as the number killed over the same period by lightning, or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.37 Add up
the eight deadliest terrorist attacks in US history, and they amount to fewer than four thousand fatalities.38
In contrast, flu and pneumonia deaths are estimated to be around sixty thousand per year.39 Another forty thousand die in auto accidents each year.40 Based on our experience with terrorism thus far, the risk of
dying from terrorism is very low on the relative scale of fatal risks. Dramatic events and media attention can cloud
a rational assessment of risk.
The year 2001 was not just notable for the September 11 attacks. It was also the summer of the shark bite, when extensive media coverage about shark
bites led to the perception that such attacks were on the rise. But there were fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000 and fewer deaths as well, with only four in 2001 as compared to thirteen in 2000.41 And regardless of which
year had more deaths, the number is so low that an attack is a freak occurrence. It is certainly true that our past experience with terrorism might not be a good indicator of the future. More treacherous terrorism is possible, such
as the use of nuclear or biological weapons. This complicates our ability to assess the risk of harm from terrorism. Moreover, the intentional human conduct involved in terrorism creates a sense of outrage and fear that ordinary
deaths do not engender. Alleviating fear must be taken into account, even if such fear is irrationally high in relation to other riskier events such as dying in a car crash. But enlightened policy must not completely give in to the panic
and irrational fear of the moment. It should certainly attempt to quell the fear, but it must do so thoughtfully. Nevertheless,
most policymakers find it quite difficult to
assess the threat of terrorism modestly. In the face of widespread public panic, it is hard for government officials to make only moderate changes. Something dramatic must be done,
or political heads will roll. Given the difficulty in assessing the security threat in a more rational manner, it is imperative that the courts meaningfully analyze the effectiveness of security measures. Even if panic and fear
might lead to the gravity of the threat being overstated, we should at least ensure that the measures taken to
promote security are sufficiently effective to justify the cost. Unfortunately, as I will discuss in the next section, rarely do discussions about the sacrifice of civil liberties explain the corresponding
security benefit, why such a benefit cannot be achieved in other ways, and why such a security measure is the best and most rational one to take. Little scrutiny is given to security
measures. They are often just accepted as a given, no matter how ill-conceived or ineffective they might be. Some ineffective security measures are largely symbolic,
such as the New York City subway search program. The searches are unlikely to catch or deter terrorists because they involve only a miniscule fraction of the millions of daily passengers. Terrorists can just turn to other targets or
simply attempt the bombing on another day or at another train station where searches are not taking place. The vice of symbolic security programs is that they result in needless sacrifices of liberty and drain resources from other,
more effective security measures. Nevertheless, these programs have a virtue—they can ameliorate fear because they are highly visible. Ironically, the subway search program’s primary benefit was alleviating people’s fear (which
Data mining represents another kind of security measure, one that currently has little
proven effectiveness and little symbolic value. Data mining programs are often not visible enough to the public to quell much fear. Instead, their benefits come primarily from their actual effectiveness in
was probably too high), albeit in a deceptive manner (as the program did not add much in the way of security).
reducing terrorist threats, which remains highly speculative. Thus far,
data mining is not very accurate
in the behavioral predictions it makes. For example, there are
approximately 1.8 million airline passengers each day.42 A data mining program to identify terrorists with a false positive rate of 1 percent (which would be exceedingly low for such a program) would flag eighteen thousand people
as false positives. This is quite a large number of innocent people. Why is the government so interested in data mining if it remains unclear whether it will ever be very accurate or workable? Part of the government’s interest in
data mining stems from the aggressive marketing efforts of database companies. After September 11, database companies met with government officials and made a persuasive pitch about the virtues of data mining.43 The
just because data mining might
be effective for businesses trying to predict customer behavior does not make it effective for the
government trying to predict who will engage in terrorism. A high level of accuracy is not necessary when data mining is used by businesses to target
technology sounds quite dazzling when presented by skillful marketers, and it can work quite well in the commercial setting. The problem, however, is that
marketing to consumers, because the cost of error to individuals is minimal. Amazon.com, for example, engages in data mining to determine which books its customers are likely to find of interest by comparing bookbuying
patterns among its customers. Although it is far from precise, it need not be because there are few bad consequences if it makes a wrong book recommendation. Conversely, the consequences are vastly greater for government
I do not believe that the case has been made that data mining is a wise expenditure of
security resources. Those who advocate for security should be just as outraged as those on the liberty side of the debate. Although courts should not micromanage which security measures the government
data mining. Ultimately,
chooses, they should examine the effectiveness of any given security measure to weigh it against the liberty costs. Courts should not tell the executive branch to modify a security measure just because they are not convinced it is
The very point of protecting liberty is to
demand that sacrifices to liberty are not in vain and that security interests, which compromise civil
liberties, are sufficiently effective to warrant the cost.
the best one, but they should tell the executive that a particular security measure is not effective enough to outweigh the liberty costs.
Privacy backlines
Privacy - Impact Extensions
Privacy is the top priority – it’s a gateway right that shapes individual autonomy.
PoKempner ‘14
Dinah PoKempner is general counsel of Human Rights Watch. Her work has taken her to Cambodia, the Republic of Korea,
Vietnam, former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in documenting and analyzing compliance with international humanitarian law, war
crimes and violations of civil and political rights. She has written on freedom of expression, peace-keeping operations,
international tribunals, U.N. human rights mechanisms, cyber-liberties and security, and refugee law among other human rights
topics, and oversees the organization’s positions on international law and policy. A graduate of Yale and Columbia University
School of Law and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. PoKempner also teaches at Columbia University. “World
Report 2014” - World Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It
summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through
November 2013. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement
to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014
In a world where we share our lives on social media and trade immense amounts of personal information for the ease and convenience of online living, some
have questioned whether privacy is a relevant concept. It is
not just relevant, but
crucial. Indeed, privacy is a
gateway right that affects our ability to exercise almost every other right, not least our freedom to
speak and associate with those we choose, make political choices, practice our religious beliefs, seek medical help, access
education, figure out whom we love, and create our family life. It is nothing less than the shelter in which we work out what we
think and who we are; a fulcrum of our autonomy as individuals.
Privacy is vital to autonomy and protecting independent thought.
PoKempner ‘14
Dinah PoKempner is general counsel of Human Rights Watch. Her work has taken her to Cambodia, the Republic of Korea,
Vietnam, former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in documenting and analyzing compliance with international humanitarian law, war
crimes and violations of civil and political rights. She has written on freedom of expression, peace-keeping operations,
international tribunals, U.N. human rights mechanisms, cyber-liberties and security, and refugee law among other human rights
topics, and oversees the organization’s positions on international law and policy. A graduate of Yale and Columbia University
School of Law and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. PoKempner also teaches at Columbia University. “World
Report 2014” - World Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It
summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through
November 2013. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement
to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014
Some argue we must simply live with the reality of pervasive online surveillance, and that public expectation
of privacy has eroded. But this is neither accurate nor dispositive. Our understanding of privacy has in fact grown
far beyond “a right to be left alone” into a right of personal self-determination , embracing the
right to choose whom we share our personal details with and what identity we project to various
communities. When applied to the digital world, privacy gives us some boundaries against unwanted monitors, and
with it the essential freedom for personal development and independent thought.
A-to Counter-Bias
( ) Extend our 1AC Solove ev – it proves that security risks are inflated and bias. Prefer
our ev – Solove is a foremost expert on privacy and security risks.
( ) The structural bias debate goes Aff. Bias against privacy runs so deep that even
hawks will hamper security in order to squash privacy interests.
Dragu ‘11
Tiberiu Dragu is an Assistant Professor of Politics, Faculty of Department of Politics at NYU. He also holds a PhD from the
Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He wrote this piece while at The University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign “Is There a Tradeoff Between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention” http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiberiu_Dragu/publication/231746561_Is_There_a_Tradeoff_between_Security_and_Liberty_Executive_Bias_Privacy_Protections_and_Terrorism_Prevention/links/02e7e52c84ffd738fc
000000.pdf
More importantly, the analysis shows that the executive
agencies in charge of terrorism prevention prefer to reduce
privacy protections even when such a reduction reduces security from terrorism. The
presence of this strategic bias, currently absent from public debate , raises three crucial matters. First,
it suggests that it may not be desirable to allow those executive off cials responsible for terrorism prevention also to craft antiterrorism legislation. Exacerbating the
problem, situations of emergency, such as the aftermath of a terrorist attack, a ord executive agencies opportunities to draft measures and pass policies that were
not attainable in normal times. For example, Congress rejected the inclusion of roving wiretaps in the 1996 Anti-terrorism and E ective Penalty Act; however, the
roving wiretaps were included into the 2001 Patriot Act. Similarly, the FBI introduced delayed-notice search warrants into anti-drug bills and also attached them to a
bankruptcy bill before 9/11, but Congress rejected all of these e orts (Donohue 2008). In striking contrast, the 2001 Patriot Act legalized the use of delayed-notice
search warrants. Second, the
assumption underlying emergency measures is that once the threat passes, civil
liberties restrictions will be undone. However, the executive's strategic bias creates an institutional
interest to maintain them on the books after the perceived threat diminishes.
Anecdotal
evidence supports this implication. For example, in the U.K, the Terrorist Act of 1974 was enacted as a temporary measure in response to the IRA bombing
campaigns of the early 1970s.23 The Act was rewritten in 1976 and 1984, and then again in 1989, but always as emergency 'temporary' powers (Walker 1992). The
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2000 made them permanent. Finally, legal scholars
often argue that there should be a high level of
judicial deference to the executive on matters of security policy in times of emergency. Judge Richard Posner (2006a) asserts that
judges should give the executive branch considerable deference when it comes to assessing the security measures it proposes. Likewise, Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule (2007) write, “The executive branch, not Congress or the judicial branch, should make the tradeo between security and liberty." However,
the
result here shows that enforcement agencies have incentive to push for decreased privacy
protections even when such a shift diminishes security from terrorism. The presence of
this strategic bias suggests that judges should perhaps be less deferential to the expertise of the executive on
terrorism matters.
( ) Bias goes our way. Security risk is unknowingly inflated – this starts with the media
and seeps into scholarship.
Wong & Belair-Gagnon ‘13
Albert Wong and Valerie Belair-Gagnon are resident fellows at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School – “On the
NSA, the media may tilt right” – Columbia Journalism Review – October 23rd http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/news_media_pro_surveillance_bi.php
Since June 6, the world has been roiled by an ongoing series of disclosures based on Edward Snowden’s document leaks, with coverage led by the Guardian and the
Washington Post, about clandestine mass surveillance conducted, with little oversight, by the NSA and its international partners. Public
perceptions of
these surveillance revelations are affected not only by the NSA’s actual actions, but also by the news coverage of the
government’s spying programs. Previous studies have shown that the latter factor can have a profound effect on
public
opinion. Given the importance of this issue, we decided to analyze major US newspapers’ “post-Snowden” coverage of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to
determine if there was an overall bias
in either a pro- (traditionally conservative) or anti-surveillance (traditionally liberal) direction. The results were unexpected, and quite remarkable.
Our analysis of total press coverage of FISA and FISC between July 1 and July 31 (July was the first full calendar month after the initial disclosures in June) revealed
that the widely held assumption that major media outlets uniformly tilt to the left does not match reality. In fact, if anything, the
media appears to tilt
to the right, at least on this issue. We did a LexisNexis search of four of the largest US newspapers by circulation: The New York Times, USA
Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Of the 30 traditionally pro- or anti-surveillance terms we examined (15 each, listed below) in all four
newspapers, key
words generally used to justify increased surveillance, such as security or terrorism , were used
much more frequently than terms that tend to invoke opposition to mass surveillance, such as privacy or liberty. USA
Today led the pack, using pro-surveillance terms 36 percent more frequently than anti-surveillance terms. The LA Times followed at 24 percent, while The New York
Times was at 14.1 percent. Even the Washington Post, where Barton Gellman was the first US journalist to break the news of the NSA’s surveillance, exhibited a net
pro-surveillance bias in its coverage of 11.1 percent. Although keyword frequency analysis on its own is not always conclusive, large, consistent discrepancies of the
kind observed here strongly suggest a net media bias in favor of the US and UK governments’ pro-surveillance position. The pro-surveillance media bias we found
was not, in general, overt. In our opinion, most of the New York Times’ FISA/FISC coverage was neutral in tone. But
covert bias is still bias—in fact, it
may even be more effective than blatant bias , since readers may not notice its existence. A seemingly
neutral article could leave a net pro-surveillance impression on readers if it contains an excess of references to, say, foreign terrorists or national security—terms
that tend to frame the issue as a question of patriotic willingness to do what it takes to keep the country safe. Our findings indicate that the intense public concern
about the NSA’s activities is not merely an artifact of biased coverage, since the media actually appears to be biased in the opposite direction. In a recent Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 54 percent of respondents disagreed with dragnet collection of internet metadata and 71 percent disagreed with
warrantless monitoring of US phone calls. Public opposition
to the government surveillance might be even more
pronounced if overall media coverage was neutral and unbiased. Consciously or not, Western journalists and media
outlets may still (even more than a decade after 9/11) be wary of appearing to be “soft on terror,” much as they once were about
appearing to be soft on Communism. President George W. Bush’s September 2001 admonition that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” appears
to have an enduring legacy in media bias.
A-to “Security Rights should come first”
( ) Utilitarian balancing is often good – but it shouldn’t hold in all instances. Narrow
issues - such as prejudiced surveillance - should be off-limits.
Clarke ‘13
(et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report releases the
findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert contributors
include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director
twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
The United States Government must protect, at once, two different forms of security: national security and personal
privacy. In the American tradition, the word “security” has had multiple meanings. In contemporary parlance, it
often refers to national security or homeland security. One of the government’s most fundamental responsibilities is to protect this form of
security, broadly understood. At the same time, the idea of security refers to a quite different and equally fundamental value, captured
in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . ” (emphasis added). Both forms of security must be protected. The central task is one of risk management; multiple risks are involved, and all of
them must be considered. When public officials acquire foreign intelligence information, they seek to reduce risks, above all risks to national security. The challenge, of course, is that multiple
risks are involved. Government must consider all of those risks, not a subset, when it is creating sensible safeguards. In addition to reducing risks to national security, public officials must
consider four other risks: • Risks to privacy; • Risks to freedom and civil liberties, on the Internet and elsewhere; • Risks to our relationships with other nations; and • Risks to trade and
The idea of “balancing” has an important element of truth, but it is also inadequate
and misleading. It is tempting to suggest that the underlying goal is to achieve the right “balance” between the two forms of
commerce, including international commerce.
security. The suggestion has an important element of truth. But some safeguards are not subject to balancing at all.
In a free society
, public officials should never engage in surveillance in order to punish their political enemies; to
restrict freedom of speech or religion; to suppress legitimate criticism and dissent; to help their preferred companies or industries; to provide domestic companies with an unfair competitive
advantage; or to benefit or
and gender .
burden members of groups defined in terms of religion, ethnicity, race,
Utilitarianism and Consequences = Go Aff
Util and Consequentialism goes Aff in this specific context. The link is falsely rigged in
favor of security over privacy.
Solove ‘8
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article: “Data Mining and the Security-Liberty Debate” - University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 74, p. 343,
2008 - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990030
The current security-liberty debate is deeply flawed, resulting in a balancing between security and liberty
that is not very meaningful. The scale is rigged so that security will win out nearly all the time. In an age
of consequentialist balancing of rights against government interests, it is imperative that the balancing be
done appropriately. Security and liberty often clash, but there need not be a zero-sum tradeoff.
Liberty interests are generally not achieved by eliminating particular security programs but by placing
them under oversight, limiting future uses of personal data, and ensuring that they are carried out in a balanced and controlled manner. Curtailing
ineffective security measures is often not just a victory for liberty but for security as well, since better
alternatives might be pursued. The government is currently seduced by data mining. It is not clear, however, that data mining is
an effective security measure. Its lack of transparency serves as a major impediment to any meaningful balancing of its security benefits and
liberty costs. By exposing security interests to sunlight and heeding liberty interests, the government could ultimately be more accountable to the
people. The result might be not only better protection of liberty but also more thoughtful and effective
security.
A-to “corporate privacy infringements are far worse ”
( ) Government surveillance is far worse – there’s no opt-out and government force
carries greater weight.
Fung ‘13
Brian Fung covers technology for The Washington Post, focusing on telecom, broadband and digital politics. Before joining the
Post, he was the technology correspondent for National Journal and an associate editor at the Atlantic. “Yes, there actually is a
huge difference between government and corporate surveillance” – Washington Post - November 4, 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/yes-there-actually-is-a-huge-difference-betweengovernment-and-corporate-surveillance/
Yes,
there actually is a huge difference between government and corporate surveillance
When it comes to your online privacy — or what little is left of it — businesses and governments act in some pretty similar
ways. They track your credit card purchases. They mine your e-mail for information about you. They may even monitor your movements in the real
world.
Corporate and government surveillance also diverge in important ways . Companies are
looking to make money off of you, while the government aims to prevent attacks that would halt that commercial activity (along with some other things). But the
biggest difference between the two has almost no relation to who's doing the surveillance and everything to do with your options in
response. Last week, we asked you whether you'd changed your online behavior as a result of this year's extended national conversation about privacy — and
if so, which form of snooping annoyed you more. Looking through the responses so far, this one caught my eye: The government because I can't *choose* not to be
spied on by them.
The government also has the power to kill or imprison me which no private company has. I am a
firm believer that our founding fathers created a system that respected individual privacy and to see it eroded by the federal government concerns me deeply. I am
a strong believer in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th amendments. Putting aside the government's power to capture or kill, your
inability to refuse the
government is what distinguishes the NSA from even the nosiest companies on Earth. In a functioning marketplace,
boycotting a company that you dislike — for whatever reason — is fairly easy. Diners who object to eating fake meat can stop
frequenting Taco Bell. Internet users that don't like Google collecting their search terms can try duckduckgo, an
anonymous search engine. By contrast, it's nearly impossible to simply pick up your belongings and quit
the United States. For most people, that would carry some significant costs — quitting your job, for instance, or disrupting your children's education, or leaving
friends and family. Those costs can be high enough to outweigh the benefits of recovering some hard-to-measure modicum of privacy. Besides, leaving the country
would ironically expose you to even greater risk of surveillance, since you'd no longer be covered by the legal protections granted to people (even foreign terror
suspects) that arrive to U.S. shores. There are still some ways to shield yourself from the NSA. To the best of our knowledge, the government has yet to crack the
encryption protocols behind Tor, the online traffic anonymizing service. But Tor's users are also inherently the object of greater suspicion precisely because they're
making efforts to cover their tracks. In
the business world, no single company owns a monopoly over your privacy.
The same can't really be said about the government.
( ) Government violations are worse. Even if they’re now - corporate privacy
violations shouldn’t condone government violations.
Sklansky ‘2
David A. Sklansky is an Associate Dean and Professor of Law. UCLA School of Law. “BACK TO THE FUTURE: KYLLO, KATZ, AND
COMMON LAW” - University of California, Los Angeles School of Law Research Paper Series. Mississippi Law Journal,
Forthcoming Research Paper No. 02-17 - July 27. 2002 - www.isrcl.org/Papers/sklansky.pdf
There are two relatively straightforward ways out of this dilemma, but both would require the Supreme Court to rethink certain aspects of
government surveillance differs
from private snooping , and therefore that the latter, no matter how common , should not
Fourth Amendment law.252 The first and simplest way out would be to recognize that
eliminate protection against the former. This was the approach one lower court took when it found that government agents
intruded on a reasonable expectation of privacy by using a telescope to peer into a suspect's apartment. The court expressly rejected the
government's claim that any expectation of privacy was rendered unreasonable by the widespread use of telescopes by private citizens to spy
on people living in high-rises. Private
snooping, the court reasoned, had "no bearing" on the legality of government
surveillance, because the government spies " for different purposes than private citizens." and
sometimes " with more zeal." Accordingly, a person's "lack of concern about intrusions from private
sources has little to do with an expectation of freedom from systematic governmental surveillance," and
"[t]he fact that Peeping Toms abound does not license the government to follow suit." 253
A-to “Government Checks mitigate Privacy violations”
New Protocols insufficient – doesn’t check the large Privacy violation.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The government argues that the privacy intrusion here is mitigated by the fact that most of the collected data is
never reviewed. See Gov’t Br. 65. The government’s bulk collection of such personally revealing information ,
however, cannot be made reasonable by back-end protocols. Cf. Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2491. The privacy
intrusion occurs at the moment of collection , when the government obtains personal information
protected by the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 264 (1990) (“[A] violation of the
[Fourth] Amendment is ‘fully accomplished’ at the time of an unreasonable governmental intrusion.” (quoting
United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 354 (1974))); accord Soldal v. Cook Cnty., 506 U.S. 56, 67 n.11 (1992); see also Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 37 (“[T]here is certainly no
exception to the warrant requirement for the officer who barely cracks open the front door and sees nothing but the nonintimate rug on the vestibule floor.” (citing
Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 512 (1961))).
A-to “No 4th Amendment Violation – Metadata is not a search”
Meta-data is a “search” and does violate the 4th Amendment.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
collection and aggregation of Mrs. Smith’s call records is a search within the meaning of
the Fourth Amendment. See Pl. Br. 21–26. When collected in bulk, call records reveal religious, familial, political,
and intimate relationships; sleeping and work habits; health problems; and business plans. Id. at 22–24. When the records of one individual are
The long-term
aggregated with the records of many others, the records become even more revealing. See, e.g., Felten Decl. ¶ 64 (ERII 101); Jonathan Mayer & Patrick Mutchler,
MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata (Mar. 12, 2014), http://bit.ly/1CqOaPK (study demonstrating use of telephony metadata to reveal who obtained
an abortion, who sought medical treatment, or who owns particular kinds of firearms). The government contends that this case is controlled by Smith v. Maryland,
but while that case involved the collection of call records, it did not involve the collection of call records over an extended period of time or in bulk. It held only that
the Fourth Amendment is not implicated by the government’s collection of a single criminal suspect’s call records over a period of a few days. The
Fourth
Amendment analysis is not indifferent to the scale and intrusiveness of the government’s surveillance. Just
four years after it decided Smith, the Supreme Court explicitly recognized that the distinction between narrow surveillance and dragnet surveillance is a
constitutionally significant one. See Pl. Br. 18 (discussing United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983)). More recently, in United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012),
five Justices concluded that the longterm tracking of an individual in public amounted to a search under the Fourth Amendment. See Pl. Br. 18–23; see also United
States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544, 557 (D.C. Cir. 2010), aff’d sub nom. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945. They reached this conclusion even though the Supreme Court had
previously concluded that shorterterm tracking did not amount to a search. See Knotts, 460 U.S. at 281–82.
Meta-Data violates 4th Amendment
Hattem ‘15
Julian – Reporter for The Hill, holds a B.A. from the University of Chicago. The Hill is a newspaper written for and about the U.S.
Congress, with a special focus on business and lobbying, political campaigns and other events on Capitol Hill. “Top federal court
rules against NSA's phone records program” – internally quoting Judge Gerard Lynch, of the Federal Second Circuit Court of
Appeals. The Hill – May 7th - http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241305-top-court-rules-against-nsa-program
metadata can reveal “civil, political, or religious affiliations,” Lynch wrote, as well as personal
behavior and “intimate relationships.” But that reading, the court ruled, is far beyond what Congress ever intended. “If the government is
correct, it could use § 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing metadata available anywhere in the private
sector, including metadata associated with financial records, medical records, and electronic communications (including e‐
mail and social media information) relating to all Americans,” Lynch wrote. “Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly
private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans.”
While seemingly benign,
Bulk collection = violates 4th amendment
Bulk collection is the biggest internal link to privacy violations. Legal precedent must
be updated.
EPIC ‘14
The Electronic Privacy Information Center or “EPIC” - is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C… EPIC routinely
participates as amicus curiae before federal and state courts in cases concerning the protection of privacy. Members of the EPIC
Advisory Board are expert in issues of domestic surveillance. The EPIC amicus brief is joined by 33 technical experts and legal
scholars – these include several Law Professors, Distinguished Scientists, Computer Science experts, Professors with
specializations in Information Law. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER (EPIC) AND THIRTY-THREE TECHNICAL EXPERTS AND
LEGAL SCHOLARS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT” – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by Attorney Marc Rotenberg,
Counsel of Record. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to EPIC and its technical experts.
This pdf can be obtained at: https://epic.org/amicus/fisa/215/smith/
This case presents a critical Constitutional question : whether the collection of all domestic
telephone
records of American telephone customers violates a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Supreme Court has never considered
government surveillance activity of this scope ; current case law relies on an opinion from an era before
e-mail, cell phones, and mobile apps, when most metadata was not available to the government because it was never
created. Modern communications technology generates a constant stream of detailed information about our
private lives, raising concerns about data breaches, identity theft, and the wrongful disclosure of personal information. Legal scholars and technical experts affiliated with EPIC
believe that
changes in technology and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Riley v. California favor a new legal rule that
recognizes the privacy interest inherent in modern communications records. The ongoing
collection of Americans’ telephone call records by the N ational S ecurity A gency is an unprecedented invasion of
privacy that contravenes the core purpose of the Fourth Amendment : to limit the government’s ability to search
private records without individualized suspicion and the oversight of a neutral magistrate. The decision of the lower court that the NSA’s routine collection of all telephone call records of all
telephone customers does not constitute a Fourth Amendment “search” relies on an opinion from the 1970s in which the police monitored calls from a single phone line following the
Reliance on Smith v. Maryland is untenable today for three
reasons: (1) communications systems have changed dramatically since the era of the rotary dial phone; (2) the vast
amount of metadata generated today was unavailable when Smith was decided; and (3) the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014),
recognized that the privacy interests of phone users today are far greater than the interests the Court considered when phones
were tethered to desks, email was for computer geeks, and no one could take a picture by holding up a
telephone receiver.
suspicious activity of an identified suspect. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979).
A-to “Meta-Data d/n violate Privacy - it was released to a 3rd Party”
Releasing Meta-data to a 3rd Party does not extinguish privacy interests.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The government contends that its collection of call records does not implicate the Fourth Amendment
because call records consist of information entrusted by Americans to third-parties. See Gov’t Br. 39–40, 57–58. As Plaintiff has
explained, however, Pl. Br. 24–26,
the third-party doctrine has never operated with this kind of
rigidity. If the transfer of information to a third party were enough to extinguish an expectation of privacy,
the Fourth Amendment would not protect even the content of phone calls and emails—but even the
government concedes that this kind of content is protected. A third party’s possession of information is
surely relevant to the Katz analysis in some contexts, but it
way. See Pl. Br. 24– 25 (citing cases).
is not determinative. If it were, many previous cases would have come out the other
A-to “Special Needs Doctrine means Terrorism Outweighs Privacy”
Special Needs doctrine does not justify the current meta-data program
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The bulk
collection of call records is per se unreasonable because it is warrantless and no exception to the Fourth
Amendment’s warrant requirement applies. The government invokes the special-needs doctrine, Gov’t Br.
60, but the special-needs doctrine applies only where compliance with the probable-cause and warrant requirements
would be impracticable. See Pl. Br. 29–30. Thus, in Al- Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Department of Treasury, 686 F.3d 965, 992–93 (9th Cir. 2011),
the Court rejected a warrantless seizure based on a foreignintelligence need after concluding that the
government could accomplish its purpose by obtaining a warrant.4 The same logic applies here. It would
not be impracticable for the government to acquire phone records—including those within one or two hops of its surveillance
targets—on an individualized basis. See id. Indeed, the government does not dispute that fact, see Gov’t Br. 67–68, and it has endorsed legislation
that would end bulk collection in favor of targeted requests to phone companies.5 See White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Fact Sheet: The Administration’s
Proposal for Ending the Section 215 Bulk Telephony Metadata Program (Mar. 27, 2014), http://1.usa.gov/1gS2HK0; Letter from Att’y Gen. Eric Holder and Dir. of
Nat’l Intel. James Clapper to Sen. Patrick Leahy (Sept. 2, 2014) http://bit.ly/1tum5r1 (supporting the USA FREEDOM Act, S. 2685, as an “approach [that] will
accommodate operational needs while providing appropriate privacy protections”).
A-to “Aff contradicts - still issues warrants, so privacy’s not absolute”
There’s no contradiction. Issuing warrants differs from mass surveillance. Such
monitoring destroys self-expression.
Solove ‘6
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article: “A TAXONOMY OF PRIVACY” - University of Pennsylvania Law Review - VOL. 154, #3 – available at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=667622
For a long time, surveillance has been viewed as problematic. The term “Peeping Tom” originates from a legend dating back to
1050. When Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse in the city of Coventry to protest taxes, a young man named Tom gawked at her, and he was punished by being
blinded.48 Today, many states have Peeping Tom laws. South Carolina, for example, criminalizes “peep[ing] through windows, doors, or other like places, on or
about the premises of another, for the purpose of spying upon or invading the privacy of the persons spied upon and any other conduct of a prohibit two-way
mirrors in certain areas.50 As
with visual surveillance, audio surveillance has long been viewed as troubling. William
Blackstone noted that eavesdropping was a common law crime, and defined it as “listen[ing] under walls or windows, or the eaves of a house, to hearken after
discourse, and thereupon to frame slanderous and mischievous tales.”51 These attitudes persisted after the emergence of elec-tronic eavesdropping. As early as
1862, California prohibited the intercep-tion of telegraph communications.52 Soon after telephone wiretapping be-gan in the 1890s, several states prohibited it,
such as California in 1905.53 By 1928, over half the states had made wiretapping a crime.54 Justice Holmes referred to wiretapping as a “dirty business,”55 and
Justice Frank-furter called it “odious.”56 When
the Supreme Court held in the 1928 case Olmstead v. United States that the
Fourth Amendment did not protect against wiretapping,57 Congress responded six years later by making
wire-tapping a federal crime.58 In 1967, the Supreme Court changed its position on wiretapping,
overruling Olmstead in Katz v. United States.59 One year later, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and
Safe Streets Act of 1968, Title III of which provided comprehensive protection against wiretap-ping.60 Title III
required law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before wiretapping and criminalized wiretaps by
private parties.61 Congress amended Title III in 1986 with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), expanding Title III’s protections from
wiretapping to additional forms of electronic surveillance.62 What is the harm if people or the government watch or listen to us?
Certainly, we all watch or listen, even when others may not want us to, and we often do not view this as problematic. However, when done in a certain manner—
such as
continuous monitoring— surveillance has problematic ef-fects. For example, people expect to be
looked at when they ride the bus or subway, but persistent gawking can create feelings of anxiety and discomfort. Not only can direct awareness of surveillance make a person feel ex-tremely uncomfortable, but it can also cause that person to alter
her behav-ior. Surveillance can lead to self-censorship and inhibition.63 Because of its inhibitory effects, surveillance is a
tool of social control, enhancing the power of social norms, which work more effectively when people are being observed by others in the community.64
John Gilliom observes: “Surveil-lance of human behavior is in place to control human behavior, whether by limiting access to programs or institutions, monito ring
and affecting behav-ior within those arenas, or otherwise enforcing rules and norms by observ-ing and recording acts of compliance and deviance.”65 This aspect of
sur-veillance does not automatically make it harmful, though, since social control can be beneficial and every society must exercise a sizeable degree of social
control. For example, surveillance can serve as a deterrent to crime. Many people desire the discipline and control surveillance can bring. Jeff Rosen observes that
Britain’s closed circuit television (CCTV)—a net-work of over four million public surveillance cameras—is widely perceived as “a friendly eye in the sky, not Big
Brother but a kindly and watchful uncle or aunt.”66 Too
much social control, however, can adversely impact freedom, crea-
tivity, and self-development. According to Julie Cohen, “ pervasive moni-toring of every first move or false start will, at the
margin, incline choices toward the bland and the mainstream.” 67 Monitoring constrains the “ac-ceptable
spectrum of belief and behavior,” and it results in “a subtle yet fundamental shift in the content of our
character, a blunting and blurring of rough edges and sharp lines.”68 Surveillance thus “threatens not only to chill the expression
of eccentric individuality, but also, gradually, to dampen the force of our aspirations to it.”69 Similarly, Paul Schwartz ar-gues that surveillance
inhibits freedom of choice, impinging upon self-determination.70
A-to ‘What is privacy ?...” or “Privacy is a vague concept”
Meta-questions about “what is privacy” miss the point. There are genuinely invasive
practices that need to be countered.
Solove ‘7
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article ““I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” - San Diego Law Review, Vol.
44, p. 745 - GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289 – available from download at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
My purpose in advancing the taxonomy is to shift away from the rather vague label of privacy in order to prevent distinct harms and problems
from being conflated or not recognized. Some might contend, however, that several of the problems I discuss are not really “privacy” problems.
But with no satisfactory set of necessary or sufficient conditions to define privacy, there is no one specific criterion for inclusion or exclusion
under the rubric of “privacy.” Privacy violations consist of a web of related problems that are not connected by a common element, but
nevertheless bear some resemblances to each other. We can determine whether to classify something as falling in the domain of privacy if it
bears resemblance to other things we similarly classify. In other words, we use a form of analogical reasoning in which “[t]he key task,” Cass
Sunstein observes, “is to decide when there are relevant similarities and differences.”59 Accordingly, there are no clear boundaries for what we
should or should not refer to as “privacy.” Some might object to the lack of clear boundaries, but this objection assumes that having definitive
boundaries matters. The
quest for a traditional definition of privacy has led to a rather fruitless and unresolved
debate. In the meantime, there are real problems that must be addressed , but they are either
conflated or ignored because they do not fit into various prefabricated conceptions of privacy. The law often
neglects to see the problems and instead ignores all things that do not fall into a particular conception of privacy. In this way,
conceptions of privacy can prevent the examination of problems. The problems still exist regardless of
whether we classify them as being “privacy” problems. A great deal of attention is expended trying to elucidate the
concept of privacy without looking at the problems we are facing. My goal is to begin with the problems and
understand them in detail. Trying to fit them into a one-size-fits-all conception of privacy neglects to see the problems in their full dimensions
or to understand them completely. Conceptions should help us understand and illuminate experience; they should not detract from experience
and make us see and understand less.
A-to Etzioni
( ) Etzioni is wrong – falsely assumes privacy trades-off with communal rights.
Solove ‘7
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – From the Article ““I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” - San Diego Law Review, Vol.
44, p. 745 - GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289 – available from download at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
Communitarian scholars launch a formidable critique of traditional accounts of individual rights. Amitai Etzioni, for example,
contends that privacy is “a societal license that exempts a category of acts (including thoughts and emotions) from communal, public,
and governmental scrutiny.”64 For Etzioni, many theories of privacy treat it as sacrosanct, even when it conflicts
with the common good.65 According to Etzioni, “privacy is not an absolute value and does not trump all other rights or concerns for the common
good.”66 He goes on to demonstrate how privacy interferes with greater social interests and often, though not always, contends that privacy should lose out in the
balance.67 Etzioni is right to critique those who argue that privacy is an individual right that should trump social interests. The
problem, however, is that
utilitarian balancing between individual rights and the common good rarely favors individual
rights —unless the interest advanced on the side of the common good is trivial. Society will generally win when its interests are balanced against those of the
individual. The
deeper problem with Etzioni’s view is that in his critique of liberal theories of individual rights as absolutes, he views
individual rights as being in tension with society. The same dichotomy between individual and society that pervades liberal theories of
individual rights also pervades Etzioni’s communitarianism. Etzioni views the task of communitarians as “balanc[ing] individual rights with social responsibilities, and
individuality with community.”68 The problem with Etzioni’s communitarian view is that individuality
need not be on the opposite side
of the scale from community. Such a view assumes that individual and societal interests are distinct and conflicting. A similar view also underpins
many liberal conceptions of individual rights.
A-to “Public Private Dichotomy”
There is no “public-private dichotomy”. We said a form of “privacy” – that doesn’t lock
us into never considering the same thing “public. The notions were always fluid and
non-exclusive.
Solove ‘2
Daniel Solove is an Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He
is one of the world’s leading expert in information privacy law and is well known for his academic work on privacy and for
popular books on how privacy relates with information technology. He has written 9 books and more than 50 law review
articles – Conceptualizing Privacy, 90 CAL. L. REV. 1087, 1095–99 (2002). Available via:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=313103
It is reductive to carve the world of social practices into two spheres, public and private, and then attempt to
determine what matters belong in each sphere. First, the matters we consider private change over
time . While some form of dichotomy between public and private has been maintained throughout the
history of Western civilization,254 the matters that have been considered public and private have metamorphosed
throughout history due to changing attitudes, institutions, living conditions, and technology. The matters we consider
to be private are shaped by culture and history, and have differed across cultures and historical epochs. Second, although certain matters have moved from being
public to being private and vice versa, the change often has been more subtle than a complete transformation from public to private. Particular matters have
but in different ways ; they have been understood as private but because of different attributes; or they have been
regarded as private for some people or groups but not for others. In other words, to say simply that something is public or private is to
make a rather general claim ; what it means for something to be private is the central question. We consider our Social Security
long remained private
number, our
sexual behavior, our diary, and our home private, but we do not consider them private in the same
way. A number of aspects of life have commonly been viewed as private: the family, body, and home to name a few. To
say simply that these things are private is imprecise because what it means for them to be private is
different today than it was in the past. I will demonstrate my point by tracing a brief genealogy of the privacy of the family, body, and home.
Court version of Aff – legal defense of 215 must be struck-down
The justifications the government used to support Section 215 in court must be
debunked – otherwise they’ll snowball to many forms of electronic surveillance.
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden and Udall sat on the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program. “BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON
WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - Appeal
from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No.
2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE
LLP. This pdf can be obtained at: https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
In assessing the lawfulness of the government’s bulk call-records program, it is also important to understand the
implications of the government’s interpretation of section 215. That interpretation could authorize bulk
collections of information far beyond the call records at issue in this case, such as financial or medical
records, or even records indicating the location of ordinary Americans . The Court should reject the
government’s contention that its use of the statute is cabined by the supposedly unique characteristics of call records. Because the
government’s call-records
program needlessly intrudes upon the privacy rights of hundreds of
millions of Americans , providing the executive branch with information that U.S. citizens have no
intention of providing to the government, amici believe the bulk collection of these phone records should be
ended.
The precedents from the phone meta-data sets a precedent that spills to privacy
violations on every issue.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
The government’s ongoing
collection of Anna Smith’s call records violates the Fourth Amendment. The government contends
that Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), controls this case, but that case involved the collection of a single criminal suspect’s call records over a period of
several days; it did not involve dragnet surveillance, which—as the Supreme Court has recognized—raises constitutional questions of an entirely different order.
To accept the government’s view that the Constitution is indifferent to that distinction is to accept that the
government may collect in bulk not just call records, but many other records as well. It is to accept
that the government may also create a permanent record of every person Americans contact by
email ; every website they visit; every doctor or lawyer they consult ; and every financial transaction they
conduct. The
Constitution does not condone that result.
Hops are key
The new Freedom Act didn’t ban “contact chain hops”. Hops are key – a single search
violates the privacy of many more.
EPIC ‘14
The Electronic Privacy Information Center or “EPIC” - is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C… EPIC routinely
participates as amicus curiae before federal and state courts in cases concerning the protection of privacy. Members of the EPIC
Advisory Board are expert in issues of domestic surveillance. The EPIC amicus brief is joined by 33 technical experts and legal
scholars – these include several Law Professors, Distinguished Scientists, Computer Science experts, Professors with
specializations in Information Law. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER (EPIC) AND THIRTY-THREE TECHNICAL EXPERTS AND
LEGAL SCHOLARS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT” – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by Attorney Marc Rotenberg,
Counsel of Record. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to EPIC and its technical experts.
This pdf can be obtained at: https://epic.org/amicus/fisa/215/smith/
Government’s Analysis of the Phone Metadata Is Specifically Designed to Uncover The Private Associations of
Users The NSA uses computer algorithms to create detailed social graphs through a process known as “contact chaining.” See Documents on
The
N.S.A. Efforts to Diagram Social Networks of U.S. Citizens, N.Y. Times (Sept. 28, 2013) (showing an internal NSA memo on new “contact chaining” procedures from 2011).17 The NSA has
described contact chaining as “the process of building a network graph that models the communication (e-mail, telephony, etc.) patterns of targeted entities (people, organizations, etc) and
their associates from the communications sent or received by targets.” Office of the Inspector Gen., Nat’l Sec. Agency, Cent. Sec. Serv., Working Draft ST-09-0002 (Mar. 24, 2009) (discussing a
proposed amendment to Department of Defense procedures for contact chaining).
NSA analysts conduct this contact chaining procedure beginning with a target or
“seed” number and extending through all “second and third tier contacts of the identifier.” Administration White Paper: Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Under Section 215
of the USA PATRIOT Act 3 (Aug. 9, 2013).18 Each layer of analysis is referred to as a “hop.” The first “hop” includes the numbers that directly
contact the target; the second “hop” includes the numbers that directly contact first hop numbers; and the
third “hop” are those numbers that directly contact the second hop numbers. Id. at 3-4. The number of phone records analyzed grows
exponentially as the number of hops increases. The NSA has emphasized that the number of “seed”
numbers queried is low, but this ignores the broad impact of the contact chaining process. For example, in
2012, the NSA queried 288 phone numbers (known as “seeds”). The contact chaining algorithms the NSA uses,
though,
implicate a much larger set of phone numbers . A three-hop analysis would yield 2.5 million numbers if each person contacted 40
unique people. Jonathan Mayer & Patrick Mutchler, MetaPhone: The NSA Three-Hop n.3 (Dec. 9, 2013).19 The NSA stores telephony metadata collected under this program for five years. The
social graphing of the past five years of a persons phone number will produce a very detailed and intimate picture of his or her life.
Phone Data is key
Phone data is a huge internal link to privacy. Modern Meta-data reveals much more
information.
EPIC ‘14
The Electronic Privacy Information Center or “EPIC” - is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C… EPIC routinely
participates as amicus curiae before federal and state courts in cases concerning the protection of privacy. Members of the EPIC
Advisory Board are expert in issues of domestic surveillance. The EPIC amicus brief is joined by 33 technical experts and legal
scholars – these include several Law Professors, Distinguished Scientists, Computer Science experts, Professors with
specializations in Information Law. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER (EPIC) AND THIRTY-THREE TECHNICAL EXPERTS AND
LEGAL SCHOLARS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT” – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by Attorney Marc Rotenberg,
Counsel of Record. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to EPIC and its technical experts.
This pdf can be obtained at: https://epic.org/amicus/fisa/215/smith/
bulk telephone records collected by the NSA reveal a great deal more information about social connections between
than any traditional pen register data could. But as the Court recognized in Riley, this aggregation of millions of records
In fact, the
citizens
heightens the privacy harm to each user . Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2489. And due to the ubiquity of cell phones in the United States, the volume of call data is
much higher now than in 1979 before the emergence of mobile phones.21 Location data, in particular, reveals sensitive information including a
“comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional,
religious, and sexual associations.” United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 955 (2012) (Sotomayor, J., concurring). The lower court’s broad reading of Smith v.
Maryland is inconsistent with the Court’s recent holding in Riley. Modern networks generate a wealth of detailed data about our communications,
and the ability to analyze and extract sensitive personal information from that data implicates users’ privacy
interests in a way inconceivable in the 19 70s. To argue that the disclosure of all telephone records of
all telephone customers in the United States today is equivalent to the disclosure of the telephone records from a single
telephone line in the 1970s is like equating the Hubble space telescope and the bottom of a glass jar because
they both enlarge images. The collection and aggregation of private communications data by the NSA on a
nationwide scale violates the reasonable expectations of privacy of everyday Americans.
A-to “No Privacy violation b/c it’s only phone data”
( ) Phone Data alone is sufficient to violate Privacy.
Smith ‘14
Peter J. Smith IV – attorney for the law firm LUKINS & ANNIS and Lead Council for This brief was was signed by the entire legal
team, which includes four attorneys from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and three additional attorneys from the
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION - APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. October 16th – available at: https://www.eff.org/document/smiths-reply-brief
Elsewhere, the
government emphasizes that it is collecting phone numbers, not names, as if this mitigates or
even eliminates the
privacy intrusion. See Gov’t Br. 14. But phone numbers are every bit as identifying as
names. Indeed, they are more so: while many people in the country may share the same name, no two
phone subscribers share the same number. Moreover, it is trivial for the government to obtain a subscriber’s
name once it has that subscriber’s phone number, using publicly available resources or the many subpoena authorities at its disposal.
See Felten Decl. (ERII 86) ¶ 19 & n.14. For these reasons, the government itself treats phone numbers as identifying information in, for example, the context of
Freedom of Information Act requests. See, e.g., Moore v. Obama, No. 09-5072, 2009 WL 2762827, at *1 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 24, 2009) (per curiam) (affirming FBI’s
withholding of employee phone numbers); Smith v. Dep’t of Labor, 798 F. Supp. 2d 274, 284 (D.D.C. 2011) (“Generally, personal identifying information such as a
person’s name, address, phone number, date of birth, criminal history, medical history, and social security number may be protected under Exemption 6.”).
Backlines – Bigotry Advantage
If you read the shorter 1AC version…
…then these are the cards you didn’t read in the 1AC. They could be useful in the 2AC.
NSA surveillance = Racist, Must Center Racial Impacts
Warrantless mass surveillance is racist. Vote Aff to prioritize these under-represented
impacts in public debates.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
Beginning in June 2013, a series of news articles
based on whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s collection of documents from the
National Security Agency (NSA) took the world by storm. Over the course of a year, the Snowden material provided a
detailed account of the massive extent of NSA’s warrantless data collection . What became clear was
that the NSA was involved in the mass collection of online material. Less apparent was how this data was actually used by the
NSA and other national security agencies. Part of the answer came in July 2014 when Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain
published an article that identified specific targets of NSA surveillance and showed how individuals were being
placed under surveillance despite there being no reasonable suspicion of their involvement in criminal
activity.1 All of those named as targets were prominent Muslim Americans. The following month, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan
Devereaux published another story for The Intercept, which revealed that under the Obama administration the number of people
on the National Counterterrorism Center’s no-fly list had increased tenfold to 47,000. Leaked classified documents showed that the NCC
maintains a database of terrorism suspects worldwide—the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment—which contained a million names by 2013, double the
number four years earlier, and increasingly includes biometric data. This
database includes 20,800 persons within the United
States who are disproportionately concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, with its significant Arab
American population.2 By any objective standard, these were major news stories that ought to have attracted as much attention as the earlier
revelations. Yet the stories barely registered in the corporate media landscape. The “tech community,” which had earlier expressed outrage at the NSA’s mass
digital surveillance, seemed to be indifferent when details emerged of the targeted surveillance of Muslims. The explanation for this reaction is not hard to find.
While many object to the US government collecting private data on “ordinary” people, Muslims tend to be
seen as reasonable targets of suspicion. A July 2014 poll for the Arab American Institute found that 42 percent of Americans think it is
justifiable for law enforcement agencies to profile Arab Americans or American Muslims.3 In what follows, we argue that the
debate on national
security surveillance that has emerged in the United States since the summer of 2013 is woefully inadequate, due
to its failure to place questions of race and empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the
basis for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed, racist fears that are whipped up to
legitimize this surveillance to the American public, and the disproportionately targeted racialized groups that have been most effective in making
sense of it and organizing opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race and state surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism.
Likewise, we argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United States is inseparable from the history of US colonialism and empire.
Surveillance = Racist
Surveillance is racist – it’s the modern COINTELPRO. Reject the security justifications
that prop-up these forms of violence.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
As of 2008, the
FBI had a roster of 15,000 paid informants and, according to Senator Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, the bureau had 10,000 counterterrorism intelligence analysts in 2013.63 The proportion of these informants and analysts who are
assigned to Muslim populations in the United States is unknown but is likely to be substantial. The kinds of infiltration and provocation tactics that
had been practiced against Black radicals in the 1960s are being repeated today. What has changed are the
rationales used to justify them: it is no longer the threat of Black nationalist subversion, but the threat of
Muslim radicalization that is invoked. With new provisions in the Clinton administration’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
the FBI can launch investigations of a suspected individual or organization simply for providing “material support” to terrorism—a vague term that could include
ideological activity unrelated to any actual plot to carry out violence. While
COINTELPRO violated federal laws, today similar kinds
of investigation and criminalization of political dissent can be carried out legitimately in the name of
countering terrorism.
Kritik of the Neg’s Security Disad
We reject the racialized notions of Surveillance and Security. These practices falsely
construct threats and shut-down dissent in many forms.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
In the second part, we
turn our attention to the current conjuncture in which the politics of the War on Terror shape
national security surveillance practices . The intensive surveillance of Muslim Americans has been
carried out by a vast security apparatus that has also been used against dissident movements such as
Occupy Wall Street and environmental rights activists, who represent a threat to the neoliberal order.
This is not new; the process of targeting dissenters has been a constant feature of American history. For instance, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s were
passed by the Federalist government against the Jeffersonian sympathizers of the French Revolution. The British hanged Nathan Hale because he spied for
surveillance regimes have always sought to monitor and penalize a wide range
of dissenters, radicals, and revolutionaries. Race was a factor in some but by no means all of these cases. Our focus here is on the production of
racialized “others” as security threats and the ways this helps to stabilize capitalist social relations. Further, the current system of mass
surveillance of Muslims is analogous to and overlaps with other systems of racialized security surveillance that
feed the mass deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration and that disproportionately target African
Americans, contributing to their mass incarceration and what Michelle Alexander refers to as the New Jim Crow.4 We argue that
racialized groupings are produced in the very act of collecting information about certain groups deemed
Washington’s army in the American Revolution. State
as “threats” by the national security state— the Brown terrorist , the Black and Brown drug
dealer and user, and the immigrant who threatens to steal jobs. We conclude that “ security” has become one of
the primary means through which racism is ideologically reproduced in the “post-racial,” neoliberal
era. Drawing on W. E. B. Dubois’s notion of the “psychological wage,” we argue that neoliberalism has been legitimized in part through racialized notions of security
that offer a new “psychological wage” as compensation for the decline of the social wage and its reallocation to “homeland security.”
Bigotry Advantage - Backlines
A-to Counter-Bias
( ) The counter-bias cards work better against a privacy advantage than a bigotry
advantage. It may be overstated to say everyone suffers from surveillance. But some
groups suffer far more than others – our Stanfill ev proves that’s bigotry.
( ) Bias goes our way. Security risk is unknowingly inflated – this starts with the media
and seeps into scholarship.
Wong & Belair-Gagnon ‘13
Albert Wong and Valerie Belair-Gagnon are resident fellows at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School – “On the
NSA, the media may tilt right” – Columbia Journalism Review – October 23rd http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/news_media_pro_surveillance_bi.php
Since June 6, the world has been roiled by an ongoing series of disclosures based on Edward Snowden’s document leaks, with coverage led by the Guardian and the
Washington Post, about clandestine mass surveillance conducted, with little oversight, by the NSA and its international partners. Public
these surveillance revelations are
perceptions of
affected not only by the NSA’s actual actions, but also by the news coverage of the
government’s spying programs. Previous studies have shown that the latter factor can have a profound effect on
public
opinion. Given the importance of this issue, we decided to analyze major US newspapers’ “post-Snowden” coverage of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to
in either a pro- (traditionally conservative) or anti-surveillance (traditionally liberal) direction. The
determine if there was an overall bias
results were unexpected, and quite remarkable.
Our analysis of total press coverage of FISA and FISC between July 1 and July 31 (July was the first full calendar month after the initial disclosures in June) revealed
that the widely held assumption that major media outlets uniformly tilt to the left does not match reality. In fact, if anything, the
media appears to tilt
to the right, at least on this issue. We did a LexisNexis search of four of the largest US newspapers by circulation: The New York Times, USA
Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Of the 30 traditionally pro- or anti-surveillance terms we examined (15 each, listed below) in all four
newspapers, key
words generally used to justify increased surveillance, such as security or terrorism , were used
much more frequently than terms that tend to invoke opposition to mass surveillance, such as privacy or liberty. USA
Today led the pack, using pro-surveillance terms 36 percent more frequently than anti-surveillance terms. The LA Times followed at 24 percent, while The New York
Times was at 14.1 percent. Even the Washington Post, where Barton Gellman was the first US journalist to break the news of the NSA’s surveillance, exhibited a net
pro-surveillance bias in its coverage of 11.1 percent. Although keyword frequency analysis on its own is not always conclusive, large, consistent discrepancies of the
kind observed here strongly suggest a net media bias in favor of the US and UK governments’ pro-surveillance position. The pro-surveillance media bias we found
was not, in general, overt. In our opinion, most of the New York Times’ FISA/FISC coverage was neutral in tone. But
covert bias is still bias—in fact, it
may even be more effective than blatant bias , since readers may not notice its existence. A seemingly
neutral article could leave a net pro-surveillance impression on readers if it contains an excess of references to, say, foreign terrorists or national security—terms
that tend to frame the issue as a question of patriotic willingness to do what it takes to keep the country safe. Our findings indicate that the intense public concern
about the NSA’s activities is not merely an artifact of biased coverage, since the media actually appears to be biased in the opposite direction. In a recent Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 54 percent of respondents disagreed with dragnet collection of internet metadata and 71 percent disagreed with
warrantless monitoring of US phone calls. Public opposition
to the government surveillance might be even more
pronounced if overall media coverage was neutral and unbiased. Consciously or not, Western journalists and media
outlets may still (even more than a decade after 9/11) be wary of appearing to be “soft on terror,” much as they once were about
appearing to be soft on Communism. President George W. Bush’s September 2001 admonition that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” appears
to have an enduring legacy in media bias.
Utilitarianism is bad
Reject utilitarianism. It shatters all ethics and justifies the worst atrocities.
Holt ‘95
(Jim Holt is an American philosopher, author and essayist. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New York Times
Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and Slate. He hosted a weekly radio spot on
BBC for ten years and he writes frequently about politics and philosophy. New York Times, “Morality, Reduced To Arithmetic,”
August 5, p. Lexis)
Can the deliberate massacre of innocent people ever be condoned? The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 to 250,000
Japanese by incineration and radiation poisoning. Although a small fraction of the victims were soldiers, the great majority were noncombatants -- women, children, the aged. Among the
justifications that have been put forward for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the bomb, only one is worth taking seriously -- that it saved lives. The alternative, the reasoning goes,
was to launch an invasion. Truman claimed in his memoirs that this would have cost another half a million American lives. Winston Churchill put the figure at a million. Revisionist historians
have cast doubt on such numbers. Wartime documents suggest that military planners expected around 50,000 American combat deaths in an invasion. Still, when Japanese casualties, military
and civilian, are taken into account, the overall invasion death toll on both sides would surely have ended up surpassing that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scholars will continue to argue over
whether there were other, less catastrophic ways to force Tokyo to surrender. But given the fierce obstinacy of the Japanese militarists, Truman and his advisers had some grounds for
believing that nothing short of a full-scale invasion or the annihilation of a big city with an apocalyptic new weapon would have succeeded. Suppose they were right. Would this prospect have
In the debate over the question, participants on both sides have been playing the
numbers game. Estimate the hypothetical number of lives saved by the bombings, then add up the actual lives
lost. If the first number exceeds the second, then Truman did the right thing; if the reverse, it was wrong to have dropped the bombs. That is one approach to the matter -- the utilitarian
approach. According to utilitarianism, a form of moral reasoning that arose in the 19th century, the goodness or evil of an action is determined
justified the intentional mass killing of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
solely by its consequences. If somehow you can save 10 lives by boiling a baby, go ahead and boil that
baby . There is, however, an older ethical tradition, one rooted in Judeo-Christian theology, that takes a quite different view. The gist of it is
Some actions, this tradition holds, can never be justified by
their consequences; they are absolutely forbidden. It is always wrong to boil a baby even if lives are
saved thereby. Applying this absolutist morality to war can be tricky. When enemy soldiers are trying to enslave or kill us, the principle of self-defense permits us to kill them
expressed by St. Paul’s condemnation of those who say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.”
(though not to slaughter them once they are taken prisoner). But what of those who back them? During World War II, propagandists made much of the “indivisibility” of modern warfare: the
idea was that since the enemy nation’s entire economic and social strength was deployed behind its military forces, the whole population was a legitimate target for obliteration. “There are no
civilians in Japan,” declared an intelligence officer of the Fifth Air Force shortly before the Hiroshima bombing, a time when the Japanese were popularly depicted as vermin worthy of
extermination. The boundary between combatant and noncombatant can be fuzzy, but the distinction is not meaningless, as the case of small children makes clear. Yet is wartime killing of
those who are not trying to harm us always tantamount to murder? When naval dockyards, munitions factories and supply lines are bombed, civilian carnage is inevitable. The absolutist moral
tradition acknowledges this by a principle known as double effect: although it is always wrong to kill innocents deliberately, it is sometimes permissible to attack a military target knowing some
noncombatants will die as a side effect. The doctrine of double effect might even justify bombing a hospital where Hitler is lying ill. It does not, however, apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Transformed into hostages by the technology of aerial bombardment, the people of those cities were intentionally executed en masse to send a message of terror to the rulers of Japan. The
practice of ordering the massacre of civilians to bring the enemy to heel scarcely began with Truman. Nor did the bomb result in casualties of a new order of magnitude. The earlier bombing of
Tokyo by incendiary weapons killed some 100,000 people. What Hiroshima and Nagasaki did mark, by the unprecedented need for rationalization they presented, was the triumph of
utilitarian thinking in the conduct of war. The conventional code of noncombatant immunity -- a product of several centuries of ethical progress among nations, which had
been formalized by an international commission in the 1920’s in the Hague -- was swept away. A simpler axiom took its place: since war is hell, any means necessary may be used to end, in
Churchill’s words, “the vast indefinite butchery.” It
is a moral calculus that, for all its logical consistency, offends
our deep-seated intuitions about
the
sanctity of life -- our conviction that a person is always to be treated as an end, never as a means. Left up to
the warmakers, moreover, utilitarian calculations are susceptible to bad-faith reasoning: tinker with the
numbers enough and virtually any atrocity can be excused in the national interest. In January, the
world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where mass slaughter was committed as an end in itself -- the ultimate evil. The moral nature of Hiroshima is
the bomb’s sinister legacy is
plain: it has inured us to the idea of reducing innocents to instruments and morality to arithmetic.
ambiguous by contrast. Yet in the postwar era, when governments do not hesitate to treat the massacre of civilians as just another strategic option,
A-to Legalism, Law K
( ) perm – do the Alternative. Plan did not commit to more Law or More State action.
We committed to less.
( ) Law won’t serve as cover in this context. The Aff solves and the Law can form
ethical resistance. The Alt’s violent – fails to effectively counter everyday violence.
Gilreath ‘14
Shannon Gilreath - Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wake Forest
University. “THE INTERNET AND INEQUALITY: A COMMENT ON THE NSA SPYING SCANDAL” - This Essay is an expanded version
of remarks prepared for two live events, "Regulating Privacy on the Internet," held at Wake Forest University, from which this
symposium issue of the Wake Forest Law Review emerged, and "Being Social: The Effects of Social Media on Our Lives," held at
the University of Quebec at Montreal. 49 Wake Forest L. Rev. 525 – 2014 – available via google scholar and lexis.
I have criticized obedience to the rule of law as a convenient cover for excessive use of power. Certainly, I believe this to be
true in many cases . But the law is also-perhaps unfortunately- the best shot we have at dealing with
immediate problems. I echo the late Ann Scales, who once said that " my heart need[s] the world to change
in more immediate and more enforceable ways than [are] observable from nonlegal
political activism." 175 I certainly do not advocate abandoning the law as an instrument
of change. Such is the work of postmodern theory, mostly the luxury of academics, and also, generally, a universitysubsidized collection of "familiar if fancier reasons for doing nothing. "176 As lawyers, we have to continue to use the
law, as we know it, and as we invent it , to respond to governmental anti-equality intrusions into the
everyday lives of citizens. One grassroots possibility would be to pressure Congress to change the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of
1994, which, as written, requires telecommunications companies to build their networks in ways that make government surveillance of Internet activity possible,
including the interception of e-mail and web traffic.177 Many of the contributions to this Symposium provide a range of other possibilities. 178
CONCLUSION Part of the problem of doing anything about the problem of the Internet and inequality is not only that we are dealing with power
perpetuating itself-and power is a serious thing -but also that we are dealing with notions of reality with which people have become
comfortable or, at least, in which they have largely surrendered in their protest. In this sense, technology itself is a panopticon. Its ubiquity is transforming society in
its image, as well as the rule of law.179 At
stake, now, in our new-or at least newly revealed-"United States of Surveillance" is
nothing less than a democratic ideal, that is to say how a free society (however arbitrary that meaning may be) makes decisions about governing
itself and dealing with the rest of the world.
Any intelligent response must include
the ingredients sketched in these remarks: a
seriousness about the problem; a knowledge of history; a healthy skepticism regarding "national security" justifications for increasing governmental power; and
a
determination to change the present situation for the better. Beyond these, I leave you with an
exhortation. In 1995, my heroine, the late Andrea Dworkin, gave a speech that she entitled "Remember, Resist, Do Not Comply."180 That is exactly what
I am
asking you to do with regard to the technologization of oppression and the NSA Internet surveillance program as an extension of
that historical process
: remember, resist, do not comply.
( ) perm - do both
( ) Grassroots movements won’t solve – and bigotry will just continue in the interim.
Gitlin ‘97
Todd – formerly served as professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley,
and then a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. He is now a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of
the Ph.D. program in Communications at Columbia University. He was a long-time political activist( from the Left) – “The Anti-Political Populism
of Cultural Studies” – Dissent Magazine – Spring 1997. Modified for potentially objectionable langauge –
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1893
here is an explanation for the rise of academic cultural studies during precisely the years when
the right has held political and economic power longer and more consistently than at any other time in more than a half
century. Now, in effect, "the cultural is political," and more, it is regarded as central to the control of political and economic resources. The control of
popular culture is held to have become decisive in the fate of contemporary societies--or at least it is the sphere in which opposition can find footing, find
breathing space, rally the powerless, defy the grip of the dominant ideas, isolate the powers that be, and prepare for a "war of
Consolation:
position" against their dwindling ramparts. On this view, to dwell on the centrality of popular culture is more than an academic's way of filling her hours; it is a useful certification of the people
the political aura of cultural studies is supported by something like a "false consciousness" premise:
the analytical assumption that what holds the ruling groups in power is their capacity to muffle, deform,
paralyze, or destroy contrary tendencies of an emotional or ideological nature. By the same token, if there is to be a significant
"opposition," it must first find a base in popular culture--and first also turns out to be second, third,
and fourth, since popular culture is so much more accessible, so much more porous, so much more changeable than the
economic and political order. With time, what began as compensation hardened--became institutionalized--into a tradition. Younger scholars
gravitated to cultural studies because it was to them incontestable that culture was politics. To do cultural
and their projects. To put it more neutrally,
studies, especially in connection with identity politics, was the politics they knew. The contrast with the rest of the West is illuminating. In varying degrees, left-wing intellectuals in France,
Italy, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain and elsewhere retain energizing attachments to Social Democratic, Green, and other left-wing parties. There, the association of culture with excellence and
traditional elites remains strong. But in the Anglo-American world, including Australia, these conditions scarcely obtain. Here, in a discouraging time, popular culture emerges as a consolation
prize. (The same happened in Latin America, with the decline of left-wing hopes.) The sting fades from the fragmentation of the organized left, the metastasis of murderous nationalism, the
Class inequality may have soared, ruthless individualism may have intensified, the conditions of life
for the poor may have worsened, racial tensions may have mounted, unions and social democratic parties may have weakened or
reached an impasse, but never mind. Attend to popular culture, study it with sympathy, and one need not dwell
on unpleasant realities. One need not be unduly vexed by electoral defeats. One need not be preoccupied by the ways in which the political culture's center of gravity has
twilight of socialist dreams virtually everywhere.
moved rightward--or rather, one can put this down to the iron grip of the established media institutions. One need not even be rigorous about what one opposes and what one proposes in its
place. Is capitalism the trouble? Is it the particular form of capitalism practiced by multinational corporations in a deregulatory era? Is it patriarchy (and is that the proper term for a society
that has seen an upheaval in relations between women and men in the course of a half-century)? Racism? Antidemocracy? Practitioners of cultural studies, like the rest of the academic left,
Speaking cavalierly of "opposition" and "resistance" permits--rather, cultivates--a certain
sloppiness of thinking, making it possible to remain "left" without having to face the most difficult
questions of political self-definition. The situation of cultural studies conforms to the contours of our political moment. It confirms--and
reinforces--the current paralysis (inaction): the incapacity of social movements and dissonant sensibilities to
imagine effective forms of public engagement. It substitutes an obsession with popular culture for coherent economic-political thought or a connection
with mobilizable populations outside the academy and across identity lines. One must underscore that this is not simply because of cultural studies' default. The default is an
effect more than a cause. It has its reasons. The odds are indeed stacked against serious forward motion in conventional politics. Political power is not
only beyond reach, but functional majorities disdain it, finding the government and all its works contemptible. Few of the
are frequently elusive.
central problems of contemporary civilization are seriously contested within the narrow band of conventional discourse. Unconventional politics, such as it is, is mostly fragmented and selfcontained along lines of racial, gender, and sexual identities.
politics that is already in force.
One cannot say that cultural studies diverts energy from a vigorous
Still, insofar as cultural studies makes claims for itself as an insurgent
politics, the field is presumptuous and misleading. Its attempt to legitimize the ecstasies of the moment confirms the
collective withdrawal from democratic hope. Seeking to find political energies in audiences who
function as audiences, rather than in citizens functioning as citizens, the dominant current in cultural studies is pressed
willy-nilly toward an uncritical celebration of technological progress. It offers no resistance to the primacy of visual and nonlinear culture over the literary and linear. To the
contrary: it embraces technological innovation as soon as the latest developments prove popular. It embraces the sufficiency of markets; its main idea of the intellect's democratic
Is there a chance of a modest redemption? Perhaps, if we imagine a harder headed,
less wishful cultural studies, free of the burden of imagining itself to be a political practice. A chastened,
realistic cultural studies would divest itself of political pretensions. It would not claim to be politics. It
would not mistake the academy for the larger society. It would be less romantic about the world--and
about itself. Rigorous practitioners of cultural studies should be more curious about the world that remains to be researched--and changed. We would learn more about politics,
economy, and society, and in the process, appreciate better what culture, and cultural study, do not accomplish. If we wish to do politics, let us organize groups, coalitions,
demonstrations, lobbies, whatever; let us do politics. Let us not think that our academic work is already that.
commitment is to flatter the audience.
( ) The only way the Alt competes is if they refuse to use the law – even to reduce it.
That’s violent because the Alt can’t wish away the State.
Eckersley ‘4
Robyn, Reader/Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne, “The Green State:
Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty”, MIT Press, 2004, Google Books, pp. 3-8
While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nation- state, and the limitations of state-centric analyses of global ecological
degradation, I
seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might increasingly play, in
global and domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago, Hedley Bull (a proto-constructivist and leading writer in the English school)
outlined the state's positive role in world affairs, and his arguments continue to provide a powerful challenge to those who
somehow seek to "get beyond the state," as if such a move would provide a more lasting solution to the
threat of armed conflict or nuclear war , social and economic in justice, or environmental
degradation. 10 As Bull argued, given that the state is here to stay whether we like it or not, then the call
to get "beyond the state is a counsel of despair, at all events if it means that we have to begin by abolishing or
subverting the state, rather than that there is a need to build upon it.""¶ In any event, rejecting the "statist frame" of
world politics ought not prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory potential of the state as a crucial "node"
in any future network of global ecological governance. This is especially so, given that one can expect states to persist as major
sites of social and political power for at least the foreseeable future and that any green transformations of the present political
order will, short of revolution, necessarily be state-dependent. Thus, like it or not, those concerned about ecological destruction must contend
with existing institutions and, where possible, seek to "rebuild the ship while still at sea." And if states are so implicated in ecological
destruction, then an inquiry into the potential for their transformation even their modest reform into something that is at least more conducive
to ecological sustainability would seem to be compelling.¶ Of
course, it would be unhelpful to become singularly fixated
on the redesign of the state at the expense of other institutions of governance. States are not the only institutions that
limit, condition, shape, and direct political power, and it is necessary to keep in view the broader spectrum of formal and informal institutions
of governance (e.g., local, national, regional, and international) that are implicated in global environmental change. Nonetheless,
while
the state constitutes only one modality of political power, it is an especially significant one because of its
historical claims to exclusive rule over territory and peoples—as expressed in the principle of state sovereignty. As Gianfranco Poggi explains,
the political power concentrated in the state "is a momentous, pervasive, critical phenomenon. Together with other forms of social power, it
constitutes an indispensable medium for constructing and shaping larger social realities, for establishing, shaping and maintaining all broader
and more durable collectivities."12 States play, in varying degrees, significant roles in structuring life chances, in distributing wealth, privilege,
information, and risks, in upholding civil and political rights, and in securing private property rights and providing the legal/regulatory
framework for capitalism. Every one of these dimensions of state activity has, for good or ill, a significant bearing on the global environmental
crisis. Given that the
green political project is one that demands far-reaching changes to both economies and societies,
it is difficult to imagine how such changes might occur on the kind of scale that is needed without the
active support of states. While it is often observed that states are too big to deal with local ecological problems and too small to deal with
global ones, the state nonetheless holds, as Lennart Lundqvist puts it, "a unique position in the constitutive hierarchy from individuals through
villages, regions and nations all the way to global organizations. The state is inclusive of lower political and administrative levels, and
exclusive in speaking for its whole territory and population in relation to the outside world."13 In short, it seems to me inconceivable to
advance ecological emancipation without also engaging with and seeking to transform state power.¶ Of course, not all states are democratic
states, and the green movement has long been wary of the coercive powers that all states reputedly enjoy. Coercion (and not democracy) is
also central to Max Weber's classic sociological understanding of the state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."14 Weber believed that the state could not be defined sociologically in terms of its
ends* only formally as an organization in terms of the particular means that are peculiar to it.15 Moreover his concept of legitimacy was merely
concerned with whether rules were accepted by subjects as valid (for whatever reason); he did not offer a normative theory as to the
circumstances when particular rules ought to be accepted or whether beliefs about the validity of rules were justified. Legitimacy was a
contingent fact, and in view of his understanding of politics as a struggle for power in the context of an increasingly disenchanted world,
likely to become an increasingly unstable achievement.16 In contrast to Weber, my approach to the state is explicitly normative and explicitly
concerned with the purpose of states, and the democratic basis of their legitimacy. It focuses on the limitations of liberal normative theories of
the state (and associated ideals of a just constitutional arrangement), and it proposes instead an alternative green theory that seeks to redress
the deficiencies in liberal theory. Nor is my account as bleak as Weber's. The fact that states possess a monopoly of control over the means of
coercion is a most serious matter, but it does not necessarily imply that they must have frequent recourse to that power. In any event,
whether the use of the state's coercive powers is to be deplored or welcomed turns on the purposes for which
the manner in which it is exercised , and whether it is managed in
public , transparent, and accountable ways —a judgment that must be made against a background of changing problems,
practices, and under- standings. The coercive arm of the state can be used to "bust" political
demonstrations and invade privacy. It can also be used to prevent human rights abuses, curb the
that power is exercised,
excesses of corporate power, and
protect the environment. In short, although the political autonomy of states is widely believed to
are still few social institution that can match the same degree of capacity and potential legitimacy that
states have to redirect societies and economies along more ecologically sustainable lines to address ecological problems
be in decline, there
such as global warming and pollution, the buildup of toxic and nuclear wastes and the rapid erosion of the earth's biodiversity. States—
particularly when they act collectively—have the capacity to curb the socially and ecologically harmful consequences of capitalism. They are
also more amenable to democratization than cor- porations, notwithstanding the ascendancy of the neoliberal state in the increasingly
competitive global economy. There are therefore many good reasons why green political theorists need to think not only critically but also
constructively about the state and the state system. While the state is certainly not "healthy" at the present historical juncture, in this book I
nonetheless join Poggi by offering "a timid two cheers for the old beast," at least as a potentially more significant ally in the green cause.17
A-to “Not sinister - checks solve”
“Checks” and “surveillance reforms” won’t solve racism. These checks may curtail
surveillance of those with privilege –but won’t solve for those that lack it.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
In March 2014, Rick Ledgett, deputy director of the NSA, told an
audience: “Contrary to some of the stuff that’s been printed, we
don’t sit there and grind out metadata profiles of average people. If you’re not connected to one of those
valid intelligence targets, you are not of interest to us.”72 In the national security world, “connected to”
can be the basis for targeting a whole racial or political community so, even assuming the accuracy of this
comment, it points to the ways that national security surveillance can draw entire communities into its
web, while reassuring “average people” (code for the normative white middle class) that they are not to be troubled.
In the eyes of the national security state, this average person must also express no political views critical of the status quo.
A-to “Mass surveillance good – solves power imbalances”
( ) Their ev assumes an ideal world – where everything is monitored and there’s no
need for policing. We’re nowhere near that world. In the interim, surveillance will get
clouded by human bigotry.
( ) Federal surveillance info drives subsequent enforcement. That enforcement
empirically becomes selective and racially biased.
Unegbu ‘13
Cindy C. Unegbu - J.D. Candidate, Howard University School of Law - NOTE AND COMMENT: National Security Surveillance on
the Basis of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Constitutional Misstep - Howard Law Journal - 57 How. L.J. 433 - Fall, 2013 – lexis;
lawrev
The authority
to spy and monitor domestic individuals has been granted to various agencies within the government, such
as the FBI and the DHS. n104 This power, granted through the establishment of the NCTC and the DIOG, has led to various improper
surveillance practices, such as using race, ethnicity, or religion as a basis for monitoring an individual
when there is no suspicion of criminal or terrorist activity. n105 The government has used race and ethnicity as
a basis for selecting individuals to monitor and for conducting threat analysis in the past. n106 Furthermore, with the additional surveillance
power that has been given to the government, the use of race and ethnicity as a basis for surveillance is disconcerting. Past
Department of Justice national security guidance has explicitly disallowed the consideration of race or ethnicity, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution
[*450] and laws of the nation. n107 Although a constitutional analysis of the government's surveillance efforts will be conducted later in this Comment, it is
important to note that the Justice Department's past guidance stated that "in absolutely no event ... may Federal officials assert a national security or border
integrity rationale as a mere pretext for invidious discrimination." n108 This 2003 guidance explains what efforts regarding race or ethnicity are allowed and not
allowed as a means to protect national security; however, the DIOG has permitted measures that are contrary to the standards outlined in the 2003 Department of
Justice Guidance. n109 Although the DIOG prohibits the FBI from considering race or ethnicity as the sole factor in determining whether an individual or group will
be subject to intense monitoring, n110 ethnicity
may be considered in evaluating whether an individual is a possible
associate of a criminal or terrorist group that is known to be comprised of members of the same ethnic grouping as that individual. n111 Furthermore,
the DIOG permits the FBI to identify areas of concentrated ethnic communities if the locations will reasonably aid in threat analysis. n112 The locations of "ethnicoriented" businesses and facilities may be gathered if their locations will reasonably contribute to an awareness of threats, vulnerabilities, and intelligence
collection opportunities. n113 Just as race or ethnicity is often closely correlated to religious affiliation, the FBI has been granted the authority, although
accompanied with many restrictions, to utilize religion as a basis for examination. n114
security investigation power, the
In accordance with its surveillance and national
FBI has conducted various undercover monitoring procedures that call into question their
constitutional permissibility. n115 In 2009, the FBI participated in a career day event conducted in San [*451] Jose, CA sponsored by an Assyrian community
organization. n116 The FBI's observations were placed in a mapping report. n117 In the report, the FBI recited information about the organization's activities, the
identities of several leaders within the organization, and the content of conversations at the event. n118 This content included opinions, backgrounds, travel
histories, educations, occupations, and charitable activities. n119 Similarly, a memo submitted by the Sacramento Division of the FBI details a conversation in which
an undercover agent discusses the Saudi Student Association with an innocent California State University student. n120 The conversation included the
organization's size, purpose, and activities. n121 The memo, which included the student's social security number, telephone number, and address, was submitted to
the FBI in Washington, DC. n122 Additionally, in San Francisco, the FBI submitted a 2007 and 2008 report that detailed FBI spy efforts at Ramadan Iftar dinners.
n123 In the reports, the FBI documented the names of attendees, the contents of various conversations and presentations, a photo of dinner participants, and other
information. n124 Both of the reports indicate that the information was disseminated outside of the FBI. n125 There
are several other instances,
similar to these, in which the FBI utilized individuals' race or ethnicity as a basis for monitoring. n126 The American
Civil Liberties Union and [*452] other organizations have protested the wide-sweeping authority that has
been granted to the national government to monitor domestic individuals, especially those that are not
suspected of terrorism or criminal activity. n127
(Note to students: “DIOG” – an acronym in this piece of evidence – stands for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide”.)
A-to “Turn – plan stops Legal Marijuana”
( ) Their ev assumes an ideal world – where everything is monitored, so pot
legalization makes more sense. We’re nowhere near that world. In the interim,
surveillance will get clouded by human bigotry.
( ) Federal surveillance info drives subsequent enforcement. That enforcement
empirically becomes selective and racially biased.
Unegbu ‘13
Cindy C. Unegbu - J.D. Candidate, Howard University School of Law - NOTE AND COMMENT: National Security Surveillance on
the Basis of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Constitutional Misstep - Howard Law Journal - 57 How. L.J. 433 - Fall, 2013 – lexis;
lawrev
The authority
to spy and monitor domestic individuals has been granted to various agencies within the government, such
as the FBI and the DHS. n104 This power, granted through the establishment of the NCTC and the DIOG, has led to various improper
surveillance practices, such as using race, ethnicity, or religion as a basis for monitoring an individual
when there is no suspicion of criminal or terrorist activity. n105 The government has used race and ethnicity as
a basis for selecting individuals to monitor and for conducting threat analysis in the past. n106 Furthermore, with the additional surveillance
power that has been given to the government, the use of race and ethnicity as a basis for surveillance is disconcerting. Past
Department of Justice national security guidance has explicitly disallowed the consideration of race or ethnicity, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution
[*450] and laws of the nation. n107 Although a constitutional analysis of the government's surveillance efforts will be conducted later in this Comment, it is
important to note that the Justice Department's past guidance stated that "in absolutely no event ... may Federal officials assert a national security or border
integrity rationale as a mere pretext for invidious discrimination." n108 This 2003 guidance explains what efforts regarding race or ethnicity are allowed and not
allowed as a means to protect national security; however, the DIOG has permitted measures that are contrary to the standards outlined in the 2003 Department of
Justice Guidance. n109 Although the DIOG prohibits the FBI from considering race or ethnicity as the sole factor in determining whether an individual or group will
be subject to intense monitoring, n110 ethnicity
may be considered in evaluating whether an individual is a possible
associate of a criminal or terrorist group that is known to be comprised of members of the same ethnic grouping as that individual. n111 Furthermore,
the DIOG permits the FBI to identify areas of concentrated ethnic communities if the locations will reasonably aid in threat analysis. n112 The locations of "ethnicoriented" businesses and facilities may be gathered if their locations will reasonably contribute to an awareness of threats, vulnerabilities, and intelligence
collection opportunities. n113 Just as race or ethnicity is often closely correlated to religious affiliation, the FBI has been granted the authority, although
accompanied with many restrictions, to utilize religion as a basis for examination. n114
security investigation power, the
In accordance with its surveillance and national
FBI has conducted various undercover monitoring procedures that call into question their
constitutional permissibility. n115 In 2009, the FBI participated in a career day event conducted in San [*451] Jose, CA sponsored by an Assyrian community
organization. n116 The FBI's observations were placed in a mapping report. n117 In the report, the FBI recited information about the organization's activities, the
identities of several leaders within the organization, and the content of conversations at the event. n118 This content included opinions, backgrounds, travel
histories, educations, occupations, and charitable activities. n119 Similarly, a memo submitted by the Sacramento Division of the FBI details a conversation in which
an undercover agent discusses the Saudi Student Association with an innocent California State University student. n120 The conversation included the
organization's size, purpose, and activities. n121 The memo, which included the student's social security number, telephone number, and address, was submitted to
the FBI in Washington, DC. n122 Additionally, in San Francisco, the FBI submitted a 2007 and 2008 report that detailed FBI spy efforts at Ramadan Iftar dinners.
n123 In the reports, the FBI documented the names of attendees, the contents of various conversations and presentations, a photo of dinner participants, and other
information. n124 Both of the reports indicate that the information was disseminated outside of the FBI. n125 There
are several other instances,
similar to these, in which the FBI utilized individuals' race or ethnicity as a basis for monitoring. n126 The American
Civil Liberties Union and [*452] other organizations have protested the wide-sweeping authority that has
been granted to the national government to monitor domestic individuals, especially those that are not
suspected of terrorism or criminal activity. n127
(Note to students: “DIOG” – an acronym in this piece of evidence – stands for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide”.)
Federal marijuana legalization will prove extremely difficult.
Vitiello ‘13
(MICHAEL, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; University of Pennsylvania, J.D.,
1974; Swarthmore College, B.A., 1969 “Joints or the Joint: Colorado and Washington Square Off Against the United States” OREGON LAW REVIEW - Vol. 91 - http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/volumes/91/4/documents/Vitiello.pdf)
The first brief moment when the federal government seemed ready to reevaluate its position on marijuana
occurred during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. President Carter called for its decriminalization. Also during the Carter presidency, the government implemented a
compassionate use program, allowing some seriously ill patients access to marijuana through a carefully controlled federal program.57 Begun during Richard Nixon’s
presidency,58 the War on Drugs proliferated during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.59 Penalties were increased, often with mandatory minimum sentences.60
And those laws were enforced, often vigorously.61 Under federal drug laws, marijuana is categorized as a Schedule I drug, one for which there is no recognized medical benefit.62 The
government has fought all efforts to reschedule marijuana . It fought early efforts of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML) to do so. As I summarized elsewhere, Litigation dragged on between 1972 and 1992, with drug enforcement agencies using various procedural maneuvers to prevent
a hearing on the issue. Despite an administrative law judge’s recommendation, the DEA administrator ruled against
More recent efforts to reschedule
marijuana have been met with similar resistance by the federal government. Protracted
litigation has ended recently with a federal court of appeals again upholding the Drug Enforcement
Agency’s (DEA) refusal to reschedule marijuana .64 During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Obama gave supporters of legalization of
marijuana hope when he stated that he would stop raids on “legitimate” medical marijuana dispensaries.65 Shortly after the election, the Attorney General’s office
issued a memo randum seemingly implementing that promise.66 Almost certainly, the government’s “softer” approach led to rapid
expansion of dispensaries in states with existing medical marijuana laws67 and to passage of medical marijuana statutes elsewhere.68 That was then. But what followed seems like
a U-
turn in administration policy. Notably, in California, marijuana providers opened hundreds of dispensaries, often in central business locations.69 The
Obama administration reacted forcefully. Under his administration, there have been more raids on marijuana
dispensaries in California than there were under the Bush administration.70 Federal government agents have threatened landlords with forfeiture
of their drug laws that heighten penalties when drug dealers sell drugs within proximity to schools.72
pursued “legitimate” dispensaries.
Finally, the Internal Revenue Service has
The IRS’s position is especially threatening to states’ hopes of raising tax revenues. Reagan-era legislation makes
it unlawful for drug dealers to deduct ordinary business expenses, including salaries paid to staff.73 At least according to news reports, the IRS has targeted some of the most law-abiding
dispensaries in California.74 That stance, if upheld by the courts,75 has a potentially perverse effect: dispensary owners most interested in complying with the law would be forced out of
business, while those who are interested in using medical marijuana laws as a cover for drug trafficking may be able to remain in business. Some observers express little surprise in the Obama
administration’s shift in its position.76 An outsider might conclude that the Obama administration discovered a reality of modern government:
change is hard because of
inertia resulting from entrenched vested interests of governmental agencies . Thus, the
administration’s policy shift may have resulted from a conflict between Obama’s more tolerant
position towards marijuana and officials in the Office of National Drug Policy, the DEA, and other law
enforcement agencies.77 Unwilling to take on entrenched bureaucrats, especially after the 2010 election
debacle, the administration simply folded. If that narrative is accurate, then at least for the next several years, talk of legalization
of marijuana is wishful thinking . Using its full arsenal, the federal government can prevent Colorado and Washington from implementing their laws. At
least as drug laws are written, state officials who participate in the state-authorized drug trade—for example, as employees providing marijuana—would be violating federal law. As the federal
government has done in California, it can invoke various laws, including forfeiture laws and tax laws, to drive state-authorized drug sellers out of business. Again, continuing the same narrative,
efforts to legalize marijuana create an existential crisis for agencies like the DEA: officials in those
agencies will not go away without a fight. Viewed from that perspective, reports of the demise of marijuana laws are greatly exaggerated.
Turn - legalization would hurt unprivileged communities.
Moran ‘11
(Thomas J., J.D. @ Washington and Lee Univ School of Law., “Just a Little Bit of History Repeating: The California Model of
Marijuana Legalization and How it Might Affect Racial and Ethnic Minorities,’ Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and
Social Justice, p. 581-3)
Much is made by the proponents of marijuana legalization concerning marijuana’s potential to become the next "cash crop" creating billions of
dollars in both sales and tax revenue. 135 Particularly in the face of decriminalization proposals, which do nothing to divert money from the
hands of drug dealers, legalization makes sense. The argument goes something like this: as history has shown, marijuana use will not stop;
therefore, we might as well sell the drug legally, putting the money from drug dealers’ wallets into those of the people. 136 Although this is
generally a sound and sensible argument, for minority
groups it might truthfully represent another tool of
economic oppression bogging down their communities. In the illegal market, high-quality marijuana costs, on
average, over $4,000 per pound, while lower level marijuana nears $1,000 per pound. 137 As noted earlier, marijuana sales in the
United States, top $100 billion annually. 138 As also noted, the highest concentration of drug dealers is
found in lower income, urban environments prone to minority dwelling. 139 These figures tend to reflect that
billions, and at the very least hundreds of millions, of dollars are funneled into such lower income communities each
year. With the legalization of marijuana, money expended by consumers will be the same or higher, but minorities must
ask where that money will drain. Meaning, will the billions or hundreds of millions of dollars continue their current flow into lower
income communities, or will forces divert the money elsewhere? The California initiative created licensing regulations for both the growing
140 and the selling 141 of marijuana. To
the detriment of minorities, these licensing requirements required both
money and a certain amount of business prowess: cultivating or growing marijuana would require 1) a maximum license fee
of $5,000 paid by all applicants to "reasonably cover the costs of assuring compliance with the regulations to be issued"; 142 2) all license
applicants to submit to a criminal history background check; 143 3) appropriate security and security plans with
"satisfactory proof of the financial ability of the licensee to provide for that security"; 144 and 4) compliance with other employment, 145
inspection, 146 and recordkeeping 147 measures. These business and
licensing regulations provided no assistance to
entrepreneurs with little or no start-up capital. Therefore, marijuana, if legalized in the California fashion, while
becoming the nation’s next cash crop and a tremendous source of wealth, could potentially be so for mainly
non-minorities, ones who have the financial means and business savvy to initiate such production. Worsening this dilemma,
most of the money flowing into the minority communities from the illegal sale of marijuana would be diverted into the bank accounts of the
Minority community leaders should be mindful of this potential money
drain, and wary of its wide range of effects on their communities. 14
new class of "marijuana businessman." 148
K of Security disads
The very notion of “security” is racist and must be rejected. Their assumptions of
“security” fuel deportation and mass incarceration. These cause more real violence
than the disad.
Kumar & Kundnani ‘15
Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012). Arun Kundnani is research fellow at the International Centre
for Counter-Terrorism. He is a writer and activist, and a professor at NYU. “Race, surveillance, and empire” – International
Socialist Review - Issue #96 – Spring - http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 was said to have ushered in a new “post-racial” era, in which racial inequalities were meant to be a thing of the
past. African Americans and Muslim Americans placed their hopes in Obama, voting for him in large numbers. But in the so-called post-racial era, the
security
narrative of hard-working families (coded white) under threat from dangerous racial others has been as powerful
as ever. The unprecedented mass deportation of more than two million people during the Obama
presidency is one form taken by this post-racial racialized securitization. Over the last two decades, the progressive
criminalization of undocumented immigrants has been achieved through the building of a militarized wall between Mexico and the United States, hugely expanding
the US border patrol, and programs such as Secure Communities, which enables local police departments to access immigration databases. Secure Communities
was introduced in 2008 and stepped up under Obama. It has resulted in migrants being increasingly likely to be profiled, arrested, and imprisoned by local police
officers, before being passed to the federal authorities for deportation. Undocumented migrants can no longer have any contact with police officers without risking
such outcomes. There is an irony in the way that fears of “illegal immigration” threatening jobs and the public purse have become stand-ins for real anxieties about
the neoliberal collapse of the old social contract: the measures that such fears lead to—racialization and criminalization of migrants—themselves serve to
strengthen the neoliberal status quo by encouraging a precarious labor market. Capital, after all, does not want to end immigration but to profit from “a vast
exploitable labor pool that exists under precarious conditions, that does not enjoy the civil, political and labor rights of citizens and that is disposable through
deportation.”66 What
brings together these different systems of racial oppression— mass incarceration ,
mass surveillance , and mass deportation —is a security logic that holds the imperial state as
necessary to keeping “American families” (coded white) safe from threats abroad and at home. The ideological work of the last few decades
has cultivated not only racial security fears but also an assumption that the security state is necessary to keep “us” safe. In this sense, security has
become the new psychological wage to aid the reallocation of the welfare state’s social wage toward
homeland security and to win support for empire in the age of neoliberalism. Through the notion of
security, social and economic anxieties generated by the unraveling of the Keynesian social compact have been channeled toward
the Black or Brown street criminal, welfare recipient, or terrorist. In addition, as Susan Faludi has argued, since 9/11, this
homeland in need of security has been symbolized, above all, by the white domestic hearth of the prefeminist fifties, once again threatened by mythical frontier
enemies, hidden subversives, and racial aggressors. That this idea of the homeland coincides culturally with “the denigration of capable women, the magnification
of manly men, the heightened call for domesticity, the search for and sanctification of helpless girls” points to the ways it is gendered as well as racialized.67
A-to Terror Disad
Racialized surveillance causes terror attacks. It kills law enforcement coop with
domestic Muslim populations – which is key to checking domestic terror.
Risen ‘14
(Internally quoting Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. Tom Risen is a reporter
for U.S. News & World Report. “Racial Profiling Reported in NSA, FBI Surveillance” - U.S. News & World Report - July 9, 2014 http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/09/racial-profiling-reported-in-nsa-fbi-surveillance)
The National Security Agency and the FBI have reportedly been overzealous trying to prevent terrorist attacks to the point
that anti-Islamic racism in those agencies led to the surveillance of prominent Muslim-Americans,
revealing a culture of racial profiling and broad latitude for spying on U.S. citizens. An NSA document leaked by
former agency contractor Edward Snowden to reporter Glenn Greenwald shows 202 Americans targeted among the approximately 7,485 email addresses
monitored between 2002 and 2008, Greenwald’s news service The Intercept reports. To monitor Americans, government agencies must first make the case to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause that the targets are terrorist agents, foreign spies or “are or may be” abetting sabotage,
espionage or terrorism. Despite this filter The Intercept identified five Muslim-Americans with high public profile including civil rights leaders, academics, lawyers
and a political candidate. Racial profiling of Muslims by security officers has been a controversy since the terrorist attacks of 2001 spiked fears about al-Qaida
trainees preparing more attacks. The New York Police Department has disbanded its unit that mapped New York’s Muslim communities that designated surveillance
of mosques as “terrorism enterprise investigations” after pressure from the Justice Department about aggressive monitoring by police. A 2005 FBI memo about
surveillance procedures featured in The Intercept story uses a fake name “Mohammed Raghead” for the agency staff exercise. This latest report about email
surveillance of successful Muslim-Americans is akin to “McCarthyism” that fed paranoia about communist spies during the Cold War, says Reza Aslan, a professor at
the University of California, Riverside. “The
notion that these five upstanding American citizens, all of them prominent public individuals,
represent a threat to the U.S. for no other reason than their religion is an embarrassment to the FBI and an
affront to the constitution,” Aslan says. There is a risk of radicalization among citizens Americans, evidenced by some who have gone to
fight jihads in Syria and Somalia, but mass shootings carried out by U.S. citizens of various racial backgrounds occurs much more often, says Vanda
Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. Since 1982, there have been at least 70 mass
shootings across the U.S. “We
have seen very little domestic terrorism in the U.S.,” Felbab-Brown says. This lack of
terrorism is due in part to the willingness of the Islamic community to cooperate with
law enforcement to identify possible radical threats , out of gratitude that the U.S. is a stable, secure country
compared with the Middle East, she says. “ That could go sour if law enforcement becomes too aggressive, too
extreme ,” she says.
Additional Racism impact extensions
Challenging institutional racism is a prior ethical question— it makes violence
structurally inevitable and foundationally negates morality making their utilitarianism
arguments incoherent
Memmi 2K
Albert - Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ U of Paris, Naiteire, Racism, Translated by Steve Martinot, p. 163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably
never achieved. Yet, for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease
and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism; one must not even let the
monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the
bestial part in us and in other people, which is to diminish what is human. To accept the racist universe
to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the
dark history in which we still largely live. it is to agree that the outsider will always be a
possible victim (and which man is not himself an outsider relative to someone else?. Racism
illustrates, in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated that is, it illuminates in a
certain sense the entire human condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in
question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animosity to
humanity . In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that one’s
moral conduit only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other choices, and
always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to
conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order, for
which racism is the very negation . This is almost a redundancy. One cannot found a moral order,
let alone a legislative order, on racism, because racism signifies the exclusion of the other, and his or her
subjection to violence and domination. From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is
‘the truly capital sin. It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsels
respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical morality and
disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All things
considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because
injustice engenders violence and death . Of course,
this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression
of others is permissible. Bur no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be
reversed. All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to
treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall.” says the Bible, “that you were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means
both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming one again someday. It is an
ethical and a practical appeal—indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In
short, the refusal of racism is the
condition for all theoretical and practical morality because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the
political choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all. If this contractual principle is not
accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot. If it is accepted, we can hope
someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.
Meta-Data checks abuses on the basis of identity
( ) Limiting meta-data is vital to protecting abuses on the basis of identity.
PoKempner ‘14
Dinah PoKempner is general counsel of Human Rights Watch. Her work has taken her to Cambodia, the Republic of Korea,
Vietnam, former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in documenting and analyzing compliance with international humanitarian law, war
crimes and violations of civil and political rights. She has written on freedom of expression, peace-keeping operations,
international tribunals, U.N. human rights mechanisms, cyber-liberties and security, and refugee law among other human rights
topics, and oversees the organization’s positions on international law and policy. A graduate of Yale and Columbia University
School of Law and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. PoKempner also teaches at Columbia University. “World
Report 2014” - World Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It
summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through
November 2013. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement
to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014
Arguably, collecting
and banking mass personal data over time confers such power to track, analyze, and expose
people’s lives that it should be thought of as a form of “effective control.” Some of us may not care about who sees our
Facebook postings, but the security and human dignity of many people all over the world depends on the
ability to limit who knows about their political preferences, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and
more.
Backlines – Journalism Advantage
Backlines
Surveillance = key to chilling journalism
Surveillance is the vital internal link to chilling. It significantly hampers aggressive
journalism.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
More broadly, however, the debates in Congress and among relevant members of the Executive Branch have
failed to account for a variety of
costs of large-scale surveillance programs, including not only the implications of surveillance for individuals’ privacy rights, both
inside and outside the US, but also the “chilling” or inhibiting effect surveillance can have on the exercise of
freedoms of expression and association. Indeed, early research indicates that the revelations in 2013 and continuing to date have begun to have a
chilling effect on private individuals’ electronic communications practices and activities.47 And, as this report documents,
surveillance can have a profound impact on the practice of journalism and law.
Surveillance => chills, no government accountability
Surveillance hampers the public’s ability to change the government by holding it
accountable.
HRW ‘14
(Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human
dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. This evidence is internally quoting Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier Fellow at
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. This evidence is also internally quoting the report “With Liberty to
Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy,”. That report is based on
extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including
the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. “US: Surveillance Harming Journalism, Law, Democracy” - July 28 http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/28/us-surveillance-harming-journalism-law-democracy)
Large-scale US
surveillance is seriously hampering US-based journalists and lawyers in their work, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union said in a joint report released today.
Surveillance is undermining media freedom and the right to counsel, and ultimately obstructing the American people’s ability
to hold their government to account
, the groups said. The 120-page report, “With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law,
and American Democracy,” is based on extensive interviews with dozens of journalists, lawyers, and senior US government officials. It documents how national security journalists and lawyers are adopting elaborate steps or
otherwise modifying their practices to keep communications, sources, and other confidential information secure in light of revelations of unprecedented US government surveillance of electronic communications and transactions.
The report finds that
human
government surveillance and secrecy are undermining press freedom, the public’s right to information, and the right to counsel, all
rights essential to a healthy democracy.
“The work of journalists and lawyers is central to our democracy,” said report author Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier
Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. “When their work suffers, so do we." The report is drawn from interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law
enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. The US has long held itself out as a global leader on media freedom. However, journalists interviewed for the report are finding that
surveillance is harming their ability to report on matters of great public concern.
Surveillance has magnified existing
concerns among journalists and their sources over the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The crackdown includes new restrictions on contact between intelligence officials and the media, an increase in leak prosecutions, and
the Insider Threat Program, which requires federal officials to report one another for “suspicious” behavior that might betray an intention to leak information. Journalists interviewed for the report said that
surveillance intimidates sources, making them more hesitant to discuss even unclassified issues of public concern. The sources
fear they could lose their security clearances, be fired, or – in the worst case – come under criminal investigation.
“People are increasingly scared to talk about anything,” observed one Pulitzer Prize winner, including unclassified matters that are of legitimate public concern. Many journalists described adopting elaborate techniques in an
environment of tremendous uncertainty in an effort to protect evidence of their interaction with sources. The techniques ranged from using encryption and air-gapped computers (which stay completely isolated from unsecured
networks, including the Internet), to communicating with sources through disposable “burner” phones, to abandoning electronic communications altogether. Those cumbersome new techniques are slowing down reporters in their
pursuit of increasingly skittish sources, resulting in less information reaching the public.
This situation has a direct effect on the public’s ability to obtain important information
to serve as a check on government
Journalists
expressed concern that rather than being
essential checks on government and partners in
ensuring a healthy democratic debate, they may be viewed as suspect
about government activities, and on the ability of the media
,
, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found.
treated as
for doing their jobs. One prominent journalist summed up
what many seemed to be feeling: “I don’t want the government to force me to act like a spy. I’m not a spy; I’m a journalist.”
( ) bulk surveillance chills aggressive journalism.
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
For more than seven years, the National Security Administration (“NSA”) has
been collecting logs of the time and duration of most telephone
calls placed or received by individuals in the U nited S tates with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. See Administration White
Paper: Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Aug. 9, 2013), available at http://bit.ly/15ebL9k. Appellant argues that
this practice violates her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and sought injunctive relief in the district court to prevent
the NSA from collecting and analyzing her telephone data. Mem. Decision. at 1. The district court denied that request and dismissed Appellant’s action, holding that
under the Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), Appellant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the telephone numbers
that she dialed. Id. at 8. She appealed. Mass,
indiscriminate call tracking chills newsgathering and induces self
censorship . Amici write to emphasize the corrosive effect that this broad and indiscriminate collection of call data has on
the ability of the media to gather and report information concerning matters of public interest. Throughout America’s
history, confidential communications between journalists and sources have led to news stories of the
greatest public importance. Yet blanket, mass monitoring of calls undermines any promise of
confidentiality made by a reporter because it reveals the frequency, time, and duration of
communications between that reporter and his or her sources. And knowledge that communications are being monitored has
led both sources and reporters to self-censor, interfering with newsgathering and diminishing the quality of reporting. Since the public has become
aware of widespread call tracking by the government, many reporters at major news outlets have said that this program and
other NSA surveillance efforts have made sources less willing to talk with them, even about matters not related to
national security, resulting in a press that is less capable of keeping the executive branch and Congress
accountable and a public that is less informed on matters at the heart of democratic governance.
Bulk surveillance chills aggressive journalism
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
unrestricted power of search and seizure could also be an
instrument for stifling liberty of expression,” Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717, 729 (1961), and for undermining freedom of the press. While the
In short, “[t]he Bill of Rights was fashioned against the background of knowledge that
government may now proffer different justifications than “the search for the nonconformist that led British officials to ransack private homes” in 1765, Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 376
(1959) (Douglas, J., dissenting), mass call tracking in 2014 poses the same threat to newsgathering and reporting that general warrants did. Indeed, as set forth in more detail below, constant,
indiscriminate government surveillance of calls impacts confidential reporter-source relationships and chills the exercise of First
Amendment rights. THE INTEGRITY OF A CONFIDENTIAL REPORTER SOURCE RELATIONSHIP IS
CRITICAL TO PRODUCING GOOD JOURNALISM , AND MASS TELEPHONE CALL TRACKING
COMPROMISES THAT RELATIONSHIP TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE PUBLIC . By undermining the confidentiality of
crucial reporter-source relationships, the mass call tracking at issue is harming journalism of all types and preventing the press
from fulfilling its constitutionally-recognized role of gathering and disseminating the news for the benefit of the public. Wholesale government monitoring of calls
leaves phone users uncertain of the privacy of their communications and thus makes them unwilling to exchange potentially
sensitive information. And, as Justice Potter Stewart stated in his dissenting opinion in Branzburg v. Hayes, “[w]hen neither the reporter nor his source can rely on the shield
of confidentiality against unrestrained use of [government] power, valuable information will not be published and the public dialogue will inevitably be impoverished.” 408 U.S. 665, 732 (1972)
(Stewart, J., dissenting). Although Justice Stewart was referring to the chilling effect of government subpoenas on the reporter-source relationship, mass call tracking has the same effect.
Moreover,
unlike subpoenas, which provide notice to the media, decisions about what call logs to review are made in
secret , leaving both reporters and sources vulnerable to government surveillance at every turn, notwithstanding any promise of
confidentiality.
Confidentiality of Sources is key to aggressive journalism
( ) Confidentiality is key and the squo chills it on many issues.
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
There is a long history of journalists breaking significant stories by relying on information from confidential
sources. Confidentiality has long been essential to the news media’s ability to fulfill its constitutionally protected
duty to
gather and disseminate information to the public about such matters as political corruption ,
national security and foreign affairs. Many history-altering news stories would not have been reported without confidential
communications between journalists and sources. Anonymous sources were the foundation of the more than 150 articles Washington Post reporters Bob
Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote following the Watergate break-in. See David von Drehle, FBI’s No. 2 Was ‘Deep Throat’: Mark Felt Ends 30-Year Mystery of The
Post’s Watergate Source, Wash. Post (June 1, 2005), http://wapo.st/JLlYvZ. Bernstein has said, “Almost all of the articles I coauthored with Mr. Woodward on
Watergate could not have been reported or published without the assistance of our confidential sources and without the ability to grant them anonymity, including
the individual known as Deep Throat.” In Re Grand Jury Subpoenas to Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, No. CR-06- 90225-JSW (N.D. Cal. June 15, 2006,
affidavit in support of motion to quash subpoenas). Other major stories have similarly relied on confidential sources. The New York Times used these contacts to
break the story that – long before the scope of the current surveillance came to light – the NSA had an illegal wiretapping program that monitored phone calls and
e-mail messages involving suspected terrorist operatives without the approval of federal courts. See James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers
Without Courts, N.Y. Times (Dec. 16, 2005), http://nyti.ms/neIMIB.2 The Times also used confidential sources to report on the harsh interrogations that terrorism
suspects in U.S. custody have faced. See, e.g., Scott Shane, David Johnston, James Risen, Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations, N.Y. Times (Oct. 4,
2007), http://nyti.ms/1dkyMgF. The Washington Post relied on confidential government sources, among others, to break the story of the Central Intelligence
Agency’s use of “black sites,” a network of secret prisons for terrorism suspects. See Dana Priest, CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons, Wash. Post (Nov. 2,
2005), http://wapo.st/Ud8UD. These are just a few examples of the important contributions to public knowledge that come from anonymous sources speaking to
journalists. The mass call tracking at issue here compromises the ability of the news media to cultivate these sources. Recent
developments
highlight the link between mass call tracking and a chill on reporter-source communications. The response to
the Justice Department’s recent seizure of records from 20 A ssociated P ress telephone lines demonstrates the
climate of fear that develops when government investigation tactics are brought to bear directly on the news media. See Mark Sherman, Gov’t
Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe, Associated Press (May 13, 2013), http://bit.ly/11zhUOg. These records, from phone lines used by more than 100
AP reporters and editors, contained metadata— i.e. the numbers, timing and duration of calls. See id. This is the same type of
information that the mass call-tracking program collects. After learning about the secret subpoenas, AP President and CEO
Gary Pruitt said in a speech at the National Press Club that the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to
reporters at his news outlet: “Some of our longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking to us, even on stories
that aren’t about national security. ” Jeff Zalesin, AP Chief Points to Chilling Effect After Justice Investigation, The Reporters Comm.
for Freedom of the Press (June 19, 2013), http://rcfp.org/x?CSPl. The
chilling effect, Pruitt said, is not limited to the AP: “Journalists at
other news organizations have personally told me it has intimidated sources from speaking to them.” Id.
He continued, “In some cases, government employees that we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak
to us by phone and some are reluctant to meet in person.” See Lindy Royce- Bartlett, Leak Probe Has Chilled Sources, AP Exec Says,
CNN (June 19, 2013), http://bit.ly/11NGbOH. Last year, the public also learned that the FBI identified Fox News journalist James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in a
search warrant application so that it could obtain his e-mails relating to the criminal investigation of a source. See Application for Search Warrant for E-mail Account
[redacted]@gmail.com, No. 1:10-mj-00291-AK (D.D.C., Affidavit in support of application for search warrant, unsealed Nov. 7, 2011). Many commentators have
explored the connection between the Rosen case and an overall chill on the willingness of sources to come forward. See Editorial, Another Chilling Leak
Investigation, N.Y. Times (May 21, 2013), http://nyti.ms/14vjDl5 (“With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ‘co-conspirator’ in a criminal
investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to
gather news.”); see also Eugene Robinson, Obama Administration Mistakes Journalism for Espionage, Wash. Post (May 20, 2013), http://bit.ly/13RvZrc (“The Obama
administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their emails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from
gathering news. This heavyhanded business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold.”).
Mass Surveillance is a bigger deterrent than subpoenas
( ) Mass Surveillance outweighs fear from subpoenas
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
Controversial and
exceptional cases involving subpoenas and search warrants targeting journalists and media organizations cause
serious harm to newsgathering, but mass call tracking has an equal, and perhaps even greater, chilling effect , as
sources now have very good reason to believe that logs of their phone contacts with reporters will always
be on file with the government. This chilling effect is not surprising. “Awareness that the Government may be watching
chills associational and expressive freedoms.” United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. __, __ (2012) (slip op., at 3) (Sotomayor, J., concurring). Indeed, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
(“PCLOB”) concluded that the refusal of sources to speak with journalists is “entirely predictable and rational” in light of revelations regarding mass call tracking. PCLOB, Report on the
Telephone Records Program Conducted Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 164 (Jan. 23, 2014),
http://bit.ly/1fjSbeJ. PCLOB added that this
self-censorship would cause “greater hindrances to political
activism and a less robust press.” Id. Indeed, when such widespread surveillance is a standard practice, source intimidation
is inevitable, leading to a less robust media. Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson told CBS’s Face the Nation, “The reporters who work for the
Times in Washington have told me that many of their sources are petrified to even return calls at this
point.” Face the Nation Transcripts, CBS News (June 2, 2013), http://cbsn.ws/1aGmeyd; see also Dylan Byers, Reporters Say There’s a Chill in the Air, Politico (June 8, 2013),
Reporters on the national security beat say it’s not the fear of being
prosecuted by the DOJ that worries them — it’s the frightened silence of past trusted sources
that could undermine . . . investigative journalism [.] Some formerly forthcoming sources have grown reluctant to return phone calls,
http://politi.co/11znRrJ (“
even on unclassified matters, and, when they do talk, prefer in-person conversations that leave no phone logs, no emails, and no records of entering and leaving buildings[.]”).
Chilling impact
Such chilling discourages suicide, abuse, and addiction prevention.
EPIC ‘14
The Electronic Privacy Information Center or “EPIC” - is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C… EPIC routinely
participates as amicus curiae before federal and state courts in cases concerning the protection of privacy. Members of the EPIC
Advisory Board are expert in issues of domestic surveillance. The EPIC amicus brief is joined by 33 technical experts and legal
scholars – these include several Law Professors, Distinguished Scientists, Computer Science experts, Professors with
specializations in Information Law. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER (EPIC) AND THIRTY-THREE TECHNICAL EXPERTS AND
LEGAL SCHOLARS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT” – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief was prepared by Attorney Marc Rotenberg,
Counsel of Record. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to EPIC and its technical experts.
This pdf can be obtained at: https://epic.org/amicus/fisa/215/smith/
The use
of certain phone numbers will necessarily reveal sensitive personal information: suicide
hotlines , sexual abuse hotlines , gambling or drug addiction hotlines , and domestic abuse hotlines.
Without the promise of privacy , many individuals would not be willing to seek the support that
they need. Similarly, calls to a physician’s office, a gun store, a psychiatrist, a pharmacy, a medical marijuana dispensary, a church, or an abortion clinic
would all reveal information about the caller’s private activities. Many charities and political groups also now accept donations via
text message, so a record of a message sent to one number could reveal the users political affiliation.
Chilling = violates 1st Amendment
Meta-Data independently violates the 1st Amendment – it chills speech and religious
freedom.
Medine ‘15
David Medine chairs of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is an
independent agency within the executive branch of the United States government, established by Congress in 2004 to advise
the President and other senior executive branch officials to ensure that concerns with respect to privacy and civil liberties are
appropriately considered in the development and implementation of all laws, regulations, and executive branch policies related
to terrorism. Mr. Medine served as a Senior Advisor with the National Economic Council at The White House, where he advised
both the President and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, coordinated Administration policies on such issues as
privacy, financial institutions, and expanding capital investment in under-served areas. Before working at the White House, Mr.
Medine was the Associate Director for Financial Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection for the Federal Trade Commission,
where he was responsible for debt collection enforcement. “Hard National Security Choices NSA’s Section 215 Telephony
Metadata Program Should and Can Be Shut Down” – Lawfare - Feb 13th - http://www.lawfareblog.com/2015/02/nsas-section215-telephony-metadata-program-should-and-can-be-shut-down/
In its Section 215 report, PCLOB
found that bulk collection of Americans’ phone call metadata was not effective in
identifying terrorist plots or terrorists, concluding there was “little evidence that the unique capabilities provided by
the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone records actually have yielded material counterterrorism results that could not have
been achieved without the NSA’s Section 215 program.” Balanced against this slim record of efficacy, the
government’s collection of information about countless private interactions between people not suspected of
any wrongdoing clearly risks chilling freedom of speech, association and religion , and as well as
risking future data abuse by government officials. The NRC chose not to address this policy debate and also
devoted little effort to considering alternatives to bulk collection that would be comparably effective and better protect privacy and civil liberties, acknowledging it
“did
not investigate the full range of alternatives that intelligence agencies could bring to bear.”
Government Accountability impact
Lack of accountable governance ensures the worst social injustice and militarized
violence.
Roberts ‘13
Paul Craig Roberts currently a columnist. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and
Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions and formerly served as an
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of
California, Berkeley and at Merton College, Oxford University. He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.“Humanity Is Drowning In Washington's Criminality” OpEdNews - 8/13/2013 - http://www.opednews.com/articles/Humanity-Is-Drowning-In-Wa-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-13081317.html
If an American citizen lies to a federal investigator, even if not under oath, the citizen can be arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Yet, these same federal personnel can lie to Congress and
to citizens with impunity.
Whatever the American political system is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with
accountable government. In Amerika no one is accountable but citizens, who are accountable not only to law but also to unaccountable charges for which no
evidence is required. Congress has the power to impeach any presidential appointee as well as the president. In the 1970s Congress was going to impeach President Richard Nixon simply
because he lied about when he learned of the Watergate burglary. To avoid impeachment, Nixon resigned. In the 1990s, the House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual
affair with a White House intern. The Senate failed to convict, no doubt as many had sexual affairs of their own and didn't want to be held accountable themselves. In the 1970s when I was on
the Senate staff, corporate lobbyists would send attractive women to seduce Senators so that the interest groups could blackmail the Senators to do their bidding. Don't be surprised if the NSA
has adopted this corporate practice. The improprieties of Nixon and Clinton were minor, indeed of little consequence, when compared to the crimes of George W. Bush and Obama, their vice
presidents, and the bulk of their presidential appointees. Yet, impeachment is "off the table," as Nancy Pelosi infamously declared. Why do Californian voters send a person to Congress who
refuses to protect them from an unaccountable executive branch? Who does Nancy Pelosi serve? Certainly not the people of California. Most certainly not the US Constitution. Pelosi is in total
What is the purpose of the
domestic surveillance of all Americans? This is surveillance out of all proportion to the alleged terrorist
threat. The US Constitution is being ignored and domestic law violated. Why? Does the US government have an undeclared agenda for which the "terrorist threat" is a cover? What is this
violation of her oath of office. Will Californians re-elect her yet again? Little wonder America is failing. The question demanding to be asked is:
agenda? Whose agenda is more important than the US Constitution and the accountability of government to law?
No citizen is secure unless
government is accountable to the Constitution and to law. It is an absurd idea that any American is more threatened
by terrorism than by unaccountable government that can execute them, torture them, and throw
them in prison for life without due process or any accountability whatsoever. Under Bush/Obama, the US has returned to the
unaccountable power of caesars, czars, and autocrats. In the famous play, "A Man For All Seasons," Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, asks: So, you would
have me to cut down the law in order to chase after devils? And what will we do, with the law cut down, when the devil turns on us? This is the most important legal question ever asked, and
it is seldom asked today, not in our law schools, not by our bar associations, and most certainly not by the Justice (sic) Department or US Attorneys. American conservatives regard civil liberties
as mere excuses for liberal judges to coddle criminals and terrorists. Never expect a conservative Republican, or more than two or three of them, to defend your civil liberty. Republicans simply
do not believe in civil liberty. Democrats cannot conceive that Obama -- the first black president in office, a member of an oppressed minority -- would not defend civil liberty. This combination
of disinterest and denial is why the US has become a police state. Civil liberty has few friends in government, the political parties, law schools, bar associations, or the federal judiciary.
Consequently, no citizen is secure. Recently, a housewife researched online for pressure cookers looking for the best deal. Her husband was searching for a backpack. The result was that a fully
armed SWAT team appeared at the door demanding to search the premises and to have questions answered. I am always amazed when someone says: "I haven't done anything wrong. I have
nothing to fear." If you have nothing to fear from the government, why did the Founding Fathers put the protections in the Constitution that Bush and Obama have stripped out? Unlike the
Founding Fathers who designed our government to protect the citizens, the American sheeple trust the government to their own demise. Glenn Greenwald recently explained how the mass of
data that is being accumulated on every American is being mined for any signs of non-terrorist-related criminal behavior. As such warrantless searches are illegal evidence in a criminal trial,
the authorities disguise the illegal way in which the evidence is obtained in order to secure conviction based on illegally obtained evidence. In other words, the use of the surveillance justified
by the "war on terror" has already spread into prosecutions of ordinary criminals where it has corrupted legal safeguards and the integrity, if any, of the criminal court system, prosecutors and
judges. This is just one of the many ways in which you have much to fear, whether you think you are doing anything wrong or not. You can be framed for crimes based on inferences drawn
from your Internet activity and jokes with friends on social media. Jurors made paranoid by the "terrorist threat" will convict you. We should be very suspicious of the motive behind the
universal spying on US citizens. The authorities are aware that the terrorist threat does not justify the unconstitutional and illegal spying. There have been hardly any real terrorist events in the
US, which is why the FBI has to find clueless people around whom to organize an FBI orchestrated plot in order to keep the "terrorist threat" alive in the public's mind. At last count, there have
been 150 "sting operations" in which the FBI recruits people, who are out of touch with reality, to engage in a well-paid FBI designed plot. Once the dupes agree, they are arrested as terrorists
and the plot revealed, always with the accompanying statement that the public was never in any danger as the FBI was in control. When 99 percent of all terrorism is organized by the FBI, why
do we need NSA spying on every communication of every American and on people in the rest of the world? Terrorism seldom comes from outside. The source almost always is the government
in power. The Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. The Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to decimate the communists and assume
unaccountable power in the name of "public safety." An alleged
terrorist threat is a way of using fear to block popular objection to the
exercise of arbitrary government power. In order to be "safe from terrorists," the US population, with few objections, has accepted the demise of their civil
liberties, such as habeas corpus, which reaches back centuries to Magna Carta as a constraint on government power. How, then, are they safe from their government? Americans today are in
the same position as the English prior to the Great Charter of 1215. Americans are no longer protected by law and the Constitution from government tyranny. The reason the Founding Fathers
wrote the Constitution was to make citizens safe from their government. If citizens allow the government to take away the Constitution, they might be safe from foreign terrorists, but they are
no longer safe from their government. Who do you think has more power over you, foreign terrorists or "your" government? Washington defines all resistance to its imperialism and tyranny
as "terrorism." Thus, Americans who defend the environment, who defend wildlife, who defend civil liberties and human rights, who protest Washington's wars and robbery of the people on
behalf of special interests, all become "domestic extremists," the term Homeland Security has substituted for "terrorist." Those who are out of step with Washington and the powerful private
In
the United States independent thought is on the verge of being criminalized as are constitutionally guaranteed
protests and the freedom of the press. The constitutional principle of freedom of speech is being redefined as treason, as aiding an undefined enemy, and as
interests that exploit us, other peoples, and the earth for their profits and power fall into the wrong side of Bush's black and white division of the world: "you are for us or against us."
seeking to overthrow the government by casting aspersions on its motives and revealing its secret misdeeds. The power-mad inhabitants of Washington have brought the US so close to
Gestapo Germany and Stalinist Russia that it is no longer funny. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to see the difference. The neoconservatives have declared that Americans are the "exceptional"
and "indispensable people." Yet, the civil liberties of Americans have declined the more "exceptional" and "indispensable" that Americans become. We are now so exceptional and
Neoconservatives
have given Washington a monopoly on right and endowed its military aggressions with a morality that supersedes
the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Washington, justified by its "exceptionalism," has the right to attack populations in countries with which Washington is not at war, such
indispensable that we no longer have any rights. And neither does the rest of the world. Neoconservatism has created a new dangerous American nationalism.
as Pakistan and Yemen. Washington is using the cover of its "exceptionalism" to murder people in many countries. Hitler tried to market the exceptionalism of the German people, but he
Washington is always morally right, whatever it does, and those who report its crimes
are traitors who, stripped of their coddling by civil liberties, are locked away and abused until they confess to their crimes against the state. Anyone who
tells the truth, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, are branded enemies of the state and are ruthlessly
lacked Washington's Madison Avenue skills.
persecuted. How does the "indispensable, exceptional nation" have a diplomatic policy? How can a neoconized State Department be based on anything except coercion? It can't. That is why
Washington produces nothing but war and threats of war. Wherever a person looks, whatever a person hears, it is Washington's threat -- "we are going to bomb you into the stone age" if you
don't do what we want and agree to what we require. We are going to impose "sanctions," Washington's euphemism for embargoes, and starve your women and children to death, permit no
medical supplies, ban you from the international payments system unless you relent and consent to being Washington's puppet, and ban you from posting your news broadcasts on the
Internet. This is the face that Washington presents to the world: the hard, mean face of a tyrant. Washington's power will survive a bit longer, because there are still politicians in Europe, the
Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the NGOs in Russia, who are paid off by the almighty dollar. In exchange for Washington's money, they
endorse Washington's immorality and murderous destruction of law and life. But the dollar is being destroyed by Quantitative Easing, and the domestic US economy is being destroyed by jobs
offshoring. Rome was powerful until the Germans ceased to believe it. Then the rotten edifice collapsed. Washington faces sooner or later the same fate. An inhumane,
illegal,
unconstitutional regime based on violence alone, devoid of all morality and all human compassion, is not acceptable to China, Russia, India, Iran, and Brazil,
or to readers of this column. The evil that is Washington cannot last forever. The criminals might destroy the world in nuclear war, but the
lawlessness and lack of humanity in Washington, which murders more people as I write, is no longer acceptable to the rest of the world,
not even to its European puppet states, despite the leaders being on Washington's payroll.
A-to “Must have perfect solvency”
( ) Requiring individually-tailored subpoenas is a game changer. If bulk collection goes
away, sources would only worry if they had reason to think they were already an
investigative target.
( ) Bulk surveillance key. Plan also creates greater transparency about the law – which
helps sources.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Journalists interviewed for this report described the difficulty of obtaining sources and covering sensitive topics in
an atmosphere of uncertainty about the range and effect of the government’s power over them. Both surveillance and leak
investigations loomed large in this context—especially to the extent that there may be a relationship between the two. More specifically, many journalists see the
government’s power as menacing because they know little about when various government agencies share among themselves information collected through
surveillance, and when they deploy that information in leak investigations.71 “[Government officials have been] very squishy about what they have and [what they]
will do with it,” observed James Asher, Washington Bureau Chief for McClatchy Co., the third largest newspaper group in the country.72 One Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporter for a newspaper noted that even
a decrease in leak prosecutions is unlikely to help, “ unless we [also] get
clear lines about what is collectable and usable.” 73 Others agreed. “I’m pretty worried that NSA information will make
its way into leak investigations,” said one investigative journalist for a major outlet.74 A reporter who covers national defense expressed concern about the
possibility of a “porous wall” between the NSA and the Department of Justice, the latter of which receives referrals connected to leak investigations.75 Jonathan
Landay wondered whether the government might analyze metadata records to identify his contacts.76 A national security reporter summarized the situation as
follows: “Do we trust [the intelligence] portion of the government’s knowledge to be walled off from leak investigations? That’s not a good place to be.”77 While
most journalists said that their difficulties began a few years ago, particularly with the increase in leak prosecutions, our
interviews confirmed that
for many journalists largescale surveillance by the US government contributes substantially to the new
challenges they encounter. The government’s large-scale collection of metadata and communications makes it
significantly more difficult for them to protect themselves and their sources, to confirm details for their stories, and
ultimately to inform the public.
( ) Our HRW ev proves we don’t need perfect solvency. Only our ev proves the
distinction between the new and old Freedom Act. It says we’re sufficient.
( ) We don’t need perfect solvency – freeing up even comparatively more sources can
break a meaningful story.
A-to Environmental Impact Defense - Biodiversity
( ) Biodiversity loss risks extinction.
Raj ‘12
(P. J. Sanjeeva Raj, former Head of Zoology Department, Madras Christian College, “Beware the Loss of Biodiversity,” The Hindu,
September 23, 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/beware-the-loss-of-biodiversity/article3927062.ece)
He regrets that if such indiscriminate annihilation of all biodiversity from the face of the earth happens for anthropogenic reasons, as has been seen now, it is sure
to force humanity into an emotional shock and trauma of loneliness and helplessness on this planet. He believes that the current wave of biodiversity loss is sure to
lead us into an age that may be appropriately called the “Eremozoic Era, the Age of Loneliness.” Loss
of biodiversity is a much greater
threat to human survival than even climate change. Both could act, synergistically too, to escalate human extinction faster.
Biodiversity is so indispensable for human survival that the United Nations General Assembly has designated the decade 2011- 2020 as
the ‘Biodiversity Decade’ with the chief objective of enabling humans to live peaceably or harmoniously with nature and its biodiversity. We should be happy that
during October 1-19, 2012, XI Conference of Parties (CoP-11), a global mega event on biodiversity, is taking place in Hyderabad, when delegates from 193 party
countries are expected to meet. They will review the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was originally introduced at the Earth Summit or the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is the nodal agency for
CoP-11. Today, India is one of the 17 mega-diverse (richest biodiversity) countries. Biodiversity
provides all basic needs for our healthy
survival — oxygen , food , medicines , fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc. Fast vanishing honeybees,
dragonflies, bats, frogs, house sparrows, filter (suspension)-feeder oysters and all keystone species are causing great economic loss as well as posing
an imminent threat to human peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity mission before us is to inventorise the existing biodiversity,
conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it.
( ) Loss of Biodiversity causes extinction to all life.
Mittermeier ‘11
(et al, Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist. He holds Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological
Anthropology and as conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations and
he is considered an expert on biological diversity. Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. From Chapter One of the book
Biodiversity Hotspots – F.E. Zachos and J.C. Habel (eds.), DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 –
available at: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots)
Global changes, from habitat loss and invasive species to anthropogenic¶ climate change, have initiated the sixth great
mass extinction event in Earth’s¶ history. As species become threatened and vanish, so too do the broader
ecosystems¶ and myriad benefits to human well-being that depend upon biodiversity . Bringing¶
an end
to global biodiversity loss requires that limited available resources be guided¶ to those regions that need it
most. The biodiversity hotspots do this based on the¶ conservation planning principles of irreplaceability
and vulnerability. Here, we¶ review the development of the hotspots over the past two decades and present an¶ analysis of their biodiversity,
updated to the current set of 35 regions. We then¶ discuss past and future efforts needed to conserve them, sustaining their
fundamental¶ role both as the home of a substantial fraction of global biodiversity and as the¶ ultimate source of
many ecosystem services upon which humanity depends.
A-to Environmental Impact Defense - Warming
Warming is real and anthropogenic
EDF ‘9
[Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group, “Global Warming Myths and Facts,” 1/13/2009,
http://mrgreenbiz.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/global-warming-myths-and-facts-2/]
There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming. The most respected
scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it
by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
which in 2005 the White House called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other National
Academies of Science saying "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is
vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global
greenhouse gas emissions." (Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005) The only debate in the
science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions.
Scientists have given a clear warning about global warming, and we have more than enough facts — about causes and fixes — to implement
solutions right now. MYTH Even if global warming is a problem, addressing it will hurt American industry and workers. FACT A well designed
trading program will harness American ingenuity to decrease heat-trapping pollution cost-effectively, jumpstarting a new carbon economy.
Claims that fighting global warming will cripple the economy and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs are unfounded. In fact, companies that are
already reducing their heat-trapping emissions have discovered that cutting pollution can save money. The cost of a comprehensive national
greenhouse gas reduction program will depend on the precise emissions targets, the timing for the reductions and the means of
implementation. An independent MIT study found that a modest cap-and-trade system would cost less than $20 per household annually and
have no negative impact on employment. Experience has shown that properly designed emissions trading programs can reduce compliance
costs significantly compared with other regulatory approaches. For example, the U.S. acid rain program reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by
more than 30 percent from 1990 levels and cost industry a fraction of what the government originally estimated, according to EPA.
Furthermore, a mandatory cap on emissions could spur technological innovation that could create jobs and wealth. Letting global warming
continue until we are forced to address it on an emergency basis could disrupt and severely damage our economy. It is far wiser and more costeffective to act now. MYTH Water vapor is the most important, abundant greenhouse gas. So if we’re going to control a greenhouse gas, why
don’t we control it instead of carbon dioxide (CO2)? FACT Although water vapor traps more heat than CO2, because of the relationships among
CO2, water vapor and climate, to fight global warming nations must focus on controlling CO2. Atmospheric levels of CO2 are determined by
how much coal, natural gas and oil we burn and how many trees we cut down, as well as by natural processes like plant growth. Atmospheric
levels of water vapor, on the other hand, cannot be directly controlled by people; rather, they are determined by temperatures. The warmer
the atmosphere, the more water vapor it can hold. As a result, water vapor is part of an amplifying effect. Greenhouse gases like CO2 warm the
air, which in turn adds to the stock of water vapor, which in turn traps more heat and accelerates warming. Scientists know this because of
satellite measurements documenting a rise in water vapor concentrations as the globe has warmed. The
best way to lower
temperature and thus reduce water vapor levels is to reduce CO2 emissions. MYTH Global warming and extra CO2
will actually be beneficial — they reduce cold-related deaths and stimulate crop growth. FACT Any beneficial effects will be far
outweighed by damage and disruption. Even a warming in just the middle range of scientific projections would have
devastating impacts on many sectors of the economy. Rising seas would inundate coastal communities, contaminate water supplies with salt
and increase the risk of flooding by storm surge, affecting tens of millions of people globally. Moreover, extreme weather events, including heat
waves, droughts and floods, are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity, causing loss of lives and property and throwing agriculture
into turmoil. Even though higher levels of CO2 can act as a plant fertilizer under some conditions, scientists now
think that the
"CO2 fertilization" effect on crops has been overstated; in natural ecosystems, the fertilization effect can diminish after a
few years as plants acclimate. Furthermore, increased CO2 may benefit undesirable, weedy species more than desirable species. Higher levels
of CO2 have already caused ocean acidification, and scientists are warning of potentially devastating effects on marine life and fisheries.
Moreover, higher levels of regional ozone (smog), a result of warmer temperatures, could worsen respiratory illnesses. Less developed
countries and natural ecosystems may not have the capacity to adapt. The notion that there will be regional “winners” and “losers” in global
warming is based on a world-view from the 1950’s. We live in a global community. Never mind the moral implications — when an
environmental catastrophe creates millions of refugees half-way around the world, Americans are affected. MYTH Global warming is just part of
a natural cycle. The Arctic has warmed up in the past. FACT The
global warming we are experiencing is not natural.
People are causing it. People are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels (like oil, coal and natural gas) and
cutting down forests. Scientists
have shown that these activities are pumping far more CO2 into the
atmosphere than was ever released in hundreds of thousands of years. This buildup of CO2 is the
biggest cause of global warming . Since 1895, scientists have known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the
earth. As the warming has intensified over the past three decades, scientific scrutiny has increased along with it. Scientists have considered and
ruled out other, natural explanations such as sunlight, volcanic eruptions and cosmic rays. (IPCC 2001) Though natural amounts of CO2 have
varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today's CO2 levels are around 380 ppm. That's 25% more than the highest natural levels over
the past 650,000 years. Increased CO2 levels have contributed to periods of higher average temperatures throughout that long record. (Boden,
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center) As for previous Arctic warming, it is true that there were stretches of warm periods over the Arctic
earlier in the 20th century. The limited records available for that time period indicate that the warmth did not affect as many areas or persist
from year to year as much as the current warmth. But that episode, however warm it was, is not relevant to the issue at hand. Why? For one, a
brief regional trend does not discount a longer global phenomenon. We know that the planet has been warming over the past several decades
and Arctic ice has been melting persistently. And unlike the earlier periods of Arctic warmth, there is no expectation that the current upward
trend in Arctic temperatures will reverse; the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases will prevent that from happening. MYTH We can adapt
to climate change — civilization has survived droughts and temperature shifts before. FACT Although humans as a whole have survived the
vagaries of drought, stretches of warmth and cold and more, entire societies have collapsed from dramatic climatic shifts. The current warming
of our climate will bring major hardships and economic dislocations — untold human suffering, especially for our children and grandchildren.
We are already seeing significant costs from today's global warming which is caused by greenhouse gas pollution. Climate has changed in the
past and human societies have survived, but today six billion people depend on interconnected ecosystems and complex technological
infrastructure. What's more, unless
we limit the amount of heat-trapping gases we are putting into the
atmosphere, we will face a warming trend unseen since human civilization began 10,000 years ago. (IPCC
2001) The consequences of continued warming at current rates are likely to be dire. Many densely populated
areas, such as low-lying coastal regions, are highly vulnerable to climate shifts. A middle-of-the-range projection is that the homes of 13 to 88
million people around the world would be flooded by the sea each year in the 2080s. Poorer countries and small island nations will have the
hardest time adapting. (McLean et al. 2001) In what appears to be the first forced move resulting from climate change, 100 residents of Tegua
island in the Pacific Ocean were evacuated by the government because rising sea levels were flooding their island. Some 2,000 other islanders
plan a similar move to escape rising waters. In the United States, the village of Shishmaref in Alaska, which has been inhabited for 400 years, is
collapsing from melting permafrost. Relocation plans are in the works. <continues…> Scarcity of water and food could lead to major conflicts
with broad ripple effects throughout the globe. Even if people find a way to adapt, the wildlife and plants on which we depend may be unable
to adapt to rapid climate change. While the world itself will not end, the world as we know it may disappear. MYTH Recent cold winters and
cool summers don’t feel like global warming to me. FACT While different pockets of the country have experienced some cold winters here and
there, the overall trend is warmer winters. Measurements show that over the last century the Earth’s climate has warmed overall, in all
seasons, and in most regions. Climate skeptics mislead the public when they claim that the winter of 2003–2004 was the coldest ever in the
northeastern United States. That winter was only the 33rd coldest in the region since records began in 1896. Furthermore, a single year of cold
weather in one region of the globe is not an indication of a trend in the global climate, which refers to a long-term average over the entire
planet. MYTH Global warming can’t be happening because some glaciers and ice sheets are growing, not shrinking. FACT In most parts of the
world, the retreat of glaciers has been dramatic. The best available scientific data indicate that Greenland's massive ice sheet is shrinking.
Between 1961 and 1997, the world’s glaciers lost 890 cubic miles of ice. The consensus among scientists is that rising air temperatures are the
most important factor behind the retreat of glaciers on a global scale over long time periods. Some glaciers in western Norway, Iceland and
New Zealand have been expanding during the past few decades. That expansion is a result of regional increases in storm frequency and
snowfall rather than colder temperatures — not at all incompatible with a global warming trend. In Greenland, a NASA satellite that can
measure the ice mass over the whole continent has found that although there is variation from month to month, over the longer term, the ice
is disappearing. In fact, there are worrisome signs that melting is accelerating: glaciers are moving into the ocean twice as fast as a decade ago,
and, over time, more and more glaciers have started to accelerate. What is most alarming is the prediction, based on model calculations and
historical evidence, that an approximately 5.4 degree Fahrenheit increase in local Greenland temperatures will lead to irreversible meltdown
and a sea-level rise of over 20 feet. Since the Arctic is warming 2-3 times faster than the global average, this tipping point is not far away. The
only study that has shown increasing ice mass in Greenland only looked at the interior of the ice sheet, not at the edges where melting occurs.
This is actually in line with climate model predictions that global warming would lead to a short-term accumulation of ice in the cold interior
due to heavier snowfall. (Similarly, scientists have predicted that Antarctica overall will gain ice in the near future due to heavier snowfall.) The
scientists who published the study were careful to point out that their results should not be used to conclude that Greenland's ice mass as a
whole is growing. In addition, their data suggested that the accumulation of snow in the middle of the continent is likely to decrease over time
as global warming continues. MYTH Accurate weather predictions a few days in advance are hard to come by. Why on earth should we have
confidence in climate projections decades from now? FACT Climate prediction is fundamentally different from weather prediction, just as
climate is different from weather. It is often more difficult to make an accurate weather forecast than a climate prediction. The accuracy of
weather forecasting is critically dependent upon being able to exactly and comprehensively characterize the present state of the global
atmosphere. Climate prediction relies on other, longer ranging factors. For instance, we might not know if it will be below freezing on a specific
December day in New England, but we know from our understanding of the region's climate that the temperatures during the month will
generally be low. Similarly, climate tells us that Seattle and London tend to be rainy, Florida and southern California are usually warm, and the
Southwest is often dry and hot. Today’s climate models can now reproduce the observed global average climates over the past century and
beyond. Such findings have reinforced scientist’s confidence in the capacity of models to produce reliable projections of future climate. Current
climate assessments typically consider the results from a range of models and scenarios for future heat-trapping emissions in order to identify
the most likely range for future climatic change.
The impact is billions of deaths.
Cummins ‘10
(Ronnie, International Director – Organic Consumers Association and Will Allen, Advisor – Organic Consumers Association, “Climate
Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century”, 2-14, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/14-6)
The hour is late. Leading climate scientists such as James Hansen are literally shouting at the top of their lungs that the world needs to
reduce emissions by 20-40% as soon as possible, and 80-90% by the year 2050, if we are to avoid
climate chaos , crop
failures , endless wars , melting of the polar icecaps, and a disastrous rise in ocean levels. Either we radically
reduce CO2 and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e, which includes all GHGs, not just CO2) pollutants (currently at 390 parts per million and
rising 2 ppm per year) to 350 ppm, including agriculture-derived methane and nitrous oxide pollution, or else
survival for the present and
future generations is in jeopardy. As scientists warned at Copenhagen, business as usual and a corresponding 7-8.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in
global temperatures means that the carrying capacity of the Earth in 2100 will be reduced to one billion people. Under this hellish scenario,
billions will die of thirst, cold, heat, disease, war, and starvation. If the U.S. significantly reduces greenhouse gas
emissions, other countries will follow. One hopeful sign is the recent EPA announcement that it intends to regulate greenhouse gases
as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately we are going to have to put tremendous pressure on elected public officials to force the
EPA to crack down on GHG polluters (including industrial farms and food processors). Public pressure is especially critical since "just say no"
Congressmen-both Democrats and Republicans-along with agribusiness, real estate developers, the construction industry, and the fossil fuel
lobby appear determined to maintain "business as usual."
A-to “Can adapt to warming”
( ) Can’t adapt to warming – rates likely to be too fast to ensure resilience.
EPA ‘7
[United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Climate Change-health and environmental effects: ecosystems and biodiversity.”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/ecosystemsandbiodiversity.html -- 12/20]
Observations of ecosystem impacts are difficult to use in future projections because of the complexities involved in human/nature interactions
(e.g., land use change). Nevertheless, the
observed changes are compelling examples of how rising temperatures
can affect the natural world and raise questions of how vulnerable populations will adapt to direct and indirect effects associated
with climate change. The IPCC (IPCC, 2007) has noted, During the course of this century the resilience of many ecosystems
(their ability to adapt naturally) is likely to be exceeded by an unprecedented combination of change in
climate and in other global change drivers (especially land use change and overexploitation), if greenhouse gas emissions
and other changes continue at or above current rates. By 2100 ecosystems will be exposed to atmospheric
CO2 levels substantially higher than in the past 650,000 years, and global temperatures at least among the highest as those
experienced in the past 740,000 years. This will alter the structure, reduce biodiversity and perturb functioning of
most ecosystems, and compromise the services they currently provide.
A-to “Warming Not Real”
( ) Global Warming is happening – most recent and best evidence concludes that it is
human induced
Muller ‘12
[Richard, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, “The Conversion of a
Climate-Change Skeptic”, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all]
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very
existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive
research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that
global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans
are almost entirely the cause. My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average
temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase
of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results
from the human emission of greenhouse gases. These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change [IPCC], the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the
I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C.
consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more
sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our
lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We
carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from
data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from
poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data
adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome
recent warming could be natural. Our Berkeley Earth approach used
effects unduly biased our conclusions. The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known
explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a
few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such
oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused
the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We
tried fitting the shape to simple math functions
(exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best
match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in
polar ice.
( ) Consensus is on our side
EDF 9.
[ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND, 1-13 “GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS AND FACTS” -- http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011]
FACT: There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming. The most respected
scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it
by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House
called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other
National Academies of Science saying
"the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify
nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and longterm reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions." (Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005) The only
debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a
result of heat-trapping emissions. Scientists have given a clear warning about global warming, and we
have more than enough facts — about causes and fixes — to implement solutions right now.
A-to “Aff = Biased Authors”
( ) Our climate models are the most accurate- studies of studies prove
Science Daily ‘8
(4/6, "Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change", http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080402100001.htm)
The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject
of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of
Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on
reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the
next 100 years. Scientific opinion on climate change In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler
and Junsu Kim from the Department of
how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To
this end, they compare the output of the models against observations for present climate. The authors apply
this method to about 50 different national and international models that were developed over the past
two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea,
Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model
generation that was used for the very recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and
the best models are now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching
conventional atmospheric observations," said Reichler. "We can now place a much higher level of
confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past." The many hours of studying models
Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate
and comparing them with actual climate changes fulfills the increasing wish to know how much one can trust climate models and their
predictions. Given
the significance of climate change research in public policy, the study's results also
provide important response to critics of global warming. Earlier this year, working group one of the IPCC released its
fourth global warming report. The University of Utah study results directly relate to this highly publicized report by showing that the
models used for the IPCC paper have reached an unprecedented level of realism.
( ) Neg authors are worse- they’re just special interest hacks
Hansen ‘6
(Jim. Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s
Earth Institute. “The Threat to the Planet” The New York Review of Books. Pages 11-12.
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.astro.columbia.edu%2F~roban%2Flab_2006_fall%2Fhansen.
pdf&images=yes )
Why are the same scientists and political forces that succeeded in controlling the threat to the ozone layer now failing miserably to deal with
the global warming crisis? Though we depend on fossil fuels far more than we ever did on CFCs, there is plenty of blame to go around. Scientists
present the facts about climate change clinically, failing to stress that business-as- usual will transform the planet. The
press and
television, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus concerning global warming, give equal time to
fringe "contrarians" supported by the fossil fuel industry. Special interest groups mount effective
disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about the reality of global warming. The government
appears to be strongly influenced by special interests, or otherwise confused and distracted, and it has
failed to provide leadership. The public is understandably confused or uninterested. I used to spread the blame uniformly until, when
I was about to appear on public television, the producer informed me that the program "must" also include a "contrarian" who would take
issue with claims of global warming. Presenting such a view, he told me, was a common practice in commercial television as well as radio and
newspapers.
Supporters of public TV or advertisers, with their own special interests, require "balance" as a
price for their continued financial support. Gore's book reveals that while more than half of the recent
newspaper articles on climate change have given equal weight to such contrarian views, virtually none
of the scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals have questioned the consensus that emissions from
human activities cause global warming. As a result, even when the scientific evidence is clear, technical
nit-picking by contrarians leaves the public with the false impression that there is still great scientific
uncertainty about the reality and causes of climate change.
A-to “Leak Prosecutions = declining/unlikely”
( ) Leak prosecutions increasing now.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The increase in
US government surveillance has come at the same time as an increase in criminal investigations and
prosecutions of leaks , as well as the establishment of new government programs to prevent leaks of
information or otherwise restrict government officials’ contact with the media.48 These
steps have raised further concerns
over public access to information, particularly as many journalists , advocates, and even some members of
Congress and the Executive Branch believe the government over-classifies information, prohibiting access to
much information that is not actually sensitive.49
A-to Alt cause of Leak Prosecution
Surveillance outweighs and drives leak prosecutions
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Yet, beyond the leak investigations and administrative efforts to prevent leaks, many journalists said that the
government’s increased capacity to engage in surveillance — and the knowledge that it is doing so on an unprecedented
scale—has
made their concerns about how to protect sources much more acute
and real. In
fact, some believed that
surveillance may be a direct cause of the spike in leak investigations. “It used to be that
leak investigations didn’t get far because it was too hard to uncover the source, but with digital tools it's
just much easier, and sources know that.” observed Bart Gellman.98 Peter Maass, a senior writer at The Intercept, concurred: “Leak
investigations are a lot easier because you leave a data trail calling, swiping in and out of buildings, [and] walking down a
street with cameras. It’s a lot easier for people to know where you’re going and how long you’re there.”99 Charlie Savage raised a similar point: “[E]lectronic trails
mak[e] it easier to figure out who’s talking to reporters. That
has made it realistic [to investigate leaks] in a way that it wasn’t
before.”100 Peter Finn, the National Security Editor at the Washington Post, expressed concern that “the government’s ability to find the source will only get
better.”
Surveillance is what makes leak prosecution scary to sources.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Journalists repeatedly told us that surveillance had made sources much more fearful of talking.
The Snowden revelations have “brought home a sense of the staggering power of the government,”
magnifying the fear created by the increasing number of leak investigations.105 Accordingly, sources are
“afraid of the entire weight of the federal government coming down on them. ”106 Jane
Mayer, an award-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, noted, “[t]he added layer of fear makes it so much harder. I can’t count the number of people afraid of
the legal implications [of speaking to me].”107 One journalist in Washington, DC, noted, “I think many sources
assume I’m spied on. [I’m] not sure
they’re right but I can’t do anything about their presumption.”108 As a result, she said, some remaining sources have started visiting her house to speak with her
because they are too fearful to come to her office.109 One national security reporter estimated that intelligence reporters have the most skittish sources, followed
by journalists covering the Department of Justice and terrorism, followed by those on a military and national security beat.110
A-to “journalists can use counter-measures”
( ) Alternative communication fails - surveillance chills sources first contacts.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Adding to the challenge of developing sources that are already skittish is the fact that surveillance makes it very
difficult for journalists to communicate with them securely. Calling or emailing can leave a trail between
the journalist and the source; and it can be difficult to get casual contacts to take more elaborate security measures to communicate. “[H]ow
do you even get going?” asked Bart Gellman, referring to the challenge of making first contact with a new
would-be source without leaving a trace. “By the time you're both ready to talk about more delicate
subjects, you’ve left such a trail that even if you start using burner phones or anonymous email accounts you’re already
linked. ”116 A national security reporter noted, “[Ideally,] you bump into people. [That’s] tough to arrange, though, without [creating a] record…. [You] find
yourself using phone and email to set up a chance to talk. If that’s completely forbidden, then we are really in trouble.”117 As a result, according to Peter Finn,
“both parties want to move faster toward a more direct relationship that requires less electronic contact.”118 Yet approaching
sources in person
from the outset can also be quite difficult. The time and effort required physically to locate specific
sources can be prohibitive. Moreover, some sources simply do not want reporters to know their identities, so
they “won’t necessarily want to meet face to face initially.”119 That can push journalists back toward more conventional—and traceable—methods
of making contact.120 This sort of situation can leave reporters feeling “increasingly frustrated.”121
( ) Alternate ways to interview sources is insufficient.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Even with rapidly evolving techniques for conducting research and contacting sources, journalists expressed
concern that widespread government surveillance constrains their ability to investigate and report on
matters of public concern, and ultimately undermines democratic processes by hindering open, informed
debate. One of the most common concerns journalists expressed to us was that their sources were
drying up.78 According to James Asher, “[Before] you’d start pulling the curtain back and more people would come forward. Many fewer people are coming
forward now.”79
A-to “Other checks protect journalism”
( ) Meta-data overwhelms other checks designed to protect journalistic sources.
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
Mass call tracking negates safeguards the government has pledged in response to threats to journalism.
As a consequence of the outcry over the AP and Fox News seizures, the D epartment o f J ustice revisited its rules
for issuing subpoenas and search warrants to the media. See generally Department of Justice, Report on Review of News Media Policies (July 12,
2013), http://1.usa.gov/12mkn9B. Among other things, the Justice Department now requires prosecutors to give the news media advance
notice of a subpoena, except in rare cases where notice poses a clear and substantial threat to the investigation, risks grave harm to national security, or
presents an imminent risk of death or bodily harm. Id. at 2. Such notice is given so that “members of the news media [have] the opportunity to engage with the
Department regarding the proposed use of investigative tools to obtain communications or business records[.]” Id. The report says the Justice Department also will
create a News Media Review Committee to provide oversight of media-related investigations, see id. at 4, and that journalists would not be considered suspects for
“ordinary newsgathering activities,” see id. at 3. In addition, the Obama administration has asked Congress to adopt a federal shield law, which would give
journalists a qualified privilege not to testify about information from confidential sources. See Jack Komperda, White House, lawmakers push for federal reporter
shield law in wake of AP phone records seizure, The Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press (May 15, 2013), http://rcfp.org/x?0lyA. President Obama also has
pledged to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which decides the constitutionality of many NSA programs. Transcript of President Obama’s Press
Conference (Aug. 9, 2013), http://1.usa.gov/13pyCLa. In addition to ordering the declassification of some of the Court’s opinions, President Obama has said he
would take steps to allow an adversary to argue before the Court, which now only hears from a government official. Id. Further, the Presidential Review Group
tasked with evaluating the call tracking program recognized that the “potential danger of leaks” must be balanced against the responsibility of the press to “ferret
out and expose information that government officials would prefer to keep secret when such secrecy is unwarranted.” Presidential Review Group on Intelligence
and Communications Technologies, Liberty and Security in a Changing World, 127 (Dec. 12, 2013), http://1.usa.gov/1cBct0k. By
taking these steps,
the government has indicated an interest in handling investigations impacting press freedom on a case-by-case
basis, with meaningful analysis based on the particular set of circumstances.
mass call tracking continues unabated.
This commitment is meaningless if rampant
A-to “Correlation, not causation”
Harm to journalism is not a correlation – direct causation has been established.
Sinha ‘14
(G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Program at the American
Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a specialization as a Scholar from
NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy University of Toronto. Sinha is being
interviewed for this article. “Mass U.S. Surveillance Targeting Journalists and Lawyers Seen as Threat to American Democracy” Democracy Now – July 29th - http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/29/mass_us_surveillance_targeting_journalists_and
AMY GOODMAN: That’s ABC’s Brian Ross. For lawyers, the threat of surveillance is stoking fears they will be unable to protect a client’s right to privacy. Some
defendants are afraid of speaking openly to their own counsel, undermining a lawyer’s ability to provide the best possible defense. Human Rights Watch and the
ACLU conclude this climate "undermines press freedom, the public’s right to information, and the right to counsel, all human rights essential [to] a healthy
democracy." Well, for more, we’re joined by Alex Sinha, author of the report, "With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism,
Law, and American Democracy." He’s the Aryeh Neier fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Still with us, longtime national security
reporter Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. Talk about what you found. ALEX SINHA: Sure. I think the
most remarkable thing we have here is
we finally have documentation of concrete harms that flow from large-scale surveillance. I mean,
we’ve been having this debate in the country over the last year about what surveillance means for the society and what we
should do about it, but we focus a lot on abstract harms to privacy. And while those are important, as well, I think it’s really
helpful to have something to point to, to say, "Look, this is what we’re losing. Journalists are losing sources , and
so less information reaches the public. Attorneys are losing the ability to be secure in their communications, and that undermines their ability
to represent their clients." AMY GOODMAN:
Give us examples. ALEX SINHA: So, I mean, I had many attorneys talk about how they feel obligated to
warn their clients that their communications are not actually confidential, that there’s a chance that somebody could pick up what they’re saying, and therefore
that in order to build their case strategy or in order to exchange basic facts about their case, they need to meet in person, they need to do it in a certain way that’s
secure. The
journalists reported similar things, that instead of using conventional methods of connecting to
sources—emails, phone calls, whatever—you have to contrive a way to bump into a person, you know, meet them
face to face, find a way to do that without leaving an electronic trail to set up the meeting in the first place, and which is really
slowing down the reporters.
A-to “Snowden disproves chilling”
Snowden doesn’t disprove chilling. Media can only get true believers – not the steady
stream that’s key to solve.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
Some journalists independently spoke directly to this point. One suggested
Manning and one by
that a pair of sizable leaks in recent years—one by Chelsea
Edward Snowden— may be obscuring the chilling effect
in part, supplying two specific streams of
classified information.406 Indeed, some of the journalists we spoke with indicated that levying hefty penalties against suspected sources weeds out
all
but the most committed sources , creating an environment more suitable for occasional, massive leaks of
highly sensitive information rather
than more numerous, smaller disclosures of less sensitive information.407 As Charlie Savage noted,
journalists having more consistent access to a wider range of government agencies may be better for “shed[ding]
light on democratic processes” than having a small number of concentrated leaks.408 The government might prefer
that situation as well.
Phone surveillance is key
Phones are key
Brown ‘14
Bruce Brown - Counsel of Record. BRIEF OF THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 17 MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT - The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
is an unincorporated association of reporters. The Reporters Committee has provided representation, guidance and research in
First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act litigation since 1970.Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United
States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to the
Reporters Committee – Sept 9th - https://www.eff.org/document/rcfp-smith-amicus-brief
Surveillance of telephone calls, in particular , impedes newsgathering because communications between
sources and journalists regularly involve, and often require, the use of a telephone. Indeed, as the Supreme Court
recently recognized, cell phones are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars
might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Riley v. California, 573 U.S. __, __ (2014) (slip op., at 9).
Confidential relationships between sources and journalists are critical for effective reporting and an
informed public , but constant call tracking requires journalists and sources to completely avoid one of the most (if
not the
most) commonly used communications channels in order to attempt to guarantee confidentiality. As a result,
government monitoring via mass call tracking limits journalists’ ability to gather information in the public
interest. The result is self-censorship by sources and journalists and harm to the public discourse.
Backlines – Global internet freedom
advantage
General threads
US push inevitable on global internet freedom – surveillance key
US will inevitably push for global internet freedom. Domestic surveillance will
complicate the success of that push.
Sinha ‘15
G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Program at the American
Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a specialization as a Scholar from
NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy University of Toronto. From the
article “Better Privacy Protections Key to US Foreign Policy Coherence” – Defense One – March 25th http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/03/better-privacy-protections-key-us-foreign-policy-coherence/108469/
For all its interest in promoting human rights around the world, you’d think the United States would be
more sensitive to the ways its own surveillance policies undermine those very rights. Over the last few years, U.S.
officials say they have spent more than $125 million to advance Internet freedom, which the State
Department describes as a “foreign policy priority.” The U.S. rightly links Internet freedom with the
freedoms of expression , peaceful assembly, and association , as well as with the work of human
rights defenders. It makes sense, therefore, that the U.S. also actively funds human rights defenders, and calls out
other governments for mistreating them. Yet surveillance conducted by the U.S.
government —some of it unconstitutional and contrary to international human rights law—compromises Internet freedom,
undermines the rights the government seeks to promote , and directly harms human rights
defenders.
Domestic surveillance hurts US on global internet freedom
Domestic surveillance hurts US credibility on global internet freedom.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The
questions raised by surveillance are complex. The government has an obligation to protect national security, and in some cases, it is legitimate for government to restrict
international human rights and constitutional law set limits on the state’s authority to engage in activities
certain rights to that end. At the same time,
like
surveillance, which have the potential to undermine so many other rights. The current, large-scale , often indiscriminate US approach to
surveillance carries enormous costs. It erodes
privacy and sets a terrible example for
countries
that are in the process of expanding surveillance capabilities. It also
damages US credibility in advocating internationally for internet freedom which the US has listed as
global digital
like India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and others
other
their
,
an important foreign policy objective since at least 2010. As this report documents, US surveillance programs are also doing damage to some of the
values the United States claims to hold most dear. These include freedoms of expression and association, press freedom , and the right to
counsel, which are all protected by both international human rights law and the US Constitution.
US = key to global internet norms
US key to shaping global internet norms – but surveillance hurts needed credibility.
Wadhwa ‘13
Tarun Wadhwa is a researcher with the Hybrid Reality Institute. Formerly, he was a Research Fellow at Singularity University
and a Senior Research Associate with the Think India Foundation. He is also the author of the book: Identified: Why They Are
Getting To Know Everything About Us – which is about the global rise of digital identification systems. He holds a BA in Political
Science from George Washington University and EPD11 from Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program in Policy, Law
and Ethics - “NSA Surveillance May Have Dealt Major Blow To Global Internet Freedom Efforts” - Forbes – 6-13-13 http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2013/06/13/with-nsa-surveillance-us-government-may-have-dealt-major-blow-toglobal-internet-freedom-efforts/
As the internet has grown in usage and importance in our daily lives, so too has the difficulty of keeping it
“free” from censorship and control. This struggle was important enough to 29-year-old former Booz Allen employee Edward
Snowden for him to give up his life, career, and freedom to leak a historic amount of classified information about the shocking size
and depth of the American surveillance state. The fallout is just beginning – and as of now, there are far more questions than
answers. One thing has become clear though: the
credibility of the idea that the internet can be a positive, freedom-
promoting global force is facing its largest challenge to date. And it comes directly from one of its most
outspoken supporters: the US government. Simply put, our government has failed in its role as the “caretaker”
of the internet. Although this was never an official designation, America controls much of the
infrastructure, and many of the most popular services online are provided by a handful of American companies. The world is starting to sober up to the fact
that much of what they’ve done online in the last decade is now cataloged in a top-secret facility somewhere in the United States. Reasonable minds
can disagree over the necessity of these programs and how to strike the proper balance between
security and privacy. These matters aside, what has been the most disturbing part of this entire scandal has to do with the lack of accountability and
oversight. Not only were the American people kept in the dark – they were lied to by intelligence officials, misled about possible constitutional violations, and
potentially undermined by the very courts that were supposed to protect their rights. The government has used peculiar interpretations of laws – that they are not
even willing to discuss – to defend an invasive collection of personal data beyond anything even the paranoid among us would have thought was possible. And while
President Obama “welcomes the debate” over an issue he has worked hard to keep secret, we are now starting to see the usual Washington tactics of political spin,
feverish scapegoating, and patriotic grandstanding in lieu of a real discussion. We should all be extremely concerned about the colossal surveillance infrastructure
that is being built in the name of our safety. In trying to reassure the public, our leaders have told us that these programs are not meant to target us, but instead,
foreigners who may pose a threat to our security. But this is merely a decision on how the data is being used today – we are getting into very dangerous territory by
hoping for the best intentions of whoever is in power in the future. American history holds many lessons for us here: circumstances can change, the perception of
who is a threat can vary with whoever is in office, and we cannot predict what our political situation will look like decades, or even years, from now. In
the
court of global public opinion, America may have tarnished its moral authority to question the
surveillance practices of other nations – whether it be Russia on monitoring journalists, or China on conducting cyber espionage.
Declarations by the State Department that were once statements of principle now ring hollow and
hypocritical to some. No nation can rival the American surveillance state, but they no longer need support to build their own massive systems of espionage
Diplomatic
pressures and legal barriers that had also once served as major deterrents will soon fade
away. The goal has been to promote internet freedom around the world, but we may have also potentially
created a blueprint for how authoritarian governments can store, track, and mine their citizens’
and oppression. The costs of surveillance and data storage technologies are plummeting — these will no longer be prohibitive factors.
digital lives.
A-to “Turn – US Credibility is Bad”
( ) Their ev assumes the status quo. Yes, bulk surveillance means the US might be bad
leader now – but, post plan, the US is re-commits to internet privacy.
( ) Outside of bulk surveillance, the US would – on balance – be a solid leader on
privacy issues.
Brown ‘14
(internally citing the internet freedom rankings of Freedom House. Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization
dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world - Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a staff editor for Reason.com. Her writing
has also appeared places such as Time, The Week, Newsweek, Fox News, and The Dish. Brown has an M.A. in strategic
communication from American University, – “Internet Freedom Under Global Attack; Report Finds Governments Around the
World Expanded Online Control, Surveillance Last Year” - Reason - Dec. 4, 2014 - http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/04/globalinternet-freedom-report-2014)
The United States scored pretty high on the Internet freedom scale. Freedom House considers a
score of zero to 30 to represent a "free" Internet, 31-60 "partly free", and 61-100 not free. Scores were
determined by considering a set of "21 questions and nearly 100 accompanying subpoints" surrounding things such as
obstacles to access (infrastructural barriers, government blocking of specific apps or technologies), limits on content
(filtering and blocking websites, censoring online news media), and violations of user rights (surveillance, legal restrictions on
online activity). America
received a score of 19, coming in just behind Australia (17), Germany (17), Canada (15), Estonia
just ahead of France (20), Italy (22), Japan (22), Hungary (24), the U.K. (24), and South Africa (26).
(8), and Iceland (6), and and
( ) Their arg falsely assumes the US secretly desires a closed internet. Our 1AC Kalathil
ev proves the US unequivocally favors open internet access.
( ) Brazil’s not a reliable leader on this issue.
Donahoe ‘15
(et al; Eileen Donahoe, director of global affairs at Human Rights Watch, represents the organization worldwide on human
rights foreign policy, especially with respect to Internet freedom, security and governance. Donahoe previously served as the
first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. She has been a scholar at the Freeman Spogli
Institute for International Studies and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. “Brazil as
the Global Guardian of Internet Freedom?” – HRW website - February 13, 2015 - http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/13/brazilglobal-guardian-internet-freedom)
Until fairly recently, ‘Internet governance’ was a term that made people’s eyes glaze over. It has now become one of the most dynamic and challenging topics on
the global political agenda. Digitization has escalated exponentially in the past several years, but social, legal and political institutions are struggling to keep pace
with the implications. Internet
governance will shape the future of global economics, security, communications, and human rights.
The question arises: who will lead in the protection of Internet freedom in the digital age? Introduction It would
be hard to overstate the extent to which Edward Snowden’s disclosures about US mass surveillance techniques in the post-9/11 period have shaken up geopolitical
dynamics on Internet freedom, security and governance over the past year. Even before Snowden, many governments had recognized the revolutionary,
disintermediating and disruptive capacities of the Internet, and the corresponding empowerment of their citizens. Unfortunately, though, some chose to respond to
the blossoming of free expression on the Internet by clamping down on social media, monitoring online activists, and imposing new restrictions on digital
communications. Others chose to place themselves at the forefront of international reform, creating new momentum for a more informed global discussion on the
right to privacy in the digital era. This
article will examine Brazil’s role in the increasingly complex realm of Internet governance. During the past
year, Brazil has taken several significant leadership steps toward ensuring protection for human rights in the
digital age. These moves have shaken up previous geopolitical alignments and challenged governments around the world to take a stand to ensure protection
The question remains whether Brazil can be counted on as a
champion for digital freedom , security and privacy in the 21st century.
of human rights in the digital realm.
( ) US is key to global internet freedom. No other actor’s stepping up to the plate.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
The U.S. government should internationalize its Internet freedom efforts. The push for online freedom, which is
rooted in universal values, is
too heavily identified with the United States alone.
Promoting Internet freedom must not be
merely an element of American foreign policy, but rather should be an international effort supported by a wide range of actors
Not unique - Global internet freedom declining now
Mullins ‘13
Dexter Mullins is a multimedia producer at The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Prior to that, he worked as a line producer,
studio P.A., Desk Reporter and newsroom assistant at NBC Nightly News. Dexter has a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina
A&T in print journalism and a master’s in digital media from Columbia Journalism School. “Internet freedom in 'global decline,'
report finds” – Al Jazeera America – Oct 3rd - http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/3/report-showsdeclineininternetfreedomin35countries.html
Internet freedom in countries around the world has declined sharply in the past year despite a pushback from activists that
successfully blocked some governments’ repressive laws, according to a new report. The study, by advocacy group Freedom House,
looked at online trends in 60 countries, evaluating each nation them based on obstacles to access, limits to content and violations of user
rights. It found that in 35 of the countries monitored, governments had expanded their legal and technical surveillance
powers in regards to citizen's online activities. “ Broad surveillance , new laws controlling web content and growing
arrests of social media users
drove a worldwide decline in Internet freedom in the past year ,” the authors
of the report concluded. Of the countries included in the research, Iceland came top in terms of giving its citizens the highest level of freedom. China, Cuba and Iran
were listed as the most restrictive for a second consecutive year. The report noted that declines in online freedom in three democracies – Brazil, India and the
United States – were “especially troubling”. Revelations
by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have ignited a
global debate about the U.S. government's domestic surveillance activities, and the report says the
changes in U.S. online freedom are on a "significant" negative trajectory. Despite a 5-point decline in its score as
a result of its controversial domestic spying, the U.S. still made it to fourth in Freedom House’s list. A growing fear of
social media being used to organize national protests led many governments to pass laws restricting freedom of
expression online, the report notes. Since May 2012, 24 countries have adopted some form of legislation restricting
internet freedom. Bangladesh imposed a prison sentence of 14 years on a group of bloggers for
writing posts criticizing Islam. At least 10 people were arrested in Bahrain for "insulting the king on
Twitter," an 18-year-old in Morocco was sentenced to 18 months in prison for "attacking the nation's
sacred values" over a Facebook post that allegedly ridiculed the king, and a woman in India was
arrested for "liking" a friends Facebook status.
Extensions vs. their US Cred Turn – “Brazil leadership = not reliable”
Brazil leadership on internet is not reliable in the status quo.
Donahoe ‘15
(et al; Eileen Donahoe, director of global affairs at Human Rights Watch, represents the organization worldwide on human
rights foreign policy, especially with respect to Internet freedom, security and governance. Donahoe previously served as the
first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. She has been a scholar at the Freeman Spogli
Institute for International Studies and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. “Brazil as
the Global Guardian of Internet Freedom?” – HRW website - February 13, 2015 - http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/13/brazilglobal-guardian-internet-freedom)
Brazil’s civil society, as well as the multi-stakeholder entity CGI.br, deserve a great deal of credit for skillfully guiding the Brazilian
But the years ahead will require even greater
commitment and leadership , to ensure that Internet governance and regulation protect and
strengthen rights, rather than undermine them. Domestically, the Brazilian government will be
government toward such positive outcomes on Marco Civil and NETmundial.
urged to move forward on its own ground by implementing Marco Civil in a transparent and participatory
way. Simultaneously, in the international arena, now that it has embraced the more inclusive, transparent ‘multi-stakeholder’ approach, Brazil
will be expected to continue influencing the global debate on Internet rights and governance in a way that reinforces
strong human rights and democratic principles. An immediate challenge in this process will be to build from the 2013 Right to Privacy in the Digital Age resolution at
the United Nations, and support an initiative within the international community to establish a UN Special Rapporteur on privacy in the digital age, with regular
This will entail willingness to review its own
surveillance and intelligence services. In exercising this leadership, Brazil will be required to challenge its BRICS partners on their
reporting on government surveillance policies and practices.
performance on digital rights and security as well.
A-to “Alt Cause - Kill switch crushes US image on Internet Freedom”
( ) We control the vital internal link – constant mass surveillance is a much bigger deal
than a “kill switch” bill that may never pass or even be used.
( ) Their authors exaggerate – Kill-switch fears are overblown and even privacy
advocates are fine with it.
Keen ‘11
Andrew Keen, currently a columnist. The author holds a master's degree in political science from the University of California,
Berkeley. After Berkeley, Keen taught modern history and politics at Tufts University, Northeastern University and the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The Death Of The Internet Has Been Greatly Exaggerated” - Tech Crunch - Nov 14, 2011
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/death-internet-exaggerated/
The news, I’m afraid, is dire. The Internet is about to be destroyed by big media. It is about be killed by two
Congressional bills – The ProtectIP and The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – that all-powerful big media lobbyists are now
pushing through Congress. These bills will censor the Internet, turn it into China, censor it, destroy its innovation and value. “Big media is going
nuclear against the DMCA,” thus writes the author and serial entrepreneur Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, arguing that ProtectIP and COPA will “spell the end of the
Internet as we know it.” Techcrunch’s Devin Coldeway, describing
SOPA as “possibly unconstitutional” and as a “kill switch” , says it is a
“desperate power grab by a diminishing elite”. CNET columnist Molly Wood chimes in that SOPA is “brazen” and “nightmarish” and warns that it will result in a
“copyright police state”. The Obama administration is “busy in bed with Hollywood,” she warns, “cheerfully ceding your rights to the MPAA and RIAA.” Even the VCs
are worried. Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, argues that “these bills were written by the content industry without any input from the technology industry”.
The problem, Wilson explains, is that “the content industry is not creating new jobs right now” and thus, by establishing a destructive legal environment for startups, SOPA and ProtectIP will supposedly “kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline.” But
there’s a problem with all this bad
news. It’s wrong . Almost entirely wrong. No, the Internet isn’t about to be destroyed by either
ProtectIP or SOPA. The technology industry has had input into the political process. Neither
ProtectIP nor SOPA are “unconstitutional” or “nuclear” options designed to kill the DMCA. The administration isn’t in bed, either literally or
metaphorically, with big media and the US government isn’t the “villain” in this story. The technology industry – notably Google, who were invited to the
Congressional hearings on the legislation – has had significant input into the political process. Most importantly, this legislation – by fighting the corrosive impact of
counterfeiting and piracy on the American marketplace – is designed to make our domestic economy stronger, protect jobs both on and offline and encourage
innovation in our digital knowledge economy. So what, exactly, are ProtectIP and SOPA? Rather than being seen as a replacement for the U.S. Digital Millenium
Copyright Act (DMCA), the genesis of these pieces of legislation – ProtectIP being authored by the Senate and SOPA by the House – is the need for legal tools to
fight primarily online criminals who operate outside of the U.S. jurisdiction and U.S. companies who, often unwittingly, sustain them. Rogue sites legislation exists in
parallel to the DMCA and is intended to stop criminal enterprises from accessing US markets online in ways that they would never be able to do offline. Whatever
one might think of some of the details of these bills (no, they aren’t perfect, especially the sometimes sloppily written and occasionally misguided SOPA), they are
designed to address a serious problem of the online economy – foreign criminals and companies which use the Internet to sell or distribute illegal or counterfeit
goods to American consumers. These companies extend from those that sell advertising off the back of pirated movies to those selling fake drugs online. It is
undeniable that rogue websites – organizations which sell counterfeit goods or peddle stolen intellectual property – are a significant drain on the US economy.
Borrowing numbers from various government and private sector experts, it is estimated by one House committee that intellectual property theft alone costs the US
economy over $100 billion per year. And as The Guardian reported in September, in its investigation of the impact of fake drugs sales on the UK marketplace, there
are almost 13,000 fake pharmacy websites – “most… facilitated by Chinese or Russian criminal organizations”, according to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare
Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA). Not only, therefore, are SOPA and ProtectIP addressing a set of genuinely costly economic issues, but they’ve also – in the
best Madisonian tradition of representative democracy – assembled a broad coalition of supporters for these bills. No, neither SOPA nor ProtectIP reflect the
Administration being “in bed with Hollywood.” I talked earlier this week to Steven Tepp, the US Chamber of Commerce’s online piracy and anti-counterfeiting chief,
who reminded me that the bipartisan Senate bill had just won its 40th co-sponsor and that 350 organizations – including pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly and
Johnson & Johnson as well as Nike, Caterpillar and Major League Baseball – signed a September 22 letter to Congress in support of legislation against rogue sites.
But this
isn’t just a legislative initiative supported by corporations. 43 State Attorney Generals, the US Conference of
Mayors,
the AFL-CIO and The National Consumer League are also in favor. And so is US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
who early this month, in defense of legislation that seeks to make it impossible for American Internet users to access criminal foreign websites, wrote that there
“is no contradiction between intellectual property rights protection and enforcement and ensuring
freedom of expression on the Internet.”
( ) US Kill Switch has not been authorized, would never pass, and could only enforce
small shut-downs.
The Economist ‘11
(“Reaching for the kill switch” –Feb 10th - http://www.economist.com/node/18112043)
THE timing was dire. On January 25th American
senators reintroduced a bill granting the president emergency powers
to shut down parts of the nation's internet as a defence against cyber-attack. Three days later Egypt's embattled autocrats
took their country offline. The American bill's backers never expected an easy victory . But outrage
at the five-day shutdown of Egypt's once-flourishing internet (used by 20m people there) and its mobile-phone network (used by 55m) has
given opponents of the “kill switch” in America and elsewhere some powerful arguments . The people
in charge of the internet in places such as Germany, Austria and Australia were among those who felt obliged to confirm that their governments would not seek
similar powers. Proponents
of the American bill countered that they would never want a shutdown on
Egyptian lines. Laws that govern radio and television broadcasts already give the American authorities the right to shut bits of the internet, they argue. The
new bill merely clarifies and limits such powers. These would be needed, for example, if hackers took control of nuclear facilities, or were about to open the Hoover
dam. Critics call this scaremongering and fear that the White House will gain unnecessarily sweeping powers. The people who run the networks are themselves
best-placed to keep them safe, they argue. Either way, in
America the size and complexity of the networks, coupled with the fierce
protection of laws guaranteeing free speech, make blackout or manipulation on an Egyptian scale almost
unthinkable.
A remote “kill switch”, even if authorised, would be hugely complex and expensive to build and run, though some worry that the new
cybersecurity agencies proposed by lawmakers are just the kind of bodies that would have a go.
A-to “US can’t change global behavior’
**US norms on internet freedom can change global behavior. Not all nations are
holdouts and plan still moves the needle everywhere.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
The Bush
and Obama administrations have both sought to promote Internet freedom by shaping international
norms. Developing international norms is a long-term, global objective. Some countries that currently repress that Internet
access – like China , Iran and Burma – are unlikely to be moved by normative trends in the near
term; statements at the United Nations and policy declarations supporting Internet freedom are highly unlikely to change their current policies. But
promoting Internet freedom is not only a near-term effort, and current efforts may pay off in the long run.
Many countries have not yet fully developed their own Internet policies or thought through all of the implications of
Internet freedom and repression even in the short run – including states in Central Asia , the Middle
East and Africa . Shaping the behavior of those states should be an important goal of the United States and
likeminded partners.
US can change global norms – but diplomatic leverage is hampered by domestic
surveillance.
Pitter ‘14
Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel in Human Rights Watch's US Program, monitors, analyzes and writes on US
national security policies. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Laura was a journalist, human rights advocate, and attorney
who practiced in both the public and private sectors. She was a reporter during the war in Bosnia where she wrote for Time
Magazine and Reuters News Agency among other media outlets. Following the war she worked for the United Nations in both
Bosnia and post Sept. 11-Afghanistan as a protection and political affairs officer. After Afghanistan, Laura practiced law for eight
years, first as a public defender and later with a product liability law firm, both in New York. Laura holds a bachelor's degree
from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a master's in international affairs from Columbia University, and a law degree
from the University of San Francisco. “US: It's Been a Year Since Snowden, and Nothing's Really Changed” – Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. June 5, 2014 - http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/06/05/us-its-been-year-snowdenand-nothings-really-changed
Prior to these disclosures, the United States was considered a world leader in promoting Internet
freedom. It made it a signature part of American foreign policy and spent millions of dollars supporting new
tools to protect the digital
privacy of human rights activists globally. But the last year has deeply undermined global trust
in U.S. leadership in this area, not to mention its commitment to the rule of law and transparency in government. If this trust continues
to erode, it will have huge ramifications for U.S. business and foreign policy interests. Technology companies are
already losing billions of dollars and overseas customers who want their data stored away from the snooping eyes of the U.S. government. Studies
estimate a loss of between $35 billion and $180 billon to the U.S. cloud computer industry over the next three
U.S. diplomats are now at a distinct disadvantage when negotiating economic
and foreign policy agreements abroad. The leaks have dealt a blow to America's standing when
years. And
criticizing countries with repressive regimes, who threaten fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and
association -- rights that Washington purports to hold dear.
Hypocrisy does not sell.
A-to “US still funds global internet freedom”
Funding global internet freedom alone is insufficient – US must be seen as protecting
privacy norms.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
Internet freedom typically includes two dimensions. Freedom of the Internet denotes the freedoms of online expression,
assembly and association – the extension to cyberspace of rights that have been widely recognized to exist outside
it. Promoting freedom of the Internet merely expands to cyberspace a tradition of U.S. diplomatic and financial support for human rights abroad. Freedom
via the Internet, the notion that new communications technologies aid the establishment of democracy and
liberal society offline, is at once more alluring and hotly contested. Internet freedom in this sense has captured the imagination of many
policymakers and experts who see in these technologies a tool for individuals to help move their societies away from authoritarianism and toward democracy.
Though the links between democracy and Internet freedom are indirect and complex, nascent evidence
suggests that new
communications tools do matter in political change, and that both dissidents and dictators act on that
basis. Most attention has focused on technologies that allow dissidents to penetrate restrictive firewalls
and communicate securely. But funding technology comprises just one aspect of America’s
Internet freedom agenda. The United States also advocates international norms regarding freedom of
speech and online assembly and opposes attempts by autocratic governments to restrict legitimate
online activity.
Defending the Economy Module
Global Econ not resilient
( ) Global Econ not resilient – a shock could reverse growth.
UNECE ‘14
UNECE is the The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. “Global economy is improving, but remains vulnerable to
new and old headwinds that could derail growth”– UNECE Report – Published:20 January 2014 –
http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=34621
Global economic growth should increase over the next two years with continuing signs of improvement, according to the
United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects 2014 (WESP) report, launched today. The global economy is expected to grow at a pace of 3.0 per cent in
2014 and 3.3 per cent in 2015, compared with an estimated growth of 2.1 per cent for 2013. The world economy experienced subdued growth for a second year in
2013, but some improvements
in the last quarter have led to the UN’s more positive forecast. The euro area has finally
ended a protracted recession. Growth in the United States strengthened somewhat. A few large emerging economies, including China and India, managed to
backstop the deceleration they experienced in the past two years and veered upwards moderately. These factors point to increasing global growth. According to
WESP, inflation will remain tame worldwide, but the employment situation will continue to be challenging. While growth in international trade flows is expected to
pick up moderately to 4.7 per cent in 2014, the prices of most primary commodities are projected to be flat, although any unexpected supply-side shocks, including
geo-political tensions, could push some of these prices higher. The report warns that international capital flows to emerging economies are expected to become
more volatile. “Our
forecast is made in the context of many uncertainties and risks coming from possible policy
missteps as well as non-economic factors that could stymie growth,” said Shamshad Akhtar, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic
Development. Developed economies In the United States, fiscal tightening and a series of political gridlocks over budgetary issues weighed heavily on growth;
however, quantitative monetary easing boosted equity prices. The U.S. labour market and housing sector continued to recover. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in
the U.S. is expected to increase 2.5 per cent in 2014. Western Europe emerged from recession in 2013, but growth prospects remain weak, as fiscal austerity will
continue and the unemployment rates remain elevated. GDP in Western Europe is expected to grow by 1.5 per cent in 2014. Growth in Japan has been boosted by a
set of expansionary policy packages, but the effects of forthcoming structural reforms remain uncertain and an anticipated increase in Japan’s consumption tax rate
is expected to curb growth. GDP is forecast to grow by 1.5 per cent in 2014. Developing countries and economies in transition Growth prospects among large
developing countries and economies in transition are mixed. Growth in Brazil has been hampered by weak external demand, volatility in international capital flows
and tightening monetary policy, but growth is expected to rebound to 3 per cent in 2014. A slowdown in China has been stabilized and growth is expected to
maintain at a pace of about 7.5 per cent in the next few years. India experienced its lowest growth in two decades, along with large current account and
government budget deficits plus high inflation, but growth is forecast to improve to above 5 per cent in 2014. In the Russian Federation growth weakened further in
2013, as industrial output and investment faltered, and is expected to recover modestly to 2.9 per cent in 2014. Among developing regions, growth prospects in
Africa remain relatively robust. After an estimated growth of 4.0 per cent in 2013, GDP is projected to expand by 4.7 per cent in 2014. The report emphasized the
dependence of Africa’s growth on investment in infrastructure, trade and investment ties with emerging economies, and improvements in economic governance
and management. More detailed regional forecasts from WESP will be released in January 2014. Risks and uncertainties threaten global economy The report
stressed that the risks associated with a possible bumpy exit from the quantitative easing programmes by the U.S Federal Reserve (Fed) threaten the global
economy. As already seen somewhat during the summer of 2013, efforts by the Fed to pull out of quantitative easing programmes could lead to a surge in longterm interest rates in developed and developing countries. Tapering could also lead to a sell-off in global equity markets, a sharp decline of capital inflows to
emerging economies and a spike in the risk premium for external financing in emerging economies. These first-round shocks in international financial markets could
transmit quickly to developed and developing economies. The report warns that as the Fed is expected to taper and eventually unwind its quantitative easing
programmes, emerging economies will face more external shocks. While economic fundamentals and the policy space in many emerging economies are better than
when the Asian financial crisis erupted in 1997, emerging economies with large external imbalances remain particularly vulnerable. Other uncertainties and risks
include the remaining fragility in the banking system and the real economy in the euro area and the continued political wrangling in the U.S. on the debt ceiling and
the budget. Beyond the economic domain, geopolitical tensions in Western Asia and elsewhere remain serious risks. These and other risk
factors,
unfolding unexpectedly , could derail the world economy far beyond the report’s projections.
( ) Global econ not resilient – last financial crisis means reversals still possible.
Hawkins ‘14
(et al Adam Hawkins – and all of the authors of this paper – are from the International Finance and Development Division, the
Australian Treasury. “Is the global financial safety net at a tipping point to fragmentation?” – April 9th –
www.treasury.gov.au/~/media/.../01_Global_financial_safety_net.ashx)
As with any insurance, the ideal state of the world would be where the safety net is not needed at all. During the so
called Great Moderation years, a sanguine view of the international monetary system, expressed by Rose (2006) for example, was that
advanced economies with floating exchange rates and inflation targeting central banks had no need for a safety net. That
rosy view has
been laid to rest by the events of the past few years. The Global Financial Crisis and subsequent ongoing
volatility in financial markets and capital movements has triggered a reassessment of the size and use of the safety net, and
reignited debates about its role. This is very much a live debate, as continued volatility in financial markets
around the world suggests that the global economy remains vulnerable to shocks. There
have been arguments that the safety net should be expanded from its current insurance role to a more active role including intervening in
markets to smooth volatility. Against this backdrop, it is timely to reassess the role, size and composition of the global financial safety net.
A-to Econ Defense/Impact Boosters
Global economic decline causes nuclear war
Auslin ‘9
(Michael, Resident Scholar – American Enterprise Institute, and Desmond Lachman – Resident Fellow – American Enterprise Institute, “The
Global Economy Unravels”, Forbes, 3-6, http://www.aei.org/article/100187)
What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and
global chaos followed hard
on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make responsible,
economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally
worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems.
The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20
million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a
year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The
regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's
neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has
had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in
downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that
devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture
toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external
conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic
stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's
unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the
specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets.
Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer
Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while
nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not
bode well for the rest of Europe. A
prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise
tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation in the United States, unresolved
ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what
they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang .
( ) Economic decline risks global nuclear conflicts – studies confirm.
Ferguson ‘9
(Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, “The Axis of Upheaval,” Foreign Policy, February 16th,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/02/16/the_axis_of_upheaval)
The Bush years have of course revealed the perils of drawing facile parallels between the challenges of the present day and the great catastrophes of the 20th
century. Nevertheless, there is reason to fear that the
biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression could have
comparable consequences for the international system. For more than a decade, I pondered the question of why the
20th century was characterized by so much brutal upheaval. I pored over primary and secondary literature. I wrote more than 800 pages
on the subject. And ultimately I concluded, in The War of the World, that three factors made the location and timing of lethal organized violence
more or less predictable in the last century. The first factor was ethnic disintegration: Violence was worst in areas of mounting ethnic tension. The second factor
was economic volatility: The
greater the magnitude of economic shocks, the more likely conflict was. And the third factor
was empires in decline: When structures of imperial rule crumbled, battles for political power were most bloody. In at least one of the world’s regions—the greater
Middle East—two of these three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there for decades, and following the difficulties and
disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasi-imperial presence in the region. It likely still will.
Now the third variable, economic volatility, has returned with a vengeance. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s “Great Moderation”—the supposed
decline of economic volatility that he hailed in a 2004 lecture—has been obliterated by a financial chain reaction, beginning in the U.S. subprime mortgage market,
spreading through the banking system, reaching into the “shadow” system of credit based on securitization, and now triggering collapses in asset prices and
economic activity around the world. After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, the global economy will almost certainly sputter along in 2009, though
probably not as much as it did in the early 1930s, because governments worldwide are frantically trying to repress this new depression. But no matter how low
interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such
economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming
upheaval. In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalia’s endless anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russia’s new brand
of aggression, and Sam Quinones explores Mexico’s drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three case studies out of a possible
nine or more. In Gaza, Israel has engaged in a bloody effort to weaken Hamas. But whatever was achieved militarily must be set
against the damage Israel did to its international image by killing innocent civilians that Hamas fighters use as human shields. Perhaps more importantly, social and
economic conditions in Gaza, which were already bad enough, are now abysmal. This situation is hardly likely to strengthen the forces of moderation among
Palestinians. Worst of all, events
in Gaza have fanned the flames of Islamist radicalism throughout the region—not least in Egypt.
Iran, meanwhile, continues
to support both Hamas and its Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons program that Israelis legitimately
see as a threat to their very existence. No one can say for sure what will happen next within Tehran’s complex political system, but it is likely that the radical
faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically,
From Cairo to Riyadh, governments will now think twice before committing themselves to any new Middle East peace initiative.
however, Iran is in a hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even
a purely Israeli air offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But
with presidential elections in June, Ahmadinejad
has little incentive to be moderate. On Iran’s eastern border, in Afghanistan,
upheaval remains the disorder of the day. Fresh from the success of the “surge” in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of U.S. Central Command, is now
grappling with the much more difficult problem of pacifying Afghanistan. The task is
made especially difficult by the anarchy that
prevails in neighboring Pakistan. India, meanwhile, accuses some in Pakistan of having had a hand in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of last
November, spurring yet another South Asian war scare. Remember: The sabers they are rattling have nuclear tips. The democratic
governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere. Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break down amid
escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial role. Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse
of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe
for political stability. This club is anything but exclusive. Candidate members include Indonesia,
Thailand, and Turkey, where there are
already signs that the economic crisis is exacerbating domestic political conflicts. And let us not forget the plague of piracy in
Somalia, the renewed civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the continuing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, and the heart of darkness that is
Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. The axis of upheaval has many members. And it’s a fairly safe bet that the roster will grow even longer this year. The
problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis and paying little attention to
the wider world crisis. This is true even of the United States, which is now so preoccupied with its own economic problems that countering global upheaval looks
like an expensive luxury. With the U.S. rate of GDP growth set to contract between 2 and 3 percentage points this year, and with the official unemployment rate
likely to approach 10 percent, all attention in Washington will remain focused on a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Caution has been thrown to the wind by both
the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The projected deficit for 2009 is already soaring above the trillion-dollar mark, more than 8 percent of GDP. Few
commentators are asking what all this means for U.S. foreign policy. The answer is obvious: The resources available for policing the world are certain to be reduced
for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the United States or simply
begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies. Economic
volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in
decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval
starts now
( ) Decline magnifies the severity of other conflicts – WWII proves
Miller ‘8
G. Robert M. Miller, journalist for Digital Journal, 10-25, 2008, “Guns vs. Shovels – The Central Question Behind Our Next
Economy,” online: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/261595
But before we look at the modern ‘Guns versus Butter’ model, it first has to be noted that this phrase was originally
popularized in a time where securing economic prosperity was a primary concern in nearly every nation. More
importantly, when these nations did experience economic collapse, nearly all of them chose Guns. There is no question
that Nazi aggression spawned World War II, however, what was happening in Europe became a world war for a
purpose as central to the heart of the capitalist as was the instantaneous end of the holocaust to the heart of the compassionate; economic
prosperity. Simply said, big wars are big money; and to truly break from the embrace of the Great Depression, a big
commitment to the economy was necessary. And due to the leadership that guided the balance between ‘Guns
and Butter’ in the US through World War II, the economy was considerably improved; this was true for many western
nations.
( ) Economic decline cause nuclear war.
Bearden 2K
(Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BigMedicine/message/642)
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years.
As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing
nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that
desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have
increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving
North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a
desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the
mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies
have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are
then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that
the only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch
immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the
studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed .
The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least
is almost never discussed. Without effective defense,
for many decades.
Yes, Diversionary war
( ) Economic decline causes war – studies prove
Royal ‘10
(Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and
the Problem of Economic Crises, in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political
science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of
interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow.
First, on the systemic level. Pollins (20081 advances Modclski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms
in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody
transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises
could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 19SJ) that leads to uncertainty about power
balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fcaron. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek
to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with
parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and
connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000)
theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and
security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states arc likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an
optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if
the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult
to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined
to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either
on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between
economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Mom berg and Hess (2002) find a strong
correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic
downturn. They write. The linkage, between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and
mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict lends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour.
Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external
conflicts self-reinforce each other (Hlomhen? & Hess. 2(102. p. X9> Economic decline has also been linked with an
increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blombcrg. Hess. & Wee ra pan a, 2004). which has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting
government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic
decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a
'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and Blombcrg. Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence
showing that economic decline and use of force arc at least indirecti) correlated. Gelpi (1997). Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009)
suggest that Ihe tendency towards diversionary tactics arc greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic
leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence
showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked lo an
increase in the use of force. In summary, rcccni economic scholarship
positively correlates economic integration with
an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic
decline with external conflict al systemic, dyadic and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed
conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.
( ) Crisis makes diversionary theory true – states will start wars to head off domestic
discontent – and use force to settle old disputes with rivals.
Rothkopf ‘9
David Rothkopf, Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3-11, 2009, “Security and the Financial
Crisis,” Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee, CQ Congressional Testimony, lexis
--Destabilizing Bilateral or Regional Effects of the Crisis: The
weakening of states can produce instability that spills
across borders or can produce social pressures that increase migration and create associated tensions
along borders. The rise of opposition groups can create an opportunity for like-minded neighbors to
support their activities and thus cause rifts and potential conflicts to spread. Political and economic
weakness in nations can be seen by opportunistic neighbors (some wishing to produce distractions from their own
crises) as an invitation to intervene in their neighbors politics or even to step in and take control of neighboring territories or
to seek to use force to resolve in their favor long-simmering disputes. In the same vein, old animosities may be inflamed by the
crisis either because they produce tensions that play into the origins of old rivalries or because political leaders seek to play on those
rivalries to produce a distraction from their inability to manage the economic crisis. Need may enhance
tensions and produce conflicts over shared or disputed resources. A desire to preserve national
resources, jobs, or capital may produce reactive economic, border or other policies that can increase
tension with neighbors. This can include both trade and capital markets protectionism (in traditional and new forms see below),
closed or more tightly monitored borders, more disputes on cross-border issues and thus both an increase in tensions and a decreased
ability to effectively cooperate with neighbors on issues of common concern.
Defending the Democracy Module
US surveillance hampers US Democracy Promotion
US surveillance sets a precedent which nations feel obliged to follow. That specifically
hampers global internet freedom and boosts authoritarianism.
Pizzi ‘14
Internally quoting a report from Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that
works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. Michael W. Pizzi is
a reporter for Al Jazeera America the and former Fulbright Research Fellow for the Jordan Media Institute. This evidence also
internally quotes Dinah PoKempner, a legal expert with Human Rights Watch who is also a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and teaches at Columbia University.- “US surveillance imperils global free expression, rights group says” – Al Jazeera
America – Jan 21st - http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/21/us-setsdangerousprecedentwithnsasurveillancesayshrw.html
The U nited S tates has set a dangerous precedent with its pervasive surveillance apparatus and risks
undermining global Internet freedom , Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday in the group’s annual world report, pressing the U.S.
and other states that engage in mass surveillance and espionage to “commit to transparent and public review of their practices and laws.” Since former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden
leaked that the N ational S ecurity A gency (NSA) was collecting domestic
communications in bulk and monitoring the personal calls and emails of world leaders, including heads of countries allied with the U.S., rights
groups have called on the U.S. to be more transparent about its mass surveillance, and to extend privacy protections to foreign citizens. “The U.S. now leads in
ability for global data capture, but other nations and actors are likely to catch up,” Human Rights Watch said. “In the end, there will be no safe haven if privacy is
seen as a strictly domestic issue, subject to many carve-outs and lax or nonexistent oversight.” As
the birthplace of the Internet, and given
that most global Internet traffic runs through its territory or companies , the U.S. has a
unique responsibility to safeguard freedom of expression on the Internet, the report said. If the U.S. cannot
guarantee freedom of expression for the world's Internet users, it may inadvertently affect what Internet experts have termed
the "Balkanization" of the Internet — a system where a country tries to bring its entire online
infrastructure within its borders. Brazil, a victim of NSA data collection, has already called for the user
data of its citizens on sites such as Facebook to be store domestically. "An Internet that is violated by
national sovereignty and territories is not going to have the same promise in opening free expression as a
global Internet," Dinah PoKempner, a legal expert with HRW, told Al Jazeera. Of principle concern, should the global Internet splinter, is
that oppressive governments would have greater control over how they censor their own version of the Internet.
Surveillance crushes the US democracy model
HRW ‘14
(Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human
dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. This evidence is internally quoting Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier Fellow at
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. This evidence is also internally quoting the report “With Liberty to
Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy,”. That report is based on
extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including
the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. “US: Surveillance Harming Journalism, Law, Democracy” - July 28 http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/28/us-surveillance-harming-journalism-law-democracy)
Large-scale US surveillance is seriously hampering US-based journalists and lawyers in their work, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in
a joint report released today. Surveillance
is undermining media freedom and the right to counsel, and ultimately obstructing the American
people’s ability to hold their government to account , the groups said. The 120-page report, “With Liberty to Monitor
All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy,” is based on extensive interviews with dozens of journalists, lawyers,
and senior US government officials. It documents how national security journalists and lawyers are adopting elaborate steps or otherwise modifying their practices
to keep communications, sources, and other confidential information secure in light of revelations of unprecedented US government surveillance of electronic
communications and transactions. The report finds that government
surveillance and secrecy are undermining press freedom, the
rights essential to a healthy democracy. “The work of
journalists and lawyers is central to our democracy,” said report author Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union. “ When their work suffers, so do we. " The report is drawn from interviews with some 50 journalists
covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR. The US has
long held itself out as a global leader on media freedom . However, journalists interviewed for the
report are finding that surveillance is harming their ability to report on matters of great public
concern. Surveillance has magnified existing concerns among journalists and their sources over the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The crackdown
public’s right to information, and the right to counsel, all human
includes new restrictions on contact between intelligence officials and the media, an increase in leak prosecutions, and the Insider Threat Program, which requires
federal officials to report one another for “suspicious” behavior that might betray an intention to leak information. Journalists interviewed for the report said that
surveillance intimidates sources, making them more hesitant to discuss even unclassified issues of public concern. The
sources fear they could lose their security clearances, be fired, or – in the worst case – come under criminal
investigation. “People are increasingly scared to talk about anything,” observed one Pulitzer Prize winner, including unclassified matters that are of
legitimate public concern. Many journalists described adopting elaborate techniques in an environment of tremendous uncertainty in an effort to protect evidence
of their interaction with sources. The techniques ranged from using encryption and air-gapped computers (which stay completely isolated from unsecured
networks, including the Internet), to communicating with sources through disposable “burner” phones, to abandoning electronic communications altogether. Those
cumbersome new techniques are slowing down reporters in their pursuit of increasingly skittish sources, resulting in less information reaching the public. This
situation has a direct effect on the public’s ability to obtain important information about government activities, and on the ability of the
media
to serve as a check on government , Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found. Journalists expressed concern that, rather than
being treated as essential checks on government and partners in ensuring a healthy democratic debate, they may be viewed as suspect for doing their jobs. One
prominent journalist summed up what many seemed to be feeling: “I don’t want the government to force me to act like a spy. I’m not a spy; I’m a journalist.” The
Impact of Surveillance on the Practice of Law For lawyers, large-scale surveillance has created concerns about their ability to meet their professional responsibilities
to maintain confidentiality of information related to their clients. Failure to meet those responsibilities can result in discipline through professional organizations, or
even lawsuits. Lawyers also rely on the free exchange of information with their clients to build trust and develop legal strategy. Concerns over government
surveillance are making it harder for attorneys – especially, but not exclusively, defense attorneys – to build trust with their clients or protect their legal strategies.
Both problems corrode the ability of lawyers to represent their clients effectively. As with the journalists, lawyers increasingly feel pressure to adopt strategies to
avoid leaving a digital trail that could be monitored. Some use burner phones, others seek out technologies designed to provide security, and still others reported
traveling more for in-person meetings. Like journalists, some feel frustrated, and even offended, that they are in this situation. “I’ll be damned if I have to start
acting like a drug dealer in order to protect my client’s confidentiality,” said one. The result of the anxieties over confidentiality is the erosion of the right to counsel,
a pillar of procedural justice under human rights law and the US Constitution, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found. The US has an obligation to protect
national security, and under human rights standards, it may engage in surveillance to that end, but only to the extent that surveillance is lawful, necessary, and
proportionate, and the least intrusive means to protect against tangible threats to national security. Many existing surveillance programs are indiscriminate or
overbroad, and threaten freedom of expression, the right to counsel, and the public’s ability to hold its government to account. Programs allowing surveillance of
non-US persons offer even fewer protections. The US should reform its surveillance programs to ensure that they are targeted and legitimate, increase transparency
around national security and surveillance matters, and take steps for better protection of whistleblowers and the media, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU said.
“The US holds itself out as a model of freedom and democracy, but its own
surveillance programs are threatening the values it claims to represent, ” Sinha said. “The US
should genuinely confront the fact that its massive surveillance programs are damaging many critical ly important
rights.”
The US will inevitably push democracy – the model’s eroded by surveillance’s chilling
effect.
Sinha ‘14
(et al; Authors Include: G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights
Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a
specialization as a Scholar from NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Toronto. Additional authors include - Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, US Program deputy director at Human
Rights Watch, who participated in some of the research interviews; and Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington Director at Human
Rights Watch, who also participated in one of the research interviews and provided key contacts. Human Rights Watch is an
independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the
cause of human rights for all. From the Report: WITH LIBERTY TO MONITOR ALL How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming
Journalism, Law and American Democracy – This report is based on extensive interviews with some 50 journalists covering
intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and
NPR. JULY 2014 – available at: http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
United States has held itself out as a model of freedom, democracy , and open,
accountable government. Freedoms of expression and association, as well as rights to a fair trial, are protected by the Constitution, and US
officials speak with pride of the freedom of the media to report on matters of public concern and hold
government to account for its actions. Yet, as this report documents, today those freedoms are very much under
threat due to the government’s own policies concerning secrecy, leak prevention, and officials’ contact with the media, combined with large-scale
For much of its history, the
surveillance programs. If the US fails to address these concerns promptly and effectively, it could
do serious, long-term damage to the fabric of democracy in the country. Specifically, this
report documents the effects of large-scale electronic surveillance on the practice of journalism and law,
professions that enjoy special legal protections because they are integral to the safeguarding of rights and transparency in a
democracy. To document these effects, we interviewed 92 people, including 46 journalists and 42 lawyers, about their concerns and the ways in which
their behavior has changed in light of revelations of largescale surveillance. We also spoke to current and former senior government officials who have knowledge
of the surveillance programs to understand their perspective, seek additional information, and take their concerns into account in our analysis.
Global Internet Freedom = key to effective US Democracy Promotion
US will inevitably push democracy – only a successful internet freedom agenda makes
that push effective.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
The paper assumes that the
United States has an interest in supporting human rights and democracy abroad. There is
a continued healthy debate about this point and it is far from America’s only interest. But successive
administrations ( including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama ) have made promoting
democracy an explicit objective of U.S. policy. While the United States should be realistic and modest
about what it can achieve, to the extent that a freer online space facilitates a freer offline space, the
United States should support Internet freedom. At its heart, an American Internet freedom agenda should
actively aim to tilt the balance in favor of those who would use the Internet to advance tolerance and free
expression, and away from those who would use it for repression or violence.
Internet Freedom key to Global Democracy
On balance, Global internet freedom key to democratic consolidation.
Fontaine ‘11
(et al; Richard Fontaine graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from Tulane University. He also holds
a M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and he
attended Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been an adjunct professor in the
Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently the President of President of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age” – June, 2011 http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf)
Yet some case
studies do demonstrate the Internet’s profound potential: that access to an open Internet can help
countries slide away from authoritarianism and toward democracy. Events in Iran , Tunisia , Egypt
and elsewhere suggest that the Internet and related technologies (such as SMS) have indeed served as critical tools for
organizing protests, spreading information among dissident parties and transmitting images and information to the outside
world – some of which moved onto satellite television channels, further boosting their influence. 64 And while experts
continue to argue about the precise effect, they tend to agree that social media tools have made
revolutions in the Middle East easier and speedier than they would have otherwise been.65 Perhaps the most compelling
link between a free Internet and democratization is also the simplest: Both dissidents and dictatorships abroad seem to believe that the Internet can have a
transformative role, and they act on that basis. Dictatorships expend enormous time and resources to clamp down on online activity, and more than 40 countries
actively censor the Internet or engage in other forms of significant Internet repression.66 Meanwhile, millions of individuals use proxy servers and other
circumvention and anonymity tools to evade censorship and monitoring. During the 2009 presidential campaign in Iran, for example, both President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and his opponent, Mir-Hussein Mousavi, cited the Internet as a tool through which the liberal opposition could mobilize support.67 It is unlikely they
were both wrong. While
the effect of the Internet will depend on local conditions, there are indeed reasonable
grounds for believing that a free Internet can help empower individuals to press for more liberal political
systems.
Democracy Key to check extinction
Democracy Key to check extinction – better than all other alternatives
Revel ‘93
(Jean-Francois, Former Prof. Philosophy and Commentator, “Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse”,
p. 258-259)
Twentieth-century history is clear on two points: only capitalism engenders economic development;
only democracy can correct the worst political abuses and errors. This is why humanity faces a stark
choice: democratic capitalism or extinction. I would revise Michael Novak's term to read: democratic and liberal capitalism. For
capitalism can be illiberal—protectionist and closely associated to the state. In this case, it is not as much of an obstacle to development and individual liberty as is
socialism, but it hinders them and creates incentives for the corruption of political leaders. Liberal democratic capitalism is not the best system: it is the only one
[that works]. The parrots who keep telling us about its imperfections are right, it is imperfect. But the only prohibitive vice for a system, is not for it to be without
vices, but to be without qualities. And what
we know about all the tested alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism
is that they are without qualities. It deserves plenty of criticism, but these should not lead to the
temptation of returning to collectivism or even milder forms of state control. Of course democratic capitalism has its
share of sins; but as Robert Nozick put it, socialism does seem to be an excessively heavy punishment for them. And anyway it has been tried already.
Democracy Solves War
Democracy solves war – scholarly consensus is on our side
Russett ‘9
(Bruce - Professor of International Relations at Yale, European Journal of International Relations, Vol 15 No 1, pp.11-12)
there is now scholarly nearconsensus for the basic empirical claim that
rarely over the past century or two have democracies fought one another. Depending on how one defines key terms, fullscale war between pairs (dyads) of established democracies is somewhere between extremely rare and
completely absent. Militarized disputes ranging in severity from purely diplomatic threats to small-scale violence falling short of a
Though critics dispute about the reasons,
thousand war deaths are more common between democracies, but still much less so than between non-democratic dyads.7 Democracy and
autocracy are best conceptualized not as a dichotomy, but as a scale on which states may fall in the middle or at different various points toward
The major component of DP
theory is the dyadic proposition that the more democratic any two states are, the less frequent and less
severe will be any militarized disputes between them.
either end. This point applies both within a particular historical context and between such contexts.
Democracy solves war – international democratization causes global peace.
Lynn-Jones ‘98
(Sean, at the International Security Program at the Kennedy School of Government, “Why the United States Should Spread
Democracy,” March, http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/lys02/)
In addition to improving the lives of individual citizens in new democracies,
the spread of democracy will benefit the
international system by reducing the likelihood of war. Democracies do not wage war on other
democracies. This absence—or near absence, depending on the definitions of "war" and "democracy" used—has been called
"one of the strongest nontrivial and nontautological generalizations that can be made about
international relations." 51 One scholar argues that "the absence of war between democracies comes as
close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations." 52 If the number of democracies
in the international system continues to grow, the number of potential conflicts that might escalate to
war will diminish. Although wars between democracies and nondemocracies would persist in the short run, in the long run an
international system composed of democracies would be a peaceful world. At the very least, adding to the number
of democracies would gradually enlarge the democratic "zone of peace."
Democracy solves the environment
Democracy solves the environment – studies prove consistent effects.
Li & Reuveney ‘6
(Quan and Rafael, Associate Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University and Associate Professor of
International Political Economy and Sustainable Development at Indiana University, International Studies Quarterly, December,
Vol 50 No 4, Wiley InterScience Online)
Our analysis contributes to the democracy–environment literature by empirically testing the net effect
of democracy on environmental degradation. We use a wide array of empirical measures of environmental degradation. We also use a
continuous measure of the level of democracy/autocracy and two dichotomous measures of democracy and autocracy. The empirical scope of our
data analysis is generally wider than in previous studies. The empirical results we report are consistent across the different types
of environmental degradation. We find that a higher level of democracy leads to less CO2 emissions per capita, less
NOx emissions per capita, less organic pollution in water, lower deforestation rates, and less land
degradation. But such an effect appears discontinuous along the continuous scale of political regime types. We find that the difference between autocracy
and nonautocracy significantly influences CO2 emissions, NOx emissions, and organic pollution in water, while the difference between democracy and nondemocracy
significantly affects land degradation. But the effect of democracy on the deforestation rate and the forested land area appears to be monotonic along the democracy
scale. In
sum, democracy reduces the extent of human activities that directly degrade the environment,
and the nonmonotonic effects of democracy vary across the environmental indicators. We also find that the effect of democracy on environmental degradation
varies in size across degradation types. But in all cases, a rise in democracy produces a noticeable effect on
environmental degradation. This also applies to CO2 and organic water pollution when we take into account the long-run effect of democracy via
the lagged-dependent variable. The sizes of effects are considerable for the rate of deforestation, the size of forested land, NOx emissions per capita, and land
degradation. The immediate (annual) effects of a rise in democracy on organic pollution in water and CO2 emissions per capita appear to be small, but the cumulative
effects of this rise in democracy over time are much larger. Yet, these two effects are still smaller than the effects of democracy on NOx emissions, rate of
deforestation, forested land, and land degradation. Hence, democracy reduces some types of environmental degradation more than other types. Our results also
suggest that democratization could indirectly promote environmental degradation through its effect on national income. This effect is subtle and works through the
environmental Kuznets curve. Across the five aspects of environmental degradation, we find evidence supporting the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve
for CO2 emissions per capita, NOx emissions per capita, the rate of deforestation, and the level of land degradation. When income per capita is low, a rise in income
per capita causes more degradation; once passing a threshold, a rise in income per capita reduces degradation. Although existing evidence on the effect of democracy
on economic growth is inconclusive, to the extent that a rise in democracy promotes economic growth, the environmental Kuznets curves that we find suggest that
democracy could indirectly cause more environmental degradation for the above-mentioned indicators at the initial stage of development, and only later help to
reduce it.
Democracy increases environmental commitment.
Neumayer ‘2
Eric Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Journal of Peace
Research, March, pp.156-9
democracies exhibit
stronger international environmental commitment than non-democracies. This result appears to be
relatively robust with respect to our different measures of environmental commitment. For the great majority
Taken together, the results reported in the last section provide strong evidence in favour of our hypothesis that
of these proxies of environmental commitment, the democracy variables not only have the expected sign, but are also statistically significant. It is also
quite robust with respect to our different measures of democracy. No single measure of democracy provides systematically different estimates in terms of
sign of coefficients and their statistical significance from the other three.21 Equally satisfying is that the coefficients and their significance remain roughly
the same whether developed countries are included in the full sample or excluded in the restricted sample. In other words, the results are not simply
triggered by the presence of developed democratic countries. Almost throughout, we observe that the coefficients for the FREE-low, POLIT-low and GOVlow countries indicate less environmental commitment at stronger statistical significance than the coefficients for the FREE-mid, POLIT-mid and GOVmid
clearly undemocratic countries exhibit even less environmental commitment than
countries in the middle group, and we can be more certain that their commitment differs significantly
from clear democracies than we can be for the group in between. This was to be expected, of course. In conclusion,
this study provides a positive message: Democracies clearly show stronger environmental commitment
than non-democracies. All other things being equal, therefore, a more democratic world will also be a world with stronger environmental
countries. In other words,
commitment. This need not translate into better environmental outcomes, however, at least not immediately. Theory predicts a stronger link of democracy
with environmental commitment than with outcomes. Gleditsch & Sverdrup (1996: 8) suspect this much when they write that ‘the crucial point is that
regardless of what harm democracies may do to the environment, they are more likely to make
corrective action’. As democracy spreads around the world, so will environmental commitment . More
environmental commitment will help preventing environmental scarcities from leading to extreme outcomes like violent conflict. There is thus another
avenue through which democracy can foster peace.
Possible Impact Modules for later in the summer
Internet Freedom key to counter privilege & support ID movements
( ) Internet Freedom key to counter privilege & support identity movements
Color of Change ‘14
ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our goal is to empower our members - Black Americans
and our allies - to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political
and social change for everyone. Rashad Robinson serves as Executive Director of ColorOfChange, the nation’s largest online civil
rights organization. Under Rashad’s leadership, ColorOfChange has grown its membership to over one million people
nationwide. In 2015, Fast Company named ColorOfChange the 6th Most Innovative Company in the world, for creating a civil
rights group for the 21st century. “Tell CBC members: protect the open Internet” - Jul 01 2014 http://orig.colorofchange.org/nncbc/
Internet freedom is essential to the Internet's diversity, and has enabled it to serve Black people and
other historically marginalized communities in unique and powerful ways. Without it , the thousands of
blogs, online businesses, news sites, and advocacy organizations that cater to our communities would likely
suffer — and some would not have a chance.
Internet Freedom key to advancing non-mainstream ideas
Internet freedom key to open expression of ideas outside mainstream thought
Sangsuvan ‘14
(Kitsuron Sangsuvan is a S.J.D. Candidate at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indianapolis. He received
his first LL.M. Degree in Global Legal Studies and his second LL.M. Degree in Intellectual Property from John Marshall Law
School in Chicago. “Balancing Freedom of Speech on the Internet Under International Law” - North Carolina Journal of
International Law & Commercial Regulation - 39 N.C.J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 701 - Spring, 2014 – lexis; lawrev)
The Internet has become a key instrument for the exercise of the right to freedom of speech today.
n145 The Internet helps people interact and communicate with each other freely and globally. As one court explained, " It is no exaggeration to
conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of
mass speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen." n146 The Internet constitutes a unique and wholly
new medium of worldwide human communication. n147 Many people depend on it daily to [*722] communicate with others and to receive
information they need. n148 "The Internet provides an unprecedented volume of resources for information and
knowledge and opens up opportunities for new expression and participation."
Internal link to human rights credibility
Domestic surveillance shatters the US’s global human rights credibility. Privacy rights
are key.
Sinha ‘15
G. Alex Sinha, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Program at the American
Civil Liberties Union. Sinha holds a J.D. from New York University’s School of Law. This includes a specialization as a Scholar from
NYU’s Institute for International Law & Justice. The author also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy University of Toronto. From the
article “Better Privacy Protections Key to US Foreign Policy Coherence” – Defense One – March 25th http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/03/better-privacy-protections-key-us-foreign-policy-coherence/108469/
Despite its lofty rhetoric about promoting Internet freedom and associated human rights, the U.S. needs
a new general comment on privacy as much as anyone. It has resisted modernizing international privacy
protection standards in the same statements it uses to reaffirm its commitments to privacy rights. It simultaneously funds secure communications
technology and weakens the security of such technology. Its
surveillance programs have had chilling effects here at home on
the exact rights it aims to promote around the world . Now it’s being sued by major human rights defenders for
hindering their work, even as it trumpets its commitment to their cause. Privacy lies at the center of this tangle of
contradictions. Of course, we believe the U.S. should respect the human right to privacy because it’s
legally obligated to do so. But if that’s not a good enough reason, there is another: It’s the first step
toward a coherent foreign policy on human rights.
Backlines – India Advantage
General threads
The first card is great if you didn’t already read this card in the Global Internet Freedom Advantage
Great card that the New Freedom Act fails + the Aff solves modeling
New Freedom Act fails to restore US’s global credibility on Internet freedom. The
original version solves by closing SST loopholes.
Brinkerhoff ‘14
(Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before
joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of
their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom,
with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning
Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and
human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights
Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human
rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights
Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and
advance the cause of human rights for all. Noel Brinkerhoff is a Political reporter and writer covering state and national politics
for 15 years. “With Support of Obama Administration, House NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Includes Gaping Loopholes” – AllGov
– May 26th - http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/with-support-of-obama-administration-house-nsa-surveillance-reformbill-includes-gaping-loopholes-140526?news=853242)
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives claim they have addressed the problems of the National Security Agency’s (NSA)
notorious bulk collection of data, made so famous last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the
legislation adopted to end this controversial practice contains huge loopholes that could allow the
NSA to keep vacuuming up large amounts of Americans’ communications records, all with the blessing of the Obama
administration. Dubbed the
USA Freedom Act, the bill overwhelmingly approved by the House (303 to 121) was criticized
for not going far enough to keep data out of the hands of government. “This so-called
reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the U.S. and around the world,” Cynthia Wong,
senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. “Until Congress passes real
reform , U.S. credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.” Julian Sanchez, a
researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, warned that the changes could mean the continuation of bulk collection of phone records by another name.
“The
core problem is that this only ends ‘bulk’ collection in the sense the intelligence community uses
that term,” Sanchez told Wired. “As long as there’s some kind of target , they don’t call that bulk collection,
even if you’re still collecting millions of records…If they say ‘give us the record of everyone who visited
these thousand websites,’ that’s not bulk collection, because they have a list of targets.” HRW says the bill,
which now goes to the Senate for consideration, contains ambiguous definitions about what can and cannot be collected by the agency. For
an earlier version more clearly defined the scope of what the NSA could grab under Section 215 of the
Patriot Act, which has formed the legal basis for gathering the metadata of phone calls. “ Under an earlier version of the USA
instance,
Freedom Act, the government would have been required to base any demand for phone metadata or
other records on a “ specific selection term” that “uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Under
the House version, this definition was broadened to mean “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a
person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the government to limit the scope” of information sought,” according to Human Rights Watch. “ This
definition is too open-ended and ambiguous to prevent the sort of creative interpretation by intelligence agencies that has been used to
justify overbroad collection practices in the past,” the group claims. The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is similarly
disappointed in the final House bill. “Taken together,” the Institute wrote, “ the changes to this definition may still allow for massive
collection of millions of Americans’ private information based on very broad selection terms such as a
zip code, an area code , the physical address of a particular email provider or financial institution , or
the IP address of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites.”
India Models US surveillance practices
( ) India Models US surveillance practices
North ‘13
(not Kimye’s child, but Andrew North – who is a South Asia correspondent for BBC News. This evidence is internally quoting
Sunil Abraham, who is the Executive Director of the Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society.
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of
expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. Sunil
Abraham also founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and communications
solutions. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted
a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source
Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42
countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he managed ENRAP an electronic network of
International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International
Development Research Centre, Canada. From the article: “NSA leaks helping India become 'Big Brother' state?” – BBC News –
October 31st - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-24753696)
While the US and Britain fend off accusations of Big Brother-style spying, other
contractor Edward Snowden's
countries are learning lessons from fugitive ex-US intelligence
leaks and, critics say, developing the same kind of mass-surveillance. India is
one of those in the frame. Its authorities are bringing in new measures against foreign cyber-snooping, including a plan to move internet traffic inside its
borders and banning officials from using Gmail and other external email services. Simultaneously, campaigners say the
Indian government is
loosening controls on electronic snooping by its own spies. It is also stepping up efforts to build its own mass-surveillance system,
which critics have dubbed "India's PRISM" - a reference to one of the US spy programmes revealed by Mr Snowden. This is the downside of Mr Snowden's leaks,
says Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, an Indian advocacy group. "Governments like
India are now cherry-picking the worst practices, in a race for the bottom in terms of human rights".
Documents released by Mr Snowden to journalist Glenn Greenwald showed America's National Security Agency (NSA) was hoovering up billions of chunks of Indian
data, making the country its fifth most important target worldwide. 'Not actually snooping' But unlike other states that have discovered the US is siphoning off their
secrets, India has conspicuously avoided joining the chorus of criticism. That may be because it doesn't want to draw attention to its own activities. Its foreign
minister Salman Khurshid even appeared to excuse American monitoring, saying it "was not actually snooping". When the German chancellor Angela Merkel
erupted over reports the NSA had been bugging her mobile phone, the Indian prime minister's office was untroubled by the possibility he too had been targeted.
"There are no concerns", a spokesman for Manmohan Singh told the BBC, because "he does not use a mobile phone or Gmail". Many Indian officials do. But from
this December the government is planning to bar them from using their private email accounts for any official business - in direct response to evidence of US prying.
Instead, they will have to use government email. The latest reports of even deeper NSA penetration of Google is likely to further spur such moves. It won't be an
easy change to make though, judging from the BBC's own experiences dealing with Indian officials. Many prefer to use Gmail or Yahoo rather than their official
accounts because the government email system so often crashes. More ambitious still is a plan to bring all internal Indian internet traffic inside its borders.
Currently, an email sent from say Delhi to Calcutta is more likely to travel via the US or Europe, partly because of the way the internet is designed but also because
of a lack of Indian capacity. But at a summer meeting to assess Mr Snowden's leaks, one of India's security chiefs called for "100%" of emails and files sent between
Indians to stay in the country to limit snooping by "foreign elements". As other governments take similar measures, these changes may not just mean a tougher job
for spies but also a more fragmented internet under tighter state control. Critics say India was already on the road to creating a Big Brother state, long before
anyone had heard of Edward Snowden. Their biggest concern is a secret mass-surveillance project the government has reportedly been building for the past few
years. The Central Monitoring System (CMS) is supposed to give security agencies the ability to listen or record all communications nationwide and track individuals,
in real time - like some of the US programmes that have been revealed. If the few details that have emerged are correct, Indian cyber-spies would have even more
freedom, bypassing internet and telecom companies and tapping straight into the cables and servers carrying the traffic. Mirroring America's defence of its spying
programmes, the government says the monitoring system is to protect against terrorists and other national security threats. But a lack of concrete information has
only heightened fears about its intentions. A draft privacy bill which was supposed to allay some concerns has been watered down in the light of Mr Snowden's
revelations. According to Sunil Abraham, " India's
what we can do?"
intelligence agencies argued: Look at what the US can do. Why curtail
A-to “India’s Surveillance Policies aren’t reversible – won’t protect
privacy”
India’s Surveillance Policies are reversible – privacy protections can be built in.
Kaul ‘13
Mahima Kaul, heads the Cyber and Media Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and is also the editor of its
monthly Cyber Monitor. The Initiative provides a vibrant platform for all stakeholders to discuss internet-related issues in India.
It also runs India's biggest internet policy platform: Cyfy: The India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance, which
brings governments, business, academia and civil society participation from over 12 countries to New Delhi, every October. She
is Member, India Project Advisory Committee Member for Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the European
Union's project "Advancing Internet Freedoms" which looks at internet freedom in India, Pakistan and Malaysia. The author
holds an M.A. Communication Policy, University of Westminster, and a B. A. Political Science & History, McGill University.
“India’s Plan to Monitor Web Raises Concerns Over Privacy” - From the publication: Cyfy - May 21, 2013 - http://cyfy.org/indiasplan-to-monitor-web-raises-concerns-over-privacy/
There’s also another pressing question to consider when examining the CMS: who will oversee the body to ensure that
there are checks and balances? Intelligence agencies don’t come under parliamentary oversight as of yet in India. A bill entitled Intelligence Services
(Powers and Regulation) Bill, introduced in parliament in 2011 has been shelved by the Prime Minister, with the promise that a law would be formulated soon.
What seems to be a plausible way forward , given that India is building online surveillance
mechanisms, is a valid legal framework for bodies like the CMS. The challenge is to ensure the citizen’s right to
privacy as enshrined by the constitution is not trampled upon, and that accountability is built into these systems from
the start.
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”.)
Defending the Indian Economy module
A-to “Empirically false – Indian Econ is struggling now”
India Economy not struggling – their sources are too pessimistic and don’t assume new
methods for calculating growth.
Financial Express ‘15
Internally citing Aditya Puri, who is the Managing Director of HDFC Bank, India's largest private sector bank. Aditya studied at
Punjab University, Chandigarh, gaining a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the
Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He has worked in the banking sector for 40 years, in India and other countries, and
became CEO of Citibank, Malaysia in 1992. “Unnecessary negativism around Indian economy: Aditya Puri” - Financial Express June 14, 2015 - http://www.financialexpress.com/article/economy/unnecessary-negativism-around-indian-economy-adityapuri/84672/
There is “unnecessary negativism” surrounding the Indian economy and the government needs to be given
chance to carry out its work as recovery is underway, senior banker Aditya Puri has said. The government has also got a
firm hold over things that were affecting in the past such as inflation and fiscal deficit, he said. “I genuinely believe that
there is unnecessary negativism in terms of the growth and the prospects for the country,” Puri, HDFC Bank’s
managing director, told PTI in an interview. “I think the government has done a lot, we are on the right track. I think we
voted for a government and need to give them a chance,” he said. He also pointed to the government’s work on agricultural constituents like
functioning of the APMCs, irrigation and direct benefit transfers, which will help the supply side. On minimum support price, however, Puri said
it is unnecessary as it is not the solution to farmer issues. Showering fulsome praise on the government, he asserted that he is speaking in terms
the new way of computing growth, there
is an uptick in the economy, with GDP growth expected to rise up to 7.9 per cent, from 7.3 per cent.
of facts on the ground and not merely giving his views. Puri said that under
A-to “Indian Economy is resilient”
Indian Economy not resilient – structural vulnerabilities and government mis-steps.
Patnaik ‘13
Ila Patnaik is a nonresident senior associate in The Carnegie Endowment’s South Asia Program. She is also a professor at the
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in New Delhi. “How to Make India’s Economy More Resilient” – October
24 – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/24/how-to-make-india-seconomy-more-resilient
In some ways, the
rupee did worse than other emerging-market currencies because of the government’s
missteps. However, after Bernanke’s remarks on September 18, in which he reversed the U.S. position on the tapering of its monetary stimulus, the rupee
regained a lot of ground, as did other emerging-market currencies. So I don’t buy the line that the Reserve Bank of India made the right move in mounting an
interest rate defense; the capital controls and sudden sharp interest rate hikes that were implemented made things worse for the rupee in the short run.
Looking ahead, India’s economy is vulnerable because there continues to be significant volatility in global
markets. The government should not overreact to this volatility; if it does, it will make a bad situation even
worse. India’s policy on interest rates, for instance, should be driven by the domestic business cycle and economic
factors, not by an attempt to defend an artificial value for the rupee.
Indian Economy Impact - Backline
Indian economic decline spurs aggression and miscalculation. It increases risk of
nuclear war.
Camp ‘14
Donald Camp was most recently the senior adviser on South and Central Asia at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 2012.
He was senior director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council staff through August 2009. Prior to that, he
was principal deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asia. “Regional Dynamics and Strategic Concerns in South Asia
India’s Role” A Background Paper of the CSIS Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation January 2014 http://csis.org/files/publication/140124_Camp_India_Web.pdf
The worst-case scenario,
a nuclear exchange, is by most estimates very unlikely, but hardly impossible. Attacks by terrorists on Pakistani
military bases, so far unsuccessful, have raised Indian concern about a seizure of nuclear materials. Equally worrisome is Indian and Pakistani
misunderstanding of what constitutes their respective redlines for a nuclear response. If Pakistani
leaders, for instance, perceived that a conventional conflict was threatening the unity or existence of the nation,
they might resort to a nuclear warning shot. Conflict with Pakistan spells disaster for India’s hopes for the near future. Wars in the
past (against China in 1962 and Pakistan in 1965 and 1972) have stirred patriotic and nationalist fervor. A new war may not follow the
same path. The Indian economy, increasingly interdependent with Asia and the West, would suffer a sharp and immediate blow at a time of conflict. The
economic plight of the relatively poorer Muslim community combined with a Pakistan war could produce India’s
ethnic nightmare—a radicalization of elements of that community with some turning to domestic terrorism. This scenario is the most
likely to lead to regional instability and conflict . India has been a force for stability in the region but increased
violence and terrorism at home—with dramatically lowered economic growth —is a recipe for a more jingoistic and
aggressive government, supported by Hindu revivalists and an angry and aggressive civil society.
Defending the India Cyber Scenario
Note that these cards could also apply on the Indian Economy Scenario.
Hacks are Coming in India – will succeed (and hurt econ, too)
***Hacks on India’s meta-data honeypot will inevitably succeed. That’ll crush India’s
economy.
Dharmakumar ‘13
Rohin Dharmakumar is an Editor at Forbes India. Holds degrees from The Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, as well as
The R. V. College of Engineering in Bangalore, This evidence is internally quoting Sunil Abraham, who is the Executive Director
of the Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society. The Centre for Internet and Society is a nonprofit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with
disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. Sunil Abraham also founded Mahiti in 1998, a company
committed to creating high impact technology and communications solutions. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to
'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004
and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development
Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between
September 2007 and June 2008, he managed ENRAP an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development
projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada. From the article:
“Is CMS a compromise of national security?” – This article appeared in Forbes India Magazine of 12 July, 2013 http://forbesindia.com/printcontent/35543
Meanwhile, government
bodies like the R&AW, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Narcotics
Control Bureau and the Enforcement Directorate will have the right to look up your data. Starting next year, all mobile telephony operators
will also need to track and store the geographical location from which subscribers make or receive calls. “I see it as the rise of techno-determinism in our security
apparatus. Previously,
our philosophy was to avoid infringing on individual privacy, and monitor a small set of
individuals directly suspected of engaging in illegal activities. Now, thanks to the Utopianism being offered up by ‘Big Data’ infrastructure,
putting everybody under blanket surveillance seems like a better way to serve our security and law enforcement agendas more
effectively,” says Abraham. There is a real risk that CMS and the numerous other monitoring programmes
that will subsequently connect to it will end up harming more Indians than protecting them. The biggest risk is
that these programmes will turn into lucrative ‘honey pots’ for hackers, criminals and rival countries. Why bother
hacking individuals and companies if you can attack the CMS? We’ve seen private corporations and government agencies in the
US, Israel and the UK getting hacked. So let’s not have any illusions that India is going to fare much better. Another
consequence is that sooner or later innocent citizens will be wrongly accused of being criminals based on mistaken data patterns. While searching for matches in
any database with hundreds of millions of records, the risk of a ‘false positive’ increases disproportionately because there are exponentially more innocents than
there are guilty. And in the near-Dystopian construct of the CMS, it will take months or years for such errors to be rectified. As more Indians become aware of these
programmes, they will adopt encryption and masking tools to hide their digital selves. In the process, numerous ‘unintended consequences’ of failing to
differentiate law-abiding citizens from criminals will be created. What answer will a normal citizen offer to a law enforcement official who wants to know why he or
she has encrypted all communications and hosted a personal server in, say, Sweden? But arguably the
biggest threat of 24x7 surveillance is to
businesses. Security and trust are the foundations atop which most modern businesses are built. From your
purchase of a gadget on an ecommerce site to a large conglomerate’s secret bid in a government auction to discussions within a company on future business
strategies to patent applications—everything requires secrecy and security. All an unscrupulous competitor, whether it be a company
or a country, has to do to go one-up on you is to attack the CMS and other central databases. “The reason why the USA historically decided
not to impose blanket surveillance wasn’t because of human rights, but to protect its businesses and intellectual
property. Because while we may be able to live in a society without human rights, we cannot be in one without functional markets,”
says Abraham.
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”.)
Mass surveillance harms the India’s online economy. Bulk storage becomes a treasure
trove for rivals or cyber criminals
Raza ‘13
Raza is an reporter for Tech2. Tech2 is India’s widest reach technology media brand. As Network 18’s personal technology
media label Tech2 unifies information delivery and brand communications across multiple mediums. This evidence is internally
quoting Sunil Abraham, who is the Executive Director of the Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and
Society. The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom
of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. Sunil
Abraham also founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and communications
solutions. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted
a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source
Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42
countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he managed ENRAP an electronic network of
International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International
Development Research Centre, Canada. From the article: “India’s Central Monitoring System: Security can’t come at cost of
privacy” – via the Tech2 website - July 10th, 2013 , http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/indias-central-monitoring-systemsecurity-cant-come-at-cost-of-privacy-214436.html
Given the use of technology by criminals and terrorists, government surveillance per se, seems inevitable. Almost in every nation, certain chunk of population is
mass-scale tracking the data of all citizens – not just those
who are deemed persons of interest -enabled by the CMS has sparked a public furor. Sunil Abraham, executive
always under the scanner of intelligence agencies. However,
director, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, compared surveillance with salt in cooking. “ A
tiny amount is essential but any excess is
counterproductive,” he said. “Unlike target surveillance, blanket surveillance increases the probability of false positives. Wrong data analysis will put
more number of innocent civilians under suspicion as, by default, their number in the central server is more than those are actually criminals.”
Such
blanket surveillance techniques also pose a threat to online business. With all the data going
in one central pool, a competitor or a cyber criminal rival can easily tap into private and sensitive information
by hacking into the server. “As vulnerabilities will be introduced into Internet infrastructure in order to
enable surveillance, it will undermine the security of online transactions, ” said Abraham. He notes that
the project also can undermine the confidentiality of intellectual property especially pre-grant patents and trade secrets.
“Rights-holders will never be sure if their IPR is being stolen by some government in order to prop up
national players.”
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”.)
( ) Hacks on the CMS will succeed. India’s government lacks the cyber-expertise to
stop them.
Acharya ‘13
Bhairav Acharya is a constitutional lawyer and advises the Centre for Internet & Society, India, on legal issues. The Centre for
Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy,
accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. “COMMENTARY: The National
Cyber Security Policy: Not a Real Policy” – From the journal: ORF Cyber Monitor – Volume I; Issue 1 - August, 2013
http://www.orfonline.org/cms/sites/orfonline/html/cyber/cybsec1.html
But, putting aside the shortcomings of its piece-meal provisions, the NCSP also fails to address high-level conceptual policy concerns. As
information
repositories and governance services through information technology become increasingly integrated and centralised, the
security of the information that is stored or distributed decreases. Whether by intent or error, if these consolidated repositories of
information are compromised, the quantity of information susceptible to damage is greater leading to higher insecurity. Simply put, if power transmission is
centrally controlled instead of zone wise, a single attack could black out the entire country instead of only a part of it. Or if
personal data of citizens
is centrally stored, a single leak could compromise the privacy of millions of people instead of only
hundreds. Therefore, a credible policy must, before it advocates greater centralisation of information, examine the merits of diffused
information storage to protect national security. The NCSP utterly fails in this regard. Concerns short of national security,
such as the maintenance of law and order, are also in issue because crime is often planned and perpetrated using information technology. The prevention of
crime before it is committed and its prosecution afterwards is a key policy concern. While the specific context may vary depending on
the nature of the crime - the facts of terrorism are different from those of insurance fraud - the principles of constitutional and criminal law continue to apply.
However, the NCSP neither examines the present framework of cyber security-related offences nor suggests any changes in existing law. It merely calls for a
"dynamic legal framework and its periodic review to address the cyber security challenges" (sic). This is self-evident, there was no need for a new national policy to
make this discovery; and, ironically, it fails to conduct the very periodic review that it envisages. This is worrying because the NCSP presented DeitY with an
opportunity to review existing laws and learn from past mistakes. There are concerns that cyber security laws, especially relevant provisions of the IT Act and its
rules, betray a lack of understanding of India's constitutional scheme. This is exemplified by the insertion, in 2008, of section 66A into the IT Act that criminalises the
sending of annoying, offensive and inconvenient electronic messages without regard for the fact that free speech that is annoying is constitutionally protected. In
India, cyber security law and policy attempts to compensate for the state's inability to regulate the internet by overreaching into and encroaching upon
democratic freedoms. The Central Monitoring System (
CMS ) that is being assembled by the Centre is a case in point. Alarmed at its
inability to be privy to private communications, the Centre proposes to build systems to
intercept, in real time, all voice and data traffic in
India. Whereas liberal democracies around the world require such interceptions to be judicially sanctioned, warranted and supported by probable cause, India
does not even have statutory law to regulate such an enterprise. Given that, once completed, the CMS will represent the largest domestic
interception effort in the world, the failure of the NCSP to examine the effect of such an exercise on daily cyber security is
bewildering. This is made worse by the fact that the state does not possess the technological
competence to build such a system by itself and is currently tendering private companies for equipment. The state's
incompetence is best portrayed by the activities of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) that
was constituted under section 70B of the IT Act to respond to "cyber incidents". CERT-In has repeatedly engaged in extra-judicial censorship and has ham-handedly
responded to allegedly objectionable blogs or websites by blocking access to entire domains. Unfortunately, the NCSP, while reiterating the operations of CERT-In,
attempts no evaluation of its activities precluding the scope for any meaningful policy measures. The
NCSP's poor drafting, meaningless provisions,
deficiency of analysis and lack of stated measures renders it hollow. Its notification into force adds little to the public or intellectual debate about
cyber security and does nothing to further the trajectory of either national security or democratic freedoms in India. In fairness, this
problem afflicts many other national policies. There is a need to revisit the high intellectual and practical standards set by most national policies that were issued in
the years following Independence.
(Note to students: “CMS” – internally referenced – is India’s new surveillance system. “CMS” stands for
“Central Monitoring System”. “NCSP” – also internally referenced – stands for India’s “National Cyber
Security Policy”)
Internal Link to Indian Cyber-attacks
( ) Cyber-attacks in India are inevitable. Meta-data and mass surveillance increases
the risk by hurting counter-measures.
Sreevatsan‘14
Ajai Sreevatsan - Journalist for the Hindu and the McCormick National Security Fellow for USA TODAY. This evidence is
internally quoting Sunil Abraham, who is the Executive Director of the Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for
Internet and Society. The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues
relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and
openness. Sunil Abraham also founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and
communications solutions. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and
was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International
Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information
Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he managed ENRAP an
electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by
International Development Research Centre, Canada. From the article: “Targeting surveillance” – The Hindu – December 28th http://www.thehindu.com/sunday-anchor/targeting-surveillance/article6731202.ece
The similarities between Irhabi 007, later identified as Younis Tsouli, and India’s Mehdi Masoor Biswas are uncanny.
Neither participated in any terror attack. Their reputation stems from an alleged involvement as cyber propagandists for
proto-terror groups — Irhabi was distributing manuals and teaching online seminars on behalf of the emerging al-Qaeda faction in Iraq, while Mehdi is
alleged to be an IS sympathiser. Both in their early 20s with cover identities during the day, and separated by a decade in technological evolution. Such
expertise within terror groups is hardly surprising, says Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society. “Any
organisation engaged in a war for hearts and minds and oil fields will exploit contemporary technology to its fullest
potential,” he says. Irhabi currently serves a 16-year jail term, while Mehdi awaits his trial. What their cases highlight is that the phenomenon of
young, tech-savvy armchair radicals is nothing new. Research done at Israel’s Haifa University, which tracks the proliferation of terrorist
websites, shows that the number of such sites went up from fewer than 100 in the late-1990s to more than 4,800 in just a decade. There is also credible evidence
that an al-Qaeda website posted a sketched-out proposal for the 2004 Madrid bombings three months before the attack. Another macabre example is the crowdsourcing effort launched in 2005 by the Victorious Army Group to build its website. By the competition’s rules, the winner would get to fire a rocket at an American
base. As
Indian agencies gear up to respond to similar online threats in this part of the world, Mr. Abraham says India
should not repeat the mistakes made by the West over the previous decade. “ We should not get caught up
in big data surveillance, ” he says. “Surveillance is like salt. It could be counter-productive even if slightly in
excess. Ideally, surveillance must be targeted. Indiscriminate surveillance just increases the size of the
haystack, making it difficult to find the needles,” Mr. Abraham says.
A-to “hack couldn’t create havoc”
( ) Their arg makes no sense – Our ev Dilipraj ev doesn’t solely rely on infrastructure.
Private information from the CMS can be used to instigate communal divisions and
boost Indian instability.
( ) Hack could create havoc – Indian infrastructure will inevitably digitize and is
already vulnerable.
Shukla ‘13
Ajai Shukla is Indian journalist and retired Colonel of Indian Army. He currently works as Consulting Editor with Business
Standard writing articles on strategic affairs, defence and diplomacy. He earlier worked with DD News and NDTV– “India's
digital battleground” - Business Standard - June 21, 2013 - http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-sdigital-battleground-113062101013_1.html
But the
government has understood that an ostrich-like response to the digital threat - which is to have as
little digitisation as possible - is not a viable, long-term strategy. The economic ministries are finding that
volumes of data are becoming larger and larger. And the compulsion for more open governance requires the Internet to
be harnessed, mastered and adequately secured. Although India's day-to-day governance and infrastructure
management is not heavily reliant on the Internet, there is unease within the government at the
growing vulnerability of private Internet users to cyber-attacks. According to figures that the government shared with Business
Standard, India was the 10th most intensely cyber-attacked country in 2010-11; today, it is second only to the US. With internet usage
(including cellphones) rising dramatically - from 202 million users in March 2010 to 412 million in March 2011 and 485 million in March 2012 India is now second only to China in the number of devices connected to the Internet.
A-To “Aff exaggerates how much India’s CMS is gathering”
( ) Not an exaggeration – the more we learn about CMS, the worse the privacy
violations.
Cushing ‘13
Tim - Staff Writer, Techdirt - “How The Indian Government's 'Central Monitoring System' Makes The NSA Look Like A Paragon
Of Restraint” – Tech Dirt - Jul 1st 2013 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130629/17255423670/how-indian-governmentscentral-monitoring-system-makes-nsa-look-like-paragon-restraint.shtml
Glyn Moody
covered the roll out of India's intrusive surveillance system a couple of months ago, but more
information has come out , filling in the details of the country's breathtaking domestic spy network. If the NSA's
surveillance capabilities make the Stasi's spying seem completely underwhelming, the Indian government's efforts
in the same arena threatens to make our men and women at the NSA look as if they're just not
applying themselves. The NSA, as revealed in media reports earlier this month, has been monitoring phone-call metadata (such
as phone numbers and call durations) on a widespread basis for years, but has to get the approval of a (albeit secret) court to spy on the calls
CMS [ Centralized Monitoring System ], by contrast, will give nine
Indian government agencies—including the tax department—the power to access, in real-time, phone
conversations, video conferences, text messages, emails, and even internet search data and social media activity... If that's not
themselves or the content of emails. The
enough to make the NSA's staunchest supporters begin fantasizing about setting the Constitution ablaze using the Bill of Rights as kindling, it
gets even better/worse, depending on your point of view. [The agencies] will work without any independent oversight, Reuters reports [and]
the agencies can start monitoring targets without the approval of the courts or the parliament. We get the impression here that the NSA works
without oversight, but many have rushed to point out that Congress is (supposedly) watching the watchers and all requests must receive FISA
court approval, something that seems about as difficult to obtain as a "Participant" ribbon. India is simply being more efficient and cutting out
the brief "makin' it legal" stops on the way to the domestic data harvest. The
CMS has it easy. No privacy laws to
break. A system that is its own rubber stamp. But it goes even further. Someone must have wondered aloud during the formation
of the CMS, "It's almost too easy. But is it too easy enough?" Moreover, with the CMS, security agencies
won’t need to request
users’ information from telcos. They’ll be able to get it directly, using existing interception systems that are built into telecom
and data-service networks. According to the Hindu newspaper, the system will have dedicated servers and extensive data-mining capabilities
that can be used for surveillance. Much like the 9/11 attacks led to an unprecedented increase in domestic (and worldwide) surveillance by US
security agencies, the Mumbai attacks of 2008 resulted in changes to existing laws that allowed the Indian government to increase the size (and
depth) of its surveillance net. Additional attacks in 2011 prompted another rewrite and expansion. Again, much like in the US, the terms
"safety" and "security" are thrown around to justify the existence and actions of the CMS. Finally, much like the US, government officials have
taken care to point out the supposed "oversight" CMS falls under, and it's every bit as weak as the arguments used by the NSA's defenders.
The government has so far played down fears of abuse. Senior government officials told the Times of India that since “CMS
will involve an online system for filing and processing of all lawful interception requests, an electronic audit trail will be in place
for each phone number put under surveillance.” And who will audit the audit trail? The same ministry that authorizes
the surveillance requests. Hardly a reassuring safeguard. Oversight doesn't really mean anything if no
one's interested in questioning actions or curbing excesses. Making sure the foxes guarding the national hen house answer to a
different fox does very little to improve the hens' existence, and even less to deter the predatory nature of their "guardians."
Defending the Indian Democracy module
Surveillance Reform = key to Indian Democracy
Absent enhanced privacy protection, surveillance will significantly erode Indian
democracy.
Greenleaf ‘14
Graham Greenleaf – Professor of Law & Information Systems at The University of New South Wales. He specializes in the
relationships between information technology and law, and research in the areas of cyberspace law, data protection and
privacy, legal information systems and intellectual property. From the book: Asian Data Privacy Laws: Trade & Human Rights
Perspectives - page 408
The need
for stronger data privacy laws in India is apparent from even a brief account of some key aspects of India's
growing array of surveillance institutions and surveillance powers. The rapid recent development of surveillance powers and institutions has
also made the incomplete development of data privacy laws in India a highly political topic. India has been a frequent target of terrorist attacks, so there is a
constant temptation to extend every form of surveillance. India's private sector has not yet embraced systemic data surveillance techniques for commercial
purposes, except in the credit industry. The Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act 2005 is a blueprint for a comprehensive credit surveillance system, but
on the other hand the information it collects will be largely restricted to the credit industry. However, the
Indian state itself is not yet involved
in pervasive surveillance of its population, or even major segments of it. Furthermore the tendencies toward increased surveillance are
tempered by the activism of the somewhat slow-moving Indian judiciary which administers the rule of law in ways that are sensitive to issues of civil liberties,
including privacy. However,
there are substantial increases in surveillance capacities under development in both sectors,
through measures such as those discussed in the following section. In particular, the development of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) system has
major data protection implications, but it is unknown whether the legislation under which it will operate (when enacted) will bring it within the established
protections of Indian democracy and civil liberties. Whether those protections will be sufficient, in light of all the developments sketched below and the fact that
some of them are already occurring without any legislative basis, remains to be seen. Some critics claim the
rapidly, arguing that the convergence of the developments in this section
democracy. 15.
surveillance situation is worsening
carries great risks for Indian society and
India is key to global democracy
Effective Indian Democracy key to global democracy
Bangar ‘3
RAVI BANGAR, former Deputy High Commissioner in Singapore (2002-2006) and at the Ministry of External Affairs as Attaché in
Europe West Division (1983-84). Foremr Deputy Secretary in Gulf Division (1992-1995) and as Director in Africa Division (19961999). He joined as Deputy Permanent Representative in the Permanent Mission of India to the World Trade Organization. Also
Deputy High Commissioner, High Commission of India – Straits Times (Singapore) – April 12, 2003 – lexis
The United Nations' Human Development Report (HDR) 2000 acknowledged Indian democracy as a role model
for the developing world , and said that New Delhi's track record on human rights promotion and
development has sweeping significance for a rights-based approach to progress. The report said the
country was a powerful
example of the creative use of human rights instruments in social transformation. India's approach, the report said,
encouraged the capacity of people to change laws , institutional arrangements and norms to consistently fight for
'The research for HDR 2000 came up again and again with India as a leading
country in the promotion of human rights and mobilisation of rights to press for social transformation,' the report said. It
praised India for significant progress in the participation of women in local politics, creative use of public interest litigation, effectiveness of
improvement in the quality of their lives.
its vibrant civil society and mobilisation of its democratic institutions. Former United States president Bill Clinton lauded India's success in
developing a model civil society in the face of several constraints. In a message to mark the 50th anniversary of the country's independence,
Mr Clinton praised India's
vibrant democracy as a 'model' for other nations
and peoples
who are still
striving to build civil societies, to institutionalise democratic values of free expression and religion, and to find
strength in diversity. 'I am honoured to congratulate India on 50 years of independence and to extend to citizens of this great nation the best
wishes of all Americans for lasting peace, freedom and prosperity,' he said in a message commemorating the golden jubilee of India's freedom
from the colonial yoke.
He singled out the success of Indian democracy and said India had reminded
the world that freedom was not a Western value, but a universal longing.
Democracy Key to check extinction
Democracy Key to check extinction – better than all other alternatives
Revel ‘93
(Jean-Francois, Former Prof. Philosophy and Commentator, “Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse”,
p. 258-259)
Twentieth-century history is clear on two points: only capitalism engenders economic development;
only democracy can correct the worst political abuses and errors. This is why humanity faces a stark
choice: democratic capitalism or extinction. I would revise Michael Novak's term to read: democratic and liberal capitalism. For
capitalism can be illiberal—protectionist and closely associated to the state. In this case, it is not as much of an obstacle to development and individual liberty as is
socialism, but it hinders them and creates incentives for the corruption of political leaders. Liberal democratic capitalism is not the best system: it is the only one
[that works]. The parrots who keep telling us about its imperfections are right, it is imperfect. But the only prohibitive vice for a system, is not for it to be without
vices, but to be without qualities. And what
we know about all the tested alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism
is that they are without qualities. It deserves plenty of criticism, but these should not lead to the
temptation of returning to collectivism or even milder forms of state control. Of course democratic capitalism has its
share of sins; but as Robert Nozick put it, socialism does seem to be an excessively heavy punishment for them. And anyway it has been tried already.
Democracy Solves War
Democracy solves war – scholarly consensus is on our side
Russett ‘9
(Bruce - Professor of International Relations at Yale, European Journal of International Relations, Vol 15 No 1, pp.11-12)
there is now scholarly nearconsensus for the basic empirical claim that
rarely over the past century or two have democracies fought one another. Depending on how one defines key terms, fullscale war between pairs (dyads) of established democracies is somewhere between extremely rare and
completely absent. Militarized disputes ranging in severity from purely diplomatic threats to small-scale violence falling short of a
Though critics dispute about the reasons,
thousand war deaths are more common between democracies, but still much less so than between non-democratic dyads.7 Democracy and
autocracy are best conceptualized not as a dichotomy, but as a scale on which states may fall in the middle or at different various points toward
The major component of DP
theory is the dyadic proposition that the more democratic any two states are, the less frequent and less
severe will be any militarized disputes between them.
either end. This point applies both within a particular historical context and between such contexts.
Democracy solves war – international democratization causes global peace.
Lynn-Jones ‘98
(Sean, at the International Security Program at the Kennedy School of Government, “Why the United States Should Spread
Democracy,” March, http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/lys02/)
In addition to improving the lives of individual citizens in new democracies,
the spread of democracy will benefit the
international system by reducing the likelihood of war. Democracies do not wage war on other
democracies. This absence—or near absence, depending on the definitions of "war" and "democracy" used—has been called
"one of the strongest nontrivial and nontautological generalizations that can be made about
international relations." 51 One scholar argues that "the absence of war between democracies comes as
close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations." 52 If the number of democracies
in the international system continues to grow, the number of potential conflicts that might escalate to
war will diminish. Although wars between democracies and nondemocracies would persist in the short run, in the long run an
international system composed of democracies would be a peaceful world. At the very least, adding to the number
of democracies would gradually enlarge the democratic "zone of peace."
Democracy solves the environment
Democracy solves the environment – studies prove consistent effects.
Li & Reuveney ‘6
(Quan and Rafael, Associate Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University and Associate Professor of
International Political Economy and Sustainable Development at Indiana University, International Studies Quarterly, December,
Vol 50 No 4, Wiley InterScience Online)
Our analysis contributes to the democracy–environment literature by empirically testing the net effect
of democracy on environmental degradation. We use a wide array of empirical measures of environmental degradation. We also use a
continuous measure of the level of democracy/autocracy and two dichotomous measures of democracy and autocracy. The empirical scope of our
data analysis is generally wider than in previous studies. The empirical results we report are consistent across the different types
of environmental degradation. We find that a higher level of democracy leads to less CO2 emissions per capita, less
NOx emissions per capita, less organic pollution in water, lower deforestation rates, and less land
degradation. But such an effect appears discontinuous along the continuous scale of political regime types. We find that the difference be tween autocracy
and nonautocracy significantly influences CO2 emissions, NOx emissions, and organic pollution in water, while the difference between democracy and nondemocracy
significantly affects land degradation. But the effect of democracy on the deforestation rate and the forested land area appears to be monotonic along the democracy
scale. In
sum, democracy reduces the extent of human activities that directly degrade the environment,
and the nonmonotonic effects of democracy vary across the environmental indicators. We also find that the effect of democracy on environmental degradation
varies in size across degradation types. But in all cases, a rise in democracy produces a noticeable effect on
environmental degradation. This also applies to CO2 and organic water pollution when we take into account the long-run effect of democracy via
the lagged-dependent variable. The sizes of effects are considerable for the rate of deforestation, the size of forested land, NOx emissions per capita, and land
degradation. The immediate (annual) effects of a rise in democracy on organic pollution in water and CO2 emissions per capita appear to be small, but the cumulative
effects of this rise in democracy over time are much larger. Yet, these two effects are still smaller than the effects of democracy on NOx emissions, rate of
deforestation, forested land, and land degradation. Hence, democracy reduces some types of environmental degradation more than other types. Our results also
suggest that democratization could indirectly promote environmental degradation through its effect on national income. This effect is subtle and works through the
environmental Kuznets curve. Across the five aspects of environmental degradation, we find evidence supporting the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve
for CO2 emissions per capita, NOx emissions per capita, the rate of deforestation, and the level of land degradation. When income per capita is low, a rise in income
per capita causes more degradation; once passing a threshold, a rise in income per capita reduces degradation. Although existing evidence on the effect of democracy
on economic growth is inconclusive, to the extent that a rise in democracy promotes economic growth, the environmental Kuznets curves that we find suggest that
democracy could indirectly cause more environmental degradation for the above-mentioned indicators at the initial stage of development, and only later help to
reduce it.
Democracy increases environmental commitment.
Neumayer ‘2
Eric Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Journal of Peace
Research, March, pp.156-9
democracies exhibit
stronger international environmental commitment than non-democracies. This result appears to be
relatively robust with respect to our different measures of environmental commitment. For the great majority
Taken together, the results reported in the last section provide strong evidence in favour of our hypothesis that
of these proxies of environmental commitment, the democracy variables not only have the expected sign, but are also statistically significant. It is also
quite robust with respect to our different measures of democracy. No single measure of democracy provides systematically different estimates in terms of
sign of coefficients and their statistical significance from the other three.21 Equally satisfying is that the coefficients and their significance remain roughly
the same whether developed countries are included in the full sample or excluded in the restricted sample. In other words, the results are not simply
triggered by the presence of developed democratic countries. Almost throughout, we observe that the coefficients for the FREE-low, POLIT-low and GOVlow countries indicate less environmental commitment at stronger statistical significance than the coefficients for the FREE-mid, POLIT-mid and GOVmid
clearly undemocratic countries exhibit even less environmental commitment than
countries in the middle group, and we can be more certain that their commitment differs significantly
from clear democracies than we can be for the group in between. This was to be expected, of course. In conclusion,
this study provides a positive message: Democracies clearly show stronger environmental commitment
than non-democracies. All other things being equal, therefore, a more democratic world will also be a world with stronger environmental
countries. In other words,
commitment. This need not translate into better environmental outcomes, however, at least not immediately. Theory predicts a stronger link of democracy
with environmental commitment than with outcomes. Gleditsch & Sverdrup (1996: 8) suspect this much when they write that ‘the crucial point is that
regardless of what harm democracies may do to the environment, they are more likely to make
corrective action’. As democracy spreads around the world, so will environmental commitment. More
environmental commitment will help preventing environmental scarcities from leading to extreme outcomes like violent conflict. There is thus another
avenue through which democracy can foster peace.
Defending India-Pakistan War
A-to “No India-Pakistan war” and “Deterrence Checks”
Deterrence would not check – India Pakistan conflict likely and would escalate.
Chaffin 11
(Greg Chaffin, Research Assistant at Foreign Policy in Focus, July 8, 2011, “Reorienting U.S. Security Strategy in South Asia,”
modified for potentially objectionable language. http://www.fpif.org/articles/reorienting_us_security_strategy_in_south_asia)
The greatest threat to regional security (although curiously not at the top of most lists of U.S. regional concerns) is the possibility that increased India-Pakistan tension
will erupt into all-out war that could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange . Indeed, in just the past two decades, the two
neighbors have come perilously close to war on several occasions.
India and Pakistan remain the most likely belligerents in the world to engage
in nuclear war . Due to an Indian preponderance of conventional forces, Pakistan would have a
strong incentive to use its nuclear arsenal very early
on before a routing of its military installations and weaker conventional forces. In the event of conflict,
Pakistan’s only chance of survival would be the early use of its nuclear arsenal to inflict unacceptable damage to Indian military and (much more likely) civilian targets. By raising the stakes to unacceptable levels, Pakistan
would hope that India would step away from the brink. However, it is equally likely that
India would respond in kind, with escalation ensuing. Neither
state possesses tactical nuclear weapons, but both possess scores of city-sized bombs
Nagasaki. Furthermore, as more damage was inflicted (or as the result of a decapitating strike),
like those used on Hiroshima and
c ommand and c ontrol elements would be (destroyed)
disabled, leaving individual commanders to respond in an environment increasingly clouded by the fog of
war and decreasing the likelihood that either government (what would be left of them) would be able to guarantee that their forces would
follow a negotiated settlement or phased reduction in hostilities. As a result any such conflict would likely
continue to escalate until one side incurred an unacceptable or wholly debilitating level of injury or exhausted its nuclear arsenal . A
nuclear conflict in the subcontinent would have disastrous effects on the world as a whole. In a January 2010 paper published
in Scientific American, climatology
professors Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon forecast the global repercussions of a regional
nuclear war. Their results are strikingly similar to those of studies conducted in 1980 that conclude that a nuclear war between the United
States and the Soviet Union would result in a catastrophic
and prolonged
nuclear winter , which could very well
place the survival of the human race in jeopardy . In their study, Robock and Toon use computer models to simulate the effect of a nuclear exchange between
India and Pakistan in which each were to use roughly half their existing arsenals (50 apiece). Since Indian and Pakistani nuclear devices are strategic rather than tactical, the likely
targets would be
major population centers. Owing to the population densities of urban centers in both nations, the number of direct casualties could climb as high as 20 million. The fallout of such an exchange
would not merely be limited to the immediate area. First, the detonation of a large number of nuclear devices would propel as much as seven million
metric tons of ash, soot, smoke, and debris as high as the lower stratosphere. Owing to their small size (less than a tenth of a
micron) and a lack of precipitation at this altitude,
ash particles would remain aloft for as long as a decade , during which time the world
would remain perpetually overcast. Furthermore, these particles would soak up heat from the sun, generating intense heat in the upper atmosphere that
would
severely damage the earth’s ozone layer . The inability of sunlight to penetrate through the smoke and dust would
lead to global cooling
by as much as 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
This shift in global temperature would lead to more drought, worldwide food
shortages, and widespread political upheaval. Although the likelihood of this doomsday scenario remains relatively low, the consequences are dire enough to warrant
greater U.S. and international attention. Furthermore,
due to the ongoing conflict over Kashmir and the deep animus held between India and Pakistan, it
might not take much to set them off . Indeed, following the successful U.S. raid on bin Laden’s compound, several members of India’s security apparatus along with
conservative politicians have argued that India should emulate the SEAL Team Six raid and launch their own cross-border incursions to nab or kill anti-Indian terrorists, either preemptively or after the fact. Such provocative
action could very well lead to
all-out war between the two that could quickly escalate .
Deterrence wrong - nuclear weapons haven’t deterred tensions in Kashmir and make
conflict more likely
Ganguly ‘99,
Sumit Ganguly:**Dr. Ganguly is Professor of Political Science at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is the
author of The Origins of War in South Asia (Second Edition, 1994) and Between War and Peace: The Crisis in Kashmir
(forthcoming). Michael Krepon:**Mr. Krepon is President of the Henry L. Stimson Center and coeditor of Crisis Prevention,
Confidence Building, and Reconciliation in South Asia (1995). Dr. Prof. Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli is a Pakistani-American political
scientist and an Ambassador. In 2008, she was the senior advisor for women's empowerment to the United States Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice[1] and was Senior director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the UN
Security Council from 2003-2005. She has served 5 Republican presidential administrations since 1980. CDI Show Transcript:
“Nuclear War Between India and Pakistan?” December 13, 1999 http://www.cdi.org/adm/1214/transcript.html
II. IS THERE A DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR? GANGULY: ... there
is some legitimate concern about the possibility of war and the war
escalating to the nuclear level. NARRATOR: According to most observers , the likeliest cause of a nuclear
war in South Asia is the fight for control of Kashmir. The dispute over Kashmir predates Indian and Pakistani independence from British
colonial rule in 1947. Even though Kashmir had a largely Muslim population, its Hindu monarch chose to join India, rather than Pakistan. Pakistan felt cheated.
GANGULY: For Pakistan, as the homeland for Muslims, as the homeland for Muslims in South Asia, it was vitally important to incorporate Kashmir, because
otherwise Pakistan would not be complete... NARRATOR: Mushahid Husain, the Pakistani government's Minister of Information, recalls that Pakistan's proposed
solution, which calls for a popular vote in Kashmir to decide that territory's fate, has been endorsed by the United Nations. But the Indian authorities have thus far
resisted. HUSAIN: There are UN resolutions, resolutions of the United Nations, which say there should be a plebescite in Kashmir, and let the people of Kashmir
decide whether they want to go with India or Pakistan. NARRATOR: Still
has reached the pitch of holy war.
no agreement exists to settle the dispute, which at times
KREPON: Pakistan wants international help in resolving the Kashmir dispute with India. HUSAIN: Let
us focus on resolving Kashmir, because now, after the nuclear tests between, the Indian and Pakistani tests, there is an inextricable linkage between Kashmir and
the larger issue of peace, stability and security in South Asia. KREPON: Pakistan is seeking to get that help by pointing to the Kashmir dispute as a nuclear flashpoint.
And to lend credence to that, Pakistan has heated up that line of control, with a lot of firing and a lot of violence. India has responded in kind. So it's a very
Some observers had hoped that a balance of nuclear terror in South Asia
would have a sobering effect on relations between India and Pakistan. But thus far the specter
of nuclear war has failed to quell the violence in Kashmir. (border ceremony. more Kashmir gore) KHELI:
dangerous game. NARRATOR:
institutions like the intelligence agencies think they have much greater leeway than they might actually
have, thinking the envelope is that much further to push. Because if war is unthinkable, that gives
greater latitude . So in all ways I think it makes the potential for war more likely.
NARRATOR: But
could escalation of the Kashmir conflict lead to a nuclear war? Unlike the more experienced nuclear powers, India and
Pakistan do not have a clear, published doctrine of when and how nuclear weapons
would be used in a war. But leaders in both countries do stress that their nuclear weapons are only a deterrent, and not an offensive weapon.
CHANDRA: We have said that we will never undertake a first use. NARRATOR: Naresh Chandra is India's Ambassador to the United States. CHANDRA: We have
clarified that we viewed our nuclear capabilities as a deterrent, not as a means of projecting aggressive designs on any neighbor. NARRATOR: Pakistani officials have
echoed India's claim that its nuclear arsenal is also for defensive purposes. HUSAIN: Of course, we say Pakistan's bomb is meant only for security and self-defense.
NARRATOR: But wherever there are nuclear weapons, there is an implied willingness to use them. And both India and Pakistan are today developing and testing
new medium-range missiles, which could potentially carry nuclear warheads. The
climate of tension, secrecy, and mistrust which
surrounds these missile programs may present the greatest nuclear danger in South Asia.
Deterrence is wrong. India and Pakistan have already fought three wars. And, their
defense doesn’t assume a destabilized India.
Weitz ‘10
(Richard, writes a weekly column on Asia-Pacific strategic and security issues. He is director of the Center for Political-Military
Analysis and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, The Diplomat, South Asia’s Nuclear War Risk - July 12, 2010, http://thediplomat.com/2010/07/12/south-asia%e2%80%99s-nuclear-war-risk/4/?print=yes)
Yet even setting aside the question of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands, nuclear
competition between India and
Pakistan is especially dangerous. Active (and ongoing) political disputes between the two countries have
resulted in three past wars as well as numerous proxy conflicts. Pakistani leaders in particular have concluded that their nuclear
arsenal has deterred India from again using its conventional forces to attack Pakistani territory. As a result, Pakistan’s implicit nuclear doctrine
The risks of such tensions are compounded by the physical
proximity of the two countries, as well as their reliance on ballistic missiles as delivery vehicles, which means that early
warning times might be as little as five to ten minutes. Although it remains unclear whether India or Pakistan have
combined its nuclear warheads with their assigned delivery systems, such a precarious stance would increase the risks of
both accidental and catalytic war (a nuclear conflict between both governments precipitated by a third party, such as a terrorist group).
presumes the possible first use of nuclear weapons.
Throw China into the mix, with Pakistan at risk of viewing its own nuclear programme as increasingly inadequate as India seeks to achieve
mutual deterrence with China, and the picture becomes more complicated. And add
in the risk of widespread political
disorder in either India or Pakistan, which could see a dangerous political adventurism as political leaders look to rally
domestic support, and the peculiar challenges posed by the region become clearer. The fact is South Asia is
particularly prone to a destabilizing arms race. And perhaps nuclear war.
Future cards for a possible court version of the Aff
India Court cards
( ) Indian Court system strongly influenced by developments in US privacy law.
There’s direct spillover to the Indian CMS.
Bhatia ‘14
Gautam Bhatia - An Advocate, Delhi High Court. He is also practicing law in Delhi. The author studied Law, philosophy, history,
political theory at Yale. Graduated Yale Law School and was also a Recipient of the Rhode Scholarship. From the article: “STATE
SURVEILLANCE AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN INDIA: A CONSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHY” - 26 NLSI Rev. (2014) – posted May 12,
2015. (2014) 26(2) National Law School of India Review. Note the term “CMS” – internally referenced – is an acronym that
stands for “Centralized Monitoring System”, a government metadata surveillance system that’s in its infancy in India – Article is
available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2605317
It is Gobind v. State of M.P.30, decided in 1975, that marks the watershed moment for Indian privacy law in the Constitution.
Like Kharak Singh31, Gobind32 also involved domiciliary visits to the house of a history-sheeter. Unlike Kharak Singh33, however, in Gobind34 the Court found that
the Regulations did have statutory backing – Section 46(2)(c) of the Police Act35, which allowed State Government to make notifications giving effect to the
provisions of the Act, one of which was the prevention of commission of offences. The
surveillance provisions in the impugned
regulations, according to the Court, were indeed for the purpose of preventing offences, since they were
specifically aimed at repeat offenders. To that extent, then, the Court found that there existed a valid ‘law’ for the purposes of Articles 19 and
21. By this time, of course, American constitutional law had moved forward significantly from eleven years ago, when
Kharak Singh36 had been decided. The Court was able to invoke Griswold v. Connecticut37 and Roe v. Wade38, both of which
had found ‘privacy’ as an “interstitial” or “penumbral” right in the American Constitution – that is, not reducible to any one
provision, but implicit in a number of separate provisions taken together. The Court ran together a number of
American authorities, referred to Locke and Kant, to dignity, to liberty and to autonomy, and ended by holding, somewhat confusingly: “… the right to
privacy must encompass and protect the personal intimacies of the home, the family marriage, motherhood, procreation and child rearing. This catalogue approach
to the question is obviously not as instructive as it does not give analytical picture of that distinctive characteristics of the right of privacy. Perhaps, the only
suggestion that can be offered as unifying principle underlying the concept has been the assertion that a claimed right must be a fundamental right implicit in the
concept of ordered liberty… there are two possible theories for protecting privacy of home. The first is that activities in the home harm others only to the extent
that they cause offence resulting from the mere thought that individuals might he engaging in such activities and that such ‘harm’ is not Constitutionally protective
by the state. The second is that individuals need a place of sanctuary where they can be free from societal control. The importance of such a sanctuary is that
individuals can drop the mask, desist for a while from projecting on the world the image they want to be accepted as themselves, an image that may reflect the
values of their peers rather than the realities of their natures… the right to privacy in any event will necessarily have to go through a process of case-bycase
development.”39 (emphasis supplied) But if no clear principle emerges out of the Court’s elucidation of the right, it was fairly unambiguous in stressing the
importance of the right itself. Interestingly, it grounded the right within the context of the freedom struggle. “Our founding fathers,” it observed, “were thoroughly
opposed to a Police Raj even as our history of the struggle for freedom has borne eloquent testimony to it.”40
The parallels to the
American Fourth Amendment are striking here: in his historical analysis Akhil Amar tells us that the Fourth Amendment was
meant precisely to avoid the various abuses of unreasonable searches and seizures that were common in England at the time.41 The
parallels with the
United States become even more pronounced, however, when the Court examined the grounds for
limiting the right to privacy . It held: “Assuming that the fundamental rights explicitly guaranteed to a citizen have penumbral zones and
that the
right to privacy is itself a fundamental right, that fundamental right must be subject to restriction on the basis of
compelling public interest.”42 (emphasis supplied) “Compelling public interest” is an interesting phrase, for two
reasons. First, ‘public interest’ is a ground for fundamental rights restrictions under Article 19 (see, e.g., Article 19(6)), but the text of the Article 19 restrictions do
not use – and the Court, in interpreting them, has not held – that the public interest must be “compelling”. This suggests a stricter standard of review for an Article
21 privacy right violation than Article 19 violations. This is buttressed by the fact that in the same paragraph, the Court ended by observing: “even if it be assumed
that Article 19(5) [restrictions upon the freedom of movement] does not apply in terms, as the right to privacy of movement cannot be absolute, a
law
imposing reasonable restriction upon it for compelling interest of State must be upheld as valid.”43
(emphasis supplied) The Court echoes the language of 19(5), and adds the word “compelling”. This
importantly –
surely cannot be an oversight. More
the compelling State interest is an American test, used often in equal protection cases and cases of
discrimination, where ‘suspect classes’ (such as race) are at issue. Because of the importance of the right at issue, the compelling state interest test goes hand-inhand with another test: narrow tailoring.44 Narrow tailoring places a burden upon the State to demonstrate that its restriction is tailored in a manner that infringes
the right as narrowest manner that is possible to achieve its goals. The
statement of the rule may be found in the American
Supreme Court case of Grutter v. Bollinger: “Even in the limited circumstance when drawing racial distinctions is permissible to further a
compelling state interest, government is still constrained under equal protection clause in how it may pursue that end: the means chosen to accomplish the
government’s asserted purpose must be specifically and narrowly framed to accomplish that purpose.”45 To take an extremely trivial example that will illustrate the
point: the State wants to ban hate speech against Dalits. It passes legislation that bans “all speech that disrespects Dalits.” This is not narrowly tailored, because
while all hate speech against Dalits necessarily disrespects them, all speech that disrespects Dalits is not necessarily hate speech. It was possible for the government
to pass legislation banning only hate speech against Dalits, one that would have infringed upon free speech more narrowly than the “disrespect law”, and still
achieved its goals. The law is not narrowly tailored. Crucially, then, the Court in Gobind46 seemed to implicitly accept the narrow- tailoring flip side of the
compelling state interest coin. On the constitutionality of the Police Regulations itself, it upheld their constitutionality by reading them narrowly. Here is what the
Court said: “Regulation 855, in our view, empowers surveillance only of persons against whom reasonable materials exist to induce the opinion that they show a
determination, to lead a life of crime – crime in this context being confined to such as involve public peace or security only and if they are dangerous security risks.
Mere convictions in criminal cases where nothing gravely imperiling safety of society cannot be regarded as warranting surveillance under this Regulation. Similarly,
domiciliary visits and picketing by the police should be reduced to the clearest cases of danger to community security and not routine follow-up at the end of a
conviction or release from prison or at the whim of a police officer.”47 (emphasis supplied) But Regulation 855 did not refer to the gravity of the crime at all. Thus,
the Court was able to uphold its constitutionality only by narrowing its scope in a manner that the State’s objective of securing public safety was met in a way that
minimally infringed the right to privacy. Therefore, whether the Gobind48 bench was aware of it or not, its
holding incorporates into
Indian constitutional law and the right to privacy, not just the compelling State interest test, but narrow tailoring as well. The
implications for surveillance systems such as the CMS and Netra are obvious. Because with narrow tailoring, the
State must demonstrate that bulk surveillance of all individuals, whether guilty or innocent, suspected of crimes or not suspected of
crimes (whether reasonably or otherwise), possessing a past criminal record or not, speaking to each other of breaking up the government or breaking up a
relationship – every bit of data must
be collected to achieve the goal of maintaining public security, and that
nothing narrower will suffice. Can the State demonstrate this? Perhaps it can; but at the very least, it should be made to do so in open Court.
CMS surveillance program will inevitably be challenged in Indian Courts.
Bhatia ‘14
Gautam Bhatia - An Advocate, Delhi High Court. He is also practicing law in Delhi. The author studied Law, philosophy, history,
political theory at Yale. Graduated Yale Law School and was also a Recipient of the Rhode Scholarship. From the article: “STATE
SURVEILLANCE AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN INDIA: A CONSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHY” - 26 NLSI Rev. (2014) – posted May 12,
2015. (2014) 26(2) National Law School of India Review. Note the term “CMS” – internally referenced – is an acronym that
stands for “Centralized Monitoring System”, a government metadata surveillance system that’s in its infancy in India – Article is
available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2605317
Our enquiry has spanned fifty years and many different aspects of law that touch an individual’s personal life –
from criminal law practices (police surveillance, narco-analysis, self-incrimination) to phone-tapping, from marital relations to the status of one’s bank records.
Despite the diversity of cases and the differing reasoning employed by judges to reach differing results
over time, we have seen that a careful analysis reveals certain unifying strands of logic and argument
that can provide a coherent philosophical and constitutional grounding to the right to privacy in Indian law, bases
that the Court can – and should – draw upon in order to decide an eventual CMS/bulk surveillance
challenge in a principled manner.
Verdict could go either way.
Bhatia ‘14
Gautam Bhatia - An Advocate, Delhi High Court. He is also practicing law in Delhi. The author studied Law, philosophy, history,
political theory at Yale. Graduated Yale Law School and was also a Recipient of the Rhode Scholarship. From the article: “STATE
SURVEILLANCE AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN INDIA: A CONSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHY” - 26 NLSI Rev. (2014) – posted May 12,
2015. (2014) 26(2) National Law School of India Review. Note the term “CMS” – internally referenced – is an acronym that
stands for “Centralized Monitoring System”, a government metadata surveillance system that’s in its infancy in India – Article is
available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2605317
As far as the CMS , Netra and other dragnet surveillance mechanisms go, it is clear, then, that they implicate a
privacy interest; and to justify them, the government must show that there is no other way in which it
could achieve its goals (of combating terrorism etc) without bulk surveillance on an industrial scale. But if recent judgments of our
Supreme Court do not exactly instill confidence in its role as the guarantor of our civil liberties170, its longterm record in national security cases is even worse. A.K. Gopalan171, Habeas Corpus172 and the 2004 People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India173 come
is therefore unclear how the Court will rule on a CMS/surveillance challenge. One thing
is clear, though: the privacy law jurisprudence that it has developed over the last fifty years provide it with all the
analytical tools to fulfil its constitutional mandate of protecting civil liberties. Consistent with the narrow tailoring test,
the Supreme Court ought not to allow the government to baldly get away with asserting a national
security interest, but require it to demonstrate not only how national security is served by dragnet surveillance, but also how dragnet
surveillance is the only reasonable way of achieving national security goals. The possibility of abuse is too great, and the
to mind as examples. It
lessons that history teaches us – that totalitarianism always begins with pervasive governmental spying over individuals – is to be ignored at our peril.