[Advisors] FW: [governance] NSA spying trashes U.S. global role

[michael gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Robert Guerra
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 9:39 AM
To: Internet Governance Caucus
Cc: Ron Deibert
Subject: [governance] NSA spying trashes U.S. global role

Wanted to share with those on this list Ron Deibert's op/ed published today.
It touches on many of the points recently raised on this list...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/12/opinion/deibert-nsa-surveillance/

NSA spying trashes U.S. global role

By Ronald Deibert , Special to CNN
updated 8:32 AM EDT, Wed June 12, 2013 CNN.com

Can Americans trust NSA's surveillance?

Editor's note: Ronald Deibert is a professor of political science at the
University of Toronto, where he is director of the Canada Centre for Global
Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs.
He is author of "Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace"
(Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2013). (link to the book -
http://blackcodebook.com )

(CNN) -- In 2011, I was on a panel, organized by the security company RSA,
with two retired National Security Agency directors, Michael Hayden and
Kenneth Minihan. During the course of our debate, I raised concerns, as the
only non-American on the panel, that their plans and preferences for having
the NSA secure cyberspace for the rest of us were not exactly reassuring. To
this, Minihan replied that I should not describe myself as "Canadian" but
rather "North American."

As jarring as his response was, the fact of the matter is when it comes to
communications, he's right. Practically speaking, there is no border
separating Canadian from U.S. telecommunications -- though that's not true
the other way around. Primarily, this one-way dependence is a product of
history and economics. Canadians' communications are inextricably connected
to networks south of the border and subject to the laws and practices of the
U.S. over which we, as foreigners, have no say or control.

For American citizens, the recent NSA scandal has touched off soul-searching
discussions about the legality of mass surveillance programs, whether they
violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and
whether proper oversight and accountability exist to protect American
citizens' rights.

Indeed, with respect to the case of PRISM, NSA's secret set of tools used to
collect data about overseas Internet communications, some argue the program
actually enhances those safeguards for Americans -- because it appears that
collection of company data was segregated in such a way to limit the
collection to "foreign citizens." As reassuring as this may be for
Americans, for the rest of us non-Americans who enjoy our Gmail, Google
Docs, and Facebook accounts, it's definitely unsettling: We're all fair
game.

While cyberspace may be global, its infrastructure most definitely is not.

For example, a huge proportion of global Internet traffic flows through
networks controlled by the United States, simply because eight of 15 global
tier 1 telecommunications companies are American -- companies like AT&T,
CenturyLink, XO Communications and, significantly, Verizon.

The social media services that many of us take for granted are also mostly
provided by giants headquartered in the United States, like Google,
Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. All of these companies are subject to U.S.
law, including the provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act, no matter where their
services are offered or their servers located. Having the world's Internet
traffic routed through the U.S. and having those companies under its
jurisdiction give U.S. national security agencies an enormous home-field
advantage that few other countries enjoy.

But there are unintended consequences of the NSA scandal that will undermine
U.S. foreign policy interests -- in particular, the "Internet Freedom"
agenda espoused by the U.S. State Department and its allies.

The revelations that have emerged will undoubtedly trigger a reaction abroad
as policymakers and ordinary users realize the huge disadvantages of their
dependence on U.S.-controlled networks in social media, cloud computing, and
telecommunications, and of the formidable resources that are deployed by
U.S. national security agencies to mine and monitor those networks.

For example, in 2012, Norwegian lawmakers debated a ban on the use by public
officials of Google's and Microsoft's cloud computing services. Although
shelved temporarily, this type of debate will almost certainly be
resurrected and spread throughout Europe and other regions as the full scope
of U.S.-based "foreign directed" wiretapping and metadata collection sinks
in.

Already we can see regional traffic to the United States from Asia, Africa
and even Latin America gradually declining, a trend that is almost certainly
going to accelerate as those regions ramp up regional network exchange
points and local services to minimize dependence on networks under U.S.
control.

Many of the countries in the Southern Hemisphere are failed or fragile
states; many of them are authoritarian or autocratic regimes. No doubt the
elites in those regimes will use the excuse of security to adopt more
stringent state controls over the Internet in their jurisdictions and
support local versions of popular social media companies over which they can
exact their own nationalized controls -- a trend that began prior to the NSA
revelations but which now has additional rhetorical support.

In the age of Big Data, the revelations about NSA's intelligence-gathering
programs touched many nerves. The issue of surveillance won't go away, and
Americans will need to figure out the appropriate safeguards for liberty in
their democracy. It's an important debate, but one that doesn't include us
"foreigners" that now make up the vast majority of the Internet users.
Americans would do well to consider the international implications of their
domestic policies before they come home to bite them.


Ronald Deibert
Director, the Citizen Lab
and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies Munk School of Global
Affairs University of Toronto
(416) 946-8916
PGP: http://deibert.citizenlab.org/pubkey.txt
http://deibert.citizenlab.org/
twitter.com/citizenlab
r.deibert at utoronto.ca