Investigations: Book, film reveal the Third World War

Published in the Portland Phoenix

United States commandos answerable directly to President Barack Obama are killing countless innocent civilians every night in dozens of countries around the world.

Rather than fighting terrorism, these missions to kill alleged militants often come before the intended targets have ever done anything violent or illegal. And even if soldiers are lucky enough to hit their target — and often they don’t — these attacks, by covert raid or submarine- or drone-launched missile, also kill and maim innocent bystanders, turning actual and potential American sympathizers and allies into blood-feud sworn enemies of the United States.

Under the George W. Bush administration, and vastly and secretly expanded under the Obama administration, the US has created a self-perpetuating cycle of secret worldwide combat, robbing families in this country and around the globe of loved ones, peaceful futures, and the numberless benefits of security at home and abroad.

These are the theses — and the undeniable conclusions — of Jeremy Scahill’s newest book, Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield (Nation Books, $32.99) and its companion Dirty Wars film, directed by Richard Rowley, which SPACE Gallery is bringing to screen at the Portland Museum of Art four times this weekend.

In many ways the 83-minute film, distributed by indie-movie kingmakers IFC Films/Sundance Selects, is a trailer for the book. Taken on its own, the movie is a slow, dark procedural, following pieces of Scahill’s extensive multi-year investigation into how the Joint Special Operations Command, “the most covert unit in the military, and the only one that reports directly to the White House,” has taken charge in the fight against terrorism. In the process, JSOC has gotten Obama’s permission to kill anyone anywhere in the world — even US citizens — without specific allegations of wrongdoing, any functioning oversight or real spending limits, and in ways that only inflame international anti-American opinion, ensuring a steady supply of potential targets for a neverending war.

The film has compelling moments, to be sure. In the first ten minutes, for example, we meet a man who was at a party that was raided by US Special Forces, killing his wife and other family members, including an Afghan police commander who had extensively trained alongside the US military. The man tells of seeing the soldiers dig the bullets out of the bodies — even from people who were still alive — with their knives. Then the man himself was taken prisoner and held for several days. Upon his return to his village, he had been radicalized: “I wanted to wear a suicide jacket and blow myself up among the Americans,” he tells Scahill.

The corresponding scene in the book is stronger, by far. Of course it lacks the visceral video of a man dancing with friends and family only hours before he is killed by US Special Forces. It doesn’t include the actual sobs of a grieving woman. And the text also doesn’t let you hear the sweet, high-pitched voice of a six-year-old Afghan girl as she recites the names of family members Americans killed that night.

What it offers instead is page after page of an organized, sequential play-by-play of the events, explained clearly and vividly (including the important detail that the bullets were dug out of the bodies to cover up evidence that American troops had been there). The movie was filmed during Scahill’s reporting, so some quotes appear in both places, but the book uses them in better and more complete context, making reading them more effective even than seeing and hearing the tearful voices of the survivors of the attack.

And that gets at the basic difference between the two, and the reason the film is only really powerful when viewed as a selective sampler of the book. The movie is about the life and experience of being a war reporter digging this stuff up, as opposed to the book’s focus on what Scahill uncovered. And without question, the latter is more important than the former.

It’s certainly interesting to hear the inner dialogue of an investigative reporter’s brain — to hear how such simple questions (“Who were these American soldiers?”) require so much hard work to answer and untangle into a cohesive story.

Yet it is much more useful to read in full the stunning mosaic Scahill is able to put together than to watch small bits of his experience of locating the tiny pieces of that whole.

Scahill’s reporting on these issues, like his previous best-selling bookBlackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army(Nation Books, 2007; excerpted in the Portland Phoenix March 23, 2007) and his reporting in the Nation, on Democracy Now!, and elsewhere is a call to action, if not to arms, for Americans who still believe their country should be governed by its people, for its people.

What the film blasts through but the book explores — and explains — in depth is possibly the most terrifying development in the war on terror: Obama’s decision, made by him personally, that it was legal and permissible to kill American citizens overseas without trial, in direct contravention of the Fifth Amendment, which says “no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

As Scahill notes, even John Walker Lindh, an American citizen who joined the Taliban and actually engaged in combat against US forces, was given a trial under the Bush administration after his capture in 2001. Anwar al Awlaki, who had never done anything but write and speak passionately about how he saw the world, was not given the same rights by the Obama administration before he was killed in a drone strike in 2011. (Nor was Samir Khan, another US citizen killed in the same strike that targeted Awlaki.)

And neither was Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also a US citizen, killed a few short weeks after his father, while having lunch with some teenage buddies.

The US explained away the teen’s killing, calling it “collateral damage” of a drone strike targeting someone else, but didn’t apologize for the death. And the government downplayed the facts that the attack failed to kill any actual confirmed terrorists, and that it happened in Yemen, a country not publicly acknowledged as an American war zone.

Scahill’s conclusion is chilling: Abdulrahman al Awlaki was killed not for what he had done, but “for what he might someday become.” Even today, the American attacks continue, and continue to turn people around the world — and at home — into opponents of US government’s World War Three.

Dirty Wars | directed by Richard Rowley | 83 minutes | at Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square, Portland | Aug 2 @ 7 pm, Aug 3 @ 2 and 7 pm, Aug 4 @ 2 pm | $7

Press Releases: Here's the RS problem

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Rolling Stone made a massive error last week when it released the image of its cover featuring accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But to be clear, the error was not putting Tsarnaev on the cover, in a photo the young man (he turned 20 on Monday) took of himself in quieter days, in the style of so many online selfies.

The error was depriving that cover of its proper context. Yes, the image was released as part of a blog post with a selection of highlights from the upcoming story. But that wasn’t nearly enough information on which to judge the work of RS, which has a long and proud tradition of alternative journalism — featuring both entertainers and newsmakers, fan-like coverage and investigative reporting.

For those who criticize the selection of the image and say they “expected” something else of RS, I suggest that the view RS has of itself is probably different than the one harbored by occasional readers. This sort of thing happens at the Portland Phoenix, too. From time to time, people profess themselves surprised to learn that we cover important news issues, or say they’re disappointed by a viewpoint they don’t expect to see presented in our pages.

Surprising readers, providing new perspectives and provoking them to think about important topics in different ways, is what alternative journalism does, and has always done. (And those topics are intentionally wide-ranging: across music, art, film, food, and, yes, the news of the day.)

But another hallmark of alternative journalism is its context. We tell you not only what is happening, but also why you care. (At times we acknowledge you probably don’t care, and then try to persuade you otherwise.)

And that’s what was missing from the initial reveal. The RS article (which many protesters did not read before taking up arms) paints a more complete portrait of Tsarnaev than we’ve seen before, and includes the very details of his 21st-century teen life that most befuddle those who knew him best. He was, as the full story puts forth, seen and experienced by friends and coaches as a normal kid, feeling idealistic, looking dissipated, taking selfies that look like pop-culture images of rock stars.

To illustrate that with one of those images, showing if nothing else how Tsarnaev viewed himself, is a brilliant move that — when seen in its proper context — startles us into confronting our own view of the younger half of the duo who allegedly bombed the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three and injuring scores of others, some who are permanently maimed. In our minds, we see a monster; he — and those of us who look at the cover — saw a regular guy. And that’s not just the face he presented to himself — it’s the face those around him saw, as the RS story extensively documents.

It’s a truly great way to illustrate the story’s overall point: Tsarnaev really was the terrorist next door. The problem is that in attempting to promote its upcoming strong scoop, RSforgot to provide the proper context, and suffered a massive and public backlash as a result of that failing. And yes, the magazine did respond swiftly, releasing the full story online as the frenzy grew. But by then they were by definition behind the curve and playing defense. 

On an unrelated topic Would that the international press covered climate change, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and war with the breathless and undivided attention — not to mention massive expenditures — with which they cover the impending birth of a person who, like his or her grandfather, may never actually become an actual British monarch. 

As thinker and writer Esther Dyson regularly argues, people’s attention is the most limited natural resource available. The frenzy of what has been dubbed “the Great Kate Wait” is a colossal waste of that valuable supply. Media outlets that spend any time on this highly personal piece of triviality (which, yes, is very important to the immediate family) are harming their audiences by failing to tell them about actual news that will deeply affect their everyday lives.

Un-Flash: California company trades in fake spontaneity

Published in the Portland Phoenix

We know: Flash mobs are so ten years ago. But it turns out the craze whose entire point is an underground do-it-yourself surprise has gone corporate. And rather than celebrating creativity, community, and spontaneity, it’s now a business model profiting in part off the energy of unpaid performers.

Yes, there’s a company called Flash Mob America. It’s based in Los Angeles, and has produced what it calls “flash mobs” for major TV shows, including Today, Modern Family, and The Bachelorette.

FMA’s “sole purpose,” according to its marketing materials, is “creating joy through surprise.” Oh, and making money by getting hired to put on staged events largely carried out by volunteers.

That’s what’s happening here. See, FMA employs a public-relations firm, Hollywood fave MWPR, which has worked with Oprah, Martha Stewart, People, Us Weekly, and more. Some poor intern from MWPR called the Phoenix (and, apparently, other Maine media outlets) on July 18 to announce that a “flash mob” will happen at 5 pm on August 5, somewhere in Portland. Surprise!

After cutting through some promo-talk the announcement boiled down to this: Would we at the Phoenix be interested in running a story, to tell people they could volunteer to perform? The company needed these unpaid workers, or it wouldn’t be able to actually provide the service for which it had been hired by an as-yet unidentified Portland client.

Now that’s a surprise.

The original flash-mob ethos was pretty different — fully DIY and organic, often created by groups of artists. One of the earliest academic studies of flash mobs, published inFibreculture Journal in December 2005 by Judith Nicholson, then a graduate researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, found that flash mobs specifically avoided traditional media, in favor of mobile communication among participants directly.

The movement’s credo, she wrote, was “the power of many, in the pursuit of nothing.” And it was deliberately created and intended as a criticism of capitalist society, designed to empower citizens over governments and corporations. In fact, she wrote, “While flash mobbing was being popularized, a fear that someone would appoint himself leader of the mob or that the trend would be appropriated for specific political or commercial purposes was expressed frequently” by those involved. (With a leaderless reclaiming of public space for use by the people, it might be seen as a celebratory precursor to the Occupy movement.)

Of course, something can hardly be called “flash” if it’s being planned from across the country several weeks in advance. And with “more than 50 professional performers” in the mix, along with somewhere between 100 and 200 unpaid workers, it’s not quite sounding like a spontaneous fun thing. “It’s a really detailed full-scale live production,” FMA co-founder Staci Lawrence told me.

Though the event will be “in a really public place,” the audience is preselected — by the paying client. There’s “a specific group of people that we are surprising,” Lawrence says, hoping that anyone who figures out the details wouldn’t share them, for fear of ruining the closely guarded, highly manufactured spontaneity.

FMA gets permission from relevant authorities — a far cry from an upstart art form that used to call for outright cancellation of the event if property owners or police got wind of it beforehand.

But then, what should we expect from a company “founded . . . in tribute to Michael Jackson” anyway? Yes indeed, in the promo materials’ “About Flash Mob America” section is a heartwarming little gem: “In July 2009, Staci and Conroe [Brooks] — moved by Michael Jackson’s emotional memorial — produced the first American tribute to the late King of Pop by recreating Sweden’s ‘Beat It’ flash mob.”

You read that right: this is a company whose founders got their start by reenacting an actual flash mob, put on by a group of Swedish street dancers just two weeks after Jackson’s death.

And then, FMA did it again. And again. Back to the press release: “The following month they again honored Jackson with a flash mob on what would have been his 51st birthday. And then the unexpected: Universal Music Group hired the team to produce a flash mob to surprise the late pop icon’s sister, Janet Jackson.”

That led to bigger gigs, including somehow working with Oscar Mayer and Charmin, and leading to their self-description as “the industry’s flash-mob experts.” Lawrence says on big corporate jobs, she does try to make sure the non-professional mobbers get paid; for the upcoming Portland show and most others, though, “there’s not that kind of budget.”

That’s no surprise.

Extended Openings: Fundraising push on for prep space at BayOne

Published in the Portland Phoenix

After a winter and spring of increasing activity at BayOne, the Anderson Street home to the expanded Bomb Diggity Bakery and some small-scale food-production businesses, it's time for another growth phase. (See "Building a Hub for Food," by Jeff Inglis, January 11.)

Eli Cayer, who runs BayOne and its neighbor and relative, Urban Farm Fermentory, has launched a $16,000 Indiegogo campaign to pay for a couple of community-focused aspects of the project.

First, Cayer wants to raise $5000 to pay for sinks and stainless-steel tables for a set of three prep-kitchen booths, which will be available for people to rent as licensed food-prep spaces under city and state regulations. (For food carts and trucks, and other small-scale producers, home prep is no longer allowed, and a licensee needs to specify a location where prep will occur.)

"Portland is lacking a facility where startups and nano producers can legally make and package their artisanal products," Cayer writes in his Indiegogo project description.

The plumbing is in place; what's needed is money for the sinks and tables, as well as industrial track curtains that will separate the spaces as needed, but can also retract to make the area a larger space for community classes, film screenings, and other gatherings.

Cayer says he has several small startups interested in the space, as well as people wanting to start teaching classes once the space is finished.

The rewards for contributing to the Indiegogo campaign are focused on exactly those people: a $15 pledge gets a person an hour of prep time in the kitchen, and $20 the opportunity to sell wares at a booth at a market also to be held regularly in the space. For community members, a $25 pledge earns entry to a basic-skills class, or a $25 discount off an advanced-level class.

Indiegogo allows organizations to collect the money they raise, even if their campaign doesn't hit the target amount (unlike Kickstarter, which only dispenses money if a goal is achieved), and Cayer is hoping to get far more than $5000.

An additional $10,000 will pay for the setup of a greenhouse that will not only be home to herbs used by UFF and other BayOne tenants, but also to an aquaponics area that could grow in contained systems salad greens and fish for sale at the market sessions. It will be an additional site for classes and workshops, too.

Those classes and other happenings depend on another key aspect of the project, a zoning ordinance amendment that will come before the City Council at its July 15 meeting.

"We're not trying to change the ordinance. We're just trying to tweak it a little bit," Cayer says. The amendment would allow special events like "maker's markets," where people could sell art, crafts, and food — including prepared foods, which are frowned upon at the regular Portland farmers' markets — as well as lectures, musical performances, and the like.

Head to the council meeting — July 15 @ 7 pm in City Hall — and donate at igg.me/p/440350 until August 20.

You are being watched: Government surveillance is broad, deep, and dangerous

Published in the Portland Phoenix and the Providence Phoenix

The government is collecting every kind of digital communications information about you — not just the so-called "metadata" of the location, participating phone numbers, and duration of every single telephone call made in the United States, but also the content of those phone conversations, and of emails, online chats and instant messages, and text messages.

Thanks to brave leakers and reporters who have revealed the details of two major programs, one collecting telephone information, and the other vacuuming up terabytes of data from major Internet companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and more), we know all of those things are happening, with the possible — and only possible — exception of recording the phone calls. A former FBI agent told CNN back in May that phone conversations were being captured. The Associated Press was blunt in a June 15 report, paraphrasing Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and computer-security expert: "Just assume the government collects everything." (For an overview, see sidebar, "PRISM Primer," by Deirdre Fulton.)

Now that we know for sure that we live in a surveillance state, where do we go from here? Of course, some people will say they already expected as much, or believed so. These new revelations aren't for them — they're for everyone else, who didn't think the Panopticon had truly arrived. But now the United States itself has become 18th-century thinker Jeremy Bentham's architectural wonder of a prison, in which inmates can be observed at each and every moment, without being sure whether they are in fact being watched just now.

Rather than dismissing the alarms about government surveillance, the public at large can no longer ignore or wish away its presence. Those fearmongerers who were rudely dismissed should take heart from The Daily Show, which in the wake of the revelations about NSA spying has introduced a new segment: "Good News! You're Not Paranoid."

PRIVACY=TRUE SELF

First, a brief discussion about the importance of privacy. Many people dismiss it, saying things like "I have nothing to hide." Beyond the oft-cited "right to be left alone" definition offered by Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928, privacy is nothing less than the right to actually be yourself.

Surveillance — intrusion on privacy — affects human psychology and action. It is the ultimate infringement on personal freedom, because it exploits an instinctual weakness of humans. When we're in private, we do things freely, as our true selves; when we're being watched, we change our behavior.

The principle Bentham articulated in 1787 is simple: "Observation and fear of detection ensures compliance," as author Charlie Canning summarized it. Think about it yourself (privately): Is there absolutely nothing you would do differently in your entire life if your partner, parent, child, boss, and best friend were watching at all times? Now expand that audience to include the only power that can by the force of arms deprive you of your freedom — the government. (There are several other important related problems; see sidebar "Debunking 'Nothing to Hide.'")

Of course, there are plenty of regular, law-abiding people who will respond, "I don't do anything wrong, so they won't watch me, and there's nothing to catch me doing." But in his 2011 book Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, civil-liberties lawyer (and occasional Phoenix contributor) Harvey Silverglate details exactly how misguided that sense of security can be. Making the argument that federal laws are overbroad, loosely interpreted, and aggressively prosecuted, Silverglate describes case after case in which innocent citizens doing their very best to behave within the law accidentally came to the attention of federal authorities — largely through personal misfortune, such as running out of gas when riding a snowmobile on US Forest Service land — and were charged with, and convicted of, felonies.

Let's just say it straight: If a federal prosecutor wants to find something you've done wrong, there's probably something that could qualify. Your main hopes to avoid prosecution are: 1) avoiding coming to authorities' attention, and 2) depriving the authorities of information that could be used against you. Since the first is mainly a matter of chance, it's best to focus on the second — which is, plainly put, privacy. How, exactly, should we do that? In her sidebar ("Counterveillance 101"), Deirdre Fulton outlines some strategies.

DOING THE NSA'S BIDDING

As best we can tell, the government is not doing direct collection of the information it's using. Rather, the NSA and the FBI are demanding — at times with the help of judges in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — that private companies disclose data those firms have already collected from us. We have offered up that information willingly in almost every case, often in exchange for services we like, such as connections with distant friends, or directions to the nearest gas station.

There are two key differences between this and what the government is doing. First is transparency: do we know the information is being collected, and by whom? And second, what could the people who have the data do with it? The specter of being tracked just by our cellphones is very real — and requires no snooping on conversations. (See sidebar, "Metadata matters.")

That said, corporate data-mining is pretty open. Most of those companies tell us — even if it's buried pages into a software license agreement — they're collecting data, and most of them make it fairly obvious they do so. For example, when we connect to Facebook, it's right in front of us that the site knows our own information and that of our friends. And we know, when we sign up for customer-loyalty programs, that we're being tracked in exchange for discounts or special deals.

And what companies can do with the data is pretty limited (or so we think). Of course, they could publish it — but apart from the fact that Facebook in particular offers publication as a benefit of its service, it's worth noting the effectiveness of public backlashes against Facebook's periodic attempts to relax privacy controls. That outcry is a limit on intentional corporate misuse of the data — and if the data is stolen or otherwise gets out unintentionally, federal and state laws offer recourse to those whose private data is compromised.

Which is not to say that corporations' use of our personal information is not invasive. But it is less of an affront because we know it's happening, assist in the data-collection process, have some recourse if policies change, and are limited in our vulnerability — at least companies can't lock us up!

Government data-mining, by contrast, is secret — until it's revealed by leakers who face prosecution for telling the truth. And the government's power is sweeping, including literal deprivation of freedom, or even life itself, through prosecution and punishment. Public outcry can only change things when we know what's happening — but too often officials hide behind the concept of classified information, even when they're involving corporations in the info-vacuum. And the so-called "public servants" are bought and paid for by special interests that conflict with our own.

Beyond being deprived of the information we need to make good decisions about our government's actions, we can't even fight back against telecom firms, which are forced to comply and protected from repercussions. A June 11 Huffington Post report details the millions of dollars spent by AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint from 2002 to 2012, including a combined $55 million on lobbying relating to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And sure enough, the companies have gotten federal legislation enacted that gives them total retroactive legal immunity from civil lawsuits related to their participation in government surveillance programs. The immunity has been attacked, but repeal efforts have failed.

HAVING A PUBLIC CONVERSATION

It's easy to laugh about how ineffective this surveillance system might be, especially in certain cases: How did they miss the Boston-bombing Tsarnaev brothers? Why can't the feds locate NSA leaker Edward Snowden in a worldwide manhunt? "Agency Busy Spying on Three Hundred Million People Failed to Notice One Dude Working For It," wrote the New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz. But to point out flaws, even arrogance, in the concept that data can tell us everything is to miss the point that our leaders apparently think data is all-seeing, and have taken it upon themselves to gather it without real oversight.

The biggest problem with this whole surveillance mess is that it was secret. We simply have not, as a democratic society, had the conversation about what kinds of freedoms and privacies we are willing to give up in exchange for what kinds of safety and security. As President Barack Obama put it in his false dichotomy June 7, "you can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy."

Nobody's asking for such a thing (nevermind that both concepts are unquantifiable) — we're asking for a clear and transparent balance between security and privacy, a balance arrived at through a public debate, both in Americans' own lives and in Congress. (Also useful would be a conversation through the courts; at present, only government attorneys are permitted to appear at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's secret hearings, removing any possibility that government claims could be challenged or questioned.)

But it's hard to talk about the details of these programs without security clearances; whether it should be or not, most of this work is classified. That's where a post-9/11 recommendation that has finally borne fruit comes in.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was suggested in the list of recommendations from the 9/11 Commission report, back in 2004, and was created by Congress later that year. It was never truly funded or staffed, but after a 2008 change in its authorizing law, and after years of Congressional and delays from the Bush and Obama administrations, its chairman was finally confirmed by the Senate on May 7 of this year.

That man, David Medine, has said his board will investigate the NSA program — after a classified briefing on June 11, he told the Associated Press "further questions are warranted." In addition to meeting with Obama and officials in the intelligence community, the board will also hold a public meeting slated for July 9, "that would bring together academics, experts and advocates to explore issues raised by the national surveillance programs," the Washington Post wrote on June 21.

But then again, perhaps these surveillance programs do keep us safer. As Stephen Colbert said of our enemies: "They hate us for our freedoms. The less freedom we have, the less likely they are to attack us."

There's a comforting thought.



Debunking 'nothing to hide'

'NO SECRETS' DOESN'T MEAN 'NO PROBLEM'

• Apart from the fact that you do have things to hide — or wasn't it you who posted nudie pics of yourself and your beloved online? (and was it really for the sake of living a transparent life?) — the claim that people have "nothing to hide" and that, therefore, government surveillance must be okay, is torn to pieces by George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove's 2011 book Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security (Yale University Press).

Solove argues that the problems of government surveillance go well beyond the watching and collecting. While most debate about privacy centers on themes along the lines of the all-seeing telescreens in George Orwell's 1984, Solove says a better example is Franz Kafka's The Trial, a chillingly prescient early 19th-century novel about a man arrested but not told why, and whose attempts to find explanation only result in vague information that he is being investigated by some authority for some unknown transgression.

"Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no information that people want to hide is uncovered," Solove writes. "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 denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process. The harms are bureaucratic ones — indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability."

Beyond that, claiming "nothing to hide," Solove points out, suggests that what's hidden is bad, wrong, or illegal. But "Surveillance . . . can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy," he writes.

There is also the key question of whether people own their own data. "Many government national-security measures involve maintaining a huge database of information that individuals cannot access," Solove writes. "Indeed, because they involve national security, the very existence of these programs is often kept secret." Calling this collection a "due-process problem," in which citizens are denied power over themselves and their information, Solove says this creates "a power imbalance between people and the government. . . . This issue isn't about what information people want to hide but about the power and the structure of government."

Solove also notes a key vulnerability that even law-abiding citizens have to government misinterpretation. "For example, suppose government officials learn that a person has bought a number of books on how to manufacture methamphetamine. That information makes them suspect that he's building a meth lab. What is missing from the records is the full story: The person is writing a novel about a character who makes meth. . . . Should he have to worry about government scrutiny of all his purchases and actions? He might not want to have to worry about how everything he does will be perceived by officials nervously monitoring for criminal activity. He might not want to have a computer flag him as suspicious because he has an unusual pattern of behavior."

So it's not that you have nothing to hide. It's that revealing all would leave you naked and powerless before the fearsome strength of the government — which is the very opposite of freedom.

_JI



'Metadata' matters

FOUR CALLS OR TEXTS CAN ID YOU

• If your concern is focused on whether the government is listening to your phone conversations, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Cellphone "metadata" — whom you call, when, from where, and how often — is much more interesting, and much more invasive than whether someone hears you say, "Hi. It's me. Can you please get milk?"

A study published in the online academic journal Scientific Reports in March details exactly how just four pieces of "spatio-temporal" data can "uniquely identify 95 percent of . . . individuals" without hearing any phone conversations or reading any text messages.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Catholic University in Belgium, and the Complex Systems Institute in Chile studied cellphone company data covering 1.5 million people's calls over 15 months. The data provided did not contain callers' names or addresses; it included only the time and location of the connecting cellular antenna each time a phone received or sent a call or text message.

By charting the series of antenna connections over time, the researchers were able to construct a map of each phone's movement, which they called a "mobility trace." In 95 percent of the traces, just four points of time-location data were needed to tell that trace uniquely apart from the others in the large dataset. (The most difficult traces to focus in on needed only 11 locations before becoming unique.)

While the study does admit that additional, outside, data would be needed to connect a mobility trace to a person's name, the researchers observe that many pieces of location information are a matter of public record (such as property ownership files), are disclosed voluntarily through online check-ins (Facebook, Foursquare), or are easily searchable (business addresses).

In an example offered on Democracy Now on June 12, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau said this: "When Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, there were a number of calls that weekend before. One can imagine just the trail of calls. First the CEO of Sun and the CEO of Oracle talk to each other. Then probably they both talk to their chief counsels. Then maybe they talk to each other again, then to other people in charge. And the calls go back and forth very quickly, very tightly. You know what's going to happen. You know what the announcement is going to be on Monday morning, even though you haven't heard the content of the calls."

And even without a name attached, drawing a picture of events is simple, Landau said: "The metadata of a phone call tells what you do as opposed to what you say. If you call from the hospital . . . and then later in the day the doctor calls you, and then you call the surgeon, and then when you're at the surgeon's office you call your family, it's pretty clear, just looking at that pattern of calls, that there's been some bad news."

Bad news is right.

_JI