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Technology in exchange for Freedom and Safety
-- By AlessiaSaracinoFendi - 17 Mar 2022
The coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made evident that technology is facilitating the fragmentation of our constitutional rights and freedoms. Under the facade of better protecting citizens from the coronavirus, governments have increased surveillance of citizens and unless forced, are unlikely to scale these measures back. While the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the uneasy reality that a modern life of ease can turn into one of survival, it has also underlined that data citizens have unreservedly given in exchange for technologies of convenience could just as easily be used against them.
Government Surveillance
As James Madison indicated, “in framing a government which is to be administered by men, over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” In response to the September 11th attacks in 2001, the US government altered its focus from federal privacy legislation to information gathering. This change to push for heightened government surveillance made the tech community’s innovative surveillance practices take new precedence Private companies collecting information have enabled the intelligence community to circumvent to constitutional, legal, or regulatory constraints. The CIA has been collecting information from corporations like Google and Facebook and storing everything in perpetuity. The US and many other liberal democracies have unfortunately made surveillance the base of their social order.
While freedom of speech has been blamed as the cause of the destructive effects of epistemic chaos recently afflicting American society, Dr. Zuboff, in The Coup We Are Not Talking About, argues that this chaos is truly a consequence of surveillance, not freedom of speech. As Zuboff describes, governments have initiated a vicious cycle in which they are unable to maintain the trust of their citizens, which in turn deepens the government’s justification for invasive surveillance.
The covid pandemic, in keeping with previous state of emergencies, accelerated the circumvention of the rule of law globally. In some countries, “exceptional” rules were adopted under the pretext of a “state of health emergency,” like in Israel, where new surveillance powers were granted to domestic intelligence services. While, in France, a new surveillance program using police drones was introduced without a proper legal framework. With mass-surveillance strengthened through the guise of Covid concerns and no chance of being scaled back to pre-pandemic levels, the situation in Ukraine has further intensified unease at the availability of important private information of individuals accessible via our smartphones. Citizens are not aware of the full ramifications of their digital footprint. In addition to the destruction of physical and digital infrastructure Russia could inflict on Ukraine, Russia may also target individuals, their friends and family, thanks to information gathered through social media. Unfortunately, a cyberspace conflict will have a “profound impact on the sovereignty of a people.”
Restricted Internet Access
The internet has become critical for the economy and communication and therefore, whomever has control over the internet has an upper hand in a conflict. Some governments recurringly conduct shutdowns of internet access as a means of oppressing public dissent in a similar power dynamic as withholding energy sources, water, or supply lines. According to Access Now, “in 2020, there were about 155 internet shutdowns across 29 countries.”
Strategically, Putin may not want to take down Ukraine’s internet now as it is using it to flood Ukrainian and Russian people with disinformation. “In an information civilization, societies are defined by questions of knowledge — how it is distributed, the authority that governs its distribution and the power that protects that authority.” While the US’s radical response to Ukrainian conflict has been to leak intelligence, Putin has launched a disinformation campaign via broadcasting and social media to keep the truth of the situation in Ukraine from the Russian people.
The fear that Russia will attempt to restrict Ukraine’s internet access has been a concern since the conflict began. Russia has cyber-attacked Ukraine in the past. In 2015, Russia-backed hackers caused a power outage in Ukraine. In 2017, a “malware attack, widely attributed to Russia, targeting major Ukrainian companies and government agencies, but spread widely and disabled computers—as well as commerce dependent on them—around the globe.” Ukraine’s internet has many physical and logical connections and is intensely interconnected to Europe’s internet backbone making it more challenging to disconnect. However, Ukraine’s current internet infrastructure may not withstand a concerted Russian effort to destroy it and is likely why Ukraine requested for connection to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet.
Threat of Cyber Attacks
In addition to cyberattacks on Ukraine, after the profound financial sanctions against Russia, America’s may also be at risk for a Russian launched cyber-attack. The sanctions against Russia have removed most counter reasons for Russia to not conduct a cyberattack. America’s ability to counteract is in question as well. As Professor Waxman explains in Cyberattacks and the Constitution, “depending on the facts, cyberattacks could be viewed as exercises of noncombat military powers, foreign affairs powers, intelligence powers, and commerce powers, as well as a combination of these and still other powers.” Unfortunately, America is not as protected and ready for cyberattacks as many would hope.
Conclusion
Constitutional law, as discussed in class, is an alternative to individual protecting of freedom. The social contract formed in the Constitution creates a framework that bears the responsibility to protect its citizens freedoms. The heightened surveillance since the Covid pandemic and the current situation in Ukraine has revealed that these pre-existing bargains in favor of freedoms have instilled a false sense of security and complacency. After mindlessly yielding personal data to governments and private entities, we are realizing that the Constitution is not a perfect failsafe. If we are not vigilant and proactive, with the current status-quo, we could lose of our rights and freedoms from one day to the next.
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