The Campaign Against Privacy:
How Propaganda is Used to Perpetuate Surveillance and State Power

The American public's deep reliance on the internet and cloud services has given rise to a problem that is not unique in nature, but has changed in type. Governments hunger for power, and surveillance is a time-tested way for governments to ascertain knowledge and control in subtle ways. Influencing behavior not by heavy-handed force, but by understanding and manipulating people's own preferences, is a particularly desirable method for democratic governments that must keep the people content that they are making their own decisions. In other words, allowing people to make their own decisions but surreptitiously influencing those choices has proven an excellent means of control for the American government.

This strategy is by no means new, but the battle has assumed a different form, as reliable means for encryption and anonymity have become easily accessible. The most powerful surveillance network ever to exist has risen simultaneously with the most effective means of widespread yet anonymous communication. Some governments have tried to respond with traditional means of control, such as mandatory key disclosure programs,(3) or outright bans of privacy-protecting software.(4) But the American government chooses to fight this threat to its growing power in its traditionally subtle way: do not exert direct force, but persuade people that there is something dangerous or taboo about circumventing the surveillance and control networks. This is accomplished through a campaign of propaganda against effective, widely available, and largely open-source programs that protect secrecy and anonymity.

Individual autonomy is drastically undercut when the threat of monitoring always lurks in the background. "Autonomy is vitiated by the wholesale invasion of secrecy and privacy. Free decision-making is impossible in a society where every move is monitored . . . ."(7) The ability to communicate anonymously and free from this fear of eavesdropping is central not only to personhood, but to a functional democracy as well.(8)

Even with relatively secure means of communication, government access is a serious concern. Last year, the FBI sought information about users of the encrypted-messaging app Signal.(12) Notoriously, encrypted email service Lavabit was required by a court order to turn over its private keys, which would have given the government the ability to break through the encryption of all Lavabit email accounts.(13) The regular use of national security letters in this context amplifies these concerns, because there is a severe lack of transparency and judicial oversight.(14)

Many times, targets of surveillance will never know who is seeing their private correspondence, when, or why; thus, without reliable encryption and anonymization, any individual is constantly at risk that they are being monitored or profiled.

The U.S. government and corporate entities that benefit from commonplace surveillance have taken a strong stance against secure means of communication, and encryption in particular, by highlighting instances where criminals or terrorists use these tools and perpetuating the "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" narrative.(16) These tactics and the overall message against encryption ignore legitimate needs for the technology, and they reveal troubling motives to the government's approach to technology, privacy, and free speech.

A prevalent tactic is to associate secure or anonymous communication with criminality or terrorism. In one report (by a private firm), Tor, VPN services, and several messaging applications are identified as "Tech for Jihad."(20) Tor in particular has gained a reputation as "the web browser for criminals,"(21) merely because it serves to anonymize users. Telegraph, an app which can send encrypted and self-deleting messages, has been identified as "the app of choice for jihadists."(22)

The government has itself played a significant role in associating privacy-protecting or anonymizing tools with criminality. The standoff between Apple and the FBI over the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone brought to the forefront the government's discomfort with encryption.(25) The Manhattan District Attorney's Office argues that "[t]here is an urgent need for federal legislation that would compel software and hardware companies that design or build mobile devices or operating systems to make such devices amenable to appropriate searches."(26)

This treatment of encryption and anonymity is classic propaganda.(29) adapted to a new world. Where information spreads more easily and the public is skeptical of obvious exercises of power, propaganda takes the form of subtle suggestion. The government can easily enlist corporations that also benefit from naked communication and total information gathering. Such a campaign makes sense: encryption is easy to implement and access,(30) so the best way to keep people from it is to treat it as if it were dangerous or presumptively criminal. The goal is to change behavior through misinformation and fear, rather than through direct enforcement. This is at its core self-censorship and self-regulation, gradually imposed on the citizenry. Simply put, the best way to ensure that behavior can be comprehensively monitored is to normalize snooping (by both the government and private parties) and to stigmatize evasion of such intrusions.

Privacy threatens government power and corporate profitability. This campaign thrives on ignorance, misinformation, and ultimately restriction of true expression. The best way to combat it is perhaps through the opposite: vigilance, more information, and increased uninhibited speech. If the public is more aware of the use to which their information is put, as well as the legitimate uses for privacy-enhancing tools, misinformation designed to skew the need for privacy and suggest that people have ";nothing to hide" would quickly lose legitimacy. Of course, that information is and has been available, and some portion of the population will continue to opt for convenience over privacy. For those who do not, however, it remains paramount to recognize patterns of despotism as they develop and to intervene with information or litigation. Continuing to speak freely and access information uninhibited, while ensuring that channels remain open and accessible for others to do the same, will be the challenge of the near future, but that task is central to preserving the right to exist free from the comprehensive collection and direction of behavior that the government desires to implement on a systematic level.

Propaganda and Power Through Subtle Influence

The Importance of Anonymity and Protected Communication

The Tactics of Anti-Privacy Propaganda

More Speech is the Appropriate Counterpropaganda

It's not my responsibility to read within the word limit: it's your responsibility to write within it. The revised draft has to be under 1,001 words or else.

The best way to make the essay more terse, in my view, is to make the windup shorter and the follow-through longer. Yes, there's an effort to shape public opinion against encryption as the tool of criminals and terrorists. That's been there since the first round of the crypto wars. You don't need hundreds of words to establish that point. Nor can you get away with one paragraph of "moving forward" based on the "public must demand" strategy for rhetorical seeming efficiency in face of nothing to recommend. You need something to recommend, and one would have though that this would be on the level of "more speech," that is, communicative strategies for countering the propaganda. The evolution, or at least the hypothesis, of such strategies is what would make a fine essay.

II. State and Corporate Vilification of Encryption

Note: this intermediate draft contains over 1000 words, as new content has been added but I have not edited down the length yet. Please see the previous revision for a version within the word limit.

The Campaign Against Privacy:
Propaganda's Role in Government and Corporate Circumvention of Encryption and Anonymity

Introduction

II. The Campaign of Vilification Against Encryption

Now, however, covert observation is widespread. The effort required to tap into years of extremely intimate information about a person is minimal (consider access to a Google account containing perfectly archived emails, cloud storage, photos, calendar data, and more). The government can and does conduct wide-scale dragnet surveillance. The public has a stronger need than ever for tools that protect information from unauthorized viewing and mining, both by the government and private actors.

This need is more than an abstract desire to keep personal effects secret to avoid embarrassment; rather, individual autonomy is drastically undercut when the threat of monitoring always lurks in the background. "Autonomy is vitiated by the wholesale invasion of secrecy and privacy. Free decision-making is impossible in a society where every move is monitored . . . ."(112) The ability to communicate anonymously or free from this fear of eavesdropping is central not only to personhood, but to a functional democracy as well.(113)

Government access by voluntary disclosure or cooperative programs with companies that host data or communication services is perhaps a greater concern, because there is no advocate for the end user; instead, if data is turned over routinely and voluntarily, lay users may expect their assurances of privacy to be respected without understanding the extent to which their data can be easily shared.(117)

Further, the privacy interests discussed above can be -- and are -- undermined by private actors accessing personal communications and information; government surveillance is a serious privacy concern, but so is exposure of data to others for snooping, profiling, extortion, etc. These concerns arise when users' information is compromised due to large-scale data breaches or targeted hacking, but also when the host of the data mines the information for marketing or other profitable purposes.

These concerns are severe and nearly omnipresent in widely used online services. The danger is not only in actual theft or loss of privacy, but in the fact that users will often never know who is seeing their private correspondence, when it is being monitored, and for what purpose the data is used. Thus the need encryption and reliable anonymity that can provide reasonable assurance against such intrusions is significant if the threat of constant observation is to be curtailed at all.

II. The Government's Vilification of Encryption

Note: This is an incomplete draft

Introduction

This paper briefly discusses efforts to frame anonymity and encryption -- vital tools to free expression, uninhibited communication, and autonomous life in a world of snooping and surveillance -- as dangerous and unnecessary instruments of criminality. It examines the legitimate need for modern tools that preserve anonymous communication and protected data, the attempts to undermine the usefulness of these tools, and the harm of this campaign against privacy-promoting technology.

Anonymity, Encryption, and Propaganda

A. Association with Criminality and Delegitimization

B. Flaws, Motives, and Dangers of This Campaign

While anonymity and secrecy are directly offended by a war on encryption, autonomy is also a victim. As discussed above, the persistent threat of monitoring and censorship severely limits the ability to express, act, and ultimately think on one's own. The notion that people who seek to act autonomously by guaranteeing freedom from these intrusions are dangerous (or even criminal) demonstrates a troubling lack of respect for these principles of autonomy from those in power, but also threatens to suppress expression and uninhibited behavior by making individuals and communities police themselves. If people are told that they have nothing to hide if they have done nothing wrong, and companies adopt this narrative by prohibiting customers from using anonymizing tools,(167)

In one report (by a private firm), Tor, VPN services, and several messaging applications are identified as "Tech for Jihad."(169) Tor in particular has gained a reputation as "the web broswer for criminals,"(170) merely because it helps to anonymize users. Telegraph, an app which can send encrypted and self-deleting messages, has been identified as "the app of choice for jihadists."(171)

C. Flaws, Motives, and Dangers of This Campaign

Anonymity, Propaganda, and Encryption

I. The Growing Need for Anonymity and Privacy

A. The Demand for Protected Communication Is Legitimate

B. The Need for Protected Communication Is Stronger Than Ever

II. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Government's Vilification of Encryption

A. Association with Terrorism

B. Discounting of Legitimate Use

C. Motives and Dangers of This Campaign

III. Moving Forward and Embracing Technology as a Defender of Autonomy

Paper Title

-- By EthanThomas - 03 Mar 2017

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