“COLLECT IT ALL, KNOW IT ALL, EXPLOIT IT ALL”: SURVEILLANCE, MONITORING AND CONTROL
AI Systems and the Continuing Expansion of Governmental Power
David Barnhizer
Tulsi, Say It’s Not So!
Frankly, I am unbelievably offended at the treatment of Tulsi Gabbard starkly demonstrating the fact that, as Abe Lincoln warned, the danger to the exceptional system America has sought to create comes from within, not through the actions of foreign powers. As Lincoln understood, the greatest threat to the core essence of the American nation is “us”. When we tolerate the abuse of the vast powers granted American governmental agents and institutions, we are responsible for our fates and have no one else to blame. We are failing to defend our nation against the largely silent and stealthy internal attack.
A dramatic recent example of that failure has been almost completely ignored by what is referred to as the “Mainstream Media”. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has placed former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Lieutenant Colonel in America’s Army Reserve and former presidential candidate, on its “terror watch” list, close-surveilling her with multiple agents whenever she flies. From 2013 to 2021 she was the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district, and the House of Representative’s first Samoan-American voting member.
Gabbard has revealed she had been placed on the “Quiet Skies” terrorist watch list of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) and, according to a report and a post by Gabbard on X (Twitter) stated:
@TulsiGabbard. “RETALIATION. A few weeks ago, I had the audacity to tell the truth: that Kamala Harris would essentially be a mouthpiece and puppet of the Military Industrial Complex and National Security State. The next day, July 23, they retaliated. Sadly this is what we can expect from the “Harris” Administration. She reports that TSA agents follow her through airports, track her movements, and have even flown on her flights.”
At the age of 22, Gabbard enlisted in the Army National Guard. In July 2004, she deployed for a tour in Iraq. In 2007, she graduated from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School. She was the first woman to finish as the distinguished honor graduate in the Academy's 50-year history. In 2009, she was deployed to Kuwait, working on training counterterrorism units. In 2012, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2013-2016. Gabbard has dedicated her life to this nation. What has occurred is a dire warning about how our government is taking steps to steal the our freedom and independence. Simply put, “if they can do it to Tulsi Gabbard, they can do it to any of us”.
Read the following two paragraphs slowly and carefully. They are frightening and damning of the kinds of people in government who abuse the powers with which they have been entrusted.
“Gabbard and her husband have found their boarding passes marked with the “SSSS” designation, colloquially called “Quad S,” indicating that the passenger is on a threat list and subjecting the passenger to lengthy “random” searches. The designation also means that a Gabbard will have (unbeknownst to her) two explosive detection canine teams, a transportation security specialist, a plainclothes TSA supervisor, and three federal air marshals on any flight that she is on. Gabbard, who is also an Iraq War veteran and current Army reservist, recalled the incredulity of a TSA agent in seeing someone with a military ID get flagged as a threat. “Why are you Quad S? You’re in the military,” the agent asked Gabbard.
“That’s exactly what I’m wondering,” replied Gabbard before adding, “The only thing I can think of is, I work in politics.” … Gabbard also pointed to the documents released in a suit against a now-disbanded Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, headed by the former CIA Director John Brennan. The group included as “indicators for extremism or terrorism” innocuous things such as support of the former President Donald Trump, military service, and religious practice.”
Governments Are Incapable of Avoiding the Abuse of Power
While we were “sleeping” the US government, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea and many others developed amazing capabilities to surveil their citizens (as well as those of other nations). This capability has allowed authoritarian regimes to control the information to which their people had access, to spread propaganda and false data and conclusions, and punish anyone who violated their Orwellian rules on speech and behavior. The ability to achieve expanded control was provided in many instances by what we refer to as “Big Tech”. “Big Tech” has become the major supplier of surveillance technology to governments, profiting immensely by selling the data they “mine” from our Internet activities to governmental entities intent on monitoring what we are doing.
The government’s mantra justifying its widespread intrusion into our privacy has been: “Nobody is safe. Everyone is a potential terrorist. Therefore keep tabs on as many as possible, just in case now or sometime in the future they might get up to no good.”
As part of their justification of draconian repression and surveillance, supposedly democratic governments devise reasons and excuses to use their monitoring capabilities simply “because they can”. After all, who can argue against “good” goals such as stopping crime, interdicting terrorists, uncovering corruption and lies, detecting insider trading, uncovering the reality of what specific people really are like when they think no one is watching or listening, preventing abuses of various kinds, inhibiting bad thoughts, exposing racists, sexists, “phobes” of all sorts, or child molesters, etc.? These are all legitimate aims, but they have become an “ends justifying means” situation where, once accepted, there are few if any limits. In nations such as Russia, China, Iran and Turkey any boundaries have disappeared years ago because their people understand the reality of the government’s power. “Privacy fears over artificial intelligence as crimestopper”, Rob Lever, 11/11/17. https://www.yahoo.com/news/privacy-fears-over-artificial-intelligence-crimestopper-015326163.html.
This is occurring to the extent that, after the Edward Snowden/National Security Agency affair in which Snowden revealed the scale and breadth of US government surveillance activities, “privacy” in the traditional sense no longer exists. Authoritarian and supposedly “democratic” governments such as the US and UK have “in a single bound” leapt across traditional lines of personal privacy. The extent of the intrusion--aided by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other private sector data-mining actors--is dramatic. Nor can we expect our government leaders to protect us. John Kampfer writes:
“Whenever challenged about the breadth of these powers, government ministers talk of checks and balances. None of these work properly: not parliament, not the courts, not ministerial accountability. Most MPs and peers do not have the technical knowledge to grasp the details of online surveillance. It's easy for the security agencies to run rings around them.” John Kampfner, “As in Russia, the terror threat has become the excuse to curtail our rights”, 8/20/13. The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/russia-terror-
Such technologies give government, massive corporate technological monopolies, radical Progressives who have captured a once-vital Democratic Party, and a bunch of other “looney toons” powers they should not have. Nor should anyone else be trusted to impose limits on their intrusive and controlling behavior when they hold uncontrolled power in their hands.
See also, e.g., “Silicon Valley Tightens Its Grip on Free Speech: Alliance between progressives and tech is killing the unfettered exchange of ideas”, Edmund Kozak, 8/14/17. http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/silicon-valley-tightens-its-grip-on-free-speech/. “ Kozak writes:
“Political totalitarianism is coming to America, and it is being ushered in not by government thugs in jackboots but by progressive activists and their allies in Silicon Valley.” . “Is Alexa spying on us? We're too busy to care — and we might regret that”, Tim Johnson, 8/10/17. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article166488597.html.
China, North Korea, Iran and Russia are authoritarian regimes that don’t even have to pretend what they were doing. They simply do whatever they wish. America was dramatically different until recently is somewhat different because we operated under what is becoming the increasingly thin veneer of being a nation committed to the Constitutionally-based Rule of Law. I say “thin” because it is now clear that America has been moving toward the dilution of that system. Significant contributors toward the erosion of that system are the US governmental agencies that have developed intimate collaborations with Big Tech and the “Big Six” AI companies themselves which possess incredible and still expanding power on a scale that should never be allowed.
This “unholy collaboration” between governmental actors and Big Tech has evolved to the point that US agencies can now buy massive amounts of data they could never themselves be allowed to directly obtain as a matter of law. They are effectively end-running many of our fundamental constitutional rules about the appropriate limits of governmental power. As we have seen in numerous instances, the products generated by the surveillance and data collection systems do not sit idle and unseen in government data banks. The information is being used in unmonitored and questionable ways. This is having an obvious impact and has resulted in a populace that is becoming afraid to communicate in certain ways unless it is favorable to those in power.
Freedom Is Receding Rapidly
The powers that have been conferred on governments and private actors through AI and the Internet are far more than typically “dangerous”. They are destructive of our American system of fundamental rights and limits. They pose an enormous threat to our hard won freedom and basic ideals. We are in the midst of an age similar to when the Soviet Chekists and the Maoist Red guard have seized power and gained control of the reins and instrumentalities of power.
An analysis claiming that “freedom” is receding globally concluded that the US-led bloc that had been committed to advancing concepts of freedom and democratic expression was faltering in the face of the new technological capabilities they, and their enemies, now possessed. “Freedom Is Receding Around the World: By itself, Brexit isn't a big deal. But it symbolizes the decade-long weakening of the U.S.-led bloc that advanced liberal values”, Noah Smith, 7/8/16. http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-08/freedom-is-receding-around-the-world.
Freedom is in fact fading as governments, including in the US and the UK, are using the Internet and AI systems to monitor billions of private communications and actions. A recent analysis indicates that Google and Amazon have developed extensive and growing relationships with US intelligence agencies, involving both the sharing and securing of data. “Big Tech firms march to the beat of Pentagon, CIA despite dissension”, McClatchy News, Tim Johnson, 6/4/18. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article212173259.html.
Another example is offered by the alleged connection between the FBI and Best Buy’s “Geek Squad”. Reports indicate:
“[U]nsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy's Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer's request for repairs.” Scott Moxley, “FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance”, 3/8/17. http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-used-best-buys-geek-squad-to-increase-secret-public-surveillance-7950030.
Lest we forget, the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lied to a Congressional Committee during a hearing in 2013 when asked under oath if they were collecting telephonic communications on enormous numbers of American citizens. His response was “Not Wittingly”. Several months later, the documents taken by Edward Snowden were released and it became undeniably clear that the American government was collecting hundreds of millions of communications under the PRISM surveillance program without any warrant or legal cause. Later, Clapper stated he didn’t really understand Senator Ron Wyden’s questions about what was taking place. It was also noted that even with the massive data sweep nothing of consequence was produced by the illegal invasion of citizen’s rights and privacy.
Ten years later in 2024, the CIA finally admitted that, contrary to prior representations, some members of the fifty-one “former spies” statement writers were actually contractual employees of the CIA when they made their statements in a group letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop showed clear signs of being Russian disinformation.
See also, for example, the analyses of Kim Hart, Jonathan Taplin, and Christopher Mims.
Kim Hart, 6/15/17, “Policing the power of tech giants: The world's largest tech companies — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple — have become enormous concentrations of wealth and data, drawing the attention of economists and academics who warn they're growing too powerful”. https://www.axios.com/the-growing-antitrust-concerns-about-u-s-tech-giants-2433870013.html.
Jonathan Taplin warns: ”Platform companies have captured the economy," in a new book and a recent NYT op-ed that the dominant platforms are so big that they're undermining competition.
Christopher Mims pointedly adds: “Amazon Is Leading Tech’s Takeover of America: The tentacles of a handful of tech giants are reaching into industries no one ever expected them to, reshaping our world in their image”, Christopher Mims, 6/16/17. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-is-leading-techs-takeover-of-america-1497653164.
No Place to Hide
Commenting on Glenn Greenwald’s 2014 book on Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency’s approach to surveillance, The Atlantic concluded:
“Glenn Greenwald's … book is far more grounded in traditional American norms, laws, and values than the surveillance programs it is critiquing…. No Place to Hide, reproduces a secret National Security Agency document that sums up that agency's radical approach to surveillance: Collect it all. Know it all. Exploit it all.” “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State”, (Picador Reprint 2015) https://us.macmillan.com/noplacetohide/glenngreenwald/9781250062581/.
Greenwald’s book exposed surveillance powers equal to, or perhaps even greater than those possessed by the National Security Agency. These invasive powers have spread throughout our society, and given governments, corporations, private groups and malicious “trolls” powers far beyond what has ever before existed. In many instances those private sector intrusions are more pervasive and wide-ranging than the activities of governments. This is because the actors and abusers have virtually no oversight or restrictions on what they do, and no one to hold them to account.
The Atlantic’s analysis adds: “Fearless and incisive, No Place to Hide has … sparked outrage around the globe and been hailed by voices across the political spectrum as an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.” See, Greenwald, No Place to Hide: A Conservative Critique of a Radical NSA”, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/on-nsa-surveillance-glenn-greenwald-is-not-the-radical/370830/.. The analysis argues:
That totalitarian approach came straight from the top. Outgoing NSA chief Keith Alexander began using "collect it all" in Iraq at the height of the counterinsurgency. Eventually, he aimed similar tools at hundreds of millions of innocent people living in liberal democracies at peace, not war zones under occupation. The strongest passages in No Place to Hide convey the awesome spying powers amassed by the U.S. government and its surveillance partners; the clear and present danger they pose to privacy; and the ideology of the national-security state. The NSA really is intent on subverting every method a human could use to communicate without the state being able to monitor the conversation. U.S. officials regard the unprecedented concentration of power that would entail to be less dangerous than the alternative. They can't conceive of serious abuses perpetrated by the federal government, though recent U.S. history offers many examples.
There is an increasing risk our future is one of “total surveillance” in which “Big Brother” is watching, or our fear it is so causes us to become passive and conforming sheep. Andrew Napolitano warns that Congress created a “monster” through the frighteningly broad powers it has given the US President through the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the special FISA Court it created, one that reportedly approves 99% of the warrant applications submitted to it by imperfect, politicized and flat-out lying agencies such as the FBI and Department of Justice. See, “Spies among us -- Congress has created a monster that is coming for us”, Andrew P. Napolitano, 3/9/17. “The NSA has 24/7/365 access to all the mainframe computers of all the telephone and computer service providers in America.” http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/09/andrew-napolitano-spies-among-us-congress-has-created-monster-that-is-coming-for-us.html.
Governments and corporations now possess unparalleled information and surveillance capabilities through their near-total capture of the Internet, AI systems and data mining and message suppression applications. Marlowe Hood explains the dangers.
"We live in a world fraught with day-to-day hazards from the misuse of AI, and we need to take ownership of the problems." The authors called on policy makers and companies to make robot-operating software unhackable, to impose security restrictions on some research, and to consider expanding laws and regulations governing AI development.” “Top experts warn against 'malicious use' of AI”, Marlowe Hood, 2/20/18. https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-experts-warn-against-malicious-ai-014639573.html.
In the arena of supposedly democratic Western political systems It is not only America whose freedoms are at stake. John Kampfner writes how the “surveillance society” and vaguely written laws came upon the UK as a heavy-handed response to terror attacks. He explains that in the UK:
“By the time Tony Blair left office in 2007, he had built a surveillance state unrivalled anywhere in the democratic world. Parliament passed 45 criminal justice laws – more than the total for the previous century – creating more than 3,000 new criminal offences.” John Kampfner, “As in Russia, the terror threat has become the excuse to curtail our rights” 8/20/13, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/russia-terror- excuse-curtail-rights.
The Nature of Democracy Is Being Undermined and Transformed
A demoralizing result is that the nature of government is itself being transformed. Nor is the shift solely that of the dominance of the “Big Six” technological monoliths. A significant part of the transformation involves large-scale and aggressive tactics by organized special interest and identity groups. In their quest to compel everyone to accept their world view as the sole legitimate way to view and talk about a reality they invented, they have used the power of the Internet and AI to create an un-accountable quasi-governmental power and to virtually “lynch”, sanction, and punish anyone who offends them or fails to overtly support their agenda. After all, we have been lectured that “Silence Is Violence!” and we had better get ourselves “On the Right Side of History”, which is code for what they are pursuing.
As the Chinese Communist Party and other dictatorships have discovered, the Internet and AI applications confer an incredible power to track, sanction and punish. There are no constraints on their power to intimidate, condemn, defame, accuse, spread false information, and do harm. Power always corrupts and there is a dangerous truth in the fact that governments, and “private” actors that are intimately linked to governments, such as Google, Facebook and a network of intolerant interest groups have developed an almost absolute power to monitor, intrude and condemn.
As bad as it is, the NSA’s strategy of collecting and exploiting vast amounts of surveillance data pales in comparison with China’s all-encompassing totalitarian surveillance regime. The Chinese government has even managed to develop AI applications that allow it to detect and suppress disfavored words and images before they make it all the way onto the Internet. I guess we can call this “anticipatory surveillance” and join it with the efforts being pursued in various countries and technological contexts to identify people we may call “criminals” or “dissenters” according to the rules of the involved nation and sanction the “deviants” or “unbelievers” before they take action. “Scary, scary, and really scary.”
Those controlling the levers of power within such systems simply can’t help themselves. They become addicted to their new power and push to expand its reach as far as possible. This almost irresistible impulse applies not only to totalitarian states such as China and Russia, but to the US and some European nations. But China certainly leads in the race to repression. See, “China working on ‘repression network’ which lets cameras identify cars – and humans – with unprecedented accuracy: Peking University reveals results of research aimed at developing next generation of surveillance systems”, Jasper Hamill, 8/10/17. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4213358/china-working-on-repression-network-which-lets-speed-cameras-track-and-identify-cars-and-human-motorists/.
China’s totalitarian approach to the Internet and suppression of discourse and criticism is not unique, even though extreme. Chinese police allegedly arrested a citizen who had the audacity to ask why Taiwan couldn’t be called a “country”. Repression, propaganda and censorship are increasing visibly in China, Egypt and Turkey, and more covertly in the US and EU nations as well as the UK. Egypt, for example, arrested a Lebanese tourist at the airport as she was leaving the country and charged her with the criminal offense of “insulting” Egypt. She faces a possible three-to-five year prison term. Her offense was to complain about being robbed and sexually harassed and calling Egypt a “son of a bitch” country that deserved al-Sisi. “Lebanese tourist referred to criminal trial for insulting Egypt on Facebook”, Reuters, 6/3/18. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/lebanese-tourist-referred-criminal-trial-insulting-egypt-facebook-190518538.html.
A Few More Examples
Below are a few examples of how governments and private actors are exercising the immense and heretofore non-existent powers of AI, the Internet, an amazing array of vague and slippery laws, and the ability to collaborate in an aggressive political movement. What has been created is a massive surveillance, monitoring and “canceling” machine.
“‘Minority Report’ Artificial Intelligence machine can identify 2 billion people in seconds: A leading tech company has developed an Artificial Intelligence machine that can identify two billion people in a matter of seconds. Yitu Technology has made an AI algorithm that can connect to millions of surveillance cameras and instantly recognise people.” Daily Star UK, Rachel O'Donoghue, 12/12/17.
“China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Social Credit Score’ To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy: Country Determines Your Standing Through Use Of Surveillance Video, Plans To Have 600 Million Cameras By 2020”, CBS Local NY, Ben Tracy, 4/24/18.
“Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance”. Washington Post, 1/7/18.
“Harvesting Facebook Photos For a Massive Facial Recognition Database”, Forbes, Thomas Fox-Brewster, 4/16/18.
“Facial Recognition Security Cameras: A Game-Changing Technology: Facial recognition security cameras are becoming more prevalent.” Loss Prevention Media, Chris Trlica, 6/19/17.
“Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police: Prompting Outcry Over Surveillance”, New York Times, Nick Wingfield, 5/22/18.
“Who Wants to Supply China’s Surveillance State? The West: Companies vie to revolutionize ‘Big Brother’ surveillance with AI to read your mood and trawl your life.” Wall Street Journal, Dan Strumpf and Wenxin Fan, 11/1/17.
“Nvidia Making Facial Recognition AI for Smart City Surveillance: Do you ever feel like somebody's watching you?” Next Government, Caitlin Fairchild, 2/20/18.
“Privacy fears over artificial intelligence as crimestopper”, Yahoo News, Rob Lever, 11/11/17.
“No, you’re not being paranoid. Sites really are watching your every move: Sites log your keystrokes and mouse movements in real time, before you click submit.” Ars Technica, Dan Goodin, 11/20/2017.
“They Know All”
German AI specialist and entrepreneur Yvonne Hofstetter, author of Sie wissen alles (They Know All), warns about Big Data’s manipulative and intrusive business model that depends on acquiring an incredible range of information about us through accessing our electronic devices. They have designed software and monitoring systems that observe everything we look at on the Internet. These systems record our consumer decisions and construct detailed profiles for their use or for sale. They insert tracking chips into our cell phones, and build locators into our motor vehicles so that they know where we drive and even the speeds at which we drive.
Although we must take action against governmental abuse, the overwhelming loss of personal privacy and the ability of private actors to gain knowledge of other’s actions is also an extreme challenge. We have created a comprehensive and pervasive “surveillance society” where we are monitored, observed, recorded, manipulated and intimidated by both public and private actors. Just how pervasive and intimate the systems have become is shown by the experience of Judith Duportail who writes:
“I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets: The dating app knows me better than I do, but these reams of intimate information are just the tip of the iceberg. What if my data is hacked – or sold?”, Judith Duportail, 9/26/17. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/tinder-personal-data-dating-app-messages-hacked-sold.
Hofstetter explains how the system works and draws parallels to the authoritarian system that controlled East Germany until the reunification.
Our smart phones, our tablets, have been built in such a way that they are geared perfectly to supporting these business models. We are actually carrying the bugging device around with us in our pockets. It really is all about tapping into our personal data. This is why so many things around us have been fitted with sensor technology. … [T]oday … Internet giants trick us into accepting similar devices.
Judith Reker explains that Hofstetter really knows what she is describing.
“Yvonne Hofstetter is herself the managing director of a company that processes and evaluates huge amounts of data. In her book “Sie wissen alles” (They Know All) she calls for a better way of dealing with the digital revolution.” https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/ges/20440422.html. “Yvonne Hofstetter on Big Data “We Carry The Bugging Device Around With Us In Our Pockets””, Judith Reker.