The NSA (National Security Agency) is reading your emails, and listening to your online Skype calls. In fact, they are searching and following you wherever you go online, to which ever site you are watching, reading or even playing on, right now. Even this one… Yikes! Invasion of my privacy scream the people. Conventional wisdom, screams this is a violation of the American Bill of Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights, my U.N. Charter of rights and every other rights guaranteed by various governments. Specifically the right privacy and unlawful search and seizure. The think is this a dastardly plan for world control! The logic of it goes like this; I send you a letter. So long as it has a proper address, postage and is sealed. It cannot be open or intercepted except by a legal court order, legally obtained. Otherwise, it is not lawfully held and people doping it can be arrested for acting outside the law in violation of so many statues that is it not funny. Serious jail time and financial penalties. Similarly, if you plant outside my house, a video and audio surveillance camera, or CCTV type recording device that can film into my residence, in the absences of that magic protection, a court order, anything obtained is unusable and just plain creepy. And there is again all that notion of illegality, jail time and even lawsuits. A man or a woman’s home, is their castle and as such in inviolable except with the valid court order where then anything is permissible with the blessing of a judge. Ok with various nuances of jurisdictions, this is basically the way law works in a democratic country. Certainly in the United States and in Canada.
Following this logic, we turn to the Internet. When I send an electronic mail, email, it should be considered the same way as a snail mail letter. When I go online in the privacy of my own home, you need a warrant to see where i go, or listen to who I speaking with, just like as if you were planting a camera to spy inside my room. Ergo, the matter is solve, case law solves the mater for us and as such this is a closed book. They cannot do this except with a court order. Since there is no such thing as a global court order, all such activities by the NSA is illegal. And must cease and desist immediately. So why is it still going on?
Sadly the logic presented is incorrect. The fact that the law grind slowly but grinds finely is missing. They have yet to enter legal definition of modern technology for the most part. They are not sure if I sign a paper and fax it to you if that is the same force of law as if I signed it in front of you? Who uses faxes today anyways? they are so passe! When was the last time someone used a fax machine? Technology having outstripped the speed of law.
However, the law is not the problem in this case. In fact, the problem is our understanding of the internet. When i send an email it is not like a letter at all. A letter is a singular event. Going from one person hands to another. In the case of an email. it goes to all parts of the internet to ask each one, “Is this for you?” when it gets a no, it moves on. Your email stops when it gets to the right location. The government is able to read it and record it as it comes by without stopping it. Only someone with the resources of a government like the United States can do that, or rather can afford all the equipment to record it all to do that.
So one last thought, that super secret highly encrypted bank account information that was behind so many billion firewalls that it is not funny leading to your bank account? Oh yes that one? Well just as you are reading this on a web page, so too is your bank account. With the right guess you can land on that same bank account. While they code such pages not to be index by site like Google, those pages are as open as google is, if you know the URL. So whatever you thought was private is not on the internet. Welcome to the modern world. Privacy does not exist. It is all in the area where you have no expectation of privacy. So to the NSA who are reading this, carry on. It is perfectly legal to do so. Just as you are allowed to read my emails and listen in on Skype. I am not saying this is right, moral or even needed. However, it is legal.