First post for 2014, aka Rachel's brain is finally back from cheese-induced coma break, also titled:
What your government isn't telling you and why you should probably be paying attention.
I have been utterly gob-smacked and dismayed at the public reaction to government controls of information in this past year. 2013 heralded a new government here at home who are quite content to control the message and spy on our neighbours, as seen in our scant media releases from the Department of Border Protection and the Indonesian controversy. As well as this, we have seen huge revelations regarding privacy and cybersecurity abroad as evident in the NSA and Snowden debates which have spilled out of the domestic arena into the international sphere. I, in my naivety, thought that no populous could stand by and allow a giant public admission of spying and collection of personal information to slide, and yet I was wrong.
In the last congressional and senate sessions before Christmas 2013, the
US saw a bill titled
"To authorize and request the
President to award the Medal of Honor to Bennie G. Adkins and Donald P. Sloat
of the United States Army for acts of valor during the Vietnam Conflict and to
authorize the award of the Medal of Honor to certain other veterans who were
previously recommended for award of the Medal of Honor” passed into law. Since
being signed into law by President Obama, it has gained it's actual title of
National Defense Authorisation Act of 2014, or NDAA 14 for short. It is a bill
that is passed yearly which outlines the policy and framework in which the
department of defense is allowed to spend it's budget, which is passed through
a separate budget spending bill (also passed in the last sessions of
2013). You may remember NDAA 12 as the the bill which allowed indefinite
detention. NDAA 14 has its own little insidious quirks, which have passed with
little scrutiny because America was yelling about ducks.
Also attached to this was a watered down Cyber-security bill (Sections 932- 942) as added by Senator Jay Rockefeller. It's
no CISPA, but it does have provisions for voluntary sharing of information
between public and government entities. It seems those on the hill have learnt
from the mishaps of the highly controversial act of 2012/13 and created a bill
which creates an even broader framework and shys away from any language that
would suggest that information flow would be government controlled. It has some
cybersecurity education parts and a model for headhunting potential highly
talented cyber-oriented young adults for easy transition into NSA
jobs. It is the first section that is worrisome though, potentially opening the
door for data and information collection with many of the private corporations
that did support CISPA.
The NDAA itself is a behemoth of a bill, with so much padding that you don't quite know where to begin. Jennifer Briney and her excellent podcast Congressional Dish attempt to break it apart, but even she admitted that there were probably parts that she had missed. The broadly scary parts are:
- Section 1071: ENHANCEMENT OF CAPACITY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO ANALYZE CAPTURED RECORDS
This section details that a Conflict Records Research Center will "establish a digital research database, including
translations, and to facilitate research and analysis of records captured from countries, organizations, and individuals, now or once hostile to the United States". They maintain that academic integrity will be maintained, and that as long as it is in accordance with national security, intelligence protocols and sources and personal information they will make a significant portion of the data available to researches. So it is basically legalising the NSA's current work, under the guise of research.
The weird part comes when the section authorises gifts and donations from other government departments, foreign governments, foundations or charitable organisations (foreign or domestic), any source from the private sector (foreign or domestic). Combine this with the voluntary sharing of information in the cybersecurity bill and you have a whole host of possibilities for information collection and transference.
- There is a whole section on the New Start treaty and nuclear preparedness that I am uncomfortable as it has international ramifications, but as I am running out of time I shall delve into this another day.
All of this combined with the new information from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection that the barely adequate once a week 'Operation Sovereign Borders' update will now be an email without the press conference. There is now no way of specifically knowing how many boats are returned to Indonesia or the actual numbers as the update likes to lump all the numbers together in a weekly aggregate total. How are the general population meant to educate themselves and avoid statistics like the ones seen in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday if there is no access to actual data?
This post has no answers to all of these frustrations, but at least it begins to disseminate questions.
