[PLUG-TALK] Surveillance, elections, media, and blackmail

[Keith Lofstrom]

With all the concerns about the government spying on ordinary 
citizens, I haven't seen much press about a bigger threat - 
government spying on government.  More specifically, intelligence
agencies spying on elected representatives.

At first blush, this seems good, yes?  We get to find out who the
bad guys are, and not elect them.  But if the bar for "bad guy"
is set too low, it quickly descends below the level of the average
citizen.  And that opens the door for egregious manipulation of
the political process by intelligence agencies whose budgets
and powers are decided upon by the politicians elected by that
political process.

Case in point:  there is big kerfuffle about New York politician
Anthony Weiner, who sent sexually explicit pictures to women
following his twitter posts.  Okay, that was crazy stupid. 

But anyone who does lots of things does lots of things wrong. 
The lack of inhibition that makes a person foolhardy enough
to start a business or run for office or achieve some other
large goal spills over into other parts of their lives.
Passionate people aren't robots, and those who achieve great
things make correspondingly great mistakes.  A careful reading
of history uncovers many monsters and few saints, and while I
might dislike Weiner's politics and his stupid mistake, that
does not make him a monster.

All the net traffic these low-inhibition individuals create is
scanned and recorded by the NSA.  When politicians decide how
to vote on an NSA appropriation or an intelligence-related bill,
the NSA could be blatantly pulling their strings with blackmail
threats.  But far more subtly, they could be analyzing these
individuals and steering them through carefully crafted messages,
seemingly from ordinary constituents.  Or jiggering on-line poll
numbers by shill voting.  Or by placing sexually-explicit 
pictures where these politicians will find them, when and where
their inhibitions are weakest.  On the internet, nobody knows
you're a dog - or a bot.

I don't think that most NSA workers would knowingly participate
in such evil.  They have a job serving their country, and most
honorable ones would quit and blow the whistle rather than support
such behavior.  The professionals create powerful tools for data
gathering and analysis and decision making.  But the NSA is highly
compartmentalized, and most of those in positions of power got
there through decades of gradual compromises.  There is great
temptation to apply the tools they use to steer foreign leaders
and citizens to steering the domestic politics that determine
their own economic and political fate.  These are achievement
driven, low inhibition leaders, too.  

This changes politics.  Over a decade ago, Oregon Senator Mark
Hatfield, as close to a saintly politician as American politics
ever produces, was under intense media scrutiny for a gift, I
think from OHSU.  OK, taking that gift was wrong.  But what is
the story behind the story?  Why did we the citizens even hear
about Sen. Hatfield's error, rather than some other far more
egregious mistakes?  Hatfield chaired the Senate Appropriations
Committee.  Pressure, a reminder of the forces he was up against,
may have influenced some appropriations. 

Nothing as crude as blackmail;  a series of distractions and
seemingly unrelated events is enough to change what a person
does, especially if those events are carefully chosen by experts
in human communication and behavior.  The tools we use to
manipulate a Castro or Khomeini work just fine on a Hatfield
or an Obama.

This is why we should restrict the size of our intelligence
agencies, carefully specify their tasks, make their operations
as publically transparent as possible, and design manipulation-
resistant oversight organizations and watch those, too.  This
may not even be possible, but until we engage every source of
ideas we have, and debate them publically and cooperatively,
we won't know, will we?  Ignorance does not excuse failure.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993