6 ms·

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociolo

by espeed 13y ago

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching". Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invisible hand. Those that united and cooperated survived and evolved, and those that refused to unite died off. Jonathan Haidt has been talking (http://www.ted.com/speakers/jonathan_haidt.html http://www.ted.com/speakers/jonathan_haidt.html) and writing (http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Haidt/e/B001H6GAXW http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Haidt/e/B001H6GAXW) about how this was key to and accelerated civilization's evolution -- "it put everyone in the same boat." This same phenomenon happens at the cellular level -- bacteria group to form mitochondria, and mitochondria to form cells, and so on, each time forming a superorganism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization). E pluribus unum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum) -- "out of many, one." Ants, wasps, and bees are the canonical example of this, and the beehive is often used to symbolize this concept (https://www.google.com/search?q=beehive+symbolism&newwindow=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=beehive+symbolism&newwindow=...). The PRISM name even reflects the symbology -- a honeycomb is made up of prisms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_prismatic_honeycomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_prismatic_honeycomb). For the last few hundred years, market forces have been the invible hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand), and the corporation emerged as the superorganism. But overtime entropy increases and order erodes. Maybe PRISM is an attempt to reestablish order. The NSA may see other benefits from PRISM leaking. For example, mining the world's communication data may or may not be practical today, but observing a system changes a system. How will people's behavior change now that they know they're being watched? It would be easier to detect deltas than to mine the entire system. Turn on the lights. Roaches scatter. Targets reveal.

logn 13y ago
I've also wondered if perhaps Snowden is still on CIA payroll. Maybe the NSA didn't want this leaked but CIA did.
- cracell 13y ago
  It's very interesting to think about if Snowden is actually a part of a larger group and is just the front man for leaking what they want out there, regardless of their motivation. So far he's been presented as a lone wolf with assistance now from groups like Wikileaks but acquiring data on his own and initiating things up himself. But that may not be the case.
northwest 13y ago
They certainly know that sooner or later things risk coming to light. But it seems more likely that they would have preferred to have this leak and its accompanying chilling effect happen at a later date, when they can be sure that everybody is under their control and their power structure could not be brought down anymore.
- espeed 13y ago
  > They certainly know that sooner or later things risk coming to light. General Michael Hayden, former head of NSA, said essentially that on Face the Nation a few weeks ago: One of the results of the Snowden leaks is that it launched a national debate about the balance between privacy and security. I'm convinced the more the American people know exactly what it is we are doing in this balance between privacy and security -- the more they know -- the more comfortable they will feel. So frankly I think we ought to be doing a bit more to explain what it is we're doing, why, and the very tight safeguards under which we are operating. ... Here's how I do the math. In an ideal world, I would keep all of this secret because any of it that I make public slices some of my operational advantage away from me. But here's what I've learned heading up both NSA and CIA. You may be able to do one thing one-off based upon narrow legalness and the President's authorization, but in democracies like ours don't get to do something over a long period of time without national consensus. So I'm willing to shave points off of my operational effectiveness in order to make the American people a bit more comfortable about what it is we're doing; otherwise, the American people won't let us do it in the first place. CBS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpfwjI9Eqy4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpfwjI9Eqy4
moocowduckquack 13y ago
"Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak?" Perhaps they have been taking notes from Jeremy Bentham. "PANOPTICON; OR THE INSPECTION-HOUSE: CONTAINING THE IDEA OF A NEW PRINCIPLE OF CONSTRUCTION APPLICABLE TO ANY SORT OF ESTABLISHMENT, IN WHICH PERSONS OF ANY DESCRIPTION ARE TO BE KEPT UNDER INSPECTION" ... "To say all in one word, it will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection. No matter how different, or even opposite the purpose: whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools. It is obvious that, in all these instances, the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose X of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so." http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm
eigenvalue 13y ago
Really thought provoking post, thanks.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
How will people's behavior change now that they know they're being watched? Here's one possibility. The really dangerous people - those few actual, professional-grade, funded and organized terrorists - may contract black-market hackers to flood the internet and cell networks with red-herring terror-signature traffic, rendering the entire surveillance system useless for its original purpose. For just a tiny fraction of its cost. In order to justify the construction and continued funding of the system, its mission will have to creep, and we'll all soon have the police knocking on our doors because of our internet searches.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
There is a difference between self-organization and falling prey to parasites. It's the difference between everybody being in the same boat, and almost everybody being in the same pot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality ^ Not what we're dealing with here. Nowhere near.
ams6110 13y ago
It wouldn't even have to be technically true. If enough anecdotal evidence "leaked" you could get a lot of people to accept the idea and behave accordingly. It's also a classic move by tyrannical authority.... get the people to believe that the authority is omnipotent and resistance is futile.
bparsons 13y ago
If this was their strategy, it would be an extremely risky one from a political point of view. The NSA's endless budget expansion is now at risk, while almost half of the House of Reps voted to nearly shut the program down last week. No doubt, the next mid-term cycle will be dominated by people on the left and right, campaigning on the promise to shut down these insane programs. The next campaign for President will likely turn out the same. From Obama's perspective, this is a complete nightmare. His legacy as President will be tarnished, with even the true believers now deeply disillusioned.
rcthompson 13y ago
I'm sorry to say that pretty much all the biological examples and analogies you give are either wrong or at best controversial and not widely accepted. Bacteria do not group to form mitochondria; mitochondria do not group to form cells. Mitochondra don't even cooperate "willingly" with their host cells, but rather the host cell must incentivize them by withholding essential nutrients from the "slackers" until they shape up. Insect colonies are not "superorganisms"; the individuals within a colony act selfishly, doing things like secretly laying eggs to propagate their genes and sometimes even trying to "usurp the throne" by killing and replacing the queen. The concept of a "superogranism" as a group of individual organisms that evolve together is not generally accepted by biologists [1]. I'm not familiar with Jonathan Haidt's work, so I can't comment directly on that, but your paraphrase above (e.g. "Those that united ... evolved") sounds suspiciously like group selection, and must answer to the same criticisms [1]. The concepts of entropy and order don't really apply in a social system. In many industries the only stable equilibrium is a monopoly [2], which is arguably the least entropic "market state" possible. The "optimal" market according to capitalism is perfect competition among a large number of small independent firms, which is arguably the maximum-entropy state. So it seems that increased entropy should be a good thing. The word "prism" has a mathematical meaning and a physical meaning, and I think it's pretty clear that when the NSA called their spying program PRISM, they were invoking the physical meaning of a tool that separates light into its components rather than the mathematical meaning of a solid formed by two identical polygons whose sides are connected by parallelograms. This might seem like nitpicking. If it was just a few examples in your post that were slightly inaccurate, I wouldn't have cared. But your post is clearly trying to give a bunch of examples in order to establish a pattern, and when nearly all of your examples are wrong in significant ways or based on controversial theories, I feel it undermines your the point you were trying to make. Finally, suggesting that the purpose of a vast surveillance program is anything other than surveillance is going against Occam's razor, and doesn't seem to make sense to me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
- espeed 13y ago
  > I'm sorry to say that pretty much all the biological examples and analogies you give are either wrong or at best controversial and not widely accepted. Many in today's foreign policy circles agree with Haidt's analogies -- see Foreign Policy's "Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2012" (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012globalthinkers?wp_login_redirect=0# http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012globalthinkers?wp_login_red...). Controversial or not, if policy makers hold the idea, it may be sufficient to justify/sell the strategy. And since when has universal buy-in been prerequisite to a course of action? > Bacteria do not group to form mitochondria; "The Evolution of the Cell" (http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/organelles/ http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/organelle...) "Cells within cells: An extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence" (http://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/endosymbiosis.pdf http://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/endosymbiosis.pdf) Mitochondrion Origin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin) Endosymbiotic Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory) > mitochondria do not group to form cells. Eukaroyte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote) vs. Prokaryote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote) > Mitochondra don't even cooperate "willingly" with their host cells, but rather the host cell must incentivize them by withholding essential nutrients from the "slackers" until they shape up. Haidt uses the term "freeloaders" instead of "slackers", but incentivizing the freeloaders to "shape up" is exactly the point of the analogy. > I'm not familiar with Jonathan Haidt's work, so I can't comment directly on that All of his writings and talks touch on it, but here's a good overview: "Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence" (http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway_to_self_transcendence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway_...) Papers & Citatations (http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VafYYacAAAAJ&hl=en http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VafYYacAAAAJ&hl=en) Google Tech Talk: "Hive Psychology and the Moral Life of Organizations" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APK3tlPL_0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APK3tlPL_0) > The concepts of entropy and order don't really apply in a social system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation) > In many industries the only stable equilibrium is a monopoly [2], which is arguably the least entropic "market state" possible. The "optimal" market according to capitalism is perfect competition among a large number of small independent firms, which is arguably the maximum-entropy state. So it seems that increased entropy should be a good thing. It's about balance. Unrestrained corporate growth in its current form is unsustainable to the biosphere. We have limited natural resources. What's good for one group may be detrimental to the whole. > The word "prism" has a mathematical meaning and a physical meaning, and I think it's pretty clear that when the NSA called their spying program PRISM, they were invoking the physical meaning of a tool. I don't know how you can argue anything the NSA does is "pretty clear." Look up doctrinal meaning vs literal meaning, or double entendre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre).

by espeed 13y ago

logn 13y ago

I've also wondered if perhaps Snowden is still on CIA payroll. Maybe the NSA didn't want this leaked but CIA did.

cracell 13y ago
It's very interesting to think about if Snowden is actually a part of a larger group and is just the front man for leaking what they want out there, regardless of their motivation. So far he's been presented as a lone wolf with assistance now from groups like Wikileaks but acquiring data on his own and initiating things up himself. But that may not be the case.

northwest 13y ago

They certainly know that sooner or later things risk coming to light. But it seems more likely that they would have preferred to have this leak and its accompanying chilling effect happen at a later date, when they can be sure that everybody is under their control and their power structure could not be brought down anymore.

espeed 13y ago
> They certainly know that sooner or later things risk coming to light. General Michael Hayden, former head of NSA, said essentially that on Face the Nation a few weeks ago: One of the results of the Snowden leaks is that it launched a national debate about the balance between privacy and security. I'm convinced the more the American people know exactly what it is we are doing in this balance between privacy and security -- the more they know -- the more comfortable they will feel. So frankly I think we ought to be doing a bit more to explain what it is we're doing, why, and the very tight safeguards under which we are operating. ... Here's how I do the math. In an ideal world, I would keep all of this secret because any of it that I make public slices some of my operational advantage away from me. But here's what I've learned heading up both NSA and CIA. You may be able to do one thing one-off based upon narrow legalness and the President's authorization, but in democracies like ours don't get to do something over a long period of time without national consensus. So I'm willing to shave points off of my operational effectiveness in order to make the American people a bit more comfortable about what it is we're doing; otherwise, the American people won't let us do it in the first place. CBS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpfwjI9Eqy4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpfwjI9Eqy4

moocowduckquack 13y ago

"Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak?" Perhaps they have been taking notes from Jeremy Bentham. "PANOPTICON; OR THE INSPECTION-HOUSE: CONTAINING THE IDEA OF A NEW PRINCIPLE OF CONSTRUCTION APPLICABLE TO ANY SORT OF ESTABLISHMENT, IN WHICH PERSONS OF ANY DESCRIPTION ARE TO BE KEPT UNDER INSPECTION" ... "To say all in one word, it will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection. No matter how different, or even opposite the purpose: whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools. It is obvious that, in all these instances, the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose X of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so." http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm

eigenvalue 13y ago

Really thought provoking post, thanks.

Lagged2Death 13y ago

How will people's behavior change now that they know they're being watched? Here's one possibility. The really dangerous people - those few actual, professional-grade, funded and organized terrorists - may contract black-market hackers to flood the internet and cell networks with red-herring terror-signature traffic, rendering the entire surveillance system useless for its original purpose. For just a tiny fraction of its cost. In order to justify the construction and continued funding of the system, its mission will have to creep, and we'll all soon have the police knocking on our doors because of our internet searches.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

There is a difference between self-organization and falling prey to parasites. It's the difference between everybody being in the same boat, and almost everybody being in the same pot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality ^ Not what we're dealing with here. Nowhere near.

ams6110 13y ago

It wouldn't even have to be technically true. If enough anecdotal evidence "leaked" you could get a lot of people to accept the idea and behave accordingly. It's also a classic move by tyrannical authority.... get the people to believe that the authority is omnipotent and resistance is futile.

bparsons 13y ago

If this was their strategy, it would be an extremely risky one from a political point of view. The NSA's endless budget expansion is now at risk, while almost half of the House of Reps voted to nearly shut the program down last week. No doubt, the next mid-term cycle will be dominated by people on the left and right, campaigning on the promise to shut down these insane programs. The next campaign for President will likely turn out the same. From Obama's perspective, this is a complete nightmare. His legacy as President will be tarnished, with even the true believers now deeply disillusioned.

rcthompson 13y ago

I'm sorry to say that pretty much all the biological examples and analogies you give are either wrong or at best controversial and not widely accepted. Bacteria do not group to form mitochondria; mitochondria do not group to form cells. Mitochondra don't even cooperate "willingly" with their host cells, but rather the host cell must incentivize them by withholding essential nutrients from the "slackers" until they shape up. Insect colonies are not "superorganisms"; the individuals within a colony act selfishly, doing things like secretly laying eggs to propagate their genes and sometimes even trying to "usurp the throne" by killing and replacing the queen. The concept of a "superogranism" as a group of individual organisms that evolve together is not generally accepted by biologists [1]. I'm not familiar with Jonathan Haidt's work, so I can't comment directly on that, but your paraphrase above (e.g. "Those that united ... evolved") sounds suspiciously like group selection, and must answer to the same criticisms [1]. The concepts of entropy and order don't really apply in a social system. In many industries the only stable equilibrium is a monopoly [2], which is arguably the least entropic "market state" possible. The "optimal" market according to capitalism is perfect competition among a large number of small independent firms, which is arguably the maximum-entropy state. So it seems that increased entropy should be a good thing. The word "prism" has a mathematical meaning and a physical meaning, and I think it's pretty clear that when the NSA called their spying program PRISM, they were invoking the physical meaning of a tool that separates light into its components rather than the mathematical meaning of a solid formed by two identical polygons whose sides are connected by parallelograms. This might seem like nitpicking. If it was just a few examples in your post that were slightly inaccurate, I wouldn't have cared. But your post is clearly trying to give a bunch of examples in order to establish a pattern, and when nearly all of your examples are wrong in significant ways or based on controversial theories, I feel it undermines your the point you were trying to make. Finally, suggesting that the purpose of a vast surveillance program is anything other than surveillance is going against Occam's razor, and doesn't seem to make sense to me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

espeed 13y ago
> I'm sorry to say that pretty much all the biological examples and analogies you give are either wrong or at best controversial and not widely accepted. Many in today's foreign policy circles agree with Haidt's analogies -- see Foreign Policy's "Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2012" (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012globalthinkers?wp_login_redirect=0# http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012globalthinkers?wp_login_red...). Controversial or not, if policy makers hold the idea, it may be sufficient to justify/sell the strategy. And since when has universal buy-in been prerequisite to a course of action? > Bacteria do not group to form mitochondria; "The Evolution of the Cell" (http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/organelles/ http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/organelle...) "Cells within cells: An extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence" (http://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/endosymbiosis.pdf http://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/endosymbiosis.pdf) Mitochondrion Origin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin) Endosymbiotic Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory) > mitochondria do not group to form cells. Eukaroyte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote) vs. Prokaryote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote) > Mitochondra don't even cooperate "willingly" with their host cells, but rather the host cell must incentivize them by withholding essential nutrients from the "slackers" until they shape up. Haidt uses the term "freeloaders" instead of "slackers", but incentivizing the freeloaders to "shape up" is exactly the point of the analogy. > I'm not familiar with Jonathan Haidt's work, so I can't comment directly on that All of his writings and talks touch on it, but here's a good overview: "Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence" (http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway_to_self_transcendence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway_...) Papers & Citatations (http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VafYYacAAAAJ&hl=en http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VafYYacAAAAJ&hl=en) Google Tech Talk: "Hive Psychology and the Moral Life of Organizations" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APK3tlPL_0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APK3tlPL_0) > The concepts of entropy and order don't really apply in a social system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_entropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation) > In many industries the only stable equilibrium is a monopoly [2], which is arguably the least entropic "market state" possible. The "optimal" market according to capitalism is perfect competition among a large number of small independent firms, which is arguably the maximum-entropy state. So it seems that increased entropy should be a good thing. It's about balance. Unrestrained corporate growth in its current form is unsustainable to the biosphere. We have limited natural resources. What's good for one group may be detrimental to the whole. > The word "prism" has a mathematical meaning and a physical meaning, and I think it's pretty clear that when the NSA called their spying program PRISM, they were invoking the physical meaning of a tool. I don't know how you can argue anything the NSA does is "pretty clear." Look up doctrinal meaning vs literal meaning, or double entendre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre).