MOSCOW
— TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a
Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the
revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of
nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed,
those journalists and others published documents revealing that
democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of
ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.
Within
days, the United States government responded by bringing charges
against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were
advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned
to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as
un-American, even treasonous.
Privately,
there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged
lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with
indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.
Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.
Two
years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s
invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and
disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board
investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist
attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and
criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.
This is the power of an informed public.
Ending
the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a
historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the
latest product of a change in global awareness. Since 2013, institutions
across Europe have ruled similar laws and operations illegal and
imposed new restrictions on future activities. The United Nations
declared mass surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights. In
Latin America, the efforts of citizens in Brazil led to the Marco Civil,
an Internet Bill of Rights. Recognizing the critical role of informed
citizens in correcting the excesses of government, the Council of Europe
called for new laws to protect whistle-blowers.
Beyond
the frontiers of law, progress has come even more quickly.
Technologists have worked tirelessly to re-engineer the security of the
devices that surround us, along with the language of the Internet
itself. Secret flaws in critical infrastructure that had been exploited
by governments to facilitate mass surveillance have been detected and
corrected. Basic technical safeguards such as encryption — once
considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled by default in the
products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your
phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such structural
technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond
borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of
anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.
Though
we have come a long way, the right to privacy — the foundation of the
freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights — remains under
threat. Some of the world’s most popular online services have been
enlisted as partners in the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs, and
technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world
to work against their customers rather than for them. Billions of
cellphone location records are still being intercepted without regard
for the guilt or innocence of those affected. We have learned that our
government intentionally weakens the fundamental security of the
Internet with “back doors” that transform private lives into open books.
Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary
Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale
unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States
government makes a note.
Spymasters
in Australia, Canada and France have exploited recent tragedies to seek
intrusive new powers despite evidence such programs would not have
prevented attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain recently
mused, “Do we want to allow a means of communication between people
which we cannot read?” He soon found his answer, proclaiming that “for
too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our
citizens: As long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”
At
the turning of the millennium, few imagined that citizens of developed
democracies would soon be required to defend the concept of an open
society against their own leaders.
Yet
the balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the
emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview
defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from
reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court
victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more
convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a
right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects. ☐
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