Fourth Amendment, Expectations of Privacy, and Surveillance

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.  The Fourth Amendment, however, is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only those that are deemed unreasonable under the law.  It states:

The right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The U.S. Constitution protects a right to privacy from government intrusion, most explicitly in the Fourth Amendment.  It should be clear by now that databases and surveillance technology challenge this right.

First, the government can search our homes or any physical place that holds our personal information  without entering them, and they can search our persons from a distance without our knowledge.  There are lots of examples.  Here's one:

Bridges, tunnels and toll roads use automated toll collection systems.  Sensors read a device in the car as it goes by without stopping, and the owner's credit card or bank account gets billed for the toll.  Police use toll records in investigations.

The USA PATRIOT Act and national security letters (NSLs)

Before the PATRIOT Act, the FBI could obtain various kinds of records, meta data from telephone, email, and ISP records without a court order or any court oversight, using a document called an NSL.  The FBI could only use NSLs only when it had reason to believe that the customer or entity whose records it sought was a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.  Only certain FBI officials at is headquarters could issue NSLs. 

The PATRIOT Act, significantly expanded FBI authority to use NSLs.  It allows any field office to issue them.  It eliminated the requirement that the information had to pertain to a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.  NSLs can include a person's full credit report.  Recipients of an NSL are prohibited from telling anyone about the order (this includes family members, an attorney... this is the "gag order").  The level of secrecy and lack of court review clearly presented opportunities for abuse.

Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), revisited

Driving around Silicon Valley, eavesdropping on cell phone conversations was a popular form of industrial spying in the 1980s.  ECPA (which was amended in 1994) was a significant step toward protecting privacy in cyberspace (aka the Internet) from private and governmental snooping.  It required that the government get a court order to legally intercept email or read stored e-mail.  The government argued that people give up their expectation of privacy by allowing ISPs to store their email on the ISPs computers.  Thus, strict requirements of the Fourth Amendment would not apply.

The PATRIOT Act reversed the direction of ECPA.  It loosened restrictions on government surveillance and wiretapping activities.   The story is not over, and even though the NY Times revealed domestic wiretapping of domestic phone calls in 2005, it wasn't until Edward Snowden reaveled the deep dark secrets of what was actually collected, did the public and government realize the extend of the surveillance.  And so it goes....

Feel free to comment here about these issues if you want as part of Tech Muse #3. 

Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986

A good source for all things related to privacy is https://epic.org.
EPIC stands for Electronic Privacy Information Center.  It's a great resource, as is the Electronic Frontier Foundation at https://www.eff.org/ -- both are added to the links on the right side of the blog.

Recently, the hot news is that the House Judiciary Committee has voted 28-0 in favor of the Email Privacy Act, H.R. 699, a bill that would establish a warrant requirement for the disclosure of all electronic communications. The law would also require notice to customers whose communications have been collected. With 314 members of the House cosponsoring, the bill is slated to be considered by the House on April 25th. Senator Leahy, who has sponsored an identical bill in the Senate, said that "Congress has waited far too long to enact these reforms."

To understand the importance of all the news related to domestic "snooping" on devices and apps without informed consent, you have to first understand ECPA.  According to the Epic site:

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA") was passed in 1986 to expand and revise federal wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping provisions. It was envisioned to create "a fair balance between the privacy expectations of citizens and the legitimate needs of law enforcement." Congress also sought to support the creation of new technologies by assuring consumers that their personal information would remain safe.

ECPA includes the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Pen-Register Act. Wire communication refers to "any aural transfer made in whole or in part through the use of facilities for the transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or other like connection"; in short, it refers to phone conversations. An oral communication is "any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying such expectation"; this constitutes any oral conversation in person where there is the expectation no third party is listening

 You can read more about ECPA, and pay close attention to the section on Disclosure of Records as well as reasons for Reform.  At the top of the page, you can access recent news on this topic.

Feel free to add what you know.  The new bill being considered now in the House and Senate is intended to close the loop on disclosure and informed consent, but Epic and others think it hasn't gone far enough.

Arizona Gives Day, April 5

Here is your chance to donate to as many Arizona charities as you like!! GIVE! https://www.azgives.org/c/GivesDay

Sherry Turkle’s ‘Reclaiming Conversation’

Here is a review of Turkle's book by Jonathan Frazen, the author, most recently, of “The Kraus Project” and the novel “Purity."  I liked it for its nuanced point of view, noting that not everyone has the luxury of getting off their phones.  For example, he says,

the family that is doing well enough to buy and read her new book may learn to limit its exposure to technology and do even better. But what of the great mass of people too anxious or lonely to resist the lure of tech, too poor or overworked to escape the vicious circles?

Stop Googling. Let's Talk.

This is a topic that was mentioned in one class and thought I would post about it.  It's about the loss of face-to-face conversation.  For me to even engage with the class (without using Clickers to do so), I have to ask students to close their laptops, and look up.  What a concept!  In the NY Times Sunday Review (last Sept), Sherry Turkle begins:

COLLEGE students tell me they know how to look someone in the eye and type on their phones at the same time, their split attention undetected. They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught. Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, “elsewhere.”

Sherry Turkle has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five, She had a special focus: What has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk? She goes on:

First of all, there is the magic of the always available elsewhere. You can put your attention wherever you want it to be. You can always be heard. You never have to be bored. When you sense that a lull in the conversation is coming, you can shift your attention from the people in the room to the world you can find on your phone. But the students also described a sense of loss.

 For example, Turkle spoke to one college junior who tried to capture what is wrong about life in his generation. “Our texts are fine,” he said. “It’s what texting does to our conversations when we are together that’s the problem.”

Read the article by Turkle based on her book, “Reclaiming Conversation.”  Here she makes a case for face-to-face talk, and that direct engagement is crucial for the development of empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the place of others.   After you read this article, there is a link to her next article, as she reacts to the comments she received.  I found this related article, "Talk to Each Other, Not Your Phone" to be even more powerful.  We text because regular conversation is so "pedestrian" and boring.  In her book, Turkle asks Randall, 24, a real estate broker,

What happens when there is a lull in the conversation. He looked at me, seeming not to understand. Later he explained that, in his mind, he had just made it clear that there is never a lull in the conversation. Anything like that would be filled by turning to your phone. But I hadn’t understood this yet so I tried again. I said, “Like, if things got quiet among your friends?” Randall said, “Oh, if the conversation was not providing information, I’d check out some YouTube stuff I’m behind on … or take a picture of us and post it.”

After you read the articles (very short), what do you think?  What has been your experience? Are you comfortable with silence in conversation?  Or do you view conversation a transactional; that it has to accomplish something or provide new information?  

OK, Google. Where Did I Put My Thinking Cap?

It's not unusual to hear people talk about "Googling it" to find about anything.   But it is surprising to find that students use Google and Siri to help them answer assignment questions, or whenever they want to know anything.  This recent NPR tech article probes this further by asking,

But with so much information easily available, does it make us smarter? Compared to the generations before who had to adapt to the Internet, how are those who grew up using the Internet — the so-called "Google generation"— different?

Although there is a relative lack of research available examining the effect of search engines on our brains even as the technology is rapidly dominating our lives, the few studies available do not seem to bode well for the Google generation.

• A 2008 study commissioned by the British Library found that young people go through information online very quickly without evaluating it for accuracy.
• A 2011 study in the journal Science showed that when people know they have future access to information, they tend to have a better memory of how and where to find the information — instead of recalling the information itself.   That phenomenon is similar to not remembering your friend's birthday because you know you can find it on Facebook. When we know that we can access this information whenever we want, we are not motivated to remember it.

Consider these positions: 

1. The worry for some educators is that the more you (fill in: students) are on your computer, the less likely it is that you will be able to read the material and understand it for a sustained amount of time.  
2. The Internet holds great potential for education — but curriculum must change accordingly. Since content is so readily available, teachers should not merely dole out information and instead focus on cultivating critical thinking, he says.
3. One recommendation is to make questions "Google-proof."

Design it so that Google is crucial to creating a response rather than finding one," he writes in his company's blog. "If students can Google answers — stumble on (what) you want them to remember in a few clicks — there's a problem with the instructional design.

Are there are other recommendations or comments you want to add about relying on Google and voice-recognition software (aka Siri)?

Read the article at here.
 

DevOps - Building software development into operations

We had a lively conversation in class today about how agile software development takes no heed to those who work in operations, that is, many software "innovations" fail to consider the hardware architecture that will make the software actually WORK.  Software development without operations (back-end system and network administrators) will never get off the ground.  Enter: DevOps.  And lucky for us, we have an expert in DevOps coming to talk to our class on Thurs., Feb. 11 (details forthcoming).  I'm very excited.  Nicole Forsgren got her Ph.D in MIS & Accounting here, and now she works for Chef (I posted a link on this blog and the class blogs).

I'm working on a way to create a better understanding of DevOps for our projects, as well as some basic primer readings.  In the meantime, here is are two keynote talks at LISA conferences.  The talks are long, but well worth the time.   is over an hour, but 10-12 minutes in and you'll get the main idea.  Stay with it as long as you can.   Would love to hear your points of view on this. 

• Here is a short video summary of the history of DevOps began. I learned a lot. http://itrevolution.com/the-history-of-devops/ 
• Gene Kim gave a keynote at LISA 2014 (Usenix special interest group for system administrators - mostly ops people).  This is considered a seminal talk. https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa14/conference-program/presentation/kim. (Some of what Nicole Forsgren talked about in my class is mentioned this talk.) 
• Also Gene Kim et al., wrote "The Phoenix Project" - read Inside Amazon.  Worthwhile and easy to digest.

• A really fantastic talk was given by Jez Humble at LISA 2015 (keynote), delivered to an Ops crowd. He talks about how DevOps is different from Agile Lean Configuration Management