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The recent cyber attacks on Google and 34 other Silicon Valley entities – including Symantec, Dow Chemical, and Adobe - is causing quite a stir regarding the topic of Internet censorship and the security of information networks. There are conflicting views on the origin and the intent of the attacks, and even whether or not the Chinese government was directly involved.
Prior to the incident in December where Google's services, particularly Gmail were targeted, Google had experienced repeated harassment involving what seemed to be a politically motivated attempt in information gathering. According to Google, their cooperation with China's regulations regarding Internet censorship, requiring Google to filter out topics banned by Chinese censors, had made the company the target of hackers.
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“As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion.”
-Adjudication on Motions for Preliminary Injunction, American Civil Liberties Union et al. V. Janet Reno (No. 96-963) and American Library Association et al. V. United States Dept. of Justice (No. 96-1458)
On January 21, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the The Newseum in Washington, DC on the importance of the freedom of information.
The Internet provides us with an amazing real-time news tool, where we can learn exactly what is happening, when it's happening, and where it's happening. In an analogy between the Cold War and today, Clinton compared web 2.0 tools like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to the “Samizdat” of the modern age, and said that Internet censorship is the “new information curtain descending across much of the world.”
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"When the American Republic was founded, the framers established a libertarian equilibrium among the competing values of privacy, disclosure, and surveillance. This balance was based on the technological realities of eighteenth-century life. Since torture and inquisition were the only known means of penetrating the mind, all such measures by government were forbidden by law. Physical entry and eavesdropping were the only means of penetrating private homes and meeting rooms' the framers therefore made eavesdropping by private persons a crime and allowed government to enter private premises only for reasonable searches, under strict warrant controls.”
– Alan F. Westin, Privacy and Freedom (Atheneum, 1968, p. 67)
The 18th century framers of the United States of America had no ability to predict what our modern age would be like. We've made technological leaps throughout the centuries that make it necessary for us to reinterpret the intention and spirit of our privacy laws. Privacy was particularly important to our forefathers but, as illustrated in Westin's quote, they could not have imagined how difficult the trade-off between security and privacy would become as our world transformed. The concrete walls that used to guard our personal privacy have dissolved and modern life now revolves around intangible forms of communications such as telephones and emails.
Today's government has responded to today's new security and challenges with high-tech surveillance and identify profiling. Although often discredited as paranoia or fiction, the latest issues regarding cellular phone tracking have brought new public awareness to how much attention the government really is paying to our everyday lives.
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