Mass Surveillance

In George Orwell’s 1984, there are two major elements to the oppression of Oceania’s society: the first is the constant, looming threat of Big Brother watching every move; and the second is a terrifyingly granular understanding of psychology, allowing for the entire population to be constantly analyzed, judged, and manipulated depending on their behavior. These two elements create possibly the most horrific dystopian society ever conceived — although, to any reader in the 21st century, the technology that Orwell envisions in his 1949 novel is almost laughable when compared to the technological atrocities apparently advancing society today. Mass surveillance has become far more dangerous and comprehensive than anyone could have imagined at the internet’s inception; and the ability to store a near-limitless amount of information allows companies to preserve what they surveille forever. Because of this, the looming threat of mass surveillance could very well become the most devastating consequence of humanity’s disregard for questioning its conquest for constant technological progress.

Mass surveillance, in this context, is the process by which governments and corporations collect, in mass, identifiable information about as many people as possible for the purpose of extortion and exploitation. This process is usually carried out through the use of “nonfree” or “proprietary” software. Proprietary software is software whose intellectual property rights are reserved by the software’s publisher, giving them the right to determine who is allowed to use, modify, share modifications, or redistribute the software. In order to protect these rights, proprietary software needs to be “locked down” and restrict user freedom. The main privacy concern with proprietary software is that the source code of the software is almost always made either obfuscated or completely unavailable in order to protect these rights; and in many cases, even inspecting the source code if one is not authorized to would be considered an offense. This is always to the detriment of the user; so long as the source code of a piece of software is obfuscated or unavailable, the operations which the software performs are not able to legally be understood or audited in any way except by the rights-holders. This is the main mechanism that software proprietors use to include malicious features (e.g. surveillance) into their software without the user’s knowledge. As such, a good heuristic to use is to assume that the all proprietary software, especially proprietary software that is free of cost and connects to the internet, is exploiting the privacy of their users for economic or political gain. Even if the software in question is purported to be privacy-oriented, it is reasonable to assume that this is simply a lie; especially as governments such as that of the United States are notorious for pressuring companies to include “backdoors” into their software.¹ These backdoors essentially act as intentional vulnerabilities that companies hope go unnoticed. They are used as a master key, allowing the government, companies, and even security researchers who may stumble upon these backdoors to view or change all communication through the service or unlock devices. All of these features of proprietary software make it impossible to trust.

The alternative to proprietary software is software which is licensed under a “free” or “libre” license. In this case, “free” is a misnomer; the meaning of “free” software is not, as the Free Software Foundation (FSF) puts it, “free as in free beer,” but instead it is “free as in freedom”.² The difference between free/libre software and nonfree/proprietary software is that proprietary software, whether or not it is free of cost, does not respect a users freedom to use that software however that user may want. When a user receives a copy of a free software program on the other hand, that software essentially becomes their software which they can do with as they please. Some free software developers choose to implement an exception to this rule, stating that users cannot redistribute the software or a modified version of it as proprietary software; this clause is often called “copyleft,” as the idea of this rule is to keep free software free instead of allowing people to claim free software as their own intellectual property. Even libre software that costs money is still considered “free software” because even if the software is not free of cost (although in practice the vast majority of libre software is free of cost since it is admittedly difficult to enforce this), it still respects the users right to use that software however they choose. On the other hand if a user is to purchase a proprietary application, the user does not now own that software; they are only granted a license to use that software which can usually be revoked at any time for any reason by the software’s publisher.

Free software is currently defined by the FSF as software whose license abides by the “four essential freedoms of free software,” which are as such:

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.²

These freedoms ensure that, among other things, users are entitled to view, modify, and redistribute the source code of free software; and as such, these freedoms enable proper auditing of a software’s source code and allow for the inner-workings of the software to be well understood. Because of the “open-source” nature of free software, backdoors, as well as most other privacy violating features, are effectively impossible to hide.

Another benefit of free software is that development of the free software projects is largely a community driven effort; anybody can suggest changes, and even submit modified snippets of code as a part of their suggestion. The freedom to modify and redistribute the software also means that even if the maintainers of the project were to reject these changes, somebody could simply “fork” the project (redistribute a modified copy of software, usually with new branding) and become the maintainer of their own version of that software. This is especially useful when it comes to ensuring privacy and security because if any privacy-violating features were to be introduced into a project, then a fork of the project can easily be made to roll back these changes. In these cases, the development community will also typically shift away from the original version onto the privacy respecting version, making the original project irrelevant. This ensures that free software is, in addition to the freedoms listed above, effectively and practically always free of any malicious or privacy violating features. Modifying proprietary software in this manner, on the other hand, would in most cases — even if that software is legally free to download elsewhere — be considered software piracy, a punishable offense. Free software advocates instead encourage these practices with their projects, as they are always beneficial to the quality of the software and to the users who use that software.

Despite the clear advantages of free software for end-users, company executives are often skeptical of the ability to profit from free software models. Companies like Microsoft have built their whole empire almost entirely off the profit of selling licenses to use their proprietary Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, and many other technologies. Giving away software for free (and without malware as well) certainly does not seem like a very straightforward way of profiting, but in reality, free software models can actually be extremely profitable with some ingenuity. For example, Red Hat Incorporated, a company which develops exclusively free software, was acquired by IBM in 2019 for $34 billion.³ Red Hat’s business model is to sell subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services to help enterprises to use their free software products. Even Microsoft has begun to realize the potential of the free software market, and their 2018 acquisition of GitHub Incorporated, the world’s biggest platform for distributing and developing open-source software projects, shows that free software is surely becoming the way of the future.⁴ However, it is often challenging to develop stable business models using free software, especially if the software being developed is either niche or, the more likely scenario, collecting user data is integral to the business model. Companies like Google and Facebook, whose business models are both built on targeted advertising, develop free-to-use and addictive proprietary software products and services with the expressed purpose of collecting as much user data as possible; a clear example of the saying, “if you are not paying for the product, then you are the product”.⁵

Proprietary operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s IOS and Mac OS, and Google’s Android and Chrome OS are even more detrimental to personal privacy, as these operating systems have full access to not only all of the pictures, videos, documents, etc. stored on the machine; but they even have full control of computer peripherals such as cameras and microphones. This concern is no longer about conjecture either, as Apple, one of the biggest supposed-privacy advocates in the world, was exposed in 2020 by Thomas Le Bonniec, a former Apple contractor, for recording the conversations of unwilling-participants in an effort to, apparently, “improve Siri dictation,” (Siri being Apple’s famous voice recognition software assistant).⁶ Apple later promised “sweeping changes” to these programs, but due to the closed nature of their software, it is impossible to confirm any of this.⁷ These technologies allow for even more granular details of users to be collected and analyzed. Certainly, the gall of Apple and other companies to so radically violate the privacy of consumers shows the immense profit incentive for companies to continue this malicious behavior.

These concerns are compounded by the realization that all of this data is, in fact, stored indefinitely by these companies. According to CRN, in 2019, “Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft led the charge in terms of building new data centers … In the third quarter of 2019, hyperscale capex data center spending exceeded $31 billion, up 8 percent year over year”.⁸ With these software giants recording as much information as they possibly can, it is no surprise that building these types of data centers is a necessary endeavor; even still, the actual mode of profit here considering these lofty investments is questionable at best. Certainly, even in the highly competitive market of modern advertising, the amount of information being collected seems to be, and almost certainly is, completely unnecessary to accomplish the goal of targeting advertisements — especially the part about storing this data indefinitely. Snapchat, an extremely popular texting app made by Snap Incorporated and targeted at children and young adults, is particular egregious in this regard. This is because while the app makes it appear as all messages are deleted after being opened, Snap actually stores all of these messages forever; even the original users who sent or received the message are not allowed to access the message, only Snap is. All of this information about Snapchat was only revealed after Snap settled out of a US Federal Trade Commissions charge that the chat service “deceived customers” by storing this seemingly-deleted data and, just to add insult to injury, “transmitted users’ location and collected their address books without notice or consent” as well.⁹ The massive depths of Snap’s near-infinite collection of text messages and images (including, of course, all kinds of extremely sensitive information and photos) is no doubt very valuable to some; Facebook, arguably a perfect match for Snap, even attempted to buy Snap in 2013 for $3 Billion.¹⁰

It seems that all these companies agree with the idea that this mass of information is extremely valuable, but what about it is profitable? It seems that, with continually growing interest from these companies in neural network and advanced artificial intelligence technology, the idea behind these practices becomes clear: this data is valuable because, while it is seemingly mostly inert now, it will certainly be an integral income stream for these companies in the future. The data analysis methods of tomorrow will allow companies to extract more useful information than ever before; and it will make them unmatched, for the exception of world governments, in their ability to drive any aspect of any human (or millions of humans) as they please. Using the ability of social media and other software to show people whatever the proprietor of that software deems fit, it seems extremely likely that with this, along with advanced analysis of everyone’s individual psychology, that extremely effective and subtle mass manipulation is undoubtedly on the horizon for massive portions of the population. Without a doubt, this is an example of the true terror of mass surveillance; and it is enabled by general willingness to plainly accept the fact that modern technology records every movement made while carrying a smartphone, every piece of media consumed or passed over (and every face or noise made while consuming said media), every time a user scrolls back up on a web page to double-check, and especially every conversation had with a loved one where a smartphone is present. All of this and more has the potential to be (and in most of these cases actively is) collected and analyzed constantly, and to be stored in continuously greater quantities as companies continue to invest more and more into these practices.

Governments are quite possibly an even greater concern when it comes to all matters of mass surveillance. While companies may be unwilling to share the data that they collect amongst other companies, all of them are required by law (at least in the United States, where almost all of these companies are located) to provide the government with any and all metrics or data when met with a subpoena. As stated earlier, the government also instructs companies to include backdoors into their software products, allowing them to intercept computer communications in real-time.

The dangers of the government using mass surveillance to monitor citizens is a threat with seemingly limitless potential for abuse. Authoritarian governments like that of China already implement “social credit” systems to monitor their citizens, and to bar them from certain rights depending on how harshly they are judged for their perceived slights against the Chinese Communist Party.¹¹ This is just one example of how modern technology makes 1984 look like a complete joke, everybody is already willingly carrying a telescreen in their pocket everywhere they go; all that is left is for the government to start abusing its power more blatantly than it already does. Governments are certainly not any more trustworthy than companies when it comes to mass surveillance either, Edward Snowden proved that to be the case for the NSA as far back as 2013.¹² The potential for authoritarian governments to take advantage of these circumstances to control their populations is nearly certain to manifest itself increasingly in different parts of the world.

Alternatively, by using free software, all of these issues can easily be avoided on a personal basis. By switching to a fully free software workflow, and by being mindful of proprietary software when it is in use, digital autonomy can largely be achieved on an individual basis. This autonomy can easily be violated by authoritarian governments though, and so encouraging personal efficacy is likely only the start to a tenable solution. It seems like legislation barring these practices could be helpful, although California’s 2020 Consumer Privacy Act, which forces companies to expunge data on given users when requested, shows the complete incompetence of governments in these issues; as this legislation simply does not come close to addressing the issue at hand. For starters, government data collection is completely permissible and unfettered by this act. And it still lets companies collect “anonomyzed data,” which is easily “fingerprint-able” and still allows companies to analyze trends in extremely specific regions. These laws do almost nothing to truly protect the privacy of consumers, and companies can still legally collect all of this information without the user’s knowledge.¹³ It seems that the true long-term solution to this issue would be to make consumers more mindful of these malicious practices. This would cause more consumers to demand that hardware manufactures and software developers release their products as free software, and would in turn shift the technology sphere to use more ethical business practices. If consumers avoided purchasing privacy violating products, then the incentive to create said products would plummet. The only reason that these companies and governments are allowed to continue using mass surveillance is due to the indifference of the populous.

If large portions of the population continue to allow these practices to go unchecked however, then it is certain that these systems will continue to contribute to the oppression of all who fall below the ruling class. Nonfree software, for this reason, is always malicious. The more people who carry an iPhone in their pocket everywhere they go, keep their webcam uncovered, use centralized social media, and who disregard or fail to recognize the issue of privacy altogether will cause additional people to be susceptible to the type of mass control that is detrimental to us all.

A major issue in the world of computer technology is the availability, quality, and ease of use of free software. As time continues to moves on however, this issue is quickly becoming an issue of the past. GNU/Linux has gone from being an obscure operating system, traditionally only really suitable for server and administrative usage, to a serious contender in the desktop/laptop space. Because of the extremely collaborative nature of free software, the quality of the software increases by a substantial margin with every passing day when compared to that of proprietary software; and this previously niche software (along with its ideology) is becoming more and more mainstream.

The most pressing issue to contend with today is smartphones, as there is currently very few viable free software alternatives to Android or IOS since smartphone hardware is significantly more locked down. This is because on Android and IOS devices, even if a user fully owns the hardware, they are not able to gain administrative privileges on their own device without the use of hacking — this is referred to by the FSF as a “proprietary jail,” and, as such, hacks to “break out” of a proprietary jail are commonly known as a “jailbreak.” As such, much of the development effort of these operating systems, unsurprisingly, goes into patching the holes that allow for jailbreaks in the first place.¹⁴ Because of issues like these — and because of other issues like cell-tower tracking and wire-tapping — it is best to keep smartphones away from any sensitive conversations, personal information, and even photos due to face detection and other similar technology.¹⁵ Some even go as far as to completely avoid using a smartphone altogether. Free software should also always be used in place of proprietary software when possible; this can easily be done by simply searching the internet for “open-source [type of application]” or “open-source alternative to [application]” (the keyword “open-source” is used as opposed to “free software” in this example to avoid confusing the search engine). It is imperative that consumers should avoid hardware only compatible with proprietary software unless that device is not at all connected to the internet. Caution in this manner allows for computer users to make more informed and privacy-oriented decisions about the software that they choose to use.

The ultimate conclusion to be drawn from the mass surveillance crisis of the 2010’s is that people need to be conscious of the freedom that they forego when using modern proprietary technology. Free software is the only way to ensure that people can prevent these dangers from continuing to manifest, as the proprietors of nonfree software have shown time and time again that they are not to be wisely trusted. Advocating for and contributing to free software projects is the only way to create a world where people can avoid walking on eggshells when responsibly using modern technology. In the words of Edward Snowden,

This [free software] community that we have, that we’re building, that does so much, has to grow. We can’t compete with Apple, we can’t compete with Google, directly, in the field of resources. What we can eventually do is head count and heart count. We can compete on the ground of ideology because ours is better.¹⁶