“’Joshua Kold, in all likelihood, is stuck in some country house as he agonisingly ponders what kind of surprises the next stage of his young life will bring him.
Having worked for 30 years in the intelligence services, I truly hope that his food is sickening, the winter is fierce and his access to the internet is awful. But I’m not so much worried about what will happen to this young man as the damage which Kold has caused and is still capable of causing to the long-term ability of America to find an optimal balance between the protection of private life and the security of the country.’”
“Bastard!”
“Well, one can understand him as well – he is still on the other side of the barrier and has to show loyalty,” the Lawyer noted.
Kold snorted as he continued reading: “’Kold was working on contract with the NSA, and from the moment he made public top-secret materials about the surveillance programmes, he and the government of the USA have pursued a fierce debate about the essence of these programmes.
Those who follow Kold’s epic should understand two main postulates. The first one is the fact that in the modern world, filled with dangers, many things must be kept secret. The line between ‘secret’ and ‘not secret’ is quite blurred, and if we prioritise security, then we should better ‘sin’ towards even higher secrecy than go in the other direction. Secondly, despite the complaints of Kold and his admirers, the government of the USA has made sustained efforts not to violate the right to privacy and not just because it respects the right to a private life (although it does respect this right) but also because the government simply doesn’t have time to read meaningless electronic messages or listen to conversations, which have no bearing on any potential plots against American citizens.
Cases like Kold’s put many of my colleagues from the intelligence community in a difficult situation. Indeed, the official explanations in regard to data collection programmes can look unconvincing, or they can be regarded as an attempt of self-justification. But they are the truth. I know first-hand that General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, tells the truth when he claims that many plots have been uncovered and terrorist attacks prevented thanks to information acquired by his agency. I know this because I used to work there, because I had access to the secret information and I took part in many of the operations he’s talking about.
I have spent years among those who worked at detection and discovery of attacks by Al-Qaeda. We were working in secrecy not because we were ashamed of something. We were working this way because it was necessary. Al-Qaeda and its allies are studying our actions. They learn from our mistakes. America has become safer because we made it our goal to study their methods better than they did ours.
I understand that a certain balance is necessary here. But the intelligence community hides the information from American people not because it doesn’t trust the people. The fact is, as soon as important information in connection to security becomes public, anybody can use it to their advantage, including those who want to harm us.
That is why I find the contradictions which Kold’s case revealed so discouraging. I understand that many Americans don’t trust their government. I would’ve liked to be able to change it. I would’ve liked to be able to tell people about the astonishing things I have witnessed during the 30 years of my work in the CIA. About the fact that I have never before seen people like this who would be prepared to work so hard and so selflessly. Such long hours and for such small pay. People who were prepared for their smallest mistakes to be subjected to the most thorough analysis and for their successes not to be noticed. But I have enough experience to affirm that the deeply rooted distrust towards the government cannot be shaken by the stories of people like me. Fans of conspiracy theories never stop making cries of protest at the thought that the government may find out how long they spent talking on the phone to their favourite auntie.
Let me explain the situation tactfully. The government is not interested in the least in your conversations to your auntie, unless of course she’s the head of a terrorist organisation. Last year each day more than 100 billion electronic messages were sent – 100 billion! In this huge mass are concealed some small pebbles which have immediate interest, amid masses of waste rock, which has no value whatsoever. Unfortunately, the metadata (phone numbers, length of the conversations and the like, but not the content of the conversation) in relation to your phone call to a member of your family can get into the same large basket, in which the data about a planned terrorist attack is contained. As Jeremy Bash, the former head of the CIA, once said, ‘if you are looking for a needle in haystack, you first to need to find the haystack’.
Unfortunately, in covering Kold’s case, much of the mass media has spent more time looking at how the government can misuse the information to which it has access, rather than focusing on the efforts the intelligence community is making to protect the right to privacy. We have spent a lot of time establishing how to separate the few ‘pearl seeds’ of valuable information from the huge ‘dunghill’ of useless data.
It is done with tough and well thought-through limitations. I had an opportunity to personally observe the consequences of the incursion into private life in an organization I was working for – the National Counter Terrorism Center. As deputy of the director of that center I had to fire employees, good employees, or dismiss them from their posts, for breaking rules for acquiring and use of information. It didn’t happen often and the matters were never in relation to malicious attempts to collect personal information. We had mandatory training courses and special employees who made sure that the rules relating to privacy are followed. We used our precious resources to hire lawyers and experts in the field of civil rights, who monitored our efforts. And on those few occasions when we made mistakes, the punishments were severe and would follow immediately.
Yes, some information now classified as secret may not have been in the past. Such ‘super secrecy’ can undermine the public trust in us and weaken our ability to protect the data, which requires protection. Kold hasn’t given any proof of mass errors in our policies. It’s more that he took upon himself a right to judge which instruments the intelligence community can use to provide security for our citizens. Unfortunately, Kold has attracted the public’s attention and the government’s reaction now seems too weak, too late and too self-justifying. But the intelligence community, a priori a less attractive character than a self-proclaimed informer, has a lot to say about how the government ensures the integrity of the private life. And we have to say it.”
Kold grinned, put the printout to the side and said thoughtfully:
“You were right, what you said about the barricades. And if I had stayed in America I would, in all likelihood, be thinking the same as Liebman.”
File 008.wav
“Mr. Jenkins, well, the Baseball player, came to my ward with a bouquet of wisteria and a book by Tom Clancy. I think it was the novel The Cardinal of the Kremlin, although I may be mistaken.
He took the bull by the horns straight away:
‘The English people sing “God save the queen”! The anthem for our agency should be: “God save the creator of the internet, electronic mail and social networks!”’
‘What does this have to do with social networks?’ I asked.
‘Aha, that’s where the dog is hidden!’ The Baseball player raised his finger triumphantly: ‘The information that the special services used to spend years and years of painstaking work to acquire can now be collected in seconds, thanks to the internet! Just think about it, Joshua – in seconds! And one of our main helpers in this task are social media. We now control time and therefore we can now prevent crimes and terrorist attacks before innocent people are killed. Children, old people, women – they all stay alive and the criminals get what they deserve. It’s an incredible breakthrough in the international fight for security, it’s the future! My boy, don’t shake your head, just listen to me and weigh all the pros and cons.’