The Senate charade last week allowing the National Security Agency to continue spying on Americans’ phone records would be laughable if it didn’t have such dangerous implications for both the tech industry and consumer privacy. ADVERTISING The Senate charade last
The Senate charade last week allowing the National Security Agency to continue spying on Americans’ phone records would be laughable if it didn’t have such dangerous implications for both the tech industry and consumer privacy.
One by one Senate Republicans stood up and announced their support for the NSA’s “collect it all” mentality on the grounds that it’s a crucial counterterrorism tool. Never mind that the United States has been able to point to only one, single case that came to light through a search of domestic phone records. And that one example was an Anaheim cabbie sending the vast sum of $1,000 to an al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia. Yep, that makes all the spying worthwhile.
Silicon Valley and the American public must increase the pressure on Congress to come to its senses.
Consumer confidence in Silicon Valley’s tech products continues to fall at alarming rates around the world. The latest projections are that it will cost the tech industry an estimated $35 billion over the next three years. Don’t buy it? The Pew Research Center recently reported that the percentage of Germans believing the U.S. government protects personal freedoms fell from 81 percent to 58 percent in the last year. In Brazil, it dropped from 76 to 51 percent.
Fortunately the fight is not over. The Senate failure to curb the NSA’s data collection sets up what should be a lively debate next June on the future of the Patriot Act, the post 9/11 legislation that authorized the NSA’s bulk collection of data.
The Patriot Act needs to be reauthorized by the end of 2015 or it will expire. Senate Republicans are likely to learn that it’s much harder to marshal the necessary votes to approve measures than it is to block them. What’s needed is a reasonable compromise that balances the nation’s need to keep would-be terrorists in check with reasonable privacy protections.
Technology firms would have a much better case in Congress and with the American public if they were more forthcoming themselves with consumers about how their personal information is being used. Tech firms successfully blocked a bill in the state Legislature in 2013 that would have accomplished that goal.
It’s unlikely that the valley will be able to innovate itself out of this mess. The right to privacy is one of the nation’s most treasured principles. Silicon Valley needs to take a more active role in protecting Americans’ privacy — and restoring public trust in its products.
— From the San Jose Mercury News
