The scenario that a bigger adversary gaining access to the data is definitely troublesome. We also need to consider other scenarios.
How about the ramifications of the pipes created for NSA, getting leveraged by other actors?
What happens when a rogue employee hacks the infrastructure created for providing the pipe to NSA?
What if a group of such rogue employees across multiple companies act in concert, may be creating a cartel?
Such things have the potential to remain unnoticed for a pretty long time, ruining lives of innocent people.
Now, let's replace the word rogue with innocent and intelligent but cleverly manipulated by sophisticated player and the scenario reads bleaker.
To believe that such things haven't happened before or aren't happening now, in some part of the world, will be pointless.
Consider a scenario in developing countries: let's say you wrote some piece of code (unrelated to telecom) for a businessman. Let's also say that the businessman runs many companies, one of which provides BPO services to telecom companies. Let's say that the businessman wants to exploit you. He can very well track your location using the network of the telecom company without that company knowing it, let alone the law enforcement officials. He can remain under the radar because the request can be clubbed with other legitimate ones.
This is not just a US problem, it's a global problem.
It is precisely for such reasons, that we need a manifesto about data collection policies, like "Do No Evil" or "The Patent Pledge."
"He can remain under the radar because the request can be clubbed with other legitimate ones."
I still don´t see the legitimacy of the US government accessing citizen´s data. Perhaps it´s because I´m from an european country, and governments in europe have laws to proctect citizen´s private data.
Comments
The scenario that a bigger adversary gaining access to the data is definitely troublesome. We also need to consider other scenarios.
How about the ramifications of the pipes created for NSA, getting leveraged by other actors?
What happens when a rogue employee hacks the infrastructure created for providing the pipe to NSA?
What if a group of such rogue employees across multiple companies act in concert, may be creating a cartel?
Such things have the potential to remain unnoticed for a pretty long time, ruining lives of innocent people.
Now, let's replace the word rogue with innocent and intelligent but cleverly manipulated by sophisticated player and the scenario reads bleaker.
To believe that such things haven't happened before or aren't happening now, in some part of the world, will be pointless.
Consider a scenario in developing countries: let's say you wrote some piece of code (unrelated to telecom) for a businessman. Let's also say that the businessman runs many companies, one of which provides BPO services to telecom companies. Let's say that the businessman wants to exploit you. He can very well track your location using the network of the telecom company without that company knowing it, let alone the law enforcement officials. He can remain under the radar because the request can be clubbed with other legitimate ones.
This is not just a US problem, it's a global problem.
It is precisely for such reasons, that we need a manifesto about data collection policies, like "Do No Evil" or "The Patent Pledge."
"He can remain under the radar because the request can be clubbed with other legitimate ones."
I still don´t see the legitimacy of the US government accessing citizen´s data. Perhaps it´s because I´m from an european country, and governments in europe have laws to proctect citizen´s private data.
I agree with you. My point was related to a legitimate telecom request, for example to track the telephone of a person declared missing.
What country do you live in that doesn't have any thing like warrants that let police look at your private records?