Narcos is currently one of the most popular series of Netflix. The series tells the story of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and how he tries to avoid getting arrested by the drug police. On the contrary, the drugs police do everything in their power to catch Escobar. However, back in those days it was not that easy. Escobar and his men used satellite phones that could be taped. However, the taped conversation only had value when the reception was good and when the police was able to recognize someone’s voice. I couldn’t stop thinking how different the same situation would be nowadays.
Tracking only the metadata of someone’s phone for one week can tell you someone’s life story. The Correspondent, a Dutch online newspaper, tracked the phone of Ton, and you will be surprised what they knew about him after a week. The name of his girlfriend is Merel and they send each other 100 Whatsapp messages per day on average. Ton also has a sister, Annemiek, who is still studying. Ton likes to read about sports on several news apps and is particularly interested in cycling. Furthermore, he likes to read Scandinavian thrillers, is interested in philosophy and religion, and most likely a Christian based on his search results on Google and Yahoo. He knows a lot about technology, uses three e-mail addresses, works at Bits of Freedom, and often works till late. He normally goes to bed around midnight and so forth! It is frightening to see that so much information can come from meta-data collected in one week.
Where the Correspondent got permission from Ton to track his data, the National Communications Security Agency (NCSC) of the Netherlands is entitled to track all people’s meta-data. And of course, for the sake of safety they have collected data from everyone and over a long period of time, also called data mining. Their intention is to build data-warehouses where they can store the data forever. Next to collecting data, the NCSC also has advanced tools to analyze the data. In special cases, they are allowed to go further than only analyzing meta-data and may also look into the content of the data.
However, collecting data of everyone and saving this forever is in conflict with the privacy rights. The public opinion about this matter is not clear. When Snowden reveals data collection secrets of national security agencies, everyone believes that they are collecting too much data and are violating the privacy rights of the citizens. However, when there is a terrorist attack everyone claims that we should give up our privacy rights for the sake of safety. But there is no clear debate going on. Would you have given up your privacy rights to get the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar?
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos
- https://decorrespondent.nl/528/hoe-je-onschuldige-smartphone-bijna-je-hele-leven-doorgeeft-aan-de-geheime-dienst/25712016-b07ce737
- https://www.aivd.nl/onderwerpen/het-werk-van-de-aivd/inhoud/hoe-komt-de-aivd-aan-inlichtingen/onderschepping-telecommunicatie
- https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/09/17/aivd-wil-encryptie-whatsapp-beperken-a1522000
- http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media-technologie/article/detail/3456186/2013/06/10/Wat-is-belangrijker-veiligheid-of-privacy.dhtml
- https://www.oneworld.nl/vrede-veiligheid/de-kwetsbare-balans-tussen-jouw-privacy-en-veiligheid
Hi Tjeerd. Interesting topic, and I love the referencing to Narcos! Regarding privacy, I agree it is a difficult matter. Intuitively, privacy is a sacred thing that we all hold dear and want to protect. However, every time an app asks for permission to update, we don’t read or don’t care what the app wants access to. And I’m sure nobody reads the terms and conditions. This has created a paradox, a situation where we claim privacy to be very important, but simultaneously opening everything up for the benefit of using applications. Seemingly, we already give up our privacy rights to public companies.
Regarding your closing question, if I would give up my privacy rights for the benefit of national security? I probably already gave up my privacy rights when I downloaded Facebook. You too, probably. If I would do that for a public company, I might as well give up my privacy rights to national security too so they can catch the new Pablo.
Very nice and an absolute interesting topic! Nice that you bring both sides to discussion. Privacy concers are always hard to discuss in my opinion because it is very subjective. In my case, i will absolutely give up my privacy rights for the benefit of national security, especially with all these terrorist attacks in the world.
I also think that it is on one hand quite logical that agencies as NCSC are data-mining. I think that it is important that national agencies collecting the data of their inhabitants but it is sometimes very scary to hear that they actually know everything about your personal life, just as you mentioned in your article. It is a very hard discussion, but the biggest problem will always be that we don’t know what national agencies know about us and that is also the thing that scares me the most.