The Chief Justice of the United States has named two new judges to the eleven-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Court announced last week.

Chief Justice Roberts designated Judge James P. Jones of the Western District of Virginia and Judge Thomas B. Russell of the Western District of Kentucky to serve on the FISC beginning May 19, 2015. Judge Jones and Judge Russell were both nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton. The new FISC appointees will replace Judge Mary A. McLaughlin and Judge James B. Zagel, who will rotate off the Court on May 18. The current membership of the FISA Court is listed here (and here).

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rules on applications for electronic surveillance and physical search (“and other investigative actions”) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In recent years, the Court has also secretly interpreted intelligence surveillance law in ways that were unexpected and counterintuitive, authorizing the collection of all domestic telephone metadata records.

The evolution of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was critically examined in a report last month from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Due to changes in law and technology, the FISA Court has “veer[ed] off course, departing from its traditional role of ensuring that the government has sufficient cause to intercept communications or obtain records in particular cases and instead authorizing broad surveillance programs,” wrote Liza Goitein and Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center.

“It is questionable whether the court’s new role comports with Article III of the Constitution, which mandates that courts must adjudicate concrete disputes rather than issuing advisory opinions on abstract questions. The constitutional infirmity is compounded by the fact that the court generally hears only from the government, while the people whose communications are intercepted have no meaningful opportunity to challenge the surveillance, even after the fact,” they wrote.

See What Went Wrong with the FISA Court, Brennan Center, March 18.

(Former Justice Department official Carrie Cordero took issue with some of the authors’ recommendations for changes to the Court on the Lawfare blog last week. Update: The authors replied here.)

The Congressional Research Service issued several reports last year on possible reforms to the FISA Court:

Reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts: A Brief Overview, March 31, 2014

Reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts: Procedural and Operational Changes, August 26, 2014

Reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC): Selection of Judges, May 5, 2014

Reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts: Introducing a Public Advocate, March 21, 2014

Reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts: Disclosure of FISA Opinions, February 24, 2014

The Department of Homeland Security aims to increase its domestic human intelligence collection activity this year, the Department recently told Congress.

In a question for the record from a September 2014 congressional hearing, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-GA) asked:  “Do we currently have enough human intelligence capacity–both here in the homeland and overseas–to counter the threats posed by state and non-state actors alike?”

The Department replied, in a response published in the full hearing volume last month (at p. 64):

“DHS is working on increasing its human intelligence-gathering capabilities at home and anticipates increasing its field collector/reporter personnel by 50 percent, from 19 to approximately 30, during the coming year.”

“We are also training Intelligence Officers in State and major urban area fusion centers to do intelligence reporting. This will increase the human intelligence capability by additional 50–60 personnel.”

The projected increase in DHS HUMINT collection activity was not specifically mentioned in the Department’s FY 2015 budget request.

Human intelligence collection in this context does not necessarily mean that the Department is running spies under cover. According to a 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service (footnote 38), “For purposes of DHS intelligence collection, HUMINT is used to refer to overt collection of information and intelligence from human sources. DHS does not, generally, engage in covert or clandestine HUMINT.”

In any case, “The DHS Intelligence Enterprise has increased intelligence reporting, producing over 3,000 reports in fiscal year 2014,” DHS also told Rep. Broun.

A June 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office found fault with some of that reporting, which is generated by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A).

“I&A customers had mixed views on the extent to which its analytic products and services are useful,” GAO found. See DHS Intelligence Analysis: Additional Actions Needed to Address Analytic Priorities and Workforce Challenges, GAO report GAO-14-397, June 2014.

DHS concurred with the resulting GAO recommendations.

“Understanding culture is essential in conducting irregular warfare.”

That is the opening sentence in the introduction to a new U.S. Army publication on Cultural and Situational Understanding.

“Irregular warfare requires a deliberate application of an understanding of culture due to the need to understand a populated operational environment, what specifically is causing instability, the nature of the threat, and the ability to work with host-nation governments and security forces.”

The new Army doctrine on cultural understanding emerges from and builds upon existing Army counterinsurgency doctrine. It is “outward looking” and does not pause to contemplate the cultural foundations of the Army itself. See Cultural and Situational Understanding, Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 3-24.3, April 2015.

Update: For a critical perspective on this document, see The US Army’s Serial Plagiarists by Roberto Gonzalez, Counterpunch, May 1, 2015, and The Quiet Death of ATP 3-24.3 (A Plagiarism Postmortem), May 7, 2015.

The anticipated deployment of thousands of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) — or drones — in American skies raises unresolved privacy concerns that have barely begun to be addressed, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

The CRS report provides “a primer on privacy issues related to various UAS operations, both public and private, including an overview of current UAS uses, the privacy interests implicated by these operations, and various potential approaches to UAS privacy regulation.” See Domestic Drones and Privacy: A Primer, March 30, 2015.

This week, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration arguing that the FAA was obliged to establish privacy rules for commercial drones and that it had failed to do so.

The privacy implications of drones have been discussed in several congressional hearings over the past two years, yielding these published hearing volumes:

U.S. Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Integration, Oversight, and Competitiveness, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, December 10, 2014

Eyes in the Sky: The Domestic Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems, House Judiciary Committee, May 17, 2013

The Future of Drones in America: Law Enforcement and Privacy Considerations, Senate Judiciary Committee, March 20, 2013

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Other new or updated CRS reports that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Cyberwarfare and Cyberterrorism: In Brief, March 27, 2015

The United Kingdom: Background and Relations with the United States, March 27, 2015

Yemen: Civil War and Regional Intervention, March 26, 2015

Peace Talks in Colombia, March 31, 2015

Membership of the 114th Congress: A Profile, March 31, 2015

Supervised Release (Parole): An Overview of Federal Law, March 5, 2015

In a significant retrenchment of the national security bureaucracy, the Department of Defense has reduced the number of employees and contractors who hold security clearances in the past two years by more than 700,000 persons, a cut of 15% in the total security-cleared population in DoD. The previously undisclosed reductions were reported in data provided by DoD to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

This is the first documented drop in the overall number of security clearances since FY 2010, when the systematic collection of statistical data on clearances began, and it is probably the first major decline in the number of cleared personnel since 9/11.

Most of the new reductions involved persons who had been investigated and deemed “eligible” (or “cleared”) for access to classified information but who did not have or need such access in fact. But a sizable 117,000 persons who were “in access” (i.e. who actually did have access to classified information) were also dropped from the clearance rolls between FY 2013 and FY 2015, according to the new statistics.

A 2014 report from the Office of Management and Budget recommended reductions in the cleared population since the “growth in the number of clearance-holders increases costs and exposes classified national security information, often at very sensitive levels, to an increasingly large population.” A cut in clearances may also lead indirectly to reduced production of classified information.

In the first quarter of FY 2015, following the new reductions, there were 3.9 million DoD personnel (employees and contractors) with security clearances, down from 4.6 million in FY 2013, for a drop of 15.3%. The total number of clearance holders government-wide is about 0.5 million higher than the DoD figure.

The new data were disclosed last week in the latest quarterly report on implementation of the Insider Threat Program.

The data also indicated that the backlog of Top Secret/SCI clearance holders whose periodic reinvestigations were overdue (or “out of scope”) had been reduced by 63,000. However, there are still 356,000 TS/SCI clearance holders that remain “out of scope” and in need of an updated reinvestigation, according to the DoD data.

A new annual report to Congress on security clearances government-wide (including non-DoD agencies) “is in its final stages, but not yet ready for release,” said a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It will be made available next month, he said. Last year’s annual report is here.

A flood of information from the ongoing proliferation of space-based sensors and ground-based data collection devices is promoting a new era of transparency in at least one corner of the U.S. intelligence community.

The “explosion” of geospatial information “makes geospatial intelligence increasingly transparent because of the huge number and diversity of commercial and open sources of information,” said Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), in a speech last month.

Hundreds of small satellites are expected to be launched within the next three years — what Mr. Cardillo called a “darkening of the skies” — and they will provide continuous, commercially available coverage of the entire Earth’s surface.

“The challenges of taking advantage of all of that data are daunting for all of us,” Mr. Cardillo said.

Meanwhile, the emerging “Internet of Things” is “spreading rapidly as more people carry more handheld devices to more places” generating an abundance of geolocation data.

This is, of course, a matter of intelligence interest since “Every local, regional, and global challenge — violent extremism in the Middle East and Africa, Russian aggression, the rise of China, Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons, cyber security, energy resources, and many more — has geolocation at its heart.”

Consequently, “We must open up GEOINT far more toward the unclassified world,” Director Cardillo said in another speech last week.

“In the past, we have excelled in our closed system. We enjoyed a monopoly on sources and methods. That monopoly has long since ended. Today and in the future, we must thrive and excel in the open.”

So far, NGA has already distinguished itself in the area of disaster relief, Mr. Cardillo said.

“Consider Team NGA’s response to the Ebola crisis. We are the first intelligence agency to create a World Wide Web site with access to our relevant unclassified content. It is open to everyone — no passwords, no closed groups.”

NGA provided “more than a terabyte of up-to-date commercial imagery.”

“You can imagine how important it is for the Liberian government to have accurate maps of the areas hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic as well as the medical and transportation infrastructure to combat the disease,” Mr. Cardillo said.

But there are caveats. Just because information is unclassified does not mean that it is freely available.

“Although 99 percent of all of our Ebola data is unclassified, most of that is restricted by our agreements [with commercial providers],” Mr. Cardillo said. “We are negotiating with many sources to release more data.”

Last week, Director Cardillo announced a new project called GEOINT Pathfinder that will attempt “to answer key intelligence questions using only unclassified data.”

When it comes to transparency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently expressed the view that the U.S. intelligence community should make “information publicly available in a manner that enhances public understanding of intelligence activities, while continuing to protect information when disclosure would harm national security.”

But some intelligence agencies have chosen a different path.

At the CIA, for example, public access to unclassified translations and analytical products of the Open Source Center was abruptly terminated at the end of 2013. Such materials from the OSC and its predecessor, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, had provided invaluable support to generations of scholars, students, and foreign policy specialists. But that is no longer the case.

Several pending bills would promote increased sharing of cybersecurity-related information — such as threat intelligence and system vulnerabilities — in order to combat the perceived rise in the frequency and intensity of cyber attacks against private and government entities.

But such information sharing is easier said than done, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service, because it involves a thicket of conflicting and perhaps incompatible laws and policy objectives.

“The legal issues surrounding cybersecurity information sharing… are complex and have few certain resolutions.” A copy of the CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News. See Cybersecurity and Information Sharing: Legal Challenges and Solutions, March 16, 2015.

Cyber information sharing takes at least three different forms: the release of cyber intelligence from government to the private sector, information sharing among private entities, and the transfer of threat information from private entities to government agencies.

“While collectively these three variants on the concept of cyber-information sharing have some commonalities, each also raises separate legal challenges that may impede cyber-intelligence dissemination more generally,” said the CRS report, which examines the legal ramifications of each category in turn.

Among the concerns at issue are: the potential for liability associate with disclosure of cybersecurity information, inappropriate release of private information through open government laws, loss of intellectual property, and potential compromise of personal privacy rights.

All of these create a legal morass that may be unreconcilable.

“A fundamental question lawmakers may need to contemplate is how restrictions that require close government scrutiny and control over shared cyber-information can be squared with other goals of cyber-information sharing legislation, like requirements that received information be disseminated in an almost instantaneous fashion,” the CRS report said.

“Ultimately, because the goals of cyber-information legislation are often diametrically opposed, it may simply be impossible for information sharing legislation to simultaneously promote the rapid and robust collection and dissemination of cyber-intelligence by the federal government, while also ensuring that the government respects the property and privacy interests implicated by such information sharing,” the report said.

Other new or newly updated CRS reports that Congress has withheld from public distribution include the following.

Cybersecurity: Authoritative Reports and Resources, by Topic, March 13, 2015

EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan: Conversion to Mass-Based Emission Targets, March 17, 2015

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR): A Primer for the 114th Congress, March 17, 2015

Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2016, March 18, 2015

The Federal Communications Commission: Current Structure and Its Role in the Changing Telecommunications Landscape, March 16, 2015

Mandatory Spending Since 1962, March 18, 2015

Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations, March 17, 2015

Balancing Tourism against Terrorism: The Visa Waiver Program, CRS Insights, March 13, 2015

U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues, March 18, 2015

Attorneys for former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was found guilty on nine felony counts involving unauthorized disclosure of classified information, argued yesterday that the Sterling verdict should be set aside in view of the misdemeanor plea agreement that was recently offered to former CIA director Gen. David Petraeus for mishandling classified information.

Sterling’s attorneys suggested that the disparate treatment of the two cases was attributable to improper considerations of rank and race.

They noted that Petraeus had acknowledged providing his mistress unauthorized access to “classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberate discussions from high level National Security Council meetings, and […] discussions with the President of the United States of America.”

“For these transgressions, General Petraeus pled guilty to a misdemeanor violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1924 and will not serve a single day in jail. No espionage charge was made. Equally stunning is that General Petraeus admits to making false statements to the Government about his criminal activity and yet avoids a perjury or obstruction charge.”

“On the other hand, Mr. Sterling was charged with espionage and obstruction and faces a prison term. The defense submits again that the principal difference between Mr. Sterling and Generals Petraeus and Cartwright [who was reportedly suspected of leaks concerning the Stuxnet program] are their respective races and rank. Like General Cartwright, General Petraeus is a white, high-ranking official.” Mr. Sterling is African-American.

“The Government must explain why the justice meted out to white Generals is so different from what Mr. Sterling has faced,” the Sterling attorneys wrote in a March 19 filing.

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times today, attorney David E. Kendall said that the Petraeus case differed from other leak cases in that Gen. Petraeus had not intended to publicly release classified information and that the information in question had not in fact been made public.

Yesterday, the Sterling attorneys also urged the court to dismiss the case against Sterling because they said that the government had failed to produce any direct evidence that he committed the crimes he is charged with.

“In this case, not even one witness was called with direct evidence of Mr. Sterling’s guilt on a single charge,” they wrote in another March 19 filing. “The Court can search the record with a fine tooth comb and find no evidence that beyond a reasonable doubt identifies Mr. Sterling as the source” for classified information that appeared in James Risen’s book State of War.

Government attorneys, citing precedent, argued this month that “a conviction may rely entirely on circumstantial evidence.”

The policy implications of changing climatic conditions in the Arctic region, and specifically the record loss of ice cover, are explored in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service. See Changes in the Arctic, March 17, 2015.

“There are only eight nations in the world whose territory above the Arctic Circle gives them the right to claim being an Arctic nation,” said Adm. Robert Papp, Jr., the U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic, at a congressional hearing last December. “The United States is one, although it has been my experience that Americans do not embrace or fully understand the concept of being an Arctic nation.”

Other new and updated CRS products that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Energy Tax Incentives: Measuring Value Across Different Types of Energy Resources, March 19, 2015

Recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, CRS Fact Sheet, March 19, 2015

“Holds” in the Senate, March 19, 2015

Increased Campaign Contribution Limits in the FY2015 Omnibus Appropriations Law: Frequently Asked Questions, March 17, 2015

U.S. Manufacturing in International Perspective, March 17, 2015

African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA): Background and Reauthorization, March 13, 2015

International Drug Control Policy: Background and U.S. Responses, March 16, 2015

The U.S. Government reached the statutory debt limit today, exhausting its normal ability to borrow money. In order to meet the government’s financial obligations, the Secretary of the Treasury must now take certain extraordinary measures. A newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service provides background on federal debt policy and explains the current state of affairs.  See The Debt Limit Since 2011, March 9, 2015.

Other new or newly updated CRS reports that Congress has withheld from public distribution include the following.

Internet Domain Names: Background and Policy Issues, March 6, 2015

Internet Governance and the Domain Name System: Issues for Congress, March 6, 2015

Access to Broadband Networks: The Net Neutrality Debate, March 9, 2015

The Federal Budget: Overview and Issues for FY2016 and Beyond, March 6, 2015

OSC Rule Seemingly Expands Federal Contractor Whistleblower Rights, CRS Legal Sidebar, March 11, 2015

Scientific Basis of Environmental Protection Agency Actions: H.R. 1029 and H.R. 1030, CRS Insights, March 11, 2015

Prevalence of Mental Illness in the United States: Data Sources and Estimates, March 9, 2015

Health Care for Veterans: Traumatic Brain Injury, March 9, 2015

U.S. Circuit and District Court Nominations During President Obama’s First Six Years (2009-2014): Comparative Analysis with Recent Presidents, March 9, 2015

Federal Grants to State and Local Governments: A Historical Perspective on Contemporary Issues, March 5, 2015

The European Capital Markets Union, CRS Insights, March 11, 2015

Cyprus: Reunification Proving Elusive, March 6, 2015

Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, March 11, 2015

China-U.S. Trade Issues, March 9, 2015

Navy Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism Operations: Background and Issues for Congress, March 4, 2015

Iran Sanctions, March 9, 2015

The Department of Justice has adopted an unacceptable double standard in its treatment of persons accused of leaking or mishandling classified information, the attorney for imprisoned leaker Stephen Kim wrote in a letter to DoJ released yesterday.

“The decision to permit General [David] Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called ‘leakers’ and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes,” attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a March 5 letter.

“As we said at the time of Mr. Kim’s sentencing, lower-level employees like Mr. Kim are prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back. High-level officials (such as General Petraeus and, earlier, Leon Panetta) leak classified information to forward their own agendas (or to impress their mistresses) with virtual impunity.”

In light of the Petraeus plea agreement, Mr. Lowell asked Department attorneys to support Mr. Kim’s immediate release from prison.

In a statement to supporters, Mr. Kim’s sister Yuri Lusternberger-Kim expressed dismay at the Petraeus settlement.

“You can imagine how are hearts sunk and the outrage we felt when we heard this. For pleading to much less, Stephen was given a much harsher sentence — a felony conviction and 13 months in prison. This double standard is inexplicable on its face. For a lot of reasons, the resolution for General Petraeus is fair (the Espionage Act should not be used for these kinds of ‘leaks’), but Stephen should have been given the same benefits.”

“We are let down by our justice system when it applies harsh, unfair judgments on those without power, and who don’t play politics and don’t have powerful political allies.”

“Our family and our friends think it is just terribly unfair and not right that Stephen was given less consideration and different treatment for doing no more, and even less than General Petraeus. The General got the right result, but so should have Stephen. Stephen’s lawyers tried to get the Justice Department to address this disparity but they would not do so. We want others to know this,” Ms. Lustenberger-Kim said.

(More: NYT, Yahoo)

Within a remarkably short period of time– less than two decades– all of us have become immersed in a sea of electronic data collection. Our purchases, communications, Internet searches, and even our movements all generate collectible traces that can be recorded, packaged, and sold or exploited.

Before we have had a chance to collectively think about what this phenomenal growth in data production and collection means, and to decide what to do about it, it threatens to become an irreversible feature of our lives.

In his new book Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World (Norton, 2015), author and security technologist Bruce Schneier aims to forestall that outcome, and to help recover the possibility of personal privacy before it is lost or forgotten.

“Privacy is not a luxury that we can only afford in times of safety,” he writes. “Instead, it’s a value to be preserved. It’s essential for liberty, autonomy, and human dignity.”

Schneier describes the explosion of personal data and the ways that such data are harvested by governments and corporations. Somewhat provocatively, he refers to all types of personal data collection as “surveillance,” whether the information is gathered for law enforcement or intelligence purposes, acquired for commercial use, or recorded for no particular reason at all. Under this sweeping definition, the National Security Agency and the FBI perform surveillance, but so do Google, Sears, and the local liquor store.

“Being stripped of privacy is fundamentally dehumanizing, and it makes no difference whether the surveillance is conducted by an undercover policeman following us around or by a computer algorithm tracking our every move,” he writes (p.7). Others would argue that it makes all the difference in the world, and that while one never wants to be followed by an undercover policeman, a computer algorithm that helps us drive a car to our destination might be quite welcome. Schneier, of course, knows about the benefits of such applications and acknowledges them later in the book.

Having gained access to classified NSA documents that were leaked by Edward Snowden and having aided reporters in interpreting them, the author is particularly exercised by the practice of bulk collection or, the term he prefers, mass surveillance.

“More than just being ineffective, the NSA’s surveillance efforts have actually made us less secure,” he says. Indeed, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found the “Section 215” program for bulk collection of telephone metadata to be nearly useless, as well as likely illegal and problematic in other ways. But by contrast, it also reported that the “Section 702” collection program had made a valuable contribution to security. Schneier does not engage on this point.

Aside from the inherent violations of privacy, Schneier condemns the NSA practice of stockpiling — instead of repairing — computer software vulnerabilities and government strong-arming of Internet firms to compel them to surrender customer data.

His arguments are fleshed out in sufficient detail that readers will naturally find points to question or to disagree with. “For example,” he writes, “the NSA targets people who search for information on popular Internet privacy and anonymity tools” (p. 38). It’s not clear what “NSA targeting” means in this context. Many people conduct such information searches with no discernible consequences. In any case, Schneier positively encourages readers to seek out and adopt privacy enhancing technologies.

“Surveillance is a tactic of intimidation,” Schneier writes, and “in the US, we already see the beginnings of [a] chilling effect” (pp. 95-96). But this seems overwrought. One may curse the NSA, file a lawsuit against it, advocate reductions in the Agency’s budget, or publish its Top Secret records online all without fear of reprisal. Lots of people have done so without being intimidated. (Agency employees who defy their management are in a more difficult position.) If there is a chilling effect associated with NSA surveillance, it doesn’t appear to originate in the NSA.

What is true is that surveillance shapes our awareness and that it can alter our conduct in obvious or profound ways. Many people will slow down when driving past a police car or a traffic surveillance camera. Almost all will modify their speech or their behavior depending on who is listening or watching. The book is particularly good at exploring the ramifications of such surveillance-induced changes in the way we behave and interact, and the risks they pose to an open society.

In the latter portions of the book, Schneier presents an action agenda for curbing inappropriate surveillance including steps that can be taken by government, by corporations, and by concerned members of the public. The proposals are principled and thoughtful, though he admits not all are readily achievable.

Schneier’s core objective is to preserve, or to restore, a domain of personal privacy that is impervious to unwanted intrusion or monitoring.

He acknowledges the necessity of surveillance for valid law enforcement and intelligence purposes. Among other things, he calls for the development of privacy-respectful innovations in these areas of security policy.

“If we can provide law enforcement people with new ways to investigate crime, they’ll stop demanding that security be subverted for their benefit.” Similarly, “If we can give governments new ways to collect data on hostile nations, terrorist groups, and global criminal elements, they’ll have less need to go to the extreme measures I’ve detailed in this book…. If we want organizations like the NSA to protect our privacy, we’re going to have to give them new ways to perform their intelligence jobs.”

Along these lines, a 2009 study performed for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that was released last month raised the somewhat fanciful possibility of “crowdsourcing intelligence”:

“The intelligence community has a unique opportunity to engage the public to help filter and solve a multitude of difficult tasks…. For example, consider a citizen-driven Presidential Daily Brief and its potential to enable truly democratic communication to the highest levels in the United States.”  See Mixed Reality: Geolocation & Portable Hand-Held Communication Devices, ODNI Summer Hard Problem (SHARP) Program, 2009.

Anyway, for many people the erosion of personal privacy has arrived abruptly and overwhelmingly. They might reasonably conclude that the changes they’ve experienced are beyond their ability to control or influence. Schneier insists that that is not necessarily the case– but that the future of privacy depends on how much the public cares about it. This challenging book explains why privacy matters, how it is threatened, and what one can do to defend it.

“In the end, we’ll get the privacy we as a society demand and not a bit more,” he concludes.