Emerging threatsEmerging threats require a new social contract between the state, citizens: Study
Technological advancements create opportunities for governments and the private sector, but they also pose a threat to individual privacy and individual – and public — safety, which most Americans look to the government to protect. The authors of a new book on emerging threats argue that while, at one time, “the government used to be our sole provider of security,” companies which store troves of private information are also key to Americans’ privacy and security. They say that the United States may need a new social contract between the state and its citizens on matters of security and privacy. “The old social contract has its roots in the security dilemmas of the Enlightenment era,” they write. “In our new era, everyone is simultaneously vulnerable to attack and menacing to others. That requires a different, more complex social contract — one that we are just starting to imagine.”
Technological advancements in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and biotechnology create opportunities for governments and the private sector, but they also pose a threat to individual privacy and individual – and public — safety, which most Americans look to the government to protect.
Today, personal surveillance drones, the size of an insect, could be deployed by adversaries to monitor homes, offices, and highly classified laboratories. An anarchist molecular-biology student could re-create the smallpox virus using ordinary laboratory tools and gene-splicing equipment available online. He could then infect himself and once symptoms begin to show, visit a crowded public area such as an airport to infect as many people as he can.
President Barack Obama, speaking about cybersecurity recently, said that “one of the great paradoxes of our time” is that “the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm.” His words also applies to a wide range of technological advancements which have created a world in which every individual, organization, and government can pose a threat to every other individual, organization, and government anywhere around the global.
The Wall Street Journal noted that these technologies do not just empower countries and major terrorist groups to attack invisibly from remote positions. In 2011, Luis Mijangos, an illegal immigrant in Orange County, California pleaded guilty to computer hacking and wiretapping and was sentenced to six years in prison. Mijangos tricked women and teenage girls into downloading malware onto their computers, which let him use the infected computers’ Web cams to take intimate images and videos of them. Mijangos then used the images to “sextort” the victims into giving him more pictures and videos. More than 100 computers used by roughly 230 individuals, at least forty-four of them underage, were infected by Mijangos’ malware.
According to Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum, co-authors of The Future of Violence, the Mijangos incident represents a challenge to security and the way individuals think about the government agencies created to ensure security and privacy. Do Americans have government institutions that can protect against such an attack? If so, at what cost? Local law enforcement officers protect residents of their respective cities and towns from crime, but who will protect those same residents from cybercriminals and hackers like Mijangos? The National Security Agency (NSA), capable of monitoring Americans’ e-mails and telecommunications, could help detect and prevent future deployment of certain malware against Americans’ computers, but doing so would require giving the NSA unprecedented legal powers to monitor personal online communications and traffic.
Wittes and Blum suggested that while, at one time, “the government used to be our sole provider of security,” companies such as Facebook and Google, which store troves of private information, are also key to Americans’ privacy and security. “By handing them our personal information and communications, we are asking them to protect us — our homes and our families — in a way we once thought was the state’s job.”
By U.S. surveillance laws now requiring technology companies to help U.S. authorities with investigations, including wiretapping suspects, the government has admitted that it alone cannot protect Americans. Perhaps the United States needs a new social contract between the state and its citizens on matters of security and privacy. “The old social contract has its roots in the security dilemmas of the Enlightenment era,” Wittes and Blum wrote. “In our new era, everyone is simultaneously vulnerable to attack and menacing to others. That requires a different, more complex social contract — one that we are just starting to imagine.”
— Read more in Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum, The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones — Confronting A New Age of Threat (Basic Books, March 2015)
