[governance] Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps on The National Security-Communications Industry Complex

Fri Nov 22 12:55:15 EST 2013

Hi Tom,
"

*Civil society must acknowledge that the nation-state has a vital role in
matters of security. And we must accept that an institutional aversion to
failure in these matters is natural. With this awareness we can ask that
nation-state participants in multistakeholder talks present a "statement of
needs." This statement should present in general scope, and as much detail
as practicable, the nature of relationships sought by government to meet
these needs."*

I like this approach. There has to be some understanding of the
difficulties faced the world over by Governments, they have primary
responsibility for a nation's health, education and welfare and in no
lesser way the security of their people, infrastructure, and capital.
There have to be strategies to combat the myriad of security issues that
face both Governments and us the citizens. Always there will be the need
for balance between security and personal privacy.

As natural as electricity finding the path with least resistance, according
the this article, Governments have been utilizing the conglomerates with
large databases of personal information and the ability to track individual
activities, especially within the cyber environment to provide them with
raw data for their intelligence analyses, and to inform their various
Government's policy decisions.

The inherent danger in this of course is the need for reciprocity.
Conglomerates are profit centered so it is clear their payback from
government will be any perks, allowances, incentives or competitive
intelligence that will improve their bottom line. Hence the
long-term  negative impacts warned about by Ike and now realized in our
day. Governments in bed with conglomerates in secret, is a clear recipe for
inequality, injustice, inequity and certainly not a level playing field for
the ordinary citizen. The loss of privacy therefore just adds painful
stings to the wounds our people face.

Civil Society is supposed to be the structure through which the ordinary
citizen's voice can be heard in the hallowed halls of exalted policy
decision making. I have read and listened to dialogues, speeches, position
papers, conventions, and treaties. I am often left wondering how much of
these would the ordinary citizen understand and could empathise with. Is it
that there is a different language for civil society leaders use to speak
on behalf of their constituencies?

So there seems to be a disconnect between the structures and
administrations that represent our interests and  an understanding of what
our real needs are. There has to be a concerted effort to have direct
contact between state and non-state actors, especially now that we can
reach over 40% of the populations via the internet, and the real-time
nature of the information derived therefrom.

If not the gulf will continue to widen between the haves and the have nots,
and the top of the wealth pyramid will continue to have smaller angles even
as the base gets wider.

Devon

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt
<toml at communisphere.com>wrote:

>  Folks,
>
> Below is an insightful article by former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Copps>on his experiences with national security interests while at the FCC.
> Copps' experiences led me to ponder how civil society might enter into a
> trusting multistakeholder negotiation knowing of these close relationships
> between government and industry. Here's one approach.
>
> Civil society must acknowledge that the nation-state has a vital role in
> matters of security. And we must accept that an institutional aversion to
> failure in these matters is natural.
>
> With this awareness we can ask that nation-state participants in
> multistakeholder talks present a "statement of needs." This statement
> should present in general scope, and as much detail as practicable, the
> nature of relationships sought by government to meet these needs.
>
> Working from these understandings civil society can enter into a trusting
> relationship in Brazil and elsewhere.
>
> Tom Lowenhaupt
>
>
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> [*The Benton Foundation publishes articles penned by Commissioner Copps
> each month for our Digital Beat Blog
> <http://benton.org/blog?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>.*
> ]
>
> *The Long Arm of the National Security-Communications Industry Complex*
>
> This is a story about more than just the national security implications of
> government surveillance, but it begins there.
>
> The New York Times reported in a front page story<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/cia-is-said-to-pay-att-for-call-data.html?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>earlier this month that the Central
> Intelligence Agency<https://www.cia.gov/index.html?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>is paying AT&T in excess of $10 million annually for information from the
> company’s telephone records, including the international calls of U.S.
> citizens. The article pointed out that this work "is conducted under a
> voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the
> company to participate, according to officials." The story adds yet another
> chapter to the still-unfolding revelations about National Security Agency<http://www.nsa.gov/?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>surveillance. Every week seems to bring new reports about the close and
> almost seamless ties that bind the several intelligence agencies to the
> huge telecom and broadband companies that bestride our nation’s
> communications infrastructure.
>
> When I became a Member of the Federal Communications Commission<http://www.fcc.gov/?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>(FCC) in 2001, I assumed I would be privy to at least a credible amount of
> information about what the companies under FCC oversight were doing behind
> the scenes. My expectations went unfulfilled.
>
> Did I expect the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information to be
> shared with me? No, I did not. But would it have been helpful for me to
> know more about how the industry executives who visited me on a whole range
> of non-national security communications industry issues were at the same
> time working hand-in-glove with the White House and these secretive
> agencies on a far more intimate and confidential basis than I was? Yes,
> absolutely.
>
> Warnings about various special interest-government complexes hearken back
> to President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY&utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>wherein he warned of the dangers that the military-industrial complex held
> for democratic government. Historians consider Ike’s admonition as a
> high-point of his Presidency. Since that speech almost 53 years ago, the
> influence of special interests and corporate power has only grown -- at the
> White House, in Congress, and among the federal agencies.
>
> Maybe I’m a slow learner, or maybe I just wasn’t supposed to know, but it
> finally dawned on me that the CEOs and top management who came calling on
> me at the FCC were far better informed and connected than I was -- because
> their companies were the ones running these sensitive monitoring and
> surveillance operations in behalf of the national security agencies. It
> was, very often, their workers and their technologies that drove the
> process. Meanwhile, industry leaders themselves served on such influential
> but hush-hush boards as The President’s National Security
> Telecommunications Advisory Committee<http://www.dhs.gov/nstac?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>.
>
>
> As I began to grasp the power of these huge companies to leverage their
> influence on non-national security matters, I also began to understand that
> my influence as a Commissioner at an independent federal agency was more
> limited than I had thought. In a lengthy July 25, 2013 article in the
> National Journal, Chief Correspondent Michael Hirsh<http://?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>traced in considerable detail how our nation’s leading telecom and tech
> companies supported -- and even helped create -- the “surveillance state.”
> It is, of course, a story going back long before Iraq and Afghanistan to
> the days of World War II, and it’s the stuff of a thriller novel -- except
> it’s not that entertaining.
>
> Hirsh tells how the NSA became an influential voice in the evolution of
> our communications systems, becoming a “major presence” in such seemingly
> non-defense decisions as industry mergers and consolidations. But these
> transactions weren’t “non-defense” to the intelligence agencies. On the
> contrary, it was easier and more efficient for the agencies to deal with
> huge industry players where the number of decision-makers was narrowed and
> where the sheer power of size helped get the national security job done.
>
> It wasn’t news to me that these huge companies wielded far-reaching power
> all across Washington. I just didn’t realize how much power until I had
> been there a while. Then I began to think: *what difference does it make
> if one or two Commissioners at the FCC don’t approve of a pending merger
> between telecom giants?* (And, goodness knows, there are plenty of such
> transactions!) I conjured up images of a national security agency meeting
> at the White House<http://www.whitehouse.gov/?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email>and someone saying, *“This
> guy Copps down at the FCC is opposed to this merger.”* And I could
> envision a White House or national security type saying, *“So what? These
> companies are working with us on all kinds of secret projects, and that
> takes precedence over any Commissioner’s worries about diminishing
> competition in communications or about consumer protection.”*
>
> And so the consolidation bazaar rolls on, companies continue to merge, and
> we find ourselves in a world wherein a few dominant players drive the last
> spikes into the coffin of competition. I am not arguing that national
> security concerns alone brought us to this point; there are plenty of other
> reasons that Big Telecom wants to grow even bigger. I *am* saying that
> both parties to this national security-communications industry complex
> derived great benefits (in their eyes) from this partnership. I *am*saying the tentacles of this cooperative enterprise reach widely and deeply
> into many aspects of our national life. And I *am* saying the American
> people need to know more -- much more -- about this.
>
> We can argue the pros and cons of national security surveillance, and it
> is a debate worth having. But this debate needs to be informed by facts.
> Maybe we can’t have all the facts in all their detail, but certainly we
> need more than we presently possess. There is a point where national
> security depends upon secrecy. There is also a point where national
> security depends upon sunlight. The balance is sadly out-of-whack right
> now, and we are paying the price in the loss of government credibility both
> at home and abroad.
>
> Finally, we need to conduct this discussion in a broader context because
> it is part of even larger issues. Every day brings non-national security
> revelations about companies developing and deploying new ways to invade our
> personal space, capture every available fact about our daily lives and
> habits, and share them for purely commercial benefit. This is not an issue
> separate from what I have been discussing in this piece. And, as deeply
> troubling as the privacy and consumer issues are, the implications for
> democracy are just as severe. Open communications are a prerequisite of
> self-government. Any short-circuiting of this openness diminishes the
> ability of free people to chart their own democratic future.
> ------------------------------
> Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications
> Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman
> from January to June 2009. His years at the Commission have been
> highlighted by his strong defense of "the public interest"; outreach to
> what he calls "non-traditional stakeholders" in the decisions of the FCC,
> particularly minorities, Native Americans and the various disabilities
> communities; and actions to stem the tide of what he regards as excessive
> consolidation in the nation's media and telecommunications industries. In
> 2012, former Commissioner Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and
> Democracy Reform Initiative. Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit
> advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for
> citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold
> their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.
>
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-- 
Devon Blake
ICT and Development Consultant
29 Dominica Drive
Kgn 5
,Phone: Office 876-968-4534, Mobile, 876-483-2632

To be kind, To be helpful, To network
*Earthwise ... For Life!*
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