http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2013/06/12/an-open-of-course-letter-to-my-friend-the-nsa/
Dear NSA,
We need to have a chat, so I trust you’re reading this.
Of course you are; good. Now, let’s see … how should I put this? Look,
you’ve done a great job cultivating that whole “spook” image for the
past 60 years. Really, you’ve just been terrifyingly adept at creating
an environment of ironclad secrecy, even more so than the CIA, who’ve
bungled too many overseas jobs to be the omnipotent, untouchable agency
they’d like us to think they are.
Times are changing, though. For the past several generations, you’ve
been the rulers of all information, with no one to challenge you.
Americans just had to trust that the good quiet folk at the NSA were
looking out for them, because no one else could handle data on such a
large scale. It was a simpler time, back when the Internet was young and
the Web was just a seed of an idea, and our idea of “big data” was the
Yellow Pages.
There are new kids in town, though; kids who grew up on data. They were
raised to dish out and take in as much data as possible, and they do it
for fun. To you, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all the rest of it are
the latest places from which to siphon information. To these new kids,
it’s home. It’s where they grew up, which is why they’re much better at
it, and why you hire so many of them.
Now, what happens when you raise a generation on a steady diet of data,
and then try to keep naughty secrets? They’re going to ask questions.
They grew up in a world where information was free, and they took
advantage of that fact. They learned more about the world around them
than could ever be learned in school, and they went online for the
answers to the questions their parents and teachers wouldn’t answer.
They grew up not just appreciating that information was free, but
expecting information to be free.
It gets worse. Not only are you hiring millennials, for whom secrecy is
anathema—you’re hiring millennial hackers. And hacking, as you well
know, means finding ways of turning technology to serve a purpose other
than its intended one. When information isn’t free, these people have
the ability and the will to free it.
I know this because I’m one of them. I may not have top-secret clearance
and make six figures working for one of your contractors, but Edward
Snowden’s demographic profile still hits close to home. When I was a
boy, I used to hack into my computer games to add fart sounds to them. I
built my own computers. I made my sister’s Teddy Ruxpin say horrible,
horrible things. When I get a new phone, its hackability is its
number-one buying point.
When I get my hands on a new piece of technology, my first thought isn’t
about what it can do—it’s about what it can’t do, and how can I force it
to overcome its limitations to do what I want. I then wonder, “Why
wasn’t I ‘allowed’ to do this in the first place?” See, we millennial
hackers simply cannot take anything at face value. We’re a bit
contrarian and stubborn by nature. It’s why we’re good at what we do.
The more constraints you place on us (be they workplace, physical,
technological, or copyright) the more we feel a need to disregard,
challenge, or overcome those constraints.
To be a hacker is to be cynical about whatever “solid” information or
limits you’re faced with, to remove layers of consumer sheen or
government spin until raw components are laid bare to reconstruct at
will. You reward people like me with fat salaries when we do this with
technology, so there’s little sense in expecting us not do the same in
the rest of our lives—with your policies, rules, information, even with
our own personal lives. We tinker, probe, deconstruct, and reassemble
for other purposes. One thing we don’t do is blindly put hand to heart
and sing “God Bless, America” —unless we’re in a North Korean gulag and
it’s a contrarian move.
Do you see the problem? You need my kind of people for our understanding
of data, but we don’t necessarily want or need you. You are anathema to
our values and expectations. Sure, you’ve got some very smart graybeards
who can do some amazing things, but they’re not going to be the bulk of
your army for long, if they even still are. You have no choice but to
keep hiring these hackers who didn’t grow up having data hidden from
them. It’s ironic that you’ve become so reliant on people who really
have no business in a tight-lipped, hierarchical quasi-militarized
institution. We are the ones you should be snooping on, if only you
could snoop without us.
I feel your pain.
Edward Snowden smoked you, and it wasn’t even very hard for him. Now, I
know what you’re going to say. “It won’t happen again! We’ll improve
security!” Who is going to improve your security? Is it going to be the
naval officers you used to hire, respectful of hierarchy and used to a
military lifestyle? Or maybe, say, more young, technical
lay-people—contractors with the information freedom ideals of the
millennial hacker? Yeah, I thought so.
Let’s face it: This isn’t going to be the last time your secrets are
aired to the public. It’s probably not even going to be the last time
this year that your secrets are aired to the public by another Edward
Snowden, because you’ve got countless Edward Snowdens on your payroll
whose first—not last—instinct is to blow open your information
infrastructure. I mean, you tried to recruit me years ago, for goodness
sake. Those confidential recruitment materials that said “For Your Eyes
Only” all over them? Yeah, I showed those to everyone I knew, mostly
because you were so heavy-handed with all the confidential stuff.
The important thing now is not to panic. No tears. You’re a big, strong,
spooky organization, right? You don’t have to clean out your desk.
You’ve still got a big role to play in the cyber-warfare of the next
several decades. You’re just learning a hard lesson here, and I realize
you’re partly being demonized for implementing what the White House and
Congress want. However, you have no choice but to keep hiring these
young, entitled, informed, data-driven hackers, who pretty soon might
not have any secrets to leak because the Snowdens in your midst will
have forced you to turn into a fully transparent (but still efficient!)
organization.
Now that I think of it, you really should have played up the six-figure
salary and Hawaii angle in those recruiting materials you gave me. I
would’ve kept your secrets. Really.
Cheers,
Cyrus
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
