See without being seen. The computer panopticon erected by our governments struck people 10 years ago. On June 6, 2013, the newspaper The Guardian revealed that the US intelligence agency not only collects data from criminal suspects, but from all citizens. Thanks to these punchy leaks provoked by Edward Snowden, the omnipresent eye of electronic surveillance today keeps its eyelid half-closed.
” No such agency » [aucune agence de ce type]. This was the nickname of the NSA, the American surveillance agency, before the Snowden affair. Since then, you have to be very naive to believe that your online presence only concerns you.
Before Canadians saw the faces of those spying on them, Canada relied on only a handful of politicized officials to watch over the overseers. The Security Intelligence Review Committee was made up a fortiori of people with questionable credentials. Former Prime Minister Philippe Couillard and his interloper friend Arthur Porter were notably members.
After Snowden’s shock wave, Ottawa created two organizations to oversee its panopticon: one technical, the other political. On the one hand, “experts, lawyers, mathematicians”, and on the other, “deputies” access secret information to ensure that the government does not overstep its surveillance rights, explains in an interview. At Duty Stéphane Leman-Langlois, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Surveillance and Social Construction of Risk.
“We now have two agencies that monitor national security across the board [à tous les niveaux]. We even bring in Royal Canadian Mounted Police business. […] They are going to look at Canada’s border services. They will examine all aspects of the federal government that affect national security. »
“We know that it’s not perfect, he concedes, but we have this tension that did not exist before. […] It is truly a revolution in the surveillance of intelligence activities in Canada. And this is directly the consequence of the revelations [de Snowden]. »
His revelations also shocked in the United States, where the USA Freedom Act has prohibited the mass collection of telephone records.
The Internet, this encrypted kingdom
In addition to the political landscape, the realm of 0s and 1s has also changed a lot since 2013, when the iPhone 5 was released (we are soon on the iPhone 15).
Encrypted “encrypted” protection now protects the majority of the billion gigabytes of data that circulates in cyberspace every day. Google claims that 95% of its traffic remains inaccessible to “eavesdropping, third-party attacks and hackers”. Its competitor Mozilla estimates that 80% of Internet sites are made opaque to the panopticon of governments.
“Even the smallest website that sells bagels online is encrypted, we can no longer see what is going on, and there, things are going badly [pour les agences de renseignement], cartoon Stéphane Leman-Langlois. It’s a door that slammed shut after Snowden. »
Many criminals took advantage of this to become invisible to the authorities. This fear that malicious players escape surveillance alerts the major intelligence centres. For example, the British intelligence center has been advocating for years for the installation of “back doors” so that they can intercept encrypted messaging data. Unfortunately for them, the web giants aren’t as complacent as they used to be. The Apples, Googles and Microsofts of this world refused the outstretched hand in 2019, arguing that the practice “threatens fundamental human rights, including privacy and free expression.”
The British returned to the charge this year in a strategic document by urging companies to work together to “shape standards of responsible behavior”.
There will always be flaws
Even if we admit that our government wants to monitor us for our good, hell is paved with good intentions. An example of this diversion from good intentions happened to the NSA “a few years ago”, when it had its bank of vulnerabilities stolen ” zero day “says Stéphane Leman-Langlois. “These are flaws in operating systems like Windows. A good institutional player should call Microsoft and reveal that they found a vulnerability, but that’s not what they did. […] They kept it secret, kept it on the back burner, thinking that they could potentially use it, at some point, against a malicious actor. […] But the NSA had this bank robbed! We picked up with a package [de vulnérabilités] in the wild, in the jungle of organized crime. It had been carefully collected by the NSA, but is now available to malicious actors. »
The corset that Western governments have imposed on themselves no doubt delights the autocratic governments which, in China or Russia, shamelessly use abusive shadowing. The partial banishment of the Chinese network TikTok in our country reminded us last February of the importance of guarding against the abuses of undemocratic states.
Moreover, the data collectors are no longer only governmental, but also commercial. About 85% of companies collect data from their customers, according to a US study dated 2021.
Since the Snowden affair settled down, “our attention has shifted more to business than to government,” observes Michael Geist, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Internet Law and of e-commerce. “While we trust our governments and believe they have our best interests at heart, let’s recognize that there are powers governments have that the private sector simply doesn’t. […] I recognize that technology companies are very big, are rich, operate across borders and have a certain maneuverability that our governments do not have. But, you know, tech companies can’t put people in jail. »
There is no doubt that, despite all the democratic control possible, people are looking in conspiratorial rooms everywhere for new ways of seeing without being seen.