![\"NSA](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/nsa-spy-robot-300x180.jpeg\")
<\/a>NSA assisted the UK spy agency GCHQ in collecting millions of images from Yahoo webcams. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach \/ Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n
Increasingly, we are watched not by people but by algorithms. Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream, and suggest other books and movies based on our habits. Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say, and show us advertisements based on our behavior. Google even modifies our web search results based on our previous behavior. Smartphone navigation apps watch us as we drive, and update suggested route information based on traffic congestion. And the National Security Agency, of course, monitors our phone calls, emails and locations, then uses that information to try to identify terrorists.<\/p>\n
Documents provided by Edwards Snowden and revealed by the Guardian today show that the UK spy agency GHCQ, with help from the NSA, has been collecting millions of webcam images from innocent Yahoo users<\/a>. And that speaks to a key distinction in the age of algorithmic surveillance: is it really okay for a computer to monitor you online, and for that data collection and analysis only to count as a potential privacy invasion when a person sees it? I say it\u2019s not, and the latest Snowden leaks only make more clear how important this distinction is.<\/p>\n The robots-vs-spies divide is especially important as we decide what to do about NSA and GCHQ surveillance. The spy community and the Justice Department have reported back early<\/a> on President Obama\u2019s request for changing how the NSA \u201ccollects\u201d your data, but the potential reforms – FBI monitoring<\/a>, holding on to your phone records<\/a> and more – still largely depend on what the meaning of \u201ccollects\u201d is.<\/p>\n Indeed, ever since Snowden provided reporters with a trove of top secret documents, we\u2019ve been subjected to all sorts of NSA word games<\/a>. And the word \u201ccollect\u201d has a very special definition, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). A 1982 procedures manual<\/a> (pdf; page 15) says: \u201cinformation shall be considered as \u2018collected\u2019 only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties.\u201d And \u201cdata acquired by electronic means is \u2018collected\u2019 only when it has been processed into intelligible form\u201d.<\/p>\n Director of National Intelligence James Clapper likened the NSA\u2019s accumulation of data to a library<\/a>. All those books are stored on the shelves, but very few are actually read. \u201cSo the task for us in the interest of preserving security and preserving civil liberties and privacy,\u201d says Clapper, \u201cis to be as precise as we possibly can be when we go in that library and look for the books that we need to open up and actually read.\u201d Only when an individual book is read does it count as \u201ccollection\u201d, in government parlance.<\/p>\n So, think of that friend of yours who has thousands of books in his house. According to the NSA, he\u2019s not actually \u201ccollecting\u201d books. He\u2019s doing something else with them, and the only books he can claim to have \u201ccollected\u201d are the ones he\u2019s actually read.<\/p>\n This is why Clapper claims \u2013 to this day<\/a> \u2013 that he didn\u2019t lie in a Senate hearing when he replied<\/a> \u201cno\u201d to this question: \u201cDoes the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?\u201d<\/p>\n If the NSA collects – I\u2019m using the everyday definition of the word here \u2013 all of the contents of everyone\u2019s e-mail, it doesn\u2019t count it as being collected in NSA terms until someone reads it. And if it collects \u2013 I\u2019m sorry, but that\u2019s really the correct word – everyone\u2019s phone records or location information and stores it in an enormous database, that doesn\u2019t count as being collected \u2013 NSA definition \u2013 until someone looks at it. If the agency uses computers to search those emails for keywords, or correlates that location information for relationships between people, it doesn\u2019t count as collection, either. Only when those computers spit out a particular person has the data \u2013 in NSA terms \u2013 actually been collected.<\/p>\n If the modern spy dictionary has you confused, maybe dogs can help us understand why this legal workaround, by big tech companies and the government alike, is still a serious invasion of privacy.<\/p>\n Back when Gmail was introduced, this was Google\u2019s defense, too, about its context-sensitive advertising. Googles computers examine each individual email and insert an advertisement nearby, related to the contents of your email. But no person at Google reads any Gmail messages; only a computer does. In the words of one Google executive: \u201cWorrying about a computer reading your email is like worrying about your dog seeing you naked\u201d.<\/p>\n But now that we have an example of a spy agency seeing people naked \u2013 there are a surprising number of sexually explicit images in the newly revealed Yahoo image collection<\/a> \u2013 we can more viscerally understand the difference.<\/p>\n To wit: when you\u2019re watched by a dog, you know that what you\u2019re doing will go no further than the dog. The dog can\u2019t remember the details of what you\u2019ve done. The dog can\u2019t tell anyone else. When you\u2019re watched by a computer, that\u2019s not true. You might be told that the computer isn\u2019t saving a copy of the video, but you have no assurance that that\u2019s true. You might be told that the computer won\u2019t alert a person if it perceives something of interest, but you can\u2019t know if that\u2019s true. You do know that the computer is making decisions based on what it receives, and you have no way of confirming that no human being will access that decision.<\/p>\n When a computer stores your data, there\u2019s always a risk of exposure. There\u2019s the risk of accidental exposure, when some hacker or criminal breaks in and steals the data. There\u2019s the risk of purposeful exposure, when the organization that has your data uses it in some manner. And there\u2019s the risk that another organization will demand access to the data. The FBI can serve a National Security Letter on Google, demanding details on your email and browsing habits. There isn\u2019t a court order in the world that can get that information out of your dog.<\/p>\n Of course, any time we\u2019re judged by algorithms, there\u2019s the potential for false positives. You are already familiar with this; just think of all the irrelevant advertisements you\u2019ve been shown on the Internet, based on some algorithm misinterpreting your interests. In advertising, that\u2019s okay. It\u2019s annoying<\/a>, but there\u2019s little actual harm, and you were busy reading your email anyway, right? But that harm increases as the accompanying judgments become more important: our credit ratings depend on algorithms; how were treated at airport security does, too. And most alarming of all, drone targeting is partly based<\/a> on algorithmic surveillance.<\/p>\n The primary difference between a computer and a dog is that the computer interacts with other people in the real world, and the dog does not. If someone could isolate the computer in the same way a dog is isolated, we wouldn\u2019t have any reason to worry about algorithms crawling around in our data. But we can\u2019t. Computer algorithms are intimately tied to people. And when we think of computer algorithms surveilling us or analyzing our personal data, we need to think about the people behind those algorithms. Whether or not anyone actually looks at our data, the very fact that they even could is what makes it surveillance.<\/p>\n This is why Yahoo called GCHQ\u2019s webcam-image collection \u201ca whole new level of violation of our users\u2019 privacy<\/a>\u201d. This is why we\u2019re not mollified by attempts from the UK equivalent of the NSA to apply facial recognition algorithms to the data, or to limit how many people viewed the sexually explicit images. This is why Google\u2019s eavesdropping is different than a dog\u2019s eavesdropping, and why the NSA\u2019s definition of \u201ccollect\u201d makes no sense whatsoever.<\/p>\n