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The Techno-Oppression of Ukraine Is Exactly Why Snowden Blew the Whistle

The NSA "immunizes" "the government of every two-bit dictator" that engages in oppressive mass surveillance, Snowden says.
Ukraine riot police containing demonstrators. Image: photo.ua/Shutterstock.com

Last week, Snowden said that one of his biggest concerns with the NSA's operations was how they increased the legitimacy of intrusive surveillance programs around the globe. The US, he said, needed to lead the push against NSA overreach, lest a global precedence be set for mass domestic spying policies.

It's probably no unhappy coincidence then that last week also saw a government engage in one of the most Orwellian uses of surveillance technology yet. Ukraine's regime sent a text message to protesters—who had been detected by their cell phone signals—notifying them that they had been determined to be violating draconian new protest laws.

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"Dear subscriber, you have been registered as a participant in a mass disturbance," the now-infamous SMS message read.

Such ominous instances of technologically-enabled oppression are precisely why Snowden argued that “America needs to take the lead in fixing" surveillance overreach in his online Q+A last Friday. "If our government decides our Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable seizures no longer applies simply because [there's] a more efficient means of snooping, we’re setting a precedent that immunizes the government of every two-bit dictator to perform the same kind of indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance of entire populations that the NSA is doing," he wrote.

As he was typing those words out on a laptop somewhere in Moscow, one aspiring "two-bit dictator" was putting a permutation of the kind of policy Snowden feared into practice.

In response to widening revolt, President Viktor Yanukovych drastically expanded Ukraine's anti-protest laws. Unauthorized public demonstration was suddenly illegal, and simply bringing a cell phone to a public place deemed to be marked by active protest was enough to get you "registered as a participant in a mass disturbance" and, presumably, eligible for arrest.

After mass outrage to the hastily passed law, which was rammed through parliament with a show of hands vote, Yanukovych promised to walk the law back. As of yet, he has not. In fact, his justice minister has promised even more sweeping anti-demonstration measures if the opposition doesn't relent—instating aggressive curfews and "extra powers of detention." That's hard to imagine, given that authorities are already proficient at detaining, abusing, even kidnapping and beating protesters to death.

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It's important to note here that the technology itself isn't the crux of the problem. It's not newfangled technology that poses the issue, as the surveillance tech used to monitor protestors in Ukraine is relatively simple and has been available for years. It's the legitimization of the institutionalized practice we should be concerned about.

Writing for SlateTyler Lopez explains that the technology that Ukraine used to snare demonstrators' cell signals has been deployed before, by none other than the FBI. In investigating how the government pulled off its Orwellian mass text (and receiving denials from the nation's major telecom companies that they participated in any way) he examines the most plausible theory, that:

… a “Pirate Base Station”—or a virtual base transceiver station—was used to contact those close to the protests. Commonly known as IMSI-catchers, these devices are easily obtained and most often been used by governments and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. The technology is fairly simple: Since mobile phones will automatically connect to the strongest base station/cell tower in a given area, a powerful ISMI-catcher can easily lure in mobile devices wishing to connect to a network.

And, you guessed it: "While you’re connected to the ISMI-catcher, operators—government, criminal, or both—can listen to your calls, read your text messages, and send messages to you."

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This remains a theory for how authorities sent the text blast, as there's been little chance to investigate amidst the chaos of the revolution. Furthermore, experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and elsewhere have noted that it's unlikely there's been much actual "registration," as most Ukrainians use prepaid SIM plans. Still, the concept and intent alone is disturbing, and demonstrates a willingness to embrace a hardline techno-authoritarianism.

Whether or not Ukrainian authorities used an ISMI-catcher, or whether it got the idea from American surveillance operations, it nonetheless demonstrates the policy creep that's capable of spreading once technologies are proven viable and deemed useful by a spy-happy state. It's difficult, as Snowden says, to delegitimize and combat the oppressive domestic surveillance tactics employed by anti-democratic strongmen like Yanukovych. We are helping to normalize and make ubiquitous such widespread surveillance, not just at home, but abroad as well.

Snowden reminds of the stakes in latest video chat with the German news outlet NDR, published today.

"Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of any crime," Snowden said. "Traditionally the government would identify a suspect, they would go to a judge, they would say we suspect he’s committed this crime, they would get a warrant and then they would be able to use the totality of their powers in pursuit of the investigation."

This is where mass surveillance is prone to erode democracy, where it has already clearly done so in places like Ukraine. It is hastening a devolution in our constitutionally established standards of justice, slowly inverting that whole innocent until proven guilty thing.

"Nowadays what we see is they want to apply the totality of their powers in advance—prior to an investigation," Snowden said.