What Is Data Encryption, And How Can It Be Used to Protect Us in an Overly Surveilled State?
With an increase of police surveillance during and after protests, let’s take a dive into how citizens are being surveilled, and how data encryption can protect some of your information
This article is a part of the Tech in Policy publication. TiP focuses on technology being used for good and shines a light on its more malicious or neglectful implementations. To read more, visit this link.
The year of 2020 has been a year demonstrating the culmination of the effects of the actions (and inactions) we have taken as a nation. The underfunding of the National Institute of Health (NIH) has led to a pandemic with fatalities reaching 200K; the systemic racism that infiltrates our criminal justice system and lack of accountability and action within our police departments for murder has led to an uprising across the country for justice; a lack of regulations and law on privacy in public spaces has led to the government and police departments surveilling its citizens through AI, social media, sting rays, cell site simulators and more.
More on that last point. The government surveils its citizens?
The history of the U.S. government surveilling its citizens is nothing new, and stems back to the signing of a post 9–11 Patriot Act that would allow the electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens and the collection of metadata from large phone companies. In the following years, the FISA Amendments Act would authorize the nefarious collection of communications under PRISM, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. And while section 215 of the Patriot Act is set to expire this year, we have seen no sign of police slowing down on surveillance. Following protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington stated “[We have] begun analyzing the data of who we have arrested, and begun, actually, doing what you would think as almost pretty similar to our COVID [response]. It’s contact tracing. Who are they associated with? What platforms are they advocating for?” And with examples like police using facial recognition to track down and arrest BLM activist Derrick Ingram, it’s clear that police across the country are following suit.
What methods are being used for surveillance?
We likely do not know the scope and depth in which the police track our data, and that information is usually only found out years in the making through investigative journalism, accountability, public records requests, according to Matthew Guariglia, Policy Analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But from what we do know, citizens are able to be tracked in public spaces via AI facial recognition provided by companies like Clearview AI, who created a database of billions of photos scraped from social media platforms. AI facial recognition can be used via drones, body cams, and general pictures from a scene.
More concerning, citizens can be tracked through their use of mobile phones. Data that is shared via social media — including images, geodata and content — is being mined for information. Cell site simulators, which are stingrays, are able to track where we are, and share that information with government/police department officials.
Is the government allowed to surveil us in this way?
There is currently no federal law that protects our right to privacy and to not be surveilled in public spaces. One of the closest cases we have to determining our right to privacy through the data on our phones, is Carpenter v. United States. The courts have held that obtaining geodata of our cell phones without a warrant is a violation of our Fourth Amendment right. As we wait for more clear guidance and federal regulation, legislation has begun to be enacted at the local level in places like Somerville & Brookline in MA, and San Francisco and Berkeley in CA.
What can we do to protect ourselves?
There are great resources on how to effectively protect yourself in public spaces, especially when it’s likely there will be public surveillance (ie: if you’re attending a protest). Here are some thorough guidelines from the ACLU on how to protect yourself and others from surveillance while attending a protest. For AI recognition, you must cover yourself properly, and if you’re going to take images, make sure not to share anything that could identify allies at the protest. To protect your data, we’re going to take a deeper dive into data encryption and how it works.
What is data encryption?
The first point on the ACLU’s guidelines to protect yourself from surveillance while attending a protest states to fully encrypt that data on your phone. What does that mean? Data encryption is the process of translating your data into cipher text, which can only be decrypted with an authorized key.
In its original form, your data is in plaintext, text that is not computationally tagged, specially formatted, or written in code. In order to protect digital data confidentiality as it is stored on computer systems and transmitted using the internet or other computer networks, that data is put through a modern data encryption algorithm and an encryption key. The encrypted data is now cipher text.
According to the Digital Guardian, data encryption is one of the most popular and effective data security methods. That is because the cipher text can only be decrypted with the correct encryption key. The two main types of data encryption that exist today are symmetric encryption, and asymmetric encryption. Symmetric encryption requires the same encryption key to decrypt data. On the other hand, Asymmetric encryption uses a public key that is shared with all, and a private key that is only available to the user. And as data protection continues to grow in importance, and more sophisticated algorithms are needed, various modern data encryption algorithms continue to be built. Check out some more information on symmetric vs asymmetric algorithms here, and other types of encrypting algorithms here — though there are many more.
To encrypt your phone, follow guidance from these articles on encrypting and iPhone and an Android device. You can further encrypt your data and communications by using messaging apps that use end to end encryption, including Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram and more.
While we must take precautionary steps to protect our data, it is deeply important that we advocate for anti-surveillance laws, starting at the local level. Our data is already being mined by tech corporate giants, and we need protection on what data can be taken, and who can access it. Take steps to advocate for anti-surveillance laws by working with your local ACLU chapter, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), and by calling your local legislatures.
