Frequently Asked Questions about Surveillance

What is the main danger of mobile phones?

Mobile phones are surveillance and tracking devices. The phone system is constantly finding out where the phone is. The operator generally keeps a record of this, for months or years, and that information is available to Big Brother, very easily. I consider that oppressive. But there is worse: phones can be remotely converted into listening devices because, even if they are not “smart”phones, they contain software that can be changed remotely, through what's called a “back door.” It means that the phone receives commands from somebody else to do something. This back door can, for instance, install software changes without the permission of the supposed owner. This has been used to remotely convert phones into listening devices. The book Murder in Samarkand, by Craig Murray, describes one example of this. So, basically, once the phone is converted, it listens all the time, and it transmits all the time, and if you try to turn it off… well, it doesn't really turn off; it pretends to be off, and continues listening and transmitting.

Is surveillance always a bad thing?

I am not against the ability of the state to investigate people when there are some grounds, if a court approves the investigation. We need this to catch criminals, and prosecute them. (Unfortunately, the plutocratic states today only want to catch the small criminals; the giant criminals are too big for jail. But, we do need that, and I don't want to make that impossible.) What I object to is making a dossier about everyone all the time, because then, if the state wants to get somebody, even for a bad reason, it can get tremendous amounts of data, and can always find something to punish that person for. So, we should design our digital systems so they are not recording data about everybody all the time, because that starts to resemble what secret police did, and in fact might still be doing in lots of countries.

Is surveillance of the whole population actually going on in the United States?

In 2013, Snowden told us what the US government and some other governments are really doing. I've been saying for many years that the Pat-Riot Act—I won't call it “patriot” because it is as unpatriotic as you can get in a country based on the idea of freedom—allows collecting all the data about everyone, regularly, fast enough so it doesn't get erased between collections. But that was just a guess. Thanks to Snowden, we know that in some cases, specifically phone calls, the US government is actually doing this, and we know that there are other governments that do surveillance without even the flimsy limits of the US law.

See also “How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?”

I am not doing anything wrong, so what's wrong about being under surveillance?

First of all, the idea that if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide is ridiculous. Lots of people have things they want to hide from somebody. Some people, for instance, are gay, and in certain countries they might get prosecuted for that. You might think that you do something that your boss wouldn't like if he knew. Maybe he wouldn't like what party you vote for. Lots of people have reasons not to want everybody to know everything about them. With total surveillance, though, the state knows everything, and some companies know nearly everything, and can communicate what they know to whomever they want.

How far should I go to impede surveillance and tracking of me personally?

You should do more than you are doing now. Look for systems to stop using. Don't accept the argument that if “everyone else” tolerates surveillance, that makes it OK!

What laws do you suggest for reducing surveillance of people in general?

We should have laws restricting what personal data any business can collect or record. Personal data, once collected, will be misused; so we should design hardware to limit what data it can possibly collect, for instance to make identification of anyone impossible.

Laws should prohibit any product that has a GPS receiver (or other radio-based locator system) from recording your past locations, except when you ask it explicitly to do so. The legitimate feature is to output a list of past locations, over a short period of time, which you can store on a device of your choice.

Can we succeed in rolling back the surveillance system?

I don't know. This depends on you. I am not interested in asking, “Are we going to win?” or “Can we win?”; I am interested in doing whatever I can to win. Our freedom is at the stake, and this is true for people all around the world. I would guess that every country is increasing surveillance through digital technology to a level that is unprecedented in world history. Unless we had a great insufficiency of surveillance before, we should regard this as intolerable. We must start rejecting the so-called internet services that demand to know all about us. So, don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or TikTok, for instance. There are some services that are important, and we need to make sure that the surveillance that they can do on people is limited.

Why should we fight surveillance right now?

You should join the fight now if you want to have the possibility of some privacy some day. Now is the moment when you can make a difference. If you wait until the day you wish you had some privacy, and only then try to do something… well, that day you will be one of a few people doing it, and that won't be enough. You've got to help make a critical mass when other people are doing it—and that's now.

What if I end up as an outcast, like Assange or Snowden?

Assange and Snowden are not outcasts, as millions of people in the US and elsewhere admire them. They have been besieged by the empire, but not defeated. They decided to take risks for our freedom, but they can't win by themselves. It's up to us to carry the fight forward.

How close are companies and governments? What is their relationship?

There's no simple answer, but they work hand in hand. In the US, because of the Pat-Riot Act, companies are required to turn over all the data they collect about people to the FBI without even a court order. The FBI just has to say, “We want this data, we say it's relevant to something,” and then the company has to turn it over secretly. So, any time a company is collecting data about you, it's collecting it for its own purposes, but also for the state. Therefore we must consider that corporate surveillance about us is a part of state surveillance. Of course, both options are bad. I don't want companies to have tremendous amounts of information about me either, and I generally don't use the services that would give them that information.

Using social media platforms such as Facebook to communicate with other people is not all that bad, is it?

It's horrible. Facebook is a monstrous surveillance engine.

What's an alternative to Facebook or other social media?

An alternative that would be very similar to Facebook? No way! My alternative to a nasty system is to avoid it. If you start with the premise that you have to use one of those nasty things, you are basically deciding to lose in advance. I don't use Facebook and I don't want an alternative to Facebook.

Social media connect people. Isn't this a good thing?

People can be connected in lots of ways. But, from what I've read in the book Alone Together, by Sherry Turkle, what people do in Facebook is to carefully construct a false picture of themselves.

Shouldn't we recognize that Microsoft's and Apple's contributions in creating this global community were valuable?

Malicious technology can't be excused, even if it had some good effects. We've got to realize first of all that Microsoft and Apple software is proprietary. That means the users don't control the program, rather the program controls the users. That's an injustice. And the existence of proprietary software—although it wasn't for Microsoft or Apple back then—was why I started the free software movement. In addition to setting things up so that they control the program and the program controls the users, they started putting in malicious functionalities that spy on users, and intentionally restrict users. There are even back doors in that software. So, litterally speaking, Apple and Microsoft software is malware. Ever since Windows 8.1—we call it “Windows Prison Edition”—Windows has been requiring users to send data to Microsoft servers. Of course, Microsoft will hand out any of that data to the US government on request. It puts the users in prison. This is the natural result of letting a company have control over the software that the users are running, instead of the users themselves. So I wish Microsoft and Apple hadn't done anything, although I realize somebody else might have done it if they hadn't. Still, this is no excuse for them doing it.

Can free software generate as much digital innovation as does proprietary software?

It's a secondary question. I think freedom is more important than innovation. And when you look at a lot of the innovations that proprietary software generates, they are harmful, like the Xbox, which has a camera that's designed to determine who is in the room, how many people there are at least, and whether they are looking at the Xbox. That was an innovation—one that we shouldn't stand for. Of course, the Xbox is nasty in lots of other ways. This is one example among many of how it is a mistake to make innovation our goal.

Do people voluntarily trade their freedom for gadgets and convenience?

Partly, but companies are steering them by saying, “You could have this convenience, but only if you let us be nasty to you in that way.” People who are not sensitized to the issue might agree, but there's no fundamental reason why this convenience has to require that nastiness. The real reason is that a company figures they might get you to accept that nastiness by attaching it to this convenience. If we had control of how things are built, we could have the convenience in most cases without the nastiness. Sometimes it's difficult, but mostly these are connected artificially. So, the point is that we need more control over our technology.

Shouldn't personal success be people's priority?

I think it's a mistake. I aim for something higher. I want to live a life I will be proud to have lived.

Does everyone have the potentiality to become a freedom fighter?

Who knows? I wasn't a freedom fighter until 1983, and if you'd met me in 1970 you would never have guessed that I had this in me, and I wouldn't have thought I had this in me. Anybody can surprise oneself.

Will free software supersede or replace proprietary software eventually?

It depends on you, basically. When you have a practical decision to make, it depends on whether you say “I'll use this proprietary program because it does something for me that I want to do today,” or “No, I won't use it because the price is my freedom, and that's too much to pay.”

Free software is great, and it's available. Why do so few people use it?

Partly because of social inertia. You'll notice that most PCs are sold with Windows already in them. This is a current flowing towards Windows, and most people let themselves be carried by the current. Schools are teaching people proprietary software. Whether it's from Microsoft or Apple doesn't matter, they are both bad. The point is that with so much current artificially generated, people have to swim against it if they want to get to freedom. Not everybody is determined enough. In the free software movement, we try to make it easier for people; we try to change the current. Will we win? Who knows? The point is, let's do our best.

Has the GNU Project been a success?

Partly. Lots of people use the GNU operating system. Because GNU is an operating system, and no computer will do anything without an operating system in it. In fact, millions of people use the GNU operating system, but mostly they don't know it, because they think it's Linux. Linux is actually one essential component that's used in the system today, so it's really GNU + Linux. Yes, we achieved our initial goal, and we had a considerable success, but we haven't liberated everybody.

What is available to users for encrypting e-mail?

We have free software for encrypting email or other files. You shouldn't trust any encryption program unless it's free software, and unless encryption is done on your computer by your copy of the software. Encryption on a server is not trustworthy. How do you know they are not saving a copy before they encrypted it, and giving it to NSA? So, you need to encrypt it on your machine. Our program for doing this is called the GNU Privacy Guard, or GnuPG.

Which payment methods should we use to avoid being tracked?

As a general rule, use cash. In some specific cases (paying utility bills, buying airline tickets), it doesn't harm to use a check or a credit card, because you are identified anyway in the payee's records.

Why not pay with bitcoins?

Bitcoin seems like a solution to some problems, but it's not anonymous. We need a payment system where the payer is anonymous. The payee doesn't have to be anonymous, but it has to be so you can pay to access a webpage, and do so anonymously.

Is it possible to pay in complete anonymity?

It is, in theory. But I'm not saying we need total anonymity; we need anonymity for the person who's paying to access a website. However it's acceptable if the website operators are not anonymous in receiving this money. After all, we want them to pay their taxes.

Is privacy dead?

People who think it is are being defeatist. Or maybe they are suffering from a shock that leads them into despair. The fact is privacy has a better chance now than it has had for the past two decades, because now we have a lot of people who know that there's a problem and how big it is. We need to establish sufficient privacy in our communications that a government official can talk to a journalist without being caught. That's the amount of privacy society absolutely needs if we want to keep control over what the government is doing.