Democracy Promotion/Soft Power—Affirmative Tentative 1AC
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- An undiluted Freedom Act is crucial to democratic accountability
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SolvencyFreedom Act AffirmativeNew Freedom Act fails to restore US’s global credibility on Internet freedom. The original version solves by closing SST loopholes.Brinkerhoff ‘14 (Internally quoting Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. Noel Brinkerhoff is a Political reporter and writer covering state and national politics for 15 years. “With Support of Obama Administration, House NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Includes Gaping Loopholes” – AllGov – May 26th - http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/with-support-of-obama-administration-house-nsa-surveillance-reform-bill-includes-gaping-loopholes-140526?news=853242) Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives claim they have addressed the problems of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) notorious bulk collection of data, made so famous last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the legislation adopted to end this controversial practice contains huge loopholes that could allow the NSA to keep vacuuming up large amounts of Americans’ communications records, all with the blessing of the Obama administration. Dubbed the USA Freedom Act, the bill overwhelmingly approved by the House (303 to 121) was criticized for not going far enough to keep data out of the hands of government. “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the U.S. and around the world,” Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. “Until Congress passes real reform, U.S. credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.” Julian Sanchez, a researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, warned that the changes could mean the continuation of bulk collection of phone records by another name. “The core problem is that this only ends ‘bulk’ collection in the sense the intelligence community uses that term,” Sanchez told Wired. “As long as there’s some kind of target, they don’t call that bulk collection, even if you’re still collecting millions of records…If they say ‘give us the record of everyone who visited these thousand websites,’ that’s not bulk collection, because they have a list of targets.” HRW says the bill, which now goes to the Senate for consideration, contains ambiguous definitions about what can and cannot be collected by the agency. For instance, an earlier version more clearly defined the scope of what the NSA could grab under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which has formed the legal basis for gathering the metadata of phone calls. “Under an earlier version of the USA Freedom Act, the government would have been required to base any demand for phone metadata or other records on a “specific selection term” that “uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Under the House version, this definition was broadened to mean “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the government to limit the scope” of information sought,” according to Human Rights Watch. “This definition is too open-ended and ambiguous to prevent the sort of creative interpretation by intelligence agencies that has been used to justify overbroad collection practices in the past,” the group claims. The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is similarly disappointed in the final House bill. “Taken together,” the Institute wrote, “the changes to this definition may still allow for massive collection of millions of Americans’ private information based on very broad selection terms such as a zip code, an area code, the physical address of a particular email provider or financial institution, or the IP address of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites.” The US can alter global practices that threaten internet freedom – but only when US image is seen as less hypocritical.Wong ‘13 Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Wong worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on Global Internet Freedom. She conducted much of the organization’s work promoting global Internet freedom, with a particular focus on international free expression and privacy. She also served as co-chair of the Policy & Learning Committee of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the technology sector. Prior to joining CDT, Wong was the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights in China (HRIC). There, she contributed to the organization’s work in the areas of business and human rights and freedom of expression online. Wong earned her law degree from New York University School of Law – “ Surveillance and the Corrosion of Internet Freedom” - July 30, 2013 - Published in: The Huffington Post and also available at the HRW website at this address: http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/30/surveillance-and-corrosion-internet-freedom Defenders of US and UK surveillance programs argue that collecting metadata is not as problematic as “listening to the content of people’s phone calls” or reading emails. This is misleading. Technologists have long recognized that metadata can reveal incredibly sensitive information, especially if it is collected at large scale over long periods of time, since digitized data can be easily combined and analyzed. The revelations have also exposed glaring contradictions about the US Internet freedom agenda. This has emboldened the Chinese state media, for example, to cynically denounce US hypocrisy, even as the Chinese government continues to censor the Internet, infringe on privacy rights, and curb anonymity online. Though there is hypocrisy on both sides, the widening rift between US values and actions has real, unintended human rights consequences. For the human rights movement, the Internet’s impact on rights crystalized in 2005 after we learned that Yahoo! uncritically turned user account information over to the Chinese government, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the journalist Shi Tao. The US government forcefully objected to the Chinese government’s actions and urged the tech industry to act responsibly. In the end, that incident catalyzed a set of new human rights standards that pushed some companies to improve safeguards for user privacy in the face of government demands for data. US support was critical back then, but it is hard to imagine the government having the same influence or credibility now. The mass surveillance scandal has damaged the US government’s ability to press for better corporate practices as technology companies expand globally. It will also be more difficult for companies to resist overbroad surveillance mandates if they are seen as complicit in mass US infringements on privacy. Other governments will feel more entitled to ask for the same cooperation that the US receives. We can also expect governments around the world to pressure companies to store user data locally or maintain a local presence so that governments can more easily access it, as Brazil and Russia are now debating. While comparisons to the Chinese government are overstated, there is reason to worry about the broader precedent the US has set. Just months before the NSA scandal broke, India began rolling out a centralized system to monitor all phone and Internet communications in the country, without much clarity on safeguards to protect rights. This development is chilling, considering the government’s problematic use of sedition and Internet laws in recent arrests. Over the last few weeks, Turkish officials have condemned social media as a key tool for Gezi Park protesters. Twitter has drawn particular ire. Now the government is preparing new regulations that would make it easier to get data from Internet companies and identify individual users online. The Obama administration and US companies could have been in a strong position to push back in India and Turkey. Instead, the US has provided these governments with a roadmap for conducting secret, mass surveillance and conscripting the help of the private sector. An undiluted Freedom Act is crucial to democratic accountabilityHRW 14 - Human Rights Watch (“US: Surveillance Reform Advances in the Senate,” https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/29/us-surveillance-reform-advances-senate 7/29/2014) STRYKER (Washington, DC) – The US Senate should move swiftly to approve a surveillance reform bill introduced on July 29, 2014, by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, is a significant improvement over a companion bill that the US House of Representatives passed on May 22 and, if approved, has the potential to end bulk collection of phone records in the US. “The NSA’s large scale collection of phone metadata has deeply undermined the public’s trust in government and is doing serious harm to basic freedoms and democratic accountability in the US,” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Senate’s bill is a much-needed first step, and Congress should act quickly to approve it without letting it be diluted.” Human Rights Watch had previously criticized the ambiguous language in the House version of the bill. That version would leave broad loopholes that could ultimately fail to end mass phone data collection, despite the fact that its sponsors say that is the central objective of the draft law. The House-passed bill also would weaken transparency and oversight provisions in an earlier draft of the USA Freedom Act that could have improved supervision of surveillance practices. PRISM AffirmativePRISM unpopular and undermines support from alliesArkedis 13 (Jim, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and the co-author of Political Mercenaries, “PRISM Is Bad for American Soft Power,” The Atlantic, 6/19/13, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/prism-is-bad-for-american-soft-power/277015/)//kjz Which brings us to PRISM, the NSA program that collects meta-data from Americans' telephone and online communications. I am a former Department of Defense intelligence analyst. I have never used PRISM, and do not know if it existed during my tenure. However, I have used NSA databases, and became aware of two ironclad truths about the agency: First, its data is a critical intelligence tool; and second, that access to databases by non-NSA intelligence analysts is highly controlled. It's like buying drugs (so I'm told): you need "a guy" on the inside who passes you the goods in the shadows, then disavows any connection to you. In addition to being useful and tightly controlled, PRISM is, of course, legal by the letter of the law. Its existence is primarily justified by the "business records" clause in the PATRIOT Act, and President Obama has argued that the legislation has been authorized by "bipartisan majorities repeatedly," and that "it's important to understand your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing." Salvation from excessive government snooping would seem to lie at the ballot box. Fair enough. But in the immediate wake of September 11, Americans questioned little of what their government would do to keep them safe. Just four months after the attacks in January 2002, Gallup reported that fully half of Americans would support anti-terrorism measures even if they violated civil liberties. Times have changed. As soon as August 2003, Gallup found just 29 percent of Americans were willing to sacrifice civil liberties for security. By 2009, a CBS poll concluded only 41 percent of Americans had even heard or read about the PATRIOT Act, and 45 percent of those believed the law endangered their civil liberties. A Washington Post poll from April 2013--after the Boston marathon attacks but before PRISM's disclosure-- found 48 percent of Americans feared the government would go too far in compromising constitutional rights to investigate terrorism. And following the Edward Snowden leaks, 58 percent were against the government collecting phone records. Not a total reversal, but certainly trending in one direction. This shift has existed in a vacuum of public debate. Prior to the PRISM leaks, the last time domestic government surveillance made headlines was in very late 2005 and early 2006, following revelations that the Bush administration was wiretapping Americans without a warrant. Despite the scandal, the PATRIOT Act was quickly reauthorized by March 2006. The Bush administration did announce the end of warrantless wiretapping in 2007, and he moved the program under jurisdiction of the FISA court , a panel of Supreme Court-appointed judges who approve domestic surveillance requests. To call the FISA court a rubber stamp is an understatement. This year, it has rejected a grand total of 11 warrant requests out of--wait for it--33,996 applications since the Carter administration. The PATRIOT Act's reauthorization wouldn't come up again until 2009. By then, public uproar over warrantless wiretapping had long since receded, and the year's debate played out as a relatively quite inside-baseball scuffle between civil liberties groups and the Hill. When the law came up for its next presidential signature in 2011, it was done quietly by autopen--a device that imitates Obama's John Hancock--from France. Shifting attitudes and quiet reauthorization flies in the face of the standard the president has set for himself. In a 2009 speech at the National Archives, Obama emphasized the importance of the consent of the governed in security affairs, "I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values... My administration will make all information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable." The president's inability to live up to this ideal is particularly jarring as he defends PRISM. Following the leaks, he's said he is pushing the intelligence community to release what it can, and rightly insists that the NSA is not listening in on Americans' phone calls. Those are helpful steps, but should have been raised during the National Archives speech just months into his administration, not six months into his second term. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper continues to argue that disclosure of collection methods will give America's enemies a "'playbook' to avoid detection." That's thin gruel. First, America's enemies are already aware of the NSA's extensive electronic surveillance capabilities. That's why Osama Bin Laden and deceased al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi used a complex network of couriers rather than electronic communications. It's typical operational security of truly dangerous operatives. Second, Obama stated as recently as late May that the threat from al Qaeda's core operatives has decreased significantly, shifting to less deadly cells scattered throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The lack of public debate, shifting attitudes towards civil liberties, insufficient disclosure, and a decreasing terrorist threat demands that collecting Americans' phone and Internet records must meet the absolute highest bar of public consent. It's a test the Obama administration is failing. This brings us back to Harry Truman and Jim Crow. Even though PRISM is technically legal, the lack of recent public debate and support for aggressive domestic collection is hurting America's soft power. The evidence is rolling in. The China Daily, an English-language mouthpiece for the Communist Party, is having a field day, pointing out America's hypocrisy as the Soviet Union did with Jim Crow. Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei made the link explicitly, saying "In the Soviet Union before, in China today, and even in the U.S., officials always think what they do is necessary... but the lesson that people should learn from history is the need to limit state power." Even America's allies are uneasy, at best. German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up in the East German police state and expressed diplomatic "surprise" at the NSA's activities. She vowed to raise the issue with Obama at this week's G8 meetings. The Italian data protection commissioner said the program would "not be legal" in his country. British Foreign Minister William Hague came under fire in Parliament for his government's participation. If Americans supported these programs, our adversaries and allies would have no argument. As it is, the next time the United States asks others for help in tracking terrorists, it's more likely than not that they will question Washington's motives. It's not too late. The PATRIOT Act is up for reauthorization in 2015. In the context of a diminished threat, the White House still has time to push the public debate on still-hidden, controversial intelligence strategies (while safeguarding specific sources and methods). Further, the administration should seek to empower the FISA court. Rather that defer to the Supreme Court to appoint its panel of judges, it would be better to have Senate-confirmable justices serving limited terms. President Obama has said Americans can't have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy. But you can have an honest public debate about that allows Americans to legitimately decide where to strike that balance. It's both the right thing to do and American foreign policy demands it. 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