International corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat.
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
The Billion-Dollar Ultimatum
The Creators Project travels to Miami to meet Trevor Paglen, an artist, experimental geographer, and counter-surveillance researcher most known for his long distance pictures of secret military bases, and his contribution to the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour. In Miami, Trevor takes his art to a new level, deep diving in the Atlantic Ocean to photograph NSA-tapped underwater internet cables. We get inside the struggle between the physical reality vs. abstract concepts of privacy and the vulnerability of our data networks. Using telescopic photography and other methods, artist Trevor Paglen explores the boundaries between visible and invisible, including CIA black sites, secret satellites and the details of Bradley Manning trial drawings.
FBI Director James Comey warned again Tuesday about the bureau's inability to access digital devices because of encryption and said investigators were collecting information about the challenge in preparation for an "adult conversation" next year.
Widespread encryption built into smartphones is "making more and more of the room that we are charged to investigate dark," Comey said in a cybersecurity symposium.
The remarks reiterated points that Comey has made repeatedly in the last two years, before Congress and in other settings, about the growing collision between electronic privacy and national security.
"The conversation we've been trying to have about this has dipped below public consciousness now, and that's fine," Comey said at a symposium organized by Symantec, a technology company.
"Because what we want to do is collect information this year so that next year we can have an adult conversation in this country."
The American people, he said, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in private spaces -- including houses, cars and electronic devices.
But that right is not absolute when law enforcement has probable cause to believe that there's evidence of a crime in one of those places, including a laptop or smartphone.
"With good reason, the people of the United States -- through judges and law enforcement -- can invade our private spaces," Comey said, adding that that "bargain" has been at the center of the country since its inception.
He said it's not the role of the FBI or tech companies to tell the American people how to live and govern themselves.
"We need to understand in the FBI how is this exactly affecting our work, and then share that with folks," Comey said, conceding the American people might ultimately decide that its privacy was more important than "that portion of the room being dark."
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