A Handy Guide For Comparing Spying Vs. Terrorism Disaster Scenarios

The week’s news has been a fear-mongering marathon between civil libertarians who are convinced we’re on the road to becoming North Korea, and security hawks who are building bunkers for the inevitable post-cyberattack hell scape. Unfortunately, because the most important facts about the National Security Agency’s?surveillance?programs are top secret, the entire debate has consisted of fear-driven hypotheticals. We can’t change that fact. But! We can make NSA disaster scenarios easier to compare?by detailing the relative harms of privacy invasion vs. terrorist threats in a handy guide on their probability and scope. In ascending order of paranoia, I compare privacy vs. security trade-offs, and conclude with a section that makes sense of why some people fear?surveillance?more than terrorists. Paranoia Level: Reads A Newspaper -?Defense Tax Bill Vs. Fear Staycations Cost Comparison: $85 Billion Vs. $75 Billion We know for sure that both defense and fear of terrorists is burning a hole in America’s pocketbook. Terrorist-driven aversion to flying and tourism has resulted in an estimated $85 billion in lost revenue, according to Eli Berman, an associate professor of economics at University of California, San Diego. In a bit of delightful parity, the combined cost?of the U.S. intelligence apparatus is $75 billion, including $1.7 billion for the NSA’s massive new 1-million-square-foot Utah campus, which houses all the servers it needs to retain America’s vast collection of porn, Justin Bieber tweets and cat videos. Paranoia Level: Has Purell on a keychain -?Stealing Company Secrets Vs. Self-Censorship Cost: Innovation Vs. Open Dialogue ?Surveillance inclines us to the mainstream and the boring,? wrote Washington University law professor Neil Richards, who argues that the watch-tower effect of omnipresent government spying throttles open dialogue. Personally, I do find myself avoiding the word “terrorist” in emails because I have a vague sense I’ll get flagged by some government agency. On the security side, some are reasonably worried about theft of company secrets. We know that Chinese hackers are fans of corporate espionage; in one instance, stolen data from Coca-Cola preceded their failed $2.4 billion acquisition of the China Huiyuan Juice Group. According to security firm Mandiant, the Chinese top-level hacking unit, was ?busy rummaging through their computers in an apparent effort to learn more about Coca-Cola?s negotiation strategy.? It’s just as possible that the Russian and Middle Eastern terror cells being tracked by the NSA are also stealing corporate secrets, which could cause more widespread piracy and throttling

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