GDI 2015 Bullrun Negative

***Advantage Answers***

Tech

UQ Tech Companies
Tech Sector strong now- Apple and other tech companies
seeing strong growth
Richardson, Head of Investment at BlackRock, 15 (Heidi, February
27th, Market Realist, Strong Earnings Report Indicates US Tech Sectors
Strength, http://marketrealist.com/2015/02/strong-earnings-report-indicatesstrength-u-s-tech-sector/, 06/28/15, MM)
So where should investors look? We believe mature information technology
(or IT) companies are a potential bright spot. Unlike more defensive sectors
(such as utilities), price gains for mature tech stocks have largely
been led by earnings growth rather than by multiples expansion.
Were seeing the trend continue this earnings season. Apple was
the standout, of course. The company reported $18 billion in profit
and $74 billion in revenuethe most profitable quarter for any
company ever. Earnings per share (EPS) increased 48%, handily
beating expectations. (Source: Apple.) Microsoft (MSFT) and Google
(GOOG) have also reported earnings. Although both came in under
analysts estimates, Googles EPS and revenues are both up, and
Microsoft reported an uptick in sales of its mobile devices. Contrast
this with disappointing results for sectors such as financials, multinationals
and energy, and tech appears to be one of the few areas of the market
moving in the right direction. U.S. tech sector beating sales and EPS
expectations Enlarge Graph Market Realist A strong earnings report is a
tailwind for US tech stocks The US tech sector looks to be
fundamentally strong. The strong earnings report provided
momentum for the sector. The US tech sector (XLK) outperformed
the S&P 500 (SPY) (IVV) in terms of earnings growth. According to
FactSet, the earnings growth for tech companiesthat have
reported earnings so farhas been 9.6% for 4Q14. In contrast, for the
S&P 500 it has been 3.5%. Four out of the seven technology industries (QQQ)
experienced earnings growth. Three of the four industries exhibited doubledigit growth, according to FactSet. The strong earnings growth came despite
headwindsthe stronger US dollar hurting exporters and a weak global
economy. The previous graph shows the earnings per share, or EPS, and
sales beats by the tech sector and the S&P 500 ex-Tech. The tech sector
outperformed the broader market significantly. Apple EPS Apple reports
its best quarter ever Apple (AAPL) is the largest contributor to
earnings growth of both the tech sector and the S&P 500. Apple
reported an actual EPS of $3.06 for the last fiscal quarterup from $2.07
reported in 4Q13. According to FactSet, the exclusion of Apple would cause
the tech sectors earnings growth to fall to 1.9% from 9.6%. The earnings

growth rate for the S&P 500 would fall to 1.7% from 3.5%. The previous
graph shows Apples actual reported EPS over the last year. Apples iPhone
sales climbed to a whopping $74.5 million in the last quarter.
Qualcomm (QCOM) is Apples chip supplier. It stands to benefit from
the rise in sales too. Qualcomm enjoys 60% gross margins on
revenue. Revenue grew at a healthy five-year average rate of 28%. With
zero debt, robust cash reserves, and high dividend yields, the company looks
to be a good investment bet. In the next part of this series, well discuss how
cyclical trends will likely benefit the tech sector.

Tech sector not in a bubble- set to grow even more in 2015

Kharpal, journalist at CNBN London, 14
(Arjun, December 5, CNBC, Heres why tech stocks will go nuts in 2015,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102243196, June 28, 2015, GG)
Technology stocks will go "nuts" in 2015 thanks to growth in the
U.S. and the "normalization" of interest rates, HSBC told CNBC.
Rejecting the idea of bubble in technology equities, HSBC Global Asset
Management's head of absolute return, Charlie Morris, said investors need
to look at large cap growth stocks. "There is a long way to go here.
People have been chasing in the search for yield dividend stocks, corporate
bonds and so on, that's the wrong place to be. The right place to be is in
growth and you know U.S. large cap growth is the theme," Morris told
CNBC in a TV interview. The MSCI World Information Technology Index,
which tracks stocks such as Google, Microsoft and Apple, has rallied
17.89 percent year-to-date, with many of the companies far
outperforming the index. Apple has seen its share price rise 44 percent on
the back of new products and the promise of its Apple Pay system.
Facebook is up 37.7 percent while Microsoft has rallied 30.6
percent. Read MoreApple could be 'obsolete' in 3 years: Analyst Initial
public offerings in the technology sector have been buoyant, with 84
flotations done in the first nine months of 2014, worth $43.7 billion,
according to PwC. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba was the highlight of the
year when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the biggest ever IPO.
The stock has since rallied 16.3 percent. "I think that that idea that the
tech is a bubble is wrong. It is actually making a lot of money, a lot
of these companies are very, very profitable and it will continue to
go higher next year," Morris said.

Tech Sector strong- job growth

Fallon, Business Reporter, 15 (Nicole, February 27th, Business News
Daily, Want a Tech Job? Differentiate Yourself,
http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7799-us-tech-job-growth.html, 06/28/15,
MM)
According to CompTIA's Cyberstates 2015 report, the American tech
industry added 129,500 new jobs between 2013 and 2014, bringing
the total number of jobs in the industry to nearly 6.5 million, or 5.7
percent of the U.S. private sector workforce. This is good news for
both the economy and job seekers looking for tech positions. "The
U.S. tech industry continues to make significant contributions to our
economy," Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA, said in a
statement. "The tech industry accounts for 7.1 percent of the overall
U.S. GDP and 11.4 percent of the total U.S. private sector payroll.
With annual average wages that are more than double that of the
private sector [overall], we should be doing all we can to encourage
the growth and vitality of our nation's tech industry." While tech
employment grew in the majority of states (38) over the last year, some
states fared better than others. CompTIA identified the following states as
having the largest net gains and/or employment rates in tech jobs. California
32,900 jobs added; 1.1 million employed Texas 20,100 jobs added;
581,200 employed Florida 12,500 jobs added; 307,100 employed
Massachusetts 8,700 jobs added; 286,300 employed Michigan 8,100 jobs
added; 196,005 employed New York 5,700 jobs added; 346,500 employed
CompTIA's findings support recent data published by ZipRecruiter on the
best cities to find a tech startup job: Nearly half of the 25 cities on the list,
including seven of the top 10, are located in these six states. The
Cyberstates report also found the tech industry segments with the most jobs
added: IT services (63,300); R&D, testing and engineering services (50,700);
and telecommunications and Internet services (21,100).

Tech sector stable now- high employment and growth

Rushe, Business Editor for the Guardian, 12 (Dominic, December
6th, The Guardian, Technology sector found to be growing faster than rest of
US economy,
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/06/technology-sectorgrowing-faster-economy, 06/28/15, MM)
Since 2004, the bottom of the dot-com bust, employment growth in the
hi-tech sector had grown at a pace three times faster than the
private sector as a whole and has proved more resilient through the

recession-and-recovery period, according to the report commissioned by

Engine Advocacy, a tech start-up lobbyist and conducted by the Bay Area
Council Economic Institute. The report found growth not just in the
more famous hi-tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle but in
nearly all communities across the US. It found 98% of US counties
had at least one hi-tech business establishment in 2011. Delaware
topped the list of states for growth in hi-tech employment in 2011 at 12.8%.
Greensboro-High Point in North Carolina was the county with the fastest
growth, a startling 36.3%. The report calculates that each hi-tech job
creates 4.3 jobs in the wider community, thanks in part to wages
that are 17%-27% higher than peers in other fields. By comparison,
the average manufacturing job creates 1.4 jobs in the wider community.
Demand for hi-tech jobs is expected to outstrip demand for jobs across the
US economy through at least 2020. Hi-tech industries are projected to
grow by 16.2% over the nine-year period, compared to 13.1% for the
rest of US industry. Mike McGeary, co-founder, said: "The tech sector isn't
just about Silicon Valley or New York any more. It's about Boise,
Idaho, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, South Carolina. It's a national
phenomenon." Enrico Moretti, professor of economics at the University of
California, Berkeley and author of The New Geography of Jobs, said of the
report: "This study addresses an important question: how important is hitech employment growth for the US labor market? As it turns out, the
dynamism of the US hi-tech companies matters not just to scientists,
software engineers and stockholders, but to the community at large. While
the average worker may never be employed by Google or a hi-tech
startup, our jobs are increasingly supported by the wealth created
by innovators."

The tech industry has been showing robust growth since

2004
BACEI(Bay area economic institute), A Bay Area Council
Economic Institute report,2012
This report analyzes patterns of high-technology employment and
wages in the United States. It finds not only that high-tech jobs are
a critical source of employment and income in the U.S. economy , but
that growth in the high-tech sector has increasingly been occurring in
regions that are economically and geographically diverse. This report also
finds that the high-tech sectordefined here as the group of industries with very high shares of
workers in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math is an important source
of secondary job creation and local economic development. The key

Since the dot-com bust reached bottom in early 2004,

employment growth in the high-tech sector has outpaced growth in
the private sector as a whole by a ratio of three-to-one. High-tech
sector employment has also been more resilient in the recent
recession-and-recovery period and in the last year. The
unemployment rate for the high-tech sector workforce has
consistently been far below the rate for the nation as a whole, and
recent wage growth has been stronger. Employment growth in STEM
occupations has consistently been robust throughout the last decade,
outpacing job gains across all occupations by a ratio of 27 to 1
between 2002 and 2011. When combined with very low
unemployment and strong wage growth, this reflects the high
demand for workers in these fields. Employment projections indicate
that demand for high-tech workers will be stronger than for workers
outside of high-tech at least through 2020. Employment in high-tech
industries is projected to grow 16.2 percent between 2011 and 2020
and employment in STEM occupations is expected to increase by
13.9 percent. Employment growth for the nation as a whole is
expected to be 13.3 percent during the same period. Workers in
high-tech industries and STEM occupations earn a substantial wage
premium of between 17 and 27 percent relative to workers in other
fields, even after adjusting for factors outside of industry or
occupation that affect wages (such as educational attainment, citizenship status, age, ethnicity
and geography, among others). The growing income generated by the high-tech
sector and the strong employment growth that supports it are
important contributors to regional economic development. This is
illustrated by the local multiplier, which estimates that the creation
of one job in the high-tech sector of a region is associated with the
creation of 4.3 additional jobs in the local goods and services
economy of the same region in the long run. That is more than three
times the local multiplier for manufacturing, which at 1.4, is still
quite high
findings are as follows:

UQ Econ Strong
US Economy is strong now- economic growth and increased
consumer spending
Mutikani, Reuters Economic Correspondent, 15 (Lucia, June 25th,
Reuters, Robust U.S. consumer spending buoys economic growth outlook,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/25/us-usa-economyidUSKBN0P51J920150625?
feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563,
06/28/15, MM)
U.S. consumer spending recorded its largest increase in nearly six
years in May on strong demand for automobiles and other big-ticket
items, further evidence that economic growth was accelerating in
the second quarter. While other data on Thursday showed a modest increase in first-time applications
for unemployment benefits last week, the underlying trend in jobless claims continued to suggest the labor market
was tightening. The strengthening economy suggests the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates this year even
as inflation remains well below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target. Many economists expect a rate hike in

"This portends well for second-quarter growth and the

broader momentum of economic activity in the second half of the
year, and keeps the prospect of a September rate hike squarely on
the table," said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at
Miller Tabak in New York.The Commerce Department said consumer
spending rose 0.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since August
2009, after a 0.1 percent rise in April. May's sturdy increase in
consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S.
economic activity, suggested households were finally spending
some of the windfall from lower gasoline prices, and capped a
month of solid economic reports. It was the latest indication that
growth was gaining momentum after gross domestic product shrank at a 0.2 percent annual
September.

rate in the first quarter, as the economy battled bad weather, port disruptions, a strong dollar and spending cuts in
the energy sector. From employment to the housing market, the economic data for May has been bullish. Even
manufacturing, which is struggling with the lingering effects of dollar strength and lower energy prices, is starting to
stabilize.

US Economy is strong now- economic growth and increased

consumer spending
Mutikani, Reuters Economic Correspondent, 15 (Lucia, June 25th,
Reuters, Robust U.S. consumer spending buoys economic growth outlook,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/25/us-usa-economyidUSKBN0P51J920150625?
feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563,
06/28/15, MM)

U.S. consumer spending recorded its largest increase in nearly six

years in May on strong demand for automobiles and other big-ticket
items, further evidence that economic growth was accelerating in
the second quarter. While other data on Thursday showed a modest increase in first-time applications
for unemployment benefits last week, the underlying trend in jobless claims continued to suggest the labor market
was tightening. The strengthening economy suggests the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates this year even
as inflation remains well below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target. Many economists expect a rate hike in

"This portends well for second-quarter growth and the

broader momentum of economic activity in the second half of the
year, and keeps the prospect of a September rate hike squarely on
the table," said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at
Miller Tabak in New York.The Commerce Department said consumer
spending rose 0.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since August
2009, after a 0.1 percent rise in April. May's sturdy increase in
consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S.
economic activity, suggested households were finally spending
some of the windfall from lower gasoline prices, and capped a
month of solid economic reports. It was the latest indication that
growth was gaining momentum after gross domestic product shrank at a 0.2 percent annual
September.

rate in the first quarter, as the economy battled bad weather, port disruptions, a strong dollar and spending cuts in
the energy sector. From employment to the housing market, the economic data for May has been bullish. Even
manufacturing, which is struggling with the lingering effects of dollar strength and lower energy prices, is starting to
stabilize.

The Global Economy is strong now and projected to continue

growing
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN website, 14
(DESA, 10/12/15, The United Nations, World Economic Situation and
Prospects 2015: The Global Economic Outlook,
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/wesp-2015.html,
6/29/15,CS)
Global economic growth is forecast to increase marginally over the
next two years , according to the United Nations World Economic Situation
and Prospects 2015 (WESP) report, launched today. The global economy is
expected to grow 3.1 per cent in 2015 and 3.3 per cent in 2016,
compared with an estimated growth of 2.6 per cent for 2014. The
global economy expanded during 2014 at a moderate and uneven
pace. Legacies from the global financial crisis continue to weigh on
growth, while new challenges have emerged, including geopolitical conflicts
such as in Ukraine and the Ebola epidemic. Unemployment figures remain
historically high in some regions, but appear to have stopped rising.
While global inflation remains subdued, the spectrum ranges from
deflation risks in the euro area to high inflation in some developing

countries. Foreign direct investment inflows have remained the most

stable and relevant source of financing for developing countries
whereas portfolio capital flows are highly sensitive to changes in risk
appetite. Trade growth is expected to pick up moderately with the
volume of world imports of goods and services projected to grow by
4.7 per cent in 2015. In 2015, fiscal tightening in most developed
economies will continue, although the pace of tightening is expected to
slow. The strong US dollar is expected to remain the dominant trend
on foreign exchange markets. While some economic indicators are
positive and moving in the right direction which points to the
potential for a gradual return to consistent economic growth, said
Pingfan Hong, Director of the Development and Policy Analysis Division for
the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, many risks and
uncertainties could dash efforts to get the global economy on track and
moving forward. The US economy is expected to improve in 20152016, with GDP projected to expand by 2.8 and 3.1 per cent,
respectively. Only a slight improvement in growth is expected in Western
Europe. The region is held back by the travails of the euro area, where the
level of GDP has yet to regain its pre-recession peak. A projected slowdown
in Japan is mainly attributed to the drop of private consumption due to a
higher consumption tax. Growth rates in developing countries and
economies in transition diverged more during 2014, as a sharp deceleration
occurred in many large emerging economies, particularly in Latin America
and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In contrast, East Asia,
including China, experienced only a mild slowdown, while India led South
Asia to a moderate uptick. Among the developing countries, Africas
overall growth momentum will continue, with GDP growth expected
to accelerate to 4.6 per cent in 2015 and 4.9 per cent in 2016. East
Asia will remain the fastest-growing region, and is projected to see
stable growth of 6.1 per cent in 2015 and 6.0 per cent in 2016.
Economic growth in South Asia is set to gradually pick up, while
economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean is projected to
moderately improve. In the CIS, prospects are weak with near-zero growth
expected in the Russian Federation. More detailed regional forecasts from
WESP will be released in January 2015.

The economy is high now Consumer spending, and lowest

unemployment rate in 15 years
Associated Press, an American multinational nonprofit news
agency, 6/25 (Associated Press, 6-25-2015, "U.S. Consumer Spending
Surges, Brightening Economic Outlook," New York Times,

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/business/economy/us-consumerspending-surges-brightening-economic-outlook.html?_r=0 //NK)
Consumer spending in the United States surged in May
with the biggest monthly increase in nearly six years a sign of
stronger economic growth ahead. The Commerce Department said on Thursday that
consumer spending rose 0.9 percent last month, up from a revised
0.1 percent increase in April. May spending registered the biggest gain since August 2009, an
indication that the positive impacts from the solid pace of hiring and
cheaper gasoline are starting to ripple through the economy. We are
WASHINGTON

finally seeing signs of consumers beginning to spend the gasoline savings they have been sitting on since the start

Personal income
also increased a healthy 0.5 percent. The savings rate for after-tax
income fell slightly to 5.1 percent from 5.4 percent. Until recently,
lower gas prices and an improved job market were not enough to
unlock greater consumer spending. Instead, Americans ramped up
their savings. This helped put their personal finances on a more
sustainable path, but it limited the ability of the overall economy,
which relies mostly on consumer activity, to grow at a faster pace
and potentially bolster their incomes. The consumer spending report confirms signs
elsewhere that people are loosening the grip on their wallets. Also Thursday, the Labor
Department said that the number of people seeking unemployment
aid rose slightly last week, but remained at a historically low level that signals
an improving job market. Applications rose 3,000 last week to a
seasonally adjusted 271,000, not far from the 15-year low reached
in April of 262,000. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, declined to 273,750.
Applications are a proxy for layoffs, so the low levels suggest that
businesses are confident enough in the economy to hold onto their
workers. The data also show that employers refrained from layoffs even as the economy contracted in the
of this year, said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics.

first three months of the year, a sign they saw the slowdown as temporary. Nearly 2.25 million people received
benefits, up 22,000 from the previous week. Still, the total number of beneficiaries has fallen 13 percent in the last
year.

Only about a quarter of the unemployed receive unemployment

aid. Some have exhausted all the aid available, which is capped at 26 weeks in most states. Others, like college
graduates looking for work, do not qualify for benefits.

The US isnt falling to recession any time soon GPD growth,

rising tech, and demographic shift
Sweet, member of the U.S. macroeconomics team, 6/25 (Ryan
Sweet, 6-25-2015, "Why the U.S. Economy Won't Fall Into Recession Anytime
Soon," TheStreet, http://www.thestreet.com/story/13198752/1/why-the-useconomy-wont-fall-into-recession-anytime-soon.html //NK)

The U.S. expansion is entering its seventh year but is

aging well and has plenty of room to run. Still, there have been plenty of ups and
NEW YORK (TheStreet) --

downs, and the economy's poor performance early this year rekindled concerns that the expansion was in serious
jeopardy. Based on the economic data, we believe the expansion is midcycle. This is typically the longest phase of
the business cycle before moving into the late-cycle phase, characteristic of an overheated economy poised to slip
into recession. Read More: U.S. Economic Expansion Is Not in Jeopardy There are important questions. Is this
expansion getting old, and will it age similarly to prior ones? Long in the Tooth? While we're probably closer to the

it's important to remember that

expansions are getting longer. Expansions have lengthened because
of structural changes, including reduced macroeconomic volatility
from improved policy, better management of inventories the rise of
the more stable service economy and technological change. The current
next recession than to the beginning of the recovery,

expansion is 72 months old, but age is in the eye of the beholder. The three expansions prior to the Great Recession
lasted an average of 95 months. This is noticeably longer than the 58-month average for all expansions since 1945.
The average duration of an expansion between 1860 and 1945 was 26 months. While this expansion is already

Expansions normally
end when the economy overheats. For example, the past few
expansions have ended a few years after the economy reached full
employment, leading to an acceleration in wages and inflation and
tighter monetary policy. We don't expect the economy to reach full
employment until this time next year, implying the next recession
wouldn't be until sometime in 2019. Historical patterns are simply guideposts and should
longer than the average since World War II, expansions don't die of old age.

be interpreted carefully, particularly given that this expansion has been anything but normal. Focusing on when the
expansion will end can cause some to overlook how the economy changes as the expansion matures. Learning From

Historically, real
GDP growth has moderated as the expansion matures. This is unsurprising
History The unusual nature of this expansion suggests that it could age differently.

because as the expansion ages, the economy begins to run into capacity constraints and monetary and fiscal policy
transitions from being accommodative to restrictive. Because timing is important, we broke each post-World War II
expansion into thirds to gauge how parts of the economy have historically performed as each expansion matured. A
universal definition of economic expansion is lacking, but for this exercise, recovery and expansion are used

How parts of the economy age is unsurprising. For

example, capital spending contributes less to growth as the
expansion phase of the business cycle matures. In post-World War II
expansions, equipment investment's average contribution to real
GDP growth is largest in the first third of the expansion, receding as
the cost of investment increases and returns diminish. Consumer
spending's average contribution to GDP growth is also largest in the
first third of an expansion. The release of pent-up demand is a big
factor, as it provides a significant boost to consumption, particularly
for durable goods early in the expansion. Also, low interest rates
contribute to the rebound in durable consumption. Similar factors
explain why residential investment's biggest contribution to growth
comes early in the expansion, then fades quickly. There are other identifiable
interchangeably.

patterns. On average, corporate profit growth is noticeably stronger in the first third of an expansion than in the
second and third. Productivity demonstrates a similar pattern. On the other hand, wages and population growth are
stronger in the final third of an expansion. This all suggests that the best times for the current expansion have
passed. But history doesn't always repeat itself. Read More: Deep Dive Into U.S. Personal Income Why This Time Is

Historical averages are not explanations, and this expansion

will likely age differently. Also, it's tricky to compare the economy's
Different

performance during past expansions because demographic

characteristics differ. Still, not only does this expansion not show
signs of significant wear and tear, but the unusual nature of the
recession and early expansion will cause its later stages to buck
historical trends. Therefore, while the expansion could be entering
its final leg, this could be its best yet. Real GDP growth has
accelerated this expansion, bucking the historical norm. There are a
couple of explanations. First, the economy was emerging from a
financial crisis rather than a garden-variety recession. The financial
crisis cast a longer shadow over the economy, making it take longer
to find a rhythm. Further, the initial stage of the expansion was slow
as households and businesses needed to continue to deleverage. Also,
fiscal policy turned restrictive very quickly. Not since the military drawdown after World War II had the economy
faced as much fiscal drag as it did during this recovery. The availability of credit is another issue, particularly for
households. Usually this recovers quickly early in an expansion, but that didn't occur this time. Though the duration
of this expansion has been long, there is still a sizable output gap. Therefore, the economy won't run out of spare
capacity soon, and this will keep inflationary pressures at bay. Hence, the Federal Reserve plans to tighten
monetary policy gradually. Even as the Fed begins to normalize interest rates, monetary policy will remain
extremely accommodative. Also, the Fed's balance sheet will remain enormous, keeping long-term rates lower than
they otherwise should be -- a form of stimulus that didn't occur during the tail end of the past few expansions. Read
More: Deep Dive Into U.S. GDP Rising interest rates will provide an ironic boost to housing. In contrast to past
recoveries, housing has contributed little to growth this expansion. Higher interest rates could create an urgency for
potential homebuyers to enter the market. Mortgage rates have moved higher at times during the expansion with
mixed implications for sales. However, as the Fed tightens it should alter expectations about the future path of
mortgage rates. We are not building enough homes either. Based on population growth and attrition, housing starts
should be near 1.8 million units per year over the next couple of years. Therefore, a large portion of the housing
recovery is still to come. Wage Gains Boost Spending Wage growth has been mediocre for most of this expansion
but is poised to accelerate as in past expansions. Because the relationship between wage growth and consumer
spending is stronger this cycle than most, larger wage gains will provide a boost to spending. That means spending
could add more to growth in the final leg of this expansion than it did earlier this cycle, or at similar junctures of
past expansions. There will be possible exceptions. Capital spending has followed a pattern similar to past
expansions. One reason is that pent-up demand may have been worked off over the past few years. Businesses
may also not need to invest as much in equipment because the economy's potential has declined. Businesses are
already spending more on equipment per worker than at any time in history. With the supply of labor not increasing

The demographic
composition of the U.S. will set the later portion of this expansion
apart from others. The share of those 65 and older is expected to
continue to climb because of the aging of the baby boomer
generation and increasing life expectancy. Over the next couple of
years this will weigh on consumer spending and the labor force
participation rate and potentially shorten the expansion by causing
the economy to achieve full employment faster. The potential offset
to this is the pent-up demand to form households. The prime
working-age group has started to expand again. Growth in the
prime working-age group will accelerate and be fairly strong just as
the economy enters the next recession. Read More: U.S. Economic Expansion Is Not in
as quickly, there may be less need to invest in equipment. Demographic Issues

Jeopardy

UQ Econ NO Collapse Coming

US economy stable- no contraction in the first quarter
Mitchell, Economy Reporter, 15 (Josh, June 11th, Wall Street Journal,
Reports of the U.S. Economys Contraction Have Been Greatly
Exaggerated, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/11/reports-of-the-u-seconomys-contraction-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/, 06/29/15, MM)
The U.S. economy contracted 0.7% in the first quarter. Or did it? The Commerce Department reported last month
that the gross domestic product fell at a seasonally adjusted 0.7% annual rate from January through March. Now,

reports in recent
days show consumers spent more during the winterat retailers
and on health carethan previously thought. Because consumer
spending is such a big part of the U.S. economyrepresenting more
than two-thirds of outputmany private-sector economists are
revising their own estimates of first-quarter GDP. Forecasting firm
Macroeconomic Advisers now thinks the economy didnt contract at
all, and instead registered a flat 0.0% growth reading for the
quarter. Others such as JP Morgan Chase still think GDP fell, but at a milder 0.2% rate. The Commerce
the agency might have to essentially say, Nevermind. Thats largely because

Departments Bureau of Economic Analysis will give its own update on first-quarter GDP on June 24. As it does for
all economic reports, the government releases early estimates of measures like GDP, retail sales and employment
that are based on incomplete data. Once fresher data comes in, the government puts out revised figures. In the
case of GDP, the government releases an initial estimate, and then two revisions, for each quarter in the immediate
months after it ends. (It then revises them further the following year.) The initial reading of first-quarter GDP,
released in late April, showed 0.2% growth. The second reading, released last month, showed a 0.7% contraction
that was based largely on new data showing a surging trade deficit at the end of the quarter. So why is the first

A Commerce report Wednesday

showed stronger-than-expected revenues at doctors offices. And an
agency report Thursday showed that, in addition to a jump in retail
sales in May, spending was stronger in prior months, including
March, than previously thought. To be sure, even with the revisions,
the first quarter was a forgettable one, if not an outright nightmare,
for the economy. If it stands, the contraction is the third time since the recession ended in mid-2009 that
quarter now looking a little less horrible? Two main reasons.

GDP turned negative during a quarter. Even a reading of flat or meager growth would suggest a big slowdown in the

A second-quarter rebound already appears to have occurred,

with many private economists predicting growth of 2% to 3%,
annualized, in the April-through-June period. But smoothing the ups and downs, the
winter.

big picture remains little changed, with the economy still appearing overall to be growing at a sluggish 2% pace.

Economy wont collapse soon-not likely until 2019

Sweet, Member of US Macroeconomics Team, 15 (Ryan, June 25th,
The Street, Why the U.S. Economy Won't Fall Into Recession Anytime Soon,
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13198752/1/why-the-us-economy-wont-fallinto-recession-anytime-soon.html, 06/29/15, MM)
The current expansion is 72 months old, but age is in the eye of the beholder. The three expansions prior to the
Great Recession lasted an average of 95 months. This is noticeably longer than the 58-month average for all
expansions since 1945. The average duration of an expansion between 1860 and 1945 was 26 months .

While

this expansion is already longer than the average since World War
II, expansions don't die of old age. Expansions normally end when
the economy overheats. For example, the past few expansions have ended a few years after the
economy reached full employment, leading to an acceleration in wages and inflation and tighter monetary policy.

We don't expect the economy to reach full employment until this

time next year, implying the next recession wouldn't be until
sometime in 2019. Historical patterns are simply guideposts and
should be interpreted carefully, particularly given that this
expansion has been anything but normal. Focusing on when the
expansion will end can cause some to overlook how the economy
changes as the expansion matures. Learning From History The
unusual nature of this expansion suggests that it could age
differently. Historically, real GDP growth has moderated as the
expansion matures. This is unsurprising because as the expansion ages, the economy begins to run
into capacity constraints and monetary and fiscal policy transitions from being accommodative to restrictive.
Because timing is important, we broke each post-World War II expansion into thirds to gauge how parts of the
economy have historically performed as each expansion matured. A universal definition of economic expansion is
lacking, but for this exercise, recovery and expansion are used interchangeably. How parts of the economy age is
unsurprising. For example, capital spending contributes less to growth as the expansion phase of the business cycle
matures. In post-World War II expansions, equipment investment's average contribution to real GDP growth is
largest in the first third of the expansion, receding as the cost of investment increases and returns diminish.
Consumer spending's average contribution to GDP growth is also largest in the first third of an expansion. The
release of pent-up demand is a big factor, as it provides a significant boost to consumption, particularly for durable
goods early in the expansion. Also, low interest rates contribute to the rebound in durable consumption. Similar
factors explain why residential investment's biggest contribution to growth comes early in the expansion, then
fades quickly. There are other identifiable patterns. On average, corporate profit growth is noticeably stronger in
the first third of an expansion than in the second and third. Productivity demonstrates a similar pattern. On the
other hand, wages and population growth are stronger in the final third of an expansion. This all suggests that the
best times for the current expansion have passed. But history doesn't always repeat itself. Read More: Deep Dive
Into U.S. Personal Income Why This Time Is Different Historical averages are not explanations, and this expansion
will likely age differently. Also, it's tricky to compare the economy's performance during past expansions because
demographic characteristics differ. Still, not only does this expansion not show signs of significant wear and tear,
but the unusual nature of the recession and early expansion will cause its later stages to buck historical trends.
Therefore, while the expansion could be entering its final leg, this could be its best yet. Real GDP growth has
accelerated this expansion, bucking the historical norm. There are a couple of explanations. First, the economy was
emerging from a financial crisis rather than a garden-variety recession. The financial crisis cast a longer shadow
over the economy, making it take longer to find a rhythm. Further, the initial stage of the expansion was slow as

Also, fiscal policy turned

restrictive very quickly. Not since the military drawdown after World
War II had the economy faced as much fiscal drag as it did during
this recovery. The availability of credit is another issue, particularly
for households. Usually this recovers quickly early in an expansion,
but that didn't occur this time. Though the duration of this
expansion has been long, there is still a sizable output gap.
Therefore, the economy won't run out of spare capacity soon, and
this will keep inflationary pressures at bay. Hence, the Federal
Reserve plans to tighten monetary policy gradually. Even as the Fed
begins to normalize interest rates, monetary policy will remain
extremely accommodative. Also, the Fed's balance sheet will remain
enormous, keeping long-term rates lower than they otherwise
should be -- a form of stimulus that didn't occur during the tail end
households and businesses needed to continue to deleverage.

of the past few expansions. Read More: Deep Dive Into U.S. GDP Rising interest rates will provide
an ironic boost to housing. In contrast to past recoveries, housing has contributed little to growth this expansion.
Higher interest rates could create an urgency for potential homebuyers to enter the market. Mortgage rates have
moved higher at times during the expansion with mixed implications for sales. However, as the Fed tightens it

rates. We are not building

enough homes either. Based on population growth and attrition,
housing starts should be near 1.8 million units per year over the
next couple of years. Therefore, a large portion of the housing
recovery is still to come. Wage Gains Boost Spending Wage growth has been mediocre for most of
this expansion but is poised to accelerate as in past expansions. Because the relationship
between wage growth and consumer spending is stronger this cycle
than most, larger wage gains will provide a boost to spending. That
means spending could add more to growth in the final leg of this
expansion than it did earlier this cycle, or at similar junctures of
past expansions. There will be possible exceptions. Capital spending has followed a pattern similar to
should alter expectations about the future path of mortgage

past expansions. One reason is that pent-up demand may have been worked off over the past few years.
Businesses may also not need to invest as much in equipment because the economy's potential has declined.
Businesses are already spending more on equipment per worker than at any time in history. With the supply of labor
not increasing as quickly, there may be less need to invest in equipment.

American Economy High Now- high income per capita and

economic measures
Young, Global Financial Market Specialist, 15 (Patrick, January 7th,
RT, Is the US economy Overstreched, http://rt.com/op-edge/219911-useconomy-overstretched-recession, 06/29/15, MM)
America has a wonderful appreciation that while capitalism delivers for its advocates (better living standards,
higher wages and of course, economic growth) there are inevitable (cyclical) downswings. This attitude diverges
from the prevailing European mentality where sad socialist recidivism has taken greater hold. European
governments retain a misguided belief that they can defy economic gravity. Some even proffer delusions of
breaking the economic cycle entirely (e.g. Britains fiscal failure Gordon Brown). Meanwhile egg runs down the faces
of the EU when recalling their ridiculous protestations that Anglo-Saxon capitalism was broken just as Europe
plunged headlong into their lost decade of growth. Despite the leftward lunge of the largely unproductive President

the American economy remains

propelled by entrepreneurial individuals realizing the dream of selfimprovement through diligent risk-taking. That sunny Reaganite
optimism serves the nation well. China may be coming up on the
rails as the single largest economy but US income per capita
remains unprecedented. True, there has been some economic folly in the US, QE aforethought,
Obama (golf and basketball aside), at its core,

alongside inadequate resolution of the banking mess: zero justice amid a bit of point-scoring against those with the

Nevertheless, with a core robust free

market system, America has blossomed once more. Meanwhile
Europe wallows in a festering pit of despair, strangled by
meddlesome red tape. Thus Americans do what they have always
done best less impeded by government, they flourish when given
space to grow. Sadly, that maxim is largely unknown in other, poorer continents. Separate to this
temerity to criticize the basketballer-in-chief.

economic dialogue, some correspondents may reflect that the US government has perhaps overcompensated for its
laissez faire economics with a rather trenchant enthusiasm for intervention in other nations foreign affairs.
Nevertheless, calculating the bread and circuses indicator of human life ,

the American economy

remains in the long-term a wondrous economic marvel to behold

presuming that is, the ongoing craziness of Obama economics are not reflected in a president to the left of logical
reason, like Hillary Clinton, for instance. Those preaching a mantra that America risks splitting at the seams ignore
the core economic cohesion yes there are social issues, but compared to the mass beggaring of Euro-youth? I
think not.

Surveillance doesnt hurt companies

NSA surveillance had little effect on tech companies foreign
markets- huge growth internationally
Insider Surveillance, News information of US government
surveillance, 14 (September 24th, De-Bunking the Myth of U.S. Tech Sales
Lost Due to NSA, https://insidersurveillance.com/de-bunking-myth-of-u-stech-sales-lost-due-nsa/, 06/28/15, MM)
Flashback to October 2013. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Customers worldwide are furious about NSA
spying. That means imminent doom for the U.S. tech industry. Offshore sales will plummet as buyers drop U.S. tech
products/services and buy local instead. The end is nigh! News flash for Chicken Little: The skys still up there.

Its

shining bright over a U.S. tech market that in the past year has
experienced almost unprecedented growth largely thanks to
foreign sales. As to impending Armageddon for the tech sector, to
date no one has positively identified a single nickel of tech industry
revenue or profit lost due to foreign customers purported anger
over the NSA. On the contrary, the U.S. technology and aligned sectors in defense have enjoyed a banner
yet. A few points to consider: U.S. tech stocks are near an all-time high. The
Morgan Stanley High-Technology Index 35, which includes Amazon,
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Netflix among the most vociferous
Internet and cloud companies blaming NSA for lost profits today
stands 23.4% higher than its 52-week low one year ago when antisurveillance furor reached its peak. In recent weeks the index has stood as high as 25%
above the October 2013 low point. Not too shabby for a sector supposedly on the ropes. Foreign sales lead the
march to U.S. tech profits. According to an AP story posted after 2Q2014 earnings: Technology

trendsetters Apple Inc., Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Netflix Inc.
all mined foreign countries to produce earnings or revenue that
exceeded analysts projections in their latest quarters. In the
second quarter, Google generated 58% of its revenue outside the
U.S. Facebook continued to draw 55% of revenue from overseas.
Netflix added 1.1 million new foreign subscribers double the number won in the
U.S. and Canada during the second quarter. Apple reported soaring sales of its iPhone
in China, Russia, India and Brazil, offsetting tepid growth in the U.S.
Net net, the industrys biggest gains came in the very markets that tech leaders last year cited as being at risk.

U.S. defense contractors fare best offshore. Faced with dwindling

U.S. Defense Department purchases the U.S. hasnt purchase a
single new F-16 in the last 10 years defense suppliers decision to
pursue foreign buyers has fueled a bonanza. Sales to Israel, Oman
and Iraq keep Lockheed Martins plant humming in F-16 production.
Over at Sikorsky Aircraft, makers of the Black Hawk helicopter, the
company late last year reported a 30-year contract with Taiwan
valued at over US$1.0 billion. International sales at Boeings
defense division comprise 24% of the companys $US33 billion in

defense sales.

To be sure, the defense market is a tough one. However, when U.S.sales are lost its not
because a foreign buyer was angry over NSA and decided to buy weapons systems in-country. More often the
answer is far simpler: competition from a major non-U.S. player. Example: Turkeys decision to dis Raytheons bid
for a long range air defense system was a simple dollars and cents matter: China, not exactly a bastion of human
rights, won the contract. Russian and European companies were also among the losers. No one uttered a peep
peep about the NSA. Defense executives dont sit around fretting about foreign sales supposedly lost due to U.S.
spying. Their real worry is China, an increasingly aggressive player in the defense systems market.

AT: Open Tech Institute Report

Open Technology Institute report doesnt consider a complete
picture of economic growth- biased and limited information
Insider Surveillance, News information of US government
surveillance, 14 (September 24th, De-Bunking the Myth of U.S. Tech Sales
Lost Due to NSA, https://insidersurveillance.com/de-bunking-myth-of-u-stech-sales-lost-due-nsa/, 06/28/15, MM)
The OTI paper cites the example of Dropbox, Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and Microsoft Azure suffering severe losses in foreign cloud
sales to Switzerlands Artmotion due to foreign anger over the
NSA. The source: An article published in The International Business
Times, Companies Turn to Switzerland for Cloud Storage, on July 4, 2013 three weeks after the first NSA
revelations by Edward Snowden. Describing Artmotion as Switzerlands biggest offshore hosting company, the

Aspects
of the original article and the policy paper show how easily
speculation is presented as fact by sloppy authors eager to make a
point without bothering to check their facts: Nowhere in the
International Business Times story is any evidence produced
showing AWS, Dropbox or Azure losing business. Nor is any concrete number on
article quotes the companys CEO Mateo Meier claiming a 45% jump in revenue during that period.

losses presented. The closest the reporter can come is to aver: However now services like Dropbox, AWS and Azure
are seen as potentially insecure. . .. Seen by whom? The IBT doesnt say. The OTI policy paper cites the IBT article
as the source for an assertion that companies like Dropbox and Amazon were beginning to lose business to
overseas business. Remember: the IBT didnt cite any losses by these companies it merely said they were
seen [by unnamed sources] as potentially insecure. Its anybodys guess whether Artmotion is Switzerlands
biggest (or smallest) offshore hosting company. Artmotion is a privately held company. It does not provide any
public data on finances, numbers of employees or clients, or any other information that could be used to determine

A 45% revenue gain in three weeks would defy the odds

for a large enterprise, so to borrow the practice of speculating
from our subject it is most likely that Artmotion is a smaller
entrepreneurial venture led by a CEO who had the savvy to
capitalize on the NSA scandal. Large enterprise customers, who took years to trust the idea of
the companys size.

handing over their data to third party cloud providers, are notoriously slow to embrace change. The likelihood of
FTSE1000 companies shifting cloud service providers in three weeks! is preposterous. Even Mom and Pop
cloud customers would scarcely be apt to change their minds and shift all their cloud-stored data that quickly. Even
assuming that the overnight 45% revenue boost claim is true, where is the proof tying this cash surge to non-U.S.
customers defecting from Amazon, Dropbox or Google to Artmotion? Answer: There is no proof. Its pure hearsay. If
were picking on Artmotion overmuch, its for good cause. This case study is the most substantial proof in the
entire OTI paper. From there it degenerates into even more dubious assessments by analysts and industry think
tanks. Of these, one of the better studies is by the International Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF),
generally hailed as a non-partisan group. Published in August 2013, the report honestly states that at that early
date, the data are still thin clearly this is a developing story and perceptions will likely evolve. But even ITIF
resorts to maybes versus facts. Example: a projection that U.S. cloud computing companies might lose US $21.5
billion by 2016, presuming that 10% of foreign customers flee, or up to US$ 35 billion assuming a 20% attrition rate.
The basis for these assumptions: a survey by yet another think tank, The Cloud Security Alliance, which found 10%
of non-U.S. respondents saying they had cancelled a project with a U.S. cloud communications provider. And so it

The authors leap from speculation to fact, or quote

studies based on assumptions by one group that hinge on
conclusions of yet another organization. All sources tend to be very
goes with the OTI study.

early days, when emotions on the NSA ran high. If the current
numbers exist bearing out the case for NSA spying damaging U.S.
tech companies foreign sales, then why doesnt OTI quote them?
Instead, the farther one progresses into the OTI policy paper, the more infatuated its authors become with wildly
exaggerated projections of tech industry losses. Within a few paragraphs of ITIFs claims of cloud losses reaching
$US 35 billion, we find a truly astounding quote from Forrester Research. Not to be outdone by a mere think tank,
the famous industry analyst group forecasts U.S. cloud company losses of $US 180 billion by 2016. Thats a good
trick for an industry whose total growth was projected to reach just $US 210 billion also by the year 2016 and
also by Forrester, just a few months earlier. Great Oogly Moogly its Google! Again, one must ask: How could an
ostensibly reputable organization such as the Open Technology Institute churn out such rubbish and what was
the motive? One neednt look too far for the answer .

OTI is funded by the New America

Foundation, which is chaired by Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of
Google and one of the principal critics of the NSA.

AT: Cloud Computing

No impact on US cloud computing industry- domestic and
foreign revenues havent fallen
Menn, Technology Reporter and Author, 13 (Joseph, September 15th,
Business Insider, How The NSA Revelations May Actually Be Helping The US
Tech Industry, http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-nsa-revelations-mayactually-be-help-the-us-tech-industry-2013-9, 06/28/15, MM)
Edward Snowden's unprecedented exposure of U.S. technology
companies' close collaboration with national intelligence agencies,
widely expected to damage the industry's financial performance
abroad, may actually end up helping. Despite emphatic predictions
of waning business prospects, some of the big Internet companies
that the former National Security Agency contractor showed to be
closely involved in gathering data on people overseas - such as
Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. - say privately that they have felt
little if any impact on their businesses. Insiders at companies that
offer remote computing services known as cloud computing,
including Amazon and Microsoft Corp, also say they are seeing no
fallout. Meanwhile, smaller U.S. companies offering encryption and
related security services are seeing a jump in business overseas,
along with an uptick in sales domestically as individuals and
companies work harder to protect secrets. "Our value proposition had been that it's a
wild world out there, while doing business internationally you need to protect yourself," said Jon Callas, co-founder
of phone and text encryption provider Silent Circle, where revenue quadrupled from May to June on a small base.
"Now the message people are getting from the newspapers every day is that it's a wild world even domestically."
PROPHESIES OF DOOM Shortly after Snowden's leaked documents detailed collaboration giving the NSA access to
the accounts of tens of thousands of net companies' users, the big Internet companies and their allies issued dire
warnings, predicting that American businesses would lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue abroad as distrustful
customers seek out local alternatives. In a federal court filing last week, Google said that still-unfolding news
coverage was causing "substantial harm to Google's reputation and business". The company said that could be

Likewise, last
month, six technology trade groups wrote to the White House to
urge reforms in the spy programs, citing what it called a "study"
predicting a $35 billion cumulative shortfall by 2016 in the vital
economic sector. That number, it turns out, was extrapolated from a
security trade group's survey of 207 non-U.S. members - and the
group, the Cloud Security Alliance, had explicitly cautioned that its
members weren't representative of the entire industry. "I know you
want sectors and numbers, but I don't have it," said Ed Black,
president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association,
one of the trade groups behind the letter. "Anybody who tells you
they do is making it up." The trade groups aren't the only ones issuing dismal, and headlinemitigated if it were allowed to comment with precision about its intelligence dealings.

grabbing, forecasts. Forrester Research analyst James Staten wrote of the $35 billion figure: "We think this estimate
is too low and could be as high as $180 billion, or a 25 percent hit to overall IT service provider revenues." Staten's
comments generated dozens of media stories, some of which neglected to mention that Staten said the worst

would come to pass only if businesses decided that spying was a bigger issue than the savings they gained from a
shift to cloud computing. In an interview with Reuters, Staten said he didn't believe that would be the case. "I don't
think there's going to be a significant pullback," he said, though the rate of growth could slow for a couple of years.

Google employees told Reuters that the company has seen

no significant impact on its business, and a person briefed on
Microsoft's business in Europe likewise said that company has had
no issues. At Amazon, which was not named in Snowden's
documents but is seen as a likely victim because it is a top provider
of cloud computing services, a spokeswoman said global demand
"has never been greater."
LITTLE IMPACT

Alt Causes to Tech

NSA surveillance not hampering tech sector- alt causes
Foley, Director of Strategic Communications for Oracle, 14 (John,
April 3rd, Forbes, 10 Tech Trends That Will Transform Your Industry,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2014/04/03/10-tech-trends-that-willtransform-your-industry/, 06/29/15, MM)
bad news for companies that are struggling to improve their
customer engagementits only going to get more difficult. Social-savvy,
I have

smartphone-carrying consumers will switch allegiances faster than you can say customer relationship

Customers are going to get harder to deal with, not easier

less loyal, more picky, says Oracle ORCL -1.39% President Mark Hurd. Hurd was speaking at
management.

Oracle Industry Connect in Boston, where more than 1,500 business and technology executives from the
communications, financial services, health sciences, retail, and utilities industries, and those from project-intensive
industries such as construction and manufacturing, came together to delve deeply into whats happening in their
sectors. They also shared ideas and best practices where theres common ground. People want to learn, borrow,
and understand what other industries are doing to solve similar problems, said Bob Weiler, Executive Vice
President of Oracles Global Business Units. The customer experience is one such areaa challenge, opportunity,

The
customer is in the drivers seat. We need to get in front of what her
needs are, said Karen Katz, CEO and President of Neiman Marcus
Group , during the Oracle Industry Connect keynote for retailers.
Companies can best manage such challenges with industry-specific
capabilities that are designed for the business theyre in, Hurd said. Neiman
business goal, and IT undertaking all rolled into one here-and-now, make-or-break imperative.

Marcus, for example, is deploying Oracle Retail solutions to create a more seamless omni-channel experience
across its stores, call centers, and website, and to help with demand forecasting and other retail operations. What
more can companies do to regain their footing in this fast-changing environment where customers already have the
upper hand and are about to wield even more clout and influence? Here are 10 trends that jumped out during the
keynotes and sessions I attended at Oracle Industry Connect. Companies that recognize and respond to these
trends will be in a better position to attract, engage, and retain their most influentialand most finicky!
customers. Customers want to co-create their experience with your company. As businesses pursue customer
experience, or CX, strategies, they must remember that social-savvy customers, who are more empowered than
ever, expect to have a say in the ongoing relationship they have with the company. Mike Webster, Senior Vice
President and General Manager of Oracles Retail Global Business Unit, shared the results of a survey, titled The
New Retail Democracy, which shows that 73 percent of respondents favor the idea of individual retail.

Consumers are outpacing businesses in tech innovation. Consumers and businesses

each spend about $1 trillion annually in technology, yet most of
those consumer dollars go toward new capabilities, whereas only 18
percent of business IT spending does. Thus, businesses have fallen
behind on the new technologies curve. Companies must find ways to
modernize by shifting more of their tech spending from maintaining
old systems to investing in new capabilities. Hurd points out that Oracle invests in
Consumers want to participate in decisions that affect them, said Webster.

industry-specific research and development, so companies can capitalize on that work without having to do the
heavy lifting themselves. Innovation has become a distributed dynamic. R&D, which used to happen behind closed
doors, is becoming a more open, iterative process. Because businesses are already behind the tech innovation
curve (see trend #2 above), they must find ways to tap into the innovation happening all around them. Were
moving to distributed innovation processes, said Professor James Cash of Harvard Business School. The
innovation going on in the rest of the world can probably overwhelm what companies can do internally. (For an
example of how one company is using external innovation to create new customer-facing services, see BTs New
Playing Field Combines Broadband, Innovation, and Global Sports.) Big data remains a huge opportunity.

Businesses recognize the potential of big data, but few have the pieces in place to convert that potential into a
business advantage. Sonny Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Oracles Financial Services Global
Business Unit, said 63 percent of respondents to an Oracle survey gave their organizations a grade of C or lower
in preparedness for the data deluge. Here too, industry-specific solutions can help. Check out my blog post on the
trend among with a data model, middleware, and analytics suited to their needs. Companies are moving beyond
old-style business and IT alignment. There was a time when CEOs could take comfort in knowing that their business

Tech leaders must go a step

further and play an active role in corporate strategy setting and
competitive analysis. You must be participating in the strategyformulation process, said Professor Cash in a keynote
presentation. Consumers expect immediate availability of products
and services. Its not enough to attract customers with low prices
and wow them with great serviceyou better have what theyre
looking for. Oracles The New Retail Democracy survey reveals that
consumers put a premium on product availability. In fact, 58 percent
say availability is more important that price, and 92 percent will not
wait for products to come into stock. Retailers must excel at realtime inventory management and be able to share that information
with customers.
and IT strategies were closely aligned, but those days are over.

Curtailing NSA surveillance to improve economy fails- oil is an

alt cause to a collapse
Kennedy, Writer for Oil Price, 15 (Charles, May 15th, USA Today, Oil
prices hit struggling oil companies,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/05/25/oilprice-dotcomoil-companies-struggling/27749299/, 06/29/15, MM)
Low oil prices have provided a windfall to consumers around the
world. In the United States, the second largest importer of crude
(which was recently overtaken by China), millions of motorists have
seen their gas bills plummet over the past year. The collapse in oil prices since
June of last year could result in "one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history," as the Washington Post 's Steve
Mufson put it in a December 2014 article. Oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia would see their
stratospheric export revenues vanish -- and oil-consuming nations would cash in. U.S. consumers may wind up with
an extra $700 in 2015 due to low gasoline prices. MORE: Oil markets have little to fear from Iran for now The head
of the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in January said that low oil prices provided a "tremendous

The U.S.
economy expanded at a meager rate of just 0.2 percent in the first
three months of 2015, and that figure could be revised lower,
according to the Wall Street Journal. The poor performance can be
attributed, at least in part, to low oil prices. MORE: A potentially massive win for
fracking in Texas That is because the U.S. is not just a major oil importer,
but also a massive oil producer. The fall in oil prices has inflicted
widespread damage on oil-producing states like Texas, Alaska,
North Dakota, and Louisiana. If not for severe cutbacks in capital
investment on behalf of American oil companies and other related
sectors, U.S. GDP would have been 0.75 percentage points higher.
positive impact" on the American economy. But fresh economic data is confounding that projection.

The billions of dollars in slashed investment ripples through all sorts

of industrial activity from manufacturing and heavy equipment, to
financial services, commercial real estate and even housing.

Tech Bad
Tech innovation is bad
David Rotman 6/12/13 (MIT technology review board. As the editor of MIT Technology
Review, I spend much of my time thinking about the types of stories and journalism that will
be most valuable to our readers. What do curious, well-informed readers need to know about
emerging technologies? As a writer, I am particularly interested these days in the
intersection of chemistry, materials science, energy, manufacturing, and economics.)
Given his calm and reasoned academic demeanor, it is easy to miss just how provocative Erik Brynjolfssons
contention really is. Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and

impressive advances in
computer technologyfrom improved industrial robotics to
automated translation servicesare largely behind the sluggish
employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous
for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many
types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly
adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in
professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.
That robots, automation, and software can replace people might
seem obvious to anyone whos worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But
Brynjolfsson and McAfees claim is more troubling and controversial. They
believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs
faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of
median income and the growth of inequality in the United States.
And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other
technologically advanced countries. Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence,
coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that

according to Brynjolfsson, is a chart that only an economist could love. In economics, productivitythe amount of
economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of laboris a crucial indicator of growth and
wealth creation. It is a measure of progress. On the chart Brynjolfsson likes to show, separate lines represent
productivity and total employment in the United States. For years after World War II, the two lines closely tracked
each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern is clear: as businesses
generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic
activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverge; productivity continues to rise
robustly, but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing
economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call it the great decoupling.
And Brynjolfsson says he is confident that technology is behind both the healthy growth in productivity and the

it threatens the faith that many

economists place in technological progress. Brynjolfsson and McAfee still believe that
technology boosts productivity and makes societies wealthier, but they think that it can also have
a dark side: technological progress is eliminating the need for many
types of jobs and leaving the typical worker worse off than before. weak growth in jobs. Its a startling assertion because

Brynjolfsson can point to a second chart indicating that median income is failing to rise even as the gross domestic

Productivity is at record levels,

innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have
a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling
behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and
organizations arent keeping up. Brynjolfsson and McAfee are not Luddites. Indeed, they
product soars. Its the great paradox of our era, he says.

are sometimes accused of being too optimistic about the extent and speed of recent digital advances. Brynjolfsson

says they began writing Race Against the Machine, the 2011 book in which they laid out much of their argument,
because they wanted to explain the economic benefits of these new technologies (Brynjolfsson spent much of the
1990s sniffing out evidence that information technology was boosting rates of productivity). But it became clear to
them that the same technologies making many jobs safer, easier, and more productive were also reducing the
demand for many types of human workers. Anecdotal evidence that digital technologies threaten jobs is, of course,
everywhere. Robots and advanced automation have been common in many types of manufacturing for decades. In
the United States and China, the worlds manufacturing powerhouses, fewer people work in manufacturing today
than in 1997, thanks at least in part to automation. Modern automotive plants, many of which were transformed by
industrial robotics in the 1980s, routinely use machines that autonomously weld and paint body partstasks that
were once handled by humans. Most recently, industrial robots like Rethink Robotics Baxter (see The Blue-Collar
Robot, May/June 2013), more flexible and far cheaper than their predecessors, have been introduced to perform
simple jobs for small manufacturers in a variety of sectors. The website of a Silicon Valley startup called Industrial
Perception features a video of the robot it has designed for use in warehouses picking up and throwing boxes like a
bored elephant. And such sensations as Googles driverless car suggest what automation might be able to
accomplish someday soon. A less dramatic change, but one with a potentially far larger impact on employment, is
taking place in clerical work and professional services. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, big data,
and improved analyticsall made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and
storage capacityare automating many routine tasks. Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the
post office and in customer service, have disappeared. W. Brian Arthur, a visiting researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Centers intelligence systems lab and a former economics professor at Stanford University, calls it the
autonomous economy. Its far more subtle than the idea of robots and automation doing human jobs, he says: it
involves digital processes talking to other digital processes and creating new processes, enabling us to do many

It is this onslaught of
digital processes, says Arthur, that primarily explains how
productivity has grown without a significant increase in human
labor. And, he says, digital versions of human intelligence are
increasingly replacing even those jobs once thought to require
people. It will change every profession in ways we have barely
seen yet, he warns. McAfee, associate director of the MIT Center for Digital Business at the Sloan
things with fewer people and making yet other human jobs obsolete.

School of Management, speaks rapidly and with a certain awe as he describes advances such as Googles driverless

he doesnt see the recently

vanished jobs coming back. The pressure on employment and the
resulting inequality will only get worse, he suggests, as digital
technologiesfueled with enough computing power, data, and geekscontinue their
exponential advances over the next several decades. I would like to be
car. Still, despite his obvious enthusiasm for the technologies,

wrong, he says, but when all these science-fiction technologies are deployed, what will we need all the people
for?

Cybersecurity

UQ Security High Now

Companies improving encryption now- Google, Facebook, and
Tor reforming
Kuchler, Tech Writer for Financial Times, 2014 (November 4,
Hannah, Financial Times, Tech companies step up encryption in wake
of Snowden, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3c1553a6-6429-11e4-bac800144feabdc0.html#axzz3eU0qyCO4, accessed 6-29-2015, CM)
Companies including Google, Yahoo and Facebook have tried to
improve encryption dramatically after the Snowden revelations
showed how much of their data the intelligence agencies could access. The
technology heavyweights have been joined by a new cast of privacyfocused start-ups who are creating apps and hardware with better
security. From the Wickr messaging app to the Blackphone by Silent Circle,
venture capitalists are pouring money into companies catering for a
privacy-focused audience. Shocked by the scribbles on slides leaked by
Mr Snowden that appear to show how the US National Security Agency
accessed Google data, the company now encrypts data both in transit
and when it is at rest. Eric Schmidt, Googles executive chairman, said
last month that the new system was so secure that no one believes the NSA
can break [it] during our lifetime. Google also worked with Yahoo to improve
security for both companies Gmail and Yahoo mail services, which reach
hundreds of millions of people. These now use end-to-end encryption
which means not even the companies can see the contents of a
users inbox. Google announced this summer that it would rank
encrypted websites higher in web searches, creating another
commercial incentive for website owners to improve security.
Facebook responded to the Snowden leaks by expanding its use of https
best known as the lock symbol in the browser making it a default for all
users in July 2013, just after the revelations. Last week, it made changes
which allowed people who use the Tor browser, the encrypted way of surfing
the web, to visit Facebook privately and securely. Terror groups are also
developing their own technologies, with people affiliated with al-Qaeda
creating secure apps, according to Recorded Future, a US web intelligence
start-up. Christopher Ahlberg, chief executive, said the focus on
encryption increased after the Snowden revelations with four or five
new products created since the spring of 2013. They updated their
pace of innovation just like the commercial world did, he said. You cant run
networks without communication. But he said the terrorist groups may be
better off using technology developed by major companies. If I was one of
them I would use a commercial product, he said. Youve got very few
encryption experts you can count the true experts on one hand so the

number one lesson is you will screw up if you use products which havent
been properly tested.

NSA Doesnt Hurt Security

NSA backdoors dont undermine Internet security-studies show
that they have little to no effect
Baker 14 (Stewart, former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the US
Department of Homeland Security, Washington Post 4-3, Hiding in plain
sight: evidence that NSA isnt wrecking internet security,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokhconspiracy/wp/2014/04/03/hiding-in-plain-sight-evidence-that-nsa-isntwrecking-internet-security/)
An army of researchers recently published a short study of a
weakness that NSA is alleged to have introduced into a public
security standard. Joseph Menn of Reuters gave the study lengthy and
largely uncritical coverage; heres the gist: Security industry pioneer RSA
adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National
Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agencys ability to eavesdrop on
some Internet communications, according to a team of academic
researchers. Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid
RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the
default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer
security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a
random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw or back
door that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption. A group of
professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the
University of Illinois and elsewhere now say they have discovered
that a second NSA tool exacerbated the RSA softwares
vulnerability. The allegation that NSA weakened the dual elliptic
curve random number generator has been floating around for some
time, and it has already had some policy impact. The Presidents
Review Group was reacting to the story when it declared that the US
Government should fully support and not undermine efforts to create
encryption standards [and] not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or
make vulnerable generally available commercial software. A careful
reading of the actual study, though, suggests that theres been
more than a little hype in the claim that NSA has somehow made us
all less safe by breaking internet security standards. I recognize that
this is a technical paper, and that Im not a cryptographer. So I welcome
technical commentary and corrections. With that disclaimer, however, it
seems to me that the paper makes two points that take a lot of the
air out of the NSA wrecks internet security balloon: 1. If theres a
backdoor in the standard, no one has found it. Its an article of faith
among academic cryptographers (and something the Reuters article

just assumes) that there is a backdoor in the dual elliptic curve

standard. In 2007, some Microsoft researchers explained how a backdoor
might have been implanted in the standard. Researchers have been
looking for ways to exploit the backdoor and thus prove its
existence ever since. Yet the paper concedes that the researchers
cant confirm the existence of a flaw. Instead, the researchers had to
make up a different flawed protocol and show how quickly they could exploit
that vulnerability. The artificiality of that exercise probably should have made
Reuters a little more skeptical about the studys results, but theres a more
important point in the researchers concession. Seven years is a lifetime
in cryptanalytic attacks, so its quite a surprise that no backdoor
has been proved in all this time. It raises the possibility that there
really is no flaw or that NSA has introduced a flaw that only NSA can
exploit. Thats important because the press and a lot of
cryptographers have been saying that NSA weakened internet
security for everyone. But if there is no flaw, or if its a flaw only NSA can
exploit, then at worst internet security has been weakened for adversaries
and intelligence targets of the United States. Call me old-fashioned, but that
sounds like a good thing to me. Of course, academic cryptographers may still
argue that its not, but only by flirting with a moral relativism that most
Americans dont share. 2. If theres a backdoor in the standard, its had
no discernible effect on internet security. Talk about burying the
lede. After measuring how fast their fake standards contrived flaw
could be exploited, the researchers decided to go looking for
examples of the flawed elliptic curve standard in the wild. What
they found seems to cast doubt on the news value of the whole flap.
It turns out that you can scan more or less every public-facing server on the
internet in less than an hour. A company called Zmap will do it for you for
free. The researchers used ZMap, and they found a total of 21.8 million
servers offering secure http connections of the sort that the controversial
elliptic curve standard is accused of subverting. And how many of those 21.8
million servers were clearly using the controversial standard? 720. Let me
say that again. 720 out of 21,800,000 secure servers used the standard that
is accused without conclusive proof of weakening security on the internet. In
a fit of understatement. the researchers note that this is much less than
1%. Well, yes. In fact, it is less than one percent in the same way that the
weight of your cat is less than that of a bull African elephant three orders of
magnitude less. Put another way, only .0003% of the secure servers on
the internet were found to be running code that is subject to the
famous flaw. If it is a flaw. And its likely that the vast majority of
those servers are of no interest to the United States government, so
the backdoor would never be used for them. If you assume that NSA

has a real interest in maybe 1% of internet traffic, thats 72 servers

on the internet whose security might be put at risk by the standard
and then only if they harbor information of intelligence interest to
the United States government. Big whoop. Thats not even table
stakes in the world of computer security. When other researchers went
looking for devices on the internet that were open to attack because of
flawed plug and play protocols, they found 40 or 50 million online devices
with the security flaw, a flaw that some manufacturers have simply refused
to fix. And there are between 300 and 500 million computers running
Windows XP that will get their last security updates from Microsoft this
weekend; after that, its open season on those machines. So when it comes
to weakening internet security, there are a lot of people and companies that
are way, way ahead of NSA. Though you wouldnt know it from the credulous
press coverage given to academic cryptographers attack on the elliptic
curve number generator. Academic cryptographers have seen NSA as their
adversary for fifty years, and press coverage so far has simply treated their
worst assumptions about the agency as received truth. Despite that, their
campaign against NSAs role in standards has not attracted widespread
public support or serious legislative proposals. Nor did the Obama experts
group recommendation gain much traction inside the administration. If Im
right about the two lessons to be learned from this academic paper, that is
just about the right response.

NSA decryption doesnt actually expose US to cyberattacksthere is alternative causes to encryption bypasses
Acohido 13 (Byron, Pulitzer-winning tech reporter, USA Today, The case
supporting the NSA's PRISM decrypting,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/09/06/the-case-supportingthe-nsas-prism-decrypting/2776087/)
More reaction from the global technology community is surfacing this
morning about how the New York Times has spun the spying details
contained in 50,000 pages of PRISM documents outed by Edward Snowden.
A consensus is gelling that the NSA -- in using brute-force password
hacking techniques, cracking into Virtual Private Networks and
Secure Sockets Layer services and taking steps to weaken certain
inherently weak encryption protocols is simply doing what the NSA
has always done, and was, in fact, created to do: keep the U.S.
competitive in the spy-vs-spy world. Based on the information outed by
Snowden, the global tech community, and the cyberunderground, now has
more details about the narrow technical parameters the NSA has used for
doing this. Dave Jevans, chief technology officer of mobile security firm

Marble Security, says it's possible that with the NSA's multi-billion dollar
budget and tens of thousands of employees, the agency may have
discovered mathematical techniques to weaken certain cryptographic
systems. "However, such fundamental mathematical research doesn't
constitute back doors or other covert agendas," Jevans says.
"Perhaps the NSA has discovered ways to crack these systems that
have not been discovered by the smartest researchers in academia
and industry. But there's no law against clever mathematicians
creating new encryption schemes." Jevans says he disagrees with
the characterization that the NSA, through the use of billions of
dollars of research, has exposed the U.S. to cyberattacks. "It's just
ludicrous," Jevans says. "It's not like the NSA posted open source
tools to crack encryption." Dave Frymier, vice president and chief
information security officer of IT company Unisys, opines "the NSA is doing
what intelligence agencies are supposed to do gather
intelligence." The methods and techniques outlined in the Times' report
"have little to do with the underlying encryption technology and everything
to do with compromising one side of a two-way conversation or
compromising encryption keys," Frymier says. "There are many
implementations of encryption algorithms, any of which are subject
implementation bugs, same as any software." Jakob Ehrensvard, chief
technology officer at Yubico, an authentication security company, which also
manufacturers hardware security modules, points out that Secure Sockets
Layer and Transport Layer Security are the standard security technologies for
establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. "There
are some by-design weaknesses with the concept of SSL/TLS, which could be
exploited by not only governments but also fraudulent users," Ehrensvard
observes. "They basically allow anyone to connect to anyone and establish
confidentiality." Dave Anderson, a senior director with Voltage Security,
emphasizes that encryption, in general, is robust technology. "It seems
likely that any possible way that the NSA might have bypassed
encryption was almost certainly due to a flaw in the key
management processes that support the use of encryption, rather
than through the cryptography itself," says Anderson. "So, is it
possible that the NSA can decrypt financial and shopping accounts?
Perhaps, but only if the cryptography that was used to protect the
sensitive transactions was improperly implemented."

Bullrun K2 Cybersecurity
NIST increasingly key to cybersecurity
Chapman, 14 (Cate, Editor of Advisen Risk Network, NIST emerges as a
very important tool http://www.cyberrisknetwork.com/2014/10/30/nistemerges-important-tool/)//MEB
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework is already helping underwriters to
assess cyber risk and may provide a standard of care for
negligence-based cases going forward. That was the consensus of industry experts
discussing standards and guidelines for managing cyber risk at Advisens Cyber Risk Insights Conference in New
York this week. The voluntary guide for nationally critical industries on improving cyber security and resiliency was

In the morass of laws

in the US that address data security, the NIST framework was emerging
as a very important tool, said Lisa Sotto, chair of privacy and
cybersecurity practice at Hunton & Williams. It will form a baseline
in this country and possibly internationally for assessment, Sotto
said. Insurers will ask, how do you consider the NIST framework? John
Coletti, chief underwriting officer at Cyber & Technology, XL, who said he was
skeptical at first of the value of a voluntary guide now felt it would help
the underwriting community, who are disadvantaged when
assessing cyber risk.
released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology earlier this year.

NIST developing technology to protect domestic public

networks (aka, its important)
NIST, 15 (Authentication Considerations for Public Safety Mobile Networks
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistbul/itlbul2015_05.pdf)
NISTIR 8014 analyzes approaches to identity management to assist
organizations developing requirements for use in the nationwide public
safety network. In particular, this analysis covers a variety of
technologies that allow public safety personnel and devices used to
authenticate to systems used in response to disasters , to
successfully complete their missions. Currently, there is no immediately
implementable authentication approach that can be recommended to all
members of the public safety community. The requirements mandated by
each public safety discipline will dictate if a given authentication technology
is both usable and secure within a specific context. New biometric
capabilities and other, increasingly robust features in mobile devices
necessitate additional research from a public safety perspective. Further
research is needed to ensure that these technologies are accurate
and that generally accepted methods of testing and/or verifying biometric

technologies exist. Another general class of technologies requiring additional

study is wearable technology. NISTIR 8014 only briefly explores the
possibilities offered by wearable devices in a public safety context, but as
the technology becomes more prevalent, new and novel applications
may begin to surface, pushing todays boundaries.

NSA disclosures have the effect of improving internet securitymoney dedicated to improving security
Thomson, Technology Reporter for the Register, 14 (Iain, June
12th, The Register, Tech companies are raising their game (and pants) postSnowden,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/12/safe_in_our_hands_security_industry
_takes_a_hit_from_snowdens_year/?page=1, 06/28/15, MM)
If theres a positive to the disclosures by ex-National Security
Contractor (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, its that its been a
disaster for technology and internet firms. Yes, a positive. In the last year
weve learned the NSA has backdoors placed in the hardware that makes networks, the existence of massive
funnels placed in internet and phone companies data centers to suck up vast amounts of data, and the breaking of

The effect of all this should be a raising of these

companies games and a shaking of users complacency in relying
on free products and in being too accepting of what theyre given
and of standard solutions. Already, tech and web companies are
coming back. Caught with their pants down, they are now being
given the time and money to pull them back up again. Pre-Snowden it was
internet encryption.

generally assumed the government was carrying out some sorts of surveillance against key targets and that the
bright boys and girls at the National Security Agency (NSA) could subvert security systems if they really wanted to.

NSA surveillance allows businesses to improve securitycreates necessity for change

Thomson, Technology Reporter for the Register, 14 (Iain, June
12th, The Register, Tech companies are raising their game (and pants) postSnowden,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/12/safe_in_our_hands_security_industry
_takes_a_hit_from_snowdens_year/?page=2, 06/28/15, MM)
Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union and a noted privacy researcher and activist, told The

that the rogue sysadmin's actions had proved a catalyst for

change. "The leaks caused a lot of anger in these companies, and in
particular with the security teams in these companies. These
security teams have had a list of things they've wanted to do for
years but budgets are limited and so they focus resources on the
biggest threats," he told us. "Now, it's my understanding that in the
wake of the Snowden disclosures, that security teams have been
Register

given pretty much a blank check and can spend whatever they want
to spend to protect the link between the user and the company."
However, Soghoian pointed out that this is only half of the solution. Google and others pay for "free" email systems by trawling
through the data consumers give them and selling advertising based around that. That business model isnt going to change any

: security
folks can, and are, making things better Snowden hasnt given
many interviews since going on the run, but one of the messages he
has consistently put out is that good encryption is still safe from the
prying eyes of the NSA. Yet even that isnt a perfect solution. In December 2013, a report from Reuters
time soon, he warned, but as long as it's in place the NSA will try to subvert it". Christopher Soghoian Soghoian

claimed that the NSA had deliberately weakened the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual EC DRBG) that
had been signed off by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and had allegedly paid securo-firm RSA a $10m contract
to add the system into its security products. RSA has consistently denied that it accepted any money to include a weakened security
protocol, but that didnt stop some key members of the security community from boycotting the security company's annual show
this year and setting up a rival TrustyCon get-together. The row has led some to declare that common encryption standards are
likely to be subverted and that the peer-review systems used to check out technology are broken, but in fact the reverse is true,

The encryption vetting process is working fine. AES and

SHA-3 are both stellar examples of a public process to choose a new
encryption standard. I trust them both, and will continue to trust
them," he said. There is still a lot of secure software out there that
will lock down computer communications. While Snowden's leaks
have done a lot of damage to the computer security industry, that
damage isnt fatal by any means and may actually have been helpful
in encouraging people in the industry to smarten up their practices
and provide what privacy they can. "There are a lot of people in the
security industry who are taking a fresh look at the security
technology we use and asking 'can we make this better?'," Soghoian
said. "In most cases the answer is 'yes'. The goal here isnt to keep the NSA out, because realistically they will find a way in if
Bruce Schneier says. "

they really care about you. The goal is to raise the cost so that bulk surveillance becomes impossible. If the NSA really cares about
you they will show up, break into your house and install malware on your laptop.

Turn-NSA revelations actually have a positive impact on techlittle consequences for major companies and more business for
encryption companies
Menn 13 (Joseph, technology projects reporter, Reuters 9-15, Analysis:
Despite fears, NSA revelations helping U.S. tech industry,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/15/us-usa-security-snowden-techanalysis-idUSBRE98E08S20130915)
Edward Snowden's unprecedented exposure of U.S. technology
companies' close collaboration with national intelligence agencies,
widely expected to damage the industry's financial performance
abroad, may actually end up helping. Despite emphatic predictions
of waning business prospects, some of the big Internet companies
that the former National Security Agency contractor showed to be
closely involved in gathering data on people overseas - such as

Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. - say privately that they have felt
little if any impact on their businesses. Insiders at companies that
offer remote computing services known as cloud computing,
including Amazon and Microsoft Corp, also say they are seeing no
fallout. Meanwhile, smaller U.S. companies offering encryption and
related security services are seeing a jump in business overseas,
along with an uptick in sales domestically as individuals and
companies work harder to protect secrets. "Our value proposition had
been that it's a wild world out there, while doing business internationally you
need to protect yourself," said Jon Callas, co-founder of phone and text
encryption provider Silent Circle, where revenue quadrupled from May to
June on a small base. "Now the message people are getting from the
newspapers every day is that it's a wild world even domestically."
PROPHESIES OF DOOM Shortly after Snowden's leaked documents
detailed collaboration giving the NSA access to the accounts of tens
of thousands of net companies' users, the big Internet companies
and their allies issued dire warnings, predicting that American
businesses would lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue abroad
as distrustful customers seek out local alternatives. In a federal
court filing last week, Google said that still-unfolding news coverage
was causing "substantial harm to Google's reputation and
business". The company said that could be mitigated if it were
allowed to comment with precision about its intelligence dealings.
Likewise, last month, six technology trade groups wrote to the
White House to urge reforms in the spy programs, citing what it
called a "study" predicting a $35 billion cumulative shortfall by 2016
in the vital economic sector. That number, it turns out, was
extrapolated from a security trade group's survey of 207 non-U.S.
members - and the group, the Cloud Security Alliance, had explicitly
cautioned that its members weren't representative of the entire
industry. "I know you want sectors and numbers, but I don't have
it," said Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications
Industry Association, one of the trade groups behind the letter.
"Anybody who tells you they do is making it up." The trade groups
aren't the only ones issuing dismal, and headline-grabbing, forecasts.
Forrester Research analyst James Staten wrote of the $35 billion
figure: "We think this estimate is too low and could be as high as
$180 billion, or a 25 percent hit to overall IT service provider
revenues." Staten's comments generated dozens of media stories,
some of which neglected to mention that Staten said the worst
would come to pass only if businesses decided that spying was a
bigger issue than the savings they gained from a shift to cloud

computing. In an interview with Reuters, Staten said he didn't

believe that would be the case. "I don't think there's going to be a
significant pullback," he said, though the rate of growth could slow for a
couple of years. LITTLE IMPACT Google employees told Reuters that the
company has seen no significant impact on its business, and a
person briefed on Microsoft's business in Europe likewise said that
company has had no issues. At Amazon, which was not named in
Snowden's documents but is seen as a likely victim because it is a
top provider of cloud computing services, a spokeswoman said
global demand "has never been greater." In the more than three months
since Snowden's revelations began, no publicly traded U.S. company has
cited him in a securities filing, where they are required to report events that
are material to their business. One reason that the prophecies of business
doom are getting such a wide airing is that both the U.S. industry and its
overseas detractors have been saying the same thing - that customers will
stop buying from U.S. cloud companies. Politicians in Europe and Brazil have
cited the Snowden documents in pushing for new privacy laws and standards
for cloud contracts and in urging local companies to steer clear of U.S.
vendors. "If European cloud customers cannot trust the U.S. government,
then maybe they won't trust U.S. cloud providers either," European
Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told The Guardian. "If I am right,
there are multibillion-euro consequences for American companies." There
have indeed been some contract cancellations. Charles Mount, chief
executive of business file-sharing service OneHub, told Reuters that an
automated system that asks customers why they have dropped the OneHub
service elicited this reply from an unspecified Bertelsmann unit in Austria:
"Headquarters is banning storage of company data in the U.S. or with U.S.
companies altogether because of the NSA data-mining and industrial
espionage. You should watch out for that. Maybe you should think about
hosting in Iceland, Sweden or some other place known for complying with
their own privacy legislation." Bertelsmann spokesman Christian Steinhof
said the company couldn't confirm that the exchange had occurred and
therefore wouldn't comment. FEW GOOD ALTERNATIVES There are multiple
theories for why the business impact of the Snowden leaks has been so
minimal. One is that cloud customers have few good alternatives, since U.S.
companies have most of the market and switching costs money. Perhaps
more convincing, Amazon, Microsoft and some others offer data centers in
Europe with encryption that prevents significant hurdles to snooping by
anyone including the service providers themselves and the U.S. agencies.
Encryption, however, comes with drawbacks, making using the cloud more
cumbersome. On Thursday, Brazil's president called for laws that would
require local data centers for the likes of Google and Facebook. But former

senior Google engineer Bill Coughran, now a partner at Sequoia Capital, said
that even in the worst-case scenario, those companies would simply spend
extra to manage more Balkanized systems. Another possibility is that techbuying companies elsewhere believe that their own governments have
scanning procedures that are every bit as invasive as the American
programs. Some think it's just a matter of time, however, before U.S.
industry suffers significantly. "Industry is still in denial," said Caspar Bowden,
once the chief privacy officer at Microsoft and now an independent
researcher and privacy advocate in Europe. "It's like Wile E. Coyote running
over the cliff, his legs are still turning but he hasn't started falling yet." BOON
FOR ENCRYPTION SECTOR As for the upside, so far only a minority of
people and businesses are tackling encryption on their own or
moving to privacy-protecting Web browsers, but encryption is
expected to get easier with more new entrants. Snowden himself
said that strong encryption, applied correctly, was still reliable,
even though the NSA has cracked or circumvented most of the
ordinary, built-in security around Web email and financial
transactions. James Denaro, a patent attorney with security training in
Washington, was already using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), a complicated
system for encrypting email, before the Snowden leaks. Afterward, he
adopted phone and text encryption as well to protect client information.
"One of the results we see from Snowden is an increased awareness
across the board about the incredible cyber insecurity," Denaro
said. Some early adopters of encryption have senior jobs inside
companies, and they could bring their habits to the office and
eventually change the technology habits of the whole workplace, in
the same way that executive fondness for iPhones and iPads
prompted more companies to allow them access to corporate
networks. "Clients are now inquiring how they can protect their data
overseas, what kinds of access the states might have and what controls or
constraints they could put in with residency or encryption," said Gartner
researcher Lawrence Pingree, formerly chief security architect at PeopleSoft,
later bought by Oracle. Richard Stiennon, a security industry analyst and
author, predicted that security spending will rise sharply. A week ago, Google
said it had intensified encryption of internal data flows after learning about
NSA practices from Snowden's files, and consultants are urging other big
businesses to do the same. Stiennon said that after more companies encrypt,
the NSA and other agencies will spend more to break through, accelerating a
lucrative cycle. "They will start focusing on the encrypted data, because
that's where all the good stuff is," Stiennon said. Already, in a fiscal 2013
federal budget request from the intelligence community published this

month by the Washington Post, officials wrote that investing in

"groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities" was a top priority.

Impact D- No Retal
Cyber attacks dont have very significant effects-impacts have
been severely overestimated
Healey 13 (Jason, director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic
Council, US News 3-20, No, Cyberwarfare Isn't as Dangerous as Nuclear
War, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/20/cyberattacks-not-yet-an-existential-threat-to-the-us)
America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite
recent warnings. Our cybervulnerabilities are undoubtedly grave and the
threats we face are severe but far from comparable to nuclear war. The
most recent alarms come in a Defense Science Board report on how
to make military cybersystems more resilient against advanced
threats (in short, Russia or China). It warned that the "cyber threat
is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the
nuclear threat of the Cold War." Such fears were also expressed by
Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in
2011. He called cyber "The single biggest existential threat that's
out there" because "cyber actually more than theoretically, can
attack our infrastructure, our financial systems." While it is true
that cyber attacks might do these things, it is also true they have
not only never happened but are far more difficult to accomplish
than mainstream thinking believes. The consequences from cyber
threats may be similar in some ways to nuclear, as the Science Board
concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly dissimilar. Eighty years ago, the
generals of the U.S. Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers
would easily topple other countries and cause their populations to
panic, claims which did not stand up to reality. A study of the 25year history of cyber conflict, by the Atlantic Council and Cyber
Conflict Studies Association, has shown a similar dynamic where the
impact of disruptive cyberattacks has been consistently
overestimated. Rather than theorizing about future cyberwars or
extrapolating from today's concerns, the history of cyberconflict
that have actually been fought, shows that cyber incidents have so
far tended to have effects that are either widespread but fleeting or
persistent but narrowly focused. No attacks, so far, have been both
widespread and persistent. There have been no authenticated cases
of anyone dying from a cyber attack. Any widespread disruptions,
even the 2007 disruption against Estonia, have been short-lived
causing no significant GDP loss. Moreover, as with conflict in other
domains, cyberattacks can take down many targets but keeping
them down over time in the face of determined defenses has so far

been out of the range of all but the most dangerous adversaries
such as Russia and China. Of course, if the United States is in a
conflict with those nations, cyber will be the least important of the
existential threats policymakers should be worrying about.
Plutonium trumps bytes in a shooting war. This is not all good news.
Policymakers have recognized the problems since at least 1998 with little
significant progress. Worse, the threats and vulnerabilities are getting
steadily more worrying. Still, experts have been warning of a cyber Pearl
Harbor for 20 of the 70 years since the actual Pearl Harbor. The transfer of
U.S. trade secrets through Chinese cyber espionage could someday
accumulate into an existential threat. But it doesn't seem so seem
just yet, with only handwaving estimates of annual losses of 0.1 to
0.5 percent to the total U.S. GDP of around $15 trillion. That's bad,
but it doesn't add up to an existential crisis or "economic cyberwar."
Instead, the true existential cyberdanger is likely to come after America
connects the electrical grid and other infrastructure to the Internet. An
interconnected Smart Grid connects things made not just of bytes and silicon
but of concrete and steel. It is all too likely that America will take its
overstretched and insecure electrical system and connect it to the Internet.
In this future our electric supply is no more or less reliable than the Internet
and the years when no one died because of cyberattacks will seem like the
quaint good ol' days. There are still practical solutions to avoid today's
serious threats become tomorrow's existential ones but these are often
overshadowed by the rhetoric of cyberwar, the push for ever better U.S.
cyberoffense, and other distractions. Focusing on actual fixes, like securing
the Smart Grid, will be the best ways to avoid future existential attacks.

We can easily defend against cyberattacks Would have

happened already
Cluley, award-winning security blogger, researcher and public
speaker, 14 (Graham Cluley, 10-20-2014, "GCHQ spokesperson says cyber
terrorism is "not a concern"," TripWire, http://www.tripwire.com/state-ofsecurity/security-data-protection/gchq-spokesperson-says-cyber-terrorism-isnot-a-concern/ //NK)
Ever since September 2001, Ive been asked by the media about the potential for terrorists to launch a devastating

To be honest, its not something Ive lost much sleep

about. Yes, a terrorist could launch a denial-of-service attack, or
write a piece of malware, or hack into a sensitive system, just as
easily as the next (non-terrorist), but there is no reason to believe
attack via the Internet.

that an attack launched by a terrorist living in his secret HQ in the

mountain caves of Afghanistan would be any harder to stop than the
hundreds of thousands of other attacks launched each day. Thats not to
say that launching an Internet attack wouldnt have attractive aspects for those behind a terror campaign. Put
bluntly, its a heck lot easier (and less physically dangerous) to write a Trojan horse to infect a computer on the
other side of the world, than to drive a lorry loaded up with Semtex outside a government buildings front door.
Furthermore, terrorists are often interested in making headlines, to focus the worlds attention on what they believe
to be their plight. If innocent people die during a terrorist action that certainly does help you make the newspapers,
but its very bad for public relations, and is going to make it a lot harder to convince others to sympathise with your
campaign. The good news about pretty much all Internet attacks, of course, is that they dont involve the loss of
life. Any damage done is unlikely to leave individuals maimed or bleeding, but can still bloody the nose of a

such
terrorist-initiated Internet attacks should be no harder to protect
against than the financially-motivated and hacktivist attacks that
organisations defend themselves against every day. So, when a
journalist asks me if I think cyber terrorism is a big concern, I tend
to shrug and say Not that much and ask them to consider why Al
Qaeda, for instance, never bothered to launch a serious Internet
attack in the 13 years since September 11. After all, if it is
something for us all to fear why wouldnt they have done it
already? So, I was pleased to have my views supported last week from a perhaps surprising source. GCHQ,
government that should have been better protected or potentially disrupt economies. But still,

the UK intelligence agency which has become no stranger to controversy following the revelations of NSA

Edward Snowden, appears to agree that cyber terrorism is

not a concern. Or at least thats what theyre saying behind closed doors, according to SC Magazine.
whistleblower

Cyber terror would never cause a nuclear war air gap

prevents sensitive military computers from being hacked into.
Black, espionage expert and former government intelligence advisor,
2013
(Crispin, 7/10/2013, Mirror Online, Could a terrorist cyber attack set
off World War 3? http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/could-terroristcyber-attack-set-2041439, accessed 6/28/2015, JAK)
Could ambitious terrorists start World War Three by launching
electronic attacks? Well, yes, they could, in theory, up to a point. If
terrorists, say, gained control of the computer systems behind the UKs
nuclear deterrent and managed to fire off a Trident missile at Russia, then
Russian radar systems would alert the Kremlin and President Putin would
launch his retaliation immediately no questions asked. But frightening
though this scenario sounds it would actually be far more difficult to
accomplish than it looks. Many military computers used to be fairly easy
to hack into. In 2002 Gary McKinnon, the Scottish systems administrator
and hacker, played merry hell with a number of US military computer
networks. But security has since improved dramatically. The most

sensitive computers in advanced countries are usually protected by

an air gap. In other words, they are part of a closed system cut
off from the rest of cyberspace. There is no electronic connection to
the outside world. A clever hacker like McKinnon cannot find a way
in, because there isnt one. Ironically, this was the kind of cyber-security
practised by Osama bin Laden in his hideout at Abbottabad in north east
Pakistan. Bin Laden had no phones and no internet connection. If he
wanted to communicate he would draft a message on his computer offline,
download it on to a thumb drive and get one of his helpers to send the
message from a cyber cafe. Replies were received in the same way. There
were no electronic footprints leading to bin Laden

Cyber-attacks not a threat- precaution is critical

No Author, 14 (12/28/14, The Guardian, Cyber-attacks on
South Korean nuclear power operator continue,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/28/cyber-attackssouth-korean-nuclear-power-operator, 6/28/15, WG*)
South Koreas nuclear power operator has said cyber-attacks on
non-critical operations at its headquarters are continuing but the
countrys nuclear power plants are operating safely and are secure
from attack. Cho Seok, president and chief executive of Korea Hydro &
Nuclear Power, said the firm had been stepping up its cybersecurity.
He gave no details of the continued attacks or the companys response. We
cannot let cyber-attacks stop nuclear power operation, Cho told a news
briefing. He said a closed network used for reactor operations was
inaccessible from external communication lines and impervious to
cyber-attacks. We will continue operating nuclear plants safely against
any attempted foul play. KHNP, part of state-run utility Korea Electric
Power, said last Monday that its computer systems had been hacked
but only non-critical data had been stolen, and reactor operations
were not at risk. Cho apologised for concerns that had been raised by the
cyber-attack and data leaks. South Korea has 23 nuclear reactors which
supply one-third of its electricity. Three are currently offline for
routine maintenance or awaiting a licence extension. Since last
Wednesday the operator and the government have had emergency
teams on standby as a precaution, after a hacker demanded the
shutdown of three reactors by last Thursday and in Twitter messages
threatened destruction if the demand was not met.

No impact to cyber attacks their impacts are highly

overestimated.
Healey, director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the
Atlantic Council, 13 (Jason, 3-20-13, US News, No, Cyberwarfare Isn't as
Dangerous as Nuclear War,
http://www.usnews.com/cmsmedia/2c/47f8b00c0883279e4df3e9977805b7/2
0488FE_DA_110201_USMA.jpg, accessed 6-29-15, MAM)
America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite recent
warnings. Our cybervulnerabilities are undoubtedly grave and the threats we face are severe but far from
comparable to nuclear war. The most recent alarms come in a Defense Science Board report on how to make
military cybersystems more resilient against advanced threats (in short, Russia or China). It warned that the "cyber
threat is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." Such
fears were also expressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2011. He called cyber
"The single biggest existential threat that's out there" because "cyber actually more than theoretically, can attack

cyber attacks might do these things, it is

also true they have not only never happened but are far more difficult to
accomplish than mainstream thinking believes. The consequences from cyber threats may be similar in
our infrastructure, our financial systems." While it is true that

some ways to nuclear, as the Science Board concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly dissimilar. Eighty years ago,
the generals of the U.S. Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers would easily topple other countries and cause
their populations to panic, claims which did not stand up to reality. A study of the 25-year history of cyber conflict,

the
impact of disruptive cyberattacks has been consistently
overestimated. Rather than theorizing about future cyberwars or extrapolating from today's concerns,
by the Atlantic Council and Cyber Conflict Studies Association, has shown a similar dynamic where

the history of cyberconflict that have actually been fought, shows that cyber incidents have so far tended to have

No attacks, so far, have

been both widespread and persistent. There have been no authenticated
cases of anyone dying from a cyber attack. Any widespread disruptions, even the
effects that are either widespread but fleeting or persistent but narrowly focused.

2007 disruption against Estonia, have been short-lived causing no significant GDP loss. Moreover, as with conflict in
other domains, cyberattacks can take down many targets but keeping them down over time in the face of
determined defenses has so far been out of the range of all but the most dangerous adversaries such as Russia and

cyber will be the least

important of the existential threats policymakers should be
worrying about. Plutonium trumps bytes in a shooting war. This is not all good news. Policymakers have
China. Of course, if the United States is in a conflict with those nations,

recognized the problems since at least 1998 with little significant progress. Worse, the threats and vulnerabilities
are getting steadily more worrying. Still, experts have been warning of a cyber Pearl Harbor for 20 of the 70 years
since the actual Pearl Harbor. The transfer of U.S. trade secrets through Chinese cyber espionage could someday
accumulate into an existential threat. But it doesn't seem so seem just yet, with only handwaving estimates of
annual losses of 0.1 to 0.5 percent to the total U.S. GDP of around $15 trillion. That's bad, but

it doesn't

add up to an existential crisis or "economic cyberwar."

Cyber attacks have little impact- Soviet pipeline and Estonia

prove
Rid, professor in the Department of War Studies at King's
College London, 2012 (Thomas, February 27, Foreign Policy,
Think Again: Cyberwar, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/thinkagain-cyberwar/, accessed 6-29-2015, CM)

Time for a reality check: Cyberwar is still more hype than hazard.
Consider the definition of an act of war: It has to be potentially violent, it has
to be purposeful, and it has to be political. The cyberattacks weve seen so
far, from Estonia to the Stuxnet virus, simply dont meet these criteria. Take
the dubious story of a Soviet pipeline explosion back in 1982, much
cited by cyberwars true believers as the most destructive
cyberattack ever. The account goes like this: In June 1982, a Siberian
pipeline that the CIA had virtually booby-trapped with a so-called logic
bomb exploded in a monumental fireball that could be seen from space. The
U.S. Air Force estimated the explosion at 3 kilotons, equivalent to a small
nuclear device. Targeting a Soviet pipeline linking gas fields in Siberia to
European markets, the operation sabotaged the pipelines control systems
with software from a Canadian firm that the CIA had doctored with malicious
code. No one died, according to Thomas Reed, a U.S. National Security
Council aide at the time who revealed the incident in his 2004 book, At the
Abyss; the only harm came to the Soviet economy. But did it really
happen? After Reeds account came out, Vasily Pchelintsev, a former KGB
head of the Tyumen region, where the alleged explosion supposedly took
place, denied the story. There are also no media reports from 1982 that
confirm such an explosion, though accidents and pipeline explosions in the
Soviet Union were regularly reported in the early 1980s. Something likely did
happen, but Reeds book is the only public mention of the incident and his
account relied on a single document. Even after the CIA declassified a
redacted version of Reeds source, a note on the so-called Farewell Dossier
that describes the effort to provide the Soviet Union with defective
technology, the agency did not confirm that such an explosion occurred. The
available evidence on the Siberian pipeline blast is so thin that it shouldnt
be counted as a proven case of a successful cyberattack. Most other
commonly cited cases of cyberwar are even less remarkable. Take
the attacks on Estonia in April 2007, which came in response to the
controversial relocation of a Soviet war memorial, the Bronze Soldier. The
well-wired country found itself at the receiving end of a massive
distributed denial-of-service attack that emanated from up to 85,000
hijacked computers and lasted three weeks. The attacks reached a peak on
May 9, when 58 Estonian websites were attacked at once and the online
services of Estonias largest bank were taken down. Whats the difference
between a blockade of harbors or airports of sovereign states and the
blockade of government institutions and newspaper websites? asked
Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. Despite his analogies, the attack
was no act of war. It was certainly a nuisance and an emotional
strike on the country, but the banks actual network was not even
penetrated; it went down for 90 minutes one day and two hours the

next. The attack was not violent, it wasnt purposefully aimed at changing
Estonias behavior, and no political entity took credit for it. The same is
true for the vast majority of cyberattacks on record. Indeed, there is
no known cyberattack that has caused the loss of human life. No
cyberoffense has ever injured a person or damaged a building. And if
an act is not at least potentially violent, its not an act of war. Separating war
from physical violence makes it a metaphorical notion; it would mean that
there is no way to distinguish between World War II, say, and the wars on
obesity and cancer. Yet those ailments, unlike past examples of cyber war,
actually do kill people.

Impact D No Risk
Cyber terror is a very small risk it is vandalism not war
Libicki, senior management scientist at the nonprofit,
nonpartisan RAND Corporation, 2/8 (Martin C. Libicki, 2-8-2015,
"Cyberattacks Are a Nuisance, Not Terrorism," Newsweek,
http://www.newsweek.com/cyber-attacks-are-nuisance-not-terrorism305062 //NK)
The debate over whether cyberattacks should be treated as national
security or public safety concerns was shoved forward with the Sony
hack. President Obama declared it was an act of vandalism, not war.
Others, such as Newt Gingrich and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, would treat it as war.

without visceral terror, the logic of treating attacks like that on

Sony as public safety threats, much less national security issues, is
strained. Inasmuch as cyberattacks have yet to hurt anyone directly,
non-military cyberattacks can be treated almost entirely in
economic terms. There is no sound alternative to a costminimization test of public policy. Along such lines, it is worth noting that
the United States keeps 28,500 troops in Korea at no small cost. As a
But

rough order of magnitude guess, it costs $1 million to support one warfighter in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the

Conversely, it is unclear whether the size of the U.S.

Armed Forces would be correspondingly reduced in a world without
North Korea. The Sony hacks cost the United States less than one
percent of that amount. When it comes to U.S. policy vis--vis North
Korea, the conventional military threat remains the big dog;
cyberattacks are no more than the small tail by comparison.
Korean cost $28.5 billion.

No risk of cyber terror Resources and we can defend

Singer, Strategist for the New American Foundation, 12 (Peter W.
Singer, xx-11-2012, "The Cyber Terror Bogeyman," Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer //NK)
About 31,300. That is roughly the number of magazine and journal
articles written so far that discuss the phenomenon of cyber
terrorism. Zero. That is the number of people that who been hurt or
killed by cyber terrorism at the time this went to press. In many ways, But
by looking at how terror groups actually use the Internet, rather
than fixating on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize and
focus our efforts. Part of the problem is the way we talk about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism
as a premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs and
data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. A key
word there is violence, yet many discussions sweep all sorts of nonviolent online mischief into the terror bin.
Various reports lump together everything from Defense Secretary Leon Panettas recent statements that a terror
group might launch a digital Pearl Harbor to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to

hacktivism, WikiLeaks and credit card fraud. As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use a term like cyber

Another part of the

problem is that we often mix up our fears with the actual state of
affairs. Last year, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, the
Pentagons lead official for cybersecurity, spoke to the top experts
in the field at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. It is possible
for a terrorist group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to
buy them on the black market, Lynn warned. A couple dozen
talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can
do a lot of damage. The deputy defense secretary was conflating
fear and reality, not just about what stimulant-drinking
programmers are actually hired to do, but also what is needed to
pull off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go well
beyond finding top cyber experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or
designing malware like Stuxnet that causes nuclear centrifuges to
spin out of sequence doesnt just require the skills and means to get
into a computer system. Its also knowing what to do once you are
in. To cause true damage requires an understanding of the devices
themselves and how they run, the engineering and physics behind
the target. The Stuxnet case, for example, involved not just cyber
experts well beyond a few wearing flip-flops, but also experts in
areas that ranged from intelligence and surveillance to nuclear
physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemens-brand
industrial equipment. It also required expensive tests, not only of
the software, but on working versions of the target hardware as
well. As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly mass-scale action
terrorism has as much clarity as cybersecurity that is, none at all.

using cyber means simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and personnel capacities of even the most wellfunded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated international

Lucas said the threat of cyber terrorism has been

vastly overblown. To be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in your
next-door neighbors upstairs bedroom, nor the two- or threeperson al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are
going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams , he said. We should
criminal enterprises.

be crystal clear: This is not to say that terrorist groups are uninterested in using the technology of cyberspace to
carry out acts of violence. In 2001, al-Qaida computers seized in Afghanistan were found to contain models of a
dam, plus engineering software that simulated the catastrophic failure of controls. Five years later, jihadist websites
were urging cyber attacks on the U.S. financial industry to retaliate for abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Nor does it
mean that cyber terrorism, particularly attacks on critical infrastructure, is of no concern. In 2007, Idaho National
Lab researchers experimented with cyber attacks on their own facility; they learned that remotely changing the
operating cycle of a power generator could make it catch fire. Four years later, the Los Angeles Times reported that
white-hat hackers hired by a water provider in California broke into the system in less than a week. Policymakers
must worry that real-world versions of such attacks might have a ripple effect that could, for example, knock out

But so far, what

terrorists have accomplished in the cyber realm doesnt match our
fears, their dreams or even what they have managed through
traditional means. The only publicly documented case of an actual
parts of the national power grid or shut down a municipal or even regional water supply.

al-Qaida attempt at a cyber attack wouldnt have even met the FBI
definition. Under questioning at Guantanamo Bay, Mohmedou Ould Slahi confessed to trying to knock offline
the Israeli prime ministers public website. The same goes for the September denial-of-service attacks on five U.S.
banking firms, for which the Islamist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters claimed responsibility. (Some
experts believe the group was merely stealing credit for someone elses work.) The attacks, which prevented
customers from accessing the sites for a few hours, were the equivalent of a crowd standing in your lobby blocking
access or a gang of neighborhood kids constantly doing ring and runs at your front doorbell. Its annoying, to be
sure, but nothing that would make the terrorism threat matrix if you removed the word cyber. And while it may

Even the
2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, the most-discussed incident of its
kind, had little impact on the daily life of the average Estonian and
certainly no long-term effect. Allegedly assisted by the Russian government, and hence well
beyond the capacity of most terror organizations, the attacks merely disrupted publicfacing government websites for a few days. Compare that with the impact of planes
make for good headlines, it is certainly not in the vein of a cyber 9/11 or digital Pearl Harbor.

crashing into the center of the U.S. financial system, the London subway attacks or the thousands of homemade

Even when you move into the

what if side the damage potential of cyber terror still pales
compared with other types of potential terror attacks. A disruption
of the power grid for a few days would certainly be catastrophic
(though its something that Washington, D.C., residents have lived
through in the last year. Does the Pepco power company qualify as a
cyber threat?). But, again, in strategic planning, we have to put threats into context. The explosion of
bomb attacks that happen around the world each year.

just one nuclear bomb, even a jury-rigged radiological dirty bomb, could irradiate an American city for centuries.
Similarly, while a computer virus could wreak havoc in the economy, a biological attack could change our very
patterns of life forever. As one cyber expert said, There

are [cyber] threats out there,

but there are no threats that threaten our fundamental way of life.

Dont believe the hype no cyberattacks are coming, threats

are overemphasized.
Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University,
10 (Stephen, 3-30-10, Foreign Policy, Is the cyber threat overblown?,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/30/is-the-cyber-threat-overblown/, accessed
6-29-15, MAM)
Am I the only person well, besides Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Poulson who thinks

the "cyber-

warfare" business may be overblown? Its clear the U.S. national security establishment is
paying a lot more attention to the issue, and colleagues of mine including some pretty serious and level-headed
people are increasingly worried by the danger of some sort of "cyber-Katrina." I dont dismiss it entirely, but

this sure looks to me like a classic opportunity for threat-inflation. Mind you, Im not
saying that there arent a lot of shenanigans going on in cyber-space, or that various forms of cyber-warfare dont
have military potential. So Im not arguing for complete head-in-the-sand complacency. But heres what makes me
worry that the threat is being overstated. First, the whole issue is highly esoteric you really need to know a great
deal about computer networks, software, encryption, etc., to know how serious the danger might be. Unfortunately,

details about a number of the alleged incidents that are being invoked to
demonstrate the risk of a "cyber-Katrina," or a cyber-9/11, remain classified, which makes
it hard for us lay-persons to gauge just how serious the problem really was or is. Moreover, even when we hear
about computers being penetrated by hackers, or parts of the internet crashing, etc., its hard to know how much

And as with other

specialized areas of technology and/or military affairs, a lot of the experts have a
clear vested interest in hyping the threat, so as to create greater
demand for their services. Plus, we already seem to have politicians leaping on the issue as a way to grab
valuable information was stolen or how much actual damage was done.

some pork for their states. Second, there are lots of different problems being lumped under a single banner,
whether the label is "cyber-terror" or "cyber-war." One issue is the use of various computer tools to degrade an
enemys military capabilities (e.g., by disrupting communications nets, spoofing sensors, etc.). A second issue is the
alleged threat that bad guys would penetrate computer networks and shut down power grids, air traffic control,
traffic lights, and other important elements of infrastructure, the way that internet terrorists (led by a disgruntled
computer expert) did in the movie Live Free and Die Hard. A third problem is web-based criminal activity, including
identity theft or simple fraud (e.g., those emails we all get from someone in Nigeria announcing that they have
millions to give us once we send them some account information). A fourth potential threat is cyber-espionage;
i.e., clever foreign hackers penetrate Pentagon or defense contractors computers and download valuable classified
information. And then there are annoying activities like viruses, denial-of-service attacks, and other things that
affect the stability of web-based activities and disrupt commerce (and my ability to send posts into FP). This sounds
like a rich menu of potential trouble, and putting the phrase "cyber" in front of almost any noun makes it sound
trendy and a bit more frightening. But notice too that these are all somewhat different problems of quite different
importance, and the appropriate response to each is likely to be different too. Some issues such as the danger of
cyber-espionage may not require elaborate technical fixes but simply more rigorous security procedures to
isolate classified material from the web. Other problems may not require big federal programs to address, in part
because both individuals and the private sector have incentives to protect themselves (e.g., via firewalls or by
backing up critical data). And as Greenwald warns, there may be real costs to civil liberties if concerns about vague
cyber dangers lead us to grant the NSA or some other government agency greater control over the Internet. Third,
this is another issue that cries out for some comparative cost-benefit analysis. Is the danger that some malign
hacker crashes a power grid greater than the likelihood that a blizzard would do the same thing? Is the risk of cyberespionage greater than the potential danger from more traditional forms of spying? Without a comparative
assessment of different risks and the costs of mitigating each one, we will allocate resources on the basis of hype
rather than analysis. In short, my fear is not that we wont take reasonable precautions against a potential set of

my concern is that we will spend tens of billions of dollars

protecting ourselves against a set of threats that are not as
dangerous as we are currently being told they are.
dangers;

The threat of cyber terrorism is exaggerated little to no

impact
Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings,
12 (Peter, November 2012, Brookings, The Cyber Terror Bogeyman,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer, MAM)
31,300. That is roughly the
number of magazine and journal articles written so far that discuss the phenomenon of cyber
terrorism. Zero. That is the number of people that who been hurt or killed by cyber
terrorism at the time this went to press.In many ways, cyber terrorism is like the
We have let our fears obscure how terrorists really use the Internet. About

Discovery Channels Shark Week, when we obsess about shark

attacks despite the fact that you are roughly 15,000 times more
likely to be hurt or killed in an accident involving a toilet. But by looking at
how terror groups actually use the Internet, rather than fixating on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize
and focus our efforts. Part of the problem is the way we talk about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism as a
premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs and data
which results in violence against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. A key word

there is violence, yet many discussions sweep all sorts of nonviolent online mischief into the terror bin. Various
reports lump together everything from Defense Secretary Leon Panettas recent statements that a terror group
might launch a digital Pearl Harbor to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to hacktivism,
WikiLeaks and credit card fraud. As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use a term like cyber terrorism has
as much clarity as cybersecurity that is, none at all.Another part of the problem is that we often mix up our
fears with the actual state of affairs. Last year, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, the Pentagons lead official
for cybersecurity, spoke to the top experts in the field at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. It is possible for a
terrorist group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to buy them on the black market, Lynn warned. A
couple dozen talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can do a lot of damage.The deputy
defense secretary was conflating fear and reality, not just about what stimulant-drinking programmers are actually
hired to do, but also what is needed to pull off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go well
beyond finding top cyber experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or designing malware like Stuxnet that
causes nuclear centrifuges to spin out of sequence doesnt just require the skills and means to get into a computer
system. Its also knowing what to do once you are in. To cause true damage requires an understanding of the
devices themselves and how they run, the engineering and physics behind the target.The Stuxnet case, for
example, involved not just cyber experts well beyond a few wearing flip-flops, but also experts in areas that ranged
from intelligence and surveillance to nuclear physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemens-brand
industrial equipment. It also required expensive tests, not only of the software, but on working versions of the
target hardware as well. As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly
mass-scale action using cyber means simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and personnel capacities of
even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most

the threat of cyber terrorism has been

vastly overblown. To be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in your next-door neighbors upstairs bedroom,
sophisticated international criminal enterprises. Lucas said

nor the two- or three-person al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are going to bring down the Glen
Canyon and Hoover dams, he said. We should be crystal clear: This is not to say that terrorist groups are
uninterested in using the technology of cyberspace to carry out acts of violence. In 2001, al-Qaida computers
seized in Afghanistan were found to contain models of a dam, plus engineering software that simulated the
catastrophic failure of controls. Five years later, jihadist websites were urging cyber attacks on the U.S. financial
industry to retaliate for abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Nor does it mean that cyber terrorism, particularly attacks on
critical infrastructure, is of no concern. In 2007, Idaho National Lab researchers experimented with cyber attacks on
their own facility; they learned that remotely changing the operating cycle of a power generator could make it catch
fire. Four years later, the Los Angeles Times reported that white-hat hackers hired by a water provider in California
broke into the system in less than a week. Policymakers must worry that real-world versions of such attacks might
have a ripple effect that could, for example, knock out parts of the national power grid or shut down a municipal or

so far, what terrorists have accomplished in the cyber realm

doesnt match our fears, their dreams or even what they have managed through traditional means.
even regional water supply. But

Status quo is prepared in cybersecurity prevents all impacts

Green, Washington Monthly editor, 02 (Joshua, November 02,
Washington Monthly, The Myth of Cyberterrorism,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html,
accessed 6-29-15, MAM)
When ordinary people imagine cyberterrorism, they tend to think along
Hollywood plot lines, doomsday scenarios in which terrorists hijack nuclear
weapons, airliners, or military computers from halfway around the world.
Given the colorful history of federal boondoggles--billion-dollar weapons
systems that misfire, $600 toilet seats--that's an understandable concern.
But, with few exceptions, it's not one that applies to preparedness for a
cyberattack. "The government is miles ahead of the private sector when it
comes to cybersecurity," says Michael Cheek, director of intelligence for
iDefense, a Virginia-based computer security company with government
and private-sector clients. "Particular+9ly the most sensitive military
systems." Serious effort and plain good fortune have combined to bring
this about. Take nuclear weapons. The biggest fallacy about their

vulnerability, promoted in action thrillers like WarGames, is that they're

designed for remote operation. "[The movie] is premised on the
assumption that there's a modem bank hanging on the side of the
computer that controls the missiles," says Martin Libicki, a defense analyst
at the RAND Corporation. "I assure you, there isn't." Rather, nuclear
weapons and other sensitive military systems enjoy the most basic form of
Internet security: they're "air-gapped," meaning that they're not physically
connected to the Internet and are therefore inaccessible to outside hackers .
(Nuclear weapons also contain "permissive action links," mechanisms to
prevent weapons from being armed without inputting codes carried by the
president.) A retired military official was somewhat indignant at the mere
suggestion: "As a general principle, we've been looking at this thing for 20
years. What cave have you been living in if you haven't considered this
[threat]?" When it comes to cyberthreats, the Defense Department has been
particularly vigilant to protect key systems by isolating them from the
Net and even from the Pentagon's internal network. All new software must
be submitted to the National Security Agency for security testing.
"Terrorists could not gain control of our spacecraft, nuclear weapons, or any
other type of high-consequence asset," says Air Force Chief Information
Officer John Gilligan. For more than a year, Pentagon CIO John Stenbit has
enforced a moratorium on new wireless networks, which are often easy to
hack into, as well as common wireless devices such as PDAs, BlackBerrys,
and even wireless or infrared copiers and faxes.

No serious cyber attacks- even at worse it would still cause

minimal distruction
Lewis, Former Departments of State and Commerce, 2011 (July
11, James Andrew, Center for Strategy & International Studies, Cyber
Attacks, Real or Imagined, and Cyber War,
http://csis.org/publication/cyber-attacks-real-or-imagined-and-cyberwar, accessed 6-29-2015, CM)
Only by adopting an exceptionally elastic definition of cyber attack
can we say they are frequent. There have been many annoyances, much
crime, and rampant spying, but the only incidents that have caused
physical damage or disruption to critical services are the alleged
Israeli use of cyber attack to disrupt Syrian air defenses and the
Stuxnet attacks against Irans nuclear facilities. An extortion attempt
in Brazil against a public utility may have backfired and temporarily
disrupted electrical service. A better way to identify an attack is to rely on
equivalence, where we judge whether a cyber exploit is an attack by

asking if it led to physical damage or casualties. No damage, no casualties,

means no attack. Many militaries are developing attack capabilities,
but this is not some revolutionary and immensely destructive new
form of warfare that any random citizen or hacker can engage in at
will. Nations are afraid of cyber war and are careful to stay below
the threshold of what could be considered under international law
the use of force or an act of war. Crime, even if state sponsored, does
not justify a military response. Countries do not go to war over
espionage. There is intense hostile activity in cyberspace, but it
stays below the threshold of attack. The denial-of-service efforts against
Estonian and Georgian websites in 2007 and 2008 were not attacks. The
Estonian incident had a clear coercive purpose, and it is worth considering
whether the denial-of-service exploit against Estonia could have become the
equivalent of an attack if it had been extended in scope and duration. The
exploits against Georgia, while undertaken with coercive intent and closely
coordinated with Russian military activities (and a useful indicator of how
Russia will use cyber warfare), did no damage other than to deface
government websites. The recent escapades involving groups like
Anonymous or Lulzsec do not qualify as attacks. Anonymous and
Lulzsec did not disrupt critical operations of the companies or
agencies they struck. There was embarrassment, but no damage,
destruction, or casualties. These were political actionscyber
demonstrations and graffitispun up by media attention and copycatting.
Some nationsRussia in particularargue that political actions are in fact
the core of the new kind of warfare, and the issue is really information
warfare rather than cyber warfare. They have said that information is a
weapon and that the United States will exploit the Internet to destabilize
governments it opposes. Information is a threat to authoritarian regimes, and
they want to limit access to websites and social networks. This effort to
extend cyber attack to include access to information, however, makes little
sense. It distorts long-standing ideas on warfare and military action by
disconnecting them from the concept of the use of armed force and violence.
The use of force produces immediate physical harm and is central to defining
attack and warfare. The concept is incorporated in elements of the UN
Charter and the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Publishing or sharing an
idea is not the use of force. Though an expanded definition of warfare may
serve the political interests of authoritarian regimes, it is not an accurate
description of military action or attack. There are countries that could launch
damaging cyber attacks. At least 5 militaries have advanced cyber-attack
capabilities, and at least another 30 countries intend to acquire them. These
high-end opponents have the resources and skills to overcome most
defenses. Just as only a few countries had aircraft in 1914 but most militaries

had acquired them 10 years later, every military will eventually acquire some
level of cyber-attack capability. Cyber attacks will likely be used only in
combination with other military actions, but they will be part of any
future conflict. We can regard them as another weapons system with both
tactical and strategic uses, similar to missiles or aircraft that can be launched
from a distance and strike rapidly at a target. Stuxnet, for example, was a
military grade cyber exploit and a precisely targeted alternative to
an airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities. It did less damage than an
air attack but avoided distressing photos of burning buildings and
claims of civilian casualties. The political effect on the Iranian
people was negligible, while an airstrike would have prompted an
emotional reaction. Military planners now have an additional system to
consider in their portfolio of weapons and attacks, which offers a new and
attractive combination of effect and risk. The Aurora test at the Idaho
National Labs and the Stuxnet worm show that cyber attacks are capable of
doing physical damage. Leading cyber powers have carried out network
reconnaissance against critical infrastructure in preparation for such attacks.
But these infrastructure are the most dangerous form of attack, and
therefore hold the most risk for the attacker. At the onset of conflict, attacks
that seek to disrupt and confuse are more likely than infrastructure attacks.
Cyber warfare will begin with the disruption of crucial networks and data and
seek to create uncertainty and doubt among opposing commanders. The
goal will be to increase the Clausewitzian fog of war. This informational
aspect of cyber war, where an opponent might scramble or erase data or
insert false information to mislead an opponent, is a new and powerful
military tool. The Battle of Britain is a historical example of this kind of
warfare. If the Germans had first destroyed the relatively simple network of
sensors, control facilities, and communications systems used by Royal Air
Force Fighter Command to maneuver defending aircraft, it would have
seriously degraded British air capabilities and made ultimate success much
more likely. They did not because they did not fully realize how warfare had
changed to emphasize the importance of these intangible assets. Exploiting
signals, data, and communications had become essential for military
superiority. Future warfare between advanced opponents will begin with
efforts to degrade command and control, manipulate opponent data, and
misinform and confuse commanders (accompanied by electronic warfare
actions, along with kinetic strikes on communications networks and perhaps
satellites). Cyber exploits will be the opening salvo and a short-notice
warning of impending kinetic attack. Strikes on critical infrastructure carry a
higher degree of risk for the attacker if they are used against targets outside
the theater of military operations or in the opponents homeland. An attack
on the networks of a deployed military force is to be expected. Attacks on

civilian targets in the opponents homeland are another matter and may
escalate any conflict. Military planning will need to consider when it is
beneficial to launch cyber attacks that damage critical infrastructure in order
to strain and distract the opposing political leadership, and when it is better
to limit any cyber strikes to military targets in theater. This is one area where
cyber attack, because of its global reach, may resemble nuclear war. Just as
the U.S. Single Integrated Operations Plan and other documents listed and
prioritized targets for nuclear weapons, based on satellite and other forms of
reconnaissance, an astute cyber planner will identify and prioritize targets for
cyber strikes under different conflict scenarios. A full-blown, no-holdsbarred cyber attack against critical infrastructure and networks
might be able to reproduce the damage wrought by Hurricane
Katrina, with crucial services knocked out and regional economic
activity severely curtailed. While Katrina brought immense suffering
and hardship, it did not degrade U.S. military capabilities and would
not have led to a U.S. defeat. Multiple, simultaneous Katrinas would still
not guarantee victory and could risk being seen as an existential threat that
would justify a harsh kinetic response. There are many examples of militaries
attacking targets that were irrelevant to success and only inflamed the
opponent, so we cannot rule out such attacks (which could be very appealing
to terrorist groups, should they ever acquire the ability to launch them), but
no one should believe that this is a decisive new weapon. The only decisive
weapons ever developed were nuclear weapons, and even then, many would
have been needed to overcome an opponent. Pure cyber warkeyboard
versus keyboard or geek versus geekis unlikely. Cyber attacks
are fast, cheap, and moderately destructive, but no one would plan
to fight using only cyber weapons. They are not destructive enough
to damage an opponents will and capacity to resist. Cyber attacks
will not be decisive, particularly against a large and powerful
opponent. The threat of retaliation that is limited to a cyber
response may also not be very compelling. Cyber attack is not much
of a deterrent.

Internet Freedom

UQ Global Internet
US set to relinquish control of the Internet-gradual shift to a
truly global Internet
Hyman 15 (Leonard, former Google Public Policy Analyst, Hyman 2/19/15
(Leonard, "US to Scale Back Its Role In Internet Governance")
Even though the Internet has long been an international community,
the United States has always been at its center. However, that all
may be about to change as the U.S. Department of Commerce scales
back its role in Internet governance. The transition is a gradual one,
but by the end of the year, the DOC is expected to give up its
oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) to the international community. The concept of
Internet governance may seem like a bizarre one since it often seems like
the Wild West out there. The most tangible example of ICANNs impact on
Internet governance is management of the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) functions: When you type a domain name in your browser
(e.g. TechCrunch.com), it connects you with the long, multi-digit IP address
that would otherwise be impossible to remember. On its face, it may not
seem like a big deal who manages this process. As long as TechCrunch.com
actually gets you to TechCrunch.com, does it really matter if its the U.S.,
ICANN, or some random guy whos behind it? But that question assumes that
your URL actually gets you to your destination. If a foreign government
doesnt want you accessing a certain URL, why not redirect you into a dead
end? After all, naysayers argue, some countries already have robust firewalls,
so why give them more control? The Department of Commerce claims
that by scaling back its role, it will be promoting innovation and
inclusion. After all, if the Internet supposedly belongs to the world,
shouldnt it actually belong to the world? Further, they maintain that it
wont relinquish control until safeguards are in place to prevent that from
happening. (Will it live up to that promise? Well see!) At the same time,
U.S. leadership in this area was called into question perhaps
justifiably after Snowdens NSA surveillance leaks. This is one of
the factors that has nudged the U.S. toward giving up its contract.
Maybe the international community would do a better job than we
have. As unfortunate as censorship would be for foreign countries, the
bigger challenge for the average American may be managing the domains
themselves. Over 1,000 generic Top Level Domains (e.g. dot-search, dot-eco,
dot-docs, etc.) are slated to go live in the coming months. It could easily be a
headache for corporations to buy the thousands of domains related to their
brand. (Imagine if amazon.buy took you to the wrong site.) Of course, it
could be an even bigger hassle for the budding startup, not to mention

ICANN itself overseeing this entire process without the support of the U.S.
government. The Department of Commerces process of fully handing over
the reins wont be complete until later this year; its contract with ICANN
expires in September. In the meantime, ICANN is slated to begin its next
round of sessions in Buenos Aires in June. And because its a multistakeholder process, public participation is welcomed. If youre concerned
about the impact ICANNs increasing independence could have on a free and
open Internet and you fancy a trip to South America I hear Argentina is
lovely that time of year.

Impact Turn Democracy Bad Minority Rights

Impact turn: Democracy is a bad form of government it
cannot effectively deal with minorities and their interests
Imfeld and Longchamp, 15 (Martina and Claude, Claude is a
Swiss historian and political scientist, Democracy is the best of all bad
forms of government http://www.swissinfo.ch/directdemocracy/directdemocracy_democracy-is-the--best-of-all-bad-forms-ofgovernment-/41220700)
Martina Imfeld: As a social scientist Id say it all depends on how the
questions are framed and which ones are fed into the decision-making
process. The democratic system is the best of all bad forms of government.
The point is not how voters respond but the fact that certain
problems are neglected or tackled too slowly by the system. Direct
democracy has many advantages. A majority decision is the best way to
resolve conflicts. But there is one flaw: how to deal with minorities.
Our research has found that it is highly problematic if majority
interests are imposed on minority interests in an insensitive way. If
we come back to the minaret ban, Muslims, who make up about 4% of Swiss
residents, have no chance in a majority-ruled democracy of realising their
wishes to have minarets. The system of direct democracy shows its
limits when dealing with issues of cultural and religious minorities.
Decisions by a majority can even become a form of tyranny. Claude
Longchamp: Legal experts are very familiar with this, for example, when
dealing with the issue of whether or not democratic decisions can overrule
human rights.

Impact Defense AT: Democracy

No solvency -- Information bursts from the Internet are not the key to overturning
authoritarianism
Evgeny Morozov, 2012, Morozov is a writer and researcher of Belarusian origin who studies
political and social implications of technology. He is currently a senior editor at The New
Republic. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Kindle Edition, page location at
end of card
This highly stylized account of modern authoritarianism tells us more about Western biases than
it does about modern authoritarian regimes. The persistence of modern authoritarianism can
be explained by a whole variety of factorsenergy endowment, little or no previous
experience with democratic forms of rule, covert support from immoral Western
democracies, bad neighbors but an uninformed citizenry that cries out to be liberated by
an electronic bombing of factoids and punchy tweets is typically not one of them . Most
citizens of modern-day Russia or China do not go to bed reading Darkness at Noon only to wake
up to the jingle of Voice of America or Radio Free Europe; chances are that much like their
Western counterparts, they, too, wake up to the same annoying Lady Gaga song blasting from
their iPhones. While they might have a strong preference for democracy, many of them take
it to mean orderly justice rather than the presence of free elections and other institutions
that are commonly associated with the Western model of liberal democracy. For many of
them, being able to vote is not as valuable as being able to receive education or medical care
without having to bribe a dozen greedy officials. Furthermore, citizens of authoritarian states do
not necessarily perceive their undemocratically installed governments to be illegitimate, for
legitimacy can be derived from things other than elections; jingoist nationalism (China), fear of a
foreign invasion (Iran), fast rates of economic development (Russia), low corruption (Belarus),
and efficiency of government services (Singapore) have all been successfully co-opted for these
purposes. Morozov, Evgeny (2012-02-28). The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet
Freedom (p. 86). PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.

US cant export democracy

Evgeny Morozov, 2012, Morozov is a writer and researcher of Belarusian origin who studies
political and social implications of technology. He is currently a senior editor at The New
Republic. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Kindle Edition, page location at
end of card

But there is more to Obamas silence than just his reasonable attempt to present himself as antiBush. Most likely his silence is a sign of an extremely troubling bipartisan malaise: the growing
Western fatigue with the project of promoting democracy. The project suffers not just from bad
publicity but also from a deeply rooted intellectual crisis. The resilience of authoritarianism in

places like Belarus, China, and Iran is not for lack of trying by their Western partners to
stir things up with an expectation of a democratic revolution. Alas, most such Western
initiatives flop, boosting the appeal of many existing dictators, who excel at playing up the
threat of foreign mingling in their own affairs. To say that there is no good blueprint for
dealing with modern authoritarianism would be a severe understatement. Lost in their own
strategizing, Western leaders are pining for something that has guaranteed effectiveness. Many of
them look back to the most impressive and most unambiguous triumph of democracy in the last
few decades: the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. Not surprisinglyand who can blame
them for seeking to bolster their own self-confidence?they tend to exaggerate their own role in
precipitating its demise. As a result, many of the Western strategies tried back then, like
smuggling in photocopiers and fax machines, facilitating the flow of samizdat, and
supporting radio broadcasts by Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America, are given
much more credit than they deserve. Such belated Cold War triumphalism results in an
egregious logical fallacy. Since the Morozov, Evgeny (2012-02-28). The Net Delusion: The
Dark Side of Internet Freedom . PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.

Privacy

No Violation
Surveillance necessary, in no way violates fourth amendment
Walpin, journalist, 13
(Gerald, August 16, National Review, We need NSA surveillance,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355959/we-need-nsa-surveillancegerald-walpin, June 28, 2015, GG)
After repeatedly, and correctly, proclaiming that phone and e-mail
surveillance by the NSA is both necessary and constitutional, the
president has succumbed to left and libertarian pressure: He has proposed
installation in NSA of a full-time civil-liberties and privacy officer and other
mechanisms in the transparency community. A transparency community
within an intelligence community is an unworkable oxymoron. Any civilliberties and privacy officer installed in NSA would, to show that he is
performing, have to impede intelligence activities a burden we do
not need in our already difficult war on terrorism. Our Constitutions
authors and proponents warned against bowing to the sort of demagoguery
that lies behind attacks on the NSA program as an unconstitutional
invasion of our rights. The Federalist Papers the bible of the
Constitutions meaning warn at the outset (No. 1) of those who
invoke supposed rights of the people to oppose the governments
efforts to defeat an enemy seeking to destroy us: A dangerous
ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of
the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness
and efficiency of government. Continuing, Publius (probably Alexander
Hamilton) explains why: History will teach us that the former has been
found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the
latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics,
the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court
to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants. This warning
is repeated: The Governments powers for the common defense . .
. ought to exist without limitation: because it is impossible to
foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or
the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary
to satisfy them (No. 23). Again, our Founding Fathers opposed every
project that is calculated to disarm the government of a single
weapon, which in any possible contingency might be usefully
employed for the general defense and security (No. 36). Abraham
Lincoln reiterated that view when attacked for violating constitutional rights
by suspending habeas corpus: Would not the official oath be broken, if the
government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding
the single law would tend to preserve it? Our Founders and Lincolns

teaching is even stronger when applied to the NSA: Its surveillance

program violates no constitutional provision. It examines only the
addressee and sender on e-mails, and telephone numbers called and
called from. The Supreme Court has long held that such information
is not privacy-protected by the Fourth Amendment. As a former
federal prosecutor, I often obtained such evidence, through law-enforcement
tools known as pen registers and mail covers.

The Internet is not a public space

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)
Clintons assertion that the internet be treated as a public space is interesting in part because
it is definitively not a public space. It is a series of privately owned and operated computer
networks and servers accessible to internet users around the world. These varied networks
and servers are each governed by the laws of the host state and the interests of the
individual or corporate proprietor. Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The
Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of Communication)
(Kindle Locations 4189-4192). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

There no expectation of privacy in a public space

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)
Moreover, from a legal perspective, a public space is a publicly owned area that must be
accessible to all. Freedom of assembly and expression in public spaces are treated
differently, legally, from private and anonymous speech. There are, for example, no
expectations of privacy in a public space and no protections for anonymous speech in a
public square. Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The Real Cyber War: The
Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of Communication) (Kindle Locations
4195-4197). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Solvency

Circumvention
The NSA wont accept reforms
Bradley, Forbes Contributor, 2014 (January 17, Tony, Forbes, NSA
Reform: What President Obama Said, What He Didnt,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2014/01/17/nsa-reform-whatpresident-obama-said-and-what-he-didnt/, accessed 6-29-2015, CM)
Part of the problem in trying to rein in the activities of the NSA is
that there was already a Constitution in place, and there was
already some manner of congressional oversight. The NSA seems to
have decided that its mission and the interests of national security
trumped the rules, and operated with impunity despite those
restrictions. There are no guarantees that these reforms will affect
any real change, and its virtually impossible to monitor the
activities of an agency that exists in the shadows of national
security.

Congress actions fail to make a lasting change- Attorney

General has the ability to continue surveillance
Bazan and Elsea, both Congressional Research Service, 06
(Elizabeth and Jennifer, January 5th, Congressional Research Service,
Presidential Authority to Conduct Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to
Gather Foreign Intelligence Information,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/m010506.pdf, Page #25-26, 06/25/15, MM)
In particular, 50 U.S.C. 1802 permits the Attorney General to order
electronic surveillance without a court order for up to one year to
acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one
year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that the electronic surveillance is solely directed at
means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers or on property or premises under the
open and exclusive control of a foreign power (the definition here does not include international terrorist
organizations) where there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will 87 CRS-26 (...continued) 87
directed and controlled by such foreign government or governments; (4) a group engaged in international terrorism
or activities in preparation therefor; (5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United
States persons; or (6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments. However,
for the purpose of 1802, only subsections 1801(a)(1) through (3) are included. Minimization procedures are
specific procedures implemented with respect to a particular 88 surveillance in order to minimize the acquisition
and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of information concerning unconsenting U.S. persons required to be
protected. See 50 U.S.C. 1801(h). Section 314(a)(2)(B) of P.L. 107-108,the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2002, 115 89 Stat. 1402 (Dec. 28, 2001), H.Rept. 107-328, replaced 24 hours with 72 hours in each place that
it appears in 50 U.S.C. 1805(f). For a discussion of declarations of war and authorizations for the use of military
force, see CRS 90 Report for Congress RL31133, Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military
Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications, by David M. Ackerman and Richard F. Grimmett. acquire the
contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and minimization procedures are put in
place. The Attorney General is also required to report 88 minimization procedures to the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 30 days in advance.

The 30-day

requirement can be waived if the Attorney General determines

immediate action is required, in which case he is to notify the
committees immediately of the minimization procedures and the
reason for the urgency. The FISA court is to receive a copy of the
certifications under seal. The emergency authorization provision in
50 U.S.C. 1805(f) authorizes the Attorney General to issue
emergency orders to permit electronic surveillance prior to
obtaining a court order if the Attorney General determines that
emergency conditions make it impossible to obtain an order with
due diligence before the surveillance is begun. The Attorney General or his
designee must immediately inform a FISA judge and submit a proper application to that judge as soon as
practicable, but not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General 89 authorizes such surveillance. Minimization
procedures must be followed. In the absence of a judicial order, the surveillance must terminate when the
information sought is obtained, when the application for the order is denied, or after the expiration of 72 hours from

No information obtained or evidence

derived from such surveillance may be used as evidence or
otherwise disclosed in any trial, hearing, or other government
proceeding, and no information concerning any U.S. person may be
disclosed at all without that persons consent except with the
Attorney Generals approval where the information indicates a
threat of disaster or serious bodily harm to any person.
the time the surveillance was authorized.

Despite congressional action, NSA surveillance still has

tactics to extend surveillance
Volz, Tech Policy reporter, 15 (Dustin, March 18th, NationalJournal,
Court: NSA Spying May Continue Even If Congress Lets Authority Expire,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/court-nsa-spying-may-continue-even-ifcongress-lets-authority-expire-20150318, 06/24/15, MM)
The National Security Agency may be allowed to continue scooping
up American phone records indefinitely even if congressional
authority for the spying program expires later this year, according
to a recently declassified court order. The legal underpinning of the
NSA's bulk collection of U.S. call data resides in a provision of the post-9/11
USA Patriot Act that is scheduled to sunset on June 1. The common
understanding among lawmakers and the intelligence community is that the
surveillance program will halt unless Congress reauthorizes Section 215 of
the Patriot Act in some fashion. But a passage buried on the last pages
of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
declassified last week leaves open the door for the program
exposed publicly by Edward Snowden nearly two years agoto
continue even if lawmakers let Section 215 lapse. "If Congress,
conversely, has not enacted legislation amending [Section 215] or

extending its sunset date," writes Judge James Boasberg, "the

government is directed to provide a legal memorandum
addressing the power of the Court to grant such authority beyond
June 1, 2015." The possibility of the NSA program continuing absent
congressional reauthorization was raised last year by The New York
Times, which pointed to an obscure provision of the Patriot Act that
allows the government to continue indefinitely a foreign intelligence
investigation that is ongoing and that began before the bill's
expiration. The Times article noted that administration officials were
dubious that President Obama would support leaning on such circular
justification to continue the NSA's mass collection of phone metadatathe
time stamps, numbers, and locations of a call, but not its actual contentsor
that the surveillance court would accept the rationale. But Boasberg's order,
which renewed the phone-records program until June 1 and was highlighted
by civil-liberties advocate and journalist Marcy Wheeler, appears to be the
first time such a scenario has been openly considered by the government.
"It's certainly a concern," said Liza Goitein, codirector of the Liberty
and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice,
which just released a report urging a bevy of FISA Court reforms.
"There's no way that the federal government is going to respond to
this by submitting a legal memorandum that says it does not have
the authority to do any more spying."

Topicality

International Organization
Bullrun is an international decryption program takes away all
international ground for neg
Larson, 13 (Jeff, Revealed: the NSAs Secret Campaign to Crack,
Undermine Internet Security
Many users assume or have been assured by Internet companies that
their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and
the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes
in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded
secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program codenamed Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J.
Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually
blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to
eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own back door in all encryption, it set out to

The agency, according to the documents and

interviews with industry officials, deployed custom-built, superfast
computers to break codes, and began collaborating with technology
companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points
into their products. The documents do not identify which companies
have participated.
accomplish the same goal by stealth.

Encryption =/= Surveillance

Interpretation---Patriot Act defines surveillance as the
acquisition of electronic contents in relation to a US
person
Small 08 (Matthew, His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance,
Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis,
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf,
Page 2, MM, 06/27/15)
This papers analysis, in terms of President Bushs policies, focuses on
electronic surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and obtaining
caller information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot
Act of 2001 defines electronic surveillance as: [T]he acquisition by
an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the
contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to
be received by a particular, known United States person who is in
the United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally
targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a
person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would
be required for law enforcement purposes; Adhering to the above
definition allows for a focused analysis of one part of President Bushs
domestic surveillance policy as its implementation relates to the executives
ability to abridge certain civil liberties. However, since electronic surveillance
did not become an issue of public concern until the 1920s, there would seem
to be a problem with the proposed analysis.

Violation---BULLRUN itself is not a surveillance program

Greene, Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Attorney, and
Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation International Rights
Director, 14 (David and Katitza, May 28th, Electronic Frontier Foundation,
NSA Mass Surveillance Programs Unnecessary and Disproportionate,
06/27/15, MM)
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/05/29/unnecessary_and_disproportionate.pdf,
06/27/15, MM)
Not in and of itself a surveillance program, BULLRUN is an operation
by which the NSA undermines the security tools relied upon by
users, targets and non-targets, and US persons and non-US persons
alike. The specific activities include dramatic and unprecedented efforts
to attack security tools, including: Inserting vulnerabilities into

commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint

communications devices used by targets; Actively engaging US and foreign
IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial
products' designs; Shaping the worldwide commercial cryptography
marketplace to make it more vulnerable to the NSAs surveillance
capabilities; Secretly inserting design changes in systems to make them
more vulnerable to NSA surveillance, and Influencing policies, international
standards, and specifications for commercial public key technologies.

***Disads***

Terror DA

Links
NSA surveillance sovles terror-lack of foreign attacks on US
since 9/11 proves
Francis, journalist, 13
(David, June 11, Business Insider, 5 Reasons Why The NSA's Massive
Surveillance Program Is No Big Deal (And 2 Reasons It Is),
http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-surveillance-prism-phone-nsa-big-deal2013-6, June 28, 2015, GG)
Civil libertarians have cried foul, saying the data mining violated personal
privacy and the 4th Amendments protection against unlawful search.
Lawmakers on both sides of the isle fired back, claiming that the
surveillance programs were necessary to prevent terrorism and that
revealing information about them gives an advantage to U.S.
enemies. Right now, we know that there are active threats against
the United States," Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Sunday morning. "We
have terrorist threats that continue. There are possible security
incidences that continue. And that's just the world that we live in.
Cantor said the House of Representatives would investigate Snowdens
actions. White House spokesperson Tim Carney declined to comment on
Snowden Monday. He said President Obama "would welcome" a conversation
about surveillance but not about the leaks that caused it. There are still
lingering questions about whether these revelations actually give terrorists
and other countries a leg up against the United States. Here are five reasons
that PRISM is no big deal, as well as two reasons why Americans need to be
worried about what the government and its 5 million security-cleared
workers could do. 1. Online surveillance has been effective and is an
important tool in the fight against terrorism. Lawmakers have said
that data mining stopped attacks in the United States and overseas.
The programs also provide U.S. authorities with leads on potential
and existing terrorists. One NSA official told the Washington Post that
PRISM provided a field of dots which allowed authorities to connect the
relevant ones. But the best justification for the program has been
what has not occurred. Since 9/11, there has only been one major
terror attack on U.S. soil. 2. Weve been under surveillance for more than
a decade. The government has been monitoring online and telephone
activity for more than a decade. During the Bush years, NSA was able to
monitor phone calls without a warrant. President Obama said he has put
strict protocols in place that require judicial review and a warrant
for all PRISM targets. He and other officials also said the government is
not listening to your conversations or reading your email. Its simply
identifying phone numbers that could be connected to terrorists.

Decryption is key to stop terrorism allows tracking of

terrorists online
RT, news channel, 15 (6-30-2015, "Apple, Google helping terrorists with
encryption Manhattan DA," No Publication, http://rt.com/usa/251469-applegoogle-encryption-terrorists/)//GLee
Allowing users to take advantage of advanced encryption in order to
keep their messages and mobile communication out of the
governments hands will only help terrorists plot future attacks , a
top New York law enforcement official said. The new encryption
services offered by Apple and Google will make it harder to protect
New Yorkers, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told local
AM970 radio host John Cats. He mentioned built-in encryption
which Apple claims its own engineers cannot break means that
federal and local law enforcement bodies wont be able to intercept
communications between potential criminals and terrorists, even if
they acquire a warrant. When Cats suggested, terrorists are running out to buy iPhones, Vance responded by saying, he was absolutely
right. If individuals who are seeking to do serious harm to our citizenry know they have a device that they can use with impunity and that the contents of their messages and images
on their phones cannot be accessed by law enforcement that's going to be the terrorists community device of choice, he added, according to the Daily Dot. In addition to Apple, Google

Apple
has created a phone that is dark, that cannot be accessed by law
enforcement even when a court has authorized us to look at its
contents, Vance said. In response, Vance wants police departments around the country to register their opposition with politicians and for hearings
is also incorporating encryption into its mobile devices. The two tech giants smartphones comprise 96 percent of the global market, the New York Post mentions.

on the issue to take place. On its website, Apple says that encryption is enabled end-to-end on its devices and that it has no way to decrypt iMessage and FaceTime data when its in
transit between devices. Additionally, the company states, We wouldnt be able to comply with a wiretap order even if we wanted to. Other features such as iCloud and Mail also offer
some encryption protections. Vance isnt the only law enforcement official to come out against widespread encryption. In October, New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton

FBI Director James Comey also blasted the

development. "There will come a day -- well it comes every day in
this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of
people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain
access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device, Comey
said. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. In a blog post at the Wall Street Journal, Amy Hess of the FBI clarified the
heavily criticized Apple and Google for the move, and

bureaus position on the issue, which has seen a surge in support since former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed a massive domestic and international surveillance
operation. She said law enforcement officials will need some degree of access to encrypted messages in order to stop criminal and violent plots in the future. No one in this country

The notion that electronic devices and

communications could never be unlocked or unencrypted even
when a judge has decided that the public interest requires
accessing this data to find evidence is troubling. It may be time to
ask: Is that a cost we, as a society, are prepared to pay ?
should be beyond the law, she wrote.

Multiple officials say that encryption actual creates terrorists

Cameron, Daily Dot reporter, 15 (Dell, 4-20-2015, "Apple and Google are
helping the terrorists win, says top NYC official," Daily Dot,

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/cyrus-vance-jr-apple-google-terroristsencryption/)//GLee
A Manhattan district attorney came awfully close to accusing Google and Apple of supporting terrorism during a

District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. has been

a vocal opponent of Apples built-in encryption since the company
began offering it by default last year in response to rising public
concerns over privacy. "The implications of this are that it is going
to affect our ability to protect New Yorkers," he told AM970 host
John Cats. Vance said that Apples "unilateral decision" has serious
national security implications, including allowing "homegrown
violent extremists and terrorists to communicate with each other, to
send messages without law enforcement being able to identify what
theyre saying." "And that's definitely going to hurt law enforcement," Cats responded, "and, I guess
terrorists are running out to buy iPhones." "You're absolutely right," Vance replied, "that if individuals
who are seeking to do serious harm to our citizenry know they have
a device that they can use with impunity and that the contents of
their messages and images on their phones cannot be accessed by
law enforcement that's going to be the terrorists community device
of choice." Vance laid out his argument against cellphone encryption in an op-ed for the Washington Post
last September. "Today, nearly every criminal case has a digital
component," he wrote. "Much of the evidence required to identify,
locate and prosecute criminals is stored on smartphones." Vance provided
Sunday interview with an AM radio host.

three case examplesgang members discussing a shooting on video, a man taking pictures up womens skirts on
the subway, and an identity thiefwhich he argued could not have been prosecuted as effectively if the

These
opinions closely mirrored that of FBI Director James Comey, who in
October during a speech at the Brookings Institute said, "encryption
threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place." Comey further
suggested that cellphone encryption is a sign that the "postSnowden pendulum has swung too far." During Comeys speech, the FBIs official
perpetrators had smartphone software incorporating Apple and Googles privacy guarantees.

website advised users that cellphone encryption can be used to protect the users personal data in case of loss or
theft. The advice was subsequently deleted. Likewise, visitors are no longer advised to passcode protect your
mobile device. Its nearly impossible, however, to erase something once its been online. The FBIs Web page,
complete with advice to encrypt, can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine. Vance went on to say that the
debate over cellphone encryption has nothing to do with domestic spying or the controversies surrounding the
National Security Agency (NSA). The issue with Apple and Google changing their operating systems is not that
issue. ... This is not an issue of the NSA. Privacy advocates argue the exact opposite, noting that the only reason
the NSA is unable to intercept the iMessages and FaceTime calls of Americans is the default end-to-end encryption
used by those services. FaceTime calls are not stored on any of Apples servers, and users have the option of
disabling the iCloud-backup feature to prevent iMessage and SMS message from being stored. For years, the FBI
has repeatedly and publicly expressed its desire to wiretap online communications, such as FaceTime and Google
Chat, in real-time.

NSAs most successful program, Bullrun, is key to stopping

terrorism specific examples
Larson 13
(Jeff, Data Editor at ProPublica, winner of the Livingston Award, and B.A. in
English Language and Literature, September 5, Propublica, Revealed: The
NSAs Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security,
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crackundermine-internet-encryption, Accessed: 6.29.15, VW)
Many users assume or have been assured by Internet companies that
their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and
the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent
successes in deciphering protected information as among its most
closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly
classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the
documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A.
contractor. What's New Here The NSA has secretly and successfully worked
to break many types of encryption, the widely used technology that is
supposed to make it impossible to read intercepted communications.
Referring to the NSA's efforts, a 2010 British document stated: "Vast
amounts of encrypted Internet data are now exploitable." Another British
memo said: "Those not already briefed were gobsmacked!" The NSA has
worked with American and foreign tech companies to introduce
weaknesses into commercial encryption products, allowing backdoor
access to data that users believe is secure. The NSA has deliberately
weakened the international encryption standards adopted by developers
around the globe. Documents BULLRUN Briefing Sheet from GCHQ SIGINT
Enabling Project Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually
blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine
campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in
the 1990s to insert its own back door in all encryption, it set out to
accomplish the same goal by stealth. The agency, according to the
documents and interviews with industry officials, deployed custom-built,
superfast computers to break codes, and began collaborating with
technology companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points
into their products. The documents do not identify which companies have
participated. The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages
before they were encrypted. And the agency used its influence as the worlds
most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the
encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around
the world. For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged
effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies, said a 2010

memo describing a briefing about N.S.A. accomplishments for employees of

its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.
Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted
Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.
When the British analysts, who often work side by side with N.S.A. officers,
were first told about the program, another memo said, those not already
briefed were gobsmacked! An intelligence budget document makes clear
that the effort is still going strong. We are investing in groundbreaking
cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit
Internet traffic, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.,
wrote in his budget request for the current year. In recent months, the
documents disclosed by Mr. Snowden have described the N.S.A.s broad
reach in scooping up vast amounts of communications around the world. The
encryption documents now show, in striking detail, how the agency works to
ensure that it is actually able to read the information it collects. The
agencys success in defeating many of the privacy protections offered by
encryption does not change the rules that prohibit the deliberate targeting of
Americans e-mails or phone calls without a warrant. But it shows that the
agency, which was sharply rebuked by a federal judge in 2011 for violating
the rules and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, cannot
necessarily be restrained by privacy technology. N.S.A. rules permit the
agency to store any encrypted communication, domestic or foreign, for as
long as the agency is trying to decrypt it or analyze its technical features.
The N.S.A., which has specialized in code-breaking since its creation
in 1952, sees that task as essential to its mission. If it cannot
decipher the messages of terrorists, foreign spies and other
adversaries, the United States will be at serious risk, agency officials
say. Just in recent weeks, the Obama administration has called on
the intelligence agencies for details of communications by Qaeda
leaders about a terrorist plot and of Syrian officials messages about
the chemical weapons attack outside Damascus. If such
communications can be hidden by unbreakable encryption, N.S.A.
officials say, the agency cannot do its work.

Link Booster
NSA has prevented 54 terrorist attacks internationally and is
key to continuing to prevent them
Kelly, 13 (Heather, NSA Chief: Snooping is crucial to fighting terrorism
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/tech/web/nsa-alexander-black-hat/)//MEB
The National Security Agency's controversial intelligence-gathering
programs have prevented 54 terrorist attacks around the world,
including 13 in the United States, according to Gen. Keith Alexander,
NSA director. Speaking before a capacity crowd of hackers and security
experts Wednesday at the Black Hat computer-security conference,
Alexander defended the NSA's embattled programs, which collect
phone metadata and online communications in an effort to root out
potential terrorists. The secret programs have come under fire since their
existence was revealed in June by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden,
who leaked details about them to several newspapers. "I promise you the
truth -- what we know, what we're doing, and what I cannot tell you because
we don't want to jeopardize our future defense," Alexander told the
audience, which included a few hecklers who shouted profanities and
accused him of lying.

Decryption Link Scenario

Terrorists using more complex encryption now
Kumar 14(Mohit, The Hacker News, May 14, Terrorist Group Al-Qaeda Uses
New Encryption Softwares After NSA Revelations,
http://thehackernews.com/2014/05/al-qaeda-encryption-tool.html, 2015-6-29,
DLS)
Last year, Just after Snowden leaks, the U.S Government warned that
NSA surveillance revelations will make harder to track bad guys
trying to harm the United States, as disclosures can be helpful to
terrorist groups. In response to the NSA revelations, the terrorists at AlQaeda have started using strongest encryption techniques in order
to bypass the standard cryptographic protections in its various
communications, according to the recent report released by the Threat
Intelligence company, Recorded Future. The analysis carried out by the
intelligence firm revealed that the Infamous Terrorist Organizations, AlQaeda that attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, has
switched to new encryption software for the first time in seven
years, following the revelations of the US National Security Agency (NSA) by
former contractor Edward Snowden. Al-Qaeda is a global militant Islamist
and takfiri organization which operates as a network comprising both a
multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling
for global jihad. Since 2007, Al-Qaeda was using their own built encryption
software, Mujahideen Secrets for the online and cellular communications, but
the intelligence firm has noticed that now they are using number of
new encryption tools and adopting new services like mobile, instant
messaging, and Mac as well, to mask its communications with
overseas' operatives. The nature of these new crypto products
indicates strategy to overlay stronger and broader encryption on
Western (mainly US) consumer communication services, states the
report. We do not find evidence of abandonment of US-based consumer
communication services. Likely risks are still greater to hide outside the
consumer crowd, and non-US-based services may be exposed to even
stronger lawful intercept. The three different terrorist organisations
associated with Al-Qaeda - GIMF, Al-Fajr Technical Committee and ISIS released three new major encryption tools within a three-to-five
month period of the Snowden leaks, according to the report.

Bullrun is needed to decrypt phones criminals use

RT 2014(No author, April 21, TV Novosti, Apple, Google Helping Terrorists
with Encryption, , 2015-6-29, DLS)

Allowing users to take advantage of advanced encryption in order to keep

their messages and mobile communication out of the governments hands
will only help terrorists plot future attacks, a top New York law enforcement
official said. The new encryption services offered by Apple and Google
will make it harder to protect New Yorkers, Manhattan District Attorney
Cyrus Vance Jr. told local AM970 radio host John Cats. He mentioned builtin encryption which Apple claims its own engineers cannot break
means that federal and local law enforcement bodies wont be able
to intercept communications between potential criminals and
terrorists, even if they acquire a warrant. When Cats suggested,
terrorists are running out to buy iPhones, Vance responded by saying,
he was absolutely right. If individuals who are seeking to do serious harm
to our citizenry know they have a device that they can use with impunity and
that the contents of their messages and images on their phones cannot be
accessed by law enforcement that's going to be the terrorists community
device of choice, he added, according to the Daily Dot. In addition to Apple,
Google is also incorporating encryption into its mobile devices. The two tech
giants smartphones comprise 96 percent of the global market, the New York
Post mentions. Apple has created a phone that is dark, that cannot
be accessed by law enforcement even when a court has authorized
us to look at its contents, Vance said. In response, Vance wants police
departments around the country to register their opposition with politicians
and for hearings on the issue to take place. On its website, Apple says that
encryption is enabled end-to-end on its devices and that it has no way to
decrypt iMessage and FaceTime data when its in transit between devices.
Additionally, the company states, We wouldnt be able to comply with
a wiretap order even if we wanted to. Other features such as iCloud
and Mail also offer some encryption protections. Vance isnt the only law
enforcement official to come out against widespread encryption. In October,
New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton heavily criticized
Apple and Google for the move, and FBI Director James Comey also blasted
the development. "There will come a day -- well it comes every day in
this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of
people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain
access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device, Comey
said. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country
before that day comes. In a blog post at the Wall Street Journal, Amy Hess
of the FBI clarified the bureaus position on the issue, which has seen a surge
in support since former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed a
massive domestic and international surveillance operation. She said law
enforcement officials will need some degree of access to
encrypted messages in order to stop criminal and violent plots in

the future. No one in this country should be beyond the law, she wrote.
The notion that electronic devices and communications could never be
unlocked or unencrypted even when a judge has decided that the public
interest requires accessing this data to find evidence is troubling. It may
be time to ask: Is that a cost we, as a society, are prepared to pay?

Encryption backdoors are intended to stop terrorists-the NSA

claims
Masnnick, CEO of Floor64 and editor of the Techdirt blog, 13
(Mike, 9/6/15, Techdirt, NSA Defends Encryption Backdoors By Promising It's Only Used To Spy On All Of Us,
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130906/09472224429/nsa-defends-encryption-breaking-promising-its-onlyused-to-spy-all-us.shtml, 6/28/15, YA)

The Director of National Intelligence has now responded to the

unveiling of the fact that the NSA inserted backdoors in various forms of
encryption and recruited internal spies at telco companies with one of his typically
ridiculous statements using carefully parsed words. It sounds like the NSA
rushed out that statement, because the attempt to assure the public that it's just being used on bad people leaves
open a pretty large loophole. See if you can spot it:

Throughout history, nations have

used encryption to protect their secrets, and today, terrorists,

cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide
their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its
job if we did not try to counter that.

Highlighting added by me. Here's a tip: when trying to

reassure the public that you're not abusing your powers, and that you're breaking basic encryption used widely
across the internet for their own good by narrowly targeting whom it's used against, maybe (just maybe) don't
include a hedge word that includes every human being on earth. As Ken White noted, we are all "others" here.
We've already noted that previous leaks, concerning "minimization" have shown that the NSA people believe that if
your data is encrypted then they can keep it, because you might be evil, and that comes through here as well.

They keep trying to focus on how this is just about stopping

terrorists, but it always leaves that massive loophole for "others." So, once again, the NSA's
attempt to insist that what it's doing is narrow and targeted and
just after "the bad guys,"

yet again only breeds further reasons to trust the NSA even less. As

White notes, this whole situation is particularly disturbing because so much can be classified under "others" that
should be seen as reasonable and normal activity of a person who questions whether the government is really
acting as a representative of the people. I am the other because I do not trust my government in general, or the
people working for its security apparatus in particular. I am the other because I believe the Security State and its
representatives habitually lie, both directly and by misleading language, about the scope of their spying on us. I
believe they feel entitled to do so. I am the other because I believe the Security State and its representatives
habitually violate such modest restrictions as a complacent and compliant legislature puts on their spying again,
because they feel entitled to do so. I am the other because I don't believe the Security State and its representatives

when they say that

government spying is reserved for foreign terrorists. In

fact, the NSA's "minimization" techniques touted as methods for

restricting spying to foreign terrorists instead of U.S. citizens are often transparently
and insultingly ridiculous.

Mass Surveillance made by the government is intended to stop

terrorism
Chen, HP laboratories, et al., 14
(Jia Liu, Mark D. Ryan, Liqun Chen, 6/19-22/14, Computer Security Foundations Symposium, Balancing Societal
Security and Individual Privacy: Accountable Escrow System, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?
arnumber=6957127&tag=1, 6/28/15, YA)

The world learned that the USA and other Western nations are
amassing data about the minutiae of our daily lives on an
unprecedented scale, when the former intelligence worker Edward
Snowden began an ongoing series of revelations in June 2013. The
data includes all forms of electronic communications between
people, as well as web accesses, and financial and transport data,
and the physical movements of people collected through mobile
phone location tracking. Much outrage has justifiably been expressed by academics [6], [8], [9], [1], politicians
[2], journalists [11], and, somewhat hypocritically, by the very companies that enabled it to happen [10].

Nevertheless,

the purpose of this mass surveillance is well-motivated, namely, to

detect and prevent serious crimes such as terrorism and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Protecting citizens from harm is
indeed the first duty of government, and in a civilized society individuals have to some extent to
be accountable to society as a whole. Privacy is therefore not an absolute right, but has to be balanced against other requirements,
such as societal security. But the revelations raise major questions for society about how the masses of data about us recorded by
computers every day can be used.

O/W Privacy
Society has exaggerated the value of privacy in order for
people to improve their own image-a decrease in privacy is
necessary to deter terrorists and protect national security
Posner 13 (Richard, judge on the United States Court of Appeals, Daily
News 4-28, Privacy is overrated,
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/privacy-overrated-article-1.1328656?
print)
This past Monday, Mayor Bloomberg said that in the wake of the
Boston Marathon bombings, the countrys interpretation of the
Constitution will have to change in order to enable more effective
prevention of and response to terrorist attacks and other violence,
such as attacks on schoolchildren. In particular, he wants a more
welcoming attitude toward surveillance cameras, which played a
crucial role in the apprehension of the Boston Marathon bombers and
would have been crucial had Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev come to New
York to detonate a bomb in Times Square, as they apparently planned to.
(Bloomberg has also announced a Domain Awareness System that will
consolidate and distribute information received by the cameras and other
tracking devices.) All of which is to say that he wants concerns with
privacy to take second place to concerns with security. I strongly
agree, though Im not sure that the Constitution will have to be
reinterpreted in order to enable the shift of emphasis that he (and I) favor.
Neither the word privacy nor even the concept appears anywhere in the
Constitution, and the current Supreme Court is highly sensitive, as it should
be, to security needs. The Court can and doubtless will adjust the
balance between privacy and security to reflect the increase in longrun threats to the lives of Americans. There is a tendency to
exaggerate the social value of privacy. I value my privacy as much
as the next person, but there is a difference between what is
valuable to an individual and what is valuable to society. Thirty-five
years ago, when I was a law professor rather than a judge, I published an
article called The Right of Privacy, in which I pointed out that privacy is
really just a euphemism for concealment, for hiding specific things
about ourselves from others. We conceal aspects of our person, our
conduct and our history that, if known, would make it more difficult for us to
achieve our personal goals. We dont want our arrest record to be made
public; our medical history to be made public; our peccadilloes to be made
public; and so on. We want to present sanitized versions of ourselves
to the world. We market ourselves the way sellers of consumer
products market their wares highlighting the good, hiding the

bad. I do not argue that all concealment is bad. There is nothing wrong with
concealing wealth in order to avoid being targeted by thieves or concealing
embarrassing personal facts, such as a deformity or being related to a
notorious criminal, that would not cause a rational person to shun us but
might complicate our social and business relations. There may even be
justification for allowing the concealment of facts that might, but should not,
cause a person to be shunned. Laws that place a persons arrest (as distinct
from conviction) record behind a veil of secrecy are based on a belief that
prospective employers would exaggerate the significance of such a record,
not realizing, for example, that arrests are often based on mistakes by
witnesses or police officers, or are for trivial infractions. Privacy-protecting
laws are paternalistic; they are based on a skepticism regarding whether
people can make sensible evaluations of an arrest record or other private
facts that enter the public domain. Still, a good deal of privacy just
facilitates the personal counterpart of the false advertising of goods
and services, and by doing so, reduces the well-being of society as a
whole. I am not suggesting that privacy laws be repealed. I dont think that
they do much harm, and they do some good, as just indicated. But I dont
think they serve the public interest as well as civil libertarians
contend, and so I dont think that such laws confer social benefits
comparable to those of methods of surveillance that are effective
against criminal and especially terrorist assaults. More than effective:
indispensable. How much more havoc might the two Boston Marathon
bombers have wreaked had they remained unidentified for weeks? The
critics of surveillance cameras invoke the specter of the telescreen, a twoway television that thus operates as a surveillance camera, which figures in
George Orwells great novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the critics miss two
important distinctions. The first is that the telescreen is inside peoples
homes in every room, and monitored by state security personnel (Big
Brother is watching you). The second distinction is that the nation in
Orwells novel Airstrip One (actually England) is a Soviet-style
totalitarian dictatorship. (Coincidentally, England today apparently has more
surveillance cameras than any other nation, some 4 million.) Our
government is not totalitarian, and surveillance cameras, when
indoors (in retail stores for example), are generally invited and
controlled by the owner of the premises. The surveillance cameras
installed by the government are, by and large, in public areas,
mainly streets, where privacy is anyway limited by the fact that one
is visible and audible to other people. True, the cameras create a
record, as ordinary eavesdropping does not, but is this enough of a
difference to offset the security benefits of surveillance? I think not.
I live in a city Chicago that is said to have more than 10,000 public and

private surveillance cameras. I am not troubled by them. Critics argue that

surveillance cameras dont prevent terrorism or other criminal
attacks but merely facilitate apprehension of the malefactors.
Obviously, surveillance cameras didnt prevent the Boston Marathon attacks.
But they may well have prevented further attacks planned by the bombers,
including whatever destruction they may have attempted to cause in New
York City. Moreover, the criticism ignores deterrence. By increasing the
likelihood that terrorists or other criminals will be apprehended,
surveillance cameras increase the expected cost of punishment.
That will not deter all attacks, but it will deter many. Civil liberties
groups, notably the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, of course do not limit their concerns to surveillance
cameras. They worry, too, about governmental surveillance of peoples
computer files and other stored data. But I dont think they appreciate that
this is a two-way street. Surveillance technology used by our
government is also used by our enemies. We must keep up; we
cannot resign from the technological revolution.

Politics

Obama Will Push the Plan

Obama supports surveillance reform- proved by Freedom ACT
Fabian, political editor for NBC News-Univision, 5/7/15
(Jordan, The Hill, White House asks Congress to pass NSA reform
legislation, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/241364-whitehouse-asks-congress-to-pass-nsa-reform-legislation, June 25, 2015, GG)
The White House on Thursday endorsed a bill that would reform the
National Security Agencys controversial bulk data collection program.
Press secretary Josh Earnest said Congress should pass the USA Freedom Act,
which has support from Democrats and Republicans in both chambers.
POTUS believes we must be vigilant on terror threat; also said
surveillance needed reform & he meant it, Earnest wrote on Twitter.
Obamas backing of the legislation increases the possibility of a showdown
with Republican leaders as Congress faces a June 1 deadline to renew parts
of the Patriot Act that are set to expire. Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) and GOP security hawks oppose the USA Freedom Act,
saying the surveillance programs are critical for identifying national security
threats. At the same time, McConnell is pushing for a clean extension of
the Patriot Act that would keep intact Section 215, which authorizes the bulk
data collection program. The White House has stopped short of threatening a
veto of McConnells bill, but called for changes that would repeal Section
215. The USA Freedom Act would effectively end the NSAs existing phonerecords collection program. Instead, it would require the agency to obtain a
court order before collecting records from phone companies, among other
changes. The USA Freedom Act has received a tepid reaction from advocates
who want stricter limits on the NSAs surveillance powers. Opponents of the
NSA program received a boost on Thursday when a federal appeals court
ruled that the agencys bulk collection of Americans phone records is illegal.
National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the White House is in
the process of evaluating the decision handed down this morning, but
urged Congress to move forward with reform. Without commenting
on the ruling today, the president has been clear that he believes we
should end the Section 215 bulk telephony metadata program as it
currently exists by creating an alternative mechanism to preserve the
programs essential capabilities without the government holding the bulk
data, he said

Obama fought for NSA reform- pushed Senate for USA Freedom
Act
Fabian, political editor for NBC News-Univision, 5/29/15
(Jordan, The Hill, Obama pleads that Senate act on NSA reform,
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/243503-obama-pleads-that-senateact-on-nsa-reform, June 25, 2015, GG)
Weve only got a few days, Obama said. Authorities expire Sunday at
midnight and I dont want us to be in a situation where for a certain period of
time those authorities go away. ... Ive indicated to Leader McConnell and
other senators, I expect them to take action and take action swiftly.It
appears increasingly likely those authorities, which the White House has
deemed crucial to national security, will be allowed to lapse. The White
House says the only way to avoid that would be to pass the USA
Freedom Act, the measure cleared by the House. It would revamp the NSAs
phone records program, while renewing other authorities, such as roving
wiretaps for terror suspects. But McConnell has refused to support the
measure, saying it would deprive counterterrorism officials of key powers.
McConnell is backed by other GOP hawks, including Sen. Richard Burr (RN.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Rand Paul (RKy.) is taking the opposite position. He argues the House bill does not go far
enough in reforming the program, and argues the Patriot Act should be
allowed to expire. There are no signs of a resolution, and its not clear what
bills the senators will consider on Sunday. Obama said the only thing
thats standing in the way of the USA Freedom Act is a handful of
senators who are resistant to these reforms." This is not an issue
where we have to choose between security and civil liberties, this is
an issue in which we in fact have struck the right balance and
shaped a piece of legislation that everybody can support, he said.
So lets go out and get it done.

Obama supports NSA reform

Fabian, White House correspondent for The Hill, 5/7 (Jordan
Fabian, 5-7-2015, "White House asks Congress to pass NSA reform
legislation," The Hill, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/241364white-house-asks-congress-to-pass-nsa-reform-legislation //NK)
The White House on Thursday endorsed a bill that would reform the
National Security Agencys controversial bulk data collection
program. Press secretary Josh Earnest said Congress should pass the USA Freedom Act, which has support
from Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. POTUS believes we must be vigilant

on terror threat; also said surveillance needed reform & he meant

it, Earnest wrote on Twitter. Obamas backing of the legislation increases the possibility
of a showdown with Republican leaders as Congress faces a June 1 deadline to renew parts of the Patriot Act that
are set to expire. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and GOP security hawks oppose the USA Freedom
Act, saying the surveillance programs are critical for identifying national security threats. At the same time,
McConnell is pushing for a clean extension of the Patriot Act that would keep intact Section 215, which authorizes
the bulk data collection program. The White House has stopped short of threatening a veto of McConnells bill, but
called for changes that would repeal Section 215. The USA Freedom Act would effectively end the NSAs existing
phone-records collection program. Instead, it would require the agency to obtain a court order before collecting
records from phone companies, among other changes. The USA Freedom Act has received a tepid reaction from
advocates who want stricter limits on the NSAs surveillance powers. Opponents of the NSA program received a
boost on Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled that the agencys bulk collection of Americans phone records

National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the White

House is in the process of evaluating the decision handed down
this morning, but urged Congress to move forward with reform.
Without commenting on the ruling today, the president has been
clear that he believes we should end the Section 215 bulk telephony
metadata program as it currently exists by creating an alternative
mechanism to preserve the programs essential capabilities without
the government holding the bulk data, he said.
is illegal.

Repubs Link
Broad NSA reform very unlikely- most Republicans resisting
further change
Gross, Telecom Policy for the IDG New Service, 15)
(Grant, June 5, Computer World, Don't expect Congress to make major
changes to NSA surveillance,
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2931445/technology-lawregulation/dont-expect-congress-to-make-major-changes-to-nsasurveillance.html, June 25, 2015, GG)
After the U.S. Congress approved what critics have called modest
limits on the National Security Agency's collection of domestic
telephone records, many lawmakers may be reluctant to further
change the government's surveillance programs. The Senate this week
passed the USA Freedom Act, which aims to end the NSA's mass
collection of domestic phone records, and President Barack Obama signed
the bill hours later. After that action, expect Republican leaders in
both the Senate and the House of Representatives to resist further calls
for surveillance reform. That resistance is at odds with many rank-and-file
lawmakers, including many House Republicans, who want to further limit
NSA programs brought to light by former agency contractor Edward
Snowden. Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates also promise to push
for more changes. It may be difficult to get "broad, sweeping reform"
through Congress, but many lawmakers seem ready to push for more
changes, said Adam Eisgrau, managing director of the office of government
relations for the American Library Association. The ALA has charged the NSA
surveillance programs violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. "Congress
is not allowed to be tired of surveillance reform unless it's prepared to say
it's tired of the Fourth Amendment," Eisgrau said. "The American public will
not accept that." Other activists are less optimistic about more
congressional action. "It will a long slog getting more restraints," J.
Kirk Wiebe, a former NSA analyst and whistleblower said by email. "The
length of that journey will depend on public outcry -- that is the one thing
that is hard to gauge." With the USA Freedom Act, "elected officials have
opted to reach for low-hanging fruit," said Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity
researcher and surveillance critic. "The theater we've just witnessed allows
decision makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass
surveillance while spies understand that what's actually transpired
is hardly major change.

***Counterplans***

XO CP

Solvency

XO order
Obama is the only one with the power to enact effective NSA
reform- XO 12333 proves
EEF, no date
(Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tell Obama: Stop Mass Surveillance Under
Executive Order 12333, https://act.eff.org/action/tell-obama-stop-masssurveillance-under-executive-order-12333, June 29, 2015, GG)
The NSA relies on Executive Order 12333 to engage in mass
surveillance of people around the world. But most people have never
even heard of this presidential order. Its time to respect the privacy rights of
innocent people, regardless of their nationality. Tell Obama: amend Executive
Order 12333 to prohibit mass surveillance. Executive orders are legally
binding orders given by the President of the United States which
direct how government agencies should operate. Executive Order
12333 covers "most of what the NSA does" and is "the primary
authority under which the countrys intelligence agencies conduct
the majority of their operations."1 So while the U.S. Congress is
considering bills to curtail mass telephone surveillance, the NSAs primary
surveillance authority will be left unchallenged. Its time to change
that. Last July, former State Department chief John Napier Tye came forward
with a damning account of Executive Order 12333, which he published in The
Washington Post2. Thanks to his account and the reports of others who have
spoken out candidly against surveillance under E.O. 12333, we know:
Executive Order 12333 is used to collect the content of your
communications including Internet communications like emails and text
messages. Executive Order 12333s has no protections for non-U.S.
persons, a fact that has been used to justify some of the NSA's most
extreme violations of privacy, including the recording of an entire country's
telephone conversations. Executive Order 12333 is used to collect
information on U.S. persons who are not suspected of a crime. As Tye
wrote, "It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be suspected of
wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S.
persons that may be collected and retained." No US court has seriously
considered the legality and constitutionality of surveillance
conducted under Executive Order 12333. This executive order was signed
by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, many years before the Internet was
widely adopted as a tool for mass communication. A stroke of the U.S.
President's pen over thirty years ago created the conditions that led
to our global surveillance system. The present President could fix it
just as easily.

Obama must reform NSA through XO 12333- only he has the

authority
Tye, former U.S. State Department employee, 14
(John Napier, July 18, Washington Post, Meet Executive Order 12333: The
Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-thereagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b9311e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html, June 29, 2015, GG)
Public debate about the bulk collection of U.S. citizens data by the
NSA has focused largely on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, through
which the government obtains court orders to compel American
telecommunications companies to turn over phone data. But Section 215
is a small part of the picture and does not include the universe of
collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons
authorized under Executive Order 12333. From 2011 until April of this
year, I worked on global Internet freedom policy as a civil servant at the
State Department. In that capacity, I was cleared to receive top-secret and
sensitive compartmented information. Based in part on classified facts that
I am prohibited by law from publishing, I believe that Americans should be
even more concerned about the collection and storage of their
communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215.
Bulk data collection that occurs inside the United States contains
built-in protections for U.S. persons, defined as U.S. citizens, permanent
residents and companies. Such collection must be authorized by statute and
is subject to oversight from Congress and the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court. The statutes set a high bar for collecting the
content of communications by U.S. persons. For example, Section 215
permits the bulk collection only of U.S. telephone metadata lists of
incoming and outgoing phone numbers but not audio of the calls.
Executive Order 12333 contains no such protections for U.S. persons
if the collection occurs outside U.S. borders. Issued by President
Ronald Reagan in 1981 to authorize foreign intelligence
investigations, 12333 is not a statute and has never been subject to
meaningful oversight from Congress or any court. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, has said that the committee has not been able to
sufficiently oversee activities conducted under 12333. Unlike Section
215, the executive order authorizes collection of the content of
communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons
cannot be individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However,

if the contents of a U.S. persons communications are incidentally collected

(an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence
investigation, then Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes
their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be
suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of
communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and retained.
Incidental collection may sound insignificant, but it is a legal loophole that
can be stretched very wide. Remember that the NSA is building a data center
in Utah five times the size of the U.S. Capitol building, with its own power
plant that will reportedly burn $40 million a year in electricity. Incidental
collection might need its own power plant. A legal regime in which U.S.
citizens data receives different levels of privacy and oversight,
depending on whether it is collected inside or outside U.S. borders, may
have made sense when most communications by U.S. persons stayed inside
the United States. But today, U.S. communications increasingly travel
across U.S. borders or are stored beyond them. For example, the Google
and Yahoo e-mail systems rely on networks of mirror servers located
throughout the world. An e-mail from New York to New Jersey is likely to wind
up on servers in Brazil, Japan and Britain. The same is true for most purely
domestic communications. Executive Order 12333 contains nothing to
prevent the NSA from collecting and storing all such
communications content as well as metadata provided that such
collection occurs outside the United States in the course of a lawful
foreign intelligence investigation. No warrant or court approval is
required, and such collection never need be reported to Congress.
None of the reforms that Obama announced earlier this year will
affect such collection.

XO 12333 authorizes intelligence not overseen by Congress

Abdo, former National Security Project attorney, 14
(Alex, September 29, ACLU, New Documents Shed Light on One of the NSA's
Most Powerful Tools, https://www.aclu.org/blog/new-documents-shed-lightone-nsas-most-powerful-tools, June 29, 2015, GG)
Today, we're releasing several key documents about Executive Order
12333 that we obtained from the government in response to a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit that the ACLU filed (along with the Media Freedom
and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School) just before the first
revelations of Edward Snowden. The documents are from the National
Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and others
agencies. They confirm that the order, although not the focus of the

public debate, actually governs most of the NSA's spying. In some

ways, this is not surprising. After all, it has been reported that some of
the NSA's biggest spying programs rely on the executive order, such
as the NSA's interception of internet traffic between Google's and
Yahoo!'s data centers abroad, the collection of millions of email and
instant-message address books, the recording of the contents of
every phone call made in at least two countries, and the mass
cellphone location-tracking program. In other ways, however, it is
surprising. Congress's reform efforts have not addressed the
executive order, and the bulk of the government's disclosures in
response to the Snowden revelations have conspicuously ignored
the NSA's extensive mandate under EO 12333. The order, issued by
President Ronald Reagan in 1981, imposes the sole constraints on U.S.
surveillance on foreign soil that targets foreigners. There's been some
speculation, too, that the government relies directly on the order as
opposed to its statutory authority to conduct surveillance inside
the United States. There's a key difference between EO 12333 and the two
main legal authorities that have been the focus of the public debate
Section 215 of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, which the
government relies on to justify the bulk collection of Americans' phone
records and the PRISM program. Because the executive branch issued
and now implements the executive order all on its own, the
programs operating under the order are subject to essentially no
oversight from Congress or the courts. That's why uncovering the
government's secret interpretations of the order is so important. We've
already seen that the NSA has taken a "collect it all" mentality even with the
authorities that are overseen by Congress and the courts. If that history is
any lesson, we should expect and, indeed, we have seen glimpses of
even more out-of-control spying under EO 12333.

Executive Branch currently controls majority of domestic

surveillance through XO 12333
LaChance, journalist for US News, 14
(Naomi, July 21, U.S. News, Should Executive Order 12333 Be Repealed?,
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/07/21/should-the-reagan-eransa-executive-order-12333-be-repealed, June 29, 2015, GG)
A former State Department official has raised awareness about a
Reagan-era practice that permits spying on U.S. citizens with little
oversight. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, John Napier Tye writes
that Executive Order 12333 should raise red flags for Americans

concerned about the boundaries of surveillance. "Even after all the

reforms President Obama has announced," Tye writes, "some intelligence
practices remain so secret, even from members of Congress, that
there is no opportunity for our democracy to change them."
Executive Order 12333 was approved in 1981. It permits government
intelligence agencies to monitor certain content without a court
order or warrant. Metadata, the digital trail that reveals users' locations
and certain actions, may also be monitored. Tye points to a loophole that
permits extended reach. When communications are "incidentally"
collected, the information is allowed to be kept. This turn of phrase,
Tye writes, "places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S.
persons that may be collected and retained." Because this order does
not demand consent from any party before surveillance, Tye argues that
individual companies are responsible for using their own security in order to
keep their information private. Unlike fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden,
who leaked information about NSA surveillance, Tye has not disclosed
classified information. Indeed, Tye's piece may not be a huge revelation to
those who closely follow the ins and outs of government monitoring. "Tye's
op-ed, unfortunately, only confirms our fears," wrote Alex Abdo, a staff
attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We have yet to get a full and
clear explanation from the NSA of its various surveillance authorities,
particularly as they impact U.S. citizens and residents. Instead, we have
received half-answers and artfully crafted denials." Tye filed a complaint with
the State Department claiming that Executive Order 12333 violates the
Fourth Amendment. He has also voiced concern to both the House and
Senate intelligence committees and the inspector general of the National
Security Agency. "This act of conscience illuminates yet another path a
surveillance whistleblower can take. If more current and former federal
officials believe the NSA is in flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment,
they should consider declaring themselves too," wrote Conor Friedersdorf at
the Atlantic. "I wonder what he saw but isn't revealing." Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, said last year that the committee cannot "sufficiently"
monitor Executive Order 12333. I dont think privacy protections
are built into it, she said. Its an executive policy. The executive
controls intelligence in the country.

XO 12333 collects American data incidentally, doesnt

require a warrant to do so
Nakashima, journalist, 14

(Ellen, July 23, The Washington Post, Privacy watchdogs next target: the
least-known but biggest aspect of NSA surveillance,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/23/privacywatchdogs-next-target-the-least-known-but-biggest-aspect-of-nsasurveillance/, June 29, 2015, GG)
That highly technical name masks a constellation of complex
surveillance activities carried out for foreign intelligence purposes
by the National Security Agency under executive authority. But unlike
two other major NSA collection programs that have been in the news lately,
EO 12333 surveillance is conducted without court oversight and with
comparatively little Congressional review. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight
Board, an independent executive branch agency, over the last year has taken in-depth looks at the other two NSA
programs. It concluded the bulk collection of Americans phone call metadata under Section 215 of the Patriot Act
was illegal and raised constitutional concerns. By contrast, it found the gathering of call and email content under
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to be lawful, though certain elements pushed close to the

Now the board is planning to delve into EO 12333

collection, among other topics. It is not clear, however, how deep or broad
its examination will be. Its obviously a complex thing to look at
12333, but "it's something we'll likely be delving into, said a member of
the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board who requested anonymity in
order to speak freely. The board has highlighted 12333 issues in the past. For
example, each agency is supposed to have guidelines to carry out the
executive order, but some guidelines are three decades old. The
board has encouraged the guidelines be updated, the source said.
Collection outside the United States has attained new relevance
given media reports in the last year about broad NSA surveillance based on
documents leaked to journalists by former agency contractor Edward
Snowden. Americans should be even more concerned about the
collection and storage of their communications under Executive
Order 12333 than under Section 215, said a former State Department
official, John Napier Tye, in an op-ed published Sunday in The Washington
Post. Issued in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, EO 12333 laid out the
roles and powers of the various intelligence agencies. It specified
that the NSA had control of signals intelligence collection for foreign
intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. But the nature and
scope of the collection activities have not been clarified for the
public. Unlike surveillance inside the United States or which targets U.S.
citizens and legal residents, collection under 12333 does not require a
warrant. Once upon a time, you could be fairly certain that overseas
collection would pick up only foreigners phone calls, and that Americans
communications would stay inside the United States. But today, emails, calls
and other communications cross U.S. borders and are often stored beyond
them. Companies like Google and Yahoo have mirror servers around the
line of being unconstitutional.

world that hold customers data. That means Americans data are often
stored both in the United States and abroad simultaneously, subject
to two different legal and oversight regimes. Surveillance on U.S. soil
requires court permission and an individual warrant for each target.
Surveillance abroad requires a warrant for U.S. persons, but if
collection is coming from a data center overseas, large volumes of
Americans communications may be picked up as incidental to
collection on a foreign target. So a lot of ordinary data crosses
borders, including domestic communications between Americans, said
Edward W. Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University. Or as
former NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis has said of the falling away of
borders in cyberspace: There is not an away game. There is not a home
game. There is only one game. With the merging of the home and away
games, the question arises as to whether a legal regime that bases privacy
protections and oversight largely on geography is sufficient, analysts say.
The Post reported last fall, for example, that NSA was collecting 500,000
e-mail account address books a day outside the United States
from companies such as Yahoo and Google. According to documents
obtained from Snowden, the agency was collecting the data through secret
arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or allied
intelligence services in control of facilities that direct traffic along the
Internets main data routes. Although the collection takes place overseas,
two senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that it
incidentally sweeps in the contacts of many Americans, the article
said. The Post also reported that the agency in conjunction with Britains
GCHQ, was collecting data traveling between Google and Yahoo data centers
overseas. In Googles case, that was up to 6 million records a day, according
to a slide obtained from Snowden. The firms have since said they are
encrypting the data moving between their data centers. EO 12333
collection is not available everywhere in the world, former U.S. officials
said. It is not as precise as collection from a U.S. carrier in the United States,
which can filter out unwanted communications. Under 12333, the agency is
collector and processor, said one former U.S. official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. Things go by and you
now have to figure out which things are of interest to you. And those things
are incredibly fractured and packetized. Tye said before he left the State
Department, he filed a complaint with its inspector general, as well as the
NSA inspector general, alleging that 12333 collection through its
incidental collection of Americans data, violated the Fourth
Amendments bar on unreasonable searches and seizures. Basically
12333 is a legal loophole, said Tye, who is now legal director at Avaaz, a
civil society group working on regional and national issues ranging from

corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. It allows the NSA
to collect all kinds of communications by Americans that the NSA
would not be able to collect inside the borders without a warrant.

Advantage CPs

International Effort CP
CP: NATO should
- Creates an international intelligence pool
- Hire Cyber defense experts
- international counter cyber attack exercises
- After-reaction analysis to respond to an attack
Solves cybersecurity
Aslan et al, Freelance Lawyer, 11 (Adil, Murat Dogrul, Eyyup Celik,
2011, Turkey Air War College, Developing an International Cooperation on
Cyber Defense and Deterrence against Cyber Terrorism,
https://ccdcoe.org/ICCC/materials/proceedings/dogrul_aslan_celik.pdf,
6/29/15, SV)
For all the reasons discussed above, it is an obligation to develop an
international game plan in order to fight against cyber terrorism. Therefore,
an 8-step global counter cyber-terrorism game plan is offered: Step 1.
Reaching to a common definition of terrorism and cyber terrorism is the
starting point. Which activities on the internet (e.g. hacking, propaganda,
attacking to infrastructures etc.) should be counted as cyber terrorism must
be defined exactly. Speaking the same language or creating a common
technical language could be a commencing point. Step 2. Essential national
and international legal measures have to be taken. International legal
arrangements should be realized. Then national legislation has to be
harmonized with the international legislation. Step 3. Both bilateral and
multilateral agreements on cyber security cooperation should be signed
among nations. Step 4. An intelligence pool should be created in order
to collect and share the intelligence simultaneously among the
nations. Collecting intelligence should include not only monitoring
terrorist websites but also collecting electronic evidence for the
potential incoming cyber attacks. Step 5. Cyber defense expert
teams should be created and charged internationally whenever a
country encounters with a cyber attack. The number of quick
response teams that countries own could be raised by the help of
NATOs Computer Incident Response Capability and Cooperative
Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence. An international counter cyber
attack response training programme should be established. Step 6.
International counter-cyber attack exercises should be planned and
executed in order to help the nations share their proficiency and
experience. Step 7. A well-organized international decision-making
process that spans from detection to destruction (or disruption) of

the cyber attack should be formed. Internationally authorized

executives should respond to any attack concerning international
security, based on agreed rules-of engagement. Step 8. Afterreaction analysis should be accomplished in order to identify and
improve the weak points of the system. A feedback should be
carried out for examining of the necessary innovations. In
consequence, cyber terrorism is a growing concern for the whole
international community. The current regime of international laws, norms,
and definitions not only insufficiently addresses cyber terrorism; it actually
intensifies the dangers of the threat by creating a gray area or gap that can
be exploited by cyber terrorists. Response to this global threat should be
global as well. National efforts should be coordinated internationally to be
successful against cyber terrorism. Countering this threat requires not
only legislative but also military cooperation including deterrence
strategies. United Nations and NATO are two key international
organizations. Due to UNs unique international character, and the powers
vested in its founding charter, the organization can take action on a wide
range of issues. Common definitions, international legal amendments and
multilateral agreements might be considered and discussed under UN. And
the steps concerning international military deterrence could be discussed
under NATO and shaped under the guidance of Strategic Concept of NATO. It
should be kept in mind that, international cooperation against
global cyber terrorism threat is crucial and developing further
proactive strategies for UN, NATO and other international
organizations (e.g. European Union, Council of Europe, G-8, OECD) is
essential.

Congressional Funding
CP: Congress should prioritize federal research funding for ICT
and cybersecurity research and development
Telecommunications Industry Association, leading trade
association representing the global information and
communications technology, 11 (TIA, 3/16/11, Telecommunications
Industry Association, Securing the Network: Cybersecurity
Recommendations for Critical Infrastructure and the Global Supply Chain
http://www.tiaonline.org//policy/securing-network-cybersecurityrecommendations-critical-infrastructure-and-global-supply, 6/29/15, SV)
Recommendation 4: Congress should prioritize federal research
funding for ICT and specifically cybersecurity research and
development.
While the U.S. still boasts the strongest research ecosystem in the
world, there are signs of erosion in the ICT sector as competing
nations take strong steps to attract investment in ICT research to
build innovation-based economies.[7] The consequences for the
U.S. ICT sector of a less competitive ICT research ecosystem are
very real. As the National Academy of Sciences observed, [t]he
nation risks ceding IT leadership to other generations within a
generation unless the United States recommits itself to providing
the resources needed to fuel U.S. IT innovation.[8] Yet the U.S.
government has not made a strong enough commitment to prevent
this forecast from becoming a reality federal investment in ICT
research remains relatively low compared to other scientific fields.
Beyond the economic costs of other nations surpassing the U.S. in
ICT research, the most alarming costs are in the implications for
national security. Congress should prioritize federal funding for
cybersecurity research and development, and should coordinate
research activities between different participating agencies with
industry input. Congress should also facilitate greater private
investment in research more generally through the enactment of a
permanent, simplified, R&D tax credit.

CIR CP
CP: Enact the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Solves the
economy and boosts the tech sector
Hinojosa-Ojeda, Ph.D. in Political Science, 12 (Raul, Winter 2012,
Cato Institute, The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration
Reform, http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/catojournal/2012/1/cj32n1-12.pdf, 6/29/15, SV)
The results of our modeling suggest that comprehensive immigration
reform would increase U.S. GDP by at least 0.84 percent per year.
Using 10-year GDP projections prepared by the Congressional Budget Office,
this translates into a steadily increasing amount of added annual GDP over
the coming decade. The 10-year total is at least $1.5 trillion in added
GDP, which includes roughly $1.2 trillion in additional consumption and $256
billion in additional investment. Comprehensive immigration reform
brings substantial economic gains even in the short runduring the
first three years following legalization. The real wages of newly legalized
workers increase by roughly $4,400 per year among those in lessskilled jobs during the first three years of implementation, and
$6,185 per year for those in higher-skilled jobs. The higher earning
power of newly legalized workers translates into an increase in net
personal income of $30 billion to $36 billion, which would generate
$4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional net tax revenue nationally, enough
to support 750,000 to 900,000 new jobs. Ultimately, only the federal
government can resolve the status of the undocumented. But for the
purposes of our analysis, we examine what would happen on a state and
county level if local workforces were fully legalized through comprehensive
immigration reform. In California, which faces a $25.4 billion budget
shortfall in 201112, this scenario would lead to a $27 billion
increase in labor income (pre-tax salary and wage earnings) that
would generate a $5.3 billion boost in tax revenue for the state and
add 633,000 desperately needed jobs to the economy. In Los Angeles
County, labor income would increase $10 billion through legalization,
leading to $1.9 billion in additional net tax revenue and 211,000 new jobs. In
Arizona, the same legalization scheme would generate $5.6 billion more in
labor income, leading to $1.68 billion in tax revenue and an additional
261,000 jobs. The wages of native-born workers also increase under
the comprehensive immigration reform scenario because the wage
floor rises for all workersparticularly in industries where large
numbers of easily exploited, low-wage, unauthorized immigrants
currently work. Wages for native-born U.S. workers increase by roughly
$162 per year for the less-skilled and $74 per year for the higher-skilled.

Under the temporary worker program scenario, wages fall for both lessskilled and higher-skilled native-born U.S. workers. And under the mass
deportation scenario, wages for less-skilled native-born workers actually rise,
but only at the cost of significantly fewer jobs as the economy contracts and
investment declines. The cost of this scheme to local economies, however, is
staggering. If Californias workforce were depleted by mass deportation, the
resulting contraction of the economy would mean a loss of $176 billion in
labor income and a reduction in gross product of $300 billion, or 17 percent
of the state economy. As a result, 3.6 million jobs would be lost. Los Angeles
County would be even harder hit, with the $60.1 billion loss in labor income
causing a 22 percent reduction in the local economy and the loss of 1.2
million jobs. Arizonas case is almost as severe, with the $29.5 billion the
state would lose in labor income as a result of mass deportation and the
$48.8 billion reduction in gross product representing a 20 percent depletion
of the economy and the loss of 581,000 jobs. The benefits of additional
U.S. GDP growth under the comprehensive immigration reform
scenario are spread very broadly throughout the U.S. economy, with
virtually every sector expanding. Particularly large increases occur in
immigrant-heavy industries such as textiles, ferrous metals, transportation
equipment, electronic equipment, motor vehicles and parts, nonelectric
machinery and equipment, capital goods, mineral products, and
construction. In comparison, every sector experiences significantly smaller
gains under the temporary worker scenario, while every sector contracts
under the mass deportation scenario.

FCC CP

Solvency
Current executive and legislative are inadequate
Healey, George Washington University Law School, magna cum
laude, 14
Audra, 12/14, Federal Communications Law Journal, A

Tale of Two Agencies: Exploring

Oversight of the National Security Administration by the Federal
Communications Commission, Lexis, 6/26/15, YA)
Existing executive and legislative oversight mechanisms are
inadequate in promoting efficiency and public confidence in the
NSA. The executive and legislative mechanisms currently in place to provide oversight of the NSA are
inadequate in promoting public confidence and effective national security. Ostensibly, the
activities of the NSA are generally governed by the Constitution, federal
law, executive orders, and regulations of the Executive Branch. 41 On
the legislative side, there are two congressional bodiesthe House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
(HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) that are responsible for ensuring that the
NSA follows the applicable laws and regulations.42 In the executive branch, NSA oversight is vested in the
Presidents Intelligence Advisory Board, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of
Justice. 43 Ostensibly, in addition to these legislative and executive oversight mechanisms, the NSA has also
implemented internal controls: the Office of the Inspector General performs audits and investigations while the

However, despite
the appearance of effective controls, these oversight mechanisms have
failed to prevent the current public crisis in confidence that the NSA is
fulfilling its mission with the least possible adverse impact on the
privacy of U.S. citizens. The authority of the NSA, subject to the above controls,
is very limited on paper. Every intelligence activity that the NSA
undertakes is purportedly constrained to the purposes of foreign
intelligence and counterintelligence.45 For instance, Executive Order 12,333 provides the
Office of Compliance operates to ensure that the NSA follows relevant standards.44

authority for the NSA to engage in the collection of communications by foreign persons that occur wholly outside
the United States.46 Additionally, FISA authorizes the NSA to compel U.S. telecommunications companies to assist
the agency in targeting persons who are not U.S. citizens and are reasonably believed to be located outside the

However, despite the appearances of controls, both external and internal,

the communications of U.S. persons are sometimes incidentally acquired in
targeting the foreign entities.48 The varying types of data gathered can produce a detailed
United States.47

map of a given persons life based on those persons with whom they are in contact.49 For instance, metadata can
be used to piece together substantial information about relationships; this information includes who introduced two
people, when they met, and their 100 FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL Vol. 67 general communication

The recently disclosed

collection of contact lists by the NSA has not been authorized by
Congress or FISA.51 Additionally, while other collection policies that touch upon
domestic communications, such as those under Section 702, have authorization, often
neither lawmakers nor the public have even a rough estimate of
how many communications of U.S. citizens are being acquired.52 The
NSA is easily able to operate around its apparent lack of authority.
One anonymous official has been quoted as saying that the NSA
consciously avoids the restrictions placed on it by FISA by collecting
patterns, as well as the nature and the extent of their relationships.50

this information from access points all over the world.53 This method
means that the NSA is not required to restrict itself to collecting
contact lists belonging to specified intelligence targets.54 The collection
mechanism ostensibly operates under the assumption that the bulk of the data collected through the overseas
access points is not data from American citizens.55 However, this is not necessarily true due to the globalized
nature of the Internet as a communications infrastructure, as data crosses boundaries even when its American

The oversight mechanisms currently applied to this

collection program require the NSA only to satisfy its own internal
oversight mechanisms or to answer possible inquiries from
executive branch that there is a valid foreign intelligence target
in the data collected. 57 Moreover, congressional oversight is not
effective because members of Congress have candidly said they do
not know precisely the right questions to ask NSA officials.58 Often, The
owners stay at home.56

talk encompasses the subject of how metadata can be used to determine the nature, extent, and timeline of a given
relationship between two people based on the metadata in their emails. It is important to note, however, that Issue

in congressional hearings, NSA officials and

other senior members of the intelligence community are evasive
unless directly pressed, and the congressional committees are
stymied by their lack of knowledge regarding just which questions
need asking.59 Given the realities of the NSA overstepping its authority, there is no indication to the public
1 A TALE OF TWO AGENCIES 101

that the agency, even as it has been collecting data from American citizens, has been required to answer to its
various oversight mechanisms in an effective manner. In response, President Obama directed the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to conduct two reports about NSA intelligence gathering methods.60 The
PCLOB is an independent, bipartisan agency within the executive branch tasked with reviewing and analyzing
executive branch actions taken in the name of national security to determine whether appropriate consideration
has been afforded to civil liberties in the development and implementation of national anti-terrorism policy.61

The recent PCLOB Report emphasizes that there is a: compelling danger . .

. that the personal information collected by the government will be
misused to harass, blackmail, or intimidate, or to single out for scrutiny
particular individuals or groups . . . . while the danger of abuse may
seem remote, given historical abuse of personal information by the
government during the twentieth century, the risk is more than merely
theoretical.62 The second report addressed more specifically Internet
surveillance activities of the NSAspecifically those undertaken pursuant to
Section 702.63 These reports demonstrate that there is a serious risk of
abuse of the data collected by the NSA, as well illustrating the
failings of current governmental oversight of NSA data collection
policies. this is a candid statement by a member of Congress in an
interview expressing uncertainty, rather than an official source. This
seems to indicate that, despite all the information that members of
Congress are privy to, members of the intelligence community are
often as closed-lipped as possible unless the exact right question is
asked in the exact right manner. 102 FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL Vol. 67
Moreover, according to some classified intelligence documents released by The Washington Post and other outlets,
the NSA appears to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data it is has collected, which indicates that the
mechanisms in place do not adequately help the NSA to focus its search. For instance, the NSA has begun to
implement a program (SCISSORS) in order to focus on the portion of the data that is relevant amongst the mass of
data collected.64 This is because the NSA was collecting broad swaths of data with little or no [foreign intelligence]

information.65 The first PCLOB report indicates that the NSA metadata collection program does not pass any
semblance of relevancy standards to target the data to a specific question of national security; this is because the
NSA does not have reason to suspect the owners of the metadata, unlike in other cases where the collection was
lawful.66 Thus, the current oversight system suffers from some serious failings. First, it does not allow for a focused
inquiry by the congressional committees. Additionally, the NSA can get around requirements imposed on it by FISA
by conducting Internet surveillance abroad that nonetheless captures U.S. data flows, many of which traverse
foreign networks. Moreover, the NSA has over-collected data with little value to the agencys national security
mission, and therefore must sift through masses of data involving regular American citizens while fighting a public
battle about how much information the agency collects.67 This all suggests deficiencies in the NSAs oversight
structure, as all preventive executive, legislative, and internal controls have not been effective. B. Stronger
oversight is also needed because the courts are ill-equipped to adequately review and oversee the NSA. Further

demonstrating that change in oversight is needed, federal courts,

including the FISA Court, have shown themselves inadequately
suited to oversee the NSAs activities. As discussed in the previous
subsection, existing oversight mechanisms have not stopped the
NSA from pursuing these aggressive and intrusive data collection
policies. Additionally, the courts too have a similar gap in reactive oversight. As such, some form of oversight
is needed to bridge the gap between preventative oversight by congressional committees and reactive oversight by
the FISA Court. This section first shows that the NSA defies judicial control, then discusses how the traditional
appellate process is ineffective, before arguing that the FISA Court is ineffective at controlling the NSAs data

The NSA is not effectively controlled by judicial

mechanisms: the agency violated the orders of the FISA Court that set out the parameters of permissible
collection policies.

surveillance. In 2009, the Department of Justice (DOJ) discovered that the NSA had been operating an automated
searching system contrary to FISA Court orders.68 The NSA acknowledged that the Courts orders did not provide
the agency with authority to employ the list of phone records in the manner in which it did.69 Separately, it was
also disclosed to the FISA Court that the NSA had violated the courts orders when thirty-one NSA analysts queried
the telephone records database. 70 Moreover, traditional courts without security clearance have limited authority

The regular
avenue of redress through trial and appellate courts does not
provide an adequate avenue of appeal for citizens challenging NSA
data collection. One primary drawback of the ordinary appellate process is its lack of uniformity. For
over the NSA.71 1. Traditional courts do not provide an adequate avenue of appeal.

instance, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York have reached wildly different conclusions while dealing with the same basic issue.72 In particular, the
United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted injunctive relief for citizens challenging NSA data
collection policies, holding that the public interest weighed in favor of relief on constitutional grounds.73 However,
the District Court for the Southern 104 FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL Vol. 67 District of New York found
that, while the right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, it is not absolute, and thus held that NSA
data collection practices were lawful.74 Moreover, while courts recently have not shied away from analyzing the
constitutional issues involved,75 these same opinions have indicated a healthy reluctance to overstep into issues
where jurisdiction is more questionable due to national security concerns.76 The regular appeals process generally
cannot, or at least is often unable to, consider national security information.77 Both this limitation and the lack of
uniformity show that the courts are not a guaranteed avenue for citizens to seek redress from NSA data collection
practices, nor do they provide one national voice to speak on such important topics that necessitate uniform and
effective review.78 2. The FISA Court is not providing an adequate level of publicly available oversight. Moreover,

the FISA Court, a specialized judicial entity which is intended to provide direct oversight over data
collection, is not providing an adequate level of publicly accountable
oversight. Unlike regular courts, the FISA Court does not provide a
mechanism for non-governmental parties to provide insight into the
particulars of any given case via amicus briefs.79 This characteristic of FISA Court
proceedings means that the Court does not take adequate account of positions other than the governments, which
in turn undermines the credibility and usefulness of the Court in cases involving 74. Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d at
75657. 75. See, e.g., Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d at 19 (finding that the court had the authority to review the
constitutional claim raised); Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 742 (finding that the court had authority to review the
constitutional claims raised). 76. See, e.g., Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d at 19 (holding that the court was barred from
reviewing the statutory claims based in the Administrative Procedure Act); Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 742 (noting
that the claims based on statutory grounds were precluded and would likely fail even if they were not). 77.

Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d at 19; Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 742. Indeed, the Klayman Court expressly noted that
the government regused to avail itself of in camera review that would allow the Court to view sensitive information.
Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d at 41 n.65. 78. For example, in debating the ultimate creation of the Court of Appeals for
the Federal Circuit, the Senate acknowledged that the structure of the federal courts does not facilitate uniformity
in circumstances of where a promt, definitive answer to legal questions of nationwide significance is required. S.
Rep. 97-275 at 14 (noting that the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit provides such a forum for
appeals from throughout the country in areas of the law where Congress determines that there is special need for
national uniformity. (emphasis added)).

FCC should provide oversight

The FCC has a
strong privacy background as well as a strong history of promoting
openness and transparency on the Internet. First, this section
shows the FCC has been extending many of its regulations to the
Internet and adapting to changes in technology as it does so.
Second, the FCC has a strong history of protecting the nations
communications infrastructure. The FCC has experience with
accounting for the globalized nature of communications.91 This section next
The FCC mission can be naturally expanded to protect privacy in relation to surveillance.

argues that the FCCs background in these areas prepares the agency to step into a new role overseeing the NSA
collection of data. Finally, this section discusses the benefits of tasking the FCC with this important oversight role.
87. See generally FISC Memorandum Opinion, supra note 23. 88. See PCLOB REPORT II, supra note 52, at 13. 89.
See, e.g., Klayman v. Obama, 957 F. Supp. 2d. 1 (D.D.C. 2013); ACLU v. Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d 724 (S.D.N.Y.
2013). 90. Compare Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d. 1, with Clapper, 959 F. Supp. 2d 724. As discussed above, these
recent judicial decisions regarding NSA data collection do not set a coherent precedent, and are in clear tension
with one another. 91. See, e.g., Commn Policies and Procedures Under Section 301(b)(4) of the Commcns Act,
Foreign Investment in Broadcast Licenses, Declaratory Ruling, FCC 13150, 28 FCC Rcd. 16244, 1624748, paras. 6
8 (2013) (discussing globalization, growth, and innovation). Issue 1 A TALE OF TWO AGENCIES 107 1. The FCC has
strong a background and significant expertise that will allow the agency to provide oversight of the NSA.

Since

the advent of the Internet, the FCC has been involved in

regulating this facet of the nations communications
infrastructure.92 For instance, as early as 1980, the FCC considered
the extent to which information processing (as involved in Internet services)
required further or different regulation from other communications
networks.93 In 1980, the FCC began to recognize a distinction
between basic and enhanced services, and applied this distinction
until its codification in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.94
Following codification, the FCC continued its use of this framework,
but expanded its scope to include elements of Internet
infrastructure, such as broadband connectivity. 95 However, the FCC
remained willing to consider applying its regulatory framework to
new technologies.96 this flexibility has helped the agency adapt to
new and changing technology as it influences the nations
communications infrastructure. 92. Additionally, the FCC
acknowledges the impact of privacy on the Internet. The recognition that
[c]onsumers privacy needs are no less important when consumers communicate over and use broadband Internet

the agency
has long supported protecting the privacy of broadband users.97 The
FCC further ensures that consumers have control over how their
access than when they rely on [telephone] services, has played a large part in FCC policy, as

information is used, and that they are protected from malicious

third parties. 98 Moreover, there is a direct link between consumer confidence and the adoption of new
technology, which the agency has taken into account as it formulates new policies. As former Chairman

in the FCCs view, [i]f consumers lose trust in the

Internet, this will suppress broadband adoption and online
commerce and communication, and all the benefits that come with
it.99 Moreover, the FCC has recognized that it can, and should, play
a major role in protecting privacy and consumer confidence in the
Internet, including working with industry members to provide best
practices for security100 and encouraging broadband adoption.101
The next logical step is for Congress to authorize the FCC to further
develop Internet privacy principles in the context of protecting
consumers from NSA monitoring of their Internet communications
and access of the Internet providers infrastructure to do so. 2. FCC
oversight of the NSA could confer significant benefits. The lack of oversight indicates the
need for a solution that is publically visible but would not
undermine national security: due to its relevant expertise, the FCC
is that solution. First, there are benefits specific to the FCCs area of
expertise which make it well-suited to provide insight into the data
collection regarding the public good and communications
infrastructure. Second, the FCCs unique insights into the
technological aspects of the Internet put the agency in a position to
be uniquely helpful to congressional oversight committees.
Moreover, the FCC is also particularly well-suited to 97. provide
oversight consistent with plans advocated by the PCLOB: for instance,
Genachowski explained,

specially providing the FISA Court with useful and insightful amicus curiae briefs.102 There are significant benefits
to the FCC being the agency to provide insight into the NSAs monitoring activities. The NSA gets the information it
collects from major Internet switches and depending on the type of surveillance, does not have to notify the
companies from which it collects data.103 However, the FCC could, with additional congressional authority, provide
insight into basic statistics about the information collected by the NSA: for instance, volume, requiring the NSA to at
least show patterns (i.e., the relationship mapping aspects).104 This could be beneficial to the national security
mission: by providing a volumetric, technical analysis, based on practices that can be described, the FCC could help
focus the NSAs data collection, and thereby contribute to the effort to reduce overcollection, as well as provide a
grounds for congressional monitoring and more effective court cases.105 Moreover, the FCC routinely deals with
sensitive information and collecting public comments.106 For instance, the FCC often makes certain pieces of
information confidential in its proceedings. Recently, the agency issued protective orders in its comment-seeking
proceeding regarding the Technological Transition of the Nations Communications Infrastructure.107 This
experience would facilitate the FCC acting as a bridge between the NSA and its oversight mechanisms. Additionally
the PCLOB report calls for a similar oversight scheme.108 The PCLOB, in its first report, calls for the government to

It is important
to note that this would not be the same as the FCC pursuing
litigation on its own, rather than being overseen by the DOJ . See 28 U.S.C.
516. The FCC would not be pursuing litigation on its own, but rather
acting as an independent viewpoint to add context to the NSAs representations to the FISA
work with Internet service providers and other companies that regularly receive FISA 102.

Court.. The PCLOB notes that for the executive branch . . . disclosures about key national security programs that
involve the collection, storage, dissemination of personal information . . . show that it is possible to describe
practices and policies publicly, even those that have not otherwise been leaked, without damage to national
security or operational effectiveness.. The agency noted that we expect to examine information provided by
service providers, and others, that may be highly confidential. We anticipate that such information will be necessary
to develop a more complete record on which to base the Commissions evaluation of the real-world applications of

planned changes in technology that are likely to have tangible effects on consumers. Id. 108. PCLOB REPORT I,
supra note 60, at 19. 110 FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL Vol. 67 production orders to develop rules
permitting the companies to voluntarily disclose certain statistical information. 109 Additionally, the PCLOB
recommends that the government publicly disclose detailed statistics to provide a more complete picture of
government surveillance operations.110 The PCLOB also recommends that independent experts as well as
telecommunications service providers help assess at least one data collection technique.111 The FCC regularly
interacts with these companies in its own rulemaking proceedings, and would therefore be in a position to facilitate
independent expertise being utilized in assessing the efficacy of the collection.112 This is not only because the
agency works with the companies and the infrastructure involved already, 113 but also because the FCCs general
technical expertise places the agency in a position to consider what types of statistics would be helpful to the
public. The need for expertise in determining the technical aspects of whether the data being collected is
authorized is not limited to DOJ and NSA efforts, but extends to the FISA Court. In its first report, the PCLOB calls for
Congress to enact legislation enabling the FISA Court to hear independent views.114 While a federal agency rather
than an independent entity, the FCC would be particularly well-suited to bolster the outside input and provide the
FISA Court with information regarding the impact on telecommunications, particularly the Internet, of NSA
surveillance of the American public. The FCC would be a particularly helpful independent view to involve in the FISA
Court proceedings because of its technical expertise. Furthermore, the FCC has significant experience dealing with
sensitive information, such as trade secrets.115 Both these traits make the agency particularly well-suited to
provide helpful insights to the FISA Court. 109. Id. Indeed, telecommunications and tech companies are actively

Congress is equipped to enact

legislation codifying FCC oversight of the NSA by virtue of both
current law and the PCLOBs recommendations. First, the
Telecommunications Act can serve as the basis for the FCC to take
action to further develop its protection of consumers on the
Internet, Moreover, there has been some movement in Congress
calling on the FCC to take action regarding the NSA phone database,
indicating the possibility of the FCC taking up an oversight role. 116
Further, Congress gave the FCC broad investigation, regulatory, and
enforcement powers, as well as the privacy-focused directive of
implementing Consumer Propriety Network Information
protection.117 Additionally, the first PCLOB Report calls for extensive
changes in the NSA and FISA Court regime while the second report
calls expressly for industry input and expertise: the FCC could
facilitate some of the suggested changes through its subject matter
expertise. Even as the FCC is set up to facilitate the PCLOB
recommendations, Congress needs to codify the legal authority for
the FCC to do this specifically. Granting express legal authority is
key, as organic statutes of agencies determine what a given agency
can and cannot do. Congressional authorization would be a logical
outgrowth of both the FCCs regulatory interests and current legal
recommendations regarding NSA oversight.
trying to be allowed to disclose such information.

***Kritiks***

Links Democracy = Exceptionalism

The Usage of democracy enables the religion of American
Exceptionalism
James Q. Wilson, Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University,
2006
(The American Spectator, American Exceptionalism,
http://spectator.org/articles/46395/american-exceptionalism,
6/29/15,CY)
WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH said that America hopes to spread democracy to all
of the world, he was echoing a sentiment many people support. Though
Americans do not put "extending democracy" near the top of their list of
foreign policy objectives (preventing terrorism is their chief goal), few would
deny that if popular rule is extended it would improve lives around the world.
Democracy, of course, means rule by the people. But the devil is in the
details. By one count, the number of democracies quintupled in the second
half of the twentieth century, but there are freedom-loving and freedomdisdaining democracies. Fareed Zakaria calls the latter "illiberal
democracies." Among them are Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ukraine, and
Venezuela. The number of democratic regimes has grown rapidly in the last
several decades, but what has grown is not like American-style democracy.
Though most democracies have certain things in common--popular elections,
the rule of law, and rights for minorities--we should never suppose that what
we hope will appear in the Middle East and elsewhere will look like American
government any more than Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, or Turkey
look like us. Recall that American democracy contains some strikingly
undemocratic features, such as an Electoral College, two senators for each
state regardless of state populations, and an independent judiciary. America
differs from other democratic nations in many ways, some material and
some mental. It has a more rapidly growing economy than most of Europe
and deeper sense of patriotism than almost any other country with popular
rule. A recent survey of 91,000 people in 50 nations, conducted by the Pew
Research Center and reported on by Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes,
outlines our political culture and shows how different it is from that in most
other democracies. Americans identify more strongly with their own
country than do people in many affluent democracies. While 71 percent of
Americans say they are "very proud" to be in America, only 38 percent of the
French and 21 percent of the Germans and the Japanese say they are proud
to live in their countries. And Americans are much more committed to
individualism than are people elsewhere. Only one-third of Americans, but
two-thirds of Germans and Italians, think that success in life is determined by

forces outside their own control. This message is one that Americans wish to
transmit to their children: 60 percent say that children should be taught the
value of hard work, but only one-third of the British and Italians and one-fifth
of the Germans agree. Over half of all Americans think that economic
competition is good because it stimulates people to work hard and develop
new ideas; only one-third of French and Spanish people agree. Americans
would like their views to spread throughout the world: over three-fourths said
this was a good idea, compared to only one-fourth of the people in France,
Germany, and Italy and one-third of those in Great Britain. In 1835 Alexis de
Tocqueville discussed American exceptionalism in Democracy in America,
and he is still correct. There was then and there continues now to be in this
country a remarkable commitment to liberty, egalitarianism, individualism,
and laissez-faire values. He gave three explanations for this state of affairs:
we came to occupy a vast, largely empty, and isolated continent; we have
benefited from a legal system that involves federalism and an independent
judiciary; and we have embraced certain "habits of the heart" that were
profoundly shaped by our religious tradition.

The affirmatives usage of democracy increases the

exceptionalism of America, eliminating the state equality to
produce an global American legal consciousness
Knipfer, major in international relations, 2014
(Cool Blog, American Exceptionalism: Nationalism, Imperialism, and
Ethnocentrism by Another Name,
http://www.reallycoolblog.com/american-exceptionalism-nationalismimperialism-and-ethnocentrism-by-another-name/, 6/29/15, CY)
A philosophical study of exceptionalism, especially in American society, can
reveal the true nature of our political and social culture as well as the ethical
norms and values we possess when viewing the world. Exceptionalism
describes the perception of a country or society in a certain time period that
it is exceptional in some away and thus does not need to conform to
general rules, norms, or principles. In order to arrive at this perception,
however, ethical values, political viewpoints, and philosophical realities such
as nationalism, cultural imperialism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism
need to be present and come into play. The simple act of considering a
country or society exceptional means that it is being judged and valued
above other countries and societies. If all were valued equally or looked at in
a relativistic manner (that is, the true value and worth of a different country
or society could only be judged accurately by a member of its own culture
and society), then there would be no exceptional country. By approaching

the concept of social and national worth using a relativistic or egalitarian

frame, it would be unreasonable for a person to expect to accurately judge
that their society was superior to others. Doing so would be impossible: they
lack the capacity to accurately judge the worth of other societies, and thus
could not weigh them against their own. Rather, they would have to accept
that there can only be a system of equal, albeit culturally and institutionally
different, societies and countries. The fact that American political leaders
and our political cultures espouse exceptionalist values, however,
demonstrates that this is not the case. Thus, the conclusion must be made
that our perception of other countries and societies against our own is not
drawn from a relativistic or egalitarian frame, but rather is being skewed
by other philosophical viewpoints. Further, because we uphold our own
society as being superior to others (hence why it is exceptional), these
viewpoints must be ones which support the notion that something about our
society is inherently and intrinsically better than others. Arching over and
intertwined with these viewpoints is the concept of nationalism. Nationalism
is a political identity that involves a strong identification of an individual with
a nation. With this identification comes the development of a loyalty and
pride from the individual towards his nation, its culture, and its society. The
United States has developed a strongly nationalistic culture, which is
ingrained into the American youth and which is referred to in much of the
political environment. Much of this nationalism is developed as a pride in our
countrys civic and legal concepts and norms, as well as on a common
language and cultural tradition. At a young age, American youths are taught
the Pledge of Allegiance, the stories about the founding of our country, and
about our founding fathers. The stories of throwing off British oppression,
the romanticizing of events in the Revolutionary War such as the Boston Tea
Party or Paul Reveres ride, and the cults of personality built around founders
such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin all
help in the development of pride in our countrys origins. Lessons in how the
United States serves as a bastion for the lost, the oppressed, and the
helpless (consider the famous quote on the Statue of Liberty, give me your
tired, your poor), as well as how we were the first country developed along
liberal democratic guidelines, with due process of law, political
representation, social equality, individualism, and capitalist tendencies, help
develop a pride in our countrys civic and legal roots. Its from this
nationalistic pride in our countrys civics and society that large portions of
our exceptionalist outlook stem. The historian Gordon Wood argued this
point by saying that, Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and
the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too
did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to
lead the world toward liberty and democracy. We are taught that the

American ideals of liberty, freedom, and democracy originate uniquely from

the United States, and that it is the American duty to lead the world towards
embracing these ideals. It is from this societal embrace of the ideals of
democracy and liberty, and our perception of us as a chosen people
destined to spread these ideals, that an underlying ethnocentrism is
revealed in the American psyche and the overall resulting trends towards
cultural imperialism demonstrated. Ethnocentrism describes the judgment of
other cultures by the values and standards of ones own culture. For us in the
United States, we judge the merit and value of other countries and
societies based upon our own civic institutions and legal history. For
cases in which other countries are democratic in nature and have societies
rooted in liberal philosophy, we can better associate ourselves with them,
and generally form cooperative ties with these nations. They are relatively
similar with our own society in how they are structured and the civic values
they possess, and thus we weigh these countries with relatively high value.
However, even then, these societies are unlike our own in that they lack the
American nature to spread democracy and liberty to other countries.
Hence, we do not perceive them as exceptional, nor do we believe
that they are destined countries like our own. American nationalism,
always floating above perception of other societies, thus ties into this
judgment: even though these other countries are like our own in the values
that we take pride in, they are not American, and thus they lack the
American spirit and the American destiny to spread them. Therefore, they
are inherently lesser. What are of even more philosophical interest are the
cases where the society we are judging does not mirror our own in their
societal values. In such cases, we immediately discard it as a society with
less worth than our own. Cases like these would be for autocratic and
nondemocratic countries, which lack the same legal and civic foundations
that we so pride ourselves with in our country. The American response to
such cases is to, as Wood previously argued, lead these societies into
democracy and liberty. Indeed, it is this sort of crusade for democracy that
led previous administrations, such as George W. Bushs, to engage in
operations seeking democratic regime change abroad in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The entire Bush doctrine, as it would come to be known, was
designed to seek the spread of democracy across the world. Such a doctrine,
and our world view it is the result of, is as great an example of cultural
imperialism and desire for cultural hegemony as any. Cultural imperialism is
defined as the cultural aspects in the creation and maintenance of unequal
relationships between civilizations favoring the more powerful civilization. For
the United States, the exportation of American values such of liberty and
democracy represent the imperialistic control of what the French philosopher
Michel Foucault described as governmentality. He described it as the art

of government, and represents the ensemble formed by the institutions,

procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow
the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as
its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy,
and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. By controlling
such factors in a government, Foucaults argument means that the United
States could gain hegemony on the truth in the government, and thus gain
power. He described the truth as inherent in systems of power, coincides
with hegemony, and which is culturally specific, inseparable from ideology.
By controlling the ideological framework of a government, by shifting it into a
liberal democracy along the lines of how the United States is framed, the
United States could thus shape and therefore control the power of that
government and gain hegemony and influential clout over it. The United
States has, aside from the recent Bush-era endeavors to spread democracy,
historically embarked in a sort of cultural imperialism. Following the Second
World War it spearheaded the development of many of the norms of the
free, Western world to counter those of the Soviet Union. These norms
included adherence to capitalist, market economies, a respect for
international law and organization, and general liberal, democratic
tendencies. From these norms developed institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United Nations, which
the United States has since used to coerce other, lesser powers into
conforming to the capitalist, liberalized, democratic worldview. Aside from
such power-politics, however, the transmutation from other societies
governmentality to those of our own across the globe is still the goal which
we seek because our society tells us we have been destined to do so. Our
willingness to supplement the political norms of other societies with those of
our own is demonstrative of our imperialistic societal view, and it happens
that our possession of the capacity to enact this cultural imperialism enables
us to do so. Little consideration is placed into the standing norms of those
societies, and little conceptualization of cultural relativism explored. Again,
our nationalistic tendencies make us perceive these other societies as
inferior, and our destiny dictates to us that they must be changed. Hence,
because of our willingness to change these inferior civic societies and that
our capability enables us to do so, a sort of American cultural hegemony has
appeared across the globe in the form of our civic values. The permeation
throughout much of the world of capitalism, liberal civics, and democracy
has largely been the result of the United States efforts as a superpower in
the past half century, and the United States, as the source of these values,
can be claimed to hold cultural hegemony over the globe. Cultural hegemony
is the manipulation of societal cultures so that it is imposed as the norm, and
then is perceived as a universally valid ideology and status quo beneficial to

all of society. In the terms of global society, liberal democracy, by which it is

meant political representation and the right to personal freedoms and
liberties, is now accepted as a universally valid right. Additionally, they have
become status quo norms in the global society: societies and countries which
rebuke liberal democracy are viewed as pariahs in the international
community, such as Gaddafis Libya, North Korea, and Iran. Thus, the United
States has enforced and pushed its own societal values across the globe so
that they have become the international norm, and from this it has gained
hegemony over the values which the international community subscribes to.
The fact that the United States has been so successful in shaping the
international society, and that it is the uniquely American values which have
become the norm, lend support to the perception that the United States is
therefore uniquely exceptional and above all other states, include those
which also adhere and subscribe to our societal values. Challenges to the
American hegemony on international societal values do arise, however, and
in the present day and age the United States appears to be gradually
slipping in its position as the unrivaled global power able to exert its force to
enact its destiny. These challenges reveal an underlying xenophobia
within the United States: a fear that other societies will be able to
enact and enforce their societal norms upon the international
community. Because we perceive our society to be exceptional, and
therefore better than all of the rest, we are concerned with the prospect that
a society of lesser worth will shape the norms of the future. Nationalistic
pride in American civics, as well as the belief that it is our destiny to spread
and convert the world to our style of liberal democracy, means that we are
determined not to allow foreigner societies do what we have sought
out to do. It is not, in our minds, their destiny to have. Perhaps this can
explain why Mitt Romney accused President Obama of not believing in
American exceptionalism: He was assaulting Obamas commitment to the
American destiny while making subtle nods to this underlying xenophobia in
American society. American exceptionalism is thus a powerful and motivating
experience in the American psyche, as is the worldview it espouses (one in
which the United States is a unique, unrivaled state with a morally-superior
purpose to spread liberal democratic values). However, this
exceptionalism is a result of underlying worldviews and
philosophical frameworks which operate within the United States,
those of nationalism, ethnocentrism, cultural imperialism, a desire
for an American-dominated international cultural hegemony, and an
underlying xenophobia. While, in the perspective of an American who
adheres to the American civic values and societal norms, the American
destiny to spread democracy and liberty is a good one, the underlying
philosophical frameworks which result in this destiny and are a result of the

perception of other societies because of this destiny lead to ethical

quandaries.

Link Internet Freedom

Internet Freedom based on Western, Habermasian public sphere norms, the
protection of the marketplace, and the American legal tradition
Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)
The articulation of the internet-freedom doctrine was steeped in enlightenment and legal
discourse that connected the proposed new freedom to a long history of individual rights.
The internet has become the public space of the twenty-first century the worlds town
square, classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub, Secretary Clinton asserted in 2011.
We all shape and are shaped by what happens there. 15 This implicit reference to a
Habermasian idealized public sphere, whereby rational arguments are on display for all to
evaluate and engage, is not only symbolic of what the United States wants to see internet
discourses look like, but it is also symbolic of the norms the State Department deems
appropriate for how freedom of expression online should be regulated. Following American
legal tradition, while speech is generally protected in town squares and classrooms,
anonymous speech and privacy are not. 16 Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-0320). The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of
Communication) (Kindle Locations 324-325). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Link Neoliberalism
Internet freedom promotes American companies and Western values
Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)
Geopolitics often comes veiled in ideological language, at least initially. The State
Departments evolving doctrine of internet freedom, most clearly articulated by Secretary
Clinton, is the realization of a broader strategy promoting a particular conception of
networked communication that depends on American companies (for example, Amazon,
AT& T, Facebook, Google, and Level 3), supports Western norms (such as copyright,
advertising-based consumerism, and the like), and promotes Western products . There is
certainly humanitarian value to these initiatives, as many in the mainstream media and
government have suggested. But the underlying economic and political motivations driving these
efforts deserve greater critical inquiry. Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20).
The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of
Communication) (Kindle Locations 282-287). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Discourse of internet freedom protects Western governments and globalization

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)

Discourses of internet freedom, most prominently articulated by former Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton, serve to legitimize a particular political economy of globalism. Americas
free flow doctrine is a strategic vision to legitimize a specific geopolitical agenda of
networking the world in ways that disproportionally benefit Western governments and
economies. Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The Real Cyber War: The
Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of Communication) (Kindle Locations
4643-4646). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Internet Freedom driven by neoliberal economics

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)

In addition to this political narrative, the remarks also focused on the economic logic of allowing
for greater transnational flows of information. Drawing from classic neoliberal economic
theory, Clinton said, The internet can serve as a great equalizer. By providing people
with access to knowledge and potential markets, she added, networks can create
opportunities where none exist. Clinton characterized government censorship as being
antiquated, akin to trade barriers: From an economic standpoint, there is no distinction
between censoring political speech and commercial speech. If businesses in your nations are
denied access to either type of information, it will inevitably impact on growth. Noting the
importance of innovation in the modern global economy, Clinton went further: Barring criticism
of officials makes governments more susceptible to corruption, which create[ s] economic
distortions with long-term effects. Freedom of thought and the level playing field made possible
by the rule of law are part of what fuels innovation economies. Combined, these political and
economic narratives reflect what sociologist Vincent Mosco describes as the
neodevelopmentalist perspective of international communication, which grew out of
modernization theory, an area of research that was highly influential in policy circles during the
second half of the twentieth century. Pioneered by Daniel Lerner, William Schramm, Everett
Rogers, and Ithiel de Sola Pool, modernization theory posits that the dissemination of media
content and adoption of media systems and technologies are a crucial means to establishing
robust, fast-growing, free-market economies in underdeveloped societies. The neodevelopmentalist perspective suggests that the dissemination and adoption of advanced
communication technologies and skills, preferably through the private sector, is central to the
integration of the global South into the modern, information-driven economy. It pairs this
economic argument with the broader political narrative of the importance of freedom of
expression and the free flow of information in a modern, democratic society. This
combination of economic and political logic is compelling to many, as it reflects a coherent
belief in individual freedom of choice and enterprise. It is also the underlying theory that has
guided much of American information policy since World War II. Yet it is also implicitly
geopolitical. According to communications scholars Kaarle Nordenstreng and Herbert Schiller,
Since World War II, the rhetoric of freedom has been the preferred usage of American
corporate monopolies, press and other, to describe the mechanisms of the system that favors
their operation. According to this perspective, Clintons articulation of the benefits of free and
open communication on international peace, espousing the democratizing power of the internet
and the economic benefits of being online A connection to global information networks is
like an on-ramp to modernity obfuscates geopolitical motivations driving trends toward
global connectivity. Powers, Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The Real Cyber War:
The Political Economy of Internet Freedom (The History of Communication) (Kindle Locations
341-351). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Freedom to connect is driven by the desire to promote the values of Western

cultures, economics, and governments

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)

Rather than rehashing debates about the democratic value of new and emerging media
technologies, we focus on the political, economic, and geopolitical factors driving internetfreedom policies, with particular emphasis on the U.S. policy and the State Departments
freedom-to-connect doctrine. The book takes a systematic approach, arguing that efforts to
create a singular, universal internet built upon Western legal, political, and social
preferences alongside the freedom to connect is driven primarily by economic and
geopolitical motivations rather than the humanitarian and democratic ideals that typically
accompany related policy discourse. This freedom-to-connect movement, led by the U.S.
government with the support of many powerful private-sector actors, has rich historical
roots and is deeply intertwined with broader efforts to structure global society in ways that
favor American and Western cultures, economies, and governments. Powers, Shawn M.;
Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet
Freedom (The History of Communication) (Kindle Locations 200-206). University of Illinois
Press. Kindle Edition.

Intrnet expansion protects US private industry

Powers & Jablonski, 2015, Shawn Powers, former debater, is an Assistant Professor of
Communication at Georgia State Universit, Michael Jablonski, is an attorney and presidential
fellow in communication at Georgia State University, The Real Cyber War: The Political
Economy of Internet Freedom, p. Kindle (location at end of card)
This chapter proceeds with two central foci: the uneven relationship between connectivity and
economic growth; and the economic motivations behind criticism of the International
Telecommunication Unions (ITU) potential role in internet governance. In the first three
sections we examine how the U.S. government, with the aid of its private sector, wired the
world and profited handsomely as a result. We also discuss how economies of scale strongly
favor established actors in the internet economy, challenging the idea that increased
connectivity is equally profitable for all. The final three sections examine the controversy
surrounding the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), outlining how
the negotiations were shaped by economic concerns. We argue that, contrary to popular coverage
of the event, the United States left the treaty-making process gloriously successful,
protecting its private-sector and economic interests at the expense of the majority of the
worlds concerns about the status quo governance structure. This analysis identifies how the
United States government leverages the private sector to tilt international negotiations in
its favor and offers a critique of the multistakeholder process that too often operates as a

proxy to ensure private-sector voices and interests dominate international fora. This section
concludes with a discussion of economic externalities, the basis for a network effect theory,
suggesting an alternative framing to the neoliberal, modernization, and information
sovereignty discourses that often dominate debates surrounding internet governance. Powers,
Shawn M.; Jablonski, Michael (2015-03-20). The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of
Internet Freedom (The History of Communication) (Kindle Locations 2353-2358). University of
Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.

Impact Nuclear War = Exceptionalistm Bad

American Exceptionalism has militarized the nation and will
cause nuclear war and extinction
Starr 14 (Steven, Associate member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has been
published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear
War has No Winner 2014, accessed 6/29/15, FZ)

Meanwhile, neoconservative ideology has kept the US at war during

the entire 21st century. It has led to the expansion of US/NATO forces to the
very borders of Russia, a huge mistake that has consequently revived the Cold
War. A hallmark of neconservatism is that America is the
indispensable nation, as evidenced by the neoconservative belief in
American exceptionalism, which essentially asserts that Americans are
superior to all other peoples, that American interests and values should reign
supreme in the world.
At his West Point speech on May 28, President Obama said, I believe in
American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. Obama stated his
bottom line is that America must always lead on the world stage, and the
backbone of that leadership always will be the military. American
exceptionalism based on might, not diplomacy, on hard power, not
soft, is precisely the hubris and arrogance that could lead to the
termination of human life. Washingtons determination to prevent
the rise of Russia and China , as set out in the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz
doctrines, is a recipe for nuclear war.

Ideas such as democracy are just excuses for US intervention

in other places
Cuadro 11 (Mariela, , PhD in IR at the National University of La Plata, BA in
Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, Master in IR at the National University
of La Plata, Universalisation of liberal democracy, American exceptionalism and
racism 2011, accessed 6/29/15, FZ)

The advent of liberalism would change this conception and postulate a game
where sum is different from zero. That is to say that liberalism conceived
the improvement of one state (the state-centered objective of the reason
of state remained the same) as linked to the improvement of the
others. Neoliberalism, for its part, adds to this the necessity of
intervention. Kants Perpetual Peace fit in this context. Following the
German author, perpetual peace would be guaranteed by the
globalization of commerce. During the decade Transcience (2011) Vol. 2,
Issue 2 ISSN 2191-1150 Cuadro: Liberal democracy, American
Exceptionalism and Racism. 34 of 1990s a similar thesis took force: The socalled Democratic Peace Theory postulated that perpetual peace
could be achieved via the globalization of democracy. George W.

Bush administration would take this thesis as its own and argue
that imposing democracy (on Iraq) would make the world safer and
more peaceful, implicitly arguing that US democracy is the best
socio-political model. Finally, such voices would also be specially heard
during the first weeks of the still ongoing Arab uprising. Homologated with
freedom, liberal democracy appears (mainly in liberal powers
discourses, but not just there) as a universal claim of people all over
the world, thereby becoming a necessity of history (claimed once by
Fukuyama), and justifying, once more, interventionist policies in its
name. Democracy, Human Rights and Freedom, as we will see, have been
homologated. Clearly different and Western notions have been thus mixed,
confused and universalized. Freedom, as a governmental technique, is at the
center of the liberal practice. Indeed, liberalism -understood not as an
ideology, but rather as a technology of power- is characterized as a
freedom-consuming practice. That is to say that it can only function if
some liberties exist7. In consequence, if liberalism has a need of freedom,
then, it is obliged to produce it, but, at the same time, to organize it. In other
words, it is not only a producer of freedom, but also an organizer of it: its
administrator. This administration of freedom leads to the necessity
of securing those natural phenomena (i.e.: population) and, with that
objective, to interventionist practices. The fact that the police device be
dismantled, Foucault asserts, does not mean that governmental
intervention ceases to exist. On the contrary, this is an essential
feature of liberal government.

Impact Violence Against the Other

American Exceptionalism and democracy wouldnt exist
without violence against the other, it spreads imperialism,
genocide, racism, and war wherever it goes.
Cuadro 11 (Mariela, , PhD in IR at the National University of La Plata, BA in
Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, Master in IR at the National University
of La Plata, Universalisation of liberal democracy, American exceptionalism and
racism 2011, accessed 6/29/15, FZ)

Innocence does not just imply not recognizing historical and political
responsibilities, but it also has another effect: prevent critique of
the self. Indeed, innocence can be defined as a constant need to put ones
own problems out. This mechanism generates the closure of the
totality, the homogenization of the We, through the establishment
of a difference. It is in this sense that David Campbell argues that United
States foreign policy [is] understood as a political practice central to the
constitution, production, and maintenance of American political identity
(Campbell, 1998: 8) But the most important line uniting liberals and
conservatives is the assumption of American exceptionalism5, which -in
order to put the US in the field of history- can be understood as a fervent
nationalism. This assumption, which emerges at specific moments,
has very deep roots, going back to 1630 and arrival of Puritans in North
America. Nevertheless, the way in which they understand this constructed
assumption that reified takes the form of a fact- indicates which political
impulse prevails: internationalism or isolationism. Indeed, exceptionalism
can be read in two different ways. On the one hand, it can be
understood in terms of uniqueness (this reading comes from
Tocquevilles Democracy in America), in which case America6 is
considered a model to be emulated -the city upon the hill-. On the
other hand, exceptional can be understood in the sense of being
the best socio-economic model. From our point of view, both readings
permit imperialist policies based on the idea of superiority that
underlies American exceptionalism. Indeed, the belief in being the
chosen people that accompanied the Puritans formed the basis of their
right to kill the natives inhabiting the conquered territory. In the
same sense, this led to the 19th centurys idea of the manifest
destiny to expand democracy from coast to coast in North America,
adiscourse which had the effect of conquering Mexican territory, for
example. 4THE WHITE HOUSE (2001), President Launches Education
Partnership with Muslim Nations (10/25/2001). (Online), retrieved on
February 2009. www.whitehouse.gov. 5Scowcroft: (. . . ) in the world as it is
now, only the United States can exercise enlightened leadership. Not direct

people what to do. But say, Gather round. This is the way the world
community needs to go. Brzezinski: Amen. Scowcroft: Were the only ones
who can be the guiding light. (Brzezinski; Scowcroft, 2008: 35). We have
brought this quote to illustrate the accord that exists between Democrats
and Republicans with respect to American exceptionalism. 6From a LatinAmerican point of view, that the US calls itself America gives a sense of
imperial desire over a shared continent. That explains the quotation marks.
Transcience (2011) Vol. 2, Issue 2 ISSN 2191-1150 Cuadro: Liberal
democracy, American Exceptionalism and Racism. 33 The meeting of
exceptionalism, liberalism and the colossal US military machine is
explosive. Because the idea of exceptionalism (reified as it is, not being
criticized) expresses some sort of superiority that not only gives the
US the right of lecturing other people on how to organize their
societies, but also establishes a sort of hierarchy of life value, at the
top of which rest American lives. If we add to this the disproportionate
military apparatus and a liberal discourse affirming US action is carried out in
the name of Humanity and not because of self-interest, the real possibility
to carry out extermination policies towards those who do not agree
with the way of life that is being imposed on them emerges. This is
one way to understand a fundamental US paradox: While it has had the
leading role in constructing the most complex international legal
order to maintain peace, it has, at the same time, constructed a
colossal military machine -without a peer competitor- that cannot be
understood solely in terms of defense (of Humanity). What we are trying
to emphasize is the intrinsic linkage between US democracy and
violence and the danger that accompanies it when used in the name
of universality, because it can lead to an exterminating violence. As
Benjamin once said, this violence is not just a conservative one, but can
act as a founder one (1995). And this is important too: No democracy
works without violence and -we do not have to forget- violence is in
the origins of US democracy. Indeed, it was built on the genocide of
natives and slavery. Furthermore, must consider this an open chapter in
history: in Libya, in Afghanistan, in Iraq (just for citing some examples) US is
currently exercising founder violence. Whether the exceptionalism is
understood as an example or as a right and a duty to impose particular
values on other people, both meanings shed light on the sense of superiority
that permeates US identity. We can affirm thus that American
exceptionalism is no more than a form of racism. This assertion
deserves further development.

Link - Psychoanalysis
Surveillance happens because we only see what we wish to

see- we paper over lack by imagining that the other is not

watching us. The aff attempts to eradicate surveillance but
that obscures the fact that we think the other derives
enjoyment from watching us.
Heather Cameron, PhD in mental health, 2004. (CCTV and
(In)dividuation KA)
Freud demonstrated how our vision is influenced and constructed
through unconscious beliefs and expectations. We do not see things
which are in front of us and we believe ourselves to have seen
things which we could not have. This slippage in human visual
perception has been well documented through studies interested in eye
witness testimony or criminal identification from photographs. It has
repeatedly been shown that both are unreliable. It is increasingly the case
that identification from CCTV has high levels of error. Researchers in
Leicester University recently completed a study confirming results from
Bruce et al. (1999) and Kemp, Towell and Pike (1997) that there is a very low
rate (15-30%) of successful identification of individuals from CCTV material
(Davis and Thasen, 2000). Even close up CCTV images such as those
collected from bank machines did not guarantee accurate identification.
According to the Davis and Thasen study there was still a 13% error rate
when the viewer had continuous access to the recording. In part due to his
awareness of the construction of the visual field, Freud drew attention to the
problems and pretensions of vision in the detection of information. His
therapy method of psychoanalysis seats the analyst behind and
hence out of the view of the patient but within easy listening
distance. This seating arrangement also releases the patient and
the analyst from needing to control their faces and keeping eye
contact with each other, so called face work. By removing himself
from the patients view Freud argues he achieves two therapeutic
effects: first, it dulls the effect of the analysands voyeurism and second, it
allows the analysand to express thoughts freely without seeing a reaction
mirrored on Freuds face. Freud of course is not the first authority who
wants to watch and not be watched himself. The medical inspecting
gaze is turned on patients who should not look back. Freud goes on in his
Zur Einleitung der Behandlung to argue that despite setting up the couch
and his chair this way, patients will turn to face him or otherwise resist the
command not to make eye contact (472). Visual stimuli are often reduced
(the analyst often works with his or her eyes closed) in psychoanalytic
treatment. Freud argues that after human being evolved from moving on four

legs to walking upright, vision Cameron: CCTV and (In)dividuation

Surveillance & Society 2(2/3) 139 replaced smell as our dominant sense.
Vision, accompanied by a sense of self-evidence, overwhelmed other human
forms of perception and awareness, including the other senses and the
unconscious to our detriment. Freud also cautions that vision is influenced by
memory and what we expect to see. Because we only see what we
expect to see, this misapprehension is reinforced instead of
challenged and new information can only break through with great
difficulty. This becomes relevant to discussions of what is actually
happening when people witness events and helps to explain why eye witness
testimony is so unreliable and open to suggestion.