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DDI NSA Data Surveillance Aff – Starter Pack
Read Me
The affirmative requires the NSA to provide reasonable suspicion to the FISA court that the target of their surveillance is the
hostile agent of a foreign power in order to intercept their communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Acts. Section
702 currently permits the NSA to acquire, without an individualized warrant, the communications of non-US persons reasonably
believed to be overseas when those communications are transiting the United States or stored in the United States. There is mass,
relatively untargeted collection of data from US servers now, the affirmative substantially curtails it.
There are three advs. The first two, which are the strongest and included in the standard 1AC, are about the economic effects
of NSA surveillance. The global economy and tech leadership advantages both have the same generic set of two internal links. First is
that NSA surveillance of data stored in the United States is causing international companies to cut business ties with US companies
which undermines the economy and hurts the success of US tech firms, especially in important sectors like cloud computing. Second,
the political effects of this backlash may cause an increasing wave of data localization requirements which is where a country would
require that all the online data of its citizen remain physically within the country and not be stored in the United States. This would
have broader negative effects than just to US firms.
These two advantages are what I believe to be the strongest but they could pose a tactical problem because they are so
interrelated. Messing up an argument on one page could take out the whole case. So what could be the better strategic argument may
end up being tactically weaker. The third advantage included in the file is the internet freedom advantage which say that revelations
about NSA surveillance in the US has ruined the US’ ability to promote internet freedom globally. This has the benefit of some very
strong internal link evidence and the ability to be easily separated from the other advantages but the weakness of poor impact
argument.
I encourage you to read all the evidence (including the neg), experiment and see what works for you. Good luck!
Standard 1AC – Leadership/Econ Advs
Plan: The United States Congress should substantially curtail the United States federal government’s
surveillance of data stored in the United States including requiring surveillance agencies to provide proof
of reasonable suspicion against an individual target and limiting surveillance programs to only those
approved by congressional oversight.
Contention 1 is the Global Economy
Two internal links – first is the US econ
NSA surveillance kills it
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
“It is becoming clear that the post-9/11 surveillance apparatus may be at cross-pur- poses with our high-tech economic
growth,” declared Third Way’s Mieke Eoyang and Gabriel Horowitz in December 2013. “ The economic
consequences [of the recent revelations] could be staggering.”25 A TIME magazine headline projected that “NSA
Spying Could Cost U.S. Tech Giants Billions,” predicting losses based on the increased scrutiny that economic
titans like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo have faced both at home and abroad since last June.26 The NSA’s
actions pose a serious threat to the current value and future stability of the information technology
industry, which has been a key driver of economic growth and productivity in the United States in
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the past decade.27 In this section, we examine how emerging evidence about the NSA’s extensive surveillance apparatus
has already hurt and will likely continue to hurt the American tech sector in a number of ways, from dwindling U.S.
market share in industries like cloud computing and webhosting to dropping tech sales overseas. The
impact of individual users turning away from American companies in favor of foreign alternatives is a concern. However,
the major losses will likely result from diminishing confidence in U.S. companies as trustworthy choices for foreign
government procurement of products and services and changing behavior in the business-to-business market.
Both reform and oversight are key to avoid long term destruction of the economy
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
It is abundantly clear that the NSA
surveillance programs are currently having a serious, negative impact on
the U.S. economy and threatening the future competitiveness of American technology companies. Not only
are U.S. companies losing overseas sales and getting dropped from contracts with foreign companies and governments—
they are also watching their competitive advantage in fast-growing indus- tries like cloud computing and
webhosting disappear, opening the door for foreign companies who claim to offer “more secure” alternative products to
poach their business. Industry ef- forts to increase transparency and accountability as well as concrete steps to promote
better security by adopting encryption and other best practices are positive signs, but U.S. companies cannot solve this
problem alone. “It’s not blowing over,” said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith at a recent conference. “In June of
2014, it is clear it is getting worse, not better.”98 Without meaningful government reform and better
oversight, concerns about the breadth of NSA surveillance could lead to permanent shifts in the global
technology market and do lasting damage to the U.S. economy.
US key to the global economy
Clarfeld 12 [Rob, Forbes Contributor, Decouple This!, 1/25/12,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robclarfeld/2012/01/25/decouple-this/]
During the first few weeks of 2012, the markets are following the prevailing narrative that the U.S. economy has “decoupled” from the widely known troubles of Europe, and the somewhat less discussed
prevailing risks from China. In a “decoupling” scenario, a country or region is deemed to be able to withstand the troubles going on outside of its own borders because of its own internal economic strength.
I see two major problems with this thesis. First, the U.S. economy is not growing at the recently predicted robust rate of 4-5%; rather it is struggling to achieve a rate of 2-2.5%. This leaves little cushion to
withstand the “contagion” from a major economic fallout from either Europe or China, or for that matter, economic shocks that have yet to surface. A significant European debt default, banking failure,
natural disasters or geopolitical events, would surely impact the U.S. economy and markets beyond the current level of fragile growth – we simply don’t have the levels of productivity requisite to absorb a
major blow. Second, it was only a few years ago when the decoupling thesis was widely espoused following the U.S. banking crisis and ensuing recession. At the time the thinking was that the robust
growth experienced in the emerging markets would be able to withstand the U.S. slowdown and pick up some of the slack in the global economy. We now know how that worked out – it didn’t!
When the U.S. went into a major recession it dragged down the rest of the world with it. We need to deal
with it — the global economy remains highly interdependent. If a number of dominoes begin to fall, it is
highly unlikely that any individual country or region will be able to escape the carnage. Again, any
financial crisis would be occurring from levels of growth that have not yet fully recovered from their
recessionary lows. In relative terms, some countries and regions will do better than others, but the “decoupling”
thesis is highly flawed.
Second is Data Localization
NSA domestic surveillance causes global data localization regulations which undermines the internet
economy
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
The NSA
disclosures have prompted some foreign leaders to propose new policies for data localization and data
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protection that could have serious ramifications for the Internet ecosystem. In the name of strengthening
privacy and secu- rity, many of these changes could hurt American tech companies, impact the future growth of the
network as a whole, and endanger human rights and Internet Freedom.99 In particular, proposals that would
require data localization or strengthen data protection laws could fundamentally alter the way traffic flows
over the Internet and cre- ate significant additional compliance costs for American technology companies operating overseas. Major economic powers such as Germany, Brazil, and India have discussed requiring that all Internet traffic be routed
or stored locally. Various leaders in these countries have also urged gov- ernment agencies and their citizens to stop using
American tools altogether because of concerns about backdoors or other arrangements with the NSA.100 Meanwhile,
legislators in the European Union have passed strict new data protection rules for the continent and considered various
privacy-focused proposals, including the devel- opment of “national clouds” and the suspension of key trade agreements
with the United States.101 “The vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is leading to the breakup of
the Internet as countries scramble to protect privacy or commercially sensitive emails and phone records from UK and US
security services,” reported The Guardian in November 2013.102 In combination, these various proposals could
threaten the Internet economy while endangering privacy and free expression.
Internet jurisdiction and borders were con- tentious issues long before the Snowden leaks, but the debate has become
significantly more complex in the past year. For decades, the border- less nature of cyberspace103 has raised concerns
about sovereignty and how governments can regulate and access their citizens’ personal infor- mation or speech when it is
stored on servers that may be located all over the world.104 Various data localization and national routing proposals have
been put forth by governments that seek great- er control of the information that flows within their borders, often in order to
make censorship and surveillance over the local population eas- ier.105 On the other side, free speech advocates,
technologists, and civil society organizations generally advocate for a borderless cyberspace governed by its own set of
internationally-agreed upon rules that promote the protection of human rights, individual privacy, and free expression.106
The revelations about NSA surveillance have heightened concerns on both sides of this debate. But the disclosures
appear to have given new ammunition to proponents of greater governmental control over traffic and
network infrastructure, accelerating the number and scope of national control proposals from both longtime advocates as well as governments with relatively solid track records on human rights.
There are now more than a dozen countries that have introduced or are actively discussing data localization laws.108
Broadly speaking, data localization can be defined as any measures that “specifically encumber the transfer of data across
national borders,” through rules that prevent or limit these information flows.109 The data localiza- tion proposals being
considered post-Snowden generally require that foreign ICT companies maintain infrastructure located within a coun- try
and store some or all of their data on that country’s users on local servers.110 Brazil, for example, has proposed that
Internet companies like Facebook and Google must set up local data centers so that they are bound by Brazilian privacy
laws.111 The Indian government’s draft policy would force companies to maintain part of their IT infrastructure in-country,
give local authorities access to the encrypted data on their servers for criminal investigations, and prevent local data from
being moved out of country.112 Germany, Greece, Brunei, and Vietnam have also put forth their own data sovereignty
proposals. Proponents argue that these policies would provide greater security and privacy protection because local servers
and infrastructure can give governments both physical control and legal jurisdiction over the data being stored on them—
although the policies may come with added political and economic benefits for those countries as well. “Home grown and
guaranteed security in data storage, hardware manufacture, cloud computing services and routing are all part of a new
discussion about ‘technological sovereignty,’” write Mascolo and Scott. “It is both a political response and a marketing opportunity.” 113 At the same time, data localization can also facilitate local censorship and surveil- lance,
making it easier for governments to exert control over the Internet infrastructure.
This undermines the entire global economy
CCIA 12 (international not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to innovation and enhancing society’s access to
information and communications)
(Promoting Cross‐Border Data Flows Priorities for the Business Community, http://www.ccianet.org/wpcontent/uploads/library/PromotingCrossBorderDataFlows.pdf)
The movement of electronic information across borders is critical to businesses around the world, but the
international rules governing flows of digital goods, services, data and infrastructure are incomplete. The global trading system does not spell out a consistent, transparent framework for the treatment of
cross‐ border flows of digital goods, services or information, leaving businesses and individuals to deal with a patchwork of national, bilateral and global arrangements covering significant issues such as the
storage, transfer, disclosure, retention and protection of personal, commercial and financial data. Dealing with these issues is becoming even more important as a new generation of networked technologies
enables greater cross‐border collaboration over the Internet, which has the potential to stimulate economic development and job growth.
Despite the widespread benefits of cross‐border data flows to innovation and economic growth, and due in large part to gaps in global rules and inadequate enforcement of existing commitments, digital
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protectionism is a growing threat around the world. A number of countries have already enacted or are pursuing restrictive po licies governing the provision of digital commercial and financial services,
technology products, or the treatment of information to favor domestic interests over international competition. Even where policies are designed to support legitimate public interests such as national
security or law enforcement, businesses can suffer when those rules are unclear, arbitrary, unevenly applied or more trade‐restrictive than necessary to achieve the underlying objective. What’s more,
multiple governments may assert jurisdiction over the same information, which may leave businesses subject to inconsistent or conflicting rules.
In response, the United States should drive the development and adoption of transparent and high‐quality international rules, norms and best practices on cross‐border flows of digital data and technologies
while also holding countries to existing international obligations. Such efforts must recognize and accommodate legitimate differences in regulatory approaches to issues such as privacy and security between
countries as well as across sectors. They should also be grounded in key concepts such as non‐discrimination and national treatment that have underpinned the trading system for decades.
The U.S. Government should seek international commitments on several key objectives, including: prohibiting measures that restrict legitimate cross‐border data flows or link commercial benefit to local
investment; addressing emerging legal and policy issues involving the digital economy; promoting industry‐ driven international standards, dialogues and best practices; and expanding trade in digital goods,
services and infrastructure. U.S. efforts should ensure that trade agreements cover digital technologies that may be developed in the future. At the same time, the United States should work with governments
around the world to pursue other policies that support cross‐border data flows, including those endorsed in the Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policymaking related to intellectual property protection
and limiting intermediary liability developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in June 2011.
U.S. negotiators should pursue these issues in a variety of forums around the world, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, OECD, and regional
trade negotiations such as the Trans‐Pacific Partnership as appropriate in each forum. In addition, the U.S. Government should solicit ideas and begin to develop a plurilateral framework to set a new global
gold‐ standard to improve innovation. Finally, the U.S. Government should identify and seek to resolve through WTO or bilateral consultations or other processes vio lations of current international rules
concerning digital goods, services and information.
Promoting Cross‐Border Data Flows: Priorities for the Business Community 2
The importance of cross‐border commercial and financial flows
Access to computers, servers, routers and mobile devices, services such as cloud computing – whereby
remote data centers host information and run applications over the Internet, and information is vital to the success of
billions of individuals, businesses and entire economies. In the United States alone, the goods, services
and content flowing through the Internet have been responsible for 15 percent of GDP growth over the past five
years.
Open, fair and contestable international markets for information and communication technologies (ICT) and information are important to electronic retailers, search engines, social networks, web hosting
providers, registrars and the range of technology infrastructure and service providers who rely directly on the Internet to create economic value. But they are also critical to the much larger universe of
manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, financial services and logistics firms, universities, labs, hospitals and other organizations which rely on hardware, software and reliable access to the Internet to improve
their productivity, extend their reach across the globe, and manage international networks of customers, suppliers, and researchers. For example, financial institutions rely heavily on gathering, processing,
and analyzing customer information and will often process data in regional centers, which requires reliable and secure access both to networked technologies and cross‐border data flows. According to
McKinsey, more than three‐quarters of the value created by the Internet accrues to traditional industries that would exist without the Internet. The overall impact of the Internet and information technologies
on productivity may surpass the effect of any other technology enabler in history, including electricity and the combustion engine, according to the OECD.
Networked technologies and data flows are particularly important to small businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs. Thanks to the Internet and advances in technology, small companies, NGOs and
individuals can customize and rapidly scale their IT systems at a lower cost and collaborate globally by accessing on‐ line services and platforms. Improved access to networked technologies also creates
new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to design applications and to extend their reach internationally to the more than two billion people who are now connected to the Internet. In fact, advances
in networked technologies have led to the emergence of entirely new business platforms. Kiva, a microlending service established in 2005, has used the Internet to assemble a network of nearly 600,000
individuals who have lent over $200 million to entrepreneurs in markets where access to traditional banking systems is limited. Millions of others use online advertising and platforms such as eBay,
Facebook, Google Docs, Hotmail, Skype and Twitter to reach customers, suppliers and partners around the world.
, economies
that are open to international trade in ICT and information grow faster and are more
productive Limiting network access dramatically undermines the economic benefits of technology and
can slow growth across entire economies.
More broadly
Global economic collapse cause nuclear war
Merlini 11 (Senior Fellow – Brookings)
(Cesare. A Post-Secular World? Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 – 130)
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of
oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the
acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the
use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial
system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great
Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the
unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would
likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the
European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential
religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar
issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be
sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled
nationalism.
Contention 2 is US Leadership
NSA domestic surveillance kills US technology leadership
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
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(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
When historians write about this period in U.S. history it could very well be that one of the themes will
be how the United States lost its global technology leadership to other nations. And clearly one of the factors
they would point to is the long-standing privileging of U.S. national security interests over U.S. industrial and commercial
interests when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. This has occurred over the last few years as the U.S. government has done
relatively little to address the rising commercial challenge to U.S. technology companies, all the while putting intelligence
gathering first and foremost. Indeed, policy decisions by the U.S. intelligence community have reverberated throughout the
global economy. If the U.S. tech industry is to remain the leader in the global marketplace, then the U.S.
government will need to set a new course that balances economic interests with national security
interests. The cost of inaction is not only short-term economic losses for U.S. companies, but a wave
of protectionist policies that will systematically weaken U.S. technology competiveness in years to
come, with impacts on economic growth, jobs, trade balance, and national security through a weakened
industrial base. Only by taking decisive steps to reform its digital surveillance activities will the
U.S. government enable its tech industry to effectively compete in the global market.
This spills over to economic and military dominance
Enderle 15 (president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group. Previously, he was the Senior Research Fellow for Forrester
Research and the Giga Information Group)
(Rob, U.S. surveillance programs are killing the tech industry, CIO | Jun 12, 2015, http://www.cio.com/article/2934887/privacy/u-ssurveillance-programs-are-killing-the-tech-industry.html)
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, ranked as the most authoritative science and technology think
tank in the U.S. (second in the world behind Max Planck Institutes of Germany), has just released its latest report
on the impact of the existence and disclosure of the broad NSA national and international spying programs.
It was initially reported that the revenue loss range would be between $21.5 billion and $35 billion, mostly affecting U.S.
cloud service providers. However, they have gone back and researched the impact and found it to be both far larger and far
broader than originally estimated. In fact, it appears the surveillance programs could cause a number of U.S.
technology firms to fail outright or to be forced into bankruptcy as they reorganize for survival. The damage has
also since spread to domestic aerospace and telephony service providers.
The programs identified in the report are PRISM; the program authorized by the FISA Amendments act, which
allowed search without the need for a warrant domestically and abroad, and Bullrun; the program designed to
compromise encryption technology worldwide.
The report ends in the following recommendations:
Increase transparency about U.S. surveillance activities both at home and abroad.
Strengthen information security by opposing any government efforts to introduce backdoors in software or weaken encryption.
Strengthen U.S. mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs).
Work to establish international legal standards for government access to data.
Complete trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership that ban digital protectionism, and pressure nations that seek to erect protectionist barriers to abandon those efforts.
The 2014 survey indicates that 25 percent of companies in the UK and Canada plan to pull data out of the U.S. Of those responding, 82 percent indicated they now look at national laws as the major deciding
factor with regard to where they put their data.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Birst indicated that its European customers are refusing to host information in the U.S. for fear of spying.
Salesforce, another SaaS company, revealed that its German insurance client pulled out of using the firm. Due to the backlash from the NSA disclosures Salesforce has reported a total loss to date of $124
million.
Cisco, the U.S. firm that leads the networking market, reported that sales was interrupted in Brazil, China and Russia as a result of the belief that the U.S. had placed backdoors in its networking products.
Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, tied his revenue shortfall to the NSA disclosure.
Servint, a U.S. Web Hosting company, reported losing half of its international clients as a result of the NSA Disclosure.
Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have all reported significant adverse revenue impact in China from the NSA disclosure.
A variety of U.S. companies including Cisco, McAfee/Intel, Apple and Citrix Systems were all dropped from the approved list for the Chinese government as a result of the NSA disclosure.
But it isn’t even just tech companies that have lost significant customers and revenues.
Boeing lost a major defense contract to Saab AB to replace Brazil’s aging fighter jets due to the disclosure.
Verizon was dropped by a large number German government facilities for fear Verizon would open them up to wiretapping and other surveillance.
NSA surveillance hurts U.S., creates opportunity for competing foreign firms
This has created significant opportunity for foreign firms competing with U.S. firms.
For instance, Hortensecurity (Germany) now markets itself as “Cloud Services Made in Germany” and safe from the NSA.
Cloudwatt (France) has joined a nationalistic consortium of companies called “Sovereign Cloud” (cool name) and advertises as being resistant to NSA spying.
F-Secure. which competes with Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive, has altered its marketing to include the language that they will not share data with the U.S. government as they move against these U.S.
firms.
Additional findings include broad protectionist measures in a variety of regions using this disclosure to lock U.S. firms out of the country and favor local firms and the creation of anti-U.S. technology
networks.
In addition, the governments are aggressively funding domestic startups that can replace U.S. companies
in their country. Australia, China, Russia, and India have passed laws making it illegal for personal information to be stored
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out of the country making it far more difficult for U.S. firms to do business there. China further launched an IOE movement
to prevent banks from buying from IBM, Oracle and EMC.
The report concludes that these changes taken in total will cripple and could virtually eliminate U.S.
dominance in technology internationally. While it doesn’t address what U.S. companies are doing, it is likely
many of them are looking at U.S. tech companies adversely because of the double hit of both the spying program and the
inability to adequately secure either the information about the program itself or information in general (thus the information
that was captured is also at risk).
The irony here is that if the U.S. loses the technology industry and it moves to Asia and Europe the
U.S. spy agencies will lose virtually all of their spying digital capability anyway, or it will drop to the same
level as a non-tech third-world country, because they won’t be able to force the foreign firms to give them inside access.
It could also be noted that they will also lose the capability to develop leading tech-based tools and
weapons as those skills also migrate out of the U.S. So, in a foolish effort to make the country safer, not only is
the collateral damage unacceptable to the U.S. economy it will likely result in a dramatically reduced
intelligence capability. This is a level of self-correction the U.S. might not recover from.
Reform can still solve - action key to a global signal
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
The free and open Internet that powers the globally networked economy is dependent on the ability of individuals and
companies to engage in commerce without geographic restrictions. To turn back the tide of technology
protectionism, U.S. trade negotiators will need a stronger hand to play. They cannot go to other nations
and tell them to not discriminate against U.S. tech firms if the U.S. intelligence system continues to
follow policies that threaten their citizens and businesses. As a result, it is incumbent on the Congress and
the Obama administration to take the lead in showing the world the best standards for transparency,
cooperation, and accountability.
Tech leadership is key to US primacy
Baru 9 (Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore)
(Sanjaya, “Year of the power shift?,” http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/593/593_sanjaya_baru.htm
There is no doubt that economics alone will not determine the balance of global power, but there is no doubt either that
economics has come to matter for more.
The management of the economy, and of the treasury, has been a vital aspect of statecraft from time immemorial.
Kautilya’s Arthashastra says, ‘From the strength of the treasury the army is born. …men without wealth do not attain their
objectives even after hundreds of trials… Only through wealth can material gains be acquired, as elephants (wild) can be
captured only by elephants (tamed)… A state with depleted resources, even if acquired, becomes only a liability.’ 4 Hence,
economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.5
In the modern era, the idea that strong economic performance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by
historian Paul Kennedy. ‘Victory (in war),’ Kennedy claimed, ‘has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing
productive base.’6 Drawing attention to the interrelationships between economic wealth, technological
innovation, and the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for
power projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine
military and economic strength scored over others.
‘The fact remains,’ Kennedy argued, ‘that all of the major shifts in the world’s military-power balance have
followed alterations in the productive balances; and further, that the rising and falling of the various
empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great
Power wars, where victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources.’7
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In Kennedy’s view the
geopolitical consequences of an economic crisis or even decline would be
transmitted through a nation’s inability to find adequate financial resources to simultaneously sustain
economic growth and military power – the classic ‘guns vs butter’ dilemma.
Lack of US primacy causes great power war
Zhang et al. 11 (Carnegie Endowment researcher)
(Yuhan, “America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry”, 1-22, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-aharbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/)
This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative
and perhaps alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the world’s
largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone else is narrowing. Thus, the global
distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less peaceful, liberal
and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. Over the past two decades, no
other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these circumstances,
motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and
accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the
Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts. However, as the
hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US alliance.
The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be
more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline
and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a
regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century,
accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the
notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the
Western Hemisphere’s security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy
and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints
on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society.
As a result of such political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have
appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating
stable and cooperative relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines?
Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central and
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect
global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-
hegemonic world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and
strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO
might give way to regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward
to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and
economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free — and major powers
would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum
element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western
European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did
international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A world without American hegemony is
one
where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an authoritarian
one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one
possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
Contention 3 is Solvency
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The plan is able to solve global internet splintering
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
The President’s NSA Review Group acknowl- edged the need for such reform in its report on surveillance programs,
affirming that “the right of privacy has been recognized as a basic human right that all nations should respect,” and cautioned that “unrestrained American surveillance of non-United States persons might alienate other
nations, fracture the unity of the Internet, and undermine the free flow of information across national
boundaries.”324 In addition to recommending a variety new protections for U.S. persons, the Review Group urged in its
Recommendation 13 that surveillance of non-U.S. persons under Section 702 or “any other authority”—a
reference intended to include Executive Order 12333325 — should be strictly limited to the purpose of
protecting national security, should not be used for economic espionage, should not be targeted based solely on a
person’s political or religious views, and should be subject to careful oversight and the highest degree of
transparency possible.326 Fully implementing this recommendation—and particularly restricting Section
702 and Executive Order 12333 surveillance to specific national security purposes rather than foreign
intelligence collection generally—would indicate significant progress toward addressing the
concerns raised in the recent Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on “The
Right to Privacy in the Digital Age.” The UN report highlights how, despite the universality of human rights, the common
distinction between “‘foreigners’ and ‘citizens’...within national security surveillance oversight regimes” has resulted in
“significantly weaker – or even non-existent – privacy protec- tion for foreigners and non-citizens, as compared with those
of citizens.”327
Both limiting authority and instituting congressional oversight are key to solve global fears of US
surveillance
Anderson 14 (J.D Candidate, Harvard Law School)
(Tyler C., Toward Institutional Reform of Intelligence Surveillance: A Proposal to Amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 8
Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 413 2014, Hein)
If the above analysis is correct, then Congress should reassess intelli- gence surveillance and amend FISA. Fortunately, as
Congress and the Obama Administration consider an overhaul of intelligence surveillance laws, a moment for such change
presents itself.96 In addressing concerns over the FAA, Congress should take two steps. First, Congress should narrow the scope of surveillance discretion granted to intelligence agencies. Second, Congress should strengthen
the ability of courts, Congress, and the American public to check abuses in surveillance authority exercised by the
executive branch. Drawing on the recent report issued by the President's Review Group on Intelligence and
Communications Technologies,97 this arti- cle proposes legislative language to do just that. Additionally, this article
proposes that Congress codify some of the President's promises that offer to expand civil liberties protections, particularly
the newly announced minimi- zation procedures and the promise not to use the NSA to target domestic racial minorities or
political dissidents.98
A. The First Step: Congress Should Narrow the Types of Conduct that WarrantSurveillance under the FAA
The first step Congress should take in reforming the FAA is to narrow and clarify what would give an
intelligence agency authority to initiate elec- tronic surveillance. Many have argued that one of the reasons the
FAA has attracted so much negative attention is simply that the general public does not understand what type of behavior
the act implicates. 9 This is not due to apathy, but rather to vagueness and secrecy because so much of the informa- tion
surrounding FISA is classified.
Currently, the language of 50 U.S.C. § 1801 suggests that the FAA is construed incredibly broadly by
intelligence agencies-an agency need only reasonably suspect that a target has committed or could commit any act "that
would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any State" as long as a target was
reasonably suspected of being an agent of a foreign power.'0 As the Snowden leaks demonstrate, this provision has in fact
been used to conduct broad-ranging surveillance. 01 Moreover, the act gives no guidance as to what constitutes
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"reasonable sus- picion" by an intelligence agency.102 The most sweeping provision, Section 1881a, goes further
by failing even to include such a requirement, requiring only that an intelligence agency not "intentionally target a U.S.
person" in order to conduct surveillance activities. 03 By implication, such a person may be subject to surveillance if her
data is knowingly, recklessly, or negli- gently collected.'" As the American people discovered by the disclosures of Edward
Snowden, this is exactly how the NSA and the FISA Court have interpreted this language. 05
Congress should remedy the over-collection of data and clarify what behavior warrants surveillance by narrowing these
provisions. In order to limit this expansive agency discretion, Congress could amend the FAA's most sweeping
provision, Section 1881a, to require that intelligence agen- cies "reasonably suspect the surveillance targets
of being agents of a foreign power" as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801. This requirement, as explained above, was
incorporated by definition into the FAA in Sections 1881b and 1881c,'06 but not 1881a, and could be added after Section
1881a(g)(2)(A)(v), adopting the language "targets are reasonably believed to be a foreign power, an agent of a foreign
power, or an officer or employee of a foreign power."'07 Furthermore, if Congress were to require that intelligence
agen- cies swear to and demonstrate such reasonable suspicion when they apply for a FISC warrant,
then much of the criticism of the Act's legal overbreadth would be alleviated, as 1881a could then only
be used to target legally sus- pected terrorists.
Additionally, Congress should narrow the type of activity that consti- tutes reasonable suspicion by an intelligence agency
that a U.S. person is an "agent of a foreign power" in Sections 1881b and 1881c, which it could accomplish by narrowing
the definition of "international terrorism." 0 One version of this proposal has already been put forth by Seventh Circuit
Judge Richard Posner.'" In Judge Posner's proposal, the FAA would add an addi- tional targeting requirement such that
intelligence agencies would need to reasonably suspect that targets are threats to national security. Specifically, he would
define "threat to national security" to implicate only "threats in- volving a potential for mass deaths or catastrophic damage
to property or to the economy," and leave to traditional law enforcement the surveillance of acts that include "ecoterrorism,
animal-rights terrorism, and other political violence that, though criminal, does not threaten catastrophic harm."" 0
Although Posner's proposal succeeds in narrowing intelligence agency discretion in interpreting the term "reasonably
suspicious," his analysis fun- damentally misreads the FAA since such behavior is already excluded."' However, Posner
does validly argue that NSA surveillance techniques should not be used to target nonviolent political dissidents-a position
that President Obama has publicly endorsed in his recent Presidential Policy Di- rective.1 2 Congress could accomplish
Posner's more thoughtful emendations and codify President Obama's recent directive if, instead of modifying the language
of Sections 1881a, 1881b, and 1881c as Posner suggests, Congress altered the definition of terrorist activity itself. The new
text would change the definition of terrorism from any act "that would be a criminal violation if committed within the
jurisdiction of the United States or any State" to any act "that threatens national security and would be a criminal violation
if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or and State.""' Of course, as is often the case in law governing
executive power, particularly in national security, any particular tightening of legal language must be accom- panied by
oversight and enforcement to ensure that surveillance is only truly directed at national security threats.'14
Third, Congress should modify Section 1881 a so that it explicitly states that any collateral data on U.S. persons collected
by intelligence agencies cannot be used for intelligence purposes without specific FISC authoriza- tion."5 Here, Congress
could insert a new requirement below Section 1881a(d)(1)(B) of the act, stating that any incidental data pertaining to U.S.
persons and collected by intelligence agencies cannot be used without first obtaining a FISC warrant under Section 1881b
or 1881c of the act or through normal Title III electronic surveillance procedures for criminal investiga- tions. This proposal
would remedy much of the criticism generated by the programs and methods recently reported by The Guardian.116 While
Con- gress need not adopt such a proposal wholesale, clarifying and narrowing the types of activity that give rise to FAA
surveillance would help strengthen the rule-of-law principles our system of governance embodies.
B. The Second Step: Increase Oversight by Independent Parties
The second step Congress should take to improve the FAA is to heighten the independent oversight of
surveillance activity under the act. To do so, Congress could establish a publicly accountable, independent
watch- dog agency to supervise the operation of the FAA and ensure that the law be used only for its
intended purpose. Alternatively, Congress could strengthen the existing Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to
achieve the same goal. Critically, Congress would have to ensure that the executive branch could not simply classify away
the information that the watchdog agency would need to conduct its supervision.' Congress could accomplish this either by
ensuring that agency members have high-level security clearances or by mandating specific, non-redacted disclosure by
adding a disclosure provision to the text of the FAA as recommended by the Presidential Review Group on Intelligence and
Communication Technologies."'
Many critics of the act have already suggested a watchdog agency. For example, Jack Balkin has argued that new
legislative and judicial oversight based on "prior disclosure and explanation and subsequent regular reporting and
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minimization""'9 should be coupled with the creation of a new, independent agency charged with oversight.1 Balkin
describes such an agency as "a cadre of informational ombudsmen within the executive branch-with the highest security
clearances-whose job is to ensure that the government deploys information collection techniques legally and
nonarbitrarily."'21 This would heighten independent oversight and ensure congruence between the spirit and letter of the
FAA and the FAA's application. Congress de- signed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to perform
just such a function following public outcry surrounding the passage of the PATRIOT Act, and later granted it independent
status; however, as of today the PCLOB still has little teeth (for reasons including its historical lack of funding). 2 2 In fact,
the PCLOB itself recently suggested that it requires more access to information to adequately perform its job.123 Even
before the Snowden disclosures, several critics of FISA had already suggested the PCLOB be strengthened so that it could
effectively monitor intelligence sur- 24 veillance activities.1 Moreover, this alteration in oversight should be
coupled with an expan- sion of the actual review process before the FISC, which should have the
benefit of robust adversarial proceedings. As the Presidential Review Group proposed, either Congress, the FISC,
or the PCLOB should be obligated to appoint an attorney to contest some of the more contentious FISA warrants 25
including those authorized under Section 1881a.1
Congressional oversight can rebuild trust and reverse the decline in leadership
FitzGerald and Butler 13 (Center for a New American Security)
(Ben FitzGerald, Bob Butler, NSA revelations: Fallout can serve our nation, DECEMBER 18, http://www.cnas.org/content/nsarevelations-fallout-can-serve-our-nation#.VYtAVO1Vgz8)
Security and openness need not be mutually exclusive and technological capability should not be the key to defining
operational limits. Confidence can be re-established through government-led development of the explicit
principles that set a better balance between security and openness. These principles must be formalized in government
agencies’ policies, federal laws, Supreme Court rulings and congressional oversight establishing the government
mechanisms to balance security and openness.
Credibly addressing this balance represents Washington’s best chance to rebuild the trust that has been
so eroded. It is also an opportunity to recast the Snowden revelations as a reason to establish international norms that will
govern all nations that are now developing and using similar surveillance capabilities.
What is required is to establish standards that Washington can hold itself and others to in terms of healthy collaboration
with business, productive relationships with allies and appropriate protections for the data of private citizens.
Powerful surveillance capabilities will only grow over time. The United States must therefore establish a new “higher
ground” in the international community to lead morally as well as technologically and ensure mutual
accountability among governments.
The key is to act quickly. Though the United States needs to retain robust foreign surveillance, it is clear that the fallout
from the NSA revelations will continue until proactive steps — rooted in trust, policy and law — are
taken.
***Tech Leadership Adv***
Tech Leadership Adv – 1AC
NSA domestic surveillance kills US technology leadership
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
When historians write about this period in U.S. history it could very well be that one of the themes will
be how the United States lost its global technology leadership to other nations. And clearly one of the factors
they would point to is the long-standing privileging of U.S. national security interests over U.S. industrial and commercial
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interests when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. This has occurred over the last few years as the U.S. government has done
relatively little to address the rising commercial challenge to U.S. technology companies, all the while putting intelligence
gathering first and foremost. Indeed, policy decisions by the U.S. intelligence community have reverberated throughout the
global economy. If the U.S. tech industry is to remain the leader in the global marketplace, then the U.S.
government will need to set a new course that balances economic interests with national security
interests. The cost of inaction is not only short-term economic losses for U.S. companies, but a wave
of protectionist policies that will systematically weaken U.S. technology competiveness in years to
come, with impacts on economic growth, jobs, trade balance, and national security through a weakened
industrial base. Only by taking decisive steps to reform its digital surveillance activities will the
U.S. government enable its tech industry to effectively compete in the global market.
This spills over to economic and military dominance
Enderle 15 (president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group. Previously, he was the Senior Research Fellow for Forrester
Research and the Giga Information Group)
(Rob, U.S. surveillance programs are killing the tech industry, CIO | Jun 12, 2015, http://www.cio.com/article/2934887/privacy/u-ssurveillance-programs-are-killing-the-tech-industry.html)
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, ranked as the most authoritative science and technology think
tank in the U.S. (second in the world behind Max Planck Institutes of Germany), has just released its latest report
on the impact of the existence and disclosure of the broad NSA national and international spying programs.
It was initially reported that the revenue loss range would be between $21.5 billion and $35 billion, mostly affecting U.S.
cloud service providers. However, they have gone back and researched the impact and found it to be both far larger and far
broader than originally estimated. In fact, it appears the surveillance programs could cause a number of U.S.
technology firms to fail outright or to be forced into bankruptcy as they reorganize for survival. The damage has
also since spread to domestic aerospace and telephony service providers.
The programs identified in the report are PRISM; the program authorized by the FISA Amendments act, which
allowed search without the need for a warrant domestically and abroad, and Bullrun; the program designed to
compromise encryption technology worldwide.
The report ends in the following recommendations:
Increase transparency about U.S. surveillance activities both at home and abroad.
Strengthen information security by opposing any government efforts to introduce backdoors in software or weaken encryption.
Strengthen U.S. mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs).
Work to establish international legal standards for government access to data.
Complete trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership that ban digital protectionism, and pressure nations that seek to erect protectionist barriers to abandon those efforts.
The 2014 survey indicates that 25 percent of companies in the UK and Canada plan to pull data out of the U.S. Of those responding, 82 percent indicated they now look at national laws as the major deciding
factor with regard to where they put their data.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Birst indicated that its European customers are refusing to host information in the U.S. for fear of spying.
Salesforce, another SaaS company, revealed that its German insurance client pulled out of using the firm. Due to the backlash from the NSA disclosures Salesforce has reported a total loss to date of $124
million.
Cisco, the U.S. firm that leads the networking market, reported that sales was interrupted in Brazil, China and Russia as a result of the belief that the U.S. had placed backdoors in its networking products.
Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, tied his revenue shortfall to the NSA disclosure.
Servint, a U.S. Web Hosting company, reported losing half of its international clients as a result of the NSA Disclosure.
Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have all reported significant adverse revenue impact in China from the NSA disclosure.
A variety of U.S. companies including Cisco, McAfee/Intel, Apple and Citrix Systems were all dropped from the approved list for the Chinese government as a result of the NSA disclosure.
But it isn’t even just tech companies that have lost significant customers and revenues.
Boeing lost a major defense contract to Saab AB to replace Brazil’s aging fighter jets due to the disclosure.
Verizon was dropped by a large number German government facilities for fear Verizon would open them up to wiretapping and other surveillance.
NSA surveillance hurts U.S., creates opportunity for competing foreign firms
This has created significant opportunity for foreign firms competing with U.S. firms.
For instance, Hortensecurity (Germany) now markets itself as “Cloud Services Made in Germany” and safe from the NSA.
Cloudwatt (France) has joined a nationalistic consortium of companies called “Sovereign Cloud” (cool name) and advertises as being resistant to NSA spying.
F-Secure. which competes with Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive, has altered its marketing to include the language that they will not share data with the U.S. government as they move against these U.S.
firms.
Additional findings include broad protectionist measures in a variety of regions using this disclosure to lock U.S. firms out of the country and favor local firms and the creation of anti-U.S. technology
networks.
In addition, the governments are aggressively funding domestic startups that can replace U.S. companies
in their country. Australia, China, Russia, and India have passed laws making it illegal for personal information to be stored
out of the country making it far more difficult for U.S. firms to do business there. China further launched an IOE movement
to prevent banks from buying from IBM, Oracle and EMC.
The report concludes that these changes taken in total will cripple and could virtually eliminate U.S.
dominance in technology internationally. While it doesn’t address what U.S. companies are doing, it is likely
many of them are looking at U.S. tech companies adversely because of the double hit of both the spying program and the
inability to adequately secure either the information about the program itself or information in general (thus the information
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that was captured is also at risk).
The irony here is that if the U.S. loses the technology industry and it moves to Asia and Europe the
U.S. spy agencies will lose virtually all of their spying digital capability anyway, or it will drop to the same
level as a non-tech third-world country, because they won’t be able to force the foreign firms to give them inside access.
It could also be noted that they will also lose the capability to develop leading tech-based tools and
weapons as those skills also migrate out of the U.S. So, in a foolish effort to make the country safer, not only is
the collateral damage unacceptable to the U.S. economy it will likely result in a dramatically reduced
intelligence capability. This is a level of self-correction the U.S. might not recover from.
Reform can still solve - action key to a global signal
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
The free and open Internet that powers the globally networked economy is dependent on the ability of individuals and
companies to engage in commerce without geographic restrictions. To turn back the tide of technology
protectionism, U.S. trade negotiators will need a stronger hand to play. They cannot go to other nations
and tell them to not discriminate against U.S. tech firms if the U.S. intelligence system continues to
follow policies that threaten their citizens and businesses. As a result, it is incumbent on the Congress and
the Obama administration to take the lead in showing the world the best standards for transparency,
cooperation, and accountability.
Tech leadership is key to US primacy—the impact is great power war
Baru 9 (Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore)
(Sanjaya, “Year of the power shift?,” http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/593/593_sanjaya_baru.htm
There is no doubt that economics alone will not determine the balance of global power, but there is no doubt either that
economics has come to matter for more.
The management of the economy, and of the treasury, has been a vital aspect of statecraft from time immemorial.
Kautilya’s Arthashastra says, ‘From the strength of the treasury the army is born. …men without wealth do not attain their
objectives even after hundreds of trials… Only through wealth can material gains be acquired, as elephants (wild) can be
captured only by elephants (tamed)… A state with depleted resources, even if acquired, becomes only a liability.’ 4 Hence,
economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.5
In the modern era, the idea that strong economic performance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by
historian Paul Kennedy. ‘Victory (in war),’ Kennedy claimed, ‘has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing
productive base.’6 Drawing attention to the interrelationships between economic wealth, technological
innovation, and the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for
power projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine
military and economic strength scored over others.
‘The fact remains,’ Kennedy argued, ‘that all of the major shifts in the world’s military-power balance have
followed alterations in the productive balances; and further, that the rising and falling of the various
empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great
Power wars, where victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources.’7
In Kennedy’s view the geopolitical consequences of an economic crisis or even decline would be
transmitted through a nation’s inability to find adequate financial resources to simultaneously sustain
economic growth and military power – the classic ‘guns vs butter’ dilemma.
Lack of US primacy causes great power war
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Zhang et al. 11 (Carnegie Endowment researcher)
(Yuhan, “America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry”, 1-22, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-aharbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/)
This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative
and perhaps alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the world’s
largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone else is narrowing. Thus, the global
distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less peaceful, liberal
and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. Over the past two decades, no
other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these circumstances,
motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and
accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the
Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts. However, as the
hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US alliance.
The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be
more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline
and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a
regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century,
accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the
notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the
Western Hemisphere’s security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy
and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints
on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society.
As a result of such political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have
appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating
stable and cooperative relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines?
Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central and
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect
global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-
hegemonic world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and
strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO
might give way to regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward
to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and
economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free — and major powers
would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum
element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western
European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did
international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A world without American hegemony is
one
where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an authoritarian
one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one
possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
2AC Leadership IL Ext.
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
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ITIF estimated in 2013 that even a modest drop in the expected foreign market share for cloud computing stemming from
concerns about U.S. surveillance could cost the United States between $21.5 billion and $35 billion by 2016. Since then, it
has become clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole, not just the cloud computing sector, has underperformed as a result of the Snowden revelations. Therefore, the economic impact of U.S. surveillance
practices will likely far exceed ITIF’s initial $35 billion estimate. This report catalogues a wide range of specific
examples of the economic harm that has been done to U.S. businesses. In short, foreign customers are shunning U.S.
companies. The policy implication of this is clear: Now that Congress has reformed how the National Security Agency
(NSA) collects bulk domestic phone records and allowed private firms—rather than the government—to collect and store
approved data, it is time to address other controversial digital surveillance activities by the U.S. intelligence community.
The U.S. government’s failure to reform many of the NSA’s surveillance programs has damaged the
competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector and cost it a portion of the global market share. This includes
programs such as PRISM—the controversial program authorized by the FISA Amendments Act, which allows for
warrantless access to private-user data on popular online services both in the United States and abroad—and Bullrun—the
NSA’s program to undermine encryption standards both at home and abroad. Foreign companies have seized on these
controversial policies to convince their customers that keeping data at home is safer than sending it abroad, and foreign
governments have pointed to U.S. surveillance as justification for protectionist policies that require data to be kept within
their national borders. In the most extreme cases, such as in China, foreign governments are using fear of digital
surveillance to force companies to surrender valuable intellectual property, such as source code.
1AR Leadership IL Ext.
Undermines competitiveness
Kelly 14 (staff writer for USA Today)
(Erin, Tech companies say NSA spying harms competitiveness, USA TODAY, October 7,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/07/wyden-microsoft-tech-industry-privacy-encryption/16826657/)
The tech companies say that European
and Canadian companies are using revelations about the National
Security Agency's mass surveillance of phone records to gain a competitive advantage against
American firms overseas. Foreign competitors tell potential customers that American phone and Internet companies
may be forced to turn over consumers' private data to the U.S. government.
The erosion of trust in the privacy of American technology is an especially big threat to companies
such as Dropbox, which has 70% of its users overseas.
Wyden said Congress must act to rein in the NSA or risk losing high-paying American jobs in the
tech industry. A report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said U.S. tech companies stand to
lose up to $35 billion through 2016 from canceled contracts and missed opportunities.
In June, the German government announced it would cancel a contract with Verizon Communications because of the NSA's
bulk collection of millions of phone records. The mass surveillance, which is still going on, came to light last year when
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked the information.
"There are serious concerns about the implications for the whole U.S. technology sector," said Wyden, who
also serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "You've got consumers all over the world raising questions
about the security of products that are made in the United States."
Key to Heg Ext.
This is correlation is supported by a consensus of international relations theory
Taylor 4 (Massachusetts Institute of Technology research assistant Department of Political Science)
(Mark Zachary, Ph.D. candidate, lecturer, “The Politics of Technological Change: International Relations versus Domestic
Institutions” http://web.mit.edu/polisci/research/wip/Taylor.pdf)
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Technological innovation is of central importance to the study of international relations (IR), affecting almost every aspect of the subfield.2 First and foremost, a nation’s technological capability has a significant effect on its economic growth, industrial might, and
military prowess; therefore relative national technological capabilities necessarily influence the balance of
power between states, and hence have a role in calculations of war and alliance formation. Second, technology and
innovative capacity also determine a nation’s trade profile, affecting which products it will import and
export, as well as where multinational corporations will base their production facilities.3 Third, insofar as innovation-driven economic growth
both attracts investment and produces surplus capital, a nation’s technological ability will also affect international financial
flows and who has power over them.4 Thus, in broad theoretical terms, technological change is important to the study of IR because of its overall
implications for both the relative and absolute power of states. And if theory alone does not convince, then history also tells us that nations on the
technological ascent generally experience a corresponding and dramatic change in their global stature
and influence, such as Britain during the first industrial revolution, the United States and Germany during the second industrial revolution, and Japan during the
twentieth century.5 Conversely, great powers which fail to maintain their place at the technological frontier generally
drift and fade from influence on international scene.6 This is not to suggest that technological innovation alone determines international
politics, but rather that shifts in both relative and absolute technological capability have a major impact on
international relations, and therefore need to be better understood by IR scholars indirect source of military doctrine. And for some, like Gilpin
quoted above, technology is the very cornerstone of great power domination, and its transfer the main
vehicle by which war and change occur in world politics.8 Jervis tells us that the balance of offensive and
defensive military technology affects the incentives for war.9 Walt agrees, arguing that technological
change can alter a state’s aggregate power, and thereby affect both alliance formation and the
international balance of threats.10 Liberals are less directly concerned with technological change, but they must admit that by raising or
lowering the costs of using force, technological progress affects the rational attractiveness of
international cooperation and regimes.11 Technology also lowers information & transactions costs and thus increases the applicability of international
institutions, a cornerstone of Liberal IR theory.12 And in fostering flows of trade, finance, and information, technological change can lead to Keohane’s interdependence13 or
Thomas Friedman et al’s globalization.14 Meanwhile, over at the “third debate”, Constructivists cover the causal spectrum on the issue, from Katzenstein’s “cultural norms”
which shape security concerns and thereby affect technological innovation;15 to Wendt’s “stripped down technological determinism” in which technology inevitably drives
nations to form a world state.16 However most Constructivists seem to favor Wendt, arguing that new technology changes people’s identities within society, and sometimes
even creates new cross-national constituencies, thereby affecting international politics.17 Of course, Marxists tend to see technology as determining all social relations and the
entire course of history, though they describe mankind’s major fault lines as running between economic classes rather than nation-states.18 Finally, Buzan & Little remind us
that without advances in the technologies of transportation, communication, production, and war, international systems would not exist in the first place.19
2AC Cloud IL
Domestic surveillance undermines cloud development
Evans 13
(Jonny,Why PRISM kills the cloud Computerworld | Jun 10, 2013 6:58 AM PT,
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2473687/cloud-computing/why-prism-kills-the-cloud.html)
The migration from desktop computing to the cloud is on every tech firm's playlist this season, with Apple
[AAPL] expected to deliver improvements to its iCloud service later today -- but recent revelations regarding the US
government's PRISM surveillance technology could be the kiss of death to these future tech promises. (You may
also wish to read this more recent report). Security is essential
Think about it: In order for cloud computing solutions to be seen as viable alternatives to more traditional
desktop solutions users -- personal and business users alike -- need to be 100 percent certain their data is secure.
It is unlikely too many people want their privacy curtailed in exchange for convenience -- and reports claiming the US can
pretty much tap into a user's personal data and information from any PRISM-enabled system installed in locations
worldwide undermines expectation of secure data in the cloud.
What is PRISM? Whistleblower, Edward Snowden, put it like this when he spoke with The Guardian this weekend (there's
a video of him speaking below):
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"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the
vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your
wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
That’s key to broader tech innovation
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
It appears that little consideration was given over the past decade to the potential economic repercussions if the NSA’s
secret pro- grams were revealed.38 This failure was acutely demonstrated by the Obama Administration’s initial focus on
reassuring the public that its programs primarily affect non-Americans, even though non-Americans are also heavy users of
American companies’ products. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put a fine point on the issue, saying that the government
“blew it” in its response to the scandal. He noted sarcasti- cally: “The government response was, ‘Oh don’t worry, we’re
not spying on any Americans.’ Oh, wonderful: that’s really helpful to companies [like Facebook] trying to serve people
around the world, and that’s really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies.”39 As Zuckerberg’s
comments reflect, certain parts of the American technology industry are particularly vulnerable to international backlash
since growth is heavily dependent on foreign markets. For example, the U.S. cloud computing industry has grown
from an estimated $46 billion in 2008 to $150 billion in 2014, with nearly 50 percent of worldwide cloud-computing
revenues com- ing from the U.S.40 R Street Institute’s January 2014 policy study concluded that in the next few years,
new products and services that rely on cloud computing will become increasingly pervasive. “Cloud
computing is also the root of development for the emerging generation of Web-based applications—home
security, out- patient care, mobile payment, distance learning, efficient energy use and driverless cars,” writes R Street’s
Steven Titch in the study. “And it is a research area where the United States is an undisputed leader.”41 This
trajectory may be dramatically altered, however, as a consequence of the NSA’s surveillance programs.
A2: Heg Doesn’t Solve War
Social science proves—multipolarity supports the natural incentive to seek status by fighting
Wohlforth 9 (professor of government at Dartmouth)
(William, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War,” World Affairs, January, project muse)
The upshot is a near scholarly consensus that unpolarity’s consequences for great power conflict are indeterminate and that
a power shift resulting in a return to bipolarity or multipolarity will not raise the specter of great power war. This article
questions the consensus on two counts. First, I show that it depends crucially on a dubious assumption about human
motivation. Prominent theories of war are based on the assumption that people are mainly motivated by
the instrumental pursuit of tangible ends such as physical security and material prosperity. This is why
such theories seem irrelevant to interactions among great powers in an international environment that diminishes the utility
of war for the pursuit of such ends. Yet we know that people are motivated by a great many noninstrumental
motives, not least by concerns regarding their social status. 3 As John Harsanyi noted, “Apart from economic
payoffs, social status (social rank) seems to be the most important incentive and motivating force of
social behavior.”4 This proposition rests on much firmer scientific ground now than when Harsanyi expressed it a
generation ago, as cumulating research
shows that humans appear to be hardwired for sensitivity to status and that relative standing is a
powerful and independent motivator of behavior.5 [End Page 29] Second, I question the dominant view that
status quo evaluations are relatively independent of the distribution of capabilities. If the status of states depends in some
measure on their relative capabilities, and if states derive utility from status, then different distributions of capabilities may
affect levels of satisfaction, just as different income distributions may affect levels of status competition in domestic
settings. 6 Building on research in psychology and sociology, I argue that even capabilities distributions among
major powers foster ambiguous status hierarchies, which generate more dissatisfaction and clashes
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over the status quo. And the more stratified the distribution of capabilities, the less likely such status
competition is. Unipolarity thus generates far fewer incentives than either bipolarity or multipolarity
for direct great power positional competition over status. Elites in the other major powers continue to
prefer higher status, but in a unipolar system they face comparatively weak incentives to translate that
preference into costly action. And the absence of such incentives matters because social status is a
positional good—something whose value depends on how much one has in relation to others.7 “If
everyone has high status,” Randall Schweller notes, “no one does.”8 While one actor might increase its status, all
cannot simultaneously do so. High status is thus inherently scarce, and competitions for status tend to be
zero sum.9
No one has an incentive for major war
Cohen 11 (CSIS Group Report, Craig S. Cohen, Jon B. Alterman, Ernest Z. Bower, Victor D. Cha, Heather A. Conley,
Stephen J. Flanagan, Bonnie S. Glaser, Michael J. Green, Andrew C. Kuchins, Haim Malka, Teresita C. Schaffer,
“Capacity and Resolve: Foreign Assessments of US Power,”
http://csis.org/files/publication/110613_Cohen_CapacityResolve_Web.pdf
We are now entering the third decade of a new international system—let me call it the post– Cold War
era. This international system is unique in that it comprises a single global superpower—the United
States—but with a number of regional powers, several of which operate beyond the boundaries of their regions.
Brazil is South America’s indisputable power. India dominates South Asia. In Europe we see for the
first time the emergence of the supranational state of the European Union—an economic superpower to be
sure, but not yet a diplomatic or military superpower. But this will emerge. Europe also has the phenomenon of Russia—a
remaining military superpower (largely because of nuclear weapons), but not an economic superpower. In West Asia
there is an uneasy balance among Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and a rising Turkey. In East Asia we have two
superpowers—China and Japan. Both are now economic superpowers, and China is certainly a military
superpower. Japan’s military alliance with the United States rounds out its economic power base although it is still
recovering from the terrible recent events following the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear spillage. For this third
international epoch, I pose the same questions we asked of the earlier epochs. Is this a stable international system—that is,
will it be prone to resolve differences among the power centers through peaceful means or violent means—and is it a
durable system? First, on the question of stability, I believe that a careful analysis will reveal it is an
inherently stable system. The global superpower has no incentive to enter conflict with a regional
superpower because, although it might win that military exchange, it would sap all its energies doing
so and permit other regional superpowers to fill the vacuum. No regional superpower would
conceivably find it advantageous to go to war with the global superpower.
***Global Economy Adv***
Global Economy Adv – 1AC
Two internal links – first is the US econ
NSA surveillance kills it
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
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(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
“It is becoming clear that the post-9/11 surveillance apparatus may be at cross-pur- poses with our high-tech economic
growth,” declared Third Way’s Mieke Eoyang and Gabriel Horowitz in December 2013. “ The economic
consequences [of the recent revelations] could be staggering.”25 A TIME magazine headline projected that “NSA
Spying Could Cost U.S. Tech Giants Billions,” predicting losses based on the increased scrutiny that economic
titans like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo have faced both at home and abroad since last June.26 The NSA’s
actions pose a serious threat to the current value and future stability of the information technology
industry, which has been a key driver of economic growth and productivity in the United States in
the past decade.27 In this section, we examine how emerging evidence about the NSA’s extensive surveillance apparatus
has already hurt and will likely continue to hurt the American tech sector in a number of ways, from dwindling U.S.
market share in industries like cloud computing and webhosting to dropping tech sales overseas. The
impact of individual users turning away from American companies in favor of foreign alternatives is a concern. However,
the major losses will likely result from diminishing confidence in U.S. companies as trustworthy choices for foreign
government procurement of products and services and changing behavior in the business-to-business market.
Both reform and oversight are key to avoid long term destruction of the economy
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
It is abundantly clear that the NSA
surveillance programs are currently having a serious, negative impact on
the U.S. economy and threatening the future competitiveness of American technology companies. Not only
are U.S. companies losing overseas sales and getting dropped from contracts with foreign companies and governments—
they are also watching their competitive advantage in fast-growing indus- tries like cloud computing and
webhosting disappear, opening the door for foreign companies who claim to offer “more secure” alternative products to
poach their business. Industry ef- forts to increase transparency and accountability as well as concrete steps to promote
better security by adopting encryption and other best practices are positive signs, but U.S. companies cannot solve this
problem alone. “It’s not blowing over,” said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith at a recent conference. “In June of
2014, it is clear it is getting worse, not better.”98 Without meaningful government reform and better
oversight, concerns about the breadth of NSA surveillance could lead to permanent shifts in the global
technology market and do lasting damage to the U.S. economy.
US key to the global economy
Clarfeld 12 [Rob, Forbes Contributor, Decouple This!, 1/25/12,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robclarfeld/2012/01/25/decouple-this/]
During the first few weeks of 2012, the markets are following the prevailing narrative that the U.S. economy has “decoupled” from the widely known troubles of Europe, and the somewhat less discussed
prevailing risks from China. In a “decoupling” scenario, a country or region is deemed to be able to withstand the troubles going on outside of its own borders because of its own internal economic strength.
I see two major problems with this thesis. First, the U.S. economy is not growing at the recently predicted robust rate of 4-5%; rather it is struggling to achieve a rate of 2-2.5%. This leaves little cushion to
withstand the “contagion” from a major economic fallout from either Europe or China, or for that matter, economic shocks that have yet to surface. A significant European debt default, banking failure,
natural disasters or geopolitical events, would surely impact the U.S. economy and markets beyond the current level of fragile growth – we simply don’t have the levels of productivity requisite to absorb a
major blow. Second, it was only a few years ago when the decoupling thesis was widely espoused following the U.S. banking crisis and ensuing recession. At the time the thinking was that the robust
growth experienced in the emerging markets would be able to withstand the U.S. slowdown and pick up some of the slack in the global economy. We now know how that worked out – it didn’t!
When the U.S. went into a major recession it dragged down the rest of the world with it. We need to deal
with it — the global economy remains highly interdependent. If a number of dominoes begin to fall, it is
highly unlikely that any individual country or region will be able to escape the carnage. Again, any
financial crisis would be occurring from levels of growth that have not yet fully recovered from their
recessionary lows. In relative terms, some countries and regions will do better than others, but the “decoupling”
thesis is highly flawed.
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Second is Data Localization
NSA domestic surveillance causes global data localization regulations which undermines the internet
economy
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
The NSA disclosures have prompted some foreign leaders to propose new policies for data localization and data
protection that could have serious ramifications for the Internet ecosystem. In the name of strengthening
privacy and secu- rity, many of these changes could hurt American tech companies, impact the future growth of the
network as a whole, and endanger human rights and Internet Freedom.99 In particular, proposals that would
require data localization or strengthen data protection laws could fundamentally alter the way traffic flows
over the Internet and cre- ate significant additional compliance costs for American technology companies operating overseas. Major economic powers such as Germany, Brazil, and India have discussed requiring that all Internet traffic be routed
or stored locally. Various leaders in these countries have also urged gov- ernment agencies and their citizens to stop using
American tools altogether because of concerns about backdoors or other arrangements with the NSA.100 Meanwhile,
legislators in the European Union have passed strict new data protection rules for the continent and considered various
privacy-focused proposals, including the devel- opment of “national clouds” and the suspension of key trade agreements
with the United States.101 “The vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is leading to the breakup of
the Internet as countries scramble to protect privacy or commercially sensitive emails and phone records from UK and US
security services,” reported The Guardian in November 2013.102 In combination, these various proposals could
threaten the Internet economy while endangering privacy and free expression.
Internet jurisdiction and borders were con- tentious issues long before the Snowden leaks, but the debate has become
significantly more complex in the past year. For decades, the border- less nature of cyberspace103 has raised concerns
about sovereignty and how governments can regulate and access their citizens’ personal infor- mation or speech when it is
stored on servers that may be located all over the world.104 Various data localization and national routing proposals have
been put forth by governments that seek great- er control of the information that flows within their borders, often in order to
make censorship and surveillance over the local population eas- ier.105 On the other side, free speech advocates,
technologists, and civil society organizations generally advocate for a borderless cyberspace governed by its own set of
internationally-agreed upon rules that promote the protection of human rights, individual privacy, and free expression.106
The revelations about NSA surveillance have heightened concerns on both sides of this debate. But the disclosures
appear to have given new ammunition to proponents of greater governmental control over traffic and
network infrastructure, accelerating the number and scope of national control proposals from both longtime advocates as well as governments with relatively solid track records on human rights.
There are now more than a dozen countries that have introduced or are actively discussing data localization laws.108
Broadly speaking, data localization can be defined as any measures that “specifically encumber the transfer of data across
national borders,” through rules that prevent or limit these information flows.109 The data localiza- tion proposals being
considered post-Snowden generally require that foreign ICT companies maintain infrastructure located within a coun- try
and store some or all of their data on that country’s users on local servers.110 Brazil, for example, has proposed that
Internet companies like Facebook and Google must set up local data centers so that they are bound by Brazilian privacy
laws.111 The Indian government’s draft policy would force companies to maintain part of their IT infrastructure in-country,
give local authorities access to the encrypted data on their servers for criminal investigations, and prevent local data from
being moved out of country.112 Germany, Greece, Brunei, and Vietnam have also put forth their own data sovereignty
proposals. Proponents argue that these policies would provide greater security and privacy protection because local servers
and infrastructure can give governments both physical control and legal jurisdiction over the data being stored on them—
although the policies may come with added political and economic benefits for those countries as well. “Home grown and
guaranteed security in data storage, hardware manufacture, cloud computing services and routing are all part of a new
discussion about ‘technological sovereignty,’” write Mascolo and Scott. “It is both a political response and a marketing opportunity.” 113 At the same time, data localization can also facilitate local censorship and surveil- lance,
making it easier for governments to exert control over the Internet infrastructure.
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This undermines the entire global economy
CCIA 12 (international not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to innovation and enhancing society’s access to
information and communications)
(Promoting Cross‐Border Data Flows Priorities for the Business Community, http://www.ccianet.org/wpcontent/uploads/library/PromotingCrossBorderDataFlows.pdf)
The movement of electronic information across borders is critical to businesses around the world, but the
international rules governing flows of digital goods, services, data and infrastructure are incomplete. The global trading system does not spell out a consistent, transparent framework for the treatment of
cross‐ border flows of digital goods, services or information, leaving businesses and individuals to deal with a patchwork of national, bilateral and global arrangements covering significant issues such as the
storage, transfer, disclosure, retention and protection of personal, commercial and financial data. Dealing with these issues is becoming even more important as a new generation of networked technologies
enables greater cross‐border collaboration over the Internet, which has the potential to stimulate economic development and job growth.
Despite the widespread benefits of cross‐border data flows to innovation and economic growth, and due in large part to gaps in global rules and inadequate enforcement of existing commitments, digital
protectionism is a growing threat around the world. A number of countries have already enacted or are pursuing restrictive policies governing the provision of digital commercial and financial services,
technology products, or the treatment of information to favor domestic interests over international competition. Even where policies are designed to support legitimate public interests such as national
security or law enforcement, businesses can suffer when those rules are unclear, arbitrary, unevenly applied or more trade‐restrictive than necessary to achieve the underlying objective. What’s more,
multiple governments may assert jurisdiction over the same information, which may leave businesses subject to inconsistent or conflicting rules.
In response, the United States should drive the development and adoption of transparent and high‐quality international rules, norms and best practices on cross‐border flows of digital data and technologies
while also holding countries to existing international obligations. Such efforts must recognize and accommodate legitimate differences in regulatory approaches to issues such as privacy and security between
countries as well as across sectors. They should also be grounded in key concepts such as non‐discrimination and national treatment that have underpinned the trading system for decades.
The U.S. Government should seek international commitments on several key objectives, including: prohibiting measures that restrict legitimate cross‐border data flows or link commercial benefit to local
investment; addressing emerging legal and policy issues involving the digital economy; promoting industry‐ driven international standards, dialogues and best practices; and expanding trade in digital goods,
services and infrastructure. U.S. efforts should ensure that trade agreements cover digital technologies that may be developed in the future. At the same time, the United States should work with governments
around the world to pursue other policies that support cross‐border data flows, including those endorsed in the Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policymaking related to intellectual property protection
and limiting intermediary liability developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in June 2011.
U.S. negotiators should pursue these issues in a variety of forums around the world, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia Pacific Econo mic Cooperation (APEC) forum, OECD, and regional
trade negotiations such as the Trans‐Pacific Partnership as appropriate in each forum. In addition, the U.S. Government should solicit ideas and begin to develop a plurilateral framework to set a new global
gold‐ standard to improve innovation. Finally, the U.S. Government should identify and seek to resolve through WTO or bilateral consultations or other processes violations of current international rules
concerning digital goods, services and information.
Promoting Cross‐Border Data Flows: Priorities for the Business Community 2
The importance of cross‐border commercial and financial flows
Access to computers, servers, routers and mobile devices, services such as cloud computing – whereby
remote data centers host information and run applications over the Internet, and information is vital to the success of
billions of individuals, businesses and entire economies. In the United States alone, the goods, services
and content flowing through the Internet have been responsible for 15 percent of GDP growth over the past five
years.
Open, fair and contestable international markets for information and communication technologies (ICT) and information are important to electronic retailers, search engines, social networks, web hosting
providers, registrars and the range of technology infrastructure and service providers who rely directly on the Internet to create economic value. But they are also critical to the much larger universe of
manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, financial services and logistics firms, universities, labs, hospitals and other organizations which rely on hardware, software and reliable access to the Internet to improve
their productivity, extend their reach across the globe, and manage international networks of customers, suppliers, and researchers. For example, financial institutions rely heavily on gathering, processing,
and analyzing customer information and will often process data in regional centers, which requires reliable and secure access both to networked technologies and cross‐border data flows. According to
McKinsey, more than three‐quarters of the value created by the Internet accrues to traditional industries that would exist without the Internet. The overall impact of the Internet and information technologies
on productivity may surpass the effect of any other technology enabler in history, including electricity and the combustion engine, according to the OECD.
Networked technologies and data flows are particularly important to small businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs. Thanks to the Internet and advances in technology, small companies, NGOs and
individuals can customize and rapidly scale their IT systems at a lower cost and collaborate globally by accessing on‐ line services and platforms. Improved access to networked technologies also creates
new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to design applications and to extend their reach internationally to the more than two billion people who are now connected to the Internet. In fact, advances
in networked technologies have led to the emergence of entirely new business platforms. Kiva, a microlending service established in 2005, has used the Internet to assemble a network of nearly 600,000
individuals who have lent over $200 million to entrepreneurs in markets where access to traditional banking systems is limited. Millions of others use online advertising and platforms such as eBay,
Facebook, Google Docs, Hotmail, Skype and Twitter to reach customers, suppliers and partners around the world.
, economies
that are open to international trade in ICT and information grow faster and are more
productive Limiting network access dramatically undermines the economic benefits of technology and
can slow growth across entire economies.
More broadly
Global economic collapse cause nuclear war
Merlini 11 (Senior Fellow – Brookings)
(Cesare. A Post-Secular World? Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 – 130)
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of
oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the
acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the
use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial
system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great
Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the
unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would
likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the
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European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential
religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar
issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be
sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled
nationalism.
2AC Developing Economy IL
This destroys global developing economies
-business innovation and growth
-global trade
-energy costs
-FDI
-service provision to traditional businesses
Chander and Le 15 (Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research
Scholar, University of California, Davis; Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law)
Anupam Chander and Uyên P. Lê, DATA NATIONALISM, EMORY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 64:677,
http://law.emory.edu/elj/_documents/volumes/64/3/articles/chander-le.pdf)
Economic Development Many governments believe that by forcing companies to localize data within national borders, they
will increase investment at home. Thus, data localization measures are often motivated, whether explicitly or not, by desires
to promote local economic development. In fact, however, data localization raises costs for local businesses,
reduces access to global services for consumers, hampers local start-ups, and interferes with the use of
the latest technological advances.
In an Information Age, the global flow of data has become the lifeblood of economies across the world.
While some in Europe have raised concerns about the transfer of data abroad, the European Commission has recognized
“the critical importance of data flows notably for the transatlantic economy.”209 The Commission observes that
international data transfers “form an integral part of commercial exchanges across the Atlantic including
for new growing digital businesses, such as social media or cloud computing, with large amounts of data going from the EU
to the US.”210 Worried about the effect of constraints on data flows on both global information sharing and economic
development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has urged nations to avoid “barriers
to the location, access and use of cross-border data facilities and functions” when consistent with other fundamental rights,
in order to “ensure cost effectiveness and other efficiencies.”211 The worry about the impact of data localization is widely
shared in the business community as well. The value of the Internet to national economies has been widely noted.212
Regarding Brazil’s attempt to require data localization, the Information Technology Industry Council, an industry
association representing more than forty major Internet companies, had argued that “in-country data storage requirements
would detrimentally impact all economic activity that depends on data flows.”213 The Swedish government agency, the
National Board of Trade, recently interviewed fifteen local companies of various sizes across sectors and concluded
succinctly that “trade cannot happen without data being moved from one location to another.”214
Data localization, like most protectionist measures, leads only to small gains for a few local enterprises and workers, while
causing significant harms spread across the entire economy. The domestic benefits of data localization go to
the few owners and employees of data centers and the few companies servicing these centers locally. Meanwhile, the harms
of data localization are widespread, felt by small, medium, and large businesses that are denied access to global services
that might improve productivity. In response to Russia’s recently passed localization law, the NGO Russian Association for
Electronic Communications stressed the potential economic consequences, pointing to the withdrawal of global services
and substantial economic losses caused by the passing of similar laws in other countries.215 For example, besides the loss
of international social media platforms, localization would make it impossible for Russians to order airline tickets or
consumer goods through online services. Localization requirements also seriously affect Russian companies like Aeroflot
because the airline depends on foreign ticket-booking systems.216
Critics worried, at the time, that the Brazilian data localization requirement would “deny[] Brazilian users access to great
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services that are provided by US and other international companies.”217 Marilia Marciel, a digital policy expert at
Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, observes, “Even Brazilian companies prefer to host their data outside of
Brazil.”218 Data localization affects domestic innovation by denying entrepreneurs the ability to build on top of global
services based abroad. Brasscom, the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies,
argues that such obligations would “hurt[] the country’s ability to create, innovate, create jobs and collect taxes from the
proper use of the Internet.”219 Governments implementing in-country data mandates imagine that the various global
services used in their country will now build infrastructure locally. Many services, however, will find it uneconomical and
even too risky to establish local servers in certain territories.220 Data centers are expensive, all the more so if they have the
highest levels of security. One study finds Brazil to be the most expensive country in the Western hemisphere in which to
build data centers.221 Building a data center in Brazil costs $60.9 million on average, while building one in Chile and the
United States costs $51.2 million and $43 million, respectively.222 Operating such a data center remains expensive because
of enormous energy and other expenses—averaging $950,000 in Brazil, $710,000 in Chile, and $510,000 in the United
States each month.223 This cost discrepancy is mostly due to high electricity costs and heavy import taxes on the
equipment needed for the center.224 Data centers employ few workers, with energy making up three-quarters of the costs
of operations.225 According to the 2013 Data Centre Risk Index—a study of thirty countries on the risks affecting
successful data center operations—Australia, Russia, China, Indonesia, India, and Brazil are among the riskiest countries
for running data centers.226
Not only are there significant economic costs to data localization, the potential gains are more limited than governments
imagine. Data server farms are hardly significant generators of employment, populated instead by thousands of computers
and few human beings. The significant initial outlay they require is largely in capital goods, the bulk of which is often
imported into a country. The diesel generators, cooling systems, servers, and power supply devices tend to be imported
from global suppliers.227 Ironically, it is often American suppliers of servers and other hardware that stand to be the
beneficiaries of data localization mandates.228 One study notes, “Brazilian suppliers of components did not benefit from
this [data localization requirement], since the imported products dominate the market.”229 By increasing capital purchases
from abroad, data localization requirements can in fact increase merchandise trade deficits. Furthermore, large
data farms are enormous consumers of energy,230 and thus often further burden overtaxed energy grids.
They thereby harm other industries that must now compete for this energy, paying higher prices while
potentially suffering limitations in supply of already scarce power.
Cost, as well as access to the latest innovations, drives many e-commerce enterprises in Indonesia to use foreign data
centers. Daniel Tumiwa, head of the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (IdEA), states that “[t]he cost can double easily
in Indonesia.”231 Indonesia’s Internet start-ups have accordingly often turned to foreign countries such as Australia,
Singapore, or the United States to host their services. One report suggests that “many of the ‘tools’ that start-up online
media have relied on elsewhere are not fully available yet in Indonesia.”232 The same report also suggests that a weak local
hosting infrastructure in Indonesia means that sites hosted locally experience delayed loading time.233 Similarly, as the
Vietnamese government attempts to foster entrepreneurship and innovation,234 localization requirements
effectively bar start-ups from utilizing cheap and powerful platforms abroad and potentially handicap
Vietnam from “join[ing] in the technology race.”235
Governments worried about transferring data abroad at the same time hope, somewhat contradictorily, to bring foreign data
within their borders. Many countries seek to become leaders in providing data centers for companies operating across their
regions. In 2010, Malaysia announced its Economic Transformation Program236 to transform Malaysia into a world-class
data center hub for the Asia-Pacific region.237 Brazil hopes to accomplish the same for Latin America, while France seeks
to stimulate its economy via a “Made in France” digital industry.238 Instead of spurring local investment, data localization
can lead to the loss of investment. First, there’s the retaliation effect. Would countries send data to Brazil if Brazil declares
that data is unsafe if sent abroad? Brasscom notes that the Brazilian Internet industry’s growth would be hampered if other
countries engage in similar reactive policies, which “can stimulate the migration of datacenters based here, or at least part
of them, to other countries.”239 Some in the European Union sympathize with this concern. European Commissioner for
the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, has expressed similar doubts, worrying about the results for European global
competitiveness if each country has its own separate Internet.240 Then there’s the avoidance effect. Rio de Janeiro State
University Law Professor Ronaldo Lemos, who helped write the original Marco Civil and is currently Director of the Rio
Institute for Technology and Society, warns that the localization provision would have caused foreign companies to avoid
the country altogether: “It could end up having the opposite effect to what is intended, and scare away companies
that want to do business in Brazil.”241 Indeed, such burdensome local laws often lead companies to launch overseas,
in order to try to avoid these rules entirely. Foreign companies, too, might well steer clear of the country in order to avoid
entanglement with cumbersome rules. For example, Yahoo!, while very popular in Vietnam, places its servers for the
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country in Singapore.242 In these ways we see that data
localization mandates can backfire entirely, leading to
avoidance instead of investment.
Data localization requirements place burdens on domestic enterprises not faced by those operating in more liberal
jurisdictions. Countries that require data to be cordoned off complicate matters for their own enterprises, which must turn to
domestic services if they are to comply with the law. Such companies must also develop mechanisms to segregate the data
they hold by the nationality of the data subject. The limitations may impede development of new, global services. Critics
argue that South Korea’s ban on the export of mapping data, for example, impedes the development of next-generation
services in Korea: Technology services, such as Google Glass, driverless cars, and information programs for visuallyimpaired users, are unlikely to develop and grow in Korea. Laws made in the 1960s are preventing many venture
enterprises from advancing to foreign markets via location/navigation services.243
The harms of data localization for local businesses are not restricted to Internet enterprises or to
consumers denied access to global services. As it turns out, most of the economic benefits from Internet
technologies accrue to traditional businesses. A McKinsey study estimates that about seventy-five percent of the value
added created by the Internet and data flow is in traditional industries, in part through increases in productivity.244 The
potential economic impact across the major sectors—healthcare, manufacturing, electricity, urban infra-structure,
security, agriculture, retail, etc.—is estimated at $2.7 to $6.2 trillion per year.245 This is particularly
important for emerging economies, in which traditional industries remain predominant. The Internet raises profits as
well, due to increased revenues, lower costs of goods sold, and lower administrative costs.246 With data localization
mandates, traditional businesses will lose access to the many global services that would store or process
information offshore.
Localization Bad – Global Growth Ext.
Kills global growth
Business Roundtable 15 (group of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations formed to promote pro-business public
policy)
(America’s CEOs Call for Promoting Cross-Border Data Flows to Drive Global Economic Growth, Feb 18,
http://businessroundtable.org/media/news-releases/america%E2%80%99s-ceos-call-promoting-cross-border-data-flows-drive-globaleconomic)
“Modern businesses rely on data to operate, innovate and prosper,” said Maggie Wilderotter, Chairman and
CEO of Frontier Communications Corporation, and Chair of the Business Roundtable Information and Technology
Committee. “The ability for U.S. companies both large and small, to connect to business units, trading
partners, workers and customers is essential to economic growth here at home and in every country
around the world.”
“Businesses and their customers – and governments and their citizens – gain enormous benefits by embracing cross-border
data flows,” said Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO of The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc., and Chair of the
Business Roundtable Global IT Subcommittee. “It is critical that we reverse the trend of laws and regulations that
unnecessarily restrict the movement and use of data across national borders. By fully appreciating the impacts and costs of
these policies, we can achieve more balanced approaches that address reasonable concerns without economic harm.”
The report concludes that sustained global growth and prosperity hinges on preserving interconnectedness
and putting data to work around the world. We can minimize trade barriers, promote cross-border business
investment and maximize benefits for all stakeholders, while providing practical solutions that address reasonable
government policy considerations.
Undermines global growth
Chavez 11 (Director of Public Policy at Google)
(Pablo L., Comments to the Department of Commerce Office of the Secretary; National Telecommunications and Information
Administration; International Trade Administration; National Institute of Standards and Technology Notice of Inquiry
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on the Global Free Flow of Information on the Internet Docket No. 100921457-0457-01
More broadly, the free flow
of information enables all of the Internet services and commerce that are
central to economic growth and job creation in the 21st century. The tremendous economic benefits of
the Internet are the result of its open architecture, its connective power, and its ability to make information
accessible everywhere around the world. Restrictions on the flow of information inherently limit (and, in some cases,
entirely disrupt) the Internet’s ability to support and drive the growth (including in exports) of industries that directly or
indirectly rely on it. International rules should be established to prevent these types of restrictions, and the U.S.
Government should act to protect the free flow of information internationally. The Internet’s potential to spur
economic growth is only beginning to be realized. Regulations or policies that hamper and Balkanize
the Internet negatively impact this potential for growth and development in both mature and nascent
markets.
Localization Bad – Protectionism Add-On
Leads to global protectionism – prevents global business and leads to trade wars
Chander and Le 15 (Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research
Scholar, University of California, Davis; Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law)
Anupam Chander and Uyên P. Lê, DATA NATIONALISM, EMORY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 64:677,
http://law.emory.edu/elj/_documents/volumes/64/3/articles/chander-le.pdf)
We leave for a later study a crucial additional concern—the fundamental tension between data localization and trade
liberalization obligations.168 Data localization makes impossible the forms of global business that have
appeared over the last two decades, allowing the provision of information services across borders. Moreover,
protectionist policies barring access to foreign services only invite reciprocal protectionism from
one’s trading partners, harming consumers and businesses alike in the process by denying them access to the
world’s leading services.
Trade protectionism destabalizes the globe and escalates to nuclear war
Bernstein ‘10
[William J Bernstein, PHD, principal in the money management firm Efficient Frontier Advisors, and economic
contributor to several publications, March 18 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/free-trade-vsprotectioni_b_504403.html]
When goods are not allowed to cross borders, soldiers will." --Frederic Bastiat How soon we forget. For nearly
all of recorded history before 1945 , Europe, today a peaceful and prosperous region linked by high-speed trains and
ridiculously low airfares, was riven by nearly continuous major conflicts. In the Second World War's
aftermath, it was crystal clear to military, political, and diplomatic leaders on both sides of the Atlantic that the trade
protectionism of the previous several decades in no small measure contributed to that catastrophe. The
U.S. State Department said, in effect, "never again" and drew up a blueprint for the new world trade order, Proposals for the
Expansion of World Trade and Employment, which soon gave rise to the GATT and the beginnings of the EU. The
arrangement succeeded beyond its wildest expectations and ushered in an era of unparalleled global peace and prosperity.
By 1945, the link between trade conflict and armed conflict had become blindingly obvious. This was nothing
new, of course. The Peloponnesian War saw its genesis in Athens' dependence on the grain from what is now the Ukraine,
which necessitated control of the narrow passages between the Aegean and Black Seas by the Athenian Empire. In the early
seventeenth century Holland and Portugal fought a remarkable world-wide conflict over the trade in slaves, spices, and
sugar. Later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain and Holland fought no less than four wars, sparked largely
by British protectionist legislation--the Navigation Acts. Southern anger over northern protectionism contributed to the
outbreak of the Civil War nearly as much as did slavery. Those who doubt this would do well to consider that just thirty
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years before, the two sides nearly went to war over the Nullification Crisis of 1833, which was itself directly precipitated by
the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832. Mr. Fletcher tries his best to ignore this historical inevitability of retaliation to tariff
increases; he asserts that since our trading partners, particularly those in Asia, run persistently high trade surpluses vis-a-vis
the U.S., they would not dare retaliate. There are at least three things wrong with this argument. First, in the past, it hasn't
worked. During the 1930s, for example, all nations, including those running trade surpluses, pushed up their tariff rates.
Second, it ignores one of the prime lessons of human history: winners often do not remember, while losers never forget.
Centuries of humiliation by the West have scarred the national psyches of both China and India, and
serious misunderstandings can easily ensue. Who controls the Strait of Malacca, through which flows China's oil
supply and European trade? The U.S. Navy. Last, Mr. Fletcher believes that our politicians can fairly dispense protection
broadly across the economy by means of a "flat tariff." Good luck with that : U.S. trade preferences always have,
and always will, go disproportionately to the prosperous and well connected. Exhibit A: the obscene sugar
subsidies and trade preferences meted out for decades to the wealthy and powerful Fanjul brothers. Do not be misled by
those whose naive belief in the rational self-interest of others will prevent any significant protectionist actions by the United
States. The events of August 1914 demonstrated just how seriously awry the "rational self-interest" of nations can go, and
the Cold War taught us the impossibility of containing even the smallest of nuclear exchanges. So too
has history repeatedly shown that even small tariff increases often lead to trade wars, and that trade wars can
end in Armageddon.
Localization Bad – Protectionism Ext
New infrastructure requirements undermines global trade
Chander and Le 15 (Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research
Scholar, University of California, Davis; Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law)
Anupam Chander and Uyên P. Lê, DATA NATIONALISM, EMORY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 64:677,
http://law.emory.edu/elj/_documents/volumes/64/3/articles/chander-le.pdf)
Imagine an Internet where data must stop at national borders, examined to see whether it is allowed to leave the country and
possibly taxed when it does. While this may sound fanciful, this is precisely the impact of various measures undertaken or
planned by many nations to curtail the flow of data outside their borders. Countries around the world are in the process of
creating Checkpoint Charlies—not just for highly secret national security data but for ordinary data about citizens. The very
nature of the World Wide Web is at stake. We will show how countries across the world have implemented or have planned
dramatic steps to curtail the flow of information outside their borders. By creating national barriers to data, data localization
measures break up the World Wide Web, which was designed to share information across the globe.4 The Internet is a
global network based on a protocol for interconnecting computers without regard for national borders. Information is routed
across this network through decisions made autonomously and automatically at local routers, which choose paths based
largely on efficiency, unaware of political borders.5
Thus, the services built on the Internet, from email to the World Wide Web, pay little heed to national borders. Services
such as cloud computing exemplify this, making the physical locations for the storage and processing of their data largely
invisible to users. Data localization would dramatically alter this fundamental architecture of the Internet. Such a change
poses a mortal threat to the new kind of international trade made possible by the Internet—information services
such as those supplied by Bangalore or Silicon Valley.6
Barriers of distance or immigration restrictions had long kept such services confined within national borders. But the new
services of the Electronic Silk Road often depend on processing information about the user, information that crosses
borders from the user’s country to the service provider’s country. Data localization would thus require the
information service provider to build out a physical, local infrastructure in every jurisdiction in which
it operates, increasing costs and other burdens enormously for both providers and consumers and rendering many of such
global services impossible. While others have observed some of the hazards of data localization, especially for American
companies,7 this Article offers three major advances over earlier work in the area. First, while the earlier analyses have
referred to a data localization measure in a country in the most general of terms, our Article provides a detailed legal
description of localization measures. Second, by examining a variety of key countries around the world, the study allows us
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to see the forms in which data localization is emerging and the justifications offered for such measures in both liberal and
illiberal states. Third, the Article works to comprehensively refute the various arguments for data localization offered
around the world, showing that data localization measures are in fact likely to undermine security, privacy, economic
development, and innovation where adopted.
Localization Bad – Big Data Add-On
Data localization undermines cloud computing and global big data research
Chander and Le 15 (Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research
Scholar, University of California, Davis; Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law)
Anupam Chander and Uyên P. Lê, DATA NATIONALISM, EMORY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 64:677,
http://law.emory.edu/elj/_documents/volumes/64/3/articles/chander-le.pdf)
Data localization requirements also interfere with the most important trends in computing today. They limit access to
the disruptive technologies of the future, such as cloud computing, the “Internet of Things,” and data-driven
innovations (especially those relying on “big data”). Data localization sacrifices the innovations made possible
by building on top of global Internet platforms based on cloud computing. This is particularly
important for entrepreneurs operating in emerging economies that might lack the infrastructure already
developed elsewhere. And it places great impediments to the development of both the Internet of Things and big data
analytics, requiring costly separation of data by political boundaries and often denying the possibility of aggregating data
across borders. We discuss the impacts on these trends below.
Cloud Computing. Data localization requirements will often prevent access to global cloud computing services.
As we have indicated, while governments assume that global services will simply erect local data server farms, such hopes
are likely to prove unwarranted. Thus, local companies will be denied access to the many companies that
might help them scale up, or to go global.247 Many companies around the world are built on top of existing global services. Highly successful companies with Indian origins such as Slideshare
and Zoho relied on global services such as Amazon Web Services and Google Apps.248 A Slideshare employee cites the scalability made possible by the use of Amazon’s cloud services, noting, “Sometimes I need 100 servers, sometimes I only
need 10.”249 A company like Zoho can use Google Apps, while at the same time competing with Google in higher value-added services.250 Accessing such global services thus allows a small company to maintain a global presence without having
to deploy the vast infrastructure that would be necessary to scale as needed.
The Internet of Things. As the world shifts to Internet-connected devices, data localization will require data flows to be staunched at national borders, requiring expensive and cumbersome national infrastructures for such devices. This erodes the
promise of the Internet of Things—where everyday objects and our physical surroundings are Internet-enabled and connected—for both consumers and businesses. Consumer devices include wearable technologies that “measure some sort of detail
about you, and log it.”251 Devices such as Sony’s Smartband allied with a Lifelog application to track and analyze both physical movements and social interactions252 or the Fitbit253 device from an innovative start-up suggest the revolutionary
possibilities for both large and small manufacturers. The connected home and wearable computing devices are becoming increasingly important consumer items.254 A heart monitoring system collects data from patients and physicians around the
world and uses the anonymized data to advance cardiac care.255 Such devices collect data for analysis typically on the company’s own or outsourced computer servers, which could be located anywhere across the world. Over this coming decade,
the Internet of Things is estimated to generate $14.4 trillion in value that is “up for grabs” for global enterprises.256 Companies are also adding Internet sensors not just to consumer products but to their own equipment and facilities around the
world through RFID tags or through other devices. The oil industry has embraced what has come to be known as the “digital oil field,” where real-time data is collected and analyzed remotely.257 While data about oil flows would hardly constitute
personal information, such data might be controlled under laws protecting sensitive national security information. The Internet of Things shows the risks of data localization for consumers, who may be denied access to many of the best services the
world has to offer. It also shows the risk of data localization for companies seeking to better monitor their systems around the world.
data-driven innovations will be a key basis of competition, innovation, and
productivity in the years to come, though many note the importance of protecting privacy in the process of assembling
Data Driven Innovation (Big Data). Many analysts believe that
ever-larger databases.258 McKinsey even reclassifies data as a new kind of factor of production for the Information
Age.259 Data localization threatens big data in at least two ways. First, by limiting data aggregation by
country, it increases costs and adds complexity to the collection and maintenance of data. Second, data
localization requirements can reduce the size of potential data sets, eroding the informational value that
can be gained by cross-jurisdictional studies. Large-scale, global experiments technically possible
through big data analytics, especially on the web, may have to give way to narrower, localized studies.
Perhaps anonymization will suffice to comport with data localization laws and thus still permit cross-border data flow, but
this will depend on the specifics of the law.
That’s key to avoid multiple scenarios for extinction
Eagleman 10 (David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception
and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law and author of Sum (Canongate). Nov. 9, 2010, “ Six ways the internet will
save civilization,” http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no)
Many great
civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural
disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption.
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But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we
command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid
communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the
net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of
our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the
Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to
survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing
human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum
number of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well
prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail
due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural
disasters We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly
becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to
learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians
changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the
internet
carried news about the fire more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots,
decentralised scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This head start could provide the
extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the pyroclastic
the Indian Ocean had the Pacific’s networked tsunami-warning system, SouthEast Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical
information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan
flow from Mount Vesuvius. If
civilisation -- have fallen to the bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that
survives often does not spread. Consider
smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its
By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already
collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this
way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated
Censorship of ideas was a familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines
in the USSR, Romania, Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenko’s agricultural despotism in the USSR, it
directly contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful strategy has been to
confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of
way to Europe.
information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full
of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by
some governments to build firewalls, it’s clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human
capital is vastly increased
Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of the world’s population is
involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo
Ma or Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output
and a smaller pool of problem solvers. The
net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen
The
new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats we’ve never imagined
before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy budget: when energy
spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the
worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem with a natural ease.
Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce
reduces the need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than
anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MIT’s OpenCourseWare.
individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the
banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same quantity of
information flow. The
tangle of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net
vast, networked communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly
diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality of tweeting or the decline of facedoes not address. But
to-face conversation, you may want to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.
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A2: US Econ Not Key
U.S. economy key – Currency.
Friedman & Zeihan 08 [Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert in security and intelligence issues & Director of global analysis. George Friedman
(Founder, chair and Chief Intelligence Officer of STRATFOR, (Strategic Forecasting Inc.)) and Peter Zeihan (Master’s degree in political and economic development
from the Patterson School of Diplomacy, a postgraduate diploma in Asian studies from the University of Otago in New Zealand), “The United States, Europe and
Bretton Woods II,” Stratfor.com, October 20, 2008, pg. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6895.html]
For many of the states that will be attending what is already being dubbed Bretton Woods II, having this American
centrality as such a key pillar of the system is the core of the problem. The fundamental principle of Bretton
Woods was national sovereignty within a framework of relationships, ultimately guaranteed not just by American
political power but by American economic power . Bretton Woods was not so much a system as a reality. American
economic power dwarfed the rest of the noncommunist world, and guaranteed the stability of the
international financial system. What the September financial crisis has shown is not that the basic financial
system has changed, but what happens when the guarantor of the financial system itself undergoes a crisis.
When the economic bubble in Japan — the world's second-largest economy — burst in 1990-1991, it did not
infect the rest of the world. Neither did the East Asian crisis in 1997, nor the ruble crisis of 1998. A crisis in France
or the United Kingdom would similarly remain a local one. But a crisis in the U.S. economy becomes global. The
fundamental reality of Bretton Woods remains unchanged: The U.S. economy remains the largest, and
dysfunctions there affect the world. That is the reality of the international system, and that is ultimately what the
French call for a new Bretton Woods is about. There has been talk of a meeting at which the United States gives up its
place as the world's reserve currency and primacy of the economic system. That is not what this meeting will be about,
and certainly not what the French are after. The use of the dollar as world reserve currency is not based on an
aggrandizing fiat, but the reality that the dollar alone has a global presence and trust. The euro, after all, is
only a decade old, and is not backed either by sovereign taxing powers or by a central bank with vast
authority. The European Central Bank (ECB) certainly steadies the European financial system, but it is the sovereign
countries that define economic policies. As we have seen in the recent crisis, the ECB actually lacks the authority to
regulate Europe's banks . Relying on a currency that is not in the hands of a sovereign taxing power, but
dependent on the political will of (so far) 15 countries with very different interests, does not make for a
reliable reserve currency.
U.S. economy key – Consumption.
Sull 09, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners-Capital Management, 7-2 Ajbinder Sull, President and
Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners – Capital Management, 7-2-09, The Financial Post, “The US Consumer:
Engine of the Global Economy Gears Down”
Over the years, the
world the world has looked to the US consumer to lead the way out of economic
downturns. Currently, the US consumer accounts for almost 70% of the American economy and about 15 - 17% of the
global economy. Economists had long derided the “Spend! Spend! Spend!” ways of Americans. Credit was a means to an end. The rising real estate prices
that had lasted for much of this decade allowed consumers to cash out some of the equity from their homes to continue the odyssey of lifestyle improvement. This
gave way to the notion that US consumers were using their homes as ATM machines. But a funny thing has happened during
the current economic
slowdown. US consumers have retrenched from vigorous consumption in order to save more. As the chart below
shows, savings rates in the US have gone from a negative rate (consumers adding debt to consume) to positive. Current statistics show that the savings rate in the
US is on track to approach a level of about 7% later this year. This change in behavior is both positive and negative. The negative case for this
change is that
that other countries will have to bolster their own consumption and investment as an offset. This will
not be easy as Asian nations have a higher rate of savings. Europe’s economy will likely take much longer to
get moving as is usually the case after economic slowdowns. For the financial markets this means that any excessive optimism
it means
should be tempered with this realization that the coming economic recovery will be different than any we have seen in quite some time. The positive side to this
change is that it will mean less reliance by the US on foreign capital to help fund the budget deficit. These rising savings rates are ending up in the US banking
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system and will provide more fuel for the US banking system to lend a helping hand to the US economy. Not to mention - helpful to the US dollar.
The irony
is that just as the world would welcome the US consumer going back to old habits of spending and consuming,
Americans have realized that a little savings can go a long way. The price of this change in behavior is that
global economic growth will not rebound as fast and as much as the markets might be hoping for.
A2: Decline Doesn’t Cause War
Statistics prove
Brock Blomberg, Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, Gregory Hess, Professor of Economics at Oberlin College,
February 2002, “The Temporal Links between Conflict and Economic Activity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution
To begin this temporal “causal” investigation, we first need to develop a statistical framework to estimate the joint,
dynamic determination of the occurrence of internal conflict, external conflict, and growth. Because conflict is measured as
a discrete variable, researchers typically estimate the occurrence as a probability, or if we consider both internal and
external conflict, we can always estimate the joint probability distribution. But are there similar interpretations of economic
activity as a discrete state? Indeed, a broad literature considers the evolution of states in the economy as the natural
progression of phases. In fact, one of the key historical studies of U.S. and international business cycles,
undertaken by Burns and Mitchell (1944), treated the state of the economy as either an expansion or
contraction, on which the National Bureau of Economic Research’s dating procedure for recessions was
founded. 4 The relevance for our study is that breakpoints in the state of the economy, either expansion or
recession, are analogous to break points in peace—internal or external conflicts.5 Using an unbalanced panel
of data covering 152 countries from 1950 to 1992, we therefore consider the joint determination of internal
conflict, external conflict, and the state of the economy as measured by the aforementioned discrete
variables. We find that the relationship between the variables is not a simple one. Conflict does appear to be highly
related to the economy for the entire sample. However, it seems to be most highly related when considering certain
nation-groups. For nondemocracies or in regions highly populated by nondemocracies, there seems to be an intimate
link between a poor economy and the decision to go to war—both internally and externally. These results
confirm much of the original hypotheses put forth in Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2001)—namely, that there is
compelling evidence of a conditional poverty-conflict trap.
***Internet Freedom Adv***
Internet Freedom Adv – 1AC
Surveillance on domestic internet infrastructure leads to the global failure of the Internet Freedom
agenda
Deibert 13 (professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the
Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto)
(Ronald, Why NSA spying scares the world, Special to CNN, Wed June 12, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/12/opinion/deibertnsa-surveillance/)
While cyberspace may be global, its infrastructure most definitely is not.
For example, a huge proportion of global Internet traffic flows through networks controlled by the
United States, simply because eight of 15 global tier 1 telecommunications companies are American -- companies like
AT&T, CenturyLink, XO Communications and, significantly, Verizon.
The social media services that many of us take for granted are also mostly provided by giants headquartered in the United
States, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. All of these companies are subject to U.S. law, including the provisions
of the U.S. Patriot Act, no matter where their services are offered or their servers located. Having the world's Internet
traffic routed through the U.S. and having those companies under its jurisdiction give U.S. national security
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agencies an enormous home-field advantage that few other countries enjoy.
But there are unintended consequences of the NSA scandal that will undermine U.S. foreign policy interests -- in
particular, the "Internet Freedom" agenda espoused by the U.S. State Department and its allies.
The revelations that have emerged will undoubtedly trigger a reaction abroad as policymakers and ordinary users realize the
huge disadvantages of their dependence on U.S.-controlled networks in social media, cloud computing, and
telecommunications, and of the formidable resources that are deployed by U.S. national security agencies to mine and
monitor those networks.
For example, in 2012, Norwegian lawmakers debated a ban on the use by public officials of Google's and Microsoft's cloud
computing services. Although shelved temporarily, this type of debate will almost certainly be resurrected and spread
throughout Europe and other regions as the full scope of U.S.-based "foreign directed" wiretapping and metadata collection
sinks in.
Already we can see regional traffic to the United States from Asia, Africa and even Latin America
gradually declining, a trend that is almost certainly going to accelerate as those regions ramp up regional network
exchange points and local services to minimize dependence on networks under U.S. control.
Many of the countries in the Southern Hemisphere are failed or fragile states; many of them are authoritarian or autocratic
regimes. No doubt the elites in those regimes will use the excuse of security to adopt more stringent state
controls over the Internet in their jurisdictions and support local versions of popular social media
companies over which they can exact their own nationalized controls -- a trend that began prior to the NSA
revelations but which now has additional rhetorical support.
In the age of Big Data, the revelations about NSA's intelligence-gathering programs touched many nerves. The issue of
surveillance won't go away, and Americans will need to figure out the appropriate safeguards for liberty in their democracy.
It's an important debate, but one that doesn't include us "foreigners" that now make up the vast majority of the Internet
users. Americans would do well to consider the international implications of their domestic policies
before they come home to bite them.
Two Internal Links
First is Data Localization enables regimes to crush dissent
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
Data localization proposals also threaten to undermine the functioning of the Internet, which was built on
protocols that send packets over the fastest and most efficient route possi- ble, regardless of physical location. If actually
implemented, policies like those suggested by India and Brazil would subvert those protocols by altering
the way Internet traffic is routed in order to exert more national control over data.167 The localization of Internet traffic
may also have significant ancillary impacts on pri- vacy and human rights by making it easier for countries to
engage in national surveillance, censorship, and persecution of online dissi- dents, particularly where
countries have a his- tory of violating human rights and ignoring rule of law.168 “Ironically, data localization policies will
likely degrade – rather than improve – data security for the countries considering them, making surveillance, protection
from which is the ostensible reason for localization, easier for domestic governments, if not foreign powers, to achieve,”
writes Jonah Force Hill.169 The rise in data localization and data protection proposals in response to NSA
surveillance threatens not only U.S. economic interests, but also Internet Freedom around the world.
Second, surveillance kills US internet freedom credibility
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
The effects of the NSA disclosures on the Internet Freedom agenda go beyond the realm of Internet governance.
The loss
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of the United States as a model on Internet Freedom issues has made it harder for local civil society
groups around the world—including the groups that the State Department’s Internet Freedom programs typically
support203—to advocate for Internet Freedom within their own governments.204 The Committee to Protect
Journalists, for example, reports that in Pakistan, “where freedom of expression is largely perceived as a Western notion,
the Snowden revelations have had a damaging effect. The deeply polarized narrative has become starker as the corridors of
power push back on attempts to curb government surveillance.”205 For some of these groups, in fact, even the appearance
of collaboration with or support from the U.S. government can diminish credibility, making it harder for them to achieve
local goals that align with U.S. foreign policy interests.206 The gap in trust is particularly significant for individuals and
organizations that receive funding from the U.S. government for free expression activities or circumvention tools.
Technology supported by or exported from the United States is, in some cases, inherently suspect due to the revelations
about the NSA’s surveillance dragnet and the agency’s attempts to covertly influence product development.
Moreover, revelations of what the NSA has been doing in the past decade are eroding the moral high ground that the United
States has often relied upon when putting public pressure on authoritarian countries like China, Russia, and Iran to change
their behavior. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders added the United States to its “Enemies of the Internet” list for the first
time, explicitly linking the inclusion to NSA surveillance. “The main player in [the United States’] vast surveillance
operation is the highly secretive National Security Agency (NSA) which, in the light of Snowden’s revelations, has come to
symbolize the abuses by the world’s intelli- gence agencies,” noted the 2014 report.207 The damaged perception of
the United States as a leader on Internet Freedom and its diminished ability to legitimately criticize
other countries for censorship and surveillance opens the door for foreign leaders to justify—and even
expand— their own efforts.209 For example, the Egyptian government recently announced plans to mon- itor social
media for potential terrorist activity, prompting backlash from a number of advo- cates for free expression and privacy.210
When a spokesman for the Egyptian Interior Ministry, Abdel Fatah Uthman, appeared on television to explain the policy,
one justification that he of- fered in response to privacy concerns was that “the US listens in to phone calls, and supervises
anyone who could threaten its national securi- ty.”211 This type of rhetoric makes it difficult for the U.S. to effectively
criticize such a policy. Similarly, India’s comparatively mild response to allegations of NSA surveillance have been seen by
some critics “as a reflection of India’s own aspirations in the world of surveillance,” a fur- ther indication that U.S. spying
may now make it easier for foreign governments to quietly defend their own behavior.212 It is even more difficult for the
United States to credibly indict Chinese hackers for breaking into U.S. government and commercial targets without fear of
retribution in light of the NSA revelations.213 These challenges reflect an overall decline in U.S. soft power
on free expression issues.
Broader Foreign Policy Costs
Beyond Internet Freedom, the NSA disclo- sures “have badly undermined U.S. credibility with many of its allies,” Ian Bremmer argued in Foreign Policy in November 2013.214 Similarly, as Georg Mascolo
and Ben Scott point out about the post-Snowden world, “the shift from an open secret to a published secret is a game changer... it exposes the gap between what gov- ernments will tolerate from one another
under cover of darkness and what publics will tolerate from other governments in the light of day.”215 From stifled negotiations with close allies like France and Germany to more tense relations with
emerging powers including Brazil and China, the leaks have undoubtedly weakened the American position in international relations, opening up the United States to new criticism and political maneuvering
that would have been far less likely a year ago.216
U.S. allies like France, Israel, and Germany are upset by the NSA’s actions, as their reactions to the disclosures make clear.217 Early reports about close allies threatening to walk out of negotiations with the
United States—such as calls by the French government to delay EU-U.S. trade talks in July 2013 until the U.S. govern- ment answered European questions about the spying allegations218—appear to be
exaggerated, but there has certainly been fallout from the disclosures. For months after the first Snowden leaks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel would not visit the United States until the two countries
signed a “no-spy” agreement—a doc- ument essentially requiring the NSA to respect German law and rights of German citizens in its activities. When Merkel finally agreed come to Washington, D.C. in
May 2014, tensions rose quickly because the two countries were unable to reach an agreement on intelligence sharing, despite the outrage provoked by news that the NSA had monitored Merkel’s own
communica- tions.219 Even as Obama and Merkel attempted to present a unified front while they threatened additional sanctions against Russia over the crisis in the Ukraine, it was evident that relations are
still strained between the two countries. While President Obama tried to keep up the appearance of cordial relations at a joint press conference, Merkel suggested that it was too soon to return to “business as
usual” when ten- sions still remain over U.S. spying allegations.220 The Guardian called the visit “frosty” and “awk- ward.”221 The German Parliament has also begun hearings to investigate the revelations
and sug- gested that it is weighing further action against the United States.222
Moreover, the disclosures have weakened the United States’ relationship with emerging powers like Brazil, where the fallout from NSA surveillance threatens to do more lasting damage. Brazilian President
Dilma Rousseff has seized on the NSA disclosures as an opportunity to broaden Brazil’s influence not only in the Internet governance field, but also on a broader range of geopolitical issues. Her decision
not to attend an October 2013 meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House was a di- rect response to NSA spying—and a serious, high-profile snub. In addition to cancelling what would have
been the first state visit by a Brazilian president to the White House in nearly 20 years, Rousseff’s decision marked the first time a world leader had turned down a state dinner with the President of the
United States.223 In his statement on the postponement, President Obama was forced to address the issue of NSA surveillance directly, acknowledging “that he understands and regrets the concerns
disclosures of alleged U.S. intelligence activities have generated in Brazil and made clear that he is committed to working together with President Rousseff and her government in diplomatic channels to
move beyond this issue as a source of tension in our bilateral relationship.”224
Many observers have noted that the Internet Freedom agenda could be one of the first casualties of the
NSA disclosures. The U.S. government is fighting an uphill battle at the moment to regain credibility in
international Internet governance debates and to defend its moral high ground as a critic of
authoritarian regimes that limit freedom of expression and violate human rights online. Moreover, the
fallout from the NSA’s surveillance activities has spilled over into other areas of U.S. foreign policy and currently threatens
bilateral relations with a number of key allies. Going forward, it is critical that decisions about U.S. spying are made in
consideration of a broader set of interests so that they do not impede—or, in some cases, completely under- mine—U.S.
foreign policy goals.
That’s crucial to global authoritarianism
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Chander and Le 15 (Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research
Scholar, University of California, Davis; Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law)
Anupam Chander and Uyên P. Lê, DATA NATIONALISM, EMORY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 64:677,
http://law.emory.edu/elj/_documents/volumes/64/3/articles/chander-le.pdf)
Information control is central to the survival of authoritarian regimes. Such regimes require the suppression
of adverse information in order to maintain their semblance of authority. This is because “even authoritarian governments
allege a public mandate to govern and assert that the government is acting in the best interests of the people.”280
Information that disturbs the claim of a popular mandate and a beneficent government is thus to be eliminated at all costs.
Opposition newspapers or television is routinely targeted, with licenses revoked or printing presses confiscated. The
Internet has made this process of information control far more difficult by giving many dissidents the ability
to use services based outside the country to share information. The Internet has made it harder, though not
impossible, for authoritarian regimes to suppress their citizens from both sharing and learning information.281 Data
localization will erode that liberty-enhancing feature of the Internet.
Global authoritarianism causes nuclear war
Burke-White 4 (Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University;
(William W., Spring, 17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249)
This
Article presents a strategic--as opposed to ideological or normative--argument that the promotion of
human rights should be given a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. It does so by suggesting a
correlation between the domestic human rights practices of states and their propensity to engage in
aggressive international conduct. Among the chief threats to U.S. national security are acts of
aggression by other states. Aggressive acts of war may directly endanger the United States, as did the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, or they may require U.S. military action overseas, as in
Kuwait fifty years later. Evidence from the post-Cold War period [*250] indicates that states that
systematically abuse their own citizens' human rights are also those most likely to engage in
aggression. To the degree that improvements in various states' human rights records decrease the
likelihood of aggressive war, a foreign policy informed by human rights can significantly enhance
U.S. and global security. Since 1990, a state's domestic human rights policy appears to be a telling
indicator of that state's propensity to engage in international aggression. A central element of U.S.
foreign policy has long been the preservation of peace and the prevention of such acts of aggression.
n2 If the correlation discussed herein is accurate, it provides U.S. policymakers with a powerful new tool to
enhance national security through the promotion of human rights. A strategic linkage between national
security and human rights would result in a number of important policy modifications. First, it changes the prioritization
of those countries U.S. policymakers have identified as presenting the greatest concern. Second, it alters some of the policy
prescriptions for such states. Third, it offers states a means of signaling benign international intent through the
improvement of their domestic human rights records. Fourth, it provides a way for a current government to prevent future
governments from aggressive international behavior through the institutionalization of human rights protections. Fifth, it
addresses the particular threat of human rights abusing states obtaining weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). Finally, it offers a mechanism for U.S.-U.N. cooperation on human rights issues.
US Cred IL – NSA Kills It Ext.
Sends a global signal – NSA is key
Zetter 15 (award-winning, senior staff reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, and security)
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(KIM ZETTER, 07.29.14, PERSONAL PRIVACY IS ONLY ONE OF THE COSTS OF NSA SURVEILLANCE,
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-big-costs-of-nsa-surveillance-that-no-ones-talking-about/)
Finally, the NSA’s
spying activities have greatly undermined the government’s policies in support of
internet freedom around the world and its work in advocating for freedom of expression and combating
censorship and oppression.
“As the birthplace for so many of these technologies, including the internet itself, we have a responsibility to see them used
for good,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a 2010 speech launching a campaign in support of internet
freedom. But while “the US government promotes free expression abroad and aims to prevent repressive governments from
monitoring and censoring their citizens,” the New American report notes, it is “simultaneously supporting domestic laws
that authorize surveillance and bulk data collection.” The widespread collection of data, which has a chilling effect
on freedom of expression, is precisely the kind of activity for which the U.S. condemns other countries.
This hypocrisy has opened a door for repressive regimes to question the US role in internet governance bodies and has
allowed them to argue in favor of their own governments having greater control over the internet. At the UN Human Rights
Council in September 2013, the report notes, a representative from Pakistan—speaking on behalf of Cuba,
Iran, China and other countries—said the surveillance programs highlighted the need for their nations
to have a greater role in governing the internet.
Leads to Localization and ITU shift
Roth 13 (executive director of Human Rights Watch)
(Kenneth, The NSA’s Global Threat to Free Speech, NOVEMBER 18, 2013, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/18/nsa-s-globalthreat-free-speech)
But the NSA’s overreaching endangers free speech in more direct ways as well. Consider the not-uncommon
situation in which a repressive government such as China’s asks an Internet company for information on a user. The most
notorious request of this kind involved the Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who just completed eight years in prison for “leaking
state secrets”—sending a human rights group information about media restrictions for the fifteenth anniversary of the 1989
Tiananmen Square uprising and the ensuing massacre. At China’s request, Yahoo turned over Shi’s email information,
contributing to his conviction.
One of the best defenses against such requests is for Internet companies to store user information in servers located outside
the country in question. That approach is not foolproof—governments have many ways to pressure Internet companies to
cooperate—but it can help to fend off such requests. US Internet companies currently opt to repatriate to servers in the
United States most information on users in foreign countries.
However, after the revelations about NSA surveillance, many countries have said they may require Internet companies to
keep data about their citizens on servers within their own borders. If that becomes standard practice, it will be easier for
repressive governments to monitor Internet communications. Weak as US privacy safeguards are, those in many other
countries are no better. For example, while outraged at the NSA’s snooping, many privacy activists in Brazil oppose their
own government’s proposed requirement to store data locally because they fear their data protection laws are inadequate.
Moreover, as the case of Shi Tao shows, granting national governments easy access to user information may
enable them not only to invade privacy but also to suppress criticism and unearth dissent. Anonymity is
sometimes the best protection against censorship, but official access to user information makes anonymity difficult.
Current proposals to change the way the Internet is regulated could, if implemented, also facilitate
efforts by foreign governments to gather information on their own citizens’ electronic activities. The
Internet is governed mainly through informal cooperative arrangements among numerous public and private entities, but a
US-based organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is responsible for, among
other things, coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers that allow computers around the world to find and recognize
each other. A private board of directors runs ICANN, but the US Commerce Department has a large part in its management.
It may seem anomalous that the US government would have such influence over a global network like the Internet, and
now that the United States has proven such an unreliable guardian of our privacy, there have been renewed calls to
replace the current system with a UN agency such as the International Telecommunications Union. But few
believe that such a system would protect free speech on the Internet because it would likely defer to governments that want
to prioritize national sovereignty over the free flow of information and ideas. Greater national control would make it
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easier for governments to wall off national Internets, as China has tried to do with its Great Firewall and Iran has
threatened to do with a “national information network,” enabling censorship and undermining the powerful
potential of cyberspace to connect people around the world.
The NSA’s electronic spying has also done much to discredit the US government’s reputation as an
outspoken champion of Internet freedom. Most notably under the leadership of former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, the US has regularly criticized countries for detaining dissident bloggers or users of social media. But today,
although the United States continues to respect freedom of expression on and off line, that virtue is easily overshadowed by
Washington’s indifference to Internet privacy. And even America’s reputation for respecting free speech is undermined
when the Obama administration tries to extradite and prosecute Edward Snowden for an alleged security breach that many
see as legitimate whistleblowing.
US Cred IL – A2: Alt Causes
Signal is greater than any alt causes – other factors are falling away
Wadhwa 13 (Forbes staff writer)
(Tarun, NSA Surveillance May Have Dealt Major Blow To Global Internet Freedom Efforts, JUN 13,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2013/06/13/with-nsa-surveillance-us-government-may-have-dealt-major-blow-to-globalinternet-freedom-efforts/
One thing has become clear though:
the credibility of the idea that the internet can be a positive, freedompromoting global force is facing its largest challenge to date. And it comes directly from one of its most outspoken supporters: the US government.
Simply put, our government has failed in its role as the “caretaker” of the internet. Although this was never an official designation, America controls much of the infrastructure, and many of the most popular services online are provided by a
handful of American companies. The world is starting to sober up to the fact that much of what they’ve done online in the last decade is now cataloged in a top-secret facility somewhere in the United States.
Reasonable minds can disagree over the necessity of these programs and how to strike the proper balance between security and privacy. These matters aside, what has been the most disturbing part of this entire scandal has to do with the lack of
accountability and oversight. Not only were the American people kept in the dark – they were lied to by intelligence officials, misled about possible constitutional violations, and potentially undermined by the very courts that were supposed to
protect their rights.
The government has used peculiar interpretations of laws – that they are not even willing to discuss – to defend an invasive collection of personal data beyond anything even the paranoid among us would have thought was possible. And while
President Obama “welcomes the debate” over an issue he has worked hard to keep secret, we are now starting to see the usual Washington tactics of political spin, feverish scapegoating, and patriotic grandstanding in lieu of a real discussion.
We should all be extremely concerned about the colossal surveillance infrastructure that is being built in the name of our safety.
In trying to reassure the public, our leaders have told us that these programs are not meant to target us, but instead, foreigners who may pose a threat to our security. But this is merely a decision on how the data is being used today – we are getting
into very dangerous territory by hoping for the best intentions of whoever is in power in the future. American history holds many lessons for us here: circumstances can change, the perception of who is a threat can vary with whoever is in office,
and we cannot predict what our political situation will look like decades, or even years, from now.
In the court of global public opinion, America may have tarnished its moral authority to question the
surveillance practices of other nations – whether it be Russia on monitoring journalists, or China on conducting
cyber espionage. Declarations by the State Department that were once statements of principle now ring hollow and
hypocritical to some. No nation can rival the American surveillance state, but they no longer need support to build their
own massive systems of espionage and oppression.
The costs of surveillance and data storage technologies are plummeting — these will no longer be prohibitive
factors. Diplomatic pressures and legal barriers that had also once served as major deterrents will soon
fade away. The goal has been to promote internet freedom around the world, but we may have
also potentially created a blueprint for how authoritarian governments can store, track, and
mine their citizens’ digital lives.
Total smash – ITU IL
Dourado 13 (research fellow in the technology policy program with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a former
member of two US delegations to the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union meetings)
(Eli, So much for America's internet freedom agenda, Wednesday 7 August 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/nsa-surveillance-alienating-us-from-world)
The scandal is reinvigorating Russian proposals for the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, to take over
internet technical standards and management of the domain name system. Brazil insists that the role of governments and
intergovernmental agencies in managing the internet be discussed at ITU meetings in November and March. These are not
major policy changes, but they now find a more sympathetic ear from the developing countries that make up the majority at
the ITU, which conducts business on the basis of one vote per country.
In truth, most developing countries don't care very much about the management of the internet per se. What they really
want is more access to the internet – more foreign investment and more aid to set up internet exchange points. In the past,
the United States always offered more development resources as a way to smooth over its hard-line stance on preserving
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existing Internet institutions.
But now, developing countries don't want US assistance because they assume the equipment comes with a backdoor for the
NSA. They are walking straight into the arms of Russia, China, and the ITU, and when the time comes to decide how the
internet should be managed, who do you think they'll side with?
This is not to suggest that the United States shut down all of its intelligence operations. After all, other countries spy, and
spying – for better or worse – is part of international politics. But the United States is one of very few countries with the
capability to monitor absolutely everything that is going on in the world. This means that the kind of indiscriminate, total
surveillance that the United States is presently engaged in is not strictly necessary, and unilateral disarmament is an option.
No doubt the intelligence establishment will dismiss the suggestion out of hand. US intelligence hegemony has its
advantages, particularly if you are a US intelligence officer. Yet as the politics of internet governance shows, it also has
significant costs. By surveilling harmless and innocent foreigners alongside America's enemies, the United States is
alienating the world and projecting an arrogant disregard for the perfectly ordinary aspirations of billions of people to
maintain some semblance of privacy in their personal lives. Eventually, that alienation could destroy the free,
global Internet that we all love. Is it worth it?
US Cred IL – US Key Ext.
US cred is key to global internet freedom
Roff 14 (a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report)
(2/25/, Is Obama About to Abandon the Internet?, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2014/02/25/willobama-abandon-internet-freedom)
Freedom built the Internet. Up to now it has been the position of the United States government to
defend that idea. The U.S. actively pressures other countries who guard news and information more
jealously, who exercise a greater degree of control over news and information content than we do here to play by our
rules – which include free and open access and freedom of content. Giving up control of the Internet to any
international body would make that a much tougher row to hoe. It’s perfectly well and good for senior U.S. officials like
Secretary of State John Kerry to meet with bloggers from China about the promotion of Internet freedom. But if the
president and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker are at the same time working out a scheme to give the Chinese
government – which is not exactly a worldwide symbol of free thought and free association -- a commanding voice in how
the Internet is managed, then what’s the point? The situation is more complex than former President Jimmy Carter’s longago give-away of the Panama Canal. The idea that “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” as Ronald Reagan famously said
years ago, is the starting point of the discussion -- not the closing argument. The idea behind the Internet is
freedom, and no country can guarantee that freedom as well or as enduringly as the United States.
Policymakers in Washington need to put a stop to the globalization of its management now, before it’s
too late.
US key to internet freedom signal
Fontaine and Rogers 11 Richard Fontaine is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Will Rogers
is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf
At the same time, the United States should counter the view that Internet freedom is merely an American project cooked
up in Washington, rather than a notion rooted in universal human rights. The United States promotes Internet freedom
more actively than any other country, and is one of the only countries that actively funds circumvention
technologies. It leads in promoting international norms and has made a greater effort than most to
incorporate Internet freedom into its broader foreign policy.
US Cred IL – Now Key
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Now is key
Fontaine 14 (President of the Center for a New American Security)
(Richard, Bringing Liberty Online: Reenergizing the Internet Freedom Agenda in a Post-Snowden Era, SEPTEMBER 2014, Center
for New American Security)
Now, then, is a crucial time for the United States to reenergize its approach to Internet freedom.
As technology entrepreneur Marc Andreessen recently said, given the loss of trust in the United States following
the Snowden disclosures, it remains an open question whether in five years the Internet will operate as it
does today.52 Such con- cerns may turn out to be overdrawn. But with the future of online freedom at stake in
decisions made by governments, corporations and individuals today, it is vital for the United States, despite all of
the complications and difficulties of the past year, once again to take the lead in defense of Internet freedom.
I-Freedom Good – A2: Doesn’t Solve
Internet freedom is key to global democracy
Tkacheva et al. 13 (Olesya, and Lowell H. Schwartz, Martin C. Libicki, Julie E. Taylor, Jeffrey Martini, and
Caroline Baxter, RAND Corporation, Internet Freedom and Political Space, Report prepared for USDOS)//LA
Online information can undermine the stability of non- democratic regimes by triggering an
information cascade. The impact of protests is frequently proportional to the number of protesters who appear on the
streets. The Internet can facilitate social protests by enabling citizens to anonymously express their true
opinions and coordinate collective action, which can create a domino effect. Online mobilization in
both Egypt and Russia triggered a wave of protests with long-term consequences—most notably the
stunningly swift collapse of the Mubarak regime. Although social media in Egypt did not cause the popular upris- ing
that came to center in Tahrir Square, it substantially increased the number of people who participated in the
first demonstration. The size of the crowd in the Square caught Egyptian authori- ties by surprise and triggered the
defection of some high-ranking army officials. In Russia, the information about electoral fraud triggered a
wave of online mobilization that manifested itself in a series of mass demonstrations. Syria’s activists used
the Internet to publicize elite defection from the regime, albeit with more limited success against a brutal and determined
foe. • The Internet can make political coalitions more inclusive by opening up deliberations that cut
across socioeconomic cleav- ages, thereby spreading information to people who do not normally interact on a daily
basis. This conclusion emerges pri- marily from the review of theoretical literature on the diffusion of information online
and the literature on social movements. While weak ties facilitate the diffusion of information online, strong ties create peer
pressure that contributes to offline social mobilization.
I-Freedom Good – Human Rights Promo
Internet freedom promotion key to international human rights agenda
Fontaine and Rogers 11 Richard Fontaine is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Will Rogers
is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf
The United States has a long history of providing diplomatic and financial support for the promotion of human
rights abroad, including the right to free expression. While each presidential administra - tion emphasizes human rights
to differing degrees, during recent decades they have all consistently held that human rights are a key U.S. interest.
Promoting freedom of the Internet expands human rights support into cyberspace, an environment in
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which an ever-greater proportion of human activity takes place. The United States advocates for freedom of
the Internet because it accords not only with American values, but also with rights America believes are intrinsic to
all humanity.
I-Freedom Good – Existential Threats
Extinction
Genachowski 13 Julius Genachowski is chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, First Amendment
scholar Lee C. Bollinger is president of Columbia University. Bollinger serves on the board of the Washington Post
Company, Foreign Policy, April 16, 2013, "The Plot to Block Internet Freedom",
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/16/plot_block_internet_freedom?page=full
The Internet has created an extraordinary new democratic forum for people around the world to express their opinions. It is
revolutionizing global access to information: Today, more than 1 billion people worldwide have access to the
Internet, and at current growth rates, 5 billion people -- about 70 percent of the world's population -- will be connected in
five years. But this growth trajectory is not inevitable, and threats are mounting to the global spread of an
open and truly "worldwide" web. The expansion of the open Internet must be allowed to continue: The mobile
and social media revolutions are critical not only for democratic institutions' ability to solve the collective
problems of a shrinking world, but also to a dynamic and innovative global economy that depends on
financial transparency and the free flow of information. The threats to the open Internet were on stark display at
last December's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, where the United States fought
attempts by a number of countries -- including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia -- to give a U.N. organization, the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), new regulatory authority over the Internet. Ultimately, over the objection of
the United States and many others, 89 countries voted to approve a treaty that could strengthen the power of governments
to control online content and deter broadband deployment. In Dubai, two deeply worrisome trends came to a head.
First, we see that the Arab Spring and similar events have awakened nondemocratic governments to the danger that
the Internet poses to their regimes. In Dubai, they pushed for a treaty that would give the ITU's imprimatur to
governments' blocking or favoring of online content under the guise of preventing spam and increasing network
security. Authoritarian countries' real goal is to legitimize content regulation, opening the door for governments to block
any content they do not like, such as political speech. Second, the basic commercial model underlying the open
Internet is also under threat. In particular, some proposals, like the one made last year by major European network
operators, would change the ground rules for payments for transferring Internet content. One species of these proposals is
called "sender pays" or "sending party pays." Since the beginning of the Internet, content creators -- individuals, news
outlets, search engines, social media sites -- have been able to make their content available to Internet users without paying
a fee to Internet service providers. A sender-pays rule would change that, empowering governments to require Internet
content creators to pay a fee to connect with an end user in that country. Sender pays may look merely like a commercial
issue, a different way to divide the pie. And proponents of sender pays and similar changes claim they would benefit
Internet deployment and Internet users. But the opposite is true: If a country imposed a payment requirement, content
creators would be less likely to serve that country. The loss of content would make the Internet less attractive and would
lessen demand for the deployment of Internet infrastructure in that country. Repeat the process in a few more countries, and
the growth of global connectivity -- as well as its attendant benefits for democracy -- would slow dramatically.
So too would the benefits accruing to the global economy. Without continuing improvements in transparency
and information sharing, the innovation that springs from new commercial ideas and creative breakthroughs
is sure to be severely inhibited. To their credit, American Internet service providers have joined with the broader U.S.
technology industry, civil society, and others in opposing these changes. Together, we were able to win the battle in Dubai
over sender pays, but we have not yet won the war. Issues affecting global Internet openness, broadband
deployment, and free speech will return in upcoming international forums, including an important meeting in
Geneva in May, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum. The massive investment in wired and wireless
broadband infrastructure in the United States demonstrates that preserving an open Internet is completely compatible with
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broadband deployment. According to a recent UBS report, annual wireless capital investment in the United States increased
40 percent from 2009 to 2012, while investment in the rest of the world has barely inched upward. And according to the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, more fiber-optic cable was laid in the United States in 2011 and 2012
than in any year since 2000, and 15 percent more than in Europe. All Internet users lose something when some
countries are cut off from the World Wide Web. Each person who is unable to connect to the Internet diminishes
our own access to information. We become less able to understand the world and formulate policies to
respond to our shrinking planet. Conversely, we gain a richer understanding of global events as more people connect
around the world, and those societies nurturing nascent democracy movements become more familiar with America's
traditions of free speech and pluralism. That's why we believe that the Internet should remain free of gatekeepers and that
no entity -- public or private -- should be able to pick and choose the information web users can receive. That is a principle
the United States adopted in the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order. And it's why we are
deeply concerned about arguments by some in the United States that broadband providers should be able to block, edit, or
favor Internet traffic that travels over their networks, or adopt economic models similar to international sender pays. We
must preserve the Internet as the most open and robust platform for the free exchange of information
ever devised. Keeping the Internet open is perhaps the most important free speech issue of our time.
Human Rights Solve War
Human rights solve war
William W. Burke-White, Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Spring 2004
17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249
This Article presents a strategic--as opposed to ideological or normative--argument that the promotion of human rights
should be given a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. It does so by suggesting a correlation between the domestic
human rights practices of states and their propensity to engage in aggressive international conduct. Among the chief threats
to U.S. national security are acts of aggression by other states. Aggressive acts of war may directly endanger the United
States, as did the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, or they may require U.S. military action overseas, as in
Kuwait fifty years later. Evidence from the post-Cold War period [*250] indicates that states that systematically abuse
their own citizens' human rights are also those most likely to engage in aggression. To the degree that improvements
in various states' human rights records decrease the likelihood of aggressive war, a foreign policy
informed by human rights can significantly enhance U.S. and global security.
Since 1990, a state's domestic human rights policy appears to be a telling indicator of that state's
propensity to engage in international aggression. A central element of U.S. foreign policy has long
been the preservation of peace and the prevention of such acts of aggression. n2 If the correlation
discussed herein is accurate, it provides U.S. policymakers with a powerful new tool to enhance
national security through the promotion of human rights. A strategic linkage between national security and
human rights would result in a number of important policy modifications. First, it changes the prioritization of those
countries U.S. policymakers have identified as presenting the greatest concern. Second, it alters some of the policy
prescriptions for such states. Third, it offers states a means of signaling benign international intent through the
improvement of their domestic human rights records. Fourth, it provides a way for a current government to prevent future
governments from aggressive international behavior through the institutionalization of human rights protections. Fifth, it
addresses the particular threat of human rights abusing states obtaining weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Finally, it
offers a mechanism for U.S.-U.N. cooperation on human rights issues.
Human rights are key to national security and preventing war
William W. Burke-White, Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Spring 2004
17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249
One causal pathway rooted in liberal international relations theory that may explain the observed
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correlation between systematic human rights violations and interstate aggression is the institutional
constraint that accompanies human rights protections. n97 Institutionalization of human rights norms
has at least two powerful effects on state behavior. First, human rights protections govern how broad a
spectrum of the community has at least some voice in the political decisions of the state. Even if the
state is not a democratic polyarchy, if it provides basic protections for the human rights of all or most
citizens, then a very broad spectrum of the polity is represented in political affairs. Freedom of thought
and freedom from extrajudicial bodily harm, for example, allow citizens to develop their own views on
political issues and, often, to express those views through public channels. A wider spectrum of voices,
in turn, increases the level of political competition--one of the key structural explanations for the
democratic peace--even without the establishment of a democratic form of government. n98 Of course,
in a non-democratic, but human rights respecting state, the views of individual interests may not have a
direct effect on state policy, but, arguably, they can still increase the level of political competition by
facilitating debate and the exchange of ideas.
The second effect of institutionalized protections of human rights is to set a minimum floor of
treatment for all citizens within the domestic polity. Even in a non-democracy, minimum human rights
protections ensure that [*266] rights are accorded to individuals not directly represented by the government. By
ensuring a minimum treatment of the unrepresented, human rights protections prevent the government
from externalizing the costs of aggressive behavior on the unrepresented. In human rights respecting
states, for example, unrepresented individuals cannot be forced at gunpoint to fight or be bound into
slavery to generate low-cost economic resources for war, and thus restrain the state from engaging in
aggressive action. On the other hand, in a state where power is narrowly concentrated in the hands of a
political elite that systematically represses its own people, the state will be more able to bear the
domestic costs of war. By violating the human rights of its own citizens, a state can force individuals to
fight or support the military apparatus in its war-making activities. Similarly, by denying basic human
rights, a state may be better able to bear the political costs of war. Even if such a state had fair elections, denial
of freedom of thought and expression might well insulate the government from the electoral costs of an aggressive foreign
policy. n99
Human rights solve war
William W. Burke-White, Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Spring 2004
17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249
The social beliefs explanation begins from the proposition that individuals within human rights protecting states
share a preference for a minimum set of protections of human rights. This assumption is appropriate
for two reasons. First, according to liberal political science theory, state policy represents the
preferences of some subset of the domestic polity. n100 If the observed state policy is to protect human
rights, then at least some subset of the domestic polity must share that preference. Second, even if
individuals within a domestic polity seek a variety of differentiated ends, basic respect for human
rights allows individuals to pursue--to some degree at least--those ends as they define them. Liberal
theory thus suggests that individuals within a human rights respecting state tend to support basic
human rights provisions. The next step in the social beliefs argument is to recognize that respect for
human rights has an inherently universalist tendency. n101 Unlike cultural or national rights, human
rights are just that--human. They apply as much [*267] to those individuals within a domestic polity
as to those outside the polity. Such cosmopolitan liberalism indicates that "the more people are free,
the better off all are." n102 The net result is that individuals within a human rights respecting state
tend, on the average, to support the human rights of individuals in other states as well. Given a set of
universalist human rights values in states that respect human rights, the policy articulated by the
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government may be one which respects human rights at home and demands their protection abroad.
This belief in a thin set of universal human rights may cause the leadership of the state to frame its
security policy around that belief structure and to refrain from aggressive acts that would violate the
human rights of citizens at home or abroad. As Peter Katzenstein argues, "security interests are defined by actors
who respond to cultural factors." n103 Acts of international aggression tend to impinge on the human rights
of individuals in the target state and, at least temporarily, limit their freedom. After all, bombs, bullets,
death and destruction are not consistent with respect for basic human rights. n104 Framed in the liberal international relations
theory terms of policy interdependence, international aggression by State A imposes costs on State B, whose citizens' human rights will be infringed upon by the act of aggression. This infringement in turn imposes costs on citizens in State A, whose
By contrast, a
state which commits gross human rights violations against its own people will not be subject to this
restraint. Such violations often occur when the government has been "captured" by a select minority
that chooses to violate human rights. If the citizens themselves are not in favor of human rights at
home, they are unlikely to be committed to the enforcement of human rights abroad. Where capture
occurs, the government is not responsive to the preferences of the domestic polity. In such cases, even
if there is a strong preference among citizens to protect human rights at home and abroad, the
government is unlikely to respond to those interests and its policies will not be constrained by them.
citizens have a preference for the protection of the human rights of citizens in both states. This shared value of respect for human rights thus may restrain State A from pursuing international aggression. n105
Human Rights Solve Terror
HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION THWARTS OPPORTUNITIES FOR TERRORISM
Rosemary Foot, Professor of International Relations, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, 2003, Survival, Volume 45, No. 2, Summer,
p. 173
It is a linkage that has lived on the neo-Reaganite George W. Bush administration and appeals because the human security idea allows
for connections to be made between neo-conservative and liberal rhetoric. The idea contributed to the decision in Bush’s January
2002, State of the Union Address to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil” and to the argument in the September
2002 National Security Strategy that terrorists would thrive where there was an absence of the rule of law and a failure to protect
human dignity. Thus, for the Bush administration, human-rights concerns enter into policymaking first as a result of political,
bureaucratic and legislative commitments made in the past. And secondly, because of its acceptance latterly of the idea that gross
violations of human rights generally tend to be the mark of a state that might, wittingly or not, provide the base
from which terrorist cells can operate, or be hospitable to the establishment of links with transnational terrorism,
or through it actions foment violent unrest that spills over its borders.
Human rights key to national security – prevents terrorist recruitment
MICHAEL J. O'DONNELL, Editor in Chief, Boston College Third World Law Journal, Winter 2004
24 B.C. Third World L.J. 223
The resentment and anger engendered by U.S. hypocrisy on human rights policy and corporate responsibility are antithetical to longterm U.S. interests, and represent an immediate security threat in an age of global terrorism. n279 As the U.S. has become entrenched
in the Middle East, an area of the world currently saturated by virulent anti-Americanism, its perception abroad has increasingly
become a matter of national security policy. n280 As one prominent human rights leader has noted, "Human rights are the
foundation of national security, both domestically and around the world." n281 Flagrant inconsistency between U.S. rhetoric and
practice abroad provides anti-American extremists and terrorists with an invaluable propaganda tool for adding angry recruits to their
ranks. n282 Because such antagonism is eminently preventable, U.S. double standards on human rights and corporate accountability
represent a clear foreign policy failure. n283
US human rights leadership is key to national security and stopping terrorism
Lorne W. Craner, Asst. Sec. Of State For Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, October 31, 2001
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/rm/2001/6378.htm
The world has changed dramatically for all of us since September 11, and some people have expressed the concern that, as a result of the attacks on America, the Bush Administration will abandon human rights and democracy work. To those people I say boldly that this
maintaining the focus on human rights and democracy worldwide is an integral part of our response to the attack and is
even more essential today than before September 11th. They remain in our national interest in promoting a stable and democratic
world. As Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice said only a week after the horrific attack, "Civil liberties matter to this President very much, and
is not the case. In fact,
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our values matter to us abroad. We are not going to stop talking about the things that matter to us, human rights, religious freedom and so forth and so on. We're going to continue to press those things; we would not be American if
we did not." In practical terms, we continue to raise human rights issues at the highest levels of governments worldwide and have made it clear that these issues remain important to us. We do so because there is often a direct link
between the absence of human rights and democracy and seeds of terrorism. Promoting human rights and democracy addresses the
fear, frustration, hatred, and violence that is the breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists. We cannot win a war against
terrorism by halting our work promoting the universal observance of human rights. To do so would be merely to set the stage for a
resurgence of terrorism in another generation. As Thomas Jefferson said: that government is the strongest of which everyone may feel a part. At the very least, the brutality of the attack on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon and the fact that it was completely unprovoked suggest that models based on what we used to call the "rational actor" are far from fully comprehensive -- unless, of course, you are willing to take Clausewitz one step further and suggest that not only is war
politics by another means, but so, too, is terrorism. But that would be to give it a legitimacy that it clearly does not merit. Even so, what drives individuals -- not states, but men, individual, independent actors -- to assume the cloak of moral or religious rectitude and
This is not an attack on armies, but on symbols.
declare holy war on a country?
Obviously, we need to learn how to fight the perceptions and misperceptions that lie behind all that better than we do. The question that we
all are asking ourselves since that terrible day last month is this: how do we, who have the responsibility for promoting and protecting the values that underpin civil society at home and throughout the world, pick our way through all the causes and effects of that and
make sure that it does not happen again? Obviously, there is much we can do: in intelligence-gathering and information sharing, in civil defense and homeland security, in diplomacy and economic leveraging, in international cooperation and coalition-building, in
pressure and in force. All this the Administration is doing, and much, much more. My point is not to venture into the realm of military strategy. That is not my responsibility in this administration. Fortunately for all of us, the President has assembled a very experienced
. We cannot solve every
regional dispute and ethnic conflict. And yet, we are the sole superpower. Our reach is global and unprecedented. People look to us.
Our power and our potential are immense. We have interests and we have obligations to our friends and allies. As the head of the
bureau charged with advising the President and Secretary of State on human rights, I have to worry about the causes and consequences
of conflicts wherever they take place, for all of them involve human rights in one way or another -- whether in Sudan or Sierra
Leone, Indonesia, Macedonia, or the Middle East. I suspect most of you are looking to hear something about this administration's priorities within the field of human rights, especially after the September 11th attacks.
Let me begin by outlining the general principles that I think will guide us. First, over the past 20 years, both political parties -- Republicans and Democrats -- have firmly embraced the belief that America has an obligation to
advance fundamental freedoms around the world. Thus human rights have the deep and strong backing of both parties, all branches of government, and, most importantly, the American people. This will not change. In a
and capable team for that. This country is not the cause of all the problems of this world -- quite the contrary. We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to solve them. But still, we cannot be everywhere at once
multilateral sense, the United States has been the unquestioned leader of the movement to expand human rights since the Second World War. We pushed it in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and into the conventions and treaty bodies that
have ensued. And when I say "we," I do not just mean the U.S. government. For it was our people, Americans from every walk of life, who gave the international non-governmental organization (NGO) movement so much of its intellectual force, its financial muscle,
and its firm commitment to civil society. This, too, will not change. We in this administration are conscious of our history and
are proud to bear the mantle of leadership in international human rights
into this new century.
HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION IS KEY TO FIGHTING INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, HERITAGE FOUNDATION REPORTS, December 21, 2001,
p. 1. (MHDRG/D737)
The advancement of human rights and democracy is important in its own right. At the same time, these
efforts are the bedrock of our war on terrorism. The violation of human rights by repressive regimes
provides fertile ground for popular discontent. In turn, this discontent is cynically exploited by terrorist
organizations and their supporters. By contrast, a stable government that responds to the legitimate
desires of its people and respects their rights, shares power, respects diversity, and seeks to unleash the
creative potential of all elements of society is a powerful antidote to extremism. I am pleased to tell you
that this Administration's commitment to human rights, democracy, and religious freedom is unshakeable. The President
and other senior officials have emphasized these core principles repeatedly in the aftermath of September 11. The
President's National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, at a recent Forum on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act,
reiterated our commitment to promoting democracy, noting "democratization and stability are the underpinning for a world
free of terrorism."
***Oversight Solvency***
Solvency – 1AC
Plan: The United States Congress should substantially curtail the United States federal government’s
surveillance of data stored in the United States including requiring surveillance agencies to provide proof
of reasonable suspicion against an individual target and limiting surveillance programs to only those
approved by congressional oversight.
This solves global internet splintering
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston is the Policy
Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
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(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom
& Cybersecurity, July 2014)
The President’s NSA Review Group acknowl- edged the need for such reform in its report on surveillance programs,
affirming that “the right of privacy has been recognized as a basic human right that all nations should respect,” and cautioned that “unrestrained American surveillance of non-United States persons might alienate other
nations, fracture the unity of the Internet, and undermine the free flow of information across national
boundaries.”324 In addition to recommending a variety new protections for U.S. persons, the Review Group urged in its
Recommendation 13 that surveillance of non-U.S. persons under Section 702 or “any other authority”—a
reference intended to include Executive Order 12333325 — should be strictly limited to the purpose of
protecting national security, should not be used for economic espionage, should not be targeted based solely on a
person’s political or religious views, and should be subject to careful oversight and the highest degree of
transparency possible.326 Fully implementing this recommendation—and particularly restricting Section
702 and Executive Order 12333 surveillance to specific national security purposes rather than foreign
intelligence collection generally—would indicate significant progress toward addressing the
concerns raised in the recent Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on “The
Right to Privacy in the Digital Age.” The UN report highlights how, despite the universality of human rights, the common
distinction between “‘foreigners’ and ‘citizens’...within national security surveillance oversight regimes” has resulted in
“significantly weaker – or even non-existent – privacy protec- tion for foreigners and non-citizens, as compared with those
of citizens.”327
Both limiting authority and oversight are key to solve global fears
Anderson 14 (J.D Candidate, Harvard Law School)
(Tyler C., Toward Institutional Reform of Intelligence Surveillance: A Proposal to Amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 8
Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 413 2014, Hein)
If the above analysis is correct, then Congress should reassess intelli- gence surveillance and amend FISA. Fortunately, as
Congress and the Obama Administration consider an overhaul of intelligence surveillance laws, a moment for such change
presents itself.96 In addressing concerns over the FAA, Congress should take two steps. First, Congress should narrow the scope of surveillance discretion granted to intelligence agencies. Second, Congress should strengthen
the ability of courts, Congress, and the American public to check abuses in surveillance authority exercised by the
executive branch. Drawing on the recent report issued by the President's Review Group on Intelligence and
Communications Technologies,97 this arti- cle proposes legislative language to do just that. Additionally, this article
proposes that Congress codify some of the President's promises that offer to expand civil liberties protections, particularly
the newly announced minimi- zation procedures and the promise not to use the NSA to target domestic racial minorities or
political dissidents.98
A. The First Step: Congress Should Narrow the Types of Conduct that WarrantSurveillance under the FAA
The first step Congress should take in reforming the FAA is to narrow and clarify what would give an
intelligence agency authority to initiate elec- tronic surveillance. Many have argued that one of the reasons the
FAA has attracted so much negative attention is simply that the general public does not understand what type of behavior
the act implicates. 9 This is not due to apathy, but rather to vagueness and secrecy because so much of the informa- tion
surrounding FISA is classified.
Currently, the language of 50 U.S.C. § 1801 suggests that the FAA is construed incredibly broadly by
intelligence agencies-an agency need only reasonably suspect that a target has committed or could commit any act "that
would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any State" as long as a target was
reasonably suspected of being an agent of a foreign power.'0 As the Snowden leaks demonstrate, this provision has in fact
been used to conduct broad-ranging surveillance. 01 Moreover, the act gives no guidance as to what constitutes
"reasonable sus- picion" by an intelligence agency.102 The most sweeping provision, Section 1881a, goes further
by failing even to include such a requirement, requiring only that an intelligence agency not "intentionally target a U.S.
person" in order to conduct surveillance activities. 03 By implication, such a person may be subject to surveillance if her
data is knowingly, recklessly, or negli- gently collected.'" As the American people discovered by the disclosures of Edward
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Snowden, this is exactly how the NSA and the FISA Court have interpreted this language. 05
Congress should remedy the over-collection of data and clarify what behavior warrants surveillance by narrowing these
provisions. In order to limit this expansive agency discretion, Congress could amend the FAA's most sweeping
provision, Section 1881a, to require that intelligence agen- cies "reasonably suspect the surveillance targets
of being agents of a foreign power" as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801. This requirement, as explained above, was
incorporated by definition into the FAA in Sections 1881b and 1881c,'06 but not 1881a, and could be added after Section
1881a(g)(2)(A)(v), adopting the language "targets are reasonably believed to be a foreign power, an agent of a foreign
power, or an officer or employee of a foreign power."'07 Furthermore, if Congress were to require that intelligence
agen- cies swear to and demonstrate such reasonable suspicion when they apply for a FISC warrant,
then much of the criticism of the Act's legal overbreadth would be alleviated, as 1881a could then only
be used to target legally sus- pected terrorists.
Additionally, Congress should narrow the type of activity that consti- tutes reasonable suspicion by an intelligence agency
that a U.S. person is an "agent of a foreign power" in Sections 1881b and 1881c, which it could accomplish by narrowing
the definition of "international terrorism." 0 One version of this proposal has already been put forth by Seventh Circuit
Judge Richard Posner.'" In Judge Posner's proposal, the FAA would add an addi- tional targeting requirement such that
intelligence agencies would need to reasonably suspect that targets are threats to national security. Specifically, he would
define "threat to national security" to implicate only "threats in- volving a potential for mass deaths or catastrophic damage
to property or to the economy," and leave to traditional law enforcement the surveillance of acts that include "ecoterrorism,
animal-rights terrorism, and other political violence that, though criminal, does not threaten catastrophic harm."" 0
Although Posner's proposal succeeds in narrowing intelligence agency discretion in interpreting the term "reasonably
suspicious," his analysis fun- damentally misreads the FAA since such behavior is already excluded."' However, Posner
does validly argue that NSA surveillance techniques should not be used to target nonviolent political dissidents-a position
that President Obama has publicly endorsed in his recent Presidential Policy Di- rective.1 2 Congress could accomplish
Posner's more thoughtful emendations and codify President Obama's recent directive if, instead of modifying the language
of Sections 1881a, 1881b, and 1881c as Posner suggests, Congress altered the definition of terrorist activity itself. The new
text would change the definition of terrorism from any act "that would be a criminal violation if committed within the
jurisdiction of the United States or any State" to any act "that threatens national security and would be a criminal violation
if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or and State.""' Of course, as is often the case in law governing
executive power, particularly in national security, any particular tightening of legal language must be accom- panied by
oversight and enforcement to ensure that surveillance is only truly directed at national security threats.'14
Third, Congress should modify Section 1881 a so that it explicitly states that any collateral data on U.S. persons collected
by intelligence agencies cannot be used for intelligence purposes without specific FISC authoriza- tion."5 Here, Congress
could insert a new requirement below Section 1881a(d)(1)(B) of the act, stating that any incidental data pertaining to U.S.
persons and collected by intelligence agencies cannot be used without first obtaining a FISC warrant under Section 1881b
or 1881c of the act or through normal Title III electronic surveillance procedures for criminal investiga- tions. This proposal
would remedy much of the criticism generated by the programs and methods recently reported by The Guardian.116 While
Con- gress need not adopt such a proposal wholesale, clarifying and narrowing the types of activity that give rise to FAA
surveillance would help strengthen the rule-of-law principles our system of governance embodies.
B. The Second Step: Increase Oversight by Independent Parties
The second step Congress should take to improve the FAA is to heighten the independent oversight of
surveillance activity under the act. To do so, Congress could establish a publicly accountable, independent
watch- dog agency to supervise the operation of the FAA and ensure that the law be used only for its
intended purpose. Alternatively, Congress could strengthen the existing Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to
achieve the same goal. Critically, Congress would have to ensure that the executive branch could not simply classify away
the information that the watchdog agency would need to conduct its supervision.' Congress could accomplish this either by
ensuring that agency members have high-level security clearances or by mandating specific, non-redacted disclosure by
adding a disclosure provision to the text of the FAA as recommended by the Presidential Review Group on Intelligence and
Communication Technologies."'
Many critics of the act have already suggested a watchdog agency. For example, Jack Balkin has argued that new
legislative and judicial oversight based on "prior disclosure and explanation and subsequent regular reporting and
minimization""'9 should be coupled with the creation of a new, independent agency charged with oversight.1 Balkin
describes such an agency as "a cadre of informational ombudsmen within the executive branch-with the highest security
clearances-whose job is to ensure that the government deploys information collection techniques legally and
nonarbitrarily."'21 This would heighten independent oversight and ensure congruence between the spirit and letter of the
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FAA and the FAA's application. Congress de- signed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to perform
just such a function following public outcry surrounding the passage of the PATRIOT Act, and later granted it independent
status; however, as of today the PCLOB still has little teeth (for reasons including its historical lack of funding). 2 2 In fact,
the PCLOB itself recently suggested that it requires more access to information to adequately perform its job.123 Even
before the Snowden disclosures, several critics of FISA had already suggested the PCLOB be strengthened so that it could
effectively monitor intelligence sur- 24 veillance activities.1 Moreover, this alteration in oversight should be
coupled with an expan- sion of the actual review process before the FISC, which should have the
benefit of robust adversarial proceedings. As the Presidential Review Group proposed, either Congress, the FISC,
or the PCLOB should be obligated to appoint an attorney to contest some of the more contentious FISA warrants 25
including those authorized under Section 1881a.1
Congressional oversight can rebuild trust and reverse the decline in leadership
FitzGerald and Butler 13 (Center for a New American Security)
(Ben FitzGerald, Bob Butler, NSA revelations: Fallout can serve our nation, DECEMBER 18, http://www.cnas.org/content/nsarevelations-fallout-can-serve-our-nation#.VYtAVO1Vgz8)
Security and openness need not be mutually exclusive and technological capability should not be the key to defining
operational limits. Confidence can be re-established through government-led development of the explicit
principles that set a better balance between security and openness. These principles must be formalized in government
agencies’ policies, federal laws, Supreme Court rulings and congressional oversight establishing the government
mechanisms to balance security and openness.
Credibly addressing this balance represents Washington’s best chance to rebuild the trust that has been
so eroded. It is also an opportunity to recast the Snowden revelations as a reason to establish international norms that will
govern all nations that are now developing and using similar surveillance capabilities.
What is required is to establish standards that Washington can hold itself and others to in terms of healthy collaboration
with business, productive relationships with allies and appropriate protections for the data of private citizens.
Powerful surveillance capabilities will only grow over time. The United States must therefore establish a new “higher
ground” in the international community to lead morally as well as technologically and ensure mutual
accountability among governments.
The key is to act quickly. Though the United States needs to retain robust foreign surveillance, it is clear that the fallout
from the NSA revelations will continue until proactive steps — rooted in trust, policy and law — are
taken.
Oversight Low
Fails now
Schuman 14 (Policy Director at CREW)
(Daniel, CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT OF NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM AGENDA, December 17,
http://crew.3cdn.net/3f9dcae5dba89a5369_gem6bhdce.pdf)
Congressional oversight of national security is broken. While Congress has a central role in authorizing,
overseeing, and funding programs related to national security, it cannot perform its constitutionally required oversight role
without each legislator having access to sufficient information. In the 1970s, unconscionable abuses and breathtaking
violations of law committed in the name of national security led to reforms.1 These reforms have since eroded, and again
members of Congress find themselves troubled by information obtained through leaks and news reports.2 Many
representatives have come to the conclusion that congressional oversight of the intelligence community
does not work. 3 Congress must once again review how it conducts oversight and renew its
commitment to meaningful stewardship of national security activities.4
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The FREEDOM Act abrogates Congressional oversight
Eddington 15 (Policy Analyst in Homeland Security and Civil Liberties at the Cato Institute)
(Patrick G., The Minimalist Surveillance Reforms of USA Freedom, April 29, 2015,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/minimalist-surveillance-reforms-usa-freedom)
Passing the USA Freedom Act in its current form would effectively represent a repeat of the Protect America Act fiasco of
the previous decade — an act of Congress that made legal a previously illegal surveillance program that did exactly nothing
to protect the country, while costing billions and subjecting Americans to continued mass surveillance. And the decline
of a real Congressional institutional ethic for holding the executive branch accountable for its misdeeds in
the intelligence arena is a major reason why this is happening.
My doubts about the bill’s likely effect are also based on the executive branch’s well-documented penchant for playing
legal word games with surveillance law — a practice key supporters of this bill have complained about loudly and often.
But even if we suspend disbelief and assume the more optimistic interpretations of the legislation’s effects come to pass,
and that the executive branch will abide by the intent of the bill’s authors, how will that reform compare with what’s been
revealed about the scope of NSA’s activities since 9/11?
The revelations about the abuses of the Patriot Act Sec. 215 metadata program are what ignited this surveillance reform
debate. Yet even the current version of the USA Freedom Act would not end the executive branch’s authority to collect
metadata; it would (assuming the best case scenario) simply narrow the scope of such metadata collection. It’s a curious
course of action given the fact that Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology found
that the metadata program prevented zero attacks on the United States. And as the New York Times recently reported,
multiple government audits of this and other post-9/11 surveillance programs found them essentially useless in the fight
against foreign terrorist organizations.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this debate — such as it is — is the refusal of the bill’s proponents to actually deal
with the fact that these surveillance authorities should never have existed in the first place, that they have been repeatedly
renewed despite false claims of their effectiveness and their dubious constitutionality, and that existing oversight
mechanisms have failed to correct executive branch surveillance over-reach in multiple areas.
Consider what this bill is not addressing:
The “back door” searches conducted under Sec. 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
The expansive collection of U.S. Person data under Executive Order 12333.
The targeting of anyone using internet anonymization technology such as Tor.
NSA’s subversion of encryption standards, supply chain interdiction operations, and espionage and spy recruitment efforts
against international standards bodies.
The elephant in the room is the absolutely wretched state of the congressional response to the Surveillance State,
demonstrated by the gap between the Congress’s response to NSA’s transgressions in the 1970’s and it’s post-Snowden
oversight posture. As I noted in a recent Washington Examiner piece:
Contrast that with the Watergate era. The Congressional investigation into NSA domestic spying programs known as
Shamrock and Minaret took place in 1975, and reforms under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) became law
in 1978.
Those reforms were driven the most exhaustive congressional investigations of the US Intelligence Community in
American history—an investigation that led to the creation of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and a
ban on the domestic surveillance of Americans by those same agencies. Until 9/11, STELLAR WIND, and all that came
after.
And despite the very real need for a similarly exhaustive examination of executive branch surveillance programs (including
others, such as the DEA’s own metadata collection program), Congress appears to have no appetite for taking
that much needed step.
In his new book, Democracy in the Dark, former Church Committee chief counsel Fritz Schwartz, commenting on the
problems with Congressional oversight of the Intelligence Community, notes that:
It is a truism that oversight bodies in both the public and the private sphere tend to be coopted by becoming too close to
those they oversee. But truisms are often true. It is striking that…members of the intelligence committees generally…do
not usually make waves or challenge the exclusivity of their super-secret access to secret information or their presumed
lack of power to do anything about it.
With a very few prominent exceptions, that observation is now applicable to the Congress as a whole where executive
branch surveillance excesses are concerned.
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Oversight Key to Credibility
Oversight key to solve global perceptions
Lewis 14 (senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies)
(James Andrew, Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate, http://csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf)
These six steps would address the concerns created by surveillance programs. Now is not the time to dismantle them. But
the use of communications surveillance for security must be reexamined and carried out in ways that do not pose risks to
the values that are the ultimate foundation of our strength. Strong oversight mechanisms and greater
transparency are the keys to acceptance and credible accountability. While every nation must undertake
some activities in secret, democracies require that national priorities and policies be publicly debated and
that government be accountable to the citizens for its actions. To rebuild trust and strengthen oversight,
particularly for collection programs that touch U.S. persons, greater openness is essential. Too much secrecy
damages national security and creates the risk that Americans will perceive necessary programs as
illegitimate.
Signal Key
Only a clear signal can solve
Otto 14
(Greg, JULY 30, 2014 9:22 AM, Is NSA's PRISM program ruining cloud computing's growth?, http://fedscoop.com/nsa-prism-cloudcomputing/)
"Ensuring that a strong version of USA
FREEDOM becomes law is only the first step toward repairing the
damage that the NSA has done to America's tech economy, its foreign relationships, and the security of
the Internet itself," said Kevin Bankston, OTI's policy director
Castro said even with meaningful reform, he doesn't think it will change the perception that companies are fighting an
uphill battle with NSA in order to protect their products
"I don't think the companies themselves can solve this problem," he said. " The issue is that these foreign and
domestic buyers don't trust the U.S. government right now. Until there is a clear signal that the
intelligence community is turning the page through policies, I don't think we are going to see a change
in perception."
A2: Executive Circumvention
Executive will abide by the law
Prakash and Ramsey ‘12 (Saikrishna B, David Lurton Massee, Jr. Professor of Law and Sullivan and Cromwell Professor of
Law, University of Virginia School of Law and Michael D, Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law, review of The
Executive Unbound, Texas Law Review (2012) 90:973, http://www.texaslrev.com/wp-content/uploads/Prakash-Ramsey-90-TLR973.pdf)
Yet we doubt the book’s central claim that we live in a post-Madisonian republic. First, the U.S. Executive is very much
bound—by the Constitution, Congress’s laws, and the courts. Though we cannot peer into the many minds populating the
Executive Branch, we do not believe that executive officials regard themselves as above the law and the courts, answerable
only to the people via elections and polls. The Executive Branch does not act this way, and most of its actions
are consistent with its own sense of what the law requires and forbids (although, like most actors, it often
reads the law to maximize its discretion). To be sure, the Executive Branch takes advantage of gaps and
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ambiguities in the law, as well as its speed, decisiveness, and access to information, all as The Executive
Unbound describes.5 But the Executive does not systematically disregard orders from Congress or the
courts nor does it usually exercise core powers that the Constitution assigns elsewhere; the Executive
does not impose criminal punishments, spend money without authorization, or rule by decree. Second,
while we agree with Posner and Vermeule that public opinion colors Executive Branch decision making, we also believe
that the public favors an executive bound by the law. So long as the public expects the law to constrain
the Executive, the Executive will take into account this expectation and the public’s sense of the
law, even under Posner and Vermeule’s own light. In other words, the public has a taste for the rule of law, a
taste that the Executive Branch ignores at its peril. We think the legal constraints on the modern
Executive are so manifest that we wonder whether Posner and Vermeule’s real project is more aspirational than
descriptive. Perhaps their ultimate objective is to persuade us that we should have an unbound executive, not that we
already have one. We hedge here because the book seems of two minds. In keeping with the title, most of the book
forcefully argues that the Executive faces no material legal constraints. For instance, Posner and Vermeule write that “the
legally constrained executive is now a historical curiosity”6 and that the Madisonian separation of powers has “collapsed.”7
There is no equivocation here. Yet Chapter 6 argues that irrational fear of executive tyranny has prevented the
Executive from obtaining powers needed to handle modern emergencies.8 Obviously this complaint
assumes that there are constraints on the Executive. And the conclusion in particular appears to admit that the courts and
Congress check the Executive—that the Executive is bound and that the Madisonian republic lives on.
A2: Can’t Solve Localization
US leadership is key to prevent localization requirements
Business Roundtable 12 (group of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations formed to promote pro-business public
policy)
(Promoting Economic Growth through Smart Global Information Technology Policy The Growing Threat of Local Data Server
Requirements, http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Global_IT_Policy_Paper_final.pdf)
Sustained and credible U.S. leadership and multilateral collaboration are necessary to protect against
blanket local data server requirements. BRT recognizes the good work of the United States and other key trading
partners in negotiating well-crafted policies that address the integrated nature of today’s global economy. We want to work
with the U.S. government to promote further acceptance and implementation of these principles.
The E.U.-U.S. Trade Principles for Information and Communication Technology Services and the OECD Principles for
Internet Policy-Making provide a solid foundation for advocating against local data server requirements. In relevant part,
they state:
The E.U.-U.S. Trade Principles for Information and Communication Technology Services — “Local Infrastructure”:
Governments should not require ICT service suppliers to use local infrastructure, or establish a local presence, as a
condition of supplying services.
The OECD Principles for Internet Policy-Making — “Promoting and Enabling the Cross-Border Delivery of Services”:
Suppliers should have the ability to supply services over the Internet on a cross- border and technologically neutral basis in
a manner that promotes interoperability of services and technologies, where appropriate. Users should have the ability to
access and generate lawful content and run applications of their choice. To ensure cost effectiveness and other efficiencies,
other barriers to the location, access and use of cross-border data facilities and functions should be minimized, providing
that appropriate data protection and security measures are implemented in a manner consistent with the relevant OECD
Guidelines and reflecting the necessary balance among all fundamental rights, freedoms and principles.
BRT and the U.S. government can work together to implement these policy principles and assess disruptive
market and policy trends. As an initial step to doing so, we have chosen to focus on the very real operating impacts
that come from a growth in local data server requirements. At the same time, we realize that to be fully successful with
other countries, the United States must lead by example and must have a best-practice and consistent position
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on these matters.
A clearly articulated U.S. position on the appropriate way to minimize barriers to data server location will allow
the United States to advance its position that the unimpeded, free flow of cross-border data is of
fundamental importance to the economic competitiveness of U.S. business, as well as business
communities and societies around the world.
A2: Foreign Surveillance OWs
Cloud computing means that domestic surveillance is international – massive data pull out happening
now
Castro and McQuinn 15 (Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Research Assistant, Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation)
(Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S. Competitiveness, June 9, 2015,
http://www.itif.org/publications/2015/06/09/beyond-usa-freedom-act-how-us-surveillance-still-subverts-us-competitiveness)
Since the revelations of PRISM and other digital surveillance programs by Edward Snowden in 2013, a steady stream of
troubling details has continued to emerge about online spying by the U.S. intelligence community. 7 These revelations
have fundamentally shaken international trust in U.S. tech companies and hurt U.S. business prospects
all over the world. In 2014, one survey of businesses in the United Kingdom and Canada found that 25
percent of respondents planned to pull company data out of the United States as a result of the NSA
revelations.8 This survey also found that respondents were thinking differently about the location of their data in a postPRISM world, with 82 percent citing national laws as their top concern when deciding where to store their data. Several
companies have come forward describing the damage that this loss of trust has had on their ability to do business abroad.
For example, the software-as-a-service company Birst has found that companies in Europe do not want their data hosted in
North America due to concerns about U.S. spying.9 In order to address these concerns, Birst was forced to partner with a
European-based company to access European businesses. In another example, a major German insurance company
turned its back on Salesforce—a U.S. cloud computing firm—that was slated to manage its consumer
database after the revelations emerged.10 In fact, Salesforce faced major short-term sales losses and suffered a $124
million deficit in the fiscal quarter after the NSA revelations.11
***Inh***
Freedom Act Failed – Need FISA Oversight
Shackford 15
(Scott, Is the USA Freedom Act the Best We Can Expect Right Now?May. 20, 2015 2:20 pm, http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/20/isthe-usa-freedom-act-the-best-we-can-e)
"The USA Freedom Act should be stronger," Jaycox says. " Congress should be pushing for more control for
themselves and more for the public." EFF would like Congress to return to the first iteration of the act that called for
a stronger adversarial position within the FISA court, not just an adviser. They want Congress to address other
authorizations used to justify bulk metadata collection, not just Section 215 and National Security Letters. They want better
"minimization" procedures to make sure information that isn't directly connected to an investigation is properly purged.
And they want to remove an "emergency exception" that allows the government to snoop on any "non-United States
person" for 72 hours without any court authorization at all.
Given that the court ruling determined that the NSA had been operating outside of the law's intent, should we be concerned
that any attempt to partly rein in surveillance powers without completely eliminating them will ultimately lead back to more
abuse? Who gets to decide what a "specific selection term" is? The same people who determined that every single phone
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record of every American was "relevant" to investigating potential terrorist attacks on Americans? Jaycox is aware that this
abuse concern helps feed the belief the USA Freedom Act doesn't go nearly far enough.
"We've seen the intelligence community and the administration stretch definitions," Jaycox says. "We've seen them come
up to the line and cross it completely. Section 215 is an example. I think that's where the hesitancy comes from." It's the
FISA court that was supposed to stand in the way of the NSA abusing the language, but that clearly
didn't happen. Congress can legislate words to be as narrow as they like, Jaycox notes, "But at the end of
the day it's going to be a judge that's reviewing these orders." And thus, there's the push for more transparency
and declassification of FISA court decisions, in the hopes of making it more clear how the judges themselves are
interpreting the law.
702 is key
Sanchez 15 (a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute)
(Julian, JUNE 5, 2015 4:30PM, Snowdenversary Gifts for Privacy Advocates, http://www.cato.org/blog/snowdenversary-giftsprivacy-advocates)
These are, to be sure, heartening developments, but plenty of work remains. We still
know precious little about the
massive surveillance being conducted under the aegis of Executive Order 12333, which governs
intelligence gathering that takes place outside the United States, yet sweeps in large amounts of Americans’ data as it
travels around the globe. Nor do the reforms passed this week touch §702 of the FISA Amendments Act, an
authority that blesses the very general warrants abhorred by the framers of our Constitution, enabling large scale collection
of Americans’ communications with foreign persons and websites. That authority is set to expire at the end of
2017, and after a brief pause to toast the small progress made this week, is the next battle to which
privacy advocates will be turning their efforts.
702 = Domestic
All this surveillance is domestic despite being targeted at foreign agents
Thompson 13
(Loren, Why NSA's PRISM Program Makes Sense, JUN 7, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2013/06/07/why-nsasprism-program-makes-sense/)
President Obama’s firm defense of the National Security Agency’s “domestic” surveillance program
on Friday should calm some of the more extravagant fears provoked by public disclosure of its
existence. I put the word “domestic” in quotes because the effort to monitor Internet and other
communications traffic isn’t really about listening in on Americans, or even foreign nationals living
here, but rather intercepting suspicious transmissions originating overseas that just happen to be
passing through the United States.
That is an eminently sensible way of keeping up with terrorists, because it is so much easier than tapping into network
conduits in other countries or under the seas (not that we don’t do that). In order to grasp the logic of the NSA program,
which is code-named PRISM, you have to understand how the Internet evolved. It was a purely American innovation at its
inception, with most of the infrastructure concentrated in a few places like Northern Virginia.
I live a few miles from where the Internet’s first big East Coast access point was located in the parking garage of an office
building near the intersection of Virginia’s Routes 7 and 123, an area that some people refer to as Internet Alley. Because
the Worldwide Web grew so haphazardly in its early days, it was common until recently for Internet
traffic between two European countries to pass through my neighborhood. There were only a few
major nodes in the system, and packet-switching sends messages through whatever pathway is
available.
The Washington Post story on PRISM today has a graphic illustrating my point about how bandwidth tends to be allocated
globally. Like a modern version of ancient Rome’s Appian Way, all digital roads lead to America. It isn’t hard to
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see why Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper could say on Thursday that “information collected under this
program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect.” No kidding: PRISM
generated an average of four items per day for the President’s daily intelligence briefing in 2012.
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