I am considering making this the topic of a future podcast. Please tell me why you think privacy is so paramount in the digital age? Also where do we draw the line between help and hindrance as far as our government "looking out" for and over us? What, if anything, have the Edward Snowden revelations made you think about how the government acts in regards to surveillance?
- because administrations aren't forever. - because laws aren't universal. - because the most perfect digital surveillance serves the most imperfect analog humans. - because what you're doing here and now should never become a weapon against you there and then. IT'S THIS FUCKING SIMPLE There was a time when purchasing alcohol was illegal. Drinking it wasn't; unless you were black, of course. Back then we had The Black Chamber and it sure wasn't an NSA but if we had the NSA back then, you can be damn skippy it would have been used against blacks, the same way the DEA is using NSA wiretaps. So let's suppose my friend Ekaterina, who is a naturopathic doctor in Washington State, knuckled under to demands of her boss to prescribe marijuana in 2010. It's legal now in Washington - no prescription necessary. But do you think the DEA was using NSA wiretaps to monitor people prescribing marijuana in Washington just in case that shit became handy at some point in the future? You're naive if you think otherwise. Now let's suppose the US and Russia get into a pissing match over, say, anything. Oksana's mother, who lives with her, heads back to St. Petersburg to see family. Only now when she comes home, she's stopped at the gate because according to the DEA, her mother is a known drug trafficker. The TSA strip searches Oksana's mom, all 70 years old of her, then bounces her back to Russia. Oksana is doing what her boss says and isn't in any violation of state law - but the grist mill between state and federal statutes just chewed up her family. Now let's say my buddy Assam, who is a Ph.D candidate at Georgetown in Islamic History, answers a question of mine about beheading via email. He doesn't endorse it, but he does say "The Koran is unequivocal about the punishment of infidels, as indicated by Surat 47.4." Thanks to Semantic Forest, the words "beheading" "punishment" "infidels" and "Koran" rocket up in A-space to the counterterrorism branch of the CIA, who run Assam's records and discover he's a Moroccan national. Yeah, he's lived in the US for 15 years but doesn't that just make him worse? So now he's investigated by the FBI. Maybe they even set him up for a sting because the FBI really does suck this hard at this. In the meantime, they discover his wife is an Iranian and they're already on the terror watch list. So they sweep her up. They'd leave her two kids with her parents but OH SHIT THEY'RE IRANIANS TOO and despite the fact that they've been practicing medicine in Stockton CA for 30 years, they get vanned, too. All because I asked HIM a question over email. * * * Couldn't happen here, right? Couldn't happen now? Wait for the wind to shift. I had a Pakistani friend who had to stop running at lunch in 2003 because the longshoremen would line up to spit on him as he went by. Why? "He looked Iraqi." Privacy is tantamount because no matter how warm'n'fuzzy you feel about the Obama administration, its needs are served by committed, hard-core Republican Conservative twats who have been stepping on civil liberties their entire careers. Worse, you're either dealing with the lifers who are too stupid or lackluster to bounce out to SAIC, KBR or any of the other Alphabet Soups that do the heavy lifting, or you're dealing with the Alphabet Soup full of talented, shiftless kids looking for a reason to do something else. Edward Snowden bounced because he thought the violation of civil liberties was too much. he went to the Guardian. Christopher Boyce bounced because he didn't like the idea of us influencing elections in Australia to end up with a CIA-friendly government. He went to the Soviets by way of a drug-dealer childhood friend who wandered down with him to Mexico City. This shit is too important to trust to the judgement of bureaucrats. If a vacuuming of data can destroy my life, that vacuuming of data will be performed in accordance with the laws of the United States, including the Fourth Fucking Amendment. "If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to worry about." Tell that to the Protestants under Bloody Mary. Or the Catholics under Henry VIII. Or the blacks under Hoover, or my buddy Assam and his wife, who already can't fly anywhere, under this lovely, progressive, Democratic administration run by a scholarly black man. You should care because if you're on the ins this time, you'll be on the outs next time. Honesty has fuckall to do with it.
I can't help but hark back to a thread I saw on r/austin once. We have a pretty big problem with bikers getting killed in hit and runs by drunks on late weekends. The anti-surveillance argument went like this: "These bikers know the risks of biking at night on the weekend, and maybe they should stop doing it." The pro-surveillance argument was: "Let's use existing data sets and patterns to identify the most dangerous intersections in downtown Austin, where this most frequently happens, and stick some cameras at license plate angles." The anti-surveillance counterargument was: "It won't stop there." Bikers were dying in the present tense, and civil liberties were being threatened in the future tense. Everywhere I encounter the surveillance discussion, that's where it goes. Every time. Present safety weighed against the threat against future privacy*. Now, I agree with you. Our civil liberties are what make America a good place to live; they're our national treasure without a doubt. But "privacy" and "liberty" are dangerous catch-all rebuttals that grab attention and make headlines. It doesn't, for example, make sense to restrict your friends' flight abilities. It does, however, make sense to use cameras to stop hit and run car accidents. Unfortunately, the same principle is argued in both cases, with detrimental effects in the long term to both. *I'm not sure it's possible to objectively make this call.
You aren't making an argument. You're using a non-equivalent parable and attempting to illustrate that there are two sides to the coin. You are wrong on many fronts, allow me to list them for you. 1) Putting a camera up in a public place is not at all equivalent to snooping in someone's email. There is no right to privacy in a public place. This is why people are allowed to take photos there. This is why traffic cams exist. This is why we have the freedom to peacefully assemble. Comparing a traffic camera to NSA surveillance is sophistry. 2) Observing a hit and run is not going to prevent a hit and run. It's going to aid in the prosecution of a hit and run after it has happened. The argument is "we need cameras so we can catch the people who are running over bicyclists." You've turned it into "we need cameras so we can prevent hit and runs." They are not the same. More sophistry. 3) Further, an argument put forth for the cameras is probable cause - "people are being skeeshed, we need cameras up so we can catch the culprits." The argument for surveillance bypasses probable cause - "we need to put cameras up in case something bad happens." I think this was a mistake on your part, but you know better. 4) Finally, you're obliquely attempting to make a point that not only attempts to undermine my own, you're ignoring the very argument I'm making. Simply put, for your future quoting fun, Surveillance against law-abiding citizens is bad because laws can change and those who enforce them are imperfect, putting the citizen in danger of future criminalization for current non-criminal acts. Your argument boils down to "but if they have nothing to worry about now, then they have nothing to worry about NOW." Your defense of this argument is "but people who have stuff to worry about now should be surveilled in public." Which nobody is talking about. Your "anti-surveillance" argument is not, in fact, anti-surveillance. It's pragmatic. It says "perhaps we shouldn't spend tens of thousands of dollars and put the civil liberties of every citizen in Austin in jeopardy in exchange for marginally-improved prosecutorial tools against people who are already breaking the law." The amendment to it is "maybe we should park a police car at those intersections at closing time and nobody has to worry about a fucking thing." See how easy that was? See how non-theoretical and clear-cut?
Well, you're sort of angry about this, which is good I guess. If there's anything in the US to be angry about right now it's this stuff. But anyway, you misunderstand. I'm not making an argument, like you said several times, and certainly not offering my post as a counter to what you said. I actually originally typed it up as a reply to the OP, but felt it made a bit more sense added on to your post. I'm just adding something to the discussion, and that is this: we often end up having to weigh immediate safety (and yes, that's what the NSA will say they're giving you by pinging emails for 'bomb'; if anyone actually believes that is inconsequential to them) versus a future loss of privacy. Or, especially, we end up being told that's what is happening. I'm saying that's a very hard concept to explain to people, and that dichotomy is difficult to assess if you're Obama, or his NSC, etc. "Privacy" has become a buzzword, an excuse, and I think that's wrong, precisely because it leads to the same argument being made in the cases of two wildly different things -- in this instance the NSA's snooping and streetcorner surveillance. This inevitably weakens the argument. (Also -- a) it's good to put someone in jail who is morally okay with driving drunk and then leaving the scene of a crime, and b) cameras prevent crime, theoretically***. If we had never had streetlights, muggings would be more frequent, and adding streetlights may not stop a mugging that's already happened, but it sure does prevent new ones.)
I think the essence of your argument is that this technology allows for targeted oppression and that is bad. I agree that targeted oppression is bad. I do not agree that perfect surveillance is inherently a bad thing, as seems to be the opinion in all of these privacy debates. Perfect surveillance could be amazing for society. Here are my hypothetical situations which are more or else as likely as yours. Let's go for dramatic impact first. There's a depressed kid in Bumfuck, Texas. Let's call him Ben. He hates it there. No one listens to the music he likes and he's bullied daily because he's fat. He's on 4chan a lot and they get him, unlike his school counselor or his parents, but he's forced to go to school 7 hours a day. Scotty at the NSA, he's in charge of depressed fat kid analytics for the state of Texas. Scotty is a psychology grad who specialized in childhood and adolescent development. He sets up filters that identify potentially suicidal teens for his region. At this point Ben is just another teen. But then Ben starts researching .38 caliber revolvers. His search history doesn't indicate any prior interest in guns, so this triggers an alert. Scotty sees the alert and decides to monitor Ben for a while. Ben continues to researching the .38 and only the .38. At this point Scotty runs a search on Ben's family's gun registry and finds out that Ben's dad owns a .38 for home defense. At this point, Scotty knows what's up and gives Ben's school a call. He talks to the counselor and tells Ben's story. The counselor didn't know about the bullying, so she calls Ben out of class one day. She tells him that she's heard he was being bullied and Ben tells her who it is. The two begin weekly sessions to help Ben recover. At the same time the counselor asks Scotty about the bully. Scotty runs some searches and he informs her that it seems the bully has spent an inordinate amount of time reading about alcoholism. She begins sessions to help the bully address his issues at home. She also rearranges Ben's schedule to help him avoid the bully. In the days of digital privacy, the bully catches a bullet along with six other innocents. This hypothetical assumes a lot of things, much like yours. I assume a good school counselor (though maybe one who can't monitor the internal thoughts and feelings of 800 kids). I assume an NSA employee with proper training. I assume a government that cares more about curbing school shootings than about setting up stings on Muslims. The possibilities for a perfect digital surveillance in a decent society are endlessly beneficial, especially in the realm of identifying mental health disorders early. Fuck, any medical condition. Let's say for a month I've got headaches, but I don't go to the doctor because I don't feel like waiting in a waiting room and my health insurance deductible is too high. I look up headaches on WebMD. The headaches go away, but a few months later I notice that my toes are just constantly numb. I google it and assume it's just the cold weather. Unknown to me I've just moved from the "headache googlers" list which contains pretty much everybody, to the "headache + numb toes within a few months of each other" list. These lists and filters are of course created by some of the foremost doctors in the country (I'm assuming for this hypo). At this point I get a friendly call from my doctor that I should come in for an MRI, because it has become likely that I have a brain tumor. Without surveillance, I die, because by the time I go in because my nose is bleeding every night, the cancer has spread throughout my body. (All this medical stuff isn't accurate at all, for all those wondering). You get my point. I just don't want to see this type of technology written off as inherently evil. Can it be used for evil purposes? Yes. Is atomic energy inherently evil? No. Can it be used for evil? Yes. And yet you're not writing a multi-paragraph essay on the potential HUGE devastation of nuclear weapons and calling for immediate disarmament. There is no rally in DC soon that will attract hundreds of Redditors calling for Obama to dump the nukes in the ocean. If you want to talk about ending racial profiling, let's address how to stop it. If you want to talk about drug reform, let's do it. The government has all the power they need to oppress already. It's by actually taking the time to change the political tide on issues like these that will decide whether we end up in your hypothetical dystopia or in a better one. Whether or not the NSA spies on people won't.
Wow. Okay, for starters, all of my hypotheticals aren't hypotheticals. They're REAL. The names have been changed, but I do have a couple of friends who are Moroccan and Iranian, and he is an Islamic scholar at Georgetown. I didn't email him about Koran questions last time because he is on the no-fly list just for being from Morocco. I do have a Russian friend who has to keep her nose clean because her mother does fly back and forth from the US and Russia (and Uzbekistan, which is another can of worms - I mean, Russia's one thing but Uzbekistan is one of the places we practice Extraordinary Rendition). For another thing, you have Scotty the NSA agent saving Ben the depressed kid because his parents, his teachers, his guidance counselor, his friends and Ben are all incapable of doing so. I'd send you an article, but I'll just link to the intro to make a point of how ridiculous this is. our world is not full of friendly childhood counselors who work for the NSA, and it never will be - remember, the NSA has no domestic charter. They can't legally spy on Americans using American communication channels (but they do). Meanwhile, the practical effect of your Ben'n'Scotty chestnut is that Scotty works for the Division of Thoughtcrime and Ben just practiced a conscribed search. And now, in a zero-tolerance universe, he's expelled. For looking up a gun. That his father owns. So - you've spun Orwell into a Rockwell and I'm reporting real things that my real friends deal with in the real world. Tell me where the equivalency is? Let's take another step back and point out the elephant you're sweeping under the rug - CONSENT. Suppose Ben's dad wants to monitor his son's web searches. He can. Suppose Ben's school wants to monitor Ben's facebook account. They can. Suppose Ben's counselor wants to track Ben's web usage while at school. She can. Hey - suppose Ben's school wants to give Ben a free laptop to do his work on - they can monitor his fucking face while he masturbates. All this shit is available NOW and it happens. But somewhere in there, somebody said "yes, check up on my kid" even if it was a EULA for using the school computer. The above is called "monitoring" and it's an opt in. The discussion at hand is called SURVEILLANCE and it's performed on hostiles. I don't get your point. The entire argument is about intent, and your argument is "sometimes people are altruistic." Altruistic people ask permission. I think you need to bone up on what "informed consent" "surveillance" and "monitoring" mean. Because we're not talking about WebMD keeping tabs on your aspirin supply, we're talking about an autonomous organization that reports only to the executive who spies on girlfriends, spouses and friends so much they have an acronym for it.
Yes, your statements are hypotheticals when you tack the word "suppose" onto a brief description of one of your friends and then describe civil rights violations that have not occurred. And the fact that you can poke tons of holes in my Ben and Scotty hypo is because it is an unlikely event, but in my mind, it's about as likely as the world where a Russia-US "pissing contest" sends innocent citizens away at the airport because of "crimes" their RELATIVE didn't even get a trial for. It's also about as likely as an entire family getting "vanned" just for their nationality and e-mails that are clearly not threatening to anyone who takes the three seconds to read them.
Once more with feeling: Ekaterina hasn't had these problems because she has actively chosen to disobey her employer. You think people can get onto planes no problem? The guy who directed Donnie Darko got turned away from a flight to Cannes because he has the same name as a suspected terrorist. Assam is not running into trouble because I'm keeping him out of it. Remember - he's already on the no-fly list. He hasn't seen his family in fifteen years. His dad died last year and Assam didn't even get to attend the funeral. I don't give a shit about "your mind" because in your Town Called Perfect Scotty the Spook is an altruistic busybody who is only performing blanket searches on everyone so that he can help save kids from turning a web search into Columbine. "Your mind" presumes that information will only ever be used for good, and discounts the fact that the consequences of it being used for evil are absolute. I suspect you don't know any immigrants. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: America is much easier if you're a white citizen. And while I know you will continue to live in your "it can't happen here" bubble, allow me to state once more, before I set you to ignore, that it is happening here every day. I have a friend whose band had to cancel their showcase at SXSW because his name is in the TSA list as being an alias for someone who is on the list. He drove for two years, everywhere he needed to go... then he legally changed his name. Now he's the same as every other citizen. There's your ideal surveillance state. Too disconnected to know that a programmer from Seattle isn't a grudge-holding Tamil... and too clueless to care when the formerly-indicted skates because he changed his name. Bye bye.
"You've spun Orwell into a Rockwell" is a fantastic quotable. Also, the link in your original post about the Semantic Forest was eye-opening, seeing references to Julian Assange in 1999. Probably my naivete combined with the fact that I was 12 at that time, I had only really considered the NSA issues to be at least (relatively) new.
Issues of spying go way back. Here's one from 40 years ago.
Knowing that you could be watched at any time means you might as well be being watched all the time. Consider what that means when you're Billy in Texas and develop an interest in politics; having heard what the people of good people of Bumfuck say about insufficiently right-wing right-wing nutjobs, you fear being observed researching anything else. Maybe you question your religion, but because you've heard what the good people of Bumfuck say about atheists, you don't want to be observed researching atheism. Maybe you think you might be gay... Power doesn't have to be abused to be oppressive.
You know what? This whole fucking thing has me deeply pissed off and I'm going to tell you all why. There's this notion that "maybe we overvalue privacy" or "are we standing in the way of our appointed guardians" or "privacy is passé in the Facebook era" and other assorted bullshit. It's all a ruse. It's all a misdirection. It's all an attempt to get you to stop paying attention to the fundamental issue at hand. It boils down to this: 1) The NSA is not allowed to spy on American citizens without probable cause. 2) But the NSA is spying on American citizens without probable cause. In any universe other than bizarro-world, what follows is 3) Well, the NSA shouldn't do that. We should stop them. But where we're being led, by the whole of the American counter-intelligence apparatus, is 3a) Well, since they're doing it anyway, maybe we should let them. No. NO! A thousand times no. Try this on for size: 1) I'm not allowed to stab my neighbors to death. 2) But I just stabbed a neighbor to death. 3) kleinbl00 goes to jail forever. 3a) Well, since he's started, maybe we should let him continue to stab neighbors to death. There's no argument here. There aren't two sides. There isn't an assemblage of pros and cons. People whose job it is to determine what the NSA can and cannot do decided a long fucking time ago that the NSA is NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS. They went and did it anyway. Can they point to any concrete improvements it has made in anyone's lives? No, they can't. Why? Oh, not because there haven't been any, but because it's all so secret. There are more people with top secret clearances in the United States than there are people who live in Austin Texas. And, thanks to compartmentalization, each and every one of them can know absolutely nothing about what everyone else is doing. That way, nobody has to be responsible. Enough. This is not a thorny issue, this is a violation of the law and people need to stop wringing their hands about it as if there was some sort of terrible choice that has to be made. There isn't. The NSA is in violation of its charter. Has been for a long fucking time. Full stop. I'm done. Keep your hypotheticals to yourself; I'll be at Walgreens.
It gives the government the tools of a police state. In time, corruption cannot be fettered out, and the abuse of power cannot be held to account. Power corrupts, and total surveillance makes power close to absolute. It should be remembered that the citizen is served by the government. Currently, President Obama serves me. I do not serve him. That's why he asked for my vote. Everyone in government serves me, the citizen. The government should work under our surveillance, and its privacy should be limited by us. That is not to say that we should not grant the government some of these powers. However, we must do so extremely carefully, because surveillance and lack of privacy undermines the fundamental relationship of a representative government. If an organization is to serve me, the balance of power must be tipped in my favor. Surveillance tips the balance the other way.
I care because obviously if they start locking people up for political thoughts that would be a bad thing. But at the same time I do not care currently because that isn't happening. I've never assumed I was anonymous on the internet, it's all tracked. I know what type of logs and everything are kept, and I just assume everything on the internet is filtered for keywords and has been for decades. With non-internet things, in real life, you have no expectation of privacy in public or on another's private property. People can take pictures of you, you can be recorded, you can be stop and frisked in some states/cities, etc. There is no privacy in public. Period. Everyone knows that, and no one brings that up as a comparison to the internet. The internet is very much a mish mash of various private and public infrastructure criss-crossing the globe. So my argument has always been, why do we feel entitled to an expectation of privacy that is somehow even greater than are lack of privacy when we walk about in the real world outside of our homes? What is so special about what people do on the internet that they care so much about whether it was logged somewhere? If it wasn't the NSA doing it, I'd still assume that anything I do on the internet could be tracked or recorded by another party. There just isn't any guarantees of privacy online or in public, and there never will be, even if the NSA shutdown tomorrow. Not trying to sound like a hipster, but I've been telling people about this snooping and the capabilities of the government for over a decade now. And while I may not like it, it is what it is, I do believe it serves a purpose, I do believe every country is doing it, and I do believe it's only a story because it's the US and because they got caught with their pants down. But at the same time, we aren't China, we aren't Qatar, and we aren't locking up people who insult the king or post a banned topic. But of course, that is the possible negative outcome of all of this. But I'm not ready to jump into the "Police State / Nazi Germany / NWO/ 1984" club with the Redditors and other people who are completely losing their shit over this story. The other day I was talking to a guy on Reddit who was asking about SSL and why Reddit only uses encryption for login but not commenting or browsing. I pointed out that SSL would be kind of silly to encrypt comments that appear in plain text anyway. I mean, he volunteers his thoughts and ideas into comments for everyone to see who goes to that thread, but he somehow was angry that the traffic itself wasn't encrypted. I was just kind of baffled by that mindset. Some people are taking this privacy battle too far (for my tastes), and it's obvious many really do not even understand it. But it's another one of thos internet-uniting causes like SOPA/ACTA that gives a lot of people with little excitement going on, to fight some "battle" over privacy in this case. They aren't making legitimate arguments like "Hey you shouldn't be able to snoop cell conversations or emails, but we understand you're trunking connection information at the ISP, and we understand why that's needed." It's just "OMG THE NSA DID THIS WHAT A BUNCH OF JERKS!" It's just blind hate, much like we saw with SOPA/ACTA, and I just get really turned off when this happens. I probably don't have the most popular opinion on this subject, but I'm apathetic at best with all of this privacy stuff.
I don't think this is true. You still have the privacy of thought, of everything that's in your mind. For me a lot of privacy is the choice to tell something or not tell something and the fact that that choice is mine to make no matter what. Your comment might be better as "There is no physical privacy in public" but even that is not 100% true. It is more true in the UK I think.With non-internet things, in real life, you have no expectation of privacy in public or on another's private property
Well much like in public, no one can read your thoughts on the internet either, unless you choose to put them into text and transmit them, much like choosing to speak in public. I still don't see much of a difference.
I understand your apathy and your acceptance of the fact that some third-party more than likely has access to your internet footprint. But as kb said elsewhere in this thread, the NSA demonstrably overstepped its charter, is breaking the law, and it should be stopped, as a matter of judicial principle. Just like we arrest and punish street criminals, we ought to put a stop to injustices carried out by the government (and white collar criminals while we're dreaming, not a single arrest and conviction in relation to the ballooned mortgage market!?). Sure this is a convenient excuse for some to get outraged on the internet, but that's not an excuse to drop this cause.
I haven't dropped it. You'll notice I said I don't like it and consider it illegal, I'm just not going to fool myself and pretend on the internet that I'm going to do something about it. I vote, I caucus, I attend primaries, and I'll do what I can there. But beyond that, I'm not going to fight some arm-chair revolution with anyone over this. That's all. Also, if people think the NSA is the only branch doing this, they need to read up, yet they are the only agency getting mentioned in all of this privacy stuff. The CIA, FBI, DEA, and DHS all have their own signals intelligence programs. People need to be mad at the politicians they voted for, or didn't vote for, because these programs are common across many branches of military and domestic law enforcement. It's not just the NSA. I get why it's a serious issue. I get why it's illegal. I get how it's unconstitutional. But I'm being honest about myself not going out into the streets to protest or revolt, yet that seems to be what all the people who are vehemently against this and outspoken over it seem to be talking about... yet I haven't seen a single person actually go out and do anything. Not one. So what makes me any different from them other than perhaps a little more self awareness? I'm just not fooling myself that I'm going to do anything about it outside of the voting booth.
Privacy is not about whether or not you have something to hide. Privacy is about having the personal liberty to choose, or not choose, who you share what information with. It is about feeling comfortable to open up with someone who previously did not know you well versus being forced open, pried apart like a bivalve. Privacy is important not because I have something to hide but because I want to feel comfortable with whom and what I share. It is about not saying something, or not having something known, simply if I don't want it to be known. It is about personal freedom more than anything else I think. I care about privacy when I want to surprise someone in a good way, like a surprise birthday party or present for instance. Too often privacy is associated only with secrecy and secrecy only with "something to hide." If someone knows personal information about me, even if I don't consider it 'bad,' they can choose to judge me for it anyway. They can use information against me even if it's not something that I did wrong. Sometimes sharing certain bits of information about oneself is intimate. There is an intimacy in secrets; it's like nudity. I'm not personally a fan of public nudity and when asked why I usually retort along the lines of "I work hard to have the body I do. I expect other people to work hard to see it." If everyone knows everything about each other it devalues personal information and I think can devalue relationships (friendships, romantic relationships, whatever). I mean, you wouldn't let me look at your bank statements or tell me your income, would you? But that's not "something to hide." It's not like there is a crime on your bank statements (well, I assume). It is just something you would prefer not everyone else see. As for our gov't, it's gone too far. But I'm afraid it's entrenched and there's not much we can do about it.
Absolutely. Privacy is a fundamental human right. No one else should be able to choose to whom I disclose information about myself or when I choose to do so. Losing that right makes us all susceptible to the biases, whims, and agendas of those who wish to collect, (mis)interpret, and manipulate information about us: [And organizations ha]ve mistaken data for people and statistics for character. As a result, they've created a world where people should be worrying about what their credit cards might say about them or whether a phone call or E-mail message could be misinterpreted by a bureaucrat or a piece of software. But organizations have no inherent right to data about us. Their "mining" of electronic networks, for browsing habits and communication patterns, is invasive. Their forms, which require us to divulge information to them that they have no reasonable use for, are obnoxious. Their habit of keeping, even relevant, information about us much longer than is necessary for them to do their jobs is irresponsible. Their notion that information about us is some sort of commodity, which they can sell and trade to each other, is contemptible. And their willingness to let statistics tell them who we "really" are, and what we are liable to do, is dangerous. And people who are only worried about the government are being naive. Employers, landlords, bankers, and schools are all making assumptions about you from this data too.Privacy is about having the personal liberty to choose, or not choose, who you share what information with.
We used to live in a world where privacy only worried celebrities. Now, we live in a world filled with questionnaires, application forms, and silicon gadgets — from credit-card readers to personal computers — that leave electronic tracks. ...
It's all about choice for me. The choice of showing what I want to whom I want when I want to. These things are incredibly personal, so who is a government to decide for me? I feel like the US government has lost sight of the individual concerns and only focusus on gathering massive amounts of private data just to maybe save a couple of people sometime. On the other hand, the more practical approach, is that I'm just not interesting to any of the intelligence agencies. I am very cautious about what I say online. It's a shame that it's necessary to walk on eggshells, but at least I can manage that.
Copy-pasted from a relevant reddit AMA I live in a country generally assumed to be a dictatorship. One of the Arab spring countries. I have lived through curfews and have seen the outcomes of the sort of surveillance now being revealed in the US. People here talking about curfews aren't realizing what that actually FEELS like. It isn't about having to go inside, and the practicality of that. It's about creating the feeling that everyone, everything is watching. A few points: 1) the purpose of this surveillance from the governments point of view is to control enemies of the state. Not terrorists. People who are coalescing around ideas that would destabilize the status quo. These could be religious ideas. These could be groups like anon who are too good with tech for the governments liking. It makes it very easy to know who these people are. It also makes it very simple to control these people.
Lets say you are a college student and you get in with some people who want to stop farming practices that hurt animals. So you make a plan and go to protest these practices. You get there, and wow, the protest is huge. You never expected this, you were just goofing off. Well now everyone who was there is suspect. Even though you technically had the right to protest, you're now considered a dangerous person.
With this tech in place, the government doesn't have to put you in jail. They can do something more sinister. They can just email you a sexy picture you took with a girlfriend. Or they can email you a note saying that they can prove your dad is cheating on his taxes. Or they can threaten to get your dad fired. All you have to do, the email says, is help them catch your friends in the group. You have to report back every week, or you dad might lose his job. So you do. You turn in your friends and even though they try to keep meetings off grid, you're reporting on them to protect your dad.
2) Let's say number one goes on. The country is a weird place now. Really weird. Pretty soon, a movement springs up like occupy, except its bigger this time. People are really serious, and they are saying they want a government without this power. I guess people are realizing that it is a serious deal. You see on the news that tear gas was fired. Your friend calls you, frantic. They're shooting people. Oh my god. you never signed up for this. You say, fuck it. My dad might lose his job but I won't be responsible for anyone dying. That's going too far. You refuse to report anymore. You just stop going to meetings. You stay at home, and try not to watch the news. Three days later, police come to your door and arrest you. They confiscate your computer and phones, and they beat you up a bit. No one can help you so they all just sit quietly. They know if they say anything they're next. This happened in the country I live in. It is not a joke.
3) Its hard to say how long you were in there. What you saw was horrible. Most of the time, you only heard screams. People begging to be killed. Noises you've never heard before. You, you were lucky. You got kicked every day when they threw your moldy food at you, but no one shocked you. No one used sexual violence on you, at least that you remember. There were some times they gave you pills, and you can't say for sure what happened then. To be honest, sometimes the pills were the best part of your day, because at least then you didn't feel anything. You have scars on you from the way you were treated. You learn in prison that torture is now common. But everyone who uploads videos or pictures of this torture is labeled a leaker. Its considered a threat to national security. Pretty soon, a cut you got on your leg is looking really bad. You think it's infected. There were no doctors in prison, and it was so overcrowded, who knows what got in the cut. You go to the doctor, but he refuses to see you. He knows if he does the government can see the records that he treated you. Even you calling his office prompts a visit from the local police.
You decide to go home and see your parents. Maybe they can help. This leg is getting really bad. You get to their house. They aren't home. You can't reach them no matter how hard you try. A neighbor pulls you aside, and he quickly tells you they were arrested three weeks ago and haven't been seen since. You vaguely remember mentioning to them on the phone you were going to that protest. Even your little brother isn't there.
4) Is this even really happening? You look at the news. Sports scores. Celebrity news. It's like nothing is wrong. What the hell is going on? A stranger smirks at you reading the paper. You lose it. You shout at him "fuck you dude what are you laughing at can't you see I've got a fucking wound on my leg?"
"Sorry," he says. "I just didn't know anyone read the news anymore." There haven't been any real journalists for months. They're all in jail.
Everyone walking around is scared. They can't talk to anyone else because they don't know who is reporting for the government. Hell, at one time YOU were reporting for the government. Maybe they just want their kid to get through school. Maybe they want to keep their job. Maybe they're sick and want to be able to visit the doctor. It's always a simple reason. Good people always do bad things for simple reasons.
You want to protest. You want your family back. You need help for your leg. This is way beyond anything you ever wanted. It started because you just wanted to see fair treatment in farms. Now you're basically considered a terrorist, and everyone around you might be reporting on you. You definitely can't use a phone or email. You can't get a job. You can't even trust people face to face anymore. On every corner, there are people with guns. They are as scared as you are. They just don't want to lose their jobs. They don't want to be labeled as traitors.
This all happened in the country where I live.
You want to know why revolutions happen? Because little by little by little things get worse and worse. But this thing that is happening now is big. This is the key ingredient. This allows them to know everything they need to know to accomplish the above. The fact that they are doing it is proof that they are the sort of people who might use it in the way I described. In the country I live in, they also claimed it was for the safety of the people. Same in Soviet Russia. Same in East Germany. In fact, that is always the excuse that is used to surveil everyone. But it has never ONCE proven to be the reality.
Maybe Obama won't do it. Maybe the next guy won't, or the one after him. Maybe this story isn't about you. Maybe it happens 10 or 20 years from now, when a big war is happening, or after another big attack. Maybe it's about your daughter or your son. We just don't know yet. But what we do know is that right now, in this moment we have a choice. Are we okay with this, or not? Do we want this power to exist, or not?
You know for me, the reason I'm upset is that I grew up in school saying the pledge of allegiance. I was taught that the United States meant "liberty and justice for all." You get older, you learn that in this country we define that phrase based on the constitution. That's what tells us what liberty is and what justice is. Well, the government just violated that ideal. So if they aren't standing for liberty and justice anymore, what are they standing for? Safety?
Ask yourself a question. In the story I told above, does anyone sound safe?
I didn't make anything up. These things happened to people I know. We used to think it couldn't happen in America. But guess what? It's starting to happen.
I actually get really upset when people say "I don't have anything to hide. Let them read everything." People saying that have no idea what they are bringing down on their own heads. They are naive, and we need to listen to people in other countries who are clearly telling us that this is a horrible horrible sign and it is time to stand up and say no
When I saw the title of the thread, I thought of this exact post from reddit. It's a frightening story.
The first answer is technical; as far as the technology is concerned, no attacker is different than any other attacker. If you can't defend against the attackers society doesn't want you defending yourself against, you can't defend against any attacker. The second answer was given by Foucault before there was an Internet.
Why does the person have to be honest to care about their privacy? Does the protections of the Constitution not apply to "no true Americans" as well?
5 Minute Fact Session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YsZoqwRnKE#t=258
I think that there has been some very interesting discussion in this thread. I wonder though, if it might be better if people were shown what a world with absolutely no privacy looks like, through the eyes of someone surveilling that world. As humans, we conceal certain things from each other to control to the best of our ability, how other people perceive us. For example, on a first date it's very rare for people to lay everything out there for the other to pick through and scrutinize. If they did, people's prejudices about how to live and about morality, fun, love, etc. would be overloaded and it's unlikely that anyone would end up feeling closer to a person as it's not something that humans tend to do. My worry is that this kind of scrutiny will distance the people surveilling us from us even further. All kinds of terrible things happen when people don't treat each other as people and when one of those groups of people knows absolutely everything there is to know about the other group, well then the other group is at a severe disadvantage and in a prime position to be abused.
Simply the same anonymity we have in person is fine. But allowing "anyone" to view your tv watching habits, what you decide to eat, what you do on your free time, etc is simply crossing a line. I don't let strangers into my home and let them watch me do what I do. For most day to day activities I'm an "honest person". But that doesn't mean I want my life to be a TV show. I'll share what I want to share. And I'll keep the rest private. As for why? Simply because I like to not share every detail to everyone. Some people may not need to know that I watch anime on my free time (especially if what I'm currently doing is work related). And there's no reason for people to judge others based on unrelated activities. That said, I freely share most of my life to anyone curious. I keep an anime list updated with dates I watched them, what my thoughts were, and which episode I'm on. I frequently post my thoughts about stuff online (though with a pseudoname). I don't mind people seeing the stuff I write, and frequently write about "controversial" topics on my facebook account as well. That doesn't bother me. It bothers me when I write/say/do something for a specific person, and then an unrelated person then gets access to that without me knowing or saying so. Best way to put it: If I upload a photo of me and my friends on facebook, I don't want that photo to just randomly spread across the net with my name attached to it, if I didn't say so. Having millions of people know who you are and where you live is incredibly dangerous and terrifying. There are a lot of horrible people, and I'd rather they not know everything about me. Doesn't matter that it's "the government'. As far as I know, "the government" could be sharing that information with any number of people. I didn't give them that information, they took it from me. If I give facebook something, that means facebook can have it. Not the NSA. Not the CIA. Not fucking anyone else. Just me, maybe the ISP, and Facebook. Facebook and I then agree on who to show it to.
Due to the fact that you could be breaking laws without knowing it. If someone in the government wants to pin something on you for whatever reason in the future, they could potentially bring up a law broken in the past that you weren't aware of.
Wow, people really feel very strongly about this subject. It would be nice if we were able to do something about it.
We already know that the government watches activist groups, Muslims and journalist without warrants, this has an effect on the peoples ability to freely associate, speak, consume news and worships. All those activities are supposedly protected by the constitution, that is why people should care. We also know that there is no meaningful over site about how this data is used, just because your are honest doesn't mean that your data can't be used against you. Administrations change and just like this administration they always don't play be the rules. There are any number of dangerous or upsetting situations that could occur from malicious use of a person data. We have no evidence that this level of surveillance or expense has any where near the level of benefit that it costs (both in money and in freedom).
Because you don't know what is going to be done with it, quite simply. We live in an age where digital manipulation is not only (relatively) easy and cheap, but getting to the point where it's difficult to tell that anything has been done at all. Now, I'm not saying that the government is going to digitally manipulate phone calls made by you and pictures of you to frame you for some crime (although they could), but digital information isn't exactly the most secure. Would you allow the police to place CCTV's all through-out your house and neighbourhood, workplace, grocery stores, gyms, etc. just so that they could make sure you weren't being robbed, or assaulted? Now what if they said the reason was to make sure you weren't going to rob or assault someone else, or to better protect a potential victim if you were to ever do that. I highly doubt many people would agree to this, honest or not. As far as the last sentence goes, it's my belief that the government has far overstepped its bounds in regards to internet surveillance and information security. Going back to my last example, I'd be pretty livid if I found out that the government had installed secret cameras and recorders all through-out my life and were saving all data "in case it's needed in the future." In my opinion, it's the same thing, and I can see a lot more going wrong with it than the good it can provide society. They didn't need to monitor everything about everyone all the time before, they don't need to do it now.
I'm at work right now, so I'll try to come back later and expand on my answer a bit, but I'll write out a few of my thoughts on this. This is something I've been considering a lot lately. Social news sites like Reddit and Hacker News make me think I should absolutely be hoarding my information and encrypting email, etc. etc. And there are posts on Hubski that paint things in the same light. But is it really that bad to be using Google's products? Or to be on Facebook? What's the point in hiding my information if I don't have anything to hide? (Don't get me wrong: I love using and supporting [and sometimes contributing to] open source alternatives to Google's and other's products, but in many cases where Google's is the best, why bother?) The answer to these questions - for me - is: I'm going to say some things differently - or sometimes not at all - if I think my words may be being listened to or being monitored for certain words/phrases/etc. I would change my behavior in the same way if the government were looking through the window at my apartment - except, in that case, it would be much more obvious that I were being watched. I have a feeling that people are probably a lot more accepting of the widespread surveillance we now know about because they can't actually see the NSA/whoever watching them. The other phenomenon that I see as relevant is the idea that by putting a lobster in non-boiling water and slowly heating it up, the lobster won't try to escape; whereas, if you put a lobster straight into boiling water, it'll jerk away and try not to go into the water. (I botched that analogy, but you see where I'm going.) By slowly infringing on our privacy, the public has slowly come to accept the surveillance as just a part of living in the US. It's not seen as something we can do anything about. To summerize: I'll say and do different things if I'm being watched/monitored/listened to, whether digitally or not. By effectively 'controlling' what people are saying by scaring them into not saying 'unpatriotic' things, it makes it harder for people to organize and conquer corruption in government, and all the forms that that takes, etc.
Keibler as one of the founders of Restore The Fourth and as the person that suggested I focus on this topic for the podcast, I wonder what you think of some of the responses?
Their good, but I think they all kinda need to be summed up. Much more positive in my view here though. Lets put it like this: The NSA is like a crazy, obsessed stalker. What would you want to have a stalker to have? Nothing, right? If so, then why wouldn't you be opposed to the NSA? We've seen they have YOUR browsing history, YOUR emails and texts, YOUR naughty pics that were supposed to go to that girl, and now YOUR contact lists, and how much you've talked to them!
They've profiled YOU, as a person, as a man or women, and your family, your neighbor, and ANYONE, ANYONE you've ever met, saw, or thought about. Even worse is that unlike a Stalker, it's legal for them, and do it they do. All day, all night. They may not look at it, but who the hell cares if they do, they have it without you giving them YOUR consent. And if they want, they can look at it with out you ever knowing. Just think about that, everything digital you've ever done, they know. Stalkers
I will probably revisit this when I'm less sick and braindead... Basically, my thoughts on this have less to do with what the government or anyone may be able to find out about me and what this shift means in the future. You don't suddenly wake up to find yourself in 1984 world. Small steps are taken over large periods of time, each of which doesn't seem too bad or mostly elicits an hey, well I've done nothing wrong... The problem is that it's a step that brings us closer and closer to doublethinking our way to lemming-land. If we continue to be apathetic and believe this "Oh well it doesn't really affect me" bullshit then they will be able to do whatever they want, for whatever reasons they want.