Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

A little more info on optimusjamie's article:

"The big internet companies have a "social responsibility" to act on terrorist material posted online, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

It comes after a report into Fusilier Lee Rigby's murder found one of his killers spoke online about murdering a soldier five months before the attack."

The killers, by the way, were already on like seven different watchlists.

edited 25th Nov '14 10:59:26 PM by Pykrete

I'm not sure I agree with the BBC article. I dont think it's the "internet companies" (whoever they are) responsibility to police content on the internet.

Internet companies are Google, Facebook, Amazon etc...

I remember the problems this site had when we were largely supported by Google Ads, and they didnt like the titles of some of our trope pages.

It's not about whether it's their responsibility per se but about the logistics of doing so at all. By forcing these companies to actively police all the content that their users submit, you utterly destroy their business model. They simply cannot remain viable if they have to hire thousands or tens of thousands of employees whose sole duty it is to pore over every single post, every single comment, every blog entry, every video, every image, looking for evidence of terrorist intent. Would you want that job? I think I'd go insane.

They rely on user reports of improper activity, exactly as we do, and exactly as just about every other site does.

Consider the same logic applied outside the Internet. Should we hire policemen to spy on every single conversation that people have in public? Read every letter sent in the mail? It's not just a matter of privacy rights; it's literally impossible.

edited 26th Nov '14 6:47:36 AM by Fighteer

What about hiring third-party specialist companies that are dedicated to this sort of job? Would that be more viable/sustainable, assuming that they actually exist in the first place?

edited 26th Nov '14 6:52:32 AM by MarqFJA

Here's more from the updated article:

Then again, it has been said specifically that the companies were American.

More from The BBC: Can internet companies monitor terrorists?

edited 26th Nov '14 6:54:59 AM by Greenmantle

Remember the bad experiences that we've had with private security/military firms in other areas? No, the problem with any such agency is that they have a perverse incentive to find bad guys even if none exist, in order to justify their own continued funding. Public or private, hiring "secret police" to monitor every civilian in a nation has a historical tendency to go horribly, horribly wrong. Heck, look at the craziness we've been going through with the NSA!

I will say this: if Facebook's automated screening algorithms can identify "terrorist intent" in posts by particular individuals, that should set up a red flag that could lead to law enforcement being notified. That particular concern is quite reasonable, in my opinion. There is an implied social responsibility to report illegal behavior, once it has been identified.

edited 26th Nov '14 7:06:51 AM by Fighteer

Marq's Saudi. He knows about Secret Police.

I meant hiring third-party private contractors to sift through the deluge of user content complaints, instead of automatically taking down the supposedly offending material without checking for the veracity of the claims. You know, to avoid such things that led to certain game developers abusing Youtube's flagging feature to shut down a certain online independent reviewer's scathing but honest and spot-on critical review of a So-Bad-It's-Horrible game that they had released recently.

Okay, basically, anyone who is trying to kill me with a drone is a bad guy.

I guess that depends on who you are and what you are up to.

I am a contrarian climbing their way up the investing ladder, but that's about it. Unless me buying stock is going to destroy the world, I can't think of why any drone attack against me would be not-evil.

But really I think it's just the big guns that bother me. I don't do anything worth being killed over, but I'm not exactly equipped to stop them from taking whatever they want from me if they wanted to.

If the government decides, for whatever reason, that I am a sufficient threat to national security to set drones to spy on me and police to harass me, I accept that I am screwed. Fighting back with violence or by trying to hide is pointless. The best I can hope for is that my plight becomes worthy of public attention.

edited 26th Nov '14 8:53:57 PM by Fighteer

At which point an uncensored internet will be your friend. And legally you will be much better off if they need to get a warrant to read your private correspondence.

Microsoft says private data 'at risk' in court case: "Microsoft argued Monday in a court brief that an order requiring it to give US prosecutors data stored in Ireland could 'put all of our private digital information at risk.'

The brief with the US Court of Appeals in New York comes with prosecutors seeking customer emails in a narcotics probe, with the data stored in Microsoft servers in Ireland."

If Microsoft complies, would that piss of the Irish system?

Only if it involves messages to/from Irish citizens. Just because the server is in Ireland doesnt imply much about what is actually stored on it.

To this judge: You're an idiot. I really don't know what else to say.

Also: Ugh. WHAT A SURPRISE. Congress doesn't have America's privacy interests at heart. They've all been scared by the terrorist boogeymen into giving it up in the name of "security".

edited 12th Dec '14 7:24:49 AM by speedyboris

Not paedophiles then?

“Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct,” Posner added. “Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and business opportunities by concealing the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with you.”

and

"The objections from Amash and others arose from language in the bill's Section 309, which includes a phrase to allow for "the acquisition, retention, and dissemination" of U.S. phone and Internet data. That passage will give unprecedented statutory authority to allow for the surveillance of private communications that currently exists only under a decades-old presidential decree, known as Executive Order 12333."

Dont make any cash donations to unpopular political causes using your cell phone. Actually, I wonder about Congress. What the clueless judge said about business people applies just as much to politicians, except in their case the NSA can blackmail them into passing any law they want. It's like J. Edgar Hoover all over again.

Has the NSA used its information for reasons other than monitoring terrorists? Like, harassing people?

Disappointingly stupid from Richard Posner.

@Aespai: We dont know because exactly what they collect, and what they do with it, is secret.

edited 12th Dec '14 7:49:10 PM by demarquis