Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

You presume that someone in government gives two beans about your browsing history. Which, I might add, becomes available to your browser developer, your operating system, ad trackers, etc. Why are you blasé about corporations getting their hands on it but paranoid about government?

We bestow vastly inflated importance upon the privacy of our own personal information. That said, the path to greater information security is more intervention by regulatory authorities, not less.

edited 24th Sep '15 6:49:53 AM by Fighteer

Corporations can't put you in jail over "offending the religious" or "propagading homosexuality" or, if we want an actually American example, being a minor and possessing naked pictures of... yourself.

Nobody is saying the president is going to personally come to your house and shit on your carpets for visiting wrong sites. Someone of lesser value would be assigned to something like that. Closer to, say, a county clerk.

Or just leave it to pattern recognition software. Automatic profiling. Somewhere there's always a shitty enough government to do that.

What I want to emphasize about government survelliance is that it doesn't need to watch over literally everyone to be a threat. Realistically, it would engage in racial/religious/etc profiling, concentrating on "problem demographics" and specific "important people"(notable activists, leaders of "undesirable" movements) etc. Targeting someone who you think is already "a problem" to make an example is cost-efficient and easy. Yes, the majority of people will likely be unaffected. But minorities kinda matter too.

That is to say, I don't think assuming the above poster is ok with corporations having their private data. There's a reason people block ad trackers, remove spyware from Windows 10, etc etc. People are just as paranoid about corporations having private data as they are about governments. It's just the worst a corporation can do is to attempt to sell you stupid shit it thinks you need or hand it over to the government(which, again, makes government the threat). Maybe sue you for piracy if you lend your Xbox One game to a friend.

But even then, the thing you'd want to protect your data from the most is the public. The judgmental and sensationalist society is a much greater threat than governments and corporations combined. The public looooves its acceptable targets.

Tl;dr - "Government can't watch everyone, so it won't watch anyone" is a tired old argument, people do give a shit about corporate spyware, but really they should watch out for the public the most.

edited 24th Sep '15 8:18:19 AM by Luminosity

For the American example, I feel it should be noted that the level of surveillance we're talking about is on a federal level, not a state or local level.

Like, sure, I'd be afraid of Louisiana state cops abusing any advantage they can get to persecute black people. I'd be deeply worried about Texas state government being able to tell who's gay and who isn't.

I'm less concerned about the FBI having that information. They tend to be cooler about that sort of thing. Maybe it's because they were founded by a cross-dresser rather than evolving naturally from a racist society, but whatever the reason, the FBI is pretty cool.

edited 24th Sep '15 10:12:33 AM by TobiasDrake

And let's not forget that all that personal data can be stolen...

If I'm worried about someone stealing my personal data from the goverment I'm less worried about stuff the government might have picked up with security sweeps, and more worried about my official stuff that I have with the goverment, like my National Insurance number (equivalent to Social Security number), my passport number, my driving licence number, ect... Thing is that stopping that stuff getting stolen requires the goverment to be more secure, as I need the goverment to have that data.

edited 24th Sep '15 6:24:53 PM by Silasw

That.

"I'm fine with hackers stealing my credit card info and social security number but god forbid they know about my porn habits or anachronistic love of pogs," seems like fairly skewed priorities.

This is a conversation that I feel like we have every other day. The cognitive dissonance is amazing.

The idea seems to be that "hackers gon' git our datas no matter what", so we should give our data to the fewest people possible to minimize the risk that any particular recipient will compromise it.

The thing is that a national (or global) repository of everyone's data would carry no greater risks than a billion smaller repositories. It would carry different risks, to be sure, but to call one unconscionable whilst passively accepting the other is disingenuous.

edited 25th Sep '15 9:03:12 AM by Fighteer

One can, of course, reject both.

As someone whose version of FBI derived from KGB, I'll just admit my lack of cultural comprehension and assume you have a point there.

In the light of massive scandals, like leaking credit cards on Playstation Network and other leaks of personal info, this seems like a strawman to me. I see no reason to believe people are any less paranoid about this than they are of... pogs.

Though I see a certain small bit of logic in there. Society can't shame you or harrass you over having a credit card and nobody got fired or put in jail for having a social security number.

That.

Or at least maybe we can stop having to put everything on clouds until cyber security becomes a bit less of a tragic joke.

The FBI is about the only three letter organization in the United States that I'd call trustworthy.

The CIA are pretty damn evil to be frank.

edited 25th Sep '15 4:11:09 PM by LeGarcon

Yeah I think we're hitting the cultural divide here, the US and European tropers here are looking at this from the perspective of our governments (well the non-elected parts of them) being well meaning by flawed institutions that hurt people out of incompetence not malice. This compares very differently to the situation faced by people in countries where they could go to jail or be beaten by the police for being gay.

To be fair, parts of the US are one of those countries where you could go to jail or be beaten to death for being gay.

That was specifically a counterargument against the idea that hackers can steal your data.

edited 26th Sep '15 7:05:59 AM by TobiasDrake

The CIA and the FBI are both bureaucratic organizations mission driven to go to extremes. That's what they do. Absent close civilian control they will always abuse their power. Trusting the CIA or the FBI is exactly the same thing as trusting Congress.

Still sanguine?

Necessary pedantry: the FBI and CIA are under the executive branch, not the legislative; you should trust them as you trust the White House, not Congress.

No, they do report to the President, but it's the Congress that provides budgetary oversight. For obvious reasons, we cant rely on the direct chain of command as the sole mechanism of accountability.

Sure but big organisations still have a level of independence simply because the day to day operational decisions are made by the people who form the organisation, just look at the stuff the CIA got up to without informing Congress or the White House.

Mass surveillance isnt "day to day" affairs. That's high level policy.

It being policy is high level policy, but it being carried out is day to day stuff, the people reading your emails and such aren't Congressmen, they're FBI agents.

edited 27th Sep '15 8:44:20 AM by Silasw

That wasnt my point.

Then what was your point?

Agents are bureaucrats, members of an organization that has a history of abusing it's privileges, not because they are evil, but because that's what bureaucratic organizations with narrowly defined missions do. They have to be held accountable by some authority outside the bureaucracy and it's chain of command. In the US, that's the Congress. The FBI and the CIA are as safe and trustworthy as the Congress forces them to be.

They only have to be as safe and trustworthy as Congress forces them to be, but it's possible for them to be better then the minimum, which I think it what people feel the FBI is.

Maybe they are, maybe they arent, but we have no way of knowing, which is why we need formal mechanisms to hold them accountable.

I should point out that I have never argued against accountability for government surveillance and data collection agencies.

I was just clarifying my point to Silas W.