Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Before we get too worked up.

Huh...I always had a sneaking suspicion something was up with the story the instant I heard it was by Glenn Greenwald. For all the praise he supposedly gets, he's always come off as a left wing-sorry, "progressive" version of Rush Limbaugh to me.

My main concern is that bad reporting like this may undermine future efforts to actually uncover possible cases of government overreach.

edited 9th Jun '13 12:05:46 PM by Exploder

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

Sorry, this is now an officially a national "OUTRAGE" which means common sense, rationality, and looking at the facts is now completely impossible to do.

This was never just about "direct access to servers", as if all we care about is how they access our data.

Our government has been increasing it's surveillance capabilities far beyond any reasonable amount by exploiting our fears through the media, mostly through the news. Many of the crimes you hear about on the news have happened many times before, and likely will continue to happen in the future. They are not more common now than they used to be, it's just that they're reported more and more often these days. So then the politicians use these selectively reported cases as a reason to pass various legislation, which has various little nuances and clauses that they put in with the main focus of the bill in the hopes that no one will pick up on it, while they are trying to use it to selectively prosecute anyone who could be viewed as a threat to their power and/or wealth. This is exactly why I don't watch TV, and have such a strong oppostion to various bills that are vaguely worded, as that gives them more room to selectively enforce said legislation.

What annoys me is half the people seemingly outraged by this will forget it in a couple of days if Nelson Mandela doesn't make it, or when the trailer for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug comes out. If people are really pissed off, organize. Sign petitions on Change, attend demos, write to the President (there's a 0.0005% chance he'll read it), just express your outrage in a way more substantial than a cut 'n' pasted Ben Franklin quote, and some tired "it's all because Obama is serving his evul!1 corporate masters" shtick in the "comment" box beneath the article.

If I sound cynical and elitist, it's because I am.

^

I wouldn't say that sounds elitist, and I can't say that you're wrong for being cynical, as I am too.

Well Achaemenid, at least your honest about it.

You are also completely right.

But everyone knows arguing on CNN's comment section is the best way to get your voice out.

Talking is a necessary preliminary step before organizing.

But some places, you may as well be talking into your toilet.

edited 9th Jun '13 4:34:31 PM by Thorn14

Because there is a listening device there?

Talking is a necessary step before organization.

Oh undoubtedly. But given the static nature of this issue (about the only thing that really is going nowhere in US politics) one feels that most internet comments are just textual diarrhea - the first furious and uninformed thoughts of those who read it, without any time for reflection or consideration. I would be incredibly surprised if even a fraction of the people who proclaim their "outrage" actually take any steps to express it in direct, effectual form. There is a difference between "talking" and writing the first thing that comes into your head and having your slacktivist mates vote the comment up.

American politics is shifting leftwards, as it shifted rightwards in The '80s with the Reagan era - on gay rights, wealth redistribution, foreign policy, Americans are becoming more progressive, as are their politicians (slowly). Except civil liberties. And barely anyone seems to stir to change it.

EDIT: I can't really do a great deal in America, being British. I have written a letter to President Obama - I wonder what they'll think about that address in the Royal Mail sorting office! - and I've been fairly active regarding the British end of all this, which I'm proud of. But nothing annoys me more than the people who blame the government and do nothing to change it.

edited 9th Jun '13 4:44:14 PM by Achaemenid

Not true. Public opinion in the US is changing, Congress is starting to debate the issue, with partisans on both sides, and of course civil libertarian groups have been active all along. It's getting started slowly, but the trend is in the right direction.

More can and will be done.

edited 9th Jun '13 5:21:52 PM by DeMarquis

I don't particularly like Google or Facebook doing it either. But for one, I'm playing in their house, and for two, they can't investigate and detain you at will.

For instance, I Google a lot of very heavily political and/or violent topics, because they're news topics that happen to matter and are notoriously poorly covered by mainstream media. Riots, religious philosophy, shootings, gang activity, Mexican drug war, gun homicide statistics, terror attacks. I imagine I regularly light up every third red flag they have. I've also Googled some obscure substances, both because I'm a science geek and they're used in important research, and because some of them I saw in Spacechem (which on an unrelated note is an amazing game that I totally recommend) and didn't recognize them right away. Hell, this post may well show up before they see the harmless context and go "meh" and move on.

A Google search record, however, completely lacks context, and any data mining process will give false positives — for something as vanishingly rare as domestic terrorism is compared to the surrounding population, you're likely to get more false positives than hits. You don't need to actually be doing anything wrong to look suspicious "enough" to someone who can break in and rifle through your stuff without a warrant, or send a SWAT team to your house and haul you away at gunpoint, and frankly any risk of that is too much.

Even if one were to ignore potential power abuse (which, again, is already openly rampant among existing law enforcement), authorities make genuine mistakes too. Personally, I'd rather their mistakes didn't circumvent our legal process.

Untrue. Just none that operate under privacy, and no privacy for anyone else.

edited 9th Jun '13 5:48:03 PM by Pykrete

Salon.com has done an expose on the NSA whistleblower.

I'd just like to say that this "Americans hate surveillance, Europeans are fine with it" dichotomy that some people were pushing just isn't true. I am very socialist, like the welfare state etc. but I sure as hell don't want the government to listen in on my calls, read my mails etc. That is a ridiculous invasion of privacy, whether it is done by the government or some company and it just shouldn't happen, unless the police has permission from the courts. Terrorist attacks have a very low probability of actually happening, you're more likely to die in a car accident, so using it as an excuse to limit civil liberties is just plain fear-mongering and it erodes the civil rights of the country in question.

This is an actual issue and has nothing to do with the left/right divide, as it seems like most mainstream parties on both sides, in a lot of western countries want increased surveillance and control. It's not like the stupid bullshit libertarians like to spout about how the government is incurring on their rights by raising taxes. So this is one of the few things where I can agree with libertarians despite being diametrically opposed to them on almost everything else and thinking that their economic policies are pretty much destroying the world.

Sorry, I don't really have much to add to the discussion, just wanted to clear up that misconception, because it annoys me. Civil liberties are important to Europeans too.

Ironically, in the ECHR and the case law of the ECtHR, privacy is protected more stringently than perhaps any other right, often to the detriment of press freedom.

edited 10th Jun '13 2:59:59 AM by Achaemenid

Big Brother goes to Hell.

I saw that xkcd as well. I think it's amusing to imagine someone in government conducting 24/7 surveillance of me or, indeed, most other people. They'd get to watch me playing video games, browsing TV Tropes at work, scratching myself and farting a lot. I can't even imagine how the expense would be justified for 99% of people, 99% of the time.

That's a huge and ultimately self-deluding misconception of what big brothers do. If they are looking for evidence of criminal intent, they will find it, regardless if you playing dwarf fortress or exchanging views with a penpal from Pakistan.

That has nothing to do with the surveillance, though. You're addressing the wrong problem. It's like people getting mad at drones, when what they're really concerned about is extrajudicial killing.

Frankly, if you want to be concerned about privacy, you should worry far more about what corporations are doing. They own your entire life story, more or less, and you can't even FOIA it. Governments at least have rules about what they can and cannot collect.

edited 10th Jun '13 10:13:55 AM by Fighteer

It's a combination of the two. Drones by themselves are not a problem, except in the hands of people who are not accountable to anyone. Big brother types are a minor annoyance, except when they have the right to arrest or kill you.

Big brother types flying drones? Shit getting real.

edited 10th Jun '13 10:24:28 AM by DeMarquis

The fact of governments extending their methods of surveillance is not as important to me as what they do with the information. Frankly, I think that the drones and the 'net snooping and what not are doing an admirable job of acting as a scapegoat so people are distracted from the real issues.

edited 10th Jun '13 11:28:51 AM by Fighteer