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Well at least you didn't have a Government that wanted to introduce Identity Cards to supposedly counteract terrorism — something that pissed off the Left and the Right.
edited 13th Jun '13 1:00:34 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnWhat's so heinous about government-issued identity cards? Every state in the US issues drivers licenses that are de facto ID cards (many also issue actual explicit ID cards for people who can't or don't drive but still want a government-issued photo ID), and on the federal level we have social security numbers.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Indeed. A national ID system is something that we sorely need. It's certainly the only way we're going to be able to effectively combat identity theft, among other nasty things, and if the people out to stop illegal immigration really mean it, they'd recognize the value there too.
It just can't be half-assed.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"We've got both of them. Photocard Driving Licences and NI Numbers. But this ID Card
was much more. The last time Britain had ID Cards was World War II.
From the article on The Other Wiki:
edited 13th Jun '13 1:12:42 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnI had an alien ID card while I was in South Korea, and all the Korean citizens I saw didn't seem to be chafing under the tyranny of having their own federal ID cards either. I can't imagine how tough it was to have one card you needed to go to the hospital for your state-provided healthcare, apply for any sort of government paperwork, or verify your identity for stuff like missing bank cards. It must have been awful for them.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
IIRC it was less that people had to carry ID cards and more that the UK ID Card scheme involved a lot of snooping on the government's part and overly broad powers, not to mention concerns about Police racism.
But yeah, the bill as it stood was basically carte blanche for the government to collect tons of info it did not already have. That was the crucial issue.
edited 13th Jun '13 3:14:50 PM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiI'm pretty sure it was about collecting non-relevant data about the ID cards as everyone else has already stated. They took a simple idea that was meant to benefit people and turned it into a power tool.
For PRISM, 20 million is so small I'm quite sure it's completely ineffective at what it's stated intention is anyway (collect all data) because server costs alone would be more on the order of $100 to $200 million a year (as a rough estimate). Plus competent engineers working on such a program cost $150k/year (Snowden had a $120k base salary not including perks) a piece in salary alone, not including hardware, so that budget number seems to indicate lack of confidence on the part of the government that PRISM was even effective :P
And why should anyone try to prove "anything bad" happened? It's a program that mass-collects data of everyone in total secrecy. Before Snowden, you couldn't even prove it friggin existed, now you want to prove the effects of the program? What do you want? Bodies to pile up? It's too late by then.
Two things:
There is no security through obscurity.
A government has no right to secrecy, only people do.
@ Fighteer
We're only talking about PRISM. We can't scrap PRISM? I don't think the US government is broken enough that it can't scrap even one on the fringe program.
edited 13th Jun '13 4:01:55 PM by breadloaf
The Guardian says Russia is considering it if requested. There's no formal one yet.
Other places include Ecuador, India and the Philippines. I doubt the latter since we're nice to the Americans.
Again, we already trust the government to hold onto a lot of dangerous stuff. They've got stores of explosives, toxic chemicals, radioactive substances, and germ cultures that no one outside the government is allowed to get near or learn the exact location of. I'm not saying you're wrong, but if your concern is that the government will abuse its secret resources, then you've got a lot more to worry about than just data collection.
That's actually not particularly secret.
Dugway Proving Ground is one rather expansive site.
This satellite of Aberdeen Proving Ground is a location where they destroy chemical agents.
Detrick is where we test the nastiest things we can find.
Test range for nuclear delivery systems.
DOE manages most of our nuclear ''research'' programs.
Disposes of depleted uranium rounds, home of the FEV Virus in the Fallout video games IIRC.
Chemical disposal depot, including VX weaponry.
Chemical weapons destruction and storage facility.
As for our Nuclear arsenal, the US Air Force has custody of most of it in bases like Minot, Barksdale, FE Warren, Kirtland, Whiteman, Offut, Malmstrom, Mountain Home, and a few other bases. The US Navy also has a smaller nuclear arsenal for its submarines, but I don't know where they are off the top of my head, though you could find out easily enough.
All the above is open source, and easy enough to figure out if you go looking for it.
Now of course you can't just walk on and go "Hey, can I check out what your VX disposal operations look like?" But it's pretty obvious why you can't do stuff like that and why these bases are closed to personnel who don't need to be there.
When dealing with an agency known for overstepping its bounds on a regular basis being handed an unprecedentedly invasive tool on the grounds of fighting a threat that ranks lower than wild bees, one can be forgiven for putting the burden of proof on the other side. Under such extreme outlier circumstances and risk, to do otherwise would be, frankly, pants-on-head idiotically naive.
edited 13th Jun '13 9:03:33 PM by Pykrete
When has the NSA done anything that caused demonstrable harm to any citizen?
edited 13th Jun '13 9:17:13 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Wiretapping is itself demonstrable harm. There's a reason we prosecute it when anyone else does it. People expect privacy — whether it's TSA body scanners or NSA saving a copy of every personal phone call and email they ever make. Furthermore, they tend to cause vulnerabilities by trying to stick backdoors into things — see Clipper.
Beyond that, you're obviously looking for concrete physical harm, which is a loaded question because the NSA is exclusively intel — the suits that go out and abduct people based on that intel are CIA or FBI. So when this
or this
or this
happens, the NSA's contribution leading up to it often gets left out because they weren't the ones who personally yoinked the dude and shipped him off to get tortured in Africa.
edited 13th Jun '13 10:37:35 PM by Pykrete
It's already been pointed out how ridiculous the quantity of resources spent on 'stopping terrorism' is. Most likely, even if it isn't being abused, PRISM is still a colossal waste of public funds and public privacy, and the responsible thing would be to shut it down. On the other hand, if it happens to be one of the few anti-terrorism projects that actually is cost-effective (and again, the lack of transparency means the public has no way of determining this), then the responsible thing to do would be to shut down the other projects that weren't, thereby showing the public that their money is being spent on actually serving their interests.
As it is, the absurd amount of money being thrown around is a giant red flag that 'anti-terrorism' efforts are rife with ulterior motives, and the public has very little idea where this latest invasion of their privacy fits into the whole mess. Other than that, you know, its non-discriminating nature lends itself to the 'ulterior motives' side more than the 'actually stopping terrorism' side. Which may or may not mean anything. But probably does.
The British Government continues to set brave new standards for disagreeing with the American Government.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.@Pykrete: Frankly, wiretapping being harmful is somewhat tautological. There is no loss to anyone except for an abstract concept called privacy, and it's really hard to prove damages if nothing was done with the information. It's illegal because it's illegal, because we say it should be illegal. That's well and good, and if Joe Schmoe is tapping my phone, I certainly want him caught and punished — as much for the invasion of privacy as for whatever he might do with the information.
But the NSA's mandate is to gather intelligence, and that means wiretapping and such. That's its job, defined in law. It is specifically authorized to do it by Congress. It is legal by definition. Getting outraged when, all of a sudden, it's revealed to have been doing what it's legally authorized to do doesn't help anything.
edited 14th Jun '13 6:52:30 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Fighteer: That sounds almost Nixon-esque, in a way. "If the President does it, that means it's not illegal." However, even if Congress has authorized warrantless wiretaps, they're still illegal if they violate the Constitution.
I agree, it's the NSA's job to collect intelligence. Thus, we as citizens need to force Congress to tighten the standards under which the NSA is permitted to operate, to be in compliance with our right to be secure against intelligence gathering without a warrant. Failing that, it's up to the courts to find the enabling legislation to be in violation of our citizens' constitutional rights.
edited 14th Jun '13 6:56:30 AM by Ramidel
I agree with that, Ramidel. It is up to the courts to determine if these programs are constitutional, and it's up to the public to vote for lawmakers who represent their interests. PRISM, however, met with the approval of all three branches of government. It is, by definition, legal.
I'm not saying that you can't get upset about it, but this aura of shock and outrage is almost comical for its hypocrisy, given that we voted for the people who enacted the policies that we now decry.
edited 14th Jun '13 7:01:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Then would it be ok if PRISM was just used against foreigners?
Keep Rolling On

And this is why I keep saying people need to closely read the Slippery Slope Fallacy before they start shouting it on internet forums.
Slippery slope arguments assert that further legislative steps that might happen in the future will be bad — and this behavior happens all the time in reality. Indeed, legal precedent is built upon this. It's only a fallacy if you assert that this will happen 100% of the time as the only possible conclusion.
In this case, a tool that already exists has "an endless number of bad uses and no substantial benefit for the public" as well as no meaningful oversight and being run by an agency infamous for constantly overstepping its bounds. It's not even a slippery slope anymore because we're not afraid of going down the slope — we're already there and we want back up.
edited 13th Jun '13 12:47:14 PM by Pykrete