Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

I don't have to be hiding something or fear technology to want to protect my privacy. It's a personal preference that I feel I have a right to indulge, like owning a car, or expressing my opinion in public.

Must of the time, those images where you appear won't be looked at by anyone, and if they are, it would be to locate a criminal who was near you or something. And you'd still have all the unlimited privacy you want inside your house.

I guess it takes some getting used to, but it's the way the world is going to be.

Inside my house? Where have you been for the last 5 years? There is no privacy inside your house, not if you live online, or happen to buy an internet connected appliance, or make a phone call, or mistakenly come under surveillance by the local police, or your neighbor owns a drone, or...

Please, if you want to argue for the security state, go ahead, it's a rational position to hold. One I disagree with, but it's arguable. But please don't ignore what everyone knows, and downplay the threat.

"The threat"? The government isn't actively listening to your phone calls or monitoring you purchases unless they're suspicious of you for some reason. And really, your neigbour spying on you with a drone? I don't know any case like that and it seems like paranoia.

Do people even "mistakenly" come under surveillance, given the sheer amount of times some intelligence agency has admitted that some lone wolf was on their radar the whole time?

The German telecommunications agency has formally banned smartwatches for kids.

They are now deemed "prohibitive listening devices", and parents are being urged to destroy them.

They're often caught in the system, but ignored as the information is shifted through. It's why things like cyber surveillance tend to be controversial.

I suppose the point here is that, proliferation of such technology will inevitably be abused and ruin lives, so it shouldn't be available to anyone else except authorities.

edited 20th Nov '17 12:49:38 AM by TerminusEst

By far, the largest modern threat to privacy is corporate spying, not government spying, at least in the Western world. That and criminal activity using our modern technology.

In other parts of the world, such as the Russian sphere, corporate and government spying are basically the same thing.

edited 20th Nov '17 4:41:46 AM by Fighteer

Man Dies in Police Raid on Wrong House - "...“We did the best surveillance we could do, and a mistake was made,” Lebanon Police Chief Billy Weeks said."

"The government isn't actively listening to your phone calls or monitoring you purchases unless they're suspicious of you for some reason."

Again, where have you been? Have you seriously not heard of warrentless mass surveillance? Look, my friend, you seem like a nice guy, but you also appear to be sadly misinformed. Allow me to assure you that there is no privacy anymore. It's all gone, whether you are online, on the phone, out shopping or in the privacy of your own home. Between large corporate retailers, financial services firms, Google location services, and the government, you are being monitored everywhere you go, all the time. Sometimes it's you as an individual, sometimes it's mass surveillance, but you are being monitored, we all are.

Privacy is a right in itself, and a social good. It's not a means to another end. It's like the right to express your opinion—you don't need to justify protecting it, it's yours by right. You cannot be bought or sold as property, your labor is yours, your intellectual property belongs to you, you have right not to be slandered, and you have an inherent right to privacy. A threat to privacy is just that—a threat to privacy. Not a threat to cause objective harm, not a financial loss, not an arrest. Just someone listening or watching you in private without your consent.

Why care? Ask any parent, woman, minority member or protest activist. We live in a highly polarized society of disinformation and slander campaigns—you don't have to be a crimminal to become a target, just someone that someone else finds objectionable or fun to harass.

I'm a parent. My right to privacy is my child's right to privacy, because their only access to social media is through me. My kid plays video games online using my account—I definately don't want anyone collecting information about us. But I would worry about it even if I didn't have kids. We are all one asshole away from being doxxed. Every administration uses surveillance in an attempt to suppress dissent. The only protection we now have is the technology that has been made available to us (like the Tor network, or the Sarkeesian website I posted to earlier), and the law.

I dont make that much of a distinction between government surveillance and corporate data collection. The one is available to the other for a price, and they often share what they have. And I haven't even gotten into mass influence yet.

Read "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google". They know who to target with which fake news by accessing individual Facebook accounts and logging keyword searches and friending networks. The ability to engage in mass online propaganda is based on access to massive databases of individual social media accounts. Those accounts are collected by corporate entities, then sold to governments and their proxies like the Russian hackers. Now they know how to influence our elections.

And on and on and on. I'm not being paranoid—everything I have claimed here is docuemented, it's even common knowledge. If you are female, LGBT, a minority, a parent, a dissenter, or concerned at all with large organizations' ability to manipulate public opinion, then privacy is a concern.

If you are not concerned about privacy, then you aren't paying attention. Like all rights, someone is constantly trying to take it away, because the purpose of all rights is to promote equality between the powerful and the powerless—and equality doesnt serve everyone's interests. You fight for it, or you lose it. I don't intend to lose mine quietly.

Not to mention, we have a lot to be concerned about considering who's in the White House. Not only is Trump a typical "we have to beef up mass surveillance to keep the country safe" politician (look at his stance on the San Bernardino case for just one example), but he's a petty, grudge-holding, authoritarian-aspiring one at that. That combination is concerning, to say the least.

Now to be fair, the current intelligence agencies are mostly anti-Trump, but if that changes, we have a lot to be worried about. He could easily use the intelligence agencies to punish anyone who criticizes him.

edited 20th Nov '17 6:25:46 PM by speedyboris

When we are lucky that the man who wants to oppress us is so incompetant, well...

All of the scenarios you are discussing above are passive data gathering, not active intrusion. They aren't installing malware on your computer to read your files, they are accessing the information that you transmit to and from the Internet.

Again, I don't make the distinction. Privacy is privacy, and losing it is losing it. It's the principle that needs to be constantly defended, not the technical details (except insofar as you need to know them to protect your privacy).

Unlike you, I accept that anything that leaves my personal data space is probably going to be observed by someone. It's inevitable. Nor do I feel a sense of ownership, unless my communication is intended to be private. Even then, if it's out there, I can no longer claim any sort of ownership. Fighting against that seems like tilting at windmills.

Obviously, certain forms of data should be private, like my financial information, and I take steps to protect that. But what I post on TV Tropes, or Facebook? Not so much. I voluntarily put that out there, so I feel no expectation that it ought to somehow be magically dissociated from my real identity by the privacy fairies.

This "principle" is important to you, clearly, but principles need to meet practicality at some point or they have no value.

I've already posted, several times, my ideas for how a truly secure online data space could be constructed, but it involves a central authority controlling that data, not an "every man for himself" wilderness of proxies and personal encryption. Like the survivalist who holes up in his mountain shack with a thousand cans of beans so the Black Helicopters can't find him, you're fighting a battle that is pointless and unwinnable.

edited 21st Nov '17 3:42:52 PM by Fighteer

@speedyboris: President Trump is absolutely nowhere near to tracking/arresting people for their political affiliation, nor is it something he would ever be allowed to do.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that De Marquis never suggested the survivalist path. It's more of a "let's secure as much privacy as possible", not "disconnect from the online world", nor "become 100% anonymous on-line".

Regardless, I do have a couple of questions for your idea:

1) Because different countries have different imbalances when it comes to central authorities (be it the State or otherwise) and their role in general society, what would be the check and balance body/committee/group of judges in charge within the US (and I'm only saying the US because what may work for the US doesn't work for other countries)?

2) What to do if the central authority becomes corrupted (e.g. internally, by influence of corporations and financial lobbies, specific political groups^note including folks who are involved deep within the corridors of power and government), prone to abuses of the law, prone to overly excessive checks on private communications, or all of these?

edited 21st Nov '17 4:18:28 PM by Quag15

I don't have a clear answer to those questions. I know how I would do it technically, but not how I'd insulate this authority from all possible corruption. Really, there is no ultimate defense against political corruption.

"President Trump is absolutely nowhere near to tracking/arresting people for their political affiliation, nor is it something he would ever be allowed to do."

You're assuming Trump would follow the rules of law.

He wouldn't but lets reword it.

The intelligence agencies and the military don't like Trump anywhere near enough to carry out any unlawful order he would make. If anything they're waiting for the chance so they can toss him out on his ass.

And he's also astonishingly (or perhaps not so astonishingly, given how he managed to bankrupt himself over trying to build a casino in Las Vegas) incompetent at abusing the power he has in his hands. He wouldn't be getting anything done if it weren't for the GOP majority in both houses of Congress... and they are in turn hampered by their own internal divisions, with their consistent failure to agree on how to repeal Obamacare for 10 months being the stellar example.

I was going to reply to Fighteer, but Quag did it for me. Thanks Quag.

As for the Trump administration, my concern is independent of who happens to be in the White House. Abuses of civil rights by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies has a very well documented history.

edited 25th Nov '17 10:26:09 AM by DeMarquis

Worry more about a cop planting coke on your person when you get stopped for a speeding ticket than the CIA reading your emails.

Quite bluntly, there's fuck all you can do if any of the three letter organizations put forth any actual effort to spy on you.

Except, of course, pass a law saying they cant do it without a warrant.

He said you as in a single person. What you're suggesting is something that requires the collective action of the majority of the USA's population. That's something for your political representatives to worry about, not you, a single citizen with (presumably) no interest in being either a career politician or a career activist.

Pretty much. Besides doing your normal civic duty and participating in democracy there's just not much to be done about any of it.

Well, that isnt true. I can protect myself using safe practices and technology, like the Tor network, and by educating people, as I do on this web.