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The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

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Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#41

Post by jdavis703 »

ra1n85 wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

Seeing this as well. The most ironic of my observations was that the most liberal of my friends would support the release of Chelsea Manning, but insisted on prosecuting Snowden.

Why is this ironic? I could see why this might be labeled a double standard. Not trying to be pedantic here, just trying to understand your point of view.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#42

Post by woofyman »

cmurf wrote: post #38
woofyman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up Rounded up for what? No one I know has that fear.

DACA: whether ther 1/4 million approved or the 2 million eligble, it is unknown whether they will be targeted for deportation. Undocumented workers: past Republican administrations have engaged in work place raids as an enforcement action on workers themselves, rather than on employers engaging in illegal hiring. Muslims? It's not unreasonable for them to debate in their own mind whether the president is sincere, and…

DACA and the undocumented: that's a legitimate fear. Muslin Americans and Muslins here legally: that's legitimate but I'm confident our institutions are strong enough to prevent something that blatantly unconstitutional from happening.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#43

Post by pdkl95 »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

> all anyone can talk about lately is politics

Good! It would have been great if this more active participation in the political process started a long time ago, but better late than never.

> The overwhelming response has been not caring

One of the reasons for this is that the focus is usually on the surveillance itself. Humans are bad a risk assessment, and most of the time common fallacy that "I have nothing to hide" is approximately correct. Like smoking, the average person is unlikely to be affected by surveillance in the short term. The accumulation of risk over time is never seen first hand.

I suggest that the important understanding that is needed to evaluate the risks of surveillance is that data never goes away. It's easy to be indifferent when you understand surveillance as an isolated event. Instead, the focus should be on growing databases that allow anyone with access to reconstruct entire lives. Practical demonstrations (like Google's map of already-collected location data) are even better.

> will embrace the expansion of the surveillance state

This is what happens when we allow problematic behavior to become normalized. Unfortunately, the too many of the people that did understand surveillance technology decided to say "I don't see any current risk" and chose convenience and features at the expense of future security.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#44

Post by matroosberg »

dangero wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

Isn't the entire Democratic viewpoint about augmenting the role of government in a number of places via government programs and regulation? I'm sure Democrats will pop up to tell me I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you cannot wish for the expansion of government control and power unless you believe the government is mostly good. It's an interesting line you've drawn to mass surveillance because, yes, if the governm…

There are a couple more necessary requirements for surveillance not to be a problem: A guarantee that the government will stay good (and not for example turn on minorities) and competency to keep accumulated safe from malicious parties come to mind.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#45

Post by nitrogen »

dangero wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

Isn't the entire Democratic viewpoint about augmenting the role of government in a number of places via government programs and regulation? I'm sure Democrats will pop up to tell me I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you cannot wish for the expansion of government control and power unless you believe the government is mostly good. It's an interesting line you've drawn to mass surveillance because, yes, if the governm…

As is often mentioned in these discussions, the government cannot be treated as a monolithic entity. So when someone suggests a basic income might solve welfare problems, they aren't suggesting the intelligence agencies should be the ones running it.

On that note, while government has been tearing down walls between agencies, in some cases we should be raising walls.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#46

Post by roastbeef »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

What about Republicans? Libertarians? Why do you assume that Democrats are the majority or that their opinion has any more weight than anyone else? As the darling President of the Democrats, Obama has increased the surveillance state more than anyone before him.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#47

Post by stefantalpalaru »

pitaj wrote: post #39
tomludus wrote: post #6

One reason that leaders as diametrically opposed as Obama and Trump can be aligned on surveillance is simple: The majority of Americans don’t care. The reason why this keeps getting worse and worse.

Just for future reference, please don't quote using the four-spaces code block. It can make it difficult to read on mobile, and often requires scrolling from side to side on desktop. Please, instead, use the `>` (meme arrow). While it does not add markup, it does make it significantly more readable. Thanks.

> `>` (meme arrow)

It's much older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_quoting

...and it looks suspiciously similar to the "diple" used by ancient Greeks: http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/30/quotati...

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#48

Post by adventured »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

Now that Trump is in charge of the NSA, the broader Democratic Party will once again rediscover privacy as a core civil liberties issue, after having almost completely ignored it for the prior eight years. The few consistent champions of privacy on the left in DC, will be joined by a large wave of fair weather supporters. It's better than the alternative of nobody caring for the next N years of Trump's Presidency. Unfortunately, the Democrats will also have very little power to do anything about the espionage boom that's about to occur. If the left base had really wanted to make a difference, they should have aggressively protested Obama's radical expansion of espionage programs, he might have listened more had the protests been much larger.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#49

Post by saycheese »

Please stop pointing fingers at the American "government" and realize that the issue is really the average American.

The US public has had over 10 years to figure it out, blaming the government is just causing more problems, not less; to understand why it's been 10 years, Google "Room 641A", which was exposed in 2006.

Sure, there are people in America that are opposed to mass surveillance, but the bulk of Americans willfully allow it.

If you think the issue is important, do me a favor: find 10 people next week that do not believe it is an issue, help them see it is, and get them to the point that they want to help do the same thing you just did the following week.

Even if only 5 of the 10 people go on to do the same the week after, if that pattern went on for a year, by the end of the year mass surveillance would no longer exist; happy to explain, but math is a basic viral coefficient[1]; that is if only one person reading this did it and succeed, which would mean in less than three months the majority of the US would have been "converted" to supporting change.

[1] http://nichevertising.com/viral-coefficient-calculator/

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#50

Post by saalweachter »

RA_Fisher wrote: post #18
dahart wrote: post #8

> Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed. Calling all engineers! We do have the power amongst ourselves to add technical impediments to surveillance to the services we're building, and to the internet as a whole. The technology exists to prevent surveillance, we just need to care, and to use it. Also keep in mind that net neutrality would be an automatic byproduct of an internet that pre…

Net neutrality by encryption seems like a much better idea than government imposed NN. It's optional and not one size fits all. Let's encrypt all the things!

I take it you've never had WiFi drop your connection when you start using a VPN?
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