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House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

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Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#141

Post by philipov »

whatshisface wrote: post #128
ep103 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

Both parties are the same in that in neither case should "party" be taken as sufficient evidence of someone being worthy of office. It would improve the quality of your votes if you ignored party entirely and forced yourself to find out what your representatives actually believed.

It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is the power structure and incentives/disincentives to which they are subject once they have the job.

Regardless of what they believe, a politician's first priority is reelection, and it is partisan campaign committees that hold the reigns to the resources required for that. Even if you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaign, you can't accomplish anything in office if you get ostracized by everyone who doesn't have that luxury.

Cooperate with the cartel leadership, or you'll be denied funding, voter data, and committee seats.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#142

Post by throwacide »

someone needs to do independent audits in the form of a zero knowledge proof to say “ok I understand why the wizards and warlocks are at battle”. Used to be that we would say to ourselves, “we should consider It likely Obama flipped once in office because he saw confidential stuff that would make you sick”, which is a more cosmo view

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#143

Post by chongli »

_m8fo wrote: post #21
epmaybe wrote: post #8

I had a discussion with my mother regarding surveillance and privacy and how they relate to safety. I feel like she understands that surveillance when used in a nefarious manner can be detrimental to individual freedoms, but is pro surveillance regardless. This is because she believes that the benefits of keeping others safe outweighs the potential for misuse. How can I help her understand why people fight for privac…

When has an average American been severely and personally harmed from surveillance? If you can't answer that without caveats then you have no chance of convincing her in my opinion. In other words, you have to prove that the harms of surveillance outweigh the nebulous sense of protection an average person already has regarding survillance. It's trivial to come up with examples of how survillance is good for an averag…

Requiring an average American is setting the bar a little too high. Ask almost any Jewish American and they're likely to have relatives who died in the Holocaust. How did the Nazis carry that out? They leveraged a large surveillance network and a central database built with census data. Was this personal harm from surveillance? I would argue yes.

Similarly, you could ask anyone who experienced life (or had a relative who did) in the Soviet Union or East Germany under the thumb of those overwhelming surveillance networks.

Finally, to prematurely head off an objection you might have: are these events (Nazi, Soviet, East Germany) outliers? Yes. Does that disqualify them? No. [0]

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-an...

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#144

Post by noobermin »

vuln wrote: post #138
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. Obama commuted her sentence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation

Do you remember how she was treated during her 7 year stay in prison? I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...

There is a nuance here.

The Dems are better. They are better than republicans on this, but they certainly aren't good enough. That is the unfortunate part. But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's, significantly so.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#145

Post by ComputerGuru »

ep103 wrote: post #119
CWuestefeld wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy. Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

Oh please. Nitpick much? The party line in both parties was anti-privacy. Yes, there are more good apples in the bunch on the left side of the fence. The GP’s point still stands. Your reply comes across as very defensive and in denial. While technically correct, it is absolutely dishonest to try and portray the Democratic Party as a whole as actually giving a damn about this issue.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#146

Post by glitchdout »

cmiles74 wrote: post #101
iaw wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no effort to dismantle the wiretapping... * Bush implemented surveillance of citizens in response to 9/11 * Obama continued to support this program after it was revealed by Edward Snowden * Now there's Trump

Personally, this was one of my biggest disappointments from the Obama administration. Before he became president, he was critical of the Patriot Act and seemed legitimately concerned[0]. After election he signed a four year renewal[1]. [0]: http://obamaspeeches.com/041-The-PATRIOT-Act-Obama-Speech.ht... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

Yeah. I'm so disappointed every time I watch this video of candidate Obama debating president Obama on government surveillance... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#147

Post by lern_too_spel »

vuln wrote: post #127
ep103 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this... From my comment down thread >Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v…

The FBI did not need a warrant to search that phone. The owner (the shooter's employer) gave them permission.

Obama didn't expand surveillance on his way out (several surveillance programs stopped under his watch, including both email and phone metadata collection). You're confusing an authorization to share information, which allowed a more thorough investigation into Russian meddling, with authorization to collect new data.

Your first link doesn't support your claim that Obama quadrupled funding because that didn't happen. https://fas.org/irp/budget/

And we all know that Obama released Manning over the objections of our current President.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#148

Post by forapurpose »

nullifidian wrote: post #78

Can someone clear it up for me. How likely is it that my google searches are being swept up and stored indefinitely, because I'm foreigner. I've disabled google search history, though I doubt it will help. Similar question - do they have a profile for every foreigner they can identify?

> Can someone clear it up for me.

Nobody can clear it up for you, except possibly someone who has knowledge of the top secret programs run by all the U.S. government agencies, by agencies of other governments, by commercial businesses, and possibly by sophisticated criminal organizations.

Regarding only U.S. government surveillance, even the most informed citizen's knowledge is based on years-old incomplete reports of a subset of programs; nobody knows what was left out and what has changed, but we know that the NSA alone has maybe 40,000 employees and a $10 billion budget; that pays for a lot of surveillance. Remember that many other governments and businesses share their surveillance with the U.S.; if what you do is picked up by one, others may know too.

In other words, assume that anything you do online, or on a computer or phone which collects user data, is swept up.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#149

Post by Clanan »

kmonsen wrote: post #113
Clanan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's now substantial evidence that this is exactly what happened with the Obama administration and Trump's campaign. The former used an unverified dossier as an excuse to begin surveillance via FISA. So this isn't even a theoretical issue. Before anyone grabs a pitchfork, focus on the issue at hand and not the current politics. Doesn't matter who's in the White House - friend or foe, would you want them to have th…

Citation please, as far as I know there is zero evidence that this happened. But for the bigger issue, yes it is a thing that needs to be controlled.

Concrete proof has not emerged. Right now it's at the "numerous senior sources say..." level of reporting. The full answer is now known by Congresspeople but it's classified [0]. We'll see if it gets leaked. It's not proven but I certainly wouldn't say zero evidence; reports at this "truth level" happen all the time, and are widely circulated and trusted.

Circumstantially, I think strong evidence that this happened is the Trump team's behavior after he was briefed by the NSA director, Admiral Rogers. The day after their confidential meeting, all relevant activities were immediately moved out of Trump Tower.

Anyway, this is off-topic and is a testy topic as it is so I apologize for the tangent. On topic I agree it shouldn't be possible for anyone to do this, no matter their politics.

[0] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-yes-congress-ha...

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#150

Post by stallmanite »

saas_co_de wrote: post #96
rektide wrote: post #54

As Wyden[1] points out, Congress has nearly no information on what impact the FISA program has. How many Americans are targeted already? The military refuses to answer Congress. How many emails & other collections are swept up? The military refuses to answer to Congress. This bill explicitly allows it's use directly against Americans and declares which circumstances the FBI & other agencies need to use warrants and w…

> Congress has nearly no information on what impact the FISA program has Apparently it has the impact that a big majority of congress will never vote against it. I wonder why that is?

Blackmail
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