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House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

nytimes.com

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

#161

Post by inferiorhuman »

bogomipz wrote: post #104
asimpletune wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pelosi and Feinstein are the worst when it comes to privacy law.

Which is something I find interesting since they are both Democrats from San Francisco - Pelosi(represents S.F, the 12th district) and Feinstein represents California but is born and bread S.F. and served as its' Mayor for a bit.

Feinstein was not a liberal (or a particularly) mayor. She profited handsomely from the assassinations of Milk and Moscone though. Then again, San Francisco is not a particularly liberal place even by Bay Area standards.

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

#162

Post by rasz »

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…

Dig something embarrassing from her computer/old emails, post it on her FB page. /s

People who never experienced large scale oppression, eastern Europe pre nineties for example, will have a hard time grasping the repercussions.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

_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…

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by mijowi »

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…

I think you're missing the bigger picture. I think that for most of these politicians, it's really not about the issue itself (privacy in this case). It's about gaining power for your own party and removing power from the opposing party. Of course the Democrats are likely to vote against a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. And of course the Republicans are likely to vote for a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. That's what I see happening here.

Democrats had plenty of opportunity to strengthen privacy laws during the previous administration, but they didn't. Instead they strengthened the surveillance powers of the government. Now that a Republican controls the executive branch and all of these agencies, they want those powers weakened.

The US is experiencing the terrible pitfalls of a two-party system, just as the founding fathers warned. Instead of making progress, the parties mostly just fight each other, at our expense.

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

#165

Post by bogomipz »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #161
bogomipz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is something I find interesting since they are both Democrats from San Francisco - Pelosi(represents S.F, the 12th district) and Feinstein represents California but is born and bread S.F. and served as its' Mayor for a bit.

Feinstein was not a liberal (or a particularly) mayor. She profited handsomely from the assassinations of Milk and Moscone though. Then again, San Francisco is not a particularly liberal place even by Bay Area standards.

I think she was always seen as centrist. I agree the Milk/Moscone tragedy helped her career but she was also elected Mayor after that in 80's. And S.F in the 1980s was very much a liberal place.

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

#166

Post by xixi77 »

lurquer wrote: post #132
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy in the world is dead (more precisely, dying), for all intents and purposes. The technological cat that enabled its demise can't be put back into the bag. Currently the problem is that certain classes of people have more access to "private" information than others, but once that goes away society will adapt to the new normal and look back with confusion at why we were so concerned about not being able to hide…

Agreed. But, we're missing the point quibbling about search histories and emails... That's nothing compared to what's coming. The data already exists to track your every move. It's just a matter of consolidating and organizing it. Right now, there is money to be made selling customer data for marketing and the like. This keeps the repositories of our data from sharing with one another. But, soon, the economics will f…

It might be even worse. I actually doubt they'll allow you to get your info deleted, even for a fee, unless forced by law: it would only be worth it for them (as in, producing revenue that is a significant fraction of that they would be getting from selling the data) if enough people bother, but in that case, deleting their information would make the data a lot less attractive for the potential buyers...

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

#167

Post by refurb »

mijowi wrote: post #164
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…

I think you're missing the bigger picture. I think that for most of these politicians, it's really not about the issue itself (privacy in this case). It's about gaining power for your own party and removing power from the opposing party. Of course the Democrats are likely to vote against a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. And of course the Republicans are likely to vote for a bill that gives a…

This is really true. How many times have you seen a party vote against an issue, only to turn around and vote for it it's their own party leadership leading the charge?

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

#168

Post by Godel_unicode »

dragonwriter wrote: post #121
dingaling wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The military refuses to answer Congress. Pedantically the NSA, FBI and CIA are not 'military' The DIA, NRO and NIMA are.

Correct on the FBI and CIA; NSA, though is a DoD agency headed by a general and conjoined at the head with both the military Cyber Command and the military Central Security Service.

Continuing the pedantry, DirNSA is currently an admiral (Rogers, specifically).

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

#169

Post by willstrafach »

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…

> The military refuses to answer Congress

My understanding is that properly cleared representatives and their staff can absolutely get information on what they need and speak candidly about all the sensitive details in a SCIF.

This recurring narrative that intelligence agencies are holding back is not good, because it makes it seem like representatives are being misled and are tricked into voting for these authorities, deflecting accountability, which is far more convenient than the truth of them being well-informed and still choosing to support it.

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

#170

Post by willstrafach »

PopsiclePete wrote: post #13
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…

You can't. Most people will choose safety over freedom every single time.

In the case of 702, as it is for foreign surveillance, it is not even any freedom/security tradeoff because it is not them being surveiled.
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