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U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

theprivacyissue.com

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Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#61

Post by WilliamEdward »

Razengan wrote: post #22
president wrote: post #14

I'm not sure what the alternative is. Without some form of surveillance, you're never going to catch terrorists or other bad actors. You do, however, need to make sure there are strong checks and balances in place to ensure that people don't use it for nefarious purposes or for personal gain.

Really? It doesn't even occur to you to address the issues that create "terrorists?"

Some people think terrorists will always exist (despite them very clearly growing in numbers) when it's actually governments and the US in particular that radicalise most of them by bombing their countries.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#62

Post by rtkwe »

waynecochran wrote: post #53
datashow wrote: post #7

> "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism" > "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at countering terrorism" Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

The problem is that effectiveness is not falsafiable. There is no real way to know what attacks would have occurred without the surveillance laws.

We can look at the types of things that have been caught during this period and how. Using that we can get an idea of what kind of threat are out there and it's mostly a) successful lone wolves who don't get caught and b) troubled people who get into a plot made entirely of FBI informants/agents from start to finish.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#63

Post by kiba »

54thr wrote: post #43

The threat of terror gives power to the State. Power seeks more power. The State does not erode freedoms in support of safety. The State erodes freedoms to achieve more power. Terror is the excuse. It is the State's greatest tool.

More the other way around. They seek to do the impossible, and so they seek more power to do their job.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#64

Post by baybal2 »

blurps wrote: post #44

Great informative article, but at times the posing is naive or supporting a certain narrative. For instance: The government goes after Islamic terrorists and Mexican illegal immigrants. So what to complain about? Mix cause and effect to pose the illegal immigrants as targeting based on race. Or pose the extremist religious as vulnerable Muslims, targeted on religion. Remove their status as far away from the cold-hard…

> far away from the cold-hard reality

The cold-hard reality is that states who have established a system of domestic surveillance have sent millions of their own citizens to crematoriums.

Sane nations have destroyed your political faction back in sixties.

Pro-communist, race chauvinists who look up to Mao for inspiration were thrown in the garbage bin of history, and thank god for that.

Very fortunately, America of today is not Cambodia, nor Laos, and you all have to thank Rockefeller commission for grinding the legacy of Allen Dullest to dust

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#65

Post by aquadrop »

The only measure that needed to be done after 9/11, and it's surprising why this very effective measure wasn't implemented before - securing access to the pilot's cabin. Everything else is overreaction cause by power grabbing by "security agencies" and politicians trying to score. The whole security system of today's world (especially in flying) is one pointless thing after another, holding on the a fear of "what if".

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#66

Post by kossae »

remarkEon wrote: post #46
anarchodev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mis-selling exactly? Doesn't seem to me that they're saying using their VPN will make you impenetrable to dedicated actors with nation-state resources. VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP), and if you're using one it's a good bet you'll be interested in other privacy concerns too. There are a lot of VPNs with really bogus claims on their websites but I didn't notice anyt…

I don’t have the time right now to do this, but someone with it (and probably more technical experience than me in that field) should write up a no BS guise to what these popular VPN services really are offering. It’s been hard, over the last couple months especially it seems, to wade through all the new products these companies are constantly dropping in this space.

Something like this may suffice: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#67

Post by emptysea »

godelski wrote: post #57
54thr wrote: post #43

The threat of terror gives power to the State. Power seeks more power. The State does not erode freedoms in support of safety. The State erodes freedoms to achieve more power. Terror is the excuse. It is the State's greatest tool.

> Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

There's an interesting NPR interview on the origin of that quote: https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

tl;dr; Franklin was defending government spending on defense

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#68

Post by djrogers »

datashow wrote: post #7

> "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism" > "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at countering terrorism" Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

I agree - the article does a horrible job of proving this case, it merely mentions a mysterious 'panel' and an 'independant' commission's study.

The problem is that this article, and the resopnses to it, are focusing on the wrong thing: The efficacy of violating ones consitiutional rights should have no bearing on wether or not that violation is legal.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#70

Post by harambae »

colordrops wrote: post #58
54thr wrote: post #43

The threat of terror gives power to the State. Power seeks more power. The State does not erode freedoms in support of safety. The State erodes freedoms to achieve more power. Terror is the excuse. It is the State's greatest tool.

The state is made up of individuals. Who are these individuals that are seeking power?

The entrenched political class and those in (inevitably self-serving) government positions. See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
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