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

theprivacyissue.com

101–110 of 135 posts

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

#101
post #87

Law enforcement, tasked with catching the baddies, always wants more ability to complete their task: more surveillance, more laws, and more firepower. That's as it should be. The problem is the lack of heavy-weight counter-balance, always demanding more privacy, fewer laws, and less firepower. The best we've got is "the status quo" and a few non-profits (that thankfully are punching way above their weight class). Wit…

Don't forget systemic pressure to make "more baddies"!

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

what are you saying here? you would argue that cabin should not be secure, so as to guard against a hypothetical attacker who completes professional pilot certification and gets a job as a copilot for the sake of (hopefully) overcoming the captain 1 versus 1 and brings down the plane? because that seems ridiculous

I think he's subtly referencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

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

#103
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

Screening of pilots for various issues, mental and performance wise, has increased substantially since 9/11 as well.

Fuck no it hasn't...

The FAA still systematically pulls medicals for mental health issues rather than allowing treatment. If your livelihood and a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt depend on it, you'll conceal extreme depression just fine. Pilots are terrified of getting help and an absurd proportion of the community is suffering from depression as a result.

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

#104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until the pilot agreed to open the door That's the problem -- that there was a door that could be opened. It seems to me that there shouldn't be. The pilots should have their own separate entrance from the exterior of the aircraft.

Let's not add more unnecessary holes to pressurized aircraft... Also, the pilots occasionally need to be able to get back to the cabin for troubleshooting in emergencies and to use the toilet/crew rest.

> the pilots occasionally need to be able to get back to the cabin for troubleshooting in emergencies and to use the toilet/crew rest.

Toilet, crew rest, and meals can be provided in the pilot's cabin. Troubleshooting may be a good point, but perhaps it would suffice to have a tech in the non-cabin portion of the plane.

In any case, it was just a thought. This is not an issue that I actually have a strong opinion about either way.

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

#105

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"…

Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

Hence having two or three of them up there. They can't all be suicidal...

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

#106
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> securing access to the pilot's cabin Well, no, actually it was impossible to get into the cabin from outside long before 9/11 (in fact, I think since the 70’s). The hijackers smuggled box-cutters on board and used the box cutters to kill stewardesses until the pilot agreed to open the door - after which they had full access to the plane.

> until the pilot agreed to open the door That's the problem -- that there was a door that could be opened. It seems to me that there shouldn't be. The pilots should have their own separate entrance from the exterior of the aircraft.

Is that actually the problem though? Or is it that you are still here discussing of ways to prevent airplane hijacking in a world where cows still kill more people that airplane hijacking terrorists?

I don't mean to come across as condescending, I believe that as long as we spend our time talking about possible "solutions" to what-if, abstract problems, without addressing the real issues, we are just going to waste our time.

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

#107

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"…

The flight attendants union is also lobbying for all the extra security. They're well aware that thanks to their corporate overlords, flying is paramount Chinese water torture and they'd rather everyone be safely disarmed for when someone inevitably loses it.

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

#108

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…

> VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP) So you've transferred the lack of privacy from one company (your ISP) to another (your VPN vendor). Heck - look what happened to Onavo - facebook bought them and reaped a treasure trove of private browsing habits.

I use DuckDuckGo for web searches. Technically, I've just transferred my lack of search privacy from one company (Google) to another (DuckDuckGo).

I would of course prefer a zero-trust solution, but absent that, can I at least avoid giving my data the companies that are openly spying on me right now? At least until we figure out how to make Tor scale better for normal usage like streaming/games?

Transferring trust is definitely problematic, but it's also a thing that we do basically every single day all the time, and it's only in the context of VPNs where I see people suddenly advocating that anything less than a zero-trust solution is useless. Zero-trust solutions are the exception when we deal with companies. Most of the time we're just moving/centralizing trust.

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

#109
post #74
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 thought there was a list of this sort of counter terrorism successes, apparently there is... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...

Now go through them and weed out the plots that were actually sting operations where all the motivation, allies, funding and training came from three letter agencies in a million dollar operation to trick an angry young Muslim man into building a bomb instead of just graffitiing walls with ACAB.

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

#110
post #19

> The Privacy Issue is brought to you by the team behind IVPN. Get to know IVPN’s mission and download the app to browse privately and securely. Ugh. It's a fine article, but I worry the VPN industry's constant mis-selling of services under the banner of privacy will eventually taint the message.

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…

> VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP)

I never really saw that as a VPN's main purpose. Far from cutting out the ISP, you now have 2 ISPs. One that can see "everything" and another that can make inferences about your habits by analyzing your encrypted traffic.

The job a VPN actually does really well is hide your IP from sites and services that you visit which reduces the information they have available with which to track you.

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