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U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#171

Post by cercatrova »

scarface74 wrote: post #169
cercatrova wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, you can't please everyone. The distinction is, at least governments try to. Corporations do not, by design, as they are only incentivized to collect money and funnel it to the top X% of the company, not even the company as a whole which includes workers.

the government trying to please the majority is fine if you’re not a religious or racial minority and if you are straight. The US was trying to “please” religious conservatives when they passed laws against miscegenation just like the French were when they tried to pass laws against the burkini.

Correct. They were the majority then (social attitudes were the majority then at least) and they aren't now. But the government changed along with those interests, because there was a mechanism for it to change, through voting. Again, a government can't please everyone.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#172

Post by aspenmayer »

scarface74 wrote: post #167
aspenmayer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it count when EPA allows itself to be co-opted by corporations to repeal environmental regulations and air quality standards that were already in place? That seems like all parties are actually doing less than nothing.

There are severe negative externalities to my life when corporations are allowed to pollute. HN posters usually want the government to regulate technology. What major negative externalities that affect my health in an unavoidable way does the tech industry impose?

Are you asking me, or are you begging the question and implying that such negative externalities don’t exist in the tech industry? Because I believe that they do exist. Technology amplifies reach and impact of capital and ratchet up the force multiplier. It’s not so much that the tech industry itself has outsize externalities relative to other industries. Tech allows every and any industry to enhance its operations to minimize its externalities as much as increase them. However most industries tech and otherwise that enhance their externalities do so negatively in proportion to the benefit of having done so to their productivity or profits. And that isn’t the tech industry’s fault. It’s just a tool. The aims ends and intentions determine the blame and to whom it should be assigned.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#173

Post by LeifCarrotson »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #59
sneak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot envision any terrorist attack that poses an existential threat to the United States. Fighting terrorism is not a national security matter. Even the largest terrorist attack in the history of the world (not counting the atomic bombings of Japan, which were terroristic by definition but generally excluded from that classification as being carried out during a declared war by a with-a-return-address nation) was…

National security threats don’t have to be existential to be legitimate threats. Threats to American lives can be national security threats, even if they don’t threaten to kill 300 million people. ISIS could never threaten the existence of the USA, but they have killed several innocent people, and it should be the government’s responsibility to prevent attacks. The government should practice restraint with how they d…

Preventing the killing of "several" innocent people is certainly justification for temporarily violating the privacy of some others. If you're 9 for 10 successful vs unsuccessful invasive searches, that's completely defensible. And I'd grudgingly admit that even if you're just 1 for 10, I mean, it's the remainder of someone's entire life vs 9 people's privacy, you could probably still make the case to allow it.

However, it's only the human inability to grasp large numbers that would justify a 3 ("several") for 48 (US) or 330 (world) MILLION Twitter users success to failure rate. Or you use a farcical "infinite value" argument, which is basically equivalent to saying that privacy has zero value.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#174

Post by scarface74 »

cercatrova wrote: post #171
scarface74 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the government trying to please the majority is fine if you’re not a religious or racial minority and if you are straight. The US was trying to “please” religious conservatives when they passed laws against miscegenation just like the French were when they tried to pass laws against the burkini.

Correct. They were the majority then (social attitudes were the majority then at least) and they aren't now. But the government changed along with those interests, because there was a mechanism for it to change, through voting. Again, a government can't please everyone.

I’m sure all of the minorities that had to wait a century living under Jim Crow and all of the gay couples and interracial couples who were being persecuted by the government should have taken solace in the fact that the “moral majority” were pleased....

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#175

Post by aendruk »

kerkeslager wrote: post #98
parsimo2010 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, a terrorist group could use private DMs on Twitter to coordinate an attack. If the US captured a low-level terrorist that didn’t know all the details of a plan but knew that the remaining details had been sent to other Twitter users, it would be a legitimate national security request if the government asked Twitter for copies of a user’s private DMs. The hypothetical situation above would be an invasi…

> If the US government made one request to stop a terrorist plot that they had some specific knowledge of, that would be okay in my eyes. How can we tell that they just didn't straight up lie about whether the one request was to stop a terrorist plot, and not to gather intel on political foes or ex girlfriends? With no oversight and no one allowed to advocate for the rights of the individuals under surveillance, I am…

We can't. GP counters "National security is a sham […]" by positing that an acceptable use case exists, not that we have been empowered to identify it.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#176

Post by fsflover »

T-hawk wrote: post #166
DeathArrow wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They've conveniently mixed it in with "but terrorism!" Alternatively they justify some actions with the war on drugs or fighting against pedophiles with: "think of the children". If you promote strong encryption you might help drug dealers, pedophiles and terrorists. There's also the preaching: "you shouldn't be worried of us spying if you have nothing to hide".

We need a name for this fallacy: "We are empowered to stop terrorism." (or drugs, CP, etc) "X can be used for terrorism." "Therefore we are empowered to stop X." Thus that agency gains power over all possible X. Like cash, any monetary transaction, photography, encryption, any messaging system whatsoever, or any number of other things that should make up the bedrock of a free society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#177

Post by cercatrova »

scarface74 wrote: post #174
cercatrova wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. They were the majority then (social attitudes were the majority then at least) and they aren't now. But the government changed along with those interests, because there was a mechanism for it to change, through voting. Again, a government can't please everyone.

I’m sure all of the minorities that had to wait a century living under Jim Crow and all of the gay couples and interracial couples who were being persecuted by the government should have taken solace in the fact that the “moral majority” were pleased....

I am not understanding your point. Yes, that's literally exactly what happened. I pass no moral value judgments as to whether or not the rule of majority is good. I am merely explaining it descriptively as what happens in democratic republican governments thus far. We can also have a dictatorship where no change happens as well.

Put another way, it doesn't matter whether they were pleased or not, the system is set up to make their interests more apparent than others.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#178

Post by ngold »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #35
sneak wrote: post #4

Can we just ponder for a moment that we are being asked to believe that anything Twitter does or does not do could pose an existential threat to the United States? “National security” is a sham now and has been a sham every other time it has ever been used as a blanket override for human rights. Human rights to free expression are more important than any nation. This is just government spies trying to cover their ass…

Hypothetically, a terrorist group could use private DMs on Twitter to coordinate an attack. If the US captured a low-level terrorist that didn’t know all the details of a plan but knew that the remaining details had been sent to other Twitter users, it would be a legitimate national security request if the government asked Twitter for copies of a user’s private DMs. The hypothetical situation above would be an invasi…

The same could be said for mailing a letter. So why does all this not get treated as mail? Under the same laws and procedures?

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#179

Post by analbumcover »

TheNorthman wrote: post #165
analbumcover wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it Bradley at the time of the leaks?

How is that relevant? Don't dead name people and in general don't be a dick.

The variable labeled 'Bradley' wasn't relabeled to 'Chelsea' until well after the leak. Changing a name doesn't propagate backwards in time.

Although you're certainly free to conform to whatever meaningless social convention you like. I assume it provides you a sense of belonging, moral righteousness, etc.. But, given the conformity you seem to demand, you might want to consider who here is most deserving of the "dick" moniker.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#180

Post by Keverw »

ck2 wrote: post #112

Isn't everything on twitter public in the first place? It's the least of any worries. Just a reminder all kinds of "government" for any reason is reading all of your email any time they want without a warrant and it's perfectly legal. Just has to be 180 days old but I suspect that doesn't make a difference. The law allowing it is 30 years old and why the Clintons had their own private email server in their basement i…

Yeah, I heard that to about emails, after so many days they consider it abandoned property. But seems some different courts debate over that...

Written back in the old days when everyone used POP for mail... Emails would download to your computer and be deleted from the server. Plus webmail back then had limited storage anyways, like 20MB while now you can get at least a gig or more depending on the provider. So the server was more just like a temporary holding space for your email, before it got downloaded to your computer where you'd store it longer term and be responsible to back it up, etc yourself.

Now with webmail and IMAP (where your same email account can be on both your phone and laptop). Super outdated now since we access email differently now with multiple modern devices, I doubt many people use POP email now.

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