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Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

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Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#51

Post by mellow2020 »

craigsmansion wrote: post #40
dsbleia wrote: post #30

I'm asking this question not to spark a contentious debate or be ridiculed. But I'm genuinely curious, as someone who has little experience with China and only lived in the US, is the US just as much of a surveillance state as China? We often hear a lot of 'information' (bordering propaganda), about China being an "authoritarian surveillance state". I don't mean to sound absurd, but is the US that much better in term…

> but is the US that much better in terms of authoritarianism or surveillance? Who knows? The last guy who touched upon it had to hide in freedom-loving Russia afterwards. The PRC has it easy. They don't have to hide their actions behind contortions of "national security", which makes it difficult to compare the extent and pervasiveness of US and PRC surveillance.

> The last guy who touched upon it

On the other hand, people like Chomsky aren't being persecuted. Though all in all, I would also say they get ignored very efficiently, Chomsky still isn't exactly unknown either. Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades of real harsh criticism of their government under their belt, who is living in China with their works being translated in all sorts of languages and also available in China?

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#52

Post by [deleted] »

zionic wrote: post #25
aborsy wrote: post #22

Surveillance pertains to asymmetric information, a situation where a few in the society (those in power) have access to the information of the rest of the society (those not in power, namely, the public) but not conversely. The asymmetry of the information gives those in power great advantage over public. The rich and powerful claim, we monitor you to protect you, and to better serve you. The scope and the characteri…

What I don't see many talk about is how much harm the belief that they harvest everything is, on top of just the actual deed itself. If I am an organization that is well known to be spying on everyone and anything, that means I can very convincingly fabricate evidence against my enemies. It goes beyond simple spying, they now have the ability to manufacture whatever truth they'd like.

[deleted]

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#53

Post by miketery »

zionic wrote: post #25
aborsy wrote: post #22

Surveillance pertains to asymmetric information, a situation where a few in the society (those in power) have access to the information of the rest of the society (those not in power, namely, the public) but not conversely. The asymmetry of the information gives those in power great advantage over public. The rich and powerful claim, we monitor you to protect you, and to better serve you. The scope and the characteri…

What I don't see many talk about is how much harm the belief that they harvest everything is, on top of just the actual deed itself. If I am an organization that is well known to be spying on everyone and anything, that means I can very convincingly fabricate evidence against my enemies. It goes beyond simple spying, they now have the ability to manufacture whatever truth they'd like.

Not sure if also related or you meant to touch on this point. But reading that made me think the following; this means real evidence will be discounted as well since we perceive those in power to be able to conjure fake evidence. thus eroding trust wholly.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#54

Post by pdonis »

twblalock wrote: post #27
aborsy wrote: post #22

Surveillance pertains to asymmetric information, a situation where a few in the society (those in power) have access to the information of the rest of the society (those not in power, namely, the public) but not conversely. The asymmetry of the information gives those in power great advantage over public. The rich and powerful claim, we monitor you to protect you, and to better serve you. The scope and the characteri…

One way around this is to make surveillance records available to the public through due process like other public government records. This removes the asymmetry and it also makes surveillance less attractive in the first place, because those responsible for the surveillance would be forced to expose surveillance records about themselves.

> One way around this is to make surveillance records available to the public through due process like other public government records.

I would agree that a person ought to be able to see whatever surveillance records exist on themselves.

However, allowing any member of the public to see all surveillance records, on anyone, strikes me as just compounding the problem--now my private information isn't just seen by the government, it's seen by everybody.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#55

Post by pdonis »

eivarv wrote: post #24

The Norwegian parliament recently passed a bill that implements bulk metadata collection here as well. I tried debating with ministers, writing op-eds, and even organizing petitions (over 1000 security, privacy and tech professionals in a couple of days) before the vote. While every informed person I know thinks it's a bad idea, and every organization consulted massively criticized it as mass surveillance, a huge maj…

> how can we work against this on a technical level?

As the saying goes, you can't use a technical solution to fix a social problem.

One way to fix the social problem is to vote politicians out of office when they make bad decisions--not just about surveillance, but in general. People who don't have to pay a cost for bad decisions have no incentive to make better decisions.

Another way is to not give powers like this to governments in the first place. If politicians don't have decision making power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us by making a bad decision.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#56

Post by hundchenkatze »

freddyym wrote: post #20
PeterStuer wrote: post #18

Clicking on the link for Belgium leads to a site with an unbypassble cookie acceptance popup

Odd. As a team member, I can confirm that we (obviuosly) take privacy very seriously. This shouldn't have happened. Do you have a screenshot?

I think you misread (I did too at first) it to mean the cookie consent was on privacytools.io. However, I think they're referring to the Belgium link under the "Key disclosure laws may apply" which links to https://tweakers.net/nieuws/163116/belgische-rechter-verdach...

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#57

Post by Zak »

ColanR wrote: post #50
Zak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is demonstrably useful for national security Is it? Please demonstrate it by listing terrorist incidents prevented or active terrorists caught due to surveillance other than narrowly-targeted police investigation, or military action in an active combat zone. To qualify, the use of broad surveillance should be a necessary component of the investigation, i.e. the investigation would not have started or reached the…

I don't think that's quite fair. I greatly doubt that successful preventions would be willingly associated with questionably legal surveillance. In the US, "parallel construction" is used specifically to hide how information was obtained and I'm sure similar motivations exist here.

The assertion was that it's demonstrably useful for national security. Without such a demonstration, I submit that it is not, and that terrorists are caught using normal police work.

"It's too secret to tell the public in broad terms a decade after the investigation is over" strikes me as incompatible with democracy. Questionably-legal surveillance also strikes me as incompatible with democracy outside of short-term use in exceptional emergency conditions, which should be disclosed to the public once the emergency is over.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#58

Post by pdonis »

ColanR wrote: post #50
Zak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is demonstrably useful for national security Is it? Please demonstrate it by listing terrorist incidents prevented or active terrorists caught due to surveillance other than narrowly-targeted police investigation, or military action in an active combat zone. To qualify, the use of broad surveillance should be a necessary component of the investigation, i.e. the investigation would not have started or reached the…

I don't think that's quite fair. I greatly doubt that successful preventions would be willingly associated with questionably legal surveillance. In the US, "parallel construction" is used specifically to hide how information was obtained and I'm sure similar motivations exist here.

> I don't think that's quite fair.

It is if you're not going to accept a priori the claim that surveillance can be justified. If you need to have it demonstrated that surveillance can be justified, the only possible grounds for such a demonstration is to show the people the benefits--the actual harms that surveillance has prevented. If we the people can't see those benefits, how can we possibly judge whether or not surveillance can be justified?

In other words, the government of any free society is in a kind of Catch-22 position with regard to surveillance: it can't be justified to the people without revealing that it's happening and what it's discovering, but revealing those things destroys the usefulness of the surveillance. The only choices are to not permit the surveillance at all, or to accept an unavoidable loss of freedom--as a citizen, you will never be able to know whether the surveillance your government is conducting is justified. You just have to accept it.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#59

Post by rcoveson »

jjcon wrote: post #31
ColanR wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a semantic difference that doesn't bear any relevance to what I'm saying. To "realize" that it can be reasonable is to accept the underlying premise - that surveillance is not necessarily (logic term there) unacceptable. I am specifically arguing that we do not (should not) accept a priori the premise that surveillance is not necessarily bad. To do so is to capitulate the entire argument against surveillance,…

I’m not sure moral puritanism is really that useful here. Surveillance isn’t going anywhere and it is demonstrably useful for national security. We are best off working to allow it to operate with ample checks and balances rather than closing our eyes and pretending it is superfluous.

> ______ isn’t going anywhere and it is demonstrably useful for national security.

Fill in the blank, masters. Maximize our security.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#60

Post by craigsmansion »

mellow2020 wrote: post #51
craigsmansion wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but is the US that much better in terms of authoritarianism or surveillance? Who knows? The last guy who touched upon it had to hide in freedom-loving Russia afterwards. The PRC has it easy. They don't have to hide their actions behind contortions of "national security", which makes it difficult to compare the extent and pervasiveness of US and PRC surveillance.

> The last guy who touched upon it On the other hand, people like Chomsky aren't being persecuted. Though all in all, I would also say they get ignored very efficiently, Chomsky still isn't exactly unknown either. Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades of real harsh criticism of their government under their belt, who is living in China with their works being translated in all sorts of languages and also a…

> Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades

This is only as I understand it, but technically, yes.

People like to think that the Chinese Communist Party is a single body with a single well-defined set of ideas.

It's not.

It's perfectly possible for academics and even party politicians to utter criticism of the current party direction. They can, for example, advocate the return of fundamental Maoism, or advocate free market mechanisms. As long as you can argue a point of view that lies within the party's tenets, there is usually no problem.

It's different when:

- you are a person of influence.

and

- you argue against the stability of the country (where, conveniently, the CCP is seen as the most important stabilising force in mainland China (by the CCP)).

I don't know if a Chinese Chomsky exists. I have the impression that if he would exist, he would be marginalised by the media, or some of his ideas would be adopted and used in some splintered minority faction of the CCP and hailed as a great but impractical thinker, and mostly ignored.

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