Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

Why would they agree? The whole thing is made to profit and empower them (as government and decision makers).

Does it though? I mean, I feel that trite little saying misses the point. Even in normal society we have obfuscation, camouflage, deception, data dumping, signalling.

Plus data isn't just something one generates and consumes ad infinitum. It takes resources, those resources generate additional layers of data, and then the reciever/ interpreter requires both different levels of sophistication, sensitivity and mutually exclusive risk/reward trade offs in how to access, use and interpret said data.

Already there is more information available on most people than any individual can access or consume. I don't think having "even more" is going to solve any problem...

perhaps it's more accurate to say information is like water. Its generally leaky and gets everywhere, but that doesn't mean that lakes and rivers don't form. And while it's notionally plentiful, that doesn't mean it's equally accessible or utilised by everyone or that different players don't have equal levels of ability to exploit it.

in the Snowden leaks, there was a GCHQ document about their policies for targetting US Persons using data shared with them from NSA. GCHQ is not allowed to indiscriminantly spy on US Persons. the document, marked classified as STRAP1, clearly orders GCHQ to apply US laws when targetting US Persons. which means "reasonable, articulable suspicion" before firing up XKEYSCORE and searching for everything a US Person has done in their life.

sadly, the reverse is not the same, since the UK has very weak privacy laws compared to the US. NSA can search for anything about any UK citizen without needing some form of probable cause. the Official Secrets Act and RIPA makes the UK into a quasi-dictatorship IMHO, which explains why we see the native population of the UK being so heavily subjugated by their Lords and Royals.

part of the SIGINT sharing agreement between NSA and GCHQ is that data will only be shared as long as these rules are enforced. so the myth that the FVEYS is a backdoor to circumvent the law and allow foreign intel to mutually spy on each other's domestic populations is a myth.

however, this assumes the FVEYS actually obey the rules in this document. how would we know if they dont? impossible for us uncleared civilians. for all we know, there are more layers of secret laws that allow FVEYS to ignore any and all of the checks and balances intended to limit their abuse of the SIGINT system.

that's the problem with secret laws. once you have them, nobody can trust anything about your entire legal system and you become a tyranny.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that Constitutional amendments usually impose some limitation on the government (Federal, and in many cases State as well). And once such an amendment is passed, it's much harder to repeal than an ordinary statute (only one US Constitutional amendment has been repealed, the one imposing Prohibition, and it's relevant that that amendment was not one that imposed a limitation on the Federal government--it gave the Federal government more power, and it got repealed).

You can't be deemed "a dangerous criminal" without having actually been convicted in a court of law by a jury of your peers. And even then, there's appeals, pardons, etc.

> What good does the right to free speech do you if your speech is inconsequential?

Speech is never inconsequential. Even a one on one conversation can have a profound impact on another person. It's up to you to get your ideas out there and to compete in a diverse marketplace of ideas. That's the way it works.

> The US has repeatedly manufactured and framed political dissidents when it has felt politically threatened historically. Those rights you're talking about were useless to them.

Not generally, no. But sure, there are corrupt people in Government, no doubt. And that corruption has even been levied against a duly elected president of the United States (Trump vs the Obama FBI/CIA spygate). The existence of imperfection in the system is not proof of the system's uselessness.