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Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

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Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#101

Post by cgriswald »

arcticbull wrote: post #96
vkou wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who adds or repeals constitutional amendments? The government.

Not sure why you're getting down-voted. Yes, constitutional amendments are repealed by the government. A very challenging majority of government officials, yes, but the government.

This is not true in the United States, unless you conflate all the governments within the United States as "the government" and ignore the federal system.

In the United States, either Congress or the States may adopt a proposed amendment with a 2/3 vote. However, and importantly, only the States can ratify the amendment with a 3/4 vote. This means that, in the United States, at least, "the government" itself cannot repeal amendments. It requires the approval of at least (at this time) 38 other governments.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#102

Post by gonzo41 »

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.

This would never ever happen. If only bceause after the first release. Everyone would be so terrified of the Intel Agencies that they'd revolt.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#103

Post by boomboomsubban »

chrisco255 wrote: post #99
l332mn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual rights are not processes of checks and balances. Those rights can be withdrawn in a jiffy, whenever required or convenient. What good does the right to bear arms do you as an individual when you're deemed a dangerous criminal, or as a group when you're deemed a terrorist organization? What good does the right to free speech do you if your speech is inconsequential? > The fact that if a piece of evidence is…

No they can't. It's incredibly hard to amend the Constitution of the United States. That's by design. You need 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate and 3/4 of all states to ratify an amendment in order to change it. 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 t…

>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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#104

Post by chooseaname »

pdonis wrote: post #55
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…

And yet another is to run for office.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#105

Post by remedialhedge »

chrisco255 wrote: post #99
l332mn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual rights are not processes of checks and balances. Those rights can be withdrawn in a jiffy, whenever required or convenient. What good does the right to bear arms do you as an individual when you're deemed a dangerous criminal, or as a group when you're deemed a terrorist organization? What good does the right to free speech do you if your speech is inconsequential? > The fact that if a piece of evidence is…

No they can't. It's incredibly hard to amend the Constitution of the United States. That's by design. You need 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate and 3/4 of all states to ratify an amendment in order to change it. 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 t…

Why is it that your comment is greyed out, yet the green accounts willfully misunderstanding US institutions and spreading whataboutism are not?

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#106

Post by squarefoot »

pdonis wrote: post #55
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…

> 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.

In an ideal world that would be the way to go, but I'm not so sure in this one. Those people are masters at fooling voters using the same old tricks: "collecting data helps fighting terrorists", "only those who haven't anything to hide ...", "anonimity helps pedophiles, please think of the children!" etc. So to me that battle is a lost one. Until the day they actually outlaw and prosecute the use or even mere possession of countermeasures (encrypted disks, communication protocols and connections, etc.) I think we're to the point it's time to first implement them and then maybe attempting to solve the social problem the usual ways. Hopefully someone will prove me wrong.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#107

Post by vkou »

cgriswald wrote: post #101
arcticbull wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting down-voted. Yes, constitutional amendments are repealed by the government. A very challenging majority of government officials, yes, but the government.

This is not true in the United States, unless you conflate all the governments within the United States as "the government" and ignore the federal system. In the United States, either Congress or the States may adopt a proposed amendment with a 2/3 vote. However, and importantly, only the States can ratify the amendment with a 3/4 vote. This means that, in the United States, at least, "the government" itself cannot r…

State, federal, it's still the government.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#108

Post by justanotherc »

justanotheranon wrote: post #89
bouchard wrote: post #38

> In Canada key disclosure is covered under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms section 11(c) which states "any person charged with an offence has the right not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence;"[10] and protects the rights of individuals that are both citizens and non-citizens of Canada as long as they are physically present in Canada.[11] >In a 201…

in the Snowden leaks, there is a document that lists the opinions of NSA's legal counsel about a list of collection practices. one of the questions is whether passwords sent across the network are considered metadata or content. NSA legal says passwords are metadata. which means NSA can scan all traffic for passwords and steal them and no FISA warrant is needed, nor a subpoena. of course NSA already has a dozen progr…

What does the NSA have to do with Canadian law? Last I checked we weren't the 51st state...

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#109

Post by justanotherc »

chrisco255 wrote: post #75
casraso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans like to think they are immune to propaganda, or that for some reason other countries produce more of it than they do. What I have observed as someone not living in china or america is that they are roughly on equal footing and produce about as much deceptive trash as any other country, my own included. This means you will have a lot of americans answering your question by saying that america does less surve…

We started putting armed police in schools to defend against school shootings. Not to intimidate students. The school officers here are generally older cops working part time with not much time left before retirement. There still is a fundamental difference in the way that power is broken up in the US between states and federal and between different courts that are widely independent. You have a lot of levers to defe…

> We started putting armed police in schools to defend against school shootings. Not to intimidate students.

Tell that to the 8yr old who had his elbows cuffed painfully behind his back by the school officer because he misbehaved.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#110

Post by nuker »

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?

Always on VPN on all devices? Clear cookies? As a side benefit, people will move away from Google too, Google does not like VPNs.

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