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The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

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Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#41

Post by Retric »

mythrwy wrote: post #33
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACLU is a finite organization that needs to chose which battles to fight. Suggesting their not doing enough because they don’t prioritize your issues generally means you should be funding some other organization. https://www.eff.org/ for example may better fit your personal beliefs.

They are actively supporting civil non-liberties now though, in print. They are not what they used to be.

The odd thing about civil liberties is they also curtail other freedoms. The right to own property means the right to exclude others from your property. Trial by a jury of your peers means jury duty etc.

If you have fundamental disagreements around these issues you really can’t blame the organization for not doing enough. Them doing more or less isn’t the problem, them having other priorities is.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#42

Post by hypothesis »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #17
maxfurman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being trans is not a protected class, so discrimination against trans people is legal in many states. On top of that, states keep passing unconstitutional anti-trans bills like NC's famous "bathroom bill," which someone has to fight in court

Trans people have basic civil liberties already. You can't kill them, they can own property, they can work a job, they can rent a house without discrimination (legally at least), and so forth. Bathroom bills, on the other hand, require acceptance by everyone that they are who they say they are. And to put it simply, half of America (roughly speaking) doesn't find that convincing. To them, who are these people who wou…

> You can't kill them

I welcome you to the real world: “trans panic defense”.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#43

Post by specialist »

Scanned this article.

I remain ambivalent about ACLU's efforts to defend privacy rights.

What is privacy? What would ACLU's future perfect privacy protecting world look like? How, specifically, does our world differ from that world? Is the ACLU just rearranging the deck chairs, as The Titanic sinks?

This is a complicated topic.

Firstly, I don't trust that the ACLU understands our current surveillance economy. One important facet is Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism critique. How private and public, foreign and domestic interact. By analogy, it's like trying to talk about criminal cartels, focusing just on drugs, and ignoring human trafficking, arms trade, finance, and state actors.

Secondly, I'm not convinced that mass surveillance is entirely ineffective. Wholly I agree that it's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, overwrought, wicked expensive, and overreaching. But in our reform efforts, I want an account of how our intelligence services performed. I simply cannot believe that there haven't been many more attempted terrorist attacks. Foreign and domestic. And I get that for national security, these same services cannot publicly take credit for their successes. So maybe we can infer how much benefit surveillance yielded thru some kind of meta analysis.

I care about privacy a great deal. As an election integrity activist, I defended voter privacy (with some minor policy wins). As a geek, I designed and implemented electronic medical record exchanges.

And yet I feel I still don't know what privacy is. Or what the trade offs are.

I recently heard Jill Lepore's recap of the very first privacy debates, at the dawn of the IT revolution. Sadly, as someone who's been working in privacy, most of what she discussed was news to me.

Right now I feel we simply need a do over. Start the whole debate from scratch. Get down to first principles.

--

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

The Computer-men https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-7-the-comput...

"In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were being imagined, the federal government considered building a National Data Center."

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#44

Post by lavabiopsy »

fallingknife wrote: post #40
lavabiopsy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, there has been a flurry of anti-trans legislation passed in the last year: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/anti-transgender-leg... And violence against trans people has also increased this year: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/14/us-trans-trans... Two years ago, many trans people were banned from serving in the US military. The ban was reversed earlier this year, but that's kind…

As much as I want the government to stay out of bathroom policies, there's no recognized right to use whatever bathroom you want. Nor is there any right to join the military.

I'm not sure what you mean. Recognized by who? If you meant government officials, that's specifically the point: some may not recognize that it is a right, so the goal is to get them to recognize that it is.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#45

Post by gjsman-1000 »

Beldin wrote: post #32
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans people have basic civil liberties already. You can't kill them, they can own property, they can work a job, they can rent a house without discrimination (legally at least), and so forth. Bathroom bills, on the other hand, require acceptance by everyone that they are who they say they are. And to put it simply, half of America (roughly speaking) doesn't find that convincing. To them, who are these people who wou…

I would think the government making laws banning folks from using certain bathrooms is very much a civil liberties issue. But maybe it's common for US States to have laws telling men they are barred from women's toilets and vice versa, and everyone accepts those? To me that sounds preposterous, but in such a society I could see the discussion arise. TL;DR: if you substitute "trans" for "blacks" (or any other offensiv…

Your TLDR doesn't work always. If you substitute a million terms, "murderer community," "pedophile community," "MAGA community," "unvaccinated community," does it still work? You might still support trans rights, but can accept this isn't a very good defense.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#46

Post by slibhb »

owl_troupe wrote: post #35
AntwaneB wrote: post #10

After reading the post, I fail to see any connection between 9/11 and the fact that mass surveillance is not the way forward. The article is also empty of any reason WHY mass surveillance would not be the way forward, or even why it should not be. This is a particularly useless article.

OK I'll bite. From this article: >The public learned about the NSA’s “PRISM” and “Upstream” programs, which involve [...] warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications on a massive scale. The US executive branch engineered an automated, massive breach of the constitutional rights of US citizens and the rights of people abroad. > The executive branch’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board…

The article provides no principle by which we can say that mass surveillance is wrong. It does observe (per your quote) that mass surveillance has not worked very well. This raises an obvious question: if mass survillance did work well, would it be acceptable?

The broader point here is that there are arguments against mass surveillance on principle, the ACLU just doesn't find them convincing.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#47

Post by gjsman-1000 »

hypothesis wrote: post #42
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans people have basic civil liberties already. You can't kill them, they can own property, they can work a job, they can rent a house without discrimination (legally at least), and so forth. Bathroom bills, on the other hand, require acceptance by everyone that they are who they say they are. And to put it simply, half of America (roughly speaking) doesn't find that convincing. To them, who are these people who wou…

> You can't kill them I welcome you to the real world: “trans panic defense”. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

And we're getting rid of it. But that's over the right not to get killed - not the same as having people accept you in the bathroom.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#48

Post by gjsman-1000 »

gambiting wrote: post #34
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans people have basic civil liberties already. You can't kill them, they can own property, they can work a job, they can rent a house without discrimination (legally at least), and so forth. Bathroom bills, on the other hand, require acceptance by everyone that they are who they say they are. And to put it simply, half of America (roughly speaking) doesn't find that convincing. To them, who are these people who wou…

>>To them, who are these people who would invade their right to bathroom privacy? Do their rights not matter? Can you please tell us which rights are being violated here exactly, I'm super curious. Most people just go into a stall, close the door, do their business and leave - who cares if they are trans or not. Do you peek into people's pants when you go into a public bathroom??

Maybe you are a mom who is changing an infant, and having a trans person (because they can sometimes be off-putting) enter the room is disturbing enough to be on a similar emotional level to a trans person being denied bathroom access. You might say, well whatever, she's transphobic - but you are prioritizing the trans' persons emotions over the mom's however you slice it.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#49

Post by hitekker »

Retric wrote: post #41
mythrwy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are actively supporting civil non-liberties now though, in print. They are not what they used to be.

The odd thing about civil liberties is they also curtail other freedoms. The right to own property means the right to exclude others from your property. Trial by a jury of your peers means jury duty etc. If you have fundamental disagreements around these issues you really can’t blame the organization for not doing enough. Them doing more or less isn’t the problem, them having other priorities is.

You might want to read this article and the HN comments around it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920.

The GP is not arguing against your political positions, but pointing out that an organization which use to focus & care about one position no longer seems to.

Re: The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward

#50

Post by specialist »

Beldin wrote: post #25
AntwaneB wrote: post #10

After reading the post, I fail to see any connection between 9/11 and the fact that mass surveillance is not the way forward. The article is also empty of any reason WHY mass surveillance would not be the way forward, or even why it should not be. This is a particularly useless article.

I've encountered this statement before. Without reading the article, here's the argumentation I heard: Basically, the perpetrators were already known - there basically was already (close to) enough information to foresee serious problems (in hindsight * ), just no one connecting the dots. Adding mass surveillance to this doesn't make things easier: signals were already swamped under, that's not going to improve just…

I've read many scathing critiques of intel services preferring SIGINT over HUMINT. Hard to disagree.
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