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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

#71

Post by throwawaysea »

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…

Surveillance of public spaces with some controls (like needing just cause or warrants or a human in the loop) seems appropriate and obviously useful. This would allow police departments to more easily track and apprehend criminal suspects. I don’t believe the frequency of biased policing to be significant enough to offset the clear boost to pubic safety this would bring.

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

#72

Post by PartiallyTyped »

Ekaros wrote: post #20
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Australia and Apple's CSAM programme are any indication, we are moving to a new era of mass surveillance enabled by ML.

That sounds absolutely scary... ML with thing we haven't used properly with humans in loop. So we don't even have proper good data for it...

That's a significantly naive view of things that stays on first step and utterly ignores implications and possible subsequent steps.

Given enough compute, CSAM detection can become part of the display pipeline, whereby the display is checked, in realtime, against some set of known "hashes", effectively providing a limited form of real time tracking of observed behaviour.

The fact that it exists, indicates that governments may use it to circumvent E2EE, or as I mention above, achieve so much more. Apple has been known to cave in to China and other countries.

If Apple does it, then odds are everyone will follow suite due to external pressures. This has _always_ been the case.

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

#73

Post by slibhb »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #69
slibhb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm confused. At the top of the second paragraph, it explicitly mentions the erosion of privacy rights. Isn't that a valid principle upon which to oppose mass surveillance without cause? Then there's this entire paragraph: > The human toll of government surveillance is undeniable. It can have far-reaching consequences for people’s lives — particularly for communities of color, who are wrongly and disproportionately s…

> I'm confused. At the top of the second paragraph, it explicitly mentions the erosion of privacy rights. Isn't that a valid principle upon which to oppose mass surveillance without cause?

"We should oppose surveillance because we have privacy rights". Sounds like a tautology. It raises the question: why should we have privacy rights?

The long passage you quoted enumerates negative consequences of surveillance. We should have privacy because democracy depends on it, we should have privacy because surveillance doesn't work, surveillance is racist (how trendy), etc. What's missing, in my opinion, is an assertion that people have a fundamental right to privacy solely based on their being human. That's a natural rights perspective, I think it's indispensible, and I think it's unfortunate that we (not just the ACLU) no longer find it convincing.

As long as we justify our rights based on contingent circumstances they will always be up for debate.

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

#74

Post by haberman »

pseudalopex wrote: post #70
haberman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement about voting rights is particularly rich, given that the ACLU just won a lawsuit in Seattle to remove Charter Amendment 29 from the ballot for this fall's election. https://www.aclu-wa.org/news/transit-riders-union-seattlekin... Charter Amendment 29 is (was?) a popular measure concerning homelessness that polls at around 60% in Seattle, with only 20% opposed. The ACLU sued to remove it from the ballot o…

You're scandalized a civil liberties organization opposed putting a minority's liberties to a vote? > But in their filing they stated their core opposition to the bill in this way: "Moreover, allowing homelessness policy to be established by local initiative would open a floodgate to local initiative and referenda on homelessness, which could be used to further criminalize homelessness or derail action to address aff…

> You're scandalized a civil liberties organization opposed putting a minority's liberties to a vote?

That is a very creative way of framing a charter amendment that proposed to build 2,000 units of emergency housing for the homeless who are currently sleeping on the streets and in parks.

If there was a strong civil liberties argument here, why didn't the ACLU make it? Why did the entire legal argument rest on a claim that the measure conflicts with other state and local laws? The lawsuit did not cite any instances where this charter amendment actually violates any civil liberty of the homeless.

The ACLU is part of a progressive establishment that believes that the homeless must be allowed to continue sleeping on the streets and in parks, even if shelter options are available. They believe that we must spend until the homeless are enticed to choose shelter, and if they do not choose it, the only option is to spend more. I am against sweeping homeless camps when no other option is available, but I do not think it is reasonable if parks are occupied by encampments of homeless who have decided not to take offers of shelter.

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

#75

Post by pintxo »

slibhb wrote: post #56
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't actually need to worry about your obvious question, because it doesn't work . Yours is hypothetical. (And hypothetical questions can be interesting. Also, it can be good to have answers while they're still hypothetical, because sometimes they quit being hypothetical, sometimes very abruptly. But for the current discussion, we can reject mass surveillance on pragmatic grounds without worrying about the theore…

It's not obvious that mass surveillance doesn't work. It seems to work pretty well for the Chinese. Anyway, we have a mass surveillance program because people thought it would work. Perhaps we could have avoided the program if we had more people in that room who had effectively argued that, even if it worked, it was not to be pursued for reasons that have nothing to do with its efficacy. Sometimes principles come in…

Not sure the efficacy of mass surveillance can be determined within timespans of less than several decades. As there seem to be two major effects at play, one is the direct usage of information learned from mass surveillance which can be used by the surveyors. I can only assume this is the "works pretty well" you refer to. On the other hand, there are the (indirect) effects of mass surveillance on the surveyed population. Maybe the best example here is the GDR, which had a massive surveillance operations run by the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). They might have well delayed the ultimate dissolution of the GDR, but ultimately they could not stop it.

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

#76

Post by actually_a_dog »

slibhb wrote: post #73
actually_a_dog wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. At the top of the second paragraph, it explicitly mentions the erosion of privacy rights. Isn't that a valid principle upon which to oppose mass surveillance without cause? Then there's this entire paragraph: > The human toll of government surveillance is undeniable. It can have far-reaching consequences for people’s lives — particularly for communities of color, who are wrongly and disproportionately s…

> I'm confused. At the top of the second paragraph, it explicitly mentions the erosion of privacy rights. Isn't that a valid principle upon which to oppose mass surveillance without cause? "We should oppose surveillance because we have privacy rights". Sounds like a tautology. It raises the question: why should we have privacy rights? The long passage you quoted enumerates negative consequences of surveillance. We sh…

Well, you've got a problem, then. You don't get rights just for being born. You only get rights within the context of a society that has agreed to respect those rights.

Consider this: if you have rights simply because you are human, then there must be something different about humans that gives them those rights, which chimps and bonobos don't have. What is that?

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

#77

Post by slibhb »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #76
slibhb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confused. At the top of the second paragraph, it explicitly mentions the erosion of privacy rights. Isn't that a valid principle upon which to oppose mass surveillance without cause? "We should oppose surveillance because we have privacy rights". Sounds like a tautology. It raises the question: why should we have privacy rights? The long passage you quoted enumerates negative consequences of surveillance. We sh…

Well, you've got a problem, then. You don't get rights just for being born. You only get rights within the context of a society that has agreed to respect those rights. Consider this: if you have rights simply because you are human, then there must be something different about humans that gives them those rights, which chimps and bonobos don't have. What is that?

You're proving my point. You don't find the idea of natural rights convincing. That's exactly what I wrote. The problem is that, in your framework, there will always be a good reason to violate people's rights. "If we don't spy on people, the terrorists will blow us up" sounds silly today but it convinced people after 9/11. As did "we have to torture these people to prevent a terrorist attack".

I agree with you that this is linked to a distinction between humans and animals. The fact that we no longer find that distinction convincing is linked to the fact that we no longer find natural rights convincing.

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

#78

Post by lavabiopsy »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #14
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACLU has been useless as a civil rights organization for quite some time. If you haven't already, I'd say it's definitely time to find a new defender of these sorts of issues.

The ACLU has let the government increase surveillance, force mask usage, and now enforce vaccine usage across millions during the pandemic. They're staying silent because they agree with the policies - and you may too - but there is no denying that in terms of invasion of personal freedom it's very great and they're turning a blind eye to it.

With the pandemic you have it exactly backwards, the goal of mask and vaccine mandates is actually to increase personal freedom and civil liberty, by preventing spread of the virus that has already claimed many lives.

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

#79

Post by actually_a_dog »

slibhb wrote: post #77
actually_a_dog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you've got a problem, then. You don't get rights just for being born. You only get rights within the context of a society that has agreed to respect those rights. Consider this: if you have rights simply because you are human, then there must be something different about humans that gives them those rights, which chimps and bonobos don't have. What is that?

You're proving my point. You don't find the idea of natural rights convincing. That's exactly what I wrote. The problem is that, in your framework, there will always be a good reason to violate people's rights. "If we don't spy on people, the terrorists will blow us up" sounds silly today but it convinced people after 9/11. As did "we have to torture these people to prevent a terrorist attack". I agree with you that…

I'm open to being convinced, if you're open to trying.

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

#80

Post by TeeMassive »

Retric wrote: post #31
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACLU has let the government increase surveillance, force mask usage, and now enforce vaccine usage across millions during the pandemic. They're staying silent because they agree with the policies - and you may too - but there is no denying that in terms of invasion of personal freedom it's very great and they're turning a blind eye to it.

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.

The ACLU chose its case mostly in terms of the impact they will have. This is why the ACLU used to defend the KKK's 1st amendment rights even as recently as 2012. Now many of its members, even high profile ones, are arguing for the suppression of speech; justified by the Marxist ideological thinking that it mostly benefits "those in power" (https://archive.is/tL7Rj)
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