Of course it will pass. The government will never willingly give up power and will only seek ways to expand it.
[deleted]
Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
131–140 of 192 posts
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minimal is defined in the Constitution. It explicitly says we give the federal government limited powers and no more.
It defines a proscribed set of powers but doesn't say the use of those must be minimized. On top of all of that all the powers currently used have either been ruled constitutional, are untested extensions of tested uses of powers, or haven't been challenged/are currently being challenged, we can all have our own opinions about what the Constitution does and doesn't allow but within the system defined the only opinion…
I agree that it is our country and we get to shape it as we wish. But we should build on what came before. The Constitution is pretty damn good but obviously not perfect. I believe that the identifying feature of the Constitution isn't so much the words on the page but the underlying message. The whole of the Constitution espouses an idea that we, as a people, and individuals will agree to live under laws of the defined government IF the government stays in the bounds defined in the Constitution. If the government breaks their end of the deal all bets are off. In that sense SCOTUS constitutionality rulings are meaningless. If ruled constitutionality is different than the people's understanding of the Constitution it creates a sense of tyranny. If there are too many rulings that people feel are unconstitutional they will not tolerate it. The Constitution says it is the right of the people to replace their government. It doesn't say it has to be peaceful.
I would much rather see people participate in their own governance and take back control of the government peacefully before it is intolerable. However, history makes me fearful of a possible violent upheaval.
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot have unprotected, open borders for decades, and then expect to identify and track foreign internal threats AND not provide the USGOV the means to detect and surveil. We cannot assume that because we're an HN regular who thinks power corrupts (it certainly does) the cost of that corruption is greater than what we pay if/when a foreign adversary acts against the US.…
Fun fact, "open borders" is a complete myth.
"Borders with a lot of CVEs?"
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#134The FBI director straight up admits that they violate the 4th amendment routinely, and then begs Congress to not ruin their precious workaround. And yet they will face no punishment whatsoever. Like another commenter said, many people were probably unconstitutionally charged via parallel construction thanks to this crap.
FBI director in his exchange with Senator Lee [1] claims this : the case law shows that 702 doesn't violate 4A. However, Sen Lee retorts back with 'FISA court doesn't even given standing to people who wants to litigate this'. So, Secret courts, lack of standing is what the relevant case law boils down to: if people are not permitted to litigate, no case law is established or challenged.
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#135As an engineer, what I want to see is metrics. Bar charts for events the surveillance program helped with: y = count of terrorist plots stopped, x = time bucket y = cost of surveillance programs, x = time bucket y = count of petty crimes caught, x = time bucket y = count of total analyst caught abusing power, x = time bucket y = count of total Americans profiles, x = time bucket y = count of total world wide profiles…
What's to stop them from just making up numbers?
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#136As an engineer, what I want to see is metrics. Bar charts for events the surveillance program helped with: y = count of terrorist plots stopped, x = time bucket y = cost of surveillance programs, x = time bucket y = count of petty crimes caught, x = time bucket y = count of total analyst caught abusing power, x = time bucket y = count of total Americans profiles, x = time bucket y = count of total world wide profiles…
Because of metrics, easy tasks in scrum/agile are transformed into monstrous little tasks, spanning five months. Same thing with law enforcement: they find some mentally deranged person in KS, lays a trap to ensnare him in terrorism charges. Yes, 'our dragnet' captured this many number of terrorists (that is, y).
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> government will never willingly give up power Governments regularly do this. One of the greatest losses for privacy advocates over the last generation is this brand of nihilism making the issue electorally useless.
what are some recent examples of governments giving up power?
The border.
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#138As an engineer, what I want to see is metrics. Bar charts for events the surveillance program helped with: y = count of terrorist plots stopped, x = time bucket y = cost of surveillance programs, x = time bucket y = count of petty crimes caught, x = time bucket y = count of total analyst caught abusing power, x = time bucket y = count of total Americans profiles, x = time bucket y = count of total world wide profiles…
What's to stop them from just making up numbers?
this was a plot point of The Wire, where the mayor ran on a campaign of reducing murders. The murder rate dropped--but a zillion other stats came up, because the officers were fudging the classifications of the crimes to try and achieve the metric goal.
Fictional, but it makes a poignant point about needing to deeply understand how metrics are collected and recorded to be confident in the conclusions drawn from them.
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#139As an engineer, what I want to see is metrics. Bar charts for events the surveillance program helped with: y = count of terrorist plots stopped, x = time bucket y = cost of surveillance programs, x = time bucket y = count of petty crimes caught, x = time bucket y = count of total analyst caught abusing power, x = time bucket y = count of total Americans profiles, x = time bucket y = count of total world wide profiles…
What's to stop them from just making up numbers?
They already do. Entrapment then reclaim they prevented a threat they came up with. Claim on a daily basis that they’ve prevented “hundreds” of 9/11 equivalents and no one presses for proof. Or when a new reporter that doesn’t know the rules does ask for proof, they get “classified for national security reasons.”
So, no. Please don’t give me BS charts and graphs to make it easier for fed-apologists to point and play security theater.
Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?
#140Of course it will pass. The government will never willingly give up power and will only seek ways to expand it.
> government will never willingly give up power Governments regularly do this. One of the greatest losses for privacy advocates over the last generation is this brand of nihilism making the issue electorally useless.
Nihilism and expressions of futility are not the same thing, fyi. In this case, if the original poster were nihilistic, they would not care one way or another about privacy. It would be meaningless, like everything else.
And the original poster remains correct about power. Power is never willingly given up by an institution (it can, however, be given up by individuals, when they decide that there is something more important than power). That is why we (assuming USA, here) have divided government, so power cannot ever be concentrated in any one branch. In this case, the hearing on 702 is being held by one branch, congress, to decide whether to limit or expand the power of another branch, the executive. It’s an important distinction; without that separation there really would be no hope to restore basic privacy.