Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

As a European I would argue that we are already living in a police state -- there is so much surveillance here, so many things that would be a violation of the 4th admentment if we had one, so many things that would be a violation of the first admentment -- it is just that we don't like putting people in prison for very long and our media love to take up stories so most of this shit doesn't happen too openly.

Domestic terrorists may very likely have exhibited juvenile anti-social behavior. How likely is the reverse? That is, how likely is it that someone who exhibits juvenile anti-social behavior will eventually be a domestic terrorist?

My money is on "it is very unlikely", and that is a problem.

I have an aquaintance that was falsely accused of vehicular homicide because he had a car whose description was close enough for the police and he had to spend a decade in the legal system fighting for his freedom. And all of this is made possible because the police have access to records of which cars are owned and by whom and they can look at it. Should we not let the police use this information since this one individual was the victim of a false positive match and it cost him 10 years proving it? I mean, he never committed a crime in his life, and yet the police had access to his vehicle driving history / cars registered to him / etc. The had collected that information in advance. But no one called it a "massive surveillance program"

So where does it stop? Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information? What if the information is lost before the need to use it to aid an investigation. Wouldn't it be easier if they just aggregated it ahead of time and looked at it when they needed it?

I guess personally I'm just not seeing the problem. As long as they are simply gathering all information that is legally knowable, what do I care? Why should I care? I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing and I assume large corporations are doing it already. Should it be illegal to gather information on people simply because they didn't authorize it? Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them? I, personally, say no.

One way I'm reading this is that in effect it is illegal to hack a computer without permision; YET a computer can hack you without permision. When you think of it like that it does appear one-sided. This data centre could indicate you thru false positives of a crime and even present enough data to potentualy incriminate you even if you are innocent. Whilst we have managed to lock up innocent people in the past indicating the system is not perfect, the prospect of stepping closer towards automating that does not bode well.

That all said I understand what they are doing and why and it does make sence and if anything will make people realise that online is the same as in person, just better documented.

I fear people are confusing things. Take the analogy of police patrols in streets. They may see all what you do and even control your identity and ask you questions. You may consider this as a frontal aggression to your privacy and right to move around without beeing spied. You may claim it's the same as the gestapo, or your preferred historical reference. It wouldn't be fully wrong.

But see that it has also been understood by your ancestors that it is a price to pay to ensure security of the people. Because while they look at what you do they also look at what bad people do and will detect them most of the time.

The same change is taking place at a country and hopefuly at a world scale by using the new tools available.

Now back to the police patrols. While this has a proven positive effect on ssecurity, this is also a risk because these armed forces walking among us may also be subverted and they may abuse people. This is a real danger and by society evolution and learning mechanisms and rules have been put in place to avoid this.

All I say is that police patrols are unavoidable and needed to ensure security. Our concern should be to focus on the mechanisms and rules put in place to ensure it doesn't go wrong, gets misused or abused.

So I think we agree that there is indeed a danger with this. We may disagree on what the danger is and what we should focus on. This is in par with democracy.