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Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

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21–30 of 96 posts

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the survey was properly randomized, then it's actually probably true that you don't understand statistics...

Depends on the types of people who are likely to give up their phone number for national political polling reasons, and in that subset, I'd think that is hardly random.

They don't go out and canvass for phone numbers first. If they don't include cell phone numbers it's possible to bias more towards older persons, but that wouldn't invalidate the survey either.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#22
post #17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that this doesn't surprise you. My question is: why would it surprise anyone? It's not just that most Americans don't believe they have anything to hide from NSA. It's that they don't have anything to hide from NSA. I'm not invoking the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument; I have stuff I need to keep hidden. But most people really don't , and especially not from NSA.

Yeah. You'll get me too pull out my pitchfork if there is ever evidence this is being used for anything other than national security, I haven't seen that. IMO, the first shady use of this would most likely be the war on drugs, if we see that happen than I'll start getting worried.

Hey: my pitchfork is already within arm's reach. My "problem" over the last couple days is shoddy reporting and rush to judgement, especially with things like "OMG Palantir is even named after the all-seeing eye in Lord of the Rings, they must be in on it".

It's not OK if NSA is hoovering all communications in the US and sifting for national security issues, and that does appear to be what happened with Verizon/ATT/Sprint (though it does not appear to be true of Google and Facebook).

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#23
I think we need to make a choice as a society where the line is drawn. We chose to allow privilege for religious, medical, and legal conversations. Sure, in individual cases, it would be better to get the data from someone's confession, but overall, it's better for society (or people decided) to allow those conversations to encourage religious confession.

Maybe there needs to be special protection for certain classes of cloud service, computing service, or communication. Certainly allowing people to use an "exocortex" without fear of seizure would make people smarter. It might make some crimes harder to punish.

Luckily, technology gets a vote, too.

I think a clear/easy line is that anything which is "personal thought" or approximates thought should be immune to search, ideally though technical means. Notes (for yourself), a journal, etc. Maybe "quantified self" measurements. etc.

The line is probably in a different place than in the telephone era, or even the disconnected Internet era.

I'd prefer it be defined through legislation (and maybe through constitutional amendment) vs. through legal decisions. The problem with legal decisions is they tend to involve criminal cases, and "a person was keeping a personal diary of his child rapes" is an exceptionally hard thing to argue privacy for, even if that's only 0.001% of the use case enabled by making personal notes private.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#25
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic behind this comment. Surveillance against criminals doesn't work if the criminals have to opt-in to the surveillance.

In theory, that's why we have the notion of "probable cause" and warrants, etc. But what we have instead, is a "rubber stamp" mechanism from a secret court which - essentially - is completely free from an accountability to the American people. Given that, I don't really care so much what the NSA tries to do... I now realize that the real answer is promotion, advocacy and education around technological tools to evade…

All federal courts are (basically) free from public accountability. That is literally one of the objectives of the design of the Judicial Branch; complain to the founding fathers.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#26
post #7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I've mentioned this for surveys in the past and I keep getting told I don't understand statistics.

If the survey was properly randomized, then it's actually probably true that you don't understand statistics...

It's true, I've never taken a statistics course. But, if the experts tell me a 0.0003% sample size is fine so long as it's the RIGHT 0.0003%, then I guess I'll have to concede the point.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#27
post #11

That's because a majority of Americans don't believe they have anything to hide, or that the stuff they do want to hide is probably so mundane to the average government official that they assume they wouldn't care. I'm guessing the way the survey question is posed has a lot to do with the outcome. Take out the word "terrorism" and I'm sure support would drop. Add the phrase "personal information" and I'm sure it woul…

I get the sense that this doesn't surprise you. My question is: why would it surprise anyone? It's not just that most Americans don't believe they have anything to hide from NSA. It's that they don't have anything to hide from NSA. I'm not invoking the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument; I have stuff I need to keep hidden. But most people really don't , and especially not from NSA.

But most people really don't, and especially not from NSA.

How can we say that though, when we don't really know what the NSA is collecting, what they are doing with it, who they are sharing it with, etc.? The actual data collection per-se aside, one of the biggest problems with this whole setup is that we have allowed the development of a "shadow government" (not in the conspiracy theory sense, mind you) that lacks effective oversight (Congress is not sufficient oversight in my book), and is barely - if at all - accountable to the American people. Between the NSA, the CIA, the FISA courts, and FSM knows what other agencies - as well as "National Security Letters" and "gag orders" - we have a monster on our hands that we barely know anything about.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#28
I think I would vote for allowing call logs to be trackable by the NSA. Maybe other things like that, with some checks in place (mostly to prevent this data getting out of their hands).

But I want to know about these trade-offs, and I don't care if that makes them less effective.

There's no way NSA should be looking at private email, phone, VOIP, social networking communication en masse.

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#29
post #19

Keep in mind many Americans have never traveled outside the country, they are fed a constant diet of bullshit by our media alternating between frantic fear-mongering and gushing American paternalism, and simply don't stop to think about what is actually going on. I would call them complete morons but that is unkind. Incurious and ignorant and perhaps far too trusting is perhaps more polite.

What's the polite word for elitist?

"Realist speaking from experience"

Re: Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

#30
post #19

Keep in mind many Americans have never traveled outside the country, they are fed a constant diet of bullshit by our media alternating between frantic fear-mongering and gushing American paternalism, and simply don't stop to think about what is actually going on. I would call them complete morons but that is unkind. Incurious and ignorant and perhaps far too trusting is perhaps more polite.

What's the polite word for elitist?

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