61–70 of 71 posts
Daniel Solove also wrote a longer version of this in his book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300172338
Daniel Solove also wrote a longer version of this in his book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300172338
He also discussed some of his ideas in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2011: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127... .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the economic crisis finally rocks the US to its foundation. A charismatic but authoritarian leader surfaces (let's name him... I don't know, Hutlor?). Common populace vote him out of desperation based on his promises to bring back US to its place in the world. A few months later Hutlor shows his true face, the government radicalizes and becomes violent. Hutlor's party does NOT like homosexuals. He does not like pe…
Yeah, if you think the US is going to go fascist you're living in a fantasy land. You wouldn't just need a depression, you would need the whole fabric of society to unravel and become as poor as pre WW2 Germany. No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian. Authoritarianism doesn't work in wealthy countries.
Snooping on citizen's private business seems quite fascist to me.
> No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian.
For how long will the US have a high GDP? Every single empire has fallen, even the wealthiest.
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I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, but that's not even close to accurate. Inspections, vague public statements, IRS audits, being followed everywhere, having all your friends "interviewed", being stopped and having your car searched, all your cash confiscated; these things have been used before by the government. As have being killed by a drone. The Church of Scientology has quite a record of effective…
Confiscating your cash would need to be done with some kinda of judicial order, so it's not up to the president or someone who you "pissed off" The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope). The rest of your examples are definitely tools at the disposal of the executive branch, but they're on the same order of bein…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, but that's not even close to accurate. Inspections, vague public statements, IRS audits, being followed everywhere, having all your friends "interviewed", being stopped and having your car searched, all your cash confiscated; these things have been used before by the government. As have being killed by a drone. The Church of Scientology has quite a record of effective…
Confiscating your cash would need to be done with some kinda of judicial order, so it's not up to the president or someone who you "pissed off" The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope). The rest of your examples are definitely tools at the disposal of the executive branch, but they're on the same order of bein…
In the US your assets can be seized by the police before you are convicted. This is especially the case with drug related matters. This website has details (and advocacy) http://www.fear.org
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This is a huge problem with a surveillance state. Everyone has something which you can use against them. This means that if you piss off wrong people you're going to jail. Otherwise not. Possible implications to politic balance are astounding.
"This means that if you piss off wrong people you're going to jail." Except that's not the reality. The reality is that if Obama really really hates someone and wants to make their life miserable, the most he can do it make it hard for him to fly (ie. the no-fly list). The government is constrained in what it can do, surveillance and omniscience doesn't change that.
When, before or after they do it anyway, legal or not?
I'm all for bringing the most reasoned arguments to bear, but what I think we need immediately are the best way of explaining this to the apathetic and people who buy into the argument by default. We need sound bites, we need tweets and FB messages, we need short commentary that cuts to the heart of the issue in a way that can wake people up. I'm not big into politics, but seeing the apathy in the media and general i…
- There are thousands of laws and regulations, many quite vague in their application. Even the government can't tell their exact number. Are you sure you are not violating any of them?
- Even if you've done nothing illegal, if they really have to get you all they need to do is dig dirt on someone close to you. Are you still ok with mass surveillance? Everyone's got a cousin with a drug problem or something similar.
- If you want to plan a surprise trip to Hawaii for your spouse, is it OK to want to keep it a secret? Does the "nothing illegal -> nothing to hide" argument hold here?
- If you are a creative person, would you like your new novel or album to be leaked from your DropBox, Gmail or some other account to the world?
- Why would Apple hide its new products until the official release? Would it be OK for their trade secrets to be laid bare? After all, they are fully legal, thus, nothing to hide?
- If you are in business, bidding for contracts, would you like to have your communications observed by potentially rival entities?
- You have an email account with spam filters? They can label homosexuals, liberals, tea partiers and such just as easily as they label a spam.
- Do you use Google? Google makes use of a network analysis algorithm called Page Rank. In a similar way, Big Brother could rank people by their social influence (I believe FB calls its version 'EdgeRank'). They could get a list of "100 top influencers" in any social network. They could do that with the metadata from phone calls alone.
- Would it be OK for the government to know who's organizing protests against them? To have blackmail material on their opponents?
- Even with phone metadata alone they could see our social networks and movements. That would give them powerful inside information from what is considered mostly harmless data. It's not in each data point alone, it's in their aggregate that such information emerges.
- Is it OK for the government to monitor the communications of lawyers, doctors and psychologists? We entrust them with our most sensitive information.
- What will be the impact of mass surveillance on social activism? Don't we need to counter balance the government any more? Do we trust these guys implicitly?
- Information is power. Massive, asymmetrical information. They know about you everything, you know nothing about them or how they are using your info.
- In the future this database could be leaked and then you'd become blackmail-able by third entities. Imagine what the mafia would do with a database of people's secrets. If Snowden was able to get his hands on it and leak it, don't you think mafia could do the same? They could use a mole inside NSA to extract blackmail material. Hell, NSA might trade information on you with anyone if they get an advantage. Maybe NSA needs to place an informant using the mafia, while mafia wants some dirt on legitimate people and businesses to extract money from them.
- In the future all countries will (if they are not already) intercept their digital communications. The logic goes: everyone is doing it, so we need to do it too, otherwise we'd be at a disadvantage and not be able to defend ourselves. Imagine a world in which not just NSA, but hundreds of entities, national or corporate, have data on you. They could use that data for whatever interest they have. You could be indirectly targeted just for being associated with a certain person or company.
- Searching terrorists by statistical analysis of people's data doesn't work so well. The problem is mathematical: say there is just one terrorist in a million people. Even if you have a system that is 99.9% accurate, that means 1000 people flagged. That's one thousand false matches for one potential true one. Those people would then be harassed and investigated even though they are innocent. The system is bad in principle. It doesn't do so well on account that terrorists are few and normal people many. If you had a company that produced 999 defected products for every good one, would that be acceptable?
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Well, sure, there's always the armed populace, but that is inherently illegal rebellion against the government, and it would be violently resisted by the government. (And, for the record, almost everyone I know owns guns, and that percentage was even higher before I moved to San Francisco.) But even though founding fathers wrote about the inevitability and even duty to violently resist an oppressive government, that'…
You're wrong. The constitutions of New Hampshire, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas allow for the people to abolish the government.
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I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, but that's not even close to accurate. Inspections, vague public statements, IRS audits, being followed everywhere, having all your friends "interviewed", being stopped and having your car searched, all your cash confiscated; these things have been used before by the government. As have being killed by a drone. The Church of Scientology has quite a record of effective…
Confiscating your cash would need to be done with some kinda of judicial order, so it's not up to the president or someone who you "pissed off" The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope). The rest of your examples are definitely tools at the disposal of the executive branch, but they're on the same order of bein…
Because "backlash" stops people with enough incentive from regularly getting rid of people that inconvenience them.