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'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#151

Post by EthanHeilman »

FELICIA-JOY wrote: post #100

The US government spying on citizens is not new at all. It has happened for as long as our nation has been one. It may be more insidious now because the technology to aggregate spying on "we the people" is available. Welcome to the truly post-privacy era. Furthermore, the average person is not outraged by this. Cue the shock and awe for one to ten minutes after the biggest breaking stories about it and after that, fo…

>The US government spying on citizens is not new at all. It has happened for as long as our nation has been one.

The mission and organisational capability of the government as changed dramatically. Nations in the late 18th Century (1776+) didn't have intelligence agencies per se. Some had military intelligence that was focused outward and they had various figures and organisations that would informally engage in domestic espionage usually in an extremely targeted fashion. Remember that formal police departments didn't exist until the 20th Century. Most of what we think of as the Government didn't exist in your Great-Grandfathers time. None the following existed in the US in my Great-Grandfathers time:

1. Intelligence agencies CIA/NSA/CSS/NRO,

2. Dept. of Defense,

3. Welfare,

4. Police Local, State, FBI, DHS,

5. FDA (Drugs were unregulated),

6. Income Tax/IRS,

7. EPA and consumer protection agencies,

8. Public Education in its present form,

9. Federal Reserve Bank

The US Federal Government was the Postal Service to most citizens. It is really important to understand that we are living at the height of Federal power in the history of the US.

The closest thing that Europe pre-18th Century had to the NSA was the Inquisition and it was more focused on "investigation".

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#152

Post by wissler »

kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen...

A child with a proper education in history would not have been surprised. Nor would a child with a proper education think it was perfectly fine to have the institution of government so intrusively involved with the education of children.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#153

Post by espeed »

res0nat0r wrote: post #145
espeed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year Google spent $18,220,000 lobbying Congress -- #8 on the top spenders list ( http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&index... ). That's not fiction, but it's a drop in Google's coffers. And the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec... ) removed the ban which prevented corporations from using their treasury funds for direct…

Google's mission statement is: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It isn't to fall on it's sword and risk the entirety of the company fighting the US government on principale. I'd argue that doing that putting out of work tens of thousands of people in the worst case would "be evil". http://www.google.com/about/

#1 of its core philosophies is:

"Focus on the user and all else will follow." (http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/)

Don't you think safeguarding its users data and keeping their trust would fall under that?

From a business perspective, if Google loses the trust of its users, it's the beginning of the end. Safeguarding user trust should be priority #1.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#154

Post by youngtaff »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #66
rainsford wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly. Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric d…

Well, the whole affair sounds a bit like a he-said, she-said. There are claims that Mr. Miranda was a courier and that they offered a lawyer and water during the 9 hour ordeal. The law office, which represents Mr. Miranda categorically denies that legal representation was ever offered to him, for example. Now, I don't know the truth, but even assuming he had documents they wanted to get their hands on, or files on hi…

The Guardian's lawyer eventually got to see Miranda an hour before he was released.

The Guardian destroyed their own laptops rather than handing them over the to security services (my reading is the security services were concerned about the laptops falling into the wrong hands)

I don't like the way the UK government has behaved but the Guardian is omitting things in it's reports and that leads to questions about its credibility too.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#155

Post by res0nat0r »

espeed wrote: post #153
res0nat0r wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's mission statement is: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It isn't to fall on it's sword and risk the entirety of the company fighting the US government on principale. I'd argue that doing that putting out of work tens of thousands of people in the worst case would "be evil". http://www.google.com/about/

#1 of its core philosophies is: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." ( http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ ) Don't you think safeguarding its users data and keeping their trust would fall under that? From a business perspective, if Google loses the trust of its users, it's the beginning of the end. Safeguarding user trust should be priority #1.

They do safeguard their users data. They also comply with laws under which they are subject to, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#157

Post by twoodfin »

LoganCale wrote: post #118
twoodfin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'd describe what the folks at Bletchley Park did 70 years ago as terrorism?

Spying on military communications during active wartime is part of the game of war and is acceptable. Spying on the general public en masse is not.

That's not what the comment I responded to claimed.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#158

Post by cabalamat »

rahoulb wrote: post #50
cabalamat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While dare say the Guardian isn't perfect (not that it's relevant) I would distrust anything coming from Spiked, a magazine whose modus operandi is to be contrarian on every issue. They are, in effect, professional trolls.

"Spiked" used to be "Living Marxism", which was the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP members I used to know (only a handful) would revel in their own inconsistency - so since the demise of the RCP I can fully understand Spiked carrying on that particular tradition.

> The RCP members I used to know (only a handful) would revel in their own inconsistency

That doesn't surprise me one bit.

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