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It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

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Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#111

Post by notahacker »

XorNot wrote: post #54
notahacker wrote: post #26

I'm a bit confused by the whole "liberty needs a lobbyist" argument. Lobbying for what exactly? Intelligence agencies to pretend to stop spying on you? I think that's as much as you can reasonably hope for lobbying to achieve. The wider implications are earlier in the article. Wearable recording devices and biometric security devices shared in the cloud? Probably better to assume the government will compromise them i…

I'm constantly amazed that its like everyone has suddenly forgotten that during Occupy Wall St, protests before and since, and the entire Arab Spring revolution, it was portable and mobile recording devices widely dispersed amongst the populace that enabled successful revolution against government and evidence and checks of the abuses of power of police and other authorities.

To an extent, yes. Whether open communication aids or harms you depends on whose misdemeanours you're communicating, and to whom.

Two years on from Arab Spring, there are grainy new videos posted of abuses of power in Egypt every day. Whereas on the 27th January 2011, Mubarak's government was so disconcerted by the volume of criticism it was getting it actually largely succeeded in switching the internet off...

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#112

Post by amag »

I find it ironic that the reason for all this surveillance and data-gathering is to protect people from terrorists. Terrorism isn't about killing people, it's about making us all afraid (terrified). That fear will then lead us to limit our personal freedom.

We say: "Please Mr. Government, protect us from the evil terrorists" and with that we give the government the mandate to introduce massive surveillance.

As the magnitude of the surveillance starts to dawn on us, we start censuring ourselves online, not to risk a visit from the men in black. Even if what we do online today isn't illegal, laws will change and it's not unheard of people being persecuted for their political/religious alignment, even in western countries, even today.

So we shrivel and crawl back into the hole we crawled out of and wait for change.

All this is perfectly aligned with what the terrorists want. So they won. We killed them, but they won. As long as we are guided by our fear of terrorism, as long as we let our countries be guided by our fear of terrorism, the terrorists have won.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#113

Post by ForHackernews »

freshhawk wrote: post #100

I find it strange that the assumption is made that "Silicon Valley" is clearly going to be on the side of the general public in this. Why? Isn't the smart money going to side with the real power? If those well connected enough to attempt to predict things see the odds of the US rolling back the surveillance state to be low and the odds of the levels of surveillance growing then certainly brokering user data and devel…

I think the argument is that Google and others stand to lose a great deal of business around the world if they're seen as a front for US government intelligence agencies. That gives them a real financial interest in opposing this kind of surveillance.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#114

Post by angersock »

jumby wrote: post #92
angersock wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to live in a utopia to see that doing the right thing despite being afraid and aware of existential threats is something worth doing.

Would your opinion change if a nuclear bomb was detonated in Houston, TX?

Nope.

In fact, the thing that would bring the best rest to my soul would be the expectation of my fellow citizens to pick up the next day where they left off.

You win by showing your opponent that whatever they do it does not matter. That's true strength.

You know how many rigs, refineries, and lives we've lost building our energy sector? How many times Galveston has gotten back after getting wiped off the map by hurricanes?

We're strong, we're stubborn, and we rebuild and recover from any disaster without giving into fear. That's the legacy I want to leave.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#115

Post by angersock »

Cookingboy wrote: post #93
angersock wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's just admit the moral highground here, and take a stand: These people are Wrong. We are Right, because we stand for personal privacy and liberty--ideals incompatible with their ideals. There's the line in the sand.

No there isn't a line in the sand. It's a gray issue. Ideologies and society values change throughout the history, and there is not right or wrong answer in many of those cases. Like a poster above mentioned, what IF thousands of lives are saved by sacrificing the privacy of a few million people? Is that worth it? If you say no, then what if I ask you the lives could be that of your loved ones? Just want to stress fr…

The other side is coming from fear.

"Just want to stress from a different perspective, my family grew up poor in a 3rd world country, and they laugh at American's obsession with human rights and they just say "that's what people do if they never needed to worry about putting food on their table"."

And you know why it's a 3rd world country? Because they lived how they had to and not how they ought to. Progress is not made by simply putting food on one's table.

EDIT:

Look, moral relativism has its place and all, but it lacks explanatory power. Waffling because there's no objective factual right way of doing things keeps you from doing anything meaningful--it's the cowards' way out.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#116

Post by njharman »

> The US government says the surveillance is necessary to thwart terrorists.

Even if it is necessary, that does not mean it should automatically be allowed. Liberty is not "free". People have died for it and people will die for it in the future. And Liberty is worth that cost.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#117

Post by jlgreco »

jumby wrote: post #92
angersock wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to live in a utopia to see that doing the right thing despite being afraid and aware of existential threats is something worth doing.

Would your opinion change if a nuclear bomb was detonated in Houston, TX?

Is that the sort of scenario that keeps you up late at night? That isn't normal. Normal people do not spend their time worrying that Texas is going to get nuked. You should probably talk with somebody about that.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#118

Post by PavlovsCat »

tptacek wrote: post #70
duairc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Deleuze quote about this that I really like: “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality”. What I understand this to mean is that the nature of “rationality” is such that a rational person can rationalize anything . Nobody is saying “EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT”, obviously this is just you trolling, but to the extent that anything intelligent can be…

"There's no possible reason for people to support these programs", the preceding comment says, "and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons".

How are "It could just be a challenge for them." or "They could just be 'blindly' patriotic" legitimate reasons? Of course everything has a reason, we live in a causal universe. Your comment implies someone claimed it's magic, and I for one haven't heard that yet. So you may call that rational or intelligent, but that doesn't make it so.

And then there's

> "It's entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative."

"some Gmail messages"? How is this not belittling it? How is that, pardon my french, not a fucking joke to say at this stage to this audience?

And how is that list complete? Why does "sustaining power over domestic and foreign democratic interests" not show up in it? It's not reasoning to just throw out some things, two thirds of it being silly [in the context of legitimate reasons, which is what the post started out claiming to enumerate] and stopping with one nice thing that could be possible, while ignoring not so nice things that could also be possible. It's rationalization.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#119

Post by duairc »

md224 wrote: post #101
duairc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Deleuze quote about this that I really like: “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality”. What I understand this to mean is that the nature of “rationality” is such that a rational person can rationalize anything . Nobody is saying “EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT”, obviously this is just you trolling, but to the extent that anything intelligent can be…

> Sometimes it's important to halt that process and stop and just say "this is definitely fucked up", and yes, not to question it any further. In my opinion, there are few things more tragic than someone carrying out actions with serious consequences on behalf of a belief that they refuse to question. I believe I understand your pragmatic concerns. It is hard to act passionately while simultaneously entertaining doub…

In a way I actually agree with nearly everything you say, I just think you haven't taken what you say to its logical conclusion.

The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs. There's no “middle” in terms of ideology. Doing “nothing” is de facto maintaining the status quo, and acting to maintain the status quo is a positive action just as much as acting to abolish it is. The belief that the status quo should be maintained is a positive belief just as the belief that it should be abolished it is. Right?

The thing is, by the very nature of ideology, those who wish to maintain the status quo rarely have their beliefs subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those who to abolish it. Therefore it is very easy for those who wish to maintain the status quo to believe that their beliefs and actions are sane, rational, reasonable, etc., because everything seems to reinforce that, while those who wish to abolish it are often portrayed as insane, irrational, “extremist”, etc., and as someone who does wish to abolish the status quo, it's very hard not to internalise some of that. Being constantly bombarded with that, having all of your beliefs constantly scrutinised from every angle inevitably manifests itself as incapacitating self-doubt that's very difficult to overcome sometimes. Sometimes the only way to cope with this is to temporarily suspend this constant questioning of everything you believe in.

It is far more common that people who wish to maintain the status quo are slaves to dogma than that people who wish to abolish it are. Often, the latter do not have a choice about whether or not their beliefs are rigourously questioned every five minutes. But the former can comfortably go their whole lives without ever having their beliefs rigourously questioned by anybody.

Edit: I think an NSA agent participating in these programs out of a belief that they are “serving their country” and who refuses to question what “serving their country” actually means is a slave to dogma. I do not think that somebody who believes that their communications should not be monitored or recorded without their consent and who refuses to question that belief is a slave to dogma.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#120

Post by zaroth »

freshhawk wrote: post #100

I find it strange that the assumption is made that "Silicon Valley" is clearly going to be on the side of the general public in this. Why? Isn't the smart money going to side with the real power? If those well connected enough to attempt to predict things see the odds of the US rolling back the surveillance state to be low and the odds of the levels of surveillance growing then certainly brokering user data and devel…

> That they will lose customers because people demand privacy and will stop using their services if they cooperate. This hasn't happened yet...

Apparently it's already decimating IBM hardware sales in China. http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/10/17/nsa-revelatio...

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