Ending the NSA Dragnet is not the solution. The solution is to assume that there will always be a rogue agency wanting to spy and to come up with solutions that make it hard or impossible.
End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
41–50 of 176 posts
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, no bank has ever foreclosed on someone's home.
That's a bogus argument. A mortgage is a private agreement between you and a bank. A bank foreclosing on a property without a mortgage (as at least Bank of America is alleged to have done on several occasions) is a tort that should be litigated and a crime that should be prosecuted.
So it's a private agreement? I don't understand your point. You agree to pay a certain amount and if you don't a bad thing happens. When it's a bank and a mortgage, you lose your house and your family is harmed. When it's the government and taxes, your wages are garnished and your family is harmed.
Having a banking system helps people buy houses and having a government helps literally everything a society does.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#43The thing about the NSA dragnet is that if the NSA wasn't doing it, then corporations would (are) doing it. You can't stop technology from moving forward. Someone is going to be sniffing your packets now until the end of time.
Corporations don't have the legal right to take my property or harm me or my family. The two aren't equal.
If said corporation wields enough power to be able to take your property at will, "legality" isn't going to stop it.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you justify your claim that a bulk collection of phone records "clearly" violates the Constitution? I don't think the jurisprudence is so obviously on your side there.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Okay, so tell me how call records generates by ATT that are never even in my possession are nonetheless "my" papers or effects?
The text of the amendment does not clearly support your position. Indeed, the focus is clearly on personal things (house, person), not things possessed by third parties.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#45> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Uh, no. The first job of a good, decent government is protect the rights of its citizens. It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect him/herself from the government.
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." bzzt! , oh, sorry, that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is set out in the oath that all US Senators take upon being sworn into office[1] which reads: >"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and…
I can only hope their constituents will remind them of this!
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#46Surveillance. It always starts with a desire to be safe. And that comes from fear. It seems Americans today are afraid of more things than ever: pedophiles, guns, terrorists, lawsuits. Some news reports are ridiculous by foreign standards: teachers not being allowed to shake hands with students out of fear of sexual harassment allegations, boys suspended from school for drawing guns, bystanders not administering firs…
I think that the idea of surveillance is to increase safety with only a marginal decrease in freedom.
Additionally, one could argue that as our freedom grows the opportunities for surveillance increase. That is, if you use the same means of communication as available in 1776 you'll have just as much freedom as they did. But in 2013 you have much more freedom to communicate over various mediums. Your freedom has increased by a factor of x, but surveillance has decreased that freedom by a factor of y (where y is much less than x). The net gain is still positive, but less than unsurveilled access.
An interesting thought experiment is how well would an airline that does no security checks do versus one that does. Lets ignore the efficacy of security checks, and say that you're 10x more likely to die in the flight w/o security checks -- would most people be willing to endure the security checks (as they are today) for a 10x reduction in deaths (imagine the baseline is the number of deaths we see today). I think the answer is yes.
Likewise, I may well feel less free if there were no jails (maximizing actual physical freedom for prisoners) than if there is some.
Bravery doesn't equal stupidity. I'm not condoning the actions of the US government, but I think its unfair to assume increases in safety with an actual proportional decrease in freedom.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#47> "Severing ties with the NSA" started off with a NSA penalty but was so hugely popular it still got the #1 spot. However, it was quickly given an even bigger penalty, forcing it down the page. [1]
Supposedly, "N.S.A." will not trigger HN's keyword penalty :)
[1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#48> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Uh, no. The first job of a good, decent government is protect the rights of its citizens. It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect him/herself from the government.
> It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect him/herself from the government.
This has been true as long as there has been government, as far as I can tell.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#49Surveillance. It always starts with a desire to be safe. And that comes from fear. It seems Americans today are afraid of more things than ever: pedophiles, guns, terrorists, lawsuits. Some news reports are ridiculous by foreign standards: teachers not being allowed to shake hands with students out of fear of sexual harassment allegations, boys suspended from school for drawing guns, bystanders not administering firs…
The problem is not that they want to be safe, but that they are willing to give up all the rights even against the minimum amount of danger.
First off, never give up all of your yours in the name of safety. If you do, then you better make sure it's very temporary in nature, and/or for very specific targets.
Second, it better be to save something like 1 million people a year, not like 100 people per year on average. Make sure that the compromise of giving up all of your rights (if you can even accept such a thing), is done for a very real and major cause. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and infringe on everyone's freedoms, it better not be just to save 100 lives that year. It better be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at least. Otherwise, it's clearly not worth it, and that money and effort could be better used in some other place (such as healthcare, education, etc) where the return on investment is many orders of magnitude greater.
But even if it's worth it money wise, you still have to counter-balance it with the power you're giving your own government, and how much that government is going to abuse that power. Sure, the government will protect you from "terrorism", but is that worth the cost of losing your freedom, and having the risk of being arrested for anything you dare say against the government?
Many people in the past decided that they'd rather die than lose their freedom, so it's definitely not a clear cut choice, even if the government does save you from certain death. But the government is abusing all of this power today, and all of this money, and they have much less to show for it, to the point where the clear cut choice is to not accept what the government is doing.
Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think common fucking sense is pretty well on his side.
The idea that 'data' vs 'metadata' loophole has been scaled beyond belief to undermine the plain english understanding of 'reasonable' is worthy of new jurisprudence.
"Data" versus "metadata" doesn't go to the definition of "reasonable." It goes to the definition of "their" in "their persons, houses, papers, and effects..."
The basic distinction is your data versus data that's about you. If I own a store, and make a note that 001sky came in to buy a box of cookies at 2:00pm on January 23, 2005, that's my paper. It's not your paper. I can claim 4th amendment protection if the FBI breaks into my store and takes that note, but you can't. That's the legally relevant distinction between data and metadata.