Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created • Hacker News Board

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#31

Post by BugBrother » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #28

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #20

I'm not a Chomsky fan, but I agree with at least the premise and the beginning of this essay. As usual, he wanders far afield in trying to find the roots of the problem, digging up what probably was a huge moment for him personally -- the academic opposition to Reagan -- but wasn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. (It worries me that people seem to understand why the surveillance state is bad,…

I strongly disagree that the NSA is a good guy. Yes, foreign intelligence organizations no doubt get up to the same stuff. But they're basically supposed to. The NSA, however, is supposed to defend this country, and to me an inherent part of that is preserving freedom. Instead they are doing the opposite, destroying American freedom in the name of American national security, essentially the national equivalent of sma…

This is a minor problem now, but it will get much worse if you consider technical development.

Every individual gets more and more power and capabilities with time. In not too many decades, hackers will be able to design bacteria for hobby at home, even if they probably will send for a lab to synthesize the DNA etc. Now, it is still quite expensive to make artificial life.

Consider North Korea and the possibility of a biological analogue to the Stuxnet virus...

Without a 1984 surveillance state, you need some form of immune handling -- everyone as their own bubble boy or intelligent analysis of bacteria/viruses (and hoping that Stuxnet vectors are only oriented towards military installations).

At that time, NSA surveillance like today will literally be trying to stop something as bad as terrorist nuclear weapons. You can't argue analogues about how much liberty costs, since there might not be anyone left to enjoy liberty, if NSA of the 2030s-2040s fail...

I have no clue how to solve this.

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#32

Post by mpyne » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #22

rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can agree with the precepts of the Constitution and justify certain kinds of surveillance. Even if you think the NSA surveillance is unconstitutional, you have to concede that "privacy" is not a well-defined constitutional value. The framers spent many pages in the Federalist talking about the ins and outs of various voting systems, but never articulated a broader concept of privacy. The 4th amendment is based fu…

"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."

Why does everyone simply quote the Fourth Amendment as if that answers the question about privacy, especially privacy as applied to electronic communications?

Let me quote the Supreme Court decision establishing a right to privacy [1] (which was not previously considered present!): "Secondly, the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional 'right to privacy.'" That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all."

The decision goes further to note: "But the protection of a person's general right to privacy -- his right to be let alone by other people -- is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States".

In other words, one may have statute protection, but not blanket Constitutional protection. And that opens up the possibility of the ones writing the statutes carving out "foreign intelligence" exceptions.

And this is all in accordance with the decision to invent the "reasonable expectation of privacy", it's not even going into later decisions like Smith v. Maryland which tended to expand government search ability.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/389/347

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#33

Post by mpyne » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #23

curt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Commerce Clause was put in place to stop States from taxing each other, not what it's currently being used for.

Expanding on this, the utterly vile 1942 Wickard v. Filburn ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn ) held about someone growing wheat for his own consumption, quoting Wikipedia: The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allott…

Well, that decision was also conducted under the aegis of a wartime America with a President that actually did have much more expansive Article I powers due to the nation being in a state of war.

I could be hopelessly optimistic and naïve but I simply don't see a similar argument holding in a decision today since there's no National Food Board (or whatever the agency was) to set rationing levels or resource priorities for wartime industrial production.

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#34

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #17

netcan wrote: post #9

It's interesting to me how my perspective is changing on these issues as years go by and I have time to think about it. One troublesome point is the role democracy is playing in all this. This harks back to some earlier Chomsky ideas about "Manufacturing Consent." From my (removed, I am not American) perspective, it seems ridiculously obvious that terrorism is not anywhere near a big enough threat to justify the coun…

The worst part is that they collect everything to make a case against you, but you still have to wait one hour in line at Boston airport to cross the border. They don't do anything to streamline your interactions with the governement or to defend you when you're accused.

That actually caused a bit of an uproar in some circles when the NSA thing came out, because it meant that the government was sitting on a huge pile of exculpatory evidence and not disclosing it to the people they were prosecuting. It's probably too early to know if that goes anywhere, but you can imagine the result if it means that a large fraction of people put in prison since they started collecting the data have grounds for a new trial.

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#35

Post by iamwithnail » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:23 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #12

iamwithnail wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence of that, quite the opposite. In fact, there's been significant pushes in both countries for intelligence-collected information to be made available to routine law enforcement. This is sort of my point about overlapping but not necessarily connected assemblages of surveillance. Although it seems believable, the mechanisms just aren't there (again, yet.) - police CAN request information from the NSA…

From the NSA to a "random" traffic stop: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/paral...

That's a really interesting link, thanks.

I hadn't seen that particular take on it - I don't think we're particularly disagreeing, though, since that parallel construction is still a long way off 'NSA info appearing in police cruiser computers' - it'll happen, it's just not there yet...

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#36

Post by hga » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #33

hga wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on this, the utterly vile 1942 Wickard v. Filburn ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn ) held about someone growing wheat for his own consumption, quoting Wikipedia: The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allott…

Well, that decision was also conducted under the aegis of a wartime America with a President that actually did have much more expansive Article I powers due to the nation being in a state of war. I could be hopelessly optimistic and naïve but I simply don't see a similar argument holding in a decision today since there's no National Food Board (or whatever the agency was) to set rationing levels or resource prioritie…

Except the case preceded the war except in its winding its way through the courts, it's New Deal law, after the "switch in time that saved nine" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_in_time_that_saved_nine... from later in the Wikipedia article on the case:

"In July 1940, pursuant to the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1938, Filburn's 1941 allotment was established at 11.1 acres (4.5 ha) and a normal yield of 20.1 bushels of wheat per acre. Filburn was given notice of the allotment in July 1940 before the Fall planting of his 1941 crop of wheat, and again in July 1941, before it was harvested. Despite these notices, Filburn planted 23 acres (9.3 ha) and harvested 239 bushels from his 11.9 acres (4.8 ha) of excess area."

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#37

Post by mpyne » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

curt wrote: post #21

rayiner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commerce clause says that the federal government shall be able to regulate interstate commerce. Pot is something traded in intestate commerce. Its not as ridiculous as you make it seem. The framers might have used narrower language if they could foresee that one day, everything would be a part of interstate commerce. That certainly wasn't true during the time of the framing, when goods were produced locally or even p…

The Commerce Clause was put in place to stop States from taxing each other, not what it's currently being used for.

If they meant to limit it only to keep the states from taxing each other then that's exactly what would have been in the Constitution. For instance Art. I. Sect. 10 is very clear about how states may impose duties and tariffs on imports/exports, it was very much not left to chance.

Knowing the intent of a given clause is helpful for the courts in determining how to interpret the law or Constitution when the written text of the same is unclear. But when the Constitution or law is perfectly clear then that's what the law is.

In this case the relevant clause is "The Congress shall have the Power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States."

That's it... unlike Art. I. Sect. 10, there are no specific constraints or restrains embedded there, certainly nothing about taxes (since it would be easy enough to simply declare that states could not tax each other, similar to how Art I. Sect. 10 does it).

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#38

Post by iamwithnail » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

kokey wrote: post #26

netcan wrote: post #9

It's interesting to me how my perspective is changing on these issues as years go by and I have time to think about it. One troublesome point is the role democracy is playing in all this. This harks back to some earlier Chomsky ideas about "Manufacturing Consent." From my (removed, I am not American) perspective, it seems ridiculously obvious that terrorism is not anywhere near a big enough threat to justify the coun…

> The last time I went to Heathrow Airport I was thinking about those face recognition cameras logging you in and about of the country. The way they look screams techno dystopia. I was thinking about super HD panoramic cameras placed strategically around a city. Yet the UK government still doesn't have anything in place to know a thing about the vast majority of people leaving the country. I'm personally considerably…

You probably wouldn't station them in the city, too easy to obfuscate avoid if the locations are fixed - something like this will be forthcoming from the Met's Open Source Intelligence Unit fairly soon, I imagine.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20130524.asp...

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#39

Post by mpyne » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #10

iamwithnail wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence of that, quite the opposite. In fact, there's been significant pushes in both countries for intelligence-collected information to be made available to routine law enforcement. This is sort of my point about overlapping but not necessarily connected assemblages of surveillance. Although it seems believable, the mechanisms just aren't there (again, yet.) - police CAN request information from the NSA…

GCHQ is quite strongly against allowing some evidence to be used in court cases because it would need to be tested in open court. They haven't said anything about intelligence provided to law enforcement.

> GCHQ is quite strongly against allowing some evidence to be used in court cases because it would need to be tested in open court.

Yep. And that's the whole reason 'parallel construction' exists at all in the U.S.... even when NSA has solid evidence of actual crimes being conducted, they will not burn intelligence sources & methods to allow for a court prosecution of the same.

So LE has to either find a way to independently arrive at the evidence that they know is there, or go without prosecuting criminals they know to be on the street.

Parallel construction is definitely distasteful but nor is it planting evidence.

Re: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

#40

Post by mpyne » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #28

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #20

I'm not a Chomsky fan, but I agree with at least the premise and the beginning of this essay. As usual, he wanders far afield in trying to find the roots of the problem, digging up what probably was a huge moment for him personally -- the academic opposition to Reagan -- but wasn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. (It worries me that people seem to understand why the surveillance state is bad,…

I strongly disagree that the NSA is a good guy. Yes, foreign intelligence organizations no doubt get up to the same stuff. But they're basically supposed to. The NSA, however, is supposed to defend this country, and to me an inherent part of that is preserving freedom. Instead they are doing the opposite, destroying American freedom in the name of American national security, essentially the national equivalent of sma…

> I strongly disagree that the NSA is a good guy.

Somewhat ironically IMO, Snowden himself seems to hold the NSA in higher esteem than HN does.

You guys all try to find ways to vilify the lowest-level tech working at Ft. Meade while Snowden complains in his interview that those same techs just trying to do the right thing "have been given a bad rap".