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Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created

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

#51

Post by foobarqux »

rayiner wrote: post #41
alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

Key word: "their." The lynchpin or a lot of the surveillance efforts is accessing information that doesn't belong to the target of the surveillance. Phone call metadata is generated by the phone company, stored in the phone company's computers, and is used for the phone company's business purposes. Its the phone company's data, not yours. Same thing with the data Google and Facebook collect about where you go on the…

Putting aside what the law and constitution currently say, do you think mass surveillance of metadata, URL tracking and search history should be fair game?

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

#52

Post by Joeri »

rayiner wrote: post #42
e40 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terrorism is not anywhere near a big enough threat to justify the counter measures, loss of privacy , freedom and the threat of a scary totalitarian future To put it into perspective, more people die walking across roads in the US every year than died from terrorism in 2001. Most years other than 2001, the difference between them is staggering. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find anyone that we should take drastic…

Comparing death tolls is a facetious argument. DC ground to a halt during the sniper's shootings even though he killed just a handful of people. The whole point of terrorism is the psychological impact. Also, cars kill twice as many people as murderers each year. If we ignore the difference between accidents and malicious acts, and the deterrent effect involved, you can probably make a case that its not worthwhile to…

The means of the state are not endless. States carry an obligation to make rational use of their means to macimize the benefit for their citizens. The argument is not that terrorist strikes do not deserve deterrence or punishment, it's that the war on terror is inappropriate in its scale, because the same means could have achieved much more good for the american people when put (mostly) to other uses.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

tritium wrote: post #49
BugBrother wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How can we be sure that someone on the other side of the apparatus won't use their position as a means towards necessary training and equipment, and as an opportunity to act with authority above suspicion, to engineer this supposed killer virus that destroys us all? What if they become the problem we tasked them with preventing?

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by mikeash »

mpyne wrote: post #40
mikeash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

"You guys all try to find ways to vilify...."

I would appreciate it if you would not hijack my comment to accuse me of something I haven't done.

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

#55

Post by netcan »

rayiner wrote: post #42
e40 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terrorism is not anywhere near a big enough threat to justify the counter measures, loss of privacy , freedom and the threat of a scary totalitarian future To put it into perspective, more people die walking across roads in the US every year than died from terrorism in 2001. Most years other than 2001, the difference between them is staggering. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find anyone that we should take drastic…

Comparing death tolls is a facetious argument. DC ground to a halt during the sniper's shootings even though he killed just a handful of people. The whole point of terrorism is the psychological impact. Also, cars kill twice as many people as murderers each year. If we ignore the difference between accidents and malicious acts, and the deterrent effect involved, you can probably make a case that its not worthwhile to…

I agree. But even if we agree that the focus of our attention isn't completely rational, that's no reason to expect it to be completely divorced from reality as it is with the anti terrorism.

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

#56

Post by forgottenpass »

rayiner wrote: post #42
e40 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terrorism is not anywhere near a big enough threat to justify the counter measures, loss of privacy , freedom and the threat of a scary totalitarian future To put it into perspective, more people die walking across roads in the US every year than died from terrorism in 2001. Most years other than 2001, the difference between them is staggering. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find anyone that we should take drastic…

Comparing death tolls is a facetious argument. DC ground to a halt during the sniper's shootings even though he killed just a handful of people. The whole point of terrorism is the psychological impact. Also, cars kill twice as many people as murderers each year. If we ignore the difference between accidents and malicious acts, and the deterrent effect involved, you can probably make a case that its not worthwhile to…

The whole point of terrorism is the psychological impact.

Which makes it all the more important that the state not feed into the psychological impact, no? One of the ways you keep a stiff upper lip is acknowledge that society is already accustomed to certain levels of murder and accidental death.

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

#57

Post by Joeri »

netcan wrote: post #50
Joeri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology enlarges the consequences of moral choices, but it does not carry an inherent morality. Whatever values you carry into the technology landscape are what you get out of it. Digitisation is not the cause of the surveillance state, it's the enabler. The problem is that we're trying to use 18th century values and moral systems to deal with 21st century technology. We need to develop a system of morality adequa…

I don't think you're right. I think digitisation is not the cause of the surveillance state, at least by default. That is, regardless of who are the prime ministers, presidents and such of the era, the surveillance state was coming. It's not unstoppable, but I think it will need to become the no. 1 issue for a long time.

I agree with you. I think governments have always wanted to do what the NSA is doing. They've only just now become able to do it thanks to technology enabling them. Despite not being an american i also don't think the US government is worse than others, they're only better at it right now, but as technology accelerates eventually even the smallest fringe group or island state will have weapons of mass digital surveillance.

My point is that the answer is not technological or legal in nature, it is moral. We need to convince the majority of people that digital mass surveillance is immoral, regardless of who does it or why, and the (il)legality of it will follow.

The question is though: how many people even in the technology community really object to the act of bulk spying by itself, instead of just not liking it when it's done to them?

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

#58

Post by peterkelly »

BugBrother wrote: post #31
mikeash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We might even have a middle-eastern dictator creating weapons of mass destruction, even going so far as having mobile biological weapons labs. Something surely must be done before it's too late!

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

#59

Post by BugBrother »

peterkelly wrote: post #58
BugBrother wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We might even have a middle-eastern dictator creating weapons of mass destruction, even going so far as having mobile biological weapons labs. Something surely must be done before it's too late!

The point is, this will obviously get much more dangerous -- not better. We have only seen the start of this discussion.

Edit: A bit of bad humor: As an old misanthrope which had to accept that all humanity's problems seems to get solved soon (energy from solar or fusion in a few decades, electric cars, better health, etc, etc) it is good to think everything is back to normal! Jingoism from nuclear states (Russia, China and soon Iran) and an impossibility to have humane, liberal societies... "The Road", here we come! :-)

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

#60

Post by forgottenpass »

jostmey wrote: post #44

Here's a crazy idea. Why not open source surveillance to the world?

Total surveillance does not return us to a no- or low- surveillance ground state. Nor does it put us in an "everyone has dirt on everyone" state. It just makes it easier for everyone to identify who is more than N standard deviations away from standard/accepted behaviors.
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