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The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

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Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

woofyman wrote: post #75
jayjay71 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confident our institutions are strong enough to prevent something that blatantly unconstitutional from happening I say this in all seriousness: why?

The long history of the Republic. Our Institutions have failed us whether it's slavery or the Japanese internment, Jim Crow, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, the hysteria after 911. But in each case we eventually recognized our mistakes and made corrections. Edit: also the treatment of First Nation peoples

"Eventually" is a long wait for those suffering under the perils thereof.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#112

Post by zepto »

BinaryWaves wrote: post #61
hedora wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That has not been my experience at all. People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up, or are afraid someone they know will be rounded up. (They are not worried about it happening this year, but are extrapolating 5 years.) This is amongst mid-westerners and west coast types. East coast liberals I talked to years ago were part of the DC or military machine, and think 100% surveillance is just a natura…

Speak for yourself plenty of east coast liberals equally sick of shit here and can't stand the military. Here in VA military is shoved down your throat and any mention of not liking it is almost herecy

What don't people like about the military? Also what is the connection between the military and surveillance?

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#113

Post by hedora »

ebcode wrote: post #105
anigbrowl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else can people do absent somethin glike a constitutional privacy amendment? Americans have just never cared much for privacy in the aggregate; the news is (and has long been) dominated by stories that appeal to the most prurient of interests, and furthermore Americans generally don't care what other people think of them that much (or so it seems to this European). True, many of them may not appreciate the degre…

>>a constitutional privacy amendment That would be the 4th Amendment[1]. I really don't think that Americans have never cared about privacy; I think if that were true, we would have a different 4th Amendment. Instead, I think that the various amendments and overall content of the Constitution serve to limit the power of government, and in that regard, it behooves the individuals within the government to disregard as…

The 4th has been read to only limit the actions of the government. The courts have ruled that it is OK for the government to pay a company that just happens to have invaded people's privacy in a way that isn't illegal, but that would otherwise violate the 4th.

I'm not sure how the NSA thing is justified, especially given the executive order mentioned in the article.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#114

Post by hedora »

slarrick wrote: post #101
Cyph0n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but there is a procedure behind obtaining a search warrant, which is nothing at all like giving the government blanket surveillance powers.

I'm not well versed on the details of U.S. government surveillance, but is it not the case that collection of phone logs, for instance, does not entail the government directly infringing on or even caring about 99.999999% of the public's private activity? My understanding is that these types of surveillance programs technically exist so that logs can be pulled up retroactively or algorithmically in rare but important…

That argument has been made by repressive regimes to justify all sorts of witch hunts: "Our records say you were friends with John; you should have known he would be branded a subversive traitor. Why didn't you turn him in first?"

Stats make this even worse: "Sorry. The computer said we have to lock you up for your own good."

Also, the framers of the US constitution had a deep mistrust of government (they just overthrew the brits!). The right of revolution is something they teach (at least used to teach) in US schools: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution

Tl;dr: If law enforcement is too effective then you can't defend yourself from unjust governments. This is why we have juries and the right to bear arms / form [state in addition to federal] militias.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#115

Post by pitaj »

saycheese wrote: post #49

Please stop pointing fingers at the American "government" and realize that the issue is really the average American. The US public has had over 10 years to figure it out, blaming the government is just causing more problems, not less; to understand why it's been 10 years, Google "Room 641A", which was exposed in 2006. Sure, there are people in America that are opposed to mass surveillance, but the bulk of Americans w…

I heard about that on PBS NOVA of all things. It was kinda scary.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#116

Post by pitaj »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #47
pitaj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for future reference, please don't quote using the four-spaces code block. It can make it difficult to read on mobile, and often requires scrolling from side to side on desktop. Please, instead, use the `>` (meme arrow). While it does not add markup, it does make it significantly more readable. Thanks.

> `>` (meme arrow) It's much older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_quoting ...and it looks suspiciously similar to the "diple" used by ancient Greeks: http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/30/quotati...

Oh I'm sure it is. I just called it that because it's funny.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#117

Post by lrem »

westoncb wrote: post #106
doctorpangloss wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like smoking Smoking causing cancer was substantiated by some of the strongest correlations in medical science history. Regular smoking increases cancer risk by 60x (odds ratio) in contemporary studies in the US. I'm not sure where you'd observe something anything strong like that with regards to surveillance, or indeed nearly anything the government does. Even urban air pollution increases cancer risk by less than…

I think what the parent was getting at is people are bad at evaluating risks whose potential negative consequences won't manifest for decades. It's true of smoking, and it's very likely true in the case of surveillance. There aren't similar studies demonstrating this for impact of surveillance on the wellbeing of nations over periods of decades because it's totally infeasible. However, there is a good amount of evide…

There were such "studies". One result of such is the German refusal of accepting a surveillance state.

Edit: parentheses around studies relevant, I know the difference between a correctly designed controlled study and a historical observation. Point still worth making.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#118

Post by pdkl95 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #103
pdkl95 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all anyone can talk about lately is politics Good! It would have been great if this more active participation in the political process started a long time ago, but better late than never. > The overwhelming response has been not caring One of the reasons for this is that the focus is usually on the surveillance itself. Humans are bad a risk assessment, and most of the time common fallacy that "I have nothing to hid…

> Like smoking Smoking causing cancer was substantiated by some of the strongest correlations in medical science history. Regular smoking increases cancer risk by 60x (odds ratio) in contemporary studies in the US. I'm not sure where you'd observe something anything strong like that with regards to surveillance, or indeed nearly anything the government does. Even urban air pollution increases cancer risk by less than…

> Smoking causing cancer was substantiated by some of the strongest correlations in medical science history.

Of course. As westoncb pointed out, the actual risk of smoking isn't what I'm talking about. The visible damage from smoking is only seen later (i.e. when symptoms of cancer or emphysema start to appear), so it is extremely difficult for the average person to properly evaluate the risk. Humans use approximate pattern patching and heuristics when evaluating risk; this fuzzy approach to input data saves energy but fails spectacularly in some situations.

> I'm not sure where you'd observe something anything strong like that with regards to surveillance

You're exhibiting the exact problem I'm talking about: you are only considering current problems. There may not be any problems at the moment for you to observe. While that's great for today, the databases that contain an increasingly accurate profile about your activities still exists in the future. You are (severely) underestimating the risk of your data accumulating in (approximately) permanent databases if you haven't included things like:

* A judge during sentencing or parole hearing using a model that claims you are high risk because social media posts you made today correlate with the "high risk" group de jour.

* Your religious, ethic, or political group becomes the next scapegoat. Previously recorded data allows the members of that group to be easily identified "for public safety".

* On the business side, your future insurance company raising your rates because prohibited information (e.g. ethnicity, income) could be inferred from the data you are currently generating.

Those are just a few of the obvious risks that we know about. As time progresses, more risks will be discovered.

> "addicted"

That aspect of smoking is entirely orthogonal to my point. Smoking is merely one obvious example of poor risk estimation.

> It's an absolutely horrible thing you start doing to your body immediately.

Yes. It's a damaging process that wont be easily visible to the average person when they are subconsciously judging the effects of their previous cigarette and if they should buy more. Over the last few decades we have had some success at educating people about the actual risks to counteract these common errors in perceived risk, which is exactly what we need to do for data sharing and the surveillance problem.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#119

Post by Qwertious »

battlebot wrote: post #79
WalterBright wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony in all this passivity towards surveillance is the leaking of Hillary's and the DNC's emails and the damage that did to her campaign.

Oh lordy. Did we not want to know the truth about a public figure? It was a service to all voters to have a full understanding of the person and the party and shenanigans and unlawful misdeeds. That kind of sunshine is always welcome and I would go as far as saying that people in government have no expectation of privacy and that secrecy at those levels is highly dangerous to liberty because 99% of the time it is use…

"I'm not shedding any tears for those people. They're scum."

We must protect scum,because otherwise it only takes a single bullshit "this person is scum" campaign to strip a person of their rights.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#120

Post by RugnirViking »

eropple wrote: post #107
battlebot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh lordy. Did we not want to know the truth about a public figure? It was a service to all voters to have a full understanding of the person and the party and shenanigans and unlawful misdeeds. That kind of sunshine is always welcome and I would go as far as saying that people in government have no expectation of privacy and that secrecy at those levels is highly dangerous to liberty because 99% of the time it is use…

Meanwhile, the elected President and his party are demanding the names of people involved in climatology and are passing acts to let them reduce individual named government employees' salaries to $1 per year. Avoiding that "corruption" really did a whole lot of good with the actual, literal wannabe serial-assaulting autocrat who is in office, you're so very right.

Can you provide reputable sources for those claims?
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