111–120 of 158 posts
What a poorly designed site. Nothing but a spinning circle with Javascript disabled - Firefox reader mode doesn't work, either. Completely unacceptable from a privacy and usability perspective.
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I do this. But more and more often, people are responding: "You're not the government." So it doesn't work as well as people think it does.
And my response would be, "My party voted in the government, so yeah, we voted for the right to look through your phone. Now hand it over or do you want to be a law breaking criminal too?"
- To many folks, this sounds conspiracy-theory-ish, and they will just yeah-uhuh until you go away.
- Your actual point (that we may have certain comforting legal protections now does not mean that future governments will respect the same restrictions) will leave a lot of folks cold; whatever hysterics they may get up to when debating politics, most folks do not fear imminent totalitarianism in the US.
- To many folks, there is a huge difference between handing their private correspondence/pictures/finances/whatever to you or their cousin and having it available to "the authorities", whom they presume have legal restrictions, training, protocols, oversight, and the overall motive of protecting the country.
That last one is important: to most people, that's a very good thing in and of itself, and also a reason why they believe the Deep State(tm) won't harm them: they don't want to blow things up, so logically there's no reason to scrutinize at them. This is the root of the "nothing to hide" argument. It also happens to be somewhat true: the TLAs do get up to a lot they shouldn't, and sometimes are outright evil. But they do, in fact, work to protect the republic and don't mess with the vast bulk of regular people.
Remember that winning a debate and changing minds are not the same thing.
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>I've spoken with people who have said they are ok with it, when I start asking questions or sharing details on how this has been abused I tend to find they have not thought it through In the future just ask them to unlock their phone and hand it to you so you can look at their email, text and browser history. Watch them hesitate and refuse.
I do this. But more and more often, people are responding: "You're not the government." So it doesn't work as well as people think it does.
We have to remind people that The Government isn't some distant "other" - it's made of people you know.
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> I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this Do you mean like the historical racism and anti-black bias of the FBI, as mentioned in the article? I want it emphasized. Like someone else said, a lot of people are fine with some authority they perceive as benevolent (or as fighting evildoers) to control every detail of their lives. They would answer your ques…
I think it's baked into a certain conservative mindset that they are the ones who don't have anything to hide, which makes sense because if you don't have many progressive opinions then you probably aren't chafing against authority too often. And, I think authoritarians (many of them seem to march under the "conservative" banner these days) are fine with surveillance because they see it as a hallmark of an effective…
The funny thing is that these folks who think they have nothing to hide are under a high degree of surveillance if they are a player of any kind. Lockstep compliance with the party platform is required.
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>I've spoken with people who have said they are ok with it, when I start asking questions or sharing details on how this has been abused I tend to find they have not thought it through In the future just ask them to unlock their phone and hand it to you so you can look at their email, text and browser history. Watch them hesitate and refuse.
I do this. But more and more often, people are responding: "You're not the government." So it doesn't work as well as people think it does.
What a poorly designed site. Nothing but a spinning circle with Javascript disabled - Firefox reader mode doesn't work, either. Completely unacceptable from a privacy and usability perspective.
It's great if websites work without Javascript but, I don't think its fair to call them poorly designed if they dont. The web is made from HTML, CSS and Javascript. Turn off one of them and of course things aren't going to work or look right.
Good design takes these basic common issues into account.
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She would probably agree that the government is made up of officials that we elect though right? So what if the people in the majority party want to usurp power from the minority citizens. Even if only for the reason that they want to keep a 'dangerous party' from taking power. Practicalities about search techniques don't matter in such circumstances. Just imagine a party that is ready to punch the minority party mem…
What you're not getting is that the people doing this don't care about the 4th Amendment. (Or, more accurately, they are more than willing to rationalize away their violation of the 4th Amendment. Like the beat cop doing a "Stop and Frisk" on some black kid. The 4th just doesn't mean anything to him.) The people controlling access to these datasets are not from either party. They are not elected. In the vast majority…
I'm not assuming politicians are in control of these datasets. I'm assuming the politicians and the judges they elect are control of the laws and rules that govern the government agencies and employees. And the politicians are elected by Americans.
You point out that many Americans don't feel they have anything to hide, so the 4th doesn't seem to matter to them. I've noticed that too. And so what I see in government and the agencies is a reflection of the these priorities (e.g. Patriot Act, no pushback against NSA, etc). I don't think Americans can absolve themselves of responsibility of the surveillance state. That'd be too convenient.
I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this. Starting that way will cause a huge segment of the population to switch off as soon as you start talking. Imagine it works perfectly, and a three-letter agency with practically zero oversight, transparency, or accountability is collecting an accurate history of every single thing you do--everywhere you go, who yo…
I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this. Starting that way will cause a huge segment of the population to switch off as soon as you start talking. Imagine it works perfectly, and a three-letter agency with practically zero oversight, transparency, or accountability is collecting an accurate history of every single thing you do--everywhere you go, who yo…
Sadly, I know a lot of people who are ok with that. They're very much of the opinion, "Well, I'm doing nothing wrong, so I don't care. Especially if it helps catch bad guys". Not really sure how to fight that.
I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this. Starting that way will cause a huge segment of the population to switch off as soon as you start talking. Imagine it works perfectly, and a three-letter agency with practically zero oversight, transparency, or accountability is collecting an accurate history of every single thing you do--everywhere you go, who yo…
And on the off chance someone reading this is OK with the government doing that for law enforcement purposes, also consider that >At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have been caught using secret government surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of their current or former spouses and lovers in the past decade, according to the intelligence agency’s internal watchdog. before giving…
This is an important point. Most people are deciding what they're ok with based on today's circumstances, government etc. What happens if some years from now, your past behavior is at odds with the current government. You will be flagged and there will undoubtedly be consequences, which, even if minor are still negative. E.g., flagged for searches at border crossings.