141–150 of 175 posts
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Given this administrations record with leakers, brave is an understatement.
As opposed to the Bush or Reagan administrations' records with leakers?
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And a pretty low population density: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...
Utah overall population density is low but the Salt Lake metro is in geographically constrained valleys and fairly dense (maybe halfway between LA and Midwestern densities). The deserts and mountains are not useful for the NSA.
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That's how a web crawler works, though, right?
But phone calls are not supposed to be public, and web crawlers only access items which are public, so your argument isn't valid.
You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Since Smith v. Maryland (1979) the standard has been that you don't have an expectation of privacy in the records of the calls you make (as opposed to the content of those calls), on the grounds that you necessarily share that information with the phone company. This is analogous to not having any expectation of privacy on the street, eg which friends you choose to visit or which places you go that could be observed by third parties, or the lack of privacy in who mail letters to, which information is shared with the post office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland)
Now in 2006 Congress decided that consumers should have such privacy after all, and amended the telecommunications act of 1934 to make it illegal for phone companies to sell or share subscribers' call data, but that law contains a broad exception for law enforcement and intelligence gathering activity.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109hr4709enr/pdf/BILLS-10...
Here's a good (non-jargon) summary of the arguments on both sides from late last year: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/10/03/50935.htm From the legal standpoint, it's important to bear this context in mind, rather than assuming the current situation is the result of massive overreach by this administration, or the government since 9-11. The fact is that the NSA of today sits atop foundations dating from from the Cold War
By chance I picked up a 70s spy novel at a thrift store the other day, and it's all about Soviet sleeper agents hidden in the US and activated by coded messages in telephone calls - the heroes are in a race against time to pinpoint the origin of the calls and interrupt the planned sequence of events. I happened to notice the book because I remembered being scared of the movie trailer as a kid since it seemed to suggest that calling the wrong number could result in a violent death (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qg0w8qbBQo). So in the book the author was clearly worried about the openness of US society providing America's enemies with the tools of its own destruction - not unlike today's anxieties over cyber-warfare - and there's an implicit argument that high speed communications infrastructure is too powerful a force multiplier not to be under government supervision. Agree or not, it presented a surprisingly prescient understanding of asymmetrical warfare, to the point of seeming like domestic propaganda.
I mention this not to justify current NRA data collection, but to offer some historical context for how the law came to be the way it is. Too often, privacy discussions on HN are pendant on mythical notions of privacy being considered sacred until very recently. Historically (and going back all the way to the country's founding) the scope of the 4th amendment has been a lot narrower than people imagine and courts have generally not given much weight to the idea of a right to privacy. The notion that the Constitution provides a right to privacy wasn't articulated by the Supreme Court until 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut (a case about birth control that paved the way for Roe v. Wade). See http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/410/410lect16.htm for a good overview. Griswold is still considered bad law by a lot of legal scholars, who think that any right to privacy needs to be added to the Constitution by amendment rather than extrapolated by judicial imagination.
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the "checks and balances" we so hold dear in democracy are now null and void. Well, there's one check / balance aspect that is still "in play" at least in theory: the 2nd Amendment.
2nd Amendment is probably the check and balance with the least potential efficacy these days -- pro-gun supporters who tout right to bear arms to protect against government tyranny are living a fantasy. Realistically there is 0 chance an armed citizenry rising against the establishment would pose any threat to them -- the cards (and methods of control) are stacked wildly in their favor.
I think that is true only if you make certain assumptions - assumptions which I consider unfounded.
For example, if an armed revolution broke out, are we assuming that no military units would defect and join the rebellion? If so, I'd consider that questionable.
Also, are we assuming that the rebels are armed only with pistols, shotguns and semiautomatic rifles? No way... first, factor in IEDs and homemade weapons, and then factor in the likely capture of at least some military grade weaponry, and/or ilicit supply of those weapons to the rebels.
Nukes aren't even part of this equation, so no point bringing that up at all.
The thing I'd worry most about in a rebellion scenario, is the air superiority of the standing military. But if we're talking guerrilla warfare... well, it's hard to bomb an enemy when you don't know where they are.
Finally, consider sheer numbers: I forget the numbers now from last time I looked this up, but the number of members of the standing US military is fairly small relative to the population of the US. And there are a LOT of guns out there. And as somebody (possibly Stalin) once said "quantity has a quality all it's own". Get enough Americans to participate, and you'd have a chance.
Anyway... not to suggest that it's a given, nor do I hope this scenario ever unfolds. Just food for thought.
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But phone calls are not supposed to be public, and web crawlers only access items which are public, so your argument isn't valid.
But phone calls are not supposed to be public You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Since Smith v. Maryland (1979) the standard has been that you don't have an expectation of privacy in the records of the calls you make (as opposed to the content of those calls), on the grounds that you necessarily share that information with the phone company. This is analogous to not having any expectation of privacy on the street,…
In the future, I hope that the legal interpretation of privacy is changed. Just because we entrust a company or individual detail of our lives does not mean we should give up all privacy interest in those details. I'd like to see a roughly similar right to privacy with regard to our transactions with commercial agents as with legal or medical agents (i.e. attorney-client privilege and doctor-patient confidentiality). In other words, employing an agent to act on our behalf should not automatically remove all privacy of that act.
What is truly a scary thought is if the vast, mindless mass of people easily swayed by consumerism, advertisement and buzz, talk about this for about two weeks and then forget the whole thing, screaming "We have NOTHING to hide!" as a logically flawed and incredibly poor excuse. The entire premise that democracy would work is flawed. Take Turkey. A ravaged, torn, depressed state, brought back to life by a fucking dic…
It won't stay at the top of the news for even two weeks. Most people don't care because a) it doesn't actually affect their lives and b) they actually want government to monitor traffic patterns for potentially suspicious activity. As a society, some 25% of our labor force is engaged in some sort of security activity, not counting police and military. This is arguably a consequence of the fetishization of private property in the US compared to other countries: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf
a good, conservatively Green or Green Libertarian government is the only path to resolution
Er...I think you're going to run into some consistency problems there.
United States mass public is uneducated and apathetic (unlike how it used to be 300 years ago
Highly questionable. Most people in 1713 were not educated at all and even if we look at the revolutionary period we should remember that wealthy landowners whose writings have come down to use were economically exceptional (eg John dickinson, the 'Penmnsylvanian farmer' who was chided by Alexander Hamilton for implicitly arguing for 'free as in beer - http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfi... and http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfi... ...please excuse my gross oversimplification, but it's a fact that many colonists saw revolution as a means to get out from under state and private debts owed in England).
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Mindless with respect to political issues, is quite appropriate, I think. When my mom or my dad or my grandma says, "I have nothing to hide" (and they do, whenever I call them about some privacy concern), my respect for them with regards to political issues, drastically drops. Perhaps "mindless" is harsh, but they certainly aren't being insightful or politically educated. I'm not trying to launch ad hominem attacks o…
My parents are extremely politically educated, as is my wife. My dad has traveled the world extensively (80+ different countries) and seen nearly every kind of government under the sun. He was very involved politically when Bangladesh was seeking its independence. My wife, for her part, lived in east Germany after high school and observed the political situation in a city where many people still remembered life under…
Actual former East Germans still remember the Stasi and Germany itself has fought for privacy (see Germany v. Facebook).
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As opposed to the Bush or Reagan administrations' records with leakers?
Yes. Under Obama, the Justice Department has prosecuted more leakers of confidential information than prior administrations. However, the number is 6, so whether this is due to a difference in policy or random occurrences is not clear to me.
Also, 6 is a numerator. The denominator is unknown. Are there more leaks under the Obama administration, period? Are people more willing to leak? I don't feel like there's enough information available to make a judgement call.
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But phone calls are not supposed to be public You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Since Smith v. Maryland (1979) the standard has been that you don't have an expectation of privacy in the records of the calls you make (as opposed to the content of those calls), on the grounds that you necessarily share that information with the phone company. This is analogous to not having any expectation of privacy on the street,…
Since Smith v. Maryland (1979) the standard has been that you don't have an expectation of privacy in the records of the calls you make (as opposed to the content of those calls), on the grounds that you necessarily share that information with the phone company. In the future, I hope that the legal interpretation of privacy is changed. Just because we entrust a company or individual detail of our lives does not mean…
Of course the problem with rewriting the Constitution every time you have an idea for improving it is that after a while you end up with the sort of Constitution we have in California, which is less a collection of guiding principles than a heap of legislation on steroids: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/const-toc.html
At bottom, what you have is a set of conflicting imperatives. It's perfectly reasonable to charge government with the job of protecting people from military attacks, and as we saw in 2001 the costs of failure to do so can be truly severe. The opportunity costs of investing the government with broad powers to prevent such attacks are much harder to quantify. I have to say that I think the 'war on drugs' has been legally and practically far more destructive of liberty than the Patriot act or the NSA (but please don't interpret this as an endorsement of the latter). I don't worry about top-down totalitarian government nearly as much as I do about the inexorable economics of privately run prisons and city and county pension gaps. People don't care as much about the liberty of crack- and meth-heads (since drug addicts stereotypically have little consideration for others), so we craft these overbroad laws intended to protect the legitimate interests of good people by scapegoating ne'er-do-wells.
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That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah Off topic, but one of those things is not like the others... Novell was founded in Utah more than 30 years ago.
I've heard Mormons live outside of Utah too.