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End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

nytimes.com

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Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#161

Post by Crito »

Amadou wrote: post #159
Crito wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an idea I have been toying with for the past few weeks: Fear has become patriotic. Before I say more, I'll say that I am not a fan of patriotism, I think it is a mild form of bigotry, but I recognize the positive connotations it has to the population at large. I think that patriotism has also traditionally been associated with traits that are seen as positive. Traits like self assurance, confidence, pride, an…

I am soooo going to plagiarize the crap out of that. I have my doubts that it was ever the way you described it. But given these discussions are often rhetorical I don't think that detracts all that much from the concept.

Please do, that's why I shared it. :)

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#162

Post by tripzilch »

aaronem wrote: post #78
monsterix wrote: post #3

And what about the remaining 7 billion law-abiding souls on the planet? I resonate with the intent of this article but how come protecting only an Americans' privacy be of concern to this voice on NYT? I believe this approach is not only insular (apart from being stupid) but also destined to fail. If I were to run dragnet, I'd accept protecting the interest and privacy of all Americans back home, but strike a deal wi…

The government of the United States is responsible, however imperfectly, to the people of the United States, not to those of the planet entire.

Neither the government, nor the people of the United States, are alone on this planet.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#163

Post by enraged_camel »

javert wrote: post #157
enraged_camel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>There is no such thing as a "free enterprise" without a "free market", and vice versa. Your understanding of what is meant by "free enterprise" is false. Source: I have a degree in Economics and wrote my senior's thesis on this subject. "Free enterprise" in this context means the enterprise has internal freedom - i.e. it is owned and controlled by non-state actors, as in people like you and me. These non-state acto…

> Yes, there are still rules and regulations they operate under, but this does not mean that they are not free. Under rules and regulations, an enterprise is not free to allocate its capital at it desires, produce the products it desires, market them in the way it desires, and sell them to who it desires. The degree to which that is true depends on the scope of the rules and regulations. If the only one is that there…

>>If the only one is that there is a 5% income tax, the enterprise loses 5% of its freedom to allocate its capital.

Sorry, this is an extremely naive point of view. I'd even call it juvenile.

The mature way to look at it is this: the enterprise is paying 5% of its income as tax in order to have the freedom of using roads, having access to security (police, firefighters, etc.) and use all the infrastructure established by government.

>>A "free enterprise" must mean what the words "free" and "enterprise" mean in the English language. Anything else is a barrier to rational thinking.

In the very English language you speak of, context defines a lot of the meaning. And the context here is a discussion of economic terms. You can reject that all you want. The fact remains that "free enterprise" means what it means, not what you want it to mean.

I'm going to have to refrain from responding to the rest of your post, as it simply reads like a bunch of anti-intellectual nonsense.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#164

Post by rayiner »

seehafer wrote: post #153
rayiner wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a viable argument, certainly. But for the Supreme Court to read into the Constitution a right that isn't plainly in the text (as it did with the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade),[1] it's not enough to just present a viable argument. You need the weight of social and academic consensus. You need the majority of people to firmly believe that something should be a new social norm. In this context, the social nor…

Good (and clarifying) rebuttal, and now I see what you were saying in your original comment re: tech companies undermining the creation of a such a norm for the Supreme Court to use. I do think that unlike Roe there is some room in the Fourth Amendment for finding that bulk storage of all electronic communications, regardless if they are being investigated for content or not, results in an unreasonable search. The Fo…

I think you can get some of what you want by stretching the fourth as it stands, but not everything you'd want in a privacy amendment. But whatever you can get will be undermined by tech companies creating these anti privacy norms.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#165

Post by aaronem »

tripzilch wrote: post #162
aaronem wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government of the United States is responsible, however imperfectly, to the people of the United States, not to those of the planet entire.

Neither the government, nor the people of the United States, are alone on this planet.

Non sequitur.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#166

Post by rayiner »

ds9 wrote: post #149
anigbrowl wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep saying it, the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy. government surveillance is a problem, but so is the unilateral exploitation of personal data for commercial purposes. I'm Irish and living in the States, I really miss the EU Data Protection Act.

anigbrowl "the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy" Actually it shouldn't. U.S. Constitution, Amendment 9: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." [1] If this had had a good-faith interpretation in US constitutional law, many decisions would have been more favorable to individual citizens. It…

The 9th amendment just says the Constitutions enumeration of rights isn't exhaustive. That doesn't mean that anything you want to call a "right" exists just because it isn't mentioned in the Constitution. You still have to show its existence some other way. Typically, this is by showing that the right existed historically. No general right to privacy has existed historically, at least not in America or England.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#167

Post by javert »

enraged_camel wrote: post #163
javert wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, there are still rules and regulations they operate under, but this does not mean that they are not free. Under rules and regulations, an enterprise is not free to allocate its capital at it desires, produce the products it desires, market them in the way it desires, and sell them to who it desires. The degree to which that is true depends on the scope of the rules and regulations. If the only one is that there…

>>If the only one is that there is a 5% income tax, the enterprise loses 5% of its freedom to allocate its capital. Sorry, this is an extremely naive point of view. I'd even call it juvenile. The mature way to look at it is this: the enterprise is paying 5% of its income as tax in order to have the freedom of using roads, having access to security (police, firefighters, etc.) and use all the infrastructure establishe…

So in a reality where 99% of government spending is not spent on infrastructure, you use the infrastructure argument to waive me off as juvenile? This is an ad hominem cop-out.

> The fact remains that "free enterprise" means what it means, not what you want it to mean.

You have ignored my point that your definition is a contradiction in terms.

Moreover, our discussion is a discussion about politics and the economy, not an economics textbook or paper.

So why don't you just make your argument in plain English?

Because it relies on invalid definitions to get it to appear to make sense.

That would be an unsubstantiated allgeation if I had not shown that your term is contradictory. I did.

> I'm going to have to refrain from responding to the rest of your post, as it simply reads like a bunch of anti-intellectual nonsense.

I don't think people who peddle contradictory terms deserve the title "intellectual," so I don't think my comments were anti-intellectual.

If you actually see a contradiction between my analysis and reality, you should be able to state it simply. That you didn't point out such a contradiction, suggests to me that you don't actually see one.

As a sidenote, I have enough respect for some economists to find it hard to believe that they are all using the term in the way you say. Of course, many economists simply (and reasonably) stay away from any political topic.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#168

Post by kabdib »

rayiner wrote: post #62
kabdib wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By extension, then, wiretaps are just fine, by anybody. All that data, entering and leaving your house, is not in your house, so it's fair game. So is opening mail (if it's in the post office it's not under your control, right?) Your car? It's on the street, so what if we attached GPS devices. Those microphones and cameras in public places are there for your protection. We'll never abuse that, trust us. Oh never neve…

Postal mail is historically treated as a special case because it's a government agency. Cars on the street are still your property, even when you're not in it, just as your house is still your property even when you're on vacation. Wiretaps and documents hosted on the "cloud" are somewhere in-between. The first time the Supreme Court considered the Constitutionality of warrantless wire taps, it found that they were n…

While it's unclear what the line is, it's clear that it has been crossed. When you start needing lawyers to split hairs, it's time to re-examine what you've hatched and ask if it even passes a giggle test.

"Secret court" and "All this stuff we've collected? We haven't actually collected it until we look at it" and oversight by people who are clearly invested in keeping things cozy. This is all madness. How did we get here?

I might not know enough to know where to draw the line, but I know enough to know that it's gone wrong, and that erring on the side of severely restricting this kind of behavior and shedding light on what has happened is probably the best course of action.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#169

Post by Silhouette »

rayiner wrote: post #124
Silhouette wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the reasonable expectation of privacy test has always meant Obviously I disagree with you and rayiner over how ambiguous that phrase is, but that doesn't really matter. This entire HN discussion is about a call to change the situation, in particular, the current behaviour of the US government and the laws that the US government argues permit such behaviour. Arguing that something is OK because it's what t…

I don't disagree with the sentiment expressed by Sens. Udall, Wyden, etc. This (sub-) thread isn't about whether the surveillance program is "OK" but about this comment that spawned this thread: "Senators have to go to the press to try to stop the government from doing what clearly breaks the law." Most of the NSA programs that have been exposed to date are not "clear" violations of the law. They are attempts to oper…

Merely following the law doesn't turn a bad idea into a good idea, or justify a program, but it does say something about whether people are acting in good faith.

I think this is where we have slightly different points of view.

In the general situation we're discussing, i.e., state surveillance, the people who make the laws and the people who should be following them are the same, or at least closely related. In that context, to demonstrate good faith, I think you need to make good laws and then follow them.

There is an interesting wrinkle in the US that we don't have here in the UK because the US Constitution is theoretically out of reach of the current government. However, as usual actions speak louder than words, and as an outsider it doesn't appear that having a written constitution is a reliable safeguard any more (on many issues, not just the surveillance one). Again, the people who might be acting unconstitutionally and the people who would judge them are cut from the same cloth.

Because of these inherent conflicts of interest, I don't think that merely following the letter of the law is sufficient to demonstrate (or, equally, demonstrate the lack of) anything very interesting.

Re: End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

#170

Post by Silhouette »

rayiner wrote: post #164
seehafer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good (and clarifying) rebuttal, and now I see what you were saying in your original comment re: tech companies undermining the creation of a such a norm for the Supreme Court to use. I do think that unlike Roe there is some room in the Fourth Amendment for finding that bulk storage of all electronic communications, regardless if they are being investigated for content or not, results in an unreasonable search. The Fo…

I think you can get some of what you want by stretching the fourth as it stands, but not everything you'd want in a privacy amendment. But whatever you can get will be undermined by tech companies creating these anti privacy norms.

I can see two potential twists in your argument that people using tech companies create new social norms, which seems fairly reasoned on the face of it.

Firstly, there is a question akin to informed consent. People do use these services and voluntarily give up a lot of privacy, but is that an informed decision, or is it because they don't understand the significance of what they are doing? Although many people share much information with organisations like Facebook and Google, there have been significant popular backlashes against a number of changes they have made, particularly those that have resulted in information being disclosed to people that the users who supplied it didn't expect.

To extend your bathroom window analogy, there is an argument here akin to sharing certain normally private behaviour with your doctor. This is something you do by choice, in your own interests, and with a clear understanding that the information is sensitive and not to be disclosed to anyone else or used for any other purpose. This is fundamental to medical ethics, and in many places it is protected explicitly by law, so doctors can't be pressured to disclose that kind of sensitive information, even by the police. Lawyers themselves are of course familiar with a similar argument, again establishing attorney-client privilege or the equivalent as a matter of universal professional ethics and protected by force of law.

Secondly, modern technologies like computers and the Internet are part of a very young and fast-evolving industry that is changing our normal expectations in many aspects of life. In many contexts, the overall effect is positive, but there can be serious negative consequences in some cases. I think it would be unwise for the courts to attempt to reinterpret major constitutional or human rights laws based only on the fact that this week X out of Y people were happy to share something with a specific web site. It takes longer than that for social norms to develop, and as always the law should reflect our ethics rather than try to dictate how things should be.

I do think privacy is going to be a big issue over perhaps the next decade or so, as we collectively work through the implications of modern technologies and decide what is acceptable behaviour and what isn't. I also think you're right that dedicated laws are going to be needed, rather than merely trying to adapt laws written for a time before the kinds of implications we are now seeing and starting to understand. I wonder whether this won't be a generational issue, as digital natives who consider things like being on-line and having mobile devices to be basic and universal facilities start to assert their independence, while the political dinosaurs who clearly don't understand even the basics of how this technology works and its implications are replaced by the generation in between who are perhaps both more open-minded on these subjects and less willing to trust the government by default.

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