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Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

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Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#51

Post by sentenza »

zwieback wrote: post #12
alan_cx wrote: post #5

What I wonder is at what point words like stasi become reasonable or acceptable. OK, I don't like what is happening, and almost day by day thing happen that I feel are pushing the west, led by the US, more and more towards something highly controlled and not in any way free. Liberty is slowly being eroded, and I genuinely feel that is a true statement objectively. Right now, words like stasi, fascist, etc are an exag…

For me it would be when people disappear. Being spied on is one thing but being afraid of getting arrested is another. I grew up in Western Germany and visited the East several times. Living in the US now I have to say that it feels an order of magnitude "freer" than either of the Germanies of my youth. However, I'm very concerned about the NSA thing.

What about "your children will not be allowed to attend a university" or "no matter how hard you work or how good you are, your path is blocked" or "people just do not want to do business with you any more"?

Unlike during the time of the Nazis, what most people in East Germany dreaded was not to disappear, but to have the few possibilities to achieve something taken from them.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#52

Post by zwieback »

sentenza wrote: post #51
zwieback wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it would be when people disappear. Being spied on is one thing but being afraid of getting arrested is another. I grew up in Western Germany and visited the East several times. Living in the US now I have to say that it feels an order of magnitude "freer" than either of the Germanies of my youth. However, I'm very concerned about the NSA thing.

What about "your children will not be allowed to attend a university" or "no matter how hard you work or how good you are, your path is blocked" or "people just do not want to do business with you any more"? Unlike during the time of the Nazis, what most people in East Germany dreaded was not to disappear, but to have the few possibilities to achieve something taken from them.

Which is what happened to my mom and aunt in post-war Eastern Germany, luckily they were able to get away. That's also what I'm concerned about here. I totally understand the allure of big data mining for the purpose of preventing attacks but once you've figured out a good algorithm to pinpoint a specific population it's just a small step to put obstacles in their path.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#53

Post by mindcrime »

jsmcgd wrote: post #16
paganel wrote: post #3

For once I'll avoid Godwin's law and link instead to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58 > The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. So the point is that even in Soviet Russia…

Godwin's Law, or people's interpretation of it, has a lot to answer for. It's perfectly acceptable to make comparisons to the Nazis if it's relevant to where a conversation is at, at a particular moment. Not only is acceptable, it should also be encouraged. The most valuable thing to emerge from World War Two was the anti-blueprint for society. Let's not make this taboo merely for the sake of falling foul of some int…

Godwin's "law" is nothing but an Internet meme at this point. "Invoking Godwin's Law" or referencing it does nothing to promote the conversation at hand, and we'd all be better off it it just disappeared into the dustbin of history.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#54

Post by mindcrime »

mseebach wrote: post #33
jsmcgd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godwin's Law, or people's interpretation of it, has a lot to answer for. It's perfectly acceptable to make comparisons to the Nazis if it's relevant to where a conversation is at, at a particular moment. Not only is acceptable, it should also be encouraged. The most valuable thing to emerge from World War Two was the anti-blueprint for society. Let's not make this taboo merely for the sake of falling foul of some int…

The problem is that references to the Nazis or Soviets are very hard to get right without tripping over the slippery slope argument. Hitler was not only a vegetarian, he was a health fanatic, and there's evidence that it informed his obsession with purifying the race. That's doesn't make any number of locavore glutenfree vegan hipsters a step towards nazism. Hitler "militarized" society, and emphasized such organisat…

Yes, Hitler and Stalin spied a lot on their own populations for "national security" purposes, but we should be able to oppose surveillance on it's own merits with out resorting to the painting a (fallacious) slippery slope picture where the next frame is a KZ/Gulag camp.

Agreed, but consider this: a slippery slope fallacy is more like "If we do A, then B will inevitably follow". Lacking evidence to support it, that is a fallacy. But it's not a fallacy to point out "B" as warning of what might follow from "A".

And in the "reasoning by analogy" sense, it's not wrong to point out that "Group C did A and then B followed, so we might want to be careful about doing A" (assuming "B" is something undesirable).

Sometimes it is a valid point of discussion to point out these potential "slippery slopes"; it's just important to distinguish between the assertion that the following part happens as an inevitable consequence or not, and if that is asserted, to demand evidence.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#55

Post by mseebach »

jsmcgd wrote: post #50
mseebach wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that references to the Nazis or Soviets are very hard to get right without tripping over the slippery slope argument. Hitler was not only a vegetarian, he was a health fanatic, and there's evidence that it informed his obsession with purifying the race. That's doesn't make any number of locavore glutenfree vegan hipsters a step towards nazism. Hitler "militarized" society, and emphasized such organisat…

I totally get your point that people often make fallacious comparisons. In the interest of making a concise point I omitted stating it myself. However just because some people do not debate with integrity, or they make mistakes in their reasoning, it should not prevent others making comparisons which are pertinent. I disagree that with your last point, that people should make the argument purely on its own merits. "S…

> The worrying thing for me is that we've been here before.

No, that's exactly the problem. Other nations has at radically different time been in a vaguely similar situation.

Looking at Hitler doesn't tell you anything about the surveillance state that it doesn't also tell you about vegetarians and boy scouts. The reason we're not opposed to vegetarians and boy scouts (at least not based on their relation to nazism) is that we're approaching those cases on the merits. It's ludicrous to suggest a causal bond between those and Auschwitz.

Also, pure tactics: Anyone who's studied WWII civil oppression can spend hours detailing just how radical the differences between the Gestapo and the NSA are. You're basically handing your opponent the rhetorical petard he will hoist you by.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#56

Post by mindcrime »

sneak wrote: post #31
uptown wrote: post #9

This whole thing has reminded me how prescient the movie "Sneakers" was. "There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!" "The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's…

From getting paid for pentesting to phreaking to the nick I've used for fifteen+ years, that movie changed and shaped my life indelibly.

I missed it when it first came out, and only saw it for the first time about 2 years ago. I've probably watched it 20+ times since then. It really is a great movie.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#57

Post by mpyne »

betterunix wrote: post #44
tootie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key is that we don't have Article 58. Per the quote in the op-ed, the NSA has had the ability to make America a tyrrany since 1975 and it hasn't done so. None of history's police states required digital surveillance. What they required was, you know, tyranny. We don't have any right now. I look at this purely as a question of privacy and due process.

"What they required was, you know, tyranny. We don't have any right now." We have all the pieces in place. Widespread surveillance, a "legal system" that allows anyone to be arrested and imprisoned, soldiers carrying out police work, secret courts/secret laws, mass imprisonment, etc. All it would take is for someone to arrange those pieces properly and tyranny would ensue.

So in other words "all it would take" is for someone to do the one part of that which is actually almost impossible?

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#58

Post by mpyne »

toddmatthews wrote: post #43
gyardley wrote: post #29

Is there anything in this article, aside from an overblown metaphor in the title, that hasn't been posted here fifty times in the last couple weeks?

its written by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

So, no?

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#59

Post by glurgh »

paganel wrote: post #3

For once I'll avoid Godwin's law and link instead to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58 > The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. So the point is that even in Soviet Russia…

As you're concerned with the spirit of laws - your parallel is much in the spirit of 'Godwin's law' and ahistorical to the point of being specious. The USSR was a totalitarian single-party state that engaged in many decades of brutal mass repression of its population. The US is a constitutional democracy where laws are formulated, enforced and interpreted by independent branches of government, two of them elected. The comparison boils down to 'both in the US and in the USSR, they wrote some stuff down'.

Re: Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

#60

Post by xradionut »

brown9-2 wrote: post #35
paganel wrote: post #3

For once I'll avoid Godwin's law and link instead to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58 > The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. So the point is that even in Soviet Russia…

Who was responsible for passing these laws/articles in 1920s Soviet Union? One difference here is that when the USG says "well it's all done according to law", that law was written and passed by an institution who at least nominally represents and is elected by the people. I don't know if the same can be said of the USSR.

The problem now is that who you vote for doesn't represent you. They represent themselves, their donors and their social class/circle. They've also sworn an oath to the Constitution, then passed laws that are against that oath.

For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore. But we pretend it does for pragmatic reasons.

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