[HN Gopher] Global Mass Surveillance - The Fourteen Eyes
___________________________________________________________________
Global Mass Surveillance - The Fourteen Eyes
Author : latexr
Score : 198 points
Date : 2020-08-25 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.privacytools.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.privacytools.io)
| mindslight wrote:
| This is treason, plain and simple.
|
| _Treason against the United States, shall consist only in
| levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving
| them Aid and Comfort_
|
| Foreign spy agencies, even of friendly countries, are our enemies
| due to their continual mission of attacking us with surveillance.
| But rather than working to defend the people against these
| attacks, NSA has chosen to conspire with the attackers!
| swader999 wrote:
| How else will we get around laws against domestic spying?
| autisticcurio wrote:
| Firstly you were born on a patch of land that imposes its own
| laws on you. Did you sign a contract to say you would adhere
| to those laws? This is all about power and control over less
| powerful innocent people being treated like sleepy idiots. So
| to answer your question, out smart them to win, and then you
| will find they play dirty and illegally, against the spirit
| of the law they claim to uphold. 5 Eyes best demonstrates
| this by circumventing domestic laws, they dont have the
| intelligence to win the argument in their own courts. This
| also tells you that you can out smart them so get thinking,
| this is an intelligence game.
| bouchard wrote:
| > In Canada key disclosure is covered under the Canadian Charter
| of Rights and Freedoms section 11(c) which states "any person
| charged with an offence has the right not to be compelled to be a
| witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the
| offence;"[10] and protects the rights of individuals that are
| both citizens and non-citizens of Canada as long as they are
| physically present in Canada.[11]
|
| >In a 2010 Quebec Court of Appeal case the court stated that a
| password compelled from an individual by law enforcement "is
| inadmissible and that renders the subsequent seizure of the data
| unreasonable. In short, even had the seizure been preceded by
| judicial authorization, the law will not allow an order to be
| joined compelling the respondent to self-incriminate."[12]
|
| >In a 2019 Ontario court case (R v. Shergill), the defendant was
| initially ordered to provide the password to unlock his phone.
| However, the judge concluded that providing a password would be
| tantamount to self-incrimination by testifying against oneself.
| As a result, the defendant was not compelled to provide his
| password.
|
| According to the Wikipedia article cited when "Canada" is
| clicked, key disclosure laws don't apply which is the opposite of
| what the site claims.
|
| Or am I misunderstanding something here?
| justanotheranon wrote:
| in the Snowden leaks, there is a document that lists the
| opinions of NSA's legal counsel about a list of collection
| practices.
|
| one of the questions is whether passwords sent across the
| network are considered metadata or content.
|
| NSA legal says passwords are metadata. which means NSA can scan
| all traffic for passwords and steal them and no FISA warrant is
| needed, nor a subpoena.
|
| of course NSA already has a dozen programs just for extracting
| passwords from UPSTREAM passive collection. and presumably this
| means everyone in the FVEYS gets access to everyone's
| passwords, since they pool their capabilities and collection.
|
| whatever the Courts rule about local cops and passwords, it
| doesnt apply at the level of SIGINT collection, which enjoys
| its own separate and secret system of laws.
| eivarv wrote:
| The Norwegian parliament recently passed a bill that implements
| bulk metadata collection here as well.
|
| I tried debating with ministers, writing op-eds, and even
| organizing petitions (over 1000 security, privacy and tech
| professionals in a couple of days) before the vote. While every
| informed person I know thinks it's a bad idea, and every
| organization consulted massively criticized it as mass
| surveillance, a huge majority of our nation's decision makers
| apparently disagreed.
|
| Watching video from the proceedings made me realize just how few
| of them have any real understanding both of the practical
| consequences of the technical implementation, as well as of
| privacy in and of itself (my jaw was literally agape from some
| comments).
|
| How can we do something about this sorry state of things when
| politicians are not only ignorant, but ignorant of their
| ignorance - and unwilling to listen to experts that are critical?
|
| Besides using privacy-preserving technologies, how can we work
| against this on a technical level?
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| _> how can we work against this on a technical level?_
|
| As the saying goes, you can't use a technical solution to fix a
| social problem.
|
| One way to fix the social problem is to vote politicians out of
| office when they make bad decisions--not just about
| surveillance, but in general. People who don't have to pay a
| cost for bad decisions have no incentive to make better
| decisions.
|
| Another way is to not give powers like this to governments in
| the first place. If politicians don't have decision making
| power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us by
| making a bad decision.
| vkou wrote:
| > Another way is to not give powers like this to governments
| in the first place. If politicians don't have decision making
| power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us
| by making a bad decision.
|
| It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a law
| that forbids a future parliament from repealing it.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a
| law that forbids a future parliament from repealing it._
|
| Not giving powers to governments in the first place would
| be something at a higher level than parliamentary. In the
| US, it would be something like a Constitutional amendment.
|
| I agree that no such action, at any level, can ever be
| completely irreversible, in the sense that future citizens
| would never have to worry about the issue again. Eternal
| vigilance is the price of liberty.
| vkou wrote:
| And who adds or repeals constitutional amendments? The
| government.
| bundledock wrote:
| Networks require metadata to function, so metadata will always
| be around to abuse unless you can somehow invent networks that
| don't require it, which I have a hard time imagining. That
| means the only available methods to fix this problem are
| probably legal and regulatory, not technical.
| baxtr wrote:
| I'm almost at a point where I think a well programmed robot
| would do a better job using known heuristics and a method to
| test legislation for effectiveness.
| whatshisface wrote:
| All of the effort that goes in to exploiting the humans would
| turn to exploiting the heuristics.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Clicking on the link for Belgium leads to a site with an
| unbypassble cookie acceptance popup
| ffpip wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200211052201/https://tweakers....
| freddyym wrote:
| Odd. As a team member, I can confirm that we (obviuosly) take
| privacy very seriously. This shouldn't have happened. Do you
| have a screenshot?
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| I think you misread (I did too at first) it to mean the
| cookie consent was on privacytools.io. However, I think
| they're referring to the Belgium link under the "Key
| disclosure laws may apply" which links to
| https://tweakers.net/nieuws/163116/belgische-rechter-
| verdach...
| dsbleia wrote:
| I'm asking this question not to spark a contentious debate or be
| ridiculed. But I'm genuinely curious, as someone who has little
| experience with China and only lived in the US, is the US just as
| much of a surveillance state as China?
|
| We often hear a lot of 'information' (bordering propaganda),
| about China being an "authoritarian surveillance state". I don't
| mean to sound absurd, but is the US that much better in terms of
| authoritarianism or surveillance? If so, why?
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| I suspect that the main difference is that China is transparent
| about its surveillance programs, while the US ones are top
| secret.
| jjcon wrote:
| The US and EU countries have processes, checks and balances on
| those powers (though not always enough, I think they need
| more). These checks keep abuse low and keep mass surveillance
| limited to national security domains. This is in stark contrast
| to China where this power can be used/abused with almost no
| oversight or limitations.
| casraso wrote:
| What is a specific example of such a process, check, and/or
| balance that the united states has that china does not?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| To start, the chinese government has none at all.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The right to bear arms. The right to free speech. States
| rights. Hundreds of years of common law precedence. The 4th
| amendment. The fact that if a piece of evidence is acquired
| against you in an unlawful way it cannot be used against
| you in court as a US citizen. The right to a jury trial,
| etc etc.
| l332mn wrote:
| Individual rights are not processes of checks and
| balances. Those rights can be withdrawn in a jiffy,
| whenever required or convenient. What good does the right
| to bear arms do you as an individual when you're deemed a
| dangerous criminal, or as a group when you're deemed a
| terrorist organization? What good does the right to free
| speech do you if your speech is inconsequential?
|
| > The fact that if a piece of evidence is acquired
| against you in an unlawful way it cannot be used against
| you in court as a US citizen
|
| The US has repeatedly manufactured and framed political
| dissidents when it has felt politically threatened
| historically. Those rights you're talking about were
| useless to them.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Theoretically, the 4th Amendment, but there's so many
| exceptions to it lately that it only theoretically counts,
| with a good lawyer.
| [deleted]
| craigsmansion wrote:
| > but is the US that much better in terms of authoritarianism
| or surveillance?
|
| Who knows? The last guy who touched upon it had to hide in
| freedom-loving Russia afterwards.
|
| The PRC has it easy. They don't have to hide their actions
| behind contortions of "national security", which makes it
| difficult to compare the extent and pervasiveness of US and PRC
| surveillance.
| mellow2020 wrote:
| > The last guy who touched upon it
|
| On the other hand, people like Chomsky aren't being
| persecuted. Though all in all, I would also say they get
| ignored very efficiently, Chomsky still isn't exactly
| _unknown_ either. Is there a Chinese author and speaker with
| decades of real harsh criticism of their government under
| their belt, who is living in China with their works being
| translated in all sorts of languages and also available in
| China?
| craigsmansion wrote:
| > Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades
|
| This is only as I understand it, but technically, yes.
|
| People like to think that the Chinese Communist Party is a
| single body with a single well-defined set of ideas.
|
| It's not.
|
| It's perfectly possible for academics and even party
| politicians to utter criticism of the current party
| direction. They can, for example, advocate the return of
| fundamental Maoism, or advocate free market mechanisms. As
| long as you can argue a point of view that lies within the
| party's tenets, there is usually no problem.
|
| It's different when:
|
| - you are a person of influence.
|
| _and_
|
| - you argue against the stability of the country (where,
| conveniently, the CCP is seen as the most important
| stabilising force in mainland China (by the CCP)).
|
| I don't know if a Chinese Chomsky exists. I have the
| impression that if he would exist, he would be marginalised
| by the media, or some of his ideas would be adopted and
| used in some splintered minority faction of the CCP and
| hailed as a great but impractical thinker, and mostly
| ignored.
| l332mn wrote:
| You can't really draw a direct comparison between PRC and
| the US, and ask how China would react to a 'Chinese
| Chomsky'. Their respective conditions and rational
| incentives for population control are not very similar. The
| US (after the fall of the USSR) is a country who's
| stability has not truly been threatened by criticism and
| dissident voices, while China is a state which has been and
| currently is extremely vulnerable and threatened by
| instability, unrest and separatism, and is consequentially
| on high alert.
|
| Reaction to criticism and dissidence not really a
| principled stand in the eyes of a state. The way the US
| clamped down hard on leftist political groups and
| organizations during the Cold War is rather the actions of
| a country believing itself to be threatened by instability
| and unrest. Political figures who fronted harsh criticisms
| against the government have routinely been assassinated or
| framed and arrested. COINTELPRO is a program which shows
| how political repression works the US when it feels
| politically vulnerable.
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| The US is much better. Take for example internet surveillance:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surv...
|
| China is in another league. They are using deep packet
| inspection to block services they don't allow access to, they
| force some people to install apps on their phone that track
| them. The great firewall of China is far more visible and
| impactful than the real Great Wall of China.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Take for example internet surveillance:
|
| There are three somewhat current reports on there. One comes
| from the US State department, one from an organization
| started by Eleanor Roosevelt with strong US ties, and one
| lists both China and the US as "enemies of the internet."
| casraso wrote:
| Americans like to think they are immune to propaganda, or that
| for some reason other countries produce more of it than they
| do. What I have observed as someone not living in china or
| america is that they are roughly on equal footing and produce
| about as much deceptive trash as any other country, my own
| included. This means you will have a lot of americans answering
| your question by saying that america does less surveillance,
| not understanding after all the years of pledging allegiance to
| the flag and having armed police in their schools, that they
| are very very similar to china and it would be naive to assume
| they are not being watched as much.
|
| It is also unlikely they even know what happens in china to a
| good extent because china itself is not very communicative;
| they still report the same covid stats since march, for
| example, and their government websites are full of broken
| links. It is hard for me to get accurate info on china even
| from news sites, I wouldn't trust what most people say.
|
| All that said I think China is worse, but Americans would have
| you believe the difference is gigantic.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| We started putting armed police in schools to defend against
| school shootings. Not to intimidate students. The school
| officers here are generally older cops working part time with
| not much time left before retirement.
|
| There still is a fundamental difference in the way that power
| is broken up in the US between states and federal and between
| different courts that are widely independent. You have a lot
| of levers to defend yourself if a state wants to initiate
| legal action against you. In China, you don't fight the CCP
| and win, ever. People often sue and win against the Federal
| Government.
|
| There are many fundamental differences. We have rights to
| free speech, guns, due process, and hundreds of years of
| common law precedence to fall back on, in addition to a
| generally far more rebellious culture.
|
| EDIT (reply to caraso): A lot, because if the surveillance is
| used against you, you have many levers of unaffiliated and
| totally separate branches of government to pull to come to
| your defense.
| l332mn wrote:
| You don't think courts or government institutions in China
| are subject to or follow Chinese law, or do you think that
| the state is particularly prone to abuse of the law (moreso
| than in the US)? How do you suppose "fighting the CCP"
| would work in practice? If you are up against the
| legislative and judicial body itself, you have only the law
| to support you. It's not really a good sign as you think
| that people are winning legal battles against the state
| anywhere, because that's merely a symptom of the state
| abusing the law in the first place. What matters is how
| much government abuse of the law that exists in the first
| place. It might be much higher in the US for all you know.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Not at all. No. The CCP will bend the law and the laws
| don't go nearly far enough to protect the individual.
|
| Obviously China is currently an authoritarian, uniparty
| state, so there's only one way to fight that: revolution.
|
| > It's not really a good sign as you think that people
| are winning legal battles against the state anywhere,
| because that's merely a symptom of the state abusing the
| law in the first place.
|
| Really? That's your argument? There are thousands of
| civil disagreement lawsuits that are generate from either
| unintentional mistakes or are grey area at best and far
| from clear even in statute. The law is of course, not a
| binary good vs evil thing.
|
| > What matters is how much government abuse of the law
| that exists in the first place. It might be much higher
| in the US for all you know.
|
| Obviously when the CCP controls the law, they are free to
| re-interpret it or rewrite it to place themselves clearly
| in those bounds. That's the beauty of absolute power, and
| the horror of it.
| l332mn wrote:
| >Obviously when the CCP controls the law, they are free
| to re-interpret it or rewrite it to place themselves
| clearly in those bounds
|
| That's the case with every state. Every state has
| absolute power. Every state, as the union of the
| legislative, judicial and executive branch are free to
| re-interpret, rewrite and judge according to how the
| state apparatus best functions. You seem to be confusing
| the issue at hand with your objections to the political
| structure of China. You know, the CCP has 90 million
| members, they have proper political processes according
| to Chinese law too. This is just the way politics works
| in China. Don't let your prejudice cloud your judgement.
| I get that you are dismissive of a one-party system, but
| I don't think that for example the union of the
| Democratic and the Republican party in the US shows any
| less totalitarian traits than the CCP at all. Given how
| there is practically zero correlation between votes in
| congress and the popularity of policies that are
| approved, I think they actually reveal a much more
| totalitarian form of government.
|
| https://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-
| congr...
|
| The US two-party system is essentially next to useless in
| this regard. Given that the CCP is extremely popular
| among Chinese citizens, this shows that a multi-party
| system is not necessarily a more democratically
| legitimate form of government.
| knolax wrote:
| > generally far more rebellious culture.
|
| Since the first English settlement in North America,
| America has had one successful regime change, China has had
| 3. It's rich seeing people who think standing around on the
| pavement and waiting for the police to come beat you is
| rebellion try to lecture others about "rebelliousness".
| casraso wrote:
| What does any of that have to do with surveillance?
| eternalban wrote:
| "Israel is the 6th - unofficial and undeclared - member of 5
| eyes"
|
| https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2014/02/09/nsa-maintains-...
| jjcon wrote:
| Germany is also currently in the process of joining the five
| eyes
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Israel is not in the 5 eyes it has a bilateral intelligence
| sharing agreement with the US that specifically forbids further
| dissemination, Israel is very weary about burning sources there
| has been a long term ban on sharing certain intelligence with
| other 5 eye members especially the UK due to multiple past
| leaks both for political reasons and due to compromise.
| 3jckd wrote:
| The link is dead atm.
| latexr wrote:
| Working for me, but it's also on The Internet Archive:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20200825170553/https://www.privac...
| tjohns wrote:
| There's something odd going on. I'm getting an NXDOMAIN error.
| It looks like I get different results depending on which DNS
| server I try: $ dig @8.8.8.8
| www.privacytools.io (No results.) $ dig
| @8.8.4.4 www.privacytools.io www.privacytools.io. 3158 IN
| A 135.181.7.217 $ dig @75.75.75.75
| www.privacytools.io (No result.) $ dig
| @1.1.1.1 www.privacytools.io www.privacytools.io. 1395 IN
| A 135.181.7.217
| aborsy wrote:
| Surveillance pertains to asymmetric information, a situation
| where a few in the society (those in power) have access to the
| information of the rest of the society (those not in power,
| namely, the public) but not conversely.
|
| The asymmetry of the information gives those in power great
| advantage over public. The rich and powerful claim, we monitor
| you to protect you, and to better serve you. The scope and the
| characteristics of the surveillance, the incentives and the
| historical evidence don't support this claim. The harm is far
| more than potential benefits. The public should reread David Hume
| and stand up against this threat.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| There is also the implicit assumption of "superior goodness" of
| those in power, who will "benevolently assure our security". If
| anything, power corrupts. Trusting a certain small group to be
| ethically superior is insanity. If anything, history proves
| that, on average, those with more money are _less_ethical_.
| They often got the money by being that way, then convince
| everyone to give them more power.
| WealthVsSurvive wrote:
| Oh, the worst part is that our system doesn't even require
| that people be convinced to give the wealthy more wealth. The
| relationship of State governance & powerful trade unions with
| the "world banks" functions like an insurance scam, whereby
| private losses are foisted upon an unwilling populace through
| all sorts of very fancy sounding financial tools. It's a
| charade. Why do you think they are so resistant to letting
| housing naturally crash? Can't have those plebs realize they
| can live and provide for themselves without debt, gotta
| inflate, inflate, inflate, so they'll be forced to work where
| we want, salary tiered by what we need. Hey, I wonder what
| happens if you do that, while at the same time ensuring that
| no one has access to capital? $10 bag o' chips. So much faith
| in our brave and fearless "leaders." Oh hey, look, someone's
| nephew is running for office. They are just so darn
| deserving. We've really come so far since feudalism.
| zionic wrote:
| What I don't see many talk about is how much harm the _belief_
| that they harvest everything is, on top of just the actual deed
| itself.
|
| If I am an organization that is well known to be spying on
| everyone and anything, that means I can very convincingly
| fabricate evidence against my enemies. It goes beyond simple
| spying, they now have the ability to manufacture whatever truth
| they'd like.
| [deleted]
| miketery wrote:
| Not sure if also related or you meant to touch on this point.
| But reading that made me think the following; this means real
| evidence will be discounted as well since we perceive those
| in power to be able to conjure fake evidence. thus eroding
| trust wholly.
| eivarv wrote:
| Though not exactly what you're referring to, my impression is
| that people discuss the chilling effect [0] quite a bit.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect#Chilling_e
| ffec...
| HugeAcumen wrote:
| Some people do - though likely not as many as discuss Love
| Island.
|
| I think the tech community in particular (with both the
| awareness and the means) has a duty to the public to make
| clear what is going on to those less tuned in.
|
| So far, it has failed in that to a rather astonishing
| degree. Probably for exactly the reasons yourself and the
| OP describe.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| Yes, and this so-called Chilling Effect can have a
| potentially very negative impact on the ability of a
| democratic society to thrive and possibly to even survive.
| Democracies require (open, honest) debate. If we self-
| censor then we hold back on fully-expressing views or
| positions during debate.
|
| This is one of the fundamental issues that I have with this
| proliferation of population-scale mass-surveillance
| (domestically in the US and abroad). It will not lead us
| into any sort of light, despite the promises about safety
| or less kiddie pr0n or whatever.
| 3647e7ee7ru wrote:
| I'll start caring about chilling effects on speech again
| when local governments quit encouraging the police to
| just let riots wear themselves out, damage and deaths be
| damned. Until that happens I don't really care if the
| federal government is engaging in these tactics as long
| as belligerantly violent groups are actually charged and
| receive jail time.
| twblalock wrote:
| One way around this is to make surveillance records available
| to the public through due process like other public government
| records.
|
| This removes the asymmetry and it also makes surveillance less
| attractive in the first place, because those responsible for
| the surveillance would be forced to expose surveillance records
| about themselves.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> One way around this is to make surveillance records
| available to the public through due process like other public
| government records._
|
| I would agree that a person ought to be able to see whatever
| surveillance records exist on _themselves_.
|
| However, allowing any member of the public to see _all_
| surveillance records, on _anyone_ , strikes me as just
| compounding the problem--now my private information isn't
| just seen by the government, it's seen by everybody.
| twblalock wrote:
| > now my private information isn't just seen by the
| government, it's seen by everybody.
|
| Right, but that's why no reasonable congressman would want
| your information, because that would also make his/hers
| available just like yours. The result would be that
| sensitive personal information would be very unlikely to be
| collected.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The result would be that sensitive personal
| information would be very unlikely to be collected. _
|
| I don't think so; I think the result would be that people
| who had the power would simply bend the rules behind the
| scenes to make sure any information they didn't want
| revealed wasn't revealed, much as they do now.
| matz1 wrote:
| Information want to be free. Sooner or latter the
| information will leak. Especially as technology getting
| more advance, its getting easier and easier to do
| surveillance, soon everyone can do that. The sooner we
| adapt with the life where all surveillance records is
| public the better. Beside it level the playing field,
| everyone has the same information.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Information want to be free._
|
| You're welcome to let all of your private information out
| for everyone to see if that's what you believe. But
| people like me who do not want to do that should not be
| forced to.
|
| _> The sooner we adapt with the life where all
| surveillance records is public the better._
|
| I strongly disagree.
| matz1 wrote:
| >You're welcome to let all of your private information
| out for everyone to see if that's what you believe
|
| I don't necessarily want to, I'm just being realistic and
| pragmatic.
|
| >But people like me who do not want to do that should not
| be forced to.
|
| No one is forced to but the inconvenience and the cost of
| keeping thing private will go up and up.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I 'm just being realistic and pragmatic._
|
| Being realistic and pragmatic doesn't need to mean being
| defeatist.
|
| _> the inconvenience and the cost of keeping thing
| private will go up and up_
|
| Only if citizens let governments continue to increase
| their surveillance activities with no oversight and no
| pushback.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| That may slightly chip away at asymmetry but it doesn't
| remove it. For one, if only LEO officers decide who gets
| surveillance then mysteriously senators who misbehave won't
| get surveillance but poor people will.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >One way around this is to make surveillance records
| available to the public through due process like other public
| government records.
|
| I'm fairly sure they already are. Any records of interest get
| some sort of classified label preventing their release until
| long past when they matter.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Many of those that lead intelligence agencies are not rich and
| powerful but middle class bureaucrats. Many who hold top secret
| clearances aren't billionaires. That information isn't fed to
| society's wealthy but in defense of the state, which benefits
| the rich but also the public.
|
| There are many uses of intelligence and not all of it benefits
| the rich and powerful. To pretend that the intelligence world
| exists solely to provide tips to the well connected is
| ridiculous. It's not that it doesn't, it's just not that black
| and white.
|
| The world is far more nuanced compared to your abstracted
| sweeping examples.
| clairity wrote:
| right, the asymmetry needs to go the other way, e.g., sunshine
| laws. those in power should only be able to exercise power with
| complete transparency to the public, because of their ability
| to adversely affect many others, especially via tiny, hard-to-
| notice slices from each of us that erode our collective liberty
| and prosperity.
| jjcon wrote:
| I think it is important that we all take a second to realize that
| surveillance can be a reasonable apparatus of a well maintained
| democracy. We should strive to have proper checks and balances on
| those powers rather than pretend they are not useful or do not
| exist. With proper checks surveillance can greatly improve
| national security but it should be kept to that domain and we
| should seek to prevent abuses.
|
| I think us in the EU are due for a Snowden moment at some point
| here - the public is pretty in the dark on the level of
| surveillance pervading EU countries. I think it would be better
| if it was more transparent because we could actually have these
| discussions and work to prevent abuses.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Organizations are made of people, at all levels. You are not
| trusting or not of an abstract entity, you are dealing with a
| lot of people that you don't know from the present and the
| future, any of them that can use or abuse of the information
| they are gathering, in individual level or more related to
| policy level, or act based on that information.
|
| Also it is not about crime, is about control, for whatever
| agenda they have now or later. And the lack of Snowden level
| leaks in 7 years hints at which point they have control now.
| the8472 wrote:
| Surveillance != Mass Surveillance. If you need to have an
| investigator show up in person to carry away a thumb drive of
| data about one case then this means you need to make a cost-
| benefit analysis about when to send out that investigator. If
| you can just go dragnet fishing and hoard data forever then
| there's no incentive to ask whether you really need to.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mass
| surveillance is an absolute power. We can't prevent any abuses.
| The state is doing what they want without regards for the
| constitution. The FISA abuses in the US have proven that.
| adrianN wrote:
| How would such proper checks look like? I don't know of a
| country which I would trust to protect such data from misuse in
| day to day policing. Even more concerning is what happens if
| the country becomes less democratic but the surveillance
| infrastructure is still there.
| casraso wrote:
| I disagree with your premise entirely. I'm not sure a single
| 'check and balance' exists that can keep surveillance under
| control. It has an inherent propensity for abuse. There is no
| amount of bureaucracy or red tape that will make mass
| surveillance a benevolent force.
| ColanR wrote:
| > important that we all take a second to realize that
| surveillance can be a reasonable apparatus of a well maintained
| democracy
|
| No, I don't think we should just "realize" that. By all means,
| let's have a discussion; but to accept _a priori_ that some
| form of surveillance is acceptable reeks of an outlook that has
| already given up. We should not be fearful and dependent, but
| rather willing to accept danger as the price of no one looking
| over our shoulders.
| jjcon wrote:
| I said 'can be a reasonable apparatus' not 'is an acceptable
| apparatus' and I would argue there is a pretty big difference
| scotth wrote:
| Should have been "could"
| ColanR wrote:
| That's a semantic difference that doesn't bear any
| relevance to what I'm saying. To "realize" that it _can_ be
| reasonable is to accept the underlying premise - that
| surveillance is not _necessarily_ (logic term there)
| unacceptable.
|
| I am specifically arguing that we do not (should not)
| accept _a priori_ the premise that surveillance is not
| necessarily bad.
|
| To do so is to capitulate the entire argument against
| surveillance, and reduce our fight for privacy to nothing
| more than weighing lesser evils.
| jjcon wrote:
| I'm not sure moral puritanism is really that useful here.
| Surveillance isn't going anywhere and it is demonstrably
| useful for national security. We are best off working to
| allow it to operate with ample checks and balances rather
| than closing our eyes and pretending it is superfluous.
| Zak wrote:
| > _it is demonstrably useful for national security_
|
| Is it? Please demonstrate it by listing terrorist
| incidents prevented or active terrorists caught due to
| surveillance other than narrowly-targeted police
| investigation, or military action in an active combat
| zone.
|
| To qualify, the use of broad surveillance should be a
| necessary component of the investigation, i.e. the
| investigation would not have started or reached the
| conclusion it did without it. If some of these exist but
| they're all classified, that's problematic from the
| perspective of democracy because it prevents the public
| from making an informed decision about their merit.
| ColanR wrote:
| I don't think that's quite fair. I greatly doubt that
| successful preventions would be willingly associated with
| questionably legal surveillance. In the US, "parallel
| construction" is used specifically to hide how
| information was obtained and I'm sure similar motivations
| exist here.
| Zak wrote:
| The assertion was that it's demonstrably useful for
| national security. Without such a demonstration, I submit
| that it is not, and that terrorists are caught using
| normal police work.
|
| "It's too secret to tell the public in broad terms a
| decade after the investigation is over" strikes me as
| incompatible with democracy. Questionably-legal
| surveillance also strikes me as incompatible with
| democracy outside of short-term use in exceptional
| emergency conditions, which should be disclosed to the
| public once the emergency is over.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I don 't think that's quite fair._
|
| It is if you're not going to accept _a priori_ the claim
| that surveillance can be justified. If you need to have
| it demonstrated that surveillance can be justified, the
| only possible grounds for such a demonstration is to show
| the people the benefits--the actual harms that
| surveillance has prevented. If we the people can 't see
| those benefits, how can we possibly judge whether or not
| surveillance can be justified?
|
| In other words, the government of any free society is in
| a kind of Catch-22 position with regard to surveillance:
| it can't be justified to the people without revealing
| that it's happening and what it's discovering, but
| revealing those things destroys the usefulness of the
| surveillance. The only choices are to not permit the
| surveillance at all, or to accept an unavoidable loss of
| freedom--as a citizen, you will never be able to know
| whether the surveillance your government is conducting is
| justified. You just have to accept it.
| ColanR wrote:
| As I said earlier, you're espousing an outlook that has
| already given up. As other commentators have pointed out,
| checks and balances are unreliable at best, futile at
| worst.
|
| If you are interested in negotiating for minor
| concessions with entities who have demonstrated a
| willingness to work outside the law (and write new laws
| where needed), then your pragmatism will boil you slowly.
| rcoveson wrote:
| > ______ isn't going anywhere and it is demonstrably
| useful for national security.
|
| Fill in the blank, masters. Maximize our security.
| mindslight wrote:
| One of those checks and balances is the legal prohibition
| against operating domestically. These ongoing conspiracies
| demonstrate that spy agencies have effectively escaped
| democratic oversight.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > With proper checks surveillance can greatly improve national
| security
|
| Take a look at the past 20 years. Your argument is hollow.
| Ladens don't keep diaries on Facebook, and foreign spooks don't
| use email, no, they don't use computers as such.
|
| With the amount of silly foreign policy blunders in between the
| EU, and the US shows more than anything that US doesn't seem to
| benefit at all from wiretapping governments of their allies.
|
| That whole premise is invalid.
| rcoveson wrote:
| I think you're right in theory but wrong wrong in practice.
| While there probably exists a form and degree of surveillance
| that is very beneficial at the expense of minimal freedom, it's
| far more difficult to hold the line there than it is to hold
| the line at "surveillance is wrong." Rallying points like that
| are essential in politics and in personal moral integrity.
|
| There are likely forms of eugenics that have the same
| cost/benefit characteristics as the forms of surveillance to
| which we've alluded. We know that the legalization of abortion
| has the long-term effect of reducing crime, so what about laws
| that make abortions easier to access when the fetus has certain
| genetic characteristics associated with disabilities? Or with
| psychopathy? "NO!" is the resounding response. "THAT'S EVIL!"
| And a good thing too, because it's probably the only reliably
| way to hold the line against policies that really are
| murderously bad. We don't debate practical eugenics. We muse
| about it in fiction and hypothetical scenarios, but we don't
| debate it in politics. We reject it because it's wrong. It's
| wrong because it is.
|
| Surveillance policy should be met with this same sort of
| rallied opposing force. Write books about it, discuss it in an
| academic space, try to imagine ways in which it could do more
| good than bad; fine. But propose surveillance policy in the
| real world, and the response should be: "NO! THAT'S EVIL!"
|
| You won't find a more powerful force than moral outrage. It
| doesn't need to be worked around, it needs to be channeled. On
| the one side, you will have people channeling their outrage
| towards criminals and terrorists. On the other side, you must
| have people channeling their outrage towards the idea of using
| espionage against civilians. A compromise involving "only the
| good kinds" of surveillance is unacceptable, because it allows
| the side that's rallying against criminals and terrorists to
| continue using moral arguments, while the side opposing them is
| neutered and can only make comparatively weak arguments. It's
| nearly impossible to successfully argue that something is
| morally wrong if it's already the status quo. Why is it so easy
| to say slavery is wrong now when it was so hotly debated in the
| 17th century? Same question applies to eugenics, once a topic
| of much political discussion. We're in that boat with
| surveillance right now. It feels normal to be spied on, and the
| uncompromising argument that surveillance is totally morally
| abhorrent in all its forms sounds extreme, and you'd never hear
| it made by a sitting politician.
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