6 ms·

So, let's get this out of the way: will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidenc

So, let's get this out of the way: will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence? The only way we know about this stuff is by someone deciding to play outside the rules and inform the public directly. The security services and police are wildly out of control and have been intensely surveilling and scrutinizing the content of innocent people's communications without any oversight. This clearly doesn't make us any safer, as there have been two terrorist attacks on US soil during the era in which these totalitarian abuses have happened, so that argument can be discarded. In short, we don't have security (nor could we ever have perfect security), and they've taken our liberty without our permission. Disgusting abuse of democracy. How can people attend a political rally or do any political activity when they know that their attendance and discussions are going to be analyzed for weaknesses by a malevolent third party?

littletimmy 11y ago
Short answer: this dries up any dissent. But if you think THIS is what stops people from organizing politically then you're wrong: the intelligence agencies have done a lot worse. They've dabbled with human experimentation in the 50's, sabotaged civil rights movements in the 60's, propagandized anti-Soviet literature in the 70's, and so on. This is another step in the long line of government abuses in the land of the free.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of COINTELPRO and the like-- and I know that similar programs exist now as well. Kind of odd how the "bastion of democracy" can't stop doing unabashedly anti-democratic things over the course of decades.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    The thing is, democracy doesn't work on a scale as large as the United States. (By not work I mean the people are far to the left of the elite with their redistributionist policies, and that's unacceptable to the people in power.) So either you have countries directly managing public opinion like China/Russia, or you have countries covertly managing public opinion like the United States. Essentially, you have to choose Brave New World or 1984 if you want to manage a "democracy".
vox_mollis 11y ago
will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence Unfortunately, it's difficult to point out the high-powered shilling for authority that happens on HN because the biggest shills wield incredible influence (and karma). One learns not to poke the bear.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Can you say more about the high powered shilling for authority that happens on HN? I've been around for quite a while and I can't say that I've seen such a thing... maybe a few no-name easy-to-detect shills in certain hot national security and geopolitical topics, sure, but that's to be expected.
  - vox_mollis 11y ago
    Again, naming usernames is asking for a hellban. But a good proportion of prior threads on the topics of NSA surveillance, silk road (or tor in general), CISA, FBI/prosecutorial overreach, etc - has certain somebodies reliably pull the Frank Drebben "nothing to see here" routine regarding abuses of authority. The shilling that gets upvoted is rarely overt. It's almost always of the "this isn't so bad, citizen, carry on" or "criminals deserve it" variety that dramatically understates or deflects the threat posed to us by authority.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      Also without naming usernames... I've definitely seen this. This includes a handful of threads discussing legitimate concerns about BULLRUN-style influence that were suddenly insta-flagged, punted from the front page and hidden form the main index[1] by those same shills. Several times the "nothing to see here" explanation took the form of a sudden concern for "not wanting to tarnish someone's reputation". [1] which means moderator access edit: Anybody that thinks this is unlikely needs to watch PHK's "Operation Orchestra": https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation_orchestra/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
miguelrochefort 11y ago
Some people (including me) simply don't believe that a right to privacy makes any sense. If anything, we believe privacy to be the cause of some of today's most important problems. You people seem to speak as if the right to privacy is unquestionably good, and don't bother justify your beliefs. Surely, no progress can be made this way.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are not as privileged. It would be nice if we could live in an open society, but the reality is that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget about privacy is not only going to get some people killed and many others fired. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and not be harassed by the bigots in society. That's just the practical issues. A stronger argument for privacy is best summed up by Jacob Appelbaum's observation in Citizenfour: What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead. We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, but you should get the idea.
  - miguelrochefort 11y ago
    > I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are not as privileged. There is zero correlation between the values I hold in this discussion and what best serves my personal interest. I have the capacity to completely detach myself from my arguments in a way that leads to a lack of bias. I am morally and intellectually selfless. Legislation should never arise from anecdotes or personal preferences. Would I be abused or stalked, the fact that transparency is inherently superior wouldn't change. > It would be nice if we could live in an open society, but the reality is that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget about privacy is not only going to get some people killed and many others fired. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and not be harassed by the bigots in society. There is no debate to be had about the fact that pain will be involved in the transition to a transparent society. Of course it won't be easy. However, it would be unreasonable to ignore the biggest problem of our time just because of a short-term friction. Like any form of investment in life, there are short-term drawbacks. Human reasoning is weird as it understands a loss to be worse than a lack of gain. Loss aversion is the reason why we don't change things, which is the reason we can't get nicer things. People have no idea how much they're missing by trying to preserve "their" privacy. We're all "in the closet" in some regards. We're also all bigots. We must force people out of their closet. We must expose bigotry. Only then will things start to improve. > We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Quoting the Bible would have had the same effect. > We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Actually we don't. Should I have the right to erase something from your brain because you saw something I didn't want you to see? Of course I'm not suggesting that we should coerce people into doing anything they don't want to do, but a person's actions shouldn't be protected by any external entity. At the end of the day, an honest person has a lot more to gain by exposing themselves to the world instead of keeping things to themselves. IoT, Wearables, Big Data, AI are all concrete examples of how data gathering can improve people's lives. > Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, but you should get the idea. Privacy and Transparency are not games you can play alone. They're inherently social. The society is built on top of expectations of privacy. For example, there is some information that I legally couldn't disclose, even if I wanted to. Likewise, my identity is only secured by archaic methods of authentication, which completely breaks if my password gets known. Private key cryptography is not a technology we should build sensitive systems on top of, and it will quickly be destroyed once P = NP gets proven and applied. Your question is like asking a person to not wear a seat belt in an unsafe car. I might not think that humans should wear seat belts forever, yet I still wear one when I drive my car every day. Fast-forward 1000 years in the future. Total transparency. Ask a person whether they'd like to keep their name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, email address (assuming these things still exist which they won't). Surely, that person would refuse to make this information private as doing so would make his life miserable considering all the benefits this used to enable. The least I can ask from people is to discuss this issue seriously, and not just accept privacy to be the solution to all of our problems. This whole obsession with privacy is just a distraction.
grkvlt 11y ago
The USA is not a police state. This is a catalog of tools with legitimate law enforcement and espionage uses, and I would hope that most intelligence services, militaries and national law enforcement agencies would have access to these, and better, tools. We have known that such devices exist long before Snowden, this catalog is nothing new. Of course, understanding the motivation for their use, and oversight of the users is important, and I am in favour of making sure these tools are not abused. However to say that their mere existence implies a police state is laughable.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Consider the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#War_on_drugs_.281980.E2.80.93present.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... http://www.cato.org/raidmap http://www.cato.org/raidmap http://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams http://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_p... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rao33ZYlrq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rao33ZYlrq4 (just watch it and get infuriated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
crimsoneer 11y ago
All of these require judicial authority etc to use. Surely that's defence enough?

littletimmy 11y ago

Short answer: this dries up any dissent. But if you think THIS is what stops people from organizing politically then you're wrong: the intelligence agencies have done a lot worse. They've dabbled with human experimentation in the 50's, sabotaged civil rights movements in the 60's, propagandized anti-Soviet literature in the 70's, and so on. This is another step in the long line of government abuses in the land of the free.

cryoshon 11y ago
Yes, I'm aware of COINTELPRO and the like-- and I know that similar programs exist now as well. Kind of odd how the "bastion of democracy" can't stop doing unabashedly anti-democratic things over the course of decades.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  The thing is, democracy doesn't work on a scale as large as the United States. (By not work I mean the people are far to the left of the elite with their redistributionist policies, and that's unacceptable to the people in power.) So either you have countries directly managing public opinion like China/Russia, or you have countries covertly managing public opinion like the United States. Essentially, you have to choose Brave New World or 1984 if you want to manage a "democracy".

vox_mollis 11y ago

will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence Unfortunately, it's difficult to point out the high-powered shilling for authority that happens on HN because the biggest shills wield incredible influence (and karma). One learns not to poke the bear.

cryoshon 11y ago
Can you say more about the high powered shilling for authority that happens on HN? I've been around for quite a while and I can't say that I've seen such a thing... maybe a few no-name easy-to-detect shills in certain hot national security and geopolitical topics, sure, but that's to be expected.
- vox_mollis 11y ago
  Again, naming usernames is asking for a hellban. But a good proportion of prior threads on the topics of NSA surveillance, silk road (or tor in general), CISA, FBI/prosecutorial overreach, etc - has certain somebodies reliably pull the Frank Drebben "nothing to see here" routine regarding abuses of authority. The shilling that gets upvoted is rarely overt. It's almost always of the "this isn't so bad, citizen, carry on" or "criminals deserve it" variety that dramatically understates or deflects the threat posed to us by authority.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Also without naming usernames... I've definitely seen this. This includes a handful of threads discussing legitimate concerns about BULLRUN-style influence that were suddenly insta-flagged, punted from the front page and hidden form the main index[1] by those same shills. Several times the "nothing to see here" explanation took the form of a sudden concern for "not wanting to tarnish someone's reputation". [1] which means moderator access edit: Anybody that thinks this is unlikely needs to watch PHK's "Operation Orchestra": https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation_orchestra/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

miguelrochefort 11y ago

Some people (including me) simply don't believe that a right to privacy makes any sense. If anything, we believe privacy to be the cause of some of today's most important problems. You people seem to speak as if the right to privacy is unquestionably good, and don't bother justify your beliefs. Surely, no progress can be made this way.

pdkl95 11y ago
I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are not as privileged. It would be nice if we could live in an open society, but the reality is that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget about privacy is not only going to get some people killed and many others fired. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and not be harassed by the bigots in society. That's just the practical issues. A stronger argument for privacy is best summed up by Jacob Appelbaum's observation in Citizenfour: What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead. We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, but you should get the idea.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  > I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are not as privileged. There is zero correlation between the values I hold in this discussion and what best serves my personal interest. I have the capacity to completely detach myself from my arguments in a way that leads to a lack of bias. I am morally and intellectually selfless. Legislation should never arise from anecdotes or personal preferences. Would I be abused or stalked, the fact that transparency is inherently superior wouldn't change. > It would be nice if we could live in an open society, but the reality is that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget about privacy is not only going to get some people killed and many others fired. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and not be harassed by the bigots in society. There is no debate to be had about the fact that pain will be involved in the transition to a transparent society. Of course it won't be easy. However, it would be unreasonable to ignore the biggest problem of our time just because of a short-term friction. Like any form of investment in life, there are short-term drawbacks. Human reasoning is weird as it understands a loss to be worse than a lack of gain. Loss aversion is the reason why we don't change things, which is the reason we can't get nicer things. People have no idea how much they're missing by trying to preserve "their" privacy. We're all "in the closet" in some regards. We're also all bigots. We must force people out of their closet. We must expose bigotry. Only then will things start to improve. > We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Quoting the Bible would have had the same effect. > We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly. Actually we don't. Should I have the right to erase something from your brain because you saw something I didn't want you to see? Of course I'm not suggesting that we should coerce people into doing anything they don't want to do, but a person's actions shouldn't be protected by any external entity. At the end of the day, an honest person has a lot more to gain by exposing themselves to the world instead of keeping things to themselves. IoT, Wearables, Big Data, AI are all concrete examples of how data gathering can improve people's lives. > Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, but you should get the idea. Privacy and Transparency are not games you can play alone. They're inherently social. The society is built on top of expectations of privacy. For example, there is some information that I legally couldn't disclose, even if I wanted to. Likewise, my identity is only secured by archaic methods of authentication, which completely breaks if my password gets known. Private key cryptography is not a technology we should build sensitive systems on top of, and it will quickly be destroyed once P = NP gets proven and applied. Your question is like asking a person to not wear a seat belt in an unsafe car. I might not think that humans should wear seat belts forever, yet I still wear one when I drive my car every day. Fast-forward 1000 years in the future. Total transparency. Ask a person whether they'd like to keep their name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, email address (assuming these things still exist which they won't). Surely, that person would refuse to make this information private as doing so would make his life miserable considering all the benefits this used to enable. The least I can ask from people is to discuss this issue seriously, and not just accept privacy to be the solution to all of our problems. This whole obsession with privacy is just a distraction.

grkvlt 11y ago

The USA is not a police state. This is a catalog of tools with legitimate law enforcement and espionage uses, and I would hope that most intelligence services, militaries and national law enforcement agencies would have access to these, and better, tools. We have known that such devices exist long before Snowden, this catalog is nothing new. Of course, understanding the motivation for their use, and oversight of the users is important, and I am in favour of making sure these tools are not abused. However to say that their mere existence implies a police state is laughable.

cryoshon 11y ago
Consider the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#War_on_drugs_.281980.E2.80.93present.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... http://www.cato.org/raidmap http://www.cato.org/raidmap http://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams http://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_p... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rao33ZYlrq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rao33ZYlrq4 (just watch it and get infuriated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

crimsoneer 11y ago

All of these require judicial authority etc to use. Surely that's defence enough?