3 ms·

Yes, I think it's fundamentally impossible to effectively prevent or prosecute certain types of crime without scanning financial metadata, such as funding of te

Yes, I think it's fundamentally impossible to effectively prevent or prosecute certain types of crime without scanning financial metadata, such as funding of terrorist groups or cross-border fraud. The model of 'wait until someone complains, then get a warrant, then use that data to prosecute' simply doesn't work in practice, and the article notes exactly why. For criminal networks, by the time the judicial gears have started running, the criminals are long gone with their ill-gotten profits. For terrorist enterprises, it's easy and cheap to create puppet companies or non-profits to take donations, and prosecuting terrorists after they've used the money to commit violence is not acceptable to society. > Should the bank also check that the product you are trying to sell is compliant with the latest health & safety regulations and that you didn't violate environmental protection laws? No, because you can effectively punish companies that violate health and safety regulations after the financial transaction takes place. For scammers, that's not true. You might think that having these crimes is simply the price of liberty, but I think many people would disagree. I don't think the rhetorical strategy of denying there is a problem, and claiming that policing strategies from 30 years ago will fix all the problems, is a reasonable one. > Was it impossible to do their work before the internet when law enforcement had to get a warrant to open mail and tap phone lines? Yes, because now criminals aren't communicating with mail and phone lines, they're using the internet, which is a completely different beast. You can't run a business like you did 30 years ago and succeed. You can't make a movie like you did 30 years ago and expect to succeed. What makes you so confident and sure that wiretap laws from 30 years ago can be perfectly and successfully applied to the internet today?

mcbits 10y ago
I don't think you can mold your argument so that it doesn't apply equally to searching everyone's closets for skeletons once a week without suspicion because that's the only way to root out the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  - In practice, we as a society value stopping fraud and terrorist funding quite a bit more than rooting out every last Jeffrey Dahmer - Looking through financial metadata is a couple orders of magnitude less invasive than physically searching everyone's closet every week All I'm saying here is there is actually a tradeoff between privacy and law-enforcement effectiveness. Of course we should think of ways to have both, but it is not always possible in every case. As engineers, that should be easy to understand. If we're being honest with ourselves, we should admit that we're willing to pay a cost (perhaps even a substantial one) for greater privacy. We should then have a discussion about which costs we're willing to pay, for which particular forms of privacy, and how to get the most bang for our buck. We should not simply pretend that the cost of upholding our liberal values is zero, as tempting as that might be rhetorically.
  - Bjartr 10y ago
    Would you mind educating me as to when "we as a society" made the decision to shift away from valuing the privacy of an individual to the point that it is a foregone conclusion that we should eschew those liberties and implicitly throw away the protections of due process rather than improve and reform the judicial system whose inefficiency is the real bottleneck? Yes, there are tradeoffs to be made, but existing due process, including warrants, is the legal manifestation of those very tradeoffs.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      I never posited that, and of course we should not throw away our liberties. I just happen to think that defending your liberties requires a healthy dose of realism about how the police and judicial system actually work. As difficult as that may be to accept, that also requires some level of trust in those institutions and in what the leaders of those institutions say. When police or FBI say that current laws and processes are insufficient to deal with a changed environment and they need help, I've seen that the left tends to demonize them, question their motivations (like of course cops want to set up a surveillance state), and then give a hand-wavy argument that 'well, getting a warrant worked in the past, so it must work fine today'. Basically accusing cops of lying about having problems, or lying about needing new tools and processes. That doesn't seem very fair, and it's certainly not a way to have a constructive discussion. I mean, these two statements are basically the same: 1. You can't any trust climate scientists, because of course all they want is to scare you into giving them more funding and power 2. You can't any trust cops and the intelligence services, because of course all they want is to scare you into giving them more funding and power IMHO both these statements are false. Even though they're imperfect, our cops and intelligence agencies by and large try to do right, and it'd be better to understand challenges from their perspective and come up with innovative, privacy-protecting ideas that work, rather than to blindly accuse them of malice when they suggest something that we disagree with. If you think people are doing things wrong, first try help them do right.
    - drewmol 10y ago
      Specific to American Legislation, and for those who may be unfamiliar: look into the passing of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act passed shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a bill of over 2000 pages which was rushed through congress in span of a few days from finalization to ratification under the prosumtion of necessity to provide the tools to combat terrorism. It stripped away many powers of the judicial branch to provide oversight, and provisions intended to be 'temporary' have been continually extended by presidents (executive branch) on both sides of the aisle since. (edited: misspelled patriot acronym)

mcbits 10y ago

I don't think you can mold your argument so that it doesn't apply equally to searching everyone's closets for skeletons once a week without suspicion because that's the only way to root out the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world.

smallnamespace 10y ago
- In practice, we as a society value stopping fraud and terrorist funding quite a bit more than rooting out every last Jeffrey Dahmer - Looking through financial metadata is a couple orders of magnitude less invasive than physically searching everyone's closet every week All I'm saying here is there is actually a tradeoff between privacy and law-enforcement effectiveness. Of course we should think of ways to have both, but it is not always possible in every case. As engineers, that should be easy to understand. If we're being honest with ourselves, we should admit that we're willing to pay a cost (perhaps even a substantial one) for greater privacy. We should then have a discussion about which costs we're willing to pay, for which particular forms of privacy, and how to get the most bang for our buck. We should not simply pretend that the cost of upholding our liberal values is zero, as tempting as that might be rhetorically.
- Bjartr 10y ago
  Would you mind educating me as to when "we as a society" made the decision to shift away from valuing the privacy of an individual to the point that it is a foregone conclusion that we should eschew those liberties and implicitly throw away the protections of due process rather than improve and reform the judicial system whose inefficiency is the real bottleneck? Yes, there are tradeoffs to be made, but existing due process, including warrants, is the legal manifestation of those very tradeoffs.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    I never posited that, and of course we should not throw away our liberties. I just happen to think that defending your liberties requires a healthy dose of realism about how the police and judicial system actually work. As difficult as that may be to accept, that also requires some level of trust in those institutions and in what the leaders of those institutions say. When police or FBI say that current laws and processes are insufficient to deal with a changed environment and they need help, I've seen that the left tends to demonize them, question their motivations (like of course cops want to set up a surveillance state), and then give a hand-wavy argument that 'well, getting a warrant worked in the past, so it must work fine today'. Basically accusing cops of lying about having problems, or lying about needing new tools and processes. That doesn't seem very fair, and it's certainly not a way to have a constructive discussion. I mean, these two statements are basically the same: 1. You can't any trust climate scientists, because of course all they want is to scare you into giving them more funding and power 2. You can't any trust cops and the intelligence services, because of course all they want is to scare you into giving them more funding and power IMHO both these statements are false. Even though they're imperfect, our cops and intelligence agencies by and large try to do right, and it'd be better to understand challenges from their perspective and come up with innovative, privacy-protecting ideas that work, rather than to blindly accuse them of malice when they suggest something that we disagree with. If you think people are doing things wrong, first try help them do right.
  - drewmol 10y ago
    Specific to American Legislation, and for those who may be unfamiliar: look into the passing of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act passed shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a bill of over 2000 pages which was rushed through congress in span of a few days from finalization to ratification under the prosumtion of necessity to provide the tools to combat terrorism. It stripped away many powers of the judicial branch to provide oversight, and provisions intended to be 'temporary' have been continually extended by presidents (executive branch) on both sides of the aisle since. (edited: misspelled patriot acronym)