4 ms·

When your "right" to privacy starts conflicting with your "right" to safety, something has to give.

by skate22 9y ago

triplesec 9y ago
A false dichotomy should always give first. You can both be safe and have privacy
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cmiles74 9y ago
In my opinion, that's just propaganda. It's not at all clear that all the surveillance is making anyone safer.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Safety is never an absolute. Imagine a world of "very-many-nines" safety, where only once in a century a person died from a violent death, planetwide: the cause of that death would be on people's minds for decades, and any measure for decreasing the chance of it ever happening again would see great support. Once we have established that safety is a relative term it becomes pretty clear that ruthless surveillance would yield some safety improvement. I think that you can make a much more meaningful stand against surveillance when you acknowledge that, a opposed to outright denying any possible effect.
  - cmiles74 9y ago
    So far, I don't believe we have much, if any, concrete evidence that pervasive surveillance makes anyone safer. What little evidence exists is self-serving and sounds more like advertising then anything else. These surveillance organizations cost large amounts of money and produce nothing but large backlogs of data that no one has time to analyze. In my opinion, that only makes it more likely that this data will be misused in order to prove that the dollars spent yielded _something._ That the cry of "safety" is accepted as somehow obviously true is a significant problem and exacerbates the issue.
    - Ntrails 9y ago
      You'll never seen concrete evidence. Nor is it in anyone's interests to offer it. You have two choices, one at each extreme. You can assume: - Everyone working for "agencies" do so with no regard for their stated goal and are simply interested in their own personal gain. - They're genuinely intending to prevent incidents of "crime" and are relatively disinterested in the maintenance of your privacy. I find the latter more likely than the former, with a mix of the two broadly probable. Given that I find it equally unlikely that they achieve literally nothing. (Frankly even if the former were the truth it seems unlikely they wouldn't prevent something at some point even by accident). Claiming they do _nothing_ is ill founded. The more valid argument is "But at what cost?"
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - cmiles74 9y ago
        I strongly disagree with the idea that revealing ways in which pervasive surveillance provides us all with greater safety will somehow nullify that very benefit. This is clearly a simple and straightforward way for those who are performing the surveillance to excuse the fact that they are not, in fact, saving us from anything at all. To be honest, the only way I might even consider that this kind of surveillance is helping would be to see some concrete examples of them literally saving lives. I do not believe that those performing the surveillance do nothing, on the contrary, I believe they may be responsible for any number of harms (leaking private information, having that information stolen, becoming a party to blackmail, etc.) But I certainly do not believe that they are making any of us safer.
mosselman 9y ago
Much of the data gathered by agencies to make us 'safe' is alter used for ulterior motives such as tax collection or, much worse, spreading of propaganda of censoring anti-establishment information. The recent events in Spain being an example of the last case. There is nothing wrong with having to pay taxes, but using information that you gain access to by scaring people into giving up by waving terrorism in their face is not ethical and not what many people signed up for. Also, there are lots of actually effective measures to improve safety that don't involve giving governments direct access to what everyone says and does.
avs733 9y ago
this statement is predicated on the violation of our right to privacy having a significant and causal impact on our safety. I am something like 100x more likely to get struck by lightning _twice_ than I am to be killed by a terrorist
- coding123 9y ago
  And the govt. controls the lightning man...
- dhimes 9y ago
  While I don't disagree, it's still hard to turn a blind eye to the Texas church shootings, or the Las Vegas shootings, or the NY park pickup truck slaughter. Any politician that just throws up his arms and says "it all just statistics" is likely out of a job. Privacy invasion has to be stopped by law. There is no way, currently, for a person who has public safety as a responsibility to say "no" to this kind of technology. It's much the same with businesses invading user privacy and using it to drive profits. Without a law forbidding it, everyone has to keep up with the profits of the most "evil" corporation. We need explicit laws.
  - avs733 9y ago
    That is perfectly fair, but I think to a larger extent than they realize politicians drive public discourse and narrative. I'm not saying do nothing, i'm simply saying that more often than not the TSA and their methods have been shown to be utterly inept. Just because it is logistically simpler for me I bring 'contraband' on every flight I take...hundreds of flights, never even been noticed. (Most/Many) of us live in a state that declared war on a plant and is losing and the majority of people accept it for no other reason than its the narrative presented to them. I'm not against doing something, I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive. I completely agree with you.
blaze33 9y ago
> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- sitkack 9y ago
  Quotes aren't arguments. They are quotes, and often sound like an appeal to authority. And it is further weakened by the weasel words _essential_ and _little temporary_.

When your "right" to privacy starts conflicting with your "right" to safety, something has to give.

triplesec 9y ago

A false dichotomy should always give first. You can both be safe and have privacy

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cmiles74 9y ago

In my opinion, that's just propaganda. It's not at all clear that all the surveillance is making anyone safer.

usrusr 9y ago
Safety is never an absolute. Imagine a world of "very-many-nines" safety, where only once in a century a person died from a violent death, planetwide: the cause of that death would be on people's minds for decades, and any measure for decreasing the chance of it ever happening again would see great support. Once we have established that safety is a relative term it becomes pretty clear that ruthless surveillance would yield some safety improvement. I think that you can make a much more meaningful stand against surveillance when you acknowledge that, a opposed to outright denying any possible effect.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  So far, I don't believe we have much, if any, concrete evidence that pervasive surveillance makes anyone safer. What little evidence exists is self-serving and sounds more like advertising then anything else. These surveillance organizations cost large amounts of money and produce nothing but large backlogs of data that no one has time to analyze. In my opinion, that only makes it more likely that this data will be misused in order to prove that the dollars spent yielded _something._ That the cry of "safety" is accepted as somehow obviously true is a significant problem and exacerbates the issue.
  - Ntrails 9y ago
    You'll never seen concrete evidence. Nor is it in anyone's interests to offer it. You have two choices, one at each extreme. You can assume: - Everyone working for "agencies" do so with no regard for their stated goal and are simply interested in their own personal gain. - They're genuinely intending to prevent incidents of "crime" and are relatively disinterested in the maintenance of your privacy. I find the latter more likely than the former, with a mix of the two broadly probable. Given that I find it equally unlikely that they achieve literally nothing. (Frankly even if the former were the truth it seems unlikely they wouldn't prevent something at some point even by accident). Claiming they do _nothing_ is ill founded. The more valid argument is "But at what cost?"
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - cmiles74 9y ago
      I strongly disagree with the idea that revealing ways in which pervasive surveillance provides us all with greater safety will somehow nullify that very benefit. This is clearly a simple and straightforward way for those who are performing the surveillance to excuse the fact that they are not, in fact, saving us from anything at all. To be honest, the only way I might even consider that this kind of surveillance is helping would be to see some concrete examples of them literally saving lives. I do not believe that those performing the surveillance do nothing, on the contrary, I believe they may be responsible for any number of harms (leaking private information, having that information stolen, becoming a party to blackmail, etc.) But I certainly do not believe that they are making any of us safer.

mosselman 9y ago

Much of the data gathered by agencies to make us 'safe' is alter used for ulterior motives such as tax collection or, much worse, spreading of propaganda of censoring anti-establishment information. The recent events in Spain being an example of the last case. There is nothing wrong with having to pay taxes, but using information that you gain access to by scaring people into giving up by waving terrorism in their face is not ethical and not what many people signed up for. Also, there are lots of actually effective measures to improve safety that don't involve giving governments direct access to what everyone says and does.

avs733 9y ago

this statement is predicated on the violation of our right to privacy having a significant and causal impact on our safety. I am something like 100x more likely to get struck by lightning _twice_ than I am to be killed by a terrorist

coding123 9y ago
And the govt. controls the lightning man...
dhimes 9y ago
While I don't disagree, it's still hard to turn a blind eye to the Texas church shootings, or the Las Vegas shootings, or the NY park pickup truck slaughter. Any politician that just throws up his arms and says "it all just statistics" is likely out of a job. Privacy invasion has to be stopped by law. There is no way, currently, for a person who has public safety as a responsibility to say "no" to this kind of technology. It's much the same with businesses invading user privacy and using it to drive profits. Without a law forbidding it, everyone has to keep up with the profits of the most "evil" corporation. We need explicit laws.
- avs733 9y ago
  That is perfectly fair, but I think to a larger extent than they realize politicians drive public discourse and narrative. I'm not saying do nothing, i'm simply saying that more often than not the TSA and their methods have been shown to be utterly inept. Just because it is logistically simpler for me I bring 'contraband' on every flight I take...hundreds of flights, never even been noticed. (Most/Many) of us live in a state that declared war on a plant and is losing and the majority of people accept it for no other reason than its the narrative presented to them. I'm not against doing something, I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive. I completely agree with you.

blaze33 9y ago

> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

sitkack 9y ago
Quotes aren't arguments. They are quotes, and often sound like an appeal to authority. And it is further weakened by the weasel words _essential_ and _little temporary_.