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>I've spoken with people who have said they are ok with it, when I start asking questions or sharing details on how this has been abused I tend to find they hav

>I've spoken with people who have said they are ok with it, when I start asking questions or sharing details on how this has been abused I tend to find they have not thought it through In the future just ask them to unlock their phone and hand it to you so you can look at their email, text and browser history. Watch them hesitate and refuse.

bilbo0s 7y ago
I do this. But more and more often, people are responding: "You're not the government." So it doesn't work as well as people think it does.
- state_less 7y ago
  And my response would be, "My party voted in the government, so yeah, we voted for the right to look through your phone. Now hand it over or do you want to be a law breaking criminal too?"
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    And they'd still say, "You're not the government." And they'd be right. If you were part of the government, you wouldn't need to ask to see the data on her Facebook or whatever. You'd probably already have some secret access. I mean they're right. "You're not the government, and if you were you wouldn't need to ask." Point is, they trust the government implicitly. (And, for most voters, completely, in matters of security.)
    - state_less 7y ago
      And I'd say, "My party cares enough about safety that we voted that any card carrying party member can do a citizen search if they sense anything suspicious about another citizen. So hand over the phone" Hopefully we can install a sense of where things can lead to. Most folks aren't familiar with such strong tactics, but hopefully they are starting to become more so with party sanctioned violence (e.g. punch that opposing guy in the face).
      - bilbo0s 7y ago
        There's the trap they'd get you into though. With mass and ubiquitous surveillance, they don't even need citizen searches anymore. So the person you are talking to would likely report you for impersonating. An agent who was really acting on behalf of the government doesn't need to execute a citizen search of that data. What I'm trying to point out is that your line of questioning would not impact her view of the government at all, it would only raise her suspicions about you. To the extent that, at some point, she would call the government to report you. Because the government also conditioned her with the whole mantra: "If you see something, say something." Trust in the government, particularly on matters of security, is not so easily undermined.
        state_less 7y ago
        She would probably agree that the government is made up of officials that we elect though right? So what if the people in the majority party want to usurp power from the minority citizens. Even if only for the reason that they want to keep a 'dangerous party' from taking power. Practicalities about search techniques don't matter in such circumstances. Just imagine a party that is ready to punch the minority party members in the face. Such a party wouldn't think twice about a party member taking the liberty to search suspicious non-party members... In such cases, it'd be nice if no matter who's in power, there are some laws that must be followed. That's pretty much what the bill of rights is about and it includes protection against unreasonable search. The 4th's a good one because it limits a majorities ability to overpower a minority.
        bilbo0s 7y ago
        What you're not getting is that the people doing this don't care about the 4th Amendment. (Or, more accurately, they are more than willing to rationalize away their violation of the 4th Amendment. Like the beat cop doing a "Stop and Frisk" on some black kid. The 4th just doesn't mean anything to him.) The people controlling access to these datasets are not from either party. They are not elected. In the vast majority of cases, they are not even known. You're assuming politicians are in control of these datasets. I'm just asking you to consider the very real possibility that they are not. In most cases, I'm betting politicians can't even request access to these datasets without tripping flags. (And "leaks" if the people in charge think leaking that politician's request will serve them.) Politicians learned long ago, (ABSCAM), not to mess with these people. I just don't think you appreciate the depth of the problem if you're thinking on the level of the politician.
  - _jal 7y ago
    And you just lost the argument. There are multiple failures here: - To many folks, this sounds conspiracy-theory-ish, and they will just yeah-uhuh until you go away. - Your actual point (that we may have certain comforting legal protections now does not mean that future governments will respect the same restrictions) will leave a lot of folks cold; whatever hysterics they may get up to when debating politics, most folks do not fear imminent totalitarianism in the US. - To many folks, there is a huge difference between handing their private correspondence/pictures/finances/whatever to you or their cousin and having it available to "the authorities", whom they presume have legal restrictions, training, protocols, oversight, and the overall motive of protecting the country. That last one is important: to most people, that's a very good thing in and of itself, and also a reason why they believe the Deep State(tm) won't harm them: they don't want to blow things up, so logically there's no reason to scrutinize at them. This is the root of the "nothing to hide" argument. It also happens to be somewhat true: the TLAs do get up to a lot they shouldn't, and sometimes are outright evil. But they do, in fact, work to protect the republic and don't mess with the vast bulk of regular people. Remember that winning a debate and changing minds are not the same thing.
    - state_less 7y ago
      I seem to have had some success changing minds when I talk to folks about how maybe you're okay with today's government knowing everything about you, but tomorrow's government might be different, nevertheless your data is still around. I haven't actually tried the approach of role-playing a totalitarian lackey in real life. I get the sense that it could come off as too combative or seem too unrealistic and drive folks away from whatever point I was trying to get across. I get the complacency. I also largely trust the government employees and agencies given we still have a functioning democracy and mostly intact civil rights. Nevertheless, I see too much erosion of it, so I'm happy whenever we can get together and agree on repairing it.
- jagged-chisel 7y ago
  But I am. Your neighbors work for The Government. Your community members make up The Government. It's government by us, made of us, and for us. It's us. There are humans working in government with access to the data. And any new government employee or elected or appointed person from your community will have access to the data... We have to remind people that The Government isn't some distant "other" - it's made of people you know.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    Right, and by requiring a warrant to dig though my shit, at least there's one person with legal training who's ostensibly concerned about my constitutionally protected rights involved in the process. Just like the priesthood apparently attracts pedophiles because of the opportunities it offers, law enforcement is made of people, and some of those people will have gotten in to it opportunities it provides. Having access to creep on people with surveillance systems is going to attract the type of person who wants to creep on people with surveillance systems unless those systems are rigidly designed to prevent misuse.
    - throwaway_law 7y ago
      >Right, and by requiring a warrant to dig though my shit, at least there's one person with legal training who's ostensibly concerned about my constitutionally protected rights involved in the process. That warrant isn't required to dig through your data...the warrant is only required to keep your data from being suppressed as evidence in court.
- mysterydip 7y ago
  You could be, though, just as easily as anyone else. Government is made up of ordinary people.
Springtime 7y ago
This form of argument was covered in Daniel J. Solove's ''I've got nothing to hide'' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (available to read online), which goes into some detail about how such analogies are rather easily countered since they're not based on actual examples (privacy 'dead bodies' so to speak) that demonstrate abuse/negative impacts. In this case the analogy being made is that by accepting certain forms of say, government agency snooping, they should therefore be fine with you seeing their data at a whim. However people often see themselves as an irrelevant target to the government and/or that given the vast number of data being collected they would be a blip and less likely to be personally spied upon, so they reason themselves out of being concerned (or having any concern for others that may be impacted).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Solove, "I've got nothing to hide": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Even if they reason themselves out of this concern, if that data ever leaks then it will pretty much be like handing over your phone. It'll likely even come with years worth of data.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Imagine, one of their future kids becomes famous/president/etc. That parent's history will be leveraged if at all possible, whether they like it or not.

bilbo0s 7y ago

I do this. But more and more often, people are responding: "You're not the government." So it doesn't work as well as people think it does.

state_less 7y ago
And my response would be, "My party voted in the government, so yeah, we voted for the right to look through your phone. Now hand it over or do you want to be a law breaking criminal too?"
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  And they'd still say, "You're not the government." And they'd be right. If you were part of the government, you wouldn't need to ask to see the data on her Facebook or whatever. You'd probably already have some secret access. I mean they're right. "You're not the government, and if you were you wouldn't need to ask." Point is, they trust the government implicitly. (And, for most voters, completely, in matters of security.)
  - state_less 7y ago
    And I'd say, "My party cares enough about safety that we voted that any card carrying party member can do a citizen search if they sense anything suspicious about another citizen. So hand over the phone" Hopefully we can install a sense of where things can lead to. Most folks aren't familiar with such strong tactics, but hopefully they are starting to become more so with party sanctioned violence (e.g. punch that opposing guy in the face).
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      There's the trap they'd get you into though. With mass and ubiquitous surveillance, they don't even need citizen searches anymore. So the person you are talking to would likely report you for impersonating. An agent who was really acting on behalf of the government doesn't need to execute a citizen search of that data. What I'm trying to point out is that your line of questioning would not impact her view of the government at all, it would only raise her suspicions about you. To the extent that, at some point, she would call the government to report you. Because the government also conditioned her with the whole mantra: "If you see something, say something." Trust in the government, particularly on matters of security, is not so easily undermined.
      - state_less 7y ago
        She would probably agree that the government is made up of officials that we elect though right? So what if the people in the majority party want to usurp power from the minority citizens. Even if only for the reason that they want to keep a 'dangerous party' from taking power. Practicalities about search techniques don't matter in such circumstances. Just imagine a party that is ready to punch the minority party members in the face. Such a party wouldn't think twice about a party member taking the liberty to search suspicious non-party members... In such cases, it'd be nice if no matter who's in power, there are some laws that must be followed. That's pretty much what the bill of rights is about and it includes protection against unreasonable search. The 4th's a good one because it limits a majorities ability to overpower a minority.
        bilbo0s 7y ago
        What you're not getting is that the people doing this don't care about the 4th Amendment. (Or, more accurately, they are more than willing to rationalize away their violation of the 4th Amendment. Like the beat cop doing a "Stop and Frisk" on some black kid. The 4th just doesn't mean anything to him.) The people controlling access to these datasets are not from either party. They are not elected. In the vast majority of cases, they are not even known. You're assuming politicians are in control of these datasets. I'm just asking you to consider the very real possibility that they are not. In most cases, I'm betting politicians can't even request access to these datasets without tripping flags. (And "leaks" if the people in charge think leaking that politician's request will serve them.) Politicians learned long ago, (ABSCAM), not to mess with these people. I just don't think you appreciate the depth of the problem if you're thinking on the level of the politician.
- _jal 7y ago
  And you just lost the argument. There are multiple failures here: - To many folks, this sounds conspiracy-theory-ish, and they will just yeah-uhuh until you go away. - Your actual point (that we may have certain comforting legal protections now does not mean that future governments will respect the same restrictions) will leave a lot of folks cold; whatever hysterics they may get up to when debating politics, most folks do not fear imminent totalitarianism in the US. - To many folks, there is a huge difference between handing their private correspondence/pictures/finances/whatever to you or their cousin and having it available to "the authorities", whom they presume have legal restrictions, training, protocols, oversight, and the overall motive of protecting the country. That last one is important: to most people, that's a very good thing in and of itself, and also a reason why they believe the Deep State(tm) won't harm them: they don't want to blow things up, so logically there's no reason to scrutinize at them. This is the root of the "nothing to hide" argument. It also happens to be somewhat true: the TLAs do get up to a lot they shouldn't, and sometimes are outright evil. But they do, in fact, work to protect the republic and don't mess with the vast bulk of regular people. Remember that winning a debate and changing minds are not the same thing.
  - state_less 7y ago
    I seem to have had some success changing minds when I talk to folks about how maybe you're okay with today's government knowing everything about you, but tomorrow's government might be different, nevertheless your data is still around. I haven't actually tried the approach of role-playing a totalitarian lackey in real life. I get the sense that it could come off as too combative or seem too unrealistic and drive folks away from whatever point I was trying to get across. I get the complacency. I also largely trust the government employees and agencies given we still have a functioning democracy and mostly intact civil rights. Nevertheless, I see too much erosion of it, so I'm happy whenever we can get together and agree on repairing it.
jagged-chisel 7y ago
But I am. Your neighbors work for The Government. Your community members make up The Government. It's government by us, made of us, and for us. It's us. There are humans working in government with access to the data. And any new government employee or elected or appointed person from your community will have access to the data... We have to remind people that The Government isn't some distant "other" - it's made of people you know.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Right, and by requiring a warrant to dig though my shit, at least there's one person with legal training who's ostensibly concerned about my constitutionally protected rights involved in the process. Just like the priesthood apparently attracts pedophiles because of the opportunities it offers, law enforcement is made of people, and some of those people will have gotten in to it opportunities it provides. Having access to creep on people with surveillance systems is going to attract the type of person who wants to creep on people with surveillance systems unless those systems are rigidly designed to prevent misuse.
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    >Right, and by requiring a warrant to dig though my shit, at least there's one person with legal training who's ostensibly concerned about my constitutionally protected rights involved in the process. That warrant isn't required to dig through your data...the warrant is only required to keep your data from being suppressed as evidence in court.
mysterydip 7y ago
You could be, though, just as easily as anyone else. Government is made up of ordinary people.

Springtime 7y ago

This form of argument was covered in Daniel J. Solove's ''I've got nothing to hide'' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (available to read online), which goes into some detail about how such analogies are rather easily countered since they're not based on actual examples (privacy 'dead bodies' so to speak) that demonstrate abuse/negative impacts. In this case the analogy being made is that by accepting certain forms of say, government agency snooping, they should therefore be fine with you seeing their data at a whim. However people often see themselves as an irrelevant target to the government and/or that given the vast number of data being collected they would be a blip and less likely to be personally spied upon, so they reason themselves out of being concerned (or having any concern for others that may be impacted).

dredmorbius 7y ago
Solove, "I've got nothing to hide": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
Mirioron 7y ago
Even if they reason themselves out of this concern, if that data ever leaks then it will pretty much be like handing over your phone. It'll likely even come with years worth of data.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Imagine, one of their future kids becomes famous/president/etc. That parent's history will be leveraged if at all possible, whether they like it or not.