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Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehan

Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehand, most people would have derided others for mentioning "such conspiracy nonsense" (I likely would have myself), and yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. Since 9/11 in particular, the Western world has seen constant attempts to increase mass surveillance, lower the burden of proof, and dampen human rights, always in the name of whatever they have the public most fearful of at the time - drugs, terrorists, paedos, criminals, the Russians, the Chinese, the Mexicans, communists, Islam, foreigners taking our jobs, the boogey man de jour. I'm absolutely certain that we'll see politicians try to use coronavirus as an excuse for their Orwellian schemes.

shadowgovt 7y ago
Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers." The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > Business as usual has come after Snowden I can't disagree with that; honestly, it felt like the media and politicians conspired to bury it. Revelation after revelation was made after outlets like The Intercept went through the evidence, yet hardly anything made the mainstream news, and when it did, it was fleeting. The CIA destroyed evidence and lied to congress, but there was little impact. > The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it This I disagree with. We've been shown that the supposedly "benevolent" Western governments of today can't be trusted with laws that permit over-arching mass surveillance and the dampening of civil liberties and human rights, and we've seen the inevitable creeping escalations - who knows what a worse government of tomorrow might do?
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    I don't think the issue went away because anyone conspired to bury it. I think the issue went away because, on average, Americans are comfortable with the arrangement that the intelligence agencies have broad power to dragnet data. They either don't get that these tools could be used against them by unethical government agents or they know that possibility exists but they trust the checks and balances against it and think the risk is outweighed by the benefit to law enforcement and the national intelligence community in managing the international threat of global terrorist activity (which, itself, leverages modern communications tools to communicate rapidly, move rapidlt, hide from law enforcement and military powers, etc.). 9/11 was an avoidable attack and a failure of information analysis; the information needed to stop it existed but had not been consolidated. A lot of Americans are extremely disinterested in bring attacked that way again, even 20 years later.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      > I think the issue went away because, on average, Americans are comfortable with the arrangement that the intelligence agencies have broad power to dragnet data It's not just the US, it's the whole of the Western world. The UK in particular has been very complicit with the US in their joint mass surveillance. The threat of terrorist activity in the west is vanishingly low, and IMO, is partially driven by western foreign policy. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the disgusting, utterly horrifying organised torture program the CIA has undertaken at "black sites" has certainly not helped (I doubt since an organised horror has taken place since the Nazis). > 9/11 was an avoidable attack and a failure of information analysis; the information needed to stop it existed but had not been consolidated. A lot of Americans are extremely disinterested in bring attacked that way again, even 20 years later. I don't want to get deep in 9/11 in particular, but mass surveillance wasn't the solution - the 5-eyes' toxic, oil-driven relationship with Saudi Arabia was a big factor, and the CIA not hiding information from the FBI would very likely have stopped it. We've seen similar failings on a smaller scale with incidents in Europe, where the perpetrators were known to the authorities beforehand. Even where they communicated with each other "openly" using SMS, politicians called for a ban on encryption - these parasites take every opportunity to spread FUD and use it to their advantage. I think where we at least agree is a belief that many people simply don't care; they don't understand the risks with the current government, let alone future ones.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
> yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. What do you believe the truth was? I replied to somebody else in this thread who believed the truth was far wilder than anything in Snowden's leaks.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers." The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it.

GordonS 7y ago
> Business as usual has come after Snowden I can't disagree with that; honestly, it felt like the media and politicians conspired to bury it. Revelation after revelation was made after outlets like The Intercept went through the evidence, yet hardly anything made the mainstream news, and when it did, it was fleeting. The CIA destroyed evidence and lied to congress, but there was little impact. > The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it This I disagree with. We've been shown that the supposedly "benevolent" Western governments of today can't be trusted with laws that permit over-arching mass surveillance and the dampening of civil liberties and human rights, and we've seen the inevitable creeping escalations - who knows what a worse government of tomorrow might do?
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  I don't think the issue went away because anyone conspired to bury it. I think the issue went away because, on average, Americans are comfortable with the arrangement that the intelligence agencies have broad power to dragnet data. They either don't get that these tools could be used against them by unethical government agents or they know that possibility exists but they trust the checks and balances against it and think the risk is outweighed by the benefit to law enforcement and the national intelligence community in managing the international threat of global terrorist activity (which, itself, leverages modern communications tools to communicate rapidly, move rapidlt, hide from law enforcement and military powers, etc.). 9/11 was an avoidable attack and a failure of information analysis; the information needed to stop it existed but had not been consolidated. A lot of Americans are extremely disinterested in bring attacked that way again, even 20 years later.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    > I think the issue went away because, on average, Americans are comfortable with the arrangement that the intelligence agencies have broad power to dragnet data It's not just the US, it's the whole of the Western world. The UK in particular has been very complicit with the US in their joint mass surveillance. The threat of terrorist activity in the west is vanishingly low, and IMO, is partially driven by western foreign policy. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the disgusting, utterly horrifying organised torture program the CIA has undertaken at "black sites" has certainly not helped (I doubt since an organised horror has taken place since the Nazis). > 9/11 was an avoidable attack and a failure of information analysis; the information needed to stop it existed but had not been consolidated. A lot of Americans are extremely disinterested in bring attacked that way again, even 20 years later. I don't want to get deep in 9/11 in particular, but mass surveillance wasn't the solution - the 5-eyes' toxic, oil-driven relationship with Saudi Arabia was a big factor, and the CIA not hiding information from the FBI would very likely have stopped it. We've seen similar failings on a smaller scale with incidents in Europe, where the perpetrators were known to the authorities beforehand. Even where they communicated with each other "openly" using SMS, politicians called for a ban on encryption - these parasites take every opportunity to spread FUD and use it to their advantage. I think where we at least agree is a belief that many people simply don't care; they don't understand the risks with the current government, let alone future ones.

lern_too_spel 7y ago

> yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. What do you believe the truth was? I replied to somebody else in this thread who believed the truth was far wilder than anything in Snowden's leaks.