9 ms·
The Privacy Lesson of 9/11: Mass Surveillance Is Not the Way Forward
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoThat is the opposite lesson that the government is walking away with.
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoIf Australia and Apple's CSAM programme are any indication, we are moving to a new era of mass surveillance enabled by ML.
- Ekaros 5y agoThat sounds absolutely scary... ML with thing we haven't used properly with humans in loop. So we don't even have proper good data for it...
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoThat's a significantly naive view of things that stays on first step and utterly ignores implications and possible subsequent steps. Given enough compute, CSAM detection can become part of the display pipeline, whereby the display is checked, in realtime, against some set of known "hashes", effectively providing a limited form of real time tracking of observed behaviour. The fact that it exists, indicates that governments may use it to circumvent E2EE, or as I mention above, achieve so much more. Apple has been known to cave in to China and other countries. If Apple does it, then odds are everyone will follow suite due to external pressures. This has _always_ been the case.
- throwaway466445 5y agoHow is China avoiding attacks from Uyghurs? Is it because of mass surveillance?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwawaysea 5y ago> Congress must ensure that the next generation of Americans is able to speak and associate freely This is a bit ironic considering that the ACLU has abandoned many of its principled civil liberties stances of the past, including defense of free speech, and mostly turned into a progressive political organization. Some articles covering this change at the ACLU: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disintegration-of-the-aclu-james-kirchick https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disinte... On the topic of privacy, it is strange to see the ACLU speak against mass surveillance when they recently flip flopped on vaccine mandates, which are fundamentally about bodily autonomy and health privacy: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/why-aclu-supports-vaccine-mandates/619984/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/why-acl...
- kiba 5y agoOn the topic of privacy, it is strange to see the ACLU speak against mass surveillance when they recently flip flopped on vaccine mandates, which are fundamentally about bodily autonomy and health privacy: I don't know why people argued for bodily autonomy when viruses don't care about bodily autonomy or who they infect. It would be one thing if a disease isn't infectious, but that's not how covid-19 works.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI'm reminded of that classic exchange: -"Your right to swing your fist ends at the other person's nose." -"But what if the other person's nose is continually growing?" I could argue against the right to say anything I want on the grounds hearing it might exacerbate a self-diagnosed mental health issue. I might even find a way to do so honestly, if I worked at it. We can't have no impact on our fellow citizens, and I'm not saying I know the solution, but I'm sure giving them full control over our actions is not it.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoCOVID-19 is not as bad as Smallpox or Ebola. The lack of acceptance of vaccines (partially) shows people aren't afraid of this disease and view this as an overreaction. If people were terrified because people were visibly dying in the streets and vomiting blood or walking around the grocery store disfigured for life - they'd get the vaccine like past mandates.
- hzzg000 5y agoThis is from the ACLU nagware banner: "Efforts to erase voting rights, trans rights, and abortion rights for millions of people are escalating across the country. We’re responding on all fronts — from courts to legislatures in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico — but we need your help to win." Has the mission statement changed? Why are trans people, who are on every front page daily as needing more rights, being dragged into this? Why is Snowden not mentioned? Seems that organization has been successfully infiltrated as well.
- throwawaysea 5y agoThe ACLU has definitely been taken over by partisans who are more interested in defending political positions rather than sticking to basic civil liberties principles. This article, titled “The Disintegration of the ACLU”, covers the changes in leadership and culture: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disintegration-of-the-aclu-james-kirchick https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disinte...
- lavabiopsy 5y agoI found that article to be thoroughly unconvincing, and the article itself also seems to fall for the same trap of defending political positions rather than sticking to basic civil liberties principles.
- alexatalktome 5y agoBecause trans people deserve basic civil liberties? And who better to fight for them than the American Civil Liberties Union
- fallingknife 5y agoWhat rights do trans people not have?
- maxfurman 5y agoBeing trans is not a protected class, so discrimination against trans people is legal in many states. On top of that, states keep passing unconstitutional anti-trans bills like NC's famous "bathroom bill," which someone has to fight in court
- AntwaneB 5y agoAfter reading the post, I fail to see any connection between 9/11 and the fact that mass surveillance is not the way forward. The article is also empty of any reason WHY mass surveillance would not be the way forward, or even why it should not be. This is a particularly useless article.
- AndrewUnmuted 5y agoThe ACLU has been useless as a civil rights organization for quite some time. If you haven't already, I'd say it's definitely time to find a new defender of these sorts of issues.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoThe ACLU has let the government increase surveillance, force mask usage, and now enforce vaccine usage across millions during the pandemic. They're staying silent because they agree with the policies - and you may too - but there is no denying that in terms of invasion of personal freedom it's very great and they're turning a blind eye to it.
- Retric 5y agoThe ACLU is a finite organization that needs to chose which battles to fight. Suggesting their not doing enough because they don’t prioritize your issues generally means you should be funding some other organization. https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ for example may better fit your personal beliefs.
- mythrwy 5y agoThey are actively supporting civil non-liberties now though, in print. They are not what they used to be.
- Retric 5y agoThe odd thing about civil liberties is they also curtail other freedoms. The right to own property means the right to exclude others from your property. Trial by a jury of your peers means jury duty etc. If you have fundamental disagreements around these issues you really can’t blame the organization for not doing enough. Them doing more or less isn’t the problem, them having other priorities is.
- 911inside 5y ago9/11 was an inside job. So is covid.
- newbamboo 5y agoBut without it, how will we catch domestic terrorists. Did people forget about trump!
- specialist 5y agoScanned this article. I remain ambivalent about ACLU's efforts to defend privacy rights. What is privacy? What would ACLU's future perfect privacy protecting world look like? How, specifically, does our world differ from that world? Is the ACLU just rearranging the deck chairs, as The Titanic sinks? This is a complicated topic. Firstly, I don't trust that the ACLU understands our current surveillance economy. One important facet is Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism critique. How private and public, foreign and domestic interact. By analogy, it's like trying to talk about criminal cartels, focusing just on drugs, and ignoring human trafficking, arms trade, finance, and state actors. Secondly, I'm not convinced that mass surveillance is entirely ineffective. Wholly I agree that it's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, overwrought, wicked expensive, and overreaching. But in our reform efforts, I want an account of how our intelligence services performed. I simply cannot believe that there haven't been many more attempted terrorist attacks. Foreign and domestic. And I get that for national security, these same services cannot publicly take credit for their successes. So maybe we can infer how much benefit surveillance yielded thru some kind of meta analysis. I care about privacy a great deal. As an election integrity activist, I defended voter privacy (with some minor policy wins). As a geek, I designed and implemented electronic medical record exchanges. And yet I feel I still don't know what privacy is. Or what the trade offs are. I recently heard Jill Lepore's recap of the very first privacy debates, at the dawn of the IT revolution. Sadly, as someone who's been working in privacy, most of what she discussed was news to me. Right now I feel we simply need a do over. Start the whole debate from scratch. Get down to first principles. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism The Computer-men https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-7-the-computermen https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-7-the-comput... "In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were being imagined, the federal government considered building a National Data Center."
- owl_troupe 5y ago> Secondly, I'm not convinced that mass surveillance is entirely ineffective. Wholly I agree that it's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, overwrought, wicked expensive, and overreaching. But in our reform efforts, I want an account of how our intelligence services performed. I simply cannot believe that there haven't been many more attempted terrorist attacks. When the US government takes away its citizens' rights (of which privacy is one), the onus is on the government to justify this action. We cannot just assume surveillance works, the government has to prove it--show us the examples. Luckily we know just how effective these programs are and, as the authors here correctly point out, the answer is "not much." [1] From the link in the article, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded in 2014, > Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack. [1] [1] https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/ec542143-1079-424a-84b3-acc354698560/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program.pdf https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e... EDIT: As to the question of 'what's at stake with privacy rights?', there are great films [2], talks [3], and reading [4] on what's at stake with privacy. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others [3] https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matter... [4] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-the-fight-for-a-human-future-at-the-new-frontier-of-power/ https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis...
- softwaredoug 5y agoAlso interventionist wars that only end up multiplying the death toll many orders of magnitude with no positive outcome for anyone.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoLockheed Martin, Raytheon? The oil/gas contractors operating in the region? Lobbyists, politicians? Tragically there was an extremely positive outcome for a few very persuasive people.
- frashelaw 5y agoThe US was always the most advanced police state. All the "freedom" indoctrination just thinly covers up the fact that the rich pull the strings, own the politicians, start the forever wars, and neglect the needs of the common person.
- oliv__ 5y agoWhy should the rich cater to the needs of the common person?