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Major government surveillance revelations fail to make a big splash

199 points by baskethead 5y ago

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
It's very chilly in here. Too afraid to discuss?
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  As the article says, there's little to discuss: > First, details about the programs exposed recently are scarce. ... Snowden's disclosures, in contrast, included weeks of reporting on specific programs backed by leaked documents, making it easier for media and the public to latch onto the story.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Yeah, but once we had the proof we realized that the conspiracy theorists around the world wouldn't recognize a real conspiracy it it hit them on the head. Why do you think the UFO and Area-51 conspiracy theories peaked around that time? Because it was always about keeping your head in the sand, while believing you are enlightened.
- lizardactivist 5y ago
- Barrin92 5y ago
  honestly the opposite, personally I tend to avoid these topics nowadays because I feel the discussion is very one sided and I usually just get a lot of flak when I argue that people fail to make a material case against surveillance. I think the average person unlike a lot of active internet users values safety much higher than privacy and a lot of people fail to see any negative consequences of these programs in their day to day life. Opposition tends to be very ideological which is why it fails to make a splash as the article claims.
holidayacct 5y ago
[flagged]
jerf 5y ago
The biggest power the media has isn't even to make you believe an active lie. It's the power to bury a story by simply neglecting it, and filling the media space with their own choices. The media is actively on the side of you living under heavy government surveillance. Act accordingly.
- snarf21 5y ago
  As said, people don't care. They will only push click bait because it is vastly more profitable. There is no such thing as news anymore, it is infotainment. Sowing faux outrage for profit is all.
- gmuslera 5y ago
  Consume even more Soma?
- CerealFounder 5y ago
  No its not, the larger media is the original "for pay algorithm" that shows you what ever makes you engage with their platform more (subscription & ad supported). There is no conspiracy or man behind the curtain. Simply put, complex stories resonate deeply with a small group and not at all with the majority. What you get from that is the current media landscape. Surveillance is a very complicated technical and moral story that only the smallest group cares about.
  - akira2501 5y ago
    > the larger media is the original Concentration of media ownership has not been a constant factor over the past several decades and several laws have been changed to alter this reality in that time frame. As the purveyors of news get bought up and consolidated, it has almost certainly made this "information control" problem worse. > Surveillance is a very complicated technical "The government is spying on you" is not exceptionally complicated or technical. The fourth amendment is widely known and understood.
  - calibas 5y ago
    The media's willful ignorance the Epstein case implies otherwise. This was a vast criminal conspiracy involving sex, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates and Harvard University, the kind of juicy gossip that the average person goes crazy over, and the mainstream media knew about it for years, but chose not to report it. The media was complicit in the coverup until it could be ignored no longer. They did the opposite of what an honest news media is supposed to do, and helped suppress one of the decades biggest news stories. That certainly implies something, and directly contradicts the "media just gives people what they want" meme/excuse.
MrYellowP 5y ago
Generally speaking nobody cares. Given the modern echo chamber, unless people actively spread news/information to those who aren't usually exposed to it, it simply won't ever reach them. That, of course, is no guarantee. There's tons of people who solely believe the mass media. The biggest problem is, though, that apparently everyone keeps believing them again and again and again, whenever the topic switches. From one crisis to the next people literally forget that they can not and should not trust both their governments and mass media. Fascinating, isn't it?
- archhn 5y ago
  I'm inclined to use the word "terrifying." Some people I know call me "crazy" every time I take a position which contradicts MSM. They fully believe that the T.V. is giving them the unadulterated truth of all matters that should concern them.
  - rendall 5y ago
    I suspect the MSM engaging in coordinated lying on behalf of the powerful has been going on for at least half a century if not longer. The rise of the internet has allowed us, the audience, to independently falsify their accounts and listen to alternate perspectives, but I find it endlessly baffling that large numbers of people still just... allow their reality to be exactly what the MSM pundits tell them it is.
    - westmeal 5y ago
      I suspect it's easier and comforting to not think about the terrible reality of our world, and to have an 'official' perspective is to be able to move on with your life.
      - archhn 5y ago
        There are essentially two mentalities I've observed in people around me. 1. The Optimist. Believes they live in "the best of all worlds" and everything always works out for the best--Voltare satirizes this idealism in Candide. 2. The Broken Nihilist. Believes everything is bull shit. Everyone is a liar, civilization is a scam, and all human interaction is a power struggle. The optimist doesn't feel the need to worry about anything because they believe some magic force will make everything right for them. They thus are more susceptible to deception because they believe there can be no bad consequences of their actions...they are living a magical life in the best of all worlds...nothing can go wrong. The nihilist, as we may suspect, is naturally immune to deception within the bounds of his reasoning capacity. This gives him an advantage over the optimist...and he always looks down upon the optimist as an idiot.
dbtc 5y ago
> Another factor is that many Americans may now assume that their privacy is already shot. This is it for me, or the apathetic part of me. After a few revelations you can infer the not yet revealed. Hey, information wants to be free, right?
qiskit 5y ago
It's been going on for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee What's going to happen if there is a "big splash". Nothing. Has anyone in intelligence ever been arrested or punished for violating the law? These people are above the law.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  whoa- a reference to Church, and then say "These people are above the law" without caveat.. what an awful lead up to complete compliance without complaining.. count me out
  - quantum_solanum 5y ago
    Which individuals faced any material consequences from the Church Committee? Or subsequent exposés?
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      you have answered yourself with the phrase "material consequences" ?
archhn 5y ago
Without an avenue of recourse, people tune out. Eliminate choice and you eliminate thought. Honestly, it has been this way in US politics for a long time. The government is always doing crazy scandalous things, but most people are busy with the day to day and don't know how to act on such information anyway. We are also, as Vidal said, a nation of amnesia. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. I'm sure most people lack the historical knowledge to contextualize these government actions. They don't know that an antagonistic relationship exists between the people and government. The numerous historical and contemporary betrayals of governments against their peoples isn't in their mind. Plus, most people think they are living in some fantasy world where nothing bad can happen to them. It's pretty dark. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
- ccvannorman 5y ago
  It's absolutely horrible and almost unthinkable, the scandalous and nefarious things the people in power get up to, and they remain above reproach! The good news: This is a basic feature of civilization, and it's been like this since the dawn of humanity, and it's better now than it's ever been if you use the metric of "how happy, free, and empowered the average individual human is". [0] At the end of the day, that metric (IMO) is the one to care about. Yes, governments will continue to be shitty, but they're less shitty than ever before, and you as an individual will probably do better than ever before, statistically. [0] Hans Rosling - The Best Stats You've Ever Seen https://ed.ted.com/lessons/hans-rosling-shows-the-best-stats-you-ve-ever-seen https://ed.ted.com/lessons/hans-rosling-shows-the-best-stats... edited to add source
  - archhn 5y ago
    Have you ever read "Brave New World?" Happiness and all the sundry delusions you mentioned are not good metrics. The fact of the matter is that most people have less control over their lives than ever before. Gigantic entities have seized control over most sectors of human activity. In the short term, this corporate domination appears like a good thing. The mom and pop stores fell to Amazon and the Walmarts of the world, and consequently things got cheaper. That's a good thing...right? Cheaper goods = better lives...no? The low cost of goods and immediate boon to our material quality of life came at a structural cost. More and more of us are being converted from independent businesses owners to employees or contractors of large corporations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the agricultural industry. "If you don't go big, you go out," a former AG secretary said of the monopolizing currents in that industry. Prices for food went down as corporations seized more and more territory from independent farmers, but again...this came at a structural cost. In time, corporate monopolies will own all of food production. All this translates to power and wealth being concentrated into the hands of the very few. This means the dream of democracy is over. The average person will not have a say in his government when he is just a cog in a machine owned by the corporate caste. Sure, the corporate caste will probably usher in a BNW type of society, and most people will be as happy as can be...but they won't really be full human beings. They will be satisfied slaves who love their servitude. Unfortunately, this is what the common man wants...he just wants to be happy and have a full belly. He doesn't care about having the power to shape his own destiny, nor does he believe in anything higher than himself that would warrant self-sacrifice and prolonged misery. And so we may have the society you desire--the society of the last man. Almost everyone will be happy, but some men will remain wandering and crying out in the wilderness. Edit: I'd also like to add an example from history which demonstrates the misuse of statistics. Consider the period when Hitler rose to power in Germany. The Nazi regime ushered in what is called the "Economic Miracle." If you looked at the raw statistics of Germany during that period, you would think Hitler was God's gift from heaven. Not only was the economy booming, but many people bought into Hitler's magical rhetoric and became fervently hopeful for their future. It was a period of tremendous optimism and strength. The statistics show this, but they don't show the monsters lurking in the depths beneath. In order to know the monsters of today, we need to look beyond statistics. We need to look into ourselves, into human nature, and think about what happens when so few control so much.
randcraw 5y ago
IMHO, the problem with spying on citizens is that it's a double edged sword. We'd be nuts not to gather useful info on serious violations of law to improve national security (FBI) or local safety (local police). But abuse of such inherently secret info is difficult to oversee and harder still to effectively regulate. On one hand, oversight of spying programs always reveals some details about what nfo was gathered, either as dutiful proof of its proper use to the public, or in court cases as part of the chain of evidence. But doing this inevitably reveals something about what info was gathered and how, thereby weakening the future value of that source as people (or perps) learn to mistrust it and take greater pains to protect their sensitive info. On the other hand, NOT revealing data that was gathered invites its abuse, especially by orgs with minimal oversight (and scruples). Too often, law enforcement sees oversight of their practices as being equally as inimical as the perpetrators they pursue. I suspect the only way to sustainably manage this dance of mistrust is to change the role of police so that oversight is built into their culture, where they know someone is always watching their back — both in offering support to help them do a sometimes impossible job, as well as in demanding that they not abuse the special authority their job demands. In terms of their access to sensitive info, this must include enforcable strictures on their special access to info that should NOT be shared with others, like the client-servant privacy privileges demanded of lawyers or doctors.
- snarf21 5y ago
  Your opinion feels a lot like "I don't have anything to hide" kind of argument. We should just not be spying on people without express probable cause. We already have built in tracking for cells phones that people don't seem to realize or care. The other point is that we've seen nothing but continued confirmation that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The police (et al) have shown that they can't be trusted with this power.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    The poster's point is that even lawfully collected info is sensitive, and the forces that collect it should be structured so that spilling or misusing it would be curbed by checks and balances.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
This article reminded me of how many damn agencies we have spying on us. People regularly talk about the FBI, CIA, and NSA but there are like ten other US intelligence agencies. The US Intelligence Community contains 17 organizations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... and that's not counting any state or local organizations that Blueleaks showed are doing similar things. Sure Google is making it seem normal to give up our information, but it's also hard to continue being angry when you hear that the DIA and DHS are also spying on us.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mjreacher 5y ago
  While it is plausible for any of those agencies to spy on the domestic population, and it may definitely be possible that some of them need to be combined or removed, you must realize that any country will have such agencies as they have important roles, particularly for the military and law enforcement. It would be rather unwise if the FBI didn't have an intelligence branch because there's plenty of analysis to be gained from there, for example how drug cartels operate. Similarly, the DIA has an important job of accurately finding out the military capabilities of other countries. Whether they do bad/illegal things or not they are a necessary part of any government.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    You're not making a great case by saying we need to stop the drug cartels that exist because of prohibition and keep track of the military capabilities of countries we probably sold arms to. Neither of those things seem worth empowering a group to have the capability of spying on the domestic population.
    - jonnybgood 5y ago
      How are you using the word spying here? Are you using it synonymously with the word surveillance? If the FBI conducts an investigation that may require surveillance do you consider that spying and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to do it?
specialist 5y ago
Everyone, living and dead, within the Pax Americana sphere is tracked in near real time. Including everyone's economic activity, movements, communications, relationships, interests, and affinities. These additional disclosures merely confirm additional pieces of overall panopticon are in fact operational. (I don't know the current state of medical record sharing. Back when I worked in healthcare IT, mid 2000s, we had datafeeds to the CDC and others for public health stuff, deaths, births. No matter; What isn't explicit can largely be inferred from other datasets.) One darkly humorous aspect is that we're still arguing about stuff like census, gun licenses, voter registration databases, etc. Those tasks could be done with straightforward queries, with almost no errors, no drama necessary.
- Atheros 5y ago
  If the census, gun licenses, and voter registration were done as you suggest then you would simply move the drama to those other databases. There are powerful people who can legally attempt to increase their power by introducing errors into the census. Same with voter registration. The errors and subsequent drama are purposeful!
- salawat 5y ago
  Ever since EHR, medical insurers have been passing around historicals like hot cakes. So I'd assume if you are getting insured by an employer, every insurer has a cached copy of your medical history that can be dove either as a byproduct of their RFP process or otherwise. Hell, I was just thinking the last couple years that if you've got a regular prescription, medical insurance is basically a leash that can be yanked in as a control mechanism.
tormock 5y ago
Hypothetical: If you had a law enforcement agency spying/harassing you, what would you do? If they would make it hard to prove?
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Make a web series out of it and livestream it? Have your viewers vote on what kind of donuts to send? Silly, but probably a better choice than becoming the next Ted Kaczynski.
- pengaru 5y ago
  As someone who experienced something along these lines through some kind of sloppy guilt by association (frequently computed from a cafe a drug dealer operated out of when he got busted), I don't even have to answer hypothetically. Ignored it, made sure my ducks were in a row, and basically waited for them to lose interest - budgets for such individual surveillance are presumably finite. Eventually the most visible manned surveillance ceased occurring, IIRC it lasted at least a few months. It was a very annoying experience. But the population-wide omnipresent automated surveillance is a different beast entirely. When it involves manpower actually watching and following someone it can't last forever. I'm sure people are regularly being caught up in mass location and communications metadata surveillance nets thanks to their phones being in the vicinity of criminal activity like whore houses and/or illegal drug dens. The cost is so low for sustaining that kind of thing it's basically an honor system from where I'm sitting that they ever stop.
  - 2xpress 5y ago
    One way to make it less likely to get caught up in a mass-location harvesting case is to disable GPS on phone, especially on a non-de-googled Android phone. I'd also recommend paying with cash whenever that is an option. Another biggie is not to vote for politicians supporting public surveillance laws, and to cast an abstention vote when no anti-public-surveillance candidate is available. The abstention sends a signal to other prospective candidates that the election-winning politicians are not un-defeatable by a candidate better aligned with the voters who abstained.
natsup123490 5y ago
Efforts to make governments behave are pretty hopeless. Besides, it's not just the US that is spying on everybody. If you want privacy, you need to change your behavior and your tooling, using technology to create privacy.
encryptluks2 5y ago
On a recent senate committee hearing about authoritarianism the US said Russia is more synchronized in their message of using propaganda and that the US needs to figure out how we can do the same. In calling out authoritarianism their response is in order to fix it we should be more like them. The US could in the same sentence tell you why it is not okay to start war but it is okay if they do it.
zaroth 5y ago
> “Facebook can try to sell you products, but Facebook can't put you in jail,” Goitein explained. “Ideological prosecution or suppression isn’t in the monetary interest of these companies.” This is dangerously naive and less than half true. While Facebook cannot arrest you, it can cause you to be arrested for something that is absolutely not a crime. It can also financially and socially ruin you. And it is most certainly in their financial and ideological interests to do so in many occasions.
- lgvln 5y ago
  Very much so. A (in)famous authoritarian government prosecuted (successfully) a citizen of the country (while he was overseas in both instances) for publishing a private post on his Facebook (which was critical of the government).
  - ccvannorman 5y ago
    Source pls
glasshug 5y ago
Maybe I can be the first to speak to the actual Wyden–Heinrich letter [1]. I hope I don't sound like a spook when I say: there's been no splash because there's no (public) substance. Having read the 70-page PCLOB report [2], I can summarize it as: - the CIA has EO 12333 authority to perform bulk surveillance - they use it to [redacted], including financial transactions - they have a [redacted] internal process to review its use which potentially has some gaps and vagueness Sens. Wyden and Heinrich probably have more shocking secret info too. But yeah, I'd expect people to not react to these vague disclosures the same way they did 2013's detailed leaks. [1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HainesBurns_WydenHeinrich_13APR21%20-FINAL.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HainesBurns_Wyden... [2] https://www.cia.gov/static/63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/OPCL-PCLOB-Report-on-CIA-Activities.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/...
dpatru 5y ago
The most significant aspect of “government” surveillance is that whoever controls the surveillance also controls the government. It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him. Biden does not seem to have this problem, but he seems deeply compromised, https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-scandal-cnn-msnbc-abc-cbs-nbc-avoid-nyt-report-laptop https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-scandal-cnn-msnbc..., and, because of his mental condition, it’s clear he’s not the real executive who’s running the country.
- jay3ss 5y ago
  > It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him > because of his [Biden's] mental condition Can you please expand on these?
  - tdfx 5y ago
    > It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him The Russian collusion narrative comes to mind. There was so much momentum behind it that at the time I assumed it was true, as well. I naively believed there was a class of patriotic, more or less selfless bureaucrats in the IC and DOJ (Comey, Clapper, etc.) that was more intent on preserving the democratic system and the stated principles of their organizations than pursuing any political agenda. The results of the Mueller investigation and subsequent disclosures have thoroughly disabused me of that notion. I didn't realize just how stacked the deck was against Trump until watching them successfully bury the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election [0] where they astonishingly managed to discredit and bury a massive news story without ever denying any of the contents were true by saying nothing more than "it seems like something Russia would do". [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-... "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say"
  - dpatru 5y ago
    The fact that the US intelligence services were undermining Trump was obvious to anyone paying attention to headlines. Here is a specific example: the FBI submitted a false affidavit to the FISA court so that they could spy on Carter Page, https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/17/politics/fisa-court-slams-fbi-conduct/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/17/politics/fisa-court-slams..., and through Page probably the President, since a wiretap allows listening on other people up to two hops away. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/485072-was-president-trump-spied-on-as-part-of-carter-page-wiretapping?amp https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/485072-was-president... Biden’s mental decline is obvious. See for example https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/joe-bidens-made-up-stories-and-manner-raise-serious-questions-about-his-mental-health/amp/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/joe-bidens-made-up-stories-and..., https://youtu.be/9ssNav3MnBg https://youtu.be/9ssNav3MnBg.
mc4ndr3 5y ago
The crises have piled up too high to count. We're on track to lose entire countries to rising sea levels. There's a war in the Baltic states. The pandemic is only just subsiding (again), and only in first world regions. Food insecurity is rising. Even more people are forced to migrate. We already knew the gubmint was spying on us. Just one more thing on the pile.
darepublic 5y ago
MDM.. so would advertiser bs fall under any of these?
Maursault 5y ago
> taking advantage of a loophole in the Fourth Amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. What loophole? Also, any President may rescind any other President's executive orders. It's not like were stuck forever with President Reagan's demented privacy policies. (Don't you just love Republican cognitive dissonance? They want government to be just small enough to fit in a vagina.)
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  While true, the other party heavily used intelligence assets to generate fake political dossiers to discredit its opposition. That is in no way better than having a fundamentalist preacher governing your country.

199 points by baskethead 5y ago

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

It's very chilly in here. Too afraid to discuss?

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
As the article says, there's little to discuss: > First, details about the programs exposed recently are scarce. ... Snowden's disclosures, in contrast, included weeks of reporting on specific programs backed by leaked documents, making it easier for media and the public to latch onto the story.
- zibzab 5y ago
  Yeah, but once we had the proof we realized that the conspiracy theorists around the world wouldn't recognize a real conspiracy it it hit them on the head. Why do you think the UFO and Area-51 conspiracy theories peaked around that time? Because it was always about keeping your head in the sand, while believing you are enlightened.
lizardactivist 5y ago
Barrin92 5y ago
honestly the opposite, personally I tend to avoid these topics nowadays because I feel the discussion is very one sided and I usually just get a lot of flak when I argue that people fail to make a material case against surveillance. I think the average person unlike a lot of active internet users values safety much higher than privacy and a lot of people fail to see any negative consequences of these programs in their day to day life. Opposition tends to be very ideological which is why it fails to make a splash as the article claims.

holidayacct 5y ago

[flagged]

jerf 5y ago

The biggest power the media has isn't even to make you believe an active lie. It's the power to bury a story by simply neglecting it, and filling the media space with their own choices. The media is actively on the side of you living under heavy government surveillance. Act accordingly.

snarf21 5y ago
As said, people don't care. They will only push click bait because it is vastly more profitable. There is no such thing as news anymore, it is infotainment. Sowing faux outrage for profit is all.
gmuslera 5y ago
Consume even more Soma?
CerealFounder 5y ago
No its not, the larger media is the original "for pay algorithm" that shows you what ever makes you engage with their platform more (subscription & ad supported). There is no conspiracy or man behind the curtain. Simply put, complex stories resonate deeply with a small group and not at all with the majority. What you get from that is the current media landscape. Surveillance is a very complicated technical and moral story that only the smallest group cares about.
- akira2501 5y ago
  > the larger media is the original Concentration of media ownership has not been a constant factor over the past several decades and several laws have been changed to alter this reality in that time frame. As the purveyors of news get bought up and consolidated, it has almost certainly made this "information control" problem worse. > Surveillance is a very complicated technical "The government is spying on you" is not exceptionally complicated or technical. The fourth amendment is widely known and understood.
- calibas 5y ago
  The media's willful ignorance the Epstein case implies otherwise. This was a vast criminal conspiracy involving sex, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates and Harvard University, the kind of juicy gossip that the average person goes crazy over, and the mainstream media knew about it for years, but chose not to report it. The media was complicit in the coverup until it could be ignored no longer. They did the opposite of what an honest news media is supposed to do, and helped suppress one of the decades biggest news stories. That certainly implies something, and directly contradicts the "media just gives people what they want" meme/excuse.

MrYellowP 5y ago

Generally speaking nobody cares. Given the modern echo chamber, unless people actively spread news/information to those who aren't usually exposed to it, it simply won't ever reach them. That, of course, is no guarantee. There's tons of people who solely believe the mass media. The biggest problem is, though, that apparently everyone keeps believing them again and again and again, whenever the topic switches. From one crisis to the next people literally forget that they can not and should not trust both their governments and mass media. Fascinating, isn't it?

archhn 5y ago
I'm inclined to use the word "terrifying." Some people I know call me "crazy" every time I take a position which contradicts MSM. They fully believe that the T.V. is giving them the unadulterated truth of all matters that should concern them.
- rendall 5y ago
  I suspect the MSM engaging in coordinated lying on behalf of the powerful has been going on for at least half a century if not longer. The rise of the internet has allowed us, the audience, to independently falsify their accounts and listen to alternate perspectives, but I find it endlessly baffling that large numbers of people still just... allow their reality to be exactly what the MSM pundits tell them it is.
  - westmeal 5y ago
    I suspect it's easier and comforting to not think about the terrible reality of our world, and to have an 'official' perspective is to be able to move on with your life.
    - archhn 5y ago
      There are essentially two mentalities I've observed in people around me. 1. The Optimist. Believes they live in "the best of all worlds" and everything always works out for the best--Voltare satirizes this idealism in Candide. 2. The Broken Nihilist. Believes everything is bull shit. Everyone is a liar, civilization is a scam, and all human interaction is a power struggle. The optimist doesn't feel the need to worry about anything because they believe some magic force will make everything right for them. They thus are more susceptible to deception because they believe there can be no bad consequences of their actions...they are living a magical life in the best of all worlds...nothing can go wrong. The nihilist, as we may suspect, is naturally immune to deception within the bounds of his reasoning capacity. This gives him an advantage over the optimist...and he always looks down upon the optimist as an idiot.

dbtc 5y ago

> Another factor is that many Americans may now assume that their privacy is already shot. This is it for me, or the apathetic part of me. After a few revelations you can infer the not yet revealed. Hey, information wants to be free, right?

qiskit 5y ago

It's been going on for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee What's going to happen if there is a "big splash". Nothing. Has anyone in intelligence ever been arrested or punished for violating the law? These people are above the law.

mistrial9 5y ago
whoa- a reference to Church, and then say "These people are above the law" without caveat.. what an awful lead up to complete compliance without complaining.. count me out
- quantum_solanum 5y ago
  Which individuals faced any material consequences from the Church Committee? Or subsequent exposés?
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    you have answered yourself with the phrase "material consequences" ?

archhn 5y ago

Without an avenue of recourse, people tune out. Eliminate choice and you eliminate thought. Honestly, it has been this way in US politics for a long time. The government is always doing crazy scandalous things, but most people are busy with the day to day and don't know how to act on such information anyway. We are also, as Vidal said, a nation of amnesia. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. I'm sure most people lack the historical knowledge to contextualize these government actions. They don't know that an antagonistic relationship exists between the people and government. The numerous historical and contemporary betrayals of governments against their peoples isn't in their mind. Plus, most people think they are living in some fantasy world where nothing bad can happen to them. It's pretty dark. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

ccvannorman 5y ago
It's absolutely horrible and almost unthinkable, the scandalous and nefarious things the people in power get up to, and they remain above reproach! The good news: This is a basic feature of civilization, and it's been like this since the dawn of humanity, and it's better now than it's ever been if you use the metric of "how happy, free, and empowered the average individual human is". [0] At the end of the day, that metric (IMO) is the one to care about. Yes, governments will continue to be shitty, but they're less shitty than ever before, and you as an individual will probably do better than ever before, statistically. [0] Hans Rosling - The Best Stats You've Ever Seen https://ed.ted.com/lessons/hans-rosling-shows-the-best-stats-you-ve-ever-seen https://ed.ted.com/lessons/hans-rosling-shows-the-best-stats... edited to add source
- archhn 5y ago
  Have you ever read "Brave New World?" Happiness and all the sundry delusions you mentioned are not good metrics. The fact of the matter is that most people have less control over their lives than ever before. Gigantic entities have seized control over most sectors of human activity. In the short term, this corporate domination appears like a good thing. The mom and pop stores fell to Amazon and the Walmarts of the world, and consequently things got cheaper. That's a good thing...right? Cheaper goods = better lives...no? The low cost of goods and immediate boon to our material quality of life came at a structural cost. More and more of us are being converted from independent businesses owners to employees or contractors of large corporations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the agricultural industry. "If you don't go big, you go out," a former AG secretary said of the monopolizing currents in that industry. Prices for food went down as corporations seized more and more territory from independent farmers, but again...this came at a structural cost. In time, corporate monopolies will own all of food production. All this translates to power and wealth being concentrated into the hands of the very few. This means the dream of democracy is over. The average person will not have a say in his government when he is just a cog in a machine owned by the corporate caste. Sure, the corporate caste will probably usher in a BNW type of society, and most people will be as happy as can be...but they won't really be full human beings. They will be satisfied slaves who love their servitude. Unfortunately, this is what the common man wants...he just wants to be happy and have a full belly. He doesn't care about having the power to shape his own destiny, nor does he believe in anything higher than himself that would warrant self-sacrifice and prolonged misery. And so we may have the society you desire--the society of the last man. Almost everyone will be happy, but some men will remain wandering and crying out in the wilderness. Edit: I'd also like to add an example from history which demonstrates the misuse of statistics. Consider the period when Hitler rose to power in Germany. The Nazi regime ushered in what is called the "Economic Miracle." If you looked at the raw statistics of Germany during that period, you would think Hitler was God's gift from heaven. Not only was the economy booming, but many people bought into Hitler's magical rhetoric and became fervently hopeful for their future. It was a period of tremendous optimism and strength. The statistics show this, but they don't show the monsters lurking in the depths beneath. In order to know the monsters of today, we need to look beyond statistics. We need to look into ourselves, into human nature, and think about what happens when so few control so much.

randcraw 5y ago

IMHO, the problem with spying on citizens is that it's a double edged sword. We'd be nuts not to gather useful info on serious violations of law to improve national security (FBI) or local safety (local police). But abuse of such inherently secret info is difficult to oversee and harder still to effectively regulate. On one hand, oversight of spying programs always reveals some details about what nfo was gathered, either as dutiful proof of its proper use to the public, or in court cases as part of the chain of evidence. But doing this inevitably reveals something about what info was gathered and how, thereby weakening the future value of that source as people (or perps) learn to mistrust it and take greater pains to protect their sensitive info. On the other hand, NOT revealing data that was gathered invites its abuse, especially by orgs with minimal oversight (and scruples). Too often, law enforcement sees oversight of their practices as being equally as inimical as the perpetrators they pursue. I suspect the only way to sustainably manage this dance of mistrust is to change the role of police so that oversight is built into their culture, where they know someone is always watching their back — both in offering support to help them do a sometimes impossible job, as well as in demanding that they not abuse the special authority their job demands. In terms of their access to sensitive info, this must include enforcable strictures on their special access to info that should NOT be shared with others, like the client-servant privacy privileges demanded of lawyers or doctors.

snarf21 5y ago
Your opinion feels a lot like "I don't have anything to hide" kind of argument. We should just not be spying on people without express probable cause. We already have built in tracking for cells phones that people don't seem to realize or care. The other point is that we've seen nothing but continued confirmation that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The police (et al) have shown that they can't be trusted with this power.
- nine_k 5y ago
  The poster's point is that even lawfully collected info is sensitive, and the forces that collect it should be structured so that spilling or misusing it would be curbed by checks and balances.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

This article reminded me of how many damn agencies we have spying on us. People regularly talk about the FBI, CIA, and NSA but there are like ten other US intelligence agencies. The US Intelligence Community contains 17 organizations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... and that's not counting any state or local organizations that Blueleaks showed are doing similar things. Sure Google is making it seem normal to give up our information, but it's also hard to continue being angry when you hear that the DIA and DHS are also spying on us.

deleted 5y ago
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mjreacher 5y ago
While it is plausible for any of those agencies to spy on the domestic population, and it may definitely be possible that some of them need to be combined or removed, you must realize that any country will have such agencies as they have important roles, particularly for the military and law enforcement. It would be rather unwise if the FBI didn't have an intelligence branch because there's plenty of analysis to be gained from there, for example how drug cartels operate. Similarly, the DIA has an important job of accurately finding out the military capabilities of other countries. Whether they do bad/illegal things or not they are a necessary part of any government.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  You're not making a great case by saying we need to stop the drug cartels that exist because of prohibition and keep track of the military capabilities of countries we probably sold arms to. Neither of those things seem worth empowering a group to have the capability of spying on the domestic population.
  - jonnybgood 5y ago
    How are you using the word spying here? Are you using it synonymously with the word surveillance? If the FBI conducts an investigation that may require surveillance do you consider that spying and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to do it?

specialist 5y ago

Everyone, living and dead, within the Pax Americana sphere is tracked in near real time. Including everyone's economic activity, movements, communications, relationships, interests, and affinities. These additional disclosures merely confirm additional pieces of overall panopticon are in fact operational. (I don't know the current state of medical record sharing. Back when I worked in healthcare IT, mid 2000s, we had datafeeds to the CDC and others for public health stuff, deaths, births. No matter; What isn't explicit can largely be inferred from other datasets.) One darkly humorous aspect is that we're still arguing about stuff like census, gun licenses, voter registration databases, etc. Those tasks could be done with straightforward queries, with almost no errors, no drama necessary.

Atheros 5y ago
If the census, gun licenses, and voter registration were done as you suggest then you would simply move the drama to those other databases. There are powerful people who can legally attempt to increase their power by introducing errors into the census. Same with voter registration. The errors and subsequent drama are purposeful!
salawat 5y ago
Ever since EHR, medical insurers have been passing around historicals like hot cakes. So I'd assume if you are getting insured by an employer, every insurer has a cached copy of your medical history that can be dove either as a byproduct of their RFP process or otherwise. Hell, I was just thinking the last couple years that if you've got a regular prescription, medical insurance is basically a leash that can be yanked in as a control mechanism.

tormock 5y ago

Hypothetical: If you had a law enforcement agency spying/harassing you, what would you do? If they would make it hard to prove?

technobabbler 5y ago
Make a web series out of it and livestream it? Have your viewers vote on what kind of donuts to send? Silly, but probably a better choice than becoming the next Ted Kaczynski.
pengaru 5y ago
As someone who experienced something along these lines through some kind of sloppy guilt by association (frequently computed from a cafe a drug dealer operated out of when he got busted), I don't even have to answer hypothetically. Ignored it, made sure my ducks were in a row, and basically waited for them to lose interest - budgets for such individual surveillance are presumably finite. Eventually the most visible manned surveillance ceased occurring, IIRC it lasted at least a few months. It was a very annoying experience. But the population-wide omnipresent automated surveillance is a different beast entirely. When it involves manpower actually watching and following someone it can't last forever. I'm sure people are regularly being caught up in mass location and communications metadata surveillance nets thanks to their phones being in the vicinity of criminal activity like whore houses and/or illegal drug dens. The cost is so low for sustaining that kind of thing it's basically an honor system from where I'm sitting that they ever stop.
- 2xpress 5y ago
  One way to make it less likely to get caught up in a mass-location harvesting case is to disable GPS on phone, especially on a non-de-googled Android phone. I'd also recommend paying with cash whenever that is an option. Another biggie is not to vote for politicians supporting public surveillance laws, and to cast an abstention vote when no anti-public-surveillance candidate is available. The abstention sends a signal to other prospective candidates that the election-winning politicians are not un-defeatable by a candidate better aligned with the voters who abstained.

natsup123490 5y ago

Efforts to make governments behave are pretty hopeless. Besides, it's not just the US that is spying on everybody. If you want privacy, you need to change your behavior and your tooling, using technology to create privacy.

encryptluks2 5y ago

On a recent senate committee hearing about authoritarianism the US said Russia is more synchronized in their message of using propaganda and that the US needs to figure out how we can do the same. In calling out authoritarianism their response is in order to fix it we should be more like them. The US could in the same sentence tell you why it is not okay to start war but it is okay if they do it.

zaroth 5y ago

> “Facebook can try to sell you products, but Facebook can't put you in jail,” Goitein explained. “Ideological prosecution or suppression isn’t in the monetary interest of these companies.” This is dangerously naive and less than half true. While Facebook cannot arrest you, it can cause you to be arrested for something that is absolutely not a crime. It can also financially and socially ruin you. And it is most certainly in their financial and ideological interests to do so in many occasions.

lgvln 5y ago
Very much so. A (in)famous authoritarian government prosecuted (successfully) a citizen of the country (while he was overseas in both instances) for publishing a private post on his Facebook (which was critical of the government).
- ccvannorman 5y ago
  Source pls

glasshug 5y ago

Maybe I can be the first to speak to the actual Wyden–Heinrich letter [1]. I hope I don't sound like a spook when I say: there's been no splash because there's no (public) substance. Having read the 70-page PCLOB report [2], I can summarize it as: - the CIA has EO 12333 authority to perform bulk surveillance - they use it to [redacted], including financial transactions - they have a [redacted] internal process to review its use which potentially has some gaps and vagueness Sens. Wyden and Heinrich probably have more shocking secret info too. But yeah, I'd expect people to not react to these vague disclosures the same way they did 2013's detailed leaks. [1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HainesBurns_WydenHeinrich_13APR21%20-FINAL.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HainesBurns_Wyden... [2] https://www.cia.gov/static/63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/OPCL-PCLOB-Report-on-CIA-Activities.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/...

dpatru 5y ago

The most significant aspect of “government” surveillance is that whoever controls the surveillance also controls the government. It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him. Biden does not seem to have this problem, but he seems deeply compromised, https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-scandal-cnn-msnbc-abc-cbs-nbc-avoid-nyt-report-laptop https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-scandal-cnn-msnbc..., and, because of his mental condition, it’s clear he’s not the real executive who’s running the country.

jay3ss 5y ago
> It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him > because of his [Biden's] mental condition Can you please expand on these?
- tdfx 5y ago
  > It was clear that Trump was not in control of the surveillance state: it was working against him The Russian collusion narrative comes to mind. There was so much momentum behind it that at the time I assumed it was true, as well. I naively believed there was a class of patriotic, more or less selfless bureaucrats in the IC and DOJ (Comey, Clapper, etc.) that was more intent on preserving the democratic system and the stated principles of their organizations than pursuing any political agenda. The results of the Mueller investigation and subsequent disclosures have thoroughly disabused me of that notion. I didn't realize just how stacked the deck was against Trump until watching them successfully bury the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election [0] where they astonishingly managed to discredit and bury a massive news story without ever denying any of the contents were true by saying nothing more than "it seems like something Russia would do". [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-... "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say"
- dpatru 5y ago
  The fact that the US intelligence services were undermining Trump was obvious to anyone paying attention to headlines. Here is a specific example: the FBI submitted a false affidavit to the FISA court so that they could spy on Carter Page, https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/17/politics/fisa-court-slams-fbi-conduct/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/17/politics/fisa-court-slams..., and through Page probably the President, since a wiretap allows listening on other people up to two hops away. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/485072-was-president-trump-spied-on-as-part-of-carter-page-wiretapping?amp https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/485072-was-president... Biden’s mental decline is obvious. See for example https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/joe-bidens-made-up-stories-and-manner-raise-serious-questions-about-his-mental-health/amp/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/joe-bidens-made-up-stories-and..., https://youtu.be/9ssNav3MnBg https://youtu.be/9ssNav3MnBg.

mc4ndr3 5y ago

The crises have piled up too high to count. We're on track to lose entire countries to rising sea levels. There's a war in the Baltic states. The pandemic is only just subsiding (again), and only in first world regions. Food insecurity is rising. Even more people are forced to migrate. We already knew the gubmint was spying on us. Just one more thing on the pile.

darepublic 5y ago

MDM.. so would advertiser bs fall under any of these?

Maursault 5y ago

> taking advantage of a loophole in the Fourth Amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. What loophole? Also, any President may rescind any other President's executive orders. It's not like were stuck forever with President Reagan's demented privacy policies. (Don't you just love Republican cognitive dissonance? They want government to be just small enough to fit in a vagina.)

raxxorrax 5y ago
While true, the other party heavily used intelligence assets to generate fake political dossiers to discredit its opposition. That is in no way better than having a fundamentalist preacher governing your country.