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1) Your idea of replacing law enforcement [of illegal wiretaps] with even stricter laws without enforcing them - that's what reminds me about alcohol prohibitio

1) Your idea of replacing law enforcement [of illegal wiretaps] with even stricter laws without enforcing them - that's what reminds me about alcohol prohibition. 2) You again are attacking a straw man. I'm not suggesting increasing surveillance. I'm suggesting not to pay much attention to it and focus our very limited resources on what's really important: - Freedom of law-abiding citizens from government persecution. - Reducing legal restrictions on citizens. - Freedom of speech. Government surveillance abuse is not nearly as important as these three principles above. If you insist that limiting government surveillance is more important, then please name what item in my list you consider less important.

dpark 15y ago
1) Prohibition had nothing to do with replacing enforcement of laws with stricter laws. It was about passing a new law where none existed before, to take away a freedom. Your comparison makes no sense. And I'm not saying we shouldn't enforce the law. I'm saying that the range of the allowed wiretaps should be narrow so that enforcement is feasible. And indeed, the range of legal wiretaps is actually not that broad. If we enforced the existing law, there would be fewer. 2) You have repeatedly said that we shouldn't be concerned about government privacy violations, that wiretaps are not a problem, that we have more privacy than we need, that we should trade privacy for other freedoms, that the government is efficient with less privacy. You may not have explicitly said "I want more wiretaps", but you've been arguing in favor of it quite clearly. This is not a straw man. If you don't like where your arguments lead, then maybe you should ask why you're making those arguments. Your attempt to separate privacy from other freedoms and present them as a tradeoff is still unsound. I could likewise ask you whether you'd rather have freedom of speech or freedom from false arrest, and pretend that this is a legitimate tradeoff and that we need "not to pay much attention to it and focus our very limited resources on what's really important".
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  1) If wiretapping X is illegal, then law enforcement needs to prevent only wiretapping X. If wiretapping X and wiretapping Y are illegal, then law enforcement needs to prevent both of them, which makes law enforcement harder (not easier as you are saying). 2) Of course there is no point in blindly giving government more surveillance power and hope for improvement. But if government agency claims that with more surveillance power it can significantly reduce spending and significantly reduce number of false arrests while maintaining low crime level - then it might worth to try. If government agency fails to deliver on that promise, then the head of that agency should be replaced, budget shrunk anyway, and wiretapping grant revoked. 3) The difference between "government surveillance" and "limiting freedom of speech"/"false arrests" is that "government surveillance" has much smaller downsides and much higher upsides, while both "limiting freedom of speech"/"false arrests" have almost no upside and very painful downsides.
  - dpark 15y ago
    1) Your logic only makes sense if you assume that the rate of wiretaps is unchanged by the legal status of wiretapping. This seems a rather implausible situation. If wiretapping X, Y, and Z is legal, then it's easier to hide an illegal wiretap of W. When there are more legal wiretaps, it's easier for illegal wiretaps to slip through. The cost of oversight isn't dominated by the number of illegal wiretaps. It dominated by the number of legal wiretaps, because each of those needs to be reviewed. 2) No, it's not worth trying. Surveillance agencies have been saying that forever, and they've not delivered on their promise. Your beliefs seem to exist in some strange world where agencies are actually held accountable. So long as we don't live in that world, your ideas make no sense. 3) We will not agree on this. You simply don't value privacy. I do, and I think you're really naive about this.
    - dennisgorelik 15y ago
      1) Why review every single wiretap? Only wiretaps that resulted in problems need to be reviewed (e.g. some of my private info was used against me, so my lawyer would be reviewing if the wiretap was legal and would file civil suit for damages against wiretapping agency if it was illegal). 2) Are you saying that agencies without surveillance capabilities would be performing no worse than they are performing now? 3) I wish you could show me real dangers of limited privacy. But so far all your examples of surveillance abuse included government agencies doing something illegal.
      - dpark 15y ago
        1) So basically no oversight at all until someone sues? I'm sure that will go well. 2) No. I'm saying that "more surveillance" does not imply "more effective". It's true that intelligence gathering is useful. It's not true that arbitrarily spying on everyone is useful. If you do 10 targeted wiretaps and get 5 actionable leads, that's useful. If you do 10000 arbitrary wiretaps and get 5 actionable leads, it's a pointless loss of privacy and an abuse of power. 3) I wish you would show me real dangers of limited right to travel.... Putting that aside, I'm not sure why you're so dismissive of illegal abuses. That's kind of like saying you don't understand gun laws, because the only problems are with people doing something illegal. You might disagree with gun laws, but if that's the only reason why, then your opinion is rather shallow. Abuses are a significant issue. You should be worried about abuses happening, and you should be worried about them going unpunished. We see this stuff all the time already. It's borderline delusional to think this doesn't or won't happen with wiretaps. Beyond that, privacy is in many ways protected for the same reasons as speech. If you can speak against a government, you can fight it (at least in theory). Likewise, private communication can be necessary to effectively fight the government. Want to stage a surprise protest? You'll probably be more effective if you aren't being listened to by the police. Or if speaking publicly is dangerous (because the government is restricting speech or because fellow citizens find your views unpalatable) privacy will allow you to speak at least to a select audience. For one more reason, when you have the NSA mining everyone's communications for keywords, do you think there are no false alarms? Do you think that wiretaps always result in only "bad guys" getting caught? There are always going to be false positives. If 1% of wiretaps result in false positives (I'd wager the number is quite a bit higher), how many people get unjustly arrested, detained, or otherwise hassled? If only 10 people get wiretapped, possibly none. If 10000 people get wiretapped, then 100 will be unjustly interrogated. Honestly, if you can't think of any reasons why privacy is important, then you're not trying very hard. You could probably plug "why is privacy important" into any search engine and get a lot more reasons than the ones I listed.

dpark 15y ago

1) Prohibition had nothing to do with replacing enforcement of laws with stricter laws. It was about passing a new law where none existed before, to take away a freedom. Your comparison makes no sense. And I'm not saying we shouldn't enforce the law. I'm saying that the range of the allowed wiretaps should be narrow so that enforcement is feasible. And indeed, the range of legal wiretaps is actually not that broad. If we enforced the existing law, there would be fewer. 2) You have repeatedly said that we shouldn't be concerned about government privacy violations, that wiretaps are not a problem, that we have more privacy than we need, that we should trade privacy for other freedoms, that the government is efficient with less privacy. You may not have explicitly said "I want more wiretaps", but you've been arguing in favor of it quite clearly. This is not a straw man. If you don't like where your arguments lead, then maybe you should ask why you're making those arguments. Your attempt to separate privacy from other freedoms and present them as a tradeoff is still unsound. I could likewise ask you whether you'd rather have freedom of speech or freedom from false arrest, and pretend that this is a legitimate tradeoff and that we need "not to pay much attention to it and focus our very limited resources on what's really important".

dennisgorelik 15y ago
1) If wiretapping X is illegal, then law enforcement needs to prevent only wiretapping X. If wiretapping X and wiretapping Y are illegal, then law enforcement needs to prevent both of them, which makes law enforcement harder (not easier as you are saying). 2) Of course there is no point in blindly giving government more surveillance power and hope for improvement. But if government agency claims that with more surveillance power it can significantly reduce spending and significantly reduce number of false arrests while maintaining low crime level - then it might worth to try. If government agency fails to deliver on that promise, then the head of that agency should be replaced, budget shrunk anyway, and wiretapping grant revoked. 3) The difference between "government surveillance" and "limiting freedom of speech"/"false arrests" is that "government surveillance" has much smaller downsides and much higher upsides, while both "limiting freedom of speech"/"false arrests" have almost no upside and very painful downsides.
- dpark 15y ago
  1) Your logic only makes sense if you assume that the rate of wiretaps is unchanged by the legal status of wiretapping. This seems a rather implausible situation. If wiretapping X, Y, and Z is legal, then it's easier to hide an illegal wiretap of W. When there are more legal wiretaps, it's easier for illegal wiretaps to slip through. The cost of oversight isn't dominated by the number of illegal wiretaps. It dominated by the number of legal wiretaps, because each of those needs to be reviewed. 2) No, it's not worth trying. Surveillance agencies have been saying that forever, and they've not delivered on their promise. Your beliefs seem to exist in some strange world where agencies are actually held accountable. So long as we don't live in that world, your ideas make no sense. 3) We will not agree on this. You simply don't value privacy. I do, and I think you're really naive about this.
  - dennisgorelik 15y ago
    1) Why review every single wiretap? Only wiretaps that resulted in problems need to be reviewed (e.g. some of my private info was used against me, so my lawyer would be reviewing if the wiretap was legal and would file civil suit for damages against wiretapping agency if it was illegal). 2) Are you saying that agencies without surveillance capabilities would be performing no worse than they are performing now? 3) I wish you could show me real dangers of limited privacy. But so far all your examples of surveillance abuse included government agencies doing something illegal.
    - dpark 15y ago
      1) So basically no oversight at all until someone sues? I'm sure that will go well. 2) No. I'm saying that "more surveillance" does not imply "more effective". It's true that intelligence gathering is useful. It's not true that arbitrarily spying on everyone is useful. If you do 10 targeted wiretaps and get 5 actionable leads, that's useful. If you do 10000 arbitrary wiretaps and get 5 actionable leads, it's a pointless loss of privacy and an abuse of power. 3) I wish you would show me real dangers of limited right to travel.... Putting that aside, I'm not sure why you're so dismissive of illegal abuses. That's kind of like saying you don't understand gun laws, because the only problems are with people doing something illegal. You might disagree with gun laws, but if that's the only reason why, then your opinion is rather shallow. Abuses are a significant issue. You should be worried about abuses happening, and you should be worried about them going unpunished. We see this stuff all the time already. It's borderline delusional to think this doesn't or won't happen with wiretaps. Beyond that, privacy is in many ways protected for the same reasons as speech. If you can speak against a government, you can fight it (at least in theory). Likewise, private communication can be necessary to effectively fight the government. Want to stage a surprise protest? You'll probably be more effective if you aren't being listened to by the police. Or if speaking publicly is dangerous (because the government is restricting speech or because fellow citizens find your views unpalatable) privacy will allow you to speak at least to a select audience. For one more reason, when you have the NSA mining everyone's communications for keywords, do you think there are no false alarms? Do you think that wiretaps always result in only "bad guys" getting caught? There are always going to be false positives. If 1% of wiretaps result in false positives (I'd wager the number is quite a bit higher), how many people get unjustly arrested, detained, or otherwise hassled? If only 10 people get wiretapped, possibly none. If 10000 people get wiretapped, then 100 will be unjustly interrogated. Honestly, if you can't think of any reasons why privacy is important, then you're not trying very hard. You could probably plug "why is privacy important" into any search engine and get a lot more reasons than the ones I listed.