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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

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.
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  1) No wasting effort on oversight until somebody complain. 2) 10000 wiretaps are likely to generate some leaks and complaints, and dealing with these complaints costs effort and money. So smarter agencies would avoid pointless wiretaps or would shred wiretaps soon after it's clear that they don't produce anything useful. Dumber agencies would be dissolved. 3) I personally don't suffer much from limited right to travel. Especially now, when Internet communications are so efficient. But I know that for many businesses and political organizations travel is important. Limited travel makes such organizations less efficient. That said, limited travel is also not the top issue unlike freedom of speech and freedom from false arrests. 4) Now, to the core of your lapse in judgement: It's a serious mistake to assume that percent of false positives does not depend on amount of surveillance. With zero surveillance, percent of false positive arrests is indistinguishable from percent of innocent citizens in the society (that is ~99%). Massive and effective surveillance allows to move that percent of false positives down to almost zero. The constant here is the number of arrests (e.g. 100), and not percent of false positives as you claim. So if percent of false positives declines, then number of false arrests declines too. Regarding your suggestion to use privacy as a tool to cripple government - that does not make much sense, because if you want to cripple government, just don't give it money and it will weaken to the level of your desire. However the consequence here is that crippled government cannot properly deliver what it was designed to deliver (e.g. law enforcement). 5) Searching for "why is privacy important" shows that major concerns about privacy are not really related to government.
  - dpark 15y ago
    1) This means no oversight, which means that abuse is unbounded. Your idea would result in an eventual scandal when one detected abuse resulted in thousands more coming to light. Really, what you're saying is that wiretaps should be unlimited, because that's what a lack of oversight implies. 2) You live in a fantasy world. Sure, in a perfect world, agencies would be smart, but in a perfect world we wouldn't be debating which rights are most important, because a perfect government wouldnt be taking them away. In our real world, 1000 wiretaps probably mean 2000 or more weeks of wasted government employee time. 3) Ugh. Let's try again. Why is freedom of speech so important? What can you realistically say that restricted speech does to you? 4) This is just dumb. Your argument here is that everyone is presumed guilty until a wiretap proves otherwise. That's not how our legal system works. As for your "just don't give them money", why don't you try that and let me know how it goes. 5) You can't be serious. How are concerns about governmental privacy invasions not about the government?

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.

dennisgorelik 15y ago
1) No wasting effort on oversight until somebody complain. 2) 10000 wiretaps are likely to generate some leaks and complaints, and dealing with these complaints costs effort and money. So smarter agencies would avoid pointless wiretaps or would shred wiretaps soon after it's clear that they don't produce anything useful. Dumber agencies would be dissolved. 3) I personally don't suffer much from limited right to travel. Especially now, when Internet communications are so efficient. But I know that for many businesses and political organizations travel is important. Limited travel makes such organizations less efficient. That said, limited travel is also not the top issue unlike freedom of speech and freedom from false arrests. 4) Now, to the core of your lapse in judgement: It's a serious mistake to assume that percent of false positives does not depend on amount of surveillance. With zero surveillance, percent of false positive arrests is indistinguishable from percent of innocent citizens in the society (that is ~99%). Massive and effective surveillance allows to move that percent of false positives down to almost zero. The constant here is the number of arrests (e.g. 100), and not percent of false positives as you claim. So if percent of false positives declines, then number of false arrests declines too. Regarding your suggestion to use privacy as a tool to cripple government - that does not make much sense, because if you want to cripple government, just don't give it money and it will weaken to the level of your desire. However the consequence here is that crippled government cannot properly deliver what it was designed to deliver (e.g. law enforcement). 5) Searching for "why is privacy important" shows that major concerns about privacy are not really related to government.
- dpark 15y ago
  1) This means no oversight, which means that abuse is unbounded. Your idea would result in an eventual scandal when one detected abuse resulted in thousands more coming to light. Really, what you're saying is that wiretaps should be unlimited, because that's what a lack of oversight implies. 2) You live in a fantasy world. Sure, in a perfect world, agencies would be smart, but in a perfect world we wouldn't be debating which rights are most important, because a perfect government wouldnt be taking them away. In our real world, 1000 wiretaps probably mean 2000 or more weeks of wasted government employee time. 3) Ugh. Let's try again. Why is freedom of speech so important? What can you realistically say that restricted speech does to you? 4) This is just dumb. Your argument here is that everyone is presumed guilty until a wiretap proves otherwise. That's not how our legal system works. As for your "just don't give them money", why don't you try that and let me know how it goes. 5) You can't be serious. How are concerns about governmental privacy invasions not about the government?