5 ms·

Mass surveillance is antithetical to liberty, but direct, concrete harm is hard to identify. The surveillance complex has been pretty good at using secrecy, an

by dannyw 3y ago

Mass surveillance is antithetical to liberty, but direct, concrete harm is hard to identify. The surveillance complex has been pretty good at using secrecy, and perhaps even good internal controls, to limit everyday impact. How can we find real harms to win this fight? Or how can we get people to care?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cultureswitch 3y ago
Acceleration brrr
_heimdall 3y ago
The legal authority to surveil itself should be considered enough harm in my opinion. It fundamentally damages right to privacy, harm caused by the actual surveillance itself shouldn't be needed if the legal system is really designed to protect our rights.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > The legal authority to surveil itself should be considered enough harm in my opinion. While I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint, one should be clear about the tradeoff. One of the government's primary duties is to keep citizens secure, from crime, terrorism, etc. That is the argument that is used to justify the legal authority to surveil. It's not enough to just say "protect our rights"--the whole point is that there is a tradeoff of rights. Protecting you against crime and terrorism is also protecting your rights--your right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, if nothing else. So one can't just say "no surveillance" and leave it at that; one has to make a case for why the existing tradeoff of rights is the wrong one and should be changed. Also on the subject of rights, the US Bill Rights recognizes the need for things like surveillance, searches, seizures, etc. That's why the Fourth Amendment doesn't say "no surveillance, period". It just requires that there is a warrant that specifies particular information. So if the proper tradeoff is what the Fourth Amendment describes, that's not "no surveillance". It's just stopping the abuses of the warrant process.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    I'm not proposing that we should go full absolutist and also revoke the power for law enforcement to request court-approved warrants that clearly outline what they need to investigate and why. The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear details on what they're looking for and where they can look. Personally I have a much higher bar than most and think view the tradeoffs of privacy invasion rarely worth it, though I also don't expect our government to protect me in any meaningful way and would rather depend on my fellow citizens for that instead. There's a whole discussion there related to the surveillance and military state we live in today, but that probably veers way to far off topic.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear details on what they're looking for and where they can look. Yes, if we restrict discussion to warrantless surveillance then I think the restrictions ought to be much tighter. > I also don't expect our government to protect me in any meaningful way and would rather depend on my fellow citizens for that instead. In some respects this is already part of our legal framework: for example, there have been multiple court rulings at multiple levels that the police do not have a duty to protect individual citizens from crime. However, the public policies adopted by the government regarding crime can have a huge effect on overall crime rates, which in turn affects how much you need* a means of protection other than the government's overall police powers. This is more a matter of state and local governments than federal, but even here federal policies have an effect. Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc.
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        > Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc. Sounds like we largely agree on the earlier points, this where it gets to my admittedly less common/popular opinions. I don't agree with standing militaries, if we're under direct threat and our people are willing to fight then the government's role should be to coordinate and supply this effort. I also don't agree with most border controls, before enforcing solid borders we should have melted down the Statue of Liberty and sent it back to France (who ironically also doesn't believe in sending them your hungry, poor, or weak anymore). We continue to chase our tails attempting to close borders but never seriously consider the motivations leading to mass migration. If we can't feasibly close our borders we need to reconsider whether entitlement programs are worth the tradeoff and sustainable when someone can walk across the border and add to those budgets. I really don't mean to say I have the answer on what we should do, only that there's a fundamental challenge between wanting to ensure access to what we deem as core necessities when all it takes is physically being here and we can't effectively control borders. With regards to terrorism, I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. If we only learned one lesson from two decades of war in Afghanistan it should be that, when it comes to non-state actors, cutting off one head does in fact lead to multiple new heads popping up.
dfxm12 3y ago
How can we find real harms to win this fight? Or how can we get people to care? Once issue is that people have to understand that even if you have nothing to hide, it doesn't matter. This level of surveillance is all about parallel construction. It's not meant to catch you in the act of doing something illegal, it's meant to give the government the tools they need to build (fabricate, even) a case against anyone they decide to target. Another issue is the media, and how they will pretty much always toe the government line when it comes to law enforcement. Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers are way too easily painted an enemy of the state. In general, people won't care until it affects them, and in all honesty, this likely won't.
ghostpepper 3y ago
To play devil's advocate, if good internal controls are preventing abuse, why start with the foregone conclusion that there must exist "real harms" to find?
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Because the FBI has pinky promised to develop those and has consistently failed with violations continuing. There’s also plenty of technical reasons why “good internal controls” are a myth. For example, the CIA and NSA could help out the FBI by secretly trawling through that database bypassing all “controls” using exploits / back doors and sending tips from “confidential sources” and parallel reconstruction being used to prosecute. Btw we also have similar problems with normal police officers misusing records to spy on spouses and whatnot and occasionally we find out about and the department promises stricter controls and reforms and round we go the merry go round.

by dannyw 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cultureswitch 3y ago

Acceleration brrr

_heimdall 3y ago

The legal authority to surveil itself should be considered enough harm in my opinion. It fundamentally damages right to privacy, harm caused by the actual surveillance itself shouldn't be needed if the legal system is really designed to protect our rights.

pdonis 3y ago
> The legal authority to surveil itself should be considered enough harm in my opinion. While I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint, one should be clear about the tradeoff. One of the government's primary duties is to keep citizens secure, from crime, terrorism, etc. That is the argument that is used to justify the legal authority to surveil. It's not enough to just say "protect our rights"--the whole point is that there is a tradeoff of rights. Protecting you against crime and terrorism is also protecting your rights--your right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, if nothing else. So one can't just say "no surveillance" and leave it at that; one has to make a case for why the existing tradeoff of rights is the wrong one and should be changed. Also on the subject of rights, the US Bill Rights recognizes the need for things like surveillance, searches, seizures, etc. That's why the Fourth Amendment doesn't say "no surveillance, period". It just requires that there is a warrant that specifies particular information. So if the proper tradeoff is what the Fourth Amendment describes, that's not "no surveillance". It's just stopping the abuses of the warrant process.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  I'm not proposing that we should go full absolutist and also revoke the power for law enforcement to request court-approved warrants that clearly outline what they need to investigate and why. The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear details on what they're looking for and where they can look. Personally I have a much higher bar than most and think view the tradeoffs of privacy invasion rarely worth it, though I also don't expect our government to protect me in any meaningful way and would rather depend on my fellow citizens for that instead. There's a whole discussion there related to the surveillance and military state we live in today, but that probably veers way to far off topic.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear details on what they're looking for and where they can look. Yes, if we restrict discussion to warrantless surveillance then I think the restrictions ought to be much tighter. > I also don't expect our government to protect me in any meaningful way and would rather depend on my fellow citizens for that instead. In some respects this is already part of our legal framework: for example, there have been multiple court rulings at multiple levels that the police do not have a duty to protect individual citizens from crime. However, the public policies adopted by the government regarding crime can have a huge effect on overall crime rates, which in turn affects how much you need* a means of protection other than the government's overall police powers. This is more a matter of state and local governments than federal, but even here federal policies have an effect. Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      > Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc. Sounds like we largely agree on the earlier points, this where it gets to my admittedly less common/popular opinions. I don't agree with standing militaries, if we're under direct threat and our people are willing to fight then the government's role should be to coordinate and supply this effort. I also don't agree with most border controls, before enforcing solid borders we should have melted down the Statue of Liberty and sent it back to France (who ironically also doesn't believe in sending them your hungry, poor, or weak anymore). We continue to chase our tails attempting to close borders but never seriously consider the motivations leading to mass migration. If we can't feasibly close our borders we need to reconsider whether entitlement programs are worth the tradeoff and sustainable when someone can walk across the border and add to those budgets. I really don't mean to say I have the answer on what we should do, only that there's a fundamental challenge between wanting to ensure access to what we deem as core necessities when all it takes is physically being here and we can't effectively control borders. With regards to terrorism, I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. If we only learned one lesson from two decades of war in Afghanistan it should be that, when it comes to non-state actors, cutting off one head does in fact lead to multiple new heads popping up.

dfxm12 3y ago

How can we find real harms to win this fight? Or how can we get people to care? Once issue is that people have to understand that even if you have nothing to hide, it doesn't matter. This level of surveillance is all about parallel construction. It's not meant to catch you in the act of doing something illegal, it's meant to give the government the tools they need to build (fabricate, even) a case against anyone they decide to target. Another issue is the media, and how they will pretty much always toe the government line when it comes to law enforcement. Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers are way too easily painted an enemy of the state. In general, people won't care until it affects them, and in all honesty, this likely won't.

ghostpepper 3y ago

To play devil's advocate, if good internal controls are preventing abuse, why start with the foregone conclusion that there must exist "real harms" to find?

vlovich123 3y ago
Because the FBI has pinky promised to develop those and has consistently failed with violations continuing. There’s also plenty of technical reasons why “good internal controls” are a myth. For example, the CIA and NSA could help out the FBI by secretly trawling through that database bypassing all “controls” using exploits / back doors and sending tips from “confidential sources” and parallel reconstruction being used to prosecute. Btw we also have similar problems with normal police officers misusing records to spy on spouses and whatnot and occasionally we find out about and the department promises stricter controls and reforms and round we go the merry go round.