10 ms·

One of the rather interesting side issues in this whole debate has been how casually the rights of foreigners are tossed aside as secondary to those of american

by zmmmmm 13y ago

One of the rather interesting side issues in this whole debate has been how casually the rights of foreigners are tossed aside as secondary to those of american citizens. There is intense debate about whether US citizens rights are being violated, but almost nobody questions whether there's any moral or ethical issue with completely unrestrained spying on everybody else. While I understand that this is largely because the legality of the spying hinges on whether US citizens are subject to it, I still find it a rather fascinating aspect.

siculars 13y ago
Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  This is likely the root of the issue, which is that they probably capture all communications, but when they have a foreign target, that is when they actually "look" at the stuff they captured, trying to find stuff "related" to that foreign target. The NSA at least was supposedly run as a very tight ship (I have no idea now, i have no friends who have worked there recently), so I'm sure they theoretically have really detailed redaction and other procedures meant to keep personal or private info of americans from appearing in reports, but that is not exactly comforting.
  - Ziomislaw 13y ago
    I do not think any decent human being has friends THERE.
- jmadsen 13y ago
  That's what I've been wondering: - if they aren't targeting specific persons, how do they know what country the person is from & if they (the govt) are violating the law? - if I'm American living in another country, am I safer from or more likely to be tracked (terrorism aside) Am I being picked up "freely" as someone from outside the country? - many, many, many similar questions I'm sure you are also asking I realize these seem rather naive questions, but my first thought on reading Obama's response was, "How can you possibly know what country the person is a citizen of?" Considering that that was a major part of his defense - "Don't worry, it's only those foreign people we're looking at"- I really think that needs to be a bigger part of the whole discussion. I think it is quite obviously more bullshit.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    It is unlikely bullshit. They are likely not indiscriminate in targeting. It's just likely post-hoc targeting. That's the question you really want to ask: "So do you capture all the data, and then only look at the data for foreign people, or do you only capture data for foreign people?" At one point, with watchwords/etc, it was clearly the latter. I think they've moved to the former.
- chad_oliver 13y ago
  I have heard (no guarantees) that they collect information on everyone, and analyse it later as it is needed. They only investigate this information if and as if relates to a foreign suspect. Doesn't seem like there's any way to abuse this .....
- joering2 13y ago
  > Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website. I think you were just trolling but if not then one of hundreds possible ways to find that: 1. get a hold of your your email (or name and then facebook / gmail snoop) 2. your email leads to your paypal account 3. your paypal account leads to your dob and ssn, bank accounts 4. your banks accounts hold information whether you are citizen or not; - OR - 4. your ssn codification tells whether by the time obtaining the number you were citizen or not PayPal, Facebook and Palantr has the same co-owner, P. Thiel. But seriously I don't think they discriminate. Last thing they look at is whether you are citizen or not. Your IPs (all the one you ever used while login to any website you have an account with) can quickly tell them whether you are on US soil or not. Most likely as long as you are here, you are consider us citizen, whether lawfully or not but you "operate" on US soil so the same rules apply to you. Good example would be if you are in US as a tourist -- you still need to obey US laws and regulations.
  - denis1 13y ago
    Doesn't this mean that they are spying on you without actually knowing if you are a US citizen? By your logic, only after step 4 they actually know if you are a citizen, but they have collected a lot of data about you in steps 1-3.
  - corresation 13y ago
    I think you were just trolling, but the GP was asking a very pertinent, reasonable question specifically about companies like Facebook, Google, etc, and how they differentiate. Your reply -- ostensibly about what an organization like the FBI might do to identify someone -- is not relevant to their question at all, making it all the more bizarre that you decided to question whether they were "trolling" (apologies to all others, but that is a growing peeve of mine -- this noisy declaration of things people say as trolling). Google knows a lot about someone, but they have no idea what citizenship I hold. They can guess, of course, but that isn't a lawful way to discriminate.
- grey-area 13y ago
  Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website. According to the whistleblower, they don't in any meaningful sense. They collect all the data they can, and then currently only use bits of it, when they feel that is justified. His point about checking the US president's email in the video was that all they need is one email from a foreigner in order to tie anyone in the US to an investigation, and look through all their records.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    In addition I am in the process of composing a letter to my elected representatives. One thing I am noting is that the published standards are quite a bit more lax on this than the data, permitting the NSA to quite heavily over-select for Americans. A 51% confidence that your target is not American when looking at a service where 15% of the users are American, or one where only 29% of the users of the users are Americans is a meaningless standard. Now the only hope right now is that companies push back but the question is how much given that they were not willing to push back enough to break silence.
glesica 13y ago
I can't speak for others, but as far as I am concerned, every person on earth has the exact same rights. I see no difference between an American and someone from another country. This informs my stance on all of US foreign policy. To me, spying on an innocent Iraqi or Chinese citizen is just as morally reprehensible as spying on an innocent American citizen. That being said, not all people feel as I do, and you are right, the legality of it all, unfortunately, hinges on how Americans are affected.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  At least in most countries, this is just not the way it works, legally. Every country has different rights for citizens and non-citizens. For example, the US has held the 4th amendment does not apply to non-citizens who are not "part of the national community" (IE if a bunch of canadians came down and fished every weekend, you could search them however without violating the 4th amendment. If they lived here illegally, you couldn't). It's not just the US of course, almost all countries are like this (the EU has broader protections for EU citizens than random other people, like US citizens living in the EU). I don't remember all the details, and i certainly agree with "morally reprehensible", but you are suggesting a "natural rights" based approach, which, while common, but not universal.
  - kevinskii 13y ago
    > For example, the US has held the 4th amendment does not apply to non-citizens who are not "part of the national community" Could you please provide a reference for this?
    - bradleyjg 13y ago
      United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez - 494 U.S. 259 (1990) at 264-266 From the headnote: "The Fourth Amendment phrase "the people" seems to be a term of art used in select parts of the Constitution, and contrasts with the words "person" and "accused" used in Articles of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments regulating criminal procedures. This suggests that "the people" refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community."
reeses 13y ago
I suspect the primary reason we (in the USA) are focusing so much on it is that these are the people appointed, promoted, funded, etc., by people we elected. Some people think that has meaning while many are cynical enough to think that they're all the same under the various masks. This is a revelation for most people, especially younger people, and they're dealing with the immediate, personal, consequences. As with the embarrassment created by the second Bush administration, whereby we squandered a great deal of global goodwill after 9/11, we've done a stellar job of undoing the redemption we thought we had gained by electing Obama in 2008. Many Americans really thought we could be less embarrassed of our leadership with that decision. The story is still unfolding. Our government will be measured by how it acts out the next few months and how it responds to the inevitable criticism from the rest of the world. As Americans, we will be measured by how we respond to our government.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  But it is also that it is far easier for the police who have lots of surveillance to jail their own citizens than to swoop in and jail foreigners. The risk of abuses are there in both cases but they are orders of magnitude more when the police doing the arresting are from the same country as the ones doing the surveillance.
  - radd9er 13y ago
    The risk for foreigners is the same when you consider the US gov sharing intelligence with other governments.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      I wouldn't say it is the same. It would only be the same if all the governments shared everything they know, and I doubt that is the case.
      - radd9er 13y ago
        Its more complicated than that, in fact. The likelihood of the US sharing data about a Saudi citizen and the Saudi gov acting against said citizen is less than than the likelihood of the us acting against a US citizen. But the consiquences are far worse for a Saudi. So the risk could in fact be higher. But you're right, we dont know what the US shares.
nodata 13y ago
And this is a key point, a decision that many people said would never happen again: dividing the world into two groups of people is what started a few problems before.
flexie 13y ago
Absolutely. I remember how in 2001 when the US as the first country ever invoked article 5 of the NATO treaty, within hours all NATO members had followed through with support. And the minute of silence that was held all over Europe for the 9/11 victims. Then we joined them in two wars. We bought their cell phones, their operating systems and productivity suites, their internet adds, hosting and email services and movies and music. We even let some of their largest corporations get away without paying taxes on the money they made in our countries. We may not be citizens of their country but we are allies, not terrorists. When it comes to the bad things groups of people, such as governments, do to individuals, whether it's killing, torture, imprisonment with or without trial, surveillance or any other of the misdeeds that seems to have returned from the dark ages we deserve the same protection as American citizens.
- sneak 13y ago
  > When it comes to the bad things groups of people, such as governments, do to individuals, whether it's killing, torture, imprisonment with or without trial, surveillance or any other of the misdeeds that seems to have returned from the dark ages we deserve the same protection as American citizens. Despite the actions and statements of our government, most of us Americans feel the same way. (It's just that the shitty entitled xenophobes are just so damn loud sometimes...) You'll note that in our declaration of independence, it states that the rights to life and liberty are the inalienable birthright of every man, endowed by his creator, before it says fuck-all about anyone's government.
- softbuilder 13y ago
  >We bought their cell phones To be fair, folks in the US bought a LOT of European cell phones first. :)
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    And to complete the circle (triangle?), nowadays we all but Korean/Taiwanese phones :-)
    - 13y ago
Silhouette 13y ago
There is intense debate about whether US citizens rights are being violated, but almost nobody questions whether there's any moral or ethical issue with completely unrestrained spying on everybody else. Almost nobody in the US, perhaps, but this whole mess isn't doing the US any favours at all with the international community, certainly not here in Europe. I'd say there's a fair chance the cavalier attitude towards the rights of non-citizens so overtly displayed by leading US politicians and security people over the past few days could ultimately swing the entire public debate in a way the US administration really doesn't want it to go. Those statements get broadcast on TV internationally, too, and everyone in the room cringes when they hear them.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  Let's hope so. The sooner the US gets marginalized and put on the shelf internationally, the sooner the world will become a safer place to live.
  - mitchty 13y ago
    So those fleets of warships keeping shipping lanes open and free from pirate activity have done nothing for safety? I'm not saying america is perfect, but if we scale back our navy for example, there is going to have to be a lot of slack for other countries to pick up. And that means costs rising and more taxes for others. As well as the chance of increased conflict. The world isn't so cut and dry as you make it out to be.
    - flyinRyan 13y ago
      There will be costs to all of us, but at some point the US is costing more than it's saving us. I think we must be close to that point if not already past it.
      - mitchty 13y ago
        That is a statement that can't even be backed up with anything but conjecture. How would you even start measuring the cost/benefit ratio? What monetary value do you assign to things like privacy? How do you know where you're moving things to doesn't have a "better hidden" equivalent to what the US is doing? Do you even know if it would be worth moving things? What is the opportunity cost to moving? What is the cost if you're wrong? As much as I'd love to agree with the pathos response to these things, its better to see and wait than to kneejerk react to things.
konstruktor 13y ago
This is something that already pissed me off when drone strikes were discussed. While not caring about foreigners is probably the most important reason, there is another one that actually makes sense, and which is why I give Americans a little bit of benefit of doubt: Given the strict protections of your constitution, it is much easier to fight the parts that concern citizens of the US. Edit: accidentally submitted after the first word, rest of post added.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Drone strikes are also different. They represent currently a sort of danger to the world I don't think people really appreciate because they allow an elite to control more firepower with fewer henchmen than is possible otherwise. Air strikes are nothing new but in the past you had to contend with the fact that enough people might disobey orders to force a change of plans. With drones, the number of people you rely on is far less. I remember a story that on 9/11 orders were issued to shoot down any aircraft left in the sky and that fighter pilots refused to carry out the order. How would things be different if it was 8 specially trained anti-terrorist folks commanding largely autonomous drones?
  - Filligree 13y ago
    An excellent point, but you're not going far enough. Machine intelligence keeps getting better, so it won't be long before we have entirely autonomous drones that just need general instructions to do their job. At that point.. The democratization of weaponry is what caused the end of feudal society, concentrating it might will cause its rebirth. For a fictional take on this, see Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Feudal society? I think at that point you won't be looking at something that resembles fiefdoms so much as global hegemonies.... I am not sure it will get that far though. More likely it will expand until the economic stress from an oversized national security budget and rising energy prices will force it to collapse with global consequences. For the record, no, I do not think those consequences will be pleasant for anyone :-P
kaichanvong 13y ago
Looking at some of the bigger selling newspapers in the UK, I don't think people get it or the writers believe people wouldn't get it. On the whole most people in the UK who are not technical appear to know pretty much nothing about it and do not understand why it might be bad for them. The whole, "I have nothing to fear" point of view. It's the bigger picture they need to think about :(
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  I would imagine the UK expected this was the case all along. I mean, you guys arrest people for tweets, after all.
kybernetyk 13y ago
It was the same with the drone strike debate. The whole buzz was about the fact that the US president now could order a drone strike on US citizens. No discussion about non US citizens. It was just assumed that drone striking them was OK. Made me really feel weird as an European.
- radd9er 13y ago
  It made me feel weird as an American.
easytiger 13y ago
When you enter america as a tourist you (used to) sign a document saying you wave all rights of personal freedom. Now they make you pay for it up front online every couple of years.
buro9 13y ago
The US legal system is only accessible by citizens of the USA. It should be of no surprise then, that citizens of other countries have no ability to protect themselves from over-reaching laws and actions by the US government.
SagelyGuru 13y ago
'Foreigners' are customers too. They are expected to abide by the terms of service agreements (TOS) issued by these companies, which all include statements about protecting customers' data and privacy. As far as I can see, all these companies broke their contracts (their own TOS).
- vbuterin 13y ago
  And from a legal standpoint just because there's a law that happens to force you to break a contract does not usually absolve you from liability for doing so. Of course, many of these contracts may contain some kind of "you have no rights if the law says so" clause, in which case the companies would be in the clear.
valdiorn 13y ago
As a non american; Thank you for caring!
jeffasinger 13y ago
I think there's also a slightly different reaction to it, because most Americans like to feel like, at some level, the government works for citizens, and is ultimately responsible directly to them. If the government is willing to spy directly on the people it should be serving, then it starts to feel like it's out of control.
alanning 13y ago
I believe this gets to the heart of why Americans are (and should be) disturbed about programs like PRISM. When the US spies on a foreign citizen, the full weight of that citizen's government is there to protect their interests. When the US spies on US citizens, who do we have to turn to?
lkrubner 13y ago
The irony is that this issue (the universality of human rights) was the starting point of the dissent in the colonies in the 1760s that eventually lead to revolt against British rule in 1775. The people in the British colonies supported Parliament during the long revolutionary/counter-revolutionary period that lead up to the passage of the English Bill Of Rights in 1689, which everyone, in 1689, assumed applied to everyone under the rule of the crown. It was only the 1760s that Parliament adopted the attitude that the Bill Of Rights were privileges that only belonged to those who lived in Britain proper -- and the colonists were outraged that the rights they had assumed they had won 80 years earlier were now being denied to them. In 1774, when the government of Virginia asked Thomas Jefferson, to draw up a list of the grievances that the colonies had with Parliament, Jefferson referenced the long history of events that started under the Stuart Kings. When the Founding Fathers eventually drew up a Bill Of Rights for the new nation, most of them wrote things that explicitly suggest that they felt the rights being granted were universal -- in particular, Benjamin Franklin was vehement on the subject, arguing that the Bill Of Rights extended to everyone, including the blacks who were being held in slavery (and when Congress met for the first time in 1789, Franklin pushed a bill to abolish all slavery).

by zmmmmm 13y ago

siculars 13y ago

Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website.

DannyBee 13y ago
This is likely the root of the issue, which is that they probably capture all communications, but when they have a foreign target, that is when they actually "look" at the stuff they captured, trying to find stuff "related" to that foreign target. The NSA at least was supposedly run as a very tight ship (I have no idea now, i have no friends who have worked there recently), so I'm sure they theoretically have really detailed redaction and other procedures meant to keep personal or private info of americans from appearing in reports, but that is not exactly comforting.
- Ziomislaw 13y ago
  I do not think any decent human being has friends THERE.
jmadsen 13y ago
That's what I've been wondering: - if they aren't targeting specific persons, how do they know what country the person is from & if they (the govt) are violating the law? - if I'm American living in another country, am I safer from or more likely to be tracked (terrorism aside) Am I being picked up "freely" as someone from outside the country? - many, many, many similar questions I'm sure you are also asking I realize these seem rather naive questions, but my first thought on reading Obama's response was, "How can you possibly know what country the person is a citizen of?" Considering that that was a major part of his defense - "Don't worry, it's only those foreign people we're looking at"- I really think that needs to be a bigger part of the whole discussion. I think it is quite obviously more bullshit.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  It is unlikely bullshit. They are likely not indiscriminate in targeting. It's just likely post-hoc targeting. That's the question you really want to ask: "So do you capture all the data, and then only look at the data for foreign people, or do you only capture data for foreign people?" At one point, with watchwords/etc, it was clearly the latter. I think they've moved to the former.
chad_oliver 13y ago
I have heard (no guarantees) that they collect information on everyone, and analyse it later as it is needed. They only investigate this information if and as if relates to a foreign suspect. Doesn't seem like there's any way to abuse this .....
joering2 13y ago
> Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website. I think you were just trolling but if not then one of hundreds possible ways to find that: 1. get a hold of your your email (or name and then facebook / gmail snoop) 2. your email leads to your paypal account 3. your paypal account leads to your dob and ssn, bank accounts 4. your banks accounts hold information whether you are citizen or not; - OR - 4. your ssn codification tells whether by the time obtaining the number you were citizen or not PayPal, Facebook and Palantr has the same co-owner, P. Thiel. But seriously I don't think they discriminate. Last thing they look at is whether you are citizen or not. Your IPs (all the one you ever used while login to any website you have an account with) can quickly tell them whether you are on US soil or not. Most likely as long as you are here, you are consider us citizen, whether lawfully or not but you "operate" on US soil so the same rules apply to you. Good example would be if you are in US as a tourist -- you still need to obey US laws and regulations.
- denis1 13y ago
  Doesn't this mean that they are spying on you without actually knowing if you are a US citizen? By your logic, only after step 4 they actually know if you are a citizen, but they have collected a lot of data about you in steps 1-3.
- corresation 13y ago
  I think you were just trolling, but the GP was asking a very pertinent, reasonable question specifically about companies like Facebook, Google, etc, and how they differentiate. Your reply -- ostensibly about what an organization like the FBI might do to identify someone -- is not relevant to their question at all, making it all the more bizarre that you decided to question whether they were "trolling" (apologies to all others, but that is a growing peeve of mine -- this noisy declaration of things people say as trolling). Google knows a lot about someone, but they have no idea what citizenship I hold. They can guess, of course, but that isn't a lawful way to discriminate.
grey-area 13y ago
Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website. According to the whistleblower, they don't in any meaningful sense. They collect all the data they can, and then currently only use bits of it, when they feel that is justified. His point about checking the US president's email in the video was that all they need is one email from a foreigner in order to tie anyone in the US to an investigation, and look through all their records.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  In addition I am in the process of composing a letter to my elected representatives. One thing I am noting is that the published standards are quite a bit more lax on this than the data, permitting the NSA to quite heavily over-select for Americans. A 51% confidence that your target is not American when looking at a service where 15% of the users are American, or one where only 29% of the users of the users are Americans is a meaningless standard. Now the only hope right now is that companies push back but the question is how much given that they were not willing to push back enough to break silence.

glesica 13y ago

I can't speak for others, but as far as I am concerned, every person on earth has the exact same rights. I see no difference between an American and someone from another country. This informs my stance on all of US foreign policy. To me, spying on an innocent Iraqi or Chinese citizen is just as morally reprehensible as spying on an innocent American citizen. That being said, not all people feel as I do, and you are right, the legality of it all, unfortunately, hinges on how Americans are affected.

DannyBee 13y ago
At least in most countries, this is just not the way it works, legally. Every country has different rights for citizens and non-citizens. For example, the US has held the 4th amendment does not apply to non-citizens who are not "part of the national community" (IE if a bunch of canadians came down and fished every weekend, you could search them however without violating the 4th amendment. If they lived here illegally, you couldn't). It's not just the US of course, almost all countries are like this (the EU has broader protections for EU citizens than random other people, like US citizens living in the EU). I don't remember all the details, and i certainly agree with "morally reprehensible", but you are suggesting a "natural rights" based approach, which, while common, but not universal.
- kevinskii 13y ago
  > For example, the US has held the 4th amendment does not apply to non-citizens who are not "part of the national community" Could you please provide a reference for this?
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez - 494 U.S. 259 (1990) at 264-266 From the headnote: "The Fourth Amendment phrase "the people" seems to be a term of art used in select parts of the Constitution, and contrasts with the words "person" and "accused" used in Articles of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments regulating criminal procedures. This suggests that "the people" refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community."

reeses 13y ago

I suspect the primary reason we (in the USA) are focusing so much on it is that these are the people appointed, promoted, funded, etc., by people we elected. Some people think that has meaning while many are cynical enough to think that they're all the same under the various masks. This is a revelation for most people, especially younger people, and they're dealing with the immediate, personal, consequences. As with the embarrassment created by the second Bush administration, whereby we squandered a great deal of global goodwill after 9/11, we've done a stellar job of undoing the redemption we thought we had gained by electing Obama in 2008. Many Americans really thought we could be less embarrassed of our leadership with that decision. The story is still unfolding. Our government will be measured by how it acts out the next few months and how it responds to the inevitable criticism from the rest of the world. As Americans, we will be measured by how we respond to our government.

einhverfr 13y ago
But it is also that it is far easier for the police who have lots of surveillance to jail their own citizens than to swoop in and jail foreigners. The risk of abuses are there in both cases but they are orders of magnitude more when the police doing the arresting are from the same country as the ones doing the surveillance.
- radd9er 13y ago
  The risk for foreigners is the same when you consider the US gov sharing intelligence with other governments.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    I wouldn't say it is the same. It would only be the same if all the governments shared everything they know, and I doubt that is the case.
    - radd9er 13y ago
      Its more complicated than that, in fact. The likelihood of the US sharing data about a Saudi citizen and the Saudi gov acting against said citizen is less than than the likelihood of the us acting against a US citizen. But the consiquences are far worse for a Saudi. So the risk could in fact be higher. But you're right, we dont know what the US shares.

nodata 13y ago

And this is a key point, a decision that many people said would never happen again: dividing the world into two groups of people is what started a few problems before.

flexie 13y ago

Absolutely. I remember how in 2001 when the US as the first country ever invoked article 5 of the NATO treaty, within hours all NATO members had followed through with support. And the minute of silence that was held all over Europe for the 9/11 victims. Then we joined them in two wars. We bought their cell phones, their operating systems and productivity suites, their internet adds, hosting and email services and movies and music. We even let some of their largest corporations get away without paying taxes on the money they made in our countries. We may not be citizens of their country but we are allies, not terrorists. When it comes to the bad things groups of people, such as governments, do to individuals, whether it's killing, torture, imprisonment with or without trial, surveillance or any other of the misdeeds that seems to have returned from the dark ages we deserve the same protection as American citizens.

sneak 13y ago
> When it comes to the bad things groups of people, such as governments, do to individuals, whether it's killing, torture, imprisonment with or without trial, surveillance or any other of the misdeeds that seems to have returned from the dark ages we deserve the same protection as American citizens. Despite the actions and statements of our government, most of us Americans feel the same way. (It's just that the shitty entitled xenophobes are just so damn loud sometimes...) You'll note that in our declaration of independence, it states that the rights to life and liberty are the inalienable birthright of every man, endowed by his creator, before it says fuck-all about anyone's government.
softbuilder 13y ago
>We bought their cell phones To be fair, folks in the US bought a LOT of European cell phones first. :)
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  And to complete the circle (triangle?), nowadays we all but Korean/Taiwanese phones :-)
  - 13y ago

Silhouette 13y ago

There is intense debate about whether US citizens rights are being violated, but almost nobody questions whether there's any moral or ethical issue with completely unrestrained spying on everybody else. Almost nobody in the US, perhaps, but this whole mess isn't doing the US any favours at all with the international community, certainly not here in Europe. I'd say there's a fair chance the cavalier attitude towards the rights of non-citizens so overtly displayed by leading US politicians and security people over the past few days could ultimately swing the entire public debate in a way the US administration really doesn't want it to go. Those statements get broadcast on TV internationally, too, and everyone in the room cringes when they hear them.

flyinRyan 13y ago
Let's hope so. The sooner the US gets marginalized and put on the shelf internationally, the sooner the world will become a safer place to live.
- mitchty 13y ago
  So those fleets of warships keeping shipping lanes open and free from pirate activity have done nothing for safety? I'm not saying america is perfect, but if we scale back our navy for example, there is going to have to be a lot of slack for other countries to pick up. And that means costs rising and more taxes for others. As well as the chance of increased conflict. The world isn't so cut and dry as you make it out to be.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    There will be costs to all of us, but at some point the US is costing more than it's saving us. I think we must be close to that point if not already past it.
    - mitchty 13y ago
      That is a statement that can't even be backed up with anything but conjecture. How would you even start measuring the cost/benefit ratio? What monetary value do you assign to things like privacy? How do you know where you're moving things to doesn't have a "better hidden" equivalent to what the US is doing? Do you even know if it would be worth moving things? What is the opportunity cost to moving? What is the cost if you're wrong? As much as I'd love to agree with the pathos response to these things, its better to see and wait than to kneejerk react to things.

konstruktor 13y ago

This is something that already pissed me off when drone strikes were discussed. While not caring about foreigners is probably the most important reason, there is another one that actually makes sense, and which is why I give Americans a little bit of benefit of doubt: Given the strict protections of your constitution, it is much easier to fight the parts that concern citizens of the US. Edit: accidentally submitted after the first word, rest of post added.

einhverfr 13y ago
Drone strikes are also different. They represent currently a sort of danger to the world I don't think people really appreciate because they allow an elite to control more firepower with fewer henchmen than is possible otherwise. Air strikes are nothing new but in the past you had to contend with the fact that enough people might disobey orders to force a change of plans. With drones, the number of people you rely on is far less. I remember a story that on 9/11 orders were issued to shoot down any aircraft left in the sky and that fighter pilots refused to carry out the order. How would things be different if it was 8 specially trained anti-terrorist folks commanding largely autonomous drones?
- Filligree 13y ago
  An excellent point, but you're not going far enough. Machine intelligence keeps getting better, so it won't be long before we have entirely autonomous drones that just need general instructions to do their job. At that point.. The democratization of weaponry is what caused the end of feudal society, concentrating it might will cause its rebirth. For a fictional take on this, see Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Feudal society? I think at that point you won't be looking at something that resembles fiefdoms so much as global hegemonies.... I am not sure it will get that far though. More likely it will expand until the economic stress from an oversized national security budget and rising energy prices will force it to collapse with global consequences. For the record, no, I do not think those consequences will be pleasant for anyone :-P

kaichanvong 13y ago

Looking at some of the bigger selling newspapers in the UK, I don't think people get it or the writers believe people wouldn't get it. On the whole most people in the UK who are not technical appear to know pretty much nothing about it and do not understand why it might be bad for them. The whole, "I have nothing to fear" point of view. It's the bigger picture they need to think about :(

flyinRyan 13y ago
I would imagine the UK expected this was the case all along. I mean, you guys arrest people for tweets, after all.

kybernetyk 13y ago

It was the same with the drone strike debate. The whole buzz was about the fact that the US president now could order a drone strike on US citizens. No discussion about non US citizens. It was just assumed that drone striking them was OK. Made me really feel weird as an European.

radd9er 13y ago
It made me feel weird as an American.

easytiger 13y ago

When you enter america as a tourist you (used to) sign a document saying you wave all rights of personal freedom. Now they make you pay for it up front online every couple of years.

buro9 13y ago

The US legal system is only accessible by citizens of the USA. It should be of no surprise then, that citizens of other countries have no ability to protect themselves from over-reaching laws and actions by the US government.

SagelyGuru 13y ago

'Foreigners' are customers too. They are expected to abide by the terms of service agreements (TOS) issued by these companies, which all include statements about protecting customers' data and privacy. As far as I can see, all these companies broke their contracts (their own TOS).

vbuterin 13y ago
And from a legal standpoint just because there's a law that happens to force you to break a contract does not usually absolve you from liability for doing so. Of course, many of these contracts may contain some kind of "you have no rights if the law says so" clause, in which case the companies would be in the clear.

valdiorn 13y ago

As a non american; Thank you for caring!

jeffasinger 13y ago

I think there's also a slightly different reaction to it, because most Americans like to feel like, at some level, the government works for citizens, and is ultimately responsible directly to them. If the government is willing to spy directly on the people it should be serving, then it starts to feel like it's out of control.

alanning 13y ago

I believe this gets to the heart of why Americans are (and should be) disturbed about programs like PRISM. When the US spies on a foreign citizen, the full weight of that citizen's government is there to protect their interests. When the US spies on US citizens, who do we have to turn to?

lkrubner 13y ago

The irony is that this issue (the universality of human rights) was the starting point of the dissent in the colonies in the 1760s that eventually lead to revolt against British rule in 1775. The people in the British colonies supported Parliament during the long revolutionary/counter-revolutionary period that lead up to the passage of the English Bill Of Rights in 1689, which everyone, in 1689, assumed applied to everyone under the rule of the crown. It was only the 1760s that Parliament adopted the attitude that the Bill Of Rights were privileges that only belonged to those who lived in Britain proper -- and the colonists were outraged that the rights they had assumed they had won 80 years earlier were now being denied to them. In 1774, when the government of Virginia asked Thomas Jefferson, to draw up a list of the grievances that the colonies had with Parliament, Jefferson referenced the long history of events that started under the Stuart Kings. When the Founding Fathers eventually drew up a Bill Of Rights for the new nation, most of them wrote things that explicitly suggest that they felt the rights being granted were universal -- in particular, Benjamin Franklin was vehement on the subject, arguing that the Bill Of Rights extended to everyone, including the blacks who were being held in slavery (and when Congress met for the first time in 1789, Franklin pushed a bill to abolish all slavery).