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I am vacillating. Fundamentally, I have a great deal of sympathy for the security services, understand the difficulty of the job that they have been tasked wit

I am vacillating. Fundamentally, I have a great deal of sympathy for the security services, understand the difficulty of the job that they have been tasked with, and can see no other reasonable way of achieving the goals that they have been set. However, my opinion flips and flops back and forth as I read each new revelation, get caught up in the moral outrage of the crowd, write something incendiary and provocative, then sit back, think a bit, and regret (maybe) being so rash. But then again ... I understand all too well the tremendously vulnerable situation that the general population is in with respect to the state, and comprehend the risk of abuse, not so much from individual analysts or the current administration as much as from the opportunistic acts of a future administration. But then again ... It is foolish to expect answers to come easily when the questions themselves are so difficult, so it is natural to strike out in the wrong direction a few times before finding a good path. As a former member of the diplomatic community living in the US, I am (now as then) almost certain that the NSA were recording all of my telephone calls and internet browsing activity, as well as bugging the apartment in which we lived. It did not then and does not now stop me from browsing for kinky porn, having massive stand-up arguments with my wife, and emailing the Samaritans about wanting to commit suicide. (TMI, I know, sorry - but they can only hold something over your head if you want to keep it a secret). I chose not to care then, and I have to continue choosing not to care. (Not a decision one can undo easily, anyway). Living in a glass goldfish bowl or not, life goes on; and perhaps the best (or least worst) thing that can come out of all of this is that we become a little bit more honest about human imperfection and fallibility - I do not think that I am alone in being an imperfect, flawed human being. Perhaps if we stopped pretending to be perfect (or at least not-as-deranged-as-we-really-are) we would be somewhat less vulnerable to those who would seek to exploit the information imbalance. So, I guess I do not care about them invading my privacy, because that boat sailed a long time ago. I do care in principle about them invading everybody's privacy, because of hypothetical future abuses. I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them.

klibertp 13y ago
> I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them. I thought the same for a long time. Then I moved - ironically - to the "big city" (actually, it's getting smaller by the year, but it was second largest in my country some years ago). I thought that living in a big apartment building would give me anonymity and that I could do as I pleased, without being a subject of neighbours surveillance. I was wrong. It took them literally a week to learn that I'm not frequenting the mass in a nearby church. That meant, to them, all out war; I had lived there for a few years, but then I had to move, because I realized that damage to my mental health is just too great. I'm sure there were some normal people there and that they didn't care. OTOH there were a few old geezers who made a hobby out of bullying others. The point is that you don't care about what people know about you only until they start hurting you because of what they know. Then you wish they didn't know in the first place. You may be even correct that majority of people wouldn't care about you and your own life, but there probably will be someone who will care, and who will make your life quite miserable.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  Funny thing that, our innate capacity and inclination towards cruelty. Humans are evil; 'tis our very nature.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  I have to admit: I am having difficulty parsing it all; and this difficulty is not limited to the current media circus around PRISM. For example:- last year I heard my grandfather-in-law admit playing a part in a massacre, which I am pretty sure is this one, 60 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lari_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lari_Massacre. The story was coming via a translator, so I am not sure of the details, but I got the vague impression that he was one of the organizers. What do you do with information like this? How should I feel? Mostly, I feel confused. Ironically, my wife was working with the FCO legal advisers when the survivors of abuses committed during British rule originally sued - (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-kenya-settlement http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-...). Funny how the tentacles of past misdeeds reach to the future! Perhaps blown by that ill wind of legend? Moving on to more contemporaneous misdeeds, when I bore mute witness the UN happily paying off drug dealers in West Africa: http://reliefweb.int/report/guinea-bissau/un-peacebuilding-fund-grants-28m-guinea-bissau-pension-fund-defense-and http://reliefweb.int/report/guinea-bissau/un-peacebuilding-f... ... not that the alternatives were any prettier, but still: When you deal with all the evil and mess of the world, you get a bit tainted yourself. As per my grandmother's folksy aphorism: "When you throw a glove in mud, the mud doesn't get 'glovey'. " Compared to all the evil that is out there, PRISM seems pretty sweet and innocent - and, to be honest, the revelations were hardly a surprise since the (phone metadata bit) was leaked (or obliquely hinted at least) to me over 12 months ago. So: I think my sense of unease is more strongly related to our collective capacity for evil than anything else.

klibertp 13y ago

> I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them. I thought the same for a long time. Then I moved - ironically - to the "big city" (actually, it's getting smaller by the year, but it was second largest in my country some years ago). I thought that living in a big apartment building would give me anonymity and that I could do as I pleased, without being a subject of neighbours surveillance. I was wrong. It took them literally a week to learn that I'm not frequenting the mass in a nearby church. That meant, to them, all out war; I had lived there for a few years, but then I had to move, because I realized that damage to my mental health is just too great. I'm sure there were some normal people there and that they didn't care. OTOH there were a few old geezers who made a hobby out of bullying others. The point is that you don't care about what people know about you only until they start hurting you because of what they know. Then you wish they didn't know in the first place. You may be even correct that majority of people wouldn't care about you and your own life, but there probably will be someone who will care, and who will make your life quite miserable.

w_t_payne 13y ago
Funny thing that, our innate capacity and inclination towards cruelty. Humans are evil; 'tis our very nature.
w_t_payne 13y ago
I have to admit: I am having difficulty parsing it all; and this difficulty is not limited to the current media circus around PRISM. For example:- last year I heard my grandfather-in-law admit playing a part in a massacre, which I am pretty sure is this one, 60 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lari_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lari_Massacre. The story was coming via a translator, so I am not sure of the details, but I got the vague impression that he was one of the organizers. What do you do with information like this? How should I feel? Mostly, I feel confused. Ironically, my wife was working with the FCO legal advisers when the survivors of abuses committed during British rule originally sued - (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-kenya-settlement http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-...). Funny how the tentacles of past misdeeds reach to the future! Perhaps blown by that ill wind of legend? Moving on to more contemporaneous misdeeds, when I bore mute witness the UN happily paying off drug dealers in West Africa: http://reliefweb.int/report/guinea-bissau/un-peacebuilding-fund-grants-28m-guinea-bissau-pension-fund-defense-and http://reliefweb.int/report/guinea-bissau/un-peacebuilding-f... ... not that the alternatives were any prettier, but still: When you deal with all the evil and mess of the world, you get a bit tainted yourself. As per my grandmother's folksy aphorism: "When you throw a glove in mud, the mud doesn't get 'glovey'. " Compared to all the evil that is out there, PRISM seems pretty sweet and innocent - and, to be honest, the revelations were hardly a surprise since the (phone metadata bit) was leaked (or obliquely hinted at least) to me over 12 months ago. So: I think my sense of unease is more strongly related to our collective capacity for evil than anything else.