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Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on it is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from doing. We

by geetee 13y ago

Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on it is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from doing. We (collectively) can't hold the government to a standard that we can't even abide by.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on it is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from doing. That's only true if you ignore the distinction between intentionally public posts and e-mails, phone calls, and other communications intended to be privately exchanged. I suspect that there would be a lot less people upset about the NSA monitoring only intentionally public communications.
- geetee 13y ago
  I absolutely agree that private communication is a whole different ball game. That said, intentionally public communications, especially on a forum, are not a clear indication of a person's morality or what have you. The best example I can come up with is drawing parallels to a comedian's stand up routine.
- 205guy 13y ago
  You have to believe they do monitor all public postings, though that is a job in itself. 2 thoughts about that: 1) they could probably justify secret rooms and data gathering on the volume of public traffic alone. In other words if they are hitting the public APIs millions of times a day, Twitter, FB, et al. Would rather give them privileged access. Then whoops, might as well read all the private stuff as well. 2) just imagine the power of analyzing topics, trends, and personalities on all public forums across the Internet, US and international! Google indexes it, but what if the NSA were able to make sense of it somehow. From usernames and posting profiles alone (and maybe language analysis) they might be able to bullied a DB of online personas. Of course, if they could read everybody's email or get IP addresses from servers and ISPs, then they could easily correlate with actual persons.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > You have to believe they do monitor all public postings Naturally. I just don't believe that that's what the controversy is about, and that comparing searching through someone's public postings to the subject of the NSA surveillance controversy is missing the point of the controversy rather badly.
moskie 13y ago
The relevant distinction involves defining where the assumption of privacy exists. And I don't claim to know exactly where the line is (or should be) drawn.
rhizome 13y ago
First, where do you get that Snowden is trying to "prevent" anything? Secondly, we aren't law enforcement and can't torture with impunity the people whose posts we find. Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? I think you're either confused or trying to muddy the waters.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  > Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? Isn't this a bit ironic then if you are one who is up in arms about this NSA story? IE: Wholesale scooping up of unencrypted emails / forum posts etc should be expected. It hasn't been proven that actual listening in on phone conversations involving US citizens is actually going on, just phonecall metadata.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Nobody's saying real-time listening to conversations is happening, except for the government representatives who are saying it isn't.
- geetee 13y ago
  First, where do you get that Snowden is trying to "prevent" anything? Isn't that what whistleblowers do? Secondly, we aren't law enforcement and can't torture with impunity the people whose posts we find. We are the government. If enough people want to judge someone by what they said on a forum, it'll work up the chain to someone with power. Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? The hypocritical part is looking back on a trove of data and applying a narrative to it. Nobody wants to be held responsible for what they said as a teenager, but how fast are we to gobble it up when it's someone else.
e3pi 13y ago
Another Streisand Effect iteration, try: `the broken symmetry of information entropy conservation', further on, there may be some grand law/theorem you could adapt from information theory where this asymmetric abuse of total surveillance of private information will have systemic catastrophic conservation-requred unpreditable and unintended consequences.

by geetee 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

> Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on it is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from doing. That's only true if you ignore the distinction between intentionally public posts and e-mails, phone calls, and other communications intended to be privately exchanged. I suspect that there would be a lot less people upset about the NSA monitoring only intentionally public communications.

geetee 13y ago
I absolutely agree that private communication is a whole different ball game. That said, intentionally public communications, especially on a forum, are not a clear indication of a person's morality or what have you. The best example I can come up with is drawing parallels to a comedian's stand up routine.
205guy 13y ago
You have to believe they do monitor all public postings, though that is a job in itself. 2 thoughts about that: 1) they could probably justify secret rooms and data gathering on the volume of public traffic alone. In other words if they are hitting the public APIs millions of times a day, Twitter, FB, et al. Would rather give them privileged access. Then whoops, might as well read all the private stuff as well. 2) just imagine the power of analyzing topics, trends, and personalities on all public forums across the Internet, US and international! Google indexes it, but what if the NSA were able to make sense of it somehow. From usernames and posting profiles alone (and maybe language analysis) they might be able to bullied a DB of online personas. Of course, if they could read everybody's email or get IP addresses from servers and ISPs, then they could easily correlate with actual persons.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > You have to believe they do monitor all public postings Naturally. I just don't believe that that's what the controversy is about, and that comparing searching through someone's public postings to the subject of the NSA surveillance controversy is missing the point of the controversy rather badly.

moskie 13y ago

The relevant distinction involves defining where the assumption of privacy exists. And I don't claim to know exactly where the line is (or should be) drawn.

rhizome 13y ago

First, where do you get that Snowden is trying to "prevent" anything? Secondly, we aren't law enforcement and can't torture with impunity the people whose posts we find. Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? I think you're either confused or trying to muddy the waters.

res0nat0r 13y ago
> Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? Isn't this a bit ironic then if you are one who is up in arms about this NSA story? IE: Wholesale scooping up of unencrypted emails / forum posts etc should be expected. It hasn't been proven that actual listening in on phone conversations involving US citizens is actually going on, just phonecall metadata.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Nobody's saying real-time listening to conversations is happening, except for the government representatives who are saying it isn't.
geetee 13y ago
First, where do you get that Snowden is trying to "prevent" anything? Isn't that what whistleblowers do? Secondly, we aren't law enforcement and can't torture with impunity the people whose posts we find. We are the government. If enough people want to judge someone by what they said on a forum, it'll work up the chain to someone with power. Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here? The hypocritical part is looking back on a trove of data and applying a narrative to it. Nobody wants to be held responsible for what they said as a teenager, but how fast are we to gobble it up when it's someone else.

e3pi 13y ago

Another Streisand Effect iteration, try: `the broken symmetry of information entropy conservation', further on, there may be some grand law/theorem you could adapt from information theory where this asymmetric abuse of total surveillance of private information will have systemic catastrophic conservation-requred unpreditable and unintended consequences.