8 ms·

This is the wrong argument to have. The issue is not whether or not illegal surveillance has thwarted any plots. We could put a video camera in every home that

This is the wrong argument to have. The issue is not whether or not illegal surveillance has thwarted any plots. We could put a video camera in every home that can't be turned off and has a direct feed into the local police station. I'm sure that after a few months, the police could then point to all the crimes they'd discovered as a result. Success rates are not the only consideration when determining whether or not we should give a particular power to the government.

hawkharris 13y ago
My sentiments exactly. A high success rate does not justify violating constitutional limits on government or making people forfeit basic civil liberties.
thufry 13y ago
They're not the only consideration, but they are a major consideration. The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000.
- jaysonelliot 13y ago
  A privacy infraction that prevents a million deaths a year still has to be weighed against other ways to prevent those deaths without violating people's rights. Yes, the easiest way to do something might be to violate the Constitution, but that doesn't mean it's the only way.
  - thufry 13y ago
    In an imaginary world where an unconstitutional privacy infraction could be demonstrably proven to prevent a million deaths per year, the Constitution would be amended.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      You're completely missing the point. Let's take the worst-case disaster scenario: Terrorists are going to get a nuclear weapon and blow up a major city every year. Millions of deaths per year. Here are two ways to prevent this: A) We read everyone's private correspondence without prior suspicion and arrest anyone who we think has obtained nuclear materials necessary to make a bomb. Obviously if we hadn't arrested them they would have killed millions of people, so reading everyone's private correspondence without prior suspicion has saved millions of lives per year. B) We track down and secure all the nuclear material (e.g. what the Russians have lost) using traditional investigative work so that terrorists can't get it. Since it's too hard for them to make themselves, this prevents them from obtaining a nuclear weapon, problem solved. C) We send undercover operatives into terrorist networks and disrupt them before they ever get off the ground. You don't need A if B works. You don't need A if C works. You don't need A if any of D through Z works either.
      - thufry 13y ago
        Non-renewable energy sources are being continuously depleted. Mankind's options are: 1) Conserve energy through efficiency. 2) Develop renewable energy technologies. 3) Invent cold fusion. Sure, we might not need 1) or 2) if 3) works, but without the existence of 3), it's very easy to make a case for 1) and 2).
        DuskStar 13y ago
        Except that in even the mid-long term (several hundred years) non-renewable energy is reasonable. (Based on estimates of Uranium and other fissile reserves) And of course by the time that runs out, we'll have something like Planetary Resources up and running... So while 3) might not ever happen, that does not imply 1) or 2) are the only remaining options. Proof by elimination only works if you can prove for all options, not just your preferred subset.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000. The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction probably depends a lot more on how scary the stories of potential harms used to defend it are than the actual harms that it has prevented or would be likely to prevent in the future.
- uvdiv 13y ago
  This isn't always the case [0], even with very neutral questions and no media priming. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/
jmilkbal 13y ago
There are also so many more things that kill more Americans each year than terrorism which receive barely any attention. The disproportionate amount of focus on terrorism seems less like actual protection (neglected elsewhere) and more like the power grabs they appear to be.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Or maybe the people are OK with getting to choose to smoke or decide to own handguns or decide to go on the road but feel strongly that it is not permissible to let up on terrorism just because a simple cost/benefit analysis says that we statistically could. Imperial Japan made the very same mistake in the lead-up to American entry into WWII. They knew of the industrial capability of the U.S. but figured that with hard enough blows in a quick enough time that they could negotiate a settlement in their favor. What happened instead was that Japan ensured that American public opinion would support their defeat and ensured it would be essentially unconditional, no matter how long it took and however much it cost.
  - jmilkbal 13y ago
    The root of terrorism isn't terror for no reason. When we smoke we know the repercussions, all manor of cancers. When we pull a trigger, we know that our target will be maimed. However, we do not that when being a certain place at a certain time will cause serious injury to our person or other people, we are taking an incalculable risk, certainly. As as society we can not even begin to contemplate uncertainty. when you confront the average person with uncertainty they crumble and apparently governments are no different.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      And yet we have had more Pearl Harbors than we've had actual Gestapos, so maybe that "risk analysis" can be re-evaluated on all sides of the issue?
      - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
Tloewald 13y ago
This isn't a case of absolute loss of privacy vs. absolute security. Details do in fact matter.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  But we don't know the details. We know the rounded, approximate number of "terrorist attacks" and we know of one vague storied "plot". There's no details to weigh or consider. We still don't have a complete picture of the surveillance in use, but as far as I'm concerned, a live and archived-accessible account of most all of my online dealings/writings/readings/purchases... constitutes a pretty huge loss of privacy, though clearly not "absolute".
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    I won't disagree with this, but when some details are presented and argued over it's wrong to dismiss them airily as being irrelevant and compare the situation to a straw man involving absolute loss of privacy.
- josephlord 13y ago
  It is pretty close to an absolute loss of privacy[1][2] for at best a modest gain in the already high level of security[3]. [1] At least at the upper end of the speculation. I don't have a good handle on the true situation as I don't trust those who fully know to tell me straight. [2] The ability to gather metadata, listen in, record and analyze communications means that they are not private even if they are not all listened as we don't know that they are not being monitored. [3] Defined by the annual US casualty figures due to terrorism.
guelo 13y ago
As Scalia said in dissent in the recent DNA swab ruling, "Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rtpg 13y ago
  In order to query the databases, analysts have to write down an 'articulate suspicion' about the person (i.e. not just "this guy has a funny name" , but a real suspicion). If suddenly one end of the convo. is in the US, you also have to have substantial proof (beyond first-ammendment speech, but actual suspicions of conspiring). This isn't suspicionless searches. At least the querying of the data isn't. The biggest question here is whether having the info but not looking at it is the same as not having it for the courts. That'll make or break this program.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    I think you missed the Q&A with Snowden. """ Q. Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant? A. NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp. """ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-n...
    - SimHacker 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
There are two questions in play: can we do it, and should we do it. The empirical usefulness of surveillance is relevant to both. Re: "can we do it" -- The 4th amendment protects the right to be free against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Not all searches, not monitoring, not tracking. Unreasonable searches. To a lawyer (like 30-35 of 55 framers of the Constitution), "reasonable" is a signal to balance competing interests. That's what it signals now, that's what it signaled 200+ years ago when the Constitution was written. So in the context of the 4th amendment, that is exactly the right argument to have. Whether a law enforcement tool is effective and necessary is a fundamental question you have to ask in balancing the competing interests of law enforcement and privacy. And that balancing is inherent in deciding whether a search is an "unreasonable" one. Re: "should we do it -- it is self evident that a determination of whether a technique is effective and useful is instrumental in deciding whether we should use it.
- amirmc 13y ago
  Shouldn't the first discussion be about the legality and constitutionality? If it is deemed to be such, only then does it make sense to be discussing whether it's reasonable. Or are you suggesting that the first part has already been covered? NB: I'm not a US Person so I don't know the finer points of your legal system.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The legality of a search follows from whether the search complies with the law. The constitutionality of the search follows from whether the law the search complies with is permitted by the Constitution. The Constitution asks: "is this search unreasonable?" So, to answer the previous two questions, you usually have to confront the reasonableness question first.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      So, in the "Bomb Wall Street," case cited today, does the fact that nobody was charged for planning to bomb Wall Street speak to reasonableness?
jdp23 13y ago
I totally agree that success rates are far from the only consideration here. That said this discussion is very important because many people see things in terms of an overall tradeoff -- between security and privacy; or the amount to invest in different kinds of security. No matter whether we think of it that way, many others do. So it matters a lot if all the government's own examples of "success" are not in fact significant successes. Also, with the current oversight mechanisms many of the government's statements come down to "trust us". When they are seen to be spinning something like this so blatantly, it erodes trust on anything else.
- peterpathname 13y ago
  also important because 'foiling terror plots' may well not be the focus of these programs. demonstrating lack of efficacy on the stated objectives could help expose a wider agenda.
joering2 13y ago
But that's where they pushing us into right? I mean, Obama signed more gun's banning laws saying that "if its gonna prevent one dead, it was worth it". The entire system is continuously pushing us into this state of mind that they can protect all and each of us. And you know what could be the safest place? Prison! I mean, organize it properly so inmates can't fight with each other, lock every one up and viola!! That would prevent lots of kidnaping, deadly car accidents, any type of accidents, even lethal lightning strikes. You gonna prevent lots of dead. Its worth locking every one up; I mean if it can prevent one dead, then its worth it...
- guelo 13y ago
  Obama hasn't signed any gun banning laws.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    Yes, yes, the post you responded to made a minor factual error. The gun control legislation passed in the wake of Newtown was at the state rather than the federal level, which means that Obama wasn't the one to sign it. Let's try it again: Obama advocated gun control legislation using the argument that if it saves one life it's worth it.
    - SimHacker 13y ago
      And quite a few minor gramatical errors.
- rdouble 13y ago
  The only gun bills Obama has signed into law are the ones making it legal to carry guns in national parks and in checked Amtrak baggage.
codex 13y ago
Have these particular programs been ruled illegal?
flyinRyan 13y ago
You're right, but it's an interesting discussion because it shows that not only are we violating privacy rights, etc., but we're doing it for literally no reason.

hawkharris 13y ago

My sentiments exactly. A high success rate does not justify violating constitutional limits on government or making people forfeit basic civil liberties.

thufry 13y ago

They're not the only consideration, but they are a major consideration. The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000.

jaysonelliot 13y ago
A privacy infraction that prevents a million deaths a year still has to be weighed against other ways to prevent those deaths without violating people's rights. Yes, the easiest way to do something might be to violate the Constitution, but that doesn't mean it's the only way.
- thufry 13y ago
  In an imaginary world where an unconstitutional privacy infraction could be demonstrably proven to prevent a million deaths per year, the Constitution would be amended.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    You're completely missing the point. Let's take the worst-case disaster scenario: Terrorists are going to get a nuclear weapon and blow up a major city every year. Millions of deaths per year. Here are two ways to prevent this: A) We read everyone's private correspondence without prior suspicion and arrest anyone who we think has obtained nuclear materials necessary to make a bomb. Obviously if we hadn't arrested them they would have killed millions of people, so reading everyone's private correspondence without prior suspicion has saved millions of lives per year. B) We track down and secure all the nuclear material (e.g. what the Russians have lost) using traditional investigative work so that terrorists can't get it. Since it's too hard for them to make themselves, this prevents them from obtaining a nuclear weapon, problem solved. C) We send undercover operatives into terrorist networks and disrupt them before they ever get off the ground. You don't need A if B works. You don't need A if C works. You don't need A if any of D through Z works either.
    - thufry 13y ago
      Non-renewable energy sources are being continuously depleted. Mankind's options are: 1) Conserve energy through efficiency. 2) Develop renewable energy technologies. 3) Invent cold fusion. Sure, we might not need 1) or 2) if 3) works, but without the existence of 3), it's very easy to make a case for 1) and 2).
      - DuskStar 13y ago
        Except that in even the mid-long term (several hundred years) non-renewable energy is reasonable. (Based on estimates of Uranium and other fissile reserves) And of course by the time that runs out, we'll have something like Planetary Resources up and running... So while 3) might not ever happen, that does not imply 1) or 2) are the only remaining options. Proof by elimination only works if you can prove for all options, not just your preferred subset.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction will depend strongly on whether that infraction prevents 1 death a year or 1,000,000. The public's tolerance of any privacy infraction probably depends a lot more on how scary the stories of potential harms used to defend it are than the actual harms that it has prevented or would be likely to prevent in the future.
uvdiv 13y ago
This isn't always the case [0], even with very neutral questions and no media priming. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/

jmilkbal 13y ago

There are also so many more things that kill more Americans each year than terrorism which receive barely any attention. The disproportionate amount of focus on terrorism seems less like actual protection (neglected elsewhere) and more like the power grabs they appear to be.

mpyne 13y ago
Or maybe the people are OK with getting to choose to smoke or decide to own handguns or decide to go on the road but feel strongly that it is not permissible to let up on terrorism just because a simple cost/benefit analysis says that we statistically could. Imperial Japan made the very same mistake in the lead-up to American entry into WWII. They knew of the industrial capability of the U.S. but figured that with hard enough blows in a quick enough time that they could negotiate a settlement in their favor. What happened instead was that Japan ensured that American public opinion would support their defeat and ensured it would be essentially unconditional, no matter how long it took and however much it cost.
- jmilkbal 13y ago
  The root of terrorism isn't terror for no reason. When we smoke we know the repercussions, all manor of cancers. When we pull a trigger, we know that our target will be maimed. However, we do not that when being a certain place at a certain time will cause serious injury to our person or other people, we are taking an incalculable risk, certainly. As as society we can not even begin to contemplate uncertainty. when you confront the average person with uncertainty they crumble and apparently governments are no different.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    And yet we have had more Pearl Harbors than we've had actual Gestapos, so maybe that "risk analysis" can be re-evaluated on all sides of the issue?
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago

Tloewald 13y ago

This isn't a case of absolute loss of privacy vs. absolute security. Details do in fact matter.

drivebyacct2 13y ago
But we don't know the details. We know the rounded, approximate number of "terrorist attacks" and we know of one vague storied "plot". There's no details to weigh or consider. We still don't have a complete picture of the surveillance in use, but as far as I'm concerned, a live and archived-accessible account of most all of my online dealings/writings/readings/purchases... constitutes a pretty huge loss of privacy, though clearly not "absolute".
- Tloewald 13y ago
  I won't disagree with this, but when some details are presented and argued over it's wrong to dismiss them airily as being irrelevant and compare the situation to a straw man involving absolute loss of privacy.
josephlord 13y ago
It is pretty close to an absolute loss of privacy[1][2] for at best a modest gain in the already high level of security[3]. [1] At least at the upper end of the speculation. I don't have a good handle on the true situation as I don't trust those who fully know to tell me straight. [2] The ability to gather metadata, listen in, record and analyze communications means that they are not private even if they are not all listened as we don't know that they are not being monitored. [3] Defined by the annual US casualty figures due to terrorism.

guelo 13y ago

As Scalia said in dissent in the recent DNA swab ruling, "Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches."

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rtpg 13y ago
In order to query the databases, analysts have to write down an 'articulate suspicion' about the person (i.e. not just "this guy has a funny name" , but a real suspicion). If suddenly one end of the convo. is in the US, you also have to have substantial proof (beyond first-ammendment speech, but actual suspicions of conspiring). This isn't suspicionless searches. At least the querying of the data isn't. The biggest question here is whether having the info but not looking at it is the same as not having it for the courts. That'll make or break this program.
- amirmc 13y ago
  I think you missed the Q&A with Snowden. """ Q. Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant? A. NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp. """ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-n...
  - SimHacker 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

There are two questions in play: can we do it, and should we do it. The empirical usefulness of surveillance is relevant to both. Re: "can we do it" -- The 4th amendment protects the right to be free against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Not all searches, not monitoring, not tracking. Unreasonable searches. To a lawyer (like 30-35 of 55 framers of the Constitution), "reasonable" is a signal to balance competing interests. That's what it signals now, that's what it signaled 200+ years ago when the Constitution was written. So in the context of the 4th amendment, that is exactly the right argument to have. Whether a law enforcement tool is effective and necessary is a fundamental question you have to ask in balancing the competing interests of law enforcement and privacy. And that balancing is inherent in deciding whether a search is an "unreasonable" one. Re: "should we do it -- it is self evident that a determination of whether a technique is effective and useful is instrumental in deciding whether we should use it.

amirmc 13y ago
Shouldn't the first discussion be about the legality and constitutionality? If it is deemed to be such, only then does it make sense to be discussing whether it's reasonable. Or are you suggesting that the first part has already been covered? NB: I'm not a US Person so I don't know the finer points of your legal system.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The legality of a search follows from whether the search complies with the law. The constitutionality of the search follows from whether the law the search complies with is permitted by the Constitution. The Constitution asks: "is this search unreasonable?" So, to answer the previous two questions, you usually have to confront the reasonableness question first.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    So, in the "Bomb Wall Street," case cited today, does the fact that nobody was charged for planning to bomb Wall Street speak to reasonableness?

jdp23 13y ago

I totally agree that success rates are far from the only consideration here. That said this discussion is very important because many people see things in terms of an overall tradeoff -- between security and privacy; or the amount to invest in different kinds of security. No matter whether we think of it that way, many others do. So it matters a lot if all the government's own examples of "success" are not in fact significant successes. Also, with the current oversight mechanisms many of the government's statements come down to "trust us". When they are seen to be spinning something like this so blatantly, it erodes trust on anything else.

peterpathname 13y ago
also important because 'foiling terror plots' may well not be the focus of these programs. demonstrating lack of efficacy on the stated objectives could help expose a wider agenda.

joering2 13y ago

But that's where they pushing us into right? I mean, Obama signed more gun's banning laws saying that "if its gonna prevent one dead, it was worth it". The entire system is continuously pushing us into this state of mind that they can protect all and each of us. And you know what could be the safest place? Prison! I mean, organize it properly so inmates can't fight with each other, lock every one up and viola!! That would prevent lots of kidnaping, deadly car accidents, any type of accidents, even lethal lightning strikes. You gonna prevent lots of dead. Its worth locking every one up; I mean if it can prevent one dead, then its worth it...

guelo 13y ago
Obama hasn't signed any gun banning laws.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  Yes, yes, the post you responded to made a minor factual error. The gun control legislation passed in the wake of Newtown was at the state rather than the federal level, which means that Obama wasn't the one to sign it. Let's try it again: Obama advocated gun control legislation using the argument that if it saves one life it's worth it.
  - SimHacker 13y ago
    And quite a few minor gramatical errors.
rdouble 13y ago
The only gun bills Obama has signed into law are the ones making it legal to carry guns in national parks and in checked Amtrak baggage.

codex 13y ago

Have these particular programs been ruled illegal?

flyinRyan 13y ago

You're right, but it's an interesting discussion because it shows that not only are we violating privacy rights, etc., but we're doing it for literally no reason.