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I don't understand why everyone thinks it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners. Because if you think
by scarmig 13y ago
I don't understand why everyone thinks it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners. Because if you think about the reflexivity of it all, that means that it's a-ok if China surveils all American citizens and America all Chinese citizens. The only way that makes sense is if you think one government (America or China, depending on who you are) is privileged to violate the privacy rights of citizens of the other.
I would hope that Hacker News would be more cosmopolitan. So much of our work, especially, involves interacting with foreigners. If our government thinks that their communications with us deserve no protections because they're some suspicious other, and their government thinks that our communications with them deserve no protections because we're some suspicious other... then no one ends up with anything.
ETA: And when you think about it, that principle creates a giant loophole: country X surveils country Y's populace, country Y surveils country X's populace, and they have a mutual agreement to share data about each other's dissidents. Just goes to show that if you undermine a universal right for even one person, that right disappears.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoAll nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side. -- George Orwell ( http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat )
- mpyne 13y agoIt's ironic that I've been complaining about this exact same thing. It's a more specific instance of tribalism.
- Andrew_Quentin 13y agoYup, and it is what has always led to war.
- sown 13y ago> I don't understand why everyone thinks it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners. I think a lot of people are in the "right is might" way of thinking. Consider this quote from the Peloponnisian War. "...since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." --The Athenians to the Melosians
- alan_cx 13y agoWell, I say no to all mass slurping of data, foreign or domestic, but yes to targeted spying with the full weight of government and technology, foreign or domestic. The problem is not spying, the problem the industrialised mass spying of literally everybody as though we are all the target. I'm happy for any of us to be targeted as long as there is good reason to do so. However the problem with public opinion is that a lot of it is either patriotic or of fear, rational or irrational. This is where we get those double standards, which are understandable, but should be resisted, even plain ignored. I say that we are all human beings first and foremost, citizens of arbitrary borders and religions second, right?
- untog 13y agoThe reason people consider it different is that they realise the world is a complex place with complex actors. In an ideal world, no country would spy on another. But they do. How could we stop China from doing so? We can't. So we spy back. However, what our democratically elected government does to us is very much within our own power to change, and we have the ability to hold them to account.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoIf you can't stop China from spying on you, how is "spying back" any more justified than ANY OTHER reaction? After all, it does not change anything. What could change something, if one were to actually think freely, would be to have no secrets. Then suddenly what was stealing, is now just someone wasting their own time. BOOM. But of course, you can't have slavery and sitting fat on doing nothing without secrets, so that's not within the framework of allowed options.
- zwily 13y agoSure it changes something - it levels the playing field.
- scarmig 13y agoIf it levels the playing field where the Chinese and US governments are the players, what are their citizens? The pucks?
- zwily 13y agoYes. The playing field sucks, no doubt.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoIt builds a second tower of poop on it, to reach the first tower of poop. Then the first tower of poop also increases in height, and that cycle never ends. At which point does a "level playing field" come in? Oh, that's right, not ever.
- macspoofing 13y ago>I don't understand why everyone thinks it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners. What did you think the CIA and NSA was for? Are we now going to have a debate about whether militaries and intelligence services need to exist?
- pavanred 13y agoI don't think the issue is a government surveillance on its own citizens or on citizens of other countries. And, its ridiculous if you think about it. The intelligence services are using a brute force technique of spying on everyone (own citizens and citizens of other sovereign nations) to find a handful of wrong doers. It's analogous to saying if there is a murder then the police considers everyone as a suspect instead of finding any leads and pursuing them.
- tripzilch 13y ago> >I don't understand why everyone thinks it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners. > What did you think the CIA and NSA was for? There is a point when foreign signal intelligence project turns into an act of war. Large scale hacking of phone companies and stealing SMS data gets pretty fucking close to that line, if not outright crosses it. Not that you should care about my opinion of course, I'm just one of those silly foreigners whose right to privacy you think it's just fine to violate. You have a gov agency whose self-proclaimed job it is to monitor the world and violate everyone's privacy. Congratulations, it is doing its job very well. So, everything is fine, right?
- nmcfarl 13y agoYes. Or at least exist at what scale, for what purpose, at "peacetime". History has taught us over and over huge standing armies will be drawn into conflict (often quite easily) and wars ensue. Perhaps the same is true for huge standing intelligence services - not something we’ve had to deal much with in the past…
- achughes 13y ago
- carbocation 13y agoYour point from the edit is the most important point. I actually disagree with your views (that countries should not spy on a potential enemy's citizens), but I agree that the collusion of friendlies can have a catastrophic result for individual liberties. That needs to be clarified to be unlawful, if it is not intrinsically so due to the nature of the constitution of wherever you are living. If China wants the US to stop spying on its citizens, it can negotiate, throw up technological barriers, or declare war. Vice versa.
- pavanred 13y agoThere is a difference between spying on potential enemies and spying on everyone to find potential enemies.
- carbocation 13y agoIf you mean "everyone" including those who are persons of the country doing the spying, then, sure. Excluding those, I think the rules mostly come down to whatever treaties are in place between the two nations.
- psutor 13y agoWhat you describe in your edit has been happening between the US and UK for decades. They spy on each other (using the more permissive "foreigner" spying privileges) and then share the data.
- scarmig 13y agoDo you have more information on this?
- tripzilch 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
- doug11235 13y agoI don't see where that says they spy on each other. I only see bits that mention they spy on other countries of common interest e.g. China and share that data.
- DanBC 13y agoECHELON is more relevant for this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON) See especially the controversy section, which shows that the US was using the system for industrial espionage.
- 7952 13y agoWe need a privacy equivalent of mutually assured destruction. All politicians submit documentation of their most hideous perversions to a central register. If the country is caught spying on another the information is released. It would also encourage people who are not bad to go into politics.
- pmorici 13y ago"it's terrible if a government surveils its own citizens but it's totally a-ok if it does foreigners" Because a foreign government doesn't have much if any power over a citizen of a foreign country?
- mahyarm 13y agoSupposedly it's about ability to punish. If someone can spy on you but can't do something horrendous to you and get away with it, then it's harm is far less. Loopholes such as you describe would be the same, since it still will be indirect surveillance. Of course in practice it's not.