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So back to OCR paper forms then? No more web forms to fill out my tax data each year? Should I have to go visit the Social Security office in person each year t

by mpyne 13y ago

So back to OCR paper forms then? No more web forms to fill out my tax data each year? Should I have to go visit the Social Security office in person each year too?

grey-area 13y ago
You're attempting to relate unrelated topics and struggling with a straw man here. If your question had been: Should we use technology in disparate areas of government like tax records and social security, clearly the answer from almost everyone would be yes, of course, as the government does already (and with relatively basic access controls which work perfectly fine). Medical records for example are kept on computers in many countries, and access to them is regulated without a sophisticated system to log access, just with fairly basic access controls. However that has nothing to do with whether we should attempt to control NSA dragnet surveillance with technology after the fact, or help to construct a surveillance state in the first place. Debating whether we should apply controls to access to say phone record data collected by the government ignores the more important question of whether that data should be collected and collated by the NSA in the first place. I'd say that collection of the data is the only point at which adequate safeguards can be put in place, not after consumption of the data - by then it is too late, and any technical safeguards can easily be put aside later.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > However that has nothing to do with whether we should attempt to control NSA dragnet surveillance with technology after the fact It's almost like there was a reason I explicitly disclaimed NSA when I made the point you responded to. Even besides the IRS, what about FBI, local law enforcement, ATF, Border Patrol, and all of those other Federal agencies that have arrest powers? Should the local Good ol' Boy sheriff be able to pull up your record in NCIC with no audit trail?
  - grey-area 13y ago
    I don't believe you should have a record in NCIC unless there's a very good reason, just as I don't believe the US should be collecting and storing fingerprints of visitors at the border, or collecting the phone records of every American, or the GCHQ collecting almost all the data that passes through the UK and passing it back to the NSA. The mere act of collating all that information and storing it indefinitely is incredibly dangerous, and some logging of access is not going to make it safer. So this is why I reject the premise of your question. Not collecting all that information in a central record is the best defence against misuse - if you collect it, it will at some point in the future be misused, just as Hoover, Nixon, the GDR etc misused the far more limited powers they were given.

by mpyne 13y ago

So back to OCR paper forms then? No more web forms to fill out my tax data each year? Should I have to go visit the Social Security office in person each year too?

grey-area 13y ago

You're attempting to relate unrelated topics and struggling with a straw man here. If your question had been: Should we use technology in disparate areas of government like tax records and social security, clearly the answer from almost everyone would be yes, of course, as the government does already (and with relatively basic access controls which work perfectly fine). Medical records for example are kept on computers in many countries, and access to them is regulated without a sophisticated system to log access, just with fairly basic access controls. However that has nothing to do with whether we should attempt to control NSA dragnet surveillance with technology after the fact, or help to construct a surveillance state in the first place. Debating whether we should apply controls to access to say phone record data collected by the government ignores the more important question of whether that data should be collected and collated by the NSA in the first place. I'd say that collection of the data is the only point at which adequate safeguards can be put in place, not after consumption of the data - by then it is too late, and any technical safeguards can easily be put aside later.

mpyne 13y ago
> However that has nothing to do with whether we should attempt to control NSA dragnet surveillance with technology after the fact It's almost like there was a reason I explicitly disclaimed NSA when I made the point you responded to. Even besides the IRS, what about FBI, local law enforcement, ATF, Border Patrol, and all of those other Federal agencies that have arrest powers? Should the local Good ol' Boy sheriff be able to pull up your record in NCIC with no audit trail?
- grey-area 13y ago
  I don't believe you should have a record in NCIC unless there's a very good reason, just as I don't believe the US should be collecting and storing fingerprints of visitors at the border, or collecting the phone records of every American, or the GCHQ collecting almost all the data that passes through the UK and passing it back to the NSA. The mere act of collating all that information and storing it indefinitely is incredibly dangerous, and some logging of access is not going to make it safer. So this is why I reject the premise of your question. Not collecting all that information in a central record is the best defence against misuse - if you collect it, it will at some point in the future be misused, just as Hoover, Nixon, the GDR etc misused the far more limited powers they were given.