7 ms·

As Matt Damon was talking about "civil liberties vs. security" it resonated with essentially every second sentence DIRNSA was saying at his public appearance at

• snitko 13y ago
  Your comment finally made me realize why the difference in analysis of the problem leads to difference in solutions. Some people think that corporations are the root of all evil. They accumulate wealth, then put people in power to protect that wealth. Others think that government is the root of all evil, while corporations are either forced to cooperate or willingly abuse this system, because if they don't, then competitors will surely do it. Thus the latter group believes that businesses simply respond to incentives. Thus it is no surprise that the first group of people usually believes we need more elaborate regulations and a good government. The second group usually sees the solution in eliminating part or all of the government as an inherently corrupt institution. Matt Damon probably belongs to the first group, although I'm not sure.
  • DamnYuppie 13y ago
    Greed and lust for power are the root of all evil, corporations with lax oversight are simply our eras incarnation of it.
    • ekianjo 13y ago
      Yeah, and there's no Evil at all in governments, and corporations have the Monopoly of Greed? Don't make me laugh.
      • DamnYuppie 13y ago
        I am not sure why you comment was down voted. I never said they had the monopoly on it, simply that are are the very forefront of it in this country. The Government is blatantly controlled by special interest groups. All one has to do is follow the money.... My main point was that it was the lax oversight and enforcement of rules meant to check large corporations that has led to our current predicament. There is nothing new to see here as we laws on the books to keep companies from getting to big or mixing certain types of activities, yet we/congress gutted most of those so here we are...
        • ahomescu1 13y ago
          In most countries, bribes and abuse of power are illegal (and prosecuted), yet still happen at large scale. The problem is when the same people responsible for oversight (making sure that government doesn't get controlled by small powerful groups) and enforcing the rules are the ones that are most corrupt (in other words, if some corporation bribes a government official, then the latter's buddies help cover it up, is that the corporation's fault or the government's?)
    • snitko 13y ago
      And what is greed? Of course, it's always the other fella who's greedy, not me.
  • Radim 13y ago
    In the end, it comes down to who can inflict a bigger booboo, doesn't it? Can corporations? Governments? Does the military hold the "real" power and thus dictate this "evilness"? Or is it, in words of a certain popular fictional character, "power resides where men believe it resides"...
    • bradleysmith 13y ago
      I agree with the popular fictional character. Power is a shadow cast on the wall. It is more about what people perceive than it is about any real measurable force of 'power'. This is why revolutions are determined by key personalities staying loyal or defecting, because they command loyalty themselves in peoples _perceptions_ of power. The military hold 'real' power, but so do corporations. Both can lose power with a change in perceptions. Sure weapons and dollars generally do a pretty good job of indicating who has power (bullets and currency do wonders to change peoples behaviors), but they can also be ignored as power-indicators given a properly motivated population (think the groups that followed Ghandi or MLK, as dead-horse examples.) Does having 8 more declared aircraft carriers than the known world and numerous forward operating bases help cast big shadows? well, sure. Having the ability to reach out and touch much of the world with a full-fledged military operation in very short time-windows does portray a very powerful aura. Despite this, 1 out of 5mil civilian contractors also shrank this shadow quickly by outing a secret program, then (the more important part) taking advantage of extradition laws to publicly "get away with it" [Snowden]. A different civilian shrank this shadow a few years ago by building a technology to publicize (as in "to make public") any and all secrets of powerful entities [Assange & WikiLeaks; I say powerful entities & not gov't, as they seem happy to out corporate secrets. How powerful the corps that they have chosen to out secrets of actually are, I have my own doubts]. I like to think of power as the active ability to change a given reality. The greater (measurably larger in quantity or quality) the reality you can change, the greater the power. In these terms, it's easy to see how power is fleeting, and perception-based. If they are in fear, monetarily in your pocket, or loyal to your cause, you are powerful. But, how fast do these things change? just my 2 cents.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • euroclydon 13y ago
    Somewhere in the Amazon jungle there's a tribesman, wearing a vine-fiber thong, who's taking a break to looking up at an airplane flying overhead, and then getting back to hording all the bone-hammers, and plotting how to sabotage that ascendant hunter who everyone is starting to like so much.
    • nathan_long 13y ago
      Exactly. The evil in every human's heart is the real problem. Governments and corporations are just powerful collections of humans doing what humans do.
  • icebraining 13y ago
    You left out (non-proprietarian) anarchists, who believe in neither solution.
  • saraid216 13y ago
    One of the essential problems with libertarian philosophy is that it starts from the premise that there are two meaningful actors: the individual and the state. This makes it extremely hard to conceptualize and introduce a third actor, like corporations, which means corporations need to be lumped in with either the individual or the state. Libertarians who are sympathetic with corporations will tend to lump them in with the individual, talking about the state imposing itself upon them. Those less sympathetic will tend to lump them in with the state, talking about their undue influence on political theater.
    • smokeyj 13y ago
      > One of the essential problems with libertarian philosophy is that it starts from the premise that there are two meaningful actors: the individual and the state. ..you should really get a better grasp on libertarian philosophy before making statements like this. If there were any two groups libertarians would lump people in, it's violent and non-violent actors. Libertarians don't recognize the rights of corporations, governments, dictators, despots, etc. Actions are evaluated at the individual level -- which is apparently a radical new concept. Libertarianism isn't a philosophy about government, it's a philosophy about human action in general, all of which is empirically evident. It's waaayyy more principled than a political philosophy, which seems to drive many people nuts.
      • saraid216 13y ago
        > ..you should really get a better grasp on libertarian philosophy before making statements like this. There are a lot of libertarians who disagree with other libertarians. > Actions are evaluated at the individual level -- which is apparently a radical new concept. If this were actually true, then libertarians couldn't say anything useful about groups of people. Which means you can't talk about governments and corporations at all. So what's the incorrect statement here? I get that you're proud of your philosophy, but why is it that every time someone represents it to me, they open gaping wide holes large enough to fly a planet through?
        • smokeyj 13y ago
• frank_boyd 13y ago
  Exactly. > "civil liberties vs. security" 1. To what degree do we actually have a security problem? 2. Once it's made transparent for us to see that/if there actually is a grave problem: 3. What causes the security problem? What are we doing/what have we been doing that is causing others to think it's worth the sacrifice to launch attacks, instead of living peaceful and happy lives? Surveillance could never be more than a stupid patch to the real issue at stake. We have to get to the causes, now. Obviously, that means a lot of rich people will lose valuable contracts.
  • spurgu 13y ago
    Very good points. #3 is something I rarely see discussions about, although it clearly is the root of the problem.
    • redblacktree 13y ago
      That's because anyone who brings it up is labelled un-American, and part of the "blame America" crowd. cf Ron Paul
    • Loughla 13y ago
      That's because those discussions usually hinge around changing the way we live in some way - be it more expensive consumer goods/utilities or what-have-you. Either way, any increase in the cost of living (unless directly attached to 'creating jobs' whatever that is) is inherently evil and wrong. Therefore, a close-scrutiny of, in my case, US foreign policy leads down an evil and wrong road. Beautiful, isn't it? We want increased transparency in public and private areas, we want less violence, we want less exploitation of third-world workers, we want, we want, we want. BUT, as a whole, we're not really willing to sacrifice much of anything.
• Xylakant 13y ago
  There definitely is a tradeoff between civil liberties and security. Each action of the police, warranted or not, is an invasion of privacy (civil liberty) while still being aimed at solving a (planned or alleged) crime (security). A state monopoly on firearms is another example. The problem with the argument that DIRNSA and similar circle make is that the current invasion of civil liberties brings negligible or no improvement of security. They're exaggerating the security gains and downplay the erosion of rights. That's the dishonesty in the current debate. I think Damon is very well on the mark here - a decision to give up civil liberties for security should not be made by the government/powers to be but rather by a well informed public. There's a major problem with that approach though: How do we educate the public in such a way, that they can make well-informed choices. That's a pretty tough nut to crack.
  • enry_straker 13y ago
    Maybe in your mind. Maybe you want to think that these innocuous debates on the internet means something. Don't be fooled by empty words by either politicians or pundits on tv or the net. Watch what the government does - at federal, state and local, the security budget keeps slowly going up. Never coming down. The supreme court rulings slowly move in one way, never another. The number of laws slowly keep going up, never coming down. But since you are allowed to debate it to death, which none of the decision makers take note of, there is this illusion of debate. Damon is talking a good game, but it's still within the parameters of the talking points that the pols and talking heads put out on tv. When the budgets for security go down, When the number of prisoners in jail go down, when the number of laws go down, when the number of people working for police, fbi, cia, nsa, military go down, when the number of supreme court decisions go left, then let's talk about civil liberties. Till then it's nothing more than an empty, peurile phrase.
    • Xylakant 13y ago
      See, all I'm trying to point out is that there's a flaw in your argument that can easily be exploited to undermine your line of reasoning. I'm all on your side and agree with your assertion, but the argument cannot be "There is no balance between security and liberty" since the most secure state would be where every one of us is locked in a high security cell. No more murders, no theft, no rape, no crime, perfect security. What a beautiful world. The right question to ask is "How should the world we want to live in look like?" and I'm certain that most people would prefer to security budgets to go down, to see the TSA disappear, see elemental rights reinstated. It's a hard argument to make since people cling to security, but you can't substitute it by denying that security and liberty are at least partially on a trade-off scale.