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The jump from "The War on Drugs is worse than PRISM" to "PRISM really isn't a big deal" is rather large... "If the government should have the power to do these

by jlgreco 13y ago

The jump from "The War on Drugs is worse than PRISM" to "PRISM really isn't a big deal" is rather large... "If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations..." See, they obviously shouldn't. Justifying PRISM because the DEA is doing something that they shouldn't is silly. Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly the criticism it deserves. David Simon's complaint is just "hipster outrage" bullshit: "I was upset at something before it was cool!" It is just the flipside of the people who get frustrated with recent attention to surveillance because "Of course this is going on, haven't you heard of Room 641A? I've been talking about this for years! Grrr, I am upset that I am no longer unique for my suspicions."

mpyne 13y ago
> Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly the criticism it deserves. I would agree that both deserve equitable argumentation. However the choices appear to be to completely upend the way the legal system and law enforcement handles investigations (which the people have voted against time after time), or to keep the systems that exist and tighten the oversight and transparency. I suppose your choice on that will fall towards whether you are more distrustful of the government or crooks. But essentially the same logic would appear to apply to both.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > However the choices appear to be to completely upend the way the legal system and law enforcement handles investigations (which the people have voted against time after time), or to keep the systems that exist and tighten the oversight and transparency. So lets say that War on Drugs reform is impractical as it would upend the legal system or whatever bullshit. I disagree, but lets go with it... How does it follow that we should then make sure the shit is evenly spread on everybody? Is this the Harrison Bergeron school of social justice? We cannot stomach treating this segment of the population decently, so in order to make this fair, we are going to treat the rest of you like shit too?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Well you know, that's just it; I don't agree that scrapping the War on Drugs would upend the legal system. It would presumably clear out the prisons for the most part, but that's not what we should be worried about. However many of the legal and investigatory techniques used to investigate drug-related "crimes" are perfectly cromulent ways to investigate many other actual crimes. I would like to keep those techniques available, in general. Each technique may or may not have it's place, for sure. But a useful, cost-effective tool that's not otherwise unconstitutional should be used. We should then make sure that the oversight and transparency measures for each type of tool is in place to ensure that such measures are not abused. The government is pretty much literally the only thing we the people have any input into... functions which rightly belong to "the people" at large should be placed into the government. Where government screws those up, the answer should be to fix the government, not for the people to completely abdicate that responsibility. > How does it follow that we should then make sure the shit is evenly spread on everybody? You're basically asking why a given system should be fairly applied? I would reverse the question completely and say that any given government system should start off completely fair and only deviate from that for very good reason. Avoiding "Misery Loves Company" is a good reason, mind you. We levy administrative fines on people who actually screw up, for example. But the Simon logic is, why is it permissible to surveil tens of thousands of cell phone calls within a predominantly poor, black & Hispanic neighborhood for literally years at a time, looking for evidence of small-time drug dealers, but it's not possible to get the same type of court order to surveil other communications (even at larger scale) for something that's actually important to society at large? There is a difference in scale, that's for sure. But the difference is not really as large as the difference between no surveillance and what the police/FBI/others are already doing (and have been doing) throughout America. And so that's his point, if America agrees that this type of investigatory powers should be used (the kind that have always permitted incidentally collecting too much, or searching through all records reasonably relevant to a case, etc.), where and why does the framework behind those powers actually end here when it didn't there? There may very well be a good reason, but if that reason is "we don't trust the government" then by what logic do we let the DoJ in general investigate criminal acts? I guess what I'm saying is that I really wish we would get back to a framework of control of government (like the EFF, ACLU, etc. have been pushing to do for years) instead of instinctive distrust of the idea of government. But whatever we do decide the government rightly has the power to do, we should at least be consistent with it.
mindslight 13y ago
> people who get frustrated with recent attention to surveillance because "Of course this is going on, haven't you heard of Room 641A? I've been talking about this for years! > Grrr, I am upset that I am no longer unique for my suspicions." The first part is entirely true, but the second part is a misplaced caricature. If one wasn't operating with this threat model pre-Snowden, they mustn't have been analyzing the situation too hard. The people who saw the Snowden revelations as inevitable had to endure being buzzkills for the past several years while everyone else leaped at the chance to party with the "cool kids" as geeks entered the limelight. It was clear that Apple's/Facebook's/Twitter's advances were primarily in the marketing department, but it was easy to ignore this to avoid being negative when you're finally gaining long-craved social acceptance. Now that the herdthink has shifted towards privacy, we're seeing the same wishful marketing being applied to a lot of non-solutions to privacy (encrypting servers like Lavabit, remote code like Hushmail, facades of anonymity like Bitcoin, etc), when the reality is that solving (as opposed to merely obfuscating) these problems is extremely hard and any solution requires users to start taking a modicum of responsibility for their computing environment. But lowest-common-denominator faux solutions cannot address this inconvenient truth, so they give people the illusion of doing something while wasting away this iteration's outrage.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The first part does not warrant frustration that the issue is being covered. The first part alone should render you glad that the issue is now being given the attention it deserves. The people who complain that it is now receiving attention are doing it, I think, out of frustration that they are not being adequately recognized for being ahead of the curve. They feel vindicated but they think that nobody notices that, so they lash out and complain about the wrong thing. I see a parallel between this and David Simon's stance. He is upset that people are concerned about PRISM not because he has a good reason to be unconcerned about PRISM but because he wants that outrage reserved for his pet issue. He lashes out at the wrong thing; it should not concern him that people are concerned about PRISM, rather it should concern him that they are not also concerned about the War on Drugs. (I picked the "upset at not being vindicated" example because it is a position I find myself tempted to take. I feel qualified to talk about the mentality behind it because I understand and resist the urge to adopt that mentality myself.)
anigbrowl 13y ago
See, they obviously shouldn't. But it's not obvious. Lots of people disagree with you and consistently vote for draconian approaches to law enforcement, immigration etc. I know a lot of people that simultaneously think Obama's a wicked tyrant and that Civil War 2.0 is inevitable, and who are also heartily in favor of the death penalty, mass deportations of illegal immigrants, militarizing the border with Mexico, and (insert hardline view here).
- jlgreco 13y ago
  If I said "it is obvious that the world is billions of years old", would you object? Plainly there are (many) people that disagree with that statement, but do you think that would change the legitimacy of that statement? These are things put in the realm of "opinion", but I think we can safely discard fringe notions like "the world is 3000 years old" or "the disparate effect of the War on Drugs on minorities that is accelerated by hard-line stances and rapidly advancing law enforcement technology and techniques is acceptable."[0] [0] Read: "That stuff that concerns David Simon, @jivatmanx, and myself."
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Yes, I would object. It's not obvious that the world is billions of years old, so I think it's a good thing to mention however briefly, that our knowledge of such things is founded on the study of geology, chemistry and so forth, unless you're talking to someone whose views/level of knowledge you're already familiar with. You weaken your own argument when you go around stating your opinion as fact, and it's not very different from people saying things like 'obviously long prison sentences reduce crime' or 'obviously excluding immigrants will relieve unemployment' or 'obviously the point of prison is punishment.'
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      I don't think anyone but a loon or a pedant would object to a comment, in a thread about geology, that implied the ancient nature of the earth was obvious. I am afraid that I find it difficult to care about the objections of either loons or pedants. They may think my argument is weakened, and I consider that an acceptable loss. I already go out of my way to qualify much of what I say, I have little interest in further encumbering myself. (You are the later, of course?)

by jlgreco 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago

> Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly the criticism it deserves. I would agree that both deserve equitable argumentation. However the choices appear to be to completely upend the way the legal system and law enforcement handles investigations (which the people have voted against time after time), or to keep the systems that exist and tighten the oversight and transparency. I suppose your choice on that will fall towards whether you are more distrustful of the government or crooks. But essentially the same logic would appear to apply to both.

jlgreco 13y ago
> However the choices appear to be to completely upend the way the legal system and law enforcement handles investigations (which the people have voted against time after time), or to keep the systems that exist and tighten the oversight and transparency. So lets say that War on Drugs reform is impractical as it would upend the legal system or whatever bullshit. I disagree, but lets go with it... How does it follow that we should then make sure the shit is evenly spread on everybody? Is this the Harrison Bergeron school of social justice? We cannot stomach treating this segment of the population decently, so in order to make this fair, we are going to treat the rest of you like shit too?
- mpyne 13y ago
  Well you know, that's just it; I don't agree that scrapping the War on Drugs would upend the legal system. It would presumably clear out the prisons for the most part, but that's not what we should be worried about. However many of the legal and investigatory techniques used to investigate drug-related "crimes" are perfectly cromulent ways to investigate many other actual crimes. I would like to keep those techniques available, in general. Each technique may or may not have it's place, for sure. But a useful, cost-effective tool that's not otherwise unconstitutional should be used. We should then make sure that the oversight and transparency measures for each type of tool is in place to ensure that such measures are not abused. The government is pretty much literally the only thing we the people have any input into... functions which rightly belong to "the people" at large should be placed into the government. Where government screws those up, the answer should be to fix the government, not for the people to completely abdicate that responsibility. > How does it follow that we should then make sure the shit is evenly spread on everybody? You're basically asking why a given system should be fairly applied? I would reverse the question completely and say that any given government system should start off completely fair and only deviate from that for very good reason. Avoiding "Misery Loves Company" is a good reason, mind you. We levy administrative fines on people who actually screw up, for example. But the Simon logic is, why is it permissible to surveil tens of thousands of cell phone calls within a predominantly poor, black & Hispanic neighborhood for literally years at a time, looking for evidence of small-time drug dealers, but it's not possible to get the same type of court order to surveil other communications (even at larger scale) for something that's actually important to society at large? There is a difference in scale, that's for sure. But the difference is not really as large as the difference between no surveillance and what the police/FBI/others are already doing (and have been doing) throughout America. And so that's his point, if America agrees that this type of investigatory powers should be used (the kind that have always permitted incidentally collecting too much, or searching through all records reasonably relevant to a case, etc.), where and why does the framework behind those powers actually end here when it didn't there? There may very well be a good reason, but if that reason is "we don't trust the government" then by what logic do we let the DoJ in general investigate criminal acts? I guess what I'm saying is that I really wish we would get back to a framework of control of government (like the EFF, ACLU, etc. have been pushing to do for years) instead of instinctive distrust of the idea of government. But whatever we do decide the government rightly has the power to do, we should at least be consistent with it.

mindslight 13y ago

> people who get frustrated with recent attention to surveillance because "Of course this is going on, haven't you heard of Room 641A? I've been talking about this for years! > Grrr, I am upset that I am no longer unique for my suspicions." The first part is entirely true, but the second part is a misplaced caricature. If one wasn't operating with this threat model pre-Snowden, they mustn't have been analyzing the situation too hard. The people who saw the Snowden revelations as inevitable had to endure being buzzkills for the past several years while everyone else leaped at the chance to party with the "cool kids" as geeks entered the limelight. It was clear that Apple's/Facebook's/Twitter's advances were primarily in the marketing department, but it was easy to ignore this to avoid being negative when you're finally gaining long-craved social acceptance. Now that the herdthink has shifted towards privacy, we're seeing the same wishful marketing being applied to a lot of non-solutions to privacy (encrypting servers like Lavabit, remote code like Hushmail, facades of anonymity like Bitcoin, etc), when the reality is that solving (as opposed to merely obfuscating) these problems is extremely hard and any solution requires users to start taking a modicum of responsibility for their computing environment. But lowest-common-denominator faux solutions cannot address this inconvenient truth, so they give people the illusion of doing something while wasting away this iteration's outrage.

jlgreco 13y ago
The first part does not warrant frustration that the issue is being covered. The first part alone should render you glad that the issue is now being given the attention it deserves. The people who complain that it is now receiving attention are doing it, I think, out of frustration that they are not being adequately recognized for being ahead of the curve. They feel vindicated but they think that nobody notices that, so they lash out and complain about the wrong thing. I see a parallel between this and David Simon's stance. He is upset that people are concerned about PRISM not because he has a good reason to be unconcerned about PRISM but because he wants that outrage reserved for his pet issue. He lashes out at the wrong thing; it should not concern him that people are concerned about PRISM, rather it should concern him that they are not also concerned about the War on Drugs. (I picked the "upset at not being vindicated" example because it is a position I find myself tempted to take. I feel qualified to talk about the mentality behind it because I understand and resist the urge to adopt that mentality myself.)

anigbrowl 13y ago

See, they obviously shouldn't. But it's not obvious. Lots of people disagree with you and consistently vote for draconian approaches to law enforcement, immigration etc. I know a lot of people that simultaneously think Obama's a wicked tyrant and that Civil War 2.0 is inevitable, and who are also heartily in favor of the death penalty, mass deportations of illegal immigrants, militarizing the border with Mexico, and (insert hardline view here).

jlgreco 13y ago
If I said "it is obvious that the world is billions of years old", would you object? Plainly there are (many) people that disagree with that statement, but do you think that would change the legitimacy of that statement? These are things put in the realm of "opinion", but I think we can safely discard fringe notions like "the world is 3000 years old" or "the disparate effect of the War on Drugs on minorities that is accelerated by hard-line stances and rapidly advancing law enforcement technology and techniques is acceptable."[0] [0] Read: "That stuff that concerns David Simon, @jivatmanx, and myself."
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Yes, I would object. It's not obvious that the world is billions of years old, so I think it's a good thing to mention however briefly, that our knowledge of such things is founded on the study of geology, chemistry and so forth, unless you're talking to someone whose views/level of knowledge you're already familiar with. You weaken your own argument when you go around stating your opinion as fact, and it's not very different from people saying things like 'obviously long prison sentences reduce crime' or 'obviously excluding immigrants will relieve unemployment' or 'obviously the point of prison is punishment.'
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I don't think anyone but a loon or a pedant would object to a comment, in a thread about geology, that implied the ancient nature of the earth was obvious. I am afraid that I find it difficult to care about the objections of either loons or pedants. They may think my argument is weakened, and I consider that an acceptable loss. I already go out of my way to qualify much of what I say, I have little interest in further encumbering myself. (You are the later, of course?)