27 ms·

End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

552 points by jedwhite 13y ago

spodek 13y ago
Senators have to go to the press to try to stop the government from doing what clearly breaks the law -- the Constitution, no less -- using up billions of taxpayer funds and undermines American business for no clear benefit. Conventional wisdom says the Cold War was between the doctrines of Capitalism and Communism and that the doctrine of Capitalism won. It doesn't look like that view was right. The doctrine of the KGB and Stasi is winning over both of them.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  Can you justify your claim that a bulk collection of phone records "clearly" violates the Constitution? I don't think the jurisprudence is so obviously on your side there.
  - naterator 13y ago
    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/nsa-scandal-god-save-us-from-the-lawyers.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/nsa-sc...
  - danenania 13y ago
    I think common fucking sense is pretty well on his side.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      The idea that 'data' vs 'metadata' loophole has been scaled beyond belief to undermine the plain english understanding of 'reasonable' is worthy of new jurisprudence.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        "Data" versus "metadata" doesn't go to the definition of "reasonable." It goes to the definition of "their" in "their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." The basic distinction is your data versus data that's about you. If I own a store, and make a note that 001sky came in to buy a box of cookies at 2:00pm on January 23, 2005, that's my paper. It's not your paper. I can claim 4th amendment protection if the FBI breaks into my store and takes that note, but you can't. That's the legally relevant distinction between data and metadata.
        001sky 13y ago
        Thes boundaries are blurred quite easliy with sufficiently advanced technology. That is the point. I can FLIR your house from a public location. Or isps and email providers could store every message (full data) just like the metadata and now 'own' a free copy. Arguably gmail has walked this line in their argument that scanning the metadata to route the message and scanning the content for meaning are equivalent interrogations of bits. But there are strong arguments about piercing of protected speech or inpinging on the veil privacy in the home, using technology to blunt force your way in are limited by jurisprudence already. That is why the surveilance by artifacts of speech and surveilance of actual speech is not such a simple issue.
        rayiner 13y ago
        There are situations in which technology changes things and the law has adapted (e.g. using an infrared camera to look into a house from a public location is a 4th amendment violation), but this is not one of those situations. At least when it comes to call metadata, technology really has nothing to do with it. Whether AT&T records it on magnetic tape or quantum bits, it's still their records, generated by their equipment, kept for their purposes, that you never have access to. These characteristics aren't an artifact of the technology, they're reflective of the fundamental nature of the information in question: it's AT&T's information about you, not your information.
        001sky 13y ago
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      That's not an argument. rayiner has this exactly right: it is not a slam dunk violation of the Constitution as currently understood by the folks who make it their living to understand such things, and spodek was wrong to characterize it as such. Outrage doesn't make you right; at this point it's just making hn boring.
      - hindsightbias 13y ago
        > boring boorish. You'd think all these experts would have bothered to read up just a little bit on SCOTUS cases like Smith v Maryland, etc, but I guess it's just easier to grunt Freedom.
      - will_brown 13y ago
        >That's not an argument. rayiner has this exactly right I actually disagree...common sense is in fact an argument...in fact it is a 4th Amendment legal argument. When a Court hears whether a search and seizure was reasonable common sense arguments often prevail. For example, you have reasonable expectations of privacy if you were in an old school public phone booth, but not on your cell phone in public...you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your trash, that is until it hits the curb then the government can seize it (without a warrant) and use it against you in trial. As interesting as Rayiner's points are, even if he is citing case law/legal precedent it does not make him right. At the end of the day it only matters what 9 people think, and guess what more often than not those 9 people are at odds with one another, and often to the tune of 5-4 - nevertheless what the majority/plurality of those 9 opine becomes the law of the land, still that does not make any of them right either. One of the more interesting 4th Amendment issues is that it only applies to the Government, so the Government can not simply have a private citizen seize evidence without a warrant and use it as evidence, but they can use unlawfully obtained evidence so long as they did not direct the individual who originally obtained it...think how the Government used the photos hacked by Anonymous in the Stubenville Rape case. Ironically I think this could be one of the strongest arguments is that telecoms are actually working on behalf of the Government to obtain evidence they could otherwise not get without a warrant - in fact I would go so far as to say the Government is paying telecom companies to do this on their behalf.
  - samolang 13y ago
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
    - a3n 13y ago
      We should write that down somewhere.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Okay, so tell me how call records generates by ATT that are never even in my possession are nonetheless "my" papers or effects? The text of the amendment does not clearly support your position. Indeed, the focus is clearly on personal things (house, person), not things possessed by third parties.
      - kabdib 13y ago
        By extension, then, wiretaps are just fine, by anybody. All that data, entering and leaving your house, is not in your house, so it's fair game. So is opening mail (if it's in the post office it's not under your control, right?) Your car? It's on the street, so what if we attached GPS devices. Those microphones and cameras in public places are there for your protection. We'll never abuse that, trust us. Oh never never never. ("Hey, this guy voted Replubricatic last election, stick him on the list, too. Hey, he gave money to my opponent!")
        rayiner 13y ago
        Postal mail is historically treated as a special case because it's a government agency. Cars on the street are still your property, even when you're not in it, just as your house is still your property even when you're on vacation. Wiretaps and documents hosted on the "cloud" are somewhere in-between. The first time the Supreme Court considered the Constitutionality of warrantless wire taps, it found that they were not protected by the 4th amendment. In the 1960's they overturned that precedent, but using reasoning that really only makes sense in an analog context where your voice directly modulates signals on a wire, and there is no intermediate storage. Call records are further removed still. They're not a recording of your voice. They are generated by the telco, for the telco's own purposes. They are never in your possession, and you don't even know their contents. It's a huge stretch to say that they are nonetheless "your" papers. Finally, microphones and cameras in public are clearly Constitutional. Whether they can be abused is irrelevant. The 4th amendment is not a prohibition on anything that can be abused. It's a prohibition designed to protect peoples' physical persons and their property rights from government searches.
- onli 13y ago
  No. Capitalism clearly won. But Capitalism is not Freedom, not democracy and is not the rule of the law. Capitalism is a way to conduct business by letting people posess the means of production, and the capital to produce as well. It was not only rhetoric that in the fight between USA and UDSSR, there was a fight between freedom and authority. But mainly, it was a fight between different ways to regulate the means of production. Capitalism won, but that does not mean that freedom, democracy and the rule of the law will survive that victory. China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but wanting to be) communist country.
  - ttflee 13y ago
    > China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but wanting to be) communist country. Wanting to be? I'm afraid that China would never want trying again in the current reign. China just has not yet figured out which model of heaven could be used to replace the communist one. It is really a tough job to propose for a egalitarian heaven in an age of quickly increasing rich-poor gap.
    - onli 13y ago
      Hm, ok. While I know that the chinese government still tries to define its system as a communist one, it is quite possible that they are simply searching by now. Given you use of the word heaven you probably know that better than me (if my limited chinese is correct). But there are other examples. Take Stalin, under his reign there was a limited (but successful) effort to produce food using a free economy, which he shot down. Which was tragic given the food was needed. But that leads to far. I mainly meant that the existing systems claiming to be communist aren't, and some were able to use the tools of capitalism without becoming a western country, e.g. without becoming an indirect democracy - thus showing that capitalism is an economic model, not more.
  - javert 13y ago
    Nope. Capitalism == free markets == non-coersion. We have a highly mixed economy now, not capitalism. If you consider large government bureaus (public, or "private" via regulation, like, say, Verizon) to define "capitalism" just because there are large amounts of money involved ("capital"), you are defining the term by non-essentials. There were also large amounts of money in the USSR. Capitalism lost because of European intellectual influences in America; the existing defense of the ideas of the founding fathers was insufficient to stem the tide.
- ender7 13y ago
  It has always been this way. “In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” -- Abraham Lincoln
monsterix 13y ago
And what about the remaining 7 billion law-abiding souls on the planet? I resonate with the intent of this article but how come protecting only an Americans' privacy be of concern to this voice on NYT? I believe this approach is not only insular (apart from being stupid) but also destined to fail. If I were to run dragnet, I'd accept protecting the interest and privacy of all Americans back home, but strike a deal with GCHQ or some other Government agency and provide them with all the tools and tech to snoop on my fellow citizens. No legal hassles, no constitutional violation. Cost? Well that could be worked out given the advantage the data gives me to remain in power.
- guiambros 13y ago
  This is an OpEd piece, not "The NYTimes opinion". Besides, the authors are US senators, and have been historically fighting against the NSA broad data collection. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators.
- danenania 13y ago
  This is true, but if we can't even keep the NSA from poring through the communications of citizens, what hope do we have of limiting them internationally? We must begin with the practically achievable steps even if they are insufficient.
- 7952 13y ago
  The cat is out of the bag now. There are enough bad actors in the world to assume that monitoring will continue indefinitely regardless of what the NSA does. This threat can only be mitigated by developing new protocols and technology. The sad thing is that the NSA could have helped society secure itself years ago. Instead they left vulnerabilities unpatched and the public open to attack.
- aaronem 13y ago
  The government of the United States is responsible, however imperfectly, to the people of the United States, not to those of the planet entire.
001sky 13y ago
Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators. == Why isn't this adressed to Dianne Feinstein?
- f1nch3r 13y ago
  Almost certainly because she is allergic to common sense.
- leokun 13y ago
  I think the bit about the single vote was about her? Does it mean they had just one vote in the committee or a single person quashed the bill? Feinstein lives in an ivory tower, completely isolated from the needs of ordinary citizens in California. She gets six years in office with every election, and was just recently re-elected. She's totally safe, like those tea-party republicans in gerrymandered districts. California is too big of a state for a grassroots organization to challenge her in a primary and she placates enough of various groups with the funds to start an astroturf war and so they leave her alone. She's pretty much untouchable. She often starts on the wrong side of many issues, a notable exception being LGBT rights (good for her and us), and only with intense pressure from public opinion does she bow for appearances only. For example she was for SOPA, against meaningful health reform, and she's been a staunch defender of the NSA. Senator Feinstein is a defender of the status quo. She's a conservative. Not a social conservative or neo-conservative, but someone who fights progress. Her office is in an actual giant tower right outside of the Montgomery Street Bart station and she wouldn't even come down to visit protestors and talk to them when we were there on behalf of OFA and there quite a few of us. It might as well have been built in ivory. That was the only protest I have ever taken part in. It wasn't even really a protest, just a show of support for Obama's health care plan. Politicians like Feinstein make me cynical about politics. I feel helpless to be able to contribute change, so I just don't want to care anymore. Whatever, she's the boss. Great. Could be worse I guess.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    If she runs again in 2018, the best plan might be convince enough Democrats and Republicans to vote for an alternative Democrat in the primaries to make the general election Dem v. Dem. Then you'd get people actually considering the individuals... Of course, she's 80, so she might well not be running again anyway.
AsymetricCom 13y ago
The thing about the NSA dragnet is that if the NSA wasn't doing it, then corporations would (are) doing it. You can't stop technology from moving forward. Someone is going to be sniffing your packets now until the end of time.
- scrrr 13y ago
  It's much easier to opt out of corporate sniffing. A Linux laptop with the OS booted from a live-cd comes to mind.. and of course not engaging in all these web-services helps.
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    How does booting Linux from a live CD make your packets invulnerable to sniffing? Also, that's not a real solution, even if it did work.
    - scrrr 13y ago
      Sure, all it does is to make sure that no cookies are retained and that other things that can identify the user (browser version, fonts, installed extensions, etc.), are more or less defaults which, I assume, makes id more difficult. I also assume/hope that Google and Facebook etc. are not able to sniff any packets that are not meant for them.
- adventured 13y ago
  Not very worried about Google arresting me at some point in the future with their jackboot thugs for something I did or said in the past (when X wasn't illegal). This applies to Facebook, Twitter, AT&T, Verizon, Samsung, Snapchat, and so on. When these guys start trying to acquire their own domestic armies, then I'll get really concerned. There seems to be a common gloss-over regarding the fact that it's the United States Military that is doing the domestic spying. They were tapping Obama's phones when he was a Senator; most likely they own everybody at this point. This isn't some fluffcake brigade; it's the US freakin' military. Slip, and you're knee deep in a military dictatorship very quickly.
pilker09 13y ago
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Uh, no. The first job of a good, decent government is protect the rights of its citizens. It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect him/herself from the government.
- FedRegister 13y ago
  > "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." bzzt!, oh, sorry, that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is set out in the oath that all US Senators take upon being sworn into office[1] which reads: >"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." So no, sorry, the first priority is to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, which includes the NSA. Their oath says nothing about terrorism. >"If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone records." Are you done supplicating yourself fully before the police state? My copy of the Constitution (which does not contain the root password "thinkofthekids" or "terrorism") says you need not just suspicion, but probable cause for a warrant. >"When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it established that Americans’ papers and effects should be seized only when there was specific evidence of suspicious activity." bzzt!, again, so close! Let's look at what it really says[2], shall we (emphasis mine): >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Not only do you need suspicion, but you need probable cause for a warrant or the search needs to be reasonable some other way (border crossing, subject gave consent, search subject to arrest, etc). >Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Again, so close! Read the fourth amendment again. Nowhere does it say "The right of US Citizens". It says "The right of the people". That means all people - citizens and non-citizens, and that distinction is important. The protections afforded under this amendment apply to everyone in the country and extend to those parties being contacted by someone from this country, otherwise the wording would be different. [1] http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/... [2] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_tra...
dpweb 13y ago
"Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." There's the problem. Even by those protesting sweeping NSA collection, we're obsessed with this. When the axis powers threatened to plunge the world into 1000 years of darkness, the only thing we had to fear is fear itself, now - that's not good enough - we must fear the unending threat of terrorism. Letting the NSA run wild is a logical result from this mentality.
- uptown 13y ago
  That line stood out to me as well. I'm wondering whether it was stated as the first priority of the Intelligence Committee rather than the first priority of the Senate. I realize members of the Intelligence Committee are expected to bridge those two roles - but it also wouldn't strike me as unusual for the Intelligence Committee to prioritize things differently than the rest of the Senate.
- scoot 13y ago
  "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Maybe naively, but I would have imagined foreign policy reforms would be more effective, whilst eliminating the need for intrusive security. Treating the symptom rather than the disease when the treatment is more harmful does not seem rational.
dalek_cannes 13y ago
Surveillance. It always starts with a desire to be safe. And that comes from fear. It seems Americans today are afraid of more things than ever: pedophiles, guns, terrorists, lawsuits. Some news reports are ridiculous by foreign standards: teachers not being allowed to shake hands with students out of fear of sexual harassment allegations, boys suspended from school for drawing guns, bystanders not administering first-aid to accident victims out of fear of lawsuits, and of course the terrorism hysteria for which I have no words. I'm fortunate enough to have visited the US and have met mostly great people, but going by news reports the entire society seems paralyzed by fear. I always thought of freedom as inversely proportional to safety. If you want to be perfectly safe, you'll never leave your house in case you catch a germ, get in a car accident or even slip on a banana peel. You'll never eat store bought food without first running it through a spectrometer. You'll want everything controlled, predictable, seen ahead of time so that nothing unexpected gets thrown your way. I guess this is what surveillance is trying to do. Rather than accepting a level of risk as the price for being free and handling disasters when they do occur, we seem to be increasingly trying to avoid danger at all costs. And the cost seems to be freedom. It's almost as if the author of the US national anthem knew this when he ended it with "land of the free and the home of the brave" (correct me if I got that wrong). Maybe he knew you couldn't have one without the other. I guess the brave isn't home anymore... /disjointed philosophical rant
- netman21 13y ago
  Wow, well said. And extra points for quoting our national anthem at us!
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Don't a lot of national anthems and/or identities claim bravery and freedom?
- kenjackson 13y ago
  I think that the idea of surveillance is to increase safety with only a marginal decrease in freedom. Additionally, one could argue that as our freedom grows the opportunities for surveillance increase. That is, if you use the same means of communication as available in 1776 you'll have just as much freedom as they did. But in 2013 you have much more freedom to communicate over various mediums. Your freedom has increased by a factor of x, but surveillance has decreased that freedom by a factor of y (where y is much less than x). The net gain is still positive, but less than unsurveilled access. An interesting thought experiment is how well would an airline that does no security checks do versus one that does. Lets ignore the efficacy of security checks, and say that you're 10x more likely to die in the flight w/o security checks -- would most people be willing to endure the security checks (as they are today) for a 10x reduction in deaths (imagine the baseline is the number of deaths we see today). I think the answer is yes. Likewise, I may well feel less free if there were no jails (maximizing actual physical freedom for prisoners) than if there is some. Bravery doesn't equal stupidity. I'm not condoning the actions of the US government, but I think its unfair to assume increases in safety with an actual proportional decrease in freedom.
netman21 13y ago
So, no dragnet, but our first priority is terrorists.
nateabele 13y ago
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe [...] And herein lies the problem. Their job is not to keep us safe, it's to keep us free. (I'm aware others in the thread have pointed this out, but less directly).
- sailfast 13y ago
  I also came here to post this. Our priorities of late have been flipped. While providing for the common defense is one of many responsibilities, our primary responsibility and the oath taken by those in government is to the Constitution.
segmondy 13y ago
Ending the NSA Dragnet is not the solution. The solution is to assume that there will always be a rogue agency wanting to spy and to come up with solutions that make it hard or impossible.
znowi 13y ago
> "Severing ties with the NSA" started off with a NSA penalty but was so hugely popular it still got the #1 spot. However, it was quickly given an even bigger penalty, forcing it down the page. [1] Supposedly, "N.S.A." will not trigger HN's keyword penalty :) [1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
petejansson 13y ago
What this editorial gets right is that the oversight regime for domestic surveillance is inadequate. What it misses, however, is that big piles of data are inevitable with the current trajectory of technology. It will not be possible to have the piles of data not collected. As others have written, the government surveillance agencies essentially saw what private industry was doing and said "I want a copy of that." I think we need to rethink some things: 1. In the short term, one of the biggest changes that has to be addressed is the current court doctrine that privacy has not been violated if no people are actually looking at the data. Given that much of the surveillance is directed by automation, we need to recast that doctrine to include some of the automated analysis of the data. It's a thorny question, and one that will take some time and effort to get right, but there's no time like now to start. 2. We need more forceful and more transparent oversight of surveillance. There is a risk that the surveilled might change their tactics based on lessons from oversight reporting, but it seems clear at this point that the trade off is necessary. To quote the editorial: "The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security." Trade-offs are only worth making if you get something. Time to revisit the trade-off. 3. We need to address both the big piles of data in the government's hands and those in private hands. This is going to require rethinking ownership of the data, and probably moving the US more towards an EU-style privacy directive. Again, a longer process, but one that needs to start now. 4. As a country, we need to start toward a more rational view of terrorism risk. Plenty has been written about how disproportional our response has been. Time to rebalance the scales. In the end, we're going to continue to have big piles of surveillance data as long as we continue our technology trajectory. We need to start figuring out how to work with it, rather than try to stop it.
andyl 13y ago
Surveillance is a tool for oligarchs to control their citizens. The terrorist threat is theatric misdirection.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism. It's like a feller can't even write a serious editorial in support of American liberty without kowtowing to irrational fear-mongering anymore. The battle to keep us jumping at shadows has been won so conclusively that no one even bothers to stand up and say anything like: You are safe. Your family is safe. You are safer now than you would have been at nearly any other time in American history. Your children will probably view these years of The Terrorist Menace in much the same way we view McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover - a humiliating betrayal of everything that was supposed to make America different from the rest of the world. There is nothing patriotic about being afraid all the time. But that won't sell, and the Senators who wrote this know it. I don't fault their judgement, but it makes me really sad.
- gknoy 13y ago
  That was wonderfully said. May I share that with friends/family?
  - Lagged2Death 13y ago
    Thank you and please share with whomever you like!
- nooneelse 13y ago
  No kidding. I have tried to put it to people in terms of the cold war. The US faced the existential threat of hundreds of ICBMs aimed and ready to fire. Heck, the combined arsenals may have been an existential threat to all intelligent life on the planet. Those are stakes that could start to justify being afraid all the time and surveilling everyone (if it would help with the threat). But terrorism? Not even close. The fear of it has already caused damage on us far in excess to what the pissant terrorists have accomplished. All we really should have feared was fear itself. Perhaps one can still make the claim that we are not descended from fearful men, but it will be quite a bit less true should our children try to claim it.
gchokov 13y ago
Over? Well, okay, I trust you this time.
balabaster 13y ago
Unfortunately, for this opinion to make it into the mainstream conscious, it needs to be broadcast with the same gravity on Fox News and CNN where the large majority of uninformed Americans are spoon-fed their beliefs and opinions.
deleted 13y ago
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logfromblammo 13y ago
This is a Murphy's Law matter. The disaster cannot be prevented until it is technically impossible for it to continue. If legislation were to declare that the names and numbers used to identify a computer on a network could not be legally used to identify either the physical location of the computer or the human that might have been using it, I think it likely that the number of VPN access points and Tor exit nodes would increase wildly overnight. End-to-end encryption of all electronic traffic, everywhere, is the only reasonable solution.
geuis 13y ago
I disagree with this quote, "There is no question that our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, patriotic men and women who make real sacrifices to help keep our country safe and free." I argue that the weight of evidence says the opposite. First the "there is no question" bit is wrong, because clearly there is a huge question. Further, people that want power tend to be attracted to positions that give it to them. We see this in things like police, lawyers, and politicians. Note that I do no mention the military, because in the US the military is largely about subservience and not about control. There is also little evidence suggesting that the men and women working for the NSA are patriotic. I argue that they are not. Patriotism involves holding up the rights of citizens as defined by the Constitution, especially against those who would change or remove these rights. Further, patriotism involves defining new law, as needed, explicitly in the spirit of the Constitution. Under this definition, it is very unclear that the people working at the NSA have been remotely patriotic. Quite the opposite, in my view. Last, I believe we are fundamentally less free and less safe now than we were 13 years ago. The erosion of freedom and safety is often a very gradual process. When I say we, I do not refer to We as in The United States. I refer to all the people living under it, both citizens and non-citizens alike. I have to be more cautious of what I say at 33 than I did at 21. I seriously consider alternatives to flying during the holidays because "safety" has become a physical impediment to travel. I have to think twice about what I should pack in my luggage, for the certainty that someone will search my belongings. When I see police, I do not feel safe. I get more nervous and afraid. These are people walking around with weapons who can hurt, imprison, and murder people almost at will and we as citizens have almost no recourse to defend ourselves without being further harassed and harangued. That is not how someone should view their police departments. Yet I do, because in my short life I hear more about police brutality than stories of police helping people. My own experiences were particularly forged by being arrested at a peaceful protest (FTAA) and trying to watch the inauguration parade in DC in 2005. I stopped respecting police officers a long time ago, though I view them as a necessary evil. So to wrap. We are less free and less safe now than before, the people working for the NSA are working towards their own ends or the ends of people wanting power, and there is nothing patriotic going on. We are in pot being slowly boiled.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
grej 13y ago
I think the quote from William Pitt is appropriate: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
deleted 13y ago
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mrobot 13y ago
I'm glad these guys are here for us. I honestly can't believe some of the comments on the times site. My main issue is that this has not become a debate, it's still an order. And it's an order that violates our fourth amendment right. This right was part of handshake for a new system, and it cannot be violated save for some rare situation we could all agree is reasonable. No one should think this is reasonable... security is lax, control of the data is lax ("corporate store"? Are you kidding me?). The situation is flipped here. Without leaks, we would actually be suffering more. Security clearance is not protecting us, it's using and abusing us. It's being used to hide things that would harm us more if they were never leaked. And FISA courts are used to give us some illusion that rules will be followed while having it waved in our face that we're lucky to have them. This is crazy. Try to accommodate any warrantless surveillance in the fourth amendment's text without creating either a comical contradiction that violates its entire spirit or removes it entirely. We know that being ok with these citizen data programs amounts to being ok with not having this right, but we're still talking about it. I want to keep my right. And since the amendment was added in response to writs of assistance, unchecked delegation of authority so scarily similar to this reasonable articulable suspicion thing we are seeing today in both this and Stop and Frisk, i think we'd all be better suited to start with our right and add any exceptions as-needed, not have them added for us. I'm assigned a threat score even before i'm suspicious? To find out whether i'm suspicious? To then act on me because of this suspicion? All while making money off of me based on my actions? You want to buy my actions? Ok, name a price, i'll consider it. I don't want to start this privacy war this gang wants me to. I'd rather we follow the law and consider those who don't criminal. Privacy is a buffer against abuse, not a place to hide dirty secrets. We can't predict or even see or notice all of the horrible loss of self control that might come about because of this collection. The chorus of "Nothing to Hide" in response rings eery in my ears.
summerdown2 13y ago
I think one of the complications is we have become used to historically unusual levels of security. Far fewer babies die in childbirth these days. Cars have airbags. Medical care is fast and reliable. Not unreasonably, people expect their governments to provide the same level of predictability. And, not unreasonably, the majority of those politicians who want to preserve their jobs go along with it. So what can be done about it? If this was a flawless AI keeping us all safe like in Iain Bank's culture universe, I think we'd be all happy. The problem comes when it's not clear if those charged with curating this information have other agendas. I think this is a historically unique time, when we have the chance to put in safeguards and oversight while we can still see the cameras and the window of debate is still available. But in order to do that, I think the debate has to be reframed not as security vs liberty but as structured oversight vs tyranny.

552 points by jedwhite 13y ago

Senators have to go to the press to try to stop the government from doing what clearly breaks the law -- the Constitution, no less -- using up billions of taxpayer funds and undermines American business for no clear benefit. Conventional wisdom says the Cold War was between the doctrines of Capitalism and Communism and that the doctrine of Capitalism won. It doesn't look like that view was right. The doctrine of the KGB and Stasi is winning over both of them.

twoodfin 13y ago
Can you justify your claim that a bulk collection of phone records "clearly" violates the Constitution? I don't think the jurisprudence is so obviously on your side there.
- naterator 13y ago
  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/nsa-scandal-god-save-us-from-the-lawyers.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/nsa-sc...
- danenania 13y ago
  I think common fucking sense is pretty well on his side.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    The idea that 'data' vs 'metadata' loophole has been scaled beyond belief to undermine the plain english understanding of 'reasonable' is worthy of new jurisprudence.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      "Data" versus "metadata" doesn't go to the definition of "reasonable." It goes to the definition of "their" in "their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." The basic distinction is your data versus data that's about you. If I own a store, and make a note that 001sky came in to buy a box of cookies at 2:00pm on January 23, 2005, that's my paper. It's not your paper. I can claim 4th amendment protection if the FBI breaks into my store and takes that note, but you can't. That's the legally relevant distinction between data and metadata.
      - 001sky 13y ago
        Thes boundaries are blurred quite easliy with sufficiently advanced technology. That is the point. I can FLIR your house from a public location. Or isps and email providers could store every message (full data) just like the metadata and now 'own' a free copy. Arguably gmail has walked this line in their argument that scanning the metadata to route the message and scanning the content for meaning are equivalent interrogations of bits. But there are strong arguments about piercing of protected speech or inpinging on the veil privacy in the home, using technology to blunt force your way in are limited by jurisprudence already. That is why the surveilance by artifacts of speech and surveilance of actual speech is not such a simple issue.
        rayiner 13y ago
        There are situations in which technology changes things and the law has adapted (e.g. using an infrared camera to look into a house from a public location is a 4th amendment violation), but this is not one of those situations. At least when it comes to call metadata, technology really has nothing to do with it. Whether AT&T records it on magnetic tape or quantum bits, it's still their records, generated by their equipment, kept for their purposes, that you never have access to. These characteristics aren't an artifact of the technology, they're reflective of the fundamental nature of the information in question: it's AT&T's information about you, not your information.
        001sky 13y ago
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    That's not an argument. rayiner has this exactly right: it is not a slam dunk violation of the Constitution as currently understood by the folks who make it their living to understand such things, and spodek was wrong to characterize it as such. Outrage doesn't make you right; at this point it's just making hn boring.
    - hindsightbias 13y ago
      > boring boorish. You'd think all these experts would have bothered to read up just a little bit on SCOTUS cases like Smith v Maryland, etc, but I guess it's just easier to grunt Freedom.
    - will_brown 13y ago
      >That's not an argument. rayiner has this exactly right I actually disagree...common sense is in fact an argument...in fact it is a 4th Amendment legal argument. When a Court hears whether a search and seizure was reasonable common sense arguments often prevail. For example, you have reasonable expectations of privacy if you were in an old school public phone booth, but not on your cell phone in public...you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your trash, that is until it hits the curb then the government can seize it (without a warrant) and use it against you in trial. As interesting as Rayiner's points are, even if he is citing case law/legal precedent it does not make him right. At the end of the day it only matters what 9 people think, and guess what more often than not those 9 people are at odds with one another, and often to the tune of 5-4 - nevertheless what the majority/plurality of those 9 opine becomes the law of the land, still that does not make any of them right either. One of the more interesting 4th Amendment issues is that it only applies to the Government, so the Government can not simply have a private citizen seize evidence without a warrant and use it as evidence, but they can use unlawfully obtained evidence so long as they did not direct the individual who originally obtained it...think how the Government used the photos hacked by Anonymous in the Stubenville Rape case. Ironically I think this could be one of the strongest arguments is that telecoms are actually working on behalf of the Government to obtain evidence they could otherwise not get without a warrant - in fact I would go so far as to say the Government is paying telecom companies to do this on their behalf.
- samolang 13y ago
  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
  - a3n 13y ago
    We should write that down somewhere.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Okay, so tell me how call records generates by ATT that are never even in my possession are nonetheless "my" papers or effects? The text of the amendment does not clearly support your position. Indeed, the focus is clearly on personal things (house, person), not things possessed by third parties.
    - kabdib 13y ago
      By extension, then, wiretaps are just fine, by anybody. All that data, entering and leaving your house, is not in your house, so it's fair game. So is opening mail (if it's in the post office it's not under your control, right?) Your car? It's on the street, so what if we attached GPS devices. Those microphones and cameras in public places are there for your protection. We'll never abuse that, trust us. Oh never never never. ("Hey, this guy voted Replubricatic last election, stick him on the list, too. Hey, he gave money to my opponent!")
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Postal mail is historically treated as a special case because it's a government agency. Cars on the street are still your property, even when you're not in it, just as your house is still your property even when you're on vacation. Wiretaps and documents hosted on the "cloud" are somewhere in-between. The first time the Supreme Court considered the Constitutionality of warrantless wire taps, it found that they were not protected by the 4th amendment. In the 1960's they overturned that precedent, but using reasoning that really only makes sense in an analog context where your voice directly modulates signals on a wire, and there is no intermediate storage. Call records are further removed still. They're not a recording of your voice. They are generated by the telco, for the telco's own purposes. They are never in your possession, and you don't even know their contents. It's a huge stretch to say that they are nonetheless "your" papers. Finally, microphones and cameras in public are clearly Constitutional. Whether they can be abused is irrelevant. The 4th amendment is not a prohibition on anything that can be abused. It's a prohibition designed to protect peoples' physical persons and their property rights from government searches.
onli 13y ago
No. Capitalism clearly won. But Capitalism is not Freedom, not democracy and is not the rule of the law. Capitalism is a way to conduct business by letting people posess the means of production, and the capital to produce as well. It was not only rhetoric that in the fight between USA and UDSSR, there was a fight between freedom and authority. But mainly, it was a fight between different ways to regulate the means of production. Capitalism won, but that does not mean that freedom, democracy and the rule of the law will survive that victory. China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but wanting to be) communist country.
- ttflee 13y ago
  > China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but wanting to be) communist country. Wanting to be? I'm afraid that China would never want trying again in the current reign. China just has not yet figured out which model of heaven could be used to replace the communist one. It is really a tough job to propose for a egalitarian heaven in an age of quickly increasing rich-poor gap.
  - onli 13y ago
    Hm, ok. While I know that the chinese government still tries to define its system as a communist one, it is quite possible that they are simply searching by now. Given you use of the word heaven you probably know that better than me (if my limited chinese is correct). But there are other examples. Take Stalin, under his reign there was a limited (but successful) effort to produce food using a free economy, which he shot down. Which was tragic given the food was needed. But that leads to far. I mainly meant that the existing systems claiming to be communist aren't, and some were able to use the tools of capitalism without becoming a western country, e.g. without becoming an indirect democracy - thus showing that capitalism is an economic model, not more.
- javert 13y ago
  Nope. Capitalism == free markets == non-coersion. We have a highly mixed economy now, not capitalism. If you consider large government bureaus (public, or "private" via regulation, like, say, Verizon) to define "capitalism" just because there are large amounts of money involved ("capital"), you are defining the term by non-essentials. There were also large amounts of money in the USSR. Capitalism lost because of European intellectual influences in America; the existing defense of the ideas of the founding fathers was insufficient to stem the tide.
ender7 13y ago
It has always been this way. “In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” -- Abraham Lincoln

monsterix 13y ago

And what about the remaining 7 billion law-abiding souls on the planet? I resonate with the intent of this article but how come protecting only an Americans' privacy be of concern to this voice on NYT? I believe this approach is not only insular (apart from being stupid) but also destined to fail. If I were to run dragnet, I'd accept protecting the interest and privacy of all Americans back home, but strike a deal with GCHQ or some other Government agency and provide them with all the tools and tech to snoop on my fellow citizens. No legal hassles, no constitutional violation. Cost? Well that could be worked out given the advantage the data gives me to remain in power.

guiambros 13y ago
This is an OpEd piece, not "The NYTimes opinion". Besides, the authors are US senators, and have been historically fighting against the NSA broad data collection. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators.
danenania 13y ago
This is true, but if we can't even keep the NSA from poring through the communications of citizens, what hope do we have of limiting them internationally? We must begin with the practically achievable steps even if they are insufficient.
7952 13y ago
The cat is out of the bag now. There are enough bad actors in the world to assume that monitoring will continue indefinitely regardless of what the NSA does. This threat can only be mitigated by developing new protocols and technology. The sad thing is that the NSA could have helped society secure itself years ago. Instead they left vulnerabilities unpatched and the public open to attack.
aaronem 13y ago
The government of the United States is responsible, however imperfectly, to the people of the United States, not to those of the planet entire.

001sky 13y ago

Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators. == Why isn't this adressed to Dianne Feinstein?

f1nch3r 13y ago
Almost certainly because she is allergic to common sense.
leokun 13y ago
I think the bit about the single vote was about her? Does it mean they had just one vote in the committee or a single person quashed the bill? Feinstein lives in an ivory tower, completely isolated from the needs of ordinary citizens in California. She gets six years in office with every election, and was just recently re-elected. She's totally safe, like those tea-party republicans in gerrymandered districts. California is too big of a state for a grassroots organization to challenge her in a primary and she placates enough of various groups with the funds to start an astroturf war and so they leave her alone. She's pretty much untouchable. She often starts on the wrong side of many issues, a notable exception being LGBT rights (good for her and us), and only with intense pressure from public opinion does she bow for appearances only. For example she was for SOPA, against meaningful health reform, and she's been a staunch defender of the NSA. Senator Feinstein is a defender of the status quo. She's a conservative. Not a social conservative or neo-conservative, but someone who fights progress. Her office is in an actual giant tower right outside of the Montgomery Street Bart station and she wouldn't even come down to visit protestors and talk to them when we were there on behalf of OFA and there quite a few of us. It might as well have been built in ivory. That was the only protest I have ever taken part in. It wasn't even really a protest, just a show of support for Obama's health care plan. Politicians like Feinstein make me cynical about politics. I feel helpless to be able to contribute change, so I just don't want to care anymore. Whatever, she's the boss. Great. Could be worse I guess.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  If she runs again in 2018, the best plan might be convince enough Democrats and Republicans to vote for an alternative Democrat in the primaries to make the general election Dem v. Dem. Then you'd get people actually considering the individuals... Of course, she's 80, so she might well not be running again anyway.

AsymetricCom 13y ago

The thing about the NSA dragnet is that if the NSA wasn't doing it, then corporations would (are) doing it. You can't stop technology from moving forward. Someone is going to be sniffing your packets now until the end of time.

scrrr 13y ago
It's much easier to opt out of corporate sniffing. A Linux laptop with the OS booted from a live-cd comes to mind.. and of course not engaging in all these web-services helps.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  How does booting Linux from a live CD make your packets invulnerable to sniffing? Also, that's not a real solution, even if it did work.
  - scrrr 13y ago
    Sure, all it does is to make sure that no cookies are retained and that other things that can identify the user (browser version, fonts, installed extensions, etc.), are more or less defaults which, I assume, makes id more difficult. I also assume/hope that Google and Facebook etc. are not able to sniff any packets that are not meant for them.
adventured 13y ago
Not very worried about Google arresting me at some point in the future with their jackboot thugs for something I did or said in the past (when X wasn't illegal). This applies to Facebook, Twitter, AT&T, Verizon, Samsung, Snapchat, and so on. When these guys start trying to acquire their own domestic armies, then I'll get really concerned. There seems to be a common gloss-over regarding the fact that it's the United States Military that is doing the domestic spying. They were tapping Obama's phones when he was a Senator; most likely they own everybody at this point. This isn't some fluffcake brigade; it's the US freakin' military. Slip, and you're knee deep in a military dictatorship very quickly.

pilker09 13y ago

> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Uh, no. The first job of a good, decent government is protect the rights of its citizens. It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect him/herself from the government.

FedRegister 13y ago
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." bzzt!, oh, sorry, that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is set out in the oath that all US Senators take upon being sworn into office[1] which reads: >"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." So no, sorry, the first priority is to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, which includes the NSA. Their oath says nothing about terrorism. >"If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone records." Are you done supplicating yourself fully before the police state? My copy of the Constitution (which does not contain the root password "thinkofthekids" or "terrorism") says you need not just suspicion, but probable cause for a warrant. >"When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it established that Americans’ papers and effects should be seized only when there was specific evidence of suspicious activity." bzzt!, again, so close! Let's look at what it really says[2], shall we (emphasis mine): >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Not only do you need suspicion, but you need probable cause for a warrant or the search needs to be reasonable some other way (border crossing, subject gave consent, search subject to arrest, etc). >Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Again, so close! Read the fourth amendment again. Nowhere does it say "The right of US Citizens". It says "The right of the people". That means all people - citizens and non-citizens, and that distinction is important. The protections afforded under this amendment apply to everyone in the country and extend to those parties being contacted by someone from this country, otherwise the wording would be different. [1] http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/... [2] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_tra...

dpweb 13y ago

"Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." There's the problem. Even by those protesting sweeping NSA collection, we're obsessed with this. When the axis powers threatened to plunge the world into 1000 years of darkness, the only thing we had to fear is fear itself, now - that's not good enough - we must fear the unending threat of terrorism. Letting the NSA run wild is a logical result from this mentality.

uptown 13y ago
That line stood out to me as well. I'm wondering whether it was stated as the first priority of the Intelligence Committee rather than the first priority of the Senate. I realize members of the Intelligence Committee are expected to bridge those two roles - but it also wouldn't strike me as unusual for the Intelligence Committee to prioritize things differently than the rest of the Senate.
scoot 13y ago
"Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." Maybe naively, but I would have imagined foreign policy reforms would be more effective, whilst eliminating the need for intrusive security. Treating the symptom rather than the disease when the treatment is more harmful does not seem rational.

dalek_cannes 13y ago

Surveillance. It always starts with a desire to be safe. And that comes from fear. It seems Americans today are afraid of more things than ever: pedophiles, guns, terrorists, lawsuits. Some news reports are ridiculous by foreign standards: teachers not being allowed to shake hands with students out of fear of sexual harassment allegations, boys suspended from school for drawing guns, bystanders not administering first-aid to accident victims out of fear of lawsuits, and of course the terrorism hysteria for which I have no words. I'm fortunate enough to have visited the US and have met mostly great people, but going by news reports the entire society seems paralyzed by fear. I always thought of freedom as inversely proportional to safety. If you want to be perfectly safe, you'll never leave your house in case you catch a germ, get in a car accident or even slip on a banana peel. You'll never eat store bought food without first running it through a spectrometer. You'll want everything controlled, predictable, seen ahead of time so that nothing unexpected gets thrown your way. I guess this is what surveillance is trying to do. Rather than accepting a level of risk as the price for being free and handling disasters when they do occur, we seem to be increasingly trying to avoid danger at all costs. And the cost seems to be freedom. It's almost as if the author of the US national anthem knew this when he ended it with "land of the free and the home of the brave" (correct me if I got that wrong). Maybe he knew you couldn't have one without the other. I guess the brave isn't home anymore... /disjointed philosophical rant

netman21 13y ago
Wow, well said. And extra points for quoting our national anthem at us!
- arethuza 13y ago
  Don't a lot of national anthems and/or identities claim bravery and freedom?
kenjackson 13y ago
I think that the idea of surveillance is to increase safety with only a marginal decrease in freedom. Additionally, one could argue that as our freedom grows the opportunities for surveillance increase. That is, if you use the same means of communication as available in 1776 you'll have just as much freedom as they did. But in 2013 you have much more freedom to communicate over various mediums. Your freedom has increased by a factor of x, but surveillance has decreased that freedom by a factor of y (where y is much less than x). The net gain is still positive, but less than unsurveilled access. An interesting thought experiment is how well would an airline that does no security checks do versus one that does. Lets ignore the efficacy of security checks, and say that you're 10x more likely to die in the flight w/o security checks -- would most people be willing to endure the security checks (as they are today) for a 10x reduction in deaths (imagine the baseline is the number of deaths we see today). I think the answer is yes. Likewise, I may well feel less free if there were no jails (maximizing actual physical freedom for prisoners) than if there is some. Bravery doesn't equal stupidity. I'm not condoning the actions of the US government, but I think its unfair to assume increases in safety with an actual proportional decrease in freedom.

netman21 13y ago

So, no dragnet, but our first priority is terrorists.

nateabele 13y ago

> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe [...] And herein lies the problem. Their job is not to keep us safe, it's to keep us free. (I'm aware others in the thread have pointed this out, but less directly).

sailfast 13y ago
I also came here to post this. Our priorities of late have been flipped. While providing for the common defense is one of many responsibilities, our primary responsibility and the oath taken by those in government is to the Constitution.

segmondy 13y ago

Ending the NSA Dragnet is not the solution. The solution is to assume that there will always be a rogue agency wanting to spy and to come up with solutions that make it hard or impossible.

znowi 13y ago

> "Severing ties with the NSA" started off with a NSA penalty but was so hugely popular it still got the #1 spot. However, it was quickly given an even bigger penalty, forcing it down the page. [1] Supposedly, "N.S.A." will not trigger HN's keyword penalty :) [1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

petejansson 13y ago

What this editorial gets right is that the oversight regime for domestic surveillance is inadequate. What it misses, however, is that big piles of data are inevitable with the current trajectory of technology. It will not be possible to have the piles of data not collected. As others have written, the government surveillance agencies essentially saw what private industry was doing and said "I want a copy of that." I think we need to rethink some things: 1. In the short term, one of the biggest changes that has to be addressed is the current court doctrine that privacy has not been violated if no people are actually looking at the data. Given that much of the surveillance is directed by automation, we need to recast that doctrine to include some of the automated analysis of the data. It's a thorny question, and one that will take some time and effort to get right, but there's no time like now to start. 2. We need more forceful and more transparent oversight of surveillance. There is a risk that the surveilled might change their tactics based on lessons from oversight reporting, but it seems clear at this point that the trade off is necessary. To quote the editorial: "The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security." Trade-offs are only worth making if you get something. Time to revisit the trade-off. 3. We need to address both the big piles of data in the government's hands and those in private hands. This is going to require rethinking ownership of the data, and probably moving the US more towards an EU-style privacy directive. Again, a longer process, but one that needs to start now. 4. As a country, we need to start toward a more rational view of terrorism risk. Plenty has been written about how disproportional our response has been. Time to rebalance the scales. In the end, we're going to continue to have big piles of surveillance data as long as we continue our technology trajectory. We need to start figuring out how to work with it, rather than try to stop it.

andyl 13y ago

Surveillance is a tool for oligarchs to control their citizens. The terrorist threat is theatric misdirection.

Lagged2Death 13y ago

Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism. It's like a feller can't even write a serious editorial in support of American liberty without kowtowing to irrational fear-mongering anymore. The battle to keep us jumping at shadows has been won so conclusively that no one even bothers to stand up and say anything like: You are safe. Your family is safe. You are safer now than you would have been at nearly any other time in American history. Your children will probably view these years of The Terrorist Menace in much the same way we view McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover - a humiliating betrayal of everything that was supposed to make America different from the rest of the world. There is nothing patriotic about being afraid all the time. But that won't sell, and the Senators who wrote this know it. I don't fault their judgement, but it makes me really sad.

gknoy 13y ago
That was wonderfully said. May I share that with friends/family?
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  Thank you and please share with whomever you like!
nooneelse 13y ago
No kidding. I have tried to put it to people in terms of the cold war. The US faced the existential threat of hundreds of ICBMs aimed and ready to fire. Heck, the combined arsenals may have been an existential threat to all intelligent life on the planet. Those are stakes that could start to justify being afraid all the time and surveilling everyone (if it would help with the threat). But terrorism? Not even close. The fear of it has already caused damage on us far in excess to what the pissant terrorists have accomplished. All we really should have feared was fear itself. Perhaps one can still make the claim that we are not descended from fearful men, but it will be quite a bit less true should our children try to claim it.

gchokov 13y ago

Over? Well, okay, I trust you this time.

balabaster 13y ago

Unfortunately, for this opinion to make it into the mainstream conscious, it needs to be broadcast with the same gravity on Fox News and CNN where the large majority of uninformed Americans are spoon-fed their beliefs and opinions.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

logfromblammo 13y ago

This is a Murphy's Law matter. The disaster cannot be prevented until it is technically impossible for it to continue. If legislation were to declare that the names and numbers used to identify a computer on a network could not be legally used to identify either the physical location of the computer or the human that might have been using it, I think it likely that the number of VPN access points and Tor exit nodes would increase wildly overnight. End-to-end encryption of all electronic traffic, everywhere, is the only reasonable solution.

geuis 13y ago

I disagree with this quote, "There is no question that our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, patriotic men and women who make real sacrifices to help keep our country safe and free." I argue that the weight of evidence says the opposite. First the "there is no question" bit is wrong, because clearly there is a huge question. Further, people that want power tend to be attracted to positions that give it to them. We see this in things like police, lawyers, and politicians. Note that I do no mention the military, because in the US the military is largely about subservience and not about control. There is also little evidence suggesting that the men and women working for the NSA are patriotic. I argue that they are not. Patriotism involves holding up the rights of citizens as defined by the Constitution, especially against those who would change or remove these rights. Further, patriotism involves defining new law, as needed, explicitly in the spirit of the Constitution. Under this definition, it is very unclear that the people working at the NSA have been remotely patriotic. Quite the opposite, in my view. Last, I believe we are fundamentally less free and less safe now than we were 13 years ago. The erosion of freedom and safety is often a very gradual process. When I say we, I do not refer to We as in The United States. I refer to all the people living under it, both citizens and non-citizens alike. I have to be more cautious of what I say at 33 than I did at 21. I seriously consider alternatives to flying during the holidays because "safety" has become a physical impediment to travel. I have to think twice about what I should pack in my luggage, for the certainty that someone will search my belongings. When I see police, I do not feel safe. I get more nervous and afraid. These are people walking around with weapons who can hurt, imprison, and murder people almost at will and we as citizens have almost no recourse to defend ourselves without being further harassed and harangued. That is not how someone should view their police departments. Yet I do, because in my short life I hear more about police brutality than stories of police helping people. My own experiences were particularly forged by being arrested at a peaceful protest (FTAA) and trying to watch the inauguration parade in DC in 2005. I stopped respecting police officers a long time ago, though I view them as a necessary evil. So to wrap. We are less free and less safe now than before, the people working for the NSA are working towards their own ends or the ends of people wanting power, and there is nothing patriotic going on. We are in pot being slowly boiled.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

grej 13y ago

I think the quote from William Pitt is appropriate: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mrobot 13y ago

I'm glad these guys are here for us. I honestly can't believe some of the comments on the times site. My main issue is that this has not become a debate, it's still an order. And it's an order that violates our fourth amendment right. This right was part of handshake for a new system, and it cannot be violated save for some rare situation we could all agree is reasonable. No one should think this is reasonable... security is lax, control of the data is lax ("corporate store"? Are you kidding me?). The situation is flipped here. Without leaks, we would actually be suffering more. Security clearance is not protecting us, it's using and abusing us. It's being used to hide things that would harm us more if they were never leaked. And FISA courts are used to give us some illusion that rules will be followed while having it waved in our face that we're lucky to have them. This is crazy. Try to accommodate any warrantless surveillance in the fourth amendment's text without creating either a comical contradiction that violates its entire spirit or removes it entirely. We know that being ok with these citizen data programs amounts to being ok with not having this right, but we're still talking about it. I want to keep my right. And since the amendment was added in response to writs of assistance, unchecked delegation of authority so scarily similar to this reasonable articulable suspicion thing we are seeing today in both this and Stop and Frisk, i think we'd all be better suited to start with our right and add any exceptions as-needed, not have them added for us. I'm assigned a threat score even before i'm suspicious? To find out whether i'm suspicious? To then act on me because of this suspicion? All while making money off of me based on my actions? You want to buy my actions? Ok, name a price, i'll consider it. I don't want to start this privacy war this gang wants me to. I'd rather we follow the law and consider those who don't criminal. Privacy is a buffer against abuse, not a place to hide dirty secrets. We can't predict or even see or notice all of the horrible loss of self control that might come about because of this collection. The chorus of "Nothing to Hide" in response rings eery in my ears.

summerdown2 13y ago

I think one of the complications is we have become used to historically unusual levels of security. Far fewer babies die in childbirth these days. Cars have airbags. Medical care is fast and reliable. Not unreasonably, people expect their governments to provide the same level of predictability. And, not unreasonably, the majority of those politicians who want to preserve their jobs go along with it. So what can be done about it? If this was a flawless AI keeping us all safe like in Iain Bank's culture universe, I think we'd be all happy. The problem comes when it's not clear if those charged with curating this information have other agendas. I think this is a historically unique time, when we have the chance to put in safeguards and oversight while we can still see the cameras and the window of debate is still available. But in order to do that, I think the debate has to be reframed not as security vs liberty but as structured oversight vs tyranny.