7 ms·

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, gu

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.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  > Lets ignore the efficacy of security checks, and say that you're 10x more likely to die in the flight w/o security checks You are justifying massive spending and time-cost based on your own unsupported hypothetical. Why do that when we already have data regarding airline safety with simple metal detectors? We know how that performs, and we know current efficacy is low and the cost to society is high.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  The scanner isn't effective enough to warrant the additional delay and invasion of privacy, it's just that the former head of Homeland Security is now a lobbyist for that company. Has TSA caught a single terrorist yet? The idea of NSA surveillance is not to increase safety with only a marginal decrease in freedom. Otherwise they wouldn't have unconstitutionally fingered targets for the DEA to parallel construct evidence for. Thanks for a false dichotomy between scanners and nothing, by the way. If there were an airport near me that did metal detectors again (and another on the return leg) I'd use that exclusively. Anyone able to get a truly dangerous weapon through a metal detector without being nailed by the FBI or CIA first could easily get one through the full-body scanner also. So yes I would prefer to not support an unethical jerk and I would prefer to have my privacy back.
salient 13y ago
The problem is not that they want to be safe, but that they are willing to give up all the rights even against the minimum amount of danger. First off, never give up all of your yours in the name of safety. If you do, then you better make sure it's very temporary in nature, and/or for very specific targets. Second, it better be to save something like 1 million people a year, not like 100 people per year on average. Make sure that the compromise of giving up all of your rights (if you can even accept such a thing), is done for a very real and major cause. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and infringe on everyone's freedoms, it better not be just to save 100 lives that year. It better be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at least. Otherwise, it's clearly not worth it, and that money and effort could be better used in some other place (such as healthcare, education, etc) where the return on investment is many orders of magnitude greater. But even if it's worth it money wise, you still have to counter-balance it with the power you're giving your own government, and how much that government is going to abuse that power. Sure, the government will protect you from "terrorism", but is that worth the cost of losing your freedom, and having the risk of being arrested for anything you dare say against the government? Many people in the past decided that they'd rather die than lose their freedom, so it's definitely not a clear cut choice, even if the government does save you from certain death. But the government is abusing all of this power today, and all of this money, and they have much less to show for it, to the point where the clear cut choice is to not accept what the government is doing.
rayiner 13y ago
The Ben Franklin quote is apropos here: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither." While it's wildly misquoted on the interblags, you can't read out the word "essential." The point of the quote isn't that no trade-offs between freedom and safety are appropriate, but rather that we shouldn't trade away those freedoms that are "essential." It is debatable whether monitoring of the internet, a technology that didn't even exist for most of American history, is a trading off "essential" liberty, or whether its an "inessential" liberty. Ben Franklin, like the other framers, realized that freedom versus security was a trade-off. Remember, the Constitution itself was a reaction to the Articles of Confederation, which created a government that turned out to be too weak to protect peoples' safety, both from external threats (Indians, European powers) and internal threats (domestic insurgents). The Constitution draw the safety versus freedom line a little closer to "safety" by creating a more powerful, more centralized federal government. This balancing is also why the 4th amendment uses the wiggle word "unreasonable." Searches and seizures are okay, just not "unreasonable" ones. Well how do you decide what is "reasonable" versus "unreasonable?" You figure out how to appropriately trade-off freedom versus security! If the founding fathers didn't intend for us to engage in such balancing, they would've left out the word "unreasonable." No searches and seizures, even if necessary to solve a murder or kidnapping. After all, that would maximize freedom at some cost to security.
- hobs 13y ago
  Yep, but as the op-ed states, they dont think the government should be unable to surveil the citizenry, just not surveil them all the time for no reason besides they said so. The op-ed states: "So we offered amendments: One would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records, but still allow intelligence agencies to obtain information they legitimately needed for national security purposes by getting the approval of a judge, which could even be done after the fact in emergency situations. " I think you are absolutely correct in stating that there needs to be a balance, but when the American people have no say in how that balance is defined, we have programs that watch us all and as far as I am concerned trample our rights (1st chilling effect, 4th privacy, however you want to frame it).
  - 13y ago
dasil003 13y ago
Framing the conversation as freedom vs safety is dangerous because it ignores the issue of government power. The danger of mass surveillance is not due to some abstract need for privacy, but rather because of the immense power the government has. The founding fathers acutely understood the dangers of government overreach, and the constitution of the USA was designed to keep it in check. However these days, the very principles that the country was founded on are used as a shield to lull the well-fed and entertained population into a false sense of security about the benevolence of the government. Ironically people in oppressive third-world regimes would hold no such illusions, but in the English-speaking world we get "meh, what do I have to hide?". The insidious thing about this is that history's lessons on the subject can not be cited without sounding like a crackpot.
- rhizome 13y ago
  However these days, the very principles that the country was founded on are used as a shield to lull the well-fed and entertained population into a false sense of security about the benevolence of the government. I don't think these principles are used as a shield, I think they have been redefined and given the euphemism of "national security" to hide what the new definitions are, if there even are definitions beyond 'whatever we want to do'.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    Good point, my phrasing was poor. What I meant to say is that the government rhetoric about freedom and American principles is convincing because it is based on actual enlightened thought which makes it all the easier for evil men and well-meaning busybodies and bureaucrats to utterly subvert these principles until they are nothing more than the empty political slogans and propaganda used by totalitarian regimes everywhere.
Nursie 13y ago
People like predictability and the illusion of security. I've had conversations about the Snowden stuff that ended with the other conversant saying that they would always choose security every time, and if the government wanted watch everything they did then all the better. Their entire worldview seemed to be framed on a false choice though - you can either have security and safety or you can be free of government intrusion. I fundamentally disagree with this, total government intrusion and surveillance is not security, nor is it safety, you simply move the danger from 'terrorists' to 'government agents'. Either way (to steal a line from the libertarians) men with guns and bombs might show up and ruin or end your life.
DamnYuppie 13y ago
I couldn't agree more. Security and freedom are inversely proportional. I was upset when the start of the second paragraph to this piece stated that the most important thing for the government to do is protect people from terrorists. I couldn't disagree with that more, safety is never a given and freedom and resiliency in the face of adversity and setbacks should be our goal, not a nanny state.
- josephlord 13y ago
  > Security and freedom are inversely proportional. That would imply that the relationship is much more linear than reality. Particular measures have individual costs and benefits that are not necessarily closely related and some actions may cost privacy and may even be counterproductive. Sometimes adding freedom may add security e.g. not interning people without trial as that can drive support for terrorists and prevent suspicions being reported.
shitgoose 13y ago
Good post, but this part you got it wrong: "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." Surveillance doesn't try to reduce the risk or anything like that. Surveillance institutions treat the whole population as suspects.
sp332 13y ago
A side note on the anthem: The lyrics started as a poem written by Francis Scott Key after watching a battle in the War of 1812. Americans don't like to talk about the War of 1812 because we got our asses whooped by a handful of Canadians. The story of the music is even weirder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner#Early...
Crito 13y ago
Here is an idea I have been toying with for the past few weeks: Fear has become patriotic. Before I say more, I'll say that I am not a fan of patriotism, I think it is a mild form of bigotry, but I recognize the positive connotations it has to the population at large. I think that patriotism has also traditionally been associated with traits that are seen as positive. Traits like self assurance, confidence, pride, and bravery. You might be afraid that Hitler is going to cross the channel, but you are going to put on a hard face and proudly declare that the RAF will continue to kick ass and take names. That is how you make yourself look patriotic. That has changed slightly though. Now, if you want to present yourself as a patriot, you must present yourself as a coward who fears the enemy first and foremost, even if you really don't. That's why you get nonsense like this prefacing editorials: "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." You think that terrorists are going to implement Sharia Law in your podunk town in Kansas? A wildly irrational fear. So is that cowardice? No, it is patriotism! Advertise this fear to the world with a giant decal on your pickup truck; show your neighbors just how damn patriotic you really are.
- Amadou 13y ago
  I am soooo going to plagiarize the crap out of that. I have my doubts that it was ever the way you described it. But given these discussions are often rhetorical I don't think that detracts all that much from the concept.
  - Crito 13y ago
    Please do, that's why I shared it. :)

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.

Zigurd 13y ago
> Lets ignore the efficacy of security checks, and say that you're 10x more likely to die in the flight w/o security checks You are justifying massive spending and time-cost based on your own unsupported hypothetical. Why do that when we already have data regarding airline safety with simple metal detectors? We know how that performs, and we know current efficacy is low and the cost to society is high.
reginaldjcooper 13y ago
The scanner isn't effective enough to warrant the additional delay and invasion of privacy, it's just that the former head of Homeland Security is now a lobbyist for that company. Has TSA caught a single terrorist yet? The idea of NSA surveillance is not to increase safety with only a marginal decrease in freedom. Otherwise they wouldn't have unconstitutionally fingered targets for the DEA to parallel construct evidence for. Thanks for a false dichotomy between scanners and nothing, by the way. If there were an airport near me that did metal detectors again (and another on the return leg) I'd use that exclusively. Anyone able to get a truly dangerous weapon through a metal detector without being nailed by the FBI or CIA first could easily get one through the full-body scanner also. So yes I would prefer to not support an unethical jerk and I would prefer to have my privacy back.

salient 13y ago

The problem is not that they want to be safe, but that they are willing to give up all the rights even against the minimum amount of danger. First off, never give up all of your yours in the name of safety. If you do, then you better make sure it's very temporary in nature, and/or for very specific targets. Second, it better be to save something like 1 million people a year, not like 100 people per year on average. Make sure that the compromise of giving up all of your rights (if you can even accept such a thing), is done for a very real and major cause. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and infringe on everyone's freedoms, it better not be just to save 100 lives that year. It better be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at least. Otherwise, it's clearly not worth it, and that money and effort could be better used in some other place (such as healthcare, education, etc) where the return on investment is many orders of magnitude greater. But even if it's worth it money wise, you still have to counter-balance it with the power you're giving your own government, and how much that government is going to abuse that power. Sure, the government will protect you from "terrorism", but is that worth the cost of losing your freedom, and having the risk of being arrested for anything you dare say against the government? Many people in the past decided that they'd rather die than lose their freedom, so it's definitely not a clear cut choice, even if the government does save you from certain death. But the government is abusing all of this power today, and all of this money, and they have much less to show for it, to the point where the clear cut choice is to not accept what the government is doing.

rayiner 13y ago

The Ben Franklin quote is apropos here: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither." While it's wildly misquoted on the interblags, you can't read out the word "essential." The point of the quote isn't that no trade-offs between freedom and safety are appropriate, but rather that we shouldn't trade away those freedoms that are "essential." It is debatable whether monitoring of the internet, a technology that didn't even exist for most of American history, is a trading off "essential" liberty, or whether its an "inessential" liberty. Ben Franklin, like the other framers, realized that freedom versus security was a trade-off. Remember, the Constitution itself was a reaction to the Articles of Confederation, which created a government that turned out to be too weak to protect peoples' safety, both from external threats (Indians, European powers) and internal threats (domestic insurgents). The Constitution draw the safety versus freedom line a little closer to "safety" by creating a more powerful, more centralized federal government. This balancing is also why the 4th amendment uses the wiggle word "unreasonable." Searches and seizures are okay, just not "unreasonable" ones. Well how do you decide what is "reasonable" versus "unreasonable?" You figure out how to appropriately trade-off freedom versus security! If the founding fathers didn't intend for us to engage in such balancing, they would've left out the word "unreasonable." No searches and seizures, even if necessary to solve a murder or kidnapping. After all, that would maximize freedom at some cost to security.

hobs 13y ago
Yep, but as the op-ed states, they dont think the government should be unable to surveil the citizenry, just not surveil them all the time for no reason besides they said so. The op-ed states: "So we offered amendments: One would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records, but still allow intelligence agencies to obtain information they legitimately needed for national security purposes by getting the approval of a judge, which could even be done after the fact in emergency situations. " I think you are absolutely correct in stating that there needs to be a balance, but when the American people have no say in how that balance is defined, we have programs that watch us all and as far as I am concerned trample our rights (1st chilling effect, 4th privacy, however you want to frame it).
- 13y ago

dasil003 13y ago

Framing the conversation as freedom vs safety is dangerous because it ignores the issue of government power. The danger of mass surveillance is not due to some abstract need for privacy, but rather because of the immense power the government has. The founding fathers acutely understood the dangers of government overreach, and the constitution of the USA was designed to keep it in check. However these days, the very principles that the country was founded on are used as a shield to lull the well-fed and entertained population into a false sense of security about the benevolence of the government. Ironically people in oppressive third-world regimes would hold no such illusions, but in the English-speaking world we get "meh, what do I have to hide?". The insidious thing about this is that history's lessons on the subject can not be cited without sounding like a crackpot.

rhizome 13y ago
However these days, the very principles that the country was founded on are used as a shield to lull the well-fed and entertained population into a false sense of security about the benevolence of the government. I don't think these principles are used as a shield, I think they have been redefined and given the euphemism of "national security" to hide what the new definitions are, if there even are definitions beyond 'whatever we want to do'.
- dasil003 13y ago
  Good point, my phrasing was poor. What I meant to say is that the government rhetoric about freedom and American principles is convincing because it is based on actual enlightened thought which makes it all the easier for evil men and well-meaning busybodies and bureaucrats to utterly subvert these principles until they are nothing more than the empty political slogans and propaganda used by totalitarian regimes everywhere.

Nursie 13y ago

People like predictability and the illusion of security. I've had conversations about the Snowden stuff that ended with the other conversant saying that they would always choose security every time, and if the government wanted watch everything they did then all the better. Their entire worldview seemed to be framed on a false choice though - you can either have security and safety or you can be free of government intrusion. I fundamentally disagree with this, total government intrusion and surveillance is not security, nor is it safety, you simply move the danger from 'terrorists' to 'government agents'. Either way (to steal a line from the libertarians) men with guns and bombs might show up and ruin or end your life.

DamnYuppie 13y ago

I couldn't agree more. Security and freedom are inversely proportional. I was upset when the start of the second paragraph to this piece stated that the most important thing for the government to do is protect people from terrorists. I couldn't disagree with that more, safety is never a given and freedom and resiliency in the face of adversity and setbacks should be our goal, not a nanny state.

josephlord 13y ago
> Security and freedom are inversely proportional. That would imply that the relationship is much more linear than reality. Particular measures have individual costs and benefits that are not necessarily closely related and some actions may cost privacy and may even be counterproductive. Sometimes adding freedom may add security e.g. not interning people without trial as that can drive support for terrorists and prevent suspicions being reported.

shitgoose 13y ago

Good post, but this part you got it wrong: "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." Surveillance doesn't try to reduce the risk or anything like that. Surveillance institutions treat the whole population as suspects.

sp332 13y ago

A side note on the anthem: The lyrics started as a poem written by Francis Scott Key after watching a battle in the War of 1812. Americans don't like to talk about the War of 1812 because we got our asses whooped by a handful of Canadians. The story of the music is even weirder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner#Early...

Crito 13y ago

Here is an idea I have been toying with for the past few weeks: Fear has become patriotic. Before I say more, I'll say that I am not a fan of patriotism, I think it is a mild form of bigotry, but I recognize the positive connotations it has to the population at large. I think that patriotism has also traditionally been associated with traits that are seen as positive. Traits like self assurance, confidence, pride, and bravery. You might be afraid that Hitler is going to cross the channel, but you are going to put on a hard face and proudly declare that the RAF will continue to kick ass and take names. That is how you make yourself look patriotic. That has changed slightly though. Now, if you want to present yourself as a patriot, you must present yourself as a coward who fears the enemy first and foremost, even if you really don't. That's why you get nonsense like this prefacing editorials: "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism." You think that terrorists are going to implement Sharia Law in your podunk town in Kansas? A wildly irrational fear. So is that cowardice? No, it is patriotism! Advertise this fear to the world with a giant decal on your pickup truck; show your neighbors just how damn patriotic you really are.

Amadou 13y ago
I am soooo going to plagiarize the crap out of that. I have my doubts that it was ever the way you described it. But given these discussions are often rhetorical I don't think that detracts all that much from the concept.
- Crito 13y ago
  Please do, that's why I shared it. :)