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These findings illustrate the difference between surveillance and a surveillance state. The GCHG and by relation the NSA had plenty of information about who vis

by hooande 13y ago

These findings illustrate the difference between surveillance and a surveillance state. The GCHG and by relation the NSA had plenty of information about who visited or donated to Wikileaks, but did not act on any of that information [1]. These documents could easily be construed as a vote of confidence for the agencies in question. People love to throw around the phrase "Orwellian" these days, but his seminal work does not appear to be relevant here. We all know that the government could be surveilling us at any time. We should all be afraid of it taking widespread action based upon that information. This day has not come yet. The government can listen to what you say and watch what you do all they want. The moment they move from surveilling to censoring, from watching to interfering, the average citizen will come down on them with righteous fury. No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people. It's a testament to the strength of our ideals that government agents can tap your phone and hear you say how much you hate them, and yet still not lift a finger against you [1]. Keeping an eye on quasi-legal websites and organizations is the government's job. Using force to harm them is a line that we cannot allow them to cross. There are many, many more documents that have yet to come to light and I'm sure that this community will be the first to point out any serious abuses of power. [1] "That we know of"

sergiosgc 13y ago
Assuming that the government reaction would be to beat down your door is naive. The government knows, as you do, that down that path lies insurrection. Beating down doors and imprisoning dissidents is a crude tool. There are other tools for influencing individuals and controlling society, much more targeted, silent and insidious.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  I'd love to see some brain-storming on what those techniques might be; together with civil-society countermeasures.
  - bsder 13y ago
    See: Parallel construction
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    There's the MLK method: spy on a meddlesome soul, discover his infidelity, tell him to commit suicide or you'll tell his wife: http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-blackmail-martin-luther-king-into-suicide/ http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl... http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-letter-to-martin-luther-king-telling-him-to-commit-suicide/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette... http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-your-end-is.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo... Or just general COINTELPRO: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro (Yes, that's the FBI's own archives, happy reading.)
revelation 13y ago
> We all know that the government could be surveilling us at any time. We should all be afraid of it taking widespread action based upon that information. Now thats positively orwellian. I recommend you read the book first.
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
To some extent I agree... but this seems wrong: It's a testament to the strength of our ideals that government agents can tap your phone and hear you say how much you hate them, and yet still not lift a finger against you Parallel Construction is widely abused (or so it has been reported). So while it may not be about, 'government haters', and they may not be publicly abusing the information collected from wiretapping, it is being abused none the less.
tomp 13y ago
They don't need to come to your door... It's enough to charge you with phony charges and lock you up in an embassy!
lispm 13y ago
That's complete naive. Fascism is not one big step. It is a step at a time. Kill foreign people using drones. Even assassinate people of your own country. Huge graph databases storing everything about your life forever. Military equipment for police. Life sentences for minor crimes. Torture. High security prisons outside the usual law system. Getting no government job because you read Wikileaks. Access to only censored information for government workers. Journalists are manipulated to report about war in positive ways. Piece by piece. Each step brings you nearer a form of fascism. Mass surveillance is just another tool.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The words of someone who has no appreciation (and likely no knowledge) of what COINTELPRO were, or the FBI's hounding of Martin Luther King: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/cointelpro.html http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/cointelpro.html MLK: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-your-end-is.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo... http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-letter-to-martin-luther-king-telling-him-to-commit-suicide/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette... There's far more than beating down doors.
coldtea 13y ago
>No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people. Actually they do it all the time. In the EU country I'm from it's a regular occurence -- using surveillance like this to arrest and harass people the government don't like, and it has only been getting worse in the past years. In what parallel universe do people live, who think that the government does not do such things? Perhaps they are not kept current on stuff that's not on the 9 o clock news, but either appears on the middle pages in newspapers or only registers in smaller circles.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Can you list any cases of people arrested for viewing websites the government doesn't like?
  - coldtea 13y ago
    So, as he put it "No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people". Well, the key word here is "lawful". We have for example cases where people were arrested and tried for merely linking to another website (e.g a news aggregator operator was arrested for the content of a linked news article). We also have made up charges for people viewing "child pornography". For example one well known activist had such charges made up against him by the police for revenge, AFTER he had testified and provided evidence of police involvment in sexual trafficking. There are also cases of people arrested for having a blog with religious satire. We have cases where a advisor to the PM threatens people contributing donations to a certain news site. Or the same advisor giving the real name of an anonymous (critical to the government) blogger on Twitter. We had a case (recently) of a politician suing (and getting injunction measures) against a Wikipedia editor, for mentioning a well known fact about him (already published in numerous newspapers and books). And numerous other, even more crazy situations...
belorn 13y ago
Who are you, Jim Hacker[1]? We are to believe that the government is spending millions on collecting information that they are then not going to use? That sounds completely wasteful of tax money. We also already know that the US do use the information they collect. It is called "background check" and is performed in airports and government job applications. They might not be so open about it that they go and break down peoples door, but is secret files hidden in bunkers better? 1: Yes, Minister, episode 4, first 5 minutes.
twobits 13y ago
"The moment they move from surveilling to censoring, from watching to interfering, the average citizen will come down on them with righteous fury" And nothing of consequence will happen. ..You don't build tools so as to never use them.

by hooande 13y ago

sergiosgc 13y ago

Assuming that the government reaction would be to beat down your door is naive. The government knows, as you do, that down that path lies insurrection. Beating down doors and imprisoning dissidents is a crude tool. There are other tools for influencing individuals and controlling society, much more targeted, silent and insidious.

w_t_payne 13y ago
I'd love to see some brain-storming on what those techniques might be; together with civil-society countermeasures.
- bsder 13y ago
  See: Parallel construction
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  There's the MLK method: spy on a meddlesome soul, discover his infidelity, tell him to commit suicide or you'll tell his wife: http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-blackmail-martin-luther-king-into-suicide/ http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl... http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-letter-to-martin-luther-king-telling-him-to-commit-suicide/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette... http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-your-end-is.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo... Or just general COINTELPRO: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro (Yes, that's the FBI's own archives, happy reading.)

revelation 13y ago

> We all know that the government could be surveilling us at any time. We should all be afraid of it taking widespread action based upon that information. Now thats positively orwellian. I recommend you read the book first.

ItendToDisagree 13y ago

To some extent I agree... but this seems wrong: It's a testament to the strength of our ideals that government agents can tap your phone and hear you say how much you hate them, and yet still not lift a finger against you Parallel Construction is widely abused (or so it has been reported). So while it may not be about, 'government haters', and they may not be publicly abusing the information collected from wiretapping, it is being abused none the less.

tomp 13y ago

They don't need to come to your door... It's enough to charge you with phony charges and lock you up in an embassy!

lispm 13y ago

That's complete naive. Fascism is not one big step. It is a step at a time. Kill foreign people using drones. Even assassinate people of your own country. Huge graph databases storing everything about your life forever. Military equipment for police. Life sentences for minor crimes. Torture. High security prisons outside the usual law system. Getting no government job because you read Wikileaks. Access to only censored information for government workers. Journalists are manipulated to report about war in positive ways. Piece by piece. Each step brings you nearer a form of fascism. Mass surveillance is just another tool.

dredmorbius 13y ago

The words of someone who has no appreciation (and likely no knowledge) of what COINTELPRO were, or the FBI's hounding of Martin Luther King: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/cointelpro.html http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/cointelpro.html MLK: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-your-end-is.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo... http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-letter-to-martin-luther-king-telling-him-to-commit-suicide/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette... There's far more than beating down doors.

coldtea 13y ago

>No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people. Actually they do it all the time. In the EU country I'm from it's a regular occurence -- using surveillance like this to arrest and harass people the government don't like, and it has only been getting worse in the past years. In what parallel universe do people live, who think that the government does not do such things? Perhaps they are not kept current on stuff that's not on the 9 o clock news, but either appears on the middle pages in newspapers or only registers in smaller circles.

DanBC 13y ago
Can you list any cases of people arrested for viewing websites the government doesn't like?
- coldtea 13y ago
  So, as he put it "No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people". Well, the key word here is "lawful". We have for example cases where people were arrested and tried for merely linking to another website (e.g a news aggregator operator was arrested for the content of a linked news article). We also have made up charges for people viewing "child pornography". For example one well known activist had such charges made up against him by the police for revenge, AFTER he had testified and provided evidence of police involvment in sexual trafficking. There are also cases of people arrested for having a blog with religious satire. We have cases where a advisor to the PM threatens people contributing donations to a certain news site. Or the same advisor giving the real name of an anonymous (critical to the government) blogger on Twitter. We had a case (recently) of a politician suing (and getting injunction measures) against a Wikipedia editor, for mentioning a well known fact about him (already published in numerous newspapers and books). And numerous other, even more crazy situations...

belorn 13y ago

Who are you, Jim Hacker[1]? We are to believe that the government is spending millions on collecting information that they are then not going to use? That sounds completely wasteful of tax money. We also already know that the US do use the information they collect. It is called "background check" and is performed in airports and government job applications. They might not be so open about it that they go and break down peoples door, but is secret files hidden in bunkers better? 1: Yes, Minister, episode 4, first 5 minutes.

twobits 13y ago

"The moment they move from surveilling to censoring, from watching to interfering, the average citizen will come down on them with righteous fury" And nothing of consequence will happen. ..You don't build tools so as to never use them.