11 ms·

Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)

165 points by happyscrappy 13y ago

basicallydan 13y ago
This article has been posted before, but I'm glad it's come up again. Personally, it puts into words something I struggle to put into words myself, especially when I am trying to argue against massive breaches of privacy by governments. Thanks for the reminder.
higherpurpose 13y ago
Privacy in this case can be replaced with "anonymity", too. The less free speech a country has, the more important anonymity is. But even in super free speech-friendly countries anonymity can be important to hide from the judgement of the masses who might "not get it" because of the status quo culture or whatever. Sometimes ideas can take years to develop and make their way into a culture. If a person is attacked the moment he wants to plant the seed of an idea, either by the status quo-loving crowd or his or her own government, then progress will happen much more slowly.
- breakall 13y ago
  The article says that "privacy is a fundamental right". Are you saying that anonymity is also a fundamental right?
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    If you think rights are everything outside of the necessary intrusions of government, yes. If you think governments grant rights, no.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    To some extent they are the same, and to other extents they are not. That is why they are two different words, with some conceptual overlap. Anonymity is a type of privacy, and privacy (in the US at least) is a concept that appears in the US constitution and in subsequent jursiprudence.
  - john_b 13y ago
    Anonymity is a special case of privacy. Privacy is the ability to control how much you reveal about yourself to others and the circumstances of how you reveal that information. Anonymity is simply the choice to reveal no information about your identity.
- icebraining 13y ago
  As the SCOTUS put it: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
Zigurd 13y ago
This is a good argument, but, by now, the practical good of privacy is stone cold obvious. The same agencies that rob us of privacy engage in dirty tricks campaigns against dissidents. As if to prove this point in one neat package.
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
To make it short: Privacy is about protecting Democracy! As the newest information, we see that we are not only spied on, but there are also stealth techniques to mute bothersome people. It can go thus far, that you will become jailed for something you did not do. This way, anybody that becomes bothersome to mighty people (and I don't speak about any president here) can become a target. People that are against atomic plants or against chemical fertilizers, or against ... you name it. This thing can become worse to the democratic nations than killing random people by drones.
- return0 13y ago
  Fact: the worlds biggest and most spectacular privacy-breaching operation is being run by veritably democratic states, the "west". It's not some evil dictator who dictates this, it's the majority of citizens who demands spying on the rest. Another fact is that there are no major (think, ukraine-size) protests about this anywhere. My conclusion is that even democracy demands some privacy breach. Privacy may be protecting individual rights but it's not a prerequisite for democracy.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    You follow two fallacies: The fallacy, that democracies will stay forever and that people in a democracy act democratic. Democracy is no virtue of its own. Your other logical errors, I will not comment.
    - return0 13y ago
      For the latter yes, why call it a democracy if the majority of people people don't act democratically, the opposite would be absurd. I didn't claim the former at all.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't understand your arguments fully, but I think you just follow a black and white path. And that does not help in the real world.
stillsut 13y ago
Three letters: IRS. Based on their whim, your privacy can be completely invaded, and you can be thrown in jail. This happens ALL the time. What is the NSA going to do? Bring you ("meddlesome kids") into court based non-admissable evidence from PRISM? Never heard of it happening once. Please cite a case if you disagree. And bothersome people working way outside the law like Deepthroat, LulzSec, etc. already do take enormous steps to preserve their anonymity in communications. NSA changes nothing for me.
- codelap 13y ago
  Here is how it can go down, the cops are chasing Bill, because Bill is able to demonstrate that fracking is causing cancer, and all the politicians knew about it and were bribed. PRISIM intercepts bill talking to his dealer, and knows that he will have a small amount of weed on his person for sciatica because his state doesn't have medical marijuana. Send the cops an "anonymous" tip, and are instructed to make an example of this guy, and throw the book at him. Any hard documents are now confiscated as part of the arrest, and the state simply declares the documents to have been tampered with, but include sensitive data, so the public will never see it.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Why so convoluted? If we're going to make up completely unsubstantiated stories, let's go with a simple one. Bill gets shot in the head because the cop doesn't like him. The end. You greatly overestimate how complicated corruption has to be.
    - lotsofmangos 13y ago
      Life is often convoluted as much as it is simple, also that story details an example of parallel construction which is a technique that has been shown to be in current use, while yours seems more of a description of a movie you saw while too drunk to be really paying attention.
      - epmatsw 13y ago
j2kun 13y ago
Privacy laws also protect the people who don't think about privacy. Those are the ones most susceptible to being manipulated by people tracking their activities. See http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wrong/ http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wr...
onion2k 13y ago
privacy is a fundamental right The problem here is that there's no such thing as a "fundamental right". All we have is government and our legal framework; nothing about what we can or can't do exists outside of that[1]. Philosophers have looked at this many times[2], and none have managed to come up with a satisfactory definition of 'rights' that works. Consequently all we have to work with when it comes to saying what we can do, what we have the 'right' to do, and perhaps more importantly what the government can do, is the law. Really, the problem is that governments are tasked with limiting their own power over us; surrendering power is something that very few people are good at. [1] There's morals and ethics, but that's what you should do rather than what you can do. [2] If you're interested, I highly recommend reading about Jeremy Bentham who wrote about the topic more than 200 years ago: http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  I am not interested in, what philosophers say or what the government says, or even what the law books say. It is just obvious to me, that living together (and that is basically what laws, governments etc. are all about) is only possible and can last, when some fundamentals are respected. One of them is privacy (this becomes more and more obvious in the digital age).
  - onion2k 13y ago
    I absolutely agree with you - that's the same society that I want to live in. The notion of 'rights' won't get us that society though. The only way to get there is to elect governments that understand what we want, respect what we want, pass laws to make what we want happen, and ultimately realise that those laws also apply to what the government itself does. While people believe that they have privacy by virtue of something outside of the law and government, they're never actually going to have privacy.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I think, we think similar. The problem is, that from time to time, people have to stand up for their rights -- either by voting or by other means -- to change the behavior of governments. What did Benjamin Franklin write: "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" That is not only an inheritance for governments but also for all societies that want to be free. Freedom is not something to be inherited or some "virtue" you have by be born in the right country, but something that must be fought for in daily practice ... by everybody. Else, we will loose it. And we in the western countries are at the verge.
tribe2012 13y ago
I agree that privacy is a fundamental right. However, has anyone thought about how we haven't seen any real terrorist attacks in the past decade? There are people out there wanting to hurt the US. And it's not difficult to do. It really isn't. Clearly the NSA is doing something right. Like I said, I wholeheartedly agree that privacy is a fundamental right. But, I would like to see more people acknowledging the flip side of the argument.
- amirmc 13y ago
  > "Clearly the NSA is doing something right." Unfortunately, there's no way to independently verify this statement. Only those inside the security apparatus have any data to examine this but they have a clear incentive to make themselves look indispensable (and indeed, get more funding).
  - tribe2012 13y ago
    Poor choice of words. What I'm saying is that there have undoubtedly been thwarted terrorist attacks. I would like more transparency from the government on what led to those. That way, we can at least have an intelligent debate.
    - amirmc 13y ago
      > "...there have undoubtedly been thwarted terrorist attacks." We don't know this. In any case, it's the wrong question as we have to ask ourselves what the cost really is. The gov could just implement a curfew, lock everyone up in their homes and then we'd all be 'safe'. This the fodder of many a scifi movie and it would certainly thwart the plans of 'bad guys'.
    - bediger4000 13y ago
      I don't think anyone has cited specific cases of thwarting terrorist attacks. There's been quotes about some number (52?) of terrorist attacks thwarted, but so what? Which ones? I agree that more transparency is necessary, and that we must have an intelligent debate, leading, ultimately to dismantling the current mass-surveillance apparatus. But I disagree about the "undoubtedly" part. If you'd said "maybe" I might have agreed, but there's just no evidence. There is evidence of abuses, but no evidence of successes.
analyst74 13y ago
This sounds less like a complaint about breach of privacy, but more of complaint about information asymmetry -- where the powerful have access to the data, while the commoners have not. An obvious way to level the field is privacy, so that nobody has access to anybody else's information; another way would be transparency, so it's difficult for the power to hide their abuse of power.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  Interesting idea. But not practical, I think. The mighty will always find ways to hide their doings and as you can see at the current state, those with the bigger resources will always win in such a battle.
- nilved 13y ago
  No, that isn't a viable strategy. This Hacker News thread is evidence that transparency of some kind exists, and that public scrutiny is completely, 100% inconsequential for the elite.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Information asymmetry exists as a continuum and less as definitive states. Say, what if the avg person could boot up an NSA terminal to be able to search (and everyone know that they are logged in and searching) the database? That, to me, would seem to be on the other side of the spectrum than it is now, and I highly doubt that would be 100% inconsequential for the current elite. Would something like this possibly enable a future elite, possibly (as all systems seem be good at doing eventually), but at least it will be a change of the status quo where the few can leverage an information advantage against the masses. And if the startup I've founded with a friend and been working on for two years is any proof of concept of something like that working (yes we are revenue generating as of a month ago, and growing with plenty of things in the pipeline), I beg to differ. We have managed to get people who never would have heard of/or read Hacker News to care (because we made it relevant to their everyday lives in ways they can see the manifestation of their collective behaviors these past decades) about mass surveillance/data collection and acknowledge that as a society if we have collectively let things get to this point, to think that a roll back of the technical capabilities of governments/corporations/other organizations through political pandering will placate, is naive at best. Here's a post I made before the Snowden leaks[0]. I think about these things everyday, and work on ways to show that the emperor of mass surveillance is naked for everyone to see if they remove their hands from their eyes and plugs from their ears because perhaps at the end of the day, we will only see ourselves in front of the mirror reflecting upon our individual and collective actions we make everyday. [0]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent
falconfunction 13y ago
a box filled with rocks does not need locks
- jmnicolas 13y ago
  You might reconsider your statement if said rocks are diamonds ...
at-fates-hands 13y ago
I find it interesting people are all for protecting their privacy and against NSA intrusions, yet the US just handed over millions of people's health records to a government who clearly doesn't care about their privacy. I don't understand this logic at all.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  I am not so current in US politics. What do you mean?
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-services-hub-tracks-social-behavioral-data/ http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-services-h... The federally-run exchanges, euphemistically called “new health insurance marketplaces,” are accompanied by collection of a wide variety of personal data, which can now be legally shared numerous faceless government agencies — agencies which previously had to snoop, steal, or spy to get it. No longer will any of our intimate medical details be reasonably considered either private or protected. To facilitate this forfeiture of individual privacy, the Department of Health and Human Services has created a massive, comprehensive database to record and store Americans’ personal information called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the purpose of the Data Hub is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” No longer will any of our intimate medical details be reasonably considered either private or protected.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      OK, now I better understand. As I am not an US citizen, I am not affected by it, but you are right, that this seems to be a scandal of its own. But you also can see it complementary to all the surveillance stuff. It just seems, that the Obama gov. does not care to much about the privacy of US people. I think, this road taken, by the country, that once was the big model for many countries like the one I live in, is a really bad omen for freedom in the whole world.
dsugarman 13y ago
if you think about this like an inductive proof, you will see that giving up privacy to catch 'bad guys' will lead to a very scary Orwellian life for all of us. I would say most everyone I know does something illegal every day, certainly all of my friends in NYC jaywalking as a way of life and it is scary to think of the ways that computer systems can be used to enforce all of the shitty laws that serve no real purpose. Red light cameras for example are proven to cause more accidents than they prevent but they pay the bills.

165 points by happyscrappy 13y ago

This article has been posted before, but I'm glad it's come up again. Personally, it puts into words something I struggle to put into words myself, especially when I am trying to argue against massive breaches of privacy by governments. Thanks for the reminder.

higherpurpose 13y ago

Privacy in this case can be replaced with "anonymity", too. The less free speech a country has, the more important anonymity is. But even in super free speech-friendly countries anonymity can be important to hide from the judgement of the masses who might "not get it" because of the status quo culture or whatever. Sometimes ideas can take years to develop and make their way into a culture. If a person is attacked the moment he wants to plant the seed of an idea, either by the status quo-loving crowd or his or her own government, then progress will happen much more slowly.

breakall 13y ago
The article says that "privacy is a fundamental right". Are you saying that anonymity is also a fundamental right?
- Zigurd 13y ago
  If you think rights are everything outside of the necessary intrusions of government, yes. If you think governments grant rights, no.
- 001sky 13y ago
  To some extent they are the same, and to other extents they are not. That is why they are two different words, with some conceptual overlap. Anonymity is a type of privacy, and privacy (in the US at least) is a concept that appears in the US constitution and in subsequent jursiprudence.
- john_b 13y ago
  Anonymity is a special case of privacy. Privacy is the ability to control how much you reveal about yourself to others and the circumstances of how you reveal that information. Anonymity is simply the choice to reveal no information about your identity.
icebraining 13y ago
As the SCOTUS put it: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

Zigurd 13y ago

This is a good argument, but, by now, the practical good of privacy is stone cold obvious. The same agencies that rob us of privacy engage in dirty tricks campaigns against dissidents. As if to prove this point in one neat package.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

To make it short: Privacy is about protecting Democracy! As the newest information, we see that we are not only spied on, but there are also stealth techniques to mute bothersome people. It can go thus far, that you will become jailed for something you did not do. This way, anybody that becomes bothersome to mighty people (and I don't speak about any president here) can become a target. People that are against atomic plants or against chemical fertilizers, or against ... you name it. This thing can become worse to the democratic nations than killing random people by drones.

return0 13y ago
Fact: the worlds biggest and most spectacular privacy-breaching operation is being run by veritably democratic states, the "west". It's not some evil dictator who dictates this, it's the majority of citizens who demands spying on the rest. Another fact is that there are no major (think, ukraine-size) protests about this anywhere. My conclusion is that even democracy demands some privacy breach. Privacy may be protecting individual rights but it's not a prerequisite for democracy.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  You follow two fallacies: The fallacy, that democracies will stay forever and that people in a democracy act democratic. Democracy is no virtue of its own. Your other logical errors, I will not comment.
  - return0 13y ago
    For the latter yes, why call it a democracy if the majority of people people don't act democratically, the opposite would be absurd. I didn't claim the former at all.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I don't understand your arguments fully, but I think you just follow a black and white path. And that does not help in the real world.

stillsut 13y ago

Three letters: IRS. Based on their whim, your privacy can be completely invaded, and you can be thrown in jail. This happens ALL the time. What is the NSA going to do? Bring you ("meddlesome kids") into court based non-admissable evidence from PRISM? Never heard of it happening once. Please cite a case if you disagree. And bothersome people working way outside the law like Deepthroat, LulzSec, etc. already do take enormous steps to preserve their anonymity in communications. NSA changes nothing for me.

codelap 13y ago
Here is how it can go down, the cops are chasing Bill, because Bill is able to demonstrate that fracking is causing cancer, and all the politicians knew about it and were bribed. PRISIM intercepts bill talking to his dealer, and knows that he will have a small amount of weed on his person for sciatica because his state doesn't have medical marijuana. Send the cops an "anonymous" tip, and are instructed to make an example of this guy, and throw the book at him. Any hard documents are now confiscated as part of the arrest, and the state simply declares the documents to have been tampered with, but include sensitive data, so the public will never see it.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Why so convoluted? If we're going to make up completely unsubstantiated stories, let's go with a simple one. Bill gets shot in the head because the cop doesn't like him. The end. You greatly overestimate how complicated corruption has to be.
  - lotsofmangos 13y ago
    Life is often convoluted as much as it is simple, also that story details an example of parallel construction which is a technique that has been shown to be in current use, while yours seems more of a description of a movie you saw while too drunk to be really paying attention.
    - epmatsw 13y ago

j2kun 13y ago

Privacy laws also protect the people who don't think about privacy. Those are the ones most susceptible to being manipulated by people tracking their activities. See http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wrong/ http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wr...

onion2k 13y ago

privacy is a fundamental right The problem here is that there's no such thing as a "fundamental right". All we have is government and our legal framework; nothing about what we can or can't do exists outside of that[1]. Philosophers have looked at this many times[2], and none have managed to come up with a satisfactory definition of 'rights' that works. Consequently all we have to work with when it comes to saying what we can do, what we have the 'right' to do, and perhaps more importantly what the government can do, is the law. Really, the problem is that governments are tasked with limiting their own power over us; surrendering power is something that very few people are good at. [1] There's morals and ethics, but that's what you should do rather than what you can do. [2] If you're interested, I highly recommend reading about Jeremy Bentham who wrote about the topic more than 200 years ago: http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
I am not interested in, what philosophers say or what the government says, or even what the law books say. It is just obvious to me, that living together (and that is basically what laws, governments etc. are all about) is only possible and can last, when some fundamentals are respected. One of them is privacy (this becomes more and more obvious in the digital age).
- onion2k 13y ago
  I absolutely agree with you - that's the same society that I want to live in. The notion of 'rights' won't get us that society though. The only way to get there is to elect governments that understand what we want, respect what we want, pass laws to make what we want happen, and ultimately realise that those laws also apply to what the government itself does. While people believe that they have privacy by virtue of something outside of the law and government, they're never actually going to have privacy.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    I think, we think similar. The problem is, that from time to time, people have to stand up for their rights -- either by voting or by other means -- to change the behavior of governments. What did Benjamin Franklin write: "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" That is not only an inheritance for governments but also for all societies that want to be free. Freedom is not something to be inherited or some "virtue" you have by be born in the right country, but something that must be fought for in daily practice ... by everybody. Else, we will loose it. And we in the western countries are at the verge.

tribe2012 13y ago

I agree that privacy is a fundamental right. However, has anyone thought about how we haven't seen any real terrorist attacks in the past decade? There are people out there wanting to hurt the US. And it's not difficult to do. It really isn't. Clearly the NSA is doing something right. Like I said, I wholeheartedly agree that privacy is a fundamental right. But, I would like to see more people acknowledging the flip side of the argument.

amirmc 13y ago
> "Clearly the NSA is doing something right." Unfortunately, there's no way to independently verify this statement. Only those inside the security apparatus have any data to examine this but they have a clear incentive to make themselves look indispensable (and indeed, get more funding).
- tribe2012 13y ago
  Poor choice of words. What I'm saying is that there have undoubtedly been thwarted terrorist attacks. I would like more transparency from the government on what led to those. That way, we can at least have an intelligent debate.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    > "...there have undoubtedly been thwarted terrorist attacks." We don't know this. In any case, it's the wrong question as we have to ask ourselves what the cost really is. The gov could just implement a curfew, lock everyone up in their homes and then we'd all be 'safe'. This the fodder of many a scifi movie and it would certainly thwart the plans of 'bad guys'.
  - bediger4000 13y ago
    I don't think anyone has cited specific cases of thwarting terrorist attacks. There's been quotes about some number (52?) of terrorist attacks thwarted, but so what? Which ones? I agree that more transparency is necessary, and that we must have an intelligent debate, leading, ultimately to dismantling the current mass-surveillance apparatus. But I disagree about the "undoubtedly" part. If you'd said "maybe" I might have agreed, but there's just no evidence. There is evidence of abuses, but no evidence of successes.

analyst74 13y ago

This sounds less like a complaint about breach of privacy, but more of complaint about information asymmetry -- where the powerful have access to the data, while the commoners have not. An obvious way to level the field is privacy, so that nobody has access to anybody else's information; another way would be transparency, so it's difficult for the power to hide their abuse of power.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
Interesting idea. But not practical, I think. The mighty will always find ways to hide their doings and as you can see at the current state, those with the bigger resources will always win in such a battle.
nilved 13y ago
No, that isn't a viable strategy. This Hacker News thread is evidence that transparency of some kind exists, and that public scrutiny is completely, 100% inconsequential for the elite.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Information asymmetry exists as a continuum and less as definitive states. Say, what if the avg person could boot up an NSA terminal to be able to search (and everyone know that they are logged in and searching) the database? That, to me, would seem to be on the other side of the spectrum than it is now, and I highly doubt that would be 100% inconsequential for the current elite. Would something like this possibly enable a future elite, possibly (as all systems seem be good at doing eventually), but at least it will be a change of the status quo where the few can leverage an information advantage against the masses. And if the startup I've founded with a friend and been working on for two years is any proof of concept of something like that working (yes we are revenue generating as of a month ago, and growing with plenty of things in the pipeline), I beg to differ. We have managed to get people who never would have heard of/or read Hacker News to care (because we made it relevant to their everyday lives in ways they can see the manifestation of their collective behaviors these past decades) about mass surveillance/data collection and acknowledge that as a society if we have collectively let things get to this point, to think that a roll back of the technical capabilities of governments/corporations/other organizations through political pandering will placate, is naive at best. Here's a post I made before the Snowden leaks[0]. I think about these things everyday, and work on ways to show that the emperor of mass surveillance is naked for everyone to see if they remove their hands from their eyes and plugs from their ears because perhaps at the end of the day, we will only see ourselves in front of the mirror reflecting upon our individual and collective actions we make everyday. [0]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent

falconfunction 13y ago

a box filled with rocks does not need locks

jmnicolas 13y ago
You might reconsider your statement if said rocks are diamonds ...

at-fates-hands 13y ago

I find it interesting people are all for protecting their privacy and against NSA intrusions, yet the US just handed over millions of people's health records to a government who clearly doesn't care about their privacy. I don't understand this logic at all.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
I am not so current in US politics. What do you mean?
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-services-hub-tracks-social-behavioral-data/ http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-services-h... The federally-run exchanges, euphemistically called “new health insurance marketplaces,” are accompanied by collection of a wide variety of personal data, which can now be legally shared numerous faceless government agencies — agencies which previously had to snoop, steal, or spy to get it. No longer will any of our intimate medical details be reasonably considered either private or protected. To facilitate this forfeiture of individual privacy, the Department of Health and Human Services has created a massive, comprehensive database to record and store Americans’ personal information called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the purpose of the Data Hub is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” No longer will any of our intimate medical details be reasonably considered either private or protected.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    OK, now I better understand. As I am not an US citizen, I am not affected by it, but you are right, that this seems to be a scandal of its own. But you also can see it complementary to all the surveillance stuff. It just seems, that the Obama gov. does not care to much about the privacy of US people. I think, this road taken, by the country, that once was the big model for many countries like the one I live in, is a really bad omen for freedom in the whole world.

dsugarman 13y ago

if you think about this like an inductive proof, you will see that giving up privacy to catch 'bad guys' will lead to a very scary Orwellian life for all of us. I would say most everyone I know does something illegal every day, certainly all of my friends in NYC jaywalking as a way of life and it is scary to think of the ways that computer systems can be used to enforce all of the shitty laws that serve no real purpose. Red light cameras for example are proven to cause more accidents than they prevent but they pay the bills.