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There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't

by woodman 12y ago

There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would say the harm is the loss of privacy, but I disagree. I believe the harm is further consolidation of power by those with the means to abuse it. So I would advocate for a democratization of all these spy programs. If the DEA can spy on us, we should be able to spy on the DEA. Any funding request for government programs should include a documented method of direct public access (not FOIA, operator level). It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. The memory of tyrannical governance was fresh. Information is no different, if the government posses this information - so should the citizens.

isho 12y ago
+1, I totally agree. Easier said than done though.
- woodman 12y ago
  I remember when NIST was force to release the source code to NBIS. [0] We just need a lot more of that and we'll be good :) [0] http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/nbis.cfm http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/nbis.cfm
tim333 12y ago
In principle it could be reversed politically by the government just saying no. In practice no one seems that bothered though.
- woodman 12y ago
  Yeah, and in principle the NSA can't dragnet domestic signals, but here we are. Relying on the honor system has led us to something right out of Gulliver's Travels, with government bureaucrats advancing through a game of leaping and creeping...
joliv 12y ago
Some things the public should not be able to spy on. Using the example of the DEA, we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers, or when and where they're planning to make a bust. We can't have our citizens' tax records getting out of the IRS. And public relations would break down if we can't keep our allies secrets, either. Our military's plans shouldn't be made known to the enemy, of course. Many secrets are kept for good reason—letting it all out indiscriminately just doesn't make sense.
- woodman 12y ago
  Security through obscurity? No doubt a great deal would need to change, but we've tried the method of giving a select group of individuals an immense amount of power and hoping for the best. It hasn't worked out that well. So I'd recommend that you consider the present situation, because the prospect of you knowing my tax information, by comparison, doesn't seem so bad.
  - navait 12y ago
    If security through obscurity is having secrets at all, all security is obscurity.
    - woodman 12y ago
      What is secret about a moat, electrified fence or a stated policy of mutual assured destruction?
      - navait 12y ago
        Heh, true. I've seen too much time thinking of computer security, and neglected to think of real world security.
      - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
        > What is secret about a moat, electrified fence or a stated policy of mutual assured destruction? Normal people don't have a moat. A major reason that e.g. home invasions are risky (and thus are deterred) is that the criminal doesn't know when the mark or the neighbors will be away from home, what security may be in place or whether there is anything worth stealing. If you put that information on the internet for anyone then every time you come home from work all your electronics will be missing. Replacing that "security through obscurity" with actual physical security is not something most people can afford.
click170 12y ago
America has a gum problem, we can all agree. That said, I feel like the right to bare arms was included specifically for overthrowing oppressive governments (and in case the British came back?). At what point does a government become sufficiently oppressive as to be overthrown by the people? Without defining that, I feel like government can just keep employing the "but terrorists" excuse and the overton window to keep stripping us of more and more of our privacy and rights.
- Sevrene 12y ago
  Great change rarely comes with-out great violence. It is sad, but appears to be true. Considering Americans and other FVEY countries are for all purposes living very well compared to their cousins makes me doubt this will ever happen.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Sometimes I get upset when I encounter a gum on the street, but I stop short of calling for more gum control. And, I don't have any idea where any person gets the idea that they have the right to tell another person whether or not to shave their arms. As for the second thing you said, sounds like you probably just need a little more soma.
  - eru 12y ago
    You should move to Singapore. They fixed their gum problem, without impeding the right to bare arms.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
alexqgb 12y ago
Well, there is a way actually. But first you need to restore the power of the vote so that legislators are accountable to the people and the people alone. This means dismantling the five main pillars that are used to nullify, misdirect, or otherwise diminish the power of the vote - both a a signaling mechanism that members of the electorate can use to unify themselves, and as a reliably severe punitive tool that the electorate can use to avenge themselves when their "representatives" betray their interests. Listed in no particular order, they are 1. Gerrymandering (aka partisan redistricting) 2. Closed primaries 3. Private campaign finance 4. The "revolving door" that allows private industry to offer well-paid sinecures to public "servants" who have systematically betrayed the public's trust. 5. Myriad restrictions on ballot access. It's important to recognize that while each of these pillars diminishes the power of the vote, the really insidious effect comes from their interaction. But those knock-on effects can all be stopped by addressing the fundamental - and fundamental anti-democratic - structures at their roots. Eliminating any one of these abominations tilts the balance back in favor of the good guys. All of them together can be lethal to the ambitions of people who's own ambitions are anathema to a self-governing republic.
- woodman 12y ago
  Well that would certainly be a preferable situation to where we presently find ourselves, but I don't know that the root cause is addressed in that. The root cause being the fact that one entity (government, class, group, whatever) is exempt from the rules. That exemption, no matter how apparently small, ruins everything. It is like drinking water from a reservoir where across the way you see a dude with his pants down taking a dump into the water. Oh, and the exemption can't be fixed - because it defines a state: the monopoly on violence. It is a logical flaw. I'm not that thrilled with everybody in the voting population having some small amount of ownership of my life either, especially when 42% of them believe in ghosts.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Even though I'm not a US American (where this problem seems to be the gravest in the Western world, partly because of scale, partly because the US' system was the prototypal modern Republic where many lessons haven't been learned yet at time of the foundation), I've been thinking exactly that for quite a while - your list pretty much describes what need to be solved. But I have to ask - how would one go about doing this in the US? How do you change a system with such a momentum? Through the monopoly on violent force and largely complacent mass media the establishment's grip on the system seems to be air tight. And if you just wait until the shit hits the fan (I predict this will happen with enough doubling of damages caused by natural disasters that will almost certainly be coming in the next decades), it could turn both ways - the current system could be replaced with a way more horrible totalitarian regime as well as it could be fixed towards giving the power back to the people - the former is even way more probable when you look at history. The only case I know where drastic change has gone over relatively well is South Africa - everywhere else you look there was a huge struggle, usually war.
weaksauce 12y ago
There was an lapd officer(s) that were murdered within the last few days and the murderer used the waze app that shows the reported locations of speed traps and the government is already asking google to prohibit that information in some form. Knee jerk reactions to current events are never going to end well for openness of data.
- woodman 12y ago
  Knee jerk reactions to anything rarely lead to positive outcomes, transparency is no exception.
- Difwif 12y ago
  Not quite true. There were recent stories that the LAPD commissioner was calling for Waze to remove police tracking from their app. [1] There was a callout of two NYPD officers being killed in December by a shooter that used Waze before the attacks, but did not use it to track their locations leading up to and during shootings. [1] - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_TRACKING_APP http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_TRACKING_AP...
themartorana 12y ago
Who remembers when Cheney removed his house from Google Earth? All the while the NSA et al were building insane domestic surveillance systems. That's pretty much when I understood what "oligarchy" meant and how very much there we were. Snowden didn't help my mental picture of the country.
- woodman 12y ago
  I've always enjoyed the work of John Young. [0] The eyeball series isn't nearly as interesting as most of the mirrored leaks, but it serves to frustrate such attempts at airbrushing the homes and workplaces of the anointed. [0] http://cryptome.org/ http://cryptome.org/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 12y ago
I was thinking recently that the best thing that could happen to Internet privacy would be for someone to build a Palantir clone with an open API, such that anyone could dox anyone else for $0.10 a pop. Being able to dox yourself (like Googling yourself, but PRISM-er) in real time would basically give you an OPSEC REPL, perfect for figuring out how to reduce your exposure.
- woodman 12y ago
  You can be sure that if Tor was main stream that would happen, but there aren't enough potential customers right now to justify the risk.
zaroth 12y ago
The only way within the system is I guess the Supreme Court. They have already laid a framework establishing that tracking requires a warrant, even if it's just making the police's job more efficient and it's data they can get from a tail. If the license plate tracking gets to that point within metropolitan areas (presumably where cameras are most dense) or they start doing it from blimps or whatever, at least there is precedence for striking it. It's not going to stop the collection but it should at least prevent the data being used against you in court. Of course, parallel construction. Sigh...
- 3beard 12y ago
  A second way within the system is that people start to vote for politicians who are serious about privacy.
  - woodman 12y ago
    Give us a kindly king! We've got systemic issues that need to be fixed. What would you say if I suggested a form of government where you're well-being and happiness is contingent on the wisdom and industry of every other person? Yeah, not a great plan - but here we are.
tomphoolery 12y ago
Much like the Constitution you mentioned, I feel we need some sort of document that explains the intentions behind surveillance and the limitations by which it can be legally used. We have no problem upholding the bill of rights, so why would it be hard to create a set of guidelines for future regulation of surveillance? Making it open is not a complete solution (though it's still a good idea), because we're still not setting any limitations as to how this information can be legally used. We need to do more to protect the rights of the citizens involved. People like Edward Snowden have said surveillance can be used for good purposes. For example, fast forward and imagine auto insurance companies using this traffic monitoring data: Instead of structuring their prices based around age/gender/racial/class discrimination, they can use actual statistics to determine a little more about how safe someone is driving. Or instead of civil engineers having to waste time, money and other resources doing traffic studies...what if they could see the effects of their work in real-time? I think this technology could be used for very good purposes if there was just some transparency and rules surrounding it.
- visarga 12y ago
  > We have no problem upholding the bill of rights Who has no problem? The gov or the people?
- holri 12y ago
  The purpose of an insurance is to share the risk of individuals with a great number of people. To pinpoint the risk to a single person is against this purpose. They can get away with this because you have to have a insurance by law. Therefore this practice should be forbidden by law.
  - Normati 12y ago
    No, the solution would be to get insurance against high insurance costs. This already happens with medical insurance. If you're already sick your insurance costs more. But if you get insurance in advance, before you know you'll be sick, it's cheaper. The same could happen with driving. Get insurance before you've driven, before you know you'll be risky.
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> There is no way to reverse this. It's easy to reverse some of this. If they're recording license plates and they or someone else will do it regardless, then stop having license plates. The justification for having them doesn't really apply to self-driving cars anyway. Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical. That clearly isn't the case -- the constitution has been preventing police from searching your home without a warrant since 1789, even though they absolutely do have the operational capability to do that. More to the point, even if they're not prohibited from spying, as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost. Encryption works. Tor works. In many cases the lack of prohibition on spying would be irrelevant if not for the existing prohibitions and impediments to strong anonymity, as with regulations on digital money transfers. What's interesting is that your conclusion is still mostly right. Government secrecy is the cancer of democracy. But governments being transparent to their people in no way requires people to be transparent to their governments.
- woodman 12y ago
  > The justification for having them doesn't really apply to self-driving cars anyway. You seriously believe that? You think the government makes common sense decisions? So ok, no more plates. How long until we hear about them logging the serial numbers broadcast by our tire pressure sensors? Or what about the unique magnetic signature of our vehicles detectable by all the loops already embedded in the road? If the government has the technical ability to do something that will expand power and responsibility, it will do it. It has been demonstrated time and time again. > ... as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost. Yeah we'll see. Tampering with NIST, clipper chips, export controls. This is not sustainable, people will eventually tire. Also, the argument sounds very similar to what was said about TSA security theater: "No, we aren't impeding your freedom of movement - you can take the bus!" Guess what, the TSA is at the bus station now. "No, we aren't violating your fourth amendment rights - if you want to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures than you can use encryption!" Guess what happens next. It is a bullshit argument - I shouldn't have to run myself ragged. > Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical. No, my point is that you can't prevent something technically practical while the government operates in secret, enjoying a monopoly on information. That is why warrantless home searches aren't extremely common, because it would be impossible to do in secret - old papers have very little to do with it.
orbifold 12y ago
This kind of defeatism is not helpful. Through history people were able to eventually overthrow much more brutal oppressors. The kind coercion used in western societies might appear to be more effective, but there is no reason to think that direct political action could not work. When it happens, like in the case of the occupy movement, you can see by the media reaction, how uncomfortable it is for the powerful. Your suggestion of a democratization of spy programs is actually one of the premises of "The Circle", the book is meant to paint a dystopian future.
- crusso 12y ago
  Name one thing accomplished by the occupy movement. If anything, they were a distraction from the worst culprits of the unholy corporate-government alliance.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well, they made a nice few-second appearance in Google's Zeitgeist 2011 video, and also spawned some fun memes (#OccupyJupiter comes to my mind). That must be worth something. </sarcasm>
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  > Through history people were able to eventually overthrow much more brutal oppressors. They were more brutal because they substituted brutality in lieu of these sorts of technological innovations. They couldn't spy on everyone, so they had to crucify the few opponents they could definitively catch (or some sacrificial lambs, when they couldn't.) Not to mention, it's much easier to overthrow a brutal dictator. Your government is killing your friends, drafting your family into the military, and sending your coworkers to work camps? Hell yeah, we won't stand for that! But if your government is just quietly watching, while your family is sitting at home, with food in their fridge - will you pick up a weapon to fight against that regime? Will your friends, family, neighbors?
  - orbifold 12y ago
    Well the good thing about not living in a dictatorship is that you have freedom of expression and freedom of association. So there really isn't any need to resort to violence, at least in principle. You are right to point out that the majority of people are just comfortable enough, struggling to pay for debts they incurred in one way or another and generally have no incentive to fight totalitarian overreach of the state. Unfortunately the institutions for the indoctrination of the young are set up in a way by now, that they are very good at producing hyper-focused well-working replaceable cogs for industry, together with their Ayn Rand reading, libertarian overlords in one nice package. They do all that, while setting you up for a life of indebted servitude, if you don't happen to choose a profession that requires you to be highly compliant with the current system to be successful. So I guess if there is one thing to fix it would be education, a properly educated general public would hopefully be less apathetic and compliant than it is today. Technology has the potential to make education much more widely available and independent of having to assemble in one place and be subjected to abuse and brainwashing of authority figures.
stainednapkin 12y ago
You are wrong. As citizens we can grant and revoke government powers at will. Cutting off or significantly curtailing their revenue would have a similar effect. EDIT: There would need to be a concomitant cultural change as well. As it stands folks are not aware of or engaged with what their government is doing. Even if we replaced every government official today, it could quickly devolve back to its current state.
- freehunter 12y ago
  >You are wrong. As citizens we can grant and revoke government powers at will. Theoretically. First you would need someone with these beliefs to run for office. You would need them to win office, in a position where they have the power to change the laws. Then you would need them to resist the temptation to listen to lobbyists trying to change their mind. Then you would need a vote to pass. Then you would need the government agencies to agree (just because the law says something, doesn't mean everyone agrees). Generally this would take going to a high court who forces the government to comply. Hopefully that court is public and not a private rubber stamp committee. Theoretically, we can revoke government positions. But we need politicians to do it on our behalf, and we don't really have politicians who are willing to do that.
  - stainednapkin 12y ago
    Nope. These are rights granted by the Constitution. The difficulty would be in getting people to care.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      You're not wrong. The problem, though, is that I'm still right. Yes, theoretically we can change things. The way this happens is through our elected officials, not via us directly. If our elected officials are unwilling to change, there's not much we can do to force it. Literally the only way the Constitution allows for us to change things is if we vote someone into office who will change it, and then it still hinges on them actually changing things, which historically hasn't happened. You can repeat the Constitution until you're blue in the face, but just because something sounds easy on paper doesn't mean it's easy or even plausible in reality.
spenvo 12y ago
Thought experiment: if gov programs were forced to be transparent, would they be any less brazen? Not at this rate. I think officials see the Snowden-fallout and say, "hey, that wasn't so bad. the public barely cares. Yo Comey, hit the press & equate encryption to child abuse; we can win this narrative." Lack of transparency is certainly an issue, but i'd say the bigger one how to make sense of this information to the public.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. It's worth noting that no longer do citizens have the ability to arm themselves with "the same class of weapons" as the government. Unless you're willing to sell APCs and cruise missiles to private parties, there's no way a rebellion can outgun country's military.
- woodman 12y ago
  I don't think it is worth noting, I doubt it would be productive to go into John Birch Society / Oath Keeper territory :)

by woodman 12y ago

isho 12y ago

+1, I totally agree. Easier said than done though.

woodman 12y ago
I remember when NIST was force to release the source code to NBIS. [0] We just need a lot more of that and we'll be good :) [0] http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/nbis.cfm http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/nbis.cfm

tim333 12y ago

In principle it could be reversed politically by the government just saying no. In practice no one seems that bothered though.

woodman 12y ago
Yeah, and in principle the NSA can't dragnet domestic signals, but here we are. Relying on the honor system has led us to something right out of Gulliver's Travels, with government bureaucrats advancing through a game of leaping and creeping...

joliv 12y ago

Some things the public should not be able to spy on. Using the example of the DEA, we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers, or when and where they're planning to make a bust. We can't have our citizens' tax records getting out of the IRS. And public relations would break down if we can't keep our allies secrets, either. Our military's plans shouldn't be made known to the enemy, of course. Many secrets are kept for good reason—letting it all out indiscriminately just doesn't make sense.

woodman 12y ago
Security through obscurity? No doubt a great deal would need to change, but we've tried the method of giving a select group of individuals an immense amount of power and hoping for the best. It hasn't worked out that well. So I'd recommend that you consider the present situation, because the prospect of you knowing my tax information, by comparison, doesn't seem so bad.
- navait 12y ago
  If security through obscurity is having secrets at all, all security is obscurity.
  - woodman 12y ago
    What is secret about a moat, electrified fence or a stated policy of mutual assured destruction?
    - navait 12y ago
      Heh, true. I've seen too much time thinking of computer security, and neglected to think of real world security.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      > What is secret about a moat, electrified fence or a stated policy of mutual assured destruction? Normal people don't have a moat. A major reason that e.g. home invasions are risky (and thus are deterred) is that the criminal doesn't know when the mark or the neighbors will be away from home, what security may be in place or whether there is anything worth stealing. If you put that information on the internet for anyone then every time you come home from work all your electronics will be missing. Replacing that "security through obscurity" with actual physical security is not something most people can afford.

click170 12y ago

America has a gum problem, we can all agree. That said, I feel like the right to bare arms was included specifically for overthrowing oppressive governments (and in case the British came back?). At what point does a government become sufficiently oppressive as to be overthrown by the people? Without defining that, I feel like government can just keep employing the "but terrorists" excuse and the overton window to keep stripping us of more and more of our privacy and rights.

Sevrene 12y ago
Great change rarely comes with-out great violence. It is sad, but appears to be true. Considering Americans and other FVEY countries are for all purposes living very well compared to their cousins makes me doubt this will ever happen.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Sometimes I get upset when I encounter a gum on the street, but I stop short of calling for more gum control. And, I don't have any idea where any person gets the idea that they have the right to tell another person whether or not to shave their arms. As for the second thing you said, sounds like you probably just need a little more soma.
- eru 12y ago
  You should move to Singapore. They fixed their gum problem, without impeding the right to bare arms.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

alexqgb 12y ago

Well, there is a way actually. But first you need to restore the power of the vote so that legislators are accountable to the people and the people alone. This means dismantling the five main pillars that are used to nullify, misdirect, or otherwise diminish the power of the vote - both a a signaling mechanism that members of the electorate can use to unify themselves, and as a reliably severe punitive tool that the electorate can use to avenge themselves when their "representatives" betray their interests. Listed in no particular order, they are 1. Gerrymandering (aka partisan redistricting) 2. Closed primaries 3. Private campaign finance 4. The "revolving door" that allows private industry to offer well-paid sinecures to public "servants" who have systematically betrayed the public's trust. 5. Myriad restrictions on ballot access. It's important to recognize that while each of these pillars diminishes the power of the vote, the really insidious effect comes from their interaction. But those knock-on effects can all be stopped by addressing the fundamental - and fundamental anti-democratic - structures at their roots. Eliminating any one of these abominations tilts the balance back in favor of the good guys. All of them together can be lethal to the ambitions of people who's own ambitions are anathema to a self-governing republic.

woodman 12y ago
Well that would certainly be a preferable situation to where we presently find ourselves, but I don't know that the root cause is addressed in that. The root cause being the fact that one entity (government, class, group, whatever) is exempt from the rules. That exemption, no matter how apparently small, ruins everything. It is like drinking water from a reservoir where across the way you see a dude with his pants down taking a dump into the water. Oh, and the exemption can't be fixed - because it defines a state: the monopoly on violence. It is a logical flaw. I'm not that thrilled with everybody in the voting population having some small amount of ownership of my life either, especially when 42% of them believe in ghosts.
m_mueller 12y ago
Even though I'm not a US American (where this problem seems to be the gravest in the Western world, partly because of scale, partly because the US' system was the prototypal modern Republic where many lessons haven't been learned yet at time of the foundation), I've been thinking exactly that for quite a while - your list pretty much describes what need to be solved. But I have to ask - how would one go about doing this in the US? How do you change a system with such a momentum? Through the monopoly on violent force and largely complacent mass media the establishment's grip on the system seems to be air tight. And if you just wait until the shit hits the fan (I predict this will happen with enough doubling of damages caused by natural disasters that will almost certainly be coming in the next decades), it could turn both ways - the current system could be replaced with a way more horrible totalitarian regime as well as it could be fixed towards giving the power back to the people - the former is even way more probable when you look at history. The only case I know where drastic change has gone over relatively well is South Africa - everywhere else you look there was a huge struggle, usually war.

weaksauce 12y ago

There was an lapd officer(s) that were murdered within the last few days and the murderer used the waze app that shows the reported locations of speed traps and the government is already asking google to prohibit that information in some form. Knee jerk reactions to current events are never going to end well for openness of data.

woodman 12y ago
Knee jerk reactions to anything rarely lead to positive outcomes, transparency is no exception.
Difwif 12y ago
Not quite true. There were recent stories that the LAPD commissioner was calling for Waze to remove police tracking from their app. [1] There was a callout of two NYPD officers being killed in December by a shooter that used Waze before the attacks, but did not use it to track their locations leading up to and during shootings. [1] - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_TRACKING_APP http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_TRACKING_AP...

themartorana 12y ago

Who remembers when Cheney removed his house from Google Earth? All the while the NSA et al were building insane domestic surveillance systems. That's pretty much when I understood what "oligarchy" meant and how very much there we were. Snowden didn't help my mental picture of the country.

woodman 12y ago
I've always enjoyed the work of John Young. [0] The eyeball series isn't nearly as interesting as most of the mirrored leaks, but it serves to frustrate such attempts at airbrushing the homes and workplaces of the anointed. [0] http://cryptome.org/ http://cryptome.org/
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

derefr 12y ago

I was thinking recently that the best thing that could happen to Internet privacy would be for someone to build a Palantir clone with an open API, such that anyone could dox anyone else for $0.10 a pop. Being able to dox yourself (like Googling yourself, but PRISM-er) in real time would basically give you an OPSEC REPL, perfect for figuring out how to reduce your exposure.

woodman 12y ago
You can be sure that if Tor was main stream that would happen, but there aren't enough potential customers right now to justify the risk.

zaroth 12y ago

The only way within the system is I guess the Supreme Court. They have already laid a framework establishing that tracking requires a warrant, even if it's just making the police's job more efficient and it's data they can get from a tail. If the license plate tracking gets to that point within metropolitan areas (presumably where cameras are most dense) or they start doing it from blimps or whatever, at least there is precedence for striking it. It's not going to stop the collection but it should at least prevent the data being used against you in court. Of course, parallel construction. Sigh...

3beard 12y ago
A second way within the system is that people start to vote for politicians who are serious about privacy.
- woodman 12y ago
  Give us a kindly king! We've got systemic issues that need to be fixed. What would you say if I suggested a form of government where you're well-being and happiness is contingent on the wisdom and industry of every other person? Yeah, not a great plan - but here we are.

tomphoolery 12y ago

Much like the Constitution you mentioned, I feel we need some sort of document that explains the intentions behind surveillance and the limitations by which it can be legally used. We have no problem upholding the bill of rights, so why would it be hard to create a set of guidelines for future regulation of surveillance? Making it open is not a complete solution (though it's still a good idea), because we're still not setting any limitations as to how this information can be legally used. We need to do more to protect the rights of the citizens involved. People like Edward Snowden have said surveillance can be used for good purposes. For example, fast forward and imagine auto insurance companies using this traffic monitoring data: Instead of structuring their prices based around age/gender/racial/class discrimination, they can use actual statistics to determine a little more about how safe someone is driving. Or instead of civil engineers having to waste time, money and other resources doing traffic studies...what if they could see the effects of their work in real-time? I think this technology could be used for very good purposes if there was just some transparency and rules surrounding it.

visarga 12y ago
> We have no problem upholding the bill of rights Who has no problem? The gov or the people?
holri 12y ago
The purpose of an insurance is to share the risk of individuals with a great number of people. To pinpoint the risk to a single person is against this purpose. They can get away with this because you have to have a insurance by law. Therefore this practice should be forbidden by law.
- Normati 12y ago
  No, the solution would be to get insurance against high insurance costs. This already happens with medical insurance. If you're already sick your insurance costs more. But if you get insurance in advance, before you know you'll be sick, it's cheaper. The same could happen with driving. Get insurance before you've driven, before you know you'll be risky.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> There is no way to reverse this. It's easy to reverse some of this. If they're recording license plates and they or someone else will do it regardless, then stop having license plates. The justification for having them doesn't really apply to self-driving cars anyway. Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical. That clearly isn't the case -- the constitution has been preventing police from searching your home without a warrant since 1789, even though they absolutely do have the operational capability to do that. More to the point, even if they're not prohibited from spying, as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost. Encryption works. Tor works. In many cases the lack of prohibition on spying would be irrelevant if not for the existing prohibitions and impediments to strong anonymity, as with regulations on digital money transfers. What's interesting is that your conclusion is still mostly right. Government secrecy is the cancer of democracy. But governments being transparent to their people in no way requires people to be transparent to their governments.

woodman 12y ago
> The justification for having them doesn't really apply to self-driving cars anyway. You seriously believe that? You think the government makes common sense decisions? So ok, no more plates. How long until we hear about them logging the serial numbers broadcast by our tire pressure sensors? Or what about the unique magnetic signature of our vehicles detectable by all the loops already embedded in the road? If the government has the technical ability to do something that will expand power and responsibility, it will do it. It has been demonstrated time and time again. > ... as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost. Yeah we'll see. Tampering with NIST, clipper chips, export controls. This is not sustainable, people will eventually tire. Also, the argument sounds very similar to what was said about TSA security theater: "No, we aren't impeding your freedom of movement - you can take the bus!" Guess what, the TSA is at the bus station now. "No, we aren't violating your fourth amendment rights - if you want to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures than you can use encryption!" Guess what happens next. It is a bullshit argument - I shouldn't have to run myself ragged. > Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical. No, my point is that you can't prevent something technically practical while the government operates in secret, enjoying a monopoly on information. That is why warrantless home searches aren't extremely common, because it would be impossible to do in secret - old papers have very little to do with it.

orbifold 12y ago

This kind of defeatism is not helpful. Through history people were able to eventually overthrow much more brutal oppressors. The kind coercion used in western societies might appear to be more effective, but there is no reason to think that direct political action could not work. When it happens, like in the case of the occupy movement, you can see by the media reaction, how uncomfortable it is for the powerful. Your suggestion of a democratization of spy programs is actually one of the premises of "The Circle", the book is meant to paint a dystopian future.

crusso 12y ago
Name one thing accomplished by the occupy movement. If anything, they were a distraction from the worst culprits of the unholy corporate-government alliance.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Well, they made a nice few-second appearance in Google's Zeitgeist 2011 video, and also spawned some fun memes (#OccupyJupiter comes to my mind). That must be worth something. </sarcasm>
pavel_lishin 12y ago
> Through history people were able to eventually overthrow much more brutal oppressors. They were more brutal because they substituted brutality in lieu of these sorts of technological innovations. They couldn't spy on everyone, so they had to crucify the few opponents they could definitively catch (or some sacrificial lambs, when they couldn't.) Not to mention, it's much easier to overthrow a brutal dictator. Your government is killing your friends, drafting your family into the military, and sending your coworkers to work camps? Hell yeah, we won't stand for that! But if your government is just quietly watching, while your family is sitting at home, with food in their fridge - will you pick up a weapon to fight against that regime? Will your friends, family, neighbors?
- orbifold 12y ago
  Well the good thing about not living in a dictatorship is that you have freedom of expression and freedom of association. So there really isn't any need to resort to violence, at least in principle. You are right to point out that the majority of people are just comfortable enough, struggling to pay for debts they incurred in one way or another and generally have no incentive to fight totalitarian overreach of the state. Unfortunately the institutions for the indoctrination of the young are set up in a way by now, that they are very good at producing hyper-focused well-working replaceable cogs for industry, together with their Ayn Rand reading, libertarian overlords in one nice package. They do all that, while setting you up for a life of indebted servitude, if you don't happen to choose a profession that requires you to be highly compliant with the current system to be successful. So I guess if there is one thing to fix it would be education, a properly educated general public would hopefully be less apathetic and compliant than it is today. Technology has the potential to make education much more widely available and independent of having to assemble in one place and be subjected to abuse and brainwashing of authority figures.

stainednapkin 12y ago

You are wrong. As citizens we can grant and revoke government powers at will. Cutting off or significantly curtailing their revenue would have a similar effect. EDIT: There would need to be a concomitant cultural change as well. As it stands folks are not aware of or engaged with what their government is doing. Even if we replaced every government official today, it could quickly devolve back to its current state.

freehunter 12y ago
>You are wrong. As citizens we can grant and revoke government powers at will. Theoretically. First you would need someone with these beliefs to run for office. You would need them to win office, in a position where they have the power to change the laws. Then you would need them to resist the temptation to listen to lobbyists trying to change their mind. Then you would need a vote to pass. Then you would need the government agencies to agree (just because the law says something, doesn't mean everyone agrees). Generally this would take going to a high court who forces the government to comply. Hopefully that court is public and not a private rubber stamp committee. Theoretically, we can revoke government positions. But we need politicians to do it on our behalf, and we don't really have politicians who are willing to do that.
- stainednapkin 12y ago
  Nope. These are rights granted by the Constitution. The difficulty would be in getting people to care.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    You're not wrong. The problem, though, is that I'm still right. Yes, theoretically we can change things. The way this happens is through our elected officials, not via us directly. If our elected officials are unwilling to change, there's not much we can do to force it. Literally the only way the Constitution allows for us to change things is if we vote someone into office who will change it, and then it still hinges on them actually changing things, which historically hasn't happened. You can repeat the Constitution until you're blue in the face, but just because something sounds easy on paper doesn't mean it's easy or even plausible in reality.

spenvo 12y ago

Thought experiment: if gov programs were forced to be transparent, would they be any less brazen? Not at this rate. I think officials see the Snowden-fallout and say, "hey, that wasn't so bad. the public barely cares. Yo Comey, hit the press & equate encryption to child abuse; we can win this narrative." Lack of transparency is certainly an issue, but i'd say the bigger one how to make sense of this information to the public.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. It's worth noting that no longer do citizens have the ability to arm themselves with "the same class of weapons" as the government. Unless you're willing to sell APCs and cruise missiles to private parties, there's no way a rebellion can outgun country's military.

woodman 12y ago
I don't think it is worth noting, I doubt it would be productive to go into John Birch Society / Oath Keeper territory :)