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Nearly every family member or friend with whom I discuss Edward Snowden's revelations and the vast injustice of what the NSA is doing couldn't care less. It's

Nearly every family member or friend with whom I discuss Edward Snowden's revelations and the vast injustice of what the NSA is doing couldn't care less. It's possible they don't believe the Snowden revelations represent a loss of civil liberties. I actually find this to be a pretty rational belief: There's much talk about NSA data harvesting efforts as a "machinery of totalitarianism", but precious little (any?) evidence it's actually been employed that way. Real harm, not just the potential for harm, is what will motivate American citizens and their political leaders. After all, we have an election every four years giving one of us the potential power to kill millions and end civilization as we know it; that he or she also has the power to authorize computer systems that trawl through domestic phone records looking for connections to foreign bad guys doesn't seem that alarming in comparison.

jgroszko 12y ago
It's weird public discourse has gone from "Na, the NSA couldn't possibly be that widespread and invasive" to "Na, they're not doing anything bad with it..." It's like some collective denial of what the next step could be, apparently we have a lot more faith in government than a lot of people let on...
- twoodfin 12y ago
  I don't remember that Pollyanna public discourse. What would you consider the most shocking Snowden disclosure? None that I'm aware of were that surprising. It was an open secret at the phone companies that TLA folk of one sort or another have been (only sometimes with direct cooperation) plugging mysterious gear into the network for decades. Really astounding that their methods are now targeted at Gmail and Facebook?
  - jgroszko 12y ago
    The firmware exploits that were being talked about a few weeks ago are probably the most surprising to me. But IIRC a lot of the stuff that Snowden revealed was previously considered the realm of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    There is a huge difference between "carnivore", a box the FBI could put on a single network somewhere, and room 641A, six rooms hooked directly into AT&T backbones sniffing all data. There is also a huge difference between passive monitoring at specific points with some sort of criminal investigation, and actively infiltrating US companies and breaking their security to be able to monitor its traffic unimpeded. It's funny how I was a conspiracy nut when I told people this stuff was happening, and now I have people gaslighting me that everybody knew it was happening all along.
    - amyjess 12y ago
      Room 641A was well known, as fact, years before Snowden and nobody gave a shit. I remember people talking about it circa 2006. It was in the context of "if the government wanted to ban something and actively enforce it, they have the ability to do that because they've got a room where they grab a beam off all of AT&T's fiber optics" Everybody knew, nobody cared.
  - njharman 12y ago
    Taping phones of foreign politicians Intercepting shipments to plant back doors Sabotaging cryptography efforts to so everyone has weak encryption. Lying to congress. Are a few shocking revelations from Snowden disclosure my bad memory recalls.
- amyjess 12y ago
  Oh, everyone assumed the government knows anything anyway, long before Snowden. I remember after the Boston Bombings, people were complaining, saying things like "How could the government be so incompetent as to not stop this before it happened? They monitor everything on the Internet, so they should have known!". This was before Snowden. Years before that, I remember people were casually talking about Room 641A. This would be about 2005 or so. Everyone assumed the government snarfs all Internet data long before Snowden, and almost nobody cared.
  - jgroszko 12y ago
    Perhaps I'm conflating indifference with dismissal as conspiracy theory.
  - cmdkeen 12y ago
    Hasn't the existence of Echelon been common knowledge for years? The concept was popularised in Enemy of the State in 1998. Before that you had Clinton and the Clipper chip which could easily lead the poorly technically informed to assume all their internet traffic was already capable of being monitored.
    - amyjess 12y ago
      Yeah, that too. And I heard about Carnivore in the '90s -- though most people vastly overstated what it was capable of (people tended to ascribe Echelon's capabilities to Carnivore).
exelius 12y ago
I think that most people don't fully appreciate the complex relationship between the government and the governed. What we've had in the past and are missing now is oversight. This comes in multiple forms: congressional oversight, regulatory oversight, judicial oversight, etc. Ultimately, if those methods failed, we always had the media to provide oversight - which is why until the last 20 years or so, freedom of the press was considered sacred. Real harm is happening today; it's just hard to prove. The entire reason there is no evidence that the NSA machine has been used for nefarious purposes is because they've designed the programs to avoid congressional oversight. The NSA/CIA deliberately and consistently lied to congress and the judiciary about the scope and legality of its programs. When the media stepped in because other oversight had failed, they were treated as traitors and threatened with jail. The reason for all this oversight is because totalitarianism is what creeps in when you have no oversight: in the absence of a watchdog, government will naturally work to make the task of governance more efficient. The most efficient method of government is totalitarianism, so their efforts will converge to this. This is absolutely the slippery slope argument: once oversight is removed, the government can do whatever it wants and threaten anyone who disagrees with treason.
- twoodfin 12y ago
  I don't buy the idea that oversight is profoundly lacking. The FISA court has ruled on many of these programs, Congressional intelligence committees and the leadership have been briefed (funding has to come from somewhere!), and as I said, we have an election every four years to pick a guy or gal who can call the head of the NSA or CIA into the Oval and demand whatever changes they'd like. That's one of the reasons elections matter. Anyway, this is way off topic from the Patriot Act, which of course happens more or less in full public view.
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  After Hoover died it became clear the level of actual corruption and control he had over Presidential elections, and how the FBI had been suborned to serve his personal and political beliefs. So there was a secret police period, except it was years ago and it didn't result in a totalitarian system. That did include the mass interception of mail and telephone calls, without the pesky need for warrants. What has happened is a relatively short period of time in which technically inclined Americans had access to a mass communication medium which was extremely difficult to intercept. Apart from that period of time it has always been the case that if the Government wanted to get you it could and would intercept your communications. The general public have probably just always operated on the assumption that their lives just aren't important enough to become the centre of attention.

jgroszko 12y ago

It's weird public discourse has gone from "Na, the NSA couldn't possibly be that widespread and invasive" to "Na, they're not doing anything bad with it..." It's like some collective denial of what the next step could be, apparently we have a lot more faith in government than a lot of people let on...

twoodfin 12y ago
I don't remember that Pollyanna public discourse. What would you consider the most shocking Snowden disclosure? None that I'm aware of were that surprising. It was an open secret at the phone companies that TLA folk of one sort or another have been (only sometimes with direct cooperation) plugging mysterious gear into the network for decades. Really astounding that their methods are now targeted at Gmail and Facebook?
- jgroszko 12y ago
  The firmware exploits that were being talked about a few weeks ago are probably the most surprising to me. But IIRC a lot of the stuff that Snowden revealed was previously considered the realm of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  There is a huge difference between "carnivore", a box the FBI could put on a single network somewhere, and room 641A, six rooms hooked directly into AT&T backbones sniffing all data. There is also a huge difference between passive monitoring at specific points with some sort of criminal investigation, and actively infiltrating US companies and breaking their security to be able to monitor its traffic unimpeded. It's funny how I was a conspiracy nut when I told people this stuff was happening, and now I have people gaslighting me that everybody knew it was happening all along.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    Room 641A was well known, as fact, years before Snowden and nobody gave a shit. I remember people talking about it circa 2006. It was in the context of "if the government wanted to ban something and actively enforce it, they have the ability to do that because they've got a room where they grab a beam off all of AT&T's fiber optics" Everybody knew, nobody cared.
- njharman 12y ago
  Taping phones of foreign politicians Intercepting shipments to plant back doors Sabotaging cryptography efforts to so everyone has weak encryption. Lying to congress. Are a few shocking revelations from Snowden disclosure my bad memory recalls.
amyjess 12y ago
Oh, everyone assumed the government knows anything anyway, long before Snowden. I remember after the Boston Bombings, people were complaining, saying things like "How could the government be so incompetent as to not stop this before it happened? They monitor everything on the Internet, so they should have known!". This was before Snowden. Years before that, I remember people were casually talking about Room 641A. This would be about 2005 or so. Everyone assumed the government snarfs all Internet data long before Snowden, and almost nobody cared.
- jgroszko 12y ago
  Perhaps I'm conflating indifference with dismissal as conspiracy theory.
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  Hasn't the existence of Echelon been common knowledge for years? The concept was popularised in Enemy of the State in 1998. Before that you had Clinton and the Clipper chip which could easily lead the poorly technically informed to assume all their internet traffic was already capable of being monitored.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    Yeah, that too. And I heard about Carnivore in the '90s -- though most people vastly overstated what it was capable of (people tended to ascribe Echelon's capabilities to Carnivore).

exelius 12y ago

I think that most people don't fully appreciate the complex relationship between the government and the governed. What we've had in the past and are missing now is oversight. This comes in multiple forms: congressional oversight, regulatory oversight, judicial oversight, etc. Ultimately, if those methods failed, we always had the media to provide oversight - which is why until the last 20 years or so, freedom of the press was considered sacred. Real harm is happening today; it's just hard to prove. The entire reason there is no evidence that the NSA machine has been used for nefarious purposes is because they've designed the programs to avoid congressional oversight. The NSA/CIA deliberately and consistently lied to congress and the judiciary about the scope and legality of its programs. When the media stepped in because other oversight had failed, they were treated as traitors and threatened with jail. The reason for all this oversight is because totalitarianism is what creeps in when you have no oversight: in the absence of a watchdog, government will naturally work to make the task of governance more efficient. The most efficient method of government is totalitarianism, so their efforts will converge to this. This is absolutely the slippery slope argument: once oversight is removed, the government can do whatever it wants and threaten anyone who disagrees with treason.

twoodfin 12y ago
I don't buy the idea that oversight is profoundly lacking. The FISA court has ruled on many of these programs, Congressional intelligence committees and the leadership have been briefed (funding has to come from somewhere!), and as I said, we have an election every four years to pick a guy or gal who can call the head of the NSA or CIA into the Oval and demand whatever changes they'd like. That's one of the reasons elections matter. Anyway, this is way off topic from the Patriot Act, which of course happens more or less in full public view.
cmdkeen 12y ago
After Hoover died it became clear the level of actual corruption and control he had over Presidential elections, and how the FBI had been suborned to serve his personal and political beliefs. So there was a secret police period, except it was years ago and it didn't result in a totalitarian system. That did include the mass interception of mail and telephone calls, without the pesky need for warrants. What has happened is a relatively short period of time in which technically inclined Americans had access to a mass communication medium which was extremely difficult to intercept. Apart from that period of time it has always been the case that if the Government wanted to get you it could and would intercept your communications. The general public have probably just always operated on the assumption that their lives just aren't important enough to become the centre of attention.