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Deliberately missing the issue. Forget his future presidential campaign. How about every future presidential candidate? The existence of a panopticon corpus

by mapt 11y ago

Deliberately missing the issue. Forget his future presidential campaign. How about every future presidential candidate? The existence of a panopticon corpus of information on them which is only accessible to a certain group, grants power over them to that group. In the Internet age, the NSA's policy of tracking everyone is functionally vetting and accumulating blackmail material not just on presidential candidates (where our scrutiny veers towards the ridiculous), but on anyone who ever wants to enter into any position of power. No human being, much less human organizations, could remain uncorrupted by that level of influence over power for any duration of time. If these policies are not changed, eventually it takes almost negligible amounts of misuse before the NSA or parties within the NSA are quite literally running the country & the world. It takes perhaps a solitary bad actor in the organization with this level of information to merely tip the balance in favor of bureaucratic survival, shift one election or pop an adultery scandal in the way of one board member on one telco. It would require a fanatical level of self-scrutiny and belief in the norms of liberal democracy to self-police against these durable incentives, and obviously that doesn't exist. Maybe having access to everyone's Instagram account and Google search history doesn't immediately sway the balance of power in 2001, but every year that our country doesn't cut out this brain tumor, it gains more power over us; Our odds of retaining some semblance of control over this organization drop. Quite soon, there won't be any technology-phobic individuals left in our positions of leadership. That day, control over this corpus of information will become a fulcrum that can move mountains. In writing _1984_, contra to many interpretations, Orwell wasn't afraid of the concept of tyranny. We have had many tyrannical governments before, and documented their rise and fall. He was terrified of the singular notion that the novel power of technology and panopticon surveillance, might create a powerbase which was functionally immortal, a tyranny that could never fall to dissenting calls for change; That maybe technology had made the power of 'dissent' obsolete. If that comes true, we lose the power of self-determination forever.

pvg 11y ago
Calling the issue misinformed, ahistorical and overwrought is not missing the issue, it's just calling it that. Instead of reading and citing Orwell, read Bamford. You'll find a history of US security and law-enforcement agencies engaging in things far more illegal than anything that's come to light in Snowden's disclosures. You'd be hard-pressed to find among them illegal activity directed at suppressing mainstream political opposition. That would be the kiss of death for any such service. It isn't that these things are not terrible or worthy of scrutiny, opprobrium, or if you prefer, outrage. Suggesting that Western liberal democracy is somehow in unique peril because of them or 'because internet' is, and I'll say it again, silly. Western liberal democracy has easily survived a lot worse.
- mapt 11y ago
  I would press Bamford into service as a proof, not a disproof, of my point. How far do you think COINTELPRO might have gone if the FBI had been able to record every piece of mail, every conversation, had been able to lean on members of the press or members of the Church Committee with pre-recorded leverage, knowledge of every single questionable thing they'd done or said in 'private' all the way back to their childhood? ---- On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's Meet the Press without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency: “ In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[9][10] " ---- The power we have handed these people is becoming orders of magnitude more extreme than the power it was technologically practical for an organization to attain in that era. That power is going to grow as time goes on. The danger is not that the NSA deploys hundreds of thousands of spies to inform on and suppress mainstream political opposition, the danger is that they don't have to, to exert effective control. We're going to need something stronger, not weaker, than the reforms implemented then, to be a durable deterrent to more severe abuses in the future. "Information wants to be free", said they. But that's not the case. The core of the idea is that information provides an incentive to everyone with access to that information, to use it. The greater the pile of information, the stronger the draw becomes. Eventually the amount of power concentrated in that information will corrupt whatever organizational structure we surround it with, so long as we permit it to be gathered in one place.
baddox 11y ago
Is it still considered too tinfoily to believe that presidential (and indeed party primary) candidates are already thoroughly vetted by powerful people long before any ostensibly democratic process is allowed to take place?
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Nah, that's a fact - the two parties' leaderships determine who gets to run for president. Same with every other political party everywhere really.
- CaptainZapp 11y ago
  Uhhh, What about, for example, Sarah Palin?
  - talmand 11y ago
    What about Sarah Palin?
logfromblammo 11y ago
All I can say is that Dubya Bush is lucky he went to school before Facebook and Twitter existed. Even so, some of those party photos still made it out to the public. The same goes for Bill "didn't inhale" Clinton. My imaginary black-hat that hangs out on my shoulder whispers into my ear that part of the political vetting process is now either finding and securing the existing blackmail material or manufacturing some via tricks and traps. Anyone who does not have a readily-pulled lever is prevented from appearing in the news cycle, or simply libeled and slandered. My imaginary white-hat says that virtuous folk simply choose not to dirty their hands with politics. A person who does not compromise his principles cannot compromise enough to be effective in the halls of power. I think they may both be right.

by mapt 11y ago

pvg 11y ago

Calling the issue misinformed, ahistorical and overwrought is not missing the issue, it's just calling it that. Instead of reading and citing Orwell, read Bamford. You'll find a history of US security and law-enforcement agencies engaging in things far more illegal than anything that's come to light in Snowden's disclosures. You'd be hard-pressed to find among them illegal activity directed at suppressing mainstream political opposition. That would be the kiss of death for any such service. It isn't that these things are not terrible or worthy of scrutiny, opprobrium, or if you prefer, outrage. Suggesting that Western liberal democracy is somehow in unique peril because of them or 'because internet' is, and I'll say it again, silly. Western liberal democracy has easily survived a lot worse.

mapt 11y ago
I would press Bamford into service as a proof, not a disproof, of my point. How far do you think COINTELPRO might have gone if the FBI had been able to record every piece of mail, every conversation, had been able to lean on members of the press or members of the Church Committee with pre-recorded leverage, knowledge of every single questionable thing they'd done or said in 'private' all the way back to their childhood? ---- On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's Meet the Press without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency: “ In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[9][10] " ---- The power we have handed these people is becoming orders of magnitude more extreme than the power it was technologically practical for an organization to attain in that era. That power is going to grow as time goes on. The danger is not that the NSA deploys hundreds of thousands of spies to inform on and suppress mainstream political opposition, the danger is that they don't have to, to exert effective control. We're going to need something stronger, not weaker, than the reforms implemented then, to be a durable deterrent to more severe abuses in the future. "Information wants to be free", said they. But that's not the case. The core of the idea is that information provides an incentive to everyone with access to that information, to use it. The greater the pile of information, the stronger the draw becomes. Eventually the amount of power concentrated in that information will corrupt whatever organizational structure we surround it with, so long as we permit it to be gathered in one place.

baddox 11y ago

Is it still considered too tinfoily to believe that presidential (and indeed party primary) candidates are already thoroughly vetted by powerful people long before any ostensibly democratic process is allowed to take place?

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Nah, that's a fact - the two parties' leaderships determine who gets to run for president. Same with every other political party everywhere really.
CaptainZapp 11y ago
Uhhh, What about, for example, Sarah Palin?
- talmand 11y ago
  What about Sarah Palin?

logfromblammo 11y ago

All I can say is that Dubya Bush is lucky he went to school before Facebook and Twitter existed. Even so, some of those party photos still made it out to the public. The same goes for Bill "didn't inhale" Clinton. My imaginary black-hat that hangs out on my shoulder whispers into my ear that part of the political vetting process is now either finding and securing the existing blackmail material or manufacturing some via tricks and traps. Anyone who does not have a readily-pulled lever is prevented from appearing in the news cycle, or simply libeled and slandered. My imaginary white-hat says that virtuous folk simply choose not to dirty their hands with politics. A person who does not compromise his principles cannot compromise enough to be effective in the halls of power. I think they may both be right.