Privacy - Short counters to nothing to hide, nothing fear arguments.

[Abomination]

So according to you normal people aren't important enough to monitor, but are important enough to blow up with a drone?

Sure.

Are normal people being blown up by drones by their own government?

No.

Have to disagree with you there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMjuTZ6f0lM

Among the victims is a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD BOY

Oh come on: attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, not on US soil, directed at targets who were agents of groups the government was AT WAR with, and half were collateral.

They weren't attacked for holding different political views, they weren't attacked for living normal lives (far from it) - they were in a nation that was considered hostile territory.

I somehow wouldn't consider people living in hostile territory to be "normal people" in relation to citizens of the United States. Your mileage may vary but we are not splitting hairs here.

Perhaps you don't even know it but one of your friends is a Chinese dissident, or a Syrian Opposition fighter. Maybe it was by following YOUR internet patterns that the NSA found this information before it fell into the hands of some Chinese or North Korean hacker.

Bang. One in the back of the head all because you wished someone Happy Birthday on Facebook.

... what planet do you live on?

Put down the Tom Clancy books, man. You're sounding more and more absurd.

It's a tiny but heavily overpopulated planet called earth. There are SEVEN BILLION people on the planet I live on. That's 7,000,000,000. You find it implausible that this could happen even once? Statistically speaking it's not just possible, it's pretty much INEVITABLE.

Impossible? No. Improbable to happen to me as an individual? Yes. Happens enough that it would be a good enough reason to oppose the law? Of course not.

Cars kill far more people than almost any other statistic yet we don't ban cars. Just because something COULD be used in a terrible manner (and it might be used once or twice, we can never know the exact number) shouldn't suddenly counter any of the useful and practical applications of said legislation.

 

[Greg White]

Just 2 things to point out to everyone screaming MA PRIVACY!:

1. Phone records: the Fed doesn't care about you spending $8000 on phone sex or you talking to 3 other girls while married. Their concern is tracking illegal activity like, be it finding out who all called a drug dealer or something more severe like tracking individuals involved in the drug trade or plotting terrorist acts(or 'acts of kindness' if you're talking about the ALF).

2. Internet records: Unless you're engaged in piracy(this being illegal is nothing new and I have no pity for you if you get caught and take that $100000 fine/10 year jail term), look at websites of known militant groups, or watch CP, the data-mining software isn't even going to give you a second look. Your work ethic and internet searches are too insignificant to warrant a second look unless you start looking at stuff that trips an alarm.

 

[RikuoAmero]

So according to you normal people aren't important enough to monitor, but are important enough to blow up with a drone?

Sure.

Are normal people being blown up by drones by their own government?

No.

Have to disagree with you there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMjuTZ6f0lM

Among the victims is a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD BOY

Oh come on: attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, not on US soil, directed at targets who were agents of groups the government was AT WAR with, and half were collateral.

They weren't attacked for holding different political views, they weren't attacked for living normal lives (far from it) - they were in a nation that was considered hostile territory.

I somehow wouldn't consider people living in hostile territory to be "normal people" in relation to citizens of the United States. Your mileage may vary but we are not splitting hairs here.

Perhaps you don't even know it but one of your friends is a Chinese dissident, or a Syrian Opposition fighter. Maybe it was by following YOUR internet patterns that the NSA found this information before it fell into the hands of some Chinese or North Korean hacker.

Bang. One in the back of the head all because you wished someone Happy Birthday on Facebook.

... what planet do you live on?

Put down the Tom Clancy books, man. You're sounding more and more absurd.

It's a tiny but heavily overpopulated planet called earth. There are SEVEN BILLION people on the planet I live on. That's 7,000,000,000. You find it implausible that this could happen even once? Statistically speaking it's not just possible, it's pretty much INEVITABLE.

Impossible? No. Improbable to happen to me as an individual? Yes. Happens enough that it would be a good enough reason to oppose the law? Of course not.

Cars kill far more people than almost any other statistic yet we don't ban cars. Just because something COULD be used in a terrible manner (and it might be used once or twice, we can never know the exact number) shouldn't suddenly counter any of the useful and practical applications of said legislation.

You didn't watch the whole video did you? Of the four US citizens killed by US drone strikes, only ONE was more or less confirmed to be a terrorist hatching terrorist plots. The other three? All US citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I'm sorry, but where is it written down that "collateral" is justified? Just because Yemen and Pakistan are considered to be hostile countries to the US doesn't mean that every single person currently in those countries is a non-person where it doesn't matter if they get killed or not (especially since the US isn't even at war with them!)


What you're writing just highlights the problem the rest of the world has with the US government. You proclaim people to be terrorists, go off half-cocked and bomb the sh*t out of them and if other people get killed, you just go "Oops" or "collateral!" and don't give a damn about how this makes you look like incompetent fools at best, or bloodthirsty warmongers at worst.

 

[Abomination]

You didn't watch the whole video did you? Of the four US citizens killed by US drone strikes, only ONE was more or less confirmed to be a terrorist hatching terrorist plots. The other three? All US citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I'm sorry, but where is it written down that "collateral" is justified? Just because Yemen and Pakistan are considered to be hostile countries to the US doesn't mean that every single person currently in those countries is a non-person where it doesn't matter if they get killed or not (especially since the US isn't even at war with them!)


What you're writing just highlights the problem the rest of the world has with the US government. You proclaim people to be terrorists, go off half-cocked and bomb the sh*t out of them and if other people get killed, you just go "Oops" or "collateral!" and don't give a damn about how this makes you look like incompetent fools at best, or bloodthirsty warmongers at worst.

I didn't say "collateral" was justified. I said it's hardly an act of INTENTIONAL censoring of US citizens by the government via drone strikes.

Yes it sucks innocents were killed but the comparison between the government actively using its own powers to oppress its people and collateral in a combat zone is comparing apples to oranges. Yes, they're both fruit but of considerably different structure and content.

 

[RikuoAmero]

You didn't watch the whole video did you? Of the four US citizens killed by US drone strikes, only ONE was more or less confirmed to be a terrorist hatching terrorist plots. The other three? All US citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I'm sorry, but where is it written down that "collateral" is justified? Just because Yemen and Pakistan are considered to be hostile countries to the US doesn't mean that every single person currently in those countries is a non-person where it doesn't matter if they get killed or not (especially since the US isn't even at war with them!)


What you're writing just highlights the problem the rest of the world has with the US government. You proclaim people to be terrorists, go off half-cocked and bomb the sh*t out of them and if other people get killed, you just go "Oops" or "collateral!" and don't give a damn about how this makes you look like incompetent fools at best, or bloodthirsty warmongers at worst.

I didn't say "collateral" was justified. I said it's hardly an act of INTENTIONAL censoring of US citizens by the government via drone strikes.

Yes it sucks innocents were killed but the comparison between the government actively using its own powers to oppress its people and collateral in a combat zone is comparing apples to oranges. Yes, they're both fruit but of considerably different structure and content.

"I didn't say collateral was justified"...yes you did. "Oh come on: attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, not on US soil, directed at targets who were agents of groups the government was AT WAR with, and half were collateral." You said half the people listed there (half, not three quarters, so wrong there bob) were agents of of Al'Qaida and that the others were collateral, nothing to be concerned about. You didn't follow up after "collateral" you ended it right there as if the fact that completely innocent people were killed was nothing to be bothered with.

Yes, I can understand how terrorists killing massive numbers of people is horrible, but so too is the US government. Here, have another TYT video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAah_HYFsgk

Watch the whole thing please. Have a careful look at the numbers. From an outsider looking in (I'm not from the US or from the Middle East) to me, that makes the US look just as bad as the terrorists they're fighting. Especially the part about up to about 200 kids killed, and the double-taps, the targeting of first responders. If the US wants to target Al'Qaida terrorists, do Seal Team Six. Do helicopter raids. Not drone strikes where the vast majority of the time (pay careful attention to where Cenk reveals that only 2% of drone strikes target top level Al'Qaida operatives) its civilians who pay the price of recklessness.

 

[Abomination]

-Snip-

I never said justified. I said the US doesn't target normal civilians with drone strikes.

4 deaths of US citizens by drone strikes when, as you said, one was identified as a member of a hostile organization and the others were collateral does not rebuke what I said.

I never justified collateral and I'm not going to get into the discussion of how shit war is. We weren't even talking about war in the first place.

The US doesn't use drone strikes against its own people in an effort to enforce its authority over them.

 

[Zetona]

The point of the program is to catch terrorists. I think most people would agree that if someone is a known terrorist, we should do whatever we can to monitor them to stop any plots they may have and perhaps capture them.

Actually, no. I don't think we should do "whatever we can" to monitor them. We should do what is reasonable and within the bounds of law. Even if it means the difference between stopping an attack and allowing it to proceed due to lack of information, there is never an excuse to dismantle individual liberty and privacy. Whatever happened to the "Land of the Free"?

This is where most of the disagreement on this issue stems. The obvious counterargument here is "well, they can't enjoy individual liberty and privacy if they're too busy being dead because a terrorist killed them and ten others." The people who are doing all this monitoring have this idea that it is worth any cost to prevent the death of even one American from terrorism, and while you can see where they're coming from, most Americans do not agree. I can't say I agree myself?but I also can't say I'm terribly surprised or outraged at these latest developments given what the government and private companies have done before to get our data.

 

[Jamieson 90]

It's very simple - innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. Sure you might not have anything to hide but the default view shouldn't be that you do unless you prove so, you know something that's been a major element of the UK criminal justice system for centuries yet today you wouldn't think so.

 

[careful]

Government secrets are usually things like war crimes and terrorism and torture. Not secrets your average Joe might be carrying around. Anyways, a counterargument comes from one of the establishments think-tanks, the Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments [http://www.brookings.edu/]:

Executive Summary

Within the next few years an important threshold will be crossed: For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders?every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner. Governments with a history of using all of the tools at their disposal to track and monitor their citizens will undoubtedly make full use of this capability once it becomes available.

The Arab Spring of 2011, which saw regimes toppled by protesters organized via Twitter and Facebook, was heralded in much of the world as signifying a new era in which information technology alters the balance of power in favor of the repressed. However, within the world?s many remaining authoritarian regimes it was undoubtedly viewed very differently. For those governments, the Arab Spring likely underscored the perils of failing to exercise sufficient control of digital communications and highlighted the need to redouble their efforts to increase the monitoring of their citizenry.

Technology trends are making such monitoring easier to perform. While the domestic surveillance programs of countries including Syria, Iran, China, Burma, and Libya under Gadhafi have been extensively reported, the evolving role of digital storage in facilitating truly pervasive surveillance is less widely recognized. Plummeting digital storage costs will soon make it possible for authoritarian regimes to not only monitor known dissidents, but to also store the complete set of digital data associated with everyone within their borders. These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine, enabling state security services to retroactively eavesdrop on people in the months and years before they were designated as surveillance targets. This will fundamentally change the dynamics of dissent, insurgency and revolution.

 

[careful]

The US doesn't use drone strikes against its own people in an effort to enforce its authority over them.

They are already here in the US and their use is growing quickly:

They're cheap and small, and the software is already on the internets.

U.S. law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance. Routine aerial surveillance would profoundly change the character of public life in America. Rules must be put in place to ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this new technology without bringing us closer to a ?surveillance society? in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the government. Drone manufacturers are also considering offering police the option of arming these remote-controlled aircraft with (nonlethal for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas. Read the ACLU?s full report on domestic drones here. American Civil Liberties Union [http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/domestic-drones]

Domestic drones are already reshaping U.S.crime-fighting. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/03/us-usa-drones-lawenforcement-idUSBRE92208W20130303] Reuters

6 Ways to Use Domestic Drones. [http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/6-ways-to-use-domestic-drones-20130331] National Journal

Tens of thousands of domestic drones already in use nationwide, with more to come. [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/drones-skies-domestically-article-1.1278342] New York Daily.

The Dawning of Domestic Drones. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/the-dawning-of-domestic-drones.html] New York Times

 

[Seydaman]

]

The comic meant that everyone breaks the law, everyone. Even if it's minor, and because everyone breaks the law then the law enforcement must selectively enforce laws, or detain everyone living in the country, which doesn't work. This give law enforcement infinite power because chances are they could just pick a random person from a crowd and jail them for something that was recorded. J Walking? Downloading Music? Did you just run a stop sign on an empty street?

 

[Seydaman]

]

The comic meant that everyone breaks the law, everyone. Even if it's minor, and because everyone breaks the law then the law enforcement must selectively enforce laws, or detain everyone living in the country, which doesn't work. This give law enforcement infinite power because chances are they could just pick a random person from a crowd and jail them for something that was recorded. J Walking? Downloading Music? Did you just run a stop sign on an empty street?

Pretty sure they can only selectively enforce laws already anyway.

More selectively. More so than currently, because while currently (I think) one cannot just run up to a random person and ID them and jail them with 100% confidence that some illegal activity is recorded.

OT: These developments scare the shit out of me.

 

[oZode]

Simple.

If this is true, than surely the government has no secrets! Nothing to hide, nothing to fear! If the government has nothing to hide, why should they have any privacy?

The CIA has nothing to hide, the IRS has nothing to hide... Right?

If so, since we live in a democratic government we should be able to know everything about our governments actions without any lies or scandals, but this is not the case.

For this same reason the common citizen should have the right to keep secrets and have their privacy themselves.

We all have secrets, and we have the right to keep them secret.

And yes guy listening in on everything we write, I know you are listening/watching. Enjoying life? Ever wonder about the secrets you hide? Should they all be out in the open and recorded?

Than again not using the internet when hiding things can work, but seeing the little fly bot things I don't know how long it will be until even the freedom of privacy naturally given when on a spoken medium is also under watch, perhaps in a decade or less.

 

[Da Orky Man]

how long will it be before such as system is abused? a day max. and from that point on its all down hill.

i am a communist, in the UK there is an old, and abet unenforced law which makes my political stance a crime. however when i discuss thing with friends about the state of the country and how i personally feel, these words could be used to construct a treason case against me in the UK. and treason still does carry the death penalty in the UK (as does murder of a member of the royal usurpers and arson in the *****'s dockyards).

now the way i phrased my last sentence will ALSO get me into trouble. see how easy it is to fall foul of a bullshit law with overbearing and all pervasive all seeing systems.

i wish my utter failure for a democracy had something akin to the US bill of rights, and constitution which specifically limits the way a government can act.

The penalty for High Treason in the UK is life imprisonment. All references in UK law to the death penalty were removed when we joined the European Declaration on Human Rights.

Also, I can't find any reference to the anti-communist law anywhere. The USA had a fair few, but we've has a Communist Party, full and legal, for decades. Also, the way you put that sentence won't get you into any trouble. The lyrics of a particularly famous Sex Pistols song goes "God save the Queen, and her fascist regime". I hear significantly worse on BBC comedy.

 

[Scentedwiind]

While I doubt greatly that the US is going to turn into a Dystopian future (note of interest, the computer tried to auto correct Dystopian to Utopian which I find a little funny considering my argument) there is no real way to win the argument or lose either because we would feel to open to the possibility of domestic terrorism but there seriously needs to be a strong system of checks and balances as long as public awareness and openness. If the president came out early in his term and revealed these things then set out to explain the process of each, I wouldn't feel as bad if a little bit disturbed and perhaps demanding clear alterations to the policy, such as perhaps key word search information found in Google like "how to make bomb" or only seeing information for specific searches with a warrant for each (even if signed by a secret court) I would be much more willing to accept the terms. The fact that the knowledge came out without their knowing by a person and not revealed by the government itself is cause for concern.

 

[Milanezi]

I for one don't care. My city is going through a surge of violence: some kids broke into a dentist clinic and tied the doctor down, one took her credit card and went to an ATM to draw her money, sadly for her she wasn't rich, she only had R$ 30,00 in her bank account (about 15 dollars); so the guys comes back, tells his buddies and then they threw alcohol on her and set the doctor on fire, she died before the ambulance arrived. Some of those guys were identified (all minors), but later on the week some completely different kids broke into another clinic and did the same, this time they didn't even want anything, they just wanted to follow the trend of "set a dentist on fire". The number of apartments here in São Paulo, Brazil being violated by criminals who will kill, rape and steal everything within is rising, you can't really go to restaurants, because they might quickly invade it and take every damn wallet and cell phone from the clientele as well. Oh, you must have heard about beautiful Rio as well, about the American girl who was having a nice stride in one of the richest "safest" places in Rio when they were both kidnapped: he was beaten and thrown out of the vehicle, she was raped by all men and then taken inside a favela (Max Payne 3 players will know) where she was given as a present to a crime lord, who denied the gift saying she had been "spoiled", she was later found by the police, yes that's the beautiful country that will open heartedly welcome you to the World Cup and Olympic Games! Be sure to bring your bullet proof vests, personal security and personal weapons!
In sight of what I narrated, and other events if extreme violence, I WANT my privacy to be violated, I want them to know everything that's happening in my life, so they can be sure I'm not a hazard, and if i become a victim, I want them to know who is the culprit; I want to be sure that my neighbor is not a criminal, and hell, follow my line of thought, if I lived in the USA I sure would wish to be sure my neighbor isn't a terrorist or a gang member or something.
But that's just me and that's not the Big Picture...

 

[euro2019]

Security is only secure if you scrutinize everything. Imagine if your antivirus scanned all files except the ones in the Windows folder, or System 32. This is a very simple analogy of course.

I personally don't think that if you're an American citizen, that this exempts you from any sort of scrutiny. This system isn't as terrible as it sounds and I think people are blowing this a little too far out of proportion. The idea here is to stop Terrorist activities BEFORE they happen. How can you have security without checking everyone?

Would you prefer we only bag-check non-americans only at the airport because they're not from our country and they're most likely to try to smuggle something illegal? Hell no. American's have the same probability as any other.

So when it comes to national security, is it only Non-Americans that are terrorists? No. It's can potentially be anyone. Look at the last three events that have occurred. All Americans. If you have nothing to hide, you won't be suspected.

They're not going to show up at your door saying "well Jim, we saw you were looking at donkey porn 3 weeks ago. Come with us, you're going to the big house!"

This is a shot in the blue AT BEST.

As a response to the whole "what if someone in the NSA hated his neighbour" he would still need permission to access that information, and accessing a neighbours file directly is a conflict of interest is a felony. That person would lose his job and go to jail. Personal information is treated seriously in government institutions, and dissemination of that information for personal gain or without proper reason is grounds for some serious trouble.

I personally think Snow thought he was doing the right thing. But what he released, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It didn't phase me one bit, and I don't think we should take offense to it. We all have to be checked, its only fair, and you can't go looking into something after it's already happened. That doesn't prevent the event from happening to begin with.

I feel bad for Snow's family and girlfriend. He really should of thought this through. Giving up a great life and good salary to tell us something we already knew (at least most of us I'm assuming), basically for nothing. I haven't read what he posted on PRISM, but I sincerely hope he didn't reveal the way it worked and what was used. This type of information can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

 

[LetalisK]

I personally think Snow thought he was doing the right thing. But what he released, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

This was pretty much my reaction. "Yeah, and?" I'll be honest, I'm also finding it kind of hard to care.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Do you want to be FREE? Or do you want to be SAFE? If you choose safety over freedom then it's YOU that has fucked up priorities.

It's hard to exercise your freedom if you're lying facedown in a ditch.