I agree, there should be more transparency and accountability across all government levels and programs. But that's not an issue specific to this topic, it's a government-wide problem. I don't see the big deal about it because I can't find, and haven't heard, even in this thread, a real tangible problem beyond "OMG dick pics!". I'm not saying there isn't one, but I haven't heard it yet. Who fucking cares about the justification? Well, in some countries the government will use citizens' info to seek out dissenters and journalists and religious minorities, and persecute or even kill them. In my first post I asked if anyone knows of an example where a western democracy has done something similar. This was met with replies of "dickpicsdickpicsdickpics!" Forgive me for not viewing those on the same scale. And if you can show me a piece of government propaganda promoting surveillance, it'll be the first I've seen. Some of us like to find reasons and evidence before deciding about something that just feels wrong, dammit. Nope, because in the future I'm envisioning, I could browse yours if I wanted to as well. Guess what? I don't want to. And I'm not saying it definitely IS justifiable, but you guys haven't given reasons why it definitely isn't besides "It just isn't!" over and over (also dick pics). I think it's too early to tell, and we should proceed with caution (either way, the culture is proceeding to less privacy regardless of government's role -- don't think anyone disagrees with that). The only thing I'm sure of, is that more transparency is needed, not that surveillance is definitely for sure all the time wrong. I don't think it's impossible, or even much of a stretch, that as the years go on surveillance will prove to be useful, even if it's just for catching pedophiles (if we are gonna keep talking about naked pics, we should at least focus on the naked pics that actually fucking matter). Actually I did specify the time and place I would expect a right to privacy -- it was the sentence you cut off before the part you quoted: no cameras in my home. And in the part you included, I qualified it by saying that if worst they are doing is looking for illegal activity, and only acting if they find some, I can't find a reason why that's inherently bad beyond it feels weird and I'm not used to it. Re: your edit, I consider what I do online and with my phone to be activity, an extension of what I do physically, in "real life". Say the cops are tracking a suspected pedophile in a park, and I sit down and start talking with him. Say we have some kind of exchange, possibly a flash drive. The cops are allowed to view all of that, warrant-free, correct? Now make the park a seedy online chat group where they can actually read what I'm writing, versus viewing us from afar, and explain the difference.
Your personal emails, text messages, phone calls, chat messages, video chats, are part of this dragnet. It's not like this is limited to what you do on Facebook. I don't understand why that's different from having a camera in your home. A camera that's just looking for illegal activity, mind you. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...nts-show-agency-could-grab-all-skype-traffic/
The reason no one has spelled it out for you is because we assumed you would have some intuition about why the invasion of your privacy is a bad thing. If you can't imagine why the government having access to all your information is bad, if you can't imagine why me reading all your emails and bank statements is bad, any claim I make as to why the invasion of your privacy is bad and detrimental will be lost on you. If you want to know why government surveillance is bad, talk to the muslims in this country. Ask them how things have been ever since the government has turned their attention on them despite them doing nothing wrong other than having the wrong ethnicity and wrong faith. If in your future there is no privacy, the future is going to be a very paranoid difficult place to live. I would never let you have access to my gmail or bank accounts. The fact you see no problem in me reading all your emails means you're lost and no one can save you. If you really believe in the benevolence of people. post your email name and password on here, see what happens, see how the no privacy thing works out for ya. If you're feeling really convinced in your beliefs that privacy is overrated, post your home address and personal phone number on here. I think the fundamental reason this is lost on you is one because you're apparently a little slow, and no one has invaded your life to a degree where you have felt victimized.
If I was going to guess, and I am, I would guess that those who are not so concerned about it have grown up in a world where the gradual erosion of privacy has become the norm rather than the exception. I'm of an age where the idea of the government having access to any and all of my information/spying, etc. pisses me off to no end. Viscerally I know it's not "supposed" to be that way because it never was before. Or at least to the extent that it is now. I would imagine SF and Parker have grown up in the Facebook/selfie/live life on line era and just don't see it as a big deal because that's the way it's already sort of been. It's not really denial, it's just perception.
Uh, I never said anything about just Facebook. I hypothesized about an online chat group, but meant for texts, calls and all forms of chat to be included. The difference is that I own my home, but I don't own public space, which is where I'm fine walking around under the assumption that my movements could be recorded (and if I'm being honest, that's only because I want a place to masturbate and possibly fuck in private). In case you haven't noticed, most businesses and government buildings have some form of video surveillance already. Do you have a problem with that? Has it, by its very nature of being a method of surveillance, brought a bunch of problems to your life or society at large? Can you maybe think of a reason or two why those places continue using cameras? Possibly even beneficial reasons? So it's wrong because it feels wrong. Got it. And like I mentioned in my first post, so far as I can tell, brown Muslim people being harassed is the only tangible example of the government using this access the wrong way. And it's fucked up, I agree. But of course that's not the only way the government persecutes them, and it's not like they've suddenly been persecuted because of this info gathering. To simplify, it's a problem of racism and fear, across government agencies and programs. And it needs to be pointed out regardless of the method of harassment. But we're in a (more or less) functioning democracy, so we hear about these injustices, we're free to talk about them, journalists are free to report on them and lawyers are free to defend those who are persecuted. On their own, surveillance and info gathering aren't inherently the problem.
I can't believe I'm responding to this. Its wrong because of the potential for abuse. Its wrong because the government has no reason to collect this information, in particular without your authorization. Its wrong because lets say things do go wrong, or you do happen to be in a targeted community they can use that information against you. Its wrong because just like an illegal search they have no reason to gather that information other than to have a large database of citizens communications. Its wrong because it invades your privacy (which apparently doesn't mean shit to you). Please though, drink the kool-aid. Trust what they tell you. Like I said I won't convince you, anything I say you'll gloss over because you inherently trust those collecting the information. As I mentioned, you'll keep thinking this until someone gets a hold of your information and abuses it. Btw, you never gave out your email and password, why not? Is it you don't trust us with that sort of information? Do you think maybe someone on here would use that for malicious purposes? Or did you just forget to?
Unless you express sympathy for 'the enemy' - however that may be defined today. Or you are a suspected 'terrorist' - for which last I checked the government has at least 7 different definitions of what terrorism is, depending on the agency. In which case, you can be held without counsel, access to family, defense, or even really charged or tried, just stuck away on an island somewhere for over a decade. Unless you're the NY Times, and the Justice Department decides to bug your phones because you won't give up sources. Unless you're being held on a part of some island and deemed a terrorist, in which case you're not entitled to a lawyer for over a decade. Actually, they are inherently part of the problem. The fact that the government thinks it's entitled to any and all such information - recorded and stored for future use without transparency or real oversight, including judicial, is a major problem. Ultimately, what it comes down to is the gathering of this information is intrusive and unnecessary. And let's be clear. This act was passed in the wake of 9/11. But here's the thing: existing intelligence gathering techniques at the time indicated something like this might happen and Osama Bin Laden was a problem, but due to pissing matches between competing agencies - who should all share the same goal - the information wasn't properly shared. And further, for those that say these techniques have prevented other attacks I ask 'Which ones?' The government has vaguely said 'dozens' - but why not tell us how it was done? Isn't the cat out of the bag, everyone knows the NSA is recording everything, so why not use the justification and show us 'hey, we prevented such and such an attack because we traced this call, we overhead this one, we say this one interact with that one...' etc. So why don't they? Two reasons: either they didn't actually prevent anything at all, or They can't reveal the techniques they're using because we're unaware of that technique being used at present. That scares the hell out of me.
Just want to make sure everyone is debating the same thing here, are you talking about privacy of information or control of information? You're going from someone actually just knowing your information, then to someone actually manipulating the information. There is a difference between all emails being BCC'd to someone else and that someone else having the ability to read, write and delete emails that isn't you. "Access" is specific word that is another argument. If my bank statements got posted online, that's a big difference between my login and password getting posted. Once again, I find it interesting that it comes back to the good or evil of people. I don't think there is some overreaching benevolence of people. I'd like to think that if I did post my bank account on here, no one would steal my money or manipulate my account because you 1) got better shit to do 2) wouldn't want that to happen to you. Seeing bank statements? Would anyone prefer that? No. But someone just knowing that x person spent $65 at Jewel, $25 Target, and $35 at a bar may not be that freaky to most people. Accountability & Oversight - I think too much weight is being put into these words. We want there to be more accountability and oversight because the unchecked power of the government will allow them to do bad things. What I'd like to point out is that the US government can still get away with shit WITH oversight (hello Ferguson). I guess my final point (as this is getting repetitive) is that it's hard for people to see this as a fear without a true specific motivation for the government to do it. The US Gov has a reason to monitor Muslim's as the primary outside force threatening their power comes from sources where Muslims are most prevalent. Not qualifying/rationalizing that reason, just plainly stating there is a reason. The US government has been fucking with large groups of people without even using the internet. They could do it 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 and 100 years ago if they wanted to, and have. As it just popped up on the news, another guy just shot in the back in the middle of the park. 8 times. No access to emails, phone recordsor dick pics needed. Yes, the police officer was caught, sentenced and held accountable. The guy is still dead. I'm beginning to think as I'm reading these responses is that there is another level of fear beyond the fact someone could be able read (not edit/manipulate) one's emails, texts, phone records or view their cock. I'm trying to figure out why I'm not as afraid or freaked the fuck out (once again, it's not a preference). Is it because I've always known there has been a level of surveillance on my life due to who I am? Is it possible that the fear manifested here is a collective realization from a group who thought themselves above the fray now realize that they're in the middle of the cross hairs like everyone else? Is it possible that there is a shattered perception of invulnerability that is causing all of this panic and not the actual actionable realities? It is definitely possible. Edit-Add-on as I just saw this post. Also, VI, your last point lacks basic critical thinking. They don't discuss their strategies so the actual terrorist don't know how to defend against it. That's pretty simple. Why don't football coaches send over their gameplans to the opponents? Why don't pro-poker players share their hands even after winning? They start outlining that stuff, the enemy goes "Okay, they traced the phones, we do this. They checked emails, we do this." They'll start looking for gaps in the process and exploiting that. Simple. There are governments out there really trying to do shit to this country (and other countries). You don't tell the bank thieves how the vault is built.
Without getting too repetitive, I absolutely think that there needs to be more transparency across all levels of government and, for that matter, the corporate and banking world. Pretty sure we all agree on that. No, it's not wrong because of the "potential" of abuse, it's wrong when there is demonstrable abuse. By your "potential" logic, we shouldn't have cops because they could potentially abuse their power. And guess what? Some do! So we debate and modify things to weed the bad ones out. And so goes the messy struggle of collectively building a functional society. And by the way, one of the best ways of preventing abusive cops: body cams, a point I made earlier that no one has replied to, along with dash cams, security cams, pedophiles, the fact that even without our phone/online presence the government already knows MORE than enough to fuck with us, and on and on... I haven't drank any kool-aid. Haven't even seen any government agencies offering it. I just have this weird thing where I try not to form an opinion based on my first, emotional gut impulse, especially with such a new technology/phenomenon. Village Idiot, I assume you're talking about Guantanamo? I think it should be closed, but if that's the best example you can come up with of the government harassing regular citizens who are just minding their own business and sharing crotch shots by monitoring their phones and online behavior, I think it's a bit of a stretch.
How does personal communication through private mediums equate to surveillance of public places? No, by the "potential" logic, we have various levels of burdens placed on the investigating party to prove that they have a real reason to collect information about you, depending on the invasiveness of that collection. Because there is a potential for abuse, a police officer can't just arrest me for walking down the sidewalk. There has to be a reasonable suspicion that I have committed a crime, and he or she will have to prove that in court. Because there is potential for abuse, my phone can't be tapped without a warrant, and that warrant must be signed by a judge who has reviewed a case that tapping my phone is likely to provide evidence of wrongdoing.
I really wish I could remember her name, but there's a cuntish Senator who is a huge proponent for the NSA and other agency spying programs, until such time as it was shown that the CIA was doing that to her, without her permission... and then she lost her shit. She is basically saying, "it's OK to do to normal citizens, but not those of us who are in control." I wonder why she flipped her shit so hard? Gee... could it be that she knows how that data is being used, and that it could undermine her power? And right now the NSA is trying to enact into law provisions that ALL online applications hosted in the US provide them complete and unfettered front door access to all data so the NSA doesn't have to work as hard at figuring it out. That means all services, like Google (mail, drive, etc, apps), Facebook, Twitter, SalesForce, SAP, banking, everything... could get handed up to the NSA on a silver platter. If I want to host my app and sell its services to US citizens, then I very well may have to provide the NSA a front-door access to the data within.
How is it a stretch? It is a direct response that somehow the safeguards you mentioned would prevent abuse of power. My point was refuting that shortsighted contention. Typically, the things you mentioned that I quoted are considered safeguards. My point is that those safeguards don't work when the government can gather information surreptitiously, and then rig the game that you can't do anything about how they use that information. Like, say, incarcerate you indefinitely without a charge or a trial. That's how 'collection of information' can be hideously dangerous. Your analogy is wrong. The correct analogy is the other side (the citizens) already has the gameplan - as far as they know - and that gameplan is illegal. The coach of the other team says 'oh, but that's all the illegal stuff I"m doing.' Furthermore, you are missing an incredibly obvious failure in your analogy. The other coach doesn't have a duty to the other team. Our government has a duty to us, and is answerable to us. The Constitution makes that clear, even if courts have ignored that mandate. That's why secret courts used to be outlawed in this country. And apparently no longer are.
Let me amend the closing of my analogy. The bank doesn't tell it's customers how's its vault is built so the information doesn't leak to the thieves who might steal the money. The knowledge of what terrorist attacks get thwarted and when does nothing to benefit the people except provide them some sense of satisfaction knowing they know.
The Simpsons have failed you. http://www.getelastic.com/lisa-simpson-gets-why-correlation-does-not-imply-causation/
Wow, ok, not sure you understand Civics, so let me explain some basics of American Government. We are not customers, the opposing team, an opponent (in your misguided poker analogy). We, the people, are the boss. That's how this country is set up. We delegate parts of our sovereignty to a body we call the government. The outlining of exactly what we (the people) have delegated is outlined in the Constitution. Even more importantly, government officials are subject to removal at the will of the people not only at election time, but at any time for abusing that delegation of power (impeachment). Therefore, under any theory of agency, they work for us. Turning a correct understanding of American Sovereignty to your analogy: I'm the owner of a bank. My employees, without my knowledge, tap my phone and install cameras in my home, non-public areas of the bank, and begin reading my emails. I find out about it. Their explanation, when confronted, is 'well, we want to keep you safe.' I then ask: 'What are you keeping me safe from precisely?' My employees respond: 'We can't tell you. It's a secret.' That is a correct analogy (and there are many, though I don't know why reverting to an analogy lends you argument any more credence). You can certainly agree with the employees' sentiment, you'd rather be 'safe' - whatever that means - and give up privacy in that regard. But understand, that is the trade you are making, and some of us are not willing to make that trade because in any definition of liberty and freedom I've ever read or encountered, the freedom to think, communicate in private, associate in private, and have my personal effects not subject to government searches without a damn good reason (warrant in America) is a fundamental part of liberty.
All of this goes back to one person having power over another. Remember that the government is made up of people, who are all flawed humans. The U.S. Constitution was written as an attempt to limit that power, because it's not right for one person to arbitrarily have power over another. If you (Superfantastic) don't understand and value that, then you might be living in the wrong country. When we give up our privacy then we also give power over to whoever now has that information. At the present time, maybe that's not a big issue. But consider this scenario: After we've decided that we have nothing to hide and any government should be able to collect whatever info they deem necessary, the economy takes a downturn and your state decides to limit workers' overtime in order to try to reduce unemployment. Overtime was never a problem before, even in worse conditions, but this is a novel approach that you don't agree with. One evening you're not quite finished so you clock out and spend 15 more minutes off the clock to get the last bit of work done. You send a text to your girlfriend that says you're almost done and you'll be leaving in a few minutes. The next week an agent from the DOL shows up and arrests you for violating the overtime law, based on your text. Don't say this is unreasonable. When I was in Germany a few years ago I was in a meeting and one of the engineers excused himself so he could go clock out, then he came back to the meeting. They had the same type of overtime restrictions in place. What he did was illegal, but was it a crime? The difference was that texts and emails were not so prevalent then. Substitute my example for any law you think is unreasonable. Once you've given someone else the power to monitor you, all they have to do is change the rules and you're under their control. Don't say it can't happen here. The U.S. is the country with the most freedom in the history of the modern world, yet it was built with the idea that one person could own another based on his skin color, and problems from that practice still persist today. Poll taxes were not officially outlawed until 1966 in the U.S. Imagine that cell phones were as ubiquitous in the 1950's as they are today. Imagine then that one poll worker in a precinct was known to let blacks vote without paying a poll tax. Imagine that black voters sent around texts letting others know when that worker would be on duty so they could go vote without harassment. Imagine that the Federal Election Commission had a computer to monitor texts about elections looking for irregularities so they could "enforce election laws." It's really not that much of a stretch to see a poll worker be arrested for not collecting the poll tax. If you don't like that example from the past, take one from the possible near future. Substitute a young woman seeking an abortion in some southern state and texting a friend about a doctor who will perform an abortion without the state-mandated three-day waiting period. Once we have given up our privacy, both she and the doctor get arrested because Baptist men don't like abortion and want to decide what women do with their own bodies. It wouldn't even be the doctor's own messages that got him arrested. Humans are capable of incredible evil against each other, and all it takes is giving power to them. See this for an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. The debate is not about dick pics; it is about one human's control over another.
I'll admit that, beyond the surface details of John Walker Lindh, I don't know the situations of each U.S. citizen in Guantanamo, so correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I've heard they all had some direct association with known terrorist/criminal groups (in JWL's case, if memory serves, he was captured on the battle field trying to kill Americans). I thought we were talking about regular 'ol non-combative citizens who happened to peruse a terrorist website or joked on the phone about blowing up a government building having their house raided and government officials taking them away, never to be seen again. Look, I'm not saying that we -- as in my generation, let alone those of you older than me -- should bend over and let the government search all our stuff starting from our assholes, but you guys seem to think that the current situation, even going back 10-20 years, includes some impenetrable wall of privacy that phone/online monitoring is cracking for the first time ever. That wall doesn't exist. Before the internet and cell phones, the government already knew PLENTY enough about you to fuck with you if it wanted. And guess what? Unjust government intrusion happened! Was the solution that we got rid of licenses, stopped sending our personal tax info to the government and destroyed our SIN cards? No -- people spoke out, journalists reported, lawyers defended and this messy experiment we call society stumbled along. What I am saying is that the social trend -- take government completely out of it for now -- is clearly moving in a less private direction, and the younger folk share EVERYTHING. Collectively, we fucking LOVE the online world, probably even more than people loved radio and TV when they were first a thing. The difference is the online world is a two-way street, an extension of the "real" world, and that means it requires monitoring. Just like cops can monitor a suspected pedophile on a park bench, they HAVE to be able to monitor online activity to some degree because FUCKING OBVIOUSLY. If you guys want no phone/online monitoring not ever no way no how, then you may find yourselves in the company of people who agree with you and like kids a little too much. Doesn't mean the government should hold all the cards -- as you guys have rightfully pointed out, our relationship is supposed to be mutual, not antagonistic -- but the future, one way or another, from both the government and public perspective, is going to be less private, whether you like it or not. Instead of taking the "No surveillance because it feels weird and I'm convinced that at this point my life is really super private!" position, I'm hypothesizing about how the inevitably less-private future could work. The closest semblance of answer I have at this point is: more transparency all round, starting with the government, the corporate and banking world -- we should see more of what they do before they see more of us, but them seeing more of us is part of the deal. Beyond that, given the mostly youthful trend of over-sharing, we're going to give up more privacy, with each other and the government, and I'd rather be a bush blowing in the breeze than a giant oak breaking in the winds of change. Also, as both an aside and plea to my American friends: if you ever feel the urge to utter some variation of "America is the most free and/or best country in the world" to an international audience, please, stop. Just stop. It gives us a chuckle, which is always nice, but it also feeds into the stereotype of dumbass arrogant Americans, and I know it's not true, especially on here.
Seriously, if there is a country you can point out that has more freedom than the U.S. then we will either have a factual debate or I will be moving. Educate me.
So VI, what you're saying is that the Government should tell us everything they're doing all the time regardless if it increases the chances of another terrorist incident happening because we're in charge and have a right to know?