We're staring at the gradual but deliberate end of privacy and its scary. The large majority of the world's population either doesn't know or care how significant or dangerous this trend is, and those few who do will find their way into surveillance databases because they act "suspiciously" by encrypting their communications and guarding their privacy.
I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data.
I'm liberal as all get out (and voted for Obama), but this isn't limited to the right-wing. Greenwald's getting attacked by Democratic partisans a lot over the NSA revelations. Those same folks would've been outraged during the Bush years.
More or less, yes. However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger.
However, I don't think it'll ever devolve to the point where mass arrests or anything truly draconian takes place. There isn't any need in Democracy. You need to only control 51% of the engaged voters [e.g. the people who actually vote] and at least in the US the two party system controls that quite effectively.
I'm worried about this because it will lead to people getting stepped on and crushed between the massive gears of the "State Security" apparatus.
Problem is the next governments will inherit the surveillance system. Who says they won't be fascists and/or turn the country into dictatorship ? When this happens, we might see these mass arrests. A lot can change in only a few decades.
One would hope that the US population wouldn't vote in a party of fascists. And if they did, then they get what they deserve. American voters aren't known for being particularly bright (they voted in a drunk who couldn't put together a complete sentence, twice!) but voting in fascists is a little far fetched.
Obviously their running platform wouldn't be "I'm more of a fascist than the other guy". No, it's probably going to happen like it usually does- somebody gets voted in for being less of a nutjob than their opponent, something bad happens, and the elected official uses that as a excuse for all the horrible policies that follow. It's already happened at least once here with McCarthy; he was just a freakin senator, one of many across the nation.
It almost happened once again with 9/11. Bush basically gutted Habeas Corpus, since he decided that anybody arrested under suspicions of terrorism wasn't allowed the protections afforded under it. The government could arrest you, send you to secret prison, and that would be the end of it since you were never allowed a trial.
True, none of the above examples are true fascism. But, they are scary steps in the right direction. Fear is an excellent political motivator, and with our fear-mongering media we have, that's a more powerful tool than ever. Invent an enemy scary enough, and it seems people will actually hand you their rights while thanking you for it.
Yes but, for instance, if you lived under a fascist anti-gay regime and were gay you would hide it very actively. On the opposite gays today, through their correspondances, might be quiet easily spotted by the NSA or anyone with access to their phone calls / mails / texts. Once the regime becomes anti-gay, they will come for you and it is too late to do anything.
So what your saying is you'd be able to destroy all crawlable evidence on the internet and wipe the memories of all your friends and strip out every reference to a "gay bar" or the like from your finances?
I think you greatly overestimate how effective people could be in wiping their fingerprints from the internet. There is a reason people talk about once you post something on the internet its out there forever. You aren't magically going to be able to wipe out decades of fingerprints because of a regime change, regardless of whether the NSA was collecting them or not.
You can use this argument when you can wipe out all copies of a nude woman whose ex posted her to imgur or something. Until then, you are just 100% wrong because you know you can't do what you claim.
The parent comment is saying that those things wouldn't be created in the first place if the environment were already hostile to them. You can hide your present to some extent, but not erase the past.
Yes. I'm aware the parent comment wants to try to ignore reality and pretend you can nuke the publicly posted information on the internet in the event of a fascist government.
That isn't how the internet or public communication works. The Nazis were able to identify the people they sent to concentration camps because of past associations, even once it became clear what they were doing because people don't live in a vacuum.
By the same token, you aren't going to be able to nuke all your facebook posts, twitter posts, etc. that might obviously flag you as gay "magically" whenever a fascist type government comes to power. The evidence is already there and completely out of your control.
If bad people come to power you are screwed regardless of what the NSA is currently doing. At worst, this shaves a few months off the process.
The most hilarious part of this is, all of you arguing with me about this in a public forum. Do you think you can magically go back and delete all these posts if some truly evil people came to power?
Nope.
I'm amused by the downvotes and arguments because:
1) You've publicly provided information that isn't going to go away already to show which camp you'd end up in if the people arguing with me are right. This information isn't vanishing simply because its posted publicly on the internet. It isn't going to magical become invisible in the future.
2) I've said I agree with the basic premise in my parent comment and basically said it was people who were vulnerable/edge cases that are getting screwed. That is still going to the base regardless of what happens because you only need control of 51% of the electorate to remain in power. The US electorate has shown, consistently, it will believe lies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09...
"For now, there appears to be little political reason to back down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration."
The ability to fabricate falsehoods and get 51% of people to believe it is a far, far greater threat than the NSA. The fact none of you seem to notice this or even care worries me more than the NSA does. If I can get 51% of people to believe any lie I tell them, I can rule any democracy in the world.
I am not ignoring the reality: public or semi-public posts (facebook) are not going anywhere and should be considered public information.
Reading my previous post you can surely infer that I disagree with the mass spying but not that I am (or not) gay.
This is not a coincidence: I don't hide this political view and accept to be vocal about it publically because I believe discussing it helps protecting the democracy I live in today. If I am to be accused of having that opinion later on, then so be it because that was an accepted risk.
On the other hand I don't accept that my privacy can be used against me, be it related to my sexuality or the opinions I chose to keep for myself or only share with close friends privately.
Overall I am not denying that the information can be found elsewhere or that the Nazis used past associations (I have no opinion about that) but the key point is that you should be able to dissociate between your public life and your private life.
I am well aware of the public traces I leave on forums and "social media" but I don't know to which extend my private conversations are infiltrated and I am much less careful when I write them. So I am not sure what extreme (or not so extreme) opinion I once formulated and was stored somewhere. That could be used against me by the next fascist government. There are two ways to avoid that: the first is that it is never stored in the first place, the second is that I never formulate such an opinion. I want the option that is compatible with a democracy.
Obviously. However, speed isn't relevant since you can't erase your fingerprints of your entire life on the internet.
> You can use this argument when you can wipe out all copies of a nude woman whose ex posted her to imgur or something. Until then, you are just 100% wrong because you know you can't do what you claim.
That is really what it boils down to. You can't erase all of the evidence on the internet, so you are screwed anyway.
I think the most amusing part of this is the fact I basically agree with the comment I responded to except to the severity and scope of the danger.
Vulnerable people will get screwed. Most people won't.
And you can spend the time you'd spend building new infrastructure making the existing infrastructure even more powerful.
Additionally, while the people capable of building this infrastructure might refuse to do it under a fascist regime, they're comfortable doing it now under a democracy.
> However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger.
Unfortunately, you're wrong here. The first trivial counterexample that comes to mind: You cannot have a democratic society if a government agency secretly records the phone calls of all (current and prospective) political representatives.
Your trivial counterexample requires blackmail on a large scale. The problem with blackmail is it might work 75% of the time, but the other 25% end up in jail.
In the case of a politician, from time to time, one of them would say "fuck it" and use their platform to say it to the world.
The subtler approach would be to take dirt on Candidate A and give it to Candidate B so B could win the election. However, in the real world, slinging real mud is just as effective as slinging fake mud in an election. [e.g. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had no actual evidence of their allegations and the majority of Kerry's unit said they were lying...but it still had a major effect on the election anyway] Tbh, the fake mud may be even more effective since you can create the best political narrative you can without being constrained by verifiable facts.
So I'm really not that convinced that the costs of such political meddling [clearly exposed villainy that may force politicians to take action against the Security Apparatus or get voted out of office] is not cost effective. It is far, far more likely that the Security Services would simply behave themselves and make it clear that they wanted a large budget and virtually unlimited powers. They pretty much are at that point already.
(Other than that, the argument that the NSA collecting data is less dangerous because in the U.S. political debate, facts don't matter anyway, doesn't sound too convincing to me.)
You are talking about people attempting to break the law...
"The first batch, published a week ago, included a conversation between Marek Belka, the chief of Poland's central bank, and Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, in which they discussed how the central bank might use its power to help the government win reelection in 2015. Mr. Belka said that his condition for help would be "the dismissal of the finance minister" in favor of a “technical and apolitical” one. They also discussed the creation of a law that would allow the central bank to buy government debt on secondary markets, a practice known as quantitative easing.
Under Polish law, the central bank has to be independent from political interference. But Jacek Rostowski, the finance minister, did indeed lose his job in November last year and was replaced by Mateusz Szczurek, an economist with no political experience. And new laws that include a provision allowing quantitative easing are also now in the works."
Why yes, if you conspire to break the law and get recorded, this is a bad thing for you. I'm not sure why you cited one of the few cases such a recording would be perfectly acceptable.
That is actually the valid and good purpose of the media and the security apparatus. Exposing political corruption and bringing it to justice wherever possible.
Because such leaks will be used selectively, against anyone the data collecting agencies see as a worthwhile target.
And no, blanket recording of all phone calls is not the "valid and good purpose" of the security apparatus, even if it occasionally exposes political corruption.
> Because such leaks will be used selectively, against anyone the data collecting agencies see as a worthwhile target.
So because they don't remove all corrupt officials, just some, its a bad thing.
Okay. I guess I don't really see that as any different as now and is completely unrelated to the quantity of recordings.
> And no, blanket recording of all phone calls is not the "valid and good purpose" of the security apparatus, even if it occasionally exposes political corruption.
That isn't what I said. I said exposing corruption was the valid and good purpose. It had nothing to do with recording all phone calls, merely some conversations in restaurants which is what you were talking about being recorded is a valid and good purpose.
You don't get to just flip flop around and re-arrange the context of the subject you brought up [recording people having private meetings in restaurants involving illegal corruption] and [recording everyone's conversations].
>So because they don't remove all corrupt officials, just some, its a bad thing.
Yes! Absolutely! That's the worst-case. It means that the likes of Keith Alexander and James Clapper (and others who they may be in cooperation with) get to choose the government (to a degree sufficient to suit their needs).
I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data.
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