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CNN Talks WIth ACLU Tech Maven Barry Steinhardt
muon1183 writes " CNN interviews Barry Steinhardt, the ACLU's cyberchief and former staff laywer for the EFF. Steinhardt speaks on his concerns about current and upcoming legislation and its impacts on your civil liberties. It's good that this is finally making the mainstream media."
As long as people are not willing to sacrifice fundamental liberties for a temporary sense of safety...
They are. Welcome to the real world. In my experience, most people long for safety and stability, not liberty and truth. I would be more than delighted to be proven wrong, though.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Once the opponents come 'into the mainstream' then as night follows day the pro-legislation campaigners will start shouting their side of the corner. No doubt they will shout louder and as the mainstream always works, the person who shouts loudest usually wins over the public at large.
Sadly people forget what their fundamental liberties are a lot more readily than they forget the tragedies on television everyday. I wish they would see that every time a new piece of legislation comes through unchecked it brings us one step backwards in the pursuit of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Its a question of trust. Do you, honestly, trust this government, or any future government, not to misuse the data they collect right now?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Because people are innocent until proven guilty, and the innocent have the right to conduct themselves as they want in private.
People like to do strange things, and they might not want other people to know about them. If the things are legal, then they have the right to keep them private.
Although most people don't demmand privacy like this - it's important that we all have a basic level of privacy so that when we do want it we don't have to be suspected of being up to something for asking for it.
Also, there is a fear that the information could be used for something it isn't meant to use for, and that people should not be exposed to this risk if they have done nothing wrong.
I agree with you a bit - but I think that people have a right to privacy if that is what they want. With mass surveillance, people can't choose.
Overhere it reminds many people of the time we were occupied... Unless you have enough faith in your government that this power will not be abused, and of course that something you don't have to hide now, will "suddenly" become something to hide it is IMHO good to limit the government's room to do surveilance.
There are two reasons, as the other poster stated, can you trust the goverment to use the information they gather in good faith, and although you have nothing to hide right now, what happens when the rules change (something you do legally now becomes illegal, for example, criticizing the goverment).
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Here's a link to David Ross's page on the subject. Suprisingly, many of the examples listed there do apply to me, and apply to most of the people I know (if only more of my friends and coworkers would use PGP...).
What, you say? All of those examples are still about hiding things? I thought I said I had nothing to hide!
IMHO, there's a huge difference between having "something to hide" from an FBI investigation -- i.e., committing a crime -- and maintaining your privacy. You don't want everyone to know that you pick your nose and eat it, so when you send a letter to your psycologist about your "problem", you should be allowed and able to protect that message with encryption.
And, of course, if you're transmitting other types of secrets, namely trade secrets for your company, you should be able to encrypt that as well.
Now, you may still ask, so what if the government can view those messages, as long as "real people" can't? My answer to that is that the government is made of "real people" too, and I don't want any old FBI agent to know about me picking my nose. Extend that analogy as necessary for different levels of "secrets", as well as different levels of paranoia about how Big Brother will stretch any information about you to fit His purposes.
When do you envision us winning this war on terror? I'm not just talking about Iraq, but all terrorism, as G-Dub originally outlined? Do you really think we're going to make it all disappear? Sure, just after we win that war on drugs we declared fifteen years ago. It certainly doesn't help that, since 9/11, we've upped our pace of walking over smaller countries sovreign rights, fueling more hatred towards the US.
There will be no end to the war on terror; we will always be fighting it, because it has always existed. With that in mind, just when do we get to excerise our full civil liberties again?
Welcome to the real world. Lawmakers, authorities etc are people, not ideal machines. Suppose there was somebody in FBI who hated you and your family, just imagine what all could he do if he had information about your whole life....Or a more grimmer scenario... Somebody in the police wants to harm you.... some govt employee who has acess to this database desparately needs money... so if you are rich enough he could compile a list of the rich and money in their banks and sell them to mafia so that they can demand extortion
Well these are the "real" issues, then come the moral issue of what right does the govt have to know of who I am. We dont want a police state you seeMy Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I'm interested as to why someone who has "nothing to hide" should be worried about mass surveillance by their government?
Ask yourself what you do every day.
Then ask yourself if, seriously, everything that you do and which you consider "nothing to hide" is also something that every potentially powerful religious political group or other self-appointed "guardian of public morality" would also consider "nothing to hide."
If we lived in a utopian society where individualism was respted, where victimless crimes were just considered poor judgement but nothing to bring charges on, and where moral judgements were considered private opinions and not a reason for censure or imprisionment, then a university surveillance society (e.g. like what's depicted in Robert J. Sawyers' Hominids and Humans) could actually be a good thing. Unfortunately, we live in a society where people are lining up to condemn others for wrong thinking, where people can't wait to limit each other's freedoms in the name of morality and other arbitrary reasons.
Are you a homosexual? Do you read any pornographic magazines? Heck, do you look at lingeire catalogs? Do you ever drink alcohol before noon? Do you ever masturbate? Do you ever post to "hacker" message boards like Slashdot? Do you read opinions online critical of the government? Critical of the RIAA? Do you believe that Islam may be at it's core a pecaeful religion? Worse, are you a muslim? Are you an atheist? Do you ever send personal E-mail while at work? Do you ever look at sports scores or other personal sites while at work? How about when you're telecommunting from home?
There are so many various groups with strong opinions about other people's personal morality who have a lot of political influence in this country that I simply do not trust society with universal surveillance capabilities. If we really did respect individual freedom as much as we claim to, then no problem. In the mean time, when we've got things like the DMCA and the philosophy behind it, and when it's a struggle to get anti-homosexual-sex laws stricken from the books, a universal surveillance society will turn this country into a totalitarian state. Nearly everybody has something to hide. Even if you don't really, even if you don't do anything you're embarassed about and if you don't do anything to hurt anybody, there is probably some sort of fundamentalist group out there with a lot of sympathy and ability to get somebody elected who does think you ought to hide it. The easier it is for them to track down the people like you doing these "immoral" things you didn't think you had to hide, the more likely you are, in the best case, to check your own behavior-- behavior you would otherwise have thought innocuous. (And in the worst case, you'd be brought up on charges for it.)
-Rob
The arguments seem to boil down to "trust" and "possible misuse".
Fair enough, but I really think people are getting a little paranoid here.
Every employee that forms part of "The Government" is a person just like you or me; they go home at night to their families; and have a private life - just like anybody else.
It is in their interest to protect their private life just as much (if not more so!) as you or me.
Even the (President | Prime Minister) if they were to leave office would be as subject to any government surveillance as anybody else.
If the NSA employee could discover something about you in the future and use it against you; well that's a bummer; but there is just as much chance of something being found and used against that NSA employee.
I think I trust my Government. They're elected after all; the big caveat being that the majority of what is the "Government" is the civil service; which of course does not change with elections. I'm sure "Yes Prime Minister" has been seen outside the UK.
Even Civil Servants fall in love, and have cats and dogs as pets.
We've also had the secret police in western countries for years; and probably still have departments that are "even more secret than the secret ones that we know about"; but so what.
I think people need to chill out a bit.
Most people do long for safety and stability. The problem is that safety and stability are a natural consequence of of liberty and truth but no one notices. The world has huge amounts of liberty and truth and is a very safe place to be. Crossing the road is still the most dangerous thing you are likely to do even with all the wars, despots and terrorists. The sense of proportion gets lost at times like this however, which is how these worring laws get passed. If every 'Man killed by terrorist' report came along with the millions of 'Man has entirely trouble free day' reports that could also me true at that point, then maybe we wouldn't panic so much.
1) Read 1984, and find out what happens to people with nothing to hide
2) Read about Stalin and what happened to people with nothing to hide
3) Read about Nixon and what he wanted to do to people with nothing to hide.
Nothing to hide is NOT the same as agreeing with the goverment.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think if more news are like this, with pictures, people might start to half-assedly guess what a war is really like - death and misery.
Anyway - I have been kind of thinking (and hoping) that maybe the war will go off so badly until the US will put a "non-aggressive" clause in the constitution like Germany or Japan. I mean, what do you have to lose from it? just because you have the biggest gun doesn't mean you should wave it around and use it. - and you can still use your troops duing UN approved stuff - I think the only military excursions that US undertook since the UN has been UN approved actions.
(subject change, to something slightly on topic) My heart sinks when I see articles like this on CNN because I know they don't really care about stuff like this. Remember that CNN is in the same league as RIAA and MPAA - they are called content providers, who is willing to do everything they can so that they can be sure you are paying more than your fair share.
Maybe I am just being pessimistic, though - somebody please prove me wrong.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Notice that the news feeds ONLY start noticing at the VERY last possible moment, or sadly long after the fact (DMCA, Michican's anti-NAT law, etc). Too little, too late.
Does anybody remember Senator Joe McCarthy and his communist hunts during the 50's?
Just like one poster said, that 'real people' are the government and data can be abused. Someone like McCarthy can show up at any time, especially in times like this, and scare the puplic. Then watch your seeming innocent 'data' be used against you.
I don't care how much some people claim they have nothing to hide! There is 'always' something you don't want people to know. ALWAYS!!
There have also been recent cases of 'government' employees missusing citizen information. The recent case I was thinking of was identity theft. Different the someone like McCarthy, but abuse of personal data all the same.
But I bet you hop in your car without thinking, while you send brave men and women to die to protect you from a far lesser threat. Shame on you.
The arguments seem to boil down to "trust" and "possible misuse".
Fair enough, but I really think people are getting a little paranoid here.
But in a free society, shouldn't people have the right to be paranoid? The right to free speech includes anonymous speech, and the right NOT to speak out.
Life is not so "black and white" or "right and wrong" with respect to privacy. Say I'm a licensed, professional engineering. My company is committing illegal actions violating environmental standards, and endangering the welfare of the local population. If my free speech were truly protected, then blowing the whistle would be consequence free. But anyone knows that companies have something to hide, and that employees who violate that "corporate wall of silence" find it harder to get a job with another employer. Thus, anonymous speech could be used, if I wanted to protect my career. What if the company I worked for had influence politically -- and with our current law and mind frame....i could be considered a terrorist.
Every employee that forms part of "The Government" is a person just like you or me; they go home at night to their families; and have a private life - just like anybody else.
That argument alone isn't enough for me. Kennith Lay was a person "just like me" -- he went home every night to his home and family. But the big difference is Kennith Lay got rich off putting 42,000 american familes out of work. Misuse isn't a "hypothetical situation" its a standard operating procedure. Wouldn't you misuse it? What if the "security benifits" outweighed the "costs". Besides, no one's going to find out about it. And after they realized we prevented Sept. 11th 2: The Sequel, they wouldn't question our methods. The ends will justify the means for the public.
It is in their interest to protect their private life just as much (if not more so!) as you or me.
Or divert the watchful eye's attention on to someone else's. Remember, in 1984 all the party members could turn off their telescreens.
Even the (President | Prime Minister) if they were to leave office would be as subject to any government surveillance as anybody else.
If everyone were equal under the law, George W. Bush would have to take the bus and would never have come to power. His "youthful indiscretions" were D.U.Is at age 29. Police Officers found him driving on the shoulder of the road! Now he gets to send other families' kids off to die, having never fought in a war himself (He dodged the draft by joining the national guard back during Nam.)
If the NSA employee could discover something about you in the future and use it against you; well that's a bummer; but there is just as much chance of something being found and used against that NSA employee.
Again, more motivation to find dirt on other people. Get results, and they won't be looking for fault on the inside. There are plenty of patsy's in the american public.
I think I trust my Government. They're elected after all;
Not in my country, buddy. Stupid Florida.
the big caveat being that the majority of what is the "Government" is the civil service; which of course does not change with elections. I'm sure "Yes Prime Minister" has been seen outside the UK.
Even Civil Servants fall in love, and have cats and dogs as pets.
Plenty of people who've done horrible, horrible things were animal lovers or some such drek. Hitler was a strict vegetarian. G.W. Bush Jr reads scripture every day in the morning, even when he was executing retarded people as the Governor of Texas.
We've also had the secret police in western countries for years; and probably still have departments that are "even more secret than the secret ones that we know about"; but so what.
So why should I just sit there and let a soulless organization be funded with my money to work against me and deny me the very freedoms I'm supposedly paying them to "protect"? Are YOU being served?
I think people need to chill out a bit.
I think you need to graduate High School, go to college, maybe stop watching "Yes Prime Minister" and look at how dreadfully dangerous your government IS. Not "will be" or "can be", but IS.
They don't support NAMBLA's activities or endorse the content of their message, just their right to actually hold and advocate an unpopular view in public. An actual link to their statement on NAMBLA is here. I'm a straight married male with a young son. The prospect of someone's actually doing something bad to him someday horrifies me. I am disgusted by NAMBLA. But they have a fundamental right to their view and message, however unpopular or disgusting.
The ACLU defends groups and activities on all sides of the political spectrum. They have defended the American Nazi Party, NAMBLA, peace protestors, evangelical churches, and Ollie North. They stand for a principle, not a slice of the political spectrum, and they are consistent in that.
And in these times, we need the ACLU more than ever. It looks like nobody else is really interested in standing up for the Constitution - including the government.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Not that I agree with NAMBLA (I don't) but you're misconstruing the facts of the matter. They defended NAMBLA's right to exist as a free entity, and to exercise their free speech rights concerning this topic, even as unpopular as it may be. The ACLU was not condoning child molestation , or the group themselves. They were fighting to protect free speech. It was the principle, removed from the facts of the matter. Read the following statement and see if it makes sense as juxtoposed with the aforementioned: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
Why do you have a bathroom door?
As long as the ACLU refuses to recognize the 2nd Amendment I'll continue to not recognize the ALCU as actually looking out for our civil liberties.
On reflection, it seems like the ACLU is just not recognizing what you think the 2nd Amendment means. Their position seems fairly reasonable to me. I would expect a reasonable person would understand their dithering on the second amendment(do we advocate people can own nukes? do we support some 'weapons of mass destruction' exception? if we support an exception that is not explicit in the amendment, doesn't that mean we're back where we started?) when it's so much different that the black-and-white of, say, civil forfeiture laws.
If you think the ACLU has done nothing for "our civil liberties," I'd suggest you conduct some legal research.
"...but fail to sue any non-Christian (but still religious) display in front of another public building."
I've yet to ever hear of such a thing. I am a firm believer that the gov't has no business in religion and vice versa and such a thing should also not be permitted. There is one subtle difference here though: the spirit of the first amendment is, in a nutshell, to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Popular speech does not need protecting. Nobody will hit me or punish me for waving an American flag. Just try and burn one and see what happens (not that I advocate such things). Since Christianity is vastly the majority religion in the U.S., a gov't sanctioned nativity display is all the more offensive and unwelcoming to a non-Christian.