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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."
Here's more info about ACLU's campaign to challenge new security laws, called Keep America Safe and Free
It's interesting to note their views that in order to keep America safe, you do not necessarily have to take away freedom.
More info about the controversial PATRIOT ACT.
Best of luck to him!
Here's a longer interview with Barry from Wired
They also have some nice information on 'Carnivore' and 'Magic Lantern', spy technologies that the FBI is using on Americans.
Scary stuff.
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.
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.
We had a really unpleasant rail disaster in the UK a while ago. One of the survivors, who was horrifically burned, made a point of harassing the government over safety measures and so on.
Fast forward a little way and a leaked memo appeared, asking party machinery (just the Labour party here) to get details on her, and see if she was working with the opposition in order to discredit her.
This is the nub of it, a lot of people have stuff to hide. It might not even be anythign that is a crime, but purely something that you are ashamed of, or might affect how other people see you (which, in this day and age, can be pretty much anything). It basically is a useful tool to settle personal scores, and to stop people from exercising their rights to loudly question their political masters.
Now, I'm not saying this WILL occur, but it certainly can. They can neuter your ability to effectively say anything about the government.
And that's not even going all the way.
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
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.
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.