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Do Privacy Fears Allow Terrorism?
carbon3C writes "Privacy advocates are luddites, says Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute. She says we should shut up and let the government do what it wants. Our government only wants to protect us, and would never misuse technology. How do we send a clear message that non-luddites (conservative and liberal) are concerned about privacy precisely because we do know so much about technology?" Leaving your front door wide open is a great idea, until someone you don't know walks through it.
So no, we're not luddites, we'd just like to be able to live our lives without having to worry about people ripping us off....
Privacy is only as good as you allow it to be :)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
So kill them.
I dont buy that! Thats just what the government tells you so they can spy on you even more. A terrorist caught at the cost of the invasion of privacy of a 1000 citizens should not be acceptable. There should be better ways to stop terrorism. Mebbe the govt. should wake up try to wipe out the root causes of terrorism. Mebbe if Mr. Bush stopped bullying the world that would help! They should stop hiding behind the terrorist
excuse for invading the privacy of citizens.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. Nor, are they likely to end up with either."
-- Benjamin Franklin
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Freedom, in my opinion, is one of the fundamental values in human life. Does everybody really want to be shed and protected from everything by the government? Safety, but no privacy is like living in the zoo: you are spoon fed, safe from dangers, but cannot go beyond your cage.
Sad, but it seems that this is most people want. The question is, what we can do about it?
The (US) government wants to protect its citizens? By reading all mail etc? So citizens shouldn't be allowed private communication channels, but carrying fire arms is legal? Either I or the US government is missing something here... ;)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Plus, if the ID theives don't have privacy either, we could find out who they are.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
The terrorists wouldn't be there in the first place if the policies of the western world were sane. We created terrorism our self through racism, religious oppression and the support of dictatorship in developing countries during the cold war.
A big concern for me is the current state of our rights in America. Look at the guy that they arrested in Chigago for planning to build a dirty bomb after going to the middle east. No open judicial review, lack of lawyers, no due process, etc. I not so worried about getting convicted for a crime I didnt commit, but what if you are arrested and held in prison like this guy, or what about the Chinese-American that they arrested at Los Alamos national Laboratory and kept him in solitary for 6(?) months. Until we have solid rights, I dont think that we can really trust the government with this kind of thing.
You know what people have none of these days? Perspective. TV, the mass media, and the public's sheer laziness has made perspective a thing of the past. It is in this world without perspective that stupid ideas like "just bend over, you're government is only doing it because it loves you" can spread and flourish. Let's address one point right off the bat:
9/11, in the grand scale of things, should have already been forgotten. More than a year ago, 3005 people died as a direct result of 9/11. Today, 40,000 children the world over died as a direct result of starvation. Tomorrow, another 40,000 children will die of hunger. Another 40,000 the next day, and another 40,000 the day after that. Now, I understand the cultural and emotional significance of the event outweighs the mere logical aspect of it. But mobilizing a nation of 300 million people on a course of action based solely on an emotional reaction is just foolish. Destructive and foolish.
Now, I understand that past events can drive people to fear. This is why I have a hard time understanding why people trust the US government. The US government is not nice. No governments are. We live in a world where the President's duty to serve and protect his constituents and their interests often means that he has to screw over a whole lot of people. Just look up the history of US foreign policy. You don't have to make a judgement call here about whether these actions are justifiable. You just have to accept the idea that the US often does what it thinks it has to do to protect it's own interests.
Now here is the kicker. If the US government is going to act to protect it's own intersts, than individuals must act to protect their own. Far from being "luddites" (dictionary.com -- those resistant to technological change) pro-privacy people are simply doing what they must: look out for themselves.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Bloody hell, not often you hear someone quoting the "Party" from 1984 as if its a good thing.
Lets compare what the Party needed to control its people with what this person wants
1) A war against something, with a changing enemy as required. The "War on Terror" appears perfect for this
2) An ability to always track people (the TV screens in 1984), so zero privacy and the goverment able to track it.
3) The ability to "reinvent" history - Donald Rumsfield as defender of liberty... not the person who sold chemicals to Sadam. UK and USA as "Liberators" rather than the twice colonial power and the most ardent supporters of Sadam in the 80s.
4) Making people spy on each other and report to Big Brother - Already being urged in the US
5) Big Brother to be an unaccountable figurehead. When was the last time you saw someone ask a tough question to George ?
Ladies and Gentleman I call the Brotherhood to order. These are sad days for democracy, George Orwell has defined already the republican ideal of America.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Pol Pot, Stalin, Ceausescu, Galtieri, Noriega, Marcos, Hitler, Mao ... the list goes on.
When the government decides to start purging it's own people you are going to really wish that they hadn't been spying on you.
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm
Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Ultimately one must mention the Third Reich.
Ever wondered how 10 million people were identified and transported with such efficiency in a time before computers?
They didn't just turn up at the synagogues and cart people away. They used the census data. Who were the largest collators of census data in Europe in the 1930s?
I B M
As the SS arrived in the newly conquered countries of Europe IBM was there to meet them with the census data ready to sort. They took the documents from churches & town halls and fed it into the Hollerith machines. Some unfortunates got the knock and the train ride and even they didn't know they were of Jewish decent.
read the book
Not just to see what capital will do but to see where dismissing privacy as a liberal whim could take you.
You never know who will be in power next time round or in ten years time.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
There are two kinds of "privacy advocates".
One kind demands the right to prevent information being collected about them, or in milder advocates to restrict collection of information. These people are fighting the same essentially doomed fight as the RIAA etc. The information is available, it has always been available, and the tools now exist to collect and distribute it. It is not going to be practical in the long run to prevent the tools being used. (That is not to say that the tide cannot be slowed in the short term, only eventually).
The other level of privacy is the right to withhold information. Defense of ths privacy is exhibited in objections to compulsory ID cards, compulsory escrowing of encryption keys, and many other areas where the government demands information from individuals.
There is some grey area between the two, where government gets access, with varying or unclear levels of coercion, to information held by third parties about individuals.
The intermediate cases notwithstanding, these are two essentially unrelated struggles. The first one has a hint of Luddism, but the second is an onging battle between authoritarians and small-l libertarians which has been going on for centuries and is not fundamentally altered by any new technologies.
before we do lets consider this bit of history for a moment: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar I'll pass on the security excuses and keep my freedom thank you! Had the INS done their jobs in the first place there wouldn't be a need for this type of security.
If you're interested in what giving the government broader spying powers on its citizens can do for you, check out the Leipzig Stasi Museum, the headquarters of the Stasi police in the GDR. People's careers could be broken because they wrote essays or letters critical of the socialist system.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
USA government seems to be addicted to war instead of drugs, the question is which causes more deaths? When you live in a (semi) free country (like The Netherlands) and you will see the horror caused by USA.
suggested movies to see: Apocalypse Now
Americans, wake up and realise that "terrorists" are nothing more than a device of your leaders.
Wonder what motivates these "terrorists" to attack your country. An irrational fear/hatred of freedom and capitalism? Strange, I live in Europe and have nothing whatsoever to fear from "freedom hating terrorists". I feel much more "free" than I would in the US. I have a public healthcare system. Social welfare benefits if and when I need them. My kids don't get shot at in school.
I come from an island state in the EU with a very well known and long lived terrorist organisation...when will ye come and destroy my country? probably never...I've never heard the issue mentioned by the US administration since Bush took over..maybe it's because we don't have any oil...or maybe because US citizens have provided much of the funding for the group in the past...anyway how convenient, a terrorist is only a terrorist if...what??
Since all those poor, unfortunate people died in the twin towers, your government has been free to do *whatever* it pleases. *Very* convenient for them, all in all. Think of the profit. And all it cost is the lives of a few thousand innocents (so far).
Anyway my point is supposed to be, treat the cause, not the symptoms, figure out who the *real* terrorists are before your country goes down the train and drags the entire world with it in its wake.
That won't neccessarily change her opinion. After all, you are not THE GOVERMENT, so it can be bad to have the information available to you, and good to have it available to THE GOVERMENT.
In her wonderful world of fantasy, the goverment probably fills some kind of fatherly figure, good, powerful and caring. In fact, there is no such thing called THE GOVERMENT, it's only people, with their own agendas, that usually overlap enough to do something useful, hopefully.
THE GOVERMENT isn't going to access that info. Different persons are going to access it. They will probably, if history is a guide, retain the ability of accessing it well after they have quit their jobs at the goverment (working for the goverment it's just a job, rarely a religion), and keep using in their own interests.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
If the goal of the terrorists was to strike out against our liberties, to strike out against our freedoms, and our democratic way of life, they have won.
If the goal of the terrorists was to wage war on our way of life, to destroy the very fabric of our political and social structure, they have won.
If we want to fight the terrorists, if we want to win the "war on terrorism", we must cling closely to the umbrellas of freedom, privacy, due process, and democracy.
For, if we don't, terrorism has won.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Actually, that reductionist view isn't completely correct either. Governments can and do do things that many of the individuals who make them up may actually find apalling.
IMHO, the Soviet Union, for example, was an evil empire, despite the fact that most people in the Soviet Union were not evil.
Or, to put it in a different way, people have motivations, despite the fact that atoms don't.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Who watches the watchmen? State authority is the natural enemy of citizenship. That is why in many countries civil liberties are defined as restrictions to govermental excercise. I don't trust technology policy by govermental bodies.
Exactly...there is no "The Government." We have a government of for and by the people right? So the government is just PEOPLE. Would YOU trust a bunch of people you never met and didn't even know with YOUR personal info? *That's* what the question people should be asking this Heather MacDonald wacko.
My journal has hot
Iraq is a good example how well this works. The understanding citizens of Iraq have gladgly given up their privacy allowing the Iraqi government to successfully fight terrorism over the last decades. The terrorist uprising in Basra (supported by foreign terrorist groups such as the CIA) 10 years ago could not have been countered so effectively if it wasn't for the information that private Iraqi citizens so kindly provided to their government. I fail to understand why the US hasn't adopted this successfull strategy much earlier.
The artical had a quote from Canada's Privacy Commissioner, who was also at the conference, and unlike the crazy right-wing raving, he had some pretty good stuff to say. You can read his whole speach here: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/speech/2003/02_05_a_03040 2_e.asp
My favorite part is where he says that exchanging freedoms and privacy for supposed security in the face of September 11 "can only reward and encourage terrorism, not diminish it. They can only devastate our lives, not safeguard them." To true.
First of all, yes, I care about privacy, I am one of the hysterical types Ms. MacDonald is referring to.
Second, I do agree with the basic point: people concerned about privacy are concerned because they *know* what could be done if technology is misused (as oppossed to they dream up weird scenarios).
That said, it is a "american" trait to put "bars" and "locks" on doors. Do you remember Moore's Bowling for Columbine? The scene where he walks into some canadians' houses? The bit where he simply can't believe they don't lock their doors? That's imprinted in today's "american" mentality. Control freaks that can't even beging to imagine _trusting_ their neighbourgs. Sure, you have your pretty loans which you share with your neighbourg, but the sharing and trusting stops at your doorstep. I'm not saying you people are two-faced (in fact most "americans" I know are very straigh forward when it comes to saying things the way they should be said), just that you just haven't learnt to trust the people arround you.
Don't beleive me? Think of the current war with Irak: the USA goverment never came out and trusted the world with the information they said they had. They just said "trust _us_, we have the evidence, but we can't share it with you, _we_ can't trust _you_ with that".
Just let the government do what they want? What sort of stupid woman is she?
Try living in a country that DOESNT have rights for a few months.. Then make that totally insane comment.
If she truely belives the individual should not have freedom then she can get the hell out of my country.
Freedom is what this country is founded on. As soon as you give that up, we have destroyed what we are and lost the battle.
People like this just piss me off to no end.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Saddam Hussein is Immanuel Goldstein - the big bad scary man on who all society's woes and ills can be heaped.
Currently, he is. A few months ago, it was Osama Bin Ladin. A few years ago, it was Muammar el Gaddafi. Before him, it was Saddam once before. And before him, it was... you get the idea.
This is what worries me most about US politics: The Hollywoodization of its foreign policy. In recent years, the US government and media always picked one "supervillain" and kept him as a target for the public to put all blame on this one single person. It's "us", the good guys, against "him", the bad guy.
And just like in an action movie, people were and still are fed to believe that removing this person will magically resolve to a happy ending of all current problems.
And somehow the US media always forget that it's not like the movies, that with the removal of the megalomanical villain it is not that all his henchmen are suddenly gone, powerless or instantly converted to the good side.
Killing Bin Ladin will not kill Al Quaida, and killing Saddam Hussein will not magically convert the Iraqis to democratic citizens.
If, oh, if the US government would only stop to look for Hollywood action movie scripts when it sketches its foreign policy, and the US media would only stop to use Hollywood dramatization techniques for its news reporting.
P.S.: Yeah, I'm not a US citizen. Yes, I do watch CNN. No, I don't hate America. Yeah, I think you have a bad government at present. In fact, I'm afraid of your government like I have never been before. No, that doesn't make me "anti-American".
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
- Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremburg Trials after WWII
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them." - Philip K. Dick (found on www.brokensaints.com)
There is no need for Al Quaeda to do any more serious bombings or to kill a single person, because there are now people in the US who are doing its work. But instead of killing people, they do a worse thing: they are destroying the very foundations of the civilization.
What these people do not realize, is that although life should be held as important, people can be replaced, and are. But a philosophy of life, a civilization, that cannot be rebuilt as fast. I may seem callous, but think of how people will look back on this in 25 years.
What's worse, is that these measures that reduce personal privacy and liberties probably won't help stop further terrorism attempts. Not that they need to do any more, with such people working for them.
Ashcroft should be arrested for attempting to destroy the foundations of the US. That's a worst act of terrorism in my mind than anything Bin Laden has done so far.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
This lady's a coward.
To not feel fear concerning terrorism would be stupid. I mean, they really are out there, and they really can hurt us. That is a fact. But to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by that fear -that is, to be afraid- has no point or meaning, because quite frankly, they cannot be stopped 100% of the time, and it is pointless to even try, because the only way to even approach 100% is by using means which make our lives not worth defending anyway.
People seem to forget that the various government agencies get some ten to twenty terror threats a day. They don't have the resources to treat every one of them as a real threat, but fortunately, most of them are not. So they have to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff first, and then deal with the genuine threats. This is a monumental task indeed. And yet, from 1997 - 2002 (as close as we can currently get to a five-year period surrounding 9/11). only one attack got through. That's well over a 99.99% success rate. And this was with several security procedures which were in place before 9/11 not even being followed. Even the government can't ask for better than that and honestly expect any improvement.
We are, in fact, no more secure than we were before 9/11. That's because it's basically impossible to get more secure. And that's a sobering thought, that for all the efforts at trying to "prevent" terrorism, it cannot be done perfectly, not without compromising everything that makes life in the US worth living. But that's something that's simply going to have to be dealt with. Too many people, it seems, have been raised to believe that the world is like some Disney movie where "common decency" is universal, everyone is capable of being reasoned with given enough time, and governments never abuse the power they are given. That would be great if it were -or could be- true, but there's this thing called reality that gets in the way. Maybe when more people realize this, the populace as a whole will start getting a little braver.
The biggest problem that I have with the push of allowing the government to violate so many traditionally private areas is that it restricts the freedom and rights of most people.
Sure, someone can look that if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, but the problem is that sometimes we hide things because we don't want people to see them, and not because they are something "wrong." Take for example personal emails. I email my girlfriend something personal, and suppose I say something in it like "You're the bomb." Regardless of what else I say, there is a push that the hunt to find terrorists alone would be enough to search my message for meanings, and search any other messages.
Terrorists did not just suddenly appear in America, no matter what they want us to believe. Restricting what people can say in private for fear of observation and prosicution is worse than violating someone's rights to Freedom of Speech in public (where the constitution truly applies). At that point, their is no private sayings, their is no right to think what you want.
There is a fine line between security and privacy, and is somewhere around that line. The paranoia looking for terrorists has the potential to turn into another Red Scare. Sure, for every person you find pushing terrorist activities, you probably harass and punish 30 who didn't. Beyond that, we've already seen the push for this movement against people who have nothing to do with fighting terror. How long before the privacy crackdown starts busting people just for music because Peer-to-Peer networks can facilitate terrorism?
That is an assumption on your part.
My father is very much a man of principle. He once taught me that the only rights you truly have are those for which you are prepared to die. It's a great sound bite, but with more than a little truth in it: anything else can be taken away from you, and if it can be taken away, is it really a right at all? Someone with that attitude might disagree with you.
I'm not sure I could make the hard choice, say if someone were holding guns to my family's heads, but maybe that's immaturity or lack of responsibility on my part. Put it another way, but with a more commonly accepted answer: do you believe in negotiating with terrorists? Does a little short term benefit justify the long term harm? If this is not black and white and there is a balance to be struck, then where do you draw the line?
That, my friend, is the key point that makes so many people from any side of the privacy argument critical here. You are giving up a hell of a lot for something that you don't even know will work (in fact, something that history strongly suggests will not work).
The answer to your first sentence lies in your second. The US has been throwing its weight around for a very long time, as the history books will tell you if you choose to read them. Gratuitous provocative comment for discussion: Has the US has committed more terrorist acts and war crimes in the past hundred years than any other nation on earth? (Before you flame, do read the history books for yourself.)
Your current president had established an international reputation as a belligerent man with little care for the rest of the world long before 911. This is why people will give their lives to hurt you, and this is why the international community are reluctant to stand with you on issues like Iraq. So yes, there are several things you could do to significantly reduce your risk of a terrorist attack, but most of them don't involve guns or spies.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
``Those that would sacrifice their freedom for safety will find they inherit neither.''
The 2nd Amendment guarantees us security. The government needn't do anything else. When they do seek additional measures in the name of security, question their motives. These are usually the groundwork for more sinister plans.
If you think the U.S. government is not susceptible to committing atrocities, you've had your eyes closed. Ask any American Indian if they trust the government. Or any Japanese-American who spent years of his life in an internment camp. Or an African-American who unwittingly found himself enrolled in a state-sponsored syphillis program. How about the people whose lives were ruined because they were denounced as COMMUNISTS?
We're no different today. We simply changed some keywords. COMMUNISTS now means either DEMOCRATS or TERRORISTS. Instead of the USSR it's the Middle East. Instead of the SS driving jews into ghettos, it's the IDF driving Palestinians into ghettos. Beat Vietnam protestors -> Beat Iraqi war protestors. S&L? Now Enron, WorldCom, etc. Joseph McCarthy? John Ashcroft! The same scandals, the same atrocities, the same lies, the same tyrants, just new names and a new days.
Less than 1% of 1% of the CIA's documents have been declassified, and just those few alone have shown thousands of cases of US sponsored terrorism, assassinations, support of military dicatorships, sending weapons and supplies to genocidal maniacs, destabilization campaigns, drug smuggling, ad naseum. And these people are still in our government today.
Trusting in the sanity of the United States Government is not an option. Their actions must be closely monitored and recorded. There are to be no secrets, their access limited and their power tightly curtailed. We have a responsibility to do this not only for ourselves, but for the entire world.
The reason we believe in Freedom and Privacy is because we think there's hope in changing our government for the better, peacefully. Once we lose sight of this, the only option left is to exercise the 2nd Amendment.
People like Ms. McDonald just don't understand that technology doesn't magically happen. It requires people to do their jobs correctly.
Ms. McDonald says you can trust the government, but the issue isn't just trust. Even if you accept the idea that the government will not deliberately misuse this information, you have to recognize that PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES!
It doesn't matter to the poor S.O.B. whose SSN was incorrectly associated with a child molester with a similar name that it was an honest mistake; he still has his life screwed up.
Considering the truly _massive_ numbers of plain old painful screw-ups made each year by public utilities, driver's license bureaus, tax offices, public assistance offices, child welfare offices, school systems, credit bureaus, etc. etc., it is an act of truly _monumental stupidity_ to believe that if the government builds the largest collection of information ever, they will miraculously stop making the same kind of ordinary human mistakes that have defined all public databases since the beginning of written records.
Even without the legitimate concerns about deliberate misuse, this alone is enough to make any _reasonably_ sane and intelligent human being demand more accountability from the government on this issue.
The argument is already lost against someone who thinks "the government only has our best interests at heart". That person is too "embedded" to see the forest for the trees.
Where is the poster victim for data misuse? The closest thing that comes to my mind is the child molester on TV who did his time and can't find a place to settle down in the U.S., much less hold a job, because the mandatory notification follows him from town to town and state to state. Unfortunately, not that sympathetic a model.
I think the problem is the total and absolute death of ideology. You can tell people that, IN PRINCIPLE, government shouldn't be allowed to take away constitutional RIGHTS because what might seem to pragmatically solve a specific problem now COULD result in REALLY bad consequences later. That's why you hold some principles "sacred" above specific actions. But will that argument be effective or will the person just continue to assert that governments are good and rational and always do the right thing? There is no slippery slope. Frogs can't gum the constitution to death.
If that is what a person thinks, who has the time to sit them down and teach them remedial world history? Even that isn't a sure thing. I believe a lot of people, even "well educated", think the U.S. is the crown of creation and has transcended history. Therefore, it has nothing to teach us.
One could also complain about "Luddites" who are trying to hold back progress toward a new era of expanded opportunities for safety and privacy. The identity of those opposed to "progress" depends on which direction you think of as forward.
MacDonald's argument for permitting the government to conduct broad fishing expeditions is similar to school administrators' arguments for "zero tolerance" policies. In both cases, the people in charge don't want to exert the effort and take the heat associated with identifying and acting against the real threats. By treating everyone like a criminal, they avoid a lot of bother, and too bad if the target of the fight is treated just like the perpetrator or an octagenerian Medal of Honor recipient is treated just like a recent arrival from a Jihadistan terrorist training camp.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Who the hell is paying her, indeed.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The trouble with this lady's argument is that as soon as anyone says "you can trust me", you can be damn sure they do not have your best interests at heart. It's the kind of platitude that ranks along with "God is on our side" or "if you've got nothing to hide..." or, for that matter, "my mother, drunk or sober".
We have a government of for and by the people right?
That was the ideal.
In practice it's a little more complicated and you'll notice that the people in government are really not the same as the people that walk in and out of Walmart (i.e., the voters).
There's the nature of the republic, too, where intermittent elections mean there's a time lag where it's possible that the representatives we elected aren't doing what we wanted them to do. That's OK, control theory tells me that PI controller is more stable than a P controller:)
And that potential difference between what the people want and what the government does is really the crux of the entire issue about how much information "the government" is permitted to collect.
Since governments are made of fallible people (boy are they ever sometimes), it's possible for elected officials to misuse their power; the intense information gathering concentrates their grip on power and increase the severity of the consequences if they decide to suspend elections and impose martial law "to help combat terrorism and be patriotic".
People generally don't like having to trust other people with more and more power over their lives. Every single bit of power that I give to the government better have a damn good reason: if the government thinks that a particular power of surveillence will make their job more "convenient", then that alone is insufficient justification for me.
What do the people want...?
Digressing somewhat on the issues of the day I notice how disparate are the sets of beliefs on the American street, the Arab street and the European street. Despite living in the same world we have vastly different views of it; some of "our" views and some of "their" views must be incorrect or incomplete.
- media, culture and education (indoctrination) influences and determines popular opinion much more than the facts of a situation;
- popular opinion is swayed more by emotion than it is by critical, rational analysis.
And leave with this disturbing thought:So even if you trust your government now with great powers, be absolutely certain that you'd trust anyone that the "people" elected with those powers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Ms MacDonald is a lawyer with a parochial (okay, biased) view of history, and limited knowledge of technology, but (as all of US) has an opinion. It is not a legal opinion. It is a "?historical?" and maybe "?cultural?" opinion.
... type technologies will be used by Governments to spy on Citizens. A survey by the ACLU would support this view ..., as I am sure a government directed paid for survey would prove this "?MacDonald Theory?". This paragraph is my way of saying "Luddites" was a very poor choice of words, or a shabby attempt to misdirect a misinformed audience into a false sense of security.
... TIA. The record of accomplishments over the past decade shows a plethora of uninformed decision-making on technology. Now a lawyer wants to call US Luddites. It definitely appears that the politicians and lawyers are the Luddites of this century and technology.
I believe, many of the technology elite (Poindexter and others are not) of the US and EU are very concerned about how TIA and other Snif, spook, ghost,
Purveyors of the law (politicians), and dejure representatives (lawyers) who write, interpret, and apply law on technology topics can be thanked for "Opt-Out" spam laws, PGP Jeopardy for Phil,
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I realize that this is just a signature, but I seriously must say that this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. There will always be people who break the law, if only for the sake of being able to break it. What do we do then? We certainly can't let them run wild. I tend to agree with most security measures. After all, without security, things like 9/11 and Oklahoma City happen. School shootings, while having many other simpler solutions, could be prevented by having more security measures. Someday we'll all have chips embedded in our wrists or something, then it won't be such a problem anymore. That's my opinion.
Have to reply to this, too. Yes, there will always be people who break the law, but the question comes down to whether they're a majority or minority.
How many people, as a percentage, do things like the Oklahoma City bombing? Hardly any - 3 out of 250 million in this country. School shootings are a bit higher, since you can filter the population by school age - say 50 million - but you're still at less than 100 out of 50 million.
On the other hand, look at some crimes that are committed by a larger portion of the populace - speeding, for instance, by 5-10 mph (who really drives 55 or 65? No, all the traffic, in general, is moving about 75 on the highways).
Grandparent's point about laws being wrong if they have to be enforced like a police state refers to those laws that are broken by the majority. If the government decides that the speed limits are so important that they start putting cameras on every mile of highway that measure your speed and record your license plate and send you a ticket, then it becomes a police state, and there's good reason to suspect that law is wrong.
Basically, a police state acts from the assumption that every citizen is a lawbreaker, or would be if the police were not monitoring them at all times. If this is so, then the laws are obviously too overreaching - the vast majority of people are not murderers, rapists, or thieves; the laws that we'd be breaking everyday include little things like jaywalking, littering, minor speeding, running yellow lights, not coming to a full stop at stop signs, vehicular manslaughter, etc. If these are to be enforced religiously, then we would need those chips embedded in our wrists... which would be a police state, with the assumption that we're all lawbreakers.
I agree with some of the anti-terrorist security measures - Jersey barriers at Federal buildings to prevent parking too close, metal detectors at government buildings/airports, etc. Those are non-intrusive security measures. The ones that say that the government can monitor my emails and phone conversations at will, on the other hand, ARE intrusive... particularly when I can then be jailed and prosecuted without lawyer consultation, public knowledge, etc.
Don't look at this from a "I have nothing to hide, so therefore feel free to monitor my actions all the time" point of view. Look at it from a "I have nothing to hide, and have done nothing wrong, so therefore there's no need to monitor my actions all the time and it's intrusive to do so" view.
-T
Actually, just electing a Democrat with Clinton's level of morality would do the trick. It was fascinating how conservative think tanks like the Manhatten Institute came up for so many 'random' IRS audits during the Clinton years.
The price is little high for the country for such a lesson to be worth it.
Heather MacDonald and TIA
Heather MacDonald was quoted and represented strangely by Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58332,0 0.html
How can any conservative group support TIA? How can anyone who believes in small unobtrusive government support an effor that will make the post office look small? What person in their right mind wants government clerks pouring over the details of corporate management and personal lives? These are the views of a statist.
One thing September 11th proved conclusively was the inability of the Federal Government to use the information it already had. Most of the terrorists were wanted for immigration and other violations, yet they used their own names. TIA will not help. It will not force government agencies to share what they know with each other, if such a thing is technically possible.
The fourth amendment is technology independent. It raises the bar of government intrusion to sworn testimony in an open court that proves reasonable concern of actual criminal activity and a warrent is only granted for a specific time and place. TIA violates that and until computers can take the place of judges Luddites like me will oppose it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is the problem with conservatives today. They twist the meaning of words and label everything that they oppose negatively. It is amazing how the populace at large seems willing to take what these people say at face value, that not supporting the war in Iraq means you are anti-American and want the troops to die, that being concerned about privacy means you are a luddite, that owning an MP3 player or changing channels during the commercial means you are a thief and a criminal. It scares me to see how quickly we are losing our right to dissent, our right to do what we want with our property and our right to live life the way we want.
I used to say "if you;ve done nothing wrong, you've nothing to hide".
I hear that often, but my question in response is simply, "If I've done nothing wrong, why do you have to watch me?"
Remember folks, in this country, you are innocent until they can prove you guilty. It's not up to you to prove that you live a squaky clean life, it's up to them to prove that you don't. By saying that you have nothing to fear from losing your privacy becuase you're not guilty is presuming guilt on people before the evidence is collected. It's saying, "I don't have a reason to suspect you... yet. But I'll find something eventually, I just know it, so I'll keep looking."
If there is no evidence to point me out as a possible suspect, then why do I need to be watched?
And thgis portion gives me the willies, big time.
"I agree with some of the anti-terrorist security measures - Jersey barriers at Federal buildings to prevent parking too close, metal detectors at government buildings/airports, etc. Those are non-intrusive security measures. The ones that say that the government can monitor my emails and phone conversations at will, on the other hand, ARE intrusive... particularly when I can then be jailed and prosecuted without lawyer consultation, public knowledge, etc.
Don't look at this from a "I have nothing to hide, so therefore feel free to monitor my actions all the time" point of view. Look at it from a "I have nothing to hide, and have done nothing wrong, so therefore there's no need to monitor my actions all the time and it's intrusive to do so" view."
Pardon the screwed up quotations above, but the usual > didn't seem to stay formatted.
The second paragraph in particular says it like it should be.
For instance, not too long *before* 9/11/01, I had occasion to visit the Social Security admin building in a nearby town, and was treated in what I termed a very humiliating way. On entry to the building all sorts of alarms went off, and I was forced to empty my pockets of anything metalic such as my coin purse, car keys, a small barlow style pocket knife, an engraved money clip (I could keep its contents not that there was that much in the clip, 17 dollars I think), then all my shirt pocket contents such as a ball point pen, a small 'greenie' screwdriver, 2 pair of 5" curved nose suture clamps and a small 2 AAA cell flashlight. I'm a Certified Electronics Technician and those are the things that go on with my shirt in the morning, and get hung on the doorknob with it at night. Hell, they even made noises about taking my belt off because it had a metal buckle!
I did it because I had business there, but that doesn't make me the least bit happy and I made no flimsey excuses about how I felt about it. I was told to shut up or they would call the local law enforcement to have me forcibly removed and charged with verbal assault.
Security is one thing, but pure fscking paranoia is something else, and that was 100% pure paranoia, and should be treated like the male bovine excrement that it is. To be shoveled up and spread on any nearby field that needs it.
As far as privacy matters, there is entirely too much loss of that taken as matter of fact by the sheep^H^H^H^H^H population in general. My house is MY house, bought AND 100% paid for, and somebody who doesn't belong there may well find about 3 lbs of a 44 calibre barrel stuck up his nose.
These so-called think tankers seem to forget that the sorts of things they are advocating were foretold by our founding fathers, and having been forewarned, they then proceeded to formulate and pass the first 10 amendments to our Constitution, otherwise known as "The Bill of Rights"
We should take any attempted encroachment on those rights very seriously indeed. One such instance, back in '76 IIRC, resulted in the congress as a whole, passing legislation that enjoined the BATF from implementing Mr. Richard Davis's gun registration scheme, removed the 4.7 million dollars it was estimated to take to do it from the BATF budget, and enjoined them from moving any other monies into the project, and as the final insult, removed Mr. Richard Davis's salary from the budget.
Now, who did you say was writing this persons paycheck? It sure seems like we need to repeat a bit of recent history here, sending the message one more time to such personally ambitious individuals. If thats my tax dollars supporting her and that think tank, I object, stenuously.
--
Cheers, Gene
There is a little technique that Cicero used to help determine the validity of an argument in a legal matter... he reversed it. If "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide." rings true then by the same standard of reason so should "I have something (anything) to hide, therefore I am doing something wrong." This statement carries some heavy implications for secretive orgs like the FBI, NSA, CIA? I would imagine government personnel, policemen, etc. don't advertise their personal phones and addresses, are they hiding something and therefore wrong? I'm sure George W. Bush wouldn't have voluntarily informed the media of his past alcohol problems, does that mean he would be hiding something and therefore doing wrong? I don't advertise my credit card on a website, does that mean I'm hiding something and therefore wrong? If the government is in charge of keeping my personal data from the wrong hands, they are in effect, hiding something from someone... are they wrong? Corporations hide certain finances and trade secrets from stockholders and the public at large. They must be doing something wrong, right? Try this one: "I have nothing to hide, therefore I am doing right." If I do something illegal, unethical or immoral but do so openly and transparently without hiding anything, then I must not be doing anything wrong. This effectively turns a volutary confession into a get out of jail free card. Clinton could have openly admitted to his relationship with Monica and been at no risk.
Hitler was never elected, he was brought in by a consensus of people with the authority to put him in power that thought he could be controlled.
Soon after his rise to office, a major terrorist event occured in the primary city of Germany in which a landmark was torched and people were killed.
Following this, a new series of laws were enacted that allowed his government much more power and far fewer checks than previously permitted. This allowed for domestic security forces and monitoring of citizens records at will of the government, among other things.
Media services were organized to allow the government to control what its populace was exposed to. Dissenters were either publically ridiculed, or jailed (anyone else worried about the proposed law in Oregon that potentially puts anti-war protestors in the same categories as terrorists?)
This should all sound familiar. Expansion of government powers inevitably leads to erosion of personal liberties until one or the other becomes almost negated. Early in our country we did not even have the power to tax our own citizens and the only government most people saw was the post office. Our government is moving in the direction of power consolidation, especially when our civil liberties are being "protected" by fascists like Ashcroft. If not for the Democrats having control of the Senate around 9/11, the proposals allowing for severely intrusive laws by Republicans would certainly have passed and we would be looking at a potential police state. Even with those checks in place our civil liberties took severe blows over the last 18 months to the point that random people can now be detained without charge on charges of "terrorism".
I just got back from an international vacation on Sunday. I agree that airport security needed tightening up (and more work needs to get done; they never even checked the glovebox for my permit-toting friend during his random stop at the airport. He occasionally carries a pistol there but the security didn't even ask). Federal buildings need to be protected, without a doubt the concrete barriers and othe rmeasures mentioned elsewhere are necessary. But let's be honest: the terrorists who launched the attacks took years to plan and execute their strikes. It is not easy for them to get over here, it is even more difficult to support them while they're here, and most people who arrive in the US tend to want to stay once they get here. I wonder if the 19 that ended up planning the attack was not originally 100+ given the opinions of other Arabs I have known and how their opinions changed during our college years. Almost all are now applying for either green cards or work visas.
Nineteen people, or a hundred people, or even a thousand people are not justification for ruining the privacy of 275.000.000 others. Get with the program: there are those who would use the increased power to further their own ends. If Ms. McDonald wants to allow people to view every aspect of her life, then perhaps we should build her a house in downtown Washington with entirely translucent walls or put closed-circuit cameras throughout her hom with the promise that only the government is monitoring them. Let various people see her from every angle 24/7/365 and find out how long she supports government intrusion. Depriving people of their privacy is usually the first step on that slippery slope from free republics to police states, like what happened in Germany in 1933. If we don't act to protect our privacy, then the only measurable terror we shall have will be that from people fearful of speaking out against their government for feare of reprisals. Then the terrorists have truly won.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Yup. This is my stance on most issues in fact. I don't want government to promote it (using the people's money), and I don't want government to prohibit it (again, using the people's money) -- I want government to stay the hell out of the way and let the individual decide what's best for themselves.
i found it just incredible what this woman writes in her articles. Browsing through a pretty recent one about anti-war demonstrations (from April 2nd) she is complaining about all the additional costs the "anarchists" e.g. in san francisco are creating by putting heavy load on police forces. well i have to say that since i live in san francisco about one year now (i'm not american) the reason is not the anti-war demonstrators, which in 99.9% are protesting in a peaceful way (it's ANTI WAR, duh!) that create these costs, but it's the government of the city and of this country that employ more heavily armed policemen than there are protestors!! the police forces literally outnumbered the protestors. my opinion is that this is crazy and an attempt to make any anti-war protestors shut up (nice democracy you got here...)
i also found it ridiculous of the to suggest " other avenues for expressing one's views about the war" by organizing "communication campaigns directed to the White House and Congress" - i'm pretty sure that this has happened, but since mr. bush has never even talked to one of the anti-war activists this is obviously not the truth - i have learned about americans that actually think themselves only by seeing these anti war protests in the streets.
but what really made me think was the last sentence of the same paragraph where she suggests that "Protesters can hang banners and flags outside their homes or wear black or red-white-and-blue armbands"...kind of reminded me of the situation in Germany in the time between 1933-1945 where the houses of jews were painted with "Jew" and they had to wear a " Star of David" in public...maybe a strong comparison and not really exact, but apart from this i have seen and felt other similarities between the US these days and the old germany. nationality might be good (although i never got the point really - we're all human beings right?) but it can be really bad too.
it was really sad to see people on tv saying things like "it's useless to protest against the government - it won't change anything" (nice democracy again) i think this mentality made it possible for hitler to come to power (apart from powerful helpers - already mentioned in this thread).
sorry for bothering you with this, but i just felt like i would have to express my thoughts on this and i hope the usa does not transform into the dark side with darth bush as it's "fuhrer"
"that supporting the war in Iraq means you are anti-peace and want the Iraqis to die"
Yeah, that one is pretty much right, isn't it? If you were pro-peace, you wouldn't be wanting war, now would you?
Also, when you're at war with a country, you must want some of its population to die... otherwise, we'd be talking with them, not shooting at them... right?
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
The problem arises when you confuse issues and political parties with philosophies. Modern day liberals for the most part have very socialist philosophies (the state should take care of you) as opposed to modern day conservatives who lean much more towards the libertarian (the state should leave me alone). Due to the way these philosophies are manifested by certain political parties it's easy to become confused. The "libertarians" want to legalize drugs because they want to legalize everything. The "liberals" want to legalize drugs because they like to get high.
So it depends on what you are trying to graph. If the axis of your scale is freedom at one end and security at the other then socialism and facism would both be at the security end, since neither assigns any value to personal liberty. Libertarians would be at the freedom end since they are unwilling to compromise even a little. Republicans and Democrats are both in the middle of the scale constantly flip flopping who is closer to either end.
What seems to escape everyone is that the majority of Americans reject both extreme views, and we are really fighting for the more middle ground. While there are countries in the world where people genuinely have to fear for their lives if they say the wrong thing in an email there are no countries where the average citizen is more free than in the US.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian