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DNI Office Asks Why People Trust Facebook More Than the Government
Daniel_Stuckey writes "General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Robert S. Litt explained that our expectation of privacy isn't legally recognized by the Supreme Court once we've offered it to a third party. Thus, sifting through third party data doesn't qualify 'on a constitutional level' as invasive to our personal privacy. This he brought to an interesting point about volunteered personal data, and social media habits. Our willingness to give our information to companies and social networking websites is baffling to the ODNI. 'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?,' he asked."
Seriously? Gee, I don't know... maybe it's because those private parties can't ruin your fucking life like a government can?
When was the last time Facebook's swat team raided someone's house, taking all posessions and ruining their job/social image?
How many people are in jail for life because of Google's will?
Now granted if a company the size of Facebook decided to target an individual, that person would have a very hard time defending due to the large mismatch in resources. But this kind of this doesn't happen often, because it's not really profitable. On the other hand, targetting alleged law-breaking individuals is part of the government's job and is a regular occurence.
The government is granted a lot of power for the good of society -- power to decide the fate of any citizen or company. In exchange for that power, they are held to a much higher standard and have a responsibility to implement the most stringent safeguards. However inconvenient those safeguards might be, it's the price of maintaining public confidence.
Z seems to have taken a stronger stand for ideals than Google (but I might be biased, time to go smoke a bowl of good ol' Kansas Free State Homegrown :)
Because Facebook can't come after you will full force of arms, put you in jail, and otherwise make your life miserable or unlivable by misusing your information.
It's opt in and facebook doesn't have the authority to send a swat team to my door? Sure the government can read facebook posts and then send the swat team, but in that case, I'm explicitly putting information out in the open. With a telephone call or email, I have an implicit assumption (a big one nowadays), of privacy.
since you decided you want to carry a cellphone, whats wrong with the government having a log of
your location for the last few years?
what they post, the govt chooses what they snoop. A world of difference.
private parties won't burst into my house in the middle of the night
Have canceled my FB account a long time ago, but still caon't opt out of the government.
Or worse. People know Facebook is whoring out your data to sell you (stuff).
The government is out to arrest you, or send a drone down your ass when you're out of the country. There is no good reason for the government to be snooping on you other than to make you out to be a criminal.
When I share something on facebook, it's voluntary.
When you snoop on me confiding something privately to a close friend or family member, it's not voluntary.
Why would that be hard to understand?
Ummm... Google does not have the express intention and authority to throw me in jail and keep me there ... for any of the many inadvertent federal felonies I may or may not have committed, depending on the attitude, mood, and politics of the DA.
Because they don't have a monopoly on coercive power. Dufus.
"Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?"
Maybe because those private parties don't have anywhere near the same ability to ruin our lives as the most powerful government on Earth? Last I checked, Facebook doesn't have covert prisons and a predilection for drones. How clueless must you be to find this question baffling?
Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?
That's none of your business, asshole. Move on.
I was going to start by talking about the fact that social media can't come after you with guns and exact taxes. Previous commenters covered that well. But government doesn't share the info they collect. They sit on it. At least with Facebook, when I share information with friends, there is a good expectation of reciprocity. With government, it is almost all one way. If government made it clear WHAT information they had on me, and gave me an opportunity to annotate their observations, and if they made decisions affecting me with MY INPUT beyond and above the secret info they collect, I'd have no problem with the information they already collect. I mean, we can't stop them. At every period in history, government has collected as much information as they can. What is important is transparency and accountability. The glass ceiling isn't just for women and racial minorities. If we're going to live in a feudal society, we should at least be honest about it. I hate the pretty illusions and lies.
Facebook doesn't disappear people.
Facebook doesn't take money from my paycheck. And if I want to stop using Facebook, I just stop.
Because the U.S. government imprisons more of its population than any country on earth. For laws most people have no idea that they are breaking, since there are so many, and so complicated (we are not lawyers). Not to mention the police murders and raids for nonviolent offenses.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Simple. The government can protect us from Facebook, but Facebook would be hard pressed to protect us from the government.
The companies that people give all that data to use it for advertising and as a product they SELL for money (data about you to other advertisers.)
The government is collecting some of the same data- and a LOT more, without any permission granted, and using that data to pursue anyone they wish to.
And the government has the ability to incarcerate anyone they choose without due process of law, at this point.
The comparison, even more simplified:
Online companies (IE social media, etc):
send us ads and spam
sell data we have chosen to publish to other parties
Government:
surveill our associations, data and communications at will
able to lock up for extended time any person in the US without the need to press criminal charges
And you wonder why people are upset???
Are you really THAT stupid?
Facebook can not come to my door because of something I did outside of the site. Tell me the government won't come after me if I tell them what I did which they did not like. No one likes a rat and facebook is getting close...
I never consented to giving any of my personal data to Facebook. I've never joined. Why is the government using that as an excuse to invade my privacy?
Think this is a good one to point out the future of the US... and later Europe then the rest of the world
Because Facebook can't throw political protesters in jail.
People have already posted about the government's power to do harm. Another issue is that the government is able to collect from all sources. Many people (including myself) post limited information associated with each online activity and also have a set of information that is never (intentionally) posted online. This prevents any company from forming a complete and possibly dangerous profile. The government has the ability to combine all of these sets of data and the budget to use very sophisticated data mining. This places people at risk of statistically matching some sort of undesirable (child molester, terrorist, etc) even though they themselves are innocent.
The data is also a very dangerous weapon if the government were to become more authoritarian. We've already seen a number of our constitutional rights weakened in the last decade or two - it is not beyond imagination the they will be weakened much further. If we at some point have a politically unified government there is the concern that it might use this data against political opponents.
If the government firewalled its own data, it would not be so bad. I don't mind the DOD having attack aircraft and tanks, but I would not give my local police department this technology. In the same way, if a federal organization who's only mission were to protect against external threats had full access to data I would not be very concerned, but under the current rules this data is share with local law enforcement.
When Facebook screws up its data mining, I see a stupidly-placed ad on my wall.
When the US government screws up its data mining, you get a million dead Iraqis.
Predicted response from Robert S. Litt and his ilk: "Iraqis don't vote in our elections... they don't donate to our political campaigns.... I don't get it...?"
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
There's a knock one day at your door. There's a man at the door, he says "You must give me your money, you don't have a choice in the matter, but don't worry, I'm going to give it away in your name."
You wouldn't trust a crackpot like that with your property, why should you place trust when that crackpot is the government?
Besides being completely wrong, it shows how little the government thinks of property rights. The information belongs to your phone providers/Facebook/etc, it's their hard drives, you need a narrowly-scoped warrant to compel them to hand over that information, end of discussion.
But even suppose there were no property rights in this context. Could a regular person, or even a well funded company like Facebook, possibly get away with demanding personal records from other companies? No? Then it's not really public information, is it?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
2. You can sue facebook without fear of being turned down due to "national security".
FISA courts have seen to it that we can't sue the government. I can't prevent the government from demanding service providers to comply with requests. When a government spies on their own people, that is when the people need to demand the government end thoe practices.
I can sue facebook AND I can elect to not post any information on facebook - which I exercise. I'm not happy that facebook tracks almost everyone on the internet. For most people, blocking that tracking is impossible. I'm not even certain that my attempts are 100% successful.
Governments have proven they can't be trusted. The USA government has proven they will kill people around the world without due process. UK, Australian, South African, Turkish, Egyptian, France, Spain, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and too many other countries have all proven that they cannot be trusted either.
BTW, I was a government contractor for 7 yrs.
I think the NSA should be the geek-squad for other government agencies cleaning up network and computer virus - NOTHING else.
Perhaps the worse thing is that governments are controlled by politicians - EVERYONE KNOWS that politicians cannot be trusted.
I don't trust either but I can walk away from Facebook.
Apart from the comments about the obvious power of the government to screw you up and usually let you pay for it, too, there is the obvious problem of aggregation:
If I see people on the street when I take a walk, that's a random occurence. I some person is constantly hanging onto the window sill and watching everybody coming and leaving, and remembers everybody coming and leaving, it's annoying.
If someone is collecting every piece of my life that is collectable from anybody, at all times, this is much worse than the neighbor hanging from the window sill. And telling it to the government in minute detail? That's leading a Stasified life. It means one needs to remember the circumstances about every detail of one's personal life because it might be to one's disadvantage if one gets dragged before some court and can't answer questions.
It means that every bit of one's personal life will be up for blackmailing, excuse me, plea bargaining. Of course, if one's friends' friends have done something fishy, and one leads an irregular personal life or has some secrets one avoids getting exposed, one is fair game for getting judged and assassinated, by secret courts and secret police.
It's Stasi and Gestapo all over, except that those were not out of control of the government and bullshitting their "controlling" bodies just as much as the public.
Wow... really not a difficult question. I control what I put, or don't put, on Facebook. I have some control
over who can see it. The information the government is illegally seizing can be used without controls for
any purpose, is potentially information about relationships I wish to keep private (for whatever reason). The
Constitution says I'm innocent until proven guilty. At the moment, I haven't even been charged with a
crime, so what's the government doing gathering potential evidence against me?
"...volunteered personal data", and "Our willingness to give our information to companies and social networking ". The government doesn't care if we are willing or not, and will still take our personal data.
I cannot believe no one has said choice yet.
I'm not sure I do trust Facebook more than I trust the government, but there's one key difference here: We're giving our data to Facebook voluntarily.
Facebook is like handing the keys of your house over to a relative stranger-- let's say a cleaning service-- knowing there's a possibility that they'll snoop around and go through your stuff. It might be a bad idea, but you want the service being provided. You choose to hand over access by choice, knowing what you're getting into. What the NSA is doing, to extend this analogy, is like someone breaking into your house and snooping around, going through your stuff, and doing it in secret so you never even knew they were in there.
Um, duh
"Litt explained that our expectation of privacy isn't legally recognized by the Supreme Court once we've offered it to a third party. "
Why does Litt flat out lie? Smith v Maryland, which this claim is based on, does NOT say that. The ruling was based on an expectation of privacy assumed when one voluntarily gives information to a third party. It does not address an expectation of privacy explicitly and contractually promised (e.g. a "privacy policy"), nor does it cover information not offered voluntarily (e.g. incoming caller ID, location information, etc.).
Even more significantly, ignoring the legalities, spying on your citizens is simply the wrong thing to do. Litt, and other defenders of these surveillance programs are confusing ethics and law. The US Government seems not to care what the local laws are when criticizing rights violations in other countries, but use the law to defend rights violations at home.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Really? Huh. Strangely, I was going to guess the easier answer was "OMG I CAN GET VIRTUAL SHINIES FOR MY FAKE FARM OMG OMG". Oh, well. I guess I'm just underestimating Facebook users, and they're all actively making every decision they make on that website specifically to stick it to The Man (for a very restricted, convenient definition of "the man")!
is the data given away for the virtual shinies any good anyhow? in the context of nsa spying it's very different. stuff you share.. I mean PUBLISH on facebook is stuff you CHOOSE TO PUBLISH. I would imagine there would be a pretty big outcry if facebook started selling your private messaging on facebook and if facebook installed sw on your computer to spy all your mailing activities then facebook execs would be facing jail..
what are they going to do with your cat pictures that you wanted intentionally to publish on teh internets anyways? and with the information that you play a public social game of farming chickens and are publicly showing your support for legalization? if your facebook likes were private then the reason for doing facebook likes goes away. the point of clicking like is to show publicly that you "like" that thing.
if the government were doing public polls, heck, then they might be also getting information people want to give to them.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...except unless of course you stand in the careerpath of an eager and triggerhappy procecutor.
If you ever try to explain to a lay-person how and to what extent facebook and google know everything about you they are usually not very supportive of it. The people who don't mind are either not sharing anything significant or just don't care because online privacy and data mining isn't something they are really concerned with as it doesn't directly affect their daily lives.
Most people that use facebook don't truly understand the nature of facebook's business model and the technical expertise deployed to harvest their data. Much in the same way that most people can't fathom the extent to which the government can know everything you do on a computer. It's just not within their realm of understanding, most people don't even really understand how the internet works on a basic level.
I think that if people really understood that Enemy of the State (the movie) is a pretty good depiction of the state of government surveillance they would not support it.
It's not fair to conclude that since people are ok with facebook they are ok with being put into a NSA database. They don't understand the consequences of either.
On what do people base their trust? Shared moral pursuits. Wanting of independence and freedom are good examples, but so is relationship with God.
Are your moral views consistent? If not, you will be thought of as a hypocrite. Same goes for the goverment, whose behavior and ethics roughly resemble that of the general public.
For one it's impossible to claim to be merciful and just when you detain people without trials and try to break them with torture. The American government has lost a lot of credibility during the last century, when the system has become less principles in unwavering (Christianity, defending the Constitution) ethics and more concerned with pandering for the megacorps and their consumer drones.
IMHO, well-tested principles should reign over politically practical "utilitarian" (end justifies the means) views, otherwise there is too much drift in the society's moral fabric towards relativism, after which alienation, disillusionment, and demoralization triumph any sense of common good.
And more about *distrusting* government.
Ok, in this case should be a black hole calling another black hole black. But at least you can avoid one of them (not joining, installing extensions like Disconnect, etc). And as far i know, facebook don't hack your own servers or the servers of your isps/cellphone companies/hosting companies to track what you do in your own space, or plant backdoors just waiting for the moment they will be useful, or force other, unrelated companies to install spyware for you. And of course, don't have such real life impacts like putting you in jail, expelling from US, or just send a drone to your area.
And even if were that evil and with that broad reach (that nothing in earth have it, no foreing government, no organization, no independent private companies, just US government and associated private companies, join kaos, cobra, and all the bond villains organizations and you still didnt reach what US government is doing) pointing that someone does something bad too don't turns the wrong that you into right.
1) Facebook can't throw you in prison if they don't like the information you've given them.
2) You can stop giving Facebook your information if you decide you no longer trust them with it.
The most rational reason is that laws change and what you're legally doing today, can be retroactively illegal tomorrow. The tax code is the most common reason; Changing constantly and using data collected previously to take more money of you now.
On a more problematic note, is religious affiliation and sexual preferences. You never know which joker will run to office next with the "think of the children" or "following the bible\Jesus example..." slogans.
I'd actually prefer being held at gunpoint than having a facebook account...
The mere fact that someone in a position of such authority, control, and responsibility
could be so out of touch as even to ask this question is kind of worrisome. Even beyond
all the excellent comments made so far is the observation that the information we might put
on Facebook is fundamentally a different kind of thing that a list of all my phone calls, or a list
of all the web sites I visited, or all the e-mails I sent and received. I think it's time for a
peaceful revolt. Call your Congresscritters and help stop this.
Facebook hasn't murdered anyone.
Because facebook lacks any authority to act upon the information which is ideally volunteered. And they don't run guantanamo. Duh.
The danger isn't in sharing SOME information to DIFFERENT entitities.
The real danger is in how ALL DATA gets collaborated in central databases and WHO can access that!
It's a huge threat to real democracy and real freedom, as such databases can be abused for surveillance, infiltration, sabotage and elimination operations without anyone even knowing it!
Now, where's my paycheck for doing your job?
Because I don't care if Amazon thinks I might want to buy pee pee catheters because I also bought Wells' 1984. I do care if government tracks who I talk to politically.
And even at that, not so much me as any candidate I might like.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
1) I can FUCKING SUE the private parties, in a class actions, and fry their ass. The government says "state secretes" and it goes away.
2) I can chose NOT to do business with private parties (I and my family member have no Facebook or other social media accounts for exactly that reason). Can't realistically do that with the government.
3) Private parties can't send my ass to Gitmo or spend a million bucks making my life hell trying to find some way to put me in jail.
Since the government can harvest what they need via agreements/PRISM/backdoors/secret courts,
what you give Facebook you give the US Intelligence services which in turn are part of the government.
So we are contributing to each. Well I have never had a FB account and never plan to have one
but that is just me. I enjoy my friends in person, more than poking them on a website.
Because Facebook has only been fucking people over for 10 years, where the government has for centuries. Lesser of two evils?
Whats this article saying, is it asking why people are idiots? I trust no one with my personal information, government or facebook, it doesn't mattter, at the end of the day its just some idiot infront of a computer pressing buttons, scary.
Volunteered information is at my discression and is not being siphoned or taken from me. I am volunteering whatr information I give.
If they raid your house they can just confiscate your stuff and basically claim "Well I'm not finding you guilty but I can find your possessions guilty and therefore I can just take it since property doesn't have rights." (IE They can just claim "This stuff was involved with drugs therefore it's totally legal for me to take it without due process." (How this shit isn't against the 8th amendment is beyond me. IE The maximum penalty for someone who has not been convicted of anything should be $0.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Easy answer is not to respond.
The question is a false premise. It's not the same people giving info to Facebook but not wanting the government to have it. A small group of privacy advocates are arguing on behalf of those who don't understand what giving information away can do.
Lots of people have no problem with government - if they want to read my shopping lists, or listen to me talk to my wife or kids about whatever, let them.
The question is only valid for a small subset of people - and I say first you would have to find them, and then ask them.
Plus, we are not "giving information to Facebook" - we are giving it to our friends, and the fact that Facebook has to have the data is transparent, and largely not understood. I think that explains it much better.
The question was poorly formulated because it was supposed to be a rhetorical "gotcha" that made you think - well when you say it like that, the government can have whatever it wants to have. And so many people fell into the trap of considering it a real question that deserves an answer.
A government must be limited in its powers at a constitutional level, because you never know who will be running the show in the future. Limits on things they can legally do that no-one else can are necessary, but they need to be beyond the power of the administration of the day to change without further consent or the protections are meaningless.
For the rest, in theory normal laws should suffice. The government itself should legislate to ensure that, for example, businesses must respect privacy to a reasonable extent, because telling a health insurance company that you've been having lots of discussions with people who have cancer lately could potentially have serious consequences too.
The catch here is that when politicians and lawyers are involved, the distinction between government and non-government authority and restrictions can get blurred, so I am increasingly of the view that basic rights must be protected at a constitutional level against anyone who might infringe them unjustly.
None of it matters anyway if your judicial system declines to enforce the law, of course, but at least this removes any ambiguity regarding whether those fundamental rights are legally protected.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
if you stand up to the government, you're going to get body checked by a large organization that can take everything you have. If you speak up, you're going to get targeted for special treatment. This has occurred with both major parties in office. Because the bureaucracy is large and nearly permanent, with oppressive powers only an armed to the teeth State can have.
You voted in this authoritarian government and gave it the power to do harm. Vote them out of office and help dismantle the bureaucracy before it overwhelms us.
To hell with jail or death; I'm far more worried they'll send the IRS.
The IRS is actually pretty laid back compared to their counterparts in Italy: the Guardia di Finanzia http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2010/jun/28/chinese-crime-networks-raids-italy. Those guys do full on SWAT-style raids on corporations and will seize assets or even put the entire company in guardianship until the court case ends.
Their motto sounds more appropriate for Marines than a tax collection agency "Does not retreat even if broken"
Maybe the habit of outsourcing information collection that is illegal to do in-house?
Information volunteered on Social media sites are assumed to be for the use of your friends or anonymous individuals who , for the most part, mean you no harm. In other words, benign individuals who are not your enemies.
It's so long been assumed that the government cannot be benign in such a way that even the Constitution as originally written describes the government as a hostile entity that must be closely controlled or it will take the rights that every individual should expect to enjoy away from them. You don't have to look vary far in order to see that his is just what is happening in the presence of an apathetic electorate who have grown complacent with those very rights that they take for granted. Those rights maybe considered inalienable but the government that oversees the population must be kept in check or the right taken for granted can be taken away.
If I have a conversation on the phone with someone, that's protected, even though the phone call is routed through a third party (the telecoms company). Why is it different on the internet, or on a computer? Consider these situations:
I have a conversation in a room in my house with two other people: There's a third party, depending on how you choose to group the three people. That conversation is private. The conversation isn't encrypted, and it's technically very easy to record, by bug or parabolic mic for example, but the police would require a warrant to record the conversation. The expectation of privacy is based on the physical boundaries involved, regardless of whether I own or rent the property. If the conversation was in the garden, and overheard. A prosecutor could use the testimony whoever overheard the conversation. But the police still couldn't record the conversation without a warrant.
I am conducting business via snail mail, sending a contract back and forth between myself and two other people, but it's probably going to be seen by by various secretaries and flunkies as they manage/facilitate the technicalities of getting the documents to and from their intended recipients, such as putting text on letterhead (formatting) putting it in an envelope (marshalling) and putting in the post box (transmitting), and photocopy it for record keeping (storing). That conversation is private. The police would require a warrant to intercept the mail. In fact, the police couldn't even ask for on of the receptionists to forward a copy of the mail to them, or even to report to them the dates, times and addresses on the envelopes. For that they would require a warrant.
I'm conducting a conversation on facebook/google+. I've set up my privacy settings so that only people I approve can see the conversation. The expectation of privacy is that people I haven't approved can't see the conversation, based on the "boundaries" of my settings. I don't own the digital space where the conversation is taking place, but I do in a sense rent it based on the agreements in the terms of service. Compared to the first case, why shouldn't this conversation be considered private. Sure, Facebook or Google or whoever it is can see the conversation as they FORMAT it into the correct protocol, MARSHAL it for network TRANSMISSION, ad STORE it it for eventual delivery. Compared to the second case, they are acting as my digital secretary, even if that secretary is a Kelly Temp, i.e. a third party.
Just because it's on a computer and EASIER to access, shouldn't make it LEGAL to access without a warrant.
The government asserts that if I give information to a 3rd party then I loose any right to control that information. I give lots of personal information to my doctor, lawyer, and accountant and they are required *BY LAW* to keep that information confidential. The only reason the telcos are sharing my metadata is because the government is demanding it under this false doctrine. While we know the telco, or facebook, or google may have our personal data we expect them to keep it private and if they suddenly started publishing it we would probably stop interacting with them, and would probably take them to court and demand new laws if the old ones weren't sufficient. Another point is that holding individual data points about someone is a far cry from compiling all that data into full time surveillance. There is a substantial difference from the traffic cop noticing my car passing a point and 10,000 cops all noting my location and compiling it into route maps of my daily activities in the hope that someday that be used to accuse me a crime. The government has inverted the restrictions clearly stated in our constitution, that powers not granted by the constitution are not allowed to the government. They are working from the position that anything not prohibited is permitted and this overreach must be curbed. The circumvent the clear intent of laws forbidding them collecting information when they order private companies to turn that data over to them, thus they did not "collect" it, they only received it. My mother wouldn't let me get away with that line of reasoning when I was 5.
Litt asks a very good question, but it's based on a bias toward the way the law is worded, which is worded that way as a means to for law enforcement to have sensible ways to legally acquire information about people. If you offer "private" data to a third part, legally, it's not private anymore. But that's not how people really think about it. People want to have the freedom to choose who does and does not have access to "private" data. And since this goes contrary to the law, the will of the people really needs to lead to some changes in the law. Publishing on Facebook may provide it to a 3rd party, but Facebook is just a data store, and people are putting specific restrictions on who can see what parts of their personal information. If we can infer the intent of someone to commit murder by their actions and statements, we can also infer the intent of someone to constrain how their private information is shared. The courts should reason about both similarly.
Personally, I only put in Facebook what already has to be public anyway, like my educational credentials. I'm a state employee, so that also has certain implications about information that is already public with regard to my job. You can find out a lot about me online, and this is partly due to the line of work I'm in. I'm betting you can also find out how much money I make. But certain information about my home and family is simply not shared and off-limits.
One of my fears is that because I choose to re-share some already-public data about myself, some judge will infer that I intend to share everything and issue a warrant for the rest of my data. And of course, I'm afraid that such a warrant might be requested in the first place because there are so damn many people with the same name as mine, and the NSA is probably a hot-bed of false correlations. We need new laws that block the development of a surveillance state and respect MODERN conceptions of what is public and private. This idea that you should have no fear if you're doing nothing wrong is bullshit. Not only is this surveillance wrong, but there's almost a guarantee that they'll get their information wrong and start charging countless innocent people with crimes.
Clearly, the problem is that government has the power to arrest and imprison you. or make financial demands of you that you have no legal recourse to wash away, or even in some cases to legally end your life. A private social media web site like Facebook can do none of this, by comparison.
But that said? I still use FB (often using it as a sounding board to complain about political issues and repost relevant news items for my friends to read). Certainly, there are many personal things I choose not to share there. But many other things, I will. Government offers me none of the benefits of sharing such information though, if I were to volunteer the same information to them. FB, at least, gives me a window into the daily lives of many people I know, helps me buy and sell items, etc. -- all without paying any money for the service. Govt. generally just takes your information, compiles it into databases at facilities they own, and then turns around and denies they have it.
What a bizarre question: Facebook vs. the government. They're one and the same with PRISM. While I have been called paranoid and a conspiracy nut over the past decade for labelling Facebook and Google as government front operations, I call those who are late to the realization naive. Power naturally agglomerates like gravity wells regardless of whether that is "private sector" or "public sector".
So Litt's argument is the same as a rapist's, who claims that those promiscuous, little sluts who sleep around deserve it and are, in fact, asking to be raped. Hear that? Say yes to Facebook, you don't get to say no to the Federal Government, you little Information Whores!
Facebook, Microsoft and Google do not possess armies of dragoons who can break your door down, drag you into the street and throw you into the slammer and then throw away the key. Well, not yet anyway. Although these are large companies, they operate at the same level we do. That is why we trust them more than the government.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
wants to put them in jail?
At least the government isn't selling information about me for profit.
Intelligence analysts never consider the intent of the opposition, only their capabilities. The government has the capability to throw me in jail; businesses, including FB, don't. Therefore, I care a lot more about what I share with the government then I care about what I share with businesses.
Private parties just want to increase advertising revenue...not rig national elections...
Because they're killing Independent George. It's not "just FaceBook." If they were looking at "just FaceBook" it would still be awful, but not terrifying. It's the cross references. It's the JOIN statement.
Select AWFUL_SHIT from FACEBOOK and PHONERECORDS and EMAILS and SEARCH_HISTORY and FINANCIAL_RECORDS and BUTTPORN_FETISHES where SLASHDOT_UID = '321000'
We all have our personal lives, our professional lives, and our private lives, and we establish boundaries between them.
At the office, I keep it about business. That's professional. My co-workers and my boss don't need to know about my hobbies, my (acceptable) political views, my religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
On FaceBook, that's my personal life. My friends, my family, pictures of my cat. Maybe an occasional observation about politics or religion. How much fun I had at the barbecue picnic last week. And there's a place in my profile I can list some of my favorite books and movies. But I don't list on my FaceBook profile my favorite sexual fetishes, exactly how much money is in my bank account, and the precise dollar amount I spend on alcohol and what prescription medications I take.
And then there's my private life. The things I say pseudo-anonymously, the contents of my medicine cabinet, my liquor cabinet, and the secrets shared only with my lover (even if my lover happens to be myself at the time).
People who share across those boundaries are people we say have "boundary problems." The U.S. Government has boundary problems.
They've torn down those walls, and a George divided against himself cannot stand!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The ODNI doesn't know that Facebook can't have you arrested, but the Feds can? If he's that dumb, he probably should resign.
Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?
Why is it people have sex every day, but when I jump out of the bushes wearing a condom, they cry foul?
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
There's probably many more angles to reply to this. Naming just a few: /spirit/ of privacy laws; the government should not access our data, /regardless/ of the method. /want/ to give to companies, but are forced to or enticed to anyhow (and the government doesn't protect us from this); b) Information to companies is enourmouisly easier and more effeciciently abused or leaked by compnies than before the digital age; c) Privacy laws should already always have included (bits of) private information we choose to, or have to share with companies.
One thing would be the
Another point: the rules are outdated with repsect to information we give to companies: a) Much information we actually don't
Another: (Extension of above) We don't simply "willingly" share; we are coerced into giving up this data, it's just that not all people see it as clearly as that (even so many do, and many more would if explained and explicitly asked), and even fewer are vocal about it. But it's still the case. So the question posed by this government is actually flawed to begin with.
The Patriot Act - that's why people trust Facebook more than the government. It used to be that a warrant was needed for the government to invade a person's privacy, but ever since that little rat-faced git had those buildings blown up in New York City they've seen it as their God-given right to trample all over the Constitution. And shame on the current occupant for continuing the process.
I don't have any problem with persons or organizations having my personal details, so long as I /chose/ to give them said information or access. Hell, I'd probably be more than willing to give the government access, too, if they had bothered to consult me. What upsets me most is how ready my government is to evade the spirit, if not the letter, of law and constitution.
Either that or he really, really, really does not have one...which in itself is then an inditement of the Federal Government choice of directors of important agencies.
For God's sake, he had better understand by the time he reads this post that most people are petrified at the thought of having to resist the Feds, whether in a Tax Audit or a SWAT attack on the wrong house.
Gosh, how could you view private parties and government differently? I mean, unless you had even a passing familiarity with the 1st and 4th Amendments, for starters, which plainly have for a couple hundred years now ....
Sheesh, this guy was employed?
Don't tell me people trust facebook more than the government because the government can be more evil than facebook. The truth probably is more something like 90% of the people don't even realize what are possible implications of posting stuff online, and they will use whatever service can cater to their narcissistic traits, independent of who's running it.
"We do not use our foreign intelligence collection capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies in order to give American companies a competitive advantage."
No you just spy on friendly foreign governments to give American companies a competitive advantage. Nobody gives two shits about the moral difference.
"Thus, sifting through third party data doesnâ(TM)t qualifyâ"on a constitutional levelâ"as invasive to our personal privacy."
The very idea a constitutional protection would no longer be effectivly applicable to society simple because the particulars of technology which very few people understand or recognize has changed is illegitimate and unacceptable.
It is not just people fed up it is the second order effects upon large corporations who stand to lose business due to increase in numbers of customers much less willing to participate in a technological environment which imparts the same rights and expectation of privacy as a police state.
Suppose we were to organize a riot against the state in protest over violations of privacy. We'd be thwarted. Suppose we try to organize over real issues such as global warming, energy shock, systemic economic collapse? We the soon powerless starving majority at home will be the enemy of state.
"Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances."
-- Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies, Department of Defense, April 2013
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-12/html/2013-07802.htm
January 2013 http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/10C18.txt
"Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Problems of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response."
-- http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2006/sectionX.html 2006
"... anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten government stability."
-- Army Modernisation Strategy, Department of Defense, 2008
"DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance."
-- Strategic Studies Institute, 2008
"Climate change would lead to increased risk of ... tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes... Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United States itself - particularly when the nation's economy is in a fragile state or where US military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly affected - the damage to US security could be considerable. ... A severe energy crunch is inevitable [by 2015] without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions."
-- US Joint Forces Command, 2010
"climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked."
-- Quadrennial Defense Review, Department of Defense, 2010
3E51A207
It surprises me that the government might have this opinion, but I guess that it shouldn't. I wish that the government would remember that those people who post things to social networking sites believe that they are posting to a limited group of their friends. The government is really the friend of no one.
So I have an interesting test for the law. Lets say we have a mute friend, but thanks to 3rd party voice transcribing technology they can speak. Lets say its something like Siri for sign language. Should the individual have an expectation to privacy when their primary means of communication relies on a third party? Do you have to hire a human translator to have an expectation of privacy? Would it be reliant on the ToS? Because it doesn't seem like the precedent relies on any ToS like conditions.
I don't use facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc. I have that choice. The government is not giving us that choice.
Facebook isn't being bought off by lobbyists or run by political fanatics with an agenda. They're in it for the money, plain and simple, and that's something the people can understand.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Looks more professional and exceptional that i was expected.I will keep that in mind. Thank you very much for your wonderful post.... :)
Kind Regards
Rodrico Compas
'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?,'
Because I can predict what private companies will do. Private companies exist to do one thing only -- to make money. I might not necessarily trust corporations, but I trust that I can predict and understand their motivations. The incentive to make money drives people to make rational choices more than any other incentive does.
The problem I have with government is that I don't understand their mindset, and so I can't predict what they will do. For example, half the members of the US Congress are engaged in a massive, eight-year-long refusal to cooperate on any legislative accomplishments, motivated entirely by their desire to cause political damage to the president. The result is a theatre of the absurd -- for example: their original approach for medical-insurance reform was eventually embraced by the president -- so as a result they completely reversed course and they now bitterly oppose the very approach they once advocated.
Another example: I would have never predicted that the US government's response to the terrorism of 2001-09-11 would be to tack hard toward fascism and attack its own citizens' liberties instead of focusing those energies productively.
In both examples, the evil springs from the deep moral, cultural, and personal failings of those who fight their way into positions of governmental authority. Government's emotionally-fueled and unpredictable evil scares me much more than the calculated and predictable evil of Hell-Bent Capitalism.
'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?,'
Perhaps because the people willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties and the people who don't want the Government to have the same information are distinct groups; they're different people!
We actually see government as a potential ally against big business. Yet we also realize that the government can and does send jack-booted terrorists against some citizens. So far business rarely sends thugs to kill customers although they surely would if we allowed them to. So the government is a huge buffer that aids the citizen. That makes government much like the Mafia or organized crime. The Mafia buffers against a society that has fallen apart and can not provide reasonable pay checks for citizens. The Mafia also limits the power of business, also modifies the power of government, and employs large numbers of people indirectly. Are we having fun yet?
The General Council DNI (GCDNI) comments indicate a lack of understanding by analogy.
By analogy the GCDNI does not understand the difference or distinction of Consensual Sex and Rape.
They are willing to give up their information (valuable) for the opportunity and convenience that the private companies offer. Its a trade they are willing to make. The people no longer value what the government does for them at all. They see lie after lie and the huge monumental expense those lies generate and they refuse to trade with the government on anything. Uncle Sam, nobody trusts or believes you anymore. Nobody.
Probably because Facebook just wants to sell you stuff (via advertising), whereas the government wants to control your life (or end it)
The argument that just because a third party has the information, that negates the privacy of the individual, is such a facetious argument, that it is not funny. Your Doctor, is a 3rd party, you Priest, Lawyer, Accountant are also 3rd parties. Does this then negate the privacy of your conversation? Or the fact that you even had a conversation? What about your Location? Courst have ruled that placing a GPS tracking device is illegal with out a warrant. The metadata from cell phones, includes your location. Is the location of my daughter, or wife 24/365 a matter of public record? The arguments for this invasion of privacy are specious at best. It is a clear breach of the 4th amendment. Most people do not realize how much information is located in the metadata. In many cases you don't even need to know the conversation to know something vitally private. If my daughter made a call to an abortion clinic, do you consider that private information? Simple joins of database make that metadata, extremely compromising. As to 3rd parties such as Facebook, I volunteer as little information as possible. I "KNOW" they will sell me down river.
Browsing without an adblocker is like fucking without a condom - Mal-2
Because - despite all the statist reasoning that businesses are the menace to society but the government is here to help! - many people trust businesses more than the government. Indeed, they expect them not to share it with anyone, especially not the government. (Irrespective of how optimistic these wishes are. After all, the men with guns pretty much come and take whatever they please.)
CAPTCHA: TYRANTS
Gee, the General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence doesn't understand.
"It's very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
every country does that. If you earn money in that country you get taxed.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Imagine for a moment that you actually are a terrorist, here in a sleeper cell, waiting for direction.
Now imagine that you are the NSA, FBI, or CIA, or other government office. You suspect the terrorist, but don't know for certain if they will act. Do you trust them? Do you add their notations to their file?
A citizen then, a domestic terrorist like McVeigh or the folks in Waco. Still being monitored, but allowed the right to annotate your own file. What good does it do?
Do you think it would stop someone from acting if law enforcement simply said "we're watching you"? Or would they take to more traditionally preserved rights such as letters in sealed envelopes, or encryption?
What if you, now as the terrorist, could ask if the government was on to you and you could see your file? No annotations because you opt not to, but you could report back that you are either being watched, or that you appear to be free of surveillance?
Having considered that, what do you think the likelihood is of:
1) Seeing your whole file
2) Seeing anything at all, even if it is a bluff/lie
3) Having your feedback considered in any seriousness other than an addition to your file
?
Do you think that your comment "I know my good friend Sakhbir is a known terrorist, but I only hang out with him because he's a great wingman" will be taken into any account?
I thought with "reciprocity" you were going to ask for information about the government's programs. Instead, you want to give them even more information about yourself. I doubt you thought this through, nor did the 3 or hopefully more people who modded you interesting.
I can't think of any society, ever, that has an election and/or nomination process for strangers at your door. And few wouldn't allow you to simply say "no", close and lock the door, and call the police (the real government).
Governments do have some accountability and traceability, while a stranger does not. Governments have some semblance of provenance, even if you disagree with its origin, while a stranger does not.
Wow, you really believe that your opinion is the law, don't you?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
The real comparison here isn't with Facebook, although if your friends connect with HTTP instead of HTTPS it might as well be. Instead of a third party, HTTP shares this information with fourth and fifth parties. It is not your fiber, not your backbone, not your router, not your internet. The internet is not your person, your house, nor your papers.
Your house may be your castle, but once you do business outside of it, you are no longer protected by your walls. If you insist on lumping data you generate into the "effects" part of the amendment, you have a really long fight ahead of you.
Again, your opinion, right or wrong, does not make any sense given the interpretation of the Constitution and its Amendments that we have inherited from case law, before and after its framing. Effects has long stood for personal property, and the infrastructure of the internet is not your personal property.
Once you give information to a third party, it is no longer secret except by client/attorney privilege or spousal privilege. Telling me to tell your wife something is very much not the same as telling her directly, or writing her a letter, or engraving it in stone and placing it in her personal handbag.
A really good question. I think there are a LOT of biases getting involved here, some of them obvious and some a bit more subtle. Here's a random list:
- Feel good bias: The average business writes your paycheck, which feels good. The G man taxes it away, which feels bad. Score 1 for business.
- Capitalism bias: The purpose of a business is to make money, and making money is good. The government's job is spend money, and spending money is bad.
- Bully bias: When you've had a bad day you can go down the the local minimum wage shop and abuse their employees for a few hours. Haha. Try the same with a typical govt. employee, and things go south fast.
- Mob bias: When the govt. screws up REAL bad, a lot of people can rally and make some things change. When a business screws up REAL bad, your rally gets shut down by the govt. and they continue to screw up. Gee, like with the whole banking crash of every single generation ever.
- Archimede's bias: Nah. Shit floats both ways.
- Media bias: Who writes the reporter's checks? It's not the fed, that's for sure. The Govt. stance is typically to silence their own screwups, rather than to hype someone else's to elicit a public response.
- Prostitution bias: Basically every mandate that tells you how to live your life, and you aren't even getting paid to change your ways. Bummer. Anyone will whore themselves out for a buck.
- Personal touch bias: A business is owned by its owner, therefore the typical person has no right to change it or get involved. The govt. is established by the people, with clear rights and liberties.
- Murrrrrika bias: When someone says "Stop wasting my tax dollars to video record me shitting on the john", they're mad. When someone says "My innane posts and activities are somehow generating billions of unmarked dollars from presumably legitimate sources (the govt. totally vetted this) for the company?" What a country!
Because we don't like you.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
And no amount of leaks and disclosures is going to change the thinking of the rodents...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:NSA_surveillance
Yet these stupid clueless people are also people. And it's the duty of we who understand to protect them. And if duty isn't your cup of tea, rest assured we're all getting fucked by the current situation unless we take action, the lemming horde will take us all down with them.
"'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?,'"
:) You just might want to keep a close eye on what you share and with whom. Better safe then sorry.
While government and companies can both ruin your life if they want to, there's a very basic difference in goals here. A company like FB is interested in keeping you live and kicking, out of prison, using their services, spending you rmoney, vieweing their ads, making you dependent. So, while they exploit every bit of information they gather, their primary purpose is to analyze that information to see how they can best get your money. Now, the government, on the other hand, has the primary purpose of finding terrorists - according to some current definition of the word - by analyzing the data they gather from you. They have a different perspective, and analyze everything from the point of view of 'can that mean you are a terrorist' even in some remote sense. Their goal is to lock you up, if some small detail makes you suspicious. Some might think there's not a very big difference, but let's say you'd search for some information which might be part of some government filter: the company would show you ads and sell it to you, the feds would lock you up. Which one would you prefer?
That said, I don't trust my data to anyone, but sometimes sharing some information is inevitable. You know, for enjoying some small benefits, like money, travel, treatment, communication, social life
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Although I disagree that the government has any right to my property just because the majority says it does I do agree that information cannot be owned. Once the information is out there it is out there. The only way to own information is to keep it a secret.
The government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. They have no right to do the monitoring they do not only because of the 4th amendment but because of the 9th and because the constitution does not give them explicit permission to do so. Depending on your ethical views it might also be immoral.
But the reason that the government should not be storing data from every email, phone call, and private mesasge in the world is not because the information is private property. It's because the surveillance involved to get that information is unethical, unconstitutional, and tends to lead to dystopian societies in practice (think STASI).
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Perhaps its because Facebook doesn't run secret prisons in Poland and Romania?
Strategists must recognise that the Western model of 'Democracy' has failed. Governments no longer enjoy the tacit 'consent' of their political opponents. Not suggesting web-polls could replace the failed representation/lobby/debate model, but someting will have to adapt soon to avoid massive popular disengagement. What will evolve?
because the government does not protect it's people against large corporations (e.g. RIAA) that abuse their power by ruining the life of people for sharing some lame mp3's.
Wow, you really believe that your opinion is the law, don't you?
I highly doubt that.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm not sure I agree. In principle, there is a small group of privacy advocates, yes, but there are a significant number of people who are quite happy to share their data with Facebook but not the government. There are a number of reasons for this:
1) We know why Facebook want our data.
It's pretty obvious: their business is built around advertising. They sell advertising space to advertisers, and use our information to increase the advertisers' click-through rates. That's not to say that there is no nefarious messing around that goes on, but in general terms, we know that that's their business model. The government, on the other hand, nobody really knows why they want the data. "Terrorism" is the answer that's trotted out, "national security", but what does that really mean?
2) We choose what we share with Facebook.
Lots of people choose to share everything with Facebook, some choose only to share snippets of information, but each individual can choose whether to share that or not. The government want to collect data without our consent, and given recent revelations, apparently without our knowledge as well.
3) Even on Facebook we have expectations of privacy.
We have recourse (legal, or simply by closing our accounts) if Facebook break our agreement about privacy. If they share information that I have not given them permission to share, I can close my account. There's no way we can do that with the government. If our data is lost, stolen, made publicly available, or just used in a way that I don't want it to be used, tough. There's nothing you can do if it's the government's fault.
"If humans were offered a choice, even one felt at an unconscious level, then over 99% would accept"
I suggest the DNI folks engage several social scientists/departments to answer their question about why "Facebook is trusted more than the Government." It is commonly understood and taught in the Internet/cyber environment that in Europe, the public trusts their government more and commercial activities less; in the United States, the public trusts commercial activities more and their government less. I'm sure there are a number of historical reasons for this, some that go back to the founding of the United States, and others much more recent.
Scott Tousley
Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology (Cyber)
'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?'
It's not that people don't "want the government to have the same information". Information given to private parties is done so willingly and knowingly (for the sake of this argument, anyway). People don't wan't the government to be able to demand (or surreptitiously take) their information without their consent.
"General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Robert S. Litt explained that our expectation of privacy isn't legally recognized by the Supreme Court once we've offered it to a third party." - that's untrue. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. Not only that, but many types of giving information to a third party are explicitly granted expectation of privacy at federal and state levels: anything you send by the US postal service, communications with lawyers, clergy, spouses, and medical and mental health personnel, and information provided as part of clinical trials conducted by drug companies or private institutes -- just to name a few.
The reasons that people don't fear sharing information on Facebook, but fear government monitoring:
- People are aware of what Facebook has, and they can control it (even if they can't control how it's used after the fact)
- Information on Facebook is under no pressure to be correct and is unreliable
- Facebook cannot directly: seize all your assets, imprison you, assassinate you, put you on secret no-fly lists, etc.
- If Facebook does something illegal or harmful, they can be sued - not true of the government, particularly secret programs
- Facebook has a profit motive and doesn't want to piss you off, the government has fickle political motives and literally has advanced weaponry, standing armies, to enforce it's policies
TL;DR it's an issue of risk, reward, and accountability
If the Government actually owned an ISP to be able to copy data, that would be one discussion.
But no, the government here is compelling providers to hand over information without a warrant. I cannot do that, you cannot do that, Google could not order that, and neither can the Government.
(The so-called expectation of privacy not only prevents the government from searching/taking private property without a warrant, it it also prevents them from bugging public or publicly accessible property where there is otherwise an expectation of privacy - in the original court case that established this, this was a phone booth.)
The 4th amendment doesn't just protect houses. It protects companies like Facebook. It protects everyone in their own business from unlawful force.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
1) Private Companies generally have to answer to the government. So if they do something we don't like and it's discovered, the government can come down on them hard. And the government is actively, in many cases, trying to find out if they are doing bad things.
The government on the other hand, in the best of cases, reports to the people (and that is an arguable point in cases where many consider it true). And they can oh so easily hide what they are doing, because there isn't a monolithic "government" over them keeping an eye on them. The United Nations attempts to do that, but from afar. And should the government want to hide something from us, they have an immense amount of resources to do so, plus cover up the cover up. With all the money that a private company has, they don't have nearly the debt leverage that a government does, nor do they have a military, or massive police force, or massive spy agencies, etc.
2) Private companies are usually focussed entirely on making more money. Since they have to work in the confines of #1 above, the ways of making money off of my personal information are significantly reduced. In practice, they are going to use it to try and get me to help them make money. Either by getting me to buy more, or getting me to buy more from someone else. There is a certain amount of directly perceived benefit to me there, whether I like the means or not, so it's harder to get me to argue it.
The government on the other hand has a different agenda. Sure, we like to think it's to make us happy, but that's not really at the root of things. Really, a government wants to perpetuate itself, it's just that making us happy is one way to accomplish that. But look at all of the repressive regimes out there. They've learned there are plenty of other ways to keep themselves in charge. You just walk a line in the middle. It's all about who you make happy and how.
3) History has shown as that it's pretty sick what people will do for their government and what a government will do. The horrible acts throughout history perpetrated by governments outweigh private companies by far.
4) The breadth of control the government has over society dwarfs that of any private company. A private company might have some of my personal information, but the government can leverage that with information that private companies never have access to due to the sheer fact that the government requires I provide it and that they in many ways controlled how I came into this world and how I navigate it.
5) Conspiracy theories are fun, obviously we're more prone to distrust the government.
The list can go on and on ...
I'm not on Facebook. Or Twitter. Yes they may have shadow accounts for me but I won't go out of my way to help them. I'll thwart them if I can.
I trust both Facebook and the government as far as I can throw each of them. Needless to say, it's not very far...
Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?
I think it's simple. I think we tolerate facebook's intrusion into our privacy because we receive something in exchange for it. We get to use a reasonably good social network that almost everyone is on for free. The government doesn't really give you anything for it's spying. Maybe they stop a few terrorists here and there, but honestly terrorism is not a big problem in the grand scheme of things. If you could save all the people who die in terrorist acts for a whole year or all the people who die in car accidents i n one day, the choice would be painfully obvious. Nobody is willing to have something like mandatory speed inhibitors on cars, and that would probably save more lives than anti-terrorism efforts.
This difference between facebook spying on you and giving you a free service, and the government spying on you, is like the difference between buying a lunch at a restaurant for $10 and having $10 stolen from you. You lose $10 in both, why is being stolen from so much worse? For better or worse, we agreed to Facebook spying. We never agreed to government spying.
I know I shouldn't make a rape analogy... I choose what gets posted to social media sites; I do not get a choice in what the government collects.
Government is the main body of power which regulates all other powers. We're concerned when the government is given even more insight into matters it does not need to regulate, giving it advanced abilities to target individuals that are not necessary.
The reason for this concern is that those in power often seek to remain in power, exercise power, or gain more power.
Should they be able to find out any who might limit that power, vote against the power, or make way to remove that power, it becomes a threat.
Then that power can use what is known as a very real thing, corruption, to use normal valid laws on unfounded principals to remove that threat.
An example would be someone who is publicly outspoken of the current government. If this person has not broken any laws, the government
could not have the police force officially detain them, put out a warrant to track them down and stop their protesting (Assuming it's legal protest)
However, if the government knows who their friends are, what they do, where they go, who employs this person, their direct boss and so on,
it makes it very easy to create a scenario where someone has now allegedly violated the law and can be brought it, or punished.
An example would be, suddenly everyone who has anything to do with this person suddenly gets constant audits, bank accounts frozen and other
misuses of power while under legal investigation. They can find a variety of misc reasons, whereas the real reason is they're trying to put pressure on the
person protesting the governments power, decisions and or anything relating to government interests (Note I say government, not the peoples)
The government could tell the active protester that they and their friends are under investigation in relation to allegations from an unknown source relating to why they were out of town etc. The active protester would know fully the message is back off or we make life difficult.
We trust third parties with information such as facebook because they do not have this power. The government keeps them in check and prevents this.
This is why though we get concerned when without permission the government is sifting through this third party information.
It's the simple matter of giving some power to one group, and some power to the other, keeping them separate for balance. Then
one group takes the power from the first group and combines it, then we get angry.
Makes sense.
I relate the Government to Gannon. It may have the triforce of power, and that's fine. Need a good antangonist anyway.
If it has the triforce of wisdom (All our information on everything) and then through legistration gets the triforce of courage, it becomes unstoppable, and
everyone wish it wants is granted.
Seriously? Gee, I don't know... maybe it's because those private parties can't ruin your fucking life like a government can?
You miss the point, (though I agree wholeheartedly with yours) -- he is saying that once you have shared your information with facebook -- it's also open to the government anytime they want it -- without a court order.
By sharing with a third party -- by putting anything on the cloud or a website, or an ISP, you've voided your constitutional protections against seizure. I think that is the point he is making. The third parties, legally, are an extension of the government.
Until some fundamental laws change and allow 2 parties to create an agreement that can't be broken by government whim, we are screwed. BTW -- if the "third party" keeps something a secret from the government -- it's called "conspiracy". So there is a serious crime backing up other people (including your doctor, your psych, anyone but your spouse) being forced to rat on you.
That's the main problem.