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Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance (ap.org)
An anonymous reader writes: A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research gathered opinions on the U.S. government's surveillance of internet communications. The poll found that a majority of Americans, 56%, were in favor of warrantless surveillance. 28% explicitly opposed it. 67% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats supported the warrantless surveillance, while only 40% of Independents supported it. Americans under 30 supported warrantless surveillance much less than older Americans. Further, "The poll finds that for most Americans, safety concerns trump civil liberties at least some of the time. More than half — 54 percent — say it's sometimes necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism, while 45 percent think that's not necessary. On a more general level, 42 percent say it's more important for the government to ensure Americans' safety than to protect citizens' rights, while 27 percent think rights are more important and 31 percent rate both equally."
Still very, very true...
I suppose "technically" 54% is a majority, but it's not a landslide. Also, I wonder if wording of the questions and / or scenarios might change this number? Sure, most people want to fight "terrorists", but get into more detail about the invasiveness of the surveillance, and people might have different ideas.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is just another lie by the establishment to get people to accept our rights being taken away from us.
Be seeing you...
Security expert Bruce Schneier has been explaining for years that the "tradeoff" between security and liberty is a false one.
It's put out there by politicians to justify a war on liberties.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
Any "survey" or "poll" that requires comparing the two or claiming you must give up one to have the other has begged this question and is already false.
E
If only the US had some set of rules, encoded in a founding and fundamental document of some-sort, that limited the ability of the majority to commit tyranny on the minority through unfair legislation or otherwise.
The fact that Trump is even a candidate has made me give up hope on that country for the forseeable future.
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
*Nobody wants to give up their silly pea-shooter in case of Government aggression even if the government has much better toys that would make very light work of someone toting the said pea-shooter
*Nobody complains about the government pissing away trillions of the aforementioned toys while people starve and die of curable illnesses.
I actually read the article and it is missing some key details, such as what is meant exactly by "Internet Surveillance". Do they mean simply looking at what's on the public Internet for suspicious activity, etc., or do they mean the power to compel service providers, ISPs, etc., to turn over private customer information or private data? There's a difference between looking at someone's public tweets, and reading their private e-mail messages. Was this distinction made clear in the poll questions when the surveys were taken? It's possible that the people who responded to the polling questions didn't really know what they were answering.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Cattle.
Yes, I agree the government - at least if it's not nefariously self-serving, which I doubt, but let's assume... - WOULD have an easier time finding bad guys by violating fundamental rights. But they should NEVER have the right to do so, because fundamental rights are the last line of defense against tyranny and dictatorship,
If the government has a hard time fighting crime and terrorism because they have to preserve individual rights, well, tough titties. That's their problem. People should never accept any debasing of their rights for the promise that their government will have an easier time keeping them safe. Those who think it's an acceptable tradeoff deserve to be carted off to the sheep pen.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Keep that in mind for after the election when you're wondering "why the FUCK...?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Do you think that putting suspicious elements under surveillance to combat terrorism is acceptable?"
It's all in the wording. Seriously, part of my degree required lots of statistics, I could probably come up with a question worded in such a way to prove that the people in the US want a Communist Regime badly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Since I currently lack the time to write a complete answer to it, allow me to pick a single line from the whole text which, in my opinion, illustrates the underlying problem we're facing today:
"To pretend that it's some kind of "people's victory" when a technical system renders itself effectively impenetrable to the legitimate legal, judicial, and intelligence processes of democratic governments operating under the rule of law in free civil society is curious indeed."
Why is this touted as a "people's victory" in the first place? That alone shows that the problem runs far, far deeper than the question whether encryption or not is the key to more or less freedom and more or less danger. The core of the problem is that the people do not trust their government anymore to have their best interest in their mind. And that's a real danger. Far, far worse than any terrorist group could ever be.
In the end, that was what fell the Communist regimes.
A government that does not have the support of its people is eventually doomed to fail. When a request like "Don't ask what your country can do for you" is met with a "yeah, right, fuck off", you have a problem. And a problem that is far, far more serious than any suicide bomber could ever present.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At the end of the day my friend this is exactly what the government is doing with these systems. They are finding ways to quiet dissent, including how to shape public opinion. All that analysis isn't just for "finding" terrorists. I would bet the farm it is also used to analyze what we are thinking, and speaking about to see how best effectively to shape our conversations. Sad, few people see this part.
Assuming for the moment that it's legit: What we see is the end effect of a comprehensive campaign by the government and by corporate America to indoctrinate the younger generation from birth to accept the idea that 'privacy' is wrong and bad and only bad people seek it. From an early age they've had it pounded into them that they have to 'share' everything or they're not being nice. Then when they're old enough social media takes over, further reinforcing the idea that you should share every aspect of your life, even with people you really don't know. Once thoroughly primed, it's not much of a jump from that to the idea that America has to be protected against the Big Bad Terrorists, and the only way to do that is to watch everything that everyone does 24/7/365. Of course Corporate America loves this too, because they can datamine the living fuck out of every single citizen that way, cradle to grave, sell the data to the highest bidder, and then target products at individuals based on the personal profile they generate from the data. The only thing left is Minority Report-style 'pre-crime' arrests, and Big Religion getting a hold of all your surveillance data, too, so they can use their millenniums-old terror techniques to keep citizens in line and behaving the way they want them to, under fear of burning in Hell for all eternity. Thanks so much, American citizenry, you're doing a great job of fucking up everything for everyone and destroying what this country was supposed to be about in the first place.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Keep in mind that nothing man-made remains constant. Today, we may have a government run entirely by people we trust, and can trust, without reservation. But we don't know that that will be true next year. Or 10 years from now There will always be people who will seek power for their own benefit.. That is why we ought never to give government any more trust or power than is absolutely necessary.
linquendum tondere
The thing that pisses me off about the view of "I've got nothing to hide, spy away", is that it isn't about you, or me. The problem with domestic spying is that it provides a secret police tool to whomever is in power at the moment. Watergate was wrong legally, and also violated our sense of fair election practices. People knew there was a principle close to democracy which was being violated by Richard Nixon and his pals when they intended to secretly tape record a meeting of Democrats. Any secret spy apparatus can be abused by someone in power to remain in power. Just imagine if the opposition's moves, information and political strategy are always known to the group in power. It provides a huge strategic advantage to the group having access to this information. By the very nature of the spy activity, the use of it for political advantage never need be reported. There are two pillars to a free and democratic society. One is the freedom to vote based on your views. The other is the fairness of the political system, which includes open access to media, no tampering with the vote, etc. The spy powers in the hand of one ruling party destroys the fairness of the political system.
By giving up privacy, you gain the ILLUSION of safety.
Perhaps the illusion of safety is just what is needed to counter the illusion of danger.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Islam is a religion; communism and NAZIism (fascism) are political ideologies.... and while you seem to disparage the NAZI's, you are certainly wanting to use the tactics they did against the Jews. So, why does an ignorant NAZI wanna-be like you hate the Constitution of the United States of America so much?
What we need is to recognize there are some people simply too fucking stupid, and their stupidity is having negative effects on our country. Right now, it's those people who are the biggest threat to this country.... and you've given a perfect example of their idiocy.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Here is the actual link to the survey: http://www.apnorc.org/PDFs/Sec...
Question: As a way of responding to terrorist threats, do you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose government analysis of
internet activities and communications, including those involving U.S. citizens, without a warrant, to watch for suspicious activity
that might be connected to terrorism?
I don't understand this. What exactly is a respondent supposed to make of the term warrentless surveillance? I wholeheartedly support the government to analyze people's public twitter posts, and public facebook posts, and forums (including those that require subscription), and youtube channels. None of these searches require a warrant. So I would answer "yes I do support government analysis, without a warrant". Even though I strongly oppose government analysis of private communication.
I wonder if they picked a deliberately ambiguous question here?
Questions: How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of a terrorist attack? Would you say a
great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all?
Questions: How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of a terrorist attack? Would you say a
great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all? How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim
of an attack by Islamic extremists in the United States? Would you say a great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all? How
concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of domestic terrorism committed by American
citizens? Would you say a great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all?
Question: How important do you think it is that each of the following groups is allowed to practice their religion freely in the United
States?
Question: The following are some examples of rights and freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights or that are protected under various
American laws and court rulings. For each one, please tell me if you think the U.S. government is doing a good job, poor job, or neither
a good nor poor job of protecting that right or freedom.
Here, 60% of respondents think the government is not doing a good job of protecting the right to "freedom from unreasonable search and seizure". This probably guides us on how the ambiguous earlier question was interpreted by poll respondents.
The only thing I saw worth noting in the article is that Americans find terrorists to be scary.
It's not unimaginable, given some of the incindinerary talk about Muslims/liberals/homos/SJW's. We did it to 100,000+ Japanese-Americans during WW2, and we did it various Native American tribes before that (despite declarations from the Supreme Court, in the case of the Cherokees). You can object that these were not instances of full-on, permanent tyranny (like North Korea), but they were brutal events for the targeted populations, prosecuted without objection from the majority of this supposedly freedom-loving populace. Remember that Rome itself transitioned to a dictatorship with the support of her people. Caeser treated his army well and the senate was increasingly seen as helpless to address the problems of empire. There are plenty in the US who would support arbitrarily trampling it the Constitution and democratic principles so longed as it helped their cause it made them feel a little safer from a handful of bad actors. This article merely reflects how naieve we are about the dynamics of power (especially our children, who grow surrounded by surveillance). Unfortunately, it looks like the continue continuous expansion of federal (and corporate) powers that's been occurring for there past ~90 years will keep accelerating upwards, with near unilateral support from across the political spectrum. The consequences will be severe.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
What fell the Communist regimes is that Lenin got the brilliant idea of trying to build a post-capitalist economy in a country that had not actually gone trough - or even started at - capitalism yet, and that the ideals of classless society, democracy and even basic human decency could and should be sacrificed for this goal. Of course the end result was an utterly delusional dictatorship which had as much to do with Communism as Religious Right has with Jesus.
You have a problem if anyone ever makes such a request. It implies someone fancies himself ruling by divine right, not managing public affairs with the consent and approval of said public.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Islam is a religion; communism and NAZIism (fascism) are political ideologies....
Religion is the belief in a higher power than man. That makes religion the supreme authority of its believers, no matter what man-made law says about the separation of church and state or what is legal or not. It is the Creator himself dictating what believers must do and how unbelievers are to be treated, what is right and what is wrong, rewards and punishments both in life and in death. In the old days, the king ruled supreme over his subjects. The Pope ruled over the kings as God's acting representative on Earth. To think that religion is not about politics is naive in the extreme and with total disregard to history. Or even current day, as vast areas of the world still live under religious law.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings