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Well, it does seem to me that it's fairly obvious that with the proliferation of remote-controllable cameras and microphones into everybody's pockets that would lead to widespread government surveillance of them, and that even the capability to do so (which was previously, before the leaks, only demonstrated in the context of criminal prosecutions, but the ability itself is what's problematic) would, by necessity, lead to widespread abuse.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:32
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Yeah the pundits and DC insider reporter's tones shifting from "there's no way the government could do this" to "ok they CAN but there's no way they WOULD, trust them regardless of their past actions" to "heh, we knew this sort of thing was happening; it's the price we have to pay for awesome stuff. Oh and it's LEGAL so stop complaining you just don't understand" was incredibly frustrating.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:37
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Brannock posted:Remember the halcyon days of June 2013 when we were arguing about whether it was possible that the NSA could keep track of where you were at any given time by looking at your phone's data? How unrealistic! The amount of data you'd be required to keep track of and store! Your phone already does that anyway! You can turn it off! How innocent we were. We already knew the NSA was doing that in June 2013. Hell, we've known since before 2006. We've known since 2012 that tracking people by phone was only one element of a much more comprehensive system - Trapwire(and I have no doubt that Trapwire itself is in no way the totality of the NSA's spying apparatus). Trapwire is connected to a massive number of security cameras all over the states, and the full capabilities of that system are loving insane. Facial recognition, gait recognition, behavioural recognition, profiling - it does it all. Of course, actually looking at the documents that were leaked in 2012 is just proof that you're a parnoid tinfoiler, like all the pre-Snowden NSA leakers(Klein, Tice, Drake, Binney) who went through the proper channels instead of dumping a mountain of documents to the media. The biggest issue that hasn't been brought up yet(and will also get you called a paranoid tinfoiler) is exactly who these systems are really targeting. Who in their right mind could possibly believe that Al-Qaeda is organising terror attacks through loving Yahoo webcam chats? Did they manage to track down Osama bin Laden because he hopped onto Foursquare and checked in at the local mosque? These systems are completely useless when it comes to tracking down "terrorists" as most people use the word - worse, even. In Yemen/Pakistan, insurgents know that the USA uses phone surveillance to identify targets and drone strike them to death, which is why they constantly swap sim cards/devices amongst themselves and the general population(which is why the USA has been drone striking weddings and innocent people). Actual terrorists are not dumb enough to post about their plans to blow up a train station on facebook, which is why these programs still have a success rate of zero if you judge them on the basis of actually preventing terrorist attacks. But if these programs aren't going after actual terrorists(I'm sure lots of jihadis have loving kinects when they're not playing WoW), then who are they targetting? The answer that immediately jumps out is legitimate political opposition, and that answer is almost instantly confirmed when you look at the paranoid conspiracy theory that is main.core - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Core. The government maintains a database of US citizens that it considers a threat to national security, and this database had 8 million people on it in 2008. Does anyone here honestly believe that there are upwards of 8 million jihadis in the US waiting to jump out and bomb people? "Actual terrorists" were never the main targets of the surveillance state - these systems have always been pointed at the general population to make sure that no real political opposition movement is successful(the political blackmail and industrial espionage that these systems allow most definitely played a part as well). The idea that these agencies were doing nothing but watch is laughable - and now we know that a non-zero proportion of those people downplaying concerns over the surveillance state were government agents trained to disrupt discussion on the subject. E: phrasing
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Feb 27, 2014 19:47
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Brannock posted:I don't mean the people who genuinely cared, I meant the ones like fishmech who poohpoohed it away as incredibly obvious because of how technology works. "Oh! You should have known about this top secret operation! Of COURSE the government would do this!" Yes, this is kind of Fishmech's thing. Him and Arkane are like the two most ignored posters for very good reasons but then gently caress if that's ever stopped D&D from letting them single-handedly destroy threads.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:06
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Right - but what can anyone do? I mean I've suspected for quite awhile now that a lot of this surv isn't just about stopping the terrorists and I'm assuming a great many other people realize that this is about control over domestic population with a nice cover story of 'for your safety otherwise terrorists win' - but again it leaves one with the sensation of having absolutely no control over the situation - and with the sort of stuff NSA/US Govt has been collecting or trying to collect in secret, it appears as if they feel they can do this sort of thing with no impunity because again 'What are you going to do about it?' I've wondered what would happen if people try to start getting mass protests going over all of this the way Occupy ran - and in this case I don't believe(?) anyone could really even *try* to argue 'What are they protesting about? What's their message?' ..but it doesn't seem like anything along those lines is happening. Is it just because everyone feels despondent and nobody wants to take up the lance to get things rolling? Maybe it's because people are genuinely fearful over what could happen to them, their families, etc if they started really becoming an activist over this sort of thing. I certainly wouldn't blame them. For all we know there may be a nice database set up that could use facial recognition to identify you in protests and match it with webcam images that have been retained and collected in a database. What else is left at this point? What ways of getting information on the general public at large has not yet been covered that could be exploited? If there are other methods, they are probably being exploited by NSA and we just haven't seen the leak yet. I would not even be surprised anymore if one of the upcoming leaks mentions how the Govt/NSA was involved in handling and cracking down on Occupy protests. It makes me angry because it really feels like a lot of these tactics have absolutely nothing to do with keeping me safe and everything to do with keeping dossiers of information on everyone - in case it is needed if you ever are on the other side of the state. (And by other side I mean protester, activist, etc - not necessarily someone violent)
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Feb 27, 2014 20:11
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If people's paranoia are the reason they don't protest, then it's in the government's interest to encourage that paranoia, even if they never actually act on it. e: to be specific, I'm questioning the idea that because there *might* be a secret database people don't protest. These databases were active long before the Occupy Protests and yet somehow that didn't stop people then.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:14
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Andersnordic posted:We already knew the NSA was doing that in June 2013. Hell, we've known since before 2006. We've known since 2012 that tracking people by phone was only one element of a much more comprehensive system - Trapwire(and I have no doubt that Trapwire itself is in no way the totality of the NSA's spying apparatus). Trapwire is connected to a massive number of security cameras all over the states, and the full capabilities of that system are loving insane. Facial recognition, gait recognition, behavioural recognition, profiling - it does it all. Of course, actually looking at the documents that were leaked in 2012 is just proof that you're a parnoid tinfoiler, like all the pre-Snowden NSA leakers(Klein, Tice, Drake, Binney) who went through the proper channels instead of dumping a mountain of documents to the media. Did you know, that despite what the media would have you believe, white people can be terrorists too? Yes, they can be "actual terrorists", even if they're not Muslim! Domestic terrorists - American citizens born and raised in the good old US of A - are far more of a threat than Al-Qaeda. That's why every time somebody makes a joke or sarcastic remark about harming the president on Facebook or internet forums or anything else public, Secret Service agents show up at their house and interview them. The anti-terrorist agencies want to keep an eye on potential American terrorists just as much as they want to keep an eye on potential foreign terrorists, since all the Afghani surveillance in the world isn't going to stop the next Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza, John Allen Muhammad, Eric Rudolph, or Tim McVeigh.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:43
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Main Paineframe posted:Did you know, that despite what the media would have you believe, white people can be terrorists too? Yes, they can be "actual terrorists", even if they're not Muslim! Domestic terrorists - American citizens born and raised in the good old US of A - are far more of a threat than Al-Qaeda. That's why every time somebody makes a joke or sarcastic remark about harming the president on Facebook or internet forums or anything else public, Secret Service agents show up at their house and interview them. The anti-terrorist agencies want to keep an eye on potential American terrorists just as much as they want to keep an eye on potential foreign terrorists, since all the Afghani surveillance in the world isn't going to stop the next Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza, John Allen Muhammad, Eric Rudolph, or Tim McVeigh. And a bang up job they did in Boston, too.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:45
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Kobayashi posted:And a bang up job they did in Boston, too. Also with every listed example. It's almost like this idea that they're spying on us "because terrorism" is completely loving ridiculous and they've never been able to protect us for poo poo and are only using this info to crush leftist organization with their shiny 21st century Cointelpro.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:49
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Is it really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? I'm thousands and thousands of times more likely to be killed by a car than a terrorist. Knowing that the government is watching every single thing I do, my private communications and going through my pictures, and abusing this privilege no less (as evidenced in some of the earlier leaks, where NSA agents were checking up on personal acquaintances and ex-girlfriends), is that worth taking the chances of me being killed or injured by a terrorist attack from, I don't know, one out of 800,000 to one out of 900,000? We don't know the numbers and they won't tell us.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:57
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Brannock posted:Is it really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? I'm thousands and thousands of times more likely to be killed by a car than a terrorist. Knowing that the government is watching every single thing I do, my private communications and going through my pictures, and abusing this privilege no less (as evidenced in some of the earlier leaks, where NSA agents were checking up on personal acquaintances and ex-girlfriends), is that worth taking the chances of me being killed or injured by a terrorist attack from, I don't know, one out of 800,000 to one out of 900,000? We don't know the numbers and they won't tell us. You're also 7-10x more likely to be killed, as an American, by American law enforcement than an act of terror. Where's the 20 trillion dollar war on police?
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Feb 27, 2014 21:04
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Sunset posted:Right - but what can anyone do? I mean I've suspected for quite awhile now that a lot of this surv isn't just about stopping the terrorists and I'm assuming a great many other people realize that this is about control over domestic population with a nice cover story of 'for your safety otherwise terrorists win' - but again it leaves one with the sensation of having absolutely no control over the situation - and with the sort of stuff NSA/US Govt has been collecting or trying to collect in secret, it appears as if they feel they can do this sort of thing with no impunity because again 'What are you going to do about it?' Nothing short of our own Maidan would even begin to make progress. And that's not going to happen because it seems like massive protests only happen due to economic issues.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:07
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Main Paineframe posted:Did you know, that despite what the media would have you believe, white people can be terrorists too? Yes, they can be "actual terrorists", even if they're not Muslim! Domestic terrorists - American citizens born and raised in the good old US of A - are far more of a threat than Al-Qaeda. That's why every time somebody makes a joke or sarcastic remark about harming the president on Facebook or internet forums or anything else public, Secret Service agents show up at their house and interview them. The anti-terrorist agencies want to keep an eye on potential American terrorists just as much as they want to keep an eye on potential foreign terrorists, since all the Afghani surveillance in the world isn't going to stop the next Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza, John Allen Muhammad, Eric Rudolph, or Tim McVeigh. Honestly I would rather just deal with events like those as they happen instead of having the need for a massive surveillance apparatus that is trying to constantly update itself on creative ways to siphon and gather as much information on all of us as humanly, legally (or not) possible in order to keep the big bad terrorists at bay. Nevermind the fact that a lot of the names you mention have a lot more to do with mental illness issues then anything to do with terrorism tbh. All a system like this does is allow the government in the aforementioned instances to go back and look up that individual's personal life if they interacted with the internet at all. It does not stop them before they snap, and it is unfortunate if anyone thinks having this massive intrusion into everyone's personal life is somehow going to protect or keep the next Adam Lanza or Timothy McVeigh from doing their thing. I mean these guys were all over the place on the internet with what they were planning on doing right? Yeah.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:07
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Brannock posted:Is it really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? I'm not convinced even this is true.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:11
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Brannock posted:Is it really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? Well, of course not; if anything it just makes the prevention of actual attacks more difficult (making the haystack larger does not make it easier to find the needle). There's absolute no justification for any of this for any reason other than blackmail and oppression of dissent. It's the only possible purpose for information that scale. I mean, poo poo, look at J. Edgar Hoover, the single individual most responsible for our modern FBI: quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover It's not like this is some sort of educated and balanced weighting of rights; it's just a power grab, and it's the same power grab the intelligence services have consistently pulled for the entire history of their existence.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:11
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Saying that we need the NSA to spy on us to stop domestic terrorists is like saying we need the military to be bombing places in the middle east to protect our freedoms. It's absurd and insulting to the intelligence of everyone. Those reasons are obviously a PR campaign to allow for what surveillance agencies have always done which is just keeping tabs on political groups that are opposed to the status quo and I don't know how anyone that isn't vested in that can argue for it anymore and be taken seriously.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, of course not; if anything it just makes the prevention of actual attacks more difficult (making the haystack larger does not make it easier to find the needle). There's absolute no justification for any of this for any reason other than blackmail and oppression of dissent. It's the only possible purpose for information that scale. Lets take this a step further. Lets say groups of people start finding ways of getting together to form groups, clubs, organizations - secret and/or public in order to try to combat all this stuff and really put it in the light or do what they can to change it all. Does anyone here not think for a moment that the NSA/those involved stateside wouldn't turn this apparatus instantly on these sorts of groups in order to get all the information they can on them, so they can then decide how to infiltrate/disperse and break them up? Even if the groups did everything by the books and stayed legal in all their actions - but really tried to push hard on getting mobs of people to start getting very activist, I have absolutely every belief that these sorts of spying tools and individuals behind these organizations would very quickly drop the big 't' word job focus to see how they could quickly put this sort of noise to bed.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:16
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Sunset posted:Right - but what can anyone do? I mean I've suspected for quite awhile now that a lot of this surv isn't just about stopping the terrorists and I'm assuming a great many other people realize that this is about control over domestic population with a nice cover story of 'for your safety otherwise terrorists win' - but again it leaves one with the sensation of having absolutely no control over the situation - and with the sort of stuff NSA/US Govt has been collecting or trying to collect in secret, it appears as if they feel they can do this sort of thing with no impunity because again 'What are you going to do about it?' quote:may http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/smartphones-used-to-monitor-tampa-protests-20120917 quote:That also makes the situation safer for police officers, he said. The protests in Tampa never became as large as expected, nor did they get out of hand. But Moushon said that there were several instances where police were able to monitor potential trouble spots thanks to the network. quote:cracking down on Occupy quote:The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens. Occupy Wall St. went directly after the financial industry(which is in itself deeply connected to the surveillance state) and this is the reaction it received. There's no hard evidence on the subject that's been released yet, but the idea that there was no attempt to defuse the occupy protests through covert means is farcical. computer parts posted:e: to be specific, I'm questioning the idea that because there *might* be a secret database people don't protest. These databases were active long before the Occupy Protests and yet somehow that didn't stop people then. The NSA spying was still in the territory of "paranoid conspiracy theory" when the Occupy protests took place - most people didn't even know about them, which is why they didn't let it stop them. We haven't even seen the chilling effect that these "databases of ruin" can have on political discourse yet(and of course all the blackmail is not anything that will be making it into the public domain either). The Occupy movement had a very valid message and went after some of the organisations chiefly responsible for the problems they opposed before completely breaking down and achieving nothing - and look at what we know already from what the government released unredacted. The fear of retribution is most definitely one of the reasons we haven't seen a really co-ordinated protest movement just yet - everyone has something to hide or something which could incriminate them/destroy their reputation, and the NSA knows it. Specifically. This system is designed to make dissent impossible - because any protest movement can be found and stopped before it coalesces into real opposition or even attracts much attention. Don't hold out hope that the legislative branch will somehow try and curb the NSA's excesses either - we know that the NSA wiretaps the people in charge of it's oversight committee, and even if the NSA itself doesn't use that information one of the various related parties with access to that knowledge will. Look at the success of AIPAC, and then remember that Mossad gets an unminimised copy of every single communication made by US politicians(they promise they don't look at political communications, but they specifically state that this promise isn't legally binding in the document itself). Booz Allen Hamilton and the constellation of private contractors around the NSA are in a similar position - and similarly want to see the NSA continue operating. This ties back into the financial institutions as well - there's zero chance that they didn't notice when the NSA decided to make a note of every single SWIFT transaction, and they hold an immense amount of power over both individuals and the economy as a whole. Main Paineframe posted:Did you know, that despite what the media would have you believe, white people can be terrorists too? Yes, they can be "actual terrorists", even if they're not Muslim! Domestic terrorists - American citizens born and raised in the good old US of A - are far more of a threat than Al-Qaeda. That's why every time somebody makes a joke or sarcastic remark about harming the president on Facebook or internet forums or anything else public, Secret Service agents show up at their house and interview them. The anti-terrorist agencies want to keep an eye on potential American terrorists just as much as they want to keep an eye on potential foreign terrorists, since all the Afghani surveillance in the world isn't going to stop the next Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza, John Allen Muhammad, Eric Rudolph, or Tim McVeigh. The painting of the terrorist threat as purely islamic is one of the things I was attacking with that post. The surveillance state is sold to the public as necessary to protect us from the evil muslims, despite the fact that it can't detect or prevent poo poo. Show me the white spree-killer or terrorist that the NSA system stopped if you want to somehow claim that a police state is the only way to protect the population from itself. Brannock posted:We don't know the numbers and they won't tell us.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:16
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Sunset posted:Lets take this a step further. To be fair, by their own logic, people freely associating for political action to restrict intelligence gathering actually are a potential threat to national security; the NSA works very hard to overcome barriers to information awareness, whether technical or legal.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:02
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Brannock posted:Is it really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? I'm thousands and thousands of times more likely to be killed by a car than a terrorist. Knowing that the government is watching every single thing I do, my private communications and going through my pictures, and abusing this privilege no less (as evidenced in some of the earlier leaks, where NSA agents were checking up on personal acquaintances and ex-girlfriends), is that worth taking the chances of me being killed or injured by a terrorist attack from, I don't know, one out of 800,000 to one out of 900,000? We don't know the numbers and they won't tell us. Depends on who you ask. The intelligence, law enforcement, and government agencies would mostly argue that yes, it is. Everyone else? That's a personal judgement. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, of course not; if anything it just makes the prevention of actual attacks more difficult (making the haystack larger does not make it easier to find the needle). There's absolute no justification for any of this for any reason other than blackmail and oppression of dissent. It's the only possible purpose for information that scale. For now, yeah, but one of the end goals of gathering all this information appears to be so they can develop an algorithm that combs through all this information without any human input and spits out a list of likely terrorists that they can take to a court to get a warrant for investigating those people, since the privacy protections that supposedly prevent NSA agents from being allowed to read our private correspondence don't apply to computer programs. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 22:09
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On the subject of fighting back, the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention, ACLU, CAIR, and some other groups are hosting a conference about building solidarity networks to combat the erosion of civil liberties on March 29.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:15
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Main Paineframe posted:Depends on who you ask. The intelligence, law enforcement, and government agencies would mostly argue that yes, it is. Everyone else? That's a personal judgement. Main Paineframe posted:For now, yeah, but one of the end goals of gathering all this information appears to be so they can develop an algorithm that combs through all this information without any human input and spits out a list of likely terrorists that they can take to a court to get a warrant for investigating those people, since the privacy protections that prevent NSA agents from being allowed to read our private correspondence don't apply to computer programs. treasured8elief fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 22:32
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The stupendous hubris behind the lot of this blows my mind on par with the actual content---did they really think this would never get out and themselves utterly free of consequences? I know "the public at large" has essentially been towards the top of the list in terms of folks to undermine every which way, at least here in the states, for the past great many decades now...especially since protests started Going Places for a short while there...but good god! Yet through it all, I can't fathom that this is the final damning shoe to drop or anywhere near that in sequence---just so utterly disgusted at how much effort has been wasted on the lot of this when there are actually pressing problems that need those resources.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:44
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Main Paineframe posted:Depends on who you ask. The intelligence, law enforcement, and government agencies would mostly argue that yes, it is. Everyone else? That's a personal judgement. In a time of budget crises (manufactured or not) and taking in account that America, rich as it is, does not have unlimited money or resources, you have to wonder why so much time, money, and productivity is being spent on marginal returns on our safety. If a similar amount of investment were to be made in addressing car safety (or transitioning us away from a personal transportation paradigm and towards mass transit) you'd see much more significant safety returns for the productivity spent. So, then, it follows that those various government groups that you named are not strictly interested in our safety. So why do they think it's absolutely necessary?
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Feb 27, 2014 22:45
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Andersnordic posted:We do know the numbers, and the numbers are one potential wire transfer to Al-Shabaab has been stopped(although we don't know precisely how many Occupy style protest movements we've been "saved" from). You decide if that bit of protection is worth the cost of the entire NSA black budget. Even if we assume very few terrorists are caught in the act of planning or executing attacks, programs that monitor communications and bank transfers can still have a significant deterrent effect. If, as is often claimed, terrorists are too smart to plan attacks on the internet, transfer funds electronically, and use cell phones regularly, they are forced to use inferior methods to plan and fund terrorism. It's a lot harder to fund terrorism overseas if funds need to be physically transferred, communications physically delivered, and SIM cards exchanged or replaced regularly. A lack of terrorist plots foiled does not necessarily imply the programs fail to reduce terrorism.
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Feb 27, 2014 23:30
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JeffersonClay posted:Even if we assume very few terrorists are caught in the act of planning or executing attacks, programs that monitor communications and bank transfers can still have a significant deterrent effect. If, as is often claimed, terrorists are too smart to plan attacks on the internet, transfer funds electronically, and use cell phones regularly, they are forced to use inferior methods to plan and fund terrorism. It's a lot harder to fund terrorism overseas if funds need to be physically transferred, communications physically delivered, and SIM cards exchanged or replaced regularly. A lack of terrorist plots foiled does not necessarily imply the programs fail to reduce terrorism. Yeah that's sort of the IT/maintenance effect: even if you have a positive effect, it's hard to determine or to have the general public know unless something lovely happens after you get restricted. I'm not saying that's what the NSA is doing necessarily, but if they are then it's kind of hard to tell as even "guys arrested doing terrorist activities" wouldn't adequately cover the effect.
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Feb 27, 2014 23:36
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JeffersonClay posted:Even if we assume very few terrorists are caught in the act of planning or executing attacks, programs that monitor communications and bank transfers can still have a significant deterrent effect. If, as is often claimed, terrorists are too smart to plan attacks on the internet, transfer funds electronically, and use cell phones regularly, they are forced to use inferior methods to plan and fund terrorism. It's a lot harder to fund terrorism overseas if funds need to be physically transferred, communications physically delivered, and SIM cards exchanged or replaced regularly. A lack of terrorist plots foiled does not necessarily imply the programs fail to reduce terrorism. That might be a good point, if any of these programs had much of anything to do with stopping terrorism. They don't. They're about economic and political power. Terrorism is how they're sold. Ignoring this fact leads to red herring debates about how specious your reasoning is. "Hrm, I mean, yes, suppressing terrorism is a good thing, and even though we don't have any DIRECT evidence that they've done anything, they've probably indirectly made terror plots more difficult, very loving indirectly in fact in the case of the NSA spying on hundreds of German ministers, for example." Tezzor fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 00:33
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Main Paineframe posted:Did you know, that despite what the media would have you believe, white people can be terrorists too? Yes, they can be "actual terrorists", even if they're not Muslim! Domestic terrorists - American citizens born and raised in the good old US of A - are far more of a threat than Al-Qaeda. That's why every time somebody makes a joke or sarcastic remark about harming the president on Facebook or internet forums or anything else public, Secret Service agents show up at their house and interview them. The anti-terrorist agencies want to keep an eye on potential American terrorists just as much as they want to keep an eye on potential foreign terrorists, since all the Afghani surveillance in the world isn't going to stop the next Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza, John Allen Muhammad, Eric Rudolph, or Tim McVeigh.
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Feb 28, 2014 00:59
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Tezzor posted:That might be a good point, if any of these programs had much of anything to do with stopping terrorism. They don't. They're about economic and political power. Terrorism is how they're sold. Ignoring this fact leads to red herring debates about how specious your reasoning is. "Hrm, I mean, yes, suppressing terrorism is a good thing, and even though we don't have any DIRECT evidence that they've done anything, they've probably indirectly made terror plots more difficult, very loving indirectly in fact in the case of the NSA spying on hundreds of German ministers, for example." Exactly. How many loving terrorists are hiding inside Petrobras? Down here, there was a scandal when it turned out the indonesian president's wife was being monitored. I'm sure it was the watchful eyes of the NSA that prevented Angela Merkel or members of the Siemens board from becoming radical terrorists. I'm sure Dianne Feinstein was about to go suicide bomb the office from which she oversaw the NSA before the NSA started to spy on her.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:00
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Tezzor posted:That might be a good point, if any of these programs had much of anything to do with stopping terrorism. They don't. They're about economic and political power. Terrorism is how they're sold. Ignoring this fact leads to red herring debates about how specious your reasoning is. "Hrm, I mean, yes, suppressing terrorism is a good thing, and even though we don't have any DIRECT evidence that they've done anything, they've probably indirectly made terror plots more difficult, very loving indirectly in fact in the case of the NSA spying on hundreds of German ministers, for example." First, the intent of the programs doesn't make any difference to their impact. Even if terrorism was a thin cover for designing and implementing these systems to impose American hegemony, they'd still have the effect of making terrorism more difficult to plan and execute, even if there were very few cases where a terrorist attack was foiled in progress. Second, the NSA does more than just anti-terrorism, yes. The NSA, as always, spies on foreign governments. This does not preclude them from simultaneously engaging in anti-terrorism efforts, and is not necessarily evidence of a grand conspiracy.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:17
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tentative8e8op posted:What about you? Do you feel its really worth giving up every last bit of our privacy just so we have a marginally better chance at stopping domestic terrorists? Nope. But what I think doesn't really matter. I'm talking about the viewpoints of the people actually running and supporting the program, partially because the anti-surveillance outrage is producing a bit of an echo chamber where people seem incapable of understanding how anyone could possibly be okay with surveillance, and partially because it's them rather than us who decide whether these programs live or die.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:33
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JeffersonClay posted:First, the intent of the programs doesn't make any difference to their impact. Even if terrorism was a thin cover for designing and implementing these systems to impose American hegemony, they'd still have the effect of making terrorism more difficult to plan and execute, even if there were very few cases where a terrorist attack was foiled in progress. But we already have evidence of a grand conspiracy to spy on the leaders of friendly nations, to a previously unprecedented degree. There's no way you can call it anything other than a grand conspiracy.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:40
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SedanChair posted:But we already have evidence of a grand conspiracy to spy on the leaders of friendly nations, to a previously unprecedented degree. There's no way you can call it anything other than a grand conspiracy. Well, you could call it the NSA's actual job. You know. "Communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments" if you like the Truman version, or "Collection of signals intelligence information for national foreign intelligence purposes" if you prefer some Reagan. ("Foreign intelligence means information relating to the capabilities, intentions and activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.") Note the lack of the word "hostile" or "enemy" in any of those.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:52
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JeffersonClay posted:First, the intent of the programs doesn't make any difference to their impact. Even if terrorism was a thin cover for designing and implementing these systems to impose American hegemony, they'd still have the effect of making terrorism more difficult to plan and execute, even if there were very few cases where a terrorist attack was foiled in progress. Who gives a poo poo that the complete uselessness and failure of the NSA at it's stated role is or isn't evidence of a grand conspiracy? We have the evidence of a grand conspiracy. You can go look it up right now - go read the Guardian, The Intercept, and the various other media outlets that have reported on Snowden's documents. If you've somehow missed every single NSA related story since 2006 they haven't vanished and you can still read them. There IS a grand conspiracy, and to claim otherwise in the face of so much evidence is silly. But furthermore, there's no evidence whatsoever that these programs make terrorist plots more difficult to plan and execute. There weren't any terrorist orcs meeting up in Azeroth to make plans in the first place, and suicide bombers didn't usually discuss their plans in front of internet-connected 360s with kinects. Turns out that a lot of terrorists are slightly smarter than gorillas, and know better than to trust The Great Satan when he gives you a neat communication tool and promises not to peek at what you're sending to all your terrorist friends. Main Paineframe posted:Nope. But what I think doesn't really matter. I'm talking about the viewpoints of the people actually running and supporting the program, partially because the anti-surveillance outrage is producing a bit of an echo chamber where people seem incapable of understanding how anyone could possibly be okay with surveillance, and partially because it's them rather than us who decide whether these programs live or die. We have already discussed the viewpoints of the unindited felons running and supporting these programs - and that viewpoint is that the rest of society should just suck it up and accept a life as servants to the glorious surveillance state. Their opinion on Snowden is that he should be tortured to death, and their reaction to legitimate political protest is to propose sniper attacks. Calling the anti surveillance outrage an echo chamber is sickening when the pro surveillance "outrage" consists of committing perjury and writing murder fantasies about Snowden. A lot of these programs are highly illegal, and if the current government is replaced by one that is actually working for the people then large numbers of NSA employees/contractors will end up where they belong - in court, shortly before going to jail. In all seriousness, one of the awful events that security state supporters claim sprang from "libertarian paranoia" was the American revolution. If you support constant tracking of everything you do and say(as well as the accompanying metadata, which can be even more damning) to make sure that you never become a political or economic threat to the NSA then crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. e: Kalman, the list of people that the NSA is spying on includes justices of the supreme court, members of the executive branch and members of congress in charge of making sure that the NSA doesn't overstep it's bounds. Please explain how this is part of the NSA's job. Andersnordic fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 02:15
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Elotana posted:Two of the five people on your list are spree killers, not terrorists. I don't see how any of these programs would've had the slightest potential for stopping them. The attacks couldn't be prevented but they could have been caught much earlier using cellphone location data. The attacks (DC sniper at least) were spread out far enough that they would likely have been identified by the 3rd or 4th shooting. \/\/\/\/\/\/ Yeah, because the DC sniper attacks happened in 2002. Long before these programs existed. Also, I said "could have" which was intentionally not an absolute. size1one fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 02:15
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size1one posted:The attacks couldn't be prevented but they could have been caught much earlier using cellphone location data. The attacks (DC sniper at least) were spread out far enough that they would likely have been identified by the 3rd or 4th shooting. Yeah but here's the thing, they didn't. That means the programs aren't working. It's really pretty simple if you stop making poo poo up.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:41
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Andersnordic posted:Kalman, the list of people that the NSA is spying on includes justices of the supreme court, members of the executive branch and members of congress in charge of making sure that the NSA doesn't overstep it's bounds. Please explain how this is part of the NSA's job. I mean, if you include "dragging in the phone records of and never looking at", sure, that's happening. But no, the paranoid ravings of someone who used to work for the NSA aren't evidence that there's anything of the sort going on. If they were doing this, that would have been the very first story Greenwald/Snowden published.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:49
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Andersnordic posted:We have already discussed the viewpoints of the unindited felons running and supporting these programs - and that viewpoint is that the rest of society should just suck it up and accept a life as servants to the glorious surveillance state. Their opinion on Snowden is that he should be tortured to death, and their reaction to legitimate political protest is to propose sniper attacks. Calling the anti surveillance outrage an echo chamber is sickening when the pro surveillance "outrage" consists of committing perjury and writing murder fantasies about Snowden. A lot of these programs are highly illegal, and if the current government is replaced by one that is actually working for the people then large numbers of NSA employees/contractors will end up where they belong - in court, shortly before going to jail. In all seriousness, one of the awful events that security state supporters claim sprang from "libertarian paranoia" was the American revolution. Ah, yes, tell me more about how
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Feb 28, 2014 03:01
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Andersnordic posted:Calling the anti surveillance outrage an echo chamber is sickening when the pro surveillance "outrage" consists of committing perjury and writing murder fantasies about Snowden. On a material level I agree with your whole post. When he said 'echo chamber' I interpreted it not as something to diminish the worthiness of the points made but observing the way they are being communicated. There is a concern that outrage about these surveillance revelations is being 'consigned' into a corner- and becoming less of an engagement tool. I wanted to post this video because I think its really important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk This is Paul Henning-Kamp speaking at FOSDEM recently about how ultimately there are no technical solutions to the problems we face. All of the open-source communities, crypto etc., startups etc. are just far too easy to corrupt, disrupt and so on. Im a law graduate in New Zealand who has for some while felt powerless in the lack of ability to write code but now I watch this and wonder how much I really should stake on that ability- we are all in this together.
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Feb 28, 2014 03:13
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Kalman posted:I mean, if you include "dragging in the phone records of and never looking at", sure, that's happening. Yeah, there's no proof to date for his claims. Which isn't to say it's not possible, more and more we see just how possible it is. It's also not very reasonable to say if this was happening, there would've been a story published about it. These documents are not everything that is/was/will happen, and are generally (at least as far as is generally released) related to particular projects and operations in macro scale, not everything they've ever been used for. Simply because those particular claims have not been detailed in Snowden's leak does not mean it isn't happening. It's well within their technical capability, and it's certainly something individuals within the NSA and other various intelligence agencies could be interested in. Though it wouldn't be spelled out and recorded in documents tucked away unless by accident, if such were true and well-known I have no doubt there's enough people who wouldn't stand for it. Proof is definitely required however, we can't just take the guy's word for it. People really shouldn't trot it out as fact, there's plenty to be upset over, but doing that certainly weakens their argument. But let's not pretend it isn't possible and no one would ever have a motive to do such a thing or ways of covering it up, either.
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Feb 28, 2014 03:21
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