Government's got your dick pics

A rather interesting story from this episode of Last Week Tonight:



TL;DW: The Patriot Act is coming up for renewal on the 1st of June this year, and the NSA have the capacity to save and sift through a lot of communications data. A lot of data you may have thought was off limits can actually be given to the NSA. They interview Edward Snowden to establish where the boundaries of their ability are.

It also seems that a few people (only a small sample were interviewed in the video) do not know who Edward Snowden is, what he actually leaked, or what is contained in the Patriot Act.

Although the argument is simplified in the video, I'm sure a proper discussion can be had here about the implications.

Focus: What is your opinion of your Government's / the USA's surveillance?

Alt-Focus: Got any nude pictures or videos you're worried about?

 

That is until they turn on the video on your phone, then they'll see a shady person in the background going at it like an 11 year old who just discovered porn.

There's a reason Bin Laden went to a courier system. Anything electronic, anything with an on off switch and has some sort of cell phone connection or internet connection they can and will hack at will, your privacy be damned.

Government surveillance is obviously bad. A government who is threatened and paranoid of the population can only lead to bad things. Unfortunately, we're much closer to 1984 style intrusion than people know or care, or maybe they just don't give a fuck. People who don't oppose this tend to like to think they have nothing to hide so go ahead, however that is a very dangerous line of thinking. They have nothing to hide until the government critiques their relationships, their business, their daily activities.

 

I don't like what the NSA is doing and I'm generally against mass surveillance. The government seems intent on doing it though, so it's going to be pretty tough to stop. You toss in the fact that people are willingly letting google, microsoft, apple etc data mine their whole life on their phone anyway and it becomes pretty clear that the future is going to be greatly influenced by people using surveillance for profit and power. I think a pretty major event would have to take place to get people motivated enough to change the direction it's going, and if Snowden wasn't a major enough event I don't know what would be. I take solace in the fact that I'm probably not doing anything interesting enough to warrant attention from the government, but I still don't like it.

 

Yep, and that's the attitude that will sink us all in the end. "I don't care; I have nothing to hide." So we'll give up our privacy because we don't think there's any harm and then the government will change the rules to make something that was previously innocuous into a crime, and then it's too late. We've already given them the power to spy on us so anything they declare "wrong" will be fair game after that. Remember, "It's for the children!"

We've all heard the that the love of money is the root of all evil, but it's not true. I realized a few years ago that the root of all evil is the desire for power over other humans.

 

Too many times in the past few years I have heard a variation of the statement "Hey, if you're not breaking the law, what do you have to worry about?"

Profoundly stupid and impulsive statements such as that need to go bye-bye forever. Our lives are our own, now stay the fuck out.

 

Lets go ahead and assume your name has some truth to it, you're a professor. Let say the government decides the subject you work with and specifically what you're researching is deemed sensitive, dangerous, or in poor taste. Now you've become a subject for more intensive surveillance. Or lets say something happens like in Russia where they purged the academics. It seems academics are a favorite target of repressive regimes. Now you and all your colleagues are under increased government scrutiny and pressure simply because you chose this career. Its unlikely you or any of your colleagues are doing anything subversive, however, the government can't take the chance that a bunch of academics won't stir up trouble, so all of you are being harassed.

The problem with saying you have nothing to hide so take a look is it basically tells the government or those in power that you condone their intrusions into your life. And if people continue to allow these seemingly inconsequential intrusions, like anything else, they will keep pushing the line and pushing the line until a point where people finally try to oppose these intrusions, at this point however its likely too late, those in power have so much power any opposition can be managed through repression.

Government surveillance of local populations is one of those things where the line in the sand has to be drawn early, and we're already late to the game. Appeasing the the NSA and tolerating their actions only leads to further and more egregious abuses.

A good example of government surveillance and abuse is Iran. I'm not saying that our security agencies will resort to that sort of repressive action but its something to be guarded against. Recently a man was interviewed by the Anthony Bourdain CNN show, he did a simple interview about the life in that country. Seemingly he said nothing detrimental or negative about that country. However a month later he was quietly arrested and has been in prison ever since and I think was recently convicted of some crime and sentenced. That man had nothing to hide and did an innocent interview but the powers that be saw some subversion in that interview and acted.

We have nothing to hide until we can't hide anything and everything is fair game.

 

This is one of my favourite topics to daydream about and occasionally research because I'm very much undecided on where I stand.

I get the general 'government is scary' point, but I've never heard an argument from that side that doesn't go straight to extreme examples from explicitly non-democratic regimes, and even so far in this thread the examples are Russia and Iran. Is there an example of a reasonably functional democracy getting oodles of info and taking it that far? Obviously the "we're searchin' fer terr'ists" reasoning has infringed on (mostly brown Muslim) people's rights in the West, but has the government stopped us from hearing about those infractions? Are there lawyers fighting for those people? Can we, at least theoretically, vote out the people who pass those bills and laws? Did someone start this thread with a widely-available video explaining the issue?

My point is that I think there's a difference between ACTUAL autocratic regimes squashing any hint of dissent and functioning democracies having 'too much' information. And always citing regimes that literally cannot be voted out, then assuming that's definitely for sure the path we'll go down is a slightly hyperbolic perspective.

Another thing I wonder is how much more the government really knows about me now versus the pre-internet days. Name, SIN number, place of work and residence, health records, phone calls, taxes (oh snap I gotta get on that!) -- these things would've easily been available for the government when I was a teen, would they not? The fact is our lives have never been "our own", not solely, at least not for those who wish to be a part of society. We're dealing with new issues, and they need to be dealt with, but I think the newness freaks a lot of people out and makes them think the worst case scenarios to be more likely than they are. Our democratic governments are far from perfect, and we/the press could do a better job checking and balancing them, but they have legitimate access points for citizens -- that's what makes them different, and better, than Russia, Iran, North Korea etc.

"The government and private companies have multi-football stadium-sized warehouses stored full of our personal info" sounds super scary to me. But the worst I've heard they're doing with it is selling it to other companies who want to sell things more specific to my online habits, and they all want to make money. The horror.

Fun thought experiment: take it to the absolute extreme. Say we're all implanted with a chip, and there's an app where you can find out exactly where everyone you know, or even those you don't know, including every member of government, are at any time. Putting aside the amount of crime it would solve, I think most of us would get bored with it and only use it out of necessity, and there would absolutely be a part of the population who would happily put cameras everywhere in their house so all could see.

Nettdata, do you know of a straight line example where a non-autocratic government went from tracking phone call lengths and destinations to watching people shower and dump?

 

My question is how many other governments are doing this? And what are THEY doing with this information?

I've thought for a while that since traditional warfare is going obsolete, the next set would be electronic/information wars. I could get behind an organization like Boeing having their electronic communications monitored, but my dick pics seem to be a waste of fucking time and resources. The other thing is what is this designed to prevent? Terrorism? Then, judging by any number of events, it's failed.

Another question is how are we uncomfortable with the government having this information, but not comfortable with private companies having it in far more detail with somehow even less oversight than the government. The NSA having my dick pics is not a good thing, but then Google having them isn't better.

Final question: is the solution to this a "totally encrypted internet"? Is that feasible, both logistically and in terms of addressing the issue of privacy?

I get that nothing on the internet is completely private (nor does it ever really go away), but surely having Big Brother look at everything is a bit too far.

 

Despite what I said, I don't think we're on the path to a restrictive police state. I don't think the US is headed toward a repressive autocratic government. What I think needs to happen is people need to be more concerned about the potential slippery slope the current surveillance policies allow.

I think Americans need to be as concerned for their privacy as they are for Freedom of Speech. People defend Freedom of Speech at every step because they understand what any compromises may lead too. I think Americans need to understand what can happen if their privacy is invaded to a greater degree than it is now. I think people need to understand that while they tolerate what occurs now, what that tolerance may lead to is frightening. Again, thats not to say we'll become Iran or East Germany, but it needs to be commonly accepted that any compromises can't be tolerated.

Imagine if your dick picks were publicly circulated as retaliation from the government, thats the future I fear

 

Relevant:

Spoiler: Large image