
We Should All Have Something to Hide (2013) - citizensixteen
http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/
======
awakeasleep
There are a couple different arguments that have been developed to counter the
government requests/propaganda for access to our data.

Here, Moxie works on one I don't think has been popularized yet- To reform
unjust laws, people must be able to break those laws. That is an argument
against allowing the government to have total information awareness, because
that access would allow the government to enforce laws perfectly, which would
make some unjust laws permanent.

I believe that is the weak bit of the argument- although it's true, there is a
big gap between how the government could move from information awareness to
perfect enforcement.

Instead, I'd take the argument in the direction that a database of the
criminal behavior on every citizen would create the prefect tool for the
suppression of dissent. Anyone who became politically inconvenient would have
their entries combed for wrongdoing, and their life destroyed.

The weakness with THAT argument is that it assumes a conspiratorial, immoral
federal government. Many of us may be able to imagine that, but it's an idea
at the periphery of the Overton window.

Which brings me to my point.

We need a reference detailing historic government abuses of data. It should
focus on:

    
    
        How data was collected
        The original purpose of collection 
        The benign intentions 
          of the original collectors
        How the data moved from the collecting administration
          to the abusive administration
    

It seems like there should be a wealth of historical examples. What data did
the Stasi have, Mao's china, the purges of intellectuals in russia and SE
Asia. I bet there are even records of Torquemada's Inquisition.

I want us to make the posibility of a good administration collecting data, and
then that data being captured or inherited by a bad administration, a part of
the mental vocabulary of the US population. Yeah it's ambitious, but I think
that is the best chance we have at fighting the Government here. And, I
believe that an earnest civil servant could understand the danger, and want to
limit his own power, once this was properly explained.

~~~
mc32
The weakness in the argument is that privacy or secrecy will minimize one's
exposure to unjust laws. I don't think that's the case. It only makes it
harder for an unjust system to effect its goals in other words, it introduces
delay not necessarily avoidance altogether.

For example, if an unjust government didn't have access to or there didn't
exist data at oblique or proximate collection points, they'd go about and find
alternative methods. They would set up systems of popular reporting and
surveillance as they did in Vietnam where it was beneficial and of self
interest to report abnormal behavior or behavior contrary to that sanctioned
by the government.

So, yes, privacy and secrecy can delay "the bad things" but they will not
prevent it. Moreover, with less than perfect information, a bad government or
actor will simply widen the net and accept more false positives. Privacy may
defeat the mildly bad but not those intent on real bad.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> It only makes it harder for an unjust system to effect its goals in other
> words, it introduces delay not necessarily avoidance altogether.

...which is what it's supposed to do. There is nothing that makes
totalitarianism _impossible_ , what is necessary is to put up as many
roadblocks in its way as we can so the people fighting the good fight stand a
chance.

------
stegosaurus
I don't think the battle here is about privacy, encryption, or any of that
stuff.

It's really about trust in government.

It's about the specific meaning of the word 'trust' \- the idea that 'trust'
and 'distrust' are not equivalent to 'good' or 'bad'.

I can distrust my government, without thinking that they are bad.

When speaking to friends and family about this, that feels like the barrier.
They believe that current western governments are generally 'good', and that
historical ones were 'bad', accidents of some sort, that can't or won't happen
again.

That troubles me, more so than any specific issue of the day.

~~~
stegosaurus
As a programmer... in some ways I feel like it's an issue of abstraction.
Naming variables is hard. Right?

We have this 'Terrorism' abstraction. But that's not really what it is. You
might have an instance of Terrorism, that affects two people. Then is it
really Terrorism? Shouldn't it be something else? I'd say it's just Violence.

The same happens all over the place. Child abuse, theft, piracy, etc. The
battle seems to be fought and won by the media when we decide on how to
categorise and name things.

So we end up in some frankly absurd situations, because we think we're
discussing Y, when actually we're discussing X.

I don't know how to solve this, I just want to get it out of my brain, because
it really frustrates me and stops me bothering with debate most of the time
when people don't even seem to realise they've done it.

If I thought that eliminating privacy would save 1 billion lives, I would do
it. No euphemisms. That would be a sacrifice I'd feel sensible in making.

But I don't want to talk about 'encryption' and 'terrorism' because it's just
bollocks, really. It's an absurd simplification; it's a euphemism. You're not
discussing anything real anymore, you're just giving platitudes.

~~~
zanny
The real issue is that people are even talking about terrorism at all. By the
state definition more people have died from tripping over their own feet than
from terrorism in the last thirty years.

It is not about degrees of abstraction, it is about composition. Terrorism is
a wrapper function to obscure the true intent behind the militarization of the
police, the expansion of the military, and the implementation of the
surveillance state - as a politician, you fear uncertainty and a lack of
control. The natural state of affairs is to trend towards totalitarianism -
the centralization of power and authority in a society absolutely - and it
takes the vigilance of participants to repel its advances.

We have been doing a _very_ poor job of that for quite a long time now, and
the results of that gradual trend become more and more evident and
indisputable.

~~~
stegosaurus
Mmm.

I think what I'd say about this is that essentially 'Terrorism' has been
defined as some sort of catastrophic instance, of collapse of society, fear of
going outside, whatever.

But it's being applied to relatively trivial crimes (e.g. one soldier was
stabbed in the UK, and that becomes 'terrorism', when really it's just
premeditated murder).

I agree that there seems to be some sort of campaign to deliberately misuse
terminology in this way. I'm just not sure what we can do to stop it other
than to educate people about these 'tricks'.

~~~
zanny
Terrorism is just the threat. The nebulous conceptual threat - in the same way
the US thought declaring war on psychoactive recreational plants was a sane
proclamation, declaring war on the fundamental idea of violent political
dissonance through fear is also equally untenable but also equally effective
in placating the population through fear of the "other" / "sin" just by the
simple animal brain logic of different == dangerous == threat == destroy.

You don't want to finely define your threat when you want the threat to be
perpetual to justify your seizure of power. Is it sad that this is literally
what the awful Star Wars Prequel's did? The evil sith lord orchestrated
vacuous foes for the much larger, much stronger Republic to fear, and then
used that fear to see himself given absolute power so as to seize total
control of everything once the curtain was pulled back and he was revealed the
ultimate puppet master.

In much the same way, terrorism in the modern world is constructed with
American arms and money, to create the strife that funds private defense
contractors and military arms manufacturer's profit margins. It is a
fabrication to instill fear, to enable the expansion of authority in _exactly_
the same way - and everyone agrees those movies were terribly written because
the Emperor's plot seemed so impossible with so many people around him to see
it, yet we are living it out ourselves in much the same way today - and the
super majority of people are entirely ignorant, or even protective, of the
fear-mongering.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I think declaring war against pot fit nicely into the puritanical history of
America, and a few crazy controlling people like j edger hoover. We do seem to
let those types get into power. Hopefully it won't happen with Trump. I would
believe that some of those types of people would try things like that to
control people.

But I think there's a lot larger group of conservative law enforcement and
politicians that just go along with those restrictions.

Now I have even seen some republicans coming out against this national
surveillance as they think about what it would be like if trump had access to
that, instead of "their guy".

It will be hard to reverse the national surveillance state. The first step is
contacting your representatives and reminding them of your objection.

------
wereHamster
> Law enforcement used to be harder. If a law enforcement agency wanted to
> track someone, it required physically assigning a law enforcement agent to
> follow that person around. Tracking everybody would be inconceivable,
> because it would require having as many law enforcement agents as people.

It is not inconceivable. It was very much real in east germany! People tracked
each other, everybody became a law enforcement agent.

------
ck2
Most people have committed a few felonies this year and either don't even know
it or don't care.

Once prosecuting people becomes as automated as a license plate scanner
generating hundreds of tickets per day, suddenly they are going to wish they
had a little more privacy to balance the government being overbearing.

The problem is we give incredibly powerful weapons (both literally and
figuratively) to law enforcement and then when going after the real big
criminals turns out to be too difficult, they turn their eyes to the easy to
catch regular folks with little way to defend themselves, just so crime
prevention figures can look good in the budgets.

~~~
_0ffh
Well, a wsj article from 2009 claims in the US it is an average of three
felonies per day [1], and I doubt the situation has become better since then.

[1]
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487044715045744389...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842)

~~~
LinuxBender
It is an interesting post and certainly a concern around automated law
enforcement in the future. That is certainly something folks need to keep in
mind.

There are some skeptics breaking down that article however.[1] I am not saying
I agree or disagree with their analysis. It is still very much a concern even
if that article chose the incorrect examples to use for their thesis.

[1] [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-
the-a...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-average-
american-unwittingly-commit-three-felonies-a-day)

~~~
_0ffh
Thanks for the link, it's good to be skeptical. But even if the number is
inflated by an order of magnitude, it's still a very frightening one. And it's
two orders of magnitude away from ck2's estimate.

------
Finnucane
" If a law enforcement agency wanted to track someone, it required physically
assigning a law enforcement agent to follow that person around. Tracking
everybody would be inconceivable, because it would require having as many law
enforcement agents as people."

On the other hand, the Stasi and the KGB were infamous for the vast armies
they employed in this task. Maybe they couldn't track everyone all the time,
but they could track enough people enough of the time that people were
generally aware there was a non-zero chance of being tracked, and doing
anything that might arouse the suspicions of the authorities carried risk.
Also, in those societies, everyone was at risk, whereas in the US, the risk is
perceived to be weighted toward 'others'\--if you are not in the targeted
group, it is easier to be complacent.

------
studentrob
We should. But we might not be allowed to in the digital world in the future.

A bill by US lawmakers, set for release in March, could require encrypted
devices to be able to give un-encrypted data to law enforcement. Feinstein
says the bill is "coming along ... some people are making it a lot harder than
we think it needs to be". An alternate proposal is also on the table

[http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-
cybersecurity/2016...](http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-
cybersecurity/2016/02/march-is-encryption-bill-month-hackers-going-after-
japans-infrastructure-a-mixed-final-2015-tally-212865)

------
13thLetter
If this is genuinely important to you, don't forget to vote against every
politician who supports mass surveillance. Do it in primaries and the general
election. Write someone in if you have to, but do it, and don't make excuses
about the lesser evil.

------
everyone
Its a bit worrying that someone feels its necessary to write an article
explaining how the government constantly spying on everyone could be bad.

------
maus42
(The post is from 2013. Shouldn't that be mentioned in the title?)

~~~
LinuxBender
It should include 2013.

This is only becoming more true every year. I hope that more folks read this
post.

------
chinathrow
(2013)

------
ikeboy
From 2013.

