
Baseless Calls to Expand Surveillance Fit Familiar, Cynical Pattern - pavornyoh
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/baseless-calls-expand-surveillance-fit-familiar-cynical-pattern
======
cryoshon
Why should we listen? France already massively ramped up their surveillance
state after the Hebdo attacks (the perps were known to them beforehand
anyway), and that did absolutely nothing to stop a much larger and more
complex attack, also with known perps. A panopticon can't stop terrorists from
lashing out violently, but it can certainly chill speech and promote
totalitarian government.

That's their angle: use the panopticon to get blackmail material on 100% of
people, then anyone who is inconvenient or needs to be controlled can be dealt
with painlessly.

I can't understand how people can still give governments the benefit of the
doubt when they've been exposed as liars repeatedly for years.

~~~
adam419
"And that did nothing to stop a much larger, more complex attack"

Perhaps, but I think the best way to measure the effectiveness or
ineffectiveness of the program is not the number of attacks that have slipped
through, but the proportion of those that were prevented compared to those
that slipped through.

~~~
tsunamifury
This is impossible. One of the problems with the blatant misuse of forecasting
is governments using it it to compare outrageous black swan futures against
real history. It leads to claiming that "spying on everyone 24/7 to prevent an
infinite number of terror attacks" is in everyones interest. The reality is
that a limited number of black-swan terror attacks is actually a minimal cost
compared to destroying social fabric modern western society is built on.

This type of false thinking is what allows government officials to manipulate
public thought into agreeing to give up their rights. This has literally led
to the FBI radicalizing young men in order to 'catch them' in the act -- thus
justifying their existence by creating the very black-swan event they are
supposed to stop.

~~~
hokkos
For now it seems that terrorist attacks made more impact on social fabric than
US or French surveillance.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Well, they did enable government to implement those surveillance programs. It
was already in the works, but terrorism is a wonderful pretext (along with
paedophilia, Nazism, and starving authors).

------
mason240
Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind
of encryption.

After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers
Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after-
endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-
unencrypted-sms.shtml)

~~~
akerro
> Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind
> of encryption.

They actually had unencrypted text messages on their phones and used cars. Why
don't we ban unencrypted text message applications and cars?

~~~
xtreme
Bangladesh actually banned WhatsApp and other IM apps.

[http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-
bloc...](http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-
blocked-60682)

------
logn
Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic
shootings/terrorism. Well, body cams for police is maybe an exception. But
schools, churches, and movie theaters get shot up weekly.

I think the illusion that somehow the surveillance apparatus filters out white
people and only focuses on terrorism lets Americans feel okay with it.

Also I don't think most people realize how almost every action and thought in
their lives ends up on a computer or going over the internet. Everyone just
focuses on cellphone metadata, maybe because the full truth of what's being
surveilled is too painful to contemplate.

I would like to see some politician formulate a response the involves boosting
these Middle Eastern economies and schools and "bombing" them with movies and
music from LA. If we give these radicals some chance at a life then maybe
they'll stop blowing themselves up and taking us with them. Also maybe we can
consider that they're responding rationally to the endless intervention by the
West into their affairs. Not that I'm justifying their actions, at all, but
it's not healthy to dehumanize the enemy. It's what we did to the Japanese and
we ended up fire bombing and nuclear bombing them.

~~~
kzhahou
> Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic
> shootings/terrorism.

I think the reasoning is that in domestic school/church/theater shootings, the
perpetrator isn't engaged in long communications (and receiving instructions
from) a leadership group.

~~~
talmand
It wouldn't be surveillance on you as part of a group, it would be on you as
an individual. Most likely it would involve just enlarging the number of
incidents or situations that would trigger a surveillance order on you.

Doesn't matter, that type of surveillance will be incredibly easy in the near
future. Whether we want it or not.

------
arca_vorago
"One major reason Congress ended the broader program is that it didn’t work.
Millions of dollars and over 10 years of effort later"

That's the thing. They are convincing everyone that it's about security, but
it's not. The military industrial congressional complex (the correct term
before editing of DI's famous speech) has latched onto "cyber" as another
_money extraction through fear_ pipeline. We need to stop assuming their real
purpose is security, and understand that instead it is about money and power.

William Binney is the perfect man to go to about this sort of thing. He
designed a system that would cost in the two digit millions that would be
placed at core nodes and would encrypt/anonymize American's data unless a FISA
warrant was obtained. They scrapped his program, and implemented a
multibillion dollar program that didn't protect privacy, didn't ingest or
connect data as well, and this was from the very top of the Agency!

Corruption is a root cause of these issues. Congress isn't as dumb as they
pretend, but they get big donations and re-election support when they pass
stuff like this, and they are more concerned about that than any principles.
All three branches of government are affected by this level of corruption and
cronyism. Programs like this are designed for two things:

1\. Make the middle-top MICC men (the startups in Mclean VA for example) lots
of money.

2\. While the middle men are rolling in that money, having torn up the
constitution to get it, the oligarchy siphons the data through loopholes, and
suddenly, they have enough data to plan the next evolution in the facist world
government plan.

You remember the saying, follow the money? Well, at a certain point, when you
have billions, another few million isn't that big of a deal. At that point,
it's all about power. Be wary of future calls to world governmental style
bodies to be formed, and remember centralization is a weakness, not a
strength! Mark my words.

------
batz
Security apparatus position in a nutshell:

"If you give up your freedoms, we'll protect you next time."

Great, thanks. Pricks.

~~~
marcosdumay
Current position:

"No, sorry, those freedoms were not enough."

------
javajosh
What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media doesn't seem to
question the assumption behind the questions that they're asking. They ask
questions like should we give up our privacy in order to gain security? But of
course this question assumes that it's possible to gain security by giving up
privacy which is clearly false. Just look at totalitarian regimes - are they
free of terrorist attacks? No.

~~~
nly
> What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media

Both the Guardian and the NYT have articles calling BS on this sort of thing.

------
lordnacho
It would be pretty impressive if an algo existed which found most of the
terrorists with relatively few false positives.

If you look at a population in the hundreds of millions and the set of
terrorists planning an attack, maybe in the dozens (?), you need a pretty
powerful test if you're to inconvenience fewer terrorists than ordinary
people.

And that doesn't even touch on the issue of whether it's right to do so if it
works.

Has anyone here worked on similar identification algorithms? The closest I can
think of is a friend of mine who markets drugs for extremely rare conditions.
But then those people tend not to be hiding and can be approached via search
keywords.

------
nickff
The most interesting part of this debate is how it mirrors the gun control
debate, with the biggest difference between the two being the people
advocating each position.

Both debates are about the attempt to restrict something which is very
difficult to restrict. In both cases,there is a fundamental principle of
liberty at stake, but only the advocates for that liberty appear to care about
that principle. Relatively few could be argued to be harmed by the
weapons/encryption (in the manner which proponents of restriction believe they
can prevent), and even where governments have abridged those rights, the
results do not clearly demonstrate that restrictions are efficacious.
Proponents also make their strongest pushes for increased restriction in the
face of great tragedies in both cases.

The only groups which seem to have consistent positions through these two
debates are the libertarians, anarchists, and statists (; a strange list in my
opinion).

------
guard-of-terra
Most things around my life in the last 15 years fit familiar, cynical pattern
that politicians spit in our face and get away with it. That leads to
desperation and learned helplessness.

To give EFF a credit, they actually fight. Unfortunately, quixotically

~~~
natch
I wouldn't say it's quixotic, because they do win many fights:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins)

~~~
guard-of-terra
Quixote did actually win some fights too. FSVO winning.

------
tptacek
Does this EFF post say anything new, or is it voted to the top of the site
because (a) anti-surveillance and (b) EFF?

I find EFF to be a deeply cynical organization, even though I for the most
part share their policy objectives.

~~~
cryoshon
Can you give examples of why you think the EFF is cynical? As a frequent
donor, I would like another perspective.

~~~
venomsnake
While I am not the OP (and support all of their agenda) - any organization
that is payed to hold certain position becomes cynical because it is literally
their job to spin any event into something that fits their agenda. It is the
nature of the beast.

~~~
chishaku
Are they payed merely to hold certain positions or to take action (legal
challenges, software dev, spread awareness) on issues that are important to
many of us?

------
ccvannorman
Saying that surveillance doesn't stop all terrorist attacks so we should stop
all surveillance, is like saying police don't stop all violent crime so we
should fire all the police.

------
etangent
IMO, there exist good arguments against surveillance. But why are supposedly
rational geeks so irrationally prone to putting forward very bad arguments
against it? See almost every reply in this thread to prove my point, but I
will list a few:

1) If one took basic statistics, one would deem the proposition that "X is
useless because [a target of X] has just slipped through" as outrageously
wrong and a prime example of both selection bias and reliance on anecdotal
evidence, yet somehow in the context of surveillance, this argument is taken
at face value. You see otherwise smart people posting and retweeting this
argument as if they thought it a valid one.

2) In almost any other context, a rational thing to do is to evaluate both
sides and, if one seems beneficial but dangerous, propose laws to regulate it
(aka: don't use surveillance for blackmailing political candidates since it
contradicts democratic principles). Yet in the context of surveillance, a geek
will talk in completely black-and-white terms, and not even consider proposing
laws to regulate its impact. For an extended example, a common argument
against surveillance is that places the entity wielding it "outside of law".
Yet democracies have developed well-established methods for dealing with
entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law. That is the
reason why we have a president with a fixed term rather than a king, for
example.

3) If surveillance can be used for blackmailing, then obviously it has to work
quite well in the first place (be comprehensive, with ability to target
specific individuals). Yet the same geek who argues that surveillance is
dangerous because it can be used for blackmailing will also try argue, often
in the same paragraph, that surveillance doesn't work, is not effective, or is
very easily circumventable. To any impartial outside observer, the argument
that "X is not effective! But X is dangerous because it is effective!" would
seem like a contradiction, no?

4) Then there is the tired/insensitive argument that "more people die from
furniture than from terrorism". First, this is probably only true in the West,
and not in places like Nigeria or MENA (this is a good chart
[http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-
size/images/2015/11/blogs/graphic-detail/20151121_woc539.png)). Second, almost
all animals (and yes, humans are primates/animals) pay a lot more attention to
predators and to acts of violence between each other than to random accidents,
and there is an evolutionary reason for that (which specifically is left as an
exercise to the reader). I would also argue that, since this behavior is so
incredibly prevalent among animals of all kinds, it's almost definitely not an
example of a "maladaptive" cognitive bias. Finally, _even if it were_
maladaptive, one can't just simply discount it (an entire country experiencing
a fascist freakout against a minority group is not a good thing IMO, whether a
result of a cognitive bias or not).

5) For almost every other technology, geeks will argue (often
obnoxiously/pedantically) that it can be both good and bad, depending on how
it is wielded (see nuclear power). But surveillance is also a technology, yet
you almost never see a geek saying "surveillance can be either good or bad"
\-- no, to a geek, surveillance is bad, period. It's like surveillance is this
_one thing_ that technology-loving geeks can feel justified to act luddite
about.

Why is that?

~~~
ve55
1) This is a good point, but there's very little evidence in favor that /any/
legitimate terror attacks are stopped by most mass survellience. In other
words, we have no data points in favor of it, and every time an event like
this happens, it's an additional data point against it.

2) >if one seems beneficial but dangerous, propose laws to regulate it Because
there's no reason at this point for us to believe that the entities in power
will adhere to those laws, as they haven't in the past.

Keep in mind that without Snowden et al there would be almost no one arguing
against mass survellience compared to what there is today.

3) The argument isn't that survellience doesn't collect massive amounts of
information on everyone. We know it does that, and everyone should agree. The
argument is that despite all of this information, it does not help to protect
us in any notable way. In other words, mass survellience is effect at
collecting absurd amounts of data on everyone, but it is not effective as a
tool to protect us and stop legitimate terrorist threats.

~~~
etangent
1) If you were good at detecting terror attacks, wouldn't you want to keep it
secret from terrorists about how you actually do it? This is such an obvious
point (a direct counterpart to Dr. Strangelove's "the whole point of a
doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret"), yet so many of those who
argue against surveillance don't even consider it, thereby revealing that
their primary concern is not even remotely close to actually solving the
problem of terrorist attacks. Now, someone who _completely_ doesn't care about
whether terrorist attacks happen or not -- is that a rational party to have
discussion with?

2) Don't democracies have well-established principles on how to deal with
entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law -- without
actually preventing those entities from wielding any power whatsoever? Wasn't
that the entire point of having a president with a fixed term rather than a
king?

~~~
mindcrime
_Now, someone who completely doesn 't care about whether terrorist attacks
happen or not -- is that a rational party to have discussion with?_

I doubt there is anybody who truly "doesn't care if terrorist attacks happen".
But there are people (like myself) who can look at the numbers, realize that
you are MANY times more likely to die by slipping and falling in your own
bathroom, being in a car crash, drowning in your own pool, or being beaten to
death by a cop, than you are to die in a terrorist attack. And after looking
at that, I can say that I don't accept a trade-off that involves any loss of
freedom, or increase in government scope/power, in order to reduce what is
already a minuscule risk.

 _Don 't democracies have well-established principles on how to deal with
entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law -- without
actually preventing those entities from wielding any power whatsoever? Wasn't
that the entire point of having a president with a fixed term rather than a
king?_

Yes, and I will argue that it was the point, or at least _part_ of the point,
of the Second Amendment. (Yeah, I know this point isn't without controversy).

~~~
etangent
> But there are people (like myself) who can look at the numbers, realize that
> you are MANY times more likely to die by slipping and falling in your own
> bathroom

That's another example of a wrong argument often used. All animals (and yes,
humans are animals) pay more attention to predators than to random accidents,
and there is an evolutionary reason for that.

~~~
mindcrime
There's an evolutionary reason for all manner of cognitive biases. That
doesn't mean that behavior is correct.

~~~
etangent
"Correct" is not the issue here. The issue is that the behavior exists, is
powerful, and must be accounted for. If you have a country-wide fascist
freakout against a minority group, it doesn't matter whether the source was
"correct" (technical term: adaptive) bias or a maladaptive one.

~~~
woodman
So what argument would you recommend? You've clearly come out against using
logic, and suggested to the "geeks" that vestigial evolutionary behavior "must
be accounted for". How do you suggest that be done, emotional manipulation?
What bloody shirt do we have to wave?

~~~
etangent
"Vestigial" is the wrong/insensitive word. If I make an appeal to evolutionary
biology, it is because I am also a geek, not because I have some overarching
pseudo-Darwinian worldview. When applicable, its not wrong to refer to biology
to understand why humans work the way they do. When dealing with a software
system, wouldn't you want to understand the principles upon which it is built?

Please don't tell me that you would feel the same way if a member of your
family, for example, had died in a boating accident versus, say, had been
beheaded with cold blood with a knife in some insane semi-religious ceremony
(if you _would_ feel the same way, a lot of people would qualify you as a
sociopath, and they probably wouldn't be wrong). Vengeance is one of the
primary drives of human behavior, it will always exist, it is very often a bad
thing, but it must be acknowledged if you want to be taken seriously. Note for
example that in rare cases when it is _justified_ , lack of feeling of
vengeance will make you look either like a cold-blooded psychopath or a
complete coward.

It is rational to try to understand the limits of rationality. A perfectly
rational being might rationally conclude that life is not worth living and
commit suicide, leaving no progeny. Defending oneself and one's family from
threats that have _agency_ (predators, other members of your species) is and
always will be categorically different from defending from threats that don't
have agency, such as bad weather.

I recommend to consider the threat posed by terrorism as seriously as you
consider global warming, or interplanetary exploration, or whatever it is you
consider to be a serious issue. It may not be as serious to you, and that's
okay, but at least respect the fact that it is a very serious issue to many
other people. Then you can have a serious discussion over which steps are and
are not appropriate.

As a coincidence, you will also find that people will listen to your arguments
against surveillance more seriously when you respectfully acknowledge their
own wants and desires, such as desire for peace/security.

~~~
woodman
> "Vestigial" is the wrong/insensitive word.

WELL, I never. I'm offended at your offence to my insensitivity. I can be
intransigent about the value of logic relative to emotion as well.

> When dealing with a software system, wouldn't you want to understand the
> principles upon which it is built?

That depends on what you mean by principles. If you mean the CS theory that
underpins it all, sure - that level of knowledge is absolutely necessary in
many cases. If you mean the designer's intent, sure - that can help, but that
would certainly take a back seat to the cold hard CS logic of reality. Also, I
wouldn't feel a compulsion to extend the poor coding practices of yesteryear
that may be found in legacy codebases (hint: I'm not talking about code, this
is a tortured metaphor).

> Please don't tell me that you would feel the same way if a member of your
> family...

The desire for revenge is derived from a perceived injustice, that is why one
seeks revenge against people and not motorboats - motorboats can't reason. The
same goes for wild animal attacks. I think you almost touched on this in your
third paragraph. But you're conflating emotions and actions.

> ...respectfully acknowledge their own wants and desires, such as desire for
> peace/security.

Ok, I officially respect and acknowledge your wants and desires for peace and
security. BTW, you can't have either in a world where there is any amount of
free will. What next? Is that your recommendation - empathy? I'll save you
some trouble and just let you know ahead of time that if somebody is
irrational - no amount of reasoning, emotional or logical, will change their
position. That leaves only three courses of action for the self-interested
rational being:

1) Try reason, if it doesn't work then turn to page 2 or 3

2) Violence, but it works in only a super narrow band of circumstances

3) Attempt to minimize the damage done to you by the emotion driven mob, this
might mean fleeing into the wilderness and becoming a hermit... Or promoting
the benefits of logical thought in daily exchanges by demonstrating the
wealth, happiness and playboy lifestyle that it has brought you. Either or.

One issue that I won't compromise on is that of compromise, which is usually
where the emotional route leads. There are plenty of things for which
compromise is just fine, but are generally unimportant and not worth the
argument, modifications of properties and not attributes (attributes define
kindness of objects, properties do not). Like if you wanted to paint our
rocket red (change the color property) that is fine, a compromise of half red
vs full red really makes no difference outside of personal aesthetic
preference. If you wanted to replace the engine with a bag of pineapples, well
we have a problem - it is no longer a rocket and there is no compromise
between fruit and engine that would leave it a rocket.

~~~
etangent
Am finding your comment a bit difficult to read, and don't really have time to
discuss this further, so I will only remark that I'm not at all offended by
anything you said -- my mention of "sensitivity" was only to advise on how to
act in such a way so as to make people listen to your arguments (in other
words: people will typically shut down their aural response as soon as they
hear something offensive to their core beliefs). A hypersensitive person would
annoy me as much as he/she would annoy you, but the fact that such people
exist is an unfortunate reality that has to be dealt with, and not something
that can be changed by pretending otherwise.

TL;DR Just because I describe a situation does't mean I approve of it.

~~~
woodman
Well I'll summarize my perspective as well. If somebody needs emotional
coddling in order to see reason - they aren't really going to see reason (not
in the long term at least). It therefore makes no sense to deviate from a
logic based approach in argument; the "geeks" are doing it right. A verbose
argument is easily ignored (as I've apparently demonstrated), so adding
emotional appeals can do nothing but distract.

~~~
etangent
Thank you. I share your view that logic/reason is superior to emotional
appeal. However the two are often orthogonal. When dealing with public, it is
possible not to sacrifice _any_ logical soundness whatsoever while _also_
ensuring that your message is not ignored b/c of seeming insensitivity to
whatever bullshit people care about. Just because something is not often done
does not mean it is impossible. Understanding what other people care about is
called "emotional intelligence". Possessing emotional intelligence _does not_
necessarily mean that one does not possess rational intelligence (heh, it
would be a logical fallacy to say so). The two can complement one another. If
you care about having influence in the world, you should attempt to acquire
both. Just because some people only have one and some only the other does not
mean that no person exists that has both. That was my point.

------
B4CKlash
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ~ Ben Franklin

------
grandalf
This kind of thing doesn't matter. Encryption simply can't be stopped by
governments.

~~~
dahart
It certainly does matter to me, and your comment makes me wonder if it might
matter to you and you don't know it. If you read it, the articles's thrust
isn't largely about encryption, it's about mass surveillance.

The reasons it matters to me:

\- The government shouldn't have the right to wire-tap all citizens at once.
We already established that for analog telephones, but digital has become an
excuse to undo the annoying requirement of establishing probable cause. If
they have the right to listen to you through mass means, no encryption will
help you.

\- They are spending our tax dollars doing this. The money matters, and they
basically taking our money and using it against us. At best it's a waste of
that money.

\- If they establish the right to curb strong encryption, you may be right in
the sense that it doesn't matter to the criminals who use illegal and strong
encryption. But it does matter to the vast majority of the law abiding world
who get stuck with "encryption" that is readily readable by anyone who
expresses an interest, and allows the govt to keep collecting mass
surveillance unhindered.

~~~
alextgordon
Many websites require HTTPS and many of _those_ are hosted in foreign
countries.

Banning encryption is like banning breathing. Yeah, they _can_ , but we all
still have to do it.

------
AC__
Yeah no doubt this all feels familiar. Because they're(media & globalized
governments, which are effectively a single entity) reading from False Flag
Operations 101

------
firstprimate
So this may be considered hijacking, but here goes. What the EFF, and many
others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at the West because of 'our
freedoms', or these are religious nutters who want to kill Westerners because
jihad, porn, alcohol, the prophet told them to, it's in the Quran, etc.

The larger picture reveals that it's chickens coming home to roost (and I am
not going to go into the long list of foreign policy actions that create the
resentment). The Western public should not expect that their government's
actions do not have consequences.

From a purely selfish PoV, you can expect that if your government is willing
to kill/maim/oppress/steal/lie/cheat people of another nation, for whatever
reason, that this will soon start happening to you (and it has - look around).

Pushing back against initiatives like this is futile. The fear your government
sows will override any concerns for loss of civil liberties. So long as they
get to use words like terrorists, Islamic Extremism, radicals and militants
they control the conversation. And every time you use those words you set your
argument back.

More pertinently, the West has a long, long history of violence against the
other. Study that history as that is the only thing that will let you to
question your presumption of superiority and allow you to open your eyes to
the terrible suffering the West inflicts every day.

~~~
ve55
>What the EFF, and many others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at
the West because of 'our freedoms',

I'm not sure why that's relevant, I don't see anything like that in this
article. I don't see any usage of words like 'freedom', 'islam', 'extremist',
etc., either. As far as I can tell this article is neutral or just
nonpresenting with regards to what you've mentioned.

~~~
firstprimate
FTA: "But terrorism is aimed, in part, at pushing us to jump to conclusions
and take panicky steps that inflict more pain and misdirect our resources
toward failed and dangerous ideas."

