

Privacy and security - queenside3
http://blog.samaltman.com/privacy-and-security

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vijayboyapati
You say "I don’t worry about the NSA having my call records". The trouble is a
lot of people are worried about it. Every despot in history has gotten away
with oppression because of the silent majority who tolerates, or supports it
in the name of some ostensible benefit they perceive to themselves.

Regarding the benefits, they are dubious at best. The probability of being
harmed by a terrorist attack is vanishingly small; you are orders of magnitude
more likely to die in a car accident, and more likely to die from being hit by
lightening. For that risk, why should the rest of us tolerate being spied on,
being groped at airports, and being told the state is free to act outside the
bounds of judicial oversight (one of the bedrocks of common law)?

Not to mention, the US government does more to foster terrorism than to fight
it. This is easier for non-Americans to understand, because they don't have
the concept of exceptionalism baked into their head from childhood. Animosity
toward America does not come from the success or freedom of her people (that's
why people LOVE America), the animosity comes from imperialism and American
troops stationed in parts of the world whose people take it as an extreme
affront.

It's hard to produce any evidence regarding the NSA because it's so secretive
and companies and individuals that are forced to deal with it are put under
gag orders. That's why it's so amazing this information finally got out (thank
god for whistleblowers who literally put their lives on the line to bring this
awful behaviour into the daylight - I have no doubt that the leaker, if ever
revealed, will have his or her life ruined by the justice department). But
consider sister agencies like the FBI, which have a long history of abusing
surveillance powers ([http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-releases-report-
fbi-cru...](http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-releases-report-fbi-crusade-
against-martin-luther-king-jr-urges-ashcroft-not-relax-)). It's very easy to
find the history of abuses from various government agencies (for instance, the
census bureau using its data to round up Japanese-americans into concentration
camps in World War 2), so why should the onus be on those of us who oppose
domestic spying to prove that the NSA isn't abusing its power?

Also, you say "I am delighted that we can all express our outrage online
without fear of disappearing in the night—that’s pretty remarkable. I am happy
that citizens can own guns (I have gone a little off the deep end as a
prepper…). If all this stops, then it’d be time to worry."

This doesn't happen in one step. No society goes from freedom to Nazism
overnight. The progress from freedom to oppression happens in a succession of
baby steps, each of which are tolerated, or even supported.

You have mentioned your view is a minority opinion. Quite the contrary. You
form the silent majority who assents to this sort of state behaviour. Your
opinion is very closely aligned with the opinion of the power structure
itself, and this baneful behaviour can only come about if the vast majority of
people are essentially ok with it. The people complaining about it, although
loud and visible, are a minority, who have long been accused of being
"crackpots" or having a "penchant for conspiracy theories", to use your words.

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natrius
_" I believe the world is more dangerous than it used to be"_

I don't understand this belief. Since the 90's, we've lived in a world without
a nuclear armed superpowers with a hostile relationship. Trade has made war so
costly that developed nations just don't do it with each other anymore. More
Americans die trying to end civil wars in other countries than die from
terrorism. At this point, we should be reaping a peace dividend not only in
dollars, but in rights.

Members of Congress have tried to justify the revelations about spying on
Americans by claiming that it has prevented a terrorist attack. If a decade of
spying on Americans prevents just one 9/11-scale attack, I'd choose the
attack. Three thousand deaths over a decade is a rounding error. Let's start a
war on traffic accidents and metabolic syndrome instead.

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gautamnarula
"I believe the world is more dangerous than it used to be, and that as
technology develops things generally get more dangerous."

I don't think this is true. A great book that discusses this is Stephen
Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature," which essentially shows that we're
living in the least violent, most peaceful era of human history. Fareed
Zakaria's "The Post-American World" also discusses how we're currently in the
most peaceful, economically prosperous time in world history. Despite the
violence and unrest presented daily in news media, life is far better now than
it used to be by almost any metric.

That's why I agree with the people referenced in Sam's second footnote, who
believe "the amount of effort spent on the war on terror is disproportionate
to the actual risk." As terrible as the September 11 attacks were, ten times
as many people die in car accidents every year. David Foster Wallace's brief
essay, "Just Asking," really hits this point [1].

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-
ask...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-
asking/306288&#x2F);

~~~
sama
Mildy bad things are less common, but very bad things are possible now that
were not 50 years ago. One individual can have a much worse impact.

~~~
mindcrime
Regarding your concern about biological weapons... I'm not convinced all this
State surveillance could plausibly have any impact on an individual actor,
developing and using a sophisticated biological weapon. I think we're at (or
near) the point where individuals can engineer / grow their own viruses in
home laboratories. The risk is that one whacko grows SARS v456 and unleashes
it, resulting in a _The Stand_ scenario. But if he/she is truly working alone,
monitoring their communication probably won't help.

Now thermonuclear is different, because - AFAIK - it would take a massive
engineering effort involving lots of people and sophisticated equipment to
build a nuke. But that's the same reason that it strikes me that it's less
likely that terrorists will ever get one. Even nation-states like N. Korea
struggle to develop nukes, and do so undetected. A terrorist group building a
nuke seems like a plot from a Mack Bolan novel, not a real-world possibility.
Now, buying a nuke on the black-market, from a former Soviet state, might be
doable... so I'm not saying there's zero chance of this happening. But weighed
against the clearly non-zero chance of our government decaying into a
totalitarian / fascist regime like something out of Orwell; I'd err on the
side of restraining the government.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Counter point: They catch moonshiners by staking out the places you can buy
large volumes of corn and sugar. They catch meth cooks by monitoring large
quantity purchases of those ingredients (whatever they are...). They bust up
grow houses by finding higher than average power bills due to all the climate
control equipment used. It is not beyond reason that they could catch (or at
least become aware of) individuals with home labs by flagging purchases of
those supplies and/or equipment.

~~~
mindcrime
_It is not beyond reason that they could catch (or at least become aware of)
individuals with home labs by flagging purchases of those supplies and /or
equipment._

Fair enough. I don't actually know enough about the details of doing home
virus experimentation and engineering to know for sure. I just have a vague
recollection of having heard some stuff about how those abilities are
filtering down to DIY land.

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skadamat
My thoughts exactly, thanks for this refreshing blog post. There's definitely
a lot of security value for the intelligence agencies to mine our data and
they've been able to stop several terrorist plots because of being able to
access that data. Like you said, I just wish they would be more transparent
about it. Of course the other danger is that if they're too transparent, the
people who WANT to be anonymous for bad reasons will know exactly how to avoid
leaving digital trails. It's tough to balance privacy & security but I
definitely think the intelligence agencies could care less about what drug
dealers you talk to or how much porn you watch and legitimately care more
about threats to the country.

~~~
mindcrime
_but I definitely think the intelligence agencies could care less about what
drug dealers you talk to or how much porn you watch and legitimately care more
about threats to the country._

That might be true today... but what about tomorrow? Or what if one individual
at the NSA starts finding enough dirt on enough powerful people, to start
exerting an undue degree of influence / control on our society? It's not like
intelligence collected by government agencies has never been used for
political purposes before.

I also disagree with their BS about it being "necessary" to collect ALL this
data. I'm sorry, but if they're telling the truth about not collecting names,
etc., then I do not believe they can detect "terrorist activity" by simply
analyzing patterns of phone calls, durations, etc., among _random_ people. And
if their analysis is based on analyzing connections to and from _already
identified_ suspects, then all they need to do is get a warrant to collect
information on people calling (or being called by) the known suspects.

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mpyne
Great post. I would add that sometimes revealing the plots that have been
stopped or uncovered would itself destroy the intelligence value of whatever
means was used to uncover it.

But certainly it should be possible to say _something_ or otherwise have a
timeframe after which it's considered safe to mention.

And for the rest, the data collection, analysis, etc. absolutely we need more
transparency. The bad guys should already be assuming NSA sees all and knows
all, the rest of us need to know what rules the government and public are
playing by, and we need to be able to trust and oversee our own leadership in
Washington. And _that_ requires transparency.

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sethbannon
Sam, you say "I don’t worry about the NSA having my call records". I wonder if
you would be OK posting your phone records for the last 5 years online, so
anyone can see them. Who you called, who called you, how long you talked. What
if this was mandatory?

~~~
sama
I think that's totally different than the NSA having them, but yes, I would.

It's not really the point, though--I can have opinions about whether specific
practices are overreaching, but what I really care about is disclosure.

~~~
sethbannon
Fair enough!

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subsystem
I don't think probable cause exists just to protect Sam Altman.

