
PRISM? Come to Israel to study our surveillance state - yuvadam
http://2jk.org/english/?p=350
======
nir
"The Israeli authorities took George Orwell’s book, Ninteen Eighty Four, and
made it in to a master plan."

OMG! The author expands:

"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance:
employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras,
security cameras and protection cameras"

This, my friends, is the level of hyperbole/ignorance we have to suffer from
our media here in Israel.

I'm Israeli. Employers _do not_ read my email. I have no information on
whether traffic/security cameras are more prevalent than the average here
(traffic, probably so), but I doubt that makes for a "1984" scenario. In fact
I seriously doubt the author actually read "1984".

Unfortunately, clowns like him now learned that instead of being seen as a
joke by people who actually live here, they can publish in English and get to
the front page of news sites worldwide, where people don't know what's going
on in Israel and are willing to believe anything.

~~~
yuvadam
Your response reeks of privilege and ignorance.

If we put aside the ad-hominem attack on the author, which has a record that
speaks for itself, you really should look up cases in the past that perfectly
exemplify a surveillance society that is prevalent in Israel - most of you
which you can find on said author's blog which you are attempting to
discredit.

~~~
herge
> the ad-hominem attack on the author

It's not an ad-hominem attack. He stated that the author is a clown because
his article is a joke (which he argued for in the paragraph above it), and not
that his article is a joke because he is a clown. The more correct term you
should have used is 'rude'.

~~~
ianstallings
The logic police never sleep.

------
mortov
Frankly the Israeli situation sounds more proportionate and reasonable than
many - plus groups are challenging it in court which is always a Good
Thing(tm).

If you want to see the _REAL_ masters, look no further than the UK Regulation
Of Investigative Powers Act.

That gives (for example) local garbage collectors the legal powers to obtain,
say, your medical records - all they need to do is establish they are
'investigating' some garbage related offence and they have access to anything
they want so by saying you have disposed of some 'unauthorized' medical waste
they are allowed to obtain your medical records to see if you have a genuine
medical condition justifying it. It is an offence for the medical staff to
refuse _or to inform you that they have been handed over_.

Want to send your children to your local school ? Expect 24x7 surveillance of
you _and your children_ for 3 weeks:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2248295/Second-
counci...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2248295/Second-council-
admits-using-anti-terror-surveillance-over-school-places.html) [edit: this is
a different example of abuse, reply below has the correct link.]

The list is endless with over 500 different 'official' organizations entitled
to mount total surveillance and the abuses of the legislation are so egregious
that they read like a wild fantasy.

This is the "legal framework" which the UK PM David Cameron is assuring
everyone keeps them safe from PRISM and the like.

Absolute power corrupts and this power has long ago corrupted absolutely in
the UK.

[edit: originally said months and it is merely weeks, reply below has the link
to the correct article. Thanks to Jabbles for pointing out the link was the
wrong one.]

~~~
Jabbles
Your outrage is justified, but let's not just make up facts.

Your link says the surveillance lasted for 10 minutes. Not 3 months.

~~~
mortov
You're totally right, that was the wrong link, and the example I found is
actually 3 _weeks_ which is so much more reasonable for a serious crime like
sending your child to the local school.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8343865.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8343865.stm)

There are others and Wikipedia even has a special section on oppressive use :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Pow...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000)

[edit: to correct the time frame]

~~~
Jabbles
That is certainly a disturbing abuse of power. Here is the IPT's ruling on the
case: [http://www.ipt-
uk.com/docs/Paton_v_Poole_Borough_Council.pdf](http://www.ipt-
uk.com/docs/Paton_v_Poole_Borough_Council.pdf)

------
Samuel_Michon
Valid points, but I don’t think it’s a comparable situation. Israel is
constantly being attacked by people living on its own soil. It’s fairer to
compare US intelligence gathering in Iraq with Israel’s intelligence gathering
within Israel. If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of rockets a day at
California, the US government would be way less civil than Israel has been to
the Gazans. (And they have been, remember the detainment camps for Japanese
Americans?)

NB: I count 3 instances of ‘abhor’ in the article, none of them used
correctly. (The original Hebrew article speaks of נפעם, ‘excited’.)

~~~
carlob
I understand the US media is heavily skewed in support of Israel, but your
comparison is not fair at all.

Why is Israel being constantly attacked on its soil? First of all because it's
been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local
Palestinian population for the past 65 years.

Secondly Israel is a theocratic state, where citizens of different religions
have different sets of rights, where the situation has been described by
Israeli commentator as bordering apartheid.

It's extremely misleading to say "If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of
rockets a day at California…". The Palestinians have not started randomly
bombing Israel out of the blue.

Also I wouldn't use the Israeli in Gaza as a paragon of virtue: I don't think
that California would start using phosphorus bombs against Arizonan civilians,
since it's explicitly forbidden by the Geneva convention. But since the US
have actually used phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah in 2004, maybe
you're right, they would be less civil.

~~~
gadders
It's being attacked because the surrounding countries fundamentally object to
the existence of an Jewish state and wish to destroy it.

To say "Israel has apartheid" really cheapens the struggle of Black South
Africans.

//edit//Corrected glaring typo.

~~~
thwest
>> To say "Israel has apartheid" really cheapens the struggle of Black South
Africans.

Is this something a Black South African who suffered under apartheid and is
intimately familiar with the current occupied Palestine told you, or are you
the Black South African yourself?

~~~
devcpp
I'll answer for him.

Neither, I read about the apartheid from reliable sources and I know the
situation but also read about statistics to make sure I'm not being unfair to
either side.

But what about the people who say "Israel has apartheid"? Did you ask how they
can claim that? Or do you just assume that they are/have met South Africans
who lived under the Apartheid?

~~~
thwest
These are different kinds of statements that require different kinds of
knowledge.

Israel clearly has two categories of citizens within its borders defined by
tribal distinctions (race/religion). Whether this is formally 'apartheid' is
an arguement worth having, since we can look at the UN definition and Israel's
actions and have a meaningful discussion from an external perspective.

Comparing the subjectivities of the lives lived under the two regimes
necessitates experiential knowledge that is most likely lacking in this
audience. I don't find oppression olympics arguments to be fruitful. The moral
calculus of today's actions does not depend on the price paid in South Africa,
The Congo, The American South, or in Revolutionary China.

~~~
Peaker
"within its borders" is correct or incorrect depending on whether you consider
the West Bank inside Israeli borders.

------
harel
There's also the security card in Israel, which is pulled by the government
every time people start to get excited about something. Economy problems?
Security! Privacy concerns - shut up - Security! Administrative detention -
Secu... you get the picture.

~~~
einhverfr
That's where we are going.

Now granted the US and Israel are products of very different histories. The
Jews have been persecuted for centuries in Europe and to a somewhat lesser
extent in the Middle East (the grass is always greener to some extent but the
Muslims have been _slightly_ better to religious minorities through most of
history than the Christians were through the Middle Ages). The constant
problems have lead to a very specific way of looking at things and I don't
think one can have an historical perspective and say that the Jewish
perspective is wrong in the Jewish context. The Jewish paranoia (and I mean
paranoia in the security sense) is fully justified by the weight of history.

We in the US have extraordinary protections for free speech. You can stand up
in a Neo-Nazi gathering and say that the time will come when people will have
to finish what Hitler started and kill all Jews, and this is fully protected
speech, but it is protected only because of what we went through in the US
following WWII with the use of the Smith Act to prosecute people for sedition
when all they did was distribute Marxist literature and try to spread Marxist
ideas. So there is no such thing as a false or hateful idea before the law in
the US because we don't trust the government or the courts to make that
determination (interestingly if I mark bacon as kosher, the courts cannot
interpret Jewish law to determine that in fact it can't be). An equal American
paranoia --- where the government is the threat --- is also more than
justified by the weight of history.

But what terrifies me is that since Oklahoma City, the US Government has been
playing the security card all the time, and is taking more and more of our
liberties. Freedom of association and the AEDPA? Security! Militarization of
law enforcement? Security! Administrative detention? Security! Privacy
concerns? Securi- you get the picture. And we are slowly forgetting why we
have had our own different perspective.

~~~
oinksoft
It's precisely where we're going. I thought I had to get my ears checked when
I heard Obama talking about having 100% security at the expense of privacy and
convenience. A nation demanding 100% security is a police state in the
simplest sense.

------
dclowd9901
I fear that absolute surveillance is an inevitability, no matter where you
live, or how "free" your country is.

It works like this: Best case scenario, you live in a country with a
functioning republic, in which anyone is free to vote in anyway they choose.

A politician's worst nightmare is to be the one who was overseeing during an
instance in which security disastrously failed (e.g. a terrorist attack).

The irony, of course, is that no matter how much security there is, a
terrorist attack can always be successfully carried out in some manner or
another.

Further, even if the government ran out of traditional hardened terrorists to
oversee, they would start morphing dissidents into terrorists. So no way to
stop terrorist attacks, and an ever-growing pool of terrorists. It bears
repeating: you cannot stop security threats. Period.

That said, a politician's only recourse is to _do something_. That
unfortunately means increasing security. No politician will ever stand in
front of a camera and say, "You know what? I think we did everything we could,
and these things are just going to happen from time to time. We'll learn from
this and try to do better next time, but no guarantees. That's life." It's a
truth, but we know that's not what politicians are here to tell us.

The other side of this tragic playing out of events is that, following a
standard bell curve of distribution, most people are of mediocre intelligence,
at best. That means they can't, for themselves, critically come to the
understanding of the aforementioned maximum security problem. That means
they're going to vote for the guy who promises to do more about security
threats with straightforward security lockdown. They don't have the patience
or intelligence to understand real policy reform that might _actually_ lead to
more security.

It's a feedback loop that will cause any bipartisan republic/democracy to
inevitably succumb to a dictatorial-style surveillance state.

Do away with bipartisanship? There might be a way, but no elected leader in
the US will ever implement the changes to make it happen, for the other evil
politicians commit is to maintain the status quo at all costs.

~~~
alexqgb
>>"A politician's worst nightmare is to be the one who was overseeing during
an instance in which security disastrously failed (e.g. a terrorist attack)."

And this is the weak link. Also, it is not necessarily the case. As we all
know, everything from heart disease to auto wrecks are exponentially (almost
infinitely) more likely than terrorism, and just as deadly. Nevertheless,
we've accepted these possibilities as unavoidable aspects of existence, and
ones we can manage without entering a state of hysterical, paralyzing fear
combined with the surrender of all authority to concentrated, unassailable
powers.

The thing that can break this loop is a cultural response that turns the
person running on a "moar security" platform into an object of mockery. This
is the flip side of the herd instinct: few people who want power can stand
being laughed at.

------
einhverfr
The big thing about Israel is that they allow for administrative detention
without trial. It's really hard to get worked up about surveillance when they
don't even have to file charges to keep you in jail.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
How is that different from the US?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#H...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#Habeas_corpus)

~~~
einhverfr
The point is that Israeli citizens and nationals can be held without trial
indefinitely in Israel. That is not something we have to worry about here to
the same extent.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Sure, maybe not to the same extent, but as long as the definition of an ‘enemy
combatant’ remains unclear, American citizens can be arrested and held without
formal charges or trial.

~~~
einhverfr
Thus far the government has shown that they are unwilling to let the Supreme
Court review that regarding citizens. They would rather go to trial than let a
question (where the individual was captured far from combat zones) go before
the Supreme Court.

We should remember what Bush asked the 4th Circuit to do when Padilla
petitioned to the Supreme Court for the second time.... Fortunately the court
would have none of these games.

------
MichaelAza
The thing about Israel being a surveillance state? It doesn't feel like it. I,
as an Israeli, don't feel that the government is going around reading my mail
even though it can totally do that.

The thing about democracies isn't that they're less likely to violate your
civil rights, it's that they _seem_ like they're less likely to do that.
That's a lot of power right there.

All forms of government exists to subjugate the populace and that's easier to
do the less rights the population has. The only viable state is one that's
afraid of its citizens. We have a lot of power but most people don't know it.
We need to spread that knowledge.

~~~
cema

      The thing about democracies isn't that they're
      less likely to violate your civil rights, it's that
      they seem like they're less likely to do that.
      That's a lot of power right there.
    

Yes, yes! It is still important to use that power. But let's keep things in
perspective, or else we end up, as in another comment to the OP, placing USA
and China and Russia in the same basket.

------
josh_fyi
All these seem to be within the general level of intrusiveness seem in the US:

Easy access to metadata, security cameras, etc.

You haven't convinced me that the situation is much different in Israel as
compared to the US (or the UK, for that matter).

------
tudorconstantin
I'd say the best places to learn about surveillance are China and North Korea.

I lived first 7 years of my life under the Romanian communism - they also
could teach best practices in surveillance, since my parents were always
careful what they said - in an era without too much electronics.

~~~
cema
I agree, but a pedantic point: North Korea is as different from China as China
is from the Western world (in this respect). It is, frankly, different from
any other place on earth.

------
jmilkbal
It doesn't matter the level of invasive practices in other states. It's not a
competition for the most or least practices, though policy and research are
worth having dialog about. This combative attitude isn't useful, in English or
Hebrew.

Edit: As the first commenter of the article suggests, companies are doing far
more than the government in terms of intrusion just all the time. We need to
strengthen the bill of rights to not just give procedural protection from the
government, but real rights that protect us all from each other.

------
smsm42
"The authorities could approach the telecommunication providers (ISPs, mobile
operators and phone operators), pay a few Shekels, and obtain answers to
queries, as long as such queries relate to specific crimes or investigations.
"

NSA wins - they get _all_ records without ever needing to allude to specific
crime being committed.

"out of which, almost 2,000 were related to political activities such as
public disturbances."

Political activities and public disturbances are very different things. You
can make public disturbances while doing political activity, e.g. protesting,
but you can also beat up a cop while protesting, that doesn't mean beating up
a cop becomes example of political activities.

" Israel addressed Google for subscriber information (not by the Metadata act,
as it does not apply to Google), about 350 times since 2009. Google responded
to most of these requests; meaning that there are 350 people in Israel that
the government obtained their correspondence,"

It actually does not. It means there were 350 requests, on which in about 2/3
of them Google disclosed some data. There's no indication which data was
disclosed and whether such data was correspondence or not.

"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance:
employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras,
security cameras and protection cameras."

Parking and traffic cameras have nothing to do with government surveillance
and obviously are added just to sensationalize the article, as well as
allegations about email snooping by employers, which again has absolutely
nothing to do with government. Both are very common and nothing specially
relating to Israel.

Summarily, though the article raises a very valid question of eroding judicial
overview over state surveillance - which has, unsurprisingly, the same trend
in Israel as it does in the US - overly sensational tone and bunching together
legitimate privacy concerns and complaints about security cameras in private
places. This detracts from the quality of complaints significantly. Main
message of the article - that Israel is somehow an Orwellian total-
surveillance state - is false, while Israel does have the same problem as US
does, this claim is exaggerated.

------
mtgx
Could this be the reason why you've had the same PM for so long? I mean who
knows how he used that information on his competitors, or the campaign funders
of the competitors.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM for 7 years total (with 10 years in between the
two terms) That’s shorter than George W. Bush was POTUS. David Ben-Gurion was
PM for 13 years.

------
thepumpkin1979
I didn't knew this about Israel, although the fact that the situation is worse
in other parts of the worlds doesn't justify this level of Surveillance in US.

------
stplsd
‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative
terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it
‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it
produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the
knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production'

Michel Foucault

------
fennecfoxen
Replying to the article's illustration here...

1984 was not the instruction manual. It mostly deals with the ongoing
operations and consequences of the police state and its surveillance. _That
Hideous Strength_, its spiritual prequel (written by C. S. Lewis and published
shortly before the atomic bomb, later reviewed and then ripped off by Orwell)
is the instruction manual. :)

 _(In Orwell 's defense, he did make improvements. The problem with a Lewis
book, as Orwell observed, is that God exists and you know that the good guys
win at the end, so the dystopian police state isn't scary enough... which is
the major difference between the two in the plots.)_

------
drivingmenuts
Was that supposed to make us feel better somehow? The "oh-you-think-you-got-
it-bad" mentality disinclines me to any level of empathy or sympathy and more
toward apathy.

~~~
ruv
I'm not sure what should be taken seriously if at all from it, either. But
lets pretend for a moment that's irrelevant and the article does have a point:

During the last couple of days, we got to see this attitude you've
demonstrated here, unfortunately, much too often - Not everybody here is from
the US and it isn't all about you. Your surveillance is affecting us all but
most of the discussion is about how it affects US citizens, since the rest of
the world has no rights in the first place.

------
seclorum
No need. Israel is already part of the US surveillance apparatus. Every single
phone bill in the country gets shipped to an Israeli site for pre-processing..

------
LekkoscPiwa
Yes, but in the US saying anything that would even remotely criticize Israel
is an automatic anti-semitism case. So, don't expect too many comments.

Ah, Land of the Free!

~~~
vixen99
Especially since I guess the social network of HN users is pretty well mapped
out.

