

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic - snippyhollow
http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/

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marknutter
That's because a majority of Americans don't believe they have anything to
hide, or that the stuff they do want to hide is probably so mundane to the
average government official that they assume they wouldn't care. I'm guessing
the way the survey question is posed has a lot to do with the outcome. Take
out the word "terrorism" and I'm sure support would drop. Add the phrase
"personal information" and I'm sure it would drop even further. Or perhaps ask
"Would you be comfortable with the government tracking your activity on
Facebook, Gmail, and Skype?" I'm guessing support for that would be close to
0%.

~~~
tptacek
I get the sense that this doesn't surprise you. My question is: why would it
surprise anyone? It's not just that most Americans don't believe they have
anything to hide from NSA. It's that they _don 't_ have anything to hide from
NSA. I'm not invoking the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument; I have stuff
I need to keep hidden. But most people _really don 't_, and especially not
from NSA.

~~~
craigyk
Yeah. You'll get me too pull out my pitchfork if there is ever evidence this
is being used for anything other than national security, I haven't seen that.
IMO, the first shady use of this would most likely be the war on drugs, if we
see that happen than I'll start getting worried.

~~~
tptacek
Hey: my pitchfork is already within arm's reach. My "problem" over the last
couple days is shoddy reporting and rush to judgement, especially with things
like "OMG Palantir is even _named_ after the all-seeing eye in Lord of the
Rings, they must be in on it".

It's not OK if NSA is hoovering all communications in the US and sifting for
national security issues, and that does appear to be what happened with
Verizon/ATT/Sprint (though it does _not_ appear to be true of Google and
Facebook).

~~~
sliverstorm
_My "problem" over the last couple days is shoddy reporting and rush to
judgement_

Right there with you. I've started digging in my heels at breaking stories
simply for the speed at which people start jumping to conclusions.

------
tstactplsignore
The even crazier story is this: In 2006, 61% of Democrats thought it was
unacceptable, and in 2013, 34% of Democrats think it is unacceptable. I vote
as Democrat as the next guy, but that's some crazy double-think going on
there.

~~~
u2328
Cult of personalities, I think. Fascinating, if not terrifying, human trait.
People root for their political party like they root for their home team;
issues be damned.

------
staunch
I _think_ I would vote for allowing call logs to be trackable by the NSA.
Maybe other things like that, with some checks in place (mostly to prevent
this data getting out of their hands).

But _I_ want to know about these trade-offs, and I don't care if that makes
them less effective.

There's _no way_ NSA should be looking at private email, phone, VOIP, social
networking communication en masse.

~~~
brymaster
> I think I would vote for allowing call logs to be trackable by the NSA

Why? Someone looking to do harm doesn't use phones (maybe Burners) or other
communication methods where they know they'd be easily tracked.

~~~
tptacek
Why do you think people looking to do harm don't use phones? Why do you assume
the use of burners makes telephonic surveillance pointless? Are you
attributing to adversaries the best possible set of circumstances and smallest
possible set of constraints?

~~~
brymaster
I think the argument I wanted to make was that the people NSA claim to be
after aren't using your typical contractual phone plans, since OP was
suggesting they should simply track call logs.

Sure they used pre-paid phones as well as pay phones, hotmail and were still
using coded and hidden messages.

Today they'd be using that steganography over cryptography.

Few sources:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-4985597.html](http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-4985597.html)

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/al_qaeda_secre...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/al_qaeda_secret.html)

~~~
tptacek
The fact that these people might use disposable phones is actually one of the
reasons USG supporters give in favor of hoovering all the telephony
"metadata".

------
wavefunction
Keep in mind many Americans have never traveled outside the country, they are
fed a constant diet of bullshit by our media alternating between frantic fear-
mongering and gushing American paternalism, and simply don't stop to think
about what is actually going on.

I would call them complete morons but that is unkind. Incurious and ignorant
and perhaps far too trusting is perhaps more polite.

~~~
GHFigs
What's the polite word for elitist?

~~~
jmadsen
"Realist speaking from experience"

~~~
GHFigs
"Poor people are stupid" isn't an experience, it's a prejudice.

~~~
NikaJessenia
I'm with you on that.

But, for once, this guy wasn't insulting poor people. He was insulting average
people. The average person has free time but finds it very very hard to use it
for something socially beneficial. This is partially their fault but certainly
not wholly their fault.

~~~
wavefunction
Are you saying I have a habit of insulting poor people?

I've been a poor person. Shit, I'm poor now, with no real assets. I do love
reading your assumptions though. Tell me more about me.

------
rdl
I think we need to make a choice as a society where the line is drawn. We
chose to allow privilege for religious, medical, and legal conversations.
Sure, in individual cases, it would be better to get the data from someone's
confession, but overall, it's better for society (or people decided) to allow
those conversations to encourage religious confession.

Maybe there needs to be special protection for certain classes of cloud
service, computing service, or communication. Certainly allowing people to use
an "exocortex" without fear of seizure would make people smarter. It might
make some crimes harder to punish.

Luckily, technology gets a vote, too.

I think a clear/easy line is that anything which is "personal thought" or
approximates thought should be immune to search, ideally though technical
means. Notes (for yourself), a journal, etc. Maybe "quantified self"
measurements. etc.

The line is probably in a different place than in the telephone era, or even
the disconnected Internet era.

I'd prefer it be defined through legislation (and maybe through constitutional
amendment) vs. through legal decisions. The problem with legal decisions is
they tend to involve criminal cases, and "a person was keeping a personal
diary of his child rapes" is an exceptionally hard thing to argue privacy for,
even if that's only 0.001% of the use case enabled by making personal notes
private.

~~~
socillion
IANAL but aren't warrants designed to override privacy when there is existing
probable cause? IMO one problem is sweeping collection and indefinite storage
for the purposes of trawling for crimes. The other is that the FISA court
could be a token "APPROVED" rubber stamp for all we know, taking a "guilty
until proven innocent" stance on anyone outside the US.

The bit that really bothers me is the total lack of transparency and
accountability.

~~~
rdl
The collect-first and degree of oversight in FISA are issues, but generally
you can't get a warrant to access protected communications (lawyer, doctor,
priest) unless that professional is actually a co-conspirator, not just a
professional service provider. There are exceptions (e.g. child abuse,
imminent harm, etc.) to the privilege, though. And I think weaker spousal
privilege (not being compelled to testify, but if wiretapped, that's fine).
IANAL.

------
ganeumann
I think that people like us (that is, people who think in a systems fashion
about the electronic communications networks and the data flowing over them)
are more likely to view this with alarm than the normals. I think that's
because we actually know how much power having things like metadata gives you.
The question is, how do we explain this to non-engineers in a way that they
will listen to so that they will be as alarmed as we know they should be?

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captionobvious
Anyone with strong views about privacy would never answer an opinion poll so
how can this be considered accurate?

~~~
stray
It's not meant to be accurate.

It's meant to calm the masses.

------
entangld
I'd like to see more surveys or reviews of this survey's methods. It isn't
difficult for the phrasing of the questions to skew results in one direction
or another (e.g. Gallup).

I'm sure it's possible for people to be a bit apathetic and support widespread
data snooping, but I'm wary of the inevitable attacks and possible drummed up
support for current policies.

------
baddox
And I have no problem with them opting in to have their lives and data
tracked. The real problem is that everyone is tracked, including those in the
minority who do not want their lives and data tracked. But such is democracy.

~~~
tptacek
I don't understand the logic behind this comment. Surveillance against
criminals doesn't work if the criminals have to opt-in to the surveillance.

~~~
mindcrime
In theory, that's why we have the notion of "probable cause" and warrants,
etc. But what we have instead, is a "rubber stamp" mechanism from a secret
court which - essentially - is completely free from an accountability to the
American people.

Given that, I don't really care so much what the NSA _tries_ to do... I now
realize that the real answer is promotion, advocacy and education around
technological tools to evade their snooping (assuming, for the sake of
argument, that they can't break strong crypto). My goal going forward is to
dive into helping promote the use of, and education regarding, Tor, I2P, PGP,
and their ilk. Part of that is going to mean educating myself to a
considerable degree as well, as I've admittedly been too cavalier about this
stuff in the past.

~~~
tptacek
All federal courts are (basically) free from public accountability. That is
literally one of the objectives of the design of the Judicial Branch; complain
to the founding fathers.

~~~
mindcrime
It's not quite the same thing though. Yes, judges are appointed for life, and
can't (usually) be removed from office, etc. But with the "regular" federal
court system, at least we know who the judges are, who appointed them, and we
can see / read / review the actual decisions and what-not. To me, that's a
pretty marked difference from the FISA courts.

Nonetheless, I do agree with your basic point. When I get my hands on a
TARDIS, I'll be sure to let Thomas Jefferson know how I feel about all this!
:-)

~~~
adestefan
We do know who appointed them. They are 11 federal judges who are appointed to
7 year terms by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. At least 3 must live
within 20 miles of Washington, DC, they can only serve one term, and none can
be sitting on the Court of Review.

~~~
mindcrime
I stand corrected. But the more important point is that the decisions and
discussion are private and without oversight, and the presumption that they
basically "rubber stamp" all these surveillance requests. Now, maybe they _don
't_ just "rubber stamp" everything. But without more info, who's to say?

Edit: Also, for anyone more interested in details of the FISC (some of which I
obviously misremembered), here's a good resource:

[http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/fisc.html](http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/fisc.html)

~~~
tptacek
The rubber stamp argument is brandished in any discussion about FISA anywhere,
from message boards to NPR. But it's not hard to see that there are at least
two phenomenon that can account for it:

(1) That FISA courts are not a meaningful check on the authority of NSA and
the FBI to surveil people, _or_

(2) That the overwhelming majority of FISA cases involve _prima facie_
legitimate surveillance targets.

I do not find (2) that hard to believe. I'm not a firm believer in FedGov
competence, but I really don't think NSA analysts are making up random
targets; neither, for that matter, does Snowden, who intimated as much when he
was interviewed.

(Just because I don't think surveillance in the 2000's has been abusive, it
does not follow that I think we should be unconcerned with checks on
surveillance).

~~~
dragonwriter
#1 is true whether or not #2 is true, because there is no adversarial process
in the FISA courts. A one-sided legal process is never a meaningful check.
With regular courts, even when the _initial_ process is similarly one-sided
(as it is with search and arrest warrants), the fact that the outcome _will_
be subject to adversarial process down the road is something of a constraint
(but, even then, I don't think anyone is going to be point to the regular
warrant process as a particularly _strong_ check on executive power.)

The FISA warrant process, because of its secrecy and because it is generally
_not_ subject to downstream adversarial process, isn't a meaningful check. If
the judges on the FISA Court are _extremely_ diligent, it might be better than
nothing, but given the secrecy around it, its unlikely that anyone not
directly involved will ever really know whether or not it is (which is one of
the things that makes it _less_ likely that it _will_ be.)

~~~
tptacek
How could there ever be an adversarial process for foreign intelligence
surveillance? Can you explain how that could ever work?

~~~
dragonwriter
> How could there ever be an adversarial process for foreign intelligence
> surveillance?

I didn't say their could be.

Pointing out that the status quo structure doesn't provide a meaningful check
_doesn 't_ mean that there is an easy framework that does provide a meaningful
check while enabling the same scope of powers in "the right" kind of cases.

~~~
tptacek
If I read your preceding comment and then this one, I'm left with the
conclusion that you think either that there should be no foreign surveillance
of any sort, or that any attempt to check the authority of our intelligence
services is pointless.

~~~
dragonwriter
Which illustrates why it is probably better to address what is said rather
than what else you think a person might think in addition to what is said.

EDIT: To amplify: I've explicitly laid out why the existing FISC system is not
a meaningful check, and I have explicitly declined to take a position on
whether it would be possible to reform the system in a way which would retain
its essential character as a judicial oversight system while fixing the
problems that prevent it from being meaningful oversight. We haven't addressed
any other (e.g., non-judicial) checks, existing or potential, nor have I
commented at all on what _should_ exist. So your inference that I must believe
certain things about what should exist, or that I have a particular belief
about what checks are possible on foreign surveillance, is unwarranted.

------
zobzu
until ppl get problems, they have no idea what the nsa does with the data. if
they have no idea and get no problem, "why would it bother them?"

that yeah. its like if i had the right to sentence anybody on earth to death,
but i wasn't doing it too often, and when i do it, nobody has any idea it
happened. So people would think its ok.

------
cinquemb
…among a national sample of 1,004 adults 18 years of age or older living in
the continental United States

~~~
Zikes
It's funny, I've mentioned this for surveys in the past and I keep getting
told I don't understand statistics.

~~~
mpyne
If the survey was properly randomized, then it's actually probably true that
you don't understand statistics...

~~~
Zikes
It's true, I've never taken a statistics course. But, if the experts tell me a
0.0003% sample size is fine so long as it's the RIGHT 0.0003%, then I guess
I'll have to concede the point.

~~~
mpyne
The Central Limit Theorem and the Law of Large Numbers are wonderful things.

------
alan_cx
That is the power of fear for you. Terror in it's self.

~~~
brymaster
BBC did a good documentary on this very subject:

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear"
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430484/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430484/)

Seems fear, ignorance and apathy is still working out just fine unfortunately.

