

People Freak Out About Privacy On Facebook, But Ignore Government Surveillance - mtgx
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121229/02225421522/people-freak-out-about-privacy-facebook-ignore-widespread-government-surveillance.shtml

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bcoates
This is hard for me to say as I'm pretty much the real world version of Dale
Gribble, but being more worried about Facebook than the Government is a
reasonable position.

The upside of government surveillance is that the government gains power by
keeping your secrets secret, and when it comes down to it, the vast majority
of people are simply uninteresting to the spooks and both parties know it. The
odds of being extra-judicially executed for being a YouTube troll are nonzero,
but statistically close enough that it's not worth worrying about unless you
meet a very narrow profile.

Facebook, on the other hand, seems to have as a primary business model finding
out everything about everyone, _and then telling everyone else_. It's this
latter part that people worry about. They don't want their life broadcast to
every potential employer, client, lender, local xenophobe, landlord, insurance
company, lover, violent ex-lover, nosy neighbor, obsessive stalker etc. that
they deal with in their life. The odds there are a lot more grim--You're about
1000 times more likely to be killed by your ex or soon to be ex than the
President.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Only a 1000x difference?

~~~
bcoates
It's a back of the envelope estimate: the US has about a 10,000/year murder
rate, about half of those are in the family. The targeted killings program
doesn't exactly advertise but it's known to be well more than one so I'm
guessing it's in the tens per year of people who could be described as
westerners. YMMV.

~~~
rayiner
Where on earth do you get the idea that the drone strikes are killing a non-
zero number of westerners?!

~~~
Hello71
Where on earth do you get the idea that he was talking about drone strikes?!

~~~
rayiner
What other "targeted killing" program is there?

~~~
olefoo
Well, the US government has said that it doesn't have to tell you that because
it's a national security matter.

However the existence of at least one government associated plan to kill US
Citizens on US territory was surfaced in the media last week
[http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-
mentions-p...](http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-mentions-
plot-to-kill-occupy-protesters/)

And while I cannot provide evidence that there have been others; it is a fact
that the US government has been training death squads at Fort Benning and
elsewhere for more than 40 years (vide: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and
many other countries whose paramilitary/police were trained by the US and went
on targeted campaigns of killing civilians); although most of the openly
acknowledged trainees were not US citizens, but Police and Military from
client governments, mostly in South and Central America.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation)

And given that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder is on the record as saying
""" “Due process” and “judicial process” are not one and the same,
particularly when it comes to national security. """

It's not impossible that everyone who reads this thread is being assessed for
their suitability to be judged a "threat to national security" and thus worth
the cost of elimination.

~~~
rayiner
You speak of a "government associated" plan, but the very article you link to
says: "It remains unclear as to who or what this report is referring to, yet
the FBI decided to disclose it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to
the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund – the document is on page 61." You
think the FBI is giving out information about government projects to kill U.S.
citizens on U.S. soil via FOIA documents?

As for the quote "due process and judicial process are not one and the same,"
it's a completely accurate and uncontroversial statement of the law. The
phrase "due process" means exactly what it sounds like. People are entitled to
the "process" that is "due" given the context. The process due is not
necessarily judicial process, and in many contexts might be much less than
that.

~~~
olefoo
Most crimes committed by US government officials in the course of carrying out
their duties are documented in some way by the government. Those documents are
subject to disclosure under FOIA; indeed that is the purpose of the FOIA.

That the FBI knew of a plot to murder American citizens and did nothing to
warn the potential targets of such a plot; and furthermore since no one has,
so far as we know been indicted, fired, reprimanded or otherwise held
accountable for what is on the face of it a very serious crime... the obvious
implication is that it was either some element of the government itself, or
one of those monstrous public/private partnerships (like Xi/Blackwater/Triple
Canopy/etc.) that is a "deniable violence provider" in the current global
security context.

Now we can argue forever in the absence of further facts; but given the
evidence we do have, it certainly suggests that we are looking at the very
least, at a contingency plan to kill American Citizens on American Soil, for
nothing more than exercising their rights under the 1st amendment.

The common understanding of Due Process as mentioned in the Bill of Rights
specifically refers to the "due process of law"; and as such, the government
deciding to kill American Citizens would seem to require a capital trial. In a
court of law, before a judge with the usual 5th amendment rights to know the
charges against one, and to hear and challenge the evidence on which the
determination of their fate will be made; that is clearly not happening here.

We are clearly not living in the moral universe that we're taught about in
civics class anymore. And while it's always been the case that some people
"become cops to break heads", what we are seeing evidence of in the last few
years is the emergence of an elite consensus that state violence of lethal
intensity could be legitimately employed against unarmed civilians
domestically as easily and as casually as it's deployed in Afghanistan or
Iraq.

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GHFigs
This is a false dichotomy. Plenty of people ignore privacy issues on Facebook,
and there are plenty of "silly and exaggerated stories" about government
surveillance that get people freaking out.

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paul
This reminds me of the time that Facebook rounded up all of the Japanese-
Americans and put them in internment camps.

~~~
saraid216
My internment camp is named the Seattle, Washington Area network. There is
snow falling on the cedars here.

------
saraid216
Really? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982462>

You're submitting the same story twice?

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zaidrahman
Privacy is what is going to define this generation.

However, no matter what you think, Government Surveillance is better than
private surveillance. It's a democracy for crying out loud.

But the preamble, is that the breach of privacy is bad in any use case
scenario. Realistically however, surveillance is always going to exist. Either
covertly or legally. Nothing much can be done.

~~~
enoch_r
_However, no matter what you think, Government Surveillance is better than
private surveillance. It's a democracy for crying out loud._

There are two types of power within a group: exit and voice. The power to
change a community, and the power to leave it.

I am not at all confident in the power of my voice to affect the policies of
the US government on surveillance/privacy issues. In fact, although my voice
has almost no impact on Facebook's policies on privacy, I'd say that I'm
almost as likely to influence Facebook's privacy policies by complaining as to
influence US Government policies by voting.

Meanwhile, leaving the US is impractical or difficult, and even (especially!)
non-US-citizens are subject to the US government's intrusions on privacy,
surveillance, as well as the possibility of being killed or abducted without
trial. Opting out of Facebook is relatively easy.

------
codex
Some reasons:

\- The government is accountable to the people, but who is Facebook
accountable to? Shareholders.

\- Government surveillance has at least some oversight, with a long history of
regulation.

\- Allowing government spooks to note your alcoholism is less worrysome, to
most, than having drunk pics appear on the public Internet, for mom+boss to
see.

~~~
ahallock
Government is accountable to "the people"? That's just a platitude. The
government is beholden to many special interests. The bailouts, the wars--home
& abroad--, the TSA, etc. are all egregious examples.

Facebook is accountable to shareholders, true, but no one is holding you
hostage, making you share information on Facebook. You could change your
privacy settings, go to another social network(s), or stop sharing altogether.

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jiggy2011
Facebook has a profit motive and are answerable only to their own management
and shareholders.

If their board decided they could increase profit by x% by deleting all
privacy controls tomorrow then all privacy controls could be removed tomorrow.

In theory at least a democratic government has no particular interest in
sharing your data with anybody apart from maybe a few intelligence and law
enforcement officials who want to check that you're not actually trying to
kill anyone. They also have to vote on any major legislation changes, enough
unfavourable bills and they risk getting thrown out at the next election.

~~~
ahallock
If Facebook removed all privacy controls, people would leave the social
network in droves, and FB would be forced change their policy. Consumers are
fickle, and FB is not an unstoppable juggernaut; I'm not sure why people have
this idea.

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cwkoss
Facebook IS Government Surveillance.

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kapnobatairza
I think the reason for this is quite simple:

Facebook can only sell you on privacy changes by trying to convince you of a
better service/more convenience.

The U.S. Intelligence Community and Congress can sell you on surveillance by
trying to convince you that such measures are essential in preventing American
deaths.

It isn't that people don't care the government is spying on us, it is that the
government has a much more compelling argument to do so.

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readme
The kicker is that the government is using Facebook to surveil you.

