
End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now - jedwhite
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/end-the-nsa-dragnet-now.html?hp&rref=opinion
======
dalek_cannes
Surveillance.

It always starts with a desire to be safe. And that comes from fear. It seems
Americans today are afraid of more things than ever: pedophiles, guns,
terrorists, lawsuits. Some news reports are ridiculous by foreign standards:
teachers not being allowed to shake hands with students out of fear of sexual
harassment allegations, boys suspended from school for drawing guns,
bystanders not administering first-aid to accident victims out of fear of
lawsuits, and of course the terrorism hysteria for which I have no words. I'm
fortunate enough to have visited the US and have met mostly great people, but
going by news reports the entire society seems paralyzed by fear.

I always thought of freedom as inversely proportional to safety. If you want
to be perfectly safe, you'll never leave your house in case you catch a germ,
get in a car accident or even slip on a banana peel. You'll never eat store
bought food without first running it through a spectrometer. You'll want
everything controlled, predictable, seen ahead of time so that nothing
unexpected gets thrown your way.

I guess this is what surveillance is trying to do. Rather than accepting a
level of risk as the price for being free and handling disasters when they do
occur, we seem to be increasingly trying to _avoid_ danger at all costs. And
the cost seems to be freedom.

It's almost as if the author of the US national anthem knew this when he ended
it with "land of the free and the home of the brave" (correct me if I got that
wrong). Maybe he knew you couldn't have one without the other. I guess the
brave isn't home anymore...

/disjointed philosophical rant

~~~
rayiner
The Ben Franklin quote is apropos here: "Those who would give up _essential_
Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither."

While it's wildly misquoted on the interblags, you can't read out the word
"essential." The point of the quote isn't that no trade-offs between freedom
and safety are appropriate, but rather that we shouldn't trade away those
freedoms that are "essential." It is debatable whether monitoring of the
internet, a technology that didn't even exist for most of American history, is
a trading off "essential" liberty, or whether its an "inessential" liberty.

Ben Franklin, like the other framers, realized that freedom versus security
was a trade-off. Remember, the Constitution itself was a reaction to the
Articles of Confederation, which created a government that turned out to be
too weak to protect peoples' safety, both from external threats (Indians,
European powers) and internal threats (domestic insurgents). The Constitution
draw the safety versus freedom line a little closer to "safety" by creating a
more powerful, more centralized federal government.

This balancing is also why the 4th amendment uses the wiggle word
"unreasonable." Searches and seizures are okay, just not "unreasonable" ones.
Well how do you decide what is "reasonable" versus "unreasonable?" You figure
out how to appropriately trade-off freedom versus security! If the founding
fathers didn't intend for us to engage in such balancing, they would've left
out the word "unreasonable." No searches and seizures, even if necessary to
solve a murder or kidnapping. After all, that would maximize freedom at some
cost to security.

~~~
opinali
Internet privacy becomes essential in the moment that people put their entire
lives on the Internet. All mail is email, all financial transactions are
electronic, medical records are in computers, credit scores are in data
centers--- you name anything important to your privacy/freedom, and it's in
the cloud these days. No tradeoff is possible anymore.

~~~
anigbrowl
I keep saying it, the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit
right to privacy. government surveillance is a problem, but so is the
unilateral exploitation of personal data for commercial purposes. I'm Irish
and living in the States, I really miss the EU Data Protection Act.

~~~
rayiner
I think a new FISA would be a good start. As flawed as the current state of
affairs is, its a big improvement over what existed prior to FISA. That law
was a constraint on the NSA, probably the most restrictive that was possible
during the cold war.

Alternatively, the Supreme Court could invent a right,of privacy out of thin
air. That might very well happen in time, but the tech community is
undermining attempts to lay the groundwork for that. There must be a consensus
that privacy is the rule online, rather than the exception. No such consensus
will emerge if the tech community continues to condition people to accept
invasions of their privacy in the name of advertising. Ordinary people do not
have a particular distrust of government. To get to "its not okay for the
government to read my email" you have to get rid of the notion that "its okay
for Google to read my email."

~~~
anigbrowl
_Alternatively, the Supreme Court could invent a right,of privacy out of thin
air._

Between the originalists and the existing problems with rights that have been
found in the penumbrae of other rights, I cant see that happening. But then a
consittutional amendment likely isn't on the cards any time soon either.

(I'm tied up for the rest of the day and most of the week with family stuff,
but have wanted to chat with you about this for a while, would you mind
shooting me an email so we can pick it up later?)

~~~
rayiner
Sure.

------
Lagged2Death
_Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism._

It's like a feller can't even write a serious editorial in support of American
liberty without kowtowing to irrational fear-mongering anymore.

The battle to keep us jumping at shadows has been won so conclusively that no
one even bothers to stand up and say anything like:

You are safe. Your family is safe. You are safer now than you would have been
at nearly any other time in American history. Your children will probably view
these years of The Terrorist Menace in much the same way we view McCarthyism
and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover - a humiliating betrayal of everything
that was supposed to make America different from the rest of the world.

There is nothing patriotic about being afraid all the time.

But that won't sell, and the Senators who wrote this know it. I don't fault
their judgement, but it makes me really sad.

~~~
gknoy
That was wonderfully said. May I share that with friends/family?

~~~
Lagged2Death
Thank you and please share with whomever you like!

------
spodek
Senators have to go to the press to try to stop the government from doing what
clearly breaks the law -- the Constitution, no less -- using up billions of
taxpayer funds and undermines American business for no clear benefit.

Conventional wisdom says the Cold War was between the doctrines of Capitalism
and Communism and that the doctrine of Capitalism won.

It doesn't look like that view was right.

The doctrine of the KGB and Stasi is winning over both of them.

~~~
onli
No. Capitalism clearly won. But Capitalism is not Freedom, not democracy and
is not the rule of the law. Capitalism is a way to conduct business by letting
people posess the means of production, and the capital to produce as well.

It was not only rhetoric that in the fight between USA and UDSSR, there was a
fight between freedom and authority. But mainly, it was a fight between
different ways to regulate the means of production. Capitalism won, but that
does not mean that freedom, democracy and the rule of the law will survive
that victory.

China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but
wanting to be) communist country.

~~~
javert
Nope. Capitalism == free markets == non-coersion. We have a highly mixed
economy now, not capitalism.

If you consider large government bureaus (public, or "private" via regulation,
like, say, Verizon) to define "capitalism" just because there are large
amounts of money involved ("capital"), you are defining the term by non-
essentials. There were also large amounts of money in the USSR.

Capitalism lost because of European intellectual influences in America; the
existing defense of the ideas of the founding fathers was insufficient to stem
the tide.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Capitalism == free markets == non-coersion

Wrong. Capitalism is synonymous with _free enterprise_ , not free markets. And
free enterprise simply means that enterprises (rather than states) own the
means of production.

~~~
tokenizer
Agreed. We can definitly have unrestricted free markets with community owned
syndicates and still be able to create tailored products and respond to
demans.

IMO, we need to start talking about workplace democracy if we're going to
continue to entertain the idea of corporate controlled society, so that the
common person can at least get their vote back (indirectly, by choosing who
leads the company which bribes officials...).

~~~
javert
IMO, we need to stop having people control one another. There is no self-
interested reason to do it, from anyone's point of view.

~~~
tokenizer
I definitely agree with you. I subscribe to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism).

That said, many, many, people believe that most people are not competent, and
need to be taken care of/controlled/limited.

Arguments I usually have to fight against are: What to do about crime. What to
do about "evil" people. What to do about property rights. What to do about
control in decisions.

~~~
javert
I think "libertarian socialism" is a worse than worthless contradiction.

There is a simple solution to all the problems you mention, which is to have a
government that uses retaliatory force, but not initiatory force.

America had one for about a century, and now there is the intellectual
machinery needed to go back to that system and to define and defend it much
more vigorously. Unfortunately, a majority of "advocates for freedom" are
mucking around with things like "libertarian socialism" and "anarcho-
capitalism" which are contradictions in terms and won't work.

~~~
tokenizer
> I think "libertarian socialism" is a worse than worthless contradiction.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c)

~~~
javert
Well, most libertarians are subjectivists. There is no possibility of
objective knowledge of reality. You're showing your true colors.

Unfortunately for you (until or unless you stop fighting the truth), objective
knowledge is possible.

------
dpweb
"Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism."
There's the problem. Even by those protesting sweeping NSA collection, we're
obsessed with this.

When the axis powers threatened to plunge the world into 1000 years of
darkness, the only thing we had to fear is fear itself, now - that's not good
enough - we must fear the unending threat of terrorism. Letting the NSA run
wild is a logical result from this mentality.

~~~
uptown
That line stood out to me as well.

I'm wondering whether it was stated as the first priority of the Intelligence
Committee rather than the first priority of the Senate. I realize members of
the Intelligence Committee are expected to bridge those two roles - but it
also wouldn't strike me as unusual for the Intelligence Committee to
prioritize things differently than the rest of the Senate.

------
nateabele
> _" Our first priority is to keep Americans safe [...]_

And herein lies the problem. Their job is _not_ to keep us safe, it's to keep
us _free_.

(I'm aware others in the thread have pointed this out, but less directly).

~~~
sailfast
I also came here to post this. Our priorities of late have been flipped. While
providing for the common defense is one of many responsibilities, our primary
responsibility and the oath taken by those in government is to the
Constitution.

------
pilker09
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism."

Uh, no. The first job of a good, decent government is protect the rights of
its citizens. It now seems that the first job of a citizen is protect
him/herself from the government.

~~~
FedRegister
> "Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism."

 _bzzt!_ , oh, sorry, that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is set
out in the oath that all US Senators take upon being sworn into office[1]
which reads:

>"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and
that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I
am about to enter: So help me God."

So no, sorry, the first priority is to support and defend the Constitution
against all enemies, foreign and _domestic_ , which includes the NSA. Their
oath says nothing about terrorism.

>"If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should
absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone
records."

Are you done supplicating yourself fully before the police state? My copy of
the Constitution (which does not contain the root password "thinkofthekids" or
"terrorism") says you need not just suspicion, but probable cause for a
warrant.

>"When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it established that Americans’ papers
and effects should be seized only when there was specific evidence of
suspicious activity."

 _bzzt!_ , again, so close! Let's look at what it really says[2], shall we
(emphasis mine):

>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and _no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized_.

Not only do you need suspicion, but you need probable cause for a warrant or
the search needs to be reasonable some other way (border crossing, subject
gave consent, search subject to arrest, etc).

>Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor
searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and
Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Again, so close! Read the fourth amendment again. Nowhere does it say "The
right of US Citizens". It says "The right of the people". That means all
people - citizens and non-citizens, and that distinction is important. The
protections afforded under this amendment apply to everyone in the country and
extend to those parties being contacted by someone from this country,
otherwise the wording would be different.

[1]
[http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/...](http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm)

[2]
[http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_tra...](http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html)

~~~
amalag
I can only hope their constituents will remind them of this!

~~~
FedRegister
Most constituents are too ignorant to know this. That's why I support
repealing the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution[1].

The House of Representatives is apportioned by population, and its job is to
represent the interests of the people. A more populous state has more
representatives so that (theoretically) each representative represents an
equal portion of the American population. This is also why spending bills must
originate in the House as the money spent is derived from the people.

Each state receives an equal number of Senators. The Senate is responsible for
representing the interests of the states. That is why Senators were originally
appointed by the state legislature [2] instead of directly elected. A federal
republic, such as the United States, is built upon each state have its
interests represented equally, and that is why each state receives an equal
number of Senators.

I believe that the direct election of Senators undermines the original intent
of the Senate and that the 17th Amendment should be repealed.

[1]
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvii](http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvii)
[2]
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section3](http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section3)

------
petejansson
What this editorial gets right is that the oversight regime for domestic
surveillance is inadequate. What it misses, however, is that big piles of data
are inevitable with the current trajectory of technology. It will not be
possible to have the piles of data not collected. As others have written, the
government surveillance agencies essentially saw what private industry was
doing and said "I want a copy of that."

I think we need to rethink some things:

1\. In the short term, one of the biggest changes that has to be addressed is
the current court doctrine that privacy has not been violated if no people are
actually looking at the data. Given that much of the surveillance is directed
by automation, we need to recast that doctrine to include some of the
automated analysis of the data. It's a thorny question, and one that will take
some time and effort to get right, but there's no time like now to start.

2\. We need more forceful and more transparent oversight of surveillance.
There is a risk that the surveilled might change their tactics based on
lessons from oversight reporting, but it seems clear at this point that the
trade off is necessary. To quote the editorial: "The usefulness of the bulk
collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof
that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security." Trade-
offs are only worth making if you get something. Time to revisit the trade-
off.

3\. We need to address both the big piles of data in the government's hands
and those in private hands. This is going to require rethinking ownership of
the data, and probably moving the US more towards an EU-style privacy
directive. Again, a longer process, but one that needs to start now.

4\. As a country, we need to start toward a more rational view of terrorism
risk. Plenty has been written about how disproportional our response has been.
Time to rebalance the scales.

In the end, we're going to continue to have big piles of surveillance data as
long as we continue our technology trajectory. We need to start figuring out
how to work with it, rather than try to stop it.

------
znowi
> "Severing ties with the NSA" started off with a NSA penalty but was so
> hugely popular it still got the #1 spot. However, it was quickly given an
> even bigger penalty, forcing it down the page. [1]

Supposedly, "N.S.A." will not trigger HN's keyword penalty :)

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-
works.html)

------
001sky
_Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New
Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators._

== Why isn't this adressed to Dianne Feinstein?

~~~
leokun
I think the bit about the single vote was about her? Does it mean they had
just one vote in the committee or a single person quashed the bill?

Feinstein lives in an ivory tower, completely isolated from the needs of
ordinary citizens in California. She gets six years in office with every
election, and was just recently re-elected. She's totally safe, like those
tea-party republicans in gerrymandered districts. California is too big of a
state for a grassroots organization to challenge her in a primary and she
placates enough of various groups with the funds to start an astroturf war and
so they leave her alone. She's pretty much untouchable. She often starts on
the wrong side of many issues, a notable exception being LGBT rights (good for
her and us), and only with intense pressure from public opinion does she bow
for appearances only. For example she was for SOPA, against meaningful health
reform, and she's been a staunch defender of the NSA.

Senator Feinstein is a defender of the status quo. She's a conservative. Not a
social conservative or neo-conservative, but someone who fights progress. Her
office is in an actual giant tower right outside of the Montgomery Street Bart
station and she wouldn't even come down to visit protestors and talk to them
when we were there on behalf of OFA and there quite a few of us. It might as
well have been built in ivory. That was the only protest I have ever taken
part in. It wasn't even really a protest, just a show of support for Obama's
health care plan.

Politicians like Feinstein make me cynical about politics. I feel helpless to
be able to contribute change, so I just don't want to care anymore. Whatever,
she's the boss. Great. Could be worse I guess.

~~~
dllthomas
If she runs again in 2018, the best plan might be convince enough Democrats
and Republicans to vote for an alternative Democrat in the primaries to make
the general election Dem v. Dem. Then you'd get people actually considering
the individuals... Of course, she's 80, so she might well not be running again
anyway.

~~~
leokun
> If she runs again in 2012

2012 was last year.

~~~
dllthomas
Right, forgot to add 6. It's early... Fixed.

~~~
leokun
In five years she will have done so much more damage it's hardly fun to think
about it.

~~~
dllthomas
Plausibly. She doesn't individually have much power without cooperation from
others, who could potentially stop cooperating, though. That is likely a
better use of resources than railing against her individually.

~~~
001sky
_That is likely a better use of resources than railing against her
individually._

As the face of hypocrisy, its (perhaps) actually worth rallying against her
individually. Does she _really represent_ you (or by extension CA, SF,
SV...etc?). Human nature has very strong instinctual aversion to public
demonstrations of hypocrisy of one's own activity. This is true because
political power is power rested in delegated authority. That is rooted in
trust. And duplicity and hypocrisy mark such an agent as untrustworththy. This
reduces their eventual political tenebility. Its one of those experiments,
ironically derived from cognitve science about why people don't <change their
mind> on a publicly revealed preference or bet. In this case, it (perhaps)
makes sense to use the result in a constructive way.

~~~
leokun
She's not a hypocrite. She is very open and public about her positions. I do
not think she is dishonest I just think she fights against progress.

~~~
001sky
There's something about (consevative, Liberal) that itches akward, although
you may be right in a narrow sense.

~~~
dllthomas
That itch is your problem, not hers. Everyone operating in the public sphere
should be honestly trying to pursue the policies they think will lead to the
best results (for everyone, for their constituencies, and to some degree for
themselves). They should not be trying to live up to labels whose definitions
are different at different times, which are useful only when speaking in
pretty broad terms, and which largely refer to coalitions with varied
individuals of varied personal philosophy.

A ton of the "most Conservative" politicians in American politics aren't
anything like "conservative" \- changing a slew of things to the way they were
200 years ago, with no eye to the things that have changed technologically,
demographically, &c, _may_ still be the right thing to do, but it's not
"conservative". I would even argue that opposition to abortion is ceasing to
be a "conservative" position - it has been legal for longer than most of the
population has been alive. That doesn't mean that people who oppose it on
whatever grounds, and consider themselves conservative overall, are
necessarily wrong or "hypocritical" to do so.

~~~
001sky
Its more a problem for the people that she was elected to represent. The fact
that once that power is accrued, the game is to keep it, is not a partisan
one. But that creates more cognitive dissonance for some ideologies that it
does for others.

~~~
dllthomas
_As you had phrased it_ it is not a problem for them. It's a problem if she's
misrepresenting herself, but she has an awfully long voting record at this
point, and when she talks what she says is _not_ radically different than what
she does.

Many of her particular positions I consider a problem, but that has nothing to
do with any discrepancy implied by "(conservative, Liberal)".

------
geuis
I disagree with this quote, "There is no question that our nation’s
intelligence professionals are dedicated, patriotic men and women who make
real sacrifices to help keep our country safe and free."

I argue that the weight of evidence says the opposite. First the "there is no
question" bit is wrong, because clearly there _is_ a huge question. Further,
people that want power tend to be attracted to positions that give it to them.
We see this in things like police, lawyers, and politicians.

Note that I do no mention the military, because in the US the military is
largely about subservience and not about control.

There is also little evidence suggesting that the men and women working for
the NSA are patriotic. I argue that they are not. Patriotism involves holding
up the rights of citizens as defined by the Constitution, especially against
those who would change or remove these rights. Further, patriotism involves
defining new law, as needed, explicitly _in the spirit_ of the Constitution.
Under this definition, it is very unclear that the people working at the NSA
have been remotely patriotic. Quite the opposite, in my view.

Last, I believe we are fundamentally less free and less safe now than we were
13 years ago. The erosion of freedom and safety is often a very gradual
process. When I say we, I do not refer to We as in The United States. I refer
to all the people living under it, both citizens and non-citizens alike.

I have to be more cautious of what I say at 33 than I did at 21. I seriously
consider alternatives to flying during the holidays because "safety" has
become a physical impediment to travel. I have to think twice about what I
should pack in my luggage, for the certainty that someone will _search my
belongings_.

When I see police, I do not feel safe. I get more nervous and afraid. These
are people walking around with weapons who can hurt, imprison, and murder
people almost at will and we as citizens have almost no recourse to defend
ourselves without being further harassed and harangued.

That is not how someone should view their police departments. Yet I do,
because in my short life I hear more about police brutality than stories of
police helping people. My own experiences were particularly forged by being
arrested at a peaceful protest (FTAA) and trying to watch the inauguration
parade in DC in 2005. I stopped respecting police officers a long time ago,
though I view them as a necessary evil.

So to wrap. We are less free and less safe now than before, the people working
for the NSA are working towards their own ends or the ends of people wanting
power, and there is nothing patriotic going on. We are in pot being slowly
boiled.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The senators are pushing a surveillance reform bill. It does them no good to
question the motives of the intelligence community, the majority of which are
employees like most of us. On the other hand, accusing them would just make
them enemies instead of allies. Hence the paragraph.

------
segmondy
Ending the NSA Dragnet is not the solution. The solution is to assume that
there will always be a rogue agency wanting to spy and to come up with
solutions that make it hard or impossible.

------
grej
I think the quote from William Pitt is appropriate:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

------
summerdown2
I think one of the complications is we have become used to historically
unusual levels of security. Far fewer babies die in childbirth these days.
Cars have airbags. Medical care is fast and reliable.

Not unreasonably, people expect their governments to provide the same level of
predictability. And, not unreasonably, the majority of those politicians who
want to preserve their jobs go along with it.

So what can be done about it? If this was a flawless AI keeping us all safe
like in Iain Bank's culture universe, I think we'd be all happy. The problem
comes when it's not clear if those charged with curating this information have
other agendas.

I think this is a historically unique time, when we have the chance to put in
safeguards and oversight while we can still see the cameras and the window of
debate is still available.

But in order to do that, I think the debate has to be reframed not as security
vs liberty but as structured oversight vs tyranny.

------
balabaster
Unfortunately, for this opinion to make it into the mainstream conscious, it
needs to be broadcast with the same gravity on Fox News and CNN where the
large majority of uninformed Americans are spoon-fed their beliefs and
opinions.

------
mrobot
I'm glad these guys are here for us. I honestly can't believe some of the
comments on the times site.

My main issue is that this has not become a debate, it's still an order. And
it's an order that violates our fourth amendment right. This right was part of
handshake for a new system, and it cannot be violated save for some rare
situation we could all agree is reasonable.

No one should think this is reasonable... security is lax, control of the data
is lax ("corporate store"? Are you kidding me?). The situation is flipped
here. Without leaks, we would actually be suffering more. Security clearance
is not protecting us, it's using and abusing us. It's being used to hide
things that would harm us more if they were never leaked. And FISA courts are
used to give us some illusion that rules will be followed while having it
waved in our face that we're lucky to have them. This is crazy.

Try to accommodate any warrantless surveillance in the fourth amendment's text
without creating either a comical contradiction that violates its entire
spirit or removes it entirely. We know that being ok with these citizen data
programs amounts to being ok with not having this right, but we're still
talking about it. I want to keep my right. And since the amendment was added
in response to writs of assistance, unchecked delegation of authority so
scarily similar to this reasonable articulable suspicion thing we are seeing
today in both this and Stop and Frisk, i think we'd all be better suited to
start with our right and add any exceptions as-needed, not have them added for
us. I'm assigned a threat score even before i'm suspicious? To find out
whether i'm suspicious? To then act on me because of this suspicion? All while
making money off of me based on my actions? You want to buy my actions? Ok,
name a price, i'll consider it.

I don't want to start this privacy war this gang wants me to. I'd rather we
follow the law and consider those who don't criminal. Privacy is a buffer
against abuse, not a place to hide dirty secrets. We can't predict or even see
or notice all of the horrible loss of self control that might come about
because of this collection. The chorus of "Nothing to Hide" in response rings
eery in my ears.

------
logfromblammo
This is a Murphy's Law matter. The disaster cannot be prevented until it is
technically impossible for it to continue.

If legislation were to declare that the names and numbers used to identify a
computer on a network could not be legally used to identify either the
physical location of the computer or the human that might have been using it,
I think it likely that the number of VPN access points and Tor exit nodes
would increase wildly overnight.

End-to-end encryption of all electronic traffic, everywhere, is the only
reasonable solution.

------
netman21
So, no dragnet, but our first priority is terrorists.

------
gchokov
Over? Well, okay, I trust you this time.

------
monsterix
And what about the remaining 7 billion law-abiding souls on the planet? I
resonate with the intent of this article but how come protecting only an
Americans' privacy be of concern to this voice on NYT? I believe this approach
is not only insular (apart from being stupid) but also destined to fail.

If I were to run dragnet, I'd accept protecting the interest and privacy of
all Americans back home, but strike a deal with GCHQ or some other Government
agency and provide them with all the tools and tech to snoop on my fellow
citizens. No legal hassles, no constitutional violation. Cost? Well that could
be worked out given the advantage the data gives me to remain in power.

~~~
aaronem
The government of the United States is responsible, however imperfectly, to
the people of the United States, not to those of the planet entire.

~~~
tripzilch
Neither the government, nor the people of the United States, are alone on this
planet.

~~~
aaronem
Non sequitur.

------
AsymetricCom
The thing about the NSA dragnet is that if the NSA wasn't doing it, then
corporations would (are) doing it. You can't stop technology from moving
forward. Someone is going to be sniffing your packets now until the end of
time.

~~~
adventured
Not very worried about Google arresting me at some point in the future with
their jackboot thugs for something I did or said in the past (when X wasn't
illegal).

This applies to Facebook, Twitter, AT&T, Verizon, Samsung, Snapchat, and so
on. When these guys start trying to acquire their own domestic armies, then
I'll get really concerned.

There seems to be a common gloss-over regarding the fact that it's the United
States Military that is doing the domestic spying. They were tapping Obama's
phones when he was a Senator; most likely they own everybody at this point.
This isn't some fluffcake brigade; it's the US freakin' military. Slip, and
you're knee deep in a military dictatorship very quickly.

~~~
a3n
You should be concerned now, because the government can compel those companies
to hand over their dossier on you, including your cell's tower or GPS records,
your extremist views (surely something you've written is extremely different
from someone in power, now or in the future), your advocacy of treason (you
must have expressed displeasure about a President or member of Congress at
some time), your support of terrorists (ever say anything negative about a
declared or undeclared war?), and anything else you've ever said as a dirty,
stinkin' agitator.

You've also been in a conversation with me, and that makes you a person of
interest in some very plausible future scenario. ... "So, we notice that you
spent a lot of time on this _Hacker_ News site. Tell us about that."

~~~
Zigurd
I think everyone here would agree about that, but you are ignoring that
avoiding an intrusive commercial product, or obfuscating your private
information from a commercial product is easier than avoiding state-actor
pervasive surveillance. It would be a step in the right direction to reduce
the state-actor threat.

~~~
a3n
Not ignoring, just talking about one among many related problems. I agree
completely it would be good to reduce the state-actor threat.

------
andyl
Surveillance is a tool for oligarchs to control their citizens. The terrorist
threat is theatric misdirection.

