
Ecuador Using Copyright To Try To Take Down Leaked Docs About Its Surveillance - Libertatea
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130627/22382723648/ecuador-using-copyright-to-try-to-take-down-leaked-documents-about-its-surveillance-practices.shtml
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ashray
I find it interesting that the entire debate has shifted from US surveillance
to be about what is happening to Snowden and whether he is/isn't a traitor and
now even about Ecuador and how they do/don't protect their citizens.

Personally, as a non-US citizen outside the US, I feel incredibly
uncomfortable that the US govt spies on me and everything I do online as much
as it can. As far as I know, Ecuador or any other government doesn't yet
exercise such monitoring, I'm pretty sure they don't poke into my facebook
messages or worse, can look at my Gmail hosted emails.

I know that the big deal is that US citizens got spied on [because that's
illegal .. apparently], but to me, it's equally bad that innocent civilians
around the world have their data up for grabs. You never know when and where
and how this kind of stuff can be used against you. I don't like the fact that
the US can make laws within their borders and get access to my data (which may
even practically be hosted outside their borders). So where it's convenient,
i.e. US citizens cannot be spied on, the concept of a nation state is invoked,
but then non-US citizens basically have no right to privacy, not even the ones
their governments give them, because the US can look at anything. Not cool.

Why don't we look at it from the perspective that the US government can pretty
much see what any online Ecuadorean is up to. That's a big enough offense in
itself, Ecuador is just _working on_ of buying some surveillance stuff, the US
has already been doing this for years. Smells like a smear campaign.

Again, I just find it interesting how quickly this became about Snowden this
and Ecuador that, etc. rather than the central debate which is on my mind
"What about my data ?!!"

The US government can obviously spend a lot of marketing $$$ and basically
keep repeating "Snowden = Traitor" until everyone believes it and don't even
remember why. It's almost like 1984 ... I'm scared.

~~~
maratd
> So where it's convenient, i.e. US citizens cannot be spied on, the concept
> of a nation state is invoked, but then non-US citizens basically have no
> right to privacy, not even the ones their governments give them, because the
> US can look at anything. Not cool.

Look, when a dog bites the hand of its owner and then bites the neighbor, the
greater outrage is that it bit the hand that feeds it.

You're not looking at this from an objective perspective, because you're the
neighbor and well, understandably pissed.

Now me? I would put down the dog. But that's just me and it's probably not
going to happen.

~~~
goldfeld
Umm, no. From the perspective of the neighbor and the whole community, and
from the perspective of an educated person who knows the limits of his rights,
the greater outrage is that it bit the neighbor. It could have bitten the
owner for a number of reasons, such as not having been trained well; the
neighbor on the other hand had no choice, he never signed up for a dog but he
got bit anyway--and further there's little he can do to prevent it from
happening again.

What makes you more anxious, when you lose something you owned or when you
lose something a friend lent you? When the latter happens, all I wish for is
that it were mine (or that it's an item easily replaceable with money.)

It seems the government has long forgotten the good manners it's Founding
Fathers taught it. I can only hope the American people at large have a bit
more sense.

------
gasull
FTA:

> _Are there any places left on earth that actually do respect basic civil
> liberties?_

I would really like to know the answer.

~~~
fein
Switzerland is the closest thing I can think of, and even that country has
some of the same surveillance/privacy issues that spawned most of the current
discussions. I don't know if we qualify CCTV as a violation of a civil liberty
period, or only if abused.

~~~
Daishiman
If you consider the amount of negative foreign influence that some Swiss
corporations have across the globe for their, this statement might not that
accurate (I'm thinking Glencore and others)

