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I consider myself an educated, well-informed person, and I have no problem whatsoever with government surveillance. Like anything, it can be abused, but I don't think that outweighs the benefits.

I think it's sad that it makes you 'angry' that some people simply disagree with you. We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern.

If you have a problem with it, stand for election.




The communists claimed to have a democracy too. A state can maintain all the forms of democracy whilst in reality being run on a completely different basis by a parallel internal oligarchy.

"If you have a problem with it, stand for election" is facile: First past the post electoral district representative governments are almost designed to eliminate single issue candidates from ever having any electoral power. The only way to make a difference is to convince the main parties that this matters & that takes years of ground work against a well funded group which will oppose your every move using its access to the machinery of government. It isn't called the military-industrial-congressional complex for nothing you know.

As an aside, very few people have a problem with targeted government surveillance. What I have a problem with is the dragnet sweeping up of every communication, keeping as much as possible for future use against anyone and anybody whilst keeping this policy secret from the population in question. Historically this kind of action has been seen as a signifier of a totalitarian states who are afraid of their own population revolting against them and I fear that the UK/US (and by extension the five-eyes countries) have put in place the full machinery for a panopticon, in which any dissent against the ruling cadres is quietly quashed. This isn't a road I personally wish to see my country taking, yet the politicians and public at large seem blind to the risk, handing over sweeping powers to the security services with almost no oversight or control.


>I consider myself an educated, well-informed person, and I have no problem whatsoever with government surveillance

Well, I don't consider that stance well-informed.

Surely its not informed of the tons of abuses of surveillance from "democratic" governments. And its also not informed of thousands of people rotting in jail, targeted by the police, tortured etc. Perhaps people who think that way, believe that all governments are like their local bubble -- or that it has to be some third-world dictatorship for those abuses to happen.

But I'm pretty sure they're also misinformed about the abuses in their local bubble too.

If you're an American for example, you might not know FBI has an attrocious record (under McCarthyism, under the the direction of Hoover, in the sixties against students and black protesters, up to Occupy Wall Street). If you're British, you might not know of an equally disgusting history. And don't get me started on places like Italy, Greece, Spain etc. Or Latin America for that matter.

Or they know those things but just don't care, because either "this time is different" ("and now we're fully and trully a transparent democracy" -- which is the most laughable ignorance one can muster), or they agree with the abuses.

But there's an even easier explanation: they only care for themselves, and since they don't ever do anything to challenge things you think they are safe.

And it might even be true.

But those that do challenge things (from civil rights activists to new political parties, and from artists to people experimenting with new ways of living), are the ones who make society better. Not the cover-my-asses. And it's those people who challenge things that very much are targeted by the abuses.

And what exactly are the benefits? Living in a nanny state?

[edit: fixed typo, child commenter: you a funny man]


nunny state

No, that's Ireland (where the investigation of a mass grave of children in a nunnery is failing to get off the ground)


There are a few problems in here.

Most notably though, I find terrible the statement that "we have a democracy" when essentially what we're talking about are tools whose abuse (which is going to be very welcomed by the government[s]) is exactly to suppress the democracy itself. Not only this, but also that fact the this is put in a context where government[s] are increasingly given powers to silence dissidence and legally rape people (or minorities, at worst), in an immoral (probable cause hello!) or worst, unlawful way (Snowden docs here).

All of this, with the fact that the "benefits" are not proven, and are actually very arguable. It's naive to think that indiscriminately listening to a billion conversations is an easy way to investigate "terrorism".

I don't think honestly that it's a well informed opinion to assume that we have a democracy just because we can vote somebody; more specifically, black/hispanic low-class people would not have the same opinion, at least, in some countries.


> government[s] are increasingly given powers to silence dissidence and legally rape people

1. Governments have always had these powers. The state has 'a monopoly on violence' and that can be abused in many different ways, without the need for pervasive surveillance. But it isn't, at least in the USA and the UK, we don't have 'death squads' roaming the streets or summary extra-judicial executions by firing squad for supporting the wrong political party, or having the wrong religion.

2. Wait, legally rape people... What?


> Like anything, it can be abused, but I don't think that outweighs the benefits.

In a recent past, my great-grand-father was arrested and beaten up by the Gestapo for his political views (sorry for the emotional argument but i think it's appropriate). My point is that even if you perceive your country as a democracy where the leaders behave for the best, it may not be so forever. And as history shows, it can change very fast. It's important that we have strong laws that protect the people from their leaders.


> We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern. > > If you have a problem with it, stand for election.

There must be a name for this kind of fallacy.


I call it "faith in democracy", as there is no evidence of it happening in any modern "democracy". Just got to believe....



Is it really a fallacy?

Part of democracy is accepting that you don't necessarily agree with everyone about everything, and you have to compromise.


Say you were born in 1850, but had the understanding about race and slavery that you do now. Slavery makes you angry (I'm assuming here) and you make an impassioned post about the evils of slavery. In reply you get, "We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern."

Is it "sad that it makes you 'angry' that some people simply disagree with you"? Is it ok to dismiss your anger because you don't "stand for election"?


I think if I were born in 1850, the right thing to do would be to try and convince other people of why I'm right about race and slavery.

Yes, part of democracy is accepting that some people will disagree with you. The right way to go is to either compromise or to convince them you're right. Incidentally, that's what actually happens most of the time.


When you have secret laws that protect secret proceedings or as we actually have now, agencies that operate in a legal black hole and are completely unaccountable then yes, the idea that this is somehow a democracy is comical.


No.

Just because one part of an organisation does not have a particular property, it does not negate that property for all other parts. The USA and UK are, quite obviously, democracies. There are free and fair secret elections for government in which anyone can vote, and anyone can stand for election as a candidate. That makes them democracies, the behaviour of their secret intelligence services is irrelevant.

I worry about the thought processes that must occur for people to think this; or similar things, like conflating an instance of some law enforcement department abusing its power with a totalitarian police state... I understand hyperbole as a rhetorical device, but it isn't helpful when assumed as fact.


> There are free and fair secret elections.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one.

Lobbying and uncapped campaign donations are tantamount to legalised bribery. The system is utterly corrupt.

Free they may be, but calling them fair is a gross misrepresentation in my opinion.

> I worry about the thought processes that must occur for people to think this; or similar things, like conflating an instance of some law enforcement department abusing its power with a totalitarian police state.

We're not saying it's a police state. We're saying it is becoming one because of the very tools that these agencies possess and abuse without accountability.

As an example, you've basically had a man (a criminal) James Clapper lie directly to congress knowingly and unabashedly. He's somehow still walking around, free and lol'ing at the general public he so joyously likes to mislead and scaremonger.

> I worry about the thought processes that must occur for people to think this; or similar things.

I honestly think the same of people who think that there is no problem here, nothing to worry about or even that it's a good thing. I honestly can't wrap my head around the immense wilfull ignorance some people seem to be displaying.

It makes me sad, angry and disgusted all at once.


> We're not saying it's a police state. We're saying it is becoming one because of the very tools that these agencies possess and abuse without accountability

Right, this is my problem. I have no problem with posession of these tools. States possess much worse things, nuclear weapons spring to mind. And abuse of these tools in an unaccountable fashion is wrong, 100% with you on that. However it is not clear to me that such abuses have occurred, or are occurring in a systematic way. Are there any documented (to the extent possible) cases of this? I didn't think even the Snowden documents showed that. In fact, it looked like they were full of caveats about US and UK citizen surveillance being a problematic area, and stated requirements for legal reviews and checks in these cases?


As grkvlt has said, this isn't a black or white issue. We're not either a) a democracy or b) not a democracy, we're obviously more democratic in some areas and less so in others.

I agree that having secret proceedings, etc., is a big problem. But there are cases where they're necessary, or at least many people think so. Like it or not, changing the way things work now means gaining some things (e.g. more freedom, more transparency) but potentially giving some things up (some measure of security).

Some people might be willing to give up different measures of freedom for different measures of security - others will have different numbers. That's why, in a democracy, we either convince people or compromise with them.


Standing for election will potentially get you put on a list of "extremists": http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/15/green-party-...

The question is not so much can it be abused, but to what extent it is being abused. Remember, the security services are not above having people murdered if they're sufficiently troublesome: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21283169


Created 9 minutes ago (as of this post) and has one post.

Doffs tin foil hat.

I see this a lot on a variety of forums whenever topics like this come up.

It would be interesting to do an analysis of the age of the average commenter’s account by topic across popular comment type sites.


We know that the security state is spending large amounts of money employing people to run 'personas' on social media sites, make blog comments etc etc. Sometimes these are spectacularly obvious, but there are plenty who are good enough at their work to look plausible.

The goal is to create the feeling amongst those who are seeking to change the status quo that the population is not with them & that changing things will be difficult, whilst at the same time creating the impression for anyone reading the comments that certain viewpoints are unpopular or contested.


Yes, I'm sure this has happened many times, and will continue to happen, although probably not as much on HN as on jihadi extremist forums and so on...

But the knee-jerk responses of 'shill' or 'astroturfer' to dismiss anyone whose opinion differs from the local majority is sad, and seems to be getting more common on many sites I frequent.


>> I consider myself an educated, well-informed person, and I have no problem whatsoever with government surveillance. Like anything, it can be abused, but I don't think that outweighs the benefits.

You have cared enough to actually think about it and are prepared to engage in debate. Congrats, you are more interested/intelligent than 90% of the population.

>> I think it's sad that it makes you 'angry' that some people simply disagree with you.

No, I'm angry that most people don't care enough or aren't smart enough to think about it, and that's the majority, and so nothing can be done. Your assertion that I'm angry that people disagree with me is incorrect and patronising.

>> We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern.

Our democracy is incredibly weak, it's arguable we even live under a democracy when we have secret trials and secret laws.

>> If you have a problem with it, stand for election.

That's a guaranteed way to waste time and money while achieving nothing.


> We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern.

I think those are separate things -- being in a democracy means the majority decide what happens; it doesn't mean that the majority are well-informed rational deciders of objective truth.

If the government were kicking puppies for entertainment, and nobody knew about it, then the majority wouldn't use their democratic powers to vote against that either :P


There hasn't been any evidence to support these 'benefits'.


I don't know what else to say apart from that I've seen the same coverage as you, and I'm not bothered by it.

I'm sorry that this seems to infuriate you people so much, but that's my opinion. If I'm happy with it, I'm happy with it. So are many people.

Your indignation isn't going to going to change my mind, or many other people's minds.


>I don't know what else to say apart from that I've seen the same coverage as you, and I'm not bothered by it.

Sure, but then again the majority of Southerners weren't bothered by the slavery or the lynchings either. It took a civil war to make them change their ways.

I mean, if we are to put "not bothered" as some kind of argument.


Sadly, even 100 years after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, and 200 years after the Declaration that "all men are created equal", we had huge resistance to the much belated civil rights acts of the 60's.

Yes, peterlawest is entirely right. Our indignation isn't going to going to change his mind, or that of many others like him.

"People don't change their minds. They die, and are replaced by people with different opinions" -- Arturo Albergati, via Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/quo.html)

"Science progresses one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck


Downvoting for "you people", a phrase which pretty much universally seems to indicate dismissive contempt and disinterest in engaging the other party's point of view.


This attitude is incredibly naive (the fact that you made an account 2 hours ago to express this opinion, means you probably agree and are just trolling). Governments change, but data is forever, what you say now or do in public may be politically neutral or acceptable at the moment, but might be worth a jail sentence in 20 years time. Your data will never disappear and you can be held accountable for something you said 15 years ago, even if your opinion has changed or if it was out of context.

For example, have you ever expressed a view about abortion, either for or against (or homosexuality, or religion, or politics? Right now any of the views you expressed may be socially and legally acceptable. It is conceivable that the legal views on this could change 10 years down the line and if you expressed a view that is out of favor with a government of the future you could potentially be in serious trouble.


I find this view rather short-sighted.

To some extent I agree with you that there are benefits to mass surveillance, and that on the whole it is (probably) not currently being widely abused.

However, this is not predictive of the future.

By setting up such a pervasive surveillance machine, this massively enables abuses by future governments that may not be quite as benign towards its citizens.

Just consider how 'useful' this mass data mining of private communications would have been for the East German Stasi, or during McCarthyism in the USA, or many other examples of overly authoritarian governance.

The danger is that a system set up to protect state security, ostensibly with the best of intentions, can be subverted later on as a tool of governmental abuse.


What are these benefits?


I believe it helps ensure security. I don't believe they'd bother doing it if it didn't. I think you're a bit arrogant for assuming they give a fuck what you write to your girlfriend on iMessages.

I know you probably disagree with that, but this is my point - not everyone agrees that surveillance is bad. And I'm not alone - I think most people don't really care about surveillance. And this isn't a conspiracy - it's just a simple case of people not agreeing with you - this happens - get over it.


I think you're a bit arrogant for assuming they give a fuck what you write to your girlfriend on iMessages.

This is absolutely not why people object to pervasive surveillance. The democracy that you harp on about above as the justification for your position is fundamentally incompatible with pervasive surveillance and secret trials.

The problem is not whether they can see pictures of my cats on twitter or imessages to my girlfriend, it's that with pervasive and universal surveillance of our communications which GCHQ is engaged in (collect it all, mastering the internet), those in power would become almost omniscient and able to manipulate our markets, our economy, our politicians, our judges and every other branch of our society. This activity is currently not significantly limited by law, but only by technical ability, which is fast changing. For example all SMS messages in the UK are stored, and all internet traffic crossing the kingdom (which is almost all of it) for as long as possible (Tempora), probably some phone calls too. We also don't even know who they share it with - probably the NSA given their subsidiary relationship. In the wrong hands, this would be a terrible weapon, and even in the right hands, it's likely to pervert those given the power.

If you had access to the private emails of judges, lawyers, accountants, politicians, in retrospect and forever it would be incredibly easy to make and break careers and manipulate everyone else in the country to bend them to your will. Now imagine this power in the hands of a select few, and the rise to power of someone ruthless enough to use it for their own ends. Perhaps initially they'd simply nudge a referendum on independence, or a presidential election by releasing inconvenient emails at the right moment, maybe they'd ensure their continued funding with blackmail (has this already happened, would we ever know?), maybe they'll decide they could run this place better after all - again, we wouldn't even know our democracy had been entirely subverted until it was too late.

IMO the time to oppose this sort of surveillance is now - surveillance should be one-off and controlled by independent judges on a case by case basis, not pervasive and eternal.


You don't even need to have access to the content of the mail, the meta data are more than enough to find out if you've called a known drug dealer, went to an abortion clinic, used an escort service... It is more than enough to end a career or silence a critic.


I come from a country where 30 years ago every single phone call was listened to by a government worker, and everyone knew,and no one cared. People literally did not care, using the same arguments as you are using - why would they worry about what they are saying to their girlfriends, wives, husbands, so on. And you know what? For most part, the government didn't care. But it was gathering notes on everyone - where are you going, when, with whom, are you drinking, are you buying something - everything that could be of importance was recorded,but never acted upon. Unless you managed to piss off someone. Unless you said something bad about the police or a local politician. Then these notes would be found, even from several years before,and they would be used to put you in prison for 20+ years, as a "danger to society".

This is exactly what is happening right now, and you have to be a complete IDIOT to not see that this is the case. Governments are gathering loads of data about every single one of us. Just because they decide not to act on that data right now,does not mean we should not be worried, and you couldn't be more wrong when you say that the government does not care what you write to your gf on iMessage.


Noone has mentioned there that they are afraid of their loveletters to be publicly available, as a consequence of surveilance. (It is possible, but whatever)

Instead, our problem, is that surveilance is being used as a an invaluable tool for autocracy.

And the question is not whether they will use surveilance for oppressing government opposition, but when if not already.


I think that is a good question. And if there were ever a case of surveillance being used to suppress government opposition, that would be terrible. But this has not occurred, and opposition to the government is a protected and valued right of every citizen of both the UK and the US. There are even entire organisations devoted to the opposition of the current government, some in the UK even go as far as having a 'shadow' group that mirrors the current ruling cabinet, to contest their decisions publicly.


You've not heard about the police embedding undercover officers into protest groups then? And acting as agent provocateurs when embedded within them? To the extent some of them had sham relationships and are now being pursued for effectively rape?

Maybe that's not surveillance being used to suppress in your book. Whatever. Your post reads like propaganda though.


> I think you're a bit arrogant for assuming they give a fuck what you write to your girlfriend on iMessages.

This statement is nonsensical, because we know now that recording and reading what we write to our girlfriends on iMessage is exactly what they are doing. Indeed GCHQ have watched so many webcam chats amongst random people they can tell us how many are pornographic to three significant digits of accuracy. This is very much the definition of "giving a fuck".

Given that the premise of your post is incorrect, I wonder why you hold the opinions you do.


> I believe it helps ensure security.

Your beliefs are wrong, as we have been shown that this mass surveillance has failed to prevent even one terrorist attack since its inception.

Couple that with the immense amount of (wasted) tax payer money it costs to run and you've got a disgusting abuse of power and resources in exchange for the mere illusion of security to those who fail to actually do the research required to see through the bullshit.


> Your beliefs are wrong, as we have been shown that this mass surveillance has failed to prevent even one terrorist attack since its inception.

We don't actually know this. Mass surveillance may have led to 'extrajudicial' methods of thwarting terrorist attacks, i.e. death squads or drone killings. Or when cases of terrorist plots have been taken to trial, its use could have been masked by parallel construction of evidence.

This level of underhandedness seems to be increasing in recent times. For example, there is a terrorist conspiracy trial currently ongoing in the UK that is being held almost entirely in secret - the public and media are not permitted to know the evidence or the sources of evidence against the suspects. In fact up until recently even the existence of the trial and the identities of the suspects were under a gag order, for reasons unknown[1].

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/12/secret-terror-tri...


You could be right.

I'm just not sure how much 'we can't reveal that due to national security concerns' is going to fly as an excuse anymore.

Far too many shady things can be covered up under that umbrella.


Oh, I agree. Just pointing out that mass surveillance may well be both helpful to national security and very damaging to human rights.

For what it's worth, I suspect it's unduly balanced towards authoritarianism as well.


having a policeman standing in your kitchen to prevent domestic dispute, ensuring security.

a webcam in all bedrooms would ensure more security and possibly prevent other types of crime.

most people wouldn't go for those - some security measures are too invasive and ripe for abuse to support.

unless you've missed it, your location and contact endpoints are now permanently stored, and some of your conversations both written and audible are.

if one of your associates is within a certain number of hops from someone deemed undesirable - so are you.

the reason the london met phone hacking scandal resulted in outcry was that the general public could understand what happened.

this is slightly beyond their ken but it's the same problem - questionable powers that are ripe for abuse.


>I believe it helps ensure security.

How many terrorist attacks have been prevented as a result of this illegal privacy invasion?

Is there any evidence of it ensuring security? I see none.

What leads you to believe that it ensures security?


So you don't know what those benefits exactly are or how should I interpret this?


Isn't it ironic that you are being downvoted?




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