[Aardwolf]

It's funny, just prior to reading Dragon's post I was thinking to myself "you know, for all the refutations I've read of the 'if you have nothing to hide...' claim, I don't know if I've ever seen anyone actually make that claim".

Hm... I wonder if Kucinich will be running again next presidential election...

[Klaustrophobia]

It's funny, just prior to reading Dragon's post I was thinking to myself "you know, for all the refutations I've read of the 'if you have nothing to hide...' claim, I don't know if I've ever seen anyone actually make that claim".

Hm... I wonder if Kucinich will be running again next presidential election...

i used to subscribe to that notion.  i've grown up a bit since then. 

[Dragon]

TBH, sometimes I'm not quite sure what all those people are afraid of. If you're not doing anything illegal, then your data is of no interest to the government and will probably be discarded as "background noise" [...]

I will never understand how people can hold this opinion.  History has proven time and again that authority figures and organizations will take advantage of (if not outright murder) innocent people if not checked.

But why would they do that? In general, people don't do bad things "for the elvuz!", they need a reason. In a totalitarian system, sure, they need to scare the populace, not to mention they're usually paranoid anyway, so the definition of "doing anything illegal" is pretty wide for them. But a democracy? Shooting random people isn't exactly going to net you votes. They have nothing to gain from pestering innocent people, so why would they do so?

And usually the reasoning is unethical. (some might say 'evil')

http://facts.randomhistory.com/crazy-laws.html

There's a very good reason for all those strange laws: the precedent system. At some point, somebody was penalized for one of those weird things, probably for a good, however unlikely reason (the toads thing, for example, is surprisingly reasonable, if odd). It entered the books, because that's how the law works in America. I don't think anybody considers those anything but triva, much less tries tries to enforce it. Not to mentions those are state laws, Fed has no business enforcing those.

Overall, as far as government people go, I haven't seen much evil in modern democracies. Bumbling incompetence, idiocy, selfishness, inconstancy, yes, but not malice. Evil people can be dictators and kings, but not presidents, at least not for long.

[castor]

Evil people can be dictators and kings, but not presidents, at least not for long.

And why is that?

[Dragon]

Because evil presidents either turn into dictators, or get voted out of office early. Poland had a very backwards (not really evil, but clearly not suited for the office) prime minister some time ago. For about two years. After that, his own government disbanded itself. Most people in the government do, at least for some part, actually care for what happens to the country, even if only because they live in it. An evil person who somehow gets elected (for example, because of a major crisis) will get unelected unless he/she finds a way to stop the elections completely.

In general, I noticed that politicians are usually motivated either self-interest or an actual desire to make things better, at least from their own perspective (even if they're too incompetent to actually do so). Usually a bit of both, really. Problems arise when their version of "make things better" is backwards and detached from reality, when they put their own interest before that of the state, when they're just plain incompetent, or, perhaps the most commonly, all of this at once. But actual malice and trying to deliberately screw with the populace is rare.

[Rampage]

@Dragon - - You must understand the sentiment of the general American populace. Regardless of one's political orientation in the US, we Americans have an instinctual distrust of governments in general but especially of those who infringe on any personal rights. It has to do with our history of distrusting monarchies and oligarchies, which forms the basis of what is laid out in the Declaration of Independence (life, liberty and prosperity) and in the Constitution.

So the point is not whether we are good or evil or doing something illegal and thus we fear the government's reprisals; it's because we fear the simple fact that our government has grown to the point of being able of invading our lives.  Our Founding Fathers believed correctly that once a government gets too big and centralized, it loses accountability and will automatically become oppressive.

R

[AtomicClucker]

Well, it's my sincere hope that these sort of scandals continue to happen, including the possibility that the giant surveillance databases are compromised and that data make it's way into the hands of unsavory actors like the RIAA or other ill-humored lobbyists.

My primary fear is less than "OMG?! We spied on? Oh noes!?" than this information being abused, so I hope that this scandal will encourage authorities from local and other jurisdictions to clamor for access, essentially opening a lid that suddenly puts every average citizen in danger of being threatened, silenced, bullied, and even turned into a potential criminal. I think then it will send the message home to the voting populace.

[BloodEagle]

TBH, sometimes I'm not quite sure what all those people are afraid of. If you're not doing anything illegal, then your data is of no interest to the government and will probably be discarded as "background noise" [...]

I will never understand how people can hold this opinion.  History has proven time and again that authority figures and organizations will take advantage of (if not outright murder) innocent people if not checked.

But why would they do that? In general, people don't do bad things "for the elvuz!", they need a reason. In a totalitarian system, sure, they need to scare the populace, not to mention they're usually paranoid anyway, so the definition of "doing anything illegal" is pretty wide for them. But a democracy? Shooting random people isn't exactly going to net you votes. They have nothing to gain from pestering innocent people, so why would they do so?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/jose-guerena-arizona-_n_867020.html

And usually the reasoning is unethical. (some might say 'evil')

http://facts.randomhistory.com/crazy-laws.html

There's a very good reason for all those strange laws: the precedent system. At some point, somebody was penalized for one of those weird things, probably for a good, however unlikely reason (the toads thing, for example, is surprisingly reasonable, if odd). It entered the books, because that's how the law works in America. I don't think anybody considers those anything but triva, much less tries tries to enforce it. Not to mentions those are state laws, Fed has no business enforcing those.

Overall, as far as government people go, I haven't seen much evil in modern democracies. Bumbling incompetence, idiocy, selfishness, inconstancy, yes, but not malice. Evil people can be dictators and kings, but not presidents, at least not for long.

Yes, those laws (most of them) aren't enforced today.  But they were back then.  That's kind of the point, actually.

How often do you see an obviously stupid law get passed today that then gets enforced?

Just because someone will look back fifty years later and have the same regard for some of our modern laws as we do for those doesn't make it any less stupid and any less corrupt.

And as for the malice thing: moonshine, mary jane, and music.

[Dragon]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/jose-guerena-arizona-_n_867020.html

I don't see why is that related. A SWAT team raided the guy's home, he greeted them with a rifle. No wonder he ended up full of lead. And you can't see a safety from the end of a "long, dark hallway". You can only see a guy holding a rifle. There's been a tragic screwup, and a major one. If he left the rifle alone and surrendered, he probably would've lived (on the other hand, he had every reason to believe they were criminals...). This was a tragedy, but I don't believe anyone intended that to happen. What happened afterwards was people trying to hide their incompetence. They suspected the wrong guy, killed him and instead of admitting their mistake, they tried to make it look like he was, in fact, the right guy. Shameful and honorless, but hardly malicious.

Yes, those laws (most of them) aren't enforced today.  But they were back then.  That's kind of the point, actually.

You're not going to tell me that somebody ticketed a man for being aroused in public. I can't imagine circumstances that would lead to such a precedent, and I probably don't want to. Or that somebody was ever penalized for kissing their wife on sunday. Sure, dumb laws are sometimes passed, though I noticed they tend to be either ignored or challenged for violating some other laws. Also, most of those are on state level. I don't think states have this kind of monitoring capability.

And as for the malice thing: moonshine, mary jane, and music.

Please elaborate, if it's a reference, I don't get it.

[Aardwolf]

prohibition of alcohol
prohibition of marijuana
prohibition of ... idk what the last one is about actually ... vulgar song lyrics? hippies and sedition?

things which should never have been illegal, were and still are enforced inconsistently, and can get you put in jail for a long time


Edit:

I don't think states have this kind of monitoring capability.

In general, they don't. But if they don't like somebody, they have the capability to monitor that one person and find something obscure to book them on.

[Phantom Hoover]

In the words of Conor McBride, "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" presumes absolute competence and benevolence on the part of the authorities.

[Dragon]

I believe that ultimately, this is still true. Sure, mistakes happen, and sometimes wrong people end up in power, but there are also multiple places where one can defend one's rights, and in the majority of cases, an innocent person will comes out unscathed, or even a bit richer due to receiving compensation for their trouble. Even if they do end up harmed, they can go to the media and tell their story, which can sometimes force the authorities to change their mind (and can directly lead to said wrong person no longer being in power).

things which should never have been illegal,

Well, this is actually being fiercely debated. While I mostly agree with you on that point, others may not. I believe there are quite a few people who'd view stronger enforcement of those bans as a good thing. Also, banning those things was born out of genuine, if horribly misguided concern for the population, so again, not malice, but incompetence. Not to mention those things are actually harmful and one can live without them (even better than with them, in fact). So I don't consider those to be a good example.

[General Battuta]

Your view of the government is monolithic and inaccurate. Read one book about the role of surveillance and targeted killing in American foreign policy post-9/11 (I'd suggest Dirty Wars by Scahill) and you'll understand why the government is too incompetent, too fractious, and too obsessed with internal turf wars to be either effective or trustworthy with information like this. In the modern domestic theater there is little to no recourse for the individual who's been unfairly targeted.

Your view of prohibition is also a little rosy. Alcohol prohibition in the US was ended in part because the measures prohibition advocates were taking to punish illicit drinkers crossed the line into out and out malevolence.

[Ulala]

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance?CMP=twt_gu

The battle for the Internet may have begun.

[swashmebuckle]

The first thing I thought while watching his interview was that this dude's face is gonna be on one of those stupid Che Guevara T-shirts. I'll probably buy one though. America!

[karajorma]

Here's a better example of how easily laws get misused.

[Dragon]

The very first line says how the abusers in question were forced to apologize. Yes, law gets misused, but there are way to fix that if it happens and those who do get their comeuppance most of the time.

Your view of prohibition is also a little rosy. Alcohol prohibition in the US was ended in part because the measures prohibition advocates were taking to punish illicit drinkers crossed the line into out and out malevolence.

I wasn't talking about The Prohibition (well, except when I said where it originated from. It didn't start evil). The Prohibition did indeed cross the line into outright malevolence. That's about when it ended (though of course, there were other factors). There were many things horribly wrong with it, and it was a bad idea from the start.

Your view of the government is monolithic and inaccurate. Read one book about the role of surveillance and targeted killing in American foreign policy post-9/11 (I'd suggest Dirty Wars by Scahill) and you'll understand why the government is too incompetent, too fractious, and too obsessed with internal turf wars to be either effective or trustworthy with information like this.

That is a part of the reason why I don't consider surveillance in itself a major threat. The government won't do anything drastic with the data, simply because they couldn't agree on it. They're, as you said, too fractious and incompetent to be effective with that data, but that's exactly what makes them ending up as a 1984-style Party very unlikely. The fracturing does make decisive reforms (a few of which would be in order...) difficult, but also reduces the chance of drastic actions that could hurt the citizens. I believe it's kind of by design when it comes to US government, it's pretty good at keeping itself from doing anything.

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance?CMP=twt_gu

The battle for the Internet may have begun.

That's another point I didn't mention. While I don't consider surveillance bad, there's really no reason to keep this fact secret. If there's a problem, it's that the government isn't honest with it's people about it, and it should be. I understand CIA keeping secrets, it's a foreign intel agency, and thus needs not be entirely honest with the countries it's spying on. Same goes with military secrets. Domestic security agencies, however, do need much more transparency.

[The E]

They are not, however, incapable of doing harm. Wrong information gets people killed, incarcerated, fired, prosecuted each and every day. The large majority of all people will hopefully never be the target of this. But the small number of cases in which it does happen is still waaaay too ****ing large, and relying on the fact that governments are incompetent for your own protection is ... unwise, I should say.

I don't know if this piece was linked here already, but even if it did, it bears repeating: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_believe_the_government_should_be_allowed_to/caeb3pl

[General Battuta]

That is a part of the reason why I don't consider surveillance in itself a major threat. The government won't do anything drastic with the data, simply because they couldn't agree on it. They're, as you said, too fractious and incompetent to be effective with that data, but that's exactly what makes them ending up as a 1984-style Party very unlikely. The fracturing does make decisive reforms (a few of which would be in order...) difficult, but also reduces the chance of drastic actions that could hurt the citizens. I believe it's kind of by design when it comes to US government, it's pretty good at keeping itself from doing anything.

The problem is exactly the opposite. The government will do many drastic and unjustified things with the data, going off past experience. You really misapprehend how the bureaucracy works. You're thinking of this as some kind of legislative matter and it's really not. The section of 'the government' in play here isn't Congress, which you invoke when talking about 'decisive reforms', it's a baffling web of agencies and executive branch staff. The US government is already in the business of pressuring foreign governments to imprison journalists it doesn't like, intervening in foreign affairs to keep American citizens in jail, and killing American citizens overseas. Drastic actions are part and parcel of the game nowadays. They're just not well-targeted or effective drastic actions.

[Al-Rik]

if the outcry doesn't kill those spying maybe the people who made fun of it will have an effect:
http://obamaischeckingyouremail.tumblr.com/