NSA Spies on Activist Porn Habits

[aileron]

Various incidents showing NSA operatives spying on family and friends points to "yes".

You have personal knowledge of humans at the NSA spying on friends and family?  

If you can only feel safe on the web because you don't know anyone who works the NSA, something is wrong.

I know a few people who work or worked recently at the NSA.  I am a former military officer and served with them in aviation squadrons.

[Plu]

Personal knowledge? It's been all over the news...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 83554.html

[Hydra009]

[s:sil6ab8g]Three[/s:sil6ab8g] Four groups of people are generally concerned about the NSA spying on them:  1) People who given an opportunity would commit acts of war or terrorism.  2) People in powerful or influential positions.  3) Narcissistic people not in category 1 or 2 who think national security agencies give a shit about them.

4) People who give a shit about American freedoms (privacy) and hate us moving towards a Big Brother sort of society.

Classical liberalism, maybe you've heard of it?

[aileron]

Personal knowledge? It's been all over the news...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 83554.html

Ah... I misread your comment.  I thought you meant your friends and family.  NSA agents were using government assets to spy on suspected unfaithful lovers.  The thing is that the NSA claims to have taken disciplinary action against those individuals.  This kind of thing is far from uniquely an NSA problem.  I have no doubt that the NSA can deal with low level and mid level individuals who violate their policies.  Where the real oversight is needed is making sure the top echelons who set policy at the NSA are complying with the law.  Just as importantly, the people who oversee the NSA policymakers should ensure that they don't do legal things that are counterproductive, such as the head of government surveillance someone took the initiative to pursue.  They should also seriously question whether something should be done just because they have the legal and technical capability to do it.

[aileron]

[s:3bg3094j]Three[/s:3bg3094j] Four groups of people are generally concerned about the NSA spying on them:  1) People who given an opportunity would commit acts of war or terrorism.  2) People in powerful or influential positions.  3) Narcissistic people not in category 1 or 2 who think national security agencies give a shit about them.

4) People who give a shit about American freedoms (privacy) and hate us moving towards a Big Brother sort of society.

Classical liberalism, maybe you've heard of it?

Remind me, what did the classical liberal thinkers write about the government's collection and analysis of internet backbone traffic to detect and respond to cyber attacks?  What did these long dead men write about whether running analytic software on Big Data is an invasion of privacy or if it's only an invasion of privacy if humans see the information?

[Plu]

I'm guessing they thought the exact same thing as when someone suggested to start keeping logs of every piece of mail the post office collects so that a list could be built of which person had contact with what other person at what times, along with copies of the messages actually sent so they could be read by humans if someone thought someone else was being suspicious.

I'm guessing they'd turn in their graves at what is happening right now. The change in medium does not change what is essentially happening right now. It's still the government snooping in on every piece of communication you send to another person. The only thing that has changed is that more and more communication happens in a medium that allows the government to snoop in on it and keep backups of it.

[aileron]

I'm guessing they'd turn in their graves at what is happening right now. The change in medium does not change what is essentially happening right now.

This conjuring of 18th century ghouls from their graves to put fallacy of accident words in their mouths is the same thing gun nuts do to claim a right to any weapon the military has.  

Clearly the consensus among classical liberal thinkers was the individuals have a right to the same weapons as the military.  The change in technology does not matter, the gun nuts assure us; the general 18th century principle still applies.

I suspect you reject the gun nuts' necromancy.  Classical liberal thinkers also strongly supported laissez-faire economics.  Should we abandon social programs because they'd be rolling in their graves now?  Should we allow individuals to buy any weapon the military has lest our 18th century thinkers bones rest uneasily?  If not, then why special plead?

[Plu]

Because there is a huge difference between an 18th century weapon and a 21st one, but there is no difference between an 18th century message and a 21st century one. Words are still words, and people should reasonably expect what they say to be between them and the receiver. Then and now.

Like I said; only the medium has changed. The content is still the same. This is very different from weaponry, where the very content is now completely different from the way it once was. (Or economics, which is also quite, but not nearly enough, different from how it once was)

Many things have changed over time, but the concept of one person talking to another in private hasn't.

[aileron]

Because there is a huge difference between an 18th century weapon and a 21st one, but there is no difference between an 18th century message and a 21st century one.

 :-k

Like I said; only the medium has changed. The content is still the same. This is very different from weaponry, where the very content is now completely different from the way it once was.

The medium change enables C[sup:3tcwb8ka]3[/sup:3tcwb8ka] (command, control, and communications) for terrorist plots from leadership in one part of the world and operatives in another part of the world.  In that regard, your claimed distinction from changes to weaponry rings hollow.

Terrorist networks would gladly kill hundreds of thousands or millions if they were able to do so.  They reason they're not able to do so is because people are stopping them from doing it.  The most important way they stop them is not with weaponry, but signals intelligence on their C[sup:3tcwb8ka]3[/sup:3tcwb8ka].  

(Or economics, which is also quite, but not nearly enough, different from how it once was)

The point is people living in the 21st century are the ones to decide how we will balance 21st century needs for national security vs. needs for privacy.  What some moldy corpse thinks is of no interest to me on 21st century problems.

Many things have changed over time, but the concept of one person talking to another in private hasn't.

It's not just "one person talking to another in private" that people bitch about with the NSA.  They bitch about the NSA doing all kinds of things that cannot reasonably be construed as an invasion of privacy.  They bitch about the NSA performing Big Data analytics on social media -- social media for Christ's sake.  People post things for public view and then demand a right to privacy for that publicly visible information the way a basketball player tries to draw a foul by collapsing to the floor when an opponent has incidental contact.

[Plu]

The point is people living in the 21st century are the ones to decide how we will balance 21st century needs for national security vs. needs for privacy. What some moldy corpse thinks is of no interest to me on 21st century problems.

Fair enough, I wasn't the one to originally bring this up anyway. I don't think the opinion of these people matters all that much. But it doesn't really change that a private conversation is still a private conversation..

It's not just "one person talking to another in private" that people bitch about with the NSA. They bitch about the NSA doing all kinds of things that cannot reasonably be construed as an invasion of privacy. They bitch about the NSA performing Big Data analytics on social media -- social media for Christ's sake. People post things for public view and then demand a right to privacy the way a basketball player tries to draw a foul by collapsing to the floor when an opponent has incidental contact.

I'm aware of this and I agree that anyone who complains about the NSA scouring through social media is a fucking twat. It really complicates the issue about privacy when most people have no fucking clue what privacy is and that you give it away, never to return, whenever you click "public" on your social media posts.

But that doesn't really change the fact that when I send an email to a friend I'd like it to stay between me and them, and not archived in some government database for whatever reason. And no amount of "it's for your own protection" will really solve that issue. If I have no guaruantuee of privacy, that doesn't make me feel safer. It makes me feel less safe.

[aileron]

But that doesn't really change the fact that when I send an email to a friend I'd like it to stay between me and them, and not archived in some government database for whatever reason. And no amount of "it's for your own protection" will really solve that issue. If I have no guaruantuee of privacy, that doesn't make me feel safer. It makes me feel less safe.

I agree 100%.  Supposedly the NSA has legal restrictions preventing them from doing this to US citizens without a warrant, but that's pretty much a joke because they're so secretive "disallowed" and "not actually happening" are two different things entirely.  

I'd also like to see the protection against warrantless bulk collection of private data applied worldwide, not just to communications involving US citizens.  They also need oversight with real teeth or the laws don't mean anything.