You're linking to an article on corporate spying. We're discussing spying on government officials on, what I can only assume, is a lot more serious matters, i.e waging wars.
This is a trust/image issue for the states, and it's really taking a beating right now.
Lets not make the same mistake that most people were making regarding the NSA before these leaks: it makes logical sense that EU governments would spy on everyone they technologically can; ergo we must assume that they are.
Just like our last 4 comments. But here I am, giving you my morning coffee time.
I digress. I think ultimately you have to decide to accept current practises as inevitable, or malleable.
I for one, do not think allies should spy on each other. Being caught so would have punitive repercussions such as increases in trade rates. If perpetrator makes a big deal about it, then find better allies, and then they can spy all they want.
I think the best solution would be to have the NSA and other security apparatuses stop or significantly scale down their surveillance programs for a few years.
Two scenarios would play out:
1) Nothing happens or a maybe Boston Marathon Bombing-style attack once a year at most.
2) Bombs go off in a major shopping center or movie theatre every week, perhaps a few in the Bay Area. This is similar to what happened in Israel in the 90s.
In the first case it would mean that the surveillance really was for nothing and the matter would be easily resolved.
In the second case, we would at least be in a position to make an informed decision about whether the surveillance programs were worth the security it gained us. I suspect people would have a different opinion about the surveillance programs if scenario two came to pass - because preventing the second scenario is ostensibly the motive behind them.
If people were determined to blow up shopping centers in America they could easily. Pay no attention to the theater security that surrounds your everyday life. It means nothing.
Yes it is easy to blow up shopping centers. Hence the Boston Marathon bombing. Hence the surveillance programs that ostensibly identify and investigate and stop potential bombers.
The existence of 'security theatre', the only example I can think of being the TSA, doesn't preclude the possibility that there are real threats.
>The existence of 'security theatre', the only example I can think of being the TSA, doesn't preclude the possibility that there are real threats.
A related thought: Just because you have spend a lot on security, and there haven't been much in the way of incidents, doesn't mean the security spendings are sensible.
Since nobody seems to have been paying any attention or have a memory, 9/11 was sadly the information about scenario two. It's not a bloody experiment anymore.
If you think any of the measures instituted after 9/11 could prevent another mass 9/11 style attack, you're in denial. Like people who want to ban semi-automatic rifles because of school shootings. The Bush administration ignored all the 9/11 warning signs.
9/11? You mean where building 7 "got pulled", uhhh, I mean collapsed because office furniture fires? The one were 3 letter agencies collected and "lost" the tapes of nearby private surveillance cameras? The one were some people who couldn't even fly a sports plane well flew a Boeing, which is so easy to handle and for which incredibly perfect simulators are in every mall, with precision into skyscrapers? The one where fires that turned steel into some kind of explosives curiously didn't burn the passport of one of the attackers? Where explosions where not investigated, and the debris was shipped off to China?
When bad stuff happens to skyscrapers, or any building collapses for not entirely known reasosn, normally every millimeter gets photographed. It's like a murder scene, you don't just pack it up and destroy it. 9/11 didn't even have a pretend investigation.
9/11 was informative indeed, but not about "what would happen if we got rid of the spooks in our country", though the irony of such a conclusion is of course delicious in its own way. No, it's rather a statement about how the sun revolves around the Earth if the party says so, and that's about it. Nothing any scientifically thinking individual should have even one minute for in earnest. Fuck conspiracy theories and Alex Jones, all that was needed was thinking for yourself, watching news footage (as if there was a way to avoid it) with anything resembling an attention span, and listening to politicians while also reading between the lines. That is not too much to ask for a grown up individual in a supposedly democratic society.
So that you throw out that cliche of 9/11 having been an attack that, once and for all, proved that whatever "security measures" anyone could come up with are justified, and would "prevent worse things from happening", while talking about "paying any attention or have a memory" -- I am not sure if I should find that funny or shockingly sad.
I see what you said, and raise you by "9/11 was information about the validity of the process by which the vast majority come to conclusions, and that all votes are not equal." Which is so far from anyone that can be said in polite conversation that I usually keep it to myself, but I genuinely believe it. That year I realized I'm with mostly fools, stuck on this planet in a circus, and that all my previous confusion about "how could something like the Nazis ever happen" was just adorable.
I self-censored my comment earlier, but fuck you. If you deny reality there is no discussion to be had. I want to sit in Washington square park and dance without smelling acrid smoke.
If you deny reality there is no discussion to be had.
You're projecting. That's like saying there was no point in investigating the rubble of 9/11 or the explosions because it's all so obvious anyway. It's called "conclusion prior to investigation". If you had arguments, you would mention them. So there.
I suspect people would have a different opinion about the surveillance programs if scenario two came to pass
Which is funny, because those folks will probably be the same ones who keep butchering the quote and declaring "Those who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither"
But member states do, although not funded to nearly the same level. E.g. GCHQ in the UK. It'd be surprising if someone revealed to be as trigger happy and willing to spy on allies as GCHQ does not also spy on US interests.
Except, you know, all the movies where the antagonist is actually given a backstory or character development.
Example: Safe House where eventually the audience is shown that the reason Denzel Washington's character defects and turns on the CIA is because the CIA was doing clearly immoral things.
I know this narrative is attractive because it makes 'the masses' out to be sheep with you as the one that can see through it all, but it's the height of arrogance and you happen to be wrong.
>Except, you know, all the movies where the antagonist is actually given a backstory or character development.
The problem is that it's still oversimplifying. In movies like that the government agents become the wooden bad guys who can do no right, and then the general rule is that by the end of the movie they'll either be killed or arrested and everything will be right with the world once again.
In reality the world is not so black and white. Government agents invading privacy or otherwise breaking the law can have led long and distinguished careers and have caught legitimate bad guys. They may or not be corrupt or have illegitimate motives -- no doubt there are government officials who sincerely believe that dragnet surveillance is a good thing. You can have normal people who do bad things for good reasons, and it's still wrong and has to be stopped.
The Dark Knight kind of exemplifies the problem. Even when they're trying to give a justifiable treatment to the surveillance issue, at the end of the day the hero builds and uses the unreasonably invasive tools to save the day and is never brought to account for it by anyone. Because it allows them to be mealy mouthed pandering marketing trolls: The gung ho surveillance advocates get to see their arguments justified in fiction because the surveillance is necessary for the good guys to win while the anti-surveillance crowd gets to see the machine destroyed at the end. So Hollywood gets to avoid alienating any of the viewers by taking any kind of a real stand rather than making the hero face the hard choice and then do the right thing and catch the bad guys the right way instead of breaking the rules for expediency.
> uses the unreasonably invasive tools to save the day and is never brought to account for it by anyone.
Except that no one knows about it besides he and Fox, so how can he be brought to account for it by anyone?
Except that he tells Fox to destroy it precisely because it is so powerful and invasive.
> The problem is that it's still oversimplifying.
Except that in the exact movie I gave as an example, in the end the CIA explicitly is shown to be covering up the events of the movie and it is indicated that they will continue to do immoral things.
See my original comment about the reason why you find this theory so attractive.
Because I have a counter example: A large part of the drama in shows like Law and Order on the legal side comes from the process of acquiring a warrant or prosecuting a case where it turns out that the evidence was acquired unlawfully.
How was surveillance promoted with that movie? If anything it showed the downsides of such surveillance (rogue operatives hijacking it for personal gain).
The same Bourne movies where the government is portrayed as being nefarious and overreaching and the people they 'look up' in their databases are foreign or domestic spies?
> - note the lack of front-page coverage of this story in the New York Times
1. As of right now, the story is linked to on the front page in the Opinion box since this is an opinion piece and not a news piece. If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy.
2. The story of the NSA surveillance was front page on the NY Times when it broke and for about a week or two after.
3. The Mainstream media has been reporting on this consistently, both on the Snowden drama and the actual substance of his leaks.
It's sad to see both longer-time and newer users running around with this chicken little reddit-level bullshit. The mods seem to be complicit in it so oh well. The upside is that I waste less time here.
> If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy.
All "news" is someone's, or a group of someones, opinion. There's no such thing as objective journalism.
> chicken little reddit-level bullshit
It's only been a couple of weeks since people became aware that the largest spy agency in the world is spying on pretty much anything they can get a bead on.
Perhaps cutting people some slack until 24/7 surveillance becomes the New Normal might be in order?
In my opinion, there is about a 30 minute wait on the I9, and now in sports news, in my opinion the raiders beat the muskrats last night.... etc.
There is definitely such a thing as reporting the facts, and just because there are levels of opinion doesn't mean that all outlets of journalism are somehow comparable. Fox News != Anyone with credibility.
There are very few mainstream sources that have a shred of credibility left. I see little qualitative difference between Fox and CNN, for instance. They only differ in style and delivery but their main entrees are still lies and rubberstamped government press releases.
Yes, but even the choice of facts expresses an opinion.
I could report how many murders were caused by black people,
how many robberies by mexicans,
and how much drugs by asians,
Then how many illegal immigrants entered the country this month.
Nobody is claiming all news is objective. I also think that the constant claims about 'msm' 'ignoring' important stories is annoying, incorrect and in fact distracting from the proper discussion to be had.
There is in fact a very distinct difference between opinion articles and 'proper' news articles. You see, journalism is not a claim to objective truth, but a procedure aimed at achieving a minimum level of validity where it comes to events. When you read a news article, you should (to some extent) be able to trust its contents on the merits of the journalistic method. Whereas with an opinion piece, it's not bound by this procedure. Note - nobody is arguing 'absolute objectivity' here. It's a matter of trust in a procedure.
Of course, it's fine to distrust the journalistic method, to not see it as absolute truth, but to deny or entirely dismiss the distinction is annoyingly daft.
Also, afaik, this story is still everywhere. If you want it to remain that way, start working for change - newspapers report on events, not 'the truth'. Make events happen, and it stays in the cycle.
> I also think that the constant claims about 'msm' 'ignoring' important stories is annoying, incorrect and in fact distracting from the proper discussion to be had.
The Times puts plenty of opinion on the front page. It just does so obliquely. I can't forget their headline for the IRS scandal: "I.R.S. Scandal Gives G.O.P. Issue to Seize On", as if the politicization of the government's taxing power were only regretful to the extent that it might slow down the Democratic Party's policy agenda.
You'd be surprised how many people follow politics as if it were sports. The politic tactics surrounding the story are an angle that their readers are interested in, and they have real consequences as well. I think you'd have to consider all their coverage of the story as a whole to analyze their slant (which is Democratic, of course.)
No, I don't think that would be an appropriate headline in that case. But that is somewhat of a red herring/straw man since I am sincerely doubtful that was the first headline they put up. More likely that came a day or two after the story broke. And in that case, it would be appropriate.
That's a headline from Sunday May 12th, which I believe is the first story on it in the Times. The information first came to light at a press conference by Lois Lerner on May 10th and I don't see another NY Times article sandwiched between the dates. The headline did not go unremarked in conservative media[1].
There is no doubt in my mind which team the NY Times is batting for.
The last time this story was front page news for the NYT was June 23, when they reported on Hong Kong officials letting Snowden go. On June 22 they reported on Snowden being officially charged. And prior to that on June 20, when there was a story about the "complex reality" of Silicon Valley. All of these stories are sympathetic in tone and focus to the administration. Is anyone really going to characterize them as hard-hitting investigative reporting on the substance of the allegations?
There is no lack of investigative reporting that could be done on this story (most obvious question: did Congress intend to authorize warrantless dragnet surveillance), some of which is happening elsewhere, making it hardly a paranoid leap to point out that NYT coverage has been muted and uncritical at best.
Well, how dare they not put him on the front page as often as you would like. And I suppose because your analysis stops on June 20 I'm supposed to forget any reporting that they did on him in the weeks prior.
I would personally prefer they stopped feeding the Snowden soap opera and focused instead on meaningful policy and governance questions, such as:
* did Congress intend to authorize warrantless surveillance when it passed the legislation being used by the NSA to justify its current policies and wrap them in a cloak of legality?
* which of the leaked materials w/r/t NSA surveillance can and should be considered highly-classified? What is the national security justification for keeping these materials out of public view?
* if Snowden was in a position of administrative privilege that gave him access to highly-sensitive materials without reasonable oversight, why was he employed by a private-sector company? What are the implications of this for FOIA requests, administrative costs, government transparency and checks against potential abuse? (seriously... what on earth is B.A. doing in this story?)
* do the stories released by the NSA to justify warrantless surveillance really justify the actions taken in the light of the law? i.e. is stopping a cab driver from sending 8k to Somalia really the sort of urgent and time-sensitive national security concern that should preclude the government from spending a day or two to get a targeted warrant?
Regardless of whether we agree or disagree on what a reasonable person would conclude on these questions, it seems self-evident that these questions are much more important than most of what the NYT has treated as front-page news on the subject matter.
It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem like a big threat precisely because of the extreme precautions taken to stop it.
Comparing traffic related deaths to terrorism related deaths is invalid since we don't spend the same resources or give up comparable liberties to prevent traffic related deaths.
Any analysis that doesn't seriously consider that cannot be taken seriously.
As the Boston Marathon Bombing showed us, it's very easy to create a lot of destruction and disruption and fear with very mundane items (gunpowder and pressure cookers). If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more? Either terrorism is genuinely not a serious threat or our security organizations are very good at what they do using the tools they have at their disposal.
I would be in favor of our security apparatuses 'taking a break' or scaling back spying operations for about 5 years just to see what the result would be and if the American public would be able to tolerate it. Bombs going off every week in a major shopping mall or in an airliner or in a bus (like in Israel in the 90s) would probably not be acceptable to the American people.
Alternatively, we would discover that terrorism is not a big threat and the debate about giving up liberties to prevent terrorism would be a very simple one.
If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?
Maybe because outside of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor novels, and Hollywood summer blockbusters, there aren't actually that many people who: A. are motivated to conduct a terrorist attack, and B. equipped / able / willing to do so.
It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem like a big threat precisely because of the extreme precautions taken to stop it.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable. I mean, here ya go: I have a Tiger Proof Rock I'll see you. It absolutely protects against tiger attacks. How do I know it works? Well, in 39 years, I have never once been attacked by a tiger.
Anyway, this whole line of discussion shows exactly why we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government. We don't know if what they're doing works or not, because we largely don't know what they're doing. And this is not how a free, open and democratic society is supposed to work. We should not be a nation of secret laws, secret court systems, and shadowy government agencies operating in the dark.
I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it as a possible explanation.
> The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable.
And for the same reason the claim that terrorism is not a problem due to lack of sufficiently motivated terrorists is also not falsifiable. Hence my suggestion that the government scale back their anti-terrorism [spying] operations and see what the outcome is.
> we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government
I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it as a possible explanation.
I actually meant to end that with a question mark, but I mistyped it and didn't notice until I saw your reply. I definitely don't mean to assert that as fact, but just floating it out there as a scenario worth considering.
And in fact, a few people have mentioned that the intelligence agencies had a bit of forewarning about Major Hasan (at Ft. Hood) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and somehow still missed the key point: The fact that the intelligence agencies were able to know anything at all means that what they're doing is working. In fact the only thing that had kept those agencies from taking early action was our civil liberties and the need to employ due process, and the fact that there are still too many false positives.
Can a system like PRISM reduce the false positive rate? (Probably not, for domestic terrorists-to-be). If so, is it worth it? The answer might be "No", but it might be "Yes", too.
Another point to consider: If the intelligence agencies were able to get intel on the worst case scenarios (essentially "lone worf" budding terrorists) then how effective have they been in situations that play more to their strengths (which is to say, identifying and disrupting "cells" before they can proceed with an attack).
Sen. Udall has said that PRISM is completely redundant in stopping these attacks, but that doesn't mesh well with PRISM's prominent usage in the President's Daily Briefings. If PRISM isn't actually redundant, how useful does it have to be before we think it would be worth using?
And intelligence knew about the 9/11 bombers before 9/11, and failed to stop them.
If we already have enough data to predict criminal acts, and we are still failing, how is collecting more data the solution?
[Note, Fiction:] My smoke detector did a create job ringing when my house caught fire, but the fire department trucks didn't get to my house in time to save it. Why should I buy more smoke detectors?
Imagine a smoke detector that could note the presence of conditions known to lead the fire and pre-alert the fire department to be ready to respond quickly...
You're using the lack of an attack as proof that the system works, but it's proof of nothing. If I start using a special scented soap while travelling in India, can I come back and state that the use of the soap prevents tiger attacks because I was attacked 0 times while I was there? What about a shark repellent spray? I've been to the ocean many times and never been attacked by a shark because of my special spray!
| it's very easy to create a lot of destruction and
| disruption and fear with very mundane items
| If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?
| Either terrorism is genuinely not a serious threat or our
| security organizations are very good at what they do using
| the tools they have at their disposal.
Prior to the powers given to the executive branch post-9/11, anyone could have executed the Boston Marathon Bombing, but it didn't happen. Timothy McVeigh could have launched his attack in the 1960's (provided he was alive then), but no one made such an attack. We didn't have:
| Bombs going off every week in a major shopping mall or
| in an airliner or in a bus
either.
| I would be in favor of our security apparatuses 'taking a break'
| or scaling back spying operations
You're treating this as a all-or-nothing approach. Either we have all-knowing spy agencies that can spy on anyone anywhere without any oversight, or we have spy agencies that are effectively shuttered.
Why can't the middle ground just be that we have spy agencies that obey the law, and the limitations as defined by the Constitution of the United States?
I don't think anybody is suggesting curtailing all intelligence gathering, but even if they just cut the program back to deal with extranational phone calls, you're now spying far less on your own citizens, and are indeed spying in a way less likely to generate as many false positives and that are more easy to justify an express reason for.
I'm not suggesting that's a valid fix, because I still wouldn't find that acceptable, but definitely it is preferable to what we have now.
We expend enormous resources preventing traffic deaths. From driver education to advanced safety systems costing thousands of dollars (in every vehicle sold!). There are (approx.) 15 million cars sold in the U.S. each year. Each $1000 of safety equipment is $15 billion spent mitigating traffic injuries and reducing deaths.
Maybe $15 billion looks silly in comparison to hundreds of billions, but it at least starts to look pretty comparable.
If you are going to include the safety equipment people willingly pay for in their cars, you need to include the billions of dollars people spend on guns to protect themselves as well.
I think the second paragraph of my comment makes it clear enough that I wasn't trying to make a complete comparison. The goal was more to establish that just dismissing spending on things like traffic safety is a bad argument.
But it still isn't a bad argument. First of all, the spending is off by an order of magnitude, and secondly, the amount of money spent per death is many orders of magnitude different. Spending 20x the money to save under 1/10 the lives?
It seems that no one who brings this argument up
acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem
like a big threat precisely because of the extreme
precautions taken to stop it.
Then on the one hand, the FBI and CIA would regularly, and very publicly, celebrate the apprehension, or otherwise prevention, of would-be terrorists, with some non-detailed description of the realistic terrorist attacks they were planning to undertake.
It would increase morale at those agencies, increase their standing with the public and discourage other would-be terrorists. Not much is given away if we are told the 4 people apprehended 'planned to plant a bomb at a plane in JFK airport by sneaking past security'.
Instead, we only get the occasional apprehension of delusional people with ludicrous plans.
On the other hand, if there really were many terrorists with actual plans, there would occasionally be a successful attack. Even at an unbelievable 99% prevention ratio, some would come through. An illegal immigrant loner building pipebombs in his cabin-in-the-woods could easily escape detection.
The much simpler explanation is that there simply aren't many terrorists with realistic terrorist plots. If anything, this surveillance should be defended by appeals to 'stopping the next mass shooting': that's an example of a crime that occasionally happens, while also many are prevented.
While I understand it technically I feel like the video is incredibly misleading. It's demonstrating time-to-share a link which (at some point) will contain a file. It's not demonstrating time-to-upload a file like the video suggests by comparing directly against dropbox.
Incredibly misleading? Obviously it doesn't give you 8Gbit internet, it just saves your precious time. You don't have to spend five minutes on a task. It's not like Bruce was going to download that file as soon as he got the message, and that's assuming it sent right away, which it could avoid by delaying the email by those same 5 minutes.
That's how the world works.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/30/world/us-expanding-its-eff...