Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal(slate.com)
slate.com
Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/national_counterterrorism_center_s_massive_new_surveillance_program_uncovered.html
197 comments
It's been happening in the other direction for a number of years now.
My brother was turned back when he flew to Miami with his family to take his children to Disney World.
It turned out that because he had been arrested aged 19 and failed to declare it that the border people felt that he had answered fraudulantly when challenged on "Have you ever been arrested?".
My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested he was never charged or convicted. He had attended a demonstration in the North of England and when a few people caused trouble the police had just arrested everyone only to release the vast majority some hours later.
He'd forgotten about this because nothing had ever actually come of it and it was over 20 years ago, yet there he was being confronted by it at a US border.
Clearly the UK authorities already share data with the USA on its citizens, even those never charged or convicted.
That it may happen more does not surprise me the least. The only part that surprises me is that the data flow might go the other way too.
My brother was turned back when he flew to Miami with his family to take his children to Disney World.
It turned out that because he had been arrested aged 19 and failed to declare it that the border people felt that he had answered fraudulantly when challenged on "Have you ever been arrested?".
My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested he was never charged or convicted. He had attended a demonstration in the North of England and when a few people caused trouble the police had just arrested everyone only to release the vast majority some hours later.
He'd forgotten about this because nothing had ever actually come of it and it was over 20 years ago, yet there he was being confronted by it at a US border.
Clearly the UK authorities already share data with the USA on its citizens, even those never charged or convicted.
That it may happen more does not surprise me the least. The only part that surprises me is that the data flow might go the other way too.
It sucks that this is how it works, but that is what the survey is for. They already know all the answers, they just want to see how you respond.
For eg. they already know the date, your flight number, your passport number, your history - it is all about getting you in a situation where you answer questions and can be analyzed.
The Isrealis are really good at it. They realized that security through innspecting every person and every square centimeter of luggage is too expensive and isn't as effective.
A lot of their security at airports depends on picking out people and just asking them a random question or two ('why are you here') and seeing the response. If you have ever been asked the time, or the directions to the mens room, or about a flight from a tourist looking person at an Israel airport, chances are that they may have been an agent. There is a front-line of plain clothed who look around on the ground and pass on potential targets to uniformed officers.
There was a paper I remember reading sub-titled "Can you really catch terrorist by asking them if they are terrorists" and the conclusion was that yes, you can - and you do - and not because you know they will answer 'no', but by how they answer and their body language, among other factors (much of which modern governments keep secret).
There was sometime in how your brother answered that steered them towards not allowing him in. There are a lot of people who also make similar mistakes on immigration forms and are still let in.
For eg. they already know the date, your flight number, your passport number, your history - it is all about getting you in a situation where you answer questions and can be analyzed.
The Isrealis are really good at it. They realized that security through innspecting every person and every square centimeter of luggage is too expensive and isn't as effective.
A lot of their security at airports depends on picking out people and just asking them a random question or two ('why are you here') and seeing the response. If you have ever been asked the time, or the directions to the mens room, or about a flight from a tourist looking person at an Israel airport, chances are that they may have been an agent. There is a front-line of plain clothed who look around on the ground and pass on potential targets to uniformed officers.
There was a paper I remember reading sub-titled "Can you really catch terrorist by asking them if they are terrorists" and the conclusion was that yes, you can - and you do - and not because you know they will answer 'no', but by how they answer and their body language, among other factors (much of which modern governments keep secret).
There was sometime in how your brother answered that steered them towards not allowing him in. There are a lot of people who also make similar mistakes on immigration forms and are still let in.
They already know all the answers
That's nonsense. Ever commit "moral turpitude"? You'd need to be a historian of the law to know what they're on about, and the peons behind the desks certainly don't know all the answers.
They also didn't know how to interpret my H-1B after my division was purchased by another company, even at the supervisor level, though I had a thick binder from the company lawyers to explain it all - I didn't use it in the end, I did the visa waiver instead.
I'd maintain that almost all people would be turned back by CBP if their lives were inspected closely enough and the laws and questions interpreted literally enough. It's a game; you need to know which questions they think they have the answer to, and answer as expected for them; and admit no wrongdoing elsewhere. And you may still end up with a jobsworth behind the counter - though my experience of most CBP personnel is that they are reasonably cheerful and pleasant.
That's nonsense. Ever commit "moral turpitude"? You'd need to be a historian of the law to know what they're on about, and the peons behind the desks certainly don't know all the answers.
They also didn't know how to interpret my H-1B after my division was purchased by another company, even at the supervisor level, though I had a thick binder from the company lawyers to explain it all - I didn't use it in the end, I did the visa waiver instead.
I'd maintain that almost all people would be turned back by CBP if their lives were inspected closely enough and the laws and questions interpreted literally enough. It's a game; you need to know which questions they think they have the answer to, and answer as expected for them; and admit no wrongdoing elsewhere. And you may still end up with a jobsworth behind the counter - though my experience of most CBP personnel is that they are reasonably cheerful and pleasant.
I'm talking about customs and immigration clearance, not visa applications. All flights into the USA are now pre-screened with airlines forwarding all passenger info prior to departure. They literally know all the answers and have no real need for the cards you fill out.
edit: I don't have the link with me atm, but there was a Wired (I believe) story about the center that is responsible for collecting all the data in pre-screening and the technical challenge. As inputs they have airline data and data exchange agreements with governments that are part of the visa waiver program, amongst others
edit: I don't have the link with me atm, but there was a Wired (I believe) story about the center that is responsible for collecting all the data in pre-screening and the technical challenge. As inputs they have airline data and data exchange agreements with governments that are part of the visa waiver program, amongst others
I've entered the US 15 times in the past 5 years; I've been through the transition from filling out forms in the arrivals hall, to getting landing cards with your boarding pass, to ESTA pre-authorization. I've gone through with visas and without, I've gone through the US embassy process etc.; I've even sometimes gone through CBP before I left Europe, in Shannon.
They still ask stupid questions, whether it's on a website or on paper.
They still ask stupid questions, whether it's on a website or on paper.
They're not asking what thoughtcrimes/sins you've committed, they're asking you directly if you've ever been arrested, which they ~do~ know the circumstances of.
"Are you seeking entry to engage in [...] immoral activities"? - what on earth are "immoral activities", and what business is it of the state? Surely they should be asking about illegal activities?
"Are you a drug abuser or addict"? - I think almost every adult has abused alcohol at some point.
Etc.
"Are you a drug abuser or addict"? - I think almost every adult has abused alcohol at some point.
Etc.
It works so well for us because nobody, and I literally mean no other state in the world speaks THE LANGUAGE.
When you grow up here you get used to being around all kinds that you previously never fully visualized as actual, walking-talking flesh-and-blood people. There's the Russian-speaking section to which I belong, the local Palestinians, the Ethiopian section, quite a lot of the Moroccan people, as well as many small _Iraqi / Druzi / some part of Europe that speaks not-quite-Russian_ escapees. They all have their quirky chains of characteristic behaviours and you sort of learn to place people in those groups pretty fast.
And yes, all of them have children that've grown up here, and fuck all knows what group any of them belong to (unless they look and act like their parents).
Israel is a sort of an ISLAND, and as anyone who visited Japan will tell you islanders are WEIRD. And sensitive to foreigners.
When you grow up here you get used to being around all kinds that you previously never fully visualized as actual, walking-talking flesh-and-blood people. There's the Russian-speaking section to which I belong, the local Palestinians, the Ethiopian section, quite a lot of the Moroccan people, as well as many small _Iraqi / Druzi / some part of Europe that speaks not-quite-Russian_ escapees. They all have their quirky chains of characteristic behaviours and you sort of learn to place people in those groups pretty fast.
And yes, all of them have children that've grown up here, and fuck all knows what group any of them belong to (unless they look and act like their parents).
Israel is a sort of an ISLAND, and as anyone who visited Japan will tell you islanders are WEIRD. And sensitive to foreigners.
Interesting, do Arabs pretend to be Jews to pass the security?
That's a strange question. How do you "pretend" something when the security personnel have your passport information, and for citizens, a lot more?
E.g. by buying a fake russian passport for $200, stating your nationality is Jewish.
It would be a career limiting move - to put it mildly - to try to pass Israeli immigration with a fake $200 passport that states that you are Jewish when you're not.
Arab Jews certainly don't.
Article is here if anyone is interested (saves you a google) -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1336571/Terr...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1336571/Terr...
> There was sometime in how your brother answered that steered them towards not allowing him in.
Are you a mind reader?
If not how do you know that?
All I see is an overzealous border guard refusing a family to enter a country to spend their money on a holiday.
Lose-Lose.
And dumb to boot.
Are you a mind reader?
If not how do you know that?
All I see is an overzealous border guard refusing a family to enter a country to spend their money on a holiday.
Lose-Lose.
And dumb to boot.
On the other hand, you don't want to be the guy who let in a person who then goes on to commit an act of terrorism(or any crime, really). With that in mind, I can understand the guard airing on the side of caution, even if it is a bit ridiculous in this case.
There's a simple cure for that: Isolationism. Simply close your borders and call it a day.
I suspect it only goes the other way mainly in such minor, insignificant cases to build up the stats to satisfy the bilateral agreements, which go back for a long time.
This is what Churchill meant by "special relationship" and the agreement which Tony Benn oversaw when he was in office. The price set for the Polaris was Her Majesty's subjects' data. All of it.
My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested he was never charged or convicted
-> http://craphound.com/littlebrother/
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/21783-the-government-is-profili...
This is what Churchill meant by "special relationship" and the agreement which Tony Benn oversaw when he was in office. The price set for the Polaris was Her Majesty's subjects' data. All of it.
My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested he was never charged or convicted
-> http://craphound.com/littlebrother/
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/21783-the-government-is-profili...
Tony Blair I'd say. Not Tony Benn's sort of thing at all!
Like most politicians, Tony Benn changed with time. Although in the unlikely way: the other way around.
Tony Blair wasn't around Nassau (Trident, the successor to Polaris, was signed off by Thatcher, and it also precedes Blair).
youtu.be/rokTiJfL4WY
Tony Blair wasn't around Nassau (Trident, the successor to Polaris, was signed off by Thatcher, and it also precedes Blair).
youtu.be/rokTiJfL4WY
Sorry, I was about as wrong as is possible!
no problem, History isn't simple (for many reasons)
Certainly, the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory involves, for Europeans, multiple risks. Many of them are similar to the risks and dangers faced by the citizens of any of the countries possessing an atomic arsenal. The usefulness and desirability of which may be subject to debate. Including whether the risks are worth to be taken in the service of a politico-military strategy of national defence (or, conversely, must be rejected in view of universal peace and total disarmament). It is up to each and everyone to take a stance according to their beliefs, their world views, their perception and ranking of hazards, et cetera. For us here, all this is irrelevant. Because in this case, the question does not even arise. Thanks to another dimension of NATO nuclear "sharing", which is highly reflective of transatlantic relations. Whereas in the nuclear power countries the debate can focus on the articulation of the nuclear force with an overall strategy (importance attributed, or not, to the concept of deterrence), here, to the contrary, the (U.S.) nuclear force, and the myth of the protective umbrella that accompanies it, is a pretext used to justify the lack of (European) strategy. As well as providing a comfortable smokescreen that allows the governments of the old continent to stay, ultimately, flawlessly aligned on the United States – even if this means to become accomplices of a nuclear strategy in the development and implementation of which they cannot even dream of having a little bit of say. Alas, they already feel happy when they are, more or less correctly and more or less timely, informed on the subject.
Certainly, the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory involves, for Europeans, multiple risks. Many of them are similar to the risks and dangers faced by the citizens of any of the countries possessing an atomic arsenal. The usefulness and desirability of which may be subject to debate. Including whether the risks are worth to be taken in the service of a politico-military strategy of national defence (or, conversely, must be rejected in view of universal peace and total disarmament). It is up to each and everyone to take a stance according to their beliefs, their world views, their perception and ranking of hazards, et cetera. For us here, all this is irrelevant. Because in this case, the question does not even arise. Thanks to another dimension of NATO nuclear "sharing", which is highly reflective of transatlantic relations. Whereas in the nuclear power countries the debate can focus on the articulation of the nuclear force with an overall strategy (importance attributed, or not, to the concept of deterrence), here, to the contrary, the (U.S.) nuclear force, and the myth of the protective umbrella that accompanies it, is a pretext used to justify the lack of (European) strategy. As well as providing a comfortable smokescreen that allows the governments of the old continent to stay, ultimately, flawlessly aligned on the United States – even if this means to become accomplices of a nuclear strategy in the development and implementation of which they cannot even dream of having a little bit of say. Alas, they already feel happy when they are, more or less correctly and more or less timely, informed on the subject.
It turned out that because he had been arrested aged 19 and failed to declare it that the border people felt that he had answered fraudulantly when challenged on "Have you ever been arrested?".
What interpretation should they have taken from it?
What interpretation should they have taken from it?
The UK has a law called the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, within that is the notion of classes of criminal record being spent.
I don't know the specifics, but you always have to declare the equivalent of felonies, but for misdemeanours you can lawfully not declare them after some period of time in which your debt is considered repaid and the record spent.
The whole of the EU has such laws. I think most people within the EU would regard this as just a part of living in the civilised west.
And the most simple part of that is that if you arrested and never charged, or even charged but acquitted during trial, or even arrested and cautioned... then you never need to declare it. You can quite literally forget about it after some relatively short period of time, I think it's a year or 3.
Going back to my brother. Never charged, never cautioned, never went to trial, released without any impact whatsoever... just a bad day, worth forgetting and after 20 years definitely forgotten.
I think almost everyone I know would've said no to the question quite honestly believing that it's a perfectly reasonable and honest answer.
I don't know the specifics, but you always have to declare the equivalent of felonies, but for misdemeanours you can lawfully not declare them after some period of time in which your debt is considered repaid and the record spent.
The whole of the EU has such laws. I think most people within the EU would regard this as just a part of living in the civilised west.
And the most simple part of that is that if you arrested and never charged, or even charged but acquitted during trial, or even arrested and cautioned... then you never need to declare it. You can quite literally forget about it after some relatively short period of time, I think it's a year or 3.
Going back to my brother. Never charged, never cautioned, never went to trial, released without any impact whatsoever... just a bad day, worth forgetting and after 20 years definitely forgotten.
I think almost everyone I know would've said no to the question quite honestly believing that it's a perfectly reasonable and honest answer.
To reply to myself, the thing that I took away from his telling of this experience and watching his wife almost cry when they got to the part about boarding the plane back with the children... it's this:
Every thing that you ever do is recorded somewhere. Every person has a file whether they think they do or not. This file will only ever be used against you.
And Europe remembers such a thing... it was only 1990 that the Stasi was dissolved. Yet here we are constructing an even more powerful and permanent version of "a file on everyone".
My brother's demonstration was a worker's one, not political. But don't you see that if attending a political rally risks arrest and permanent repercussions, even if you were innocent of everything save for having an opinion... then are we not already at the point in which to hold an alternate political view is to risk inserting something into your file (it exists anyway) which could permanently affect your life.
Who knows what the future holds, but for my brother it's unlikely to involve working for a company that ever expects travel to the USA. Thus, one is forced to modify their behaviour to avoid being penalised by the current system.
Isn't that what the effect of the Stasi was?
I mean, being European, I find it hard to see how history isn't repeating itself on an ever grander scale now that there are tools that allow it to do so.
Every thing that you ever do is recorded somewhere. Every person has a file whether they think they do or not. This file will only ever be used against you.
And Europe remembers such a thing... it was only 1990 that the Stasi was dissolved. Yet here we are constructing an even more powerful and permanent version of "a file on everyone".
My brother's demonstration was a worker's one, not political. But don't you see that if attending a political rally risks arrest and permanent repercussions, even if you were innocent of everything save for having an opinion... then are we not already at the point in which to hold an alternate political view is to risk inserting something into your file (it exists anyway) which could permanently affect your life.
Who knows what the future holds, but for my brother it's unlikely to involve working for a company that ever expects travel to the USA. Thus, one is forced to modify their behaviour to avoid being penalised by the current system.
Isn't that what the effect of the Stasi was?
I mean, being European, I find it hard to see how history isn't repeating itself on an ever grander scale now that there are tools that allow it to do so.
I think about this often too. I think the answer ultimately lies somewhere in the realm of "history is cyclical." A society's collective memory seems to fade after a few hundred years.
America today is an excellent example of that. The founders came from a time of tyranny and oppression, and worked hard to try to prevent that in their new country. And yet a lot of how our government today works is, I imagine, very much contrary to what the founding fathers envisioned.
You can be detained for seemingly no reason by police almost anywhere (see the ACLU's "constitution-free zone"), prisons and courts have become a means of revenge, not justice or rehabilitation, the president is increasingly seen as a king-like figure ("Something's wrong with the country? Must be the president's fault. What's he going to do to fix it?"), and--without much exaggeration--we're a small jump away from a total surveillance state, as this article emphasizes. In many ways we're already there, and that's just the stuff we know about.
In Europe, as you mentioned, the Stasi were around until just recently. There are still grandparents alive who remember what the continent went through during WW2. (My own is one of them.) European society's memory is still fresh, and they won't repeat mistakes they remember. I think that's why there are so many privacy-protecting laws enshrined in the EU.
We should pay attention to how countries recently emerging from oppression or war, like Romania, Serbia, or Bosnia, handle the internet. I'll bet they'll be the bastions of internet freedom in the coming decades.
But what of the US? Maybe we're trapped in cyclical history. Maybe in 50 years things will be bad enough for people to get up in arms, and we'll start over just like we did a few hundred years ago. Who knows.
America today is an excellent example of that. The founders came from a time of tyranny and oppression, and worked hard to try to prevent that in their new country. And yet a lot of how our government today works is, I imagine, very much contrary to what the founding fathers envisioned.
You can be detained for seemingly no reason by police almost anywhere (see the ACLU's "constitution-free zone"), prisons and courts have become a means of revenge, not justice or rehabilitation, the president is increasingly seen as a king-like figure ("Something's wrong with the country? Must be the president's fault. What's he going to do to fix it?"), and--without much exaggeration--we're a small jump away from a total surveillance state, as this article emphasizes. In many ways we're already there, and that's just the stuff we know about.
In Europe, as you mentioned, the Stasi were around until just recently. There are still grandparents alive who remember what the continent went through during WW2. (My own is one of them.) European society's memory is still fresh, and they won't repeat mistakes they remember. I think that's why there are so many privacy-protecting laws enshrined in the EU.
We should pay attention to how countries recently emerging from oppression or war, like Romania, Serbia, or Bosnia, handle the internet. I'll bet they'll be the bastions of internet freedom in the coming decades.
But what of the US? Maybe we're trapped in cyclical history. Maybe in 50 years things will be bad enough for people to get up in arms, and we'll start over just like we did a few hundred years ago. Who knows.
A society's collective memory seems to fade after a few hundred years.
A few hundred years? Try a few decades.
In the 1940s, the USA fought totalitarianism. Then we had a major fight against Communism. In both struggles, a major part of our self image is that we, unlike the totalitarian states we struggled against, were a free country. If, in a movie in the 70s, you saw the German officer saying, "Papers, please", that was a sure sign that they were the enemy - not living in a free state.
Today we live in a state that would be instantly recognizable as a totalitarian state. Just like past totalitarian states, the excuse is our security. Do you think that I'm exaggerating? 20 years ago it was common to not need an ID to board a plane, with it being reasonably common that the person whose name was on the ticket was not the person holding the ticket. (That would generally be because someone had bought someone else's return ticket because that was cheaper than buying a one-way ticket.) Today you not only need ID, you go through a thorough search and most take it for granted that we might go through a virtual strip search to get onto the plane.
Can I make this worse? Actually, I can. Nobody will show you the law requiring ID to fly. There was actually a lawsuit filed about this. John Gilmore lost, and STILL didn't get to see the law. (See http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-03-... for random verification.)
A few hundred years? Try a few decades.
In the 1940s, the USA fought totalitarianism. Then we had a major fight against Communism. In both struggles, a major part of our self image is that we, unlike the totalitarian states we struggled against, were a free country. If, in a movie in the 70s, you saw the German officer saying, "Papers, please", that was a sure sign that they were the enemy - not living in a free state.
Today we live in a state that would be instantly recognizable as a totalitarian state. Just like past totalitarian states, the excuse is our security. Do you think that I'm exaggerating? 20 years ago it was common to not need an ID to board a plane, with it being reasonably common that the person whose name was on the ticket was not the person holding the ticket. (That would generally be because someone had bought someone else's return ticket because that was cheaper than buying a one-way ticket.) Today you not only need ID, you go through a thorough search and most take it for granted that we might go through a virtual strip search to get onto the plane.
Can I make this worse? Actually, I can. Nobody will show you the law requiring ID to fly. There was actually a lawsuit filed about this. John Gilmore lost, and STILL didn't get to see the law. (See http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-03-... for random verification.)
A few decades is spot on. The Bush era lies/media complicity to march us into Iraq were eerily reminiscent of the Gulf of Tonkin lie LBJ used to get us into Vietnam. It was so obvious to me. One of the things that spooked me out is that anyone who challenged the prevailing push to war was marked "unpatriotic" and "unamerican". Shut up and support our troops. I thought such sentiment could never take root in a country that had even the slightest clue about 20th century totalitarian history, particularly with regard to 1930s Europe.
I think part of the problem is we have a perverted sense of "Godwin's law", such that making allusions to the past is considered "losing the conversation". The past it seems is no longer something that we are supposed to learn from, and the notion that there may be parallels between the past and the present is now termed 'offensive'.
In a lesser forum, you would likely be dismissed out of hand for mentioning the Stasi, even though your reasons for mentioning it are very sound. How can we hope to avoid the past if we refuse to talk about it?
In a lesser forum, you would likely be dismissed out of hand for mentioning the Stasi, even though your reasons for mentioning it are very sound. How can we hope to avoid the past if we refuse to talk about it?
obviously some needed the files the instant they were up for grabs:
CIA agents acquired the records after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall
only to return them, when they became only a piece of history (I wonder about any copies)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/703303.stm
CIA agents acquired the records after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall
only to return them, when they became only a piece of history (I wonder about any copies)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/703303.stm
This. I think this form of non-judicial "punishment" and its effects in terms of people being afraid and hence modifying their behavior can be a form of censorship and political repression that is rarely discussed.
This also has a bearing on discussions whenever someone talks about freedom of expression.
This also has a bearing on discussions whenever someone talks about freedom of expression.
> The whole of the EU has such laws. I think most people within the EU would regard this as just a part of living in the civilised west.
The US is not all that different. You'd get a court order for the record to be expunged. Although each state has its own laws
The US is not all that different. You'd get a court order for the record to be expunged. Although each state has its own laws
In many (most? all?) states here you can have misdemeanors expunged from your record after a couple of years without incident as well.
For example, that since Clinton also answered fraudulently when challenged, he shouldn't be allowed to fly either. Nixon got caught too -- I presume he also did fly afterwards. But obviously some are more equal; 1984 Was Not Supposed To Be An Instruction Manual.
He was turned back because he lied (unknowingly) when the asked him if he'd been arrested.
I have to wonder if they actually expect people to be honest about that. You paid a lot for that plane ticket, and these people can turn you away for what amounts to any arbitrary reason. Would you really want to tell them about how "undesirable" you are?
Apparently they do, if you are turned away for not being honest.
You're phrasing this as if he was dishonest, but he may have been merely forgetful. Ask me what I did 20 years ago and I probably wouldn't know either. Was that time I got taken into a police station for driving a French car in the Netherlands an arrest or not? I really don't know and I think if I judged that I'd never been arrested (not charged, nothing heard from since) that I would be on the right side of that line.
So this could easily happen to me. Or, it could happen to me if I still came to the US, which I don't.
So this could easily happen to me. Or, it could happen to me if I still came to the US, which I don't.
> What interpretation should they have taken from it?
It wasn't any of their business in the first place, but since they were nosing around where they shouldn't my money would be on 'forgetful'.
It wasn't any of their business in the first place, but since they were nosing around where they shouldn't my money would be on 'forgetful'.
In the USA, after 7 years, you can have past offenses removed from your record. In fact, you can have all public records removed. I know of a case where a person successfully petitioned a local newspaper to go back and remove the mention of her arrest from their web-accessible archive.
Police records are routinely exchanged between various countries. This is an entirely different matter.
Well, it's hard for me to feel much sympathy for him. They didn't ask if he was convicted, right? They asked if he'd been arrested. And he lied.
If I want to fly to Latin America from Europe, I'd rather make the stop for the second plane in Europe, and then go straight to Latin America, than make the stop in US. I just don't want to deal with TSA in any way, especially after stories that now they even have data on what you tweeted and stuff like that, and they can take you aside or even arrest you for a while because of that.
Will TSA consider me "suspicious" just because I tweeted articles such as this one? Or maybe some Wikileaks-related articles or some OWS articles? That is ridiculous, and I don't even want to risk that by flying through the country, let alone want to live there (which is something I really wanted to do before). The world's view on America is changing fast and the view is increasingly more negative.
The world wants America to be its role model, something to aspire to, and a place where they want to live in. It doesn't want to see an America as the bully of the world, or a bully even of its own citizens. So yes, I do think this will impact tourism, cloud businesses, as well as other type of businesses, if they keep going down this road of increasing surveillance and more government abuses, not only against Americans, but against foreigners, too.
Will TSA consider me "suspicious" just because I tweeted articles such as this one? Or maybe some Wikileaks-related articles or some OWS articles? That is ridiculous, and I don't even want to risk that by flying through the country, let alone want to live there (which is something I really wanted to do before). The world's view on America is changing fast and the view is increasingly more negative.
The world wants America to be its role model, something to aspire to, and a place where they want to live in. It doesn't want to see an America as the bully of the world, or a bully even of its own citizens. So yes, I do think this will impact tourism, cloud businesses, as well as other type of businesses, if they keep going down this road of increasing surveillance and more government abuses, not only against Americans, but against foreigners, too.
I really wish people would stop mixing up TSA and USCBP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protect...)
Perhaps the worry should be that people just shorten all that to "USA", and give up. I know I would never travel there, and I don't really care which acronym is out to wreck my life.
> Perhaps the worry should be that people just shorten all that to "USA", and give up.
I've done exactly that.
Too bad, there are a lot of really nice people there that I consider close friends.
I've done exactly that.
Too bad, there are a lot of really nice people there that I consider close friends.
You seem to have been around (here at least) for a while... is there a story here, or are you just cutting off your nose to spite your face?
EDIT: Removed leading "Honestly?". Am serious if an experience led to this.
EDIT: Removed leading "Honestly?". Am serious if an experience led to this.
I've lived on the US/Canadian border for several years and I've seen enough of US immigration to last me a lifetime.
The specific incident that made me decide to stop visiting the US took place at an airport but that merely made the bucket overflow, it was already pretty full.
The specific incident that made me decide to stop visiting the US took place at an airport but that merely made the bucket overflow, it was already pretty full.
Now I am curious.
Care to go into detail on either the specific case that made "your bucket overflow" or the overall situation that maddens you so much?
I haven't been to the US for over a decade now and only pick up things on the news here and there...
> Now I am curious. Care to go into detail on either the specific case that made "your bucket overflow" or the overall situation that maddens you so much?
No.
> I haven't been to the US for over a decade now and only pick up things on the news here and there...
My last visit to the states was in 2005, so we're getting to that decade. I used to go at least once every year, sometimes more often. But until the madness is brought under control (probably not within my lifetime) it's not going to happen again. Too bad, really.
No.
> I haven't been to the US for over a decade now and only pick up things on the news here and there...
My last visit to the states was in 2005, so we're getting to that decade. I used to go at least once every year, sometimes more often. But until the madness is brought under control (probably not within my lifetime) it's not going to happen again. Too bad, really.
It's not hard to understand the confusion. One agency takes a nude photo of you and punishes you for asserting your rights, the other demands that you let them explore your laptop and cites decades of precedent in ignoring civil rights, and both take pride in examining personal luggage and publicly embarrassing people.
OTOH they've been pretty successful at preventing attacks on America since 9/11.
They've also been effective at preventing UFO invasions.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that the absence of 9/11-like attacks has anything to do with the TSA?
None.
By their nature, measures like this annoy people.
If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?
As a Brit, I have a huge problem with all this. In the old days of US funded IRA attacks against amongst other things, our government, we never let the terrorists win. We didn't budge our principles or give up core freedoms. Sure our side did some very iffy things to combat the terror, but it was still illegal. We didn't try to legitimise it by tearing up principles that applied to normal people. But once 9/11 happened and the US gave US freedoms up, we and other nation states were heavily leaned on to also give up those freedoms and principles. Sadly, we capitulated to US pressure.
So, no my opinion never budged before, during or after 9/11. In fact, it hardened. But, I'm afraid the terrorism worked. We lost freedoms, rights and principles all due to the 9/11 attacks and US reaction to it. Terror won. Bin Laden won. We became more like them.
So, no my opinion never budged before, during or after 9/11. In fact, it hardened. But, I'm afraid the terrorism worked. We lost freedoms, rights and principles all due to the 9/11 attacks and US reaction to it. Terror won. Bin Laden won. We became more like them.
Is indefinite detention without trial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment) of members of a particular 'native' ethnic group in your country a sign of a free society?
This happened during the 1970's in Northern ireland
Just last week david cameron had to apologise for the UK security forces' actions in passing information to terrorist groups to enable the murder of, amongst others, a lawyer. He also had to apologise for cases where the security forces had prior knowledge of murder and did nothing about it and for the wilful destruction of evidence by the police and the army. Is that the 'iffy' stuff that you refer to?
Edit: link to youtube of apology http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcS_FswjqrM
Just last week david cameron had to apologise for the UK security forces' actions in passing information to terrorist groups to enable the murder of, amongst others, a lawyer. He also had to apologise for cases where the security forces had prior knowledge of murder and did nothing about it and for the wilful destruction of evidence by the police and the army. Is that the 'iffy' stuff that you refer to?
Edit: link to youtube of apology http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcS_FswjqrM
I disagree, the US haven't faced a real threat since 2001. I agree with you that the UK cannot have a position of moral superiority. Perhaps the UK has learned the error of their ways, and in recent times has sought to mend them. A apology more than twenty years after the incident isn't much solace though.
This article about an incident in Northern Ireland may be interesting to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Showband_killings
This article about an incident in Northern Ireland may be interesting to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Showband_killings
>In the old days of US funded IRA attacks against amongst other things, our government, we never let the terrorists win.
Are you implying our government funded the IRA? Also, it's pretty rich being criticized by a Brit for the surveillance state. You guys have a camera system that would have made Orwell proud.
Are you implying our government funded the IRA? Also, it's pretty rich being criticized by a Brit for the surveillance state. You guys have a camera system that would have made Orwell proud.
9/11 was an inside job, designed (along other things) to take away personal freedoms.
Please leave.
Why?
Simply stating what you believe is frowned upon here, you are supposed to include your reasons.
The basic assumption that we all hold about our opinions is that everyone else would believe in them too if they knew the facts we did, so it is best to accompany all statements of opinion with a logical argument for their validity.
The basic assumption that we all hold about our opinions is that everyone else would believe in them too if they knew the facts we did, so it is best to accompany all statements of opinion with a logical argument for their validity.
Rules are made to broken (especially on a site called Hacker News) ;-) Plus I don't think jacquesm's "Please leave" has anything to do with the rules.
Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite:
1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account for.
2. On 9/11 a part of the Pentagon, including the budget analysis department rooms, was destroyed. Most of the victims were accountants.
3. Same day WTC building 7 (not mentioned in 9/11 commission report, not investigated by any other authority) was destroyed in NY. Pentagon's primary financial information backup site was inside.
One out of the many, many "coincidences" on 9/11 ...
Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite:
1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account for.
2. On 9/11 a part of the Pentagon, including the budget analysis department rooms, was destroyed. Most of the victims were accountants.
3. Same day WTC building 7 (not mentioned in 9/11 commission report, not investigated by any other authority) was destroyed in NY. Pentagon's primary financial information backup site was inside.
One out of the many, many "coincidences" on 9/11 ...
Re: Item 1 and Item 2
Are you claiming that the government 'whipped up' the terrorist attack in under 24 hours?
Are you claiming that the government 'whipped up' the terrorist attack in under 24 hours?
"By their nature, measures like this annoy people."
You know what annoys me? How many tax dollars are spent on a full body scanner, when the airport bar right on the other side is full of breakable glass. Nevermind the tests that showed that a knife, gun, or even high explosive could be snuck through the checkpoint; a determined attacker could just make their weapons after passing through security. This is not to mention the large, densely-packed crowd of people waiting to go through the checkpoint, a prime target for terrorists.
"If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?"
People were talking about terrorists making their weapons after passing through airport security in 2001. People were talking about the crowd of people waiting to pass through security being a target. People were talking about the corruption, the friendly contracts that pour tax money into well-connected companies' coffers, in 2001.
You know what annoys me? How many tax dollars are spent on a full body scanner, when the airport bar right on the other side is full of breakable glass. Nevermind the tests that showed that a knife, gun, or even high explosive could be snuck through the checkpoint; a determined attacker could just make their weapons after passing through security. This is not to mention the large, densely-packed crowd of people waiting to go through the checkpoint, a prime target for terrorists.
"If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?"
People were talking about terrorists making their weapons after passing through airport security in 2001. People were talking about the crowd of people waiting to pass through security being a target. People were talking about the corruption, the friendly contracts that pour tax money into well-connected companies' coffers, in 2001.
When was the last time a locked cabin door annoyed you?
There is nothing inherent about security measures that cause annoyance. Security theater measures on the other hand...
There is nothing inherent about security measures that cause annoyance. Security theater measures on the other hand...
Well, they've been very good at preventing attacks before 9/11, too.
And they likely could have prevented 9/11 as well, but then they wouldn't have been able to increase the state's power to "fix" things. There wasn't a lack of intelligence warning of 9/11: there was a lack of will to deal with the intelligence.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete...
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete...
You're thinking of the FBI and CIA... unless you were under the impression that nail clippers and bottles of water were actually dangerous?
There has not been a major attack on US soil since 9/11. This may or may not be because of the level of security apparent in airports. You can't tell.
My company will sponsor $5,000 for the best idea submission for mitigation techniques against these types of systems. Any suggestion on the best service to use host this / receive submissions?
We will:
1) Open source all submitted ideas.
2) Let the community choose the top 5 and we will hold an internal review process for the top spot.
3) Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submission in details with some of the top information security experts in the world.
4) Work to get press around the winning idea.
5) If we get north of 50 submissions we will help seed (with an additional $5,000) an IndieGoGo campaign to see the idea developed.
Email me (adam | socialfortress.com) or respond here to discuss.
We will:
1) Open source all submitted ideas.
2) Let the community choose the top 5 and we will hold an internal review process for the top spot.
3) Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submission in details with some of the top information security experts in the world.
4) Work to get press around the winning idea.
5) If we get north of 50 submissions we will help seed (with an additional $5,000) an IndieGoGo campaign to see the idea developed.
Email me (adam | socialfortress.com) or respond here to discuss.
> Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submission in details with some of the top information security experts in the world.
That may be a bit prohibitive, given that they will still have to use air travel, possibly to and at least within the USA. I figure the people that come up with a mitigation against a system like this would be very smart to stay the hell away from claiming credit for it.
And the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here, I don't think they'll be on your discussion panel.
That may be a bit prohibitive, given that they will still have to use air travel, possibly to and at least within the USA. I figure the people that come up with a mitigation against a system like this would be very smart to stay the hell away from claiming credit for it.
And the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here, I don't think they'll be on your discussion panel.
And the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here
I think that would be accurate if it read:
And some of the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here
There are some pretty goddamned smart people in the cypherpunk / hacker community, who would (and do) find this kind of surveillance crap abhorrent and who will work to resist it. I certainly would not say that all of the best people are on "the other side". Maybe time will prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
I think that would be accurate if it read:
And some of the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here
There are some pretty goddamned smart people in the cypherpunk / hacker community, who would (and do) find this kind of surveillance crap abhorrent and who will work to resist it. I certainly would not say that all of the best people are on "the other side". Maybe time will prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
I'm with you on the 'some', I should have been more careful with the wording there.
Yes, there are indeed lots of smart people who find this crap abhorrent and who will work to resist it. But I don't think they're the majority. Not even close. Individuals such as Phil Zimmerman are making a real difference.
But money is a powerful motivator. Lots of people will do very stupid things when offered enough money. Governments print money. Nationalism is another such powerful motivator. Press the combined buttons of nationalism and piles of cash and a lot of people will start seeing things your way.
The NSA is currently the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States, and that probably makes them the largest employer of mathematicians planet wide.
There are lots of counterparts of the NSA in other countries. And those mathematicians are not too upset about not being able to publish their results, so I'm thinking there is something to counterbalance that, such as abundant financial compensation.
For now this is an unbalanced situation.
Yes, there are indeed lots of smart people who find this crap abhorrent and who will work to resist it. But I don't think they're the majority. Not even close. Individuals such as Phil Zimmerman are making a real difference.
But money is a powerful motivator. Lots of people will do very stupid things when offered enough money. Governments print money. Nationalism is another such powerful motivator. Press the combined buttons of nationalism and piles of cash and a lot of people will start seeing things your way.
The NSA is currently the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States, and that probably makes them the largest employer of mathematicians planet wide.
There are lots of counterparts of the NSA in other countries. And those mathematicians are not too upset about not being able to publish their results, so I'm thinking there is something to counterbalance that, such as abundant financial compensation.
For now this is an unbalanced situation.
For now this is an unbalanced situation.
Agreed. I was just trying to point out that there are at least a few talented folks on "our side".
Agreed. I was just trying to point out that there are at least a few talented folks on "our side".
Hi there,
That is optional for the winner(s) :)
However, our company actually does have some of the foremost information security experts as investors (Founders / CTOs / CEOs of PGP Corp, Internet Security Systems, CipherTrust, PureWire, NitroSecurity among others).
We also work closely with some of the leading researchers at the leading engineering universities in the area of cyber security.
Always open to suggestion regarding the structure of the overall process for an event such as this!
Thank you.
That is optional for the winner(s) :)
However, our company actually does have some of the foremost information security experts as investors (Founders / CTOs / CEOs of PGP Corp, Internet Security Systems, CipherTrust, PureWire, NitroSecurity among others).
We also work closely with some of the leading researchers at the leading engineering universities in the area of cyber security.
Always open to suggestion regarding the structure of the overall process for an event such as this!
Thank you.
Great idea d0ne. I hope you do understand, that what the boys in Washington hate most, are people thinking they have rights and taking actions to protect them. If this gets any coverage, don't be surprised by the pressure to give up (tax audits, no-flight list, credit ratings).
There are two basic approaches to mitigating massive data collection efforts: reduce your digital footprint, or add noise to your digital footprint. The latter is far more effective, as you fuck them in three ways: you hide your data, you have plausible deniability, and you spam their databases with crap.
However, the "data flak" approach has limits. It is only doable with discretionary data, and even that might be problematic. But it would work well to make access logs useless. While I don't want the system to spam hacker news with nonsense posts about building nuclear weapons, I might be able to harmlessly incorporate intentionally explosive phrases in a post just to annoy them (hah, see what I did there?) For things like flights and credit card usage, there is no way to introduce flak, or really minimize exposure.
Of course, the best mitigation technique is to raise Cain over this and get the entire system dismantled. There is simply no excuse to be doing this sort of thing. The fact is that it would be pretty hard to organize an attack and not trigger (local) alarms. Local police have a feel for the community, for what's what. They can call in the feds if they need to.
Systems like this are going to always have three serious problems: a) bringing the hammer down on the innocent (false positives), b) failing to detect actual plots (false negatives), c) be abused (used as a weapon for politically or personally motivated attacks). And in the long run a) and c) are going to grow monotonically, and that is not acceptable. It's one thing to have the asshole local cop bust down your door for no good reason, it's quite another to have a bunch of feds fly in to nab you based on some data in their computers. They've never met you, don't know you, don't know your relationships to the people around you - but based on data will ruin your life. That's a nightmare scenario if I've ever heard one!
However, the "data flak" approach has limits. It is only doable with discretionary data, and even that might be problematic. But it would work well to make access logs useless. While I don't want the system to spam hacker news with nonsense posts about building nuclear weapons, I might be able to harmlessly incorporate intentionally explosive phrases in a post just to annoy them (hah, see what I did there?) For things like flights and credit card usage, there is no way to introduce flak, or really minimize exposure.
Of course, the best mitigation technique is to raise Cain over this and get the entire system dismantled. There is simply no excuse to be doing this sort of thing. The fact is that it would be pretty hard to organize an attack and not trigger (local) alarms. Local police have a feel for the community, for what's what. They can call in the feds if they need to.
Systems like this are going to always have three serious problems: a) bringing the hammer down on the innocent (false positives), b) failing to detect actual plots (false negatives), c) be abused (used as a weapon for politically or personally motivated attacks). And in the long run a) and c) are going to grow monotonically, and that is not acceptable. It's one thing to have the asshole local cop bust down your door for no good reason, it's quite another to have a bunch of feds fly in to nab you based on some data in their computers. They've never met you, don't know you, don't know your relationships to the people around you - but based on data will ruin your life. That's a nightmare scenario if I've ever heard one!
Why I'm worried about a surveillance state? Because the people in charge will have their records protected while everyone else gets the surveillance.
Our president committed crimes his justice department jails people for (illegal drugs). Drug testing is a perfect example of the surveillance state. The people who don't get tested? The testers. The legislators. The people in charge. I know there are technical problems with that analogy - but you get the point.
Our president committed crimes his justice department jails people for (illegal drugs). Drug testing is a perfect example of the surveillance state. The people who don't get tested? The testers. The legislators. The people in charge. I know there are technical problems with that analogy - but you get the point.
Case in point - the uk "contactpoint" database - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContactPoint - a database mandated by MPs that should contains all information about every child under the age of 18. Anyone excluded? Yep you guessed it - MP's children.
I read that whole thing. Pretty amazing it got as far as it did, and from what I understood reading the article it was the children of celebrities that were going to be excluded. Which makes me wonder what would be considered a celebrity.
Anyone with power/influence enough. Like it has always been.
It doesn't matter if the person is known to the general public or not. Money/power/influence is what matters in our present world.
It doesn't matter if the person is known to the general public or not. Money/power/influence is what matters in our present world.
As Eben Moglen said in his speech in Berlin. If we don't do something soon, we are going to be living in the age past forgetting. Nothing will ever be forgotten again. Everything one do, everything one say, everything one reads, listen to, or think about is recoded and saved for all eternity.
This 5 years the article talk about. Do anyone really believe than in 5 years, they won't extend it further? It will continue to the point in which either everything is stored forever, or push back actually takes away this pandora box from the government.
No goverment ever want to be with less information about the population. If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social benefits could be rerouted away. If they could predict who is going to become political candidates, they could adjust information flows away or towards that person. If they can predict who is voting for who, they can direct support/anti-support to "encourage" the right result.
This is why I am worried about a surveillance state. With a large enough database of population information, and prediction models, democracy will be eroded to the point of destruction.
This 5 years the article talk about. Do anyone really believe than in 5 years, they won't extend it further? It will continue to the point in which either everything is stored forever, or push back actually takes away this pandora box from the government.
No goverment ever want to be with less information about the population. If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social benefits could be rerouted away. If they could predict who is going to become political candidates, they could adjust information flows away or towards that person. If they can predict who is voting for who, they can direct support/anti-support to "encourage" the right result.
This is why I am worried about a surveillance state. With a large enough database of population information, and prediction models, democracy will be eroded to the point of destruction.
> If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social benefits could be rerouted away.
Surveillance is no replacement for legwork. They're not catching that many criminals (or "terrorists") with it right now, and in order to have an effect like you describe they need to catch most if not all of them. Surveillance isn't a panacea like that (even if you ignore the freedom aspect), even with perfect total information awareness, there's a ceiling of efficiency.
The thing you describe, to run smoothly is just about the same amount of trouble and effort for a government, as it would be to rule with actual justice, civil liberties, privacy, etc.
The truth is, all this surveillance shit is NOT really about protecting the public and reducing crime. It may be useful but not that useful, definitely not billons-of-dollars useful, the amounts that are being invested in this tech. It's about the state protecting its place, keeping the status quo and people covering their asses. In a healthy country, those two goals are aligned. In many countries, including the USA, they aren't. Also, money and power. Actually it's just power, money is secondary.
Surveillance is no replacement for legwork. They're not catching that many criminals (or "terrorists") with it right now, and in order to have an effect like you describe they need to catch most if not all of them. Surveillance isn't a panacea like that (even if you ignore the freedom aspect), even with perfect total information awareness, there's a ceiling of efficiency.
The thing you describe, to run smoothly is just about the same amount of trouble and effort for a government, as it would be to rule with actual justice, civil liberties, privacy, etc.
The truth is, all this surveillance shit is NOT really about protecting the public and reducing crime. It may be useful but not that useful, definitely not billons-of-dollars useful, the amounts that are being invested in this tech. It's about the state protecting its place, keeping the status quo and people covering their asses. In a healthy country, those two goals are aligned. In many countries, including the USA, they aren't. Also, money and power. Actually it's just power, money is secondary.
So true. Most of the democracies/republics in human history were destroyed by power concentration in the hands of a few.
Good time to recall that up until 2012, it was legal for Congressmen to trade stocks based on inside information they received carrying out their duties.
This is a good point, although as we saw most recently with Petraeus, sometimes an expansive surveillance state can't help but ensnare its own leaders, and this often accidentally leads to its limitations (as a bill requiring warrants for emails is now making its way through the Senate)
The Petraeus affair didn't come to light because of surveillance. That was a garden variety love triangle that blew up. The FBI wouldn't have known if they hadn't been told.
Their investigation is what is being referred to here. Their ability to dig into the email accounts without any oversight.
They have always had the ability to do that if you work in any job that requires a security clearance. Sexual orientation, affairs, drugs, politics... they have the right to look at anything that points to behavior which could make you a target for blackmail.
They (the FBI) didn't know that this was connected to the director of the CIA when they started the investigation. They only made the connection to him after getting information from Google without judicial oversight.
No, the biographer also had a clearance. They were actually within their rights.
Whether it was a gainful use of resources given the origin of the tip is dubious, but they weren't actually violating the judicial oversight requirement, as far as I understand it.
Whether it was a gainful use of resources given the origin of the tip is dubious, but they weren't actually violating the judicial oversight requirement, as far as I understand it.
They didn't know who it was connected to at all before getting information from Google. Claiming that they both had clearances, and gave up a right to private email is trying to forgive these things after the fact.
Unknown individuals should be assumed to have privacy rights. You can't break into someone random person's house, then find out that they committed a crime, and say that the warrant-less search was now a-ok.
Unknown individuals should be assumed to have privacy rights. You can't break into someone random person's house, then find out that they committed a crime, and say that the warrant-less search was now a-ok.
I'm pretty sure (but I don't know absolutely) that the fact that she had clearance means, effectively, that the breach of privacy was her transgression, not the government's. It's effectively as though the police have a warrant to search your house - any conversation with a person with clearance is subject to surveillance, and if they screw it up, that's no protection of your privacy.
so, "who watches the watchers" ?
They need to lead by example. After all, what do they have to hide?
> using “predictive pattern-matching,” to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior
Here we are again : authoritarianism being rationalized.
Here we are again : authoritarianism being rationalized.
This has nothing to do with authoritarism. It is method to detect behaviour not mathching "normal" pattern. This is used as a heuristic to detect suspicious behavior.
An issue is that they are only an _approximate_ heuristic. What is the likelihood that an unusual behavior is suspicious? The level of false negatives is, as this article points out, very high. That's because it's essentially impossible to define "normal" behavior.
"Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system.
There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the law?
"Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a higher level of submission to authority than I would like.
There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with it.
"Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system.
There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the law?
"Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a higher level of submission to authority than I would like.
There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with it.
Thanks for confirming my point.
Why is it that any kind of attempts to predict future criminal activities is always labeled "1984"?
It seems to me that so long as you don't take it further than "being ready", done right it could be a good thing.
It seems to me that so long as you don't take it further than "being ready", done right it could be a good thing.
"Done right". There's your problem.
Done right, Marxism is a good thing. Done right, a dictatorship is the most efficient form of government.
But we are, in fact, dealing in sloppy reality, where many things - by their very nature - cannot be done right. No matter how hard we try, or how earnestly we believe in fairies, these things will not be done right. They will inevitably devolve into tyranny.
Done right, Marxism is a good thing. Done right, a dictatorship is the most efficient form of government.
But we are, in fact, dealing in sloppy reality, where many things - by their very nature - cannot be done right. No matter how hard we try, or how earnestly we believe in fairies, these things will not be done right. They will inevitably devolve into tyranny.
In fact, it's not even the point. Invasion of privacy is by definition, done wrong. Are we willing to give up all of our privacy to prevent a very, very small number of incidents.
No, it actually is the point, because it's perfectly OK for Santa Claus to know whether you've been bad or good - Santa Claus is inherently trustworthy and won't tell your boss, deny you travel privileges, sell your company short, or give bad rich kids presents instead of coal.
So the day I see a reindeer with a glowing nose landing on my roof, I will consider allowing the elves to collect all the information they want, as long as the storage center is at the North Pole.
In the meantime, invasion of privacy will continue to be done wrong.
So the day I see a reindeer with a glowing nose landing on my roof, I will consider allowing the elves to collect all the information they want, as long as the storage center is at the North Pole.
In the meantime, invasion of privacy will continue to be done wrong.
"Done Right" means that he wants to provide a default assumption of trust for government actions.
However, the bill of rights is based upon a default distrust, and he may want to research why that was the case.
However, the bill of rights is based upon a default distrust, and he may want to research why that was the case.
No, it means I believe that with the right pieces of law (e.g., the bill of rights), we can govern ourselves relatively successfully (e.g., the United States government)
As clearly evidenced by the bill of rights and the US government, you don't have to implicitly trust your government to grant them power without finding yourself in the middle of a dictatorship police state.
(Yes, I know, some people believe the USA is a police state, but IMO they are the fringe and have never experienced a real police state)
As clearly evidenced by the bill of rights and the US government, you don't have to implicitly trust your government to grant them power without finding yourself in the middle of a dictatorship police state.
(Yes, I know, some people believe the USA is a police state, but IMO they are the fringe and have never experienced a real police state)
Yes, you can grant them some power, but clearly there's a limit. In fact, our law and the Constitution defines that limit - and this program (and others; see SoftwareMaven's response as well) is beyond it. They have taken power not granted them.
And I don't think anybody (except maybe protesters in large cities who suffer police violence, and of course black people anywhere in the country) thinks the United States is a police state. Similarly, I am not suffering a heart attack as I'm typing this. I still eat salad instead of cheeseburgers for every meal. Analogously, I think it's important to keep an eye on excessive power grabs by the government.
The Bill of Rights is only self-government if it's used to limit the government, you see.
And I don't think anybody (except maybe protesters in large cities who suffer police violence, and of course black people anywhere in the country) thinks the United States is a police state. Similarly, I am not suffering a heart attack as I'm typing this. I still eat salad instead of cheeseburgers for every meal. Analogously, I think it's important to keep an eye on excessive power grabs by the government.
The Bill of Rights is only self-government if it's used to limit the government, you see.
I'm afraid I don't see that working out very well right now. Illegal search and seizure is common. The president can do just about anything he chooses through executive orders. The number of ways to be arrested and tried as a criminal means it is up to the police and prosecutors whether you are in or out of prison.
All of these things exist like this today. Now give them nearly unlimited information about the citizenry. I find it hard to fathom, when the government has done so poorly with what it's been given today, that they will suddenly turn around and become true protectors of the people once they have that kind of information.
All of these things exist like this today. Now give them nearly unlimited information about the citizenry. I find it hard to fathom, when the government has done so poorly with what it's been given today, that they will suddenly turn around and become true protectors of the people once they have that kind of information.
More law enforcement power is not a good thing for America. We already arrest more people each year than any other country, even more than China (a notoriously oppressive government with several times more citizens than the US), and most of those people never actually have a trial (the courts cannot handle that many cases; if even a fraction of those arrested demanded a trial, our court system would be completely overwhelmed and unable to handle the burden). The police will not use better access to information to make better decisions about who to arrest; they will just use the information to increase the number of people they arrest, most of whom will technically be in violation of some law (not hard, given just how many laws are on the books and how broad, vague, and easily violated those laws are).
Speaking of:
> some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel
So, hindsight is 20/20, you say?
> some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel
So, hindsight is 20/20, you say?
WSJ didn't uncover it. It has been talked about since October in the context of the "disposition matrix", which is to be used to search out possible candidates for the extrajudicial "kill list".
>The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed ... the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-te...
>The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed ... the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-te...
> The aim of the TIA initiative was essentially to create a kind of ubiquitous pre-crime surveillance regime monitoring public and private databases.
I Ctrl+F-ed for Philip K. Dick's name, didn't find anything, I'll be the first one to copy-paste this:
> Paradoxes and alternate realities are created by the precognition of crimes when the chief of police intercepts a precognition that he is about to murder a man he has never met. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report)
I Ctrl+F-ed for Philip K. Dick's name, didn't find anything, I'll be the first one to copy-paste this:
> Paradoxes and alternate realities are created by the precognition of crimes when the chief of police intercepts a precognition that he is about to murder a man he has never met. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report)
People have warned that this will happen eventually, but I don't think that many believed it. We're witnessing the first real steps towards making pre-crime recognition a reality in the country. Good bye "innocent until proven guilty".
Cory Doctorow has said in his "war against general computation" talk [1] that it's becoming cheaper and easier for authorities to just monitor everyone and store information about everyone, and then use algorithms to catch them, than focusing on who they they need to catch and following just that one. Now it's up to the people to stop this from becoming legal or from being done even illegally, not just in US, but in all countries, as I'm sure many others will try doing it, too. The ironic part is that the developed "democratic" countries may be the first to do it, because they are more advanced technologically.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
Cory Doctorow has said in his "war against general computation" talk [1] that it's becoming cheaper and easier for authorities to just monitor everyone and store information about everyone, and then use algorithms to catch them, than focusing on who they they need to catch and following just that one. Now it's up to the people to stop this from becoming legal or from being done even illegally, not just in US, but in all countries, as I'm sure many others will try doing it, too. The ironic part is that the developed "democratic" countries may be the first to do it, because they are more advanced technologically.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
Since the predictive algorithms in use mostly come down to glorified dot products, I question their general validity.
Sure, it works sometimes, but just look at some of the wacky stuff Amazon, Google, and Netflix derive from such things. Now replace search results and product recommendations with waterboarding and extraordinary rendition based on the results of those dot products and hilarity ensues...
Sure, it works sometimes, but just look at some of the wacky stuff Amazon, Google, and Netflix derive from such things. Now replace search results and product recommendations with waterboarding and extraordinary rendition based on the results of those dot products and hilarity ensues...
And those dot products come down to glorified FMUL and FADD machine instructions! Specious reductionism goes all the way down.
And those FMUL and FADD instructions could either be fused multiply/add or separate multiplies and adds with twice the truncation issues, Holy FPRE!
But I'm curious as to why you place such faith in the sooper top sekrit(tm) basis vectors for these dot products? It seems to me that it's politically expedient for such a system to generate false positives rather than risk letting the terrorists win(tm) and that's where I think things go wrong. Because it would appear from the outside that the powers-that-be have decreed that it's better to torture the occasional innocent than risk letting the guilty slip through their fingers.
But I'm curious as to why you place such faith in the sooper top sekrit(tm) basis vectors for these dot products? It seems to me that it's politically expedient for such a system to generate false positives rather than risk letting the terrorists win(tm) and that's where I think things go wrong. Because it would appear from the outside that the powers-that-be have decreed that it's better to torture the occasional innocent than risk letting the guilty slip through their fingers.
I think you might be a bit too wrapped up in conspiracy theories, friend.
"Pre-crime"
You thought it was a movie, now it's reality. Soon, it'll be something you get arrested for. Mark my words.
You thought it was a movie, now it's reality. Soon, it'll be something you get arrested for. Mark my words.
If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more attention than someone with a blameless past? It seems logical to me anyway. Obviously not to the extent that you'd be held but keeping an eye on you is fair enough imo.
"If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more attention than someone with a blameless past?"
Not when we have people who were charged with sex crimes because when they were 17 years old they dated a 15 year old, and who now have to register as sex offenders. The law has become completely out of control -- saying that someone has broken laws in the past is no more of a justification than saying that a person breathes air.
Not when we have people who were charged with sex crimes because when they were 17 years old they dated a 15 year old, and who now have to register as sex offenders. The law has become completely out of control -- saying that someone has broken laws in the past is no more of a justification than saying that a person breathes air.
Eventually, having a blameless past will be cause for suspicion, if it's not already. Because at some point, not having a record is is sufficiently different from everyone to not be "normal".
Good point. That reminds me of hearing how traffic cops decide to pull someone over to check for drink driving. One of their criteria was any car that appeared to be sticking too rigidly to the speed limit
Do you really think that a previous record and terrorist acts correlate significantly?
Yes. Membership of the domestic terrorist groups in my country
correlates very strongly with a history of juvenile anti-social behaviour. These youngsters frequently come into contact with these groups either when subject to vigilante punishment or 'get taken under their wing'.
Most terrorists aren't university graduates
> Membership of the domestic terrorist groups in my country correlates very strongly with a history of juvenile anti-social behaviour.
Is the reverse true?
Is the reverse true?
Can you explain what you mean by the reverse?
Domestic terrorists may very likely have exhibited juvenile anti-social behavior. How likely is the reverse? That is, how likely is it that someone who exhibits juvenile anti-social behavior will eventually be a domestic terrorist?
My money is on "it is very unlikely", and that is a problem.
My money is on "it is very unlikely", and that is a problem.
That's analagous to saying it's a problem that Health screenings are often targeted at high-risk groups when the vast majority of those groups won't get the disease in any case.
.....and, where the cost of false positives is sufficiently high and the rate of false positives is sufficiently high, that is a very relevant consideration that is in fact made by the medical community. That is just a basic of modern medicine.
The world is not black and white. These are things that must be weighed and considered rationally with real data, not emotionally with fabricated absolutes. You don't get to discard half of your equation because when you include it the results don't make you feel warm and fuzzy.
P(A|B) = \frac{P(B | A)\, P(A)}{P(B)}
Not a hard concept.
The world is not black and white. These are things that must be weighed and considered rationally with real data, not emotionally with fabricated absolutes. You don't get to discard half of your equation because when you include it the results don't make you feel warm and fuzzy.
P(A|B) = \frac{P(B | A)\, P(A)}{P(B)}
Not a hard concept.
I'm sorry but you have gone off on a tangent there.
We weren't arguing about the effectiveness of the policy just the rationale behind it, I believe. I don't have any stats on that, do you?
Effectiveness is the only rationale that should matter. Also, you might benefit from having a look around http://lesswrong.com/; many of the arguments you will see on HN are grounded in the concepts of Bayesian rationality described there.
Thanks for the link, I'll have a look at it.
What I meant by rationale was the reasoning behind the policy, it's actual effectiveness would, I guess, only become apparent in practice.
A rationale that includes P(B|A) but not P(A|B) is not a rational one. I have been asking you to evaluate the legitimacy of the rationale by considering P(A|B).
Given that terrorists are very rare then the P(A|B) using your terminology (where A = terrorist and B= bad record) will be very low.
But for for a fixed P(A) and P(B) then the higher
the value there is for P(B|A) the higher the value of P(A|B) will be.
If you have an enornmous haystack to search it's more efficient to look first where you're most likely to find needles.
[deleted]
I have an aquaintance that was falsely accused of vehicular homicide because he had a car whose description was close enough for the police and he had to spend a decade in the legal system fighting for his freedom. And all of this is made possible because the police have access to records of which cars are owned and by whom and they can look at it. Should we not let the police use this information since this one individual was the victim of a false positive match and it cost him 10 years proving it? I mean, he never committed a crime in his life, and yet the police had access to his vehicle driving history / cars registered to him / etc. The had collected that information in advance. But no one called it a "massive surveillance program"
So where does it stop? Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information? What if the information is lost before the need to use it to aid an investigation. Wouldn't it be easier if they just aggregated it ahead of time and looked at it when they needed it?
I guess personally I'm just not seeing the problem. As long as they are simply gathering all information that is legally knowable, what do I care? Why should I care? I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing and I assume large corporations are doing it already. Should it be illegal to gather information on people simply because they didn't authorize it? Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them? I, personally, say no.
So where does it stop? Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information? What if the information is lost before the need to use it to aid an investigation. Wouldn't it be easier if they just aggregated it ahead of time and looked at it when they needed it?
I guess personally I'm just not seeing the problem. As long as they are simply gathering all information that is legally knowable, what do I care? Why should I care? I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing and I assume large corporations are doing it already. Should it be illegal to gather information on people simply because they didn't authorize it? Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them? I, personally, say no.
> Should it be illegal to gather information on people simply because they didn't authorize it? Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them? I, personally, say no.
I think this is the third time I'll make this post on HN, but it's been relevant every time.
Privacy is not about having something to hide, or about keeping things secret. Giving the government the power to store all this data about you isn't bad because they might learn embarrassing things; after all, it will most likely only be read by a computer.
But it gives the government enormous power to make decisions about you -- decisions about whether you may take a commercial airline flight, get a security clearance, or even get a job -- without your knowledge or consent, and without you knowing how they make the decisions. It's not Orwellian, it's Kafkaesque.
In short, a lack of privacy gives the government the power to be even less transparent in its decision-making, and gives it yet more power over its citizens. It's not a question of discovering your fetishes or being embarrassed, and we shouldn't respond to the "but I have nothing to hide" argument as though their conception of privacy is right and having nothing to hide really is an excuse.
There's a rather good paper I can recommend on the subject:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
I think this is the third time I'll make this post on HN, but it's been relevant every time.
Privacy is not about having something to hide, or about keeping things secret. Giving the government the power to store all this data about you isn't bad because they might learn embarrassing things; after all, it will most likely only be read by a computer.
But it gives the government enormous power to make decisions about you -- decisions about whether you may take a commercial airline flight, get a security clearance, or even get a job -- without your knowledge or consent, and without you knowing how they make the decisions. It's not Orwellian, it's Kafkaesque.
In short, a lack of privacy gives the government the power to be even less transparent in its decision-making, and gives it yet more power over its citizens. It's not a question of discovering your fetishes or being embarrassed, and we shouldn't respond to the "but I have nothing to hide" argument as though their conception of privacy is right and having nothing to hide really is an excuse.
There's a rather good paper I can recommend on the subject:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
"As long as they are simply gathering all information that is legally knowable"
The law is out-of-date. When the law was written, constructing a dossier on a person required effort -- officers in the field, following the target around, interviewing people, etc. Today, the dossier can be rapidly assembled, assuming it has not been already by some private company that "specializes" in constructing such things.
We need an update to the law, to protect our rights from government use of new technologies.
"Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information?"
Yes, I would be happier if the bureaucracy slowed the police down, as a basic protection against tyranny. We have far too many laws, and far too many prisoners -- anything that slows the expansion of our prison population and renders absurd laws unenforceable should be welcomed. Do you really think that these databases will be used solely to catch murderers and rapists? Most of people targeted by these sorts of programs will be nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders who will be charged with dozens of crimes and told to either take a plea bargain or risk a longer sentence if they exercise their right to a trial (and if even a tenth of them were to demand a trial, our court system would be overwhelmed by the case load -- yes, that is how extreme things have gotten).
"I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing"
You do not. Go ahead, try to go around your town collecting these sorts of details -- you'll be arrested for harassing people, being a public nuisance, resisting arrest, and probably multiple other crimes.
"Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them?"
We are not talking about any other random people, we are talking about the police. The police are a special class of people. We let them arrest people, holding people against their will at gunpoint. We do this because some people pose a danger to society, but we must be careful with just how much power the police have, in both firepower, information collection, and budget (currently, the police can recycle the proceeds from certain kinds of arrest back into their budgets; unsurprisingly, such arrests are more common than any other, and our prisons are filled with people who were targeted for such arrests).
The law is out-of-date. When the law was written, constructing a dossier on a person required effort -- officers in the field, following the target around, interviewing people, etc. Today, the dossier can be rapidly assembled, assuming it has not been already by some private company that "specializes" in constructing such things.
We need an update to the law, to protect our rights from government use of new technologies.
"Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information?"
Yes, I would be happier if the bureaucracy slowed the police down, as a basic protection against tyranny. We have far too many laws, and far too many prisoners -- anything that slows the expansion of our prison population and renders absurd laws unenforceable should be welcomed. Do you really think that these databases will be used solely to catch murderers and rapists? Most of people targeted by these sorts of programs will be nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders who will be charged with dozens of crimes and told to either take a plea bargain or risk a longer sentence if they exercise their right to a trial (and if even a tenth of them were to demand a trial, our court system would be overwhelmed by the case load -- yes, that is how extreme things have gotten).
"I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing"
You do not. Go ahead, try to go around your town collecting these sorts of details -- you'll be arrested for harassing people, being a public nuisance, resisting arrest, and probably multiple other crimes.
"Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them?"
We are not talking about any other random people, we are talking about the police. The police are a special class of people. We let them arrest people, holding people against their will at gunpoint. We do this because some people pose a danger to society, but we must be careful with just how much power the police have, in both firepower, information collection, and budget (currently, the police can recycle the proceeds from certain kinds of arrest back into their budgets; unsurprisingly, such arrests are more common than any other, and our prisons are filled with people who were targeted for such arrests).
I just want the point out that the reason that this is so scary is that your reasoning can be taken the other way. It's always a slippery slope. How much is too much? Anything that's now illegal to obtain, can be made legal and the process starts over.
If you begin to allow your freedom and liberty to be eroded bit by bit, you're not going to notice it when it's totally gone. There's a reason why the freedom to privacy is important, and there are reasons why it was (and is) a good idea to follow the "innocent until proven guilty" line of thought.
Now I'm unsure where I stand myself, between the 2 extremes: allow a murderer walk due to lack of evidence or allowing the government to lock up innocent civilians just based on an algorithm's "suspicion" without charge. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. What I do know is, with the way things are going, it's moving faster and faster towards the later...
I don't have the answer but I think we agree that the citizens of the country that will be put under surveylance should have a say on whether they are OK with it, not signed into law behind their backs. I mean, I thought that's what democracy is all about.
In either case, since I don't live in the US, all I can really do about it is talk. It's up to you guys to have meaningful discussions and take action (or not) on this. But just know that this will end up affecting the way other world power treat their citizens. The world will definitely be keep an close eye on this.
If you begin to allow your freedom and liberty to be eroded bit by bit, you're not going to notice it when it's totally gone. There's a reason why the freedom to privacy is important, and there are reasons why it was (and is) a good idea to follow the "innocent until proven guilty" line of thought.
Now I'm unsure where I stand myself, between the 2 extremes: allow a murderer walk due to lack of evidence or allowing the government to lock up innocent civilians just based on an algorithm's "suspicion" without charge. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. What I do know is, with the way things are going, it's moving faster and faster towards the later...
I don't have the answer but I think we agree that the citizens of the country that will be put under surveylance should have a say on whether they are OK with it, not signed into law behind their backs. I mean, I thought that's what democracy is all about.
In either case, since I don't live in the US, all I can really do about it is talk. It's up to you guys to have meaningful discussions and take action (or not) on this. But just know that this will end up affecting the way other world power treat their citizens. The world will definitely be keep an close eye on this.
Problem is that errors are always going to occur. the stronger the data sets the harder it can be to prove your innocence. We have rights and the law not to prevent the bad guys from doing bad things, but to protect the citizens from the potential misuse of the governmental system.
>Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place?
You seem to be operating under the assumption that there is a definitive answer here. There isn't, and this is completely subjective. The idea that 300M+ people will agree on such a question, to me, is ridiculous. It is really a matter of 2 questions:
1) How many false positives are acceptable?
2) Are we willing to accept the consequences if this information falls into the wrong hands?
Reasonable people will disagree on the answers, and I believe the U.S. was the last country founded (granted, on the lands of others') upon the idea that freedom and individual rights (over the collective) should be maximized. More and more, as the U.S. has matured we've seen and continue to see the collective rights being prioritized.
To be clear, I am not sure where I stand personally, but I am simply trying to objectively point out what I see.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that there is a definitive answer here. There isn't, and this is completely subjective. The idea that 300M+ people will agree on such a question, to me, is ridiculous. It is really a matter of 2 questions:
1) How many false positives are acceptable?
2) Are we willing to accept the consequences if this information falls into the wrong hands?
Reasonable people will disagree on the answers, and I believe the U.S. was the last country founded (granted, on the lands of others') upon the idea that freedom and individual rights (over the collective) should be maximized. More and more, as the U.S. has matured we've seen and continue to see the collective rights being prioritized.
To be clear, I am not sure where I stand personally, but I am simply trying to objectively point out what I see.
They're probably using Palantir. I wonder how Thiel resolves his libertarian/freedom philosophy with supplying the government with such a powerful oppressive tool.
Well there is also this company https://www.recordedfuture.com/ which has the CIA and Google as investors, like anything political the grey area covers a lot.
"We constantly collect news, blogs, and public social media.
We identify the events: past, present, and future.
We help you find predictive signals in the noise of the web."
sounds like...anyone doing information extraction or sentiment analysis from the web? If investment is the only thing to raise a red flag, you have to worry about a lot more companies than that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel#Investments
sounds like...anyone doing information extraction or sentiment analysis from the web? If investment is the only thing to raise a red flag, you have to worry about a lot more companies than that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel#Investments
I had a chance to speak to one of the lead developers at Palantir a couple years back, and asked him about this apparent conflict of political ideals.
His answer: by enabling agencies to properly apply the data they already have, Palantir's products reduce the pressure to further erode civil liberties in the pursuit of more data.
His answer: by enabling agencies to properly apply the data they already have, Palantir's products reduce the pressure to further erode civil liberties in the pursuit of more data.
Didn't IBM help we know whom to sort their victims' data during the WWII? This kind of argument doesn't work.
I'm not sure that comparison is in the same ballpark. (I'm also not supporting his stance.)
Whom do they think they are? The Dark Lord himself?
<strike>Innocent until proven guilty.</strike>
<strike>Innocent until "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until suspected "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until surveillance indicates you use encryption, therefore "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until our surveillance predicts you might commit some sort of crime, therefore "terrorist".</strike>
Innocent until we say so.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
<strike>Innocent until "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until suspected "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until surveillance indicates you use encryption, therefore "terrorist".</strike>
<strike>Innocent until our surveillance predicts you might commit some sort of crime, therefore "terrorist".</strike>
Innocent until we say so.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Give a government trillions to spend in an era of massive government programs and vast new storage & surveillance technology, and it should be obvious what you're going to get.
The only possible way to stop it is to starve the beast of funds to spend. Cut the government in half, and let's see if they can still afford all the shiny new big brother toys.
The only possible way to stop it is to starve the beast of funds to spend. Cut the government in half, and let's see if they can still afford all the shiny new big brother toys.
By this logic Europeans should be a total police state.
To find a solution we need to discover what makes Americans so afraid that no gun is big enough, no military powerful enough, and due process can be suspended.
First, it hasn't been so long since Europeans had police states, and people in Europe actually remember it.
Second, "Europeans" are a myth. The French, Germans, Italians, Danes, Brits, Spaniards, Hungarians, Greeks, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Dutch, Belgians, Irish, and so on trust each other about as far as they can collectively throw one another. No one country can possibly get much centralized control. Not that they don't try.
Third, Americans have that exceptionalism thing: no matter how dangerous a course of action is, an American will succeed because, gosh darn it, God loves us and we're great! So something like TIA, well, sure, if Castro tried it or even some trustworthy but lesser nation like English did, it'd be terrible tyranny - but we can be trusted because we're Americans.
Second, "Europeans" are a myth. The French, Germans, Italians, Danes, Brits, Spaniards, Hungarians, Greeks, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Dutch, Belgians, Irish, and so on trust each other about as far as they can collectively throw one another. No one country can possibly get much centralized control. Not that they don't try.
Third, Americans have that exceptionalism thing: no matter how dangerous a course of action is, an American will succeed because, gosh darn it, God loves us and we're great! So something like TIA, well, sure, if Castro tried it or even some trustworthy but lesser nation like English did, it'd be terrible tyranny - but we can be trusted because we're Americans.
As a European I would argue that we are already living in a police state -- there is so much surveillance here, so many things that would be a violation of the 4th admentment if we had one, so many things that would be a violation of the first admentment -- it is just that we don't like putting people in prison for very long and our media love to take up stories so most of this shit doesn't happen too openly.
You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
"Starving the beast" reminds me of the rhetoric that's tied in with the fiscal cliff business. The left's answer to that has been that it appears the beast really likes toys, far more than it enjoys exercise or a healthy diet.
I don't understand the critics. Do you think that terrorists or criminals are detected by oracles ? You ridiculed the security agencies after 911 for not beeing able to detect such a plot and now you are in shock because they do their job ? There is no way to detect a plot while staying eyes shut.
There is a problem, more precisely a risk, but it is not in collecting the data and processing it to detect a plot. It is in the usage and control of usage of the data. This is the heart of the problem and the secrecy around this information gathering and processing is not a good sign. Who controlls and how is this information controlled are the core problem which is absolutely not properly addressed.
The need to collect the information to ensure security is on the other hand obvious, at least to me. Not doing this is stupid.
There is a problem, more precisely a risk, but it is not in collecting the data and processing it to detect a plot. It is in the usage and control of usage of the data. This is the heart of the problem and the secrecy around this information gathering and processing is not a good sign. Who controlls and how is this information controlled are the core problem which is absolutely not properly addressed.
The need to collect the information to ensure security is on the other hand obvious, at least to me. Not doing this is stupid.
Ok, you're my target cause this comment is so obviously being uttered by someone who hasn't studied history in his/her whole life... Jeez ! (whom i don't believe in btw)
Hacker new indeed....
Has anyone's been following dunno, wikileaks or Appelbaum or... Hacker news that are not on hackernews (which usurpates its name because what it really is is startup news) ? Eagle, the Athen Affair (http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair/...), or more generally this : http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html ?
It's our liberty that's slipping out of the (gaping a..)hole of democracies, which is not democracies fault because they are by definition are "representative governements", based on election. Tocqueville knew that back in the XIXth, so did all theoreticians of "governance", and not a single one called a "representative government" a "democracy".
Anyway. What it boils down to is : if you're not strictly speaking living in a democracy (which i'm sorry, the US, UK, France,... Aren't by historical, philosophical, and semantic definition), the only thing that matters is keeping power at bay. Try and elect representatives who truly understand that too much power in to few hands always leads to disaster. Only. There are none. There haven't been for decades. The latest in france was General de Gaulle (though his ego was high, he was the sort able to step down from power after a people's vote) , and I guess, on the US side, Kennedy.
I wouldn't trust my shoes to the state. And to facebook ? (non existing) Jeez again ! This is so scary to realize nobody - at large - realizes...
WWII is far away, the days of the cold war too, and people become lazy. Even (so called) hackers.
Hacker new indeed....
Has anyone's been following dunno, wikileaks or Appelbaum or... Hacker news that are not on hackernews (which usurpates its name because what it really is is startup news) ? Eagle, the Athen Affair (http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair/...), or more generally this : http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html ?
It's our liberty that's slipping out of the (gaping a..)hole of democracies, which is not democracies fault because they are by definition are "representative governements", based on election. Tocqueville knew that back in the XIXth, so did all theoreticians of "governance", and not a single one called a "representative government" a "democracy".
Anyway. What it boils down to is : if you're not strictly speaking living in a democracy (which i'm sorry, the US, UK, France,... Aren't by historical, philosophical, and semantic definition), the only thing that matters is keeping power at bay. Try and elect representatives who truly understand that too much power in to few hands always leads to disaster. Only. There are none. There haven't been for decades. The latest in france was General de Gaulle (though his ego was high, he was the sort able to step down from power after a people's vote) , and I guess, on the US side, Kennedy.
I wouldn't trust my shoes to the state. And to facebook ? (non existing) Jeez again ! This is so scary to realize nobody - at large - realizes...
WWII is far away, the days of the cold war too, and people become lazy. Even (so called) hackers.
I fear people are confusing things. Take the analogy of police patrols in streets. They may see all what you do and even control your identity and ask you questions. You may consider this as a frontal aggression to your privacy and right to move around without beeing spied. You may claim it's the same as the gestapo, or your preferred historical reference. It wouldn't be fully wrong.
But see that it has also been understood by your ancestors that it is a price to pay to ensure security of the people. Because while they look at what you do they also look at what bad people do and will detect them most of the time.
The same change is taking place at a country and hopefuly at a world scale by using the new tools available.
Now back to the police patrols. While this has a proven positive effect on ssecurity, this is also a risk because these armed forces walking among us may also be subverted and they may abuse people. This is a real danger and by society evolution and learning mechanisms and rules have been put in place to avoid this.
All I say is that police patrols are unavoidable and needed to ensure security. Our concern should be to focus on the mechanisms and rules put in place to ensure it doesn't go wrong, gets misused or abused.
So I think we agree that there is indeed a danger with this. We may disagree on what the danger is and what we should focus on. This is in par with democracy.
But see that it has also been understood by your ancestors that it is a price to pay to ensure security of the people. Because while they look at what you do they also look at what bad people do and will detect them most of the time.
The same change is taking place at a country and hopefuly at a world scale by using the new tools available.
Now back to the police patrols. While this has a proven positive effect on ssecurity, this is also a risk because these armed forces walking among us may also be subverted and they may abuse people. This is a real danger and by society evolution and learning mechanisms and rules have been put in place to avoid this.
All I say is that police patrols are unavoidable and needed to ensure security. Our concern should be to focus on the mechanisms and rules put in place to ensure it doesn't go wrong, gets misused or abused.
So I think we agree that there is indeed a danger with this. We may disagree on what the danger is and what we should focus on. This is in par with democracy.
Police patrols are not one thing. It is not just "officer friendly" with a nightstick. In New York City, there are paramilitary teams wandering around in subway stations -- one can only recognize them as police because of the word POLICE written on their body armor.
Things have gotten excessive:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/a...
Things have gotten excessive:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/a...
Yup. There has to be some sort of control in any system (even a few anarchists agree on that).
To further your/my/our point(s), you can read Bruce Schneier's latest "Crypto-Gram Newsletter" (https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1212.html). He rephrases the problem with a feudal/serf paradygm, which is quite appropriate imo.
To further your/my/our point(s), you can read Bruce Schneier's latest "Crypto-Gram Newsletter" (https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1212.html). He rephrases the problem with a feudal/serf paradygm, which is quite appropriate imo.
When innocent until proven guilty is removed (folks are presumed to do something that breaks the law in the future by this) we are heading down the wrong path. Many might say, "If you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about". Except we don't know what is considered "wrong" so everyone has everything to worry about. "But we're a democracy so we don't have to worry about losing control!" others will say. I will point you to the wonderful "democratic" elections that are held in North Korea... that is the society and structure you get when utilizing "thought crimes and thought police".
I don't necessarily disagree, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does a lot of people on here. However, we had actionable intelligence about 9-11 well in advance of the attacks, and yet there were simply too many threats for us to identify this one as plausible. On the one hand this was failure of analysis. On the other hand, as the 9-11 commission concluded, there was a failure of imagination: for some reason no one took this type of threat that seriously, even though similar scenarios had been proposed by analysts before.
My question, then, is how are orders of magnitude more data going to help? I honestly think it will make our predictive power worse, not better, at least for decades to come until we have learned enough to start making sense of data on the scale we are talking about here.
It is really just a case of doing it because our technology will allow it, and a general hand-waving of "more is better" and "it will make everyone safer", than facing the reality of actually detecting a terrorist threat.
It is, in fact, just more security theater.
My question, then, is how are orders of magnitude more data going to help? I honestly think it will make our predictive power worse, not better, at least for decades to come until we have learned enough to start making sense of data on the scale we are talking about here.
It is really just a case of doing it because our technology will allow it, and a general hand-waving of "more is better" and "it will make everyone safer", than facing the reality of actually detecting a terrorist threat.
It is, in fact, just more security theater.
Target knows you're pregnant, Facebook knows you're gay, now the government is working on knowing if you're a terrorist.
Big data isn't the future, its today.
Big data isn't the future, its today.
Didn't 9/11 seem more human mistake, power battle and inefficiencies between organizations rather than lack of intelligence data ?
Yes. Intelligence and law enforcement had all the information they needed to stop the hijackers, but were unable to properly correlate it. Since then we've added a flood of low-quality data via mass surveillance which probably makes their jobs even harder by vastly increasing the number of false positives.
And then the Latin Kings or the 14K or the Camorra get their hands on the data. Then you're screwed.
(Of course that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it's the Russian FSB or Chinese PSB).
(Of course that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it's the Russian FSB or Chinese PSB).
Assume everything is recorded. don't expect anything less
It's the responsibility of people in technology to design systems to defeat passive surveillance as a baseline. Defeating simple active-attack assisted monitoring (mitm with a different cert, etc.) is a nice additional step, and being able to resist targeted attack is basically beyond what we can do now, most of the time, but we should try.
Universal point to point encryption with pre-shared keys would solve this instantly.
There are some issues with doing ipsec opportunistic encryption still (which is probably the easiest way to realize that). I still think Free S/WAN was the closest we've come to a system designed for OE for passive monitoring resistance.
(and Start TLS for mail, does a pretty good job of that for the mail space)
(and Start TLS for mail, does a pretty good job of that for the mail space)
And here's the Western European version which is much scarier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Menwith_Hill
I went on site there to install some engineering management software and you are escorted around with an SA80 pointing at you most of the time and told "no questions".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Menwith_Hill
I went on site there to install some engineering management software and you are escorted around with an SA80 pointing at you most of the time and told "no questions".
The people who flew the hot air balloons overhead were pretty brave (== crazy) I think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBksQsAZ2hQ
Indeed. I'd say they were Darwin award candidates.
Are we so spooked as a nation that we're really considering precognition-style crime fighting? Liberties aside, this really makes me wonder what the atmosphere is like inside the government. With all of this paranoia, only two paths come to mind: 1.) They're aware of a future threat so large that it threatens the stability of the country, or 2.) They're planning something internally to "take over" the country one way or another.
In another view, you have to ask what this would do to society? A public so paranoid of being harassed by the government that they barely do anything, or, actually do go out and commit crimes. Despite our "intelligence" we're still animals and will behave so put under the right amount of strain. This is a time bomb.
In another view, you have to ask what this would do to society? A public so paranoid of being harassed by the government that they barely do anything, or, actually do go out and commit crimes. Despite our "intelligence" we're still animals and will behave so put under the right amount of strain. This is a time bomb.
With all of this paranoia, only two paths come to mind
I think it's just that they place zero or negative value on privacy, so any perceived incremental increase in identifying threats justifies any amount of increased surveillance.
I think it's just that they place zero or negative value on privacy, so any perceived incremental increase in identifying threats justifies any amount of increased surveillance.
So this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but muffled behind a paywall.
One way I'm reading this is that in effect it is illegal to hack a computer without permision; YET a computer can hack you without permision. When you think of it like that it does appear one-sided. This data centre could indicate you thru false positives of a crime and even present enough data to potentualy incriminate you even if you are innocent. Whilst we have managed to lock up innocent people in the past indicating the system is not perfect, the prospect of stepping closer towards automating that does not bode well.
That all said I understand what they are doing and why and it does make sence and if anything will make people realise that online is the same as in person, just better documented.
That all said I understand what they are doing and why and it does make sence and if anything will make people realise that online is the same as in person, just better documented.
"Reminiscent" of Total Information Awareness? It is TIA - and did anybody ever actually think they'd not implement TIA just because it was found out?
[deleted]
I'm assuming the OP posted a link to Slate instead of the Wall Street Journal because the article is gated at the latter. In which case, let me show you a little trick (in case you haven't come across it).
Just Google the full title of the WSJ article and the WSJ link in the search results will let you read the whole thing.
Just Google the full title of the WSJ article and the WSJ link in the search results will let you read the whole thing.
Home of the free, right?
ladies and gentlemen we have here a clear case where the people in charge have failed to uphold the Constitution of the United States. These people must be forced out of government, and prosecuted for their crimes.
Please vote, and please run for office if you have the fortitude to help us deal with this problem.
Please vote, and please run for office if you have the fortitude to help us deal with this problem.
Your tax dollars at work, powered by machine learning(tm)
Our society would be extremely foolish to believe that we've not already been under deep surveillance by the government for quite a long time.
Philip K. Dick called...
Not another one!
If it was just revealed, it's been going on in some way or another for the last two decades plus.
Nothing new, move on :(
Not sure why this was downvoted, but those of us who have been reading Naomi Wolf, Glenn Greenwald, et al. have known about this. This is merely the logical extension of the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, Telecom Immunity, NDAA, etc. I hope this federal Leviathan collapses, and we return to liberty someday, but I fear there will be a lot of casualties before that happens.
...where on the line did these guys lost the "innocent until proven guilty" part?! (the possibility of your government handing personal data of innocent civilians to foreign governments sounds "out of your freakyn minds" even for a foreigner like me! Imagine someone coming to the US in attempt to flee from an oppressive government and data about his whereabouts getting to a contract killer via an "en masse" exchange of data about "suspicious" civilians between governments...)
...keep it like this and the USA will be the last place on Earth someone would want to emigrate to, either to work or to open a business!!!