This is very clever and all, but from the British perspective - this is exactly what they would have been looking for and Revere would be considered a revolutionary and a real threat, so this is the system working as it is supposed to.
This is the equivalent of saying that the NSA can use such metadata to find muslim extremists that want to kill your children and implement sharia law. (hyperbole courtesy of American media)
Changing the timeline such that "americans" are the underdogs rather than the establishment isn't really helpful... is it? Or is this attempt to stoke revolutionary sentiment?
It spins the story around in such a way that Americans can relate to the dangers of a surveillance state.
You're suggesting that the NSA is just looking for bad guys and that they should be able to capture evil muslim extremists.
But now the US government decides to bring back alcohol prohibition. Drinking, they say, is immoral, and so are the people who drink. Do you still have nothing to fear?
Abortion gets outlawed, and its supporters are branded as immoral. Still got nothing to fear?
Creationism gets accepted as a viable, scientific alternative to evolution and gets taught in all schools, and people who believe otherwise are dangerous subversives.
Are you now one of the bad guys? Are the NSA now interested in you?
I find it interesting that Americans can believe that the right to bear arms will protect them from the world's largest military, should it ever be run by tyrants, but at the same time believe that the government will always share the same moral code that they themselves hold.
It's often been said during during debates about government waste and inefficiency, that citizens do not actually want an efficient government. The typical example is: would you want a boot to appear on your wheel, in your driveway, the minute your license plate expires? Because that would be efficient.
The average person feels that they are getting more benefit out of Google searches, Gmail, Facebook, cell phones, and credit cards for that matter, then they are being harmed by volunteering so much information to the corporations who run these businesses.
If you think the U.S. is headed in the direction of outlawing alcohol or teaching creationism is all schools, I respectfully suggest you find something different to worry about -- maybe pot... wait, we are becoming more lenient on it as well.
I find it a bit silly, that when the government adopts new technology to fight crime, everyone brings up their pet boogey-man to try to strike fear in their like-minded citizens. I honestly can't understand if you are in support of, for instance, using web surveillance technology to capture and prosecute abortion clinic bombers or not.
The typical example is: would you want a boot to appear on your wheel, in your driveway, the minute your license plate expires?
As long as they simultaneously provide the renewal for the license, why not? It would even be a service, since I would have less of hassle dealing with it and remembering to go to their office.
A government that is so efficient that it is basically impossible to even get into trouble with these kinds of administrative things can be a very good thing, as long as it is sufficiently good-natured.
The trouble comes in areas where there is more uncertainty, with laws that are so flexible that it's hard to tell whether you're guilty or not even when you know all the facts. If any prosecutor with an ax to grind can charge anybody with a crime, you have a problem. If, in addition, there are efficient databases that allow the prosecutor to find evidence against anybody even long after the fact, you have a recipe for totalitarianism.
A government that is so efficient that it is basically impossible to even get into trouble with these kinds of administrative things can be a very good thing, as long as it is sufficiently good-natured.
Indeed. One route (the one that I'm trying to keep echoing in my head these days) to thinking about such a nicely-efficient government is to ask how something would go in Iain Banks' Culture.
I'm personally not interested in using web surveillance to catch abortion bombers, the police already have very sophisticated and functional methods.
Did we need a google tap to find McVeigh?
Additionally, your comment of 'If you think the U.S. is headed in the direction of outlawing alcohol or teaching creationism is all schools, I respectfully suggest you find something different to worry about -- maybe pot... wait, we are becoming more lenient on it as well.' is very nonconstructive. To say that trends do not buck or that social opinion never sways is the height of short sightedness.
Do you think we need another constitutional amendment to augment the 4th and make data that corporations gather about us be considered private and require that the government obtain a search warrant in order to get that data from the corporations?
This is a very constructive question. I'm afraid I am not qualified to answer. I would like to think we just need to get congressional action explicitly delimiting the privacy scope as illustrated by the 4th.
I'm generally in favor of leaving the constitution technology agnostic.
I mentioned abortion, etc, simply because they are currently contentious in US society.
For a history lesson, consider how unfortunate it would have been to have had this technology back when England kept switching its official religion from Catholic to Protestant and believers in the wrong one were murdered by the state. It would have made the whole slaughter much easier if they could run a quick SQL query to determine who was in Father Jack's parish and where their cell phone said they were hiding out.
Your evident bias notwithstanding, I believe what you're trying to emphasize is the danger of an over-strong, over-active federal government directed by ideologues of any flavor. When the government uses its power against its own citizens, dividing them to make them unequal, then it flies in the face of the founding documents and ideals of this country.
The IRS taking political sides is a recent egregious example, but since its inception, the tax code has been used as a political power tool to divide us, giving special treatment to some groups over others. This is why politicians hate the idea of meaningful, economically-sane tax reform.
You mention the citizenry bearing arms against its government and the full force of the military directed against the people. Why take it to that extreme? You must realize that with current technology, small arms are the great equalizer among Men (and women). Think 110 lb jogger with a .45 vs. thug rapist. Now large government types want to take guns away from the citizenry for ideological reasons, but those reasons make the assumption that the people must be taken care of and protected by the government.
And that is where the big vs. small government argument hinges. Should the government protect the personal well-being of each citizen? The Founders said that we are born with the right to the "pursuit of happiness" not to the happiness itself. Too many on the big-government bandwagon have been promising the happiness for too long. Too many judges have been siding with the government over the rights of the people.
An overactive surveillance state once again operates under the assumption that the people are unable to take care of themselves. We MUST monitor all traffic so we can catch even the smallest act of 'terror,' destroying the rights of the people in the process and giving the government huge power over them. And speaking of traffic, the CAFE standards for autos have killed[1] more Americans than the terrorists have.
Our national dialog needs to be framed in the "Freedom vs. Security" trade off, but I'm not so sure that many people even understand what freedom is / was supposed to be.
I think you miss the point entirely. Of course the classic Revolutionary position was treasonous to the British Empire.
The function of dialogue like this is to push the metadata conversation into the mainstream. We want the People to understand that giving away our privacy in this data is /JUST/ like taking their guns, and for the same reasons.
Note that guns-for-defense-against-tyranny gun owners are not on the Government's side on this issue. It's the anti-gun nanny-state constituency that is supporting the government.
The group that both guns and supports domestice spying is overlap of "I just use guns for shooting rabbits for fun, and I don't like brown people, and I trust the government", not the groups that says "I need my guns in case the government tries to steal my land."
I consider this article not as an attempt to discredit these techniques by making patriotic references, but as an excellent starting point to help people start building instincts about what their "useless metadata" could actually be used for.
The great challenge we face in educating the populace (and indeed, ourselves) is that people lack any intuition for what sorts of data they should or should not broadcast. People are hesitant (I hope!) to give out home addresses to strangers without good cause--we have no such innate hunches about the data and metadata we leak.
Organised religion is IMHO, evil. In fact, I consider it to be the manifestation of the false gods the bible itself warns about. I cant ever get out of my head the way Bush Jr used Christian rhetoric to justify his two wars.
So, at the very least, that example doesn't really work for me.
Comments
This is very clever and all, but from the British perspective - this is exactly what they would have been looking for and Revere would be considered a revolutionary and a real threat, so this is the system working as it is supposed to.
This is the equivalent of saying that the NSA can use such metadata to find muslim extremists that want to kill your children and implement sharia law. (hyperbole courtesy of American media)
Changing the timeline such that "americans" are the underdogs rather than the establishment isn't really helpful... is it? Or is this attempt to stoke revolutionary sentiment?
It spins the story around in such a way that Americans can relate to the dangers of a surveillance state.
You're suggesting that the NSA is just looking for bad guys and that they should be able to capture evil muslim extremists.
But now the US government decides to bring back alcohol prohibition. Drinking, they say, is immoral, and so are the people who drink. Do you still have nothing to fear?
Abortion gets outlawed, and its supporters are branded as immoral. Still got nothing to fear?
Creationism gets accepted as a viable, scientific alternative to evolution and gets taught in all schools, and people who believe otherwise are dangerous subversives.
Are you now one of the bad guys? Are the NSA now interested in you?
I find it interesting that Americans can believe that the right to bear arms will protect them from the world's largest military, should it ever be run by tyrants, but at the same time believe that the government will always share the same moral code that they themselves hold.
It's often been said during during debates about government waste and inefficiency, that citizens do not actually want an efficient government. The typical example is: would you want a boot to appear on your wheel, in your driveway, the minute your license plate expires? Because that would be efficient.
The average person feels that they are getting more benefit out of Google searches, Gmail, Facebook, cell phones, and credit cards for that matter, then they are being harmed by volunteering so much information to the corporations who run these businesses.
If you think the U.S. is headed in the direction of outlawing alcohol or teaching creationism is all schools, I respectfully suggest you find something different to worry about -- maybe pot... wait, we are becoming more lenient on it as well.
I find it a bit silly, that when the government adopts new technology to fight crime, everyone brings up their pet boogey-man to try to strike fear in their like-minded citizens. I honestly can't understand if you are in support of, for instance, using web surveillance technology to capture and prosecute abortion clinic bombers or not.
As long as they simultaneously provide the renewal for the license, why not? It would even be a service, since I would have less of hassle dealing with it and remembering to go to their office.
A government that is so efficient that it is basically impossible to even get into trouble with these kinds of administrative things can be a very good thing, as long as it is sufficiently good-natured.
The trouble comes in areas where there is more uncertainty, with laws that are so flexible that it's hard to tell whether you're guilty or not even when you know all the facts. If any prosecutor with an ax to grind can charge anybody with a crime, you have a problem. If, in addition, there are efficient databases that allow the prosecutor to find evidence against anybody even long after the fact, you have a recipe for totalitarianism.
Indeed. One route (the one that I'm trying to keep echoing in my head these days) to thinking about such a nicely-efficient government is to ask how something would go in Iain Banks' Culture.
I'm personally not interested in using web surveillance to catch abortion bombers, the police already have very sophisticated and functional methods.
Did we need a google tap to find McVeigh?
Additionally, your comment of 'If you think the U.S. is headed in the direction of outlawing alcohol or teaching creationism is all schools, I respectfully suggest you find something different to worry about -- maybe pot... wait, we are becoming more lenient on it as well.' is very nonconstructive. To say that trends do not buck or that social opinion never sways is the height of short sightedness.
Do you think we need another constitutional amendment to augment the 4th and make data that corporations gather about us be considered private and require that the government obtain a search warrant in order to get that data from the corporations?
This is a very constructive question. I'm afraid I am not qualified to answer. I would like to think we just need to get congressional action explicitly delimiting the privacy scope as illustrated by the 4th.
I'm generally in favor of leaving the constitution technology agnostic.
I mentioned abortion, etc, simply because they are currently contentious in US society.
For a history lesson, consider how unfortunate it would have been to have had this technology back when England kept switching its official religion from Catholic to Protestant and believers in the wrong one were murdered by the state. It would have made the whole slaughter much easier if they could run a quick SQL query to determine who was in Father Jack's parish and where their cell phone said they were hiding out.
Totally! And automobiles, airplanes, rifling...
Your evident bias notwithstanding, I believe what you're trying to emphasize is the danger of an over-strong, over-active federal government directed by ideologues of any flavor. When the government uses its power against its own citizens, dividing them to make them unequal, then it flies in the face of the founding documents and ideals of this country.
The IRS taking political sides is a recent egregious example, but since its inception, the tax code has been used as a political power tool to divide us, giving special treatment to some groups over others. This is why politicians hate the idea of meaningful, economically-sane tax reform.
You mention the citizenry bearing arms against its government and the full force of the military directed against the people. Why take it to that extreme? You must realize that with current technology, small arms are the great equalizer among Men (and women). Think 110 lb jogger with a .45 vs. thug rapist. Now large government types want to take guns away from the citizenry for ideological reasons, but those reasons make the assumption that the people must be taken care of and protected by the government.
And that is where the big vs. small government argument hinges. Should the government protect the personal well-being of each citizen? The Founders said that we are born with the right to the "pursuit of happiness" not to the happiness itself. Too many on the big-government bandwagon have been promising the happiness for too long. Too many judges have been siding with the government over the rights of the people.
An overactive surveillance state once again operates under the assumption that the people are unable to take care of themselves. We MUST monitor all traffic so we can catch even the smallest act of 'terror,' destroying the rights of the people in the process and giving the government huge power over them. And speaking of traffic, the CAFE standards for autos have killed[1] more Americans than the terrorists have.
Our national dialog needs to be framed in the "Freedom vs. Security" trade off, but I'm not so sure that many people even understand what freedom is / was supposed to be.
[1]: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/death_by_cafe_standar...
I think you miss the point entirely. Of course the classic Revolutionary position was treasonous to the British Empire.
The function of dialogue like this is to push the metadata conversation into the mainstream. We want the People to understand that giving away our privacy in this data is /JUST/ like taking their guns, and for the same reasons.
Note that guns-for-defense-against-tyranny gun owners are not on the Government's side on this issue. It's the anti-gun nanny-state constituency that is supporting the government.
The group that both guns and supports domestice spying is overlap of "I just use guns for shooting rabbits for fun, and I don't like brown people, and I trust the government", not the groups that says "I need my guns in case the government tries to steal my land."
I consider this article not as an attempt to discredit these techniques by making patriotic references, but as an excellent starting point to help people start building instincts about what their "useless metadata" could actually be used for.
The great challenge we face in educating the populace (and indeed, ourselves) is that people lack any intuition for what sorts of data they should or should not broadcast. People are hesitant (I hope!) to give out home addresses to strangers without good cause--we have no such innate hunches about the data and metadata we leak.
let's say in the future, Christianity is made illegal. Is the above scary now?
Organised religion is IMHO, evil. In fact, I consider it to be the manifestation of the false gods the bible itself warns about. I cant ever get out of my head the way Bush Jr used Christian rhetoric to justify his two wars.
So, at the very least, that example doesn't really work for me.
Then find something that does. Homosexuality? Recreational drug usage?