Lots of people have picked up on your thesis statement : This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law.
We aren't talking about 'law' here, we're talking about 'people.' That gets lost some times.
Someone with access to these tools might decide the shake down Jack with a bit of blackmail. They might decide to sell union organizing 'alerts' to business. These are not legal but there are many people who work in an organization with these tools available who could justify abusing them.
Consider another hotbed subject which gets argued the other way all the time, gun ownership.
Now we can all agree that someone owning a gun who follows all of the safety precautions, and doesn't wave it about irresponsibly Etc is no threat to society. And yet the argument is put forward that the capability is the threat and people other than the owner may exploit that capability (a thief steals the gun, a spouse grabs it in a fit of rage, Etc.) and that it is "better" to not allow the person to own a gun because the risk of that gun falling into the wrong hands and doing something bad are non-zero enough.
This is the same argument we should make on surveillance technology, which is that the potential for its abuse and damaging the lives of innocent civilians, out weighs the 'benefit' the law enforcement agency gets from having it. There are other ways for the agency to do its job, just as there are other ways for our homeowner to protect their property, that don't require this capability.
Exactly. Consider how often cases of police officers (or even spooks; remember that they coined the term "LOVEINT" for cases of people doing exactly this) abusing their authority to spy on, stalk, and harass the objects of their a̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ obsession have come to light.
Now contemplate how many happen, but don't come to light.
As much as I want to decry TFA for fear-mongering, slippery-sloping, and straw-manning, extant — even rampant — abuses of authority give it ever so slightly too much "plausible" to dismiss out of hand.
Someone with access to these tools might decide the shake down Jack with a bit of blackmail. They might decide to sell union organizing 'alerts' to business. These are not legal but there are many people who work in an organization with these tools available who could justify abusing them.
The situation described in the article would require coordinating a lot of data together. I have a hard time seeing how individuals could do that properly without the institution noticing (especially considering how "Big Data" it is). It's not just cell data that you need, but also license plate scans, court records, etc. These are all fairly independent things, unlikely to be stored in the same place.
Individuals will try to exploit systems, and we should work hard to avoid things like LOVEINT happening (which shouldn't be hard in itself, but given that Snowden walked off with all those documents, the NSA doesn't seem very skilled in secure storage of documents).
If institutions work hard enough to make sure they're following the rules on document access, then it'll be harder for people to abuse, since each individual block of data is useless in itself. It would be the information equivalent of N keys to launch the nukes. Abuse would be much,much harder if somebody sat down and chmod'd some folders properly (nobody should have access to everything in any system). A plus side (for gov'ts at least), would be that Snowden-class events would be a lot harder to pull off.
Institutions can be built to be a lot harder to corrupt.
The situation described in the article would require coordinating a lot of data together.
Do you think the federal government cares more about protecting your personal data, or their own top secret data?
Edward Snowden was able to single-handedly pull together reams and reams of data on a cornucopia of the most highly classified top secret projects of our government. He wasn't noticed at all, except for the fact that he outed himself.
Had Edward Snowden actually been a spy working for a foreign government, he probably wouldn't have been caught at all, and would still be working for the government.
It's not just cell data that you need, but also license plate scans, court records, etc. These are all fairly independent things, unlikely to be stored in the same place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_fusion is the process of unifying disparate data sources in order to glean information not readily apparent by looking at the sources individually. Guess who is leading the charge in this budding field?
Institutions can be built to be a lot harder to corrupt.
Once all this information is stored, its value is essentially incalculable. Almost no expense at all will be too high for a foreign government or a multinational corporation to pay for access to it - it is too profound a leg up on Bob the competitor, Joe the union organizer, and Sally the investigative reporter. The act of collecting and storing the information is, itself, opening Pandora's box.
Comments
Lots of people have picked up on your thesis statement : This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law.
We aren't talking about 'law' here, we're talking about 'people.' That gets lost some times.
Someone with access to these tools might decide the shake down Jack with a bit of blackmail. They might decide to sell union organizing 'alerts' to business. These are not legal but there are many people who work in an organization with these tools available who could justify abusing them.
Consider another hotbed subject which gets argued the other way all the time, gun ownership.
Now we can all agree that someone owning a gun who follows all of the safety precautions, and doesn't wave it about irresponsibly Etc is no threat to society. And yet the argument is put forward that the capability is the threat and people other than the owner may exploit that capability (a thief steals the gun, a spouse grabs it in a fit of rage, Etc.) and that it is "better" to not allow the person to own a gun because the risk of that gun falling into the wrong hands and doing something bad are non-zero enough.
This is the same argument we should make on surveillance technology, which is that the potential for its abuse and damaging the lives of innocent civilians, out weighs the 'benefit' the law enforcement agency gets from having it. There are other ways for the agency to do its job, just as there are other ways for our homeowner to protect their property, that don't require this capability.
Exactly. Consider how often cases of police officers (or even spooks; remember that they coined the term "LOVEINT" for cases of people doing exactly this) abusing their authority to spy on, stalk, and harass the objects of their a̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ obsession have come to light.
Now contemplate how many happen, but don't come to light.
As much as I want to decry TFA for fear-mongering, slippery-sloping, and straw-manning, extant — even rampant — abuses of authority give it ever so slightly too much "plausible" to dismiss out of hand.
The situation described in the article would require coordinating a lot of data together. I have a hard time seeing how individuals could do that properly without the institution noticing (especially considering how "Big Data" it is). It's not just cell data that you need, but also license plate scans, court records, etc. These are all fairly independent things, unlikely to be stored in the same place.
Individuals will try to exploit systems, and we should work hard to avoid things like LOVEINT happening (which shouldn't be hard in itself, but given that Snowden walked off with all those documents, the NSA doesn't seem very skilled in secure storage of documents).
If institutions work hard enough to make sure they're following the rules on document access, then it'll be harder for people to abuse, since each individual block of data is useless in itself. It would be the information equivalent of N keys to launch the nukes. Abuse would be much,much harder if somebody sat down and chmod'd some folders properly (nobody should have access to everything in any system). A plus side (for gov'ts at least), would be that Snowden-class events would be a lot harder to pull off.
Institutions can be built to be a lot harder to corrupt.
Do you think the federal government cares more about protecting your personal data, or their own top secret data?
Edward Snowden was able to single-handedly pull together reams and reams of data on a cornucopia of the most highly classified top secret projects of our government. He wasn't noticed at all, except for the fact that he outed himself.
Had Edward Snowden actually been a spy working for a foreign government, he probably wouldn't have been caught at all, and would still be working for the government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_fusion is the process of unifying disparate data sources in order to glean information not readily apparent by looking at the sources individually. Guess who is leading the charge in this budding field?
Once all this information is stored, its value is essentially incalculable. Almost no expense at all will be too high for a foreign government or a multinational corporation to pay for access to it - it is too profound a leg up on Bob the competitor, Joe the union organizer, and Sally the investigative reporter. The act of collecting and storing the information is, itself, opening Pandora's box.