Jump to content

What Upsets You About Privacy Laws?the Drone As Privacy Catalyst


Recommended Posts

What's going on / wrong in our world? Why do we 'need' all this so-called security stuff to keep us safe in the first place? Why are we so prepared to let the purveyor of lies (government) chip away at our Rights and civil liberties in the name of collective safety, which has been almost purposely compromised by these same people? Are the alleged security needs real, or part of a bigger picture plot intended to ultimately bring the all the sheeple under the oversight & complete control of Big Brother?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DEFCON;

Re,

Why are we so prepared to let the purveyor of lies (government) chip away at our Rights and civil liberties in the name of collective safety, which has been almost purposely compromised by these same people? Are the alleged security needs real, or part of a bigger picture plot intended to ultimately bring the all the sheeple under the oversight & complete control of Big Brother?

It isn't "Big Brother", that ubiquitous image of something/someone/some-body looking over our shoulder, the societal "panopticon" that Orwell imagined in 1984 that is the problem. Today that is a convenient but mythical notion of how we view and understand surveillance of the public going about their private affairs such as walking in the streets, shopping, going on vacation and the million things we do without thought or consideration for who is now watching, either from the skies or increasingly in the streets. This is done entirely with our permission, albeit tacit and assumed, first under the guise of the "war on terror", (thank you Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama) but also under the local fears created by extremely rare events such as child abductions, domestic attack and the host of other reasons Americans have chosen to arm themselves against the boogeyman in record numbers in the past four years.

This is the death of personal privacy and even the expectation of personal privacy by a million tiny cuts.

Bill Moyers had something to say which is probably worth watching, (I haven't viewed it yet, but all his stuff is as far as I'm concerned but he is increasingly a rare, sane media voice in the media bewilderness), on surveillance, privacy and the what we could now legitimately call the Executive-Industrial-Military complex, recognizing government's complicity in this loss or gain, however one chooses to view it.

About twenty years ago I wrote about Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" on this site's former iterations run by Jim. At the time, I mentioned that we removed television from our home for the child-raising years, (about a dozen years - without a boring and unnecessary summary, it worked). But the meaning of the book's title and Postman's work, (like Chomsky's, "Manufacturing Consent", Walter Lippman's The Public Opinion, and Ed Bernays' "Propaganda" - Bernays, who lived to over 100, was Freud's nephew), has changed and is more relevant than ever.

You can find and read Postman's book here, read Wiki about it here, listen to Postman discuss the book on youtube or buy it here. The video (Open Mind) is dated in a number of interesting ways and actually and by the nature of the discussion, the references and even the music and the dress incidentally provide a fascinating backdrop against which one views our present world!, (and how far we have come away from a public discussion on such matters).

But don't let that interfere with Postman's message. It was Postman who wrote the extremely popular book, Teaching as a Subsersive Activity, and later, Teaching As a Conserving Activity. Someone has brought Postman's notions together with Orwell's and Huxley's to examine them in the light of the primary message in "Amusing Ourselves to Death". That fascinating summary can be found here but here it is:

i-TzXzczF-XL.pngi-5G76XMt-XL.pngi-QXpWc9v-XL.pngi-b5QC2Z5-XL.png

It is not Orwell's or even Huxley's imagined-world in which we presently live; - those imagined-worlds are far too tame and limited to understand what has changed since the microchip and microtechnology have made intimate surveillance both cheap, undiscoverable and even acceptable. What we see appears to us as a "natural progression" within the context of a world (intentionally) driven and voluntarily-controlled by fear of (ostensibly) rare events, (Daniel Kahneman has lots to say about this in "Thinking Fast and Slow" - also, take the Kahneman "quiz", (in Vogue magazine) to see what this means). We voluntarily accept (because we haven't taken to the airwaves, the media or the streets in protest of being spied upon by government) because we generally agree with government's intrusion on our democratic freedoms in exchange for "more" security, (Bill Moyers).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi malcolm;

Re, " . . . if you look at the worldwide headlines every day and note that in areas of weak security there are daily bombings (not aerial) and deaths."

Well, last time I listened and looked, there were no "daily bombings" in our quiet neighbourhood, no abductions only the occasional break-in, car accident and domestic, probably just like millions and millions of others' quiet neighbourhoods, (acknowledging what happens to the poor, disadvantaged and inner-city people).

I don't need drones circling at 17,000ft (in public airways without clearance) above my community (or the nearest WalMart, to monitor parking lot occupancy trends for private enterprise purposes) to make me and my family safe, nor do millions and millions of normal families.

Also, if you've ever visited the site of a media event, you will know that the media makes local events "big" in every way because that is how they survive economically. Not every community is a Basra, a Tripoli, a Damascus, a Boston, (extremely rare).

So you'll have to either grant the point made in the post above or you'll have to demonstrate why ordinary people have to yield to vague arguments concerning their / our security in the face of..."nothing happening here".

Cheers,

Don

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find it amusing that everyone is getting their knickers in a knot over drones when sophisticated aerial spying technology has existed almost from the advent of the satellite. We've known for decades that satellite mounted cameras are powerful enough to let you read the headline on a newspaper being read on the ground. AWACS planes can direct bombing and counter-measures with exceptional accuracy. Accoustic listening devices can pick up conversations at extraordinary distances. None of this is remotely new or confined to global "hot spots". To me, some of the reaction to big brother intelligence gathering is just left wing paranoia to go with the right wing paranoia that the state is going to revoke one's right to own a semi-automatic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To me, some of the reaction to big brother intelligence gathering is just left wing paranoia to go with the right wing paranoia that the state is going to revoke one's right to own a semi-automatic.

Don't disagree at all.

Yes, it is amusing that almost fifty years of developing surveillance capability has existed in a sanguine society - so few paid attention at the time that the sight of knickers-in-knots was rare. That is what is meant by "(privacy's death by a million cuts) or "mission creep". Clearly, a rational and reasoned approach to the needs of surveillance is part of any such discussion - some subtlety is obviously in order. It is a mistake to consider discussion as "left" or "right" - such a characterization is for politics and media. Rather, this is a discussion, (or intends to be) on the rationality of the needs of surveillance, some of which are obvious, many of which are not. Again clearly, the likelihood that most consider London streets safer due to the presence of thousands of cameras, is very high. Are they "left", or "right"? No, of course not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don

Thanks. Like most high-school kids, I read both, 1984 & Brave New World. I believe both authors seem to have got it right; modern governments are managing the masses today using both approaches.

I'm glad to have lived during the best of times. With all the mental-conditioning that is taking place today and global over population issues over-whelming available resources etc, our kids and grandchildren will never know or enjoy the notion of freedom as we have and that I believe is the truly unfortunate reality facing the people of todays and tomorrows world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Who's ever larger & already gigantic military machine has been sticking its nose in everyone's business for 60 years running now? Who elected them the policemen of the world anyway?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad to have lived during the best of times. With all the mental-conditioning that is taking place today and global over population issues over-whelming available resources etc, our kids and grandchildren will never know or enjoy the notion of freedom as we have and that I believe is the truly unfortunate reality facing the people of todays and tomorrows world.

A popular refrain offered by many of our ancestors' generations. And now it's our turn.

Ironically, we complain like crazy about our lives but then predict that the next generation will be much worse off than us.

If that was the case, why aren't we moving backwards? Frankly, when I look around, it seems to me that society is much better off now than what it was in the 60s.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A popular refrain offered by many of our ancestors' generations. And now it's our turn.

Ironically, we complain like crazy about our lives but then predict that the next generation will be much worse off than us.

If that was the case, why aren't we moving backwards? Frankly, when I look around, it seems to me that society is much better off now than what it was in the 60s.

A very debateable point.

One's POV depends on what area of the "two societies - now vs 60's" we are discussing. I would concede that medically and technologically, only two, of perhaps many, examples that spring to mind, we are much better off but as far as the social fabric, respect for others and the manners that accompany such a society we now see, I would say the '60s were much better.

My parents never lamented about the 20's,30's 40's but there are many who now lament about certain aspects that we seem to have lost as we moved ahead to the 70's and beyond, but were most prevalent in the 50's and 60's. :closedeyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There were aspects of society the 60s that were better... but many that were not. Yes... there seemed to be more respect, but often respect was used to maintain the caste.

There was much more poverty than there is today. It was just quieter... more respectful.

It was still acceptable, for the most part, to discriminate because of the colour of someone's skin or their religious or political background. In the "good old days" of the 50s, there was McCarthyism. Not only did governments use the highest level of technology available to them to spy on their citizens, they even made stuff up to put "commies" behind bars. But those affected didn't complain... they were respectful and succumbed.

In the 50s, the government allowed thalidomide to enter the drug channel.

They also often experimented with chemicals that hurt both the environment and humankind. So much hasn't changed there.

Police often took advantage of their position, sometimes worse. People respected the police almost without question.

In the 60s, people looked the other way when adults in charge of teams and religious orgs took advantage of their young members. Only now are we catching up with some of them. In the 60s (ok, 1970) police thought it was ok to shoot young adults at Kent State.. just because they were complaining about the government.

Sometimes a bit less respect is a good thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's always been problems, but people could walk the streets without fear and without mace & a gun. People could leave their keys in the ignition, leave their home unlocked and can you imagine; they could actually answer their home door without becoming a home invasion statistic. Five year olds, not to mention other people could fly without being subjected to strip-search, the majority of people worked and could retain most of their income and were free to invest in blue-chip homegrown corporations that provided for their 'guaranteed' pensions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As can most things we use..... guns, knives, cars, powertools, airplanes etc etc but the fear of their misuse does not prevent us from using them and I think the same applies to the items in Adler's column.

Fair enough, but if Charles Adler actually believes that Al Queda was previously unaware of the USA's efforts to track their communications, then he's more naive than he's accusing them of being. The image of Al Queda as a bunch of unsophisticated cave dwellers who hate Western freedoms may help sell time on CNN, but it's hardly the entire reality. What Snowden exposed isn't new information for Al Queda. It's just new for the millions of innocent Americans who didn't believe their government was that active in tracking their lives.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As Kip said, the point is clearly debatable. Things have changed so much in the past 50 years that you could fill pages of differences, then try to quantify the pluses and minuses.



But with respect to the subject of the thread, citizens have always been spied on by their governments. When the administration didn't have enough information to draw conclusions, they made it up, and still do.



So, nothing has really changed.



I guess one advantage of additional surveillance is that with more "truth", they won't have to fill the vacuum of information with as many presumptions.



A good parallel might be football. Before the video review process, we just had to believe the referees. If they presumed that a facemask had occurred or if they had some reason to make favourable calls for one of the teams they could "call it the way they see it" with little recourse. With the advent of playback, there is now little need for them to presume nor ability to favour.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This may or may not be a slight deviation from the central theme but it comes to mind by reason of Defcon's reference to the erosion of "freedoms".

I recall a few posts some time ago to the effect that it was not unreasonable for a police officer to demand identification from the passengers of a vehicle stopped for a moving violation. I took exception but there was a lot of support for the basic proposition that if one has nothing to hide, why would they complain about the demand?

I recently submitted a request for seasonal dockage at a South Florida marina. I was advised that in addition to the usual security deposit, I would be required to pay $53.00 for a "background check". I offered as evidence of the absence of a criminal record my Nexus membership; I've been vetted by Homeland Security. Nope----insufficient. What about my membership in good standing in the LSUC? Proof of my status can be obtained online. Nope---we want a background check.

And I object as a matter of principle. It is a slippery slope that we tread when the response to an objection to an intrusive request is; "If you have nothing to hide then...."

The demand of a police officer that you empty your pockets (absent reasonable and probable cause) is no less intrusive nor objectionable than a demand that you "Show me your papers".

If we do not vigorously and vociferously fight for the preservation of fundamental rights, those rights will gradually erode and cease to exist.

I am prepared to forgo a degree of personal security in exchange for personal freedom. I acknowledge that the issue is----where lies the line in the sand?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

UpperDeck, re "If we do not vigorously and vociferously fight for the preservation of fundamental rights, those rights will gradually erode and cease to exist."


Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created in One of the World's Freest Countries

A White House lawyer seems determined to demolish our civil liberties.

June 2, 2014

In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency.

The source of the instruction, of course, is the trove of documents about the National Security Agency surveillance system released by the courageous fighter for freedom Edward J. Snowden, expertly summarized and analyzed by his collaborator Glenn Greenwald in his new book, "No Place to Hide."

The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus - in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society.

Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead.

It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures," and guarantees the privacy of their "persons, houses, papers and effects."

Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the Snowden documents.

It is also well to remember that defense of the fundamental right to privacy helped to spark the American Revolution. In the 18th century, the tyrant was the British government, which claimed the right to intrude freely into the homes and personal lives of American colonists. Today it is American citizens' own government that arrogates to itself this authority.

Britain retains the stance that drove the colonists to rebellion, though on a more restricted scale, as power has shifted in world affairs. The British government has called on the NSA "to analyse and retain any British citizens' mobile phone and fax numbers, emails and IP addresses, swept up by its dragnet," The Guardian reports, working from documents provided by Snowden.

British citizens (like other international customers) will also doubtless be pleased to learn that the NSA routinely receives or intercepts routers, servers and other computer network devices exported from the United States so that it can implant surveillance tools, as Greenwald reports in his book.

As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle every keystroke might be sent to President Obama's huge and expanding databases in Utah.

In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion.

Recently The New York Times reported the "anguish" of a federal judge who had to decide whether to allow the force-feeding of a Syrian prisoner who is on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.

No "anguish" was expressed over the fact that he has been held without trial for 12 years in Guantanamo, one of many victims of the leader of the Free World, who claims the right to hold prisoners without charges and to subject them to torture.

These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.

The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.

Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.

It has long been understood that information about the enemy makes a critical contribution to controlling it. In that regard, Obama has a series of distinguished predecessors, though his contributions have reached unprecedented levels, as we have learned from the work of Snowden, Greenwald and a few others.

To defend state power and private economic power from the domestic enemy, those two entities must be concealed - while in sharp contrast, the enemy must be fully exposed to state authority.

The principle was lucidly explained by the policy intellectual Samuel P. Huntington, who instructed us that "Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate."

Huntington added a crucial illustration. In his words, "you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine" at the outset of the Cold War.

Huntington's insight into state power and policy was both accurate and prescient. As he wrote these words in 1981, the Reagan administration was launching its war on terror - which quickly became a murderous and brutal terrorist war, primarily in Central America, but extending well beyond to southern Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

From that day forward, in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us.

Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.

In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky, distributed by the New York Times Syndicate

Unfortunately, given the quality of public and even personal conversation engendered by internet-quick-answers, text-messaging and email, many today are no longer capable of participating in or even desiring an extended dialogue let alone being able to maintain concentration (ie., no distractions for longer than 3 minutes...is it possible?), to read a long dissertation on current and critical social topics. The ability to think about what our governments are doing has been atrophied to the point where young people think it's okay for their government and private corporations to spy on citizens, because that's what the internet does anyway, the defending observation being, "if one isn't doing anything wrong, then where's the problem?", a serious and dysfunctional under-estimation of the character of the problem.

However, given that disturbing quality of public dialogue, the Guardian is still worth reading among the world's depressing and "bought" media which isn't worth turning to for "news".

Two other articles that are worth examining are linked below, (this isn't "persuasion", this is a call to read and think, then come to one's own conclusions, while seeking other points of view that disagree):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/chomsky-zizek-debate-snowden-nsa

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/19/noam-chomsky-slavoj-zizek-ding-dong

Guardian readers single out the "wisest minds of our time":

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/22/wisest-minds-guardian-readers

[edit]

Interestingly, today, (June 8) is the 65th anniversary of the publishing of George Orwell's "1984"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For a democracy to work, the people living in that world have to participate it's workings. They are the drivers. They need to feel it working in their lives, the good and the bad effects of the policies they put in place to ensure it stays on course. As intelligence becomes more pervasive though, the folks in the democracy become less removed from participating in it. The people controlling the intelligence, and over time there will be less and less of them, will decide how much the people get to participate. Soon enough, we won't know who our friends and enemies are. We'll be told who they are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Hi DEFCON;

Thanks...I tried it and got the "US viewers only" message and when I clicked on "okay" it played. I tried it a second time and the US message doesn't appear.

I hadn't seen this before - Rose is quick, aggressive and punchy with Greenwald ostensibly because he has to be lest he be branded a sympathizer with his guest but Greenwald not only holds his own brilliantly but he appears to soften Rose just a bit.

Try this technique anyway. If it doesn't work, this link might: http://glenngreenwald.net/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got the link to open by following the technique you suggested Don, thank you.

That was a good interview, but after watching a recent clip from John Oliver's interview in Russia with Snowden, I'm not sure there's much hope the sheeple have what it takes to escape being completely enslaved by their own governmental overlords.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because power is what power does, I think there is no hope whatsoever, certainly in our lifetime - we have submitted to power, elected it even and here we are. And who knows what has been going on in Canada under the "security" rubric? There is no such thing as personal privacy now, and because innocent action can (and has been) interpreted by those on a mission, surveillance takes on a new and deeply sinister meaning.

But here we are: volunteeers all, without a peep of resistance; just too busy surviving daily life.

There is a state need for secrecy to be sure. Anyone who has been or is in any position of authority knows this. However, I know of no reason why there is a need to spy on an entire population. One understands discomfort with mere opposition, (nothing to do with national security) but who or what defends democracy when those in power do such things? To whom does one submit such questions? And what should the answers then look like?

Is there a moment in the day when some form of government does not touch or affect our lives?

Statistics don't support such notions as finding the needle in a million haystacks that may be the one threat that a nation can't afford to miss. I recall stories written in early spring 2001 in the U.S. media regarding some form of threat - there were ways and means of ferreting out such elements without the need to collect a few billion emails and phone calls each day without oversight or cessation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...