by liberal japonicus
I have to admit, I only looked at this news item because I thought it said 'Lone Ranger debacle could be avoided with a gadget' and thought 'how could you have saved that film with a gadget?' (Though I saw it on the airplane coming back from the states and it was great transpacific fare, soaking up time with a minimum of mental effort).
Anyway, here is yet another open Friday post, where you can describe a gadget you like or hate or take the conversation in a different direction.
You’re all set to be the life of the party now!
You’re all set to be the life of the party now!
Actually, I don’t know why they don’t try to sell these at the local adult emporium, though I guess the inventor who views this as saving the lives of SEALS is not going to be too happy when it is used for your (not-so?) friendly neighborhood dominatrix.
Actually, I don’t know why they don’t try to sell these at the local adult emporium, though I guess the inventor who views this as saving the lives of SEALS is not going to be too happy when it is used for your (not-so?) friendly neighborhood dominatrix.
The timer handcuffs actually seem like they might indeed have valid uses. Including the one mentioned in the linked article. Far more real utility than, for example, a refrigerator linked to the Internet.
The timer handcuffs actually seem like they might indeed have valid uses. Including the one mentioned in the linked article. Far more real utility than, for example, a refrigerator linked to the Internet.
“Far more real utility than, for example, a refrigerator linked to the Internet. ”
But what will I use for spamming?
“Far more real utility than, for example, a refrigerator linked to the Internet. ”
But what will I use for spamming?
But the wonder of spam, as I recall, was that it didn’t need refrigeration! 😉
But the wonder of spam, as I recall, was that it didn’t need refrigeration! 😉
Ah, so you use an internet connected pantry or basement instead? Clever.
Ah, so you use an internet connected pantry or basement instead? Clever.
My wireless router for my internet-connected pantry has 16-bacon-bit encryption.
My wireless router for my internet-connected pantry has 16-bacon-bit encryption.
I was thinking of putting up a thread dissecting the decision in Smith v. Maryland and why it’s problematic on its own terms, and utterly useless when analyzing today’s NSA surveillance. But can’t seem to find the time.
The Court in Smith went out of its way to emphasize the limited nature and capability of the surveillance and surveillance tool at issue in the case, quoting another case “a law enforcement official could not even determine from the use of a pen register whether a communication existed. These devices do not hear sound. They disclose only the telephone numbers that have been dialed – a means of establishing communication. Neither the purport of any communication between the caller and the recipient of the call, their identities, nor whether the call was even completed is disclosed by pen registers.” The information collected by NSA goes well beyond this.
I was thinking of putting up a thread dissecting the decision in Smith v. Maryland and why it’s problematic on its own terms, and utterly useless when analyzing today’s NSA surveillance. But can’t seem to find the time.
The Court in Smith went out of its way to emphasize the limited nature and capability of the surveillance and surveillance tool at issue in the case, quoting another case “a law enforcement official could not even determine from the use of a pen register whether a communication existed. These devices do not hear sound. They disclose only the telephone numbers that have been dialed – a means of establishing communication. Neither the purport of any communication between the caller and the recipient of the call, their identities, nor whether the call was even completed is disclosed by pen registers.” The information collected by NSA goes well beyond this.
The most startling line in Smith v Maryland, I thought, was this: “Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed.” What universe do these justices inhabit? On what do they base their “in all probability” of what the petitioner (or any of the rest of us) expected?
*I* certainly expect that, if someone wants to find out what phone numbers I have dialed, they will have to get a warrant.
The most startling line in Smith v Maryland, I thought, was this: “Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed.” What universe do these justices inhabit? On what do they base their “in all probability” of what the petitioner (or any of the rest of us) expected?
*I* certainly expect that, if someone wants to find out what phone numbers I have dialed, they will have to get a warrant.
wj – there’s a lot of statements in the opinion that seem to be based on nothing by Justice Blackmun’s own sense of “what is.” E.g.:
“All telephone users realize that they must ‘convey’ phone numbers to the telephone company”
and
“All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone company has facilities for making permanent records of the numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance (toll) calls on their monthly bills”
Note the subtle switch from “users” to “subscribers” there.
“Although most people may be oblivious to a pen register’s esoteric functions, they presumably have some awareness of one common use: to aid in the identification of persons making annoying or obscene calls.”
What? If “most people may be oblivious to a pen register’s esoteric functions” then how does the rest of the opinion make sense?
wj – there’s a lot of statements in the opinion that seem to be based on nothing by Justice Blackmun’s own sense of “what is.” E.g.:
“All telephone users realize that they must ‘convey’ phone numbers to the telephone company”
and
“All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone company has facilities for making permanent records of the numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance (toll) calls on their monthly bills”
Note the subtle switch from “users” to “subscribers” there.
“Although most people may be oblivious to a pen register’s esoteric functions, they presumably have some awareness of one common use: to aid in the identification of persons making annoying or obscene calls.”
What? If “most people may be oblivious to a pen register’s esoteric functions” then how does the rest of the opinion make sense?
ugh, I think what we have here is a blatant case of someone first deciding what result he wants. And then finding (or inventing) reasons to support it. It’s what a lawyer is supposed to do for a client. But not what a judge is supposed to do in making a ruling.
ugh, I think what we have here is a blatant case of someone first deciding what result he wants. And then finding (or inventing) reasons to support it. It’s what a lawyer is supposed to do for a client. But not what a judge is supposed to do in making a ruling.
Some people just don’t get that they are pawns.
Some people just don’t get that they are pawns.
sapient:
Speaking of the RNC’s about face, can I assuming you have always been a strong supporter of the NSA programs, even under the GWB administration?
sapient:
Speaking of the RNC’s about face, can I assuming you have always been a strong supporter of the NSA programs, even under the GWB administration?
GWB (and his sidekick) were fascists. He took power with a Republican Congress. They abused their power.
I believe in a strong government with a lot of power, but the citizens have to be responsible enough not to elect fascists. The solution isn’t to dismantle government; it’s to kick out the fascists.
GWB (and his sidekick) were fascists. He took power with a Republican Congress. They abused their power.
I believe in a strong government with a lot of power, but the citizens have to be responsible enough not to elect fascists. The solution isn’t to dismantle government; it’s to kick out the fascists.
I realize this is an open thread, but saying you are leaving because of the snark and then bringing it over here is not really what I (and I think the great unmatched wash of the commentariat) has in mind.
I realize this is an open thread, but saying you are leaving because of the snark and then bringing it over here is not really what I (and I think the great unmatched wash of the commentariat) has in mind.
Oh, and thompson, we did that! At least we managed to do it on the Federal level. More work to do, especially in the House.
Oh, and thompson, we did that! At least we managed to do it on the Federal level. More work to do, especially in the House.
I realize this is an open thread, but saying you are leaving because of the snark and then bringing it over here is not really what I (and I think the great unmatched wash of the commentariat) has in mind.
As you wish, lj.
I realize this is an open thread, but saying you are leaving because of the snark and then bringing it over here is not really what I (and I think the great unmatched wash of the commentariat) has in mind.
As you wish, lj.
sapient:
I have no objections to the ‘don’t elect fascists’ plan. Personally, I don’t view it as sufficient, but I understand we differ on that point.
But what I was wondering, and maybe I should be more explicit, was the following:
Is your support of the NSA now predicated largely by an administration you support?
To say another way, would the same tools in an administration you didn’t support (frex GWB) be objectionable?
sapient:
I have no objections to the ‘don’t elect fascists’ plan. Personally, I don’t view it as sufficient, but I understand we differ on that point.
But what I was wondering, and maybe I should be more explicit, was the following:
Is your support of the NSA now predicated largely by an administration you support?
To say another way, would the same tools in an administration you didn’t support (frex GWB) be objectionable?
I think it’s hilarious that the RNC is now thanking Snowden and condemning NSA spying. It’d be even funnier if some liberals reversed their positions. Oh, wait…
But snark aside, why should anyone make judgments positive or negative about issues based on what cynical political types choose to do?
I think it’s hilarious that the RNC is now thanking Snowden and condemning NSA spying. It’d be even funnier if some liberals reversed their positions. Oh, wait…
But snark aside, why should anyone make judgments positive or negative about issues based on what cynical political types choose to do?
Thanks sapient, I appreciate that. I’m actually probably a lot more sympathetic to your position than most, and I’m hoping Ugh will write something and I may try as well, but when it gets to the level of zingers, I feel we might as well just move to twitter.
Thanks sapient, I appreciate that. I’m actually probably a lot more sympathetic to your position than most, and I’m hoping Ugh will write something and I may try as well, but when it gets to the level of zingers, I feel we might as well just move to twitter.
I have an extra can or two of snark in case anybody feels they are running short. Spraying the pan with snark before frying the spam enhances its flavor substantially.
for wj: General propositions do not decide concrete cases. – Oliver Wendell Holmes.
I have an extra can or two of snark in case anybody feels they are running short. Spraying the pan with snark before frying the spam enhances its flavor substantially.
for wj: General propositions do not decide concrete cases. – Oliver Wendell Holmes.
I think it’s hilarious that the RNC is now thanking Snowden and condemning NSA spying.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
Is your support of the NSA now predicated largely by an administration you support?
I’ve pretty much always supported a strong and effective government as long as it’s in the hands of humane and competent leaders. The constitutional system of checks and balances controls against abuse if responsible leaders are in office. I consider elections extremely important, and I’m much more troubled by the fact that money distorts the electoral process than I am about the NSA in the hands of the Obama administration. But yes, the NSA, the military, the other departments of government – all of those are disastrous tools in the hands of the right-wing.
The answer is to elect people who make government work for the general welfare. It’s our only solution to combat the unbridled power of private wealth. Weakening government certainly isn’t the answer.
I think it’s hilarious that the RNC is now thanking Snowden and condemning NSA spying.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
Is your support of the NSA now predicated largely by an administration you support?
I’ve pretty much always supported a strong and effective government as long as it’s in the hands of humane and competent leaders. The constitutional system of checks and balances controls against abuse if responsible leaders are in office. I consider elections extremely important, and I’m much more troubled by the fact that money distorts the electoral process than I am about the NSA in the hands of the Obama administration. But yes, the NSA, the military, the other departments of government – all of those are disastrous tools in the hands of the right-wing.
The answer is to elect people who make government work for the general welfare. It’s our only solution to combat the unbridled power of private wealth. Weakening government certainly isn’t the answer.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
If you weren’t talking about a defense/LE “tool of government” I’d agree with you, but the RNC has rarely demurred from empowering the military-industrial complex and its halo.
Some people just don’t get that they are pawns.
And other people base their opinions of governmental programs on principle rather than political expediency.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
If you weren’t talking about a defense/LE “tool of government” I’d agree with you, but the RNC has rarely demurred from empowering the military-industrial complex and its halo.
Some people just don’t get that they are pawns.
And other people base their opinions of governmental programs on principle rather than political expediency.
I don’t know what “defense/LE” means.
I don’t know what “defense/LE” means.
Defense or law enforcement.
Also:
I’ve pretty much always supported a strong and effective government as long as it’s in the hands of humane and competent leaders. The constitutional system of checks and balances controls against abuse if responsible leaders are in office. I consider elections extremely important, and I’m much more troubled by the fact that money distorts the electoral process than I am about the NSA in the hands of the Obama administration. But yes, the NSA, the military, the other departments of government – all of those are disastrous tools in the hands of the right-wing.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but this sounds an awful lot like a thinly-veiled paean to rule of man over rule of law.
Defense or law enforcement.
Also:
I’ve pretty much always supported a strong and effective government as long as it’s in the hands of humane and competent leaders. The constitutional system of checks and balances controls against abuse if responsible leaders are in office. I consider elections extremely important, and I’m much more troubled by the fact that money distorts the electoral process than I am about the NSA in the hands of the Obama administration. But yes, the NSA, the military, the other departments of government – all of those are disastrous tools in the hands of the right-wing.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but this sounds an awful lot like a thinly-veiled paean to rule of man over rule of law.
sapient, if you leave, where will you be going? just, y’know, curious.
sapient, if you leave, where will you be going? just, y’know, curious.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
I don’t understand what this monopoly over information is supposed to mean. How does the government’s having the same data that corporations have protect us from the corporations? That’s not even the purpose of the NSA program in question.
You say the comms companies need this data to perform functions vital to our way of life, but because you don’t trust them with it, you suggest that it makes it acceptable for the government to have it.
I just don’t get it. It makes no sense.
I think it’s predictable that the RNC would support removing information as a tool of government and leaving corporations with a monopoly over it.
I don’t understand what this monopoly over information is supposed to mean. How does the government’s having the same data that corporations have protect us from the corporations? That’s not even the purpose of the NSA program in question.
You say the comms companies need this data to perform functions vital to our way of life, but because you don’t trust them with it, you suggest that it makes it acceptable for the government to have it.
I just don’t get it. It makes no sense.
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data, nor Nombrilisme Vide’s point that the comms companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
You also reduced the question of potential for abuse to a binary determination between *potential for abuse* versus *no potential for abuse*, which it is not. It’s a question of determining to what degree the potential exists and making a judgement about acceptable levels of risk.
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data, nor Nombrilisme Vide’s point that the comms companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
You also reduced the question of potential for abuse to a binary determination between *potential for abuse* versus *no potential for abuse*, which it is not. It’s a question of determining to what degree the potential exists and making a judgement about acceptable levels of risk.
this sounds an awful lot like a thinly-veiled paean to rule of man over rule of law.
You have to do a lot of interpreting in order to come to that conclusion. The Constitution provides for a strong government under the law, allowing the Bill of Rights to protect individuals against majority abuse by the government. I don’t advocate ignoring the Constitution (which includes the authority of Congress to make laws), so not sure what your point is. Good leaders honor the law; bad leaders find no need to do so.
Remember, the NSA data collection program began without any Congressional authorization. “A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president’s now celebrated secret executive order. “
Who needs laws to “rein you in” if you don’t care about the law?
sapient, if you leave, where will you be going? just, y’know, curious.
Hard to say.
this sounds an awful lot like a thinly-veiled paean to rule of man over rule of law.
You have to do a lot of interpreting in order to come to that conclusion. The Constitution provides for a strong government under the law, allowing the Bill of Rights to protect individuals against majority abuse by the government. I don’t advocate ignoring the Constitution (which includes the authority of Congress to make laws), so not sure what your point is. Good leaders honor the law; bad leaders find no need to do so.
Remember, the NSA data collection program began without any Congressional authorization. “A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president’s now celebrated secret executive order. “
Who needs laws to “rein you in” if you don’t care about the law?
sapient, if you leave, where will you be going? just, y’know, curious.
Hard to say.
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data
What’s stopping them from buying it? Or merging? Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
That’s an unproven assertion, if I ever heard one. As most of us know, Google is way better at finding significant information from large amounts of data for a variety of purposes than what we know the NSA is doing. And where has anyone answered the question: if third parties have huge amounts of data with which they can sift though and find out who in the batch is pregnant, what kind of “expectation of privacy” do we exactly have in that data?
You also reduced the question of potential for abuse to a binary determination between *potential for abuse* versus *no potential for abuse*, which it is not.
When did I do that?
It’s a question of determining to what degree the potential exists and making a judgement about acceptable levels of risk.
Sure. No argument. Congress has been through this process, and revisits it on a regular basis. Not only is there legislation that was introduced during the fall (two competing bills), but Congress placed a sunset provision on existing law to expire in 2015. They have to reauthorize it if it’s going to remain in existence. I don’t consider that system an indication of totalitarianism.
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data
What’s stopping them from buying it? Or merging? Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
That’s an unproven assertion, if I ever heard one. As most of us know, Google is way better at finding significant information from large amounts of data for a variety of purposes than what we know the NSA is doing. And where has anyone answered the question: if third parties have huge amounts of data with which they can sift though and find out who in the batch is pregnant, what kind of “expectation of privacy” do we exactly have in that data?
You also reduced the question of potential for abuse to a binary determination between *potential for abuse* versus *no potential for abuse*, which it is not.
When did I do that?
It’s a question of determining to what degree the potential exists and making a judgement about acceptable levels of risk.
Sure. No argument. Congress has been through this process, and revisits it on a regular basis. Not only is there legislation that was introduced during the fall (two competing bills), but Congress placed a sunset provision on existing law to expire in 2015. They have to reauthorize it if it’s going to remain in existence. I don’t consider that system an indication of totalitarianism.
*I* certainly expect that, if someone wants to find out what phone numbers I have dialed, they will have to get a warrant.
The norm has been that a warrant is not needed for this.
Sort of briefly:
Olmstead vs United States (1928) held that wiretaps did not violate the 4A.
Katz vs United States (1967) overturned Olmstead and held that they did violate the 4A, and established the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test.
Smith vs Maryland (1979) held that a pen register trap and trace – which captures the numbers dialed and the time of call, but not the content – did not violate the 4A because there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy since the phone company (a third party) has to know that information in order to route the call.
From Smith vs Maryland on, information about the communication other than the content itself has been seen as outside 4A protection, while the content has been seen as being protected by the 4A.
Congress established *statutory* (as opposed to constitutional) protection for pen register and similar methods for capturing “metadata” in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in 1986.
The ECPA also explicitly addressed email and other electronic communications where message content is held at rest by a third party, and extends the legal protections afforded to phone calls to those.
The protections afforded to electronic “metadata” by the ECPA is weaker than that afforded to content – a court order, rather than a warrant, is sufficient to carry out metadata capture. So, for metadata, stronger protections than under Smith vs Maryland, but not as strong as Katz.
The USA Patriot Act (USAPA) overrode much of the protections of the ECPA, however in its current amended form metadata captures still must (a) be relevant to a specific investigation authorized by the FISC, and (b) cannot be carried out on US persons for activities specifically related to their exercise of 1A rights.
Long story short, from 1967 to 1979 the feds would have needed a warrant to trace what numbers you called. Other than that, they could do so either at will or with a simple court order.
As an aside, I will say that relying on the personal goodness and integrity of individuals elected to public office as an impediment to the abuse of power seems, to me, fantastically naive and unrealistic. It also seems to be contrary to the entire project of constitutional republican (note the small r) governance.
My opinion.
*I* certainly expect that, if someone wants to find out what phone numbers I have dialed, they will have to get a warrant.
The norm has been that a warrant is not needed for this.
Sort of briefly:
Olmstead vs United States (1928) held that wiretaps did not violate the 4A.
Katz vs United States (1967) overturned Olmstead and held that they did violate the 4A, and established the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test.
Smith vs Maryland (1979) held that a pen register trap and trace – which captures the numbers dialed and the time of call, but not the content – did not violate the 4A because there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy since the phone company (a third party) has to know that information in order to route the call.
From Smith vs Maryland on, information about the communication other than the content itself has been seen as outside 4A protection, while the content has been seen as being protected by the 4A.
Congress established *statutory* (as opposed to constitutional) protection for pen register and similar methods for capturing “metadata” in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in 1986.
The ECPA also explicitly addressed email and other electronic communications where message content is held at rest by a third party, and extends the legal protections afforded to phone calls to those.
The protections afforded to electronic “metadata” by the ECPA is weaker than that afforded to content – a court order, rather than a warrant, is sufficient to carry out metadata capture. So, for metadata, stronger protections than under Smith vs Maryland, but not as strong as Katz.
The USA Patriot Act (USAPA) overrode much of the protections of the ECPA, however in its current amended form metadata captures still must (a) be relevant to a specific investigation authorized by the FISC, and (b) cannot be carried out on US persons for activities specifically related to their exercise of 1A rights.
Long story short, from 1967 to 1979 the feds would have needed a warrant to trace what numbers you called. Other than that, they could do so either at will or with a simple court order.
As an aside, I will say that relying on the personal goodness and integrity of individuals elected to public office as an impediment to the abuse of power seems, to me, fantastically naive and unrealistic. It also seems to be contrary to the entire project of constitutional republican (note the small r) governance.
My opinion.
what kind of “expectation of privacy” do we exactly have in that data?
We have the expectation that the government will not allowed to capture it and use it against us, whether in a criminal proceeding or any other way.
That’s what is guaranteed in the 4A.
As far as I can tell, the 4A does not and was not intended to address the use of private information by private actors.
what kind of “expectation of privacy” do we exactly have in that data?
We have the expectation that the government will not allowed to capture it and use it against us, whether in a criminal proceeding or any other way.
That’s what is guaranteed in the 4A.
As far as I can tell, the 4A does not and was not intended to address the use of private information by private actors.
As an aside, I will say that relying on the personal goodness and integrity of individuals elected to public office as an impediment to the abuse of power seems, to me, fantastically naive and unrealistic. It also seems to be contrary to the entire project of constitutional republican (note the small r) governance.
Relying on “personal goodness and integrity,” is not what I said, although those things are a plus, for sure. Competence, devotion to the law, and belief in the project of governing is more what I meant. I don’t understand why that’s more naive than thinking you can pass laws that “rein in” undesirable behavior, and then elect people who will ignore them, and think that it will all be okay.
On the question of NSA surveillance, there are some factual givens. There’s a vast amount of information that’s collected all over the world, and available to many people. Some of it is freely available; some of it is protected under the law, and by technology, but available to people with technological expertise, and willingness to flout the law. Some of it is encrypted successfully (for now), but can be disclosed by malice or accident by people who have the keys. The federal government is only one of many entities who might have access to this data.
National defense is a legitimate interest of government. Allowing the federal government to pursue that interest, while protecting citizens’ constitutional rights, requires vigilance and oversight. No one denies this. But prohibiting the federal government (which represents the collective interests of citizens) from access to the same information that large numbers of private actors have (who represent their own interests) is putting too much power into private hands.
We have the expectation that the government will not allowed to capture it and use it against us, whether in a criminal proceeding or any other way.
That’s not at all what the Fourth Amendment says. The Fourth Amendment says nothing about “capturing” data given to third parties. That’s what the “outside of the envelope” concept is all about.
As an aside, I will say that relying on the personal goodness and integrity of individuals elected to public office as an impediment to the abuse of power seems, to me, fantastically naive and unrealistic. It also seems to be contrary to the entire project of constitutional republican (note the small r) governance.
Relying on “personal goodness and integrity,” is not what I said, although those things are a plus, for sure. Competence, devotion to the law, and belief in the project of governing is more what I meant. I don’t understand why that’s more naive than thinking you can pass laws that “rein in” undesirable behavior, and then elect people who will ignore them, and think that it will all be okay.
On the question of NSA surveillance, there are some factual givens. There’s a vast amount of information that’s collected all over the world, and available to many people. Some of it is freely available; some of it is protected under the law, and by technology, but available to people with technological expertise, and willingness to flout the law. Some of it is encrypted successfully (for now), but can be disclosed by malice or accident by people who have the keys. The federal government is only one of many entities who might have access to this data.
National defense is a legitimate interest of government. Allowing the federal government to pursue that interest, while protecting citizens’ constitutional rights, requires vigilance and oversight. No one denies this. But prohibiting the federal government (which represents the collective interests of citizens) from access to the same information that large numbers of private actors have (who represent their own interests) is putting too much power into private hands.
We have the expectation that the government will not allowed to capture it and use it against us, whether in a criminal proceeding or any other way.
That’s not at all what the Fourth Amendment says. The Fourth Amendment says nothing about “capturing” data given to third parties. That’s what the “outside of the envelope” concept is all about.
What’s stopping them from buying it?
A couple of things. First, it is generally not for sale. You can see this for yourself: call up the phone companies and try and buy this data on yourself or on me. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Any luck?
There are thriving markets in selling data on individuals, but for a lot of reasons, this data is generally focused on demographics; companies like bluekai will, for a price, tell you that the web browser with bluekai cookie #12345678 is (probably) a married woman in her 30s who lives in Nebraska and is interested in purchasing a new car. This is really not comparable in any way to the NSA’s data (you can opt-out, the data doesn’t contain personally identifying information, etc).
Or merging?
Consolidation in the wireless telecom space is really not a problem these days.
Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
I tried to explain this earlier but perhaps I was not clear.
The government has huge databases of criminals and suspected criminals, accumulated as part of its law enforcement functions. No one else has access to these databases. If AT&T decided to blackmail a Senator by looking at their call metadata, they’d have a much much harder time than the NSA because even though they can link Senator A to person B and person B to person C, they don’t know that person C is part of a drug cartel and they don’t know that person B is suspected by the DEA of being an intermediate distributor. The government does know that though.
Privacy is not a boolean property that you either have or don’t have. It is a multifaceted emergent property that depends in part on how much information other people can easily combine about you. No one but the feds can easily combine law enforcement databases and tax databases and metadata.
I build big data systems for a living. I have access to data on several hundred million people. And your statements here are just bullshit. You literally don’t know what you’re talking about.
Consider AT&T. It has metadata. And as I explained above, it doesn’t sell that data, so the only privacy issue here is with AT&T (and its sibling telecom companies) or the NSA. From AT&T’s perspective, there’s no value in privacy violating metadata analysis: AT&T gets paid by subscribers. Privacy-violating metadata analysis doesn’t help them improve their service and get more subscribers or higher profits. It costs money and can lead to a public relations disaster that causes them to lose subscribers en-masse and thus lose lots and lots of money. The NSA, on the other hand, doesn’t have to worry about losing money: their all point is to analyze this data and they have a bottomless money pit backing them.
What’s stopping them from buying it?
A couple of things. First, it is generally not for sale. You can see this for yourself: call up the phone companies and try and buy this data on yourself or on me. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Any luck?
There are thriving markets in selling data on individuals, but for a lot of reasons, this data is generally focused on demographics; companies like bluekai will, for a price, tell you that the web browser with bluekai cookie #12345678 is (probably) a married woman in her 30s who lives in Nebraska and is interested in purchasing a new car. This is really not comparable in any way to the NSA’s data (you can opt-out, the data doesn’t contain personally identifying information, etc).
Or merging?
Consolidation in the wireless telecom space is really not a problem these days.
Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
I tried to explain this earlier but perhaps I was not clear.
The government has huge databases of criminals and suspected criminals, accumulated as part of its law enforcement functions. No one else has access to these databases. If AT&T decided to blackmail a Senator by looking at their call metadata, they’d have a much much harder time than the NSA because even though they can link Senator A to person B and person B to person C, they don’t know that person C is part of a drug cartel and they don’t know that person B is suspected by the DEA of being an intermediate distributor. The government does know that though.
Privacy is not a boolean property that you either have or don’t have. It is a multifaceted emergent property that depends in part on how much information other people can easily combine about you. No one but the feds can easily combine law enforcement databases and tax databases and metadata.
I build big data systems for a living. I have access to data on several hundred million people. And your statements here are just bullshit. You literally don’t know what you’re talking about.
Consider AT&T. It has metadata. And as I explained above, it doesn’t sell that data, so the only privacy issue here is with AT&T (and its sibling telecom companies) or the NSA. From AT&T’s perspective, there’s no value in privacy violating metadata analysis: AT&T gets paid by subscribers. Privacy-violating metadata analysis doesn’t help them improve their service and get more subscribers or higher profits. It costs money and can lead to a public relations disaster that causes them to lose subscribers en-masse and thus lose lots and lots of money. The NSA, on the other hand, doesn’t have to worry about losing money: their all point is to analyze this data and they have a bottomless money pit backing them.
Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
Consider the case of AT&T trying to blackmail a Senator. In addition to not knowing who is criminal, there’s also the problem of probability. Assume that the wireless telecom market is divided into roughly equal fourths. That means the probability that any given wireless phone number belongs to AT&T Wireless is about 1/4. The probability that Senator A’s wireless number and Person B’s and Person C’s wireless numbers all belong to AT&T are (1/4)*(1/4)*(1/4), or under 2%. There’s a less than 2% chance that AT&T would have enough data to realize the Senator is a drug user (assuming they had access to law enforcement databases to begin with). Of course, the presence of landline phones and other communication mechanisms reduce this number even further.
Market segmentation make it very very hard for any single actor in the telecom space to amass the kind of data needed for this sort of blackmail. The NSA really does have unique capabilities different in degree and kind from any private entity.
Why do you need “all the data” in order to have enough on many of those millions of customers you do have to blackmail them, or harm them?
Consider the case of AT&T trying to blackmail a Senator. In addition to not knowing who is criminal, there’s also the problem of probability. Assume that the wireless telecom market is divided into roughly equal fourths. That means the probability that any given wireless phone number belongs to AT&T Wireless is about 1/4. The probability that Senator A’s wireless number and Person B’s and Person C’s wireless numbers all belong to AT&T are (1/4)*(1/4)*(1/4), or under 2%. There’s a less than 2% chance that AT&T would have enough data to realize the Senator is a drug user (assuming they had access to law enforcement databases to begin with). Of course, the presence of landline phones and other communication mechanisms reduce this number even further.
Market segmentation make it very very hard for any single actor in the telecom space to amass the kind of data needed for this sort of blackmail. The NSA really does have unique capabilities different in degree and kind from any private entity.
My book recommendation:
[…]
Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak?
[…]
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
My book recommendation:
[…]
Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak?
[…]
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
Interesting, CharlesWT. Looks worthwhile.
Interesting, CharlesWT. Looks worthwhile.
When did I do that?
Here, for just one example:
Juxtapose your attitude about the potential for the government to abuse the power gained from all the data they’ve collected with all the “what if”s you’re willing to apply when it comes to corporations. You’re perfectly willing to think they’re going to do all these strange, unprecedented things to mess with people with the data they have, but the government, which has a track record of abusing information and power for nefarious purposes, should be trusted…because Obama.
When did I do that?
Here, for just one example:
Juxtapose your attitude about the potential for the government to abuse the power gained from all the data they’ve collected with all the “what if”s you’re willing to apply when it comes to corporations. You’re perfectly willing to think they’re going to do all these strange, unprecedented things to mess with people with the data they have, but the government, which has a track record of abusing information and power for nefarious purposes, should be trusted…because Obama.
Consider the case of AT&T trying to blackmail a Senator. In addition to not knowing who is criminal, there’s also the problem of probability.
What if he’s having an affair? That’s not really criminal, but it’s what many people are brought down for.
Most organizations don’t have any reason to do the kind of data mining that the NSA would do to find terrorist suspects. That doesn’t mean powerful people with access to information couldn’t blackmail people. COINTELPRO was often about discrediting people for personal associations or indiscretions.
I think that most people have better things to do than read my email or track my phone calls, but it would bother me if they did. But any form of communication is dependent on a certain degree of trust, that the recipient won’t forward it or discuss it. The Fourth Amendment mentions physical objects (including one’s body). Once a person communicates an idea to another person, that communication is out of the bag. (Letters can be passed around, etc., so a warrant may need to be issued to cover the belongings of a person possessing the letter, but not the sender, etc.)
Some of these ideas are being discussed in a case against Google. (A brief”>http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/googlemotion061313.pdf”>brief by Google’s lawyers.) Please check out some of the footnotes regarding recent cases on the expectation of privacy in Internet communications.
This is an interesting area, and I don’t claim to know anything about technical issues involved in amassing data. It’s clear to me, though, just anecdotally, and from cases that have been published, that there is a lot of law left to be decided on what is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and what isn’t.
Consider the case of AT&T trying to blackmail a Senator. In addition to not knowing who is criminal, there’s also the problem of probability.
What if he’s having an affair? That’s not really criminal, but it’s what many people are brought down for.
Most organizations don’t have any reason to do the kind of data mining that the NSA would do to find terrorist suspects. That doesn’t mean powerful people with access to information couldn’t blackmail people. COINTELPRO was often about discrediting people for personal associations or indiscretions.
I think that most people have better things to do than read my email or track my phone calls, but it would bother me if they did. But any form of communication is dependent on a certain degree of trust, that the recipient won’t forward it or discuss it. The Fourth Amendment mentions physical objects (including one’s body). Once a person communicates an idea to another person, that communication is out of the bag. (Letters can be passed around, etc., so a warrant may need to be issued to cover the belongings of a person possessing the letter, but not the sender, etc.)
Some of these ideas are being discussed in a case against Google. (A brief”>http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/googlemotion061313.pdf”>brief by Google’s lawyers.) Please check out some of the footnotes regarding recent cases on the expectation of privacy in Internet communications.
This is an interesting area, and I don’t claim to know anything about technical issues involved in amassing data. It’s clear to me, though, just anecdotally, and from cases that have been published, that there is a lot of law left to be decided on what is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and what isn’t.
Sorry, bad link. The brief is here.
Sorry, bad link. The brief is here.
Not really a gadget, but something I’ve been waiting to hit the market for a long time: Omniphobic clothing. No more stains!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBK8kQRCi0&list=UUcTtHvqdxYATv861ioWdHbw
Not really a gadget, but something I’ve been waiting to hit the market for a long time: Omniphobic clothing. No more stains!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBK8kQRCi0&list=UUcTtHvqdxYATv861ioWdHbw
hairshirthedonist, you’re entitled to opinion. Maybe the Congress will shut down the NSA. If the Government can effectively defend the country without it, I really don’t care. I just feel that if you want to be paranoid about the brave new world of data, you’ve got a mountain of other worries that are more serious than the abuses of the NSA.
hairshirthedonist, you’re entitled to opinion. Maybe the Congress will shut down the NSA. If the Government can effectively defend the country without it, I really don’t care. I just feel that if you want to be paranoid about the brave new world of data, you’ve got a mountain of other worries that are more serious than the abuses of the NSA.
“If the Government can effectively defend the country without it”
IS there any indication it can’t? I’ve linked to three different very, very thorough analyses that all say its done practically nothing.
“If the Government can effectively defend the country without it”
IS there any indication it can’t? I’ve linked to three different very, very thorough analyses that all say its done practically nothing.
Interesting, CharlesWT. Looks worthwhile.
No, it really doesn’t. It looks like garbage written by ignorant people who don’t know basic statistics and have never built or worked on an actual big data system. People who have worked on such systems would never make such sweeping claims because they’re simply ludicrous. If you think big data is going to change how you buy a used car, well, I have this awesome bridge to sell you.
What if he’s having an affair? That’s not really criminal, but it’s what many people are brought down for.
The exact same arguments apply in this case. The problem of probability still greatly reduces the chances that any one company will have the data needed to detect an affair. And while the government knows everyone’s date of birth and gender and marital status, many private companies do not, so reliably determining that this individual the Senator is talking to is a paramour is much harder for AT&T than the government.
The point is that the NSA having “all the data” puts it in a very different position than a single company having a small fraction of the data. There is a network effect here where the value of the data set for blackmailing is proportional to the square of the fraction of the data available. Having all the data makes blackmail easy, but having 25% of the data is basically useless for blackmail.
Interesting, CharlesWT. Looks worthwhile.
No, it really doesn’t. It looks like garbage written by ignorant people who don’t know basic statistics and have never built or worked on an actual big data system. People who have worked on such systems would never make such sweeping claims because they’re simply ludicrous. If you think big data is going to change how you buy a used car, well, I have this awesome bridge to sell you.
What if he’s having an affair? That’s not really criminal, but it’s what many people are brought down for.
The exact same arguments apply in this case. The problem of probability still greatly reduces the chances that any one company will have the data needed to detect an affair. And while the government knows everyone’s date of birth and gender and marital status, many private companies do not, so reliably determining that this individual the Senator is talking to is a paramour is much harder for AT&T than the government.
The point is that the NSA having “all the data” puts it in a very different position than a single company having a small fraction of the data. There is a network effect here where the value of the data set for blackmailing is proportional to the square of the fraction of the data available. Having all the data makes blackmail easy, but having 25% of the data is basically useless for blackmail.
Having all the data makes blackmail easy, but having 25% of the data is basically useless for blackmail.
Unless you’re using the data to confirm what you already suspect about someone whose account you can look at.
Having all the data makes blackmail easy, but having 25% of the data is basically useless for blackmail.
Unless you’re using the data to confirm what you already suspect about someone whose account you can look at.
Unless you’re using the data to confirm what you already suspect about someone whose account you can look at.
Did you understand the probability argument at all?
Unless you’re using the data to confirm what you already suspect about someone whose account you can look at.
Did you understand the probability argument at all?
Turbulence:
Big data analysis isn’t something I know much about. I’ve only read popular media accounts, and I know those are fraught with error.
Can you recommend a relatively easy to understand book/blog/what have you?
Turbulence:
Big data analysis isn’t something I know much about. I’ve only read popular media accounts, and I know those are fraught with error.
Can you recommend a relatively easy to understand book/blog/what have you?
If you think big data is going to change how you buy a used car, well, I have this awesome bridge to sell you.
Don’t mistake your personal tree for the forest. 🙂
If you think big data is going to change how you buy a used car, well, I have this awesome bridge to sell you.
Don’t mistake your personal tree for the forest. 🙂
IS there any indication it can’t? I’ve linked to three different very, very thorough analyses that all say its done practically nothing.
If, as Turbulence said, most people’s analysis of big data is BS, and Turbulence believes that the government, and the government alone, can find out stuff about people, I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks. So far, most Congress people who have access to classified information, keep reauthorizing the program. Also the FISA court judges keep issuing orders allowing searches. I don’t claim to know the answer – I’ll trust my elected representatives who have time to look at the classified and other evidence.
Honestly, I’ll start stressing out when notice that any dissidents are being silenced. For the most part, everyone I know trashes the Executive branch on a regular basis, including people here on this blog. As for criminals, if they go to court with plenty of untainted evidence against them, they deserve to be prosecuted.
IS there any indication it can’t? I’ve linked to three different very, very thorough analyses that all say its done practically nothing.
If, as Turbulence said, most people’s analysis of big data is BS, and Turbulence believes that the government, and the government alone, can find out stuff about people, I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks. So far, most Congress people who have access to classified information, keep reauthorizing the program. Also the FISA court judges keep issuing orders allowing searches. I don’t claim to know the answer – I’ll trust my elected representatives who have time to look at the classified and other evidence.
Honestly, I’ll start stressing out when notice that any dissidents are being silenced. For the most part, everyone I know trashes the Executive branch on a regular basis, including people here on this blog. As for criminals, if they go to court with plenty of untainted evidence against them, they deserve to be prosecuted.
If, as Turbulence said, most people’s analysis of big data is BS, and Turbulence believes that the government, and the government alone, can find out stuff about people, I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote. I think the NSA is in a unique position to threaten the civil liberties of people. That doesn’t mean that private companies are completely harmless. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the NSA is effective at finding terrorists. I don’t think that at all.
Can you recommend a relatively easy to understand book/blog/what have you?
When people talk about big data, I think they’re often conflating two different things. One is scalable cheap parallel data storage and computation. The other is statistical inference. The implication of a lot of big data stories in the popular press is that we’re on the verge of entering a golden age where the combination of awesome statistics/machine-learning and computers will lead to all sorts of world changing insights. I don’t think this is true at all.
A lot of big data stories boil down to:
(1) really simple statistical models being thrown against large data sets; this is only feasible (at a reasonable cost) because of recent improvement in scalable data storage and distributed computation
(2) more complex statistical analysis that’s actually running on fairly small data sets
(3) small data sets that are generated easily from much larger messier data sets that didn’t used to be available (this is a subset of (2))
(4) obvious BS where people who don’t understand statistical inference threw some numbers into Excel or SAS or R, got a result and are too ignorant to realize that their result is meaningless
The Google flu detection is an example of (3) as is the Target pregnant customer campaign. There’s a fairly obvious signal hiding in a mass of large data (flu symptom keywords and pregnant woman purchase changes). Once it occurs to you to extract that data, doing so is very easy, and once you extract it, the data itself and the statistical analysis are small and simple. That’s kind of cool, but not very general and unlikely to be earth shattering.
The difference between (1) and (2) is that even with distributed computation, if your inference algorithms are complex enough to consume time or memory that grows faster than the size of your data, when you have a lot of data, you can’t afford the computation needed. (Think of naively sorting a data set for example: if I have N things to sort, I’m going to need around N squared operations to sort it; when N is very large, N squared is impossibly large, so I can’t do it). So, sufficiently complex statistical models are usually only run on small data sets. If you’re really running on large data sets, odds are that your analysis is relatively simple, and there are limits to how much you can learn from simple inference, even with lots of data.
To your question, I usually think of two different pathways: the statistics/machine-learning side and the scalable data storage/processing side. Data scientists usually focus on the former while systems people like me focus on the latter; it is somewhat rare to find people with expertise in both. Any basic statistical inference or machine learning textbook will get you off the ground on the former. Things like the Kaggle competitions are popular in that world. For the systems aspect, things are trickier. A lot of work is being done in the hadoop ecosystem, and there are tons of books/conferences/articles. The problem is that hadoop was written by morons and most of the ecosystem surrounding it is crap. If you just want an intro to the field though, reading up on hadoop and the problems that it solves and why it is the way that it is can be useful. That basically boils down to “how do I do scalable distributed computation while dealing with the fact that nodes can fail and inter-node communication can be expensive?”.
If, as Turbulence said, most people’s analysis of big data is BS, and Turbulence believes that the government, and the government alone, can find out stuff about people, I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote. I think the NSA is in a unique position to threaten the civil liberties of people. That doesn’t mean that private companies are completely harmless. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the NSA is effective at finding terrorists. I don’t think that at all.
Can you recommend a relatively easy to understand book/blog/what have you?
When people talk about big data, I think they’re often conflating two different things. One is scalable cheap parallel data storage and computation. The other is statistical inference. The implication of a lot of big data stories in the popular press is that we’re on the verge of entering a golden age where the combination of awesome statistics/machine-learning and computers will lead to all sorts of world changing insights. I don’t think this is true at all.
A lot of big data stories boil down to:
(1) really simple statistical models being thrown against large data sets; this is only feasible (at a reasonable cost) because of recent improvement in scalable data storage and distributed computation
(2) more complex statistical analysis that’s actually running on fairly small data sets
(3) small data sets that are generated easily from much larger messier data sets that didn’t used to be available (this is a subset of (2))
(4) obvious BS where people who don’t understand statistical inference threw some numbers into Excel or SAS or R, got a result and are too ignorant to realize that their result is meaningless
The Google flu detection is an example of (3) as is the Target pregnant customer campaign. There’s a fairly obvious signal hiding in a mass of large data (flu symptom keywords and pregnant woman purchase changes). Once it occurs to you to extract that data, doing so is very easy, and once you extract it, the data itself and the statistical analysis are small and simple. That’s kind of cool, but not very general and unlikely to be earth shattering.
The difference between (1) and (2) is that even with distributed computation, if your inference algorithms are complex enough to consume time or memory that grows faster than the size of your data, when you have a lot of data, you can’t afford the computation needed. (Think of naively sorting a data set for example: if I have N things to sort, I’m going to need around N squared operations to sort it; when N is very large, N squared is impossibly large, so I can’t do it). So, sufficiently complex statistical models are usually only run on small data sets. If you’re really running on large data sets, odds are that your analysis is relatively simple, and there are limits to how much you can learn from simple inference, even with lots of data.
To your question, I usually think of two different pathways: the statistics/machine-learning side and the scalable data storage/processing side. Data scientists usually focus on the former while systems people like me focus on the latter; it is somewhat rare to find people with expertise in both. Any basic statistical inference or machine learning textbook will get you off the ground on the former. Things like the Kaggle competitions are popular in that world. For the systems aspect, things are trickier. A lot of work is being done in the hadoop ecosystem, and there are tons of books/conferences/articles. The problem is that hadoop was written by morons and most of the ecosystem surrounding it is crap. If you just want an intro to the field though, reading up on hadoop and the problems that it solves and why it is the way that it is can be useful. That basically boils down to “how do I do scalable distributed computation while dealing with the fact that nodes can fail and inter-node communication can be expensive?”.
“I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks”
Based on…what? Congressional approval and a secret court?
“Honestly, I’ll start stressing out when notice that any dissidents are being silenced.”
You mean like a staunch critic of the intelligence/industrial complex repeatably detained at airports and had personal property seized?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Detention_and_investigation
“I’m inclined to believe that the government can find out about terrorist networks”
Based on…what? Congressional approval and a secret court?
“Honestly, I’ll start stressing out when notice that any dissidents are being silenced.”
You mean like a staunch critic of the intelligence/industrial complex repeatably detained at airports and had personal property seized?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Detention_and_investigation
The Fourth Amendment says nothing about “capturing” data given to third parties. That’s what the “outside of the envelope” concept is all about.
Which is why I have said, repeatedly, including in this very thread, as long as this topic has been under discussion here on ObWi, that routing and other information about communications *other than the content of the communication itself* is not protected by the 4A.
What the 4A does not cover is the capture and use of private communications by private actors. Since we’re discussing the *government’s* use of that information, it seems to me to be a relevant point.
If you’d like to begin a discussion of data privacy laws and why they would be a good thing to have, I’m all for it. That’s a different discussion.
The Fourth Amendment says nothing about “capturing” data given to third parties. That’s what the “outside of the envelope” concept is all about.
Which is why I have said, repeatedly, including in this very thread, as long as this topic has been under discussion here on ObWi, that routing and other information about communications *other than the content of the communication itself* is not protected by the 4A.
What the 4A does not cover is the capture and use of private communications by private actors. Since we’re discussing the *government’s* use of that information, it seems to me to be a relevant point.
If you’d like to begin a discussion of data privacy laws and why they would be a good thing to have, I’m all for it. That’s a different discussion.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote.
Welcome to another episode of “conversations with sapient”.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote.
Welcome to another episode of “conversations with sapient”.
turbulence:
Thanks, I’ll look into kaggle and hadoop. I appreciate the breakdown, it was very thorough and made a lot of sense.
turbulence:
Thanks, I’ll look into kaggle and hadoop. I appreciate the breakdown, it was very thorough and made a lot of sense.
I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with this symbolic regression software.
I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with this symbolic regression software.
Laura Poitras is another journalist who is routinely harassed at airports. link
Laura Poitras is another journalist who is routinely harassed at airports. link
I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with this symbolic regression software.
(Second try. The previous one went into monitor purgatory.)
I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with this symbolic regression software.
(Second try. The previous one went into monitor purgatory.)
Since we’re discussing the *government’s* use of that information, it seems to me to be a relevant point.
We’re discussing legality and policy matters concerning what we know about the NSA data collection program. We know that the NSA collects metadata which, according to current case law (except for Judge Leon’s opinion), is not unconstitutional.
Whether the collection of data is otherwise illegal, whether it’s wise, whether there are sufficient safeguards, and whether the notion of “expectation of privacy” regarding electronic communications is changing because of use of that information by non-government entities are all things that are being discussed.
“Expectation of privacy” is a fluid concept. Not only that, but it’s a fairly new legal concept. For Fourth Amendment purposes, I have a great expectation of privacy in a letter I write, as long as I’ve still got the letter. When I put it in the U.S. mail, because of postal laws and regulations, I still have an expectation of privacy. When the recipient gets it, I have considerably less expectation of privacy. When a warrant to read my pen pal’s mail is obtained, my letters can be read. These expectations are relevant for Fourth Amendment analysis purposes even if the government isn’t yet involved.
So, aside from ECPA considerations, do I have an expectation of privacy in my “inbox”? Do the senders of the mail have one? Do I have an expectation of privacy in my “sent mail” box? There are some court rulings that indicate that there is no expectation of privacy in instant messages.
In other words, no matter how violated we feel, the law isn’t specific on all of those issues, and when people say that their rights are being violated, it’s not clear that the law will back them up.
Since we’re discussing the *government’s* use of that information, it seems to me to be a relevant point.
We’re discussing legality and policy matters concerning what we know about the NSA data collection program. We know that the NSA collects metadata which, according to current case law (except for Judge Leon’s opinion), is not unconstitutional.
Whether the collection of data is otherwise illegal, whether it’s wise, whether there are sufficient safeguards, and whether the notion of “expectation of privacy” regarding electronic communications is changing because of use of that information by non-government entities are all things that are being discussed.
“Expectation of privacy” is a fluid concept. Not only that, but it’s a fairly new legal concept. For Fourth Amendment purposes, I have a great expectation of privacy in a letter I write, as long as I’ve still got the letter. When I put it in the U.S. mail, because of postal laws and regulations, I still have an expectation of privacy. When the recipient gets it, I have considerably less expectation of privacy. When a warrant to read my pen pal’s mail is obtained, my letters can be read. These expectations are relevant for Fourth Amendment analysis purposes even if the government isn’t yet involved.
So, aside from ECPA considerations, do I have an expectation of privacy in my “inbox”? Do the senders of the mail have one? Do I have an expectation of privacy in my “sent mail” box? There are some court rulings that indicate that there is no expectation of privacy in instant messages.
In other words, no matter how violated we feel, the law isn’t specific on all of those issues, and when people say that their rights are being violated, it’s not clear that the law will back them up.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote.
I wrote what I understood you to say, which is the following (as I heard it, not as you said it):
1) the NSA can make grave and destructive use of data because they have so much of it;
2) they are able identify when people are involved in crime and will use that information for blackmail;
3) we don’t have to worry about private entities doing that because they don’t have the incentive, and something [incomprehensible to me] about probabilities.
4) But anyway, don’t worry your little heads about Google when the NSA is the one that’s going to blackmail you with secret knowledge of your criminal activities.
I realize you didn’t say it that way, but perhaps it would be helpful for you to know that some people understood it that way.
Now you’re clarifying: that the NSA can’t really solve terrorist plots; they are only capable of using this vast data to find evidence to blackmail people and do other nefarious things. And, yes, we should worry about private entities too, but maybe not for the same reasons.
I realize that what I understood is not exactly what you said, but it seems close. Other people probably understood it exactly as you intended, so let this just be evidence of my learning disability.
That’s a spectacular distortion about what I wrote.
I wrote what I understood you to say, which is the following (as I heard it, not as you said it):
1) the NSA can make grave and destructive use of data because they have so much of it;
2) they are able identify when people are involved in crime and will use that information for blackmail;
3) we don’t have to worry about private entities doing that because they don’t have the incentive, and something [incomprehensible to me] about probabilities.
4) But anyway, don’t worry your little heads about Google when the NSA is the one that’s going to blackmail you with secret knowledge of your criminal activities.
I realize you didn’t say it that way, but perhaps it would be helpful for you to know that some people understood it that way.
Now you’re clarifying: that the NSA can’t really solve terrorist plots; they are only capable of using this vast data to find evidence to blackmail people and do other nefarious things. And, yes, we should worry about private entities too, but maybe not for the same reasons.
I realize that what I understood is not exactly what you said, but it seems close. Other people probably understood it exactly as you intended, so let this just be evidence of my learning disability.
As to the friends of Wikileaks who are being investigated at airports: even though you love Wikileakers and Snowden, the fact is that revealing classified information is a crime. These people are suspected of gaining access to the information, and are probably suspected of helping the leakers. There is nothing new or wrong with investigating suspected accomplices to crime. (I know you don’t think it’s a crime!)
As to the friends of Wikileaks who are being investigated at airports: even though you love Wikileakers and Snowden, the fact is that revealing classified information is a crime. These people are suspected of gaining access to the information, and are probably suspected of helping the leakers. There is nothing new or wrong with investigating suspected accomplices to crime. (I know you don’t think it’s a crime!)
Here’s the latest I know about on the Miranda lawsuit. Don’t know if there’s been a decision, but we’ll see if the court determines that the detention was oppression of a dissident.
Here’s the latest I know about on the Miranda lawsuit. Don’t know if there’s been a decision, but we’ll see if the court determines that the detention was oppression of a dissident.
” There is nothing new or wrong with investigating suspected accomplices to crime.”
I certainly agree. Which is why it should be easy to get warrants to investigate and detain, assuming the suspicion was based on something like probable cause.
And this would likely be followed up by indictments, trials, and convictions.
As none of this happened with Appelbaum or Poitras, I’m left assuming the government has little evidence that they committed a crime.
In which case, they are basically harassing American citizens who are engaged in activism the government does not approve of.
As both of these people are regularly in the US, it would be trivial to arrest and charge them, again if the US government had any evidence to suggest they committed a crime.
” There is nothing new or wrong with investigating suspected accomplices to crime.”
I certainly agree. Which is why it should be easy to get warrants to investigate and detain, assuming the suspicion was based on something like probable cause.
And this would likely be followed up by indictments, trials, and convictions.
As none of this happened with Appelbaum or Poitras, I’m left assuming the government has little evidence that they committed a crime.
In which case, they are basically harassing American citizens who are engaged in activism the government does not approve of.
As both of these people are regularly in the US, it would be trivial to arrest and charge them, again if the US government had any evidence to suggest they committed a crime.
turb, let’s face it. Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT. Most of them had some small bit of good sense originally. Then the PR guys got to it, and it because The Next Big Thing. And lost all resemblence to reality.
All of which is only exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people think they know what data is; and virtually none of them even know that a statistic is not a piece of (raw) data. Statistical inference? Not even in their universe. Which doesn’t keep them from pontificating about how the world will change as a result.
turb, let’s face it. Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT. Most of them had some small bit of good sense originally. Then the PR guys got to it, and it because The Next Big Thing. And lost all resemblence to reality.
All of which is only exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people think they know what data is; and virtually none of them even know that a statistic is not a piece of (raw) data. Statistical inference? Not even in their universe. Which doesn’t keep them from pontificating about how the world will change as a result.
As none of this happened with Appelbaum or Poitras, I’m left assuming the government has little evidence that they committed a crime.
Fortunately, Appelbaum and Poitras live in Germany now where they can be free.
As none of this happened with Appelbaum or Poitras, I’m left assuming the government has little evidence that they committed a crime.
Fortunately, Appelbaum and Poitras live in Germany now where they can be free.
The harassment of Poitras started after her first documentary on Iraq. And she’s not the only one. Glenn has an article about how a great many people have been harassed at airports–
link
This, again, is what worries me about government surveillance. They’re not going to come after me for bloviating under my real name all over the internet. But they might go after investigative reporters (the few that still exist) or Muslim Americans with views critical of US foreign policy. Here is a prolonged quote from the Greenwald article about Poitras–
“Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.”
The harassment of Poitras started after her first documentary on Iraq. And she’s not the only one. Glenn has an article about how a great many people have been harassed at airports–
link
This, again, is what worries me about government surveillance. They’re not going to come after me for bloviating under my real name all over the internet. But they might go after investigative reporters (the few that still exist) or Muslim Americans with views critical of US foreign policy. Here is a prolonged quote from the Greenwald article about Poitras–
“Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.”
“Fortunately, Appelbaum and Poitras live in Germany now where they can be free.”
Germany has a fairly complete extradition treaty with the US. This would be no bar unless it was a “political offense” and not otherwise a crime.
This, again, suggests to me the USG has no evidence that these people committed a crime. If they did, they could have seized them at any time on one of their many trips to the states, or issue an extradition request to Germany.
And again, we end up with law enforcement harassing activists that the government doesn’t like. Which is precisely when you said you would start to worry.
“Fortunately, Appelbaum and Poitras live in Germany now where they can be free.”
Germany has a fairly complete extradition treaty with the US. This would be no bar unless it was a “political offense” and not otherwise a crime.
This, again, suggests to me the USG has no evidence that these people committed a crime. If they did, they could have seized them at any time on one of their many trips to the states, or issue an extradition request to Germany.
And again, we end up with law enforcement harassing activists that the government doesn’t like. Which is precisely when you said you would start to worry.
Donald:
Another thing that concerns me is that it doesn’t seem these checks are investigating a crime.
First of all, they only take place at border entry, with weakened constitutional protections. While it doesn’t mean they don’t have probable cause to question her, it certainly doesn’t indicate they do.
Second, the repeated questioning, extended detentions (some lasting hours!), and seizure of perfectly legal papers and things has every presentation of harassment and fishing expeditions and no indication of an actual specific investigation.
Donald:
Another thing that concerns me is that it doesn’t seem these checks are investigating a crime.
First of all, they only take place at border entry, with weakened constitutional protections. While it doesn’t mean they don’t have probable cause to question her, it certainly doesn’t indicate they do.
Second, the repeated questioning, extended detentions (some lasting hours!), and seizure of perfectly legal papers and things has every presentation of harassment and fishing expeditions and no indication of an actual specific investigation.
You do know, Donald, that there’s a international border exception to the Fourth Amendment. I’m not sure where my outrage went off to: someone who is known to be assisting a fugitive comes and goes across the border 40 times.
You do know, Donald, that there’s a international border exception to the Fourth Amendment. I’m not sure where my outrage went off to: someone who is known to be assisting a fugitive comes and goes across the border 40 times.
Of course, if one is a foreign Arab journalist, the gloves come off–
amnesty international report
The claim is that Abdulelah Haider Shaye was working with Al Qaeda to plot attacks on Americans, but evidence of this seems lacking. What is known is that he helped expose a US missile attack that killed a lot of civilians and that Obama personally lobbied to keep him in prison.
Of course, if one is a foreign Arab journalist, the gloves come off–
amnesty international report
The claim is that Abdulelah Haider Shaye was working with Al Qaeda to plot attacks on Americans, but evidence of this seems lacking. What is known is that he helped expose a US missile attack that killed a lot of civilians and that Obama personally lobbied to keep him in prison.
This, again, suggests to me the USG has no evidence that these people committed a crime.
The government doesn’t need evidence to search people at borders. It also doesn’t have to be especially nice to people who assist fugitives from justice in disseminating national security secrets. As far as I know, both people are living safely and happily abroad, working away, and expressing themselves freely. If the NSA were all powerful, wouldn’t it be easier to just disappear them?
This, again, suggests to me the USG has no evidence that these people committed a crime.
The government doesn’t need evidence to search people at borders. It also doesn’t have to be especially nice to people who assist fugitives from justice in disseminating national security secrets. As far as I know, both people are living safely and happily abroad, working away, and expressing themselves freely. If the NSA were all powerful, wouldn’t it be easier to just disappear them?
Donald:
Amnesty International? They are probably in the Koch brothers’ pocket. An extreme right-wing organization if I ever saw one.
Donald:
Amnesty International? They are probably in the Koch brothers’ pocket. An extreme right-wing organization if I ever saw one.
Which fugitive, sapient? Was Snowden a fugitive in 2006? The NSA been doing some secret time travel research alongside the quantum computer work?
Anyway, I understand that to you there’s nothing suspicious about the harassment of a journalist who makes the US look bad. Journalists are always hanging out around suspicious characters and so if the government is to do its job it has to harass them.
Which fugitive, sapient? Was Snowden a fugitive in 2006? The NSA been doing some secret time travel research alongside the quantum computer work?
Anyway, I understand that to you there’s nothing suspicious about the harassment of a journalist who makes the US look bad. Journalists are always hanging out around suspicious characters and so if the government is to do its job it has to harass them.
That international border exception to the Fourth Amendment is pretty broad. Literally. Extending inward a 100 miles from the borders.
That international border exception to the Fourth Amendment is pretty broad. Literally. Extending inward a 100 miles from the borders.
” It also doesn’t have to be especially nice to people who assist fugitives from justice in disseminating national security secrets.”
Like the new york times or other journals?
I recognize (and even said above) that constitutional protections are weakened at borders. My point is the government seems to be using that to harass and intimidate people when they have NO EVIDENCE that these people are criminals.
” It also doesn’t have to be especially nice to people who assist fugitives from justice in disseminating national security secrets.”
Like the new york times or other journals?
I recognize (and even said above) that constitutional protections are weakened at borders. My point is the government seems to be using that to harass and intimidate people when they have NO EVIDENCE that these people are criminals.
” As far as I know, both people are living safely and happily abroad, working away, and expressing themselves freely.”
Which saddens me that two american citizens need to live abroad and not enter the US in order to enjoy constitutional protections.
” If the NSA were all powerful, wouldn’t it be easier to just disappear them?”
Nobody said the NSA had that capability.
” As far as I know, both people are living safely and happily abroad, working away, and expressing themselves freely.”
Which saddens me that two american citizens need to live abroad and not enter the US in order to enjoy constitutional protections.
” If the NSA were all powerful, wouldn’t it be easier to just disappear them?”
Nobody said the NSA had that capability.
Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT.
Tis true alas.
Welcome to another episode of “conversations with sapient”.
At least sapient is consistent. That’s a virtue when it comes to being wrong, right?
That international border exception to the Fourth Amendment is pretty broad. Literally. Extending inward a 100 miles from the borders.
This is just not true. Literally not true.
Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT.
Tis true alas.
Welcome to another episode of “conversations with sapient”.
At least sapient is consistent. That’s a virtue when it comes to being wrong, right?
That international border exception to the Fourth Amendment is pretty broad. Literally. Extending inward a 100 miles from the borders.
This is just not true. Literally not true.
The NSA been doing some secret time travel research alongside the quantum computer work?
Maybe the border patrol found some stuff on her computer even back then? In any case, they’re allowed to do that, and it’s a chance that people take when they travel. She’s made a decision to avoid the hassle by staying in Germany. Good for her.
By the way, it doesn’t seem as though Amnesty International has completed its investigation regarding the Yemeni reporter (who is now free). The article you point to “raises questions”.
The NSA been doing some secret time travel research alongside the quantum computer work?
Maybe the border patrol found some stuff on her computer even back then? In any case, they’re allowed to do that, and it’s a chance that people take when they travel. She’s made a decision to avoid the hassle by staying in Germany. Good for her.
By the way, it doesn’t seem as though Amnesty International has completed its investigation regarding the Yemeni reporter (who is now free). The article you point to “raises questions”.
Which saddens me that two american citizens need to live abroad and not enter the US in order to enjoy constitutional protections.
They enjoy constitutional protections when they’re in the U.S. Just no Fourth Amendment protections against searches at the border. Same with me. Same with you. I choose to live in the United States anyway.
Which saddens me that two american citizens need to live abroad and not enter the US in order to enjoy constitutional protections.
They enjoy constitutional protections when they’re in the U.S. Just no Fourth Amendment protections against searches at the border. Same with me. Same with you. I choose to live in the United States anyway.
This is just not true. Literally not true.
Depends on how restrained officials feel from doing as they please within that 100 miles.
Holding Border Patrol Accountable (youtube)
·
This is just not true. Literally not true.
Depends on how restrained officials feel from doing as they please within that 100 miles.
Holding Border Patrol Accountable (youtube)
·
Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT.
keeps me employed. so, bring it on.
Big Data is just the latest in a decades-long series of fads in IT.
keeps me employed. so, bring it on.
hsh:
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data, nor Nombrilisme Vide’s point that the comms companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
In all fairness, I made that point right after sapient bowed out of the other thread, so it’s entirely unreasonable to expect him to have addressed it.
hsh:
And you have yet to address the point that these corporations don’t have each other’s data, nor Nombrilisme Vide’s point that the comms companies lack the resources to analyse the data in the ways the NSA can.
In all fairness, I made that point right after sapient bowed out of the other thread, so it’s entirely unreasonable to expect him to have addressed it.
“Just no Fourth Amendment protections against searches at the border. Same with me. Same with you.”
sapient, a few things.
First of all there are still 4A protections at the border, they are just weakened. The thrust of the case law, as I understand it, is that ‘routine’ searches of property are reasonable at the border.
Extended detentions are not routine and only allowed if CBP has reasonable suspicion of contraband stowed in the GI tract.
The 5A implications of the border seizures have not been hashed out in the courts, to my knowledge.
Second, we grant LEOs fairly broad powers outside of judicial review. While I recognize that these powers are legal, I also recognize that they are subject to abuse, for example in the repeated harassment of an activist by detaining them and seizing their property.
So, while I suspect that there may be illegal aspects to some of the USG actions in these cases, my concern doesn’t rest on the illegality of the actions.
Even if the USGs actions were fully legal, I’d still hold grave concerns that the government was improperly using powers granted to it by the people to harass and intimidate anti-government activists.
“Just no Fourth Amendment protections against searches at the border. Same with me. Same with you.”
sapient, a few things.
First of all there are still 4A protections at the border, they are just weakened. The thrust of the case law, as I understand it, is that ‘routine’ searches of property are reasonable at the border.
Extended detentions are not routine and only allowed if CBP has reasonable suspicion of contraband stowed in the GI tract.
The 5A implications of the border seizures have not been hashed out in the courts, to my knowledge.
Second, we grant LEOs fairly broad powers outside of judicial review. While I recognize that these powers are legal, I also recognize that they are subject to abuse, for example in the repeated harassment of an activist by detaining them and seizing their property.
So, while I suspect that there may be illegal aspects to some of the USG actions in these cases, my concern doesn’t rest on the illegality of the actions.
Even if the USGs actions were fully legal, I’d still hold grave concerns that the government was improperly using powers granted to it by the people to harass and intimidate anti-government activists.
sapient:
I don’t advocate ignoring the Constitution (which includes the authority of Congress to make laws), so not sure what your point is. Good leaders honor the law; bad leaders find no need to do so.
When you advocate creating and empowering programs that you freely assert will be “disastrous” when the “wrong people” control them, you’re asserting that we should base our expectations of governmental behavior on the values of our leaders rather than on our laws. You weren’t even asserting (as you do here) that it’s a matter of the “bad people” breaking the laws to make bad things happen, you asserted that the systems that you deem well-regulated and non-excessive will become abusive and unacceptable under “bad” leadership. So no, you don’t have to do much interpreting at all in order to come to that conclusion.
Also, if you’re serious in thinking that the checks and balances in place will hold back malfeasance, they need to be zealously enforced when the “right people” are in office, or they’ll be delegitimatized when the “wrong people” take power. That you’ve argued that zeal now amounts to becoming an RNC “pawn” suggests a preference for selective applicability of law, which again reinforces a perception of a preference of rule of man over rule of law.
As most of us know, Google is way better at finding significant information from large amounts of data for a variety of purposes than what we know the NSA is doing.
Again, Google (or other private actors) don’t have access to as much (or the same kind) of data the gov’t does. Period, full stop. And given the extreme secrecy enshrouding the NSA, your “than we know the NSA is doing” is carrying so much weight that I can’t see it advancing itself, let alone an argument. You also are back to wanting to have it both ways: you want us to believe the NSA’s (supposed (and dubious)) inferior ability to make shallow inferences (and I’m sorry, your chosen example doesn’t rise above that level) based on web search patterns and suchlike means we’ve nothing to fear from it, but it’s also important that they have that capability so they can make the deep inferences that will make terrorists et al have everything to fear from it.
(Also, what Turb said. Very much so. I know enough about ML/data mining to know he’s accurate, but not enough to make any contribution beyond “what he said!”.)
When you argued that the private sector having too much data on us is a countervailing factor in favor of the gov’t having too much information on us, especially since it’s not exclusive of the corps still having said info. Indeed, especially since the NSA having said info is contingent on the corps having it. You don’t explicitly make the dichotomy hsh spells out, but you imply it with your misdirecting invocation of excessive private data holdings. Logically, both private and public actors having “too much” info (or even just data) is bad, but you’ve presented the private actor having it as a mitigating factor in considerations that the public actor has it too (and then some). So while there’s no explicit (or rational) invocation of said dichotomy, the implicit conclusion is that we should view it as a non-problem since we’ve failed to prevent private actors from collecting (non-collated) data. Though to your credit you have explicitly denounced this view, albeit without reconciling the above issues.
As to the friends of Wikileaks who are being investigated at airports: even though you love Wikileakers and Snowden, the fact is that revealing classified information is a crime.
Actually, no it isn’t. Revealing certain (broad) categories of classified information is a crime (Title 18 U.S.C. §793-794, §798, §952; Title 42 U.s.C. §2274-2277; 50 U.S.C. §421; potentially 5 U.S.C. Section §552a, with the first being the broadest: disclosure of of information “relating to the national defense” when the person disclosing the information has reason to believe it could be used to injure the United States or to aid a foreign nation). But just because something is classified doesn’t make its disclosure a crime (unless you’re a servicemember, in which case you’ll probably be covered by a tight enough web between General Orders and UCMJ that any disclosure would be criminal).
sapient:
I don’t advocate ignoring the Constitution (which includes the authority of Congress to make laws), so not sure what your point is. Good leaders honor the law; bad leaders find no need to do so.
When you advocate creating and empowering programs that you freely assert will be “disastrous” when the “wrong people” control them, you’re asserting that we should base our expectations of governmental behavior on the values of our leaders rather than on our laws. You weren’t even asserting (as you do here) that it’s a matter of the “bad people” breaking the laws to make bad things happen, you asserted that the systems that you deem well-regulated and non-excessive will become abusive and unacceptable under “bad” leadership. So no, you don’t have to do much interpreting at all in order to come to that conclusion.
Also, if you’re serious in thinking that the checks and balances in place will hold back malfeasance, they need to be zealously enforced when the “right people” are in office, or they’ll be delegitimatized when the “wrong people” take power. That you’ve argued that zeal now amounts to becoming an RNC “pawn” suggests a preference for selective applicability of law, which again reinforces a perception of a preference of rule of man over rule of law.
As most of us know, Google is way better at finding significant information from large amounts of data for a variety of purposes than what we know the NSA is doing.
Again, Google (or other private actors) don’t have access to as much (or the same kind) of data the gov’t does. Period, full stop. And given the extreme secrecy enshrouding the NSA, your “than we know the NSA is doing” is carrying so much weight that I can’t see it advancing itself, let alone an argument. You also are back to wanting to have it both ways: you want us to believe the NSA’s (supposed (and dubious)) inferior ability to make shallow inferences (and I’m sorry, your chosen example doesn’t rise above that level) based on web search patterns and suchlike means we’ve nothing to fear from it, but it’s also important that they have that capability so they can make the deep inferences that will make terrorists et al have everything to fear from it.
(Also, what Turb said. Very much so. I know enough about ML/data mining to know he’s accurate, but not enough to make any contribution beyond “what he said!”.)
When you argued that the private sector having too much data on us is a countervailing factor in favor of the gov’t having too much information on us, especially since it’s not exclusive of the corps still having said info. Indeed, especially since the NSA having said info is contingent on the corps having it. You don’t explicitly make the dichotomy hsh spells out, but you imply it with your misdirecting invocation of excessive private data holdings. Logically, both private and public actors having “too much” info (or even just data) is bad, but you’ve presented the private actor having it as a mitigating factor in considerations that the public actor has it too (and then some). So while there’s no explicit (or rational) invocation of said dichotomy, the implicit conclusion is that we should view it as a non-problem since we’ve failed to prevent private actors from collecting (non-collated) data. Though to your credit you have explicitly denounced this view, albeit without reconciling the above issues.
As to the friends of Wikileaks who are being investigated at airports: even though you love Wikileakers and Snowden, the fact is that revealing classified information is a crime.
Actually, no it isn’t. Revealing certain (broad) categories of classified information is a crime (Title 18 U.S.C. §793-794, §798, §952; Title 42 U.s.C. §2274-2277; 50 U.S.C. §421; potentially 5 U.S.C. Section §552a, with the first being the broadest: disclosure of of information “relating to the national defense” when the person disclosing the information has reason to believe it could be used to injure the United States or to aid a foreign nation). But just because something is classified doesn’t make its disclosure a crime (unless you’re a servicemember, in which case you’ll probably be covered by a tight enough web between General Orders and UCMJ that any disclosure would be criminal).
So, while I suspect that there may be illegal aspects to some of the USG actions in these cases, my concern doesn’t rest on the illegality of the actions.
I imagine the brave and illustrious civil liberties champions would be willing to test the legality of these actions by suing. But the reason that they don’t is that the actions weren’t illegal.
Even if the USGs actions were fully legal, I’d still hold grave concerns that the government was improperly using powers granted to it by the people to harass and intimidate anti-government activists.
I have few concerns about the alleged harassment of somebody who goes back and forth across the border 40 times. That’s a lot of times. She’s apparently very free to travel. She has created documentaries that are freely screened. We all know what she thinks. If she’s inconvenienced because during a war she was suspected of having something that the government didn’t want her to take outside the country, or she had classified information, or something else, and she had to wait for a couple of hours, I’m just not gravely concerned. Call me apathetic, but I just don’t care.
So, while I suspect that there may be illegal aspects to some of the USG actions in these cases, my concern doesn’t rest on the illegality of the actions.
I imagine the brave and illustrious civil liberties champions would be willing to test the legality of these actions by suing. But the reason that they don’t is that the actions weren’t illegal.
Even if the USGs actions were fully legal, I’d still hold grave concerns that the government was improperly using powers granted to it by the people to harass and intimidate anti-government activists.
I have few concerns about the alleged harassment of somebody who goes back and forth across the border 40 times. That’s a lot of times. She’s apparently very free to travel. She has created documentaries that are freely screened. We all know what she thinks. If she’s inconvenienced because during a war she was suspected of having something that the government didn’t want her to take outside the country, or she had classified information, or something else, and she had to wait for a couple of hours, I’m just not gravely concerned. Call me apathetic, but I just don’t care.
Anyone see my open thread? I thought it was around here somewhere…
we should view it as a non-problem since we’ve failed to prevent private actors from collecting (non-collated) data
My feeling is that you can’t stop private actors from collecting data. Like this. The City of London (which, because of certain historical anomalies, has a special status) has ordered the company to stop, but I imagine you’ll see this technology in Asia in the next 10 years. Back when this thread was an open thread, fridges linked to the internet were mentioned, and Google’s purchase of Nest for 3.2 billion should raise eyebrows. This interview has this:
We’ve been producing new products, but we wanted to roll them out to multiple countries.
We are in 96 countries where we don’t even sell today because we can see these items being connected but we can get there fast enough.
For us going with google, we could get financing, no problem, but we can get access to resources to allow us to move these products much more quickly around the world.
Later in the interview, he says that the data remains with Nest, and if that changes, he will tell everyone, but 10 years down the road, is that going to be the case?
Anyone see my open thread? I thought it was around here somewhere…
we should view it as a non-problem since we’ve failed to prevent private actors from collecting (non-collated) data
My feeling is that you can’t stop private actors from collecting data. Like this. The City of London (which, because of certain historical anomalies, has a special status) has ordered the company to stop, but I imagine you’ll see this technology in Asia in the next 10 years. Back when this thread was an open thread, fridges linked to the internet were mentioned, and Google’s purchase of Nest for 3.2 billion should raise eyebrows. This interview has this:
We’ve been producing new products, but we wanted to roll them out to multiple countries.
We are in 96 countries where we don’t even sell today because we can see these items being connected but we can get there fast enough.
For us going with google, we could get financing, no problem, but we can get access to resources to allow us to move these products much more quickly around the world.
Later in the interview, he says that the data remains with Nest, and if that changes, he will tell everyone, but 10 years down the road, is that going to be the case?
LJ:
As someone completely unqualified, I think this is another example of Google struggling to get out of the advertising game.
If I was google, I would be concern about trending towards a more privacy conscious society, either in terms of the regulatory environment, or just in the technological solutions available to people.
In terms of Nest, I don’t think its a great acquisition for google. Thermostats, even smart ones, aren’t well protected by IP or other barriers to entry. If its popular, pretty much any other company can easily get in.
Good for competition, but I don’t see it working out for google in the end.
LJ:
As someone completely unqualified, I think this is another example of Google struggling to get out of the advertising game.
If I was google, I would be concern about trending towards a more privacy conscious society, either in terms of the regulatory environment, or just in the technological solutions available to people.
In terms of Nest, I don’t think its a great acquisition for google. Thermostats, even smart ones, aren’t well protected by IP or other barriers to entry. If its popular, pretty much any other company can easily get in.
Good for competition, but I don’t see it working out for google in the end.
The SLIPS video I linked earlier I think is a more disruptive technology than Nest.
The SLIPS video I linked earlier I think is a more disruptive technology than Nest.
Google’s problem is that they have overwhelming dominance is what is rapidly becoming a saturated market. Which is to say, there isn’t anywhere to grow, unless they can expand out of their niche into other things.
The challenge for them, then, is finding another area. One which
a) is not already taken,
b) has protential for the kind of growth that their shareholders have become accustomed to, and
c) where they can leverage the resources that they already have to good effect.
It isn’t proving an easy task, which is why they have paid big bucks for various companies, which then didn’t pan out.
My suspicion is that the only real possibility is to come up with a new area themselves. Invent it, figure out how to make money off it (and advertising, as noted, won’t do it), build the infrastructure for it, and then convince the world that they cannot live without it.
Google’s problem is that they have overwhelming dominance is what is rapidly becoming a saturated market. Which is to say, there isn’t anywhere to grow, unless they can expand out of their niche into other things.
The challenge for them, then, is finding another area. One which
a) is not already taken,
b) has protential for the kind of growth that their shareholders have become accustomed to, and
c) where they can leverage the resources that they already have to good effect.
It isn’t proving an easy task, which is why they have paid big bucks for various companies, which then didn’t pan out.
My suspicion is that the only real possibility is to come up with a new area themselves. Invent it, figure out how to make money off it (and advertising, as noted, won’t do it), build the infrastructure for it, and then convince the world that they cannot live without it.
wj:
I agree. And I think that’s part of the reason they’ve been investing in highly disruptive technologies like driverless cars, as well as infrastructure (google fiber) that would be hard for smaller companies to get into.
They have a huge cash advantage and I think they are looking to the future. At least more so than facebook is…
wj:
I agree. And I think that’s part of the reason they’ve been investing in highly disruptive technologies like driverless cars, as well as infrastructure (google fiber) that would be hard for smaller companies to get into.
They have a huge cash advantage and I think they are looking to the future. At least more so than facebook is…
Fair point, and this article suggests that the google acquisition is more a tribute to an inside Silicone Valley mentality than anything else.
If I was google, I would be concern about trending towards a more privacy conscious society, either in terms of the regulatory environment, or just in the technological solutions available to people
So would you address this by giving more tools to people to have control of their own privacy or would you try to anesthetize them to the ramifications and concerns? Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but the trend seems to be the latter.
I don’t see the SLIPS as that disruptive but I may just not be looking in the right place.
Fair point, and this article suggests that the google acquisition is more a tribute to an inside Silicone Valley mentality than anything else.
If I was google, I would be concern about trending towards a more privacy conscious society, either in terms of the regulatory environment, or just in the technological solutions available to people
So would you address this by giving more tools to people to have control of their own privacy or would you try to anesthetize them to the ramifications and concerns? Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but the trend seems to be the latter.
I don’t see the SLIPS as that disruptive but I may just not be looking in the right place.
The SLIPS video I linked earlier I think is a more disruptive technology than Nest.
Another liquid repellant.
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The SLIPS video I linked earlier I think is a more disruptive technology than Nest.
Another liquid repellant.
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LJ:
People are going to get those tools, regardless. Notice how quick Google was to pressure DC after Snowden. They know their current model is predicated on trust…if people don’t trust them to handle their privacy, they will turn away.
Schneier has written on this extensively, and I’d recommend it. Trust is central to our economy, and even more important to information companies like google.
There are some people that say privacy is being depreciated by society. I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t think people have really understood the costs yet. People will of course be apathetic before the costs (lost jobs due to HR searches, criminal prosecutions based on facebook, etc etc) become prevalent.
LJ:
People are going to get those tools, regardless. Notice how quick Google was to pressure DC after Snowden. They know their current model is predicated on trust…if people don’t trust them to handle their privacy, they will turn away.
Schneier has written on this extensively, and I’d recommend it. Trust is central to our economy, and even more important to information companies like google.
There are some people that say privacy is being depreciated by society. I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t think people have really understood the costs yet. People will of course be apathetic before the costs (lost jobs due to HR searches, criminal prosecutions based on facebook, etc etc) become prevalent.
Google may be more interested in the data gathered by Nest products than the products themselves.
Google may be more interested in the data gathered by Nest products than the products themselves.
LJ:
Regarding SLIPS:
First of all, as a grade A slob, I’d love clothes that didn’t stain. But the implications are actually far beyond that.
SLIPS, and other surface modifications from Wyss, are broadly antifouling and are apparently quite robust.
That has implications from preventing barnacle attachment to ships hulls to surfaces that are innately antibacterial.
Imagine a hospital where surgeries, desks, bathrooms, chairs, sheets, blankets, etc…all resist bacterial colonization.
A little farfetched, but not as much as you might think.
LJ:
Regarding SLIPS:
First of all, as a grade A slob, I’d love clothes that didn’t stain. But the implications are actually far beyond that.
SLIPS, and other surface modifications from Wyss, are broadly antifouling and are apparently quite robust.
That has implications from preventing barnacle attachment to ships hulls to surfaces that are innately antibacterial.
Imagine a hospital where surgeries, desks, bathrooms, chairs, sheets, blankets, etc…all resist bacterial colonization.
A little farfetched, but not as much as you might think.
“Google may be more interested in the data gathered by Nest products than the products themselves.”
Maybe, but I wouldn’t think much of them if they did. It would be trivial to make a nest-like system without phoning-home.
Considering a one time investment per house and the price of thermostats…google’s typical strategy of offering a product for free in exchange for data would be…less persuasive in general.
“Google may be more interested in the data gathered by Nest products than the products themselves.”
Maybe, but I wouldn’t think much of them if they did. It would be trivial to make a nest-like system without phoning-home.
Considering a one time investment per house and the price of thermostats…google’s typical strategy of offering a product for free in exchange for data would be…less persuasive in general.
LJ, I suspect that, as part of the effort to anesthetize their customers, Google will put lots of effort into pushing all of the advantages (to the customer) of them having all that data. Not sure how they make that case . . . which probably proves that I’m right not to try for a career in PR.
Verizon is doing something similar in the TV ads pushing how you can control all of you household equipment (lights, doors, TV even) from their smartphone. Presumably they are hoping that you won’t notice that anyone who can hack the phone signal (don’t even need to steal your phone) suddenly has complete access to your house. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be signing up.
LJ, I suspect that, as part of the effort to anesthetize their customers, Google will put lots of effort into pushing all of the advantages (to the customer) of them having all that data. Not sure how they make that case . . . which probably proves that I’m right not to try for a career in PR.
Verizon is doing something similar in the TV ads pushing how you can control all of you household equipment (lights, doors, TV even) from their smartphone. Presumably they are hoping that you won’t notice that anyone who can hack the phone signal (don’t even need to steal your phone) suddenly has complete access to your house. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be signing up.
…control all of you household equipment (lights, doors, TV even) from their smartphone.
Or your car.
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…control all of you household equipment (lights, doors, TV even) from their smartphone.
Or your car.
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wj:
The verizon thing is a perfect example of something that would be easy for any other company to replicate. It doesn’t rely on any of Verizon’s advantages.
I think this is the key problem. Ultimately, you don’t need a large aggregator of your data. You need a tool that will aggregate your data for you. And a lot of companies can provide that, even ones that aren’t interested in mining your data.
wj:
The verizon thing is a perfect example of something that would be easy for any other company to replicate. It doesn’t rely on any of Verizon’s advantages.
I think this is the key problem. Ultimately, you don’t need a large aggregator of your data. You need a tool that will aggregate your data for you. And a lot of companies can provide that, even ones that aren’t interested in mining your data.
I’m usually pretty sensitive to privacy and data sharing concerns, but the worries over data sharing for nest devices has me totally stumped. Can someone explain to me: why would anyone care whether google knows when my smoke detector goes off? Or what my thermostat is set to?
There are a lot of things that google does that are problematic or at least questionable from a privacy perspective, but this? This just doesn’t seem like one.
I’m usually pretty sensitive to privacy and data sharing concerns, but the worries over data sharing for nest devices has me totally stumped. Can someone explain to me: why would anyone care whether google knows when my smoke detector goes off? Or what my thermostat is set to?
There are a lot of things that google does that are problematic or at least questionable from a privacy perspective, but this? This just doesn’t seem like one.
Thanks, a bit of googling turns up this about SLIPS.
There are some people that say privacy is being depreciated by society.
My viewpoint is from being in a society where privacy is not valued so much, or if it is, it is only as a nod to propriety. This paper gives a basic outline of the situation in Japan. I’m not precisely sure about Verizon, but a lot of these IoT approaches are being mooted here in reaction to the demographics, so that the elderly can more easily be monitored by their kids and caregivers and it seems that once they are integrated, the advantages will be perceived to outweigh the disadvantages.
Thanks, a bit of googling turns up this about SLIPS.
There are some people that say privacy is being depreciated by society.
My viewpoint is from being in a society where privacy is not valued so much, or if it is, it is only as a nod to propriety. This paper gives a basic outline of the situation in Japan. I’m not precisely sure about Verizon, but a lot of these IoT approaches are being mooted here in reaction to the demographics, so that the elderly can more easily be monitored by their kids and caregivers and it seems that once they are integrated, the advantages will be perceived to outweigh the disadvantages.
“the advantages will be perceived to outweigh the disadvantages.”
Absolutely. There is always going to be trade offs that people, and societies, make. But I think there is a large difference between a blanket “post-privacy society” and targeted trade-offs, for example in monitoring the elderly and infirm.
I can’t speak to Japan (although I will read the paper).
My point it there isn’t really something that is special about google, or nest, or facebook. It’s not a stretch that another company could come along and offer similar functionality for money, or even one-time costs, without the privacy implications.
Not saying there are swarms of them out there. But the barriers to entry are small for many of these “nest” like ideas. And that should be concerning to google.
“the advantages will be perceived to outweigh the disadvantages.”
Absolutely. There is always going to be trade offs that people, and societies, make. But I think there is a large difference between a blanket “post-privacy society” and targeted trade-offs, for example in monitoring the elderly and infirm.
I can’t speak to Japan (although I will read the paper).
My point it there isn’t really something that is special about google, or nest, or facebook. It’s not a stretch that another company could come along and offer similar functionality for money, or even one-time costs, without the privacy implications.
Not saying there are swarms of them out there. But the barriers to entry are small for many of these “nest” like ideas. And that should be concerning to google.
In which case, they are basically harassing American citizens who are engaged in activism the government does not approve of.
Leaving Snowden and his buddies aside, I’ll just add that this is a not-uncommon occurrence.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement quite often screw with folks who engage in dissent. Environmental activists, folks in the Occupy movements, people involved in the WTO protests, etc., have been the subject of spying and general being-f***ed-with.
There are also numerous efforts to get folks involved in plain old First Amendment-protected dissent classified as terrorists. Occupy folks (again), environmental activists (again), folks opposed to the Keystone pipeline, all have had folks try to have them classified as terrorists. Which they are not.
A database containing a record of every phone call made, by every person in the US, for the last five years, is a lot of information to hold. Especially about a population containing, more or less by definition, about 99.999% people who are not of interest for any good reason.
As the law stands, today, the feds are not allowed to collect metadata about phone calls made between parties who are US persons, where both are in the US, and where neither is the subject of an intelligence or terrorism investigation, unless the folks who want to do the collection can demonstrate how that is relevant to an active investigation approved by the FISC.
That’s the law, it’s in the US Code, I cited it in the other thread, if you want you can go read it.
It’s true that Congress has re-authorized the USA Patriot Act since it’s passage but part of that re-authorization was adding the specific limitation I just named above. It wasn’t in the original language of the law, and now it is.
It’s also true that FISC has approved the metadata collection, but of the many thousands of requests presented to that court from 1979 to 2012, a grand total of eleven have been denied.
So the fact that the FISC has allowed it does not tell us much.
I don’t really give a crap what google or target or ebay or amazon know about me, because they aren’t going to declare me a terrorist if I engage in acts of dissent that they don’t like and f***k with my life.
The party that is most likely to do that is the government. And that is so no matter whether a (D) or an (R) follows the president’s name.
In which case, they are basically harassing American citizens who are engaged in activism the government does not approve of.
Leaving Snowden and his buddies aside, I’ll just add that this is a not-uncommon occurrence.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement quite often screw with folks who engage in dissent. Environmental activists, folks in the Occupy movements, people involved in the WTO protests, etc., have been the subject of spying and general being-f***ed-with.
There are also numerous efforts to get folks involved in plain old First Amendment-protected dissent classified as terrorists. Occupy folks (again), environmental activists (again), folks opposed to the Keystone pipeline, all have had folks try to have them classified as terrorists. Which they are not.
A database containing a record of every phone call made, by every person in the US, for the last five years, is a lot of information to hold. Especially about a population containing, more or less by definition, about 99.999% people who are not of interest for any good reason.
As the law stands, today, the feds are not allowed to collect metadata about phone calls made between parties who are US persons, where both are in the US, and where neither is the subject of an intelligence or terrorism investigation, unless the folks who want to do the collection can demonstrate how that is relevant to an active investigation approved by the FISC.
That’s the law, it’s in the US Code, I cited it in the other thread, if you want you can go read it.
It’s true that Congress has re-authorized the USA Patriot Act since it’s passage but part of that re-authorization was adding the specific limitation I just named above. It wasn’t in the original language of the law, and now it is.
It’s also true that FISC has approved the metadata collection, but of the many thousands of requests presented to that court from 1979 to 2012, a grand total of eleven have been denied.
So the fact that the FISC has allowed it does not tell us much.
I don’t really give a crap what google or target or ebay or amazon know about me, because they aren’t going to declare me a terrorist if I engage in acts of dissent that they don’t like and f***k with my life.
The party that is most likely to do that is the government. And that is so no matter whether a (D) or an (R) follows the president’s name.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement quite often screw with folks who engage in dissent. Environmental activists, folks in the Occupy movements, people involved in the WTO protests, etc., have been the subject of spying and general being-f***ed-with.
I’d be interested to know what your basis in fact is that this has happened “quite often” on a federal level since Obama’s been in office. Links or anything?
Also, what’s your answer? Be specific. Abolish the NSA, the CIA – what else? Do you want to conduct personal oversight?
Federal, state, and local law enforcement quite often screw with folks who engage in dissent. Environmental activists, folks in the Occupy movements, people involved in the WTO protests, etc., have been the subject of spying and general being-f***ed-with.
I’d be interested to know what your basis in fact is that this has happened “quite often” on a federal level since Obama’s been in office. Links or anything?
Also, what’s your answer? Be specific. Abolish the NSA, the CIA – what else? Do you want to conduct personal oversight?
Sorry if it sounds like paranoia to me.
Sorry if it sounds like paranoia to me.
Also, russell, I don’t know how many people you’ve known (but I’ve known quite a few) who lived through, and escaped from, totalitarian regimes. It’s a scary and real phenomenon. It requires the buy-in of a large percentage of the population, or at least fear in a large number. I don’t get that vibe here in the U.S.
I know people who travel a lot, who go ballistic over security lines, TSA agents (in what I consider to be routine security checks), etc. I’m not convinced that anyone who complains about being “messed with” isn’t just really sensitive to the status quo of travel. I, myself, travel a good deal. My experiences vary. I usually have a good attitude, whereas sometimes I’ve traveled with people who don’t – and being an a**hol3 to the people at security doesn’t help.
Just to say, I don’t necessarily trust personal testimonials.
Also, russell, I don’t know how many people you’ve known (but I’ve known quite a few) who lived through, and escaped from, totalitarian regimes. It’s a scary and real phenomenon. It requires the buy-in of a large percentage of the population, or at least fear in a large number. I don’t get that vibe here in the U.S.
I know people who travel a lot, who go ballistic over security lines, TSA agents (in what I consider to be routine security checks), etc. I’m not convinced that anyone who complains about being “messed with” isn’t just really sensitive to the status quo of travel. I, myself, travel a good deal. My experiences vary. I usually have a good attitude, whereas sometimes I’ve traveled with people who don’t – and being an a**hol3 to the people at security doesn’t help.
Just to say, I don’t necessarily trust personal testimonials.
It requires the buy-in of a large percentage of the population, or at least fear in a large number. I don’t get that vibe here in the U.S.
Do you remember fall 2001? I remember fall 2001. Our society is not nearly as resilient as it might look on the surface. People are people.
It requires the buy-in of a large percentage of the population, or at least fear in a large number. I don’t get that vibe here in the U.S.
Do you remember fall 2001? I remember fall 2001. Our society is not nearly as resilient as it might look on the surface. People are people.
Not sure what you mean by that, Nombrilisme Vide. Of course, people were anxious to defend against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, and rightfully so. It was the largest loss of life on US soil by a foreign threat since the War of 1812.
Unfortunately, we had an incompetent president at the time, and people were willing to rally round. People who pretend that competent and incompetent governments yield the same results aren’t being thoughtful about what’s possible. The good news is that after eight years, Bush was history. The bad news is that once Obama was elected, a lot of people thought their work was done, and two years later Congress fell.
People have to be vigilant about whom they elect to office, sure. russell believes that D or R – it’s all the same – the gubmint will “f**k with his life”. Really? Looks like paranoia to me.
Not sure what you mean by that, Nombrilisme Vide. Of course, people were anxious to defend against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, and rightfully so. It was the largest loss of life on US soil by a foreign threat since the War of 1812.
Unfortunately, we had an incompetent president at the time, and people were willing to rally round. People who pretend that competent and incompetent governments yield the same results aren’t being thoughtful about what’s possible. The good news is that after eight years, Bush was history. The bad news is that once Obama was elected, a lot of people thought their work was done, and two years later Congress fell.
People have to be vigilant about whom they elect to office, sure. russell believes that D or R – it’s all the same – the gubmint will “f**k with his life”. Really? Looks like paranoia to me.
“Looks like paranoia to me. ”
This is from someone that was worried about Target kidnapping him and imprisoning him in a foreign country? And I quote:
“And maybe Target can cause me to be put in jail if Target wants to work with a government, not necessarily the government of the United States.”
sapient, you’re a fairly authoritarian guy. You want and advocate for a strong, benevolent, central government. I disagree, and that’s fine.
But someone saying the government is going to mess with them?
That’s history. The government has messed with people since the beginning. Again and again. There has been corruption in every party. There has been abuse in every administration.
It’s fine if you think the way to fix it is different than how I think to fix it.
But calling someone paranoid because they have observed abuse and corruption occurring throughout the history of this country and saying, yeah, that could happen again?
That’s disconnection from reality.
I’ll post a video, one of many examples. Of course, you’ll probably come back with how the police action was justified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLyUK0t0vQ
“Looks like paranoia to me. ”
This is from someone that was worried about Target kidnapping him and imprisoning him in a foreign country? And I quote:
“And maybe Target can cause me to be put in jail if Target wants to work with a government, not necessarily the government of the United States.”
sapient, you’re a fairly authoritarian guy. You want and advocate for a strong, benevolent, central government. I disagree, and that’s fine.
But someone saying the government is going to mess with them?
That’s history. The government has messed with people since the beginning. Again and again. There has been corruption in every party. There has been abuse in every administration.
It’s fine if you think the way to fix it is different than how I think to fix it.
But calling someone paranoid because they have observed abuse and corruption occurring throughout the history of this country and saying, yeah, that could happen again?
That’s disconnection from reality.
I’ll post a video, one of many examples. Of course, you’ll probably come back with how the police action was justified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLyUK0t0vQ
LJ:
Thanks for the paper. Very interesting, but it left me wanting to know more.
Can you speak more on social privacy in Japan? The paper seemed to take it as implicit that the Japanese culture simply doesn’t value privacy socially.
I’m wondering how that plays out in social interactions with friends and family?
Do people generally have personal space, physical or mental (like a personal room or journals)? Do children have no lives that their parents don’t know about? Are there things that are invasions of privacy? Could I, say, look through someone’s medical cabinet if I was invited over for dinner?
I’m not trying to be clever here, I’m just curious how deep this goes. Do people hide things? Does lack of privacy lead to people being very open about everything, or very closed (eg, never say or write anything, because you have no physical privacy).
This is a foreign concept (har har) to me, and I’d like to learn more.
People have speculated that we are going to enter a “post-privacy society” in the US. I just can’t see it happening until people are less judgmental. In other words, I can’t see it happening.
If Japan is already there…how do they deal with people who deviate from the norm? Increased acceptance or does everybody fall in line?
LJ:
Thanks for the paper. Very interesting, but it left me wanting to know more.
Can you speak more on social privacy in Japan? The paper seemed to take it as implicit that the Japanese culture simply doesn’t value privacy socially.
I’m wondering how that plays out in social interactions with friends and family?
Do people generally have personal space, physical or mental (like a personal room or journals)? Do children have no lives that their parents don’t know about? Are there things that are invasions of privacy? Could I, say, look through someone’s medical cabinet if I was invited over for dinner?
I’m not trying to be clever here, I’m just curious how deep this goes. Do people hide things? Does lack of privacy lead to people being very open about everything, or very closed (eg, never say or write anything, because you have no physical privacy).
This is a foreign concept (har har) to me, and I’d like to learn more.
People have speculated that we are going to enter a “post-privacy society” in the US. I just can’t see it happening until people are less judgmental. In other words, I can’t see it happening.
If Japan is already there…how do they deal with people who deviate from the norm? Increased acceptance or does everybody fall in line?
Hey thompson, no worries, good questions. I’m not really sure if I have a handle on it, but it seems like you are viewing a single dimension of public vs. private and for Japanese, a lot of things are orthogonal.
First of all, this pdf, an article entitled “Perspectives on Privacy, Information Technology, and Company/Governmental Surveillance in Japan” might give some more background. That paper notes that while most Japanese have no problem with increased government monitoring, they really don’t like being monitored at their job. This paragraph describes a possible reason why that is.
At first glance, it might appear then that one of the findings from this study is refuting the claims of theorists who have contended that the Confucian and Buddhist inspired culture of Japan that does not recognize individual privacy is nurturing an acceptance of electronic monitoring and data collection by those in authority positions. After all, the participants clearly expressed disdain at the notion that a company would conduct electronic surveillance on its employees. When closely analyzing the narratives, however, it comes to light that it is not really a concern with invasion of privacy that is driving this disdain. First of all, when asked about the concept of privacy, the participants provided interpretations that were more at the personal level of keeping secrets from those who were close to them. The interpretations lacked any societal meaning or implications. The concept of privacy did not come across as holding a true intrinsic value. Second, the derision toward the notion that a company would electronically monitor employees was not being derived from a concern with privacy rights. Rather, it stemmed from the idea that they felt the monitoring was signaling to the employees a sense of distrust the company had in its employees.
You might look at the legal framework that has been established and argue that it looks the same, but this article details the actual status of many of the complaints about privacy and how the system is ‘comprehensively opaque’. The article has several examples of various complaints, of which this is typical
A list broking company encouraged students sitting a university entrance exam to provide copies of their class lists, in return for a voucher worth about US$30. NCACJ considered that, although a company is prohibited from disclosing third party personal data, an individual is not so prohibited. They said it was a matter for argument whether acquiring such information from minors might constitute obtaining personal information by fraudulent or dishonest means, but did not give an opinion.
Someone who comes to Japan and watches the news might note that faces and license plates and house numbers are often blurred, and they may think that there is some real concern about privacy and that people want their privacy, but it’s not really the case, I think. For example, this is from an article about a Japanese TV documentary about LGBT people.
The show was basically an appeal for understanding, filled with testimonials from LGBT people about their loneliness and inability to function normally in a society that won’t acknowledge their situation. It was a passive appeal. The LGBT people who spoke out are waiting for society to change. One participant said LGBT should come out only when they were in a positive frame of mind, since doing so out of anger or frustration might create negative feelings. The advice was mostly about being respectful of other people’s — i.e., straight people’s — feelings. Even the example of the lesbian couple who made a point of not hiding their relationship from the neighbors was presented cautiously. The two women would walk through the streets hand-in-hand greeting everyone they met, and after a year or so people accepted them. However, on TV their faces were blurred out, as were many of the other LGBT participants’. They were not scared for themselves; they just didn’t want to take the chance of making friends and family uncomfortable.
Now, you may argue that it doesn’t matter what reason someone has for wanting to stay private, but I hope you can see that it is an strange kind of privacy that is motivated because you don’t want to make friends and family uncomfortable. I’m sure there are examples where people don’t want to be revealed even though their spouse or family is familiar with whatever it is, but a western definition of privacy starts, I think, with the notion of a personal private space for the individual. In Japan, privacy starts with protection of the group, which automatically makes it different than what we think of in the US.
I often have to explain to exchange students about these different notions and I’m often left with giving examples because there aren’t any explanations. One example is the genkan, an entryway where you take off your outside shoes. That area has traditionally been quasi-public space and if you don’t want people coming in, you have to lock the door. If you don’t lock the door, it’s essentially your fault if someone comes in there. This is changing somewhat, but still, it is common enough that Japanese can’t get angry at someone when they do that. I warn students that they shouldn’t think of their dorm room as their personal space, because anyone from the university could enter it.
When I first came to Japan, when you moved in to a new place, two police men would come to visit you, and you were supposed to invite them in for a cup of tea, chat with them a bit and thank them. Again, that has declined, but is still the norm in small towns if someone new moves in. Maybe I’ve watched too much Law and Order, but that entrance to the house is something that police have to negotiate. I probably could have refused entry, and I don’t think that police would be able to enter if I wasn’t there unless they had a compelling reason, but if you are in a culture where entry to your house is something that requires explicit consent, you are in a different place than here.
When my mom passed away 5 years ago and again when my Dad did in Nov, immediately after I informed the office, not only was a notice posted on the faculty bulletin boards, but this time, an email went out to all the teachers. I wasn’t upset, but things like that always remind me this ain’t Kansas.
One way to look at it, Japan has a pre-industrial village vibe, where one wouldn’t expect privacy. However, the narrative that somehow, Japan is going to ‘evolve’ to have the level of privacy that one seems to expect in the US seems a bit ethnocentric.
I think a better way to look at it is might be that Japanese equate public=formal, while private=not formally announced. You get a similar sort of thing in the UK, so all the broadsheets are legally enjoined from posting about a football player’s affair, but have it as the trending topic on Twitter.
I hope that might explain a bit but it’s probably not really enough. I’m happy to try and take another run at it.
Hey thompson, no worries, good questions. I’m not really sure if I have a handle on it, but it seems like you are viewing a single dimension of public vs. private and for Japanese, a lot of things are orthogonal.
First of all, this pdf, an article entitled “Perspectives on Privacy, Information Technology, and Company/Governmental Surveillance in Japan” might give some more background. That paper notes that while most Japanese have no problem with increased government monitoring, they really don’t like being monitored at their job. This paragraph describes a possible reason why that is.
At first glance, it might appear then that one of the findings from this study is refuting the claims of theorists who have contended that the Confucian and Buddhist inspired culture of Japan that does not recognize individual privacy is nurturing an acceptance of electronic monitoring and data collection by those in authority positions. After all, the participants clearly expressed disdain at the notion that a company would conduct electronic surveillance on its employees. When closely analyzing the narratives, however, it comes to light that it is not really a concern with invasion of privacy that is driving this disdain. First of all, when asked about the concept of privacy, the participants provided interpretations that were more at the personal level of keeping secrets from those who were close to them. The interpretations lacked any societal meaning or implications. The concept of privacy did not come across as holding a true intrinsic value. Second, the derision toward the notion that a company would electronically monitor employees was not being derived from a concern with privacy rights. Rather, it stemmed from the idea that they felt the monitoring was signaling to the employees a sense of distrust the company had in its employees.
You might look at the legal framework that has been established and argue that it looks the same, but this article details the actual status of many of the complaints about privacy and how the system is ‘comprehensively opaque’. The article has several examples of various complaints, of which this is typical
A list broking company encouraged students sitting a university entrance exam to provide copies of their class lists, in return for a voucher worth about US$30. NCACJ considered that, although a company is prohibited from disclosing third party personal data, an individual is not so prohibited. They said it was a matter for argument whether acquiring such information from minors might constitute obtaining personal information by fraudulent or dishonest means, but did not give an opinion.
Someone who comes to Japan and watches the news might note that faces and license plates and house numbers are often blurred, and they may think that there is some real concern about privacy and that people want their privacy, but it’s not really the case, I think. For example, this is from an article about a Japanese TV documentary about LGBT people.
The show was basically an appeal for understanding, filled with testimonials from LGBT people about their loneliness and inability to function normally in a society that won’t acknowledge their situation. It was a passive appeal. The LGBT people who spoke out are waiting for society to change. One participant said LGBT should come out only when they were in a positive frame of mind, since doing so out of anger or frustration might create negative feelings. The advice was mostly about being respectful of other people’s — i.e., straight people’s — feelings. Even the example of the lesbian couple who made a point of not hiding their relationship from the neighbors was presented cautiously. The two women would walk through the streets hand-in-hand greeting everyone they met, and after a year or so people accepted them. However, on TV their faces were blurred out, as were many of the other LGBT participants’. They were not scared for themselves; they just didn’t want to take the chance of making friends and family uncomfortable.
Now, you may argue that it doesn’t matter what reason someone has for wanting to stay private, but I hope you can see that it is an strange kind of privacy that is motivated because you don’t want to make friends and family uncomfortable. I’m sure there are examples where people don’t want to be revealed even though their spouse or family is familiar with whatever it is, but a western definition of privacy starts, I think, with the notion of a personal private space for the individual. In Japan, privacy starts with protection of the group, which automatically makes it different than what we think of in the US.
I often have to explain to exchange students about these different notions and I’m often left with giving examples because there aren’t any explanations. One example is the genkan, an entryway where you take off your outside shoes. That area has traditionally been quasi-public space and if you don’t want people coming in, you have to lock the door. If you don’t lock the door, it’s essentially your fault if someone comes in there. This is changing somewhat, but still, it is common enough that Japanese can’t get angry at someone when they do that. I warn students that they shouldn’t think of their dorm room as their personal space, because anyone from the university could enter it.
When I first came to Japan, when you moved in to a new place, two police men would come to visit you, and you were supposed to invite them in for a cup of tea, chat with them a bit and thank them. Again, that has declined, but is still the norm in small towns if someone new moves in. Maybe I’ve watched too much Law and Order, but that entrance to the house is something that police have to negotiate. I probably could have refused entry, and I don’t think that police would be able to enter if I wasn’t there unless they had a compelling reason, but if you are in a culture where entry to your house is something that requires explicit consent, you are in a different place than here.
When my mom passed away 5 years ago and again when my Dad did in Nov, immediately after I informed the office, not only was a notice posted on the faculty bulletin boards, but this time, an email went out to all the teachers. I wasn’t upset, but things like that always remind me this ain’t Kansas.
One way to look at it, Japan has a pre-industrial village vibe, where one wouldn’t expect privacy. However, the narrative that somehow, Japan is going to ‘evolve’ to have the level of privacy that one seems to expect in the US seems a bit ethnocentric.
I think a better way to look at it is might be that Japanese equate public=formal, while private=not formally announced. You get a similar sort of thing in the UK, so all the broadsheets are legally enjoined from posting about a football player’s affair, but have it as the trending topic on Twitter.
I hope that might explain a bit but it’s probably not really enough. I’m happy to try and take another run at it.
Links or anything?
No links for you.
Also, what’s your answer? Be specific.
Don’t break the law.
Sorry if it sounds like paranoia to me.
No skin off of my back buddy.
Also, russell, I don’t know how many people you’ve known (but I’ve known quite a few) who lived through, and escaped from, totalitarian regimes.
At most single digits. If your question had any relevance to the topic, that might matter.
But you are sapient, which means any freaking issue you want to drag in to obscure the topic under discussion is fair game.
Links or anything?
No links for you.
Also, what’s your answer? Be specific.
Don’t break the law.
Sorry if it sounds like paranoia to me.
No skin off of my back buddy.
Also, russell, I don’t know how many people you’ve known (but I’ve known quite a few) who lived through, and escaped from, totalitarian regimes.
At most single digits. If your question had any relevance to the topic, that might matter.
But you are sapient, which means any freaking issue you want to drag in to obscure the topic under discussion is fair game.
But calling someone paranoid because they have observed abuse and corruption occurring throughout the history of this country and saying, yeah, that could happen again?
That’s disconnection from reality.
What it is, is an ad hominem argument intended to distract attention from the substance of the issue.
Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet. I suspect he has some connection with federal agencies or private contractors that are involved in intelligence gathering, and he is here pretending that he’s an otherwise uninterested ordinary citizen, just sharing his opinions.
I say that because I’ve dealt with sock puppets before, online and elsewhere, and his comments on this topic and his style and method of argument have exactly the flavor of theirs. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc.
My sense is that, in reality, sapient is here as the stooge of folks who are involved in this kind of intelligence gathering, either for pay or because his own interests align with theirs.
sapient says I’m paranoid, I say he’s a shill and a lackey for the feds and/or their contractors. My grounds for making my statement are exactly as strong as his are for making his. Maybe stronger.
But calling someone paranoid because they have observed abuse and corruption occurring throughout the history of this country and saying, yeah, that could happen again?
That’s disconnection from reality.
What it is, is an ad hominem argument intended to distract attention from the substance of the issue.
Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet. I suspect he has some connection with federal agencies or private contractors that are involved in intelligence gathering, and he is here pretending that he’s an otherwise uninterested ordinary citizen, just sharing his opinions.
I say that because I’ve dealt with sock puppets before, online and elsewhere, and his comments on this topic and his style and method of argument have exactly the flavor of theirs. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc.
My sense is that, in reality, sapient is here as the stooge of folks who are involved in this kind of intelligence gathering, either for pay or because his own interests align with theirs.
sapient says I’m paranoid, I say he’s a shill and a lackey for the feds and/or their contractors. My grounds for making my statement are exactly as strong as his are for making his. Maybe stronger.
“single dimension of public vs. private and for Japanese, a lot of things are orthogonal.”
You’re right, I was expressing it as such, but I do realize how these things are orthogonal. The difficulty I was having was with the blanket assertion in the first link that Japan doesn’t value privacy. The truth is much more complex, of course.
The links were quite informative. To me, it seems like there is a desire for secrecy, and a desire for trust. I guess where I get lost is how that’s distinct from ‘privacy.’
At the non-government level, it seems without a concept of ‘privacy’, privacy is basically enforced by (a) desire for secrecy (b) a desire for trust and (c) respect for others desire for secrecy and trust.
If I had to describe my concept of privacy, it wouldn’t be far off.
Although clearly I extend that to my dealings with the government, which isn’t the case in Japan. Although its not entirely the case in the US. There isn’t exactly 0 support for the US, so perhaps this conversation would be better informed with a more average “american voice” contributing.
Then I read the rest of your post, and that’s when the differences became more apparent. It’s not something I fully grasp at the moment, but I’ll mull it around in my head.
My final question, I suppose, would be about the boundary between secret/private and non-secret/public. In the US, that’s a pretty diffuse line:
If you stop by someone’s house unannounced that can be anywhere from rude to a welcome surprise.
Some people are pretty open about their medical problems, others are pretty guarded.
Etc etc.
Which seems to result in the default assumption of: you take the a broadest sense of privacy so you don’t end up stepping on someone’s toes.
It seems that Japan doesn’t lack a sense of ‘privacy’ in the sense of a secret/personal space, but several of the examples you had just wouldn’t fly in the US. But it seems like if I were to go through someone’s diary or their medical cabinet, they would still be offended. Right?
So, and maybe I’m wrong, but is a component of the difference maybe that in a more culturally homogeneous society, the line between private/non-private is firmer?
Also, I wasn’t (and still am not!) trying to imply:
“Japan is going to ‘evolve’ to have the level of privacy that one seems to expect in the US seems a bit ethnocentric. ”
And I hope I didn’t give that impression.
“single dimension of public vs. private and for Japanese, a lot of things are orthogonal.”
You’re right, I was expressing it as such, but I do realize how these things are orthogonal. The difficulty I was having was with the blanket assertion in the first link that Japan doesn’t value privacy. The truth is much more complex, of course.
The links were quite informative. To me, it seems like there is a desire for secrecy, and a desire for trust. I guess where I get lost is how that’s distinct from ‘privacy.’
At the non-government level, it seems without a concept of ‘privacy’, privacy is basically enforced by (a) desire for secrecy (b) a desire for trust and (c) respect for others desire for secrecy and trust.
If I had to describe my concept of privacy, it wouldn’t be far off.
Although clearly I extend that to my dealings with the government, which isn’t the case in Japan. Although its not entirely the case in the US. There isn’t exactly 0 support for the US, so perhaps this conversation would be better informed with a more average “american voice” contributing.
Then I read the rest of your post, and that’s when the differences became more apparent. It’s not something I fully grasp at the moment, but I’ll mull it around in my head.
My final question, I suppose, would be about the boundary between secret/private and non-secret/public. In the US, that’s a pretty diffuse line:
If you stop by someone’s house unannounced that can be anywhere from rude to a welcome surprise.
Some people are pretty open about their medical problems, others are pretty guarded.
Etc etc.
Which seems to result in the default assumption of: you take the a broadest sense of privacy so you don’t end up stepping on someone’s toes.
It seems that Japan doesn’t lack a sense of ‘privacy’ in the sense of a secret/personal space, but several of the examples you had just wouldn’t fly in the US. But it seems like if I were to go through someone’s diary or their medical cabinet, they would still be offended. Right?
So, and maybe I’m wrong, but is a component of the difference maybe that in a more culturally homogeneous society, the line between private/non-private is firmer?
Also, I wasn’t (and still am not!) trying to imply:
“Japan is going to ‘evolve’ to have the level of privacy that one seems to expect in the US seems a bit ethnocentric. ”
And I hope I didn’t give that impression.
ugh, I meant to say:
“There isn’t exactly 0 support for broad surveillance in the US”
not
“There isn’t exactly 0 support for the US”
ugh, I meant to say:
“There isn’t exactly 0 support for broad surveillance in the US”
not
“There isn’t exactly 0 support for the US”
I think sapient is a sock puppet.
It is possible but seems a bit unlikely. And sapient’s obsessive contrarianism on this issue is reasonably consistent with other sapient-induced thread explosions, like their insistence that now that gays can get married, we should abolish civil marriage, for equality. Or something.
I think the more likely explanation is that sapient is just an authoritarian who gets totally irrational when people question the national security state, as long as it is being run by someone they like. Remember when they were going on and on about how awful it was for people on the internet to criticize editors in the publishing industry because we commoners are far to ignorant to even imagine criticizing our noble elites?
I think sapient is a sock puppet.
It is possible but seems a bit unlikely. And sapient’s obsessive contrarianism on this issue is reasonably consistent with other sapient-induced thread explosions, like their insistence that now that gays can get married, we should abolish civil marriage, for equality. Or something.
I think the more likely explanation is that sapient is just an authoritarian who gets totally irrational when people question the national security state, as long as it is being run by someone they like. Remember when they were going on and on about how awful it was for people on the internet to criticize editors in the publishing industry because we commoners are far to ignorant to even imagine criticizing our noble elites?
When considering privacy, perhaps we should distinguish between what people are willing to say they want and what their revealed preferences are. If you phoned up random Americans and asked them how important porn was to their lives, you’d probably come to a very different conclusion than if you looked at how much porn was actually consumed by Americans. Just because people may think that they’re not entitled to privacy or that people will think poorly of them for saying they desire privacy, does not mean that they actually don’t care about privacy at all.
When considering privacy, perhaps we should distinguish between what people are willing to say they want and what their revealed preferences are. If you phoned up random Americans and asked them how important porn was to their lives, you’d probably come to a very different conclusion than if you looked at how much porn was actually consumed by Americans. Just because people may think that they’re not entitled to privacy or that people will think poorly of them for saying they desire privacy, does not mean that they actually don’t care about privacy at all.
Nombrilisme Vide:
I noticed you referred to sapient as “he” a bit up thread, which I believe is a mistaken assumption, given various hints sapient has provided here over the years, plus I hacked into his/her state-of-the-art networked food processor which she/he controls remotely via her cellphone and managed to manipulate the “macerate” button on the processor to induce his/her cellphone to click a picture of her/him and send it my cellphone for verification.
Unfortunately, one of her/his major appliances, probably her side-by-side fridge/freezer, wirelessly intervened by launching a small drone and directing it to hover in front of sapient’s face, thus blocking identification.
That we can’t ascertain sapient’s sex here on the internet is a slightly funny adjunct to our collective privacy fears.
Very slightly funny.
Turb wrote:
“I’m usually pretty sensitive to privacy and data sharing concerns, but the worries over data sharing for nest devices has me totally stumped. Can someone explain to me: why would anyone care whether google knows when my smoke detector goes off? Or what my thermostat is set to?”
“The internet of everything” is a developing stock market investment fad, I’ve learned recently in my research, and there have been cases of major appliances being remotely hacked, to what effect I’ve no idea.
Sorry, I don’t have a link to that article.
But I think the idea of the material world of objects becoming “smart” and linked wirelessly plays into fundamental fears of losing individual sovereignty, despite the enabling of convenience advertised by the technologies’ purveyors.
One can imagine, and Hollywood has and will, one’s IRobot vacuum cleaner and floor polisher conspiring with one’s thermostat, perhaps the electric toothbrush (loaded remotely with toothpaste), and the home security system to, at the very least, play practical jokes on a person as they arrive home after a hard day at the office, perhaps ambushing a person, like Kato used to lie in wait in a cupboard for Inspector Clouseau.
The conspiracy becomes darker if some outside party is able, a person or a server in the cloud, to control one’s world. Even the name “NEST” gives me some comical, but goose-pimply pause.
Add in the pacemaker that communicates remotely with the nearest hospital and your various interfacing vehicles and the plot thickens and probably coagulates.
What happens if your washing machine, commandeered by diabolical outside forces, or of its own smarty-pants volition, is able to hack wirelessly into your tablet and go to your OK-Cupid account and alter your profile and you start receiving messages from lonely major appliances in your commuting area, who nevertheless want to confirm, like their human counterparts, that you have a job, a car, and you don’t live in your mother’s basement.
Worse, you’ll rue the day when your IPod, your self-activating waffle maker, and your furnace take a joyride together, commandeered remotely, in your car while you sleep.
I draw the line at my hair dryer booby-trapping my Orgasmatron.
And, what happens when objects begin to talk with each other online:
http://www.dollforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=41541&sid=cb9a2858a1f9bc6564b7da301579397c&view=print
thompson wrote:
“Imagine a hospital where surgeries, desks, bathrooms, chairs, sheets, blankets, etc…all resist bacterial colonization.”
Yet one more reason for staff not to wash their hands.
Also, thompson, you wrote somewhere up thread, regarding privacy becoming moot in society, whether, for that to happen, would people have to become less judgmental, I think is how you put it.
It seems that the internet, facebook, twitter, and such have fostered and amplified a tendency to hyper-judgemental behavior and criticism, rather than tamping down that normal human tendency, which might have been socially controlled in past times, but now the anonymity of the internet unleashes in full reality TV torrents of abuse.
The shy person anonymously torpedoing a restaurant opening on YELP, for example, with a virulent, over-the-top review.
Nombrilisme Vide:
I noticed you referred to sapient as “he” a bit up thread, which I believe is a mistaken assumption, given various hints sapient has provided here over the years, plus I hacked into his/her state-of-the-art networked food processor which she/he controls remotely via her cellphone and managed to manipulate the “macerate” button on the processor to induce his/her cellphone to click a picture of her/him and send it my cellphone for verification.
Unfortunately, one of her/his major appliances, probably her side-by-side fridge/freezer, wirelessly intervened by launching a small drone and directing it to hover in front of sapient’s face, thus blocking identification.
That we can’t ascertain sapient’s sex here on the internet is a slightly funny adjunct to our collective privacy fears.
Very slightly funny.
Turb wrote:
“I’m usually pretty sensitive to privacy and data sharing concerns, but the worries over data sharing for nest devices has me totally stumped. Can someone explain to me: why would anyone care whether google knows when my smoke detector goes off? Or what my thermostat is set to?”
“The internet of everything” is a developing stock market investment fad, I’ve learned recently in my research, and there have been cases of major appliances being remotely hacked, to what effect I’ve no idea.
Sorry, I don’t have a link to that article.
But I think the idea of the material world of objects becoming “smart” and linked wirelessly plays into fundamental fears of losing individual sovereignty, despite the enabling of convenience advertised by the technologies’ purveyors.
One can imagine, and Hollywood has and will, one’s IRobot vacuum cleaner and floor polisher conspiring with one’s thermostat, perhaps the electric toothbrush (loaded remotely with toothpaste), and the home security system to, at the very least, play practical jokes on a person as they arrive home after a hard day at the office, perhaps ambushing a person, like Kato used to lie in wait in a cupboard for Inspector Clouseau.
The conspiracy becomes darker if some outside party is able, a person or a server in the cloud, to control one’s world. Even the name “NEST” gives me some comical, but goose-pimply pause.
Add in the pacemaker that communicates remotely with the nearest hospital and your various interfacing vehicles and the plot thickens and probably coagulates.
What happens if your washing machine, commandeered by diabolical outside forces, or of its own smarty-pants volition, is able to hack wirelessly into your tablet and go to your OK-Cupid account and alter your profile and you start receiving messages from lonely major appliances in your commuting area, who nevertheless want to confirm, like their human counterparts, that you have a job, a car, and you don’t live in your mother’s basement.
Worse, you’ll rue the day when your IPod, your self-activating waffle maker, and your furnace take a joyride together, commandeered remotely, in your car while you sleep.
I draw the line at my hair dryer booby-trapping my Orgasmatron.
And, what happens when objects begin to talk with each other online:
http://www.dollforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=41541&sid=cb9a2858a1f9bc6564b7da301579397c&view=print
thompson wrote:
“Imagine a hospital where surgeries, desks, bathrooms, chairs, sheets, blankets, etc…all resist bacterial colonization.”
Yet one more reason for staff not to wash their hands.
Also, thompson, you wrote somewhere up thread, regarding privacy becoming moot in society, whether, for that to happen, would people have to become less judgmental, I think is how you put it.
It seems that the internet, facebook, twitter, and such have fostered and amplified a tendency to hyper-judgemental behavior and criticism, rather than tamping down that normal human tendency, which might have been socially controlled in past times, but now the anonymity of the internet unleashes in full reality TV torrents of abuse.
The shy person anonymously torpedoing a restaurant opening on YELP, for example, with a virulent, over-the-top review.
For what it’s worth, lj, this sock puppet really enjoyed your comment on Japanese notions of privacy. Maybe I’m Japanese, because the notions of trust (and autonomy) in the workplace, but also protecting family from experiencing the fallout of one’s personal eccentricities – those things make sense to me. (It’s possible that I misunderstood a bit but, according to my understanding, that’s how I felt about it.)
If the NSA is truly monitoring telephone metadata in order to “mess with people” whose views they don’t like, that’s an intolerable abuse. I haven’t read anything that leads me to believe that any such thing is going on. The fact that it “could” happen? If the FISA court system isn’t enough, there should be more safeguards implemented.
A lot of people agree with russell’s view that the NSA data collecting program doesn’t accord with the enabling statute it cites as authority. Maybe the courts, someday, will agree with him. So far, the FISA court doesn’t. Accusing the NSA of doing something illegal when it has followed the correct procedures (which involve the three branches of government) is inappropriate, even if the law (or the interpretation of the law) is not to one’s liking. Congress can address this. In fact, it has to do something in 2015.
For what it’s worth, lj, this sock puppet really enjoyed your comment on Japanese notions of privacy. Maybe I’m Japanese, because the notions of trust (and autonomy) in the workplace, but also protecting family from experiencing the fallout of one’s personal eccentricities – those things make sense to me. (It’s possible that I misunderstood a bit but, according to my understanding, that’s how I felt about it.)
If the NSA is truly monitoring telephone metadata in order to “mess with people” whose views they don’t like, that’s an intolerable abuse. I haven’t read anything that leads me to believe that any such thing is going on. The fact that it “could” happen? If the FISA court system isn’t enough, there should be more safeguards implemented.
A lot of people agree with russell’s view that the NSA data collecting program doesn’t accord with the enabling statute it cites as authority. Maybe the courts, someday, will agree with him. So far, the FISA court doesn’t. Accusing the NSA of doing something illegal when it has followed the correct procedures (which involve the three branches of government) is inappropriate, even if the law (or the interpretation of the law) is not to one’s liking. Congress can address this. In fact, it has to do something in 2015.
like their insistence that now that gays can get married, we should abolish civil marriage, for equality.
I don’t mean to threadjack, but since it came up, let me clarify something. I support marriage equality. I support equal rights under the law for LGBT people, and always have. But another belief of mine (which, ironically, thompson might have a similar feeling about – don’t know, and don’t mean to speak for him) is that government has no legitimate interest in sponsoring one domestic arrangement over another. People should be able to make families as they wish, and define them as they wish. If the state wants to facilitate domestic arrangements (such as next-of-kin relationships) by registering households, there are plenty of completely neutral, non-discriminatory ways to do that. In the meantime, since marriage seems to be an institution that’s not going away any time soon, it should definitely be inclusive of LGBT people. That’s my view. It’s held by a lot of people, including some LGBT advocates and feminists. Don’t distort it.
like their insistence that now that gays can get married, we should abolish civil marriage, for equality.
I don’t mean to threadjack, but since it came up, let me clarify something. I support marriage equality. I support equal rights under the law for LGBT people, and always have. But another belief of mine (which, ironically, thompson might have a similar feeling about – don’t know, and don’t mean to speak for him) is that government has no legitimate interest in sponsoring one domestic arrangement over another. People should be able to make families as they wish, and define them as they wish. If the state wants to facilitate domestic arrangements (such as next-of-kin relationships) by registering households, there are plenty of completely neutral, non-discriminatory ways to do that. In the meantime, since marriage seems to be an institution that’s not going away any time soon, it should definitely be inclusive of LGBT people. That’s my view. It’s held by a lot of people, including some LGBT advocates and feminists. Don’t distort it.
“Yet one more reason for staff not to wash their hands.”
I was thinking more along the lines of less need for antibotics and less MRSA. But yeah, prolly that too…
“fostered and amplified a tendency to hyper-judgemental behavior and criticism”
True. One of the reasons I don’t think we are heading to post-privacy. But more in general, I think we need privacy as a way of balancing social conformity and deviation.
Social pressure is very important to maintaining a functioning society, IMO. Without privacy, however, pressure tamps down on deviation and society stagnates.
“Yet one more reason for staff not to wash their hands.”
I was thinking more along the lines of less need for antibotics and less MRSA. But yeah, prolly that too…
“fostered and amplified a tendency to hyper-judgemental behavior and criticism”
True. One of the reasons I don’t think we are heading to post-privacy. But more in general, I think we need privacy as a way of balancing social conformity and deviation.
Social pressure is very important to maintaining a functioning society, IMO. Without privacy, however, pressure tamps down on deviation and society stagnates.
Remember when they were going on and on about how awful it was for people on the internet to criticize editors in the publishing industry because we commoners are far to ignorant to even imagine criticizing our noble elites?
Just another self-defense, off-topic, note: It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to criticize (generally) workers whose professions they know nothing about. The publishing industry is currently in a state of massive transformation. There are “editors” of many kinds who work in publishing (at least, there used to be – most were laid off). Most people who don’t work in publishing have just about as little idea of what editors do as I have about what Turbulence does. The difference is that I’m much more aware than he seems to be about my areas of ignorance.
Remember when they were going on and on about how awful it was for people on the internet to criticize editors in the publishing industry because we commoners are far to ignorant to even imagine criticizing our noble elites?
Just another self-defense, off-topic, note: It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to criticize (generally) workers whose professions they know nothing about. The publishing industry is currently in a state of massive transformation. There are “editors” of many kinds who work in publishing (at least, there used to be – most were laid off). Most people who don’t work in publishing have just about as little idea of what editors do as I have about what Turbulence does. The difference is that I’m much more aware than he seems to be about my areas of ignorance.
It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to criticize (generally) workers whose professions they know nothing about.
What’s your level of professional exposure to designing, building, or operating large-scale “big data” systems?
It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to criticize (generally) workers whose professions they know nothing about.
What’s your level of professional exposure to designing, building, or operating large-scale “big data” systems?
What’s your level of professional exposure to designing, building, or operating large-scale “big data” systems?
Zero. And if you find me criticizing people as being “unprofessional” who do that for a living, please find the quote. Honestly, I don’t know where that’s even coming from. My issue with “big data” systems is that private accumulation of data can probably used for nefarious purposes just as public accumulation of data can.
I have been informed by Turbulence that if the NSA has access to all the data that they collect under the phone metadata program, plus the criminal records data, tax records, etc., then we need to worry about the NSA being able to blackmail people. I agree. But it’s my impression (not knowledge) that there’s plenty of data in private hands that could be used for blackmail.
Maybe your point is something else? Whatever it is, I’m not getting it.
What’s your level of professional exposure to designing, building, or operating large-scale “big data” systems?
Zero. And if you find me criticizing people as being “unprofessional” who do that for a living, please find the quote. Honestly, I don’t know where that’s even coming from. My issue with “big data” systems is that private accumulation of data can probably used for nefarious purposes just as public accumulation of data can.
I have been informed by Turbulence that if the NSA has access to all the data that they collect under the phone metadata program, plus the criminal records data, tax records, etc., then we need to worry about the NSA being able to blackmail people. I agree. But it’s my impression (not knowledge) that there’s plenty of data in private hands that could be used for blackmail.
Maybe your point is something else? Whatever it is, I’m not getting it.
But it seems like if I were to go through someone’s diary or their medical cabinet, they would still be offended.
I meant to answer your question about that and got sidetracked. It’s tricky.
First of all, Japanese homes are really small. This means that it is very strange to invite people over to your house. Now (and here is where it gets really bizarre) a lot of Japanese people want to invite people over to their house because they watch a lot of overseas dramas and they have this idea that overseas, foreigners often have ‘home parties’. My students often write that they want to go overseas so they can go to a ‘home party’. So they feel like this is what you do. The ramifications of inviting someone ‘into your home’ aren’t really explored, so I’m not sure how they would feel if they invited someone over and they started rummaging thru their medicine cabinet. But then, the other tricky part is the Japanese toilet is usually in a separate room from their bath and shower, and at any rate, Japanese normally don’t have a ‘medicine cabinet’ in their ‘bathroom’, so it would be like going to someone’s house, getting told where the bathroom is, accidentally (or not) opening the wrong door and then going in there and rummaging around. (That also implies a private sleeping space, whereas in Japan, traditionally, you roll out futon in the living space and sleep on floor)
It’s not that privacy doesn’t exist in Japan or that Japanese people are not giving the right answers when quizzed, it is that lines of where this is drawn are different, which then maps to a different space as to who has responsibility for what. If I were to try and draw a line (one that I don’t always see), I’d suggest that in Japan, if you want to be private, you have to take the steps to make yourself private. You lock your door, you don’t invite people over, you decide what you give out. If you are in a service and you want to opt-out, and the company says you need to mail a copy of your passport in order to verify you are the person opting out, that doesn’t seem strange until someone says wait a minute, you are asking for more private information for me to protect my privacy and then a long dance goes to sort it out. On the other hand, from what I gather, most of the folks here think privacy is something you have unless there is some compelling reason that can be shown.
Overlaid on this is the adoption of privacy codes that are based on Western notions and adopted in fits and spurts. At various events at my school and outside it, people want to take pictures to advertise the event but Japanese law says that people have to approve their images appearing, so concern for that has us cropping pictures or making these quick statements at the beginning of taking pictures which then devalues the whole process and makes the person who opts out a nail that sticks out.
I don’t want to suggest that I ‘know’ how Japanese feel about privacy, but I hope the examples I’ve given suggest that it is different.
But it seems like if I were to go through someone’s diary or their medical cabinet, they would still be offended.
I meant to answer your question about that and got sidetracked. It’s tricky.
First of all, Japanese homes are really small. This means that it is very strange to invite people over to your house. Now (and here is where it gets really bizarre) a lot of Japanese people want to invite people over to their house because they watch a lot of overseas dramas and they have this idea that overseas, foreigners often have ‘home parties’. My students often write that they want to go overseas so they can go to a ‘home party’. So they feel like this is what you do. The ramifications of inviting someone ‘into your home’ aren’t really explored, so I’m not sure how they would feel if they invited someone over and they started rummaging thru their medicine cabinet. But then, the other tricky part is the Japanese toilet is usually in a separate room from their bath and shower, and at any rate, Japanese normally don’t have a ‘medicine cabinet’ in their ‘bathroom’, so it would be like going to someone’s house, getting told where the bathroom is, accidentally (or not) opening the wrong door and then going in there and rummaging around. (That also implies a private sleeping space, whereas in Japan, traditionally, you roll out futon in the living space and sleep on floor)
It’s not that privacy doesn’t exist in Japan or that Japanese people are not giving the right answers when quizzed, it is that lines of where this is drawn are different, which then maps to a different space as to who has responsibility for what. If I were to try and draw a line (one that I don’t always see), I’d suggest that in Japan, if you want to be private, you have to take the steps to make yourself private. You lock your door, you don’t invite people over, you decide what you give out. If you are in a service and you want to opt-out, and the company says you need to mail a copy of your passport in order to verify you are the person opting out, that doesn’t seem strange until someone says wait a minute, you are asking for more private information for me to protect my privacy and then a long dance goes to sort it out. On the other hand, from what I gather, most of the folks here think privacy is something you have unless there is some compelling reason that can be shown.
Overlaid on this is the adoption of privacy codes that are based on Western notions and adopted in fits and spurts. At various events at my school and outside it, people want to take pictures to advertise the event but Japanese law says that people have to approve their images appearing, so concern for that has us cropping pictures or making these quick statements at the beginning of taking pictures which then devalues the whole process and makes the person who opts out a nail that sticks out.
I don’t want to suggest that I ‘know’ how Japanese feel about privacy, but I hope the examples I’ve given suggest that it is different.
“Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet.”
I haven’t read the whole thread, but saw that. I really doubt this. There are plenty of people who think like sapient in the comments section of other blogs–quite a few Obama supporters treat him with something like religious reverence and make the sorts of arguments one used to hear from Bush supporters in 2001-2008 when it came to the war on terror. Sapient wants party discipline and gets very angry at almost any criticism of Obama on any subject.
Try reading the comment section at Balloon Juice. Don’t spend too much time–your brain cells will start dying. Unless it’s changed drastically, you’ll find a lot of commenters who fall into one of two categories –one group hates Obama on every issue and the other defends Obama on every issue. IMO there’s a kind of Obama Derangement Syndrome–the funny thing is it has two completely different sets of symptoms.
“Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet.”
I haven’t read the whole thread, but saw that. I really doubt this. There are plenty of people who think like sapient in the comments section of other blogs–quite a few Obama supporters treat him with something like religious reverence and make the sorts of arguments one used to hear from Bush supporters in 2001-2008 when it came to the war on terror. Sapient wants party discipline and gets very angry at almost any criticism of Obama on any subject.
Try reading the comment section at Balloon Juice. Don’t spend too much time–your brain cells will start dying. Unless it’s changed drastically, you’ll find a lot of commenters who fall into one of two categories –one group hates Obama on every issue and the other defends Obama on every issue. IMO there’s a kind of Obama Derangement Syndrome–the funny thing is it has two completely different sets of symptoms.
On second thought, make that three types of symptoms. The people who hate Obama from the right hate him in a different way from those who loathe him in every respect from the far left. Lefties don’t blather on about Kenya/socialist garbage.
On second thought, make that three types of symptoms. The people who hate Obama from the right hate him in a different way from those who loathe him in every respect from the far left. Lefties don’t blather on about Kenya/socialist garbage.
Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet.
russell doesn’t think I’m a sock puppet. He’s just trying to be mean. Surprisingly, he’s pretty good at it. Sorry that I provoked his anger, yet again.
Personally, I think sapient is a sock puppet.
russell doesn’t think I’m a sock puppet. He’s just trying to be mean. Surprisingly, he’s pretty good at it. Sorry that I provoked his anger, yet again.
” I hope the examples I’ve given suggest that it is different.”
You certainly have. I appreciate the responses, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I find the juxtaposition of publishing peoples picture being illegal with mailing your passport to opt out of some form of data collection…striking to say the least.
” I hope the examples I’ve given suggest that it is different.”
You certainly have. I appreciate the responses, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I find the juxtaposition of publishing peoples picture being illegal with mailing your passport to opt out of some form of data collection…striking to say the least.
Zero.
Thank you.
russell doesn’t think I’m a sock puppet.
Correct.
He’s just trying to be mean.
No, I’m just giving you a turn at being on the receiving end of substanceless, beside-the-point, ad hominem horseshit, intended to distract from the point of the conversation.
If it feels like I’m being “mean” to you, perhaps you might like to take a lesson from it.
Zero.
Thank you.
russell doesn’t think I’m a sock puppet.
Correct.
He’s just trying to be mean.
No, I’m just giving you a turn at being on the receiving end of substanceless, beside-the-point, ad hominem horseshit, intended to distract from the point of the conversation.
If it feels like I’m being “mean” to you, perhaps you might like to take a lesson from it.
“Try reading the comment section at Balloon Juice.”
So…yeah…that was disturbing.
I’m again reminded why ObWi is somewhere I felt it was worthwhile to comment.
“Try reading the comment section at Balloon Juice.”
So…yeah…that was disturbing.
I’m again reminded why ObWi is somewhere I felt it was worthwhile to comment.
Really, thompson? I just looked over there for a couple of minutes and found out about Leann Rimes.
Was worth the trip.
Really, thompson? I just looked over there for a couple of minutes and found out about Leann Rimes.
Was worth the trip.
I’m actually aware Leann Rimes existed before Balloon Juice.
The comment sections, however, were particularly vitriolic.
I’m actually aware Leann Rimes existed before Balloon Juice.
The comment sections, however, were particularly vitriolic.
Was worth the trip for me.
Was worth the trip for me.
See anything you recognize?
See anything you recognize?
Thompson (and anyone else interested)
A few blog posts by a professor who is doing student projects that focus on visual anthropology in Japan.
This blog post is part 7 of the guidelines and has links to the previous 6 parts along with lots of associated links.
Thompson (and anyone else interested)
A few blog posts by a professor who is doing student projects that focus on visual anthropology in Japan.
This blog post is part 7 of the guidelines and has links to the previous 6 parts along with lots of associated links.
The posts at Balloon Juice are okay–it’s a group blog and they don’t all think the same on issues like the NSA and so forth. It’s a partisan Democratic site, so you may or may not like them depending on your views. It’s the comment threads that are bad, at least when I’ve visited. Bad on both sides, for the most part (mostly liberal Obama lovers vs liberal Obama haters). It’s like there’s some scripted set of insults they all draw on.
The posts at Balloon Juice are okay–it’s a group blog and they don’t all think the same on issues like the NSA and so forth. It’s a partisan Democratic site, so you may or may not like them depending on your views. It’s the comment threads that are bad, at least when I’ve visited. Bad on both sides, for the most part (mostly liberal Obama lovers vs liberal Obama haters). It’s like there’s some scripted set of insults they all draw on.
Its a partisan Democratic site, true, but founded and run by gentle curmudgeon John Cole, all-around Republican apostate and, if I’m not mistaken, former Board member of Redstate.
They have a guy named Richard Mayhew who is very good on Obamacare. He works in the health insurance industry and seems to cut through the bullsh*t pretty well.
I rarely read the comments, though I used to participate occasionally.
Its a partisan Democratic site, true, but founded and run by gentle curmudgeon John Cole, all-around Republican apostate and, if I’m not mistaken, former Board member of Redstate.
They have a guy named Richard Mayhew who is very good on Obamacare. He works in the health insurance industry and seems to cut through the bullsh*t pretty well.
I rarely read the comments, though I used to participate occasionally.