Let me Godwin that discussion fast... Just remember that Hitler, with a few Hollerith machines [wikipedia.org], which aren't even considered computers by any definitions of the term, managed to classify, sort and exterminate millions of people, just imagine what a malevolent dictatorship could bring today. Think we are past that ? Well, it looks like the Front National, France's extremist and racist party, is posed to win the next election due to the usual two main parties being full of shit and full of themselves (not sur
One of the things that fascinates me about this debate -- in a sickening, slow-motion train-wreck-watching kind of way -- is how inherently biased the participants often seem to be.
For example, try rereading just the summary and comments on this page and counting how many references are specifically to US/American citizens. Does no-one who is not a US citizen deserve to be treated with respect, considered innocent until proven guilty, and protected by law against infringements of their basic rights and freedoms? Does no-one who is a US citizen ever do anything bad? Does anyone really think the passport someone carries -- basically an accident of birth -- is the most reliable indicator of future intentions?
Usually at this point someone pipes up with how the NSA is there to protect US interests, but that argument holds little water. If the NSA is undermining communication security to monitor others then it is undermining security for US citizens as well. And the same for GCHQ here in the UK, and every other state surveillance apparatus. So by the national interest argument, at best every state surveillance organisation in the world except possibly your own is a threat to your basic freedoms and every other nation in the world is acting like a hostile power in some sort of information-age Cold War.
This is clearly an absurd default position. International partnerships and friendships can be mutually beneficial in numerous ways, and we should be working together to develop those relationships for the good of everyone in our increasingly global society. And yet, the current obsession with intrusive surveillance and security theatre is threatening many of those potential benefits in all kinds of subtle ways, and the only news stories about international diplomacy in recent years seem to be about shady back-room deals that further the interests of state power and/or big business, often conveniently circumventing the normal safeguards provided by national laws in the process.
I don't think this position is sustainable, but my worry is that it will eventually fail not because we decided like civilised people that this kind of behaviour is unhealthy and unacceptable, but because it created so much of a them-and-us divide between normal people and powerful organisations like governments and big businesses that we reached a point of widespread civil disobedience or even actual civil war, causing catastrophically vast damage to society for at least a generation and out of all proportion to any threat these measures ever protected against.
Small data (Score:4, Interesting)
And small scope (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the things that fascinates me about this debate -- in a sickening, slow-motion train-wreck-watching kind of way -- is how inherently biased the participants often seem to be.
For example, try rereading just the summary and comments on this page and counting how many references are specifically to US/American citizens. Does no-one who is not a US citizen deserve to be treated with respect, considered innocent until proven guilty, and protected by law against infringements of their basic rights and freedoms? Does no-one who is a US citizen ever do anything bad? Does anyone really think the passport someone carries -- basically an accident of birth -- is the most reliable indicator of future intentions?
Usually at this point someone pipes up with how the NSA is there to protect US interests, but that argument holds little water. If the NSA is undermining communication security to monitor others then it is undermining security for US citizens as well. And the same for GCHQ here in the UK, and every other state surveillance apparatus. So by the national interest argument, at best every state surveillance organisation in the world except possibly your own is a threat to your basic freedoms and every other nation in the world is acting like a hostile power in some sort of information-age Cold War.
This is clearly an absurd default position. International partnerships and friendships can be mutually beneficial in numerous ways, and we should be working together to develop those relationships for the good of everyone in our increasingly global society. And yet, the current obsession with intrusive surveillance and security theatre is threatening many of those potential benefits in all kinds of subtle ways, and the only news stories about international diplomacy in recent years seem to be about shady back-room deals that further the interests of state power and/or big business, often conveniently circumventing the normal safeguards provided by national laws in the process.
I don't think this position is sustainable, but my worry is that it will eventually fail not because we decided like civilised people that this kind of behaviour is unhealthy and unacceptable, but because it created so much of a them-and-us divide between normal people and powerful organisations like governments and big businesses that we reached a point of widespread civil disobedience or even actual civil war, causing catastrophically vast damage to society for at least a generation and out of all proportion to any threat these measures ever protected against.