Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It

Methadras said:
That's a bullshit platitude. It doesn't matter whether I have anything to hide or not. It is not the governments business to be in my business without a warrant or probable cause.
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Would people exists without governments? Yes.

Would governments exist without people? No.

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson
 
lcpiper said:
Wow, a good entertaining read, but entertainment is all it is because it fails the reality check.

This reality check is simple and it involves a very basic rule that is inviolate.

If a bad guy becomes aware of how you are watching him, he will avoid that risk.

If he knows you listen to phones he will not use phones.
If he knows you travel by train he will avoid trains.
If he knows you meet confederates at libraries he will avoid libraries.

This writer has written his article from the position that the surveillance is directed against our own people when this is not the case. The surveillance is directed against foreign targets and as read each new article on NSA techniques and capabilities we are presented by these reporters with an opportunity to jump to the conclusion that we are the targets when in most cases the reported hasn't actually said this at all. In some articles the reporters have even openly admitted that our own citizens are specifically NOT the targets of a newly revealed practice.

You can not have coveilance with someone who is hostile to you. It's absurd.

But I will bring you to something that is slipping the radar, something flying low that was missed by the [H] yesterday but posses the greatest risk imaginable.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/10/us-officials-plan-system-to-monitor-behavior-workers-with-security-clearances/?intcmp=latestnews

George Clapper, the DNI, and other offials are talking about a new series of programs where the watchers are going to be watch, because of Snowden, Manning, and others. It is focused on the insider threat. Up until recently, the Intelligence Community mostly operates on a Trust Model. Yes there are Investigations and polygraphs and such on new people and periodically just to keep tabs. But for the most part, those who are granted their security clearances do not overly sacrifice their freedoms and privacy. According to this article, the Trust Model is going to be replaced with the very surveillance that so many of you claim that we are already subject to. In an effort to eliminate future Snowdens, the Government is going to create the very real beast that did not yet exist, and they are going to put that beast on their own Intelligence people first.

In ten years, long after people like me, who will leave this work behind unwilling to sacrifice my privacy for your fear and lack of trust, there will only remain people like "them", enured to living under the gaze of the beast. And how much will people like "them" care about your privacy when they sacrificed their own so long ago?

Some of you will read this article and say "Great news, know they will know what it feels like, they deserve what they get".

Some of you will believe me and realize that although the NSA's bulk phone meta-data collection program strays close to dangerous ground, it can be managed. But more importantly, the damage caused by Edward Snowden, the loss of previously effective techniques now revealed and useless, the damage to the trust placed in our Intelligence Professionals, these issues misrepresented by the media, are driving our country to actual start doing the very things we do not want them to do.

Please try and think this through fellas. I know I speak like I blame you individually, but you really do have more impact on the whole then you realize. I would hope it's not too late but I am starting to get nervous about this. This is truly becoming a self fulfilling prophecy that we do not want to see become a reality.

I hope some day you don't look back and wish you had believed me. I myself hope I am wrong but here it is and it's bad and no one is even noticing it. These politicians are not always so bright, they are too absorbed in their political games to see the reality of what they are doing. They like to think they are the real power of this country but they are fools to think so. The bureaucratic machines they have built, the great organs of our government, that is the real power and like animals they will always fight in self-preservation. Now that they are threatened, really threatened for the first time ever, they seek to turn their power on their own to keep the reins held tight, to hold their secrets closer. It will not take long for this new animal to lose any reluctance it might feel towards turning it's power on us. What so many fear and claim is reality today will become the reality of tomorrow and it will be our own fault, not theirs.

We are the ones driving them to this.
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Wow. Ultra Spin. You add another few RPM and that's things going to come flying apart.
 
lcpiper said:
So now I will begin dissecting so many of these comments that were made here in light of my last post.


A simple fallacy, the government can't contract and pay a private company to do something that they themselves can't do. Contractors must obey the same rules as their Government customers.
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Wrong. Government does whatever the government wants to do. PERIOD.

And when the shit hits the fan, and they can't plausibly deny, one agency exonerates the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

Real People. Real Guns. Real Murders. No consequence. At all.
 
lcpiper said:
In ten years, long after people like me, who will leave this work behind unwilling to sacrifice my privacy for your fear and lack of trust,
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This is either the stupidest comment I've ever seen, or sheer brilliance.
 
Without the government, who would use the government to spy on the government?
 
Wrong. Government does whatever the government wants to do. PERIOD.
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Lith1um try to stay focused here. We are not talking about some little bullshit fast and Furious crap that means nothing in the scale of things. The jerks came up with a stupid idea for a sting operation, it went south, they look stupid, and the Administration is covering for their boy in the justice Department, bug deal. This does not threaten our freedoms and it is not on topic.

We are talking about something far more serious and I would hope that you could read what I have read and apply some critical thought to it instead of posting unrelated bunk to refute it.

That article I link is the Government actually deciding to turn their surveillance power on the people with the surveillance power. When old guys like me are gone, retired or too disgusted and quit, and all that is left is the new crop of guys who are accepting of the idea that they have to be watched. Then these guys will have no problems when someone says, it was good for us, it will be good for ALL of US. And then the nightmare will begin.
 
This is either the stupidest comment I've ever seen, or sheer brilliance.
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aardvark sandwich , I enlisted in the Army in 1981, retired in "98, every job since then has been contracted work for the Army, in the States or in Iraq. I have traveled all over, Europe, Asia, the Middle East. My wife is Korean, my current work partner is a Black guy has a White wife. My daughter is married to a Mexican and I like the kid alot and his family too. I have always tried to have some sort of an open mind about things and fight my prejudices when I recognize them. I am getting old though, 54 next week, I can see the day coming where there won't be a next job. I would not claim to be brilliant, but I am experienced and I know what I know. And one thing I do know, if it keeps going this way, the machine will try to defend itself, to protect itself from more hurt like Snowden caused. The machine used to work mostly on trust, but that looks like it is going to change. I don't want to be part of what is coming if it does.
 
lcpiper said:
That article I link is the Government actually deciding to turn their surveillance power on the people with the surveillance power. When old guys like me are gone, retired or too disgusted and quit, and all that is left is the new crop of guys who are accepting of the idea that they have to be watched. Then these guys will have no problems when someone says, it was good for us, it will be good for ALL of US. And then the nightmare will begin.
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If that's so, then it's simply the natural pattern that intelligence agencies of non-trustworthy governments will follow over time, and since it's a cycle that builds on itself it's bound to continue to worsen in the future. So the solution is either for the government to become trustworthy, or the disbandment of intelligence agencies of untrustworthy governments. :p
 
Trust the intelligence community and the effectiveness of their Congressional oversight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuX9levGdY4

Published on Mar 12, 2014

http://www.democracynow.org- The spat between the CIA and its Congressional overseers has intensified after Senator Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to directly accuse the CIA of spying in an effort to undermine a probe of the agency's torture and rendition program. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report has yet to be released but reportedly documents extensive abuses and a cover-up by CIA officials. Feinstein says the CIA broke the law in secretly removing more than 900 documents from computers used by panel investigators. She also accused the CIA of intimidation in requesting an FBI inquiry of the panel's conduct. CIA Director John Brennan has rejected Feinstein's allegations. Meanwhile, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has weighed in by accusing Feinstein of hypocrisy for criticizing alleged CIA spying on U.S. senators while condoning government surveillance of private citizens. We host a roundtable discussion with three guests: former FBI agent Mike German, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and Pulitzer-winning journalist Julia Angwin, author of the new book, "Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance."
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Just accept it. It's not going away and it's better to just lash out at Apple, Google, EA, or whoever else is out there.
 
lcpiper said:
aardvark sandwich , I enlisted in the Army in 1981, retired in "98, every job since then has been contracted work for the Army, in the States or in Iraq. I have traveled all over, Europe, Asia, the Middle East. My wife is Korean, my current work partner is a Black guy has a White wife. My daughter is married to a Mexican and I like the kid alot and his family too. I have always tried to have some sort of an open mind about things and fight my prejudices when I recognize them. I am getting old though, 54 next week, I can see the day coming where there won't be a next job. I would not claim to be brilliant, but I am experienced and I know what I know. And one thing I do know, if it keeps going this way, the machine will try to defend itself, to protect itself from more hurt like Snowden caused. The machine used to work mostly on trust, but that looks like it is going to change. I don't want to be part of what is coming if it does.
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How any of this is based off of the public's lack of trust?
Do you buy into the 'we are the government' line?
 
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