Is security more important than privacy?

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WRlaXbYpH8

White guy tries to explain how he feels about the UK's surveillance society.

Let's discuss this subject properly.

I'll start:
Privacy is more important. A pretext for mass invasion of privacy which only harmed thousands of people in the last decade isn't sufficient. Yes, I'm talking about terrorism.

>Boston Bombings: 3 dead. Whole of Boston under lock down. Nobody can leave home. People don't even feel safe in their OWN HOME. (Picture where a guy in a light tank was pointing his rifle at the cameraman).

>7/7/05 bombings: 51~ dead. Shit ton of CCTV installed, police powers DRASTICALLY improved, less transparency in govt, more fear and tax payer money wasted on keeping the fear, internet monitoring and soon all communications.

>9/11: Almost 3k dead. Patriot Act. (Plus more obviously but that was the main one).

Feel free to continue

Security is more important than privacy ...

because Muslims but also other religious individuals get upset over stupid shit and cause property damage in locations where there are large crowds to cause a self-fulfilling prophecy that a police state will indirectly cause the rapturous death to a "paradise" that they were asking for because they believed in the police state that they indirectly caused. They are so obsessed with division and segregation that it causes the "forces that be" to unite even tighter. Maybe if you weren't such a edgy anarchist, people would be better able to laugh at your jokes. Instead, you just try to get more extreme, causing what was originally funny to be awkward and wrong. Please stop killing yourself and strangers. It wasn't funny then and it's not funny now.

Security is more important than privacy

>>2
Security is more important than privacy

>>1
Yes.

>>2

I understand you, but would frame the concern and issue differently.

It is always a zero sum game: a balancing test. The question is, where is it equitable for the deficiency in privacy for increased security to fall?

In the States, the Federal Government is outrageously concerned, or should be outrageously concerned, with laws which apply to everyone equally. This policy rests upon over 100 years of tradition, law and regulations.

So, any law which reduces privacy in favor of security must apply neutrally to people or groups of people, i.e., you cannot legally construct laws which are designed to invade the privacy of any suspect class or group of people (race, national origin, sex, etc...)unless there exists an incredibly important reason to do so, and the law is absolutely, 100% necessary to meet that increadable need. This is an absurdly difficult bar to meet.

So generally, all our privacy is fucked for security, until we put enough political pressure up to change it. No if, and, or but about it.

It is a political issue. Mail your congress person.

Better question.

Is multiculturalism more important than security?

>>5
I would argue that spying on the entire population is a waste of resources that could be better used elsewhere and in fact detrimental in terms of security.

>>2 & 3

Same fag detected.

>>6

Fuck off cracker, stop trying to slide this thread.

>>7

It is a waste of money. You see how the US is in such debt and then you realize how DHS are buying so many ammunition, guns and shit. Let's not even get into "What are they preparing for?". But logically, they government would cut back on unnecessary things if it were really caring for the populace.

>>5

>It's a balancing act

That's what Obama said. But in reality, there is no balance. It's almost fully tipped to security side and the fact that you cannot privately communicate without the government having access to such information is proof.

Anything other than encrypted messaging is readable and will be collected for future cases where it 'may' be needed and that should tell you something. Imagine police coming into your home and taking pictures of everything in your home in case they need to refer back to it in the future? Except, they'd do it every time you changed or bought something new.

You must realize that at the end of the day, there are almost 7 billion people in this planet. Regardless of how much information is being collected, if somebody is determined to commit a crime, they will. The data collect can only stop a handful of crimes occurring from the dumbest criminals. The real criminals know that they are being watched so they don't talk about anything important over the phone unless there's no choice and they'd encrypt it.

In conclusion, there will never be a fool-proof system to catch ALL criminals and pedophiles without violating the privacy of EVERYBODY. I do not want to give the notion that I want to protect these bad guys.

Failed to mention that the system in which we live in is perfect. However, the weak link is human nature. Emotions, greed and morals.

If there was some kind of machine that could 100% accurately sift through relevant data (used to catch criminals) and irrelevant data (innocent people tweeting etc), I wouldn't mind this whole surveillance. I would know that it's being used as it should be and not abused.

Holy shit, as I was typing the above out, I remembered how scarily similar the plot from 'Person Of Interest' is...

>>8
>>10
I discovered a ancient solution. If you want to be as vigilant as our federal government is expected to be; you just need to survive traumatic brain damage! Here's a news article in the 1940's going over how to do it.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19380925&id=MoxAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Iw4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5764,4446554

>>11

Top lel. If this board was more popular, I bet some poor fag would kill himself trying this to be more productive

My privacy is what gives me my security.

Read that again.

If every fuckin asshole that wants to cause harm knows everyones capabilities, then harm or the threat of it, can be so focused as to not be counterable.

Edit: My freedoms give me my security.

whacko

>>9

I do want to clarify something about the program, assuming the information that has come out about how it is used is accurate. This will require a leap of faith, but lets for a minute assume it to be true.

The NSA, Pentagon and other agencies which are using these programs to suck up virtually all electronic communications are not storing the "content" of such communications. What they are collecting almost across the board is what is known as "meta-data."

The term "meta-data" is not simply a technical term, it is a legal term of art, meaning it is a term which has a defined underlying legal significance. The United States courts have generally agreed that people do not have a reasonable belief that meta-data is private, thus warrants are not required for its collection. This is not FISA court stuff, just run of the mill ordinary court system stuff.

Now, "meta-data" is data about things like the who, what, when and how of your communication, but does not include the content of that communication. Its like looking at your call history on your phone, you can see who you called, who called you, and for how long, but that information does not give you the content of the message.

All this "meta-data" is being sucked up across the board. But, once a foreigner under investigation for terrorist activity contacts a citizen in the States, only then do these agencies have the authority to search their data banks for meta-data collected on that citizen, and under no circumstances can they access it otherwise. Remember, they don't have the content of the communications, but can get the who what when and where of them.

There is dispute as to how many "hops" the government can take from the foreign person under suspicion of investigation. If that person calls you, then agencies can look at your meta-data,and perhaps the meta-data of everyone on your contact list, and perhaps one step further, and look at the meta-data of your friends friends. That's a lot of data!

AND HERE IS WHERE PEOPLE NEED TO FOCUS THEIR PRIVACY ARGUMENTS IN THE REAL WORLD SITUATION. This does not require anyone to wear a tin foil hat, or to claim the black helicopters are coming. If you have a problem with these programs, you need to first ask: 1) is the legal assumption that people have no reasonable belief that meta-data is private mean that the government can suck ALL of it up into a data-bank, even assuming that they will not access it unless per a legitimate investigation; and second 2) even assuming they can and ought to be able to do so, should they be allowed to "hop" to meta-data one, two, or even three hops away from the foreigner under investigation for terrorist activity to his contact, then that contacts friends, and then their friends?

When you frame the questions like this,it means you are informed and know what is going on, and have solid arguments against these programs even assuming the government is telling the truth about them.

If we're speaking as people who are all in agreement that totalitarianism is wrong and democracy is something for which to strive, framing the question as "privacy vs. security: which is more important?" is like saying "steering wheel vs brakes: which is more important?"

>>16

Depends on the terrain over which you're driving and how fast you're going.

>>5

What you said is very valid, and I agree.

But see the thing is, they DO keep content. When James Clapper LIES blatantly to the senators, we can't trust anything else they say.

Speaking meticulously and not answering the questions properly which politicians are guilty of is completely different to just lying.

Here is the source that he lied:

http://rt.com/usa/clapper-lying-senate-nsa-568/

About the content, the first NSA whistle blower called Russ Tice had an interview with RT and he explicitly said that the NSA are lying when they say that they don't touch content.

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m1XbWOfVk#t=07m50s

It didn't work but go to 7minutes 50 seconds

>>18

Oh no, I absolutely realize that agency heads are lying to our elected officials about the extent of the programs, and you are right to point that out.

But I would point out the buzzwords in that news article you linked. It says he lied about the intentional collection of "data." See my post on this subject (taking the truth of it with a grain of salt remember).

>>15

The point is, to really argue about this strongly, we must call these programs into doubt, assuming arguendo that what we have been told about how they operate is true. Otherwise, you risk being labeled a conspiracy theorist and the entire push back will suffer when good, informed citizens argue about aspects of these programs that everyone generally postulates as true behind closed doors, but would never admit openly for fear of being branded a wacko.

To really make the change, it will require playing by their rules, to argue the issue smartly and say, "Listen, even if you are telling the truth, you are still violating the Constitution, and how much more so if you are in fact lying."

>>20
Except that their rules say that they must argue emotionally and vaguely at all cost. These people don't get away with what they do because they use smart arguments, they have license to shit on the constitution because if they don't get their way "the terrorists will win." Obama and the NSA will come away clean because there are millions of Americans who will defend their slow enslavement because "America is number one" and true patriots never question.

>>21

Everything up until your last sentence is a given. However, in order to effectively counteract the millions you identify in your last sentence, reasonable argument will be required.

As I said in >>>5, it is a political question, which means the political will in Congress to change these policies must be framed and driven in the public discourse. The media is, more or less, on our side for once in a great while. As such, reasonable persuasion is the top priority, which means you must defeat their emotional vague bull shit, assuming it to be true, with logic.

niggers and jews dude

>>22
But these people don't understand reason, they are IMMUNE to reasonable arguments when it is countered with one that appeals to their insecurity and fear. Today the house voted in favour of unreasonable search and seizure, over half totally unaffected by reason nor logic.

You have to understand that politicians have decades of experience in ignoring perfectly sound reasoning, it is an integral part of their identity.

>>20

Can you link your thread 'truth with grain of salt'. I saw it a while ago but it got lost under new threads.

>>24

You have to understand that politicians have decades of experience in ignoring perfectly sound reasoning, it is an integral part of their identity.

It's not that they're ignoring it because they genuinely feel that it's not the right way to go, it's because they are being paid to push certain agendas by corporations. I'm sure you know this...

Just recently, BBC Panorama posed as a fake company and secretly recorded the interactions with a politician. It was something along the lines of £4k per 3 days of work or something crazy.

Then the media started talking about how he was wrong for taking payments AND NOT DECLARING IT TO THE PARLIAMENT. What the flying fuck?! Logically, a people's representative shouldn't be representing anything other than the fucking PEOPLE. British law protects lobbying.

In my eyes, the fact that he even took money should have been at the heart of the scandal rather than the fact that he didn't declare the payment.

Then the ones who got caught just retire back into their cosy lives (they are mostly millionaires) and live off their businesses.

Also, I forgot to mention that one boasted he could get direct access to David Cameron for £250k.

>>25

And the media owned by the politician's friends such as Rupert Murdoch keep the attention away by talking about niggers and how society is failing elsewhere and portraying politicians in the brightest, purest light.

>>24
You are correct when you say these people do not appreciate the logical discussion. But the point is not to convince the agencies or even the politicians directly.

The point is to make your case in the public discourse, aka the media (traditional or otherwise), in order that the weight of public opinion begins to tilt more in your favor and against these agency heads and how they wield cyber snooping power like a child that just found his dad's firearm in the closet.

If the the logical approaches are exposed to the media or simply to your family and friends, it makes a difference, how ever de minimis.

If the unpopularity of these programs and practices spreads and becomes more entrenched in the public eye, then politicians will begin reacting. That's what they do when they believe they could loose a seat in Congress for supporting a wildly unpopular program, or if they believe they can gain popularity by chiming in on the discourse in a way the majority of people agree on.

The only other way for this to change is in the courts, but neither you nor I can make that happen, and there is no way to predict when the right case with the right facts will be taken to the right judge for something to be said about it.

Again, this is a political issue, which can only be changed through public pressure, which can only be brought about if you can convince more and more people through logical argument that:

"Even if they are telling the truth, this is invidious to the privacy rights of an American citizen under the 4th Amendment; we as citizens to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to "meta-data" being sucked up at the government's whim because such data, with the improvement of technology, means a lot more than it used to when the mobile communication merely email from a home desktop; and even if we say okay, you're right, meta data is not as private to us as the content of the communication, the Constitution does not allow snooping into 2nd, 3rd and even 4th party metadata."