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

>>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.