Privacy, Security and Sanity

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/11



What I keep longing to hear, in the hemorrhaging national debate about Edward Snowden, whistleblowing and the NSA, is some acknowledgment of what the word “security” actually means, and what role — if any — the government should play in creating it.

A moment of silence, please, for the dying patriarchy. That, of course, was how President Obama explained it to the American public shortly after the spy scandal hit the fan. When did we become “the children” in our relationship with the government, irrelevant to its day-to-day operations, utterly powerless as we stand in its massive, protecting shadow?

If you want to be safe, boys and girls, we need to collect and store data about all the phone calls you make and all the emails you send, along with the phone calls and emails of nearly everyone else on the planet as well. This is just how it works. Privacy is nice, but the terrorists are out there, plotting stuff even as we speak. And that’s really all you need to know — that we’re working round the clock to stop them and keep you safe.

When government officials aren’t outright lying about what they’re up to, this is the argument they revert to, in the process making an extremely important point: The issue here is sanity. As James Bamford, a security expert who has written four books about the NSA, put it in an interview last month with Politico, tracking all this data doesn’t even make sense on its own terms; a data overload of such magnitude simply intensifies the difficulty of spotting a real threat. “It’s just,” he said, “insane.”

[kentuck]

1. It's just...

insane.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[BeyondGeography]

3. Bamford's circling the target

which is, imo, this whole saga is more about private-sector profiteering and bureaucratic empire building than anything else. Greed, overreach, mission creep and the actual effectiveness of PRISM are real issues that need to be discussed. I also think leveraging the full power of technology, which Moore's Law tells us will continue to increase exponentially for another decade, is something the government finds difficult to resist. The sooner we can focus on these issues the better.

[xchrom]

5. +1

[magellan]

6. +2

[RC]

4. Which means that this has nothing to do with keeping us safe, but everything to do with control.

If they, the NSA, knows everything we do, but we know nothing of what they do, how does this work in a free country?

[hobbit709]

9. Any variation of state security has always had that as its main priority.

[Waiting For Everyman]

8. That "I" word is the one that keeps coming to mind for me too. nt

[PATRICK]

10. Insane but with a huge impetus

to find a use for and advance to another stage. No one will let the American talk about that. The guessing allowed is whether the morons in charge(who don't comprehend the meaning a single technological advance) have a neatly intimidating boondoggle or else there is a set of further plans in their war against America and its own people?

On a smaller level it is the same question all workers ask themselves: is it a plan or just stupid on a power trip? For most of its manifestations it is the latter. Some parts of the top picture though suggest real planning. Yet rather than incriminate the useful idiots I think it better to observe idiocy corrupts back upward and is entrenched as a methodology way up there as well.

The cross contamination of criminal self interest,conspiratorial power tripping with useful idiots is also seen via the Tea Party and the GOP. Yes they have nefarious plans. Yes they are dumbing down.

It beggars the definition of insanity. I almost feel less corrupted in the system by the fact I can be at least driven crazy by the unreality.