First Look Media launch, Glenn Greenwald's new website

[awepittance]

if this reporting hurts the NSA's tax-based funding, good. i have yet to see substantial evidence of the efficiency of their activities in protecting me or any other US citizen, so i'd very much like to see their activities declassified, and if shown to be overbearing or inefficient, defunded.

i think he's essentially saying it's disrupting our altruistic spying intentions, which is directed only at adversaries (until proven otherwise in every single instance, even though we've already seen ample evidence of not just systematic breaches of the 4th amendment but individuals abusing the spying apparatus to spy on girlfriends, people having phone sex, etc). As smart as Eugene seems to be maybe he doesn't realize how blatantly obvious his blind-spots and biases are (while taking every opportunity he can to call out ours?)

[eugene]

 

so in that case greenwald is aiding those adversaries by providing them detailed information about the programs and thus wasting american taxpayers' money.

 

so without the clarification of who these programs are targeting, you automatically default to that position rather than assuming they have a broader context and are being used going above and beyond the 4th amendment on domestic sources? It's interesting that you accuse so many of us of having paranoid biases, but right here you've put out in the open where your biases are, that you are much more likely to believe that Glenn is hurting national security/wasting US tax payer money VS shedding light on a program that we know with evidence is already being abused in multiple ways. Don't you see how bizarre that is?

 

i think that's actually the first proper reply of yours to my points so let's see how it goes on...

 

what makes you assume that they have a broader context ? how is this position (that they do) is more sensible than mine ? just because there were some abuses in american history you default to a position than those programs are necessarily made for abuse/intentional spying for americans ?

 

my bias, if you can call it such, is that governmental institutions generally work to the benefit of citizens, in more or less democratic states. of course you can fill this thread with many examples of cases of corruption, abuse and such but you have to realize that for every instance of abuse or corruption there's probably thousands of instances of proper functioning (if you don't then it's really hopeless).

 

 

shedding light on a program that we know with evidence is already being abused in multiple ways. Don't you see how bizarre that is?

but there's no such evidence! maybe you're just imagining that there is in this discourse that came to be. when i directly asked for such the most luke came up with is some technical problem of some nsa program that collected and stored info they shouldn't have and when the nsa people realized it they reported the issue to fisa (if i remember that article correctly). if you know something more serious then link away.

[awepittance]

but there is evidence, even going back as far as 2007 that American military people were casually spying on domestic american phone sex calls of military personnel to their girlfriends for kicks. I guess since you've so adamantly stuck to your position regardless of evidence, what point would there be to spending actual time of mine to show more pieces of evidence that regular innocent americans *have* been spied on? i think most people who've been keeping up on this story are already mostly on the side of Greenwald's position, while I can respect a differing view, I'm not interested in trying to convince you (specifically, when clearly most other people aren't taking what Greenwald is saying with a grain of salt, its sent shockwaves across the entire planet and dominated the news cycle for an entire year).

[eugene]

if this reporting hurts the NSA's tax-based funding, good. i have yet to see substantial evidence of the efficiency of their activities in protecting me or any other US citizen, so i'd very much like to see their activities declassified, and if shown to be overbearing or inefficient, defunded.

but you will never see such evidence directly because those programs have to be very secretive to keep the edge, it sounds tautological but it makes sense in this context.

[luke viia]

 

if this reporting hurts the NSA's tax-based funding, good. i have yet to see substantial evidence of the efficiency of their activities in protecting me or any other US citizen, so i'd very much like to see their activities declassified, and if shown to be overbearing or inefficient, defunded.

but you will never see such evidence directly because those programs have to be very secretive to keep the edge, it sounds tautological but it makes sense in this context.

 

 

stalemate then, and i guess all we have to go by is our assumptions of how a democracy ought to be run. in that context, you and i will have to agree to tell each other to fuck off and stop bickering about details, because we simply don't see eye to eye about how the US govt should be operating its security measures.

 

do you really think collecting a dragnet of metadata is necessary for combating terror threats? don't dodge this by saying "it could help" or something. is it necessary? if not, then keep consideration on the fact that these programs are constitutionally questionable, as many lawyers and academic know-it's have argued, and so if they are not entirely necessary, they should be under high scrutiny.

[luke viia]

regarding that FISC report, i think your summary (@eugene) leaves a little truth to be desired. calling it a "technical problem" is pretty lazy; the problem was not being able to differentiate between domestic and foreign surveillance. the issue isn't technical, the issue lies in the implementation before adequate testing took place. i find it unreasonable to suggest that this is a technical fault when clearly it could have been overcome by greater oversight. also recall the FISA court wasn't happy about the NSA's reporting of the problem, in fac they considered part of a series of "misleading statements" by the NSA officials about their programs, which the fisa court was solely responsible for overseeing. there had been multiple breaches of trust between the two agencies over at least three years. summarizing it as a 'technical problem' doesn't get to the heart of it at all.

[eugene]

but there is evidence, even going back as far as 2007 that American military people were casually spying on domestic american phone sex calls of military personnel to their girlfriends for kicks. I guess since you've so adamantly stuck to your position regardless of evidence, what point would there be to spending actual time of mine to show more pieces of evidence that regular innocent americans *have* been spied on? i think most people who've been keeping up on this story are already mostly on the side of Greenwald's position, while I can respect a differing view, I'm not interested in trying to convince you (specifically, when clearly most other people aren't taking what Greenwald is saying with a grain of salt, its sent shockwaves across the entire planet and dominated the news cycle for an entire year).

i'll assume that the first example that came to your mind is the most major and prominent one. in that case, does it make sense to close (i guess that's your final goal ?) all of those nsa programs that at least according to the government are hugely beneficial because a couple of dudes monitored sex calls. for an analogy, does it make sense to close all police departments in america given the known cases of abuses ?

 

if you've been following those posts of mine then you should know that this hubbub about greenwald and co and "most people are so and so" is absolutely meaningless to me so i don't even consider it as a counter argument of some kind.

[eugene]

 

 

if this reporting hurts the NSA's tax-based funding, good. i have yet to see substantial evidence of the efficiency of their activities in protecting me or any other US citizen, so i'd very much like to see their activities declassified, and if shown to be overbearing or inefficient, defunded.

but you will never see such evidence directly because those programs have to be very secretive to keep the edge, it sounds tautological but it makes sense in this context.

 

 

stalemate then, and i guess all we have to go by is our assumptions of how a democracy ought to be run. in that context, you and i will have to agree to tell each other to fuck off and stop bickering about details, because we simply don't see eye to eye about how the US govt should be operating its security measures.

 

do you really think collecting a dragnet of metadata is necessary for combating terror threats? don't dodge this by saying "it could help" or something. is it necessary? if not, then keep consideration on the fact that these programs are constitutionally questionable, as many lawyers and academic know-it's have argued, and so if they are not entirely necessary, they should be under high scrutiny.

 

but even "could help" can be a good enough argument for keeping it, we just don't know the details of costs and potential abuse and such. neither of us are security or legal experts, but only you people begin the argument with the assumption that government is not adhering to those considerations of legality and benefit.

[luke viia]

IMO that's not a good enough argument for keeping a surveillance program. eugenics "could help" with overpopulation but that's not a good enough reason for a sterilization program. intense torture "could help" with getting information from govt enemies but that's not sufficient to enact an intense torture program. etc.

 

i make the assumptions that the govt is not adhering to those principles because that is rational given my experience as an american citizen. you make your assumptions for other rational reasons, i assume.

[Alcofribas]

it's obvious that when it comes to national security and it's cause célèbre the "war on terror" the United States government has been mostly benign and thus the prudent and sober course is to assume that any secret power they have will be used in a benevolent, legal fashion. in fact, the war on terror has been characterized by a strict rule of law and noble behavior that has in no way jeopardized the safety of citizens. I mean, just think of how much safer we all are. yeah sure, there are tiny flaws like going against the United Nations to engage in a preemptive war on false pretenses, secreting innocent people to prisons to be tortured and even killed, incarcerating whistleblowers with absurdly lengthy jail sentences, extrajudicial drone killings of innocent people including American citizens, etc etc. but these phenomena are negligible of course which is obvious when you expand the context to include the total behavior of the government as such. I mean, who do you think delivers your mail? picks up your trash? builds your roads? you'd have to be a retarded idiot who believes in conspiracies to distrust this government's behavior when it comes to terror. bad guys need to be dealt with. gays cannot be married. god. deal with it.

[eugene]

 

 

IMO that's not a good enough argument for keeping a surveillance program. eugenics "could help" with overpopulation but that's not a good enough reason for a sterilization program. intense torture "could help" with getting information from govt enemies but that's not sufficient to enact an intense torture program. etc.

i make the assumptions that the govt is not adhering to those principles because that is rational given my experience as an american citizen. you make your assumptions for other rational reasons, i assume.

i meant "could help" in a sense that sometimes it can help and sometimes and doesn't, not that there's a possibility of it not helping at all at all time. besides, it's the minimal proposition, i'm pretty sure that the government will tell you that it actually helps a lot in a concrete manner but given your inherent mistrust of government based on your experience (n=1, obviously ) this is where the argument gets stuck.

[luke viia]

i see no reason to change my perspective given my experiences, so yeah, stuck in the mud until i see that this is actually more helpful than harmful.

 

n = 1 is meaningless here, of course. we're not running ptests on this shit; it's an opinion.

[eugene]

it's obvious that when it comes to national security and it's cause célèbre the "war on terror" the United States government has been mostly benign and thus the prudent and sober course is to assume that any secret power they have will be used in a benevolent, legal fashion. in fact, the war on terror has been characterized by a strict rule of law and noble behavior that has in no way jeopardized the safety of citizens. I mean, just think of how much safer we all are. yeah sure, there are tiny flaws like going against the United Nations to engage in a preemptive war on false pretenses, secreting innocent people to prisons to be tortured and even killed, incarcerating whistleblowers with absurdly lengthy jail sentences, extrajudicial drone killings of innocent people including American citizens, etc etc. but these phenomena are negligible of course which is obvious when you expand the context to include the total behavior of the government as such. I mean, who do you think delivers your mail? picks up your trash? builds your roads? you'd have to be a retarded idiot who believes in conspiracies to distrust this government's behavior when it comes to terror. bad guys need to be dealt with. gays cannot be married. god. deal with it.

ah yes, the obligatory "alco tries to summarize and ridicule eugene while missing the points of most arguments and while relying on some tired rhetoric" post.

 

like how do you expect me to reply to this block of shit ? so you compile a bunch of half-true talking points without any context and consider it a good argument against trust in any kind of governmental institutions ?

[luke viia]

like how do you wasn't me to reply to this block of shit ?

 

 

lol, totally gonna use this question next time i get into a days-long eugene fest

[eugene]

edited, bitch.

[b born droid]

all of those nsa programs that at least according to the government are hugely beneficial

 

HEADLINE: Secret Government Spies Admit Secret Government Spy Programmes Help Them Spy Secretly.

[Guest fiznuthian]

If anyone remembers the fake NSA datacenter website I posted and it's list of information being tracked..




Unplugging my computer in
3...
2..
1..

 

 

LAST POST

 

[azatoth]

Just biking in to say that the NSA/CIA/alphabetsoupagency gathering massive amounts of data is a really bad way of finding and stopping terrorist plots. Sure, they might get wind of something but it gets lost in the noise. The movement from HUMINT to SIGINT in the intelligence community is bad. Gathering data is just so much easier than having actual feet on the ground doing actual spy work.

[goDel]

he poured 1/4 billion $ into this, they'll produce anything from snowden action figures to greenwald-shaped dildos.

LOL

 

With respect to the rest of the discussion, I actually do agree on some points eugene makes. I don't see any problems in strategies of some national agency to do some cyber warfare, or whatever. I can imagine circumstances where such things could come in quite handy, and might possibly prevent loss of lives. But that's not the point.

 

The problem I do have is a bit more fundamental. And it's about those agencies operating outside of law and collecting huge sums of (meta)data without any confirmed consent. And it seems like a legal issue: is that data private or public? If it's public, those agencies have every 'right'. But I don't see it as public. My carriers metadata about my whereabouts is not public data and I don't think any agency should have access to it without my (informed) consent. Same for all my whatsapps, sms and whatever. If they need to access that data, they could ask some court in a transparant way. Not by plugging into the internal google servers or by having access to the way data is encrypted and just tapping info from those cables which cross those oceans.

 

The stuff the NSA has been pulling seems questionable on lots of accounts, to say the least. These currently published strategies don't really pull my nerves. The problems exist earlier in the chain of capabilities.

[eugene]

there's a difference between collecting and accessing/viewing that data. from what i understand what nsa does is collecting (and that is also according to laws as you would normally expect from governmental bodies), while accessing this data is guarded by all kinds of legal procedures and constitutions etc, and when the need arises they turn to those procedures. like i said in other threads, i don't realy see the difference between google or facebook holding this data (and passing it to whatever other third parties without any oversight whatsoever) and nsa, at least nsa is guided by those aforementioned principles and uses it for the sake of national security, not profits.

i guess the innovation is simply in removing obstacles, now that nsa has the data on its own servers it doesn't need to rely on google/facebook goodwill and cooperation whenever it acquires the warrant to access that data.

 

also:

[marf]

someone here is related to abby martin right?

[goDel]

there's a difference between collecting and accessing/viewing that data. from what i understand what nsa does is collecting (and that is also according to laws as you would normally expect from governmental bodies), while accessing this data is guarded by all kinds of legal procedures and constitutions etc, and when the need arises they turn to those procedures. like i said in other threads, i don't realy see the difference between google or facebook holding this data (and passing it to whatever other third parties without any oversight whatsoever) and nsa, at least nsa is guided by those aforementioned principles and uses it for the sake of national security, not profits.

 

So? Can we finally agree that half of WATMM isn't stupid when people have objections to the NSA collecting huge volumes of data?

 

There's a difference between google and the nsa. Whenever google collects our data it's because WE decided to make use of their services. There's this thing called informed consent. (see where I'm going?) If we don't want them to have our data, we can decide to move elsewhere.

 

Same holds for a mobile phone operator, or Amazon. We know which companies hold which data. We can choose whether or not they can share our data with third parties. And there are laws which say this data which goes to third parties must be anonymous. We pay them for their services, and whenever we don't like them collecting our data, we can stop the contract and go somewhere else. Again, it's all informed consent.

 

Can you tell me where we can decide whether we want the NSA to collect our data or not? And if the NSA shares our data, is it anonymous? Do you think it doesn't matter that, while companies only get selected pieces of information from our use of their services, the NSA gets everything from all those services combined and perhaps more? Even though we're not suspect of anything in particular? And what is their argument? It's just because it MIGHT be useful somewhere in the future? Seriously? So they collect anything because it might be useful? For the sake of national security, my ass. For the sake of national security, they could have access to all kinds of data whenever there's a valid reason. Not for the sake of just collecting. And at this point they are just collecting for the sake of it. Indefinitely and without our informed consent. It's not that we voted them to do so. Or signed some agreement which said they could have anything and share it with any third party whenever they feel like it.

 

They just collect anything and lie about what they're doing out of national security. FU

[eugene]

no, the basis of many wattmers objections to those alleged programs are completely stupid (namely, the government is evil and corrupt and is out to get us and those programs will necessarily get abused and serve no actual security purpose and are meant as means of social control and so on).

 

i'm almost sure that very few people know what data google actually collects and how it uses it. we assume that our gmail messages won't be read and that our google searches wont be logged and linked back to us (which i think is actually happening, though robotically). we decided to use the services but i don't think people realize the full extent of what it does with the data and it is not that accessible, so there's not much informed consent here.this is unlike nsa programs which were put in place democratically, through representatives and such.

 

 

 

Do you think it doesn't matter that, while companies only get selected pieces of information from our use of their services, the NSA gets everything from all those services combined and perhaps more? Even though we're not suspect of anything in particular? And what is their argument? It's just because it MIGHT be useful somewhere in the future? Seriously? So they collect anything because it might be useful? For the sake of national security, my ass. For the sake of national security, they could have access to all kinds of data whenever there's a valid reason. Not for the sake of just collecting. And at this point they are just collecting for the sake of it. Indefinitely and without our informed consent. It's not that we voted them to do so. Or signed some agreement which said they could have anything and share it with any third party whenever they feel like it.

we really don't know much about how and what nsa collects and for how long it keeps that data and all those specifics, most of the knowledge about those programs are just greenwaldian speculations with a few ppt slides. also people did vote for those policies, bush was elected twice and patriot act was approved, it didn't reveal the details of those secretive programs but it wasn't hard to imagine given its tone that such programs will take place.

[Guest fiznuthian]

Look man, I just don't want them knowing I bought odd sex toys on Amazon. That's all.

[goDel]

@eugene

 

Both are very weak arguments to make imo.

 

The first being that it isn't informed consent because people don't know what they sign up for. Apart from you not knowing what other people do or do not understand, the fact that any action people do online is out of their own choice and therefore consent should say enough. Apart from that, google, or any other company is bound by laws. And whenever there are serious doubts about the way companies behave wrt to these laws, these companies have to make transparent what the hell it is they are doing and why. And the NSA? Well, apparently they can do whatever they want, it seems. Even the court looking at what they are doing is secret.

 

The second is that because Bush, or whoever the president was, got voted, people choose to have the NSA collect their data. People did not choose to have their data collected like the NSA do. And what's worse, the people who voted for it (senate/congress), didn't even know what they voted for. Or how the NSA, and agencies like them, would interpret the laws which allowed them to do certain programs. Lines have been crossed, even without consent of congress/senate. Let alone the voters.

 

Ironically, you first argument uses a "people don't know shit" and the second a "people voted for this shit". Do I sense a contradiction? Do you believe in informed consent or not? And is voting for a president some kind of informed consent for the collecting of data? Is that really your argument? Seeing you're a sociologist, what would you expect when a referendum is being held about the NSA programs? Would people vote YAY or NAY?