Comment by renlo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renlo | Hacker News Reader

>> "America is in a long war against a resilient enemy capable of striking the homeland, but U.S. intelligence capabilities are falling short of meeting the threat."

>> "Reasonable warrantless searches are compatible with the Fourth Amendment. So are searches of data shared with third parties, such as social-media posts—a highly valuable surveillance window, since people undergoing radicalization are prone to showcase their zealotry online."

This type of rhetoric really concerns me. Especially because the author tries to distance himself from beliefs that he clearly espouses by structuring his opinions into factual statements ("America is in a long war...").

He says straight out that a) Social Media is a great tool for spying on people, b) that basically we should have 'thought police' ("people undergoing radicalization" ought to be spied (with the implication that they should be sanctioned)).

No kidding. I expect gov to keep me reasonably safe, and not absolutely safe.

I also expect to be kept safe from the government; overbearing surveillance isn't going to do that for me.

Depends on the medium, I think. If you post it just to your friends in a protected way with a reasonable expectation of privacy, then it feels wrong for the government to do dragnet surveillance on that. On the other hand, if you start tweeting about your plans to commit an act of terror, how is that any different than going to the city center and shouting it?

So what you are saying is, we need microphones on every street corner running natural language processing and speech recognition software to identify and record any threats someone may make?

No, but I'm talking about a situation where you'd be surrounded by people. And what is Twitter if not a giant megaphone?

And this discussion is about setting up systems to automatically monitor/record everything spoken through that megaphone.

It's much more than the people around you taking it upon themselves to report your threats.

I think this is more a reflection of using a digital medium to speak. Everything is inherently kept around anyway

The difference is, if you announced those plans on a city street, you'd only face government reaction if a citizen reported you or a police officer overhead.

That's different from the federal government having power to eavesdrop on all street corners at all times. The fears over these powers aren't based in a desire to keep the government in the dark, they're a reaction to the massive scope, and the notion that everyone is suspicious all the time.

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