So what if they collect it and share it with foreign governments? Social media is public to begin with, so big deal if they are basically indexing the information. Doesn't stop them moaning it's not enough or preventing bomb attacks.
As I'm sure you're aware, while most social media sites have options to post publicly, many (at least ostensibly) also offer a wide variety of options for sharing data in narrower circles (i.e. private groups, direct messages, etc).
If you're talking about only the content that the users intended to share publicly, that seems like a reasonable enough position to take, but if it goes beyond that I hope you wouldn't still say "big deal".
One of the "Key Points" on the Privacy International release linked from the TechCrunch story and available at https://privacyinternational.org/node/1532 is that "GCHQ collected and accesses this information by gaining access to private companies’ databases."
That sounds an awful lot like they're going beyond simply indexing the public web.
You're more likely to die by falling down the stairs than by being killed by a terrorist[0]. Bomb attacks are not something you should be concerned by.
However much bomb attacks scare you, you should be ~100x more scared of living in a house that has more than one floor.
[0] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/just-dangerous-terror...
War and Terrorism is completely different. When they occur is unknown, whether the event is small or cataclysmic unknown, the secondary effects they have in a wide complex system unknown.
You can take the original argument even further to understand why it is silly. Atomic bombs have only been used against people twice, therefore the chance of you dying in a car crash are multi-million times higher than dying from an atomic bomb. Should there not be an intense focus on de-proliferation, de-escalation of conflicts because of this? The consequences of an nuclear attack are so great, we spend huge amount of resources to reduce the likelihood.
Terrorism is similar. It is not only the poor victims of the attack who suffer. Our societies function on a fairly fine balance, much of which is predicated on the ability of our governance to keep us safe. Rapidly increasing frequency of attacks and their effectiveness drive us closer to instability and can severely damage our economies.
You dying in a car crash is going to hurt your friends and loved ones. You being blown up along with 50 passengers on the underground, the fifth explosion that week can have dramatic and scary results for us all.
Sure, nuclear disarmament wouldn't hurt, but like you said: atomic bombs have only been used against people twice. There's no evidence that their use against people is likely to substantially increase over the next few years, so it's not something that is worth worrying about. Just like terrorism.
EDIT: And certainly it is not worth using the risk of atomic bombs as an excuse to invade the privacy and erode the freedoms of millions of people.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index...
It does not even matter whether there is evidence that the risk is likely to increase or not. Plus, it is arguable unknowable what the current risk may be now or in a few years time (plus, do you really trust NK's safety in chain of command and equipment?). Regardless, no matter how unlikely the event is to occur the magnitude or the event is so unbelievably massive that is something to be worthy of worrying about.
It all comes downs to understanding that despite a extremely low probability of occurring, some events are so earth shattering, you cannot discount it by its probability of happening.
On September 10th there was no evidence an attack on New York City was particularly likely (apart from in the minds of the terrorists). But September 11th came along and changed the West and Middle East for decades.
No matter how unlikely an extreme event might be, if/when it does occur it has earth shattering effects due to the complexity of the world. This is why we need to be so vigilant in protecting ourselves against these threats.
I finished with "But September 11th came along and changed the West and Middle East for decades." That is the point. 9/11 was tragic enough, but it triggered an avalanche of death and trillions of dollars spent. These sort of attacks have non-linear effects that cannot be predicted.
You originally stated you are more likely to die falling down the stairs therefore "Bomb attacks are not something you should be concerned by." My response is that terror attacks are like what we see in 9/11. Considering that event resulted in hundreds of millions of death due to the complexities of the world AND the risk distribution and magnitude is completely incomparable to known risks and their distributions, it is nonsense to dismiss the risks as you are more likely to die falling down the stairs.
I absolutely feel your frustration. I share your basic outlook. But most people don't. You're not smarter, you're just not as easy to activate emotionally as they are. That's why advertising and propaganda in general doesn't consist of long earnest rational arguments of the sort found in academic journals. It consists of atavistic emotional manipulation because that is what works most reliably.
Has anyone ever handed you a political flyer that consisted of a wall of text that you glanced at but didn't bother to read because you just couldn't be bothered to navigate >1000 words of half-baked political theory that didn't really speak to you as an individual? Well that's how your arguments come across to most regular folk.
Being right is not important if you can't get people to pay attention. Citing comparative statistics is a wonderful way to get people to ignore you.
How much of my personal information do you need before you can guarantee 0 terrorism attacks. If the answer is "never 0 with any mount of loss of privacy", I am not sure if it's a worthwhile goal (or a price to pay).
This is a call to reform your government's tendency to overreact, not sign away your rights.
Look, what are the odds of being killed by a spider? tiny. And most spiders aren't even poisonous. But lots of people have an irrational phobia of creepy crawly animals, perhaps due to some unpleasant childhood experience. If someone is afflicted with such a phobia, maybe therapy can help them, maybe they'll grow out of it, whatever, but standing around saying 'it's very irrational of you to be scared of this probably harmless spider' is no help whatsoever. Either get rid of the spider for them or leave them alone, because when someone is freaking out they're not able to process information rationally.
We know that people don't react rationally to real risk probabilities, some are irrationally risk averse and others are irrationally risk tolerant. We know that such irrational cognitive behaviors are often exploited by unscrupulous actors to manipulate people for financial, political, or strategic gain. We know that the externalities of such exploitation impinge upon our economy, liberty and so so on.
Endlessly repeating an argument that people are already demonstrably indifferent to isn't getting us anywhere. Education is one long-term approach to alleviating that problem but it's very slow and expensive and outcomes are hard to predict and to measure. It has consistently proven easier for politicians to spend money on security services (both pragmatic and theatrical) than it has to raise the intelligence/wisdom of the public at large.
That said, I still don't like reductions in liberties due to fear of terrorism. Freedom is inherently risky. I am not a coward. Giving up liberties out of fear is not necessarily a good idea.
It's hardly democratic to prevent people from responding like people and fear is a powerful motivator. So, buggered if I have the answers...
I'm open to the idea but it's going to need some refinement.
- It is more than just posts on social media. The databases cover "sensitive medical data" and "financial details" and much more.
- The oversight body was not informed that this data was being shared with foreign governments, law enforcement and industry partners.
- There is no oversight on the sharing of this data with these partners, and no legal penalties for misuse of the data.
- There is no requirement that partner agencies have similar safeguards with respect to processing the data that the UK agencies already have in place.
I’m neither an American nor a gun owner but I can see the parallel between private citizens being legally forced to give up privacy for dubious reasons and gun owners potentially being asked to give up guns for dubious reasons (dubious because of how few people get killed in rampages in the United States.)