Most of the recent attacks in America were carried out by lone-wolf far-right extremists. Some of the ones who were caught were actual government employees.
Furthermore, there's more to fear than someone spraying bullets into a crowd; ICE is performing 3am Gestapo raids and imprisoning citizens.
So you bet your ass I'm more afraid of the government than a guy driving a semi-truck. The government can hurt more people in a day than a terror group can in a year.
Of course. But we need to remind myself this: what it is the probability that they are going to willingly hurt innocent people on a massive scale at the moment?
Aligned with your comment:
I have to admit that one of my paranoid fears is that this will change in the future and who is supposed to protect us is actually going to be our enemy. This was also one of the founding fathers.I guess, we are in a good company.
History is full of examples of good kings that die and their successors are very wicked men.
At the moment I think that "being able to find out what they need to" is net positive for the world ( see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20509347 ) but what really bother me is that if in a future (hopefully remote) this change, there is no way to undo the past.
From my prospective the security that they are able to provide because of being able to tap in any conversation and the risk of citizen data being used against innocent people is clearly a huge compromise.
How can a man even hold both of those viewpoints?
Well, given that they're doing it now, I'd say somewhere near 100%.
The reality is that we should be just as concerned by a guy blowing up a truck at the Apple Store as we should about ICE raids at 3 in the morning. With both right wing terrorists and the government, scope creep has a way of ensnaring us all eventually.
Same is true of any terrorist, and any government.
So look, the question is not: Whether or not compromising my personal privacy will bring me more or less security? But rather the question is: Whether or not compromising my personal privacy is consistent with American Ideals?
I say no. So in my personal opinion we, as a nation, have no business mandating that people compromise their personal privacy.
I can't be the only person completely unconcerned by events like this taking place. And I'm not someone without copious anxiety in their life.
/s?
I disagree.
> With both right wing terrorists and the government, scope creep has a way of ensnaring us all eventually.
What's an example of a terrorist group's scope creep?
> So look, the question is not: Whether or not compromising my personal privacy will bring me more or less security? But rather the question is: Whether or not compromising my personal privacy is consistent with American Ideals?
Disagree.
> So in my personal opinion we, as a nation, have no business mandating that people compromise their personal privacy.
Agree.
Good talk.
So the argument goes, you should focus on the much more direct and practical impact that laws & politics can have on your life.
Just because they opted to go with low-hanging fruit doesn't mean the fruit needs to be low-hanging for them to make use of it.
Untested hypothesis: what we consider to be trivial, politicians consider to be advanced magic.
Alternative hypothesis: politicians understand the skill level required perfectly, but they also have good reason to believe the terrorists are complete morons who wouldn’t be able to find, generate, or use a one-time pad if their life depended on it (and in this case their life literally would depend on it).
> “You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe...
It might be less of a red flag if regulation was likely to be able to prevent terrorists from using encrypted communication technology, but that's absurd as long as we have general-purpose computers and access to the open internet.
Personally, I fear all advancements it cryptology will be classified in the future.
Well, it's hacker news, so let me pull a word we like to bandy about: "scale".
"We need pervasive surveillance to protect you from the cannibals we imported to lower your salaries, peasants."