Snowden: US asked British spy agency to stop Guardian publishing revelations
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The word national security used to mean protecting a country just invaded, then moved to troops on the border looking like they'll invade. Now you've stretched it to the government doing mass surveillance on its citizens (and storing it forever). During COINTELPRO, Hoover and his secret political police in the FBI spied on and worked to anonymously disrupt feminist groups and other political organizations, and this is just a continuation of that - set up in secret incidentally. I don't see how some elite trying to set up a police state to exert political control has anything to do with national security. Luckily the FBI raided Trump recently, so Republican wariness may have them go back to that old idea of a Republican secretary of state that "gentlemen do not read each others' mail".
not true. media organizations that do not report in accordance with and to the governments favour may lose preferential access to press conferences as retaliation. their parent companies, viacom, CBS, and Warner for example, may lose the cooperation of the government on their next latest action film which may deny them access to state parks or military equipment and bases for filming and props. When you publish something the government doesnt like, they can also just straight up seize your profits from that material as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-government-can-seize-prof...
television news in the united states is under no objective requirement to serve the public interest in the 21st century. the news was originally provided as part of a service to the mandate from the FCC that license holders contribute to the public good, but modern news is partisan, divisive, appeals extensively to emotion, and uses manipulative scare tactics to drive viewership and ratings with a combination of conjecture and talk shows.
What the article doesn’t make clear is a publishing company could keep their profits from the book, the government only has a case for Snowden.
The readers are an important part of that calculus. How would your readers react when they know that information have been hidden? Some newspapers have readers that will feel betrayed and lose interest in the news outlet, others have more sectarian readers that do not care about such high quality news as long as it follows some ideological line. Lack of access is important, but readers are way more important.
You should not want a news organization to err on either extreme by publishing literally everything they get their hands on (Wikileaks) or acting as a de facto arm of the state (state media outlet of choice).
I would argue that neither extreme count as journalists.
>I don't think that's much of a revelation.
Absolutely, they basically wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't ask. Asking is a lot different than many other tactics.
But this is what they are actually doing. They saw some time ago that being in conflict with the state does not help revenue.
I would reformulate that so that security agencies have to do that calculus too and it is suspected that they do often calculate wrongly.
There is not a single example contrary to more information available to the public. There can be exceptions for immediate cases, but if you rely on information to stay hidden from the public for an extended period of time, it is a fault in your security architecture.
Pot, meet kettle.
It seems pretty obvious that the individual can not be trusted with the power modern technology hands to it, but then again, i find the three letter agencies to be entrusted with surveilance of the masses, to be the most useless and untrustworthy stewart of the public imagineable.
Hard disagree. Modern technology is mishandled most intensely by large organizations. When it's misused by individuals it's usually based on information freely given. An individual might send your employer an insensitive tweet you made ten years ago but an organization can do anything from unmasking an anonymous product review for the purpose of suing you to operating a massive surveillance state to fuel a "social credit" system.
Of course. There are more individuals in larger organizations :)
To your last point, I personally skew towards being deeply suspicious of institutional power being able to have more tools to further leverage the tilt against the individual, but you're also not wrong with individuals being deeply flawed beings too.
What makes you think so? For example, the German government prevented a number of terror attacks by monitoring electronic chat and mail exchange.
That balance is not something that would remain uninfluenced by giving the executive the power to surveil the population that brings a government into power.
Fear drives surveillance ambitions and some stereotypes have some merit.
That's going to depend heavily on which individual.
People have pointed out that "humane totalitarian" is an oxymoron, and I agree, but I think it's the challenge we face.
It seems to me that we can and should ensure that the people in power are themselves subject to the panopticon. Literally politicians should be 24/7 live streaming their lives. (This is in the context where we are all live-streaming 24/7 whether we want to or not, which is pretty much the case today at least in high-tech nations.) Police badges should be integrated with cameras, the badge IS the camera, the camera IS the badge, and if the camera is off the officer is off-duty.
Thoughts?
- - - -
I think the panopticon is unavoidable due to technological and economic considerations. The technology is only getting smaller, cheaper, lower-power, etc. and it's already ubiquitous. (See "sensing for WiFi if you really want to freak out!) Our phones already monitor and report our location in near realtime. Smart cars and traffic systems are a de facto surveillance system even for people who don't carry phones. The economic benefits are inarguable, and only going to get better.
And really, if you could trade your privacy for an end to almost all crime, isn't that worth it? Considering that you wouldn't be alone, that everyone else's privacy is gone too, it's not so bad?
This all sounds equally as feasible as simply rolling back the surveillance in the first place. The whole point of these systems is to subject the hoi polloi to constant and intrusive surveillance as a counterinsurgency tactic. Why in the world would they agree to do that to themselves as well?
The "constant and intrusive surveillance as a counterinsurgency tactic" is a side-effect. And frankly, we should be so lucky that it works (when it works.) I personally think the time for deciding things by violence-- any violence --has passed.
In re: political power, we'll see how it plays out in different systems. In China the question is, Will CCP members be subject to the Social Credit System?
In democracies we should be able to reshape our systems to take advantage of modern technology to make boring, functioning governing bodies that "just work", but we have to get from here to there.
And, if somehow you manage to prevent abuse like the above, laws will be passed that grant exceptions for the powerful and their enforcers[2][3]. Many of the existing laws in this category recognize that privacy is essential for personal security and safety-- but only grant that security and safety to the privileged few.
We need to enshrine a strong right to privacy in law-- attacking surveillance head on (in the US, this means a constitutional amendment, or it will be [more] vulnerable to laws/courts granting exceptions). While sympathetic, I don't think that trying to reign in surveillance through making it equitable (on paper), are going to succeed.
[1] https://www.insideedition.com/21559-investigation-finds-poli...
[2] https://www.ocregister.com/2009/11/12/special-license-plates...
[3] https://www.menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/press/menendez-book...
It’s the same people calling the shots for this regime.
- the NSA and/or other three letter agencies are/were out of control
- Snowden did enormous damage to US and allies with his indiscriminate distribution of classified information
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/snowden-is-a-traitor-and...
Sure, in the same way that the police do to organised white-collar criminals when they arrest them and put them in prison.
Just take a look at the list of revelations
https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations
Most of the revelations are not at all about domestic spying and instead revealed details about doing what the NSA is chartered to do: international spying.
You can consider it immoral that the NSA monitored the communications of Angela Merkel or the italian ministry of defense, but that isn't whistle-blowing. It's the reason that the NSA exists.
It is definitely whisteblowing to reveal that a country has been secretely wiretapping the communications of its (supposed) allies – one can blow the whistle on things which are "legal" especially when their legality has been surreptitiously pushed through the back door.
I almost went full Godwin point on this.
"Fred Fleitz served in 2018 as a Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and Chief of Staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton."
That surely seems like a very objective person.
I think it's telling that multiple administrations have failed to come forward and promise him a fair trial, let alone any sort of deal, commutation, or pardon.
That would be something like "telling the police about your abusive husband hurts your family". Yes, it did hurt intelligence agencies and their beneficiaries. That is not the same as "the US". The victims of the indiscriminate surveillance were largely American and are much more plentiful than the perpetrators.