If it keeps safe, what do I care!
(1) if you really believe that, then you would have no problem with a group of strangers searching your house, your bank records, safety deposit boxes, all your digital assets, etc. And by "etc" I mean also strip searching your family members or loved ones if "necessary". Did I go too far there? If so why? Because after all, "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear". Who gets to decide how far is too far?
(2) And you might respond, "but these aren't strangers searching my stuff and family, these are duly authorized government officials." Well, duly authorized government officials are flawed human beings like all of us, and the ones doing the searching are most likely not elected by anyone.
And also, these people in power at the moment, whose motives you trust, will most definitely not be in power forever. One day, there will be authorities in power whose motives you don't trust at all, maybe for very good reasons. What then?
That's why the erosion of privacy rights is worth fighting.
<post type="devils-advocate">
Your point made here is nothing but a pure combination of reduction to the absurd and the slippery slope fallacy...
I mean, are you saying that you believe that the people given the authority to invade your privacy always have good intentions? Because I don't believe that.
In the real world, these authorities are often driven by pressure to "find something", or to "make a quota", or to "prove our worth". And the results often harm innocent people.
>(1) if you really believe that, then you would have no problem with a group of strangers searching your house, your bank records, safety deposit boxes, all your digital assets, etc.
No, actually I wouldn't, because there's an entire freakin' universe of difference between cops searching your house, destroying things, having your neighbors wonder WTF is going on and having an open profile on a social network (which is what that oft-maligned quote was talking about)
Someone digging through your possessions (and strip searching your family, feckin' seriously?) is kind of not even similar to an email being picked up by an automated computer system.
That email is stored. It is cataloged. It is cross referenced with every other email that is sent. It is referenced with every crime that is investigated that even remotely has the same keywords as that mail. It is indexed in relation to those you associate with and those they associate with. It is used to create a profile of every little subversive or thing you may ever be tangentially associated with and used against you.
This bill allows it to be done warentless because otherwise a warrent would be required.
To relate this to what you choose to put on a social networking site is not even in the same ballpark as what the NSA is doing here.
Suddenly, you learn that unless you drop out of the race, or stop lobbying, or withdraw from a business venture, you or someone you love will be publicly shamed, fairly or not.
Or worse than shamed: framed and locked up. We already threw out due process in cases related to terrorism, right?
Not plausible? Not with thousands of intelligence workers and officials, with information on everyone retained for decades, with the NSA working hard to break old encryption so that archived conversations can be made searchable in their databases? Not plausible for this administration or any future one?
That's a huge bet. I'm with the Founding Fathers and the 4th Amendment: the government has to be limited in its searches to specific cases with specific justification.
I guess I'm just saying that the government has been able to frame me a lock me up for over a hundred years. I don't see what this changes about that?
On top of that, the people will be more willing to accept any 'proof' they intercepted when they know the government is intercepting everything.
This is an excellent paper on the problem:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
In short: privacy is not about hiding things. It's about an exchange of power. A government with more information about your life is one with more power to make decisions about you. There are many reasons to oppose this:
* Chilling effects. People may be more afraid to conduct legal activities for fear they will be misconstrued and used against them by the government. ("Sorry, you can't fly anymore.")
* People are powerless to fight decisions the government makes on their behalf, because they do not know what data the government has collected, and all of it is secret. It's not Orwellian; it's Kafkaesque.
* Small bits of information gathered through surveillance can turn into much more interesting information about a person combined. You might not mind revealing each individual tidbit, but what about the picture they paint when combined?
There's more the the argument, which you can read in the article linked. Privacy is not just about secrecy.
Ah! This is the crux. What if these efforts make you LESS safe?
The more people knowing where you are, how much money you have, etc, the easier it is to commit crime against you. You do have private information that keeps you safe.
This is why kids aren's supposed to tell strangers on the phone that they are home alone.
Which is more likely? You are injured in a terrorist attack or your information is leaked?
I feel bad for you. Really do.
I know it's a not a constructive comment but with him it seems like a lost cause.