Obama defends surveillance effort as 'trade-off' for security | Hacker News Reader

Obama defends surveillance effort as 'trade-off' for security

reuters.com

63 pointskyle_t35 comments

terrorist - ter·ror·ist [ter-er-ist] noun 2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

It seems more & more that the people doing the most to rally up fear & frighten us are the people we elected - not random people throughout the world that "hate" us.

Hey guys, there are these terrorists that live over there, it's somewhere in the middle east, but it's not really important where. They hate us, for some reason. Probably religious reasons. You know, the extremists, not to say that religion is bad or anything, just people who take it way too far. Well anyway, they trained up people, hijacked some planes, and flew them into 2 US buildings killing thousands on September 11, 2001.

These guys are bad guys. Clearly. They're our enemies. They attacked us once, already, and it's pretty safe to assume they want to attack us more. They want to kill you and me. They hate us. They're here, right now, and are planning the next attack. Maybe at your local mall, on that day you head there to check out some new arrivals and grab some grub at the food court. Have you thought about that? Your mall could totally be bombed by one of these guys at any time. Or the train you take to work. Or the bus that's pulling up next to you while you walk through the streets. BOOM. Any time. Anywhere. You're seriously screwed. You're in so much danger.

But we want to catch these guys before they blow you up. To do that, though, we need to see all information, all the time. These guys communicate over Facebook, they search how to blow up your mall on Google, they use e-mail just like you. They also call each other on your phone network. We need to nail these fuckers. So we're going to just listen to everything. Just in case. It's not you, it's them. We need to catch them.

When did we stop classifying scaring citizens into forfeiting constitutional rights as terrorism? Our government scares me significantly more than anyone I've ever seen at an airport, even the crazy ones. It scares me more than the thought of traveling to the middle east and wearing an "IM AN AMERICAN" t-shirt. And you want to call THEM the terrorists?

I'd be more afraid of being blown up by a drone strike while in the middle east than being shot by some radical islamic extremist who's been taught to hate us.

The forfeit of constitutional rights is unjustifiable.

Ok, since they "done so much" to protect us, why don't they tell us about the effectiveness of their program in concrete terms?

Bad opsec to tip your hand about ongoing operations.

So, tell us about operations from 2001 through 2008 which are no longer ongoing.

I don't think that would help though because there isn't a reasonable way to measure success and that's what the real problem is.

I would certainly like to know more about it too, but whenever the government (regardless of party) throws out details of such things it rarely seems to change anyone's minds. In a different context, I'm quite interested in financial fraud and in discussions with others I've heard over and over that the government never prosecutes anyone in the finance sector. For a while I got into the habit of pointing them to a DoJ website which demonstrates that a surprising number of people on Wall Street have been successfully prosecuted (http://www.stopfraud.gov/news-index.html), but in the end I gave up and just stayed out of those arguments because nobody ever seemed interested in rethinking their position.

I think most people (and I include myself in this) are much better at rationalizing their existing position in spite of new data than they are at re-evaluating their position. Of course this is an endemic problems at institutions like the NSA and in Congress.

If you want to know why the wall st. bigshots are above the law, think about the nature of Capitalism, namely an economy based on the idea that those with capital buy land, facilities, and tools, and hire labor to build businesses.

Such an economy ends up essentially being owned by the financier, which ends up being the lenders and the institutional investors. Banks end up too big to fail because, particularly when they have investment arms. This is one reason why building an alternate financial system is so important ;-)

I think he just made the case that they aren't above the law.

I think you have to start with the fact that while AQ was at full force and relatively untargetted by the US it took them 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center, there is just no epistemological model which gives you any way to measure effectiveness once we are already at war in Afghanistan.

Additionally you have a problem of us saying that we have to fight them over there so they can't fight us over here, but that has a side effect of ensuring that they don't have to come over here to fight us. If we include every bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan which has targetted US or coalition forces, the result has been a flurry of successful attacks against us. If you exclude them you end up with a footnote which says "true we haven't been attacked over here but it is also true that resources are being diverted to attack US interests in war zones."

The simple fact is they have done so much and in such a way that the success couldn't be measured even if they wanted to.

Wouldn't that just serve the terrorists?

It is so funny to see how correct and accurate were insights of Ayn Rand, Steinbeck, Misihma in describing how the system (corporations, banks, politicians) works and how naive and abstract are all those political theories compared to what was actually built.)

It is a good moment to re-read Atlas Shrugged. And Orwell, of course.

It'll be interesting to see how this flies. To be entirely honest, while the tech and journalistic circles are utterly outraged about this, the general public has yet to display any real care or regard for data privacy.

I know a number of people that are quite happy with the idea of invasive airport scans in order to get better security. It's a hard mindset to change.

The general public agrees with Obama for the most part. And no, the general public's consensus cannot be seen by reading internet blogs/news comments.

"The general public agrees with Obama for the most part."

Evidence?

Opinion polls on government's performance, priorities etc., suggest that people are primarily concerned with economic issues. If you're expecting protest marches on DC over this I think you're in for a disappointment.

Being primarily concerned with something else doesn't constitute agreement.

True, but I think the point still stands. The nature of government means that we don't like everything they do, we just protest the things that matter most. If this doesn't matter, it'll be allowed, and will be forgotten.

Certainly not, but as a practical matter apathy in politics amounts to passive consent.

people are primarily concerned with economic issues

That's true, and I'd venture that it's nearly always true, with the main exception being when people feel unsafe and security becomes #1.

However, public opinion alone doesn't drive policy. There is also elite opinion. Elite opinion may shift on this, and if it does then there will be policy changes, though perhaps not profound ones.

”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”

Sadly this is not like you were given a choice in this particular case.

If you were trying to quote Ben Franklin, you botched it. He said "Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", which is significantly different.

Indeed. It seems to be a somewhat harsher constraint, noting the use of the subjunctive.

We're not even sure he said it. He denied authorship of the compilation that the quote originally appeared in.

He said it, or at least the original thought (or variation of the words) was his, according to the sources on Wikiquote http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Quotes

Damn it... this site looked legit :( http://www.whatourforefathersthought.com/Quotes.html but you are right...

Here is a very interesting and cogent article from David Foster Wallace from 2007 about this very thing:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...

The truth is that Obama may be correct: it might be a valid trade to give up some freedom for security. But in a democracy it would be better to have that debate openly and let everyone have input into it.

The main issue here, IMO, is the lack of democracy or accountability over this particular level of surveillance. Even those representatives who knew about it and wanted to have a public debate about it were kept quiet.

"You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,"

So he is offering us (well, actually just U.S.) 100% security. Interesting...

YES WE SCAN.

> "We're going to have to make some choices as a society..."

Apparently, "society" didn't know much about this.

Great article from HuffingtonPost about why this is a false choice. Please read it. It might change your mind if you're thinking the trade-off may be worth it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-van-buren/a-childs-guide...

Thanks for the link. Some great points there like:

* Since 9/11 we have not had a mass-scale terror attack. We can say 9/11 was a one-off, an aberration, and cannot be a justification for everything the government wishes to do.

* If domestic spying is for our own good, the government should be proud to tell us what they are doing for us, instead of being embarrassed when it leaks. If you're not doing anything wrong then you've got nothing to hide, right?

* The system completely missed the Boston bombers, two of the dumbest, least sophisticated bro' terrorists in the world.

* If instead of spending trillions and trillions of dollars on spying and domestic surveillance we spent that same money on repairing our infrastructure and improving our schools, wouldn't that more directly create a stronger America?

All are valid points to consider in this discussion. But for me, it all boils down to the risk terrorist pose to America vs risk of government abusing its power. No contest. I'll take my chances with the "terrorists" any time, any place, any day.

Let us not forget the sacrifice made by our founding fathers to give us liberty. Our freedom came at great price that shouldn't be taking lightly. Only after an open national discussion, with the consensus necessary for a constitutional amendment, should the government be given this power over us that they are taking now in secret.

It's naive to pretend the trade-off doesn't exist already or that a decision hasn't been made. The trade-off has always existed- a warrant can be produced to violate your privacy. It's just a question of what the procedure should be, what information can be searched, what situations it can be used in, etc.

I don't think there is much opposition in the general population to searches where probable cause exists. But that is indeed a trade-off between security and privacy.

I suspect that a vast majority of people are going to be okay with this. It was been my observation that people are far more interested in safety than freedom.

I have a better chance of overdosing on pharmaceuticals than I do being killed by "Terrorists".

And lets not pretend that we are suddenly more vulnerable after 9/11. Maybe our perma-pandering leaders are more vulnerable as more people start to see they aren't wearing any clothes…

Not to worry, citizen--great strides are being made in the pricing of medication and health services so even that opportunity for harm will elude you!

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