57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents
rasmussenreports.com
rasmussenreports.com
That's the thing about governments: people have successors. People like Bush and Obama have been elected before, and given enough time, people like them will be elected again. Trusting one administration with a given power means trusting all future administrations, sight unseen, with that same power, and that is rarely a sane thing to do.
I find it confounding how people are still attributing this stuff to Presidents when it should be obvious by now it's not the elected officials running this show. They're being led along by an entrenched bureaucracy with its own goals and agenda, no term limits, and with the ability to shape the world view and hence decisions of our elected officials by what information they choose to provide or withhold.
Stop talking about this in terms of Bush or Obama, Republican or Democrat. The problem transcends any one elected individual or even political party.
Recent political events have demonstrated just how autonomous the President is, there is no reason to think there is some sort of hidden power at play here.
If anything we need a stronger and more professional bureaucracy that's less eager to help the President break the law.
It seems to me that it's in the NSA's (and every other gov't organization's) best interests to do everything in its power to increase its own reach and influence. It's naive to assume they are working against their own best interests unless you have some sort of evidence to back that up.
No, he ran on the exact opposite - being the anti-Bush. Maybe you saw through that are remembering what you perceived instead.
And there's no "hidden power" in so far as the Federal bureaucracy is anything but hidden. Secretive maybe, but not hidden.
>If anything we need a stronger and more professional bureaucracy that's less eager to help the President break the law.
Agreed. That would be ideal. There are elements of it, but it's not universal.
At least that's the theory.
Do we really trust a large institution that no one knows about (and thus has no accountability) to grab just the data they need and that corresponds to other laws? Do we trust the individuals with the power to access all sorts of data to always do so responsibly, to never play games with it? Do we trust the organizations to always deal with it equitably and never put certain political persuasions under greater scrutiny? Do we trust that the retention won't be used to build cases against formerly innocent people after the fact?
Whether this is your guy, the last guy was your guy, or whether neither are, this is frightening.
"There are significant partisan differences [in 2013] in views of the government's program to obtain call logs and Internet communication. Democrats are more likely to approve, by 49% to 40%. Independents (34% vs. 56%) and Republicans (32% to 63%) are much more likely to disapprove than approve.
"In 2006, when Gallup asked the similar question about a program that came to light at that point, Republicans were significantly more likely to approve than Democrats. The differences in partisan reaction between 2006 and 2013 reflect the party of the president under whose watch the programs were carried out at those two points in time."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-gover...
It just baffles me that many Americans are so myopic on this issue that they can't even see past a single election cycle!
In particular, I believe there are a significant number of respondents who either (1) aren't very politically aware, but do have high trust in "our leaders" (whatever party they may be), or (2) don't trust pollsters -- believing they could be "with the government" or other loyalist groups -- and thus answer as if the questions were a loyalty test.
Note that for both type (1) and type (2) respondents, they are especially likely to answer (a) "Yes, I'm the same party as the President in power"; and (b) "Yes, I approve of what the President's policing/border/drug/terrorism agents have been doing". The respondents have different reasons, but neither want to express dissension. And yet it's not really telling us what party "true believers" think, just situational switchers.
Of course, many party "true believers" can forgive "their guy" in office for the same things they'd raise a stink about from "the other guy". That's also a very common bias/behavior. But I suspect these other low-ideology, "kiss-up-to-whoever-is-in-office" respondents are another significant, 5-15% contributor to what looks like a "partisan swing" in polls like this.
You maybe able to trust the guy now but will you trust the next guy? That is the lesson that I have learned.
I wouldn't have trusted either Bush or Obama with these powers. Government officials have proven time and time again that they don't always have the general populace's interests at heart. The saying "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is the first thing to come to mind.
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RJpNqz1y...
[Long bit about supposing I'm OK with Obama spying on all and sundry]
Now take that argument and flip it: I'm a raving reactionary right-wing flag-waving, Bush-loving, Grover Norquist worshiping, NASCAR fanning, Fox-watching, elephant-tattoo-on-my-ass Republican. Guess what: I have exactly the same rapid paranoid concern about Obama's or any Democratic administration's use of FISA surveillance.
The so-called PATRIOT Act is a significant part of what's tearing the US apart. It fosters distrust on both sides of a vast and growing political divide. It is more power to the government with less oversight than anyone can trust. "That is not what democracy is about. That is not what freedom is about," to quote Senator Sanders.
The so-called PATRIOT Act always was and will be a full admission and capitulation to the fact that we've abandoned our cherished freedoms and the terrorists have won.
But make it more concrete and you get some scary statements:
- The government can use phone call metadata to build a list of all people who likely own firearms and are gun enthusiasts and pro-gun rights.
- The government can use phone call metadata to build a list of all women who likely have had abortions or use contraception.
- The government can use phone call metadata to build lists of likely members of each religious group, and their respective social networks.
Now there's something for everyone to oppose!
The "government" has been able to collect far more data via the tax and health care systems, TSA, census etc for decades. Imagine all the scary statements I could contrive from those. Or how about we amp up the crazy and talk about all the things the "government" could be doing with their drones and satellites.
our government is perfectly fine with suppressing dissent, and the fate of the Occupy movement shows this - a government would not use undercover police, agent provocateurs, destabilizing tactics, etc. if they tolerated dissent. in my city, the local police intentionally broke up homeless camps and moved them near or into the Occupy tent camp, straining the Occupy resources. Then, when the homeless people inevitably did drugs or were publicly intoxicated in the camp, the police came in and started arresting people left and right for drug possession, intoxication, etc. this did a fantastic job of breaking up our local protest.
And tons of other similar programs. Like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
What's "paranoid" (== isolated in a private little world and ignoring facts) is to ignore or downplay such things, as the parent does.
If not total naiveness, it's a classic case of "la la la la la hands in the ears" denial.
As Gore Vidal put it: "Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of 'conspiracy' because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers."
As if governments all other the world, throughout history, didn't conspire against dissidents. And as if secret services weren't created for this very reason exactly.
While we're on that subject:
There's a very interesting video about 9/11 that every American really, really, really should watch put out by a group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
"9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg
OP said, if you want to persuade people, frame this as government could do x,y,z.
Nothing "paranoid" about it.
Are you some kind of totally private citizen, only concerned with his household affairs, that has never been in any activist, grassroots, dissident movement, from OWS to EFF?
If yes, your lack of historical knowledge is understandable.
>The "government" has been able to collect far more data via the tax and health care systems, TSA, census etc for decades. Imagine all the scary statements I could contrive from those.
No need to imagine anything. Yes, they have been able to collect all these data, and they have already used them. Even in the past, do you know how many people the government didn't like did Senator McCarthy or J.E. Hoover step on, blackmailed, got fired from their job and/or jailed with such data?
Do you remember why Nixon was resigned? Remember that Watergate thing? Heck, they eavesdropped and broke into the HQs of the Democratic Party, which is a huge power itself. Consider what they'd do to dissidents, whistleblowers and such.
>Or how about we amp up the crazy and talk about all the things the "government" could be doing with their drones and satellites.
What's crazy about it? They already murder citizens of sovereign nations with them, without trial, and also track foreign (as if only) nations, corporations, etc, with those. You meant to suggest those things are not bad enough already?
As many have pointed out, the USG has the power, and the USG has abused that power numerous times in the past(Pentagon Papers for example? Lies/misinformation related to Iraq war and the whole War on Terror? Aforementioned Watergate scandal?). Because with power comes the responsibility, and the past has shown that the USG has not been able to live up to the expectations of the said responsibility, it is naive to believe it won't happen again. Of course it's not only USG, but probably every single government out there which has ever existed which has been corrupt in some way and which has abused it's power in a way or another when it comes to political regards, let alone other personal benefits of those in power. This only strenghtens the belief that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The government might use the IRS to harass their political opponents?
Nah, that's just crazy conspiracy theories.
I find it hard to believe that so many people have jumped out of their wits over this NSA news. After all, there are so many more harder and pressing problems in the world. Global Warming, Child Slavery, Drugs, overpriced health care, mortgage and education loans? But on HN, the most intellectual community I am part of (imo) is so worried about automated programs parsing through their mails and tweets, its surprising. Dude, wake up! Your content is NOT so cool. Its like everybody else's -- emails from mom telling you missed on events, defaulting on payments, failures in relationships, failure in school. Everybody goes through those things, and have records to show it.
When I see an article with the title that makes me believe that a bunch of scared folks are now going to set decision making processes for the future, it makes me worried. Very worried. Such community moods have been known to make the worst choices (always conservative than progressive) for the future generations. Today, people complain about the war US took to Iraq, and what a bad decision that was. Five years from now, it will be privacy policies that were set in, after "57% FEARED NSA will misuse their personal info."
Is privacy important -- yes, it is. But should we blow things out of proportion? No. That's never going to lead to a better world.
I remember the Bush Wiretapping Laws (seems like a successor to FISA).
After saying that, I am not "for" any organization (political or business) to misuse personal information. Personal info is personal, and it should stay that way. But the fear some people are portraying seems irrational and overblown, and this will lead the tech community to self-impose some harsh "laws", which will not play out well.
So, I apologize if I made you feel that way. That was not my intent. The only other time I remember such an outcry here at HN was when Steve Jobs passed. A big and depressing event, indeed. I just don't understand why we complain so sparsely about "bigger" problems as we are doing about these privacy issues. There have been some discussions about education policies, but they come and go. Privacy issues have been lurking around ever since social media emerged, and as I said, I am worried that this event makes it go overboard.
You are right, of course: The leaks are more recent in time than the people pointing that out about Google/Facebook/etc., so I'm not that surprised at the difference in reaction.
Solving the huge things like global warming, cancer, poverty, starvation, cancer, etc, are a little bit more involved, and will probably take a while, no matter what the motivation.
If we are told to be afraid, we are supposed to be afraid. But, if we our selves become afraid, we are not allowed to be afraid.
So, the gov tell us to fear drugs, immigrants and terrorists, then we should say, "Sure, we agree, have all the powers you need and take all the freedoms you like." However, when we fear surveillance and invasions of privacy as a result of our own base level sense of survival, we are stupid treasonous, un-patriotic plebs and should have nothing to fear if we have nothing to hide....because the government, with a nice smile and sharp suit, says so.
What do these problems have in common? That's right, every single one is a produce of extreme imbalances in power. Every. Single. One. And what does a program like PRISM undermine? Exactly, the democratic structures that can successfully challenge an abusive status quo.
Larry Lessig is fond of pointing out that his chosen problem (campaign finance) may not be the biggest problem in the world, or the most serious, but it is the first in that it addresses a fundamental dysfunction that prevents the us from responding to a constellation of concerns in a meaningful, socially beneficial way.
The development of a authoritarian surveillance state falls into a similar category, in that its mere existence frustrates a broad range of social development goals. Because it is absolutely guaranteed to be used against civilians who are attempting to steer government state power towards healthy ends, and away from abusive, toxic ones, it should be treats as an intrinsic part of any problem that benefits a small but entrenched status quo. Indeed, that's the whole point of structures like these. They actively undermine the ability of people to organize themselves in opposition to established interests that profit from extraordinary and otherwise unsustainable levels of abuse.
And no, this isn't speculation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun...
this is the most amazing thing I've read all day. someone using the argument that 'fear causes people to think irrationally' to justify government snooping.
Let's step back to base principles. What's the claimed reason for snooping? To stop terrorists.
How much of a threat are terrorists? If you think about it rationally, not very much.
10K per year die from drunk driving. That's three 9/11's per year. You wouldn't consider allowing the government to filter your facebook and email for strings like 'i've been drinking, now I'm driving', so why would you allow that for a much smaller problem?
Here's something else to think about rationally. Stop and look around the world and history. Have terrorists caused more deaths and taken away more individual rights than governments? I'd say its governments by an enormous margin (I'm not talking about the US govt by itself, although I bet if you dug up all the stuff like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment you might get close even in the US).
We're graced with relatively good government in the US but you don't have to look too hard around the world (Iran, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Afganistan pre-9/11, Rwanda, Bosnia) to see that it's perfectly rational to be wary of government power (its even more obvious if you consider historic examples like the Soviet Union, Nazis, Armenian).
tl;dr it's irrational to fear terrorists, ergo no need to sacrifice your civil liberties
You don't even need to look into the past in the US - as far as I know the war on drug users continues.
I've been waiting for years for this discussion to take place. I opposed PATRIOT as an irrational overreaction from the beginning. It's taken this long for the opposition to get any traction. Don't be so surprised that it has support now that people who oppose the surveillance state don't have to endure being called crazy unpatriotic paranoid loons.
I'm sorry to say but a lot of countries will degrade back to authoritarianism within the next 10-20 years due to economy and political problems.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
Democracy was practiced by Greeks 2 thousand years ago. The system of couple of hundred people from the top of society gathered in one room making the decisions for the rest of society hasn't changed since than.
And Magna Carta which codified the idea of freedom as a limit on government power is 800 years old.
After the classical era and prior to WWII the only major democracies were Britain, the U.S. and intermittently, France.
(...) I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.
Eventually at any new successful company, the hangers-on arrive. The "work hard, play hard" mantra that drove the first generations gives way to just a "play hard" one. The benefits created by the original visionaries are siphoned off mercilessly by those who didn't create them, can't create anything new, and don't seem to care that they're so destructive. With the decline of the company and jerks in power, anyone worth a damn goes elsewhere to find a better environment or if they do stay they tend to work around the system to get their jobs done or just content themselves operating at 1/4 speed for a paycheck. As more good people leave because of frustration, a death spiral ensues since upper management clowns no longer have anyone who can problem solve.
We had a nice run. It's really too bad that we lost our way as a nation.
It also ignores all of the things that the founders did that we find reprehensible today (slave-owning), along with how far this country has come racially and in regards to civil rights in the past 50 years.
It also ignores the fact that the size of the US economy has never been larger, and whatever "decline" you are referring to is purely subjective and mostly rosy retrospection.
I wonder what it is about the USA that has made this type of "our good run is over, oh well" sentiment popular for several generations. People have been making complaints like this for several hundred years in this country.
People have been making complaints like this for several thousand years, in pretty much every country. I suspect that its largely because people tend to see things in an overly optimistic way as children and progressively see more of the messy bits as they mature, and this creates a common impression (irrespective of the truth) that things are actually getting worse, and this is magnified by people trying to advance agendas by demogoguery centering around the idea of a past happier age created by exaggerating positive qualities and ignoring negative ones of the past.
No analogy is exact. Otherwise, it would be called the exact same thing. It's the building and creation of the food stamp culture that is analogous to the hangers on of startups.
founders did that we find reprehensible today
No massive social welfare programs that bankrupt society == slavery. Sure.
US economy has never been larger
Revenue does not equal health of a company or of a country.
People have been making complaints like this for several hundred years in this country
I think it has more to do with people not having realized what they've lost of their freedoms and the core strengths of the country due to the slow but inexorable encroachment of tyranny in our everyday lives.
I'm sorry to say but a lot of countries will degrade back to authoritarianism within the next 10-20 years due to economy and political problems.
What? Would you like a detailed list of counterexamples ranging from local farmer councils accepting or vetoing kings in early medieval Norway to the Greco-Roman governmental systems on which ours are based?
Additionally, it is the case that up until the last 100 years or so, tyranny was constrained by the amount of enforcement effort required. Drones in particular I see as a very major threat here for that reason.
Athens is probably a mild exception (but with esclavitude).
I agree with you, though. I am only trying to clarify what the parent was referring to.
Additionally keep in mind that during much of the time, if there was a dispute (and this was common before the Conversion), these districts could and did lead to the rise and fall of kings.
But even if you say monarchies are out (in which case the UK today is not democratic), you still have Iceland, Gottland, and much more.
Also: "Would you trust J. Edgar Hoover[1] with this data?"
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmusse...
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-po...
Either the NSA(or whomever) would have to be incredibly careful in using the information to some end, or they would abstain from using it at all. I'm not sure the benefits would outweigh the risks here.
"Feat that it Will"??????? It already does.
The other 43% know it will.
I wonder if the fears match the reality.
OK, so obama approves all this today. Don't you guys think he has the common sense to think that he will be a target tomorrow himself when he is no longer president? His wife and kids and their families?
Such things are definitely to worry about in dictatorial countries but nothing to be 'paranoid' about in democracies. While I don't condone the government for monitoring data, I will have to 'respect' their decision if they think it's the way to go about providing security. After all, they were elected by the people and people have to trust them for their brains.
The whole prism thing is completely blown up because media has nothing else to talk about right now. It's just waiting for another news to happen and everyone will move on.
Everyone else, however, well... we won't be so lucky.
Edit: And no, it is they who must trust us. We must never trust them and we must always be vigilant, always looking over their shoulder, ready to squash their wretched political careers at the slightest infraction against democracy.
That depends on whether or not we think that he and his family will be beholden to the same rules as everyone else.
Many of us would argue that that is a faulty assumption.