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Comment by ihsw | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully this will shift the conversation from "listening to phone calls" and "collecting internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)" to "storing phone calls" and "storing internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)".

At this point it's become abundantly clear that everything is stored and indexed in a database, and the only defense against abuse of this database is only policies.

One of the worst cases to come out of this entire ordeal is the legal dance around the definition of "listen" and whether it refers to automatically capturing phone calls or an individual listening to a recording of a phone call after it's been captured.

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>the only defense against abuse of this database is only policies.

This point is extremely important and is what Snowden continuously returns to. In yesterday's Q&A he said "policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens." This idea is critical to having an intelligent debate of the issues at hand.

This is where I disagree with him, during last Wednesday's CSPAN cyber-security session Senator Leahy made it abundantly clear that he supports sunset provisions that indicates an expiration and discontinuation on such surveillance programs.

Leahy does, but do enough other people to make a difference? There are usually a few people in Congress who support moving towards better protections, but in general it does tend to get looser and looser over the years.

If there are enough 'other people' (read: other senators voting for it) then the legislation passes and the sunset provisions are added, personally I think that's the most important difference.

I don't find this to be an extremely compelling point, though.

There's infinite bad things that can be committed by anyone, from the government or otherwise, where the only thing preventing it is policy and procedure. The only thing preventing an Apache helicopter from firing on schoolchildren under order of the president.... is policy. Theoretically, as commander-in-chief, the president has the authority to order that, right? But what's important is that he doesn't. What's important is there's policy that prevents it.

"The only thing preventing an Apache helicopter from firing on schoolchildren under order of the president.... is policy"

A better method of prevention would be to not build Apache helicopters.

Fair enough, but how will you prevent the Syrians or the Iranian or the Chinese or the North Koreans or etc. etc. from building theirs.

It's easy to say someone else should unilaterally drop to their knees and bow the head.

Until Utopia arrives we have to make sure our current reality is as optimal as it can be.

I understand your point, but http://beta.dawn.com/news/772409/no-obama-tears-for-children...

To be fair, it wasn't apache helicopters.

Heh, I walked into that one, but I think my point still stands: the problem you linked to is one of policy. And the solution is to find a better one.

At this point it's become abundantly clear that everything is stored and indexed in a database

Where is that made clear? Listen at 1:00:20-1:01:00

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