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Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

"The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption."

- Julian Assange, The Nonlinear Effects of Leaks on Unjust Systems of Governance

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So we as taxpayers:

1. Did not know about this surveillance

2. Would not have voted for it to be put in place

3. Are (for the most part) angry that it happened

4. Must pay extra taxes so they can be sure to keep it secret next time

I've never been more pissed off about my government.

I'm not mad about it because I pay taxes. Minor children, tax-exempt institutions, those with no income: they all deserve to be free of unjust government surveillance. Conflating the issue with the paying of taxes in a progressive tax system may introduce the rationale that those that pay the most taxes are the most deserving to not be watched.

In fact, some of nation's largest taxpayers (in the black corporations) are actively cooperating in this endeavor, so making this about taxes would seem to argue that the "taxpayer" has already spoken.

> minor children

You bring up a point (perhaps frivolously)that I haven't seen before. With many many minors owning cell phones, where does the court stand on collecting meta-data from children. The law is very clear when it comes to crimes on how minors are treated, this seems to make assumptions without guardian approval or regards to their status as minors.

Honestly, how do you people even bring yourselves to talk about these laws in the context of existing legal frameworks?

I'm not trying to be rude to you as much as I am express my frustration about what the government's doing, but look, nothing about this was particularly legal (we can debate the legality of FISA warrants off-thread, I'm happy to).

Certainly any sort of whole-sale capturing of traffic or messages or pictures or calls could cause the government to be in possession of materials that they shouldn't, but that's really not saying a whole lot, now is it?

I don't even think about these gross violations of our Constitution to even be a "legal" matter. How can you? It's not like a court can rule against these laws. The ruling is just suppresssed.

I think the point is that "protecting the children" is one of the few things that are an easy fight politically. The rules over gathering data on children are fairly strict, and could be a fine technicality to enforce a moratorium on the wide surveillance. They may not be lawful, but bureaucracies are notorious for being susceptible to goofy policy enforcement. (One could joke they answer to a higher authority that way.)

Of course, they also have the option to say fear is worse, enact special complicated safeguards that filter out children, or any number of other weasel work-arounds. But it's something, at least.

Right, I get that. But my point is thus:

First, who cares? Honestly, of all the things I'm upset about, pretty much the bottom of the list is "pictures from Tor get mirrored in an NSA facility". The "terrible" things about child porn come from it's production, distribution and sale. None of those things are happening by it getting picked up in a dragnet and put on a HD. No one's going to be motivated to stop the government over CP if they haven't over privacy.

Second, child porn is bad. But do we really have to take their bullshit strategy of "OHMHYGOD THE CHILDREN!?" when "OH MY GOD, ANY SENSE OF PRIVACY?" should suffice?

tltltl;dr: If a "legal technicality" were going to trip up the NSA, it ought to be the Fourth Amendment.

I didn't take it personal :)

I completely agree that "the children" is a minor blip in the entire program, but it is a blip that has a lot of emotional response attached to it.

I again agree that current laws can't even compare to something of this scale. But laws about minors and their entrapment or protection might be enough to waken the laymen on this apparent abuse of power.

Given that the NSA has been willing to violate the Constitution, which is literally the highest law of the land, what makes you think they care at all about a few pesky child protection rules?

It's like paying attention to the speed limit while mowing down pedestrians in your car.

Given their confidence that someone is foreign, I'm sure they have an equally impressive rate with identifying minors.

On the plus side, "think of the children" is usually something everyone can get behind, which is why it's rolled out so often :/

There would need to be unilateral storage regardless of potential profiling during mining -- otherwise the cellular profile of a child, in this case, would make a secure line.

We have that system of "he who pays the taxes makes the rules", except instead of taxes, it's campaign contributions. (Which, incidentally, often results in the donors paying far less taxes.)

You are implicitly assuming that there is nothing that the government legitimately needs to keep secret. Can you justify that assumption?

Can you justify the contrary?

Nuclear launch codes. Locations of strategic assets (eg, nuclear missiles). Identities of people in Witness Protection. Closed court records regarding children. Personal information collected as part of tax collection (eg, income). Identities of foreign informants.

Also, evidence obtained in a way that violates Constitutional amendments and that is therefore barred from admission in a case. Medical records (incl. genetic testing results). Tax returns. Information about a person inadvertently collected pursuant to a valid investigation, or otherwise not relevant to the investigation.

Fun fact: the PAL codes on Strategic Air Command's Minuteman nuclear missiles were set to 00000000. To quote President Skroob, "That's amazing - I've got the same combination on my luggage!".

To some extent I'm not sure the "launch codes" themselves -- if there is something you need to type into a console at the missile base itself to actually launch the missile and there isn't just a shiny red button -- need to be that secret. There should be a boatload of physical security protecting nuclear missiles. If there isn't, we're doing it wrong. It's not like we should be letting random people reach the point they could fire the missile.

But launching nuclear missiles is a command decision so the weak point in the system is the means by which an order to launch is authenticated. And whatever secret tokens are used in that process, those I want as few people as possible to know (ideally zero).

Here's the difference: the government is quite open about doing all those things. We can ostensibly debate and influence policy on all of them, because the policy itself is not secret.

But when even the policy is secret, it is totally beyond even the possibility of democratic control.

My favorite example of why the government shouldn't be allowed to keep that many secrets is the Supreme Court case which established the concept of "National Security" (secrets). It was a wrongful death lawsuit regarding a plane crash just after WWII (if I recall correctly). The government said, "we can't release any details of the crash because it's a matter of National Security". SCOTUS said fine and the families of the men killed in the crash were told to pound sand.

Jump forward to the modern day, when the details of the crash are accidentally released with a bunch of other declassified information. It turns out that the flight had absolutely nothing to do with "National Security", it was just a routine flight in a plane with a poor maintenance history. The government was just covering their asses to avoid paying out for wrongful deaths, and bullshit so hard they created a legal precedent.

References please? I want to know more about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds

I haven't read it yet, but a book was published about this whole affair a few years ago, Claim of Privilege. http://www.amazon.com/Claim-Privilege-Mysterious-Landmark-Su...

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