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When you're in business or divorce negotiations and your adversary "knows a guy" who can track your movement and communications, you won't fare very well.

Someone who secretly has access to Warren Buffett's movements and communications could get a jump on the market, stealing a little bit from all the honest players.

If you're protesting the government's eminent domain seizure of your home, but you only have enough money to pay the lawyers for another couple of months, the government can just wait you out. They'll be able to figure it out just by looking at the outside of the bill collection notices sent to your home, and the fact that you sent email to several lawyers who are known to work pro bono.

The problem is that the mere existence of this kind of information will draw the corrupt among us like flies to a corpse. I'm not all that concerned about the personal motivations of the people who currently have access to that information, although power does corrupt. I'm more concerned about people who will start working for those agencies because they're intrigued by the possibilities.

If the information must be gathered, then it is essential that it be a really big deal for any analyst to get access to someone's communication metadata and movements. High visibility, court oversight, logging and review, the works.

Side note: I went to the Austin Restore the Fourth rally today; couple hundred people I'd guess, mostly middle-class-looking. Pleasant energy. It's hard to tell whether that's enough of an indicator to make politicians start wondering about their campaign pocketbooks; I'm not optimistic.

There is absolutely no evidence that any of the things you listed - with the exception of the first one, maybe - is made possible by the government spying on you.

What you are living in is not safety. It is the illusion of safety. And thanks to years of government propaganda, you have come to associate the pleasant feelings that come with this illusion with government spying programs.

>What you are living in is not safety. It is the illusion of safety

Statistically, people are safer today than in the past, if you are looking at violent death rates. It's really not an illusion. Life expectancies are higher not just because of scientific advances, but because we are simply less likely to die at the hands of others.

Putting aside the domestic manslaughter rate, over the past few decades people have been far less likely to die through war than at any other point over the past 3-4 centuries (if not longer, records pre the 1700s are unreliable).

What I think could be argued as an illusion is that this period of safety has been due to increased surveillance and espionage, especially domestic surveillance.

> What I think could be argued as an illusion is that this period of safety has been due to increased surveillance and espionage, especially domestic surveillance.

Exactly. As we all should know by now, 'Correlation != Causation'. This increase in safety could just as easily be attributed to the Flynn Effect[1] as it can to spying.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The nature of war for our country has changed completely, and quite a few people on the other side do die in our wars. It's not related to our espionage efforts.

Being able to retrieve a stolen car

If my car is stolen, I don't particularly want it back.

Not being blown up by terrorists

Your odds of dying in that car are far worse than your odds of being blown up by terrorists.

Also, if I choose to believe that NSA monitoring has actually prevented a single genuine terrorist attack, I'm in the awkward position of believing some people who literally lie for a living.

Practice any religion I choose

Help me out here. Why do you need to be tracked by the government in order to be able to practice a religion? Is that some kind of Eastern thing?

Fly safely between 5 states and 5 different countries

Credible claims have been made that the TSA's X-ray scanners expose you to more risk than terrorism, over a lifetime of flying.

Drive hundreds even thousands of miles safely

Again, why do you need a (metaphorical) cop following you in order to drive safely? Have you found a way to make it less likely that you'll die in a car crash than from terrorist activity? If so, please share with the class.

Buy and sell what I please, without fear of jail

At this point I have to assume I've been trolled. I will now STFU, GBTW, and HAND.

I disagree with nearly everything you just said, but to keep this short I'm only going to mention a couple that don't make any sense to me.

> Not being blown up by terrorists

Please explain this. A few thousand dead Americans would disagree. The USA's epic spying over the last many decades did not stop thousands of people from dying in terrorist attacks. NSA spying does not keep you safe from terrorists; in fact, I think it does the opposite. It creates terrorists.

> Drive hundreds even thousands of miles safely

Driving is one of the least safe activities available to you, largely due to the government's incompetence in keeping safety regulations at a reasonable level. Tens of thousands of people die every year in the USA due to the lack of safety driving on roads. You are not safe when you are driving a car.

Except that they don't actually need that data to do the following:

* Being able to retrieve a stolen car * Not being blown up by terrorists * Practice any religion I choose * Fly safely between 5 states and 5 different countries * Drive hundreds even thousands of miles safely * Buy and sell what I please, without fear of jail

They've either been able to do these things, or simply failed to do it even with the data.

Until we have evidence that all this data mining is actually useful and essential to government function - and that the /improvements/ to the job they do at those things actually merits the risk we're taking by arming them with the tools to easily take political prisoners or implement a highly repressive regime, your argument is critically flawed.

Just because I can buy a candy bar with $500 doesn't mean I need $500 to buy it - I might be able to with $1 - and you should probably check that the money is actually going where it should.

Similarly, privacy.

tl;dr: Your argument misses the point, because it's not the spying they're doing that enables most of those things, and they were doing a pretty good job of all of those before the mass surveillance.

Only one of those is even possibly linked to the government's ability to track you (the car). The others are completely nebulous, and are made safe simply by having police present or through routine investigative powers. They don't need to know your intimate details.

The last one you mentioned is actually the opposite. You can accidentally trip over a law you weren't aware of. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Our government having the ability to track me has only led to benefits in my life including: [..] Practice any religion I choose [..] Buy and sell what I please, without fear of jail

Wait, what? In what "new reality" does that make any sense?

if it means I am kept safe

Safe from what? Safe from people being murdered in your name without charge or trial? Safe from inheriting debt to your children? Safe from heart attacks? "Safe" without qualifier is a mighty huge and mighty useless word.

if it means society as a whole can operate more openly

Now that's just doublethink. How do secret laws for spooks make society more "open"?

The issue isn't what your direct personal consequence would be.

The issue is what Snowden called "turnkey tyranny". These tools can easily be seriously abused. When they are, a Democratic regime can collapse. The US democracy is eroding. Civil rights will be lost.

Eventually, they won't even need to carry on with the democracy theater. The indirect consequences for everyone, may be dire.

This is in fact the belief of most Americans today according to recent polls.

I don't know if what you believe is necessarily true (that we are safer as a result of spying) - but here's what I don't understand: even if you believe surveillance leads to safety, would you not want a clear, transparent, and accountable process for governing this surveillance?

The surveillance is not going away - people broadly don't care about their privacy anymore. What seems unacceptable to me is the lack of legal framework to control it.

> Buy and sell what I please, without fear of jail

How's your marijuana business going?

Just fine in many states, now stop trolling and actually contribute.

The OP made a series of inane statements. I pointed out the absurdity of just one of them. I gave the commentator the benefit of the doubt, which you have failed to do in your reply. If you think someone is trolling, downvote them. If you think their conduct is egregious, flag the post. Please familiarize yourself with the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you would prefer, I can reply at length. I thought doing so was unnecessary.

Matthew R. Davies ran a dispensary out of Stockton, CA. By all appearances his business complied with local and state laws. He relied on a pledges by the President and AG not to prosecute conduct that was in line with local and state laws. He's facing 40 years for cultivation of marijuana.

This is very bad for reasons that should be obvious.

Heh. Should have specified the states I was referencing... I certainly didn't mean california. colorado and washington (off the top of my head) have been labeled by Obama as "will not prosecute", and although the confidence we can put in this statement is questionable, it has yet to be contradicted (to my knowledge, if I am wrong please let me know). This certainly isn't amazing, but it is a step in the right direction, along with most of the current weed legislation.

As far as the guidelines bit, sorry but... nothing you mentioned is in there. I felt the need to correct your comment and was annoyed. I didn't consider it off-topic, just useless and confusing to the uninformed. Have a nice day!

I would not call living in constant fear of a federal raid "just fine" and the aggressive rezoning practices that many medical and fully legal cities use against dispensaries are questionable at best.

I've had my car stolen. The police retrieved it for me, without doing any tracking whatsoever (because this was in the 1970s). They simply noticed it in a ditch and called me.

Sure, the thieves weren't very sophisticated, but few thieves are.

Let's say for the sake of argument that everything you listed is true, which, it's clearly not. Does it matter to you at all that this is UNCONSTITUTIONAL? Does the founding charter of our nation mean absolutely nothing to you?

While I disagree with the OP, I don't think blindly adhering to the constitution makes for a good argument. There are very good reasons for everything in the constitution, but each is only as strong as those reasons. In the absence of good reasons for something, the fact that it's part of the constitution does not matter very much! If anything, it means the constitution should be changed--that's why we have a ready amendment mechanism.

Now, an argument in terms of civil liberties or the danger of concentrating too much power in too few hands or possible abuses of the technology or invasion of privacy would have been completely reasonable, and such arguments have been well made in other posts. But yours by itself is completely empty.

The constitution is great, but it's hardly the perfect authority on everything and shouldn't be revered as such.

Sure, but a government with a habit of ignoring (or paying some minimal lip-service while weaving a web of bullshit about how flagrantly violating it isn't really violating it) the Constitution is a threat in the medium- to long-term (if not the short-). Complaining that behavior is a problem because it is unconstitutional does not necessarily mean we'd oppose an amendment that permits it (after thorough consideration and discussion).

Arguing against a proposed amendment on the grounds that the proposed change allows something currently prohibited would be silly, obviously, but that's not what anyone is doing I think.

> There are very good reasons for everything in the constitution, but each is only as strong as those reasons. In the absence of good reasons for something, the fact that it's part of the constitution does not matter very much! If anything, it means the constitution should be changed--that's why we have a ready amendment mechanism.

We thought the reasons weren't holding up anymore, we could have changed it, but that takes so long so we just did it in secret, thats ok yea? Its "just the constitution".

Is this your standpoint?

> The constitution is great, but it's hardly the perfect authority on everything and shouldn't be revered as such.

It was supposed to be. And when things were found to no longer work it was supposed to be amended with all branches of government having their say.

If one thing can be disregarded "because its not perfect" then all things can be disregarded. Or at least, if you think they can't just all be disregarded, because some things would be crossing the line, who is the one that gets to draw the line? Previously we had this piece of paper which drew the line, but then this guy said online it wasn't perfect.

> * Not being blown up by terrorists

Disregarding the fact that most of those items have nothing to do with government surveillance, this particular item has more to do with the fact that attempted (and competent) acts of terrorism are an extremely rare event.

The CIA and FBI failed to stop 9/11 when they failed to exchange relevant information [1]. Lack of actionable data was not the problem then, and I have a hard time believing it's a problem now.

[1] http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/wall.pdf

> Not being blown up by terrorists

I like to scream at wrong moments and so far I've not heard of anyone being raped by wolftrolls riding UFOs. So I saved you and whole world from being raped by wolftrolls. You owe me exactly $1000.

> I could be in the minority, but to me, our society has become very desensitized by sharing with Facebook leading the charge.

There's a difference between people voluntarily sharing information with a third-party, and having that information forcibly gathered without your knowledge. There has to be a line.