There is another ethical argument that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us (i.e. the Golden Rule). If the U.S. doesn't want foreign governments performing dragnet surveillance on them, then the U.S. shouldn't perform dragnet surveillance on other countries.
There is a policy argument that dragnet surveillance, when combined with foreign information sharing agreements, is effectively an unintended loophole. For example, assume British intelligence performs dragnet surveillance on the U.S. and vice versa. When these hypothetical findings are shared, it negates the perceived limitations on domestic surveillance.
There is an economic argument that if U.S. companies cannot be trusted to protect the privacy of their customers, foreign markets will become closed to them either via customer choice or even foreign government regulation.
Since when was the last time US government or its Military branch thought or cared about what's moral and what's not?
Long story short: the major reason why they can get away with drones flying over foreign soil with lethal weapon is because american media barely reports on it. My hunch is that there are deals done behind closed doors; deals maybe NOT purely illegal but unethical for sure. For example: do not report on drone strikes and Lockheed Martin will advertise their jet fighters in your newspaper for $10MM per year. It happened before (hint: that advertise has no reason to exist; you won't and you can't just pick up your phone and call Lockheed to order a jetfighter yourself).
I am sure some small newspaper somewhere is alarming public on drones killing innocent people on foreign soil, but again, they are "too small to succeed".
And further: the only reason you don't have droned killing americans on american soil is the eventual unleash of bashing that media would do. Agai, nothing to do with morality. While far away they can get away with it, however here at home it would be hard to stop the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/faa-warns-public-against-shooting-guns... has information regarding drones used in USA.
Second, if we believe ideologically that privacy is a human right that should be protected, it is hypocritical to then say "Oh, but only for Americans. Everyone else can go fuck themselves." and it weakens the arguments for privacy in America as well as U.S. attempts to encourage other countries to protect privacy and other civil rights.
The Constitution itself doesn't say a lot about hardly anything. I just looked at it (the real thing) the other day, it's even shorter than it seems at first from looking at it online.
In the event, the courts have consistently ruled that Constitutional protections are not completely binding everywhere in the world, even protections included in the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment specifically does not apply outside U.S. borders, for example, even though it does apply to anyone in U.S. borders (not just U.S. citizens).
> And the Declaration of Independence (which is not legally binding the way the Constitution is, but should give an idea of the mindset of the time) states all men are created equal.
I don't think this really helps your argument. The mindset of the time were the Negroes were not even men, for example, and they certainly had no 'right' to privacy according to those who issued the Declaration.
So I'm sympathetic to the point. I think we need to change something to bring our law in accordance with norms we'd expect for the Internet. But just pointing to the 'Charters of Freedom' will not help your argument (others have tried and failed), and they don't mean today what you think they mean.
If the Constitution said: "people in France owe us taxes" would that be valid and binding? Of course not. American law cannot impose obligations on the French, and reciprocally, American law cannot give rights to the French. The Constitution is law, and American law extends to American soil and American citizens abroad. That's the nature of law.
> And the Declaration of Independence (which is not legally binding the way the Constitution is, but should give an idea of the mindset of the time) states all men are created equal.
To get a full idea of the "mindset of the time" the Declaration of Independence used flowery language like "all men are created equal" but the Constitution enshrined slavery into law for another generation and set up a system of government where only white, landowning males could vote. If the founders didn't think that blacks or women born on U.S. soil had rights under the Constitution, why on earth would you assume they thought anyone not born on U.S. soil would have rights?
Yes, the US does not have jurisprudence over French law, but if the French were to become a violent, repressive dictatorship, we've stated our moral obligations, which are aligned with aiding the French people.
Yes, because the text would be a grant of power to the US federal government to try and collect taxes from the people of France. Such text says absolutely nothing about the rights or obligations of the people of France.
Likewise the Constitution does not "give rights" to people, except insofar as it prohibits/mandates actions of the Federal and/or State governments.
Article 12 states that:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Article 23: unions; Article 24: leisure and paid holidays; Article 25: food, clothing, housing, medical care, unemployment benefits, sickness and disability benefits, old age benefits; Article 26: free education.
None of these things are recognized as "rights" in the U.S. The U.S. has assiduously avoided being bound by international tribunals, and thus nothing in the UNDHR can be enforced as a right against the U.S., and nothing that can't be enforced merits the name "right."
The UNDHR was an aspirational document that was conceived at a time before it was realized how awful an idea it was to enter into an international union with all of the nations of the world, and before Americans fully appreciated how unwilling they were to cede any sovereignty to an international body.
Because there's nothing inherently special about the humans born inside of the imaginary lines that comprise the US borders that entitles them to privacy denied to others.
In short, none of us are free until all of us are equal.
Also, in the off chance you don't give a shit about basic human dignity for those filthy foreigners: it's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting disadvantage against internet companies in countries which don't force private organizations to silently spy for their national militaries by default.
The fact that the borders of nations are arbitrary and drawn by humans makes them no less real or important - it definitely doesn't make them imaginary. To say otherwise is incredibly naive, as well as deeply ignorant of history and the political realities in the world.
> Also, in the off chance you don't give a shit about basic human dignity for those filthy foreigners
Do you really need to include this kind of bullshit in your response?
It's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting disadvantage against internet companies in countries which don't force private organizations to silently spy for their national militaries by default.
Feel free to retort, once again.
Personally, the "we only spy on non-Americans!" bit bothers me because my wife is permanent resident, not a US citizen. Should I be concerned about the distinction? What privacy is she afforded? Should I be concerned that my communication with a non-citizen makes me 'fair game' as well?
I think this line is just to appease the American public. It's been made clear the lines of right-and-wrong, legal-and-illegal are blurry.
Sure, assuming that the US is the only country that would be involved in such activity.
> Personally, the "we only spy on non-Americans!" bit bothers me because my wife is permanent resident, not a US citizen. Should I be concerned about the distinction? What privacy is she afforded?
She's treated the same as a US citizen would be. The law covers US persons, which include green card holders.
I'm not saying the whole NSA/PRISM story isn't concerning. Just that the idea of limiting the NSA's(and, presumably, other agencies) surveillance on foreign individuals who are specifically under investigation (whatever that means, the OP wasn't specific) is a non sequitur idea that finds no meaningful support in our constitution.
You think we are all equal, but Americans are just more equal than others?
Dividing people is counter productive and antiquated. We are all unified as citizens of Earth and denizens of the internet.
That's something we would all probably like, but that's not actually true to this point. Today we can't even keep $FOOs from killing $BARs (or other $FOOs) when they're in the same national boundary, so why would you pretend the world is something other than what it actually is?
FWIW I think the U.S. needs to normalize how it conducts surveillance with other nations and political entities, but I don't think that should apply to everyone. Instead it should be dependent on bilateral treaty (we won't spy or do this list of things to you, without arranging with your Foreign Ministry, and you won't do those things to us without arranging with our Dept. of State).
During the Bush years, I recall reading that the US had (secret) bilateral agreements with the UK, wherein the Brits would spy on the Americans for the US govt and the US would spy on the Britons for the UK govt. This was supposedly a way of working around legislation governing domestic surveillance.
I've no idea if this is actually true or not, but perhaps bilateral agreements aren't necessarily better.
No, they're not. People in China will not fight and die to defend your freedom, but people in Nebraska will.
There is a real world outside the internet, and in that real world countries and national boundaries are tremendously important.
First, the context of the parent's comment about countries being arbitrary divisions was clearly with regard to human rights.
Secondly, your argument is completely circular. That people in Nebraska will defend your freedom does not make national divisions any less arbitrary. It simply means that those who would do so have bought into the arbitrary divisions. So, you are effectively saying that if we can get people to believe in those arbitrary divisions, then they are not arbitrary.
Also, as Obama has stated (intensely dislike many of his policies, but on this occasion he's right), it's a given that espionage is conducted in order to discover political/military secrets, but that's completely different from conducting industrial espionage against commercial organizations, or individual espionage against private citizens. I know that he personally is a hypocrite for saying this while PRISM exists, but that doesn't mean that the statement itself was wrong.
This is largely orthogonal to the issue of whether or not the NSA ought to be barred from spying on foreign individuals unless that person is specifically under suspicion of some sort.
US internet companies need the freedom to do business with overseas clients without those clients assuming their communication will be spied on. If you start spying on foreigners using American services you hurt the providers of those services, you hurt their ability to get customers.
That is the economic side of things. Then there is the other aspect that it is going to ruin relationship with allied countries. We have had to put up with a lot of shit from the US, and this feels like the final straw.
Whatever we allow them to do to non-U.S. citizens can and will likely be turned against U.S. citizens. Their simple argument is that the terrorists walk among us, and are thus indistinguishable from American citizens. So, they must now cast a wider net that includes Americans.
We have already seen them use this rationale and, in fact, it is part of what got us here today.
It wouldn't take long before this devolved to backdoor deals with allies; we spy on Germany, Germany spies on us, and we each "accidentally" get to scoop up data on our own citizens. (Of course, this is already happening now; they just don't have to lean on it as heavily, since most of the countries in question are spying domestically with impunity.)
Yes, that's exactly what it means. This is how governments operate, all over the world, and it's been like this for centuries, if not longer.