US and UK struck secret deal to allow NSA to 'unmask' Britons' personal data
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I find it extremely weird that these agencies need to hide what they are doing. Why do it in secret if this is democracy? What is wrong with what they are doing if they are not harming people? Gathering intelligence is their job, we need it. Bogeys know that too. But still they need to do it in secret. Then there must be something wrong with not what they do, but what they do with it.
I think increasing public awareness and loosening the old media hegemony will change things. In time.
Wasn't there a time when people accepted the risk of random terrorism as being small, but worth it for our freedoms? I 'd prefer that over "trust me we're doing this for your (our?) own good".
At this point you can't trust the government.
The problem is that nobody really fought that fight, because to do so would have been a defense of drunk drivers, basically. Now DUI checkpoints are commonplace (though some areas are making progress), and things like Stop & Frisk are only problems for those affected.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." — HL Mencken
I think I'd like the DUI comparison to be expanded on a bit. How are they being used to invade one's privacy without grounds?
More simply, a police officer can't stop you for no reason. They must have a reasonable belief that you've done something illegal.
A DUI checkpoint violates that first tenet straight off the bat.
Moreover, a police cannot search you without probable cause, but requiring you to open your window while they shine a flashlight throughout your car, after already having stopped you for no reason, is going even further.
I won't bother touching upon situations where dogs are trained to 'alert' for illegal substances whether or not they exist (because I honestly don't know the frequency), but that also happens.
This happened in San Jose, California near Club Wet(now closed), officer was white.
(Ironic I'm saying this, given some of my other past comments)
If the cops could easily tell you were driving drunk, they'd pull you over and cuff you. They have no particular reason to suspect you're DUI if they have an armed checkpoint set up. There's the first problem, "no particular reason". That's not supposed to happen in America, that was what happened in Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia.
The second problem comes from what's probably the real reason, or at least an important subsidiary reason, for the "DUI" armed checkpoints. According to some "N-Pronged Test" or "Doctrine" that non-lawyers can't possibly understand, the inside of your car is "public". If a cop sees something fishy, he or she can just search your car. That's the second problem: "DUI" checkpoints rapidly become fishing expeditions for whatever minor illegalities the cops can find.
The penalty structure for any crime or administrative infraction (at least in the USA) is set pretty high. This may have made sense when cops were few and far between. The USA had to make penalties pretty severe so that folks would stop at stop signs even when a cop wasn't there to watch. You didn't get caught very often, even if you did whatever crime. A fairly harsh punishment made sense in sparse cop circumstances.
But once you universally enforce some "sparse cop/harsh penalty" punishment regime, you've gone way off the ranch, and you're probably just doing it to increase revenue, either through fines, or through privatized prisons that need their bunks overfilled.
Following Russel Brand's interview about why there's no point in voting:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/russell...
... all parts of the establishment rallied around, saying how people had fought for years for the right, and how important it was in a democracy:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ignore-russell...
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/05/opinion/liu-not-voting-for...
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/russell-brand-robert-web...
... but really, what's the point? I know there are big differences between the parties, and that voting will make a difference. But so many of the places where their policies are identical are the ones I care about.
I wish this post wasn't coming from a place of deep frustration, but the only way I can imagine this working is as described by Daniel Ellsberg, where learning top secret knowledge changes people:
"... it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?' And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I've seen this with my superiors, my colleagues....and with myself.
"You will deal with a person who doesn't have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You'll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours."
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-...
But if politicians always believe they know better on this subject, what does that say about democracy? And how does this line up with the same people happily admitting they don't understand modern technology?
"Alternatives" to democracy aside, you should vote every time, even if it's for a throwaway candidate that you believe in but think will never get in.
The main problem I see is that the winning party uses voting numbers to claim a mandate.I'm currently reaching the conclusion that the only way to get meaningful change is for enough people to avoid voting that any idea of mandate becomes ludicrous and the disillusion has to be addressed directly.
Elections are a platform for national debate and the candidate you support is your spokesperson. The winners do claim a mandate, but that mandate won't be so strong if 25% of the population votes for the candidate who runs on an anti-surveillance platform.
If your "throwaway" candidate is a good speaker and can convey their ideals effectively, supporting them is an opportunity to spread your message to people who haven't heard it in a way that they will connect with (if they've heard at all). Voting is good, but supporting the campaign financially or through volunteer work is even better. It also demonstrates to those who share your point of view that, although they may be in the minority, they aren't alone. I try not to focus on who wins the next election, instead focusing on the long term goal of sharing ideals thereby shifting public opinion.
It's most frustrating when there isn't even a decent third party candidate. I suppose at that point all you can do is run yourself or find someone more qualified and encourage them to run.
In other words, you go thru the motions at the polling place, then some official announces some numbers as the result. What assurance do you have that the numbers announced have any definite relation to what people did in the voting booths?
If you can't show, or the government officials can't prove that deterministic relation to the public, then the talk about how voting affects political outcomes is fallacious. The last vestige of democracy was abolished when computers replaced paper ballots in an electorally significant fraction of districts.
I believe we're at or approaching the point where governments and politicians merely pay us lip service. This is certainly the case in surveillance.
It would be much more efficient, for them, to not have to bother with elections.
If enough people stop voting, it would be tempting for them to try to get rid of voting.
Would you rather live in your country that has voting, however badly it's degenerated, or your country without voting, governed by people who have eliminated voting because they could?
At least make them jump through this one last hoop. Maintain the vote, and it could be better one day. Without the vote, I think it would be the end.
I might vote, but tend to spoil the paper when I can't find a palatable candidate. I also live in an area that has had an unbroken chain of conservative MPs for the last 400 years, and will probably continue to have one for a very, very long time.
If the issue is important enough to enough people, why aren't any of them becoming candidates?
A party that is empowered by the development of new tools and technologies to enhance and support broad participation and effective decision making. A party that is not encumbered by the past: A party that self-consciously makes a break from historical partisan divides, and uses it's unique position to bridge left and right, and to take the best ideas, where-soever they might originate.
A party that believes that the electorate is far from stupid, and that attention to fundamentals and excellence in policy will, given time, shine through. A party that pays attention to details, and that cares about policy execution as much as short-term media coverage. A party that can effectively fight the inefficiency, corruption, cronyism and restrictive practices that plague big government and big business in equal measure. A party that can more than restore the freedom that our people and our markets have lost; but enhance it.
Freedom. Fairness. Effectiveness.
Achieved through: Transparency. Simplicity. Broad participation.
Supported by: Policy-agnostic decision-support processes & technologies.
I'll admit that this frustrating bit of ballot rigging does make it harder to vote for the throwaway candidate, but you should still vote for the one closest to your beliefs even if they're not a great match for the reasons summarised by emess in this thread.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/electin...
There might be some seats with very low turnouts where a decent campaign by someone wearing a monkey costume could persuade apathetic voters to turn out to vote, getting 5% of the vote and possibly winning.
The traditional protest vote is for the Monster Raving Loony Party. (Loony here is "lunatic", not the bird.) While seen as a nonsense party some of their policies have found their way into UK law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...
Sure, there'll probably be some elections in which the deposit is lost. If the approach to government is even a little bit important to more than a tiny handful of people, it doesn't seem like that should be a significant barrier.
I mean, really, I can't believe that the risk of a couple weeks wages for a single person per constituency is a substantial barrier to finding candidates who hold a view that is held as important for even a modestly substantial part of the electorate.
Historically, people who hold political views strongly have been willing to risk a lot more than that for them.
At least in my country, several representatives are elected by region, so small parties can get representatives - I voted for the smallest represented party in my country, and I was even on the ballot myself :) and my representative got in - he can't do much though, but at least he makes his voice heard.
I wonder if a smart hacker can get himself elected - maybe Alexis Ohanian in the U.S. would care to run? (no idea about his political views though)
Care to come up with an argument instead of saying you should ?
I'm sure that's true. Indeed, in all but the most completely insane dictatorships, politicians carefully consider the behavior of the public.
I would just like to point out that there is quite a gulf between "Politicians do look at how people vote" and "government by the people and for the people". Votes having some effect doesn't make a nation a democracy.
Further, the idea that civic duty can be evoked on the principle that you should vote because it might make a difference is rather dubious. The idealistic energy of the young isn't likely to be mobilized with the slogan, "who know, you might have some effect". On that same principle, I pray to the Fly Spaghetti Monster each night to deliver us from corporate corruption. That too might make a difference.
poc: capitalistic systems like the u.s. and many other countries thrive on the labor, execution, detainment, exploitation for profits and even processing of minorities into their institutions and even depend on racial inequalities to keep the status quo, the two are undeniably linked. we are so essential to that system's well being that they're still trying to keep us out of voting decades after martin luther king and malcolm x. to remove a strong leg on this oppressive system would obviously mean raising awareness, action and spreading information about such an oppressive system so that we can do something about it like destroy it and replace it for something more humane and less centered around white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, racism, sexism, neocolonialism and whiteness.
white media:
russell brand: idk things are really fucked, the environment, politics, voting, y'know? something fishy is going on around here and we gotto get to the bottom of it..
white media: OMFGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG REVOLTION HAS BEGUN LATS NIGHT
I'm not even sure of that. How different was life and policy under Major or Blair?
What matters most—and what it has been the goal of the Presidents, the Chancellors, the Premieres, and the Senators not to say—is how deeply the whole of the human race has been ensnared in this process of pervasive surveillance that destroys freedom.
The fastening of the procedures of totalitarianism on the human race is the political subject about which Mr. Snowden has summoned us to an urgent inquiry. And it is that inquiry which it has been the goal of pretty much every body responding on behalf of any Government or State not just to ignore but to obscure.
We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.
This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.
Like with commercials, people are fooled into the electoral system and how their votes make a difference. Look at the US 2008 election. "Yes, we can" and all that. What did change fundamentally?
A problem (or, perhaps, an opportunity) with Russel Brand's message is that the only way to make voting count is to start a revolution. Today's intermingled system of politics and big money will not subside on its own.