In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
There has to be some desperate business owners thinking to themselves... "Damn it, I wonder if it's too late for me to try that...?"
Kinda craps on the argument that the market would put these types of businesses underwater though. I think we'd be more likely to get distinct chains that catered toward bigots.
On April 08 2015 04:27 GreenHorizons wrote: These "golden ages" can only be such in the minds of white males. Any minority or woman can't look at either of those times and call it a "golden age".
It's ridiculous to claim pre 1920 a 'golden age' because millions of Americans couldn't even vote... These golden ages weren't just built on the things mentioned they were built on the systematic abuse/neglect of other Americans.
Even post WWII the prosperity was built at least in part by denying qualified black people jobs or paying them piss poor wages in order to enrich some other white man.
Pretending America was built off of honest hard work is one of the saddest lies we consistently reinforce. Sure there was honest hard work also, but America was only what it was because millions of people were systematically excluded from joining in enjoying the bounty of their hard work.
Nonsense.
The post WWII prosperity was built on the savage destruction of every other advanced industrial economy on the altar of industrialized war, and the fantastic profits we made on WWI.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
There has to be some desperate business owners thinking to themselves... "Damn it, I wonder if it's too late for me to try that...?"
Kinda craps on the argument that the market would put these types of businesses underwater though. I think we'd be more likely to get distinct chains that catered toward bigots.
They were only able to get this GoFundMe campaign because of the witch hunt against them. I don't agree with it, but that's the logic. Had it been a silent, vote-with-your-wallet kind of thing, the free market would've been able to crush them. Instead they ended up being martyrs because of the public outcry.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
Publicize this if you think it's abhorrent, folks. That's how the marketplace of ideas in a society that values freedom of expression works.
It's funny how quickly the "free" market sucks when its collectively decided that your decision to outwardly publicize a disinterest in serving gay weddings pizza is ignorant as fuck.
On April 08 2015 04:27 GreenHorizons wrote: These "golden ages" can only be such in the minds of white males. Any minority or woman can't look at either of those times and call it a "golden age".
It's ridiculous to claim pre 1920 a 'golden age' because millions of Americans couldn't even vote... These golden ages weren't just built on the things mentioned they were built on the systematic abuse/neglect of other Americans.
Even post WWII the prosperity was built at least in part by denying qualified black people jobs or paying them piss poor wages in order to enrich some other white man.
Pretending America was built off of honest hard work is one of the saddest lies we consistently reinforce. Sure there was honest hard work also, but America was only what it was because millions of people were systematically excluded from joining in enjoying the bounty of their hard work.
Nonsense.
The post WWII prosperity was built on the savage destruction of every other advanced industrial economy on the altar of industrialized war, and the fantastic profits we made on WWI.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
Ok, well the position the US was in was due at least in part to the systematic abuse of some of it's citizens. Men volunteering to fight for a country that when they got back to it they wouldn't be able to sit at the front of a bus, vote, or even eat at certain lunch counters. The heroism and the sacrifices those men made can't be overstated. The weight they bore can not be dismissed in the notion of a golden age.
Neither time comes close to a 'golden age' for black Americans. So anyone saying either time was a 'golden age' is dismissing the burdens bore by Black and many other Americans (the Japanese Americans come to mind). They were only golden ages in the minds of people (or their progeny) who benefit/ed from the perverse abuse.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
On April 08 2015 00:50 Acrofales wrote: I agree with John Oliver:
Why is this not being talked about? You should not want the government to collect your dick pics! Make some noise!
Who the fuck cares; seriously, there's so much shit and dick pics being produced at any one minute, do you think they'd hire some poor NSA sod to go through them all? Instagram would scar him for life. Let alone grindr...
In all seriousness, I remain pretty unconvinced. When the volume of data is so massive, the NSA only bothers checking emails/pictures/tweets/whatever that trigger key phrases that lead them to believe there may be recruitment by ISIL etc;, and they sure as hell don't have time to listen in on every phone conversation unless they have suspicion to.
Then you there are private companies that consistently log your data and your internet footprint like Google: it's not quite the same, certainly, since the data is aggregated for the most part (though if you've peaked at analytics you can get quite alot of detail in terms of connection), but overall, it's not necessarily invasive.
I continue to find this a non-issue in my life unless you're planning to join ISIL or someshit.
Also: YAY, Rand Paul has joined. Now I can popcorn all the stupid-ass shit he'll say. Oh please oh please oh please, talk about the gold standard again like Ron. I need a laugh.
On April 08 2015 01:49 Millitron wrote:
On April 08 2015 01:45 puerk wrote:
On April 08 2015 01:29 Wolfstan wrote: Rand Paul throwing his hat in officially now. Best candidate IMO.
That is unless they can find another economic conservative and social liberal.
he is not economic conservative in any real sense of those words... he is a revisionist wanting to bring back the golden (in his mind) age of america from 1880 to 1913
That kinda was the golden age though. We were more prosperous than ever before, and trust busting was in full swing.
Haha...wait, you're serious.
American prosperity was borne upon the backs of endless arms shipments to the Entente in 1918 and the massive amounts of money we made, plus Europe committing collective economic suicide twice in a row.
He said 1880 to 1913. WW1 was years off.
I know: he was being dismissive when he referred to 1880-1913 as the golden age.
So why'd you bring up the world wars? They're pretty irrelevant.
And I don't know how you can say 1880-1913 wasn't a golden age. The rail system expanded to cover the whole country. The nation became electrified. The nation switched from coal and wood fuel to oil. The automotive industry began. The Panama Canal was built. And we found a happy balance between total free market and regulation. The FDA was founded. Trusts were busted.
you do not seem to have a clue about making a concise argument that amounts to more than handwaving. for that, you would need to structure your method of inquiry: especially in regards to the questions, how is a golden age determined, and relative to what because by cherrypicking accomplishments any time frame in the history of the world can be made a golden age, because humans have the paradoxical characteristic to do stuff all the time. The second half of the 15th century in europe revolutionized our understanding of the world fundamentally, the introduction and propagation of printing did more for human civilisation than railroads in the US, and still there was inquisitions, the black plague and serfs toiled under feudal lords everywhere.
Your choice of hand picked technological improvements fitting your narrative is in no way selfexplanatory or canon in the economic field. Ignoring civil and social improvements to the aspect of economic interaction or the lack thereof shows your narrow understanding.
Edit:
The true golden age, in comparative terms, is really the immediate post-WWII years.
exactly as i said earlier.
Ok, name some bad things that weren't actively improved in the 1880's - 1913. Labor unions started and made progress fighting for workers rights. Medical technology improved greatly, with the rise of both Germ Theory and anesthetics.
There can be more than one golden age. And if you think one or two bad things ruin a possible golden age, the immediate post-WW2 years absolutely do not fit the bill as a golden age. Racism was just as bad as ever. The Soviets threatened the American domination you insist existed, going so far as stealing the plans for the atomic bomb in 1947.
The unions may have began then, but how successful were they? I don't remember labour history for the US, but in Canada, we were still rounding up union organizers as commy's and sending in the mounted police to crack heads and break up strikes even after world war one.
Why is this not being talked about? You should not want the government to collect your dick pics! Make some noise!
Who the fuck cares; seriously, there's so much shit and dick pics being produced at any one minute, do you think they'd hire some poor NSA sod to go through them all? Instagram would scar him for life. Let alone grindr...
In all seriousness, I remain pretty unconvinced. When the volume of data is so massive, the NSA only bothers checking emails/pictures/tweets/whatever that trigger key phrases that lead them to believe there may be recruitment by ISIL etc;, and they sure as hell don't have time to listen in on every phone conversation unless they have suspicion to.
Then you there are private companies that consistently log your data and your internet footprint like Google: it's not quite the same, certainly, since the data is aggregated for the most part (though if you've peaked at analytics you can get quite alot of detail in terms of connection), but overall, it's not necessarily invasive.
I continue to find this a non-issue in my life unless you're planning to join ISIL or someshit.
Also: YAY, Rand Paul has joined. Now I can popcorn all the stupid-ass shit he'll say. Oh please oh please oh please, talk about the gold standard again like Ron. I need a laugh.
On April 08 2015 01:49 Millitron wrote:
On April 08 2015 01:45 puerk wrote:
On April 08 2015 01:29 Wolfstan wrote: Rand Paul throwing his hat in officially now. Best candidate IMO.
That is unless they can find another economic conservative and social liberal.
he is not economic conservative in any real sense of those words... he is a revisionist wanting to bring back the golden (in his mind) age of america from 1880 to 1913
That kinda was the golden age though. We were more prosperous than ever before, and trust busting was in full swing.
Haha...wait, you're serious.
American prosperity was borne upon the backs of endless arms shipments to the Entente in 1918 and the massive amounts of money we made, plus Europe committing collective economic suicide twice in a row.
He said 1880 to 1913. WW1 was years off.
I know: he was being dismissive when he referred to 1880-1913 as the golden age.
So why'd you bring up the world wars? They're pretty irrelevant.
And I don't know how you can say 1880-1913 wasn't a golden age. The rail system expanded to cover the whole country. The nation became electrified. The nation switched from coal and wood fuel to oil. The automotive industry began. The Panama Canal was built. And we found a happy balance between total free market and regulation. The FDA was founded. Trusts were busted.
you do not seem to have a clue about making a concise argument that amounts to more than handwaving. for that, you would need to structure your method of inquiry: especially in regards to the questions, how is a golden age determined, and relative to what because by cherrypicking accomplishments any time frame in the history of the world can be made a golden age, because humans have the paradoxical characteristic to do stuff all the time. The second half of the 15th century in europe revolutionized our understanding of the world fundamentally, the introduction and propagation of printing did more for human civilisation than railroads in the US, and still there was inquisitions, the black plague and serfs toiled under feudal lords everywhere.
Your choice of hand picked technological improvements fitting your narrative is in no way selfexplanatory or canon in the economic field. Ignoring civil and social improvements to the aspect of economic interaction or the lack thereof shows your narrow understanding.
Edit:
The true golden age, in comparative terms, is really the immediate post-WWII years.
exactly as i said earlier.
Ok, name some bad things that weren't actively improved in the 1880's - 1913. Labor unions started and made progress fighting for workers rights. Medical technology improved greatly, with the rise of both Germ Theory and anesthetics.
There can be more than one golden age. And if you think one or two bad things ruin a possible golden age, the immediate post-WW2 years absolutely do not fit the bill as a golden age. Racism was just as bad as ever. The Soviets threatened the American domination you insist existed, going so far as stealing the plans for the atomic bomb in 1947.
The unions may have began then, but how successful were they? I don't remember labour history for the US, but in Canada, we were still rounding up union organizers as commy's and sending in the mounted police to crack heads and break up strikes even after world war one.
Pretty similar, really. We didn't have minimum wage until 1912. The famous and violent coal strikes took place during 1899 and 1902 and were resolved with intervention by Theodore Roosevelt and the department of labor. It was pretty shit and not great for anyone who wasn't rich in the era. It is a golden age if you are someone settling the taken land or already rich. If you are anyone else, it sort of sucked just as much as every other era in history.
as ive discussed before, the physical analogy most people have about government _Access_ is entry. significance of private data is the same sort of complete immunity as private domain of a house etc. this sort of reaction isnt workable and it is also inaccurate.
in the process of nsa activities about personal data, there are distinct activities of collection and access, together with the development of the possibility of doing each. they are distinct activities and the intuitive translation of all of them into a story of peeping in your shower is inaccurate.
my improved intuitive analogies in the case of personal data
possibility of collection : data :: knowledge of existence and address/map location : house collection : data :: effective jursdiction over/physical existence of : house
collection and possibility of collection of data is a unique difficulty for the digital, because digital data is information, and collection is in service of a capability to know this information. establishing possibility of collection, such as anti-dark net and encryption, is to surmount the challenge of knowing where to even look. a physical house need only be on the map, thus known to authorities. if your house or physical dominion is in some sort of space station or wormhole space unknown to existing science, we may have a similar problem. collection without examination of the content of collected data is strictly speaking analogous to a realistic 3d replication of your house, but more to the point it is in the service of having something to look at when the need so arise. in te physical world, we ask if the police has a warrant, not if the police has your house. the physical existence of the house together with jurisdiction makes possible a warranted inspection. the nature of data and practicality makes collection equivalent to replicating the certainty of a house's physical existence.
now, the digital situation of collection is more broad than merely the house existing, because latter is unique and can be altered. digital information copied at a particular time is preserved, like indestructible evidence. this is a distinct problem and maybe you could argue that govt should not have these copies of our houses lying around, but thats a different argument from talking about warrantless entering of the house. collection is in general in the service of surmounting the epistemic challenge rather unique to the digital realm, and its intent is to make potential inspections possible, quite like knowing where your house is is a hidden requirement to the process of a warranted entry to it.
collection should still be balanced against damage of leaks, but that would involve an additional crime of abrogating rules of access. notably snowden committed this sort of crime, however heroically.
possibility of access/inspection : having a means of entering (without knowledge): house access/inspection : entering and inspecting house
possibility of access is more or less already discussed above. in case of there being a copy or collection, this means simply maintaining the storage arrays. but in the case of data stored elsewhere, the possibility of access means developing a unilateral capability of access without personal authorization of data owner, like anti-encryption or obtaining authorization from third party. (this is a discussion of modal possibility rather than legality/authority)
anti encryption notably skips the data server's control, but this is not the same as actually accessing. the physical equivalent is having the master key without knowledge of owner. (we will treat your data on google as simply your data rather than discussing third party storage) To be sure, this sort of power to access is in need of legal restriction.
however, it is notable that the bad or dangerous part of a master key is loss of control of access. while anti-encryption or having a copy actually accomplishes two separate condititions. only one of these is loss of control, the other is possibility of access. in the analogy of anti encryption/mass storage as having the master key, it can be broken down to two components. one is having the key, the other is the house being accessible with some key(or some other means). this latter condition, that of strict possibility of access, is pretty defensible, because having possibility of access is required for effective jurisdiction. govt power, when justified etc through the legal process, is similarly pervasive in enforcement of the law. the analogy of the master key seems out of the ordinary before we consider the question of, is there a physical place within its jurisdiction that the govt is actually incapable of busting into with force? seems like rare instances. but point here is, _possibility_ of access in the physical world is ordinarily a part of the sovereign's lawmaking powers. whether you think the govt has too much power, it is important to keep perspective so that the perception of danger is accurate.
anti-encryption is also not the only solution. not having the possibility of encryption is the most direct analogy. i think encryption should be allowed, but this represents a real loss of the govt's sovereign power in comparison to physical situation.
if your house is in wormhole space usa, and the govt cant get in even with a warrant, then that would be a case where possibility of access is at issue. the discussion of govt copying of data(prior to access) is i think impactful primarily psychologically, akin to making everyone aware of the fact that the police can always find out any info or thing at any particular slice of time. the physical world doesnt leave copies behind, and evidence is destructible. a digital database of every msg written offers the prospect of imperishable paper trails, and this should be restricted and maybe abandoned due to risk of leaks, but in light of the nsa, all of the aforementioned activities are mainly to establish _indexical_ capability, and only very general features are read to establish these indexical capabilities.
the remaining action of actual access is already well regulated and supervised in accordance to particular contexts such as security. although given possibility of leaks more protection of the database is needed, to prevent criminals like snowden.
I disagree. The analogy with a house is just utterly strange when what you should be comparing it to is regular mail and telephone calls. In order for the police to know you are making a telephone call they can:
1. Stalk you all day 2. Get a warrant for a wiretap
The analogy with internet usage is 1:1. In the former case they know that, and for how long you are making a phone call, but not what about. It is also a large investment of resources for a pretty meagre amount of knowledge gained. The same can be done for internet access: by stalking you all day they can know when you (in public, just as with the phone) access the internet, but not what you do there.
In the second situation they can not only know who you're phoning, but what you're talking about. Encryption on the internet is obviously going to fuck with that (as does coded language on the phone), but the point is that you need a warrant to be able to do this. Why not require a warrant for getting the same info about what you look at on the internet?
Now, finally, the point is that we are not dealing with regular cops, but with information services (spies). As such, they have always operated somewhat outside the law and given more leeway. I am fine with that. However, under the patriot act they are given far too much leeway with far too little oversight.
Collecting metadata is something we can probably not prevent, and honestly, I don't think we should want to. But that is just a high-tech and easier way for stalking someone (or even: everybody, and then using pattern recognition algorithms to find "suspicious behavior"). However, for content they should really need to justify why they need to search through the digital content of some person/organization. And the former pattern recognition trawling for "suspicious behavior" has faaaaaar too many false positives to be considered a justifiable reason without backing it up.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
There has to be some desperate business owners thinking to themselves... "Damn it, I wonder if it's too late for me to try that...?"
Kinda craps on the argument that the market would put these types of businesses underwater though. I think we'd be more likely to get distinct chains that catered toward bigots.
They were only able to get this GoFundMe campaign because of the witch hunt against them. I don't agree with it, but that's the logic. Had it been a silent, vote-with-your-wallet kind of thing, the free market would've been able to crush them. Instead they ended up being martyrs because of the public outcry.
Indiana's one of the Bible Belt states, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure there's more than enough people there who are anti-gay to keep small businesses afloat. The free market doesn't stop people from being bigoted, and it only changes things if it actually results in a loss of customer numbers.
The GoFundMe campaign supporting the bigoted owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has ended, raising the O’Connor family a grand total of $842,387.
The page was started Wednesday by a reporter at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.com after Crystal told a local reporter the restaurant supported the state’s religious freedom law and would turn away a gay customer who wanted them to cater a gay wedding.
Donations started pouring in from sympathizers across the country, who’ve successfully turned this family into near-millionaires in the name of prejudice Jesus.
There has to be some desperate business owners thinking to themselves... "Damn it, I wonder if it's too late for me to try that...?"
Kinda craps on the argument that the market would put these types of businesses underwater though. I think we'd be more likely to get distinct chains that catered toward bigots.
They were only able to get this GoFundMe campaign because of the witch hunt against them. I don't agree with it, but that's the logic. Had it been a silent, vote-with-your-wallet kind of thing, the free market would've been able to crush them. Instead they ended up being martyrs because of the public outcry.
I think boycotts like this are exactly how free market pressure works. Online death threats, not as much, but this seems to be not dissimilar to campaigns to name and shame all sorts of other companies for bad behavior.
possibility of collection : data :: knowledge of existence and address/map location : house collection : data :: effective jursdiction over/physical existence of : house
are inapt and inevitably fail. A house is on physical property situated within a community that is governed by law and may or may not contain physical evidence of a crime. Data in the digital age is tantamount to taking a peek inside someone else's mind. Yes, you may find "evidence," mostly circumstantial, in your peek, but you violate a sacrosanct boundary that is not implicated in the house example: the freedom of the mind. Without anonymity, secrecy, and autonomy there is no freedom of the mind, and regardless of your kowtowing arguments about how the NSA or any other governmental agency still requires (judicial) permission to view the contents of your mind, there has been, is, and will forever be overreach by those agencies, especially when peering into the minds of perceived "dissidents." Without freedom of the mind there is, and can be, no democracy or self determination. Knowing you, though, perhaps you don't think that an important consideration, since the technocratic bureaucracy and power elite that keeps the consumer economy engine humming needs access to everyone's mind in order to stamp out "terrorism." When you consider that the FBI's number one terrorist threat within the last decade was "ecoterrorists," not Islamists, and when you consider its sordid history in sabotaging those citizens who would fight for civil rights, I don't think I need argue much more vociferously that being able to peer into correspondence, reading history, and search history of anyone they please, since it's all been recorded for them, is tantamount to policing thought. The resemblance to a "property search" is superficial at best.
i compared it to a physical house because people's intuitive reaction is based on the feeling of transgression against a domain of control and privacy, which in the physical situation is like a room. the main idea of the analogies is to draw out the distinct problems posed by digital information that mess with people's privacy threat perception.
for the phone situation, you do need a warrant for personal wiretap, but personal wiretap is in the category of actual access. personal wiretaps are directed at particular persons, and the information is collected in individual pieces rather than as an indiscriminate mass.
private mail, when they exist, are like houses or safeboxes. they require warrant to open, but their actual existence together with tracking information to indicate that they do exist would secure the possibility of access, and we are not up in arms about the post office or whichever delivery service having record of sent and received mails.
your stalking scenario is way more expansive than simply developing collection. it involves personal surveillance. a narrower analogy in the 'knowing when you called' is simply having the telephone meta-data, perhaps as a part of the phone company's operational records.
the development of 'collection' in the case of telephone calls required quite a bit of tapping when technology was not as digitized, and given the difficulty of disentangling invasion of personal physical space in wiretapping, copying every call by wiretap simply wasn't done.
the entire reason 'collection' was even a consideration is because of the more detached nature of digital data. a phone number is tied to a physical device. before mobile phones, it is practically also a physical address. there simply wasn't as much difficulty presented by the phone in terms of locating some suspect when a crime is detected. in the world of stable land lines and identifiable cell numbers, the mere possibility of wiretap would be sufficient for 'knowledge'. when identifcation of physical persons with phone numbers became more difficult, there was corresponding effort to increase control and surveillance of phone networks. but yes, a recording database of every call ever made would be a significant expansion of the reach of government, and for good or for ill, represent a loss of the private sphere. but this is only relative to a world in which phone calls are made and then lost to the ethers, a situation that represents a loss of government reach due to technology.
however, a crucial distinction with the case of digital collection is that this hypothetical mass recording data base creates new records where records did not exist. collection of meta-data and existing databases preserve government access to existing data already collected, and the loss of 'stealth' is already done at the level of your private device and internet servers.
in any case, yes, existence of an actual database of records may be an unfortunate collateral to preserving possibility of access, but it is still different from actually opening mails and entering houses.
You know that they already have millions of phone calls recorded right? And there is no reason not to think that eventually they will be recording every phone call in the US too?
possibility of collection : data :: knowledge of existence and address/map location : house collection : data :: effective jurisdiction over/physical existence of : house
are inapt and inevitably fail. A house is on physical property situated within a community that is governed by law and may or may not contain physical evidence of a crime. Data in the digital age is tantamount to taking a peek inside someone else's mind. Yes, you may find "evidence," mostly circumstantial, in your peek, but you violate a sacrosanct boundary that is not implicated in the house example: the freedom of the mind. Without anonymity, secrecy, and autonomy there is no freedom of the mind, and regardless of your kowtowing arguments about how the NSA or any other governmental agency still requires (judicial) permission to view the contents of your mind, there has been, is, and will forever be overreach by those agencies, especially when peering into the minds of perceived "dissidents." Without freedom of the mind there is, and can be, no democracy or self determination. Knowing you, though, perhaps you don't think that an important consideration, since the technocratic bureaucracy and power elite that keeps the consumer economy engine humming needs access to everyone's mind in order to stamp out "terrorism." When you consider that the FBI's number one terrorist threat within the last decade was "ecoterrorists," not Islamists, and when you consider its sordid history in sabotaging those citizens who would fight for civil rights, I don't think I need argue much more vociferously that being able to peer into correspondence, reading history, and search history of anyone they please, since it's all been recorded for them, is tantamount to policing thought. The resemblance to a "property search" is superficial at best.
bolded is a distinct problem in itself. if technology progresses to the point where mind access is possible, then whether that technology should be allowed/be used by govt would be a discussion. there is also the further problem that mere thought is not some sort of crime, whereas activities conducted in digital form could either in themselves produce harm, or be part of real world crimes etc.
now, both of these conditions do still apply to 'thoughts,' more so the latter. thoughts could be causes for bad, criminal actions, but why we do not prosecute them has more to do with how the law and government cares more about action and their results. so the distinction between action and thought is pretty much primitive to our ideas about government, and in the case of data, what is regulated is still actions and their consequences.
if in some future brains can communicate directly to each other in entirely digitized data streams, then this could be an interesting question, whether 'thought crime' should be left alone. but in that case distinct activities would have arose, in the form of communicative acts between minds, and maybe stuff like sending mental bombs to mess with other people or arranging criminal actions through mental networks becomes a thing, so that people would start to develop mind regulation instruments. in that case, and as well as in the present case, the technology that brings us closer together also enables more bad things to be done, and thus give rise to potentially more expansive reach of govt. i'm not sure there is a good solution for this sort of expansion of govt reach, and maybe this is one of the downsides of potential brain reading technology.
anyway, the basic point of the analogies is to show that while physical locations establish possibility of inspection by their existence (and relatively simple task of mapping), digital records need to be collected, or submitted to some sort of map-like metadata structure, to preserve this possibility of access. this possibility limits, as a matter of hard possibility, the reach of law enforcement.
On April 08 2015 07:44 IgnE wrote: You know that they already have millions of phone calls recorded right? And there is no reason not to think that eventually they will be recording every phone call in the US too?
i bolded the part of that post talking about this. in the case of present recordings, they all require at least some reason, but in bulk form. this potential catch-all recording would create something new and not merely be access to existing data, so yea it would require additional justification.
I am not sure you know what you're talking about when you refer to this "hypothetical mass recording data base". The data exists. And if Snowden has shown us anything, it's that the government has access to this data whenever it so pleases. That is scary. When I blithely click on a ToU popup from Google, I am agreeing to them pushing me the odd advertisement, not to giving permission for the US government to peer over my shoulder.
And when I brought up warrants for wiretaps I was not referring to the stone age (aka the 80s): modern day wiretaps consist of a phonecall to AT&T and filing the necessary paperwork... as long as a judge signed off on it.
The problem is that a judge does not even have to sign off for the NSA to collect similar information about anybody from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. They apparently have completely free reign to request whatever data they want whenever they want, with very very very minimal oversight. This oversight needs to be overhauled. The FISA court is simply not set up to deal with this. Firstly, it was meant to deal with oversight of Foreign Intelligence in the 1980s, not internal and foreign oversight in the internet era. Secondly, it was set up to be way too secretive. While secrecy is important, it is clear that some type of accountability is necessary: bounds have already been overstepped, and it is not getting any better.
EPT
