Privacy vs. safety

[popsjumper 2]

ryoder

A quote I saw on another forum, with which I fully agree:

"If this is what the gov't must do to keep me safe from the terrorists, then no thanks, I'll take my chances with the terrorists."

+1
Fear of the assholes got to where we are today.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[lawrocket 3]

So in other words, we had a right to privacy that, thanks to the GOP in 2001, took away. Now we have a Congress and POTUS that ran with it.

"Rights" and "Security" can't be reconciled. The People are seeing that is ain't just the terrorists.

Omniscience, security, surveillance and benevolence.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jcd11235 0]

lawrocket

"Rights" and "Security" can't be reconciled.

I disagree. It may not be easy, but it isn't impossible. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Either one, without the other, would be pretty useless, anyway.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[lawrocket 3]

jcd11235

Either one, without the other, would be pretty useless, anyway.

North Korea has security and dismal - if any - civil rights. Check out how secure Iraq was when Hussein ran the place. Not much to worry about - except for the government.

Security is most effectively managed by stamping out individual liberties. A free people are obviously a dangerous people. The Bill of Rights was predicated on the belief that the indivudal right to be secure trumped the government's desire for security.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jcd11235 0]

lawrocket

North Korea has security and dismal - if any - civil rights. Check out how secure Iraq was when Hussein ran the place. Not much to worry about - except for the government.

And yet, here in the US, we have quite a lot of both, even though neither is absolute, which is pretty much how the Framers intended.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[kallend 2,148]

lawrocket

So in other words, we had a right to privacy that, thanks to the GOP in 2001, took away. Now we have a Congress and POTUS that ran with it.

"Rights" and "Security" can't be reconciled. The People are seeing that is ain't just the terrorists.

Omniscience, security, surveillance and benevolence.

Nothing will happen while lawmakers see poll results like THIS .

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

jcd11235

***North Korea has security and dismal - if any - civil rights. Check out how secure Iraq was when Hussein ran the place. Not much to worry about - except for the government.

And yet, here in the US, we have quite a lot of both, even though neither is absolute, which is pretty much how the Framers intended.

Yes. It isn't North Korea. Or Cuba. Etc. But - the more secure, the fewer the rights. Which way are we headed? I don't like where we are going (yes, just my opinion) and I see us going much further.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jcd11235 0]

lawrocket

******North Korea has security and dismal - if any - civil rights. Check out how secure Iraq was when Hussein ran the place. Not much to worry about - except for the government.

And yet, here in the US, we have quite a lot of both, even though neither is absolute, which is pretty much how the Framers intended.

Yes. It isn't North Korea. Or Cuba. Etc. But - the more secure, the fewer the rights. Which way are we headed? I don't like where we are going (yes, just my opinion) and I see us going much further.

The sum of the two need not be constant. In other words, both can be increased, or both can be decreased simultaneously. In the case of the US, both are increasing.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Quote

"If this is what the gov't must do to keep me safe from the terrorists, then no thanks, I'll take my chances with the terrorists."

The problem is that people are makign assumptions and pretty wild allegations about what this actually is.

[turtlespeed 226]

SkyDekker

Quote

"If this is what the gov't must do to keep me safe from the terrorists, then no thanks, I'll take my chances with the terrorists."

The problem is that people are makign assumptions and pretty wild allegations about what this actually is.

That depends on what the definition of is is.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[champu 1]

jcd11235

***...the more secure, the fewer the rights. Which way are we headed? I don't like where we are going (yes, just my opinion) and I see us going much further.

The sum of the two need not be constant. In other words, both can be increased, or both can be decreased simultaneously. In the case of the US, both are increasing.

I think you're talking past one another.

In the context of this discussion, safety/security means preventing "bad" things from happening and privacy/freedom means leaving people who aren't doing "bad" things alone within that domain that is trying to be secured. You can, as you point out, increase both safety/security and privacy/freedom within a domain at the same time if you identfy an existing invasive and ineffective practice and replace it with a less invasive and more effective practice. That is to say, the process of trading privacy for safety is not adiabatic.

And, of course, across domains it's easy to have privacy vs. safety going in different directions. Note how states across the country are simultaneously instituting bans on assault weapons and decriminalizing marajuana. There are plenty of people who see this as win-win and plenty who see it as lose-lose.

However, provided that the methods you institute are at least somewhat effective in a given domain, then lawrocket has a point... the bigger the tuna net you cast the more dolphins that are going to get trapped in it.

Preventing spactacular terrorist attacks, for example, means finding out about it ahead of time. This could be a very short amount of time before it takes place (x-raying luggage and millimeter wave scanners at airports to try and find devices), it could be well ahead of when it takes place (analyzing call patterns or digging further into the content itself to identify a plan), or it could be ahead of when it might have even occured at all (trolling extremist forums and running a sting operation with a fake bomb.) You can pretty easily see the pivacy vs safety trade off as the government does more or less in each of these phases.

[kelpdiver 2]

kallend

Nothing will happen while lawmakers see poll results like THIS .

this was the telling paragraph to me:
"Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government’s main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006, when the NSA activity under the George W. Bush administration was first reported. Compared with that time, Republicans’ focus on privacy has increased 22 points."

Country is full of fucking idiots.

[kallend 2,148]

kelpdiver

***
Nothing will happen while lawmakers see poll results like THIS .

this was the telling paragraph to me:
"Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government’s main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006, when the NSA activity under the George W. Bush administration was first reported. Compared with that time, Republicans’ focus on privacy has increased 22 points."

Country is full of fucking idiots.

But while scared of a 1 in a million chance of being a terror attack victim, they are eating themselves into early graves.

We need better applied math instruction.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.