LibriumArcana.Games

So, first, there's this:

So, this prompted me to want to start a larger discussion about this whole thing. Where do you personally think the line should be drawn between the expectation of private citizenry to keep their lives private, and the capability of the police or government agencies to invade that privacy to pursue cases?

The problem to me at least is that the question assumes the data collected and used will be used to protect American citizens unless they plan to harm others. This sort of power makes it very easy to cross boundaries and grey areas, and other abuses.

So, where should the line be drawn on collecting information? Should the police and intelligence agencies be equipped with spy drones to patrol America? Should police and intelligence agencies have the ability to bug or place a tracking device on your car without a warrant? Should police and intelligence agencies have any roadblocks in place to invade a citizen's expectation of privacy?

Or on the other hand, should citizens have an expectation of privacy? Should we expect our household appliances and gadgets to collect information on us? Is it a good thing to help equip a government so that it knows whom to fear, and trust that this equipping will never be abused for any reason?

Alright, I'm the first here to raise the conspiracy flag. We all know this. And we also know that I'm very much for individual liberties and privacy and very opposed to the government's encroachment on them.

This video? It's about as utterly ridiculous as you can get with some of their notions about how this would go down. Spy gear in your fridge or microwave? Not fucking likely. The logistics and organization to do this alone would be crazy not to mention having to get pretty much every major manufacturer on board with this. But really, this is this decade's Clipper Chip. This is the same ubertech great government spy cure-all to make sure Big Brother is actualized. It's just not that damned simple. I can go into detail on why I think it's unlikely we're going to start mass producing covert surveillance devices for inside of appliances if anyone wishes, but I'll keep it short with the internal operational environments of most consumer appliances wouldn't be likely to be compatible with the types of sophisticated and delicate electronics that these types of things would require.

Should we expect our government to spy on us? No, we shouldn't expect them to be able to or want to. However, facing reality, this isn't so. The sad truth is thanks to things like the U.S. PATRIOT Act it's even easier to do in the name of national security than ever before. And we cannot delude ourselves into thinking we're not spied on already. Systems and software like Echelon, Onyx, Carnivore and NarusInsight are more than capable of spying on the vast majority of what we do as far as communications goes. Your cell phone is tracked by internal gps for 911 purposes and triangulation of signal from towers. Your viewing habits on the internet and tv are bought and sold by your service providers. Room 641A is operated by the NSA utilizing Narus equipment patched into a huge internet backbone. Other such black rooms are suggested to be in existence throughout the country. Our grandmothers and children are cavity searched at airports in the name of anti-terrorism procedures. With the Hotwatch act the government is able to spy on anyone's cell phone usage, internet usage, debit and credit card usage or any other piece of information in near real time without a warrant, with very little to no oversight and no notification due to gag orders and non-disclosure orders issued by judges after the fact. What books you check out at the library, how many bags of fertilizer, what hotels you book, airlines you use, cars you rent, etc. All of it can be and probably is tracked on a big database.

Should the government do this? No. Should the government have the power to do this? Again, no. Should we let them do this to us willingly? A final no. Is it happening? Yes. Is it going to continue to happen? Undoubtedly. Will we be able to stop it? Probably not. And why not? Because it's for the good of the country and its citizens and is a matter of national security. To state otherwise is to question the wisdom and integrity of our wonderful government you terrorist pig.

Lets not fool ourselves here. This isn't really a question of where the line is drawn or what the government should or shouldn't do as far as surveillance goes. The line that they shouldn't cross has been trampled into dust. The government spies on us all the time.

God, those people are painfully stupid, but these are valid questions and concerns.

Short answer, if you don't have business being in my house, you don't have business being in my house. However, it's not so simple as all that in the face of how security requirements can change based on potential bad events.

Making a purely hypothetical scenario and not based on the current capabilities of the baddies, let's say that solid intelligence was developed that an inbound passenger liner had somebody onboard infected with smallpox? Or hell, take it straight out of intelligence and into straight medical practice.

Okay, under normal circumstances detaining an entire ship full of people and subjecting them to medical examinations upon entry would be a pretty gross violation of liberty and privacy, but would anybody argue with such measures under that circumstance?

Point being that occasionally the protection of the body of society does involve invasions of privacy, even knowingly and willingly invading the privacy of probably innocent folks.

Flip side to the statement, you don't want to empower a government with explicit permission to do things that you wouldn't want to fall into the hands of your political enemies. So even if you trust the team in power now, pretty soon the other guys are going to have the same tools and are you going to be satisfied with their ability to access this information? Would the blue players be happy with tools like these in the hands of the Santorum administration, for example?

It's all about the tradeoffs. Maintaining the level of freedom to which we are accustomed means leaving gaps and vulnerabilities that can cost lives. You take a guy like Petraeus, and his job is to basically push the surveillance state to the absolute boundary of what's legally acceptable so his boss doesn't have to deal with planes crashing into buildings. The job of society is to determine those boundaries and fight back when they start getting encroached. Unfortunately, we got stampeded in the opposite direction.

Right now, I don't see as how it's warranted. I've long opposed the militarization of the police, and the process of police acquiring drones has already started and will continue to accelerate as we continue to govern society by means of declaring war on concepts, and it's time to push back on both the invasions of privacy and the whole 'War on this' and 'War on that' bullshit that's caused so much misery since Reagan kicked off the War on Drugs back when.

Of course, the unmentioned element in the above video is that regardless of the actual utility of such a program there's a contractor making billions for having convinced the government that this is just what they need.