Why There’s No Mass Protest Over Government Surveillance

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/14/why-theres-no-mass-protest-over-government-surveillance/

by kurtable • 13 years ago

42 19 13 years ago

gasull• 13 years ago

Or maybe people are just numb because of so many laws threatening our liberties simultaneously. There's just so much to protest against.

aspensmonster• 13 years ago

Well ain't that the biggest false dichotomy I've seen all year!

Either:

a.) You're an individualist and you value "privacy, ownership, sovereignty, expression, and choice."

b.) You're not an individualist and you value "transparency, sharing, global citizenship, and wisdom."

Nope. No overlap here. No sir! I'm proceeding to read the WaPo article in hopes that there is actually some substance to this matter.

eli_gottlieb3• 13 years ago

My favorite thing about "individualism versus collectivism" dichotomies is their utter failure to take into account how the ostensible "individualists" act when placed among a social group to which they actually feel the slightest tinge of loyalty or belonging.

Everyone is a collectivist for the groups they like, and an individualist for the ones they don't. These are not really deep personality features or full-scale philosophies at all.

n3rdy• 13 years ago

The convenient thing about protesting government surveillance is you don't have to travel very far to protest.

javajosh• 13 years ago

This article was written incredibly poorly. I mean, it opens with a history lesson rather than the thing we're supposed to be outraged by. For two long sentences it reminds us of what happend with SOPA, and then in a subordinate clause of the second-to-last sentence it mentions CISPA.

This is not how you write a story. It's a classic readability problem and burying the lead. Here's my rewrite:

Congress is getting ready to pass Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) as soon as next month. It's got the support of Obama and a majority of Congress, and, according to privacy and data-freedom experts from the EFF and the FSF, if passed it threatens to destroy our digital civil liberties as we know them.

This in itself isn't so strange - it seems like every other week the government is asking for (and more often than not, getting) more unchecked power under the guise of fighting terrorism. The odd thing here is that the internet hasn't said a word.

Etc.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

I think most people who actually care are already afraid of doing anything that creates a larger 'public surface,' so to speak, and have gone to ground, happy to to vote what they think and enjoy blaming everyone else when they continue to get ignored until it inevitably goes bad.

bravohippo• 13 years ago

The "masses" also have bigger problems than being spied on. Namely, having shitty lives because they are poor, diseased, and overworked.

Meanwhile, the intelligentsia waits for the masses to fix the problems over which the masses have little understanding or control.

The intelligentsia can't protest--that would threaten their careers! Free speech--meaning political speech--doesn't apply if you're a Senior Vice President. Being publicly political is the fastest way to undermine your potential.

So those with power do nothing because they want to keep power and they have bigger things to worry about.

Those without power do nothing because they have no power and it will make no difference and they have bigger things to worry about.

pdeuchler• 13 years ago

This is disappointing, and almost misleading. There are several main reasons why people "don't care" about their privacy.

1) It hasn't been threatened in their lifetime before. The past 60 or so years have been pretty good for those fighting for civil liberties, though recently we seem to have reached a tipping point.

2) Lack of (good) education in the humanities and philosophies. I'd say the vast majority of America cannot correctly define "socialism" and "capitalism", much less be able to articulate the paths societies take towards them. For most to be able to imagine and understand a deterioration towards totalitarianism is almost absurd.

3) They don't care. "I don't care that the government knows my secrets." They have "nothing to hide". This ties in with number 2, in that there is a lack of fundamental understanding of concepts like "liberty" and "privacy", which creates a dichotomy where people can appreciate privacy, but still voluntarily give it up.

And that's not even including things like "protest fatigue", willful obfuscation of issues, and the vast amount of money changing hands.

Edit: It seems like the WaPo article is hardly better. For shame, really. It almost seems like a purposeful attack (though I shouldn't attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity)

batgaijin• 13 years ago

Hey now.

Let's pretend, for whatever reason that the government didn't give two shits.

Well? There would still be a cabal of corporations trying to make us better consumers.

Idk, relevant policy requires smart willing participants. Even if you took away the main antagonizer it wouldn't actually change anything. You can make people afraid of the government but you can't teach them to be careful of being a useful idiot to others.

eli_gottlieb3• 13 years ago

4) Low population density. Low population density. LOW POPULATION DENSITY!!!

Americans kvetch plenty online about their loss of privacy. /r/politics and other fora are easy indications, even Facebook statuses show it.

You don't get mass protests because the settlement pattern of America is well-designed for incapacitating mass action. Mass action of any kind requires physical togetherness, which requires density, on several different levels.

brador• 13 years ago

This doesn't gel with reality. Civil war worked out ok with even less density. The truth is no one knows their neigbor. There's no sense of community here with those around us.

opminion• 13 years ago

The past 60 or so years have been pretty good for those fighting for civil liberties, though recently we seem to have reached a tipping point.

It does not look like the tipping point has been reached yet in developing countries.

WayneDB• 13 years ago

I'd say 1) The people who use the Internet the most...are too dependent upon the system. They haven't the time or energy for a proper protest.

joonix• 13 years ago

I told my parents about Internet surveillance and they said "Good! Help catch terrorists!"

Average American probably feels the same.

AnthonyMouse• 13 years ago

Why is there no mass protest over government surveillance? How about because the article is talking about a bill with only a tangential relationship to surveillance? If you want to talk about surveillance then talk about the Patriot Act and national security letters with gag orders or the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

What I want to know is why the media has to report vague/misleading things like this, instead of talking about what CISPA would actually do, like exempting companies (and governments?) from all state and federal laws for "good faith" "decisions made based on cyber threat information identified, obtained, or shared" under the new law. Wow.

I mean hey, maybe it could be a good thing, right? Argue that spam is a cyber threat and that setting the spammers on fire is a good faith decision made based on threat information about them?

Seriously, that wording is totally unreasonable. They really need to limit it to at least a specific class of legislation. "Exempt corporations from laws against causing death and destruction" = NOT OK.

whiddershins• 13 years ago

It's all so naive.

PIPA/SOPA threatens free stuff. Washington D.C. tariffs on Uber increase prices for riders. That's the common thread.

CISPA threatens privacy and civil liberties.

Most people have at one time or another not had as much money as they wanted, so anything that takes more money out of their pockets is bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

Most people haven't felt (or recognized) any ill effects from loss of privacy or civil liberties, so it probably feels very theoretical.

D9u• 13 years ago

The article rises to the level of the lowest common denominator, namely, the typical "dumbed-down" American who is unable to formulate an independent opinion.

forgottenpaswrd• 13 years ago

Simple, Because of "out of sight, out of mind".

The US government probably records and stores every single telephone conversation in the US, emails, Internet connections IPs and GPS mobile coordinates.

Why?, because they can, as it is now ultra cheap, now hundreds of thousands of conversations could be stored on a single hard drive. With GPS coordinates or Internet logs it is even cheaper.

It is also very useful, the same way drones are starting to record everything and after a bombing they could replay and follow the bomber, you could "replay" all the conversations that someone the US gov is interested in did in the past, where this person went, whom he met with and so.

It also gives absolute power to people in govertment, uncontrolled.

People can't see it because it is being so gradually enforced onto them and as it is secret people can't really see it. Like in "the life of others" film(in witch the main character gets shocked when he sees all the info they had over him) people is completely ignorant of what the gov does.

Today, just with facebook alone you are giving the government more info about you that the STASI did had over their citizens.

I for one believe the govs should have access to this information, but only in a way that is controlled by the people, or democracy will evolve in Tyranny.

Why There’s No Mass Protest Over Government Surveillance

Related Stories