With Snowden in the background, privacy takes a back seat to security

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/18/with-snowden-in-the-background-privacy-takes-a-back-seat-to-security/

by Libertatea • 12 years ago

93 39 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

It seems when most Americans are afraid, they automatically believe what the government tells them and that it solution will work to "save" them or protect them.

It seems to be exactly the same case with torture as well. Most seem to believe the US gov should use torture and that "it works". Facts be damned.

Mass surveillance doesn't work [1] either to stop terrorists, but facts (such as the panel reviews saying so), or logic be damned. If the government says it works, then it must be true, and must be what's needed - whatever the civil liberties cost.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_f...

ynniv• 12 years ago

They don't just accept what the government says, they also demand that the government do something, liberties be damned. I think this is the same reason the Republican party is so popular: people are voting for their own prosperity above all else. (That the the Republican party doesn't actually provide this is immaterial.)

cryptoz2• 12 years ago

I'm 27, living in Toronto. Most of my acquaintances say things like "I have nothing to hide so it doesn't bother me", or "Dropbox is just so convenient, it doesn't matter about the NSA". It's upsetting.

There continues to be very little discussion about the large-scale, societal effects from a total surveillance society: Writers and artists self-censoring themselves; power structures able to spy on, and control, entire populations; etc. The discussion should really be framed on the tragedy of the commons perspective: even if you don't care, that decision affects everyone. You should care, if not for your own privacy's sake, for our society's protection for its own decision-making ability.

Edit: From the article, discussing post-Snowden public opinion, showing that even when we care the most, a minority of people care about this:

In that poll, a record-high 39 percent said government should not intrude on privacy, even if it limits the ability to investigate possible threats."

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

> "I'm 27, living in Toronto. Most of my acquaintances say things like "I have nothing to hide so it doesn't bother me", or "Dropbox is just so convenient, it doesn't matter about the NSA". It's upsetting."

I've been pretty angry about the revelations over the last year. I'm a private person and don't want the government violating that. However - even though I don't say the things your friends are saying I still use Dropbox because getting my clients to switch would be a pain. I still use Google because DuckDuckGo just isn't good enough for me. I don't want to give up my privacy to anyone but it's just so easy to do without thinking the consequences through.

cryptoz2• 12 years ago

Right - that's fair, in my opinion. For work, I use closed-source software including Dropbox too. I should specify that I agree this is difficult or impossible to avoid, and that using these tools enables us to build things faster, which potentially is worth using them. I do it, too.

But I do want everyone to care. If you're using the tool because it's convenient, and you know that it could be spying on you, you should care about that. Apathy is what I'm fighting here, not Dropbox exactly.

I would love to move my work away from Gmail, Dropbox, etc, someday, but today isn't that day. (Uh-oh, am I like the rest of them?)

bsbechtel• 12 years ago

DuckDuckGo has made vast strides over the past year, and you choosing to set them as your default browser will only help them improve faster. I had the same complaint as you roughly a year ago, and forced myself to switch for a month or so. After that month, I had gotten used to DuckDuckGo and haven't switched back. 99% of what I need can be found there, and for that last 1% of searches, it takes me approximately 500 milliseconds longer to type www.google.com into my browser address bar.

EC1• 12 years ago

A bit off topic but I'm also from Toronto as well looking for developer friends. I'm around cityplace. m [at] eveo [dot] org if you want to grab a coffee and talk. I feel the same way about privacy. I lose my mind when I hear "I have nothing to hide". There is nothing you can say or do. They already know the risks and what's happening, they just truly do not care.

zachlatta• 12 years ago

I'm frightened that 63% of citizens in their sample value "protection" over privacy. When I've tried to explain the need for privacy to those outside of my circle, I always find my explanation lacking due to my inability to articulate why exactly privacy is important to me.

How have others been explaining why privacy is important?

usefulcat• 12 years ago

Privacy is like freedom. If you don't value it for its own sake, you're unlikely to see any reason not to sacrifice it for the sake of security (perceived or otherwise).

Create• 12 years ago

Privacy is freedom of thought.

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.... https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-...

ddod• 12 years ago

The etymology is important. Private vs. public is the difference between the individual and the group. What makes us individuals is that we exist independently from the public. If our actions, thoughts, opinions, and histories are public, we cease to be individuals. In practice, that means that differences between people will become a thing of the past either due to being "corrected" by the public or when we feel we must change ourselves to conform to fit in with the public.

thirdtruck• 12 years ago

You can point them to the horror stories from people who have been doxxed: identity theft, ruined credit, random stalkers at their front door.

Remind them that the government is composed of individuals, like police officers that stalk the exes they abused through phone records.

tdkl• 12 years ago

I find Glenn Greenwalds explanation at TED quite compelling : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk

Spooky23• 12 years ago

It's a poorly asked proposition.

From the poll: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/...) "Q: What do you think is more important right now - (for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats) or (for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy)?"

That's not really an a/b question.

The real question in my mind whether we believe that every corner of our nation and our lives is a small part of a warzone, in a "cyber war".

That's the disconnect between people on HN and the NSA/military types. They are playing a different game.

macns• 12 years ago

Ed. Snowden summed it up nicely IMO with this:

"Your rights matter because you never know when you're going to need them."

privacy = rights

shawabawa3• 12 years ago

The Post-ABC poll was conducted Jan. 12-15 among a random national sample of 1,003 adults reached on both conventional and cellular phones.

It seems to me people who are able to be cold called (haven't opted out/been careful with their phone number/screen their calls) will be much less privacy conscious than a true random sample

john_b• 12 years ago

I was about to post the same thing. The research methodology is very careless here. It reminds me of how so much psychological research has been reexamined after psychologists stopped using college students as their exclusive sample group.

The Onion should really do a parody of studies like this. "100% of Americans Answer the Phone When Strangers Call" or something like that. As it is, dubious research like this just generates misleading headlines that then misinforms public debate about important issues.

Having said that, based on personal experience I don't doubt the basic results in terms of being for/against privacy, but the numbers and methodology are probably garbage.

I'd be very interested in any study that used different communication mediums to ask equal numbers of randomly chosen people the same questions. Phone, email, Facebook, etc. I think it would raise a lot more questions than answers.

kefs• 12 years ago

reddit user /u/161719 explains the harmful effects of government surveillance and dispels the "i have nothing to hide" argument.

https://np.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_belie...

bestof: https://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2aoig4/u161719_expla...

tptacek• 12 years ago

Privacy has always taken a back seat to security, going all the way back to the dawn of the republic. It strikes me that people who are militant about privacy are doing their cause a disservice by allowing the issue to be framed like this: a preference for "security" over "privacy".

The issue is and always has been where the line is drawn.

Instead of quoting Ben Franklin and talking about how dumb the American people are --- and the UK people and the French people and the Spanish people, who have comparable or worse tradeoffs in their laws --- maybe specific policy prescriptions would be a more productive thing to discuss.

dmix• 12 years ago

maybe specific policy prescriptions would be a more productive thing to discuss.

If people are going to take the political route with this, I believe a better argument against pervasive (passive) surveillance is how it by design promotes weakening of security. By design the only defense in place is that a societal knowledge gap exists - at this moment only a small group would know how to exploit those weaknesses. But that knowledge gap will shrink as other nation states catch up and private industry starting training large amounts of people in 'cybersecurity' as is happening now.

I'd bet the average congressman will care more about threats against security than the average citizens privacy.

So people who are looking for policy change might benefit by refining their arguments in this context, instead of assuming people operating in secret will eventually start caring about privacy rights - which I find unlikely. Especially if the people in question are foreigners to the west.

unethical_ban• 12 years ago

I do a bit of both. I make the quotes, I make the comparisons and analogies that everyone else of my opinion does. I also talk about specific policy issues - reform/removal of the well-abused PATRIOT Act; civil asset forfeiture; independent investigations for police violence, and so on.

I bring up issues of privacy on topics many think I would unabashedly support, such as police cameras. Who gets to see that footage, under what circumstances? How long should tapes be retained, if they aren't needed for an investigation?

I suppose I agree with your point, and decided to respond with how I take that approach.

spaceshipdev2• 12 years ago

"Whatever it is, you don't want your private electronic mail or confidential documents read by anyone else. There's nothing wrong with asserting your privacy. Privacy is as apple-pie as the Constitution" - Philip R. Zimmermann

mike_hearn• 12 years ago

These polls have to be read very carefully. People's responses can vary a lot according to the wording.

In this case the question seems to have been about "investigation" vs "privacy". Investigations don't sound very scary. They sound targeted and high effort. If the question was more like,

"Do you agree that the government should have a camera in every living room and a microphone in everyone's pockets in order to reduce the risk of terrorist attack"

... I suspect the answers would change dramatically, though still show the same age biases (older people who lived through the cold war tend to be more authoritarian).

sjreese• 12 years ago

I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.

Edward Snowden

cryoshon• 12 years ago

It's the old folks who don't get their information from the internet who are okay with giving up their privacy for security. IMHO they're a lost cause because the mainstream media's stranglehold on them is far too strong to ever break.

Look at the 18-29 demographic in the poll-- neck and neck, and likely to be heavily swayed toward sacrificing privacy by the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris. There can be a real debate with these people, informed by what Snowden brought out.

These are the people who grew up with the internet. They're probably the most likely to have heard of evil government dissent-squashing programs like COINTELPRO and its modern successor, JTRIG. I am always beating this drum to anyone who will listen (and unfortunately I am probably preaching to the choir here), but here's a few thoughts on why trading privacy for security is a terrible decision:

1. Privacy "traded" for security is usually just taken by the government using a flimsy excuse without any input from the public.

2. This stolen privacy is never given back, even when the alleged threat passes.

3. The information gained from stolen privacy will be used for things other than the alleged purpose-- the timely example here is the NSA's parallel construction (legal system circumvention) used to make drug arrests.

4. The information gained from stolen privacy will be used to crush nonviolent dissenters (JTRIG, COINTELPRO, many other programs).

5. The information gained from stolen privacy will be handed off to third parties for gain(corporations, friendly governments)-- Palantir, Google, military contractors, whatever else.

6. The information gained from stolen privacy won't be able to stop whatever it claims it will help in stopping--the perfect example here is the Boston bombing, in which surveillance of the two perpetrators didn't prevent the attack.

7. The information gained from stolen privacy will certainly create a chilling effect which will prevent people from speaking about and eventually thinking about topics they think will get them into trouble-- you see this all the time already with people grumbling about how they are probably "on the list".

I am going to be bold and say that people who support trading privacy for security don't understand the issue, have been systematically misled, desire totalitarianism, or have a monetary incentive.

leshow• 12 years ago

The trade-off proposed by the survey isn't even true.

People aren't trading their privacy for increased security because mass surveillance isn't effective, they're trading their right to privacy for peace of mind with no actual gain in security.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

It is a false dilemma.

By losing your privacy you don't get more security. This is the frame the Government(Washington), and the media that depends on Government(like the WP) use so they can benefit from terrorism.

In fact , when you lose your privacy , you lose your security. What happens when the people in power have all the power and no oversight?

Look at Alberto Nisman in Argentina. Look at the Soviet Union for rapist and murderers controlling the police. Nazism in Germany or even the killing of JFK.

Are you safer when you are transparent to them but they are opaque to you?

How a democracy could work where Government operates in absolute secrecy for the people, but people could not hold secrets against the Government?.

oceanstone• 12 years ago

How a democracy could work where Government operates in absolute secrecy for the people

Democracy depends on informed consent of the governed.

What happens when the people in power have all the power and no oversight?

The phrase "power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely" was inspired by human history.

By losing your privacy you don't get more security.
Are you safer when you are transparent to them but they are opaque to you?

Eroding privacy protections aren't necessary. Many recent terrorism attacks could have been nipped in the bud, if more help was accepted from the public. For instance, the underwear bomber's parent warned the CIA [1] of his child. Russian intelligence warned us of the Tsarnaev's [2]. A flight school instructor warned the FBI of suspicious students who didn't seem interested in landing [3].

[1] https://hbr.org/2010/01/why-they-didnt-connect-the-dot

[2] http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/04/11/fbi-admit...

[3] http://www.newsweek.com/terrible-missed-chance-67401

- - -

Keeping citizens informed & in the loop would help national security more than anything.

quanticle• 12 years ago

The Washington Post is drawing a false dichotomy between privacy and security. In reality, the NSA is neither improving privacy nor security. They're hoarding zero-days (which makes us less secure than responsible disclosure) and they're using those zero-days to hack us (reducing our privacy).

The headline should be re-written: "With Snowden in the background, privacy and security take a back seat to power". That's what it's really about.

qeorge• 12 years ago

Another way to read this is that every generation gets braver, and more willing to stand up for their privacy. (The proportion of people in the 'protection over privacy' camp consistently goes down with age).

I hope its a generational thing, and that these young folks won't change over to the "protection over privacy" camp as they age.

AdamFernandez• 12 years ago

I don't think they will change. These events will have an impact the way they see the world in the future.

guard-of-terra• 12 years ago

The terrorists were professional (Syria-seasoned?) islamists guided at some points of their life by special ops.

How can ruining your middle-class privacy help prevent those?

How can people be so blind?

j_baker• 12 years ago

To be fair, here's a choice Snowden quote:

""" I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide, the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.' And I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, 'I didn't change these, I didn't modify the story. This is the truth; this is what's happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this.' """

With Snowden in the background, privacy takes a back seat to security

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