Re:Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever pa...
by TeMPOraL on Thursday November 17, 2016 @05:53PM
(#12982517)
I'm closer to the "nothing to hide" sentiment too (and personally I believe that a lot of privacy we take for granted is a historical aberration created by urbanization and is doomed to be removed by the progress of technology). Nevertheless, reducing the series of laws to the question of "will this particular law allow the government to see my dick (and if so, under what circumstances)" is useful, because it focuses on the things an average citizen can understand and relate to, while at the same time revealing that not every surveillance law actually implies snooping on private data.
"Dick pics" are actually a pretty good example of something one clearly doesn't want to share with third parties, but may not be aware that they're already sharing (or can be sharing under circumstances that may not be immediately obvious).
Do average citizens send pictures of their genitalia to people? Are you saying that the gov is downloading everyone's photos, or are you saying they have the capability.
I want law enforcement to have the capability to access images pertinent to an investigation when they have a warrant; it seems harmful to justice to prevent that by legislation. Oliver appears to be saying because the government can access such information they're necessarily over-powered; surely without such capability then they'd be incapable of following even the most basic of criminal organisations and certainly incapable of tracking information pertinent to defence from foreign powers and, yes, domestic terrorism.
"If the government were looking at pictures of my penis that would upset me."
The question is if you say "would you agree to the government being able to see all the pictures on a device of a suspected criminal, eg in a murder investigation" how many will say "no because they might see an image of the suspects dick and so it would be an invasion of privacy". Now "if you were the main suspect in a murder investigation, should the government be allowed to see the pictures you stored on your device"?
We all now a large proportion of people would want to hide naked images of themselves from casual observers, but TBH if the cost of cracking a terrorist ring is a government operative seeing a picture of me naked then I'll tie a bow on it and send it in gift wrap; I'm shy but it's only a body part.
The argument has been simplified by Oliver beyond what is relevant. There's much more nuance than he's pretending there is IMO.
Now, if the government agencies have agents viewing for private reasons images that are downloaded, or they're accessing data that has been acquired illegally then we have something to work on. Doubtless that happens.
PS: I'll admit I've not followed the Snowden case in depth as it's not particular interesting to me. I'm much closer to the "nothing to hide" people than the "the government know what toilet paper I use the world will end tomorrow" people [nice and objective!] as you may have surmised.