Remember, they have not stopped any terrorist attacks in the US with all the new surveillance since 9/11 (to my knowledge).
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous...
However, I think it has taken on new life and new meaning and is cautionary in terms of "be careful what you are giving up...". 9/11 attacks were successful in their goals based on exploiting the FAA guidelines for hijackers, not because we didn't spy on these people. No one imagined them turning a plane into a bomb. I think non one believes that if hijackers tried to take over a plane with box cutters today that they wouldn't be subdued or killed within minutes.
It's also old-fashioned. It reminds me of something Trump would say.
In a modern democracy everyone deserves safety and security, even people who believe the government ought to be granted additional power to constrain "essential liberty" in certain situations or within certain more expansive limits. They may eventually be proven unwise or evil policy choices, but the people advocating them still deserve safety and security -- precisely because they live in a democracy.
You should slap it around a bit, so that it stops believing in those intrinsic, unsupported assumptions. Not like a literal concussion type of slap--slap it with a hit of salvia divinorum or a provocative essay or introspective meditation or something.
Everyone has something to hide. It doesn't even have to be anything particularly shameful. You could have the most glorious junk in the history of humanity, but you still cover it up with some form of garment when you leave the house. You could have a perfectly ordinary and treatable rash on your backside, but you don't necessarily tell anyone about it outside your doctor's office. You might be going on an awesome vacation for three weeks, but you might not want the local housebreaking crew to know that.
It can happen here, as it can happen anywhere that humans come together. This is beyond tolerable, and as we are a civilized people, we have a graduated response to such behavior.
First, we publicly announce our opposition to this policy, in the hopes that a reasoned debate will cause it to be abandoned. This is the "soap box". Second, we inform our designated representatives that this is an important issue, and should they wish to continue to hold our proxy, they will vote in accordance with the wishes of their constituents. Should they do otherwise, we do our best to replace them with someone who will. This is the "ballot box". Third, we tangle it up with formal legal challenges, requiring that the policy be measured against existing legal standards. We sit on grand juries to indict or no-bill those suspected of breaking our laws, and upon petit juries to convict or not-convict those who faced trial. This is the "jury box". Finally, we can take our tools, fashion them into weapons, and physically assault those who have already failed to yield to reason, ignored those whom they purport to represent, and scoffed at the law. This is the "ammo box"--ultima ratio regum.
It can happen here. It is always happening everywhere, and here is no exception. We must constantly work at preventing it. That is the burden of democracy. Everywhere it has happened, it was because the momentum overwhelmed the resistance, and because those graduated responses were removed Alvin York style--from back to front, so that the opposition wouldn't notice until it was too late. You can't forget that when reason fails--and it does fail against the unreasonable--you have to be prepared to instead use rhetoric, tradition, or raw force to get what you want.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Richelieu
It can stay pending for a long time, mine took forever
If they were collecting private info or browsing data, sure.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19...
See 22 U.S. Code § 6010: 'As used in this chapter, the term “United States person” means any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States, and any corporation, partnership, or other organization organized under the laws of the United States.' Title 22 is the foreign relations chapter
Ask a person in Argentina, Chile, Spain, and lots of other places besides.
>I'd expect the government to be collecting all public information for its citizens and those visiting the country - why not?
Because their social media lives are not its business -- citizens or not.
This is a bit absurd. First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees your right to publish papers. But now you also want the right to prevent your publications from being read? The government has had a program collecting a vast majority of publications for a very long time i.e. the Library of Congress, so one might say the precedent has already been set.
I'm not saying they should have unfettered access to everything (far from it!), but gathering and analyzing this type of information is the very definition of their business.
The real question is what levels of information gathering are going to allow without a warrant, and who do those laws apply to?
If someone is plotting a crime while having sex with their partner in their bedroom, how is that not the government's business?
See how it gets problematic?
Bad actors like that can communicate in 200000 ways. If governments want to target "known terrorist organizations" let them target them, and follow those people, monitor their houses, etc -- not monitor the general population in the off chance they see something.
>I'm not saying they should have unfettered access to everything (far from it!), but gathering and analyzing this type of information is the very definition of their business.
So, in 1980, before Facebook, they wouldn't be able to catch anyone?
How about they monitor actual suspects with good old police work and leave the BS?
That escalated quickly. So to you monitoring information posted to a third party is the same as listening in on you and your spouse while you're bumping uglies?
> See how it gets problematic?
No I don't as I reject your example outright. What goes on within the four walls of a person's bedroom has already been established as protected. In contrast, what gets sent out to a third party has been established as not protected.
> Bad actors like that can communicate in 200000 ways. If governments want to target "known terrorist organizations" let them target them, and follow those people, monitor their houses, etc -- not monitor the general population in the off chance they see something.
Sure and this is one of the many ways they can do it. Just because there are other options available doesn't mean they can't use this as an avenue.
> So, in 1980, before Facebook, they wouldn't be able to catch anyone?
I never said that nor implied it. I'm saying that social media posts are fair game and likely a valuable source of information for identified terrorists and potential terrorists.
> How about they monitor actual suspects with good old police work and leave the BS?
That's a false dichotomy. There's no reason you can't have modern data analysis of social media posts in addition to traditional police work. Technology is a force multiplier. Back in the day people would manually examine finger prints to find a match based on a categorization system. Now a computer does it nearly instantly.
and this can also easily lead to uncovering less public information about you. More data you have about a person easier it is to triangulate anonymized data about them.
1) the people visiting the US and
2) the US public (via tax support for enforcement which is driven by this policy)
Wolfram Alpha says that 322 people visit the US in a year.
Let's assume the technologists in charge of this (who are really no different than any other corporate engineer - capable, but fairly disinterested in their work and apathetic/unaffected by the results) manage to make the process 99.9999% effective in screening out the innocent, and 100% effective in screening terrorists who enter the US.
Well, that world-class accuracy gives you 99.9999 * 322 million => 322 people a year who are caught in the dragnet (and in all likelihood, it will be multiples of this number; likely thousands of individuals).
So now we are interrogating, investigating, and suspecting 322 innocent people in order to catch the... oh, wait; there really haven't been any terrorist attacks like 9/11 since... 9/11.
The Boston Bombers were home-grown. Anti-abortion extremists, religious fundamentalists, bullied schoolchildren, and paranoid schizophrenics have all tried or been accused of trying to wage terrorism on the US, but there's not a single event[1] that it looks like this policy could have prevented. But we're investigating 322 individuals (and their families, friends, and close contacts) in order to do it.
And at what cost? We will never know, because those numbers are classified due to their sensitive nature.
In the end, none of this matters: the government was never interested in terror prevention in the first place. They just needed a new bogey man to replace drugs, the Russians, whatever as a reason to ignore the constitution.
The war on terrorism is a farce.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...
* edit: added the parenthetical note on numbers, multiples of estimate
These were Americans killing Americans, and similar to the pattern we've seen throughout the 1900s and into the 2000s, it is most likely that future terrorists will also be home grown.
As to this system, was there anything to be gained by keeping these out of the USA, for a tweet?: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
{Off-topic: Because the KKK were (mainly) killing black people and their supporters in Southern states, 'we' don't really think of them as terrorists, nor the people that still push their agenda today as terrorist sympathisers.}
Not to take away from the terror of the KKK, but 9/11 was more deadly - "The attacks caused the deaths of 2,996 people and the injuries of more than 6,000 others" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks).
9,000+ killed or wounded on a single day, massive economic impact, and a Global War on Terror that is still going on today.
I'm not sure why they don't just apply it across the board to all travelers because it seems like adding conditions just increases complexity with no benefit.
Folks with green cards, which we know a bit about, are affected. It doesn't matter what your status is so long as you weren't born here.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/28/aclu-fight-doj-request-i...
PS. Immigrants in the past came to kill all of the locals. ;)
Nazi Germany asked its own citizens for papers in-country (e.g. train trips).
And you are right, context matters. Perhaps the existence of "sanctuary cities" in current day America is more relevant to yet-another-Nazi-Germany-comparison (TM).
> It's not much a leap to imagine..
But what are the facts? For example, is Snap-chat one such social media platform that will be check based on unverified accounts?
I have nothing to hide, despise terrorism and the fanatics that commit it, and wish no harm on others with different social, political, or religious views. But I'm familiar enough with history to know how badly this can end. "Papers please" had consequences, especially for groups targeted for political reasons.
Just last night I was browsing Wikipedia articles on various Presidential/political assassinations after watching an episode of the PBS Vietnam War documentary that is currently being aired. Earlier this week I tried to sign up for Snapchat and discovered an active account based out of Saudi Arabia that someone had set up using my email address (via an unverified email address I assume - thanks SnapChat). I can't read arabic so have no idea what was being shared on that platform from "my" account but based upon the images it looked critical of America.
It's not much of a leap to imagine being accused of various things based upon your browsing history or social media, especially if actions like this (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/15/543782396/...) become more common.
The rational part of my brain keeps screaming "This is America, it can't happen here, especially if you have nothing to hide" but I also find it difficult to ignore the historical and current warning signs.