Re:German politicans doxxed, massive leak of private informa...
by deogeo on Friday January 04, 2019 @02:22PM
(#18826889)
> We give up our address, work, car details, children's records to a government
While a comprehensive list is near impossible, you missed some of the information they can gather, from companies via (secret) subpoena/warrant, or directly: Your location via license-plate readers/cell-phone tracking/facial recognition, credit card transactions, who you talk with on your phone, which web-sites you visit, what you printed via tracking dots, etc. If you attend a protest, or try to organize a union, it's easy to know (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43507728). Looks less benign now.
More importantly for this conversation, we skipped a step - is there harm in being spied on? We are assured that no, we can trust them, only criminals should worry. Yet when the tables are turned, and we can spy on the powerful, this rhetoric disappears, all hell breaks loose, and a bunch of state/trade secret laws, non-disclosure agreements, espionage acts, computer-hacking prosecutions, and takedown requests appear.
Edit: Your point about 'us and them' vs. 'we' is good, but it's not enough. Compare it to getting put in prison - thinking of the government as 'us' doesn't make you any better off behind bars. Spying is supposedly different, since they tell us it's harmless. But they sure don't act like it when it's applied to them.
While a comprehensive list is near impossible, you missed some of the information they can gather, from companies via (secret) subpoena/warrant, or directly: Your location via license-plate readers/cell-phone tracking/facial recognition, credit card transactions, who you talk with on your phone, which web-sites you visit, what you printed via tracking dots, etc. If you attend a protest, or try to organize a union, it's easy to know (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43507728). Looks less benign now.
More importantly for this conversation, we skipped a step - is there harm in being spied on? We are assured that no, we can trust them, only criminals should worry. Yet when the tables are turned, and we can spy on the powerful, this rhetoric disappears, all hell breaks loose, and a bunch of state/trade secret laws, non-disclosure agreements, espionage acts, computer-hacking prosecutions, and takedown requests appear.
Edit: Your point about 'us and them' vs. 'we' is good, but it's not enough. Compare it to getting put in prison - thinking of the government as 'us' doesn't make you any better off behind bars. Spying is supposedly different, since they tell us it's harmless. But they sure don't act like it when it's applied to them.