Re:EFF’s Game Plan for Ending Global Mass Surveillance
by thawkins on Monday January 26, 2015 @08:13PM
(#8950728)
I think also they should be raising awareness of both the cost and the ineffectivness of mass surveillance. It has failed specatularly to stop some of the worse attacks, because all the resources where tied up playing video games on thier databases, instead of old fashioned boots on the ground monitoring of suspects that on the large where already known to them. The sheer cost of building the interception infrastructure is on a nightmare scale, maybe people would care more if they knew how much it costs them personaly.
Re:EFF’s Game Plan for Ending Global Mass Surveillance
by tripzilch on Wednesday January 28, 2015 @12:03PM
(#8960999)
> My own view is that the risk of surveillance is predicated on the reliability and intent of the Watcher
This will never be possible because the surveillance is global, there will never be a Watcher that is globally considered reliable and well-intentioned.
9. Raise awareness of the practical and moral risks of mass surveillance.
My own view is that the risk of surveillance is predicated on the reliability and intent of the Watcher (in this case, the USG through the NSA). If you had a Watcher who never makes an assessment mistake, and who's intentions are always "good" (in the narrowest sense of being in your personal best interests) - who could object to such a thing? But we are faced with a world with plenty of Watcher governments who would oppress their people with this power, and already are. Citizens living under such regimes in places like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, are people for whom the risks of mass surveillance are real, now.
Officially endorsed mass surveillance is a lost opportunity to emancipate resistance movements from the surveillance of their oppressive governments, which is a huge moral risk to us.
It's important to remind ourselves what the USG/NSA thinks they are giving up if they give up mass surveillance: they think that America needs to know everything because everything is potentially useful in assessing a threat (or an opportunity). To surveil the world (and interpret the data properly) theoretically minimizes a nation's risk of attack, and maximize it's effectiveness in virtually every field (diplomatically, economically, scientifically, etc). That's a lot to give up.