Re:U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
by jsprogrammer on Monday January 26, 2015 @07:56PM
(#8950676)
The "problem" is that it is increasingly easy to assemble these databases and to update them in real time. If a government agency isn't doing it, a corporation could be (and some are, for certain pieces of data), and soon (if not now) an individual or loose collection of individuals could achieve nearly the same results.
We might need to embrace it, make everything transparent and collaborative, and figure out how to make use of the information to create a state that is better than what currently exists.
Re:U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
by DanielBMarkham on Monday January 26, 2015 @08:12PM
(#8950725)
Thank you. Just to clarify, even though I'm a libertarian, this isn't a "Big Gummit" problem. If DOJ wasn't doing this, Yellow Cab would. Or Uber. Or the guys who build traffic lights. The data is simply too valuable to ignore.
This is a tech problem. We created this, all while saying something like "Yeah, but all that ethical and philosophy stuff isn't really anything I need to worry about. What I need are eyeballs"
The government takes the blame in many cases because they hold all the trump cards -- they can take the data from anybody that's collecting it. They can also send you to jail, which commercial providers cannot directly do (yet). But the problem is with the tech. We have met the enemy and he is us.
Probably something like regulatory capture is at work, but here it's the overseen agencies that have captured Congress.
Re:U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
by stainednapkin on Monday January 26, 2015 @07:51PM
(#8950656)
I think it's a phenomenon worth examining. There isn't a simple answer. Part of it must be changes in American culture. What those changes are is debatable.
For the life of me I do not understand why both major parties aren't having conniption fits right now. Are these the same parties that, on a bipartisan basis, told Nixon to get lost? Shut down some of the intelligence community's overreach in the 70s? Impeached a U.S. President for lying under oath?
Both parties over the previous 50 years have taken strong stands -- both separately and together -- in regards to strong oversight of privacy and freedom. Would Reagan have put up with this? Carter? Ike? JFK? It's inconceivable. During those times, yes, there was plenty of illegal mucking around -- but wholesale bulldozing of citizen's privacy? It's something from a dystopian sci-fi novel of just 15 years ago.
Surely this has to come up there somewhere near as important as all those other political scandals. Surely it would be a popular measure. But instead, what I'm seeing is somebody trying to introduce a bill to nibble around the edges, then others adding amendments so that the bill to reduce NSA spying actually increases it. It's like they're being incentivized to go in exactly the wrong direction.
It just doesn't make sense to me. There is some missing piece to this puzzle. When I see guys like Hayden, with his cocky attitude; there's something he knows that I don't know, and it's not that AQ is some kind of clear and present danger. It's something else. (Sorry to sound so mysterious. I'm truly at a loss.)