On 1/14/2015 7:42 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 4:00 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/11/2015 12:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 7:14 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/10/2015 12:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 7:19 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/10/2015 2:00 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 12:24 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/9/2015 3:11 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>
*To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>
*Sent:* Friday, January 9, 2015 2:45 PM
*Subject:* Re: Democracy
On 1/9/2015 1:08 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>
*To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>
*Sent:* Friday, January 9, 2015 12:25 PM
*Subject:* Re: Democracy
On 1/9/2015 4:55 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Money becomes coercive under statism, because it becomes illegal
to use alternative currencies, operate outside of the banking
and
taxation system and so on.
>>Banks used to issue their own script and in principle anyone
could do
it. The trouble with anarcho-capitalism is that there's
nothing to
prevent a group from organizing, forming a "government",
raising an
army a conquering people around them. In fact that's exactly
the
arc of history. If you want anarchy you can go to Syria or
Somalia
right now.
What you describe is not the political philosophy of anarchy;
what
you describe is life under warlords, and the susceptibility of
anarchy to such organized groups of thugs.
Functioning anarchy would require a level of individual ethics
that
does not yet exist (or at least is not widespread). Anarchy is
vulnerable to being destroyed by thuggery and mayhem; no doubt
about that; however it should not be confused with that
heartless
outcome.
>>Every form of government will work well with perfect people.
That is side-stepping the point that some forms of social
organization require a much higher degree of civic involvement
than
others do.
Exactly, and anarchy that functions as well as constitutionally
limited democracy would require angels.
This overestimates the importance of things written in a piece of
paper
and underestimates the importance of social norms, culture and
education.
The reason why I don't go and loot my neighbours is not because a
piece
of paper says I can't, or even because I am afraid of the police.
Remove
this too things and I still wouldn't do it. I suspect everyone
participating in this discussion is the same. Why?
On the other hand, the Weimar constitution was powerless to stop the
nazis, and the American constitution appears powerless to stop the
NSA.
And I think you underestimate it. It is something any citizen can
point
to as a norm. Notice that everyone who complains about the NSA's
invasion
of privacy cites the Constitution as evidence their complaint is
justified.
That is true, but it's far from the only argument. Now my question is:
do you
figure that people think that invasion of privacy without a warrant is
wrong
think that because of what the constitution says, or do you figure
invasion of
privacy offends their sense of morality and then they look for
arguments to
justify their position and find the constitution?
That's a good question, and the answer supports my point. When you
poll people
and ask if they think it's right to wiretap people suspected of
plotting crimes
the majority say yes. So in a way the Constitution informs and bolsters
people's understanding of the importance of freedom from government
surveillance. If they were just morally offended by surveillance then
they
would be equally exercised about AT&T, Google, Time-Warner, Verizon,
and a
dozen other corporate organizations that spy on them. But because they
know
the Constitution forbids the government from doing it they are much MORE
offended when the government does it.
Without it they would have to give a long argument based the prior
abuses that the founding fathers used to to support the right to
privacy.
This would be a good argument had the Constitution actually succeeded in
preventing total surveillance from the government on its own people.
But it
didn't.
But it did. The NSA is only allowed to track who-calls-who, not what
is said.
Unfortunately, after Snowden we know better.
No, we don't. First, while I approve of Snowden I don't think he *knows*
everything
attributed to him.
One of the important tricks here is how they interpret the word "track". A
secret
court(!!!) decided that storing data is not tracking if no human is looking
at it.
So they can record your phone calls and the content of your internet
communications
and then, if they get a court order, they can go look at it.
And that is wrong how?
The attitude of governments can change in unpredictable ways in the future. It's
acknowledged that laws can have a "chilling effect" on free speech, but how strong would
that chilling effect be if it's based on the unknown future of what future laws may
come? If my conversations now are stored indefinitely, how can I be sure I won't be
persecuted for my speech 30 - 40 years from now?
NSA is only authorized to keep domestic communication data 5yr. But this is mostly just
metadata. It is obviously appropriate to keep data for some period. Discussions of an
airline flight that seem innocent may become important evidence weeks later when that
flight is bombed.
Not to mention, if you watch someone for long enough, or have enough data concerning
someone's life to pour over, you're almost certain to find something you can charge them
with. See http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
How many unknown felonies have you committed just today? (Don't answer that!)
I guess that would the ones I don't know about, so I can readily answer, "I don't
know."
But they don't really need to bother about these warrants. The neat "five
eyes"
system allows the participants to spy on behalf of each other,
circumventing these
privacy protections.
The NSA sent divers to place physical optical splitters on submarine
cables. It
stores all the data in gigantic datacenters and has algorithms comb through
it.
A slightly paranoid idea. It's much easier for them to get data other ways.
Not paranoid at all. I've heard from many sources, including submariners that this exact
thing is done. Also, are you aware of Bluffdale?
http://www.wired.com/tag/bluffdale/
It infiltrated American companies, like Google, to install spying software
on its
servers. It also infiltrated technical committees responsible for
cryptography
standards to introduce backdoors in the implementation of cryptographic
algorithms.
These actions make us all less safe. Even open source cryptography projects
like
TrueCrypt decided to give up, because they were infiltrated by the NSA and
realised
they could do nothing against it.
What makes you think it makes us less safe. I'd say part of the problem is
it makes
us more safe and people think being safe is more important than privacy -
and they
are right at least in the short run. The problem is the long run.
What leads people to think it's less safe is that governments have killed far more of
their own people (estimates are around 100,000,000 in the last century) than terrorists
ever have (or likely ever will).
We're not talking about governments in general. We're talking about the U.S. government.
So I'm not clear on the relevance of Nazi Germany, Mao's Cultural Revolution, or Stalin's
purges. On the other hand I agree that terrorists are only a tiny threat. The reason that
people feel threatened by terrorism is the play that media give incidents - something
pointed out years ago by Scott Atran. He also pointed out that this coverage serves to
recruit more terrorists.
These are not the actions of an organisation that respects privacy.
Any intelligence agency worth it's salt is going to push to the limit of the law.
Would you expect, or want anything less? Would you be happy to hear, "Yeah, we
could have found he was conspiring to blow up that building, but we thought
we
should respect his privacy when talking to Al Queda in Syria" Here's a good
analysis of the technical aspects of the situation:
http://bit-player.org/2006/room-641a
If our laws, rights, and constitutional protections mean nothing, then we might as well
be living in Syria already.
But the NSA is obeying the law - it's just not a law to your (or my) liking.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
