They're completely different scenarios, I don't see why you're being so picky with what I'm saying. The whole point is whether the ends justify the means. The police-force is not an invasive force in my life, not like monitoring my internet connection could potentially be.

Quote from Automaton

Oh, I forgot that just because people should have known something means that that something is OK. I guess if I forget to read a letter that tells me my family is going to be killed by the author, then that act is completely fine. What's the difference between arguing over the ToS and arguing over what's happening due to the ToS because you didn't read it? Either way, I agree it wasn't that bad, but I'd say bills like this are much, much worse.

Well, no, but if you willfully state that you've read the letter and agree to its terms, then it's a contract, whether you actually read it or not. It also doesn't make the act okay, you and the killer would be imprisoned for murder since you don't have the legal right to sign off on your family's death. Even if we extend the analogy beyond its intent and assume your family agreed to be murdered, manslaughter charges would apply.

There's no scenario that makes this example "okay" just because someone wrote a permission slip beforehand. Just pointing that out since you've been quick to dismiss other posts as irrelevant, completely different scenarios. This is one of them.

Quote from Automaton

I haven't seen all too much evidence of it overseas yet - but the American government is notorious for being run by the large corporations, who essentially get their way based on how much money they have. If one of those corporations wants our information, I wouldn't put it past the government to allow them that right

This already happens on a scale that you don't seem to realize. Facebook and Google alone have more information than you can possibly imagine, and they sell it to advertisers. If you have Gmail on your smartphone, Google can use your positional data to collect information about you.

I know these are advertisers and not what you're talking about, but the only reason anyone would spend money for information about you is if they could potentially make more money using that info. No one else is out to spend their own money to lessen your "liberty", I really doubt anyone cares that much about the average person you're standing up for.


There's also the DCSNet that lets the FBI "perform instant wiretaps on almost any communications device in the US". You talk about that sort of mass-surveillance as if it'd personally impact you in any way if it ever existed, even though it already does and you've likely never heard of it.

Quote from Automaton

Again, I understand concessions have to be made with freedom, I just think those concessions should be as limited as possible, in every sense of the phrase.

Who says they aren't already?

You're basically faulting the government because you know you're not a threat to anyone, meaning they have no reason to monitor your activity. At best they're wasting resources for information they'll never use, and at worst they'd use your information to exploit your privacy and "liberty" for their own benefit. Even though, again, advertisers do this constantly to everyone.

The problem is, there's too many people and too little enforcement to know who is and isn't a threat, so preventative measures need to be put into place. You're going on about potential issues because of your (justifiable) mistrust of the US government, but you have no evidence to support your claims. If these programs aided in the prosecution of just one criminal, without having any tangible effect on law-abiding citizens, then how is it a threat to the "liberty" of anyone? That seems like a fair balance of minimalist control while still accomplishing something.

Quote from Exilement

Well, no, but if you willfully state that you've read the letter and agree to its terms, then it's a contract, whether you actually read it or not. It also doesn't make the act okay, you and the killer would be imprisoned for murder since you don't have the legal right to sign off on your family's death. Even if we extend the analogy beyond its intent and assume your family agreed to be murdered, manslaughter charges would apply.

There's no scenario that makes this example "okay" just because someone wrote a permission slip beforehand. Just pointing that out since you've been quick to dismiss other posts as irrelevant, completely different scenarios. This is one of them.

I wasn't necessarily saying that what they were doing was illegal or not allowed because people didn't know about it, I was saying that regardless of whether there was a contract or not it should still be up for discussion as to whether it's a good thing to do. I'm basically saying that stating "but it was in the ToS" isn't a good response when what you're debating is whether or not what is in the ToS is justifiable.

This already happens on a scale that you don't seem to realize. Facebook and Google alone have more information than you can possibly imagine, and they sell it to advertisers. If you have Gmail on your smartphone, Google can use your positional data to collect information about you.

I know these are advertisers and not what you're talking about, but the only reason anyone would spend information about you is if they could potentially make more money using it. No one else is out to spend their own money to lessen your "liberty", I really doubt anyone cares that much about the average person you're standing up for.


There's also the DCSNet that lets the FBI "perform instant wiretaps on almost any communications device in the US". You talk about that sort of mass-surveillance as if it'd personally impact you in any way if it ever existed, even though it already does and you've likely never heard of it.

Well, shit, I didn't know it was to that extent. What I would say in response to the google and FB monitoring is that they're different extremes as technically they're only monitoring their own servers. You know, the whole difference between client and host. I mean, you can draw that parallel with ISP's and users, but then the issue becomes a lot more muddy because ISPs are more of a gateway than a host.

Who says they aren't already?

Well... I do, in my own personal opinion. That's kind of what I'm saying. I don't believe the government allows the freedom that it could allow with society still functioning respectably and healthily. We can't really debate this without creating whole separate debates for each individual law/issue, but I'll just use drugs as an example. In my opinion, the leaglisation of drugs is allowing as much freedom as possible without causing too much harm. I mean, it all comes down to how much you value "freedom" over order, and my opinion is that currently, the balance is leaning too far towards order, and not far enough towards freedom.

You're basically faulting the government because you know you're not a threat to anyone, meaning they have no reason to monitor your activity. At best they're wasting resources for information they'll never use, and at worst they'd use your information to exploit your privacy and "liberty" for their own benefit. Even though, again, advertisers do this constantly to everyone.

Well, I've already said how advertisers differ to monitoring things on the client end. Even so, just because "advertisers do it" doesn't mean it's right. I don't like that advertisers do it either. I'm more concerned with the fact that this will allow them to see my information, not that they will see my information (which they probably won't). I know these are different extremes and all, but it's like saying someone can have permission to stab me because he never will unless he needs to. Well, no, I'd rather not give that person permission to stab me at any point, thank you.

The problem is, there's too many people and too little enforcement to know who is and isn't a threat, so preventative measures need to be put into place. You're going on about potential issues because of your (justifiable) mistrust of the US government, but you have no evidence to support your claims. If these programs aided in the prosecution of just one criminal, without having any tangible effect on law-abiding citizens, then how is it a threat to the "liberty" of anyone? That seems like a fair balance of minimalist control while still accomplishing something.

That's where our views differ then, because I don't view the unused potential for my privacy to be legally breached as worth the prosecution of just one criminal, ESPECIALLY when catching cyber criminals CAN be done without this bill, as has happened up until this point.

I think this is somewhat comparable to the bill (I forget the name) which was passed in the US which allowed the government to take its own citizens as prisoners indefinitely for no reason. Just because something is a potential wrong that probably won't happen doesn't mean it should be ALLOWED to potentially happen. Bills like this will essentially make warrant-less snooping legal, meaning future government usage of this new power that we're giving them will be unchecked.

Quote from Automaton

I think this is somewhat comparable to the bill (I forget the name) which was passed in the US which allowed the government to take its own citizens as prisoners indefinitely for no reason.

Not really, that was the NDAA and all it did was confirm presidential authority as outlined in the AUMF back in 2001. After 9/11, no one had any problems with the government being able to detain militants, including US citizens, indefinitely without trial. The NDAA even said nothing in the bill is meant to expand on existing authoritative powers.

Quote from Automaton

Well, I've already said how advertisers differ to monitoring things on the client end. Even so, just because "advertisers do it" doesn't mean it's right. I don't like that advertisers do it either. I'm more concerned with the fact that this will allow them to see my information, not that they will see my information (which they probably won't). I know these are different extremes and all, but it's like saying someone can have permission to stab me because he never will unless he needs to. Well, no, I'd rather not give that person permission to stab me at any point, thank you.

I wasn't saying it's okay because advertisers do it, I'm just saying the situation you're worrying about is already reality, and I doubt you see any negative effects in your own life because of it.

That's also a poor analogy. "It's like saying someone can have permission to give me $100, just because they'll never do it". Suddenly it doesn't seem that bad, does it? Don't appeal to emotion unless you can somehow equate the harm caused by someone taking a gander at your online/phone activities, to the harm caused by someone putting a knife through your body. There's no way the two are comparable.

Quote from Automaton

I don't believe the government allows the freedom that it could allow with society still functioning respectably and healthily

In the specific instance of preventative mass-surveillance, I still don't understand where you believe "freedom" is being taken from you. You are completely free to use these devices within the confines of the law. Once you step outside of those boundaries and engage in shady, illegal behavior, that's when the surveillance plays a part.

Unless you can demonstrate a way that passively monitoring someone's behavior is harmful to them, or restricts their freedom to act within the law, you don't have an argument. You're complaining because you don't want people to be able to see what you're up to, even though you can't give a good reason why that makes any difference to the way you live your life. Complaining about it for personal reasons is one thing, but saying it takes away freedom and liberty requires some sort of evidence or logical reasoning to support it. "I don't trust the government" isn't a meaningful way to back up what you're saying.

privacy is a liberty that in my opinion should be protected just as much as the freedom of speech and thought. That is why I say it's "freedom", because it's freedom to NOT be monitored. If someone hacked into my computer and was keylogging everything I typed, but didn't do anything about it, I would find that JUST as offensive as the government doing so. Your argument rests on the basis that for something to be bad it has to limit your freedom to act within the law or be harmful to them. Well, I would say that invading privacy is a form of harm. Just because it has no tangible outcome doesn't mean it isn't bad. Someone watching me take a shit doesn't have any negative outcome but I'd be pretty pissed if someone did it. Privacy should be just as protected as freedom of speech or any other liberty for that matter.

Now I'm confused. What are you thinking of when you say "invasion of privacy"?

I'm still going by Zed's description - "just storing the data so that it can be looked at if it needs to be". I'm still struggling to see how that's an invasion of privacy in the first place. I agree that privacy needs to be protected, obviously, but I don't see where it's compromised here.

Quote from Automaton

Someone watching me take a shit doesn't have any negative outcome but I'd be pretty pissed if someone did it.

This analogy is making me think we're talking about two different things. Because again, your analogy has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. That example involves someone directly observing your behavior -- in the case of automatically recording information about you as a preventative measure, no one ever uses it unless you give them a reason to. There's a huge difference.

I kind of forgot half way through arguing these past couple of pages what it was the actual bill proposed. I guess I have been arguing the wrong thing, but I still feel like I want to defend the notion of storing information being an invasion of privacy. It's a much weaker argument, sure, but I don't agree to the principle of the government owning information on what we do in our spare time.

So what's your definition of "privacy" that it can be violated without a single person knowing/accessing your personal information or monitoring your activities?

It's just weird how up-in-arms you are over something that you admit makes zero difference in your daily life, to the point of saying it affects your liberty and freedom.

Meh, I wouldn't really consider how I'm reacting as being up-in-arms, I'm just carrying on the debate because I believe that this bill, and bills similar to this one, are wrong and violate personal rights.

one of the definitions that I found for privacy was:
"The right to privacy is our right to keep a domain around us, which includes all those things that are part of us, such as our body, home, property, thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. The right to privacy gives us the ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent, manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#Definitions

That is what I see privacy as, and the bill directly violates the accessibility to my thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. It doesn't violate observing them, it violates the ACCESS to them. Now, if your definition of privacy is different then fair enough, but the definition is partly irrelevant anyway.

When it comes down to it, regardless of words like privacy being thrown around, the meaning behind those words is that I don't think the government should have access to my thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity (which is part of what can be found via my online footprint).

You can question me further and say WHY does that bother you so, that the government has access to those things, and to that I say: it rustles my jimmies. It rustles them in the same slow and soft manner that ACTUAL freedom being taken away rustles them. If you can't accept "I don't think they should have that right" as an answer then you can't accept "they shouldn't have the right to take away my legitimate freedom" as an answer, and you'll always be searching for a deeper reasoning. This reasoning, at the end of it all, is not going to be based on tangible statistics that clearly demonstrate the negative effects that it can have on an individual, it just comes down to it rustling people's jimmies.

In other words, I don't think they should have the right to invade my privacy (which I view as a HUMAN right as far as possible) - and I just demonstrated why I think it's a breach of privacy - and the reason I don't think they should have that right is because I don't think anyone should have the right. I don't think anyone should have the right because it makes me feel sad inside, and I think it should make most people who agree that all humans are equals feel sad inside.

Quote from Automaton

If you can't accept "I don't think they should have that right" as an answer then you can't accept "they shouldn't have the right to take away my legitimate freedom" as an answer, and you'll always be searching for a deeper reasoning.

Not really, since I can point to specific ways in which people are harmed when certain freedoms are restricted, and cite examples of it actually happening.

With this argument, I'm not seeing that. All I'm looking for is an argument from you that isn't circular. Everything you've said is completely void of cause-and-effect. You're not looking at the end-result (effect) of preventative surveillance (cause), in order to form a position based on evidence or reasoning, because you readily admit that you're personally unaffected by it.

What's the problem? Automatic data collection exists. Why is that a problem? Because it rustles my jimmies. How does it affect you negatively? Because it exists, and it shouldn't. Why not? Because it makes me feel sad inside.

The extent of your logic is "It exists, therefore it shouldn't exist." Aside from your attempts to explain how privacy can be violated without anyone actually accessing your private information, like this:

Quote from Automaton

That is what I see privacy as, and the bill directly violates the accessibility to my thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. It doesn't violate observing them, it violates the ACCESS to them.

Again, no it doesn't. If someone accessed your information for no reason, it's an invasion of privacy. I'm not denying that. Granted, you'd likely never know about it unless it harmed you in some way, and if it gets that far you'd have a legal case against them.


The government is what upholds, defines and defends the rights of its citizens. Every liberty and freedom you have exists because a governing body decided to give it to you. In exchange for those rights, you're expected to play nice and not break any of the laws established by that same government.

It's give and take. You have reasonable boundaries - "I want my information and activities to remain private". The government respects that boundary, as long as you follow one of their own: "Don't use that privacy to commit criminal activities".

Once you overstep their boundary, you forfeit your right to privacy. Granted, privacy is still given to criminals to an extent, but if an officer shows up at your door with a search warrant, "I have a right to privacy!" is no longer relevant. You waved that right when you broke the social contract that gives you that right in the first place. And if you didn't, that's why we have due process. Innocent until proven guilty. If you have nothing to hide, no one will find anything and it'll amount to an annoying misunderstanding.


Interesting read on this topic:

it is not practical, and will never be, to record real time transmissions carried by modern DWDM optical backbone systems. too much data, coming too fast, too deep in protocols, and it never ends so there is no rest.

the *only* place you are going to be able to do anything useful is at the "access" layer, or said in layman's terms "at the ISP's edge routing equipment". once you are past a major ISP's border router or peering connection, the data is for all intents and purposes unrecoverable. for example, technology does not exist to effectively parse tcp/ip L3-L7 data at 10G, 40G, or 100G rates. let's say it takes 1ms (1 thousandth of a second) to determine that the word "nuke" is in the datastream (assume also the data is in plaintext, so there is no decryption overhead). on a 10Gbps ethernet link, while you were spending that paltry 1 ms parsing for "nuke", 1.25MB of data went by. so now you want the rest of the context around the word, to see if it was a bad guy or just some kid wanting to know if "duke nukem forever" was finally released. so you need to scroll back in time, to get the data around the word "nuke". but the individual packets that constitute one email could be separated by (in datacom land) a "long time" –– many, many milliseconds. so it turns out you might need to keep a few seconds of buffer, which at 10Gbps is around 5GB of data. now go and design a memory subsystem that has a read/write bandwidth of ~10GB/sec.

but this is only once instance, of one word. you also want to know when "nuclear", "bomb", "airliner", "plane", "attack", "lady gaga", etc are encountered. the basic problem is now scaling uncontrollably –– you have to sift and store all this data, which keeps coming. and next week the peering link will be upgraded from 10G to 40G or 100G –– the problem is only going to get worse. it doesn't work. i do this for a living. we sit around the lunch table and talk about how to do it. it doesn't work. it is hard enough to insert/extract individual overhead bytes at 40G (OTU3) and 100G (OTU4) –– and we know the locations in the frame these bytes are associated with –– but you are talking about recovering application layer data in real time. it is one thing to discuss pattern matching but another altogether to reverse time and get the complete context of a data flow as a result of the "hit", which requires identifying a specific flow. we build hardware using the biggest/fastest FPGA's from Altera and Xilinx and making a flexible, scalable flow-aware pattern matcher/parser at 100G is not going to happen. moreover, the client endpoints can make life impossibly more difficult; encryption, diverse routing, small/delayed packets, etc etc etc.

So I guess in that aspect, you're safe.

In the search warrant scenario, the difference is that before that person committed the crime, the government didn't have the authority or the theoretical power to snoop on him/her.

I'll restate part of that definition that I posted:
"The right to privacy gives us the ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent, manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose"
With this bill in place, the general public will no longer have the ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others. We have that ability taken away from us. It's all good saying "they won't do anything with that power", but that doesn't change the fact that they have that power.

1) I disagree with the principle of giving the government power over something that I consider to be a human right.
- in a scenario of, for example, free speech, the government could say "we have the right to stop you saying anything but we won't unless you say something that's illegal (I don't know what, maybe some top-secret military plans or some shit)
- That too would be unacceptable in my eyes

2) Why should I trust the government not to abuse this power? What evidence is there that they won't?
- A simple google search of "government abusing power" comes up with all sorts of examples of situations in which governments have used the power that their people have given them for the wrong means
- 1 example of abused power and 9,000 examples of properly used power makes giving the government power over something as important as privacy a last resort and ONLY a last resort in my eyes.

The government is what upholds, defines and defends the rights of its citizens. Every liberty and freedom you have exists because a governing body decided to give it to you. In exchange for those rights, you're expected to play nice and not break any of the laws established by that same government.

Slightly off-topic here, I could have ended my post before this, but I wanted to respond.
Are you kidding? Every liberty and freedom I have exists because a governing body decided to give it to me? The people are the ones who give the governing body the right to protect us, not the other way around. Liberty and freedom is not "granted", it is inherent to all human beings, the only things governments do is limit those liberties in order to maintain social order. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that the liberties are not "given" to us by anyone, so acting as if I should be thankful for every freedom the government gives me is insane. I should be thankful for how the government restricts freedom as little as possible without damaging societal order, but not for "giving" me it. The way I see it, every person is born with unlimited freedom, they're not given to us by anyone or anything, they just are. We then have restrictions placed upon us by the government, LIMITING these freedoms, but we learn to accept that because in return they provide us with a pretty damn good society. However, when I feel they limit those freedoms too much, or limit our inherent human rights too much, I do not have to be grateful that I have those rights at all. In that case, I am fully entitled to say to them "hey, can you not do this another way without taking so much freedom away?":
George Carlin said that we either have unlimited rights or no rights at all. I view us as having unlimited rights, but those are limited for the sake of a stable society and luxories.

(6:40 onward is the only relevant part)