Rights once given away are nearly impossible to get back. All rights, I might add, not just your right to privacy. You may not care about <thing> today but at some point in the future, you may.
Not really. There is an important difference, in my opinion, between covert surveillance conducted for national intelligence purposes, and surveillance conducted for run of the mill police purposes.
There is no real way around the fact that national intelligence agencies need to conduct mass surveillance of various kinds. National intelligence is a competitive zero sum game, and if we don't do it, others will, and we'll be at a disadvantage.
The same is not true for policing, however. The real danger to citizen rights is when the crossover happens. I'm not worried when the CIA spies on me - i'm worried when the FBI does. I'm worried when the tools of international intelligence get turned to more mundane matters. And I think that is the transition that we have to fight tooth and nail. Fighting the "don't spy on me NSA" battle was lost decades ago, and you were never going to win anyway in any material way. Because even if you could stop the NSA from doing it, every other government in the world would be doing it.
What we need to do is fight to keep that surveillance contained within the international intelligence mission, and not let it creep into domestic policing.
taborj|6 years ago
darawk|6 years ago
There is no real way around the fact that national intelligence agencies need to conduct mass surveillance of various kinds. National intelligence is a competitive zero sum game, and if we don't do it, others will, and we'll be at a disadvantage.
The same is not true for policing, however. The real danger to citizen rights is when the crossover happens. I'm not worried when the CIA spies on me - i'm worried when the FBI does. I'm worried when the tools of international intelligence get turned to more mundane matters. And I think that is the transition that we have to fight tooth and nail. Fighting the "don't spy on me NSA" battle was lost decades ago, and you were never going to win anyway in any material way. Because even if you could stop the NSA from doing it, every other government in the world would be doing it.
What we need to do is fight to keep that surveillance contained within the international intelligence mission, and not let it creep into domestic policing.
blotter_paper|6 years ago