No, surveillance is not a threat to democracy, people not caring about democracy is what threatens democracy.
Democracy has never been a right, it's always been a privilege that people demanded, and guess what, when people stop demanding it, power will naturally collude.
I'm still not seeing how that makes warrantless secret surveillance with gag orders and secret courts reporting to special committees not a threat to democracy.
OP means they aren't in and of themselves a problem if the citizens do their job and hold their democratic government accountable and force it to abide by their collective decisions.
I don't agree, though; I think secret surveillance is in and of itself anti-democratic. However, OP is correct too, in the sense that once it is revealed that secret, illegal surveillance is going on, if the subjects of a functioning democracy don't care or take any action, that is probably even more corrosive to a democratic state (since presumably there will eventually always be people like Norden^W Snowden, and nothing stays secret forever).
In my opinion, in a real democracy the citizens are not passive voters but a vigilant, armed (at least in the US) populace that holds their representatives accountable and vocally prevents unchecked accumulations of power or other undemocratic tactics (i.e. the electoral college turning into a two-party system). In my utopian view of what a democracy should be, a revelation like this would result in a very significant portion of the people speaking out and actively working to squash the surveillance system, putting the system to work instead of threatening it. Of course, such a society wouldn't let the surveillance situation progress so far and if you view democracy as a voting populace, not an informed one, my argument isn't convincing :)
You can't have a democracy without citizens who are able to think freely.
You can't think freely when you are aware that an invisible entity is constantly watching every phone call you make and every web page you surf to. Knowing you're under surveillance changes your behavior.
"Inverted totalitarianism is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
What we need is this:
The Theory of Communicative Action has three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic premises of modern philosophy and social theory; (2) to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the lifeworld and systems paradigms; and, finally, (3) to sketch out, against this background, a critical theory of modernity which analyzes and accounts for its pathologies in a way that suggests a redirection rather than an abandonment of the project of enlightenment.
I agree with your point that apathy is a threat to democracy, but there are multiple threats to an open and fair system, and a surveillance state is one of them.
I would argue that most (if not all other) internal threats to a democracy are a subset of the vigilance and apathy problem.
If the surveillance state existed before the democracy and continued on without the consent of the governed, then it wasn't a democracy to begin with. If the citizens allowed a surveillance state to take root or their vigilance slipped, then continued vigilance would keep the surveillance state in check. However, I'm making the assumption here that for the surveillance state to take enough power to make it unstoppable (without violent revolution), it would have to grow to the point where its secrecy is no longer maintainable, and the aforementioned vigilance would take over and bring in the rains.
Now that I've written that, it all seems like semantics...
Additionally "surveillance" is far too general a concept to be considered harmful or helpful in and of itself. The determining factor lies in the system that surrounds it.
In other words, a "democratic surveillance state" isn't an oxymoron. Nor it it necessarily a bad thing. However, it differs sharply from an authoritarian surveillance state, which is invariably horrible.
Writing for the Washington Post, Mike Konczal elaborates on this distinction in the best surveillance-related piece I've read post-PRISM.
Pretty sure that whoever down-voted this didn't actually read the link. Here's the key passage:
"As Aaron Bady has argued in MIT’s Technology Review, the language and concepts for privacy evolved in a world where “walls” were still the dominant metaphor. Peeking through a wall was sufficient to prove you violated someone’s privacy. But technology has opened up a brand new world where walls no longer exist, or things exist in so many places that the idea of walls makes no sense. Without them we need new concepts.
As is often the case, the battle between authoritarianism and democracy can do a lot of the mental work. One of the great things about democracy is its ability to check private and government power, as well as creating institutional structure promoting accountability and transparency. And I fear it is the only way out of the situation our country faces."
The point is that the definition of surveillance itself is changing along with the concept of privacy, leading to shifts in previously-stable balances of power. To a very large extent, these changes - which have both positive and negative aspects - are byproducts of a larger technological shift which has already brought far to many advantages to reverse.
In other words, we need to develop new social norms and structures to ensure the safety of what could otherwise be very dangerous system. We don't have to do this from scratch, but the familiar frames of reference do need updating. And that starts with recognizing that "surveillance" by itself, is neither good nor bad (depending on who is watching who, under what circumstances, and why), but that it can easily be either depending on the context.
I would suggest its a threat to society, even humanity it's self.
Social interaction only works because we have the ability to keep secrets. We hide our true feelings and intents to enable the great machine to work. If those views became known to all, you'd be in trouble. Worse still, what if you really knew every one else's views. Even worse than that, say a few people knew your real views, then used them to manipulate you.
Our ability to keep things private is vital.
I hope that some people think I'm talking about interpersonal relationships, and that other people think I'm talking about international diplomatic relations. If government expects to be able to keep secrets and privacy, it had better understand my need for it too. If it doesn't want its privacy abused, then it had better not abuse mine. We both need and value it.
I'm curious if you can even attach a quantitative value to information omission and lying through experiment. I suspect that there is some sort of nash equilibrium achieved that creates more overall welfare in a system with information omission and lying than an identical system minus the information omission and lying. I'm curious what quantity of omission/lying (assuming it's measurable) produces the greatest overall welfare even if some individual actors may fare more poorly in said system.
Glad the NYT Editorial board has stepped up and been so blunt.
"But Americans should not be fooled by political leaders putting forward a false choice. The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights. Far too little has been said on this question by the White House or Congress in their defense of the N.S.A.’s dragnet. "
> "The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights. "
No, NYT, the question is howwhich security goals can be achieved without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights.
There is no security goal that justifies destroying freedom, as freedom is the motivation for our security goals.
More like, it is easy to say that security is completely unimportant when you have spent your entire life in such a cocoon of security, you don't know what life is like outside of it.
Surprised and pleased to see the NYT editorial board take this stance, considering it has traditionally supported the Obama administration.
According to a poll cited in today's WSJ and LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-republicans-democ...), Democrats tend to support NSA surveillance, whereas Republicans tend to oppose it — a complete reversal of the situation under the Bush 43 administration. In other words, a majority of voters likes surveillance, as long as it is being conducted by their preferred political party.
You talk about liking surveillance in your final sentence, but about supporting surveillance earlier. There is a significant different between supporting something and liking something. I support visiting the dental hygienist twice a year, for instance, but I don't like visiting the dental hygienist.
Assuming we are talking about supporting, rather than liking, then it is quite rational to support surveillance when done by your own party. I choose politicians to support based on my belief that they largely share my values and goals and are smart enough and educated enough to act in ways that help further the advancement of those values and goals.
However, I recognize that politicians who succeed in getting elected gain access to information that is not available to me. That information will occasionally make the correct action in some cases appear to be against my values when judged by someone with the information I have, but actually in accord with my values given the extra information the politician has.
To put it simply, you are more likely to trust the politicians you support than the politicians you do not support, and so you are more likely to give politicians you support the benefit of the doubt if they occasionally do things that appear to go against your shared values.
Why do people who knowingly trust their data and communications to a few corporations expect any privacy in the first place? Why do people who, as it now appears, care so much about surveillance use Skype and Facebook? It is not the government, but careless consumers who are killing democracy.
If surveilance threathens your choice, then it's a threat to the democracy, but then US has never been a real democracy, but a representative one. As such it's congresmen and senators that might be threatened by it since the do our real voting for us.
Uh, thanks, but intelligent, educated people who are attentive to civic life (e.g. a significant portion of the HN readership) don't need to have the difference between a pure democracy and a representative one spelled out in detail each and every time the word "democracy" comes up in conversation.
I think it is important in this instance because that is the real heart of the problem. The US government is increasingly making decisions that go against public opinion. Something like PRISM would have a much higher chance of getting through Congress than being approved by national referendum. It seems like at some point the US government has gone from ruling on behalf of the people to simply ruling the people.
I agree with you, but I've recently (few years ago) learned about the difference. I was born in Bulgaria, and I thought we were democratic back then when communism was "all good" :) (lol, how wrong was I).
> but then US has never been a real democracy, but a representative one.
A representative democracy is a real democracy; it's just not a direct democracy. Please stop this nonsense of thinking that only direct democracies count as democracies.
I think only direct democracy is a real democracy. No need for "direct", just "democracy" will do. The fact that so call democratic countries need a modifier before the word "democracy" tells you that it is not real, as such.
A representative democracy is really a practical alternative to a real democracy which would have been hard to implement. That doesn't make it real though. Its just the practical best one can do, probably. That abstraction layer of representatives, who get a free reign, gets in the way, rendering it no longer a real democracy.
It doesn't matter what you think, words aren't defined by personal opinion but by common usage. They are used to communicate, and what you want to call a real democracy everyone else calls a direct democracy. So if your intention is to communicate effectively, don't use your own definitions for words because you like it better because it'll just continually ensure you're misunderstood.
Direct democracies are not the only real democracies and it makes you look foolish and uneducated to insist it so.
It would be nice if people realized that the United States was built upon the premise that the individual is sovereign, not the states. Your rights come from God, not government. Many think they have all the freedom they need, since they can drive (most places) with no papers and download whatever apps they want on their phones.
The government is heading down a very dangerous path and has been for a long time. Members of both major parties are too blame, for they have allowed government to grow to a scale that is far too large to leave room for the individual to be truly free.
No, my rights come what the people are willing to fight for and establish with government. Absent government, there are no rights, there is only what I'm willing to claim my rights are and what I can defend. There is no God and nature doesn't create rights.
You have rights regardless of the government. Absent government, you have the right to do whatever you want, as does everyone else. The proper purpose of the government is to protect your rights from other people; this is done by carefully and judiciously placing restrictions on everyone's rights via the law. Legal codes should be as minimalist as possible, to ensure people can exercise their rights as broadly as possible.
Of course, the question of whether rights exist in the absence of government or if rights are created by the law is as old as the hills, so we may have to just disagree on this one.
No, they don't; the premise of America is the Constitution and it doesn't mention God. You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence which is little more than a fuck you to England, it is not however our founding document nor does it reflect our principles which were actually hammered out by the Constitution as a that of a secular nation.
To one using "god" as a figure of speech, "self-evident" and "god" are sufficiently equivalent for the purposes of this discussion. You can consider both concepts to imply that the subject is considered beyond question and in need of no external justification. I have no literal believe in gods, but I use the terminology semi-frequently in the manner being described.
The word god is in no way equivalent to self evident and if you use it as such you're simply not communicating well and likely not getting your point across to those listening. Worse, you're using a term that will turn off listeners who tire of religious nonsense being injected in conversations about important issues. There's nothing less self evident than a god, they are certainly not synonyms.
What is "faith", if not considering something to be self evident? Something being self-evident just means that you don't care to provide any justification for it. I see no difference between it and faith. Gods are considered axiomatic by the religious just as the basic set of rights are considered axiomatic by American government literature.
Self evidence does not imply "correct". Far from it.
This has never before arose as a point of contention in conversation for me. You are being rather uniquely odd about it. And in case you missed it, I am not the person further up in the conversation.
Looks like I am on the edge of being hellbanned, as a full hour later I am still unable to directly respond to your comment... Just as well, I suppose.
To be explicit, I am an atheist. More to the point, I am an anti-theist atheist. I think poorly of those who believe in gods. There are very few things I think more idiotic in this world than the belief in gods of any sort.
This said I understand the terminology "self-evident" and do not pretent do muddy my understanding simply because I disagree and disrespect the beliefs of the religious. Things that are considered self-evident by believers are rarely believed by non-believers. Why should they be? If a follower considers something to be self-evident that means that they are not providing any justification to non-believers. Something that is self-evident has no justification outside of itself. There is a reason atheists such as ourselves find this to be absurd and damaging when applied outside of extraordinarily limited domains.
Believers in American style democracy consider certain rights to be self-evident, they provide no justification for these things. Believers of gods similarly provide absolutely no justification for their believes. Both are accurately described as "self-evident" believes, from the perspective of believers. Were they not considered such, then their believers would provide justifications.
While that is all true, none of it is a justification for using the word god as a synonym for self evident when it's obvious your audience isn't only the believers; it's simply an absurdly poor choice of words if the intent is communication to the widest audience. Saying rights come from god does not communicate the idea that rights are self evident well to anyone but a believer.
While the religious might consider it self evident, the non religious don't so your choice of wording has the opposite affect that you intend on those of us who consider it nonsense. You've taken something simple like the phrase self evident and replaced it with something provocative and not immediately apparent in meaning to the non religious.
Some people consider faith a virtue, others consider it idiotic, so it seems a poor thing to introduce when you can simply and unambiguously say self evident. I am not unique in this, and it's got nothing to do with being correct or not, rather its about a poor choice in communication by choosing language that means different things to different people. To consider god a synonym for self evident is simply an absurd notion to me and I'm sure to most atheists.
No, it is a figure of speech and it is pedantic to claim that it is about belief in any deity. It is similarly used in this context: "God gave you legs, now move your ass out of my way!" It is nothing more than a way to express the idea that rights are something people are born with, regardless of who is in power or what sort of government rules over them. That is how the founding fathers (another figure of speech, nobody is claiming that any of those men are any living person's father) used the term.
It's not pedantic. One of the most notable aspects of the US constitution is that its power is explicitly derived from the masses - "We the people..." - and not from some divine power, unlike the British monarchy.
Power is derived from the people, not rights. An early argument was over the very need for an explicit bill of rights. Even the text of the bill of rights suggests that the founders believed that certain rights are inherent:
Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...
That wording seems to just assume that people have the right to speak freely, that no law is needed to give people that right, and that laws can only restrict that right (and such laws are explicitly forbidden). The phrase "God-given rights" is not meant to assert that God exists, it is meant to assert that certain rights transcend legal codes and exist regardless of what government happens to be in power (or even if there is a government in power).
I don't know whether I'll agree to any of it. I'm not that wise.
Humans are able to raise kids, leave knowledge to them, and as long as they don't believe so hard in rebirth, treat history with importance. As such many different laws were left - it's for us to decide which make sense.
If we are left to nature, then we are left with whatever the animals have. It won't be anymore our human "nature".
We were not born to speak, record, etc. - over the long period of evolution it developed around us - along with raising kids. This is where we recognize the nature as important force, but not really for guiding us what to do - it's our environment, and we should care about it, but there is hardly any guidance what to do.
When people use the "Nothing to hide", or "The government does not care about your cat videos, this is the equivalent of: I'm not using my liberty, so I don't care about it.
The government may not be interested in you specifically, but they are interested in the more influential figures who share those same opinions. The HBGary leak revealed the targeting of Glenn Greenwald, and surely you're aware of MLK. What if he had had some minor personal failing, and the FBI had used it against him to derail his movement?
Surveillance is reflexive. It has no doubt already changed, irreversibly, how we all communicate. We hesitate more, we collaborate less. This is the immediate, intrinsic downside---an economic impact, even---that isn't being discussed. This loss alone makes the surveillance state a net sink on our society. Let alone the threat to democracy ,the potential abuse of power.
We need to show Obama and the other leaders that standing up against irrational fear of inevitable crime IS a tenable political position
>The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights...
There is another issue that hasn't been discussed enough, and this quote from the article simultaneously refers to the need to discuss "balance" between security and freedom, while also unquestioningly keeping alive the idea that there is a grave threat and hence need for outsized security.
So, the question is also, what is the true scale and number of these so-called "terrorism threats"? And, how do you measure the required balance without a true assessment of the actual threat (vs. assuming it)?
After 9/11 we went into this permanent "War on Terror" war-footing, wherein this notion of an overwhelming threat of terrorism was simply assumed (ex. by this article).
But, when, if ever, do we question whether that posture still makes sense (or ever did, for that matter)?
On that note, if the US had a 9/11 event every month, that would still be less dead people than we lose to suicides, which was at 1.6% the number 10 cause of all deaths in 2010. Of course, every death is one too many, but imagine we put the same amount of money into mental health research and treatment that we are currently pumping into the by-definition-unwinnable "war on terror".
Less people die by terror than by any remotely significant event category. I imagine the last few years will go down in the history books as a good example why the primary product of terror is fear and hysteria, and direct damage caused is purely incidental. Of course the indirect damage terrorized societies do to themselves is stupendously expansive.
If people honestly cared about the overall risk to them every nation would be powered by nuclear with perhaps a smattering of renewable generation in areas where it clearly made sense.
nonsense.
even ignoring the undeniable nexus between weapons and civilian power programs,
where I live, nuclear power would be more expensive and much slower to roll out.
Slower to roll out, yes, but the change would have happened long ago so we'd be talking about incremental upgrades anyways, not new construction everywhere.
As far as cost, nuclear has the fewest deaths per unit energy generated (yes, even including renewables) and is only more expensive than fossil-fueled solutions which would be disfavored due to carbon emissions concerns. Renewable can be less expensive (which is why I mentioned it).
The current nuclear cost estimates include some rather insane design margins, containments, redundant system after redundant system which could all probably be reduced a bit without appreciably affecting deaths/TW-hr, which would make it cheaper.
Also, a major portion of the expense is from very restrictive contamination handling requirements to keep radiation exposure to the workers themselves at extremely low levels. These levels could probably also be increased without detectable increase in cancer rate (in fact, it may even reduce cancer incidence; see radiation hormesis). Would we really say that nuclear workers absolutely much be safer than coal plant workers, coal miners, etc.? We do now, and this also makes nuclear more expensive.
Besides, if it's true that there is an undeniable nexus between all civilian nuclear power programs and nuclear weapons programs then it is probably imperative to take much stronger action against Iran than we are currently taking, since we can't trust their assurances that their program is strictly for civilian power generation. Unless of course, we're willing to allow them to further destabilize the whole Middle East region.
There's a very interesting video about 9/11 that every American really, really, really should watch put out by a group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Actually, that AEA911Truth video is very good with some very high calibre scientists and engineers discussing the event. I especially liked Lynn Margulis's description of what science actually is and how the follow up "investigation" cannot be called scientific by any stretch of the immagination. You should watch it before you just dismiss it.
Democracy has never been a right, it's always been a privilege that people demanded, and guess what, when people stop demanding it, power will naturally collude.