The problem is that once all of this machinery is in place, it can be used by any government that happens to come to power -- it makes it too easy for a non-benign, dictatorial government to say in power, egregiously abusing the ability to spy on arbitrary citizens.

That's so crazy to me. We don't have to go back that far in history to find an FBI director who used surveillance to settle petty grudges, and we had a PRESIDENT within my lifetime [1] that abused this type of information. Even if you believe the US government is generally good, there's no way anyone should believe this stuff won't be abused by bad actors within the system.

[1] Granted I was 1 year old when Nixon resigned.

Admittedly, I don't think that it's a good idea: There are many people who do care about privacy, for good reasons. The LGBT teenager who's not out yet - and never will be, to their parents, because of old bigotries. The kinkster with a vanilla SO, who goes out to be beaten and then goes home to have sex. The recovering drug addict, anxious to hide their checkered past, relying on the anonymity of moving to help with their future job prospects and recovery. These are all good reasons to continue a world with privacy... But I personally am fine moving to a more open world, and if society chooses, to damn these people with the rest. It's just important to me that we go into that world with eyes open.

We have fancy technology for analyzing social graphs and sifting through messages, but using this technology requires access to big (or, equivalently, many) machines and the manpower of humans who know how to work the technology.

Hence, groups that are already powerful have an easier time acquiring even more power.

I agree that given a choice between two evils (no personal privacy, or not personal privacy for anyone) I would go with the evil you describe. But I wouldn't be too happy about it. So I think it's worth fighting back.

Better then, perhaps, to have existing systems with well-understood capabilities and known scopes of operation?

Alternatively, If the dictatorship will have access to surveillance whether or not the good government installs it, then what the dictatorship will do with surveillance is irrelevant.

In East Germany (during the Cold War) it was similarly risky to tell your true opinion for the same reason.

If one of my co-workers/neighbours ever ask about my political opinions, you bet your ASCIIs that I'd reservedly express approval of our government's great efforts to protect us.

I'm the kind of person that enjoys playing devil's advocate, and I've taken my fair share of pro-communism, pro-liberterian, and absolute pacifism stances (and everything in-between) -- but it was all online. I hide behind my anonymity as a matter of personal policy.

Politicians only follow the pack, much after the movement towards some social progress has been well underway by pioneering citizens for a long period of time.

How much do you care about the credit card purchases of someone you've never met, who lives on the other side of the country, and who you wouldn't recognize the face off if you saw them? How much of your internet posting is done on the exact same assumption?

Well, if you live in the Washington DC area, the chance substantially increases. ;-)

Though, if you have ever been in a position to gain a glimpse into strangers' behavior, be it what bars/pubs they frequent, how they make income on the side, what stocks they trade, or any number of not widely publicized tricks-of-a-trade, I can guarantee you that you would use that knowledge for your own gain and/or entertainment. Your use of that information is untraceable, and in the very worst case can be plausibly denied.

The technical capability to do something doesn't mean you have the legal capability to use it or broadcast it and a good deal of your post is starting to hint at quasi-illegal activity in the first place.

Rather, I believe this slow but steady institutional creep against our civil liberties is mostly the work of independent bureaucrats who realize that by expanding their individual silos of power (i.e., expanding what their departments surveil and parse), they're a) keeping open the funding spigot, b) expanding their personal power and c) solidifying their job security. "National defense," since 1776, but especially since World War 2, has always been a bi-partisan rallying cry, after all.

In practice, the guys who get on TV (also known elected leaders), try as they might, have very little control over what actual policy is implemented in the realm of national security. They're just appealing to our most base instincts to remain elected, I think.

We read about how military, industry, organized crime, intelligence services, etc. influence other governments in untoward ways and assume it doesn't happen here. Whereas the real difference is more of a matter of degree.

I challenged him to send texts to one of his buddies, where he would simulate planning of a terrorist attack. He was going to, but then I stopped him, because I would have felt too guilty if he actually went through with it and got into trouble with the law, which I honestly believe he would have.

but the REAL reason not much people care, is because everyone have lives!

when was the last time you went to your town hall meeting? do you even do 1h of research before voting? or do you even vote? ...shit have to go really down until people even have any opinion.

Bingo. Mass surveillance is a tool to protect the oligarchs from its citizens. The terrorist threat is theatrical misdirection.

Every Senator or Congressman that votes to continue this Metadata BS program release all of THEIR Metadata. If you have nothing to hide why not release all of the following:

Every Phone number they called in the past 5 years with a date and time-stamp attached from their Home, Office and Cell numbers.

Every email-recipient they ever sent e-mail to in the past 5 years from all their addresses - personal address, Official address etc

Every website visited from their Home IP, Smart phone, Office and desk computer.

IF even ONE of the 535 US esteemed legislators in both houses agrees to this...lets say that Swine would be airborne in record numbers.

It's not just metadata, they collect full audio & text content as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/52913031241/its-not-ju... (watch the video)

And here we are 7 years after one of his voice calls was recorded.

[0] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/30/1220039/-FBI-Kept-Q...

I don't think most people realized how effective it was at bringing out collective activism and anger, and how much danger that put the establishment in. They were clearly looking at Egypt and back to OWS and thinking "that shit can NOT be allowed to happen here".

So, how to stop the next one? Mass surveillance - pick out the seedlings of discontent and crush them before they grow big enough to become threatening again.

I'm convinced is also the reason why they considered assassination. They were getting a little desperate.

Mass surveillance was in place for many years before OWS existed.

Whoever they are I have no doubt that they represent some part of the establishment in the US.

Maybe? But "the establishment" is a pretty vague and all-encompassing term. That could be anyone from the CIA to a cabal of Tea Partiers to Wall Street bankers.

I would hope the government at least would've learned by now that it's smarter to discredit a populist movement or break it from with rather than make obvious martyrs of its leaders...

I warm my chilled self by holding onto the thought that recognizing our self-censorship is the first step to fighting against it.

I was already doing that, but because "The Internet never forgets", not because of surveillance.

Or in other words, I've already assumed either outright surveillance from the ISP or the botnetted-computers my friends/family use to go to visit my Facebook crap, or later database breaches/hacks conducted by criminal elements.

I mean, all you have to do is look at /r/cringepics, "lamebook", 4chan, etc. etc. to realize that people actually are watching what you post, commenting about those things you post (in forms easily queried by Google) and those people don't work for NSA (who in any event can neither retain the entire Internet indefinitely, nor actually look at everything that's captured even if they felt like it).

So watch what you say if you feel you must, but I don't see why NSA in particular would cause a shift in your behavior, if having things you said come back to bite you later is something you're worried about as a concept, you've long had reason to be concerned.

I recently flew to DC (for the StopWatchingUs protest) and even did a body scanner opt-out. Went through without a squeak. The government...they don't care about terrorism. They're just grabbing for power. Even if they did finger me somehow, the TSA is too hairbrained to figure it out.

Just remember that by saying exactly what is on your mind is exactly what makes you a patriot. This is the founding principal of our country. By doing this, you are fighting the same way our founders did.

I'm a little shocked there isn't more outrage in the 'Land of the Free'. Things have degraded to the point that I would think there would be a story on major TV news sites every night.

So long as the people get their professional sport, VMAs with scantily clad women and can buy alcohol and cigarettes very cheaply, their needs are being met and they are not interested in the big picture.

Nobody was getting upset when Google was reading your emails; Facebook was reading your private messages; Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile were tracking your calls and geo-locations... All for the sake of more efficiently marketing to you. Advertisement is just another form of control. They don't tell you or force you to do or not do something, they just efficiently convince people to part with their money and make those people think that it was their own idea to do so all along.

All these concerns come down to whether we collectively think these practices are right or wrong, and it is becoming more difficult to make these judgements without a bias and it's difficult to continually evaluate whether your bias has been externally affected by these business practices.

The reason why nothing is truly being done about this massive theft of privacy is because people are complacent with the idea. We can't truly get upset that our governments are taking away our privacy when we have been giving it away to private corporations and religious organizations for so long.

I'm convinced the way to combat it is to provide services people use that are convenient and respect privacy. Not via easily-broken promises (Privacy Policy!!) but by enforcing privacy in the client. If cloud services only store encrypted data, you get the convenience and the privacy without compromise.

Once more companies make this shift, I think you'll see people realizing they don't mind spending a few bucks (hell they spend it on new apps all the time) to not have a million anal probes jammed into their private lives 24/7.

"Let’s be extremely generous and say that, on average, 3,000 Americans die every year from terror attacks [...]

The government has yet to prove one credible example of a legitimate terror plot that was prevented thanks to mass surveillance. If they want to insist that spying makes us safer, this would be good information to know."

Is that not evidence that to some degree, the surveillance works to keep terrorism down? One of the biggest deterrents to committing a crime is the certainty of getting caught. I realize that people have blogged about how to circumvent a lot of the security making it seem pointless, but I assume even the appearance of security would make it seem like less of an appealing idea to a would-be terrorist.

EDIT: I should say "interesting" rather than "weird." This post is assuming the psychology of a terrorist is similar to a white collar or petty criminal, which obviously isn't always the case. But maybe it's not too much of a stretch to say it doesn't stop senseless violence or serial killers from committing similar acts of terror.

Look, all this talk about surveillance is a red herring.

Since 9/11, I've been diligently praying to Zoltar the Space God every day, begging him to put a stop to Islamic terrorism on American soil.

And as you point out, it's been working great. The lack of attacks is evidence that to some degree, Zoltar is powerful and benevolent.

Maybe for you, personally, but not for a genuine terrorist.

Saying that domestic spying deters someone with a deep hatred of a country from committing an act of terrorism is like saying that gun laws reduce gang violence.

There is just no way to deter the will of sufficiently motivated person or group of people.

No, for a suicidal terrorist it is not. He'd be dead anyway, who you're going to catch? Of course, there's a risk of getting caught before, but that is known and they are sure they can avoid it, it doesn't deter them.

>> but I assume even the appearance of security would make it seem like less of an appealing idea to a would-be terrorist.

To a very stupid terrorist that can't understand it is only an appearance - maybe. However, you can deter very stupid terrorists much cheaper and without destroying civil liberties. And those who can add two and two, you'd do nothing by playing theater with them except wasting resources that actually could have gone to catch them. Every minute NSA analyst spends on spying on innocent people he doesn't spend watching terrorists. And even in the NSA the resources are finite.

It's almost like a covert intelligence program would be a really good way to know to when to swoop in such as to stop a person when they have enough evidence on them to arrest, but before they carry out an attack.

Pick any government agency at random. You'll find weird spending, baffling ideas, inefficiencies, power struggles with other agencies, etc. That agency will try to define their role in a way that maximises the money they need to do that job and that claims authority for that particular area.

I imagine the NSA feels fine about what they do. They probably have a bunch of techniques that they've rejected as being too intrusive or too constitution-violating. Something about "Overton Window" fits here - you hear about Guantanomo and you think "Hey, we're not torturing people like they do there, so we're better".

Add weak oversight, and a favourable exploitable atmosphere about a bogeyman ("THE COMMUNISTS!" "TERRORISTS!" "DRUGS!") and it's easy to see how an agency ends up going too far.

Going too far if you regulate children's play areas or the size of holes in fishnets doesn't mean much. Obviously, going too far when you're NSA ends up with a really bad situation.

"Unconstitutional" has become a lazy way to dress up a claim that something is bad. I'm not saying that what's going on with surveillance in the U.S. is a good thing, but you're not helping your cause here.

(For that matter, there's nothing about a "right to overthrow [a] corrupt government" in the Constitution either. nullsocket may be thinking of the Declaration of Independence, and its basis in the social contract theory of Locke's Second Treatise on Government.)

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

King George did have redcoats going around searching homes, opening mail, etc. in "problem" areas. He did run a police state. It is very likely the Framers wrote the Constitution with that in mind.

Unless you fancy a theocracy.

And seeing how off shoring has gone in general and the state/direction of the economy (and the us economy in particular), it's only a matter of time before the tax payers start demanding/bringing those "jobs" back home ;)

[0] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2...

The revolutionaries that founded the US didn't care that they would be breaking laws. That's kind of the point.

Eventually they had to shift their goal to outright independence to achieve those ends, but even that shift was accompanied by a detailed list of grievances (known as the Declaration of Independence) illustrating why exactly they felt they had to take that step.

Of course, those who actually bother to read that Declaration will note that it emphasizes that even moderate problems with the government should be accepted as a matter of course.

Their problem was not government, or laws, or anything like that. Obviously so, since otherwise they wouldn't have formed a government with laws after the Treaty of Paris, and then scrapped that government a few years later because it sucked so bad that it needed replaced with an even stronger government that the U.S. still operates under today.

Rather, their problem was the lack of the British Crown's desire (in their view) to uphold Britain's own laws and charters as applied to the colonies.

I see this in Congress and a lot of government leaders not just within NSA.

Look at Treasury, DEA, etc for examples.