Someone over at Slate seemed to be marveling over this “contradiction:”
One big reason why Americans aren’t that outraged by the revelations that the U.S. government runs a massive online and cellphone spying operation: People already assume they’re being tracked all over the Internet by companies like Google and Facebook.
Yesterday’s Washington Post/Pew poll showed that 56 percent of Americans view the NSA’s snooping as “acceptable,” while 45 percent think it should be allowed to go even further. Contrast that with a 2012 AP-CNBC poll that found only 13 percent of Americans trust Facebook to keep their data private, while another 28 percent trust the company “somewhat.” The majority had little to no faith in the company to protect their privacy.
The numbers aren’t perfectly parallel. But they suggest that the average American is more comfortable with the government’s spying than with Facebook’s control over their personal information…
Well, duh. Of course we trust the NSA more than we do Facebook. The NSA, the hysteria of recent days notwithstanding, works for us, and is constrained by the laws of this country and the elected and appointed representatives who have oversight over it, and who ultimately answer to us. Yes, that’s the way it actually is, contrary to all the “Big Brother” hyperventilating from the likes of Rand Paul.
Whereas Facebook works for Mark Zuckerberg. I didn’t elect Mark Zuckerberg. Nor did I elect anyone who appointed Mark Zuckerberg, or in any way keeps an eye on him and holds him to account in my behalf.
And in fact, after pulling us in with the headline, “People Trust the NSA More Than Facebook. That’s a Shame,” the Slate writer acknowledges some of the reasons why that would be so:
From a selfish perspective, that makes some sense: Most Americans assume they’ll never be the target of a terror investigation—and that the government has little use for their information otherwise. Facebook, in contrast, relies on the personal information of all of its users. It doesn’t intend to prosecute them for crimes, of course—just show them personalized advertisements. But for many people, the fear of having an illicit relationship, a racy photo, or personal communications unintentionally revealed to their friends and colleagues is more visceral—and more realistic—than the fear of being wrongly prosecuted for a crime. And whereas most people can appreciate the NSA’s interest in monitoring their communications, they have a harder time seeing the upside to Facebook’s data collection. It’s not like Mark Zuckerberg is going to use their old status updates to prevent the next terror attack.
And that doesn’t just make sense “from a selfish perspective.” It makes sense, period. As this piece notes, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to prevent the next terror attack, nor is he expected to. His job is making money for Facebook. Leave him to it. That’s his business, not ours (unless we’re one of the saps who jumped at his IPO).
If we trusted Facebook more than we did the NSA, now that would be a shame. It would mean that our whole system of representative democracy was failing. Which it isn’t.
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Well Facebook never allowed my SSN and other identifiers to be hacked like SC DoR did….because they never had them. One would hope the government would be more trustworthy…
Speaking of the SC Dept. of Revenue, I have a real estate closing that I’m doing involving a lien from the SC DoR on the seller. Obviously, I need to withhold the funds from the net proceeds to pay the tax lien. I called the SC DoR to get the updated payoff. I got it.
However, it was from a private, third-party debt collection agency that the State apparently assigned the debt to. Nothing wrong with that, but I found that a little odd.
Also, it was a debt collection agency out of PA. Talk about adding insult to injury. Can we at least throw that business to a SC company?
Sounds like another item in the outsourcing costs more than government realizes file.
I would be curious, did the DoR sell the debt to the third-party? That would seem to create all sorts of issues. And if the state still owns the debt, why pay a third party – especially with a lien on real property?
Sounds like low hanging fruit – the kind to keep on the gov’t. books…
Because in state governmentland, private is always better, even if it is out of state!
Who is the third party? I’d bet a nickel you could follow a relationship back to someone in state government.
I actually don’t have a problem with the State of SC selling it’s debt in certain circumstances. Collections take time, and they are expensive relative to the debt in many cases. Private collection agencies and lawyers are pretty good at collecting debts.
However, when the State has a tax lien, and there is real estate that it can attach, it seems silly to sell the debt. The State is going to HAVE to be paid when the property changes hands, and the property is always going to EVENTUALLY change hands.
My thoughts are more on the far end of the political spectrum. If the FBI of 1964 could send Dr. King audio tapes and letters suggesting that he kill himself, we can expect far more invasive and embarrassing actions towards “radicals” today or in the future. We can make up whole new lives concerning them if they get too noisy.
Now if you said who do you trust more Mark Zuckerberg or Peter King, I might have to say neither.
The problem with the NSA is not that the agency is unaccountable; it is that the politicians who oversee it are, in fact, unaccountable. They became so when the public was excluded from the broad policy debate that lead to the initiation of the data-mining program. It is time to revisit the “Patriot Act”. I was always suspicious of that law simply because of the name, which always appeared disingenuous at best. But now we have good reason to revisit it.
I guess I naively thought the NSA was focused on cyberwarfare – defensive and offensive. I thought they were our defense against China’s data thievery and despotic countries efforts to go nuclear, etc. I didn’t realize the resources that they had committed – wasted – developing a system to track all of our every personal data flows.
It is time for the sun to rise on our “War on Terror”; which maybe shouldn’t include the actual counter-terrorism efforts per se, but absolutely should involve a top level airing of our goals, values and approaches. We haven’t had that. It is time. Our political establishment owes the American people that. Otherwise, the ones entrenched in the secrecy of this are as unaccountable as Zuckerberg is to Americans in general.
I’ve never liked the name, “Patriot Act.” It doesn’t have anything to do with what the Act does. It’s just a particularly ham-handed, unimaginative way of marketing it. It’s like calling it the “Mom and Apple Pie” Act. That would be as relevant.
Seems like it would have been called the Homeland Security Act. Although I don’t like that, either. It’s relevant, at least, but it’s also too emotionally manipulative. A better name would be Domestic Security Act. Or just “Security Act,” since it has foreign elements and in some ways relates to collective security.
I really thought it sort of corny when we started using “Homeland” for “domestic” in policy circles. It’s just such an emotionally evocative term, from the realm of poets rather than policymakers. That’s why the TV series is called “Homeland” — it’s an emotionally freighted word.
Actually, you couldn’t have called it the “Homeland Security Act,” because that was taken… But almost any descriptive name would have been better than the non-sequitur, “Patriot Act.”
This is a slightly different topic, but has anyone noted how the quality of names for military operations has declined over the years?
That’s a different field, because you sort of don’t want THOSE to have descriptive or relevant names, for the sake of security.
In 1944, we had Operation Overlord, which was both sort of random and yet evocative of something as momentous as opening the major new front that would eventually lead to the Nazis’ Götterdämmerung. Then there was Operation Market Garden, which was in no way a stroll in any kind of garden.
But then, in 1991, we had the stupendously unimaginative “Operation Desert Storm,” which just sort of made me want to cringe.
Then, worse, we had “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” I mean, really — does nomenclature have to double as sales pitch? And if it does, can’t we be more creative than that?
Of course today, someone would be offended if you called an operation “Overlord” and it got out. But that was a great name…
You mean like D-Day?
Well, “D-Day” is a generic designation that we now use to refer to the one D-day for Overlord, because it was the most massive such day in history. (Unless someone out there can think of one that exceeds putting 175,000 men on a hostile shore in one day.)
It originally referred to June 5, 1944, but the weather intervened…
Top 5 Military Operation Codenames:
(just using the western front in WWII; in no particular order)
1. Overlord (Allied invasion of Normandy)
2. Sea Lion (Axis plan to invade Britain, which was aborted)
3. Cobra (Allied bombing in Normandy to allow breakout from hedgerow country)
4. Pegasus (Rescue mission for the Allied forces after failure of Market Garden)
5. Bodyguard (Allied disinformation operation to draw the Axis focus away from Normandy)
I like Operation Dynamo. I wrote my 8th grade WWII term paper on it…..when they called up regular old people in regular old boats to help rescue troops at Dunkirk. I like it when it regular old people help.
Very nice Top Five list, Bryan. Nick Hornby would be proud.
And Scout, you’ve just revealed how much younger you are than I am. I never took a history course that got as far as WWII. I learned everything I know about it on my own. (And even though I majored in history in college, I concentrated on the early history of our republic, and took side trips into Latin American and Spanish history and political science.)
Sometimes we had textbooks that included WWII — and I’d read those parts on my own, because I was so interested — but teachers never got that far. I think it seemed a low priority to them because it was, to their adult perspectives, so recent. They remembered it — the way you or I might remember the Gulf War, or the wars of disintegration in the Balkans, but it ended eight years before I was born, so I sorta needed to be taught that stuff.
One reason I was so fascinated with the period personally was because I understood the degree to which it had shaped the world in which I was growing up — much more so than, say, the Napoleonic Wars — and felt like I HAD to know about it.
Also, all those TV shows and movies I grew up on and all those model warplanes (Mustangs, Spitfires, Messerschmidts, Focke-Wolfes, Zeroes, etc.) I built made it seem very cool, I must admit. I would eventually learn that it wasn’t at all fun for those who had to fight it — despite the impressions one might have gained from such silliness as “Hogan’s Heroes.” But by the time I learned that war was hell, I was hooked on learning about that one.
Why should we trust the NSA more than Facebook? Brad, do you really think they work for us? If you look back at the past 60 years of history of the government spying efforts, I think that categorically, every time the government is given unchecked power to monitor its own citizenry we end up with an abuse of power ala Hoover’s black bag ops. There is a reason why we have the FISA court. Remember the Church committee? We got the FISA court out of that effort. Now the FISA court appears to be no more than a rubber stamp.
As to whether to trust the NSA over Facebook, Facebook is voluntary and the use of information is covered under its Terms of Service. (of course it takes a lawyer to dismantle what all that actually means) And if there was ever a violation of the TOS by Facebook, there would be a massive market reaction (i.e. lawsuits). Has there been a successful suit against the government over the missue of secret information that was not shutdown on the spot by the national security rationale? Is there an opt out of NSA monitoring?
I do not get much comfort from the fact that they are supposedly only gathering metadata from calls. If they were to mine the metadata to any extent, they could track every phone call and every location I have ever been while carrying my phone. The recent US Supreme Court decision involving GPS data is very informative in this matter and I would hold that the gather of metadata in this matter is barred by that opinion.
“Brad, do you really think they work for us?”
Yes.
Mark and TJ, absolutely. Because in Brad-world, neither federal nor state governments have EVER trampled on the rights of a citizen or abused their power.
Very reasonable op-ed in the NYT today: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/the-price-of-the-panopticon.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130612&_r=0
Key phrase: : “Given the open-ended nature of this country’s relentless campaign against terrorism and other declared evils, it would be naïve to imagine that the state’s grip on “big data,” achieved at such cost, would be allowed to atrophy in the foreseeable future. It is far more likely that new uses — and, inevitably, abuses — will be found for these surveillance techniques. This is true even if the Obama administration’s goals are benign. Institutions and techniques predictably outlive the intentions of their creators.”
“Because in Brad-world, neither federal nor state governments have EVER trampled on the rights of a citizen or abused their power.”
No, Phillip, that’s not what I think, and it’s not like you to engage in such misrepresentative hyperbole.
In Brad-world — which is also Phillip-world and Doug-world and everyone’s world, because it’s the real world — we have the ability to call government to account for wrongdoing, when it does do something wrong.
I’m awaiting any evidence, in all this hand-wringing, that any wrong has been done to anyone.
“I’m awaiting any evidence, in all this hand-wringing, that any wrong has been done to anyone.”
We don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why the programs are secret.
Are you meaning to tell me you trust every person from the lowest data analyst to the head of the C.I.A. that all of the data collected has not ever been used for any purpose other than data mining foreign terrorist activities? That no false positives have ever been pursued as a result of the data?
Do you think we’d even know if that happened?
If they give us specific examples of how the data has been used successfully, it would help to reduce the suspicion. I’m starting to wonder if the reason they won’t reveal details is because those details might paint a scary scenario… for example if there had been a massive attack that was thwarted very late in the game.
“Are you meaning to tell me you trust every person from the lowest data analyst to the head of the C.I.A….?”
No, I don’t mean to say anything of the kind; I mean to say what I actually say. Read the words.
The institutions of our representative democracy, and the values that guide our system, and the dynamics that cause them to function as they do, are far greater than the sum of the value of the individuals that work in them.
This is something that is intuitive for me, and counterintuitive for Doug, because of his highly individualized worldview. This creates a cognitive gap across which it is often difficult to communicate meaningfully.
Isn’t it really the difference between idealism and realism? You believe strongly in the concept of representative democracy and don’t want to get bogged down in the details of how it actually works (or doesn’t).
Had it not been for the leaks of the recent information, would we have known that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper essentially lied to Congress in March when asked specifically “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper responded, “No, sir… Not wittingly.”
How does a representative democracy deal with that? There is no recourse unless Obama does something.
Even a member of Congress has stated something similar to what I posted recently: “Members of Congress can’t make informed decisions on intelligence issues when the head of the intelligence community willfully makes false statements,”
So how do we as voters have the ability to elect the best representatives if we (and they) don’t know what the nature of the secret programs are?
Ah, but Doug… That’s not a false statement.
Brad,
Two points. First, until Mr. Snowden (illegally) leaked this information we the public did not even know about this program. How can there be accountability without public knowledge and discourse? How can there be public knowledge and discourse when it is illegal to provide the public with knowledge? Further, the branch of government most charged with holding the executive branch accountable (arguably), the judiciary, is often stopped in their tracks from reviewing cases based on executive branch practices because of the legal concept of standing (how can you prove if you were affected if it is illegal to talk about it), or trumped by concerns of national security. Please see the circa 2007 ACLU lawsuit against the NSA (493 F.3d 644).
As for harm, as Libb points out below, the mere existence of these programs chill speech and diminish us all. For example, your little joke about saying you love Big Brother over the phone. That right there shows the effect that having the government monitoring would change your expression which in turn changes your thought. The Op/Ed Phillip linked provides a very concise set of thoughts on this idea. Monitoring does harm in and of itself. If we are to accept this program there needs to be transparency and open debate.
This statement is incorrect: “First, until Mr. Snowden (illegally) leaked this information we the public did not even know about this program.”
We’ve known about the data mining, and debated it, for years now. We didn’t know about the code-name “Prism” and some other details that have emerged in the last few days. But nothing that Snowden revealed adds anything likely to change the mind of anyone on the programs, whether their previous position was pro or con, supportive or appalled.
We need to keep this in mind.
Agree with Mark, TJ and Phillip.
Perhaps the perspective of a Chinese dissident, Ai Weiwei, will persuade those who live in a “Brad-world” to think a little deeper…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/nsa-surveillance-us-behaving-like-china
Here are a few of Mr Weiwei’s thoughts on the issue:
“When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.”
“To limit power is to protect society. It is not only about protecting individuals’ rights but making power healthier.”
“I think especially that a nation like the US, which is technically advanced, should not take advantage of its power. It encourages other nations.”
” We must not hand over our rights to other people. No state power should be given that kind of trust. Not China. Not the US.”
I really don’t wish to insult anyone here even by implication, but I believe I perceive the world as I do — as it is — because I DO think about things deeply. My mind works hard to perceive what is actually happening (and what is NOT happening), rather than trying to force events into some rigid set of prefab models the way Republicans, Democrats, libertarians and members of other granfalloons do.
I may not always succeed, but it’s not generally from lack of depth.
Actually, I didn’t use “granfalloons” perfectly there. That’s not exactly what Vonnegut meant by the term. People don’t choose to be Hoosiers, for instance, whereas they do choose to be Democrats, Republicans or libertarians.
But I’m thinking in terms of meaningless associations of people who don’t really have a good basis for seeing themselves as part of the same set, so I’m in sync with him to that extent…
Actually, maybe I DID use it perfectly, if the definition in Wikipedia is correct, as in “a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless.”
I had not remembered that choice could be an element in the definition of a “false karass.”
Brad, suggesting deeper thought is not the same as saying someone lacks depth and apologies if you interpreted it that way…not my intent.
Brad,
You are incorrect in that there was not any new information in the Snowden leak. The impression from the news releases and all testimony on the intelligence gathering was that it was targeted and done in a limited way as possible. (Please note the furor over James Clapper’s answer to Senator Wyden). The reality is that information is being gathered indiscriminately from everyone everwhere at all times without any level of reasonable suspicion to justify a seizure of the information. This is a completely different understanding of the program than was conveyed.
For example:
Wyden: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Clapper: No sir.
Wyden: It does not?
Clapper: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect—but not wittingly.
Not to insult anyone, but liar, liar pants on fire. Still feel good about trusting the NSA?
No, actually, I never had the impression it was “targeted,” or anything of the kind. I’ve always seen it as an advanced technological form of what has long been referred to as “traffic analysis” — intelligence inferred from the whole mass of communications, drawing conclusions from who is talking to whom and the volume and frequency of their communications.
And I don’t see what Clapper said as a lie.
“Targeted” surveillance is actually more problematic, and could indeed be an unjustifiable invasion of privacy, as the WSJ argued yesterday. This is not that, never has been that, and I never thought it was that. And I don’t know why anyone else would have thought it.
As I noted earlier in the week, here’s something I wrote on this blog back in November of 2011:
I think it’s pretty clear that I was not laboring under any illusions that surveillance was “targeted,” and I don’t see why anyone else would have been so confused.
Clapper didn’t lie???
Let me ask you the same question he was asked.
” Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Yes or no. The word targeted is not in the question.
And Wyden has said that he furnished Clapper with the questions ahead of time.
That’s amazing actually. Clapper sounded like he was channeling Clinton: “I did not … have … sex … with … that … woman.”.
Uh-huh
Now THAT was a lie. Because oral sex is sex. That’s why they call it oral SEX.
Clapper first tried to explain his lie by coming up with a bizarre definition of the word “collect”… as in we collect it but we don’t look at individuals so we don’t really collect it.
The data that is collected is a record of calls that took place, not any information on this or that individual’s calls.
Yes, Doug, I can see how you see it as a lie. I don’t, because I think of it in terms of traffic analysis, something that is nothing like “collecting” data on this or that American, much less millions of them.
Collecting data on you, or me, or Clapper or Wyden is not the same as looking for patterns in huge masses of traffic.
Anyway, it’s out there, and if enough people agree with you that Clapper lied, there will be enormous pressure on the Obama administration to get rid of him, punish him and/or make sure that no one holding that position in the future answers questions in that manner.
So yeah, to refer to a question you asked earlier (and which I’m not immediately finding at the moment), the process of accountability in our system flows through Obama.
That doesn’t mean that Obama will do what YOU want him to do. He might do what I would want him to do instead. Either way, he and his party will bear the political burden of any backlash.
Also, Doug, my use of the word “targeted” was in reply to this, from T.J.: “The impression from the news releases and all testimony on the intelligence gathering was that it was targeted and done in a limited way as possible.”
If they collect phone numbers, they are collecting data on individuals. A phone number may as well be a persons name.
I know a little about data mining. I’ve actually done it. I testified in two cases for the U.S. government in prosecuting people who were using postal money orders in money laundering. I identified the suspects based on their patterns of use of debit cards linked to money orders. I had access to every single debit/credit card transaction and money order purchased in the U.S. at post offices over a seven year period.
And, guess what? I would identify some suspicious patterns and the Postal Inspectors would investigate them… and sometimes they weren’t illegal transactions. But if the person being investigated has someone show up at his home or business, that has an impact either way.
So I am highly confident that this data has led to chasing down ratholes that might expose innocent people to undue attention.
I don’t think anyone has any basis to say the NSA does, or does not, collect data on individual Americans.
It isn’t possible to say that, Brad.
And let’s not forget that with all this advanced technology and data mining, the Boston Marathon bombers were able to complete their objective despite all sorts of red flags that wouldn’t take data mining to find.
This is why I don’t feel any safer (or more at risk) because of these programs – any system can be defeated. It will be a neverending battle of escalating the collection in response to actual events.
This is why I want some proof of the value of the program. Show the American people that the billions of dollars have produced results.
Nobody can prove it. Not one way or the other; not even the NSA.
That’s right, Doug. Traffic analysis has its value, but it’s no substitute, in such a case as the Boston bombing, for good humint and good analysis.
Of course, maybe the terrorist brothers would have been caught by the NSA if there had been other conspirators with whom to communicate.
Brothers can make for a pretty tight cell.
You think every phone call recipient/caller to the brothers hasn’t been checked by now? I bet there’s all sorts of analysis going on of people who may or may not have had anything to do with the bombing.
Oh, I’m sure their calls are being specifically scrutinized NOW, as they should be. But I doubt they generated the kind of traffic beforehand that would have attracted attention in the broad, data-mining program.
So it’s likely innocent people will be “tagged” for further scrutiny going forward.
Possibly so. And possibly so as a result of what Edward Snowden did.
Something that has been puzzling intelligence types in Washington (according to a piece I read in the WashPost yesterday) is how this one low-level guy working for a contractor out in Hawaii had access to such different, compartmentalized, classified programs.
Maybe it’s just because he’s an IT guy, and their compartmentalization wasn’t as good as they thought it was. But another possible explanation, one that I think can’t be ignored, is that he didn’t do this alone. Which means everyone who knew him or worked with him will come under suspicion. Which, as Brooks pointed out, is just another of Snowden’s betrayals.
If it’s digital, it can be copied. Programs written by humans can be overcome by other humans. Software is no smarter than the dumbest person in the IT chain of command.
Another great perspective on the cost-benefit analysis of the so-called “War on Terror,” this time from the Economist, along with links to some other perceptive analyses. This writer summarizes my point from a day or two ago, to the effect that the War on Terror is really conducted with such thoroughness primarily because of fear that failure to prevent a terrorist attack will tip public opinion away from the government in power at warp speed and thus derail its hopes for any accomplishments in any other arenas, foreign or domestic: “For the president the war on terror is what the Vietnam War was to Lyndon Johnson: a vast, tragic distraction in which he must be seen to be winning, lest the domestic agenda he really cares about (health-care, financial reform, climate-change mitigation, immigration reform, gun control, inequality) be derailed. It’s no surprise that he has given the surveillance state whatever it says it needs to prevent a major terrorist attack.”
And this will remain true if/when the GOP recaptures the White House. And then back to the Democrats. And on and on, ad infinitum, to the delight only of Al-Qaeda, Lindsey Graham, and defense contractors.
Thanks, Phillip. That was spot on.
US Arms Sales by Company In Billions 2011
Lockheed Martin 36.27
Boeing 31.83
BAE Systems 29.15
General Dynamics 23.76
Raytheon 22.47
Northrop Grumman 21.39
EADS 16.39
Finmeccanica 14.56
L-3 Communications 12.52
United Technologies Corporation 11.64
Oops.. numbers disappeared.
Lockheed Martin 36.27
Boeing 31.83
BAE Systems 29.15
General Dynamics 23.76
Raytheon 22.47
Northrop Grumman 21.39
EADS 16.39
Finmeccanica 14.56
L-3 Communications 12.52
United Technologies Corporation 11.64
Lockheed Martin 36.27 Boeing 31.83 BAE Systems 29.15 General Dynamics 23.76 Raytheon 22.47 Northrop Grumman 21.39
I would offer this Op/Ed in the Washington Post by Daniel J. Solove. http://tinyurl.com/kg228sk
He states my opinion better than I did above. Take a look!