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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=FruminousBandersnatch][quote=Anonymous]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/just-how-much-personal-information-does-phone-metadata-reveal/

NSA defenders, including Senator Feinstein, have minimized the NSA's collection of every Americans cell phone meta data.  However, as the link reveals, the NSA can discover everything about you from that data.

Everything.

Are you comfortable with a stranger having so much information about you?

How does this intrusion fit with what you believe about our right to privacy in the US?[/quote]

People discussing government surveillance frequently use Orwellian metaphors, and, at its most basic, government surveillance can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.

The "I have nothing to hide" argument is a common response to things like this.

The problem with that argument is that it assumes that the only reason anyone would want privacy is because they have "something to hide," and it divides the world into two groups - those who don't want to be watched because they are doing something bad and those who are ok with being monitored because they aren't doing anything "bad" that they want to hide.

The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it only views privacy as a form of secrecy. but the actual problem is deeper than that. An Orwellian metaphor requires a malevolent watcher. On the other hand, as anyone who has attempted to get a credit report corrected can tell you, Franz Kafka's The Trial may be more appropriate.

(If you haven't read it, Kafka's novel centers around a man who is arrested but not informed why. He desperately tries to find out what triggered his arrest and what's in store for him. He finds out that a mysterious court system has a dossier on him and is investigating him, but he's unable to learn much more. The Trial depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people's information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.)

The problems portrayed by the Kafka are of a different sort than those portrayed by Orwell. The problems relate to information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no information that people want to hide is uncovered. As Kafka presciently assessed, the problem is not inhibited behavior but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system's use of personal data and its denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process. The harms are bureaucratic ones—indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. Consider the fact that, according to this article, after 7 years only ONE person has managed to get himself removed from the government's Do Not Fly list. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/after-s...gets-off-the-govt-no-fly-list/)

The government won't disclose who is on the list and won't even disclose how big the list is.

According to an ACLU report, which cites a National Counterterrorism Center Fact Sheet, the "consolidated terrorist watchlist" contained about 875,000 names in December 2011, and the Terrorist Screening Center's watchlist has grown significantly over time, from approximately 158,000 records in June 2004 to over 1.1 million records in May 2009.

The ACLU also cites an AP report from February 2012 documenting that there were approximately 21,000 people on the no-fly list (including about 500 US citizens and permanent residents) and saying that the list had more than doubled in the previous year.

The problems of unfettered government data collection are much deeper than the Orwellian and are much more Kafkaesque.

Although personal information can reveal quite a lot about people's personalities and activities, it often fails to reflect the whole person. It can paint a distorted picture, especially since records are reductive—they often capture information in a standardized format with many details omitted.

For example, suppose government officials learn that a person has bought a number of books on how to manufacture LSD. That information makes them suspect that he's a drug dealer. However, the real truth is that the person is writing a novel about a character who makes LSD. When he bought the books, he didn't consider how suspicious the purchase might appear to government officials, and his records didn't reveal the reason for the purchases. Should he have to worry about government scrutiny of all his purchases and actions? Should he have to be concerned that he'll wind up on a suspicious-persons list? Even if he isn't doing anything wrong, he may want to keep his records away from government officials who might make faulty inferences from them. He might not want to have to worry about how everything he does will be perceived by officials nervously monitoring for criminal activity. He might not want to have a computer flag him as suspicious because he has an unusual pattern of behavior.

Our privacy is not being lost in one fell swoop, but our privacy is being eroded over time, little bits dissolving almost imperceptibly until we finally begin to notice how much is gone.

When the government starts monitoring the metadata around the phone numbers people call, many may shrug their shoulders and say, "Ah, it's just numbers, that's all."

Then the government might start monitoring some phone calls. "It's just a few phone calls, nothing more. They're welcome to listen to me talk to Aunt Edna."

The government might install more video cameras in public places. "So what? Some more cameras watching in a few more places. No big deal." The increase in cameras might lead to a more elaborate network of video surveillance. Satellite surveillance might be added to help track people's movements. The government might start analyzing people's bank records. "It's just my deposits and some of the bills I pay—no problem. I have nothing to hide." The government may then start combing through credit-card records, then expand to Internet-service providers' records, health records, employment records, and more. Each step may seem incremental, but after a while, the government will be watching and knowing everything about us.

"My life's an open book," people might say. "I've got nothing to hide." But now the government has large dossiers of everyone's activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? Should that information be subject to FOIA requests? Should it be subject to subpoena in a divorce case (for example, license plate reader data collected by local police departments could be very handy for that).

What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? And what if, as in the case of the No Fly List and the other terrorist watch lists, the government will neither confirm nor deny that you are on the list?

Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm. [/quote]

I think that it's OK for the government to watch.  It's not OK for the government to act without due process.  So if they want to put you on a no fly list or seize accounts, there should be appropriate process for that.

Working a few blocks from the White House, I am glad that someone is monitoring all communications traffic.  I am astonished and grateful that nothing terrible (on the scale of 9/11) has happened on our soil in the last 13 years.  I don't believe the bad guys stopped trying - I can only conclude our government efforts to stop them are working.  [/quote]

The founders put the 4th amendment into place for a reason.  Anyone could have said "if you have nothing to hide, then it should be OK for us to look".

If the government spies on you and learns something - like you are having an affair - they can blackmail you with it.  If you think that's farfetched, just look at Martin Luther King.  They did it to him.  There is no due process control you can put in place at that point, all you have is trust that the persons involved won't misuse the information.  Our freedom is meant to be based on more than the honor system.  We just found out that the intelligence agencies were spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, their own oversight mechanism.  If that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, I don't know what will.

I appreciate the concern over security, but it is wrong to conclude that this surveillance is the reason we haven't had an attack.  The government has claimed that it has prevented 50 attacks, but an analysis of these threats shows that they were discovered by traditional investigative methods.  So the infrastructure was not the critical piece.  http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists

[/quote]

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