Author Topic: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners  (Read 9034 times)

Knick

  • Sentient NPC
  • ****
  • Posts: 914
  • Sion is Best
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #15 on: June 13, 2014, 05:04:06 PM »
Quick note mike, no matter what people say the US is not a democracy, it is a republic. Stop calling it a democracy.

Kat

  • Moon Cancer
  • ********
  • Posts: 4215
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #16 on: June 13, 2014, 05:08:18 PM »
Quote
Of course they do not read every single e-mail. That is obviously stupid. But, false positives do exist (and, if you filter enough e-mails, you will find them) and, further, it would be extremely naive to believe that the NSA does not possess the ability to target specific users (indeed, I would be quite worried if they do not possess the capacity to do so). Giving the NSA free access to everything that every user has done gives them the ability to run smear campaigns and the like without any real oversight.

Further, gathering more data does not always make the NSA more effective at detecting terrorism. Because, like you say, they cannot possibly read all of it. Gathering more data and running that data through filters means that they spend so much time chasing irrelevant leads that they don't have time to deal with the genuine ones. Focussing more on individuals who they know are a potential threat means they can investigate those people properly. Sure, you might miss some things doing it that way, but you also miss plenty of things using automatic filters, and there is a trade-off between the two.

No, they have analysts who can weed out false leads, and USA is remarkably effective at tracking dangerous people. Ganking Bin Laden was a masterwork.

Quote
Sure, but I'm pretty damn sure that the NSA reading all my e-mails is not protecting me.

They don't fucking care.

Quote
They have, yes, but the amount of focus that goes on preventing terrorism is massively out of proportion to the number of people who die from it.

More people would die if USA just let terrorists have their way.

Quote
And, no, this is not a theoretical concept. Just about every dictatorship in the world either came into existence or continues to exist on the basis of "emergency laws". Hell, the Nazis got power in Germany because they were able to exploit a genuine terrorist attack to ban their opponents and ensure they could bypass the constitution.

Your knowledge of history was shallow. Nazi Germany got first voted into with large popular support and formed a government because nobody else was able to.

Quote
Well, in general they wouldn't, no, but in my case I wouldn't be 100% sure because of my political beliefs.

Nobody treats anarchists seriously. Nobody.

Quote
I doubt it somehow. The EU is quite capable of defending itself.

France and Britain literally ran out of bombs while bombarding Libya. Europeans are not prepared for operating without American support and NATO structure.

Arch-Magos Winter

  • The Machine Prophet
  • Servant
  • ******
  • Posts: 2349
  • Techpriest of Beasts Lair
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #17 on: June 13, 2014, 05:11:21 PM »
>EU can defend itself

Honestly, the only nations I think that would be even CAPABLE of doing so would be Germany, Switzerland, and maybe France on a good day.

Arch-Magos Winter

  • The Machine Prophet
  • Servant
  • ******
  • Posts: 2349
  • Techpriest of Beasts Lair
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #18 on: June 13, 2014, 05:12:42 PM »
Quick note mike, no matter what people say the US is not a democracy, it is a republic. Stop calling it a democracy.

Well, more accurately we're a Federal Representative Republic/Democracy

Kat

  • Moon Cancer
  • ********
  • Posts: 4215
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #19 on: June 13, 2014, 05:13:31 PM »
And Germany is reluctant to spend too much money on defense. They sell guns, not arm themselves. Blame WW2.

Democracy in pure form only works in very small communities. Nation states cannot ask citizens about every damn thing, so citizens put their trust into elected representatives. NSA is empowered by American government after all.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2014, 05:14:48 PM by Kat the Satan »

Cherry Lover

  • The Maintainer
  • SE.RA.PH
  • **********
  • Posts: 6375
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #20 on: June 13, 2014, 06:39:46 PM »
Quick note mike, no matter what people say the US is not a democracy, it is a republic. Stop calling it a democracy.

It is a democracy in the modern sense. It's not a pure democracy, though.

Quote
Of course they do not read every single e-mail. That is obviously stupid. But, false positives do exist (and, if you filter enough e-mails, you will find them) and, further, it would be extremely naive to believe that the NSA does not possess the ability to target specific users (indeed, I would be quite worried if they do not possess the capacity to do so). Giving the NSA free access to everything that every user has done gives them the ability to run smear campaigns and the like without any real oversight.

Further, gathering more data does not always make the NSA more effective at detecting terrorism. Because, like you say, they cannot possibly read all of it. Gathering more data and running that data through filters means that they spend so much time chasing irrelevant leads that they don't have time to deal with the genuine ones. Focussing more on individuals who they know are a potential threat means they can investigate those people properly. Sure, you might miss some things doing it that way, but you also miss plenty of things using automatic filters, and there is a trade-off between the two.

No, they have analysts who can weed out false leads, and USA is remarkably effective at tracking dangerous people.

The US is pretty good at tracking down people like Bin Laden, it's not so great at finding terrorists (especially smaller-scale ones) before they strike. And, no, I'm not going to accept "but the NSA claims they stopped 5 million terrorist plots last year" as a response, because from what I've heard the NSA counts arresting some kid for making a nasty comment about Bush or Obama as "stopping terrorist plots".

Quote
Ganking Bin Laden was a masterwork.

Sure, getting Bin Laden was pretty good, but I don't think that tapping the entire internet is why they got him.

Quote
Quote
They have, yes, but the amount of focus that goes on preventing terrorism is massively out of proportion to the number of people who die from it.

More people would die if USA just let terrorists have their way.

I never said "let terrorists have their way". That is a dumb ad-hominem argument.

Quote
Quote
And, no, this is not a theoretical concept. Just about every dictatorship in the world either came into existence or continues to exist on the basis of "emergency laws". Hell, the Nazis got power in Germany because they were able to exploit a genuine terrorist attack to ban their opponents and ensure they could bypass the constitution.

Your knowledge of history was shallow. Nazi Germany got first voted into with large popular support and formed a government because nobody else was able to.

They did, yes, but they did not at the time have a majority in parliament, or the votes necessary to pass the acts needed to turn Germany into a dictatorship. The Reichstag fire provided them with the ability to enact emergency laws that allowed them to bully the other parties into voting in a dictatorship (or just to ban them outright, as they did with the Communists).

Quote
Quote
I doubt it somehow. The EU is quite capable of defending itself.

France and Britain literally ran out of bombs while bombarding Libya. Europeans are not prepared for operating without American support and NATO structure.

Erm, what?

It is true that the EU does somewhat assume NATO is going to be there in a crisis, because we know it will be, but if it was not we could defend ourselves perfectly well.

>EU can defend itself

Honestly, the only nations I think that would be even CAPABLE of doing so would be Germany, Switzerland, and maybe France on a good day.

Yeah, individually, but the EU has a defensive commitment that is seperate to NATO. If an EU country gets attacked, the rest of the EU will step in and defend it.

Democracy in pure form only works in very small communities. Nation states cannot ask citizens about every damn thing, so citizens put their trust into elected representatives. NSA is empowered by American government after all.

Sure, but part of the process is knowing what those representatives are allowing to happen and acting accordingly. If we do not know what the government is up to, then we do not have a democratic system in any meaningful sense, because the representatives do not have to justify their decisions.

Kat

  • Moon Cancer
  • ********
  • Posts: 4215
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #21 on: June 13, 2014, 06:50:07 PM »
Quote
because from what I've heard the NSA counts arresting some kid for making a nasty comment about Bush or Obama as "stopping terrorist plots".

Prove it. Even if such happened, you are literally exaggerating the issue and make needless drama about it.

Quote
Sure, but part of the process is knowing what those representatives are allowing to happen and acting accordingly. If we do not know what the government is up to, then we do not have a democratic system in any meaningful sense, because the representatives do not have to justify their decisions.

Never read about checks and balances?

---

And again, EU has no military structures at supranational level. NATO is far superior in organisation to whatever EU can muster, and there is the fact that USA alone has better military than whole EU, and Turkey who is outside of EU has second largest army in NATO.

Cherry Lover

  • The Maintainer
  • SE.RA.PH
  • **********
  • Posts: 6375
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #22 on: June 13, 2014, 06:54:34 PM »
Quote
because from what I've heard the NSA counts arresting some kid for making a nasty comment about Bush or Obama as "stopping terrorist plots".

Prove it. Even if such happened, you are literally exaggerating the issue and make needless drama about it.

My point is that I don't accept blind claims from the government that all these powers they have are "stopping terrorist plots", because they could be calling anything a terrorist plot.

Quote
Quote
Sure, but part of the process is knowing what those representatives are allowing to happen and acting accordingly. If we do not know what the government is up to, then we do not have a democratic system in any meaningful sense, because the representatives do not have to justify their decisions.

Never read about checks and balances?

Yeah, and what makes you think that those "checks and balances" are being applied, or are working? Without some indication of what is going on, we have no way to know.

Quote
And again, EU has no military structures at supranational level. NATO is far superior in organisation to whatever EU can muster, and there is the fact that USA alone has better military than whole EU, and Turkey who is outside of EU has second largest army in NATO.

NATO has more organisation, yes, because just about every EU country is part of NATO, so the EU doesn't need it. In a world where NATO did not exist, the EU would take on that role in a more active manner.

Kat

  • Moon Cancer
  • ********
  • Posts: 4215
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #23 on: June 13, 2014, 07:03:30 PM »
Quote
My point is that I don't accept blind claims from the government that all these powers they have are "stopping terrorist plots", because they could be calling anything a terrorist plot.

Prove it. Because you can as well pull off your ass NSA arresting random people, for all I know.

Quote
Yeah, and what makes you think that those "checks and balances" are being applied, or are working? Without some indication of what is going on, we have no way to know.

Lol, Supreme Court can turn down any bills when they find them unconstitutional.

Quote
NATO has more organisation, yes, because just about every EU country is part of NATO, so the EU doesn't need it. In a world where NATO did not exist, the EU would take on that role in a more active manner.

In world without NATO, EU would not exist, because Soviet Union would roflstomp Western Europe. They owned 75 % of Wehrmacht, and Britain only survived till USA bailed them out because Hitler sucked at naval logistics and strategic bombing. Even now Russia would beat European Union member states in a conventional warfare if it used their full capabilities.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2014, 07:04:49 PM by Kat the Satan »

Cherry Lover

  • The Maintainer
  • SE.RA.PH
  • **********
  • Posts: 6375
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #24 on: June 13, 2014, 07:08:23 PM »
Quote
My point is that I don't accept blind claims from the government that all these powers they have are "stopping terrorist plots", because they could be calling anything a terrorist plot.

Prove it. Because you can as well pull off your ass NSA arresting random people, for all I know.

Yeah, again, you're missing my point. What I'm saying is that there is no reason to just blindly trust anything the NSA says about the effectiveness of its methods.

Quote
Quote
Yeah, and what makes you think that those "checks and balances" are being applied, or are working? Without some indication of what is going on, we have no way to know.

Lol, Supreme Court can turn down any bills when they find them unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court can strike down bills, yes, but that doesn't help if the government is acting outside the strict limits of the law (and, laws are public knowledge in any case). In that case, you have to challenge the actions of the agencies theirselves, and you cannot do that unless you know what they are.

Quote
Quote
NATO has more organisation, yes, because just about every EU country is part of NATO, so the EU doesn't need it. In a world where NATO did not exist, the EU would take on that role in a more active manner.

In world without NATO, EU would not exist, because Soviet would roflstomp Western Europe. They owned 75 % of Wehrmacht, and Britain only survived till USA bailed them out because Hitler sucked at naval logistics and strategic bombing. Even now Russia would beat European Union member states in a conventional warfare if it used their full capabilities.

If NATO had never existed, yeah, quite possibly, but if it didn't exist now it would be different. Russia could maybe defeat the EU in a conventional war, but it could not do so quickly or easily, and I very much doubt it could do so if we put all our efforts into winning the war like we did in WW2.

Kat

  • Moon Cancer
  • ********
  • Posts: 4215
    • View Profile
Re: PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
« Reply #25 on: June 13, 2014, 07:14:08 PM »
Quote
and I very much doubt it could do so if we put all our efforts into winning the war like we did in WW2.

Not so sure, Britain and France run out of ammo bombarding Libya. You are overestimating their power.

Quote
The Supreme Court can strike down bills, yes, but that doesn't help if the government is acting outside the strict limits of the law (and, laws are public knowledge in any case). In that case, you have to challenge the actions of the agencies theirselves, and you cannot do that unless you know what they are.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act clearly established what NSA can and cannot, and it is constitutional. Research actually American politics. Or politics at all.