[ryan_j_naughton]

>You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?

Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives.

As a comparison, the war on drugs (which a Nixon aid recently revealed was intentionally designed to target his adversaries -- progressives and minorities) has been used as a justification for increased government and police power for years. Now the DEA, FBI, and local police are using parallel construction and keeping their search methodologies out of the purview of the courts.

Even if there is some 'greater good' that our government ideally aims for, the reality of its motivations and actual actuals is far different. Thus, we need not enable further surveillance. If the government wants this data, it is already publicly available and they can build that capacity themselves.

That being said, I agree with most people here that this is mostly for show as they will purchase access through some other means.

The grey area between corporation data collection and government surveillance is interesting though. It puts groups like the ACLU in odd positions -- take drone policy for instance. They believe that "a drone should be deployed by law enforcement only with a warrant, in an emergency, or when there are specific and articulable grounds to believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific criminal act."

But they do not want regulations limiting individual/private use of drones.

It does seem strange to allow a private surveillance fleet but be against a government one. Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?

[effie]

> Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?

This may be inaccurate, but I remember somebody explained to me that only people have rights, governments only have power that is to be restricted. Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights, rather than strengthening of governments with less restrictions.

[ryan_j_naughton]

>Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights

I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict, but in reality that isn't easily accomplished with many of the things we classify as rights today.

If an individual has a right to privacy another individual has a right to freely fly his/her drone over people's houses with a camera, those rights could come in conflict. Thus, it isn't so simple as "ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights". We need to answer which rights, and at what possible expense to other rights.

This is reminiscent of the recent religious liberty vs gay rights fight in the US. As with most of the HN community, I am a supporter of gay rights and don't believe firms should be able to discriminate based on sexual preference. Nonetheless, I think George Will makes some interesting points about conflicting rights in this article[1]:

The case is from back in 2012 when a photographer refused to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony. Going beyond the standard argument of freedom of religion vs right to be free from corporate and government discrimination based on sexual preference, he uses a compelled speech argument:

>Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law thinks that Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”: She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, that express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ...https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...

Given the recent Apple v FBI fight and their possible use of a 'compelled speech argument' to prevent their engineers from writing code they disagreed with, many of us agree that an individual should retain their freedom of speech (and right to be free from compelled speech). This puts me personally in a tricky philosophical predicament because I don't believe the government should be able to compel speech when it is code related to privacy but I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.

I reconcile this contradiction by realizing that we have created a complex web of somewhat conflicting rights, and we need to help find the boundaries, based in large part, on what is best for society.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...

[effie]

> I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict...

I think that would only be possible if the rights were very weak or unnaturally restricted, for example if their validity was restricted to strictly personal region of space. In a free society, people's intents collide and arguments happen.

I don't think your example with drone presents such a collision though, since a person flying a drone does not imply surveillance is happening. Only if the person intentionally uses the drone to violate privacy there is privacy violation.

> I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.

Why should government interfere with people's views on marriage and sexual relations? That is something theocracies do. I think it is basis of free society that anyone is able to express their opinion and act accordingly even if it pisses off somebody else. If the cake maker does not want to do a transaction, the best solution is the homosexual people get the cake elsewhere. I see no reason why government should compel people to do things against their will in this case.

[jomamaxx]

"Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives."

Terrorism is a very, very serious issue that affects a lot of people in the world.

Sadly, it affects mostly Muslims.

Perhaps you missed the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris?

There is a terrible war on right now between various politically aligned entities, one of them being ISIS which is actively trying to attack Western civilians, with more notable success in Europe.

This is very, very real.

Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.

[ryan_j_naughton]

I absolutely agree that terrorism is a very real threat in certain parts of the world. Living in Iraq and Afghanistan, people have up seriously weigh the probability of a bomb exploding when they are in a crowded place. Thus, it absolutely makes sense for their governments to more strongly weigh security against liberty and restrict liberty.

Nonetheless, what I said was "Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans". My point was in the context of the tradeoffs we make in our society given the risks.

For example, our TSA security measures have actually increased deaths in America BC people have substituted to driving when when it would have been a short flight due to the inconvenience of airport security [1].

Since driving is much riskier Han flying, deaths have increased such that more people have died from this effect than from all terrorism in the US since (and including 9/11).

Because the threat of terrorism is extremely small WITHIN the US, our response has been entirely overblown.

A similar example is the surge in gun purchases after the San Bernardino shooting. Gun related accidents from these purchases will undoubtedly cause more deaths than terrorism.

Thus, when making policy (and personal) decisions, we need to do an objective cost/benefit analysis.

The result: it absolutely makes sense to own a gun, have limited freedom of movement, or government surveillance if you live in Afghanistan. In the US, not so much.

>Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.

I'm extremely well read in international policy research. Many of my friends are researchers at RAND corporation, and they focus on international terrorism.

My response to your statement would be that you can't create a generalized policy solution for the whole world. It needs to be contextualized by the situation on the ground.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...