[BickNowstrom]

Government surveillance is a good thing. Change my mind. Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country. Business surveillance is a bad thing. Its stated goal is to monetize user data and surveil everyone on the internet.

So basically everyone on hackernews that worked for a modern data-driven consumer-target company participates in adversarial data gathering. Even if you just gave your data to a FANG company, in exchange for comfortable features, you helped them more effectively spy on people like you. So shame on you!

[some_random]

Government surveillance from first world, liberal governments is not necessarily a bad thing. Surveillance by authoritarians focused on suppressing their population and political enemies is a bad thing.

But yeah, I absolutely agree that the NSA et al are less damaging than Google and friends.

[saagarjha]

The reason we like first world, liberal governments is that we can collectively hold them accountable. It’s not clear that we can do so with the NSA.

[homonculus1]

Any government activity conducted in secret is anti-democratic by definition. How can we ever hope to hold an agency accountable for policies that can't legally be disclosed?

[tehlike]

It only takes few years to switch from a liberal government to oppressive one

[devit]

The actual effect might not correspond to the stated goal.

For instance, it may be applied to "protect the people currently in power in the country" instead of "protect the [people living in the] country".

Business surveillance might be less problematic because laws and government are supposed to make businesses acting for their own interest not be a problem (or be less of a problem), while the same mechanism for governments (constitution and supreme courts) is less restrictive.

[BickNowstrom]

We give the police a monopoly on violence to fulfill its goal of to protect and serve. While there exists potential for misuse, this does not justify taking away that monopoly.

I am further under the impression that way more checks and balances are in place to make sure that government surveillance does not overstep its boundaries, where businesses don't really care, especially if the profit justifies the fines or stricter regulation.

Government surveillance is not a problem, it is a solution, and it helps save lives. Facebook tracking me without a profile and knowing that I am gay or religious is a problem, because the judge/courts is a room of unethical engineers drinking Red Bull.

[JohnFen]

While I am far more concerned about surveillance by the private sector than I am about surveillance by the (US, anyway) government...

> While there exists potential for misuse

It's not just the potential for misuse that is the problem, it is the reality of misuse that is the problem.

> I am further under the impression that way more checks and balances are in place to make sure that government surveillance does not overstep its boundaries

Those "checks and balances" are rather weak, and growing weaker over time. They don't reassure me as much as they should.

> Government surveillance is not a problem, it is a solution

Government surveillance really is a problem. It is also a solution for some things.

[BickNowstrom]

Government surveillance is crucial for effective counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, foreign intelligence, and law enforcement. Government surveillance contributes to an increase in law and order of nations, and an increase in information, allowing these to faster develop, make better collective decisions, and defend itself when under attack.

Opponents mention that counter-terrorism is not effective for all cases of terrorism, in effect arguing for an increased and more efficient surveillance. "They were already on some watch-list.", of course, mass surveillance put them there successfully.

I hear of surveillance abuse, where privacy is violated (spying on ex-girlfriend). But, like the police has a monopoly on violence and can physically restrain your freedom, so has the government a monopoly on violence of privacy. If you deem your country incapable of holding that responsibility, I guess it is time to move to a country where the US government can gather even more than your telephone meta-data.

Finally, that we could end up in a totalitarian surveillance state, is a pessimistic projection akin to adversarial AGI or all police deciding to start abusing and shooting random citizens.

[JohnFen]

> Government surveillance is crucial for effective counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, foreign intelligence, and law enforcement.

There is more than a little truth to this, although I think the argument is relied on more heavily than it should be.

Here's how I view the issue -- surveillance is inherently oppressive, but it also brings certain benefits in terms of safety. So it's a tradeoff. Where the balance should be is something that reasonable people can, and do, differ about.

My bent is that I'd rather live free in a dangerous world than to live oppressed in a safe world. That's simply my bias -- I wouldn't want to live in a world that exists at either extreme, of course, but I want to preserve whatever freedom I have left.

We have been seeing a serious erosion of that freedom over the past couple of decades, primarily because of the actions of the private sector, and I am highly resistant to letting it erode even further.

You speak of surveillance (and other) abuse as if they are rare things that people make too much fuss over. I don't think that they're nearly rare enough, personally.

So, while I am not a privacy absolutist, I am of the opinion that we've already set the balance far too towards the "oppression" side of the scale, and we need to resist having it slide even further in that direction.

> If you deem your country incapable of holding that responsibility, I guess it is time to move to a country

As a patriotic citizen, I consider it my duty to not abandon my nation when I think it is behaving badly. It's my duty to help correct it.

[thesuperbigfrog]

Laws do not always stop businesses in search of profit.

There are many laws (e.g. Sarbanes–Oxley, Dodd–Frank, etc.) that were created to prevent unscrupulous acts in search of greater profits.

Business surveillance and government surveillance can be equally problematic if the people behind it have bad motives.

[saagarjha]

> Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country.

I don’t think it actually does this as well as the government would like you to believe.