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> Secondly, I'm not convinced that mass surveillance is entirely ineffective. Wholly I agree that it's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, overwrought, wicked expensive, and overreaching. But in our reform efforts, I want an account of how our intelligence services performed. I simply cannot believe that there haven't been many more attempted terrorist attacks. When the US government takes away its citizens' rights (of which privacy is one), the onus is on the government to justify this action. We cannot just assume surveillance works, the government has to prove it--show us the examples. Luckily we know just how effective these programs are and, as the authors here correctly point out, the answer is "not much." [1] From the link in the article, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded in 2014, > Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack. [1] [1] https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e... EDIT: As to the question of 'what's at stake with privacy rights?', there are great films [2], talks [3], and reading [4] on what's at stake with privacy. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others [3] https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matter... [4] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis... |
It's fine to flap your lips and wiggle your hips about privacy. Advocacy as performance art. I might be more convinced by implementations, systems, code, legislation.
Might I suggest starting with Translucent Databases, or explaining how states might conduct intel on foreign threats without impinging rights of citizens, or sketching financial systems based on zero knowledge proofs, or show how medical research and clinical studies might be done effectively with differential privacy.
Whenever I think about these potential solutions, it breaks my brain. But I'm sure the non-tech people (ACLU, Greenwald, etc) are much smarter than me and will lead the way.
Or we can all demand the impossible -- because Something Must Be Done -- forfeit on practicalities, declare victory, and move on to next outrage.