Got nothing to hide? Be very afraid.

[Quantum Windbag]

Why should people who have not broken any law be worried about government surveillance?

Here are three reasons.

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really
That Americans think they have nothing to hide in the first place is a sign of how little attention they're paying to the behavior of our Department of Justice. Many Americans have run afoul of federal laws without even knowing it. Tim Carney noted at the Washington Examiner:

Copy a song to your laptop from a friend's Beyonce CD? You just violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Did you buy some clothes in Delaware because they were tax free? You're probably evading taxes. Did you give your 20-year-old nephew a glass of wine at dinner? Illegal in many states.
Citizens that the federal government wants to indict, the federal government can indict if it monitors them closely enough. That's why it's so disturbing to learn that the federal government doesn't need to obtain a warrant on us in order to get our emails and phone records.
​

2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before

While most Gen Xers were still very young and before any Millennials were born America went through similar controversies in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. In 1975, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) put together a committee (which would eventually be known as the Church Committee) to investigate abuses of the law by intelligence agencies. Abuses included spying on leftist activists, opening and reading private mail, and using the IRS as a weapon. Sound familiar? There’s a reason why Baby Boomers have started comparing Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. The value of doing so has been lost to the ages; everything politically awful that happens in America is compared to Tricky Dick.

3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous

Gilberto Valle had an unusual sexual fetish. He fantasized about kidnapping, killing, and eating young women.

Valle was also a member of the New York Police Department, and was convicted in March of plotting to make his fantasies a reality. Whether he really meant to do so is up in the air (his defense was that this was all sexual roleplay), but he was also convicted of looking up his potential targets in a national crime database, accessible due to his position of authority.

3 Reasons the ?Nothing to Hide? Crowd Should Be Worried About Government Surveillance - Reason.com

The last is the best reason to keep the government from building a database.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Want another reason? Think about mission creep, and the way the government always expands its power.

This is true even if the Obama administration’s goals are benign. Institutions and techniques predictably outlive the intentions of their creators. J. Edgar Hoover went before Congress in 1931 to declare that “any employee engaged in wiretapping will be dismissed from the service of the bureau.” A few decades later, F.B.I. agents were in full pursuit of alleged Communist sympathizers, civil rights workers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — using wiretapping, break-ins and other shady tactics.
We must also ask how far we want government to see into our private lives, even in the prevention and punishment of genuine wrongdoing. The promise that one especially egregious sort of crime (terrorism) can be predicted and stopped can tempt us to apply these capabilities to more familiar sorts of troublesome behavior.
Imagine that analysis of telecommunications data reliably identified failure to report taxable income. Who could object to exploiting this unobtrusive investigative tool, if the payoff were a vast fiscal windfall and the elimination of tax evasion? Or suppose we find telecommunications patterns that indicate the likelihood of child abuse or neglect. What lawmaker could resist demands to “do everything possible” to act on such intelligence — either to apprehend the guilty or forestall the crime.
Using surveillance for predictive modeling to prevent all sorts of undesirable or illegal behavior is the logical next step. These possibilities are by no means a fantastical slippery slope — indeed, the idea of pre-empting criminals before they act was envisioned by Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Minority Report,” later a movie starring Tom Cruise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/the-price-of-the-panopticon.html?_r=0

 

[Lakhota]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

 

[koshergrl]

Like geronimo cares if the terrorists win...quite the opposite.

 

[Lakhota]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

Maybe we should stop fucking with their way of life.

 

[The2ndAmendment]

Don't forget the worst possible abuse:

Planting false evidence then getting it with a general warrant; making your case impossible, even before the most wise of juries.

 

[The2ndAmendment]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

Take this poll:

Is Lakhota a SOCK account?

http://www.usmessageboard.com/the-flame-zone/298263-is-lakhota-a-strawman-sock-account.html

 

[S.J.]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

How do they win if we don't let the mother fuckers in the country in the first place??? Ban all immigration from Islamic countries, but first we need a new president!

 

[Rct_Tsoul]

All you sheeple need to do is CONFORM, keep your mouths SHUT & give up the guns & whatnot ............. and you won't need to worry about it.
I can assure you that only enemies of the establishment will be taken out .......... so CONFORM.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

The issue has nothing to do with whether or not anyone has ‘something to hide.’

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, no matter how unfair the law may be perceived. But in order to indict the government must first obtain a warrant to investigate further possible criminal wrongdoing; the current surveillance programs likely don’t generate sufficient evidence for a warrant, much less an indictment.

2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before

During the Vietnam Era surveillance activities were ‘analog,’ not digital as they are today. Opening one’s hardcopy snail-mail letter is clearly a 4th Amendment violation, as one as a reasonable expectation to privacy regarding such mail.

That may not be the case with wireless, digital communications used with smart phones and computers. This doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a reasonable expectation to privacy, it’s just that the courts have yet to make a determination. And until they do the government’s surveillance programs are legal, Constitutional, and do not manifest a privacy rights violation.

3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous

True.

But anecdotal incidents of abuse by specific government employees does not constitute sufficient evidence to warrant the discontinuance of surveillance programs. If a citizen believes his civil liberties were violated by a given government employee per his execution of official government policy, he’s at liberty to file suit in Federal court, as was recently done by the ACLU.

In time there will evolve a body of case law establishing boundaries where one’s right to privacy ends and where the government’s right to surveil begins.

Until that time the current hysteria and hyperbole is pointless and counterproductive. To refer to the government’s policies as ‘Orwellian’ or ‘Big Brother’ is consequently unfounded, irresponsible demagoguery.

 

[bripat9643]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

Maybe we should stop fucking with their way of life.

Does that include strapping explosives to their children and blowing innocent people up in restaurants and buses?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

Maybe we should stop fucking with their way of life.

Maybe they should stop flying planes in our buildings.

 

[TemplarKormac]

The issue has nothing to do with whether or not anyone has ‘something to hide.’

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, no matter how unfair the law may be perceived. But in order to indict the government must first obtain a warrant to investigate further possible criminal wrongdoing; the current surveillance programs likely don’t generate sufficient evidence for a warrant, much less an indictment.

2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before

During the Vietnam Era surveillance activities were ‘analog,’ not digital as they are today. Opening one’s hardcopy snail-mail letter is clearly a 4th Amendment violation, as one as a reasonable expectation to privacy regarding such mail.

That may not be the case with wireless, digital communications used with smart phones and computers. This doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a reasonable expectation to privacy, it’s just that the courts have yet to make a determination. And until they do the government’s surveillance programs are legal, Constitutional, and do not manifest a privacy rights violation.

3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous

True.

But anecdotal incidents of abuse by specific government employees does not constitute sufficient evidence to warrant the discontinuance of surveillance programs. If a citizen believes his civil liberties were violated by a given government employee per his execution of official government policy, he’s at liberty to file suit in Federal court, as was recently done by the ACLU.

In time there will evolve a body of case law establishing boundaries where one’s right to privacy ends and where the government’s right to surveil begins.

Until that time the current hysteria and hyperbole is pointless and counterproductive. To refer to the government’s policies as ‘Orwellian’ or ‘Big Brother’ is consequently unfounded, irresponsible demagoguery.

Italics.

Wrong. On December 14th, 2010, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in US vs Warshak (2010) held that government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. This would presumptively also include digital communications on smartphones and computers.

Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication (like postal mail and telephone calls), it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection.... It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve.... [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call--unless they get a warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber's emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/breaking-news-eff-victory-appeals-court-holds


Underlined.

What? Specific?! The entire NSA was in on this, Clayton!

Obama said so himself: In the years to come,” the president said, “we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are.”

And here are his multiple statements in initial rejection of the Patriot Act, then as he became president, he magically started supporting it.

President Obama on Privacy and Civil Liberties: A Retrospective | National Review Online

Bold.

Well then, we should just forget the fact that they are reading our e-mails, building massive communications monitoring databases in Utah, and that they are tracking our very phone calling habits. What part of this is not disturbing to you? If I started doing shit like that to you, wouldn't you have me arrested? Why would what applies to me not apply to the government?

 

[LoneLaugher]

Finally, nutters have come around to the liberal way of thinking about this matter. It only took 11 years and a couple of electoral ass-kickings to do it. Bravo!

 

[TemplarKormac]

Finally, nutters have come around to the liberal way of thinking about this matter. It only took 11 years and a couple of electoral ass-kickings to do it. Bravo!

How is spying on people (like Obama has done) the liberal way of thinking?

 

[editec]

Personal privacy is a thing of the past.

Get used to it.

Doesn't matter who is in charge they ARE going to snoop into our lives maintain dossiers on us too.

And not just the government, corporations will do that as well

Why?

Because they're in charge and because they can.

Sucks you say?

Everybody agrees with you -- right or left, everybody not in power agrees.

 

[jknowgood]

Okay, just let the terrorists win.

How do the terrorists win if we refuse to let them change our way of life?

Maybe we should stop fucking with their way of life.

Kinda like abortion or gay marrige?

 

[jwoodie]

Finally, nutters have come around to the liberal way of thinking about this matter. It only took 11 years and a couple of electoral ass-kickings to do it. Bravo!

So you are the only one who laughs at your own jokes?

 

[LordBrownTrout]

The issue has nothing to do with whether or not anyone has ‘something to hide.’

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, no matter how unfair the law may be perceived. But in order to indict the government must first obtain a warrant to investigate further possible criminal wrongdoing; the current surveillance programs likely don’t generate sufficient evidence for a warrant, much less an indictment.



During the Vietnam Era surveillance activities were ‘analog,’ not digital as they are today. Opening one’s hardcopy snail-mail letter is clearly a 4th Amendment violation, as one as a reasonable expectation to privacy regarding such mail.

That may not be the case with wireless, digital communications used with smart phones and computers. This doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a reasonable expectation to privacy, it’s just that the courts have yet to make a determination. And until they do the government’s surveillance programs are legal, Constitutional, and do not manifest a privacy rights violation.



True.

But anecdotal incidents of abuse by specific government employees does not constitute sufficient evidence to warrant the discontinuance of surveillance programs. If a citizen believes his civil liberties were violated by a given government employee per his execution of official government policy, he’s at liberty to file suit in Federal court, as was recently done by the ACLU.

In time there will evolve a body of case law establishing boundaries where one’s right to privacy ends and where the government’s right to surveil begins.

Until that time the current hysteria and hyperbole is pointless and counterproductive. To refer to the government’s policies as ‘Orwellian’ or ‘Big Brother’ is consequently unfounded, irresponsible demagoguery.

Italics.

Wrong. On December 14th, 2010, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in US vs Warshak (2010) held that government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. This would presumptively also include digital communications on smartphones and computers.

Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication (like postal mail and telephone calls), it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection.... It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve.... [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call--unless they get a warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber's emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/breaking-news-eff-victory-appeals-court-holds


Underlined.

What? Specific?! The entire NSA was in on this, Clayton!

Obama said so himself: In the years to come,” the president said, “we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are.”

And here are his multiple statements in initial rejection of the Patriot Act, then as he became president, he magically started supporting it.

President Obama on Privacy and Civil Liberties: A Retrospective | National Review Online

Bold.

Well then, we should just forget the fact that they are reading our e-mails, building massive communications monitoring databases in Utah, and that they are tracking our very phone calling habits. What part of this is not disturbing to you? If I started doing shit like that to you, wouldn't you have me arrested? Why would what applies to me not apply to the government?

He thinks govt does no wrong.