Obama Admin. admits to surveillance methods: Beating a Dead Horse Pt. 74

Nah. Data mining techniques will always have a chance of finding false positives, to begin with. So there will always be a safety net required, outside of the algorithm.

And secondly, what makes you think an algorithm would be unable to distinguish between someone who's just browsing because he's interested in muslim fundamentalism, and an actual fundamentalist who has the intention to place some kind of bomb?

McCarthy had nothing to do with big data and using data mining techniques. That was about scapegoating. A practice known to man throughout history. Regardless of big data.

  On 6/10/2013 at 8:46 AM, Bertolt Brechtakt said:

 

  On 6/9/2013 at 2:03 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

the only 'reason' to believe otherwise seems to be 'why would the government want to spy on me, my life is boring' etc.

 

 

 

That's the main point, I guess. And the problem with this attitude is that your life might be that of the average guy/girl but what if your interests / communication issues / web behaviour isn't? For example, you browse the web for information on islamic fundamentalism (simply because you are interested in this mess and you look for some information that was not filtered through the Murdoch machine). So, you visit some pages that might be of interest to the government, you maybe discuss those findings with friends and foreigners in forums and emails. So for the government analyst there is a guy who is collecting lots of information about islamic fundamentalism and who is perhaps even criticising the way the government and media is acting against it or is dealing with it as promo stunt to invade other countries etc. I bet you would become a very interesting subject for the government. Just remember the McCarthy era or even the post 9-11 years where the branding of being a communist or non-patriot, respectively, was handed out very very fast without checking the details.

 

Well the McCarthy 'era' was over quickly compared to what seems indefinite of the post 9-11 years, which we are still experiencing. The rush to kick an arab guy off or to be smeared like the Dixie Chicks is over, but the climate of Patriot Act surveillance remains mostly the same, and in many ways has only increased.

re: Godel, the McCarthy era is probably the most comparable to the post 9/11 years only because of it's duration. Not just McCarthy but during the red scare 50s era, you lost your civil rights if you were a communist, or a suspected communist. It's not much different from the legal loop holes they use now to gather data on terrorists or suspected terrorists.

Well, the huge difference is in the algorithms. There is no government officer with certain intentions running his fingers through all the data. That part of the process is completely automated ( out of necessity!). The current discussion is still about the collecting of data and the use of data mining, right?

Again, climate is a fud. That's a different issue, imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations,[1][2] politics and propaganda.

FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.

  On 6/10/2013 at 8:54 AM, goDel said:

Nah. Data mining techniques will always have a chance of finding false positives, to begin with. So there will always be a safety net required, outside of the algorithm.

And secondly, what makes you think an algorithm would be unable to distinguish between someone who's just browsing because he's interested in muslim fundamentalism, and an actual fundamentalist who has the intention to place some kind of bomb?

McCarthy had nothing to do with big data and using data mining techniques. That was about scapegoating. A practice known to man throughout history. Regardless of big data.

I don't believe that the government is working that clean that it checks for all possibilities. It rather goes by indications. So, yes, I think there is quite a good chance that they won't distinguish between interest and action. I mean, why were people sent to Guantanamo? For clear evidence or for simple indication?

There are many examples for this tactics. 3rd Reich, McCarthy era, German Democratic Republic, post 9-11, present China. You didn't have to be a terrorist or revolutionist these days to get yourself in trouble. It was enough to ask questions.

  On 6/10/2013 at 9:19 AM, goDel said:

Well, the huge difference is in the algorithms. There is no government officer with certain intentions running his fingers through all the data. That part of the process is completely automated ( out of necessity!). The current discussion is still about the collecting of data and the use of data mining, right?

 

Again, climate is a fud. That's a different issue, imo.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

 

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations,[1][2] politics and propaganda.

FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.

Sorry, don't get your point.

You talk about this like there are many people involved in going through all the information. Guess again.

Are we still talking about the relationship between government and big data? Or are we back at simple government bashing? ( which is a fud....i cant repeat myself enough, i guess)

I am still talking about government and data mining. I don't care about bashing.

It seems one of your main points is that the data analysis is done completely computerised. Which in my opinion makes it even worse.

Because I don't think a computer programme can distinct between interest and action speaking. A computer searches for buzzwords and links. A computer doesn't know the subtlety of communication and human behaviour.

(Sorry, will come back later. Have to work now...)

Look, ive already said algorithms will produce false positives. You know what that means, right? Those algorithms aren't perfect, and never will be either. Lets all happily agree on this simple trivial fact.

In the world of statistics, intentions are hardly relevant, btw. Just like your genes influence your behavior to a certain extent. Silly idea: one might be able to find possible extremists on the basis of dna. Who knows.

Intentions become relevant in court. Or more specifically, when the justicial apparatus becomes involved. And that machine comes into play any time the system finds a positive.

Imo, the quality of the algorithms is not a direct issue here. Even more, because very few people got a good notion of what big data and algorithms can and cannot do. The only thing required in this discussion, imo, is the knowledge which information is, where, when, how long, and why. The algorithm is an amoral piece of the puzzle. It's a computer without evil intentions. ( and in order for this algorithm to be effective, it HAS to be amoral!). It's output is: yes, no, % of certitude. Odds are, another algorithm will be looking at that outcome as well. It'd be interesting to know how many people are actually involved in checking any information. Lets say there are 100. Now put that 100 against the 300mln+ and think about what these 100 people could do wrt those numbers of people and the amount of data they generate.

Ironically, the use of algorithms should give you more trust in the system. You can be sure there is not much more than amoral math involved with looking at your phone data and your facebook data. You could have more trust in algorithms than in people. Especially when the distrust in government argument is applied consistently. That's about trust in people and their intentions, right? Cheney is not an algorithm!

Ok, get your point.

I agree in so far as:

Yes, in court it might be a different story.

Yes, the amount of data compared to the capacity of the governmental machine behind it might be overwhelming and might be rendering the system ineffective.

Nonetheless, before the court hearing comes the investigation and likely intimidation of being arrested on basically no grounds except some comments you made in an email.

Furthermore, I don't like the idea that my personal / private content / comments / conversations are out there handed from one company to another. I mean, just on a very "little normal life" basis: employers are already checking Facebook accounts to decide on applicants or existing employees. What comes around goes around. And collected data is always going ways (and I don't want to sound paranoid here, not at all).

My privat conversations are MY privacy. Period.

  On 6/10/2013 at 10:00 AM, goDel said:

Ironically, the use of algorithms should give you more trust in the system. You can be sure there is not much more than amoral math involved with looking at your phone data and your facebook data. You could have more trust in algorithms than in people. Especially when the distrust in government argument is applied consistently. That's about trust in people and their intentions, right? Cheney is not an algorithm!

But the outcomes of an algorithm is used and interpreted by humans. You can't leave the humans out of your equation.

I 'm not leaving the people out. I'm only making a distinction between where people are and aren't involved. You mentioned a lack of trust in computers watching your data, right? The point is, it's about distrust in the people. And this is exactly why the notion of FUD is important in this discussion.

Which was one of my points also.

Furthermore, your argument about arresting people is faulty as well. Whenever the government is going to act, laws are involved. Not just in court. Every action of a government is, and should be, based on law. To a certain extent, the governmental apparatus should behave amoral, as well. Despite all the people involved. Just like a lawyer defending a rapist should be amoral.

And yes,it's a privacy issue. Again, all this discussion about distrust wrt government is FUD. The real issue is about privacy. Not some supposed intentions of some architect behind a curtain. ....Fuf fud fud.

I hate how Obama's hidden agendas are always covered up by his constant effort to appeal to the mainstream:

*posts a million other Obama internet memes and examples of trying to appeal the average household*

EMERGERD.. He is so funny and he is just like us, let's vote from him despite having done every few things good politically.... He is seriously just as bad as Bush, and I don't give a fuck how "likable" he his.

Vote for Obama, it's the cool thing to do.

He's so in touch with his crowd

The prevalence of word-term surveillance bots will probably hasten the adoption of various audio-visual modes of communication as they're less reducible to mathematics.

  On 6/10/2013 at 10:14 AM, goDel said:

Whenever the government is going to act, laws are involved. Not just in court. Every action of a government is, and should be, based on law. To a certain extent, the governmental apparatus should behave amoral, as well. Despite all the people involved. Just like a lawyer defending a rapist should be amoral.

Yeah the issue isn't about government - I guess that's why you keep referring to that angle as a FUD. It's about the actions, behaviour, attitude and capabilities of the intelligence agency. An agency that according to the guy that blew the whistle, routinely lies to congress about it's actions and capabilities. They can and do use methods such as extraordinary rendition, torture, extra judicial assassinations, indefinite detention of 'suspects' in places like Guantanamo etc etc. Assuming all actions carried out on a day to day basis are lawful is extremely naive. It's the way things should be, but it's not necessarily the way things are. It's one of the key reasons Edward Snowden decided to speak out - he's witnessed over and over again actions, behaviours and attitudes within the organisation that he can no longer live with. That's on a day to day basis. That's before we even start to entertain the idea of abuse of this power through corruption or even lobbying by corporate interests etc.

  On 6/10/2013 at 11:31 AM, Timothy Forward said:

 

  On 6/10/2013 at 10:14 AM, goDel said:

Whenever the government is going to act, laws are involved. Not just in court. Every action of a government is, and should be, based on law. To a certain extent, the governmental apparatus should behave amoral, as well. Despite all the people involved. Just like a lawyer defending a rapist should be amoral.

 

Yeah the issue isn't about government - I guess that's why you keep referring to that angle as a FUD. It's about the actions, behaviour, attitude and capabilities of the intelligence agency. An agency that according to the guy that blew the whistle, routinely lies to congress about it's actions and capabilities. They can and do use methods such as extraordinary rendition, torture, extra judicial assassinations, indefinite detention of 'suspects' in places like Guantanamo etc etc. Assuming all actions carried out on a day to day basis are lawful is extremely naive. It's the way things should be, but it's not necessarily the way things are. It's one of the key reasons Edward Snowden decided to speak out - he's witnessed over and over again actions, behaviours and attitudes within the organisation that he can no longer live with. That's on a day to day basis. That's before we even start to entertain the idea of abuse of this power through corruption or even lobbying by corporate interests etc.

 

Agreed. Sorry that I confused government with the agencies behind it. Basically, I don't trust the institutions who are using the technologies and means we are talking about here - wether it be a government or the entrusted intelligence agency.

And as Timothy pointed out, the law doesn't always stand above those agencies. These agencies have special rules and permissions.

Good point. But even these special rules and permissions you mention, should be as transparent as possible. And in some conditions, when things can not be transparent, it should be clear what the circumstances are within such transparencies can not exist. Then, those should be transparent.

Those agencies work for the government, and therefore for the voters. They're not above the law. No matter how secret their activities. Especially in the case of secret activities, the rules and regulations need to be completely transparent. If that's not the case, it's up to government to demand such things.

  On 6/10/2013 at 6:53 PM, goDel said:

Good point. But even these special rules and permissions you mention, should be as transparent as possible. And in some conditions, when things can not be transparent, it should be clear what the circumstances are within such transparencies can not exist. Then, those should be transparent.

Those agencies work for the government, and therefore for the voters. They're not above the law. No matter how secret their activities. Especially in the case of secret activities, the rules and regulations need to be completely transparent. If that's not the case, it's up to government to demand such things.

I completely agree with you (finally ). Those should be the standards the government and agencies ideally should follow. My point is basically, that it seems that they don't do it yet and that they don't want to do it.

In terms of conditions such transparencies can not exist, the US government has found card blanche: homeland security. Every action which infringes privacy, freedom of speech etc. can be put under this umbrella term without further notice or explanation.

And all that makes me quite angry and also scared. Because the result could be nothing less than a 1984 scenario.

Yes, and that's partly, imo, due to the situation following 911. Lack of transparencies became rule, because everything needed to be done for everyones safety. Call it mass hysteria, if you will. Even if there were plenty voices around that time, outing their criticisms to those policies. The masses voted to go "right", so that's the way rules and regulations went as well.

Changing these back, or correcting these is not trivial. See, for instance, rules and regulations in healthcare (years of discussion, followed by years till the entire law is implemented), in the financial system (....my god no....), guantanomo (even worse). That's partly because of politics, or lobbying, bribes even (I'd say the gun-lobby bribes people in congress, but that's without any evidence from my side), complexity of law, the amount of different stakeholders with conflicts of interests, fundamental different ideas on morality, complexities of the IT involved (rarely made explicit, but most of the time a fundamental factor which determines success), ... my mind boggles.

The irony is that the most complex issues are dealt with by government. And in the eyes of many people (in the US), the government is incompetent by definition and the issues are better off by being solved by business(es). (thanks to huge amounts of FUD) Well, no. Of course not. Even businesses have to rely on the existence of a government which produces laws and takes care of regulation. Especially in business-world. In business world your worst competitor is not the government, but other companies in the same competition. But that's not what they tell you on TV, right? (FUD.......)

Everyone interested in survival in US-media should take a course on FUD. That crap is literally everywhere. And if you're unaware, that crap will fundamentally change the way you view the world.

Obviously surveillance should be battled politically, but on the internet there are ways to protect your privacy. The optimist in me still hopes for a paradigm shift in which we move away from the big centralized services to services we are willing to trust. If you have an Android phone and you use all the Google services your life is a complete open book and everything can be requested from a single organization. How can you trust anyone with that data? Will you still be able to trust them with it in 20 years? I run my own mail, chat (xmpp), voip (sip), file sync, calendar sync and contacts sync services. Obviously this is not trivial to set up for a layman. But if we want our communication to be private we need federated protocols so we can use a service we can trust and we need to think about where and how we store and retrieve our data.

Was the actual video with the guy posted? Fascinating stuff...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130609/22400623385/nsa-whistleblower-ed-snowden-my-desk-i-could-wiretap-anyone-you-federal-judge-president-us.shtml

It wasn't posted directly but it was in the Guardian article.

[youtubehd]5yB3n9fu-rM[/youtubehd]

"Architecture of oppression" - says it all really.

...Also, he's quite pasty for someone who lived in Hawaii. I guess he didn't go outside much.

Interesting interview!

Is it me, or is he a bit ambiguous about the responsibilities between the executing agencies (such as the NSA) and the government? One moment he says the NSA does things behind the governments back (the NSA could wiretap the president as an example), and the other he uses that government itself as the one trying to hide what the NSA does and can do.

Either I'm misinterpreting something, or he doesn't get the entire picture himself.

Is his point the NSA is bad by basically creating its own policies? Or is he saying the government created those policies for the NSA? I can't tell from this interview. And I can't tell whether he has the entire picture to be able to understand those kinds of things.

  On 6/10/2013 at 10:26 PM, goDel said:

Is his point the NSA is bad by basically creating its own policies? Or is he saying the government created those policies for the NSA? I can't tell from this interview. And I can't tell whether he has the entire picture to be able to understand those kinds of things.

The more I'm reading the more he seems to be switching between blaming the agency and their practices, to blaming the situation directly on 'the government'

"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to,"

Yes. I get the feeling he doesn't get the entire picture but is being "helped" by lawyer Greenwald. I don't think it's intentional. It's not in Greenwalds or the whistle blowers interest, as far as I can tell. It just feels there are still some holes in the story which get filled with assumptions and logic which are constructed by the both of them, without any real evidence.

IMO, the obvious mistake is for us to assume the whistle blower knows the entire story. Which he doesn't (who ever does? is that even possible?). That obviously doesn't mean he doesn't know about lots of the bad things happening there. But throwing accusations around like this is not right, imo.

They should stick to the facts. Making accusations is not their job.