"I don't care if the government spies on me, I have nothing (criminal) to hide."

Uhm... but... if you have nothing criminal to hide.... then why'd they have to spy on you/collect your data...?

After all you didn't do anything illegal...

If machines should function the best way specifically for a person, they need to know that person.
You might also like:___

Everyone has something to hide, and who doesn't by using chrome for his porn, weapon research or terrorism plans - your fault.
But I'm okay with products like my phone knowing what I like and stuff. I even found some of my current dev tools through personalized advertisement.

I guess the NSA is spying but I don't care much cause they'll always find a way to get what they want - and it doesn't bother me cause they do this to »all users« - not me.

ofc i try to be careful but it's not my life goal to stay anonymous.

Daily dose of tinfoil.
Thanks 😄

How else are they supposed to show you're innocent?

Government loves you too much and just don't wanna let you out of its sight 😍

@linuxxx, are you a criminal?

(wears tinfoil hat as usual)

I may be a complete ignorant idiot but I don't understand all the fuss about 'spying'. You're using the term that scares. They don't spy you, they collect data to see if you have (by algorithms, not humans) if you have links to criminal people. If you do, hen you'll be monitored more heavily and maybe tracked by humans. Still it's not spying. You bank knows what you buy, your browser knows what you watch, you ISP knows what you do on the internet. This website you browse analyse your movements and clicks to see what you do. Monitoring is everywhere, it's not spying
People are like Schrodinger's cat. They are both criminal and innocent until you (the government/the "spies") check for yourself
I understand that allowing authorities to have access to your privacy may lead to pressure after all crimes are erradicated (Dystopia, here we come) because where lies the limit to what's a crime and what's not, if there are no more heavy crimes ? But there, it's just conspiracy theory not privacy.

@Strannch thank you!
@linuxxx what is your solution for catching the criminals that are using internet for communicating? And if you read your post again, you will see that it is confusing. Because how does the government know that you are not a criminal?

But how would government know, if you did something illegal ?

The gov spies on me because I am AMAZING

@Strannch gr8

Ooooooh this gonna be good.

@Froot 🍺 Heineken, Carlsberg or Guinness? Oh 🍿is on your right.

@Strannch

1.

Governments decide what is illegal, but don't always have a good grip on what is moral. There are still too many people who think it should be illegal to be gay for example.

A government should not be too powerful, not too effective. Faster crime fighting sounds good, but without proper checks and balances it becomes a ruthless machine which makes more victims than the crime it is trying to eradicate.

2.

Assuming that all governments are benevolent, even tolerant? Criminals will use your data. There are criminals working at tax agencies, at city halls, even infiltrated into law enforcement.

Sensitive data should be stored sparingly, and be destroyed whenever possible. As humans, we love gathering data, and we even store data we don't need. We're hoarders. With sensitive data, this is a dangerous addiction.

3. Sensitive data that is not under your control... you should consider it public knowledge.

Do you post to Facebook when you buy a sex toy? When you use it? If a neighbor rings your doorbell and asks: "When will your kids be home alone this week", do you give an honest answer?

4. All encryption will be broken. Within a decade. Everything that is stored on your dropbox, all things that have been sent over https, all nudes sent through the strictest of end-to-end encrypted chat apps. All of your medical documents and online purchases, all military communication, all discussions about patents. If it has been logged now, it can be publicized in 10 years. If qubits follow Moore's law, we only need to double performance 5 times to break modern algorithms like AES265, and thus https, ssl, bitcoin, etc...

That doensn't just affect privacy, it affects security and stability of civilization as well. So let's make it as difficult as possible to even log things!

So, in my opinion, you should be wary of online services, of storing everything in the cloud.

Store things locally. No dragnet. No logs. Keep things on your laptop, within your company. Make backups, but not over the internet.

Yeah, I use Google Drive, AWS, etc... but I treat them as having an asterisk* -- all data stored with us will eventually be public data.

@CurseMeSlowly Thanks man! A Carlsberg please

@bittersweet that sounds like the sanest argument I've heard about privacy. Thanks for explaining.
I too worry about quantum computers. Breaking all modern encryptions will be a piece of cake in a few years :/

I try to have as much privacy as I can get but the tinfoil hat guys ruin all the seriousness.

@7400 Innocent until proven guilty?

@bittersweet Much love to you man! I want to see more of this!

There is a pretty good documentary called 'the haystack documentary' (I think) where they talk about mass surveillance.
I really like the name actually because if you want to find the needle (the criminal) in the haystack then adding more hay will make it harder, so surveiling more people makes the whole thing become way harder and even useless.

Studies have shown that mass surveillance is basically useless and for example when the Boston Marathon attacks happened, the terrorists were already known to the NSA. (source: Edward snowden)

@Strannch 'conspiracy theory'? Have a look at China, Iran, Turkey, Russia...

These countries use the data that they can get to find political activists, gay people, people having the 'wrong' religion, etc. and to persecute them.
It's dystopian, yes, but it's also frighteningly real.

You're (assumably) in the privileged position to not live in a state which defines crimes as it likes (due to checks and balances - a democratic achievement which is not as granted as you might believe). But
1. Others aren't and the lack of privacy aware software in many areas is something we should combat just for their sake and
2. you have no way of knowing that your situation will stay that way. Turkey was a modern democratic state 5-10 years ago - secular, with proper courts, etc. - and today it is ruled by despotism.
The Germans didn't see it coming either when Hitler came into power.

A state should never be built on trust in the government's goid intentions - because these can change pretty fast.

@theCalcaholic yeah but then the problem isn't the surveillance, it's the government you can't trust it.
Let's imagine you can, it's a perfect government that respects people. What could go wrong ? Hackers that access the tools the government have ? Then it's a security problem, not the surveillance tools.

The main problem people rise is that you can't actually trust the government, or agencies. Ok, but that doesn't mean surveillance tools are bad. Just like a kitchen knife or a hunting rifle isn't bad, but you can kill people with it.

The problem is trust. I know it's kind of impossible to trust the government, but just like a centuries ago we thought it was impossible to have a democracy, go to the moon, see atoms, have equal rights, and such. We just need to fix the actual problem (trust in government/agencies) and now surveillance tools aren't that bad.

(I'm deliberately being the devil's advocate)

@Strannch you said it finally. It's not about spying or collection of data or finding criminals or privacy. In the end it is all about trust. Who do you trust with your information. That's all. 😁

// BTW the answer is no one. And it is also almost impossible at this days 😏

@Strannch I'm not against surveillance, but I think surveillance should be targeted, limited.

Imagine for a moment that I'm kind of an asshole cop, the kind of semi-corrupt one that beats his wife, flirts annoyingly with the waitress, gets drunk and piss against the neighbors car, whatever.

Now if my police department has a server with docs & taps on a few dangerous mobsters, acquired through court orders because some evidence has already been found... I might be an asshole cop, but at least I can take those criminals down and do some good.

However, if I'm sitting on a pile of dragnet data... I might instead check up on my own wife, stalk the girl working at the lunch cafe, or blackmail my neighbor. Or, seeing as I'm a cop and not an IT literate, write the password to the dragnet database with a marker on my laptop.

@Strannch What I'm saying is, that absolute trust towarda the government is just not an option. At all times there were influential people in the governments which represent the interests of just a small portion of the people which might conflict with the interests of the majority of people - that's not even a bad thing, that's just how it works.

However if someone gets into power who does not represent all of the people (which is never the case), this power needs to be restricted in order to not be abused against those who be doesn't represent.
Just imagine, if Trump's executive orders concerning people with foreign nationality (without further checks or suspicions) entering USA would not have been stopped by the court.

So you're basically saying 'we don't need restrictions for surveillance if the government can be absolutely trusted (by every citizen, minority or not)', which is correct - but never happened in history nor is there reason to assume it ever will.

I feel a little relieved looking at people like you who aren't only privacy conscious but also take pains to spread awareness.
It's sad that people let themselves be exploited because of their innocence(naivety)/convenience.
Because of their majority it makes things difficult for the more sensible minority.
I hope you can convert more people.

@theCalcaholic when I say "trusted" it also means that the guys in charge are not Trumps and irresponsible people.
I know the hard reality that's it's almost impossible to trust and have reliable people in place :/

Open question :
Would a >well conceived< and >secured< IA be the key to a neutral and respectful government ? (As if the IA (with quantum computing) represents the whole government)

@Strannch @bittersweet such a great debate!

@bittersweet I am trying to learn something here. How do you think targeted surveillance should work?

@tahnik That way you'd start to go towards the police/surveillance state. I'm fine with spying as long as my personal data doesn't get caught up in some dragnet.

I don't mind my data getting sucked up in some dragnet as long as nobody can abuse it in the future. The thing is that you can't know who'll come in power and how they might use the by mass surveillance gathered data.

I'm fine with targeted surveillance as that doesn't affect a whole freaking city when one person commits a crime there (looking at you, new dutch mass surveillance law).

@Strannch Just wondering if you're referring to me by that statement? If so, whyso? If not, nevermind!

@bittersweet going to screenshot that stuff!

@tahnik They've only done targeted surveillance in the Netherlands since surveillance exists over here.

Think specific internet/phone taps!
As in, targeting only the suspected persons.

@linuxxx I'm not referring to anyone, just opening up a debate of thoughts about this theme.
I'm glad you posted this, so I can learn from other points of view :)

@tahnik @linuxxx

Targeted surveillance is done by getting real people into neighborhoods, building real social networks (the offline kind), and shadowing those who are dangerous.

I often hear the argument: Terrorism is getting out of hand, we *must* do something drastic.

Compared to the 70s/80s... it's actually quite calm in Europe.
http://datagraver.com/files/...

In the US, you have a big spike in 2001 of course, but overall... terrorism is a fairly minor threat these days.

It might be a bit of a skewed comparison, but alcohol abuse kills 195k people per year in the EU, about 1000x more than terrorism... yet we don't see political parties yelling that we should outlaw booze, or hack drunk people's smartphones.

@bittersweet People will hate me for it but I wouldn't count one attack as a big upspike. It was obviously a big and devastating attack but it was still a single attack. More kids have probablly been gunned down in schools over the years in US than died in that one attack.

As for booze, sadly my government is cracking down hard on it. Anti alcohol ad campaigns are an everyday sight and alcohol taxes are rising like mad. I'm sort of glad tho, they're digging their own ditch and I won't shed a tear when theyre voted out.

@Froot Alcoholism and terrorism have similar cures.

The comparison might seem weird... but there are parallels: Playing with abberant extreme thoughts keeps things interesting in life, as long as you don't take it too seriously, get stuck in it. You need to dose it properly, use it moderately, sober up now and then. I see extremism as a mental disease, as the chronic substance abuse of a belief system.

With both, it's a way to escape truths, and you treat it by offering perspective, opportunities for the future.

You can't fight either with prohibition, surveillance or other totalitarian measures, you need to understand where the problematic cases come from on a very personal level, and fight causes instead of symptoms.

@Froot Personally, I drink one glass of cognac in the morning in the office, and I'm a non-lethal terrorist by biting people's fingers off when they indent their code wrong. I do everything in moderation.

@Numinex Sincere until proven sarcastic? Egh.

Soon they'll be spying on bots.

@irene good question. Maybe so others don't stumble upon your favorite clips when seeing your history?

Play Watchdogs 2.

@irene Agreed. According to Alvin Toffler, democracy is a machine that only put into work once in a few years to simulate the right to choose to the masses. After the simulation, the machine is shut down for next few years. However industries and moneyholders own another machine that never stops and this is the true engine running the world.

@irene That's not the case. You're going to earn opposition but you won't be censored. Noone will keep you from writing blogs and books or saying your opinion - with one restriction: If you call out to hurt anyone you're going to be prosecuted for it.

Of course I can only safely speak for my own country, because my knowledge about other countries is limited and/or indirect.

This rant right now:
Just when I think I'm out...they pull me back in.

😁

@irene Granted, is better than free speech.

@irene speech is a lot more free in the USA - and I don't think with good results. Although the rules need to be made very carefully and be discussed and contradicted.

Free speech shouldn't cover violent threats, for example.

@irene Yes I do. Nearly every of the values our societies are based on aren't as good if you carry it to the extreme.

On the most basic level: Any society needs a compromise between freedom and safety. Total freedom (of the individual) means low safety for everyone. Limitless safety means very restricted freedom.

Free speech is still a very important and good value - but you have to find the right compromise.

@irene Yes, but it can and should go a lot farther than it is today.

E. g. states need to have ways to execute targeted surveillance but Wer must avoid surveillance by design.

@irene That's luckily not the case for democratic countries. That's why we have 'checks and balances' e. g.

Basing our political and societal concepts on trust would be catastrophic. That's how monarchies are built but not democracies.

@irene If you want to go that route, even the laws which our airplane designs are based on, are not certain and we only 'trust' in them.
But that kind of trust is based on probability and likelyness and so is our political control system.
It needs to be difficult to abuse, but there is no way to make it impossible.

@irene Of course not. But it's the same principle. We try to put systems in place which give us an ad high as possible certainty that noone will manage to abuse them and that people who tried to abuse will experience consequences.
If our political system was built on trust, wouldn't that mean that we trusted our politicians? I can't confirm this assumption in the slightest for my country.

@irene To be honest, I can't answer that easily. I have no 'general trust' towards politicians. Regarding some questions I do believe that they mean what they say, regarding others I'm pretty sure they're lying straight in my face.
That's why we as society need to carefully investigate these things and confront them with their own, former statements.

Yes, trust is involved but it is not that easy.

@irene I'm less pessimistic about that. :D

Except if you mean that there's no trust in anybody on earth. That's probably true. We humans can't really live like that.
This doesn't only apply to trust into other people, btw. Without some trust in the persistence of scientific laws you couldn't really live.

@irene Actually, on rethinking this, I've come to the conclusion that you're right.

Even if our political and societal systems are not dependent on trust - if noone trusts in them they will collapse, because noone will care about them anymore.

To give an example: Let's assume the that it was extremely unlikely that any politician managed to do a harmful decision (which is not the case). If people would loose all trust in politics this would still lead to panic and arnachy - even if the political system was perfect.

Btw, I see much bigger problems in regards to the financial system we have. That one is entirely based on trust, while our political system is based on distrust in single persons (thus spreading power as much as possible)

@irene Rousseau did state similar things, yes. :)

He is famous for his theory about the state.

@irene Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke are some of the most famous philosophers which wrote about state and societal theory.

@irene You definitely do have an affinity for philosophy (which I didn't only notice today).

@irene Happy - maybe not. But it helps to live a 'deeper' life. Philosophy and being honest to myself have become very important things for me.

@irene I can totally understand you. As I said some time ago on discord: If I wasn't a Christian I would not see any way to not be a nihilist.