7 ms·

After reading the post, I fail to see any connection between 9/11 and the fact that mass surveillance is not the way forward. The article is also empty of any

After reading the post, I fail to see any connection between 9/11 and the fact that mass surveillance is not the way forward. The article is also empty of any reason WHY mass surveillance would not be the way forward, or even why it should not be. This is a particularly useless article.

AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
The ACLU has been useless as a civil rights organization for quite some time. If you haven't already, I'd say it's definitely time to find a new defender of these sorts of issues.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  The ACLU has let the government increase surveillance, force mask usage, and now enforce vaccine usage across millions during the pandemic. They're staying silent because they agree with the policies - and you may too - but there is no denying that in terms of invasion of personal freedom it's very great and they're turning a blind eye to it.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The ACLU is a finite organization that needs to chose which battles to fight. Suggesting their not doing enough because they don’t prioritize your issues generally means you should be funding some other organization. https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ for example may better fit your personal beliefs.
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      They are actively supporting civil non-liberties now though, in print. They are not what they used to be.
      - Retric 5y ago
        The odd thing about civil liberties is they also curtail other freedoms. The right to own property means the right to exclude others from your property. Trial by a jury of your peers means jury duty etc. If you have fundamental disagreements around these issues you really can’t blame the organization for not doing enough. Them doing more or less isn’t the problem, them having other priorities is.
        hitekker 5y ago
        You might want to read this article and the HN comments around it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920. The GP is not arguing against your political positions, but pointing out that an organization which use to focus & care about one position no longer seems to.
        Retric 5y ago
        It’s clear the ACLU is internally conflicted, but that’s completely normal. “It split over decisions to represent the Nazis in the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s, and the Nazis in the 1970s.” The real change has been mostly how individuals say things that the organization may disagree with. Still, I am concerned US politics has become so divisive that the right wing is viewed how the Nazis where back in the 70’s. As to my politics, I don’t support the ACLU. Requiring locations to host rallies they disagree with isn’t a free speech issue anymore than allowing protesters to block a freeway in rush hour would be. Protests at government buildings are different, but rallies don’t need to be allowed to block public streets.
        pope_meat 5y ago
        A protest that inconveniences no one is a protest that's easily ignored. You have to bring attention to the issue, otherwise everyone else will just go on with their day. Civil disobedience is not a bad thing.
        5y ago
    - newaccount2021 5y ago
      They found time to issue explicit statements of support for these measures
    - TeeMassive 5y ago
      The ACLU chose its case mostly in terms of the impact they will have. This is why the ACLU used to defend the KKK's 1st amendment rights even as recently as 2012. Now many of its members, even high profile ones, are arguing for the suppression of speech; justified by the Marxist ideological thinking that it mostly benefits "those in power" (https://archive.is/tL7Rj https://archive.is/tL7Rj)
      - Retric 5y ago
        All the way back in “the 1930s, the ACLU started to engage in work combating police misconduct and supporting Native American rights.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union So it’s been about far more than free speech for the vast majority of it’s history. And it still defends such causes, one example is even in the article: “In August 2017, officials in Charlottesville, Va., rescinded a permit for far-right groups to rally downtown in support of a statue to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Officials instead relocated the demonstration to outside the city’s core. The A.C.L.U. of Virginia argued that this violated the free speech rights of the far-right groups and won, preserving the right for the group to parade downtown.“ So while it’s scope has increased over time which has created increased internal tension, that’s always been the case. “The A.C.L.U. has in fact often gloried in its internal contentions. It split over decisions to represent the Nazis in the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s, and the Nazis in the 1970s.” Frankly the organization has never been filled 100% with defenders of free speech the Twitter age combined with a wider scope has brought this internal tension to the general public. The important work they do is generally in the courtroom which is far more focused.
  - j0hns0n 5y ago
    The ACLU is a non-profit organization. They aren't responsible for your "freedom". Go put mask on and take a civics course.
  - lavabiopsy 5y ago
    With the pandemic you have it exactly backwards, the goal of mask and vaccine mandates is actually to increase personal freedom and civil liberty, by preventing spread of the virus that has already claimed many lives.
Beldin 5y ago
I've encountered this statement before. Without reading the article, here's the argumentation I heard: Basically, the perpetrators were already known - there basically was already (close to) enough information to foresee serious problems (in hindsight * ), just no one connecting the dots. Adding mass surveillance to this doesn't make things easier: signals were already swamped under, that's not going to improve just by getting more data. Rather the opposite. I don't know how this argumentation squares with the facts. But if the intelligence problem was "failure to connect dots", getting more "dots" is not a solution. * also, hindsight is 20/20.
- specialist 5y ago
  I've read many scathing critiques of intel services preferring SIGINT over HUMINT. Hard to disagree.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    SIGINT doesn't imply on mass surveillance, and HUMINT doesn't imply in targeted actions.
    - specialist 5y ago
      And yet that's what happened.
owl_troupe 5y ago
OK I'll bite. From this article: >The public learned about the NSA’s “PRISM” and “Upstream” programs, which involve [...] warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications on a massive scale. The US executive branch engineered an automated, massive breach of the constitutional rights of US citizens and the rights of people abroad. > The executive branch’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ call records had produced “little unique value”[.] These programs have yielded almost no positive results in actually increasing security, which was their stated purpose. How much does this cost? What do we get in return? What is the chilling effect on society? >The human toll of government surveillance is undeniable. It can have far-reaching consequences for people’s lives — particularly for communities of color, who are wrongly and disproportionately subject to surveillance. Mass surveillance programs have been adapted to routine policing matters and have served to dramatically enhance existing biases in policing against marginalized communities. Over 75% of warrantless searches conducted by US police under the auspices of the Patriot Act were for drug related offenses [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-state-september-11-panic-made-us-vulnerable#gu-05-sneak-peaks-box https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-s...
- slibhb 5y ago
  The article provides no principle by which we can say that mass surveillance is wrong. It does observe (per your quote) that mass surveillance has not worked very well. This raises an obvious question: if mass survillance did work well, would it be acceptable? The broader point here is that there are arguments against mass surveillance on principle, the ACLU just doesn't find them convincing.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    We don't actually need to worry about your obvious question, because it doesn't work. Yours is hypothetical. (And hypothetical questions can be interesting. Also, it can be good to have answers while they're still hypothetical, because sometimes they quit being hypothetical, sometimes very abruptly. But for the current discussion, we can reject mass surveillance on pragmatic grounds without worrying about the theoretical.)
raven108 5y ago
Bud, seems you did npt get tne memo. Taliban and JIhadist are our new friends "businesslike & professional". "Domestic Extermist" are the new priority as per Bush; Aussie New World Order and super aggressive Aussie lock down police units. Most of these folks are already cancelled, lack real social media accounts(Gettr & Gab) don't count. So mass survelliance becomes pointless. The new targets nostly live in trailer parks, nature reserves and can be easily tackled by neighbourhood watch & police.

AndrewUnmuted 5y ago

The ACLU has been useless as a civil rights organization for quite some time. If you haven't already, I'd say it's definitely time to find a new defender of these sorts of issues.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
The ACLU has let the government increase surveillance, force mask usage, and now enforce vaccine usage across millions during the pandemic. They're staying silent because they agree with the policies - and you may too - but there is no denying that in terms of invasion of personal freedom it's very great and they're turning a blind eye to it.
- Retric 5y ago
  The ACLU is a finite organization that needs to chose which battles to fight. Suggesting their not doing enough because they don’t prioritize your issues generally means you should be funding some other organization. https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ for example may better fit your personal beliefs.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    They are actively supporting civil non-liberties now though, in print. They are not what they used to be.
    - Retric 5y ago
      The odd thing about civil liberties is they also curtail other freedoms. The right to own property means the right to exclude others from your property. Trial by a jury of your peers means jury duty etc. If you have fundamental disagreements around these issues you really can’t blame the organization for not doing enough. Them doing more or less isn’t the problem, them having other priorities is.
      - hitekker 5y ago
        You might want to read this article and the HN comments around it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920. The GP is not arguing against your political positions, but pointing out that an organization which use to focus & care about one position no longer seems to.
        Retric 5y ago
        It’s clear the ACLU is internally conflicted, but that’s completely normal. “It split over decisions to represent the Nazis in the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s, and the Nazis in the 1970s.” The real change has been mostly how individuals say things that the organization may disagree with. Still, I am concerned US politics has become so divisive that the right wing is viewed how the Nazis where back in the 70’s. As to my politics, I don’t support the ACLU. Requiring locations to host rallies they disagree with isn’t a free speech issue anymore than allowing protesters to block a freeway in rush hour would be. Protests at government buildings are different, but rallies don’t need to be allowed to block public streets.
        pope_meat 5y ago
        A protest that inconveniences no one is a protest that's easily ignored. You have to bring attention to the issue, otherwise everyone else will just go on with their day. Civil disobedience is not a bad thing.
        5y ago
  - newaccount2021 5y ago
    They found time to issue explicit statements of support for these measures
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    The ACLU chose its case mostly in terms of the impact they will have. This is why the ACLU used to defend the KKK's 1st amendment rights even as recently as 2012. Now many of its members, even high profile ones, are arguing for the suppression of speech; justified by the Marxist ideological thinking that it mostly benefits "those in power" (https://archive.is/tL7Rj https://archive.is/tL7Rj)
    - Retric 5y ago
      All the way back in “the 1930s, the ACLU started to engage in work combating police misconduct and supporting Native American rights.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union So it’s been about far more than free speech for the vast majority of it’s history. And it still defends such causes, one example is even in the article: “In August 2017, officials in Charlottesville, Va., rescinded a permit for far-right groups to rally downtown in support of a statue to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Officials instead relocated the demonstration to outside the city’s core. The A.C.L.U. of Virginia argued that this violated the free speech rights of the far-right groups and won, preserving the right for the group to parade downtown.“ So while it’s scope has increased over time which has created increased internal tension, that’s always been the case. “The A.C.L.U. has in fact often gloried in its internal contentions. It split over decisions to represent the Nazis in the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s, and the Nazis in the 1970s.” Frankly the organization has never been filled 100% with defenders of free speech the Twitter age combined with a wider scope has brought this internal tension to the general public. The important work they do is generally in the courtroom which is far more focused.
- j0hns0n 5y ago
  The ACLU is a non-profit organization. They aren't responsible for your "freedom". Go put mask on and take a civics course.
- lavabiopsy 5y ago
  With the pandemic you have it exactly backwards, the goal of mask and vaccine mandates is actually to increase personal freedom and civil liberty, by preventing spread of the virus that has already claimed many lives.

Beldin 5y ago

I've encountered this statement before. Without reading the article, here's the argumentation I heard: Basically, the perpetrators were already known - there basically was already (close to) enough information to foresee serious problems (in hindsight * ), just no one connecting the dots. Adding mass surveillance to this doesn't make things easier: signals were already swamped under, that's not going to improve just by getting more data. Rather the opposite. I don't know how this argumentation squares with the facts. But if the intelligence problem was "failure to connect dots", getting more "dots" is not a solution. * also, hindsight is 20/20.

specialist 5y ago
I've read many scathing critiques of intel services preferring SIGINT over HUMINT. Hard to disagree.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  SIGINT doesn't imply on mass surveillance, and HUMINT doesn't imply in targeted actions.
  - specialist 5y ago
    And yet that's what happened.

owl_troupe 5y ago

OK I'll bite. From this article: >The public learned about the NSA’s “PRISM” and “Upstream” programs, which involve [...] warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications on a massive scale. The US executive branch engineered an automated, massive breach of the constitutional rights of US citizens and the rights of people abroad. > The executive branch’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ call records had produced “little unique value”[.] These programs have yielded almost no positive results in actually increasing security, which was their stated purpose. How much does this cost? What do we get in return? What is the chilling effect on society? >The human toll of government surveillance is undeniable. It can have far-reaching consequences for people’s lives — particularly for communities of color, who are wrongly and disproportionately subject to surveillance. Mass surveillance programs have been adapted to routine policing matters and have served to dramatically enhance existing biases in policing against marginalized communities. Over 75% of warrantless searches conducted by US police under the auspices of the Patriot Act were for drug related offenses [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-state-september-11-panic-made-us-vulnerable#gu-05-sneak-peaks-box https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-s...

slibhb 5y ago
The article provides no principle by which we can say that mass surveillance is wrong. It does observe (per your quote) that mass surveillance has not worked very well. This raises an obvious question: if mass survillance did work well, would it be acceptable? The broader point here is that there are arguments against mass surveillance on principle, the ACLU just doesn't find them convincing.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  We don't actually need to worry about your obvious question, because it doesn't work. Yours is hypothetical. (And hypothetical questions can be interesting. Also, it can be good to have answers while they're still hypothetical, because sometimes they quit being hypothetical, sometimes very abruptly. But for the current discussion, we can reject mass surveillance on pragmatic grounds without worrying about the theoretical.)

raven108 5y ago

Bud, seems you did npt get tne memo. Taliban and JIhadist are our new friends "businesslike & professional". "Domestic Extermist" are the new priority as per Bush; Aussie New World Order and super aggressive Aussie lock down police units. Most of these folks are already cancelled, lack real social media accounts(Gettr & Gab) don't count. So mass survelliance becomes pointless. The new targets nostly live in trailer parks, nature reserves and can be easily tackled by neighbourhood watch & police.