The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
The Patriot Act should be completely eliminated. It's un-American and anti-American.
I'm not sure about that. While it does contain provisions that have been interpreted to be in violation of various aspects of the constitution, those are really a small part of the overall act. Remove those, clarify some others (mostly in Title II), and what is left has little impact on US Citizens, while making it significantly easier to monitor potential hostile targets. The other criticisms mostly relate to erosion of rights of aliens, and while those probably should be reassessed too, they have little domestic impact. The assertion that the act, in intent and as a whole, is un-American and anti-American doesn't really stand up to scrutiny in my opinion.
The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
I think it's naive to believe that many of these open-ended provisions weren't included with intent. By your wording, I suspect that you have similar concerns.
The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
I think it's naive to believe that many of these open-ended provisions weren't included with intent. By your wording, I suspect that you have similar concerns.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
What I really wish people would understand is that the only way to stop the data gathering and sophisticated analysis of individual behavior (and predictive behavioral analysis, yes Minority Report-esque) is by shutting it down at the source - i.e. not letting it get gathered in the first place.
That means commercial data harvesting, because that's where 95% of it comes from. You may fear the government more, but they are not, for the most part, the gatherers of this data; it's the Googles and Facebooks (and many others) of the world that people freely and stupidly use, that are the problem. The ONLY way to ever shut down this kind of monitoring is by not spewing your personal data, likes, dislikes, etc. all over the place, foolishly thinking it's somehow private. NOTHING you put out on any kind of commercial "service" (unless you encrypt it yourself locally) will ever be private. Nothing. That includes every single email you send or receive through commercial providers.
Few people will stop using "free" (not really) email services (though the Lavabit CEO has), so it's difficult to imagine the problem being well-addressed in the near term, but I do think that people are slowly getting smarter about the problems, and the result of that will be more solutions arriving in the coming years that give people more control.
OMG, we will get more junk mails for the big brother intends to sell the data to help USPS and the Federal budget...please dont comment on this comment, we are under the NSA's watches.
It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
That alone is good enough reason to repeal it, not to mention that we now need to push for term limits on Congressional representatives and Senators. Open-ended employment for these people has led to some of the worst corruptions of our political system.
What I really wish people would understand is that the only way to stop the data gathering and sophisticated analysis of individual behavior (and predictive behavioral analysis, yes Minority Report-esque) is by shutting it down at the source - i.e. not letting it get gathered in the first place.
That means commercial data harvesting, because that's where 95% of it comes from. You may fear the government more, but they are not, for the most part, the gatherers of this data; it's the Googles and Facebooks (and many others) of the world that people freely and stupidly use, that are the problem. The ONLY way to ever shut down this kind of monitoring is by not spewing your personal data, likes, dislikes, etc. all over the place, foolishly thinking it's somehow private. NOTHING you put out on any kind of commercial "service" (unless you encrypt it yourself locally) will ever be private. Nothing. That includes every single email you send or receive through commercial providers.
Few people will stop using "free" (not really) email services (though the Lavabit CEO has), so it's difficult to imagine the problem being well-addressed in the near term, but I do think that people are slowly getting smarter about the problems, and the result of that will be more solutions arriving in the coming years that give people more control.
That's trivially correct, but presumes that all such data gathering is inherently bad. There are certainly conceivable bad uses, but there are also tangible advantages to the consumer, such as benefitting from crowd-sourced data, targeted product information etc.. I don't regard anonymized consumer data as an intrusion of privacy, and so it seems to be me that the bad comprises mostly hypothetical future abuse, while the perceived benefits are current and actual. An important question then becomes - how much do we act on the fear of future misuse?
It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
That alone is good enough reason to repeal it, not to mention that we now need to push for term limits on Congressional representatives and Senators. Open-ended employment for these people has led to some of the worst corruptions of our political system.
As I said, I'd replace repeal with reconsider, but no argument with your second observation. I'd go further and say that the political system in the US is broken in many ways.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
I too doubt many politicians went through it in detail and/or gave it much in the way of deep thought. But there were almost certainly people in "the agencies" that did, and it was almost certainly authored with a great deal of input by them. I'm not even saying they were wrong to push for what they did, as it fits their interests, but I think oversight of these matters is incredibly weak and uninformed. Things need to be clarified and tightened down a lot. It won't hurt our national security, and anantksundaram suggested above, it may actually help in some ways, if it's not already too late.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
I too doubt many politicians went through it in detail and/or gave it much in the way of deep thought. But there were almost certainly people in "the agencies" that did, and it was almost certainly authored with a great deal of input by them. I'm not even saying they were wrong to push for what they did, as it fits their interests, but I think oversight of these matters is incredibly weak and uninformed. Things need to be clarified and tightened down a lot. It won't hurt our national security, and anantksundaram suggested above, it may actually help in some ways, if it's not already too late.
What I really wish people would understand is that the only way to stop the data gathering and sophisticated analysis of individual behavior (and predictive behavioral analysis, yes Minority Report-esque) is by shutting it down at the source - i.e. not letting it get gathered in the first place.
That means commercial data harvesting, because that's where 95% of it comes from. You may fear the government more, but they are not, for the most part, the gatherers of this data; it's the Googles and Facebooks (and many others) of the world that people freely and stupidly use, that are the problem. The ONLY way to ever shut down this kind of monitoring is by not spewing your personal data, likes, dislikes, etc. all over the place, foolishly thinking it's somehow private. NOTHING you put out on any kind of commercial "service" (unless you encrypt it yourself locally) will ever be private. Nothing. That includes every single email you send or receive through commercial providers.
Few people will stop using "free" (not really) email services (though the Lavabit CEO has), so it's difficult to imagine the problem being well-addressed in the near term, but I do think that people are slowly getting smarter about the problems, and the result of that will be more solutions arriving in the coming years that give people more control.
Personally I think Google is not nearly as much of a problem as the insurance companies, credit bureaus, and assorted data brokers like Acxiom and Intelius who may never have heard of. . . but should. They all happily buy and sell your data. At least Google keeps it to themselves.
advantages to the consumer, such as benefitting from crowd-sourced data, targeted product information etc.. I don't regard anonymized consumer data as an intrusion of privacy,
I agree that anonymous (not anonymized, that implies after-the-fact) data gathering and analysis is okay. That has existed for decades. But that's not the trend of what's happening now, on the commercial side. It's all about very personal, individualized data.
Originally Posted by muppetry
An important question then becomes - how much do we act on the fear of future misuse?
Bingo. It's an important question to ask, and one that has ramifications for quite literally the rest of our lives and the lives of our children.
My views are strong on this topic exactly because of that; the time frame for abuse is essentially unlimited. Data gathered on each of us can (and much will) live on forever. It never goes away. Data storage is cheap and getting cheaper; data processing is cheap and getting cheaper; data harvesting methods are getting cheaper and more ubiquitous every single day.
Given that, what then are the odds of this data being misused or abused (or required for job interviews, or car insurance, or medical insurance, or hell, even getting a ticket to the movies at some far date in the future)? Just using simple logic, as the length of time grows, the odds of misuse or abuse grows. As the timeframe approaches "forever", the chance of abuse approaches 100%. This is an extreme formula to illustrate a point, but people need to understand that once this data is no longer under the control of the individual, the odds of it being abused over time is pretty likely. The more data out there, the more organizations that acquire it, and the more people happily posting and emailing their life stories via "free" (data harvesting) services, then the more likely Bad things are to materialize. I'm not sure I see any real end in sight, but I can hope.
Personally I think Google is not nearly as much of a problem as the insurance companies, credit bureaus, and assorted data brokers like Acxiom and Intelius who may never have heard of. . . but should. They all happily buy and sell your data. At least Google keeps it to themselves.
EDIT: Here's a recent article on Acxiom. Still think the problem is the Google and Facebooks of the world? You might look carefully at some of these data companies that shy from the public eye. THAT'S where the bigger privacy intrusions are, away from the limelight.
Acxiom is the devil. Yes, the data brokers are indeed Really, Really Bad, perhaps the worst of breed among the personal data harvesting/using/selling paths. I totally agree on this part.
What I don't agree with is that just because one party is worse, that other parties are a-okay. Again, the only way people can prevent abuse of their personal data is by not sharing it out with commercial organizations, to the degree humanly possible. Even the data that you think Google keeps private, will not be private forever. There are no laws to compel that, and even among Google employees, I can guarantee you that most of them do not have a full grasp of what happens with that data behind the scenes, though that's all I'll say right now.
sorry, rushing off now, won't b able to respond more today-
How can Microsucks sign this? Their Internet Explorer and Explorer are known to report everything that people do on their machines to the company. Maybe they just want to keep that information for themselves.
Any new law should require companies to disclose exactly the information that they store about their users and product buyers. The license agreements people accept and the terms of service that people accept are too vague. Companies should be required to say if they keep the text of e-mails, the web addresses people visit, the files on customers computers or their titles, and whether that data is aggregated for future use in creating profiles of any type for each user whether identified by name or any other means.
Here is something a lot of people do not understand which was obvious from the surprise when people found out. When the Government pull the national Security trump card there is not a whole lot you can do even private businesses have no recourse. If the Government claims national security they can even grab US companies technologies and patents and freely license them to other companies if they feel it services their needs.
I worked for company who supplied products to NSA and a few other government agencies. Our product was based on an Intel chip-set which they told us at the time they were about to EOL and within a year we could no longer buy the chip-set after they had told us it would be around for years and we told our customers the same thing. When the NSA was told within a year we would need to move them to a new platform they were not happy to say the least. A few months later they gave us a letter which they told us to give to Intel. This letter basically said our product with their chip-set was part of a national security matter and as such Intel could not discontinue the chip-set as long as the NSA needed the product.
Needless to say, we kept getting the parts from Intel without question. This is the who issue we have with the patriot act it allows the government broad definition of what is in national security interest. The above situation happen after 911.
Comments
The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
The Patriot Act should be completely eliminated. It's un-American and anti-American.
I'm not sure about that. While it does contain provisions that have been interpreted to be in violation of various aspects of the constitution, those are really a small part of the overall act. Remove those, clarify some others (mostly in Title II), and what is left has little impact on US Citizens, while making it significantly easier to monitor potential hostile targets. The other criticisms mostly relate to erosion of rights of aliens, and while those probably should be reassessed too, they have little domestic impact. The assertion that the act, in intent and as a whole, is un-American and anti-American doesn't really stand up to scrutiny in my opinion.
The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
I think it's naive to believe that many of these open-ended provisions weren't included with intent. By your wording, I suspect that you have similar concerns.
The Patriot Act needs to be completely reworked, in my opinion - it simply has too widespread, open-ended and vague provisions that are easy to interpret in ways that, I would hope, were not originally intended.
I think it's naive to believe that many of these open-ended provisions weren't included with intent. By your wording, I suspect that you have similar concerns.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
What I really wish people would understand is that the only way to stop the data gathering and sophisticated analysis of individual behavior (and predictive behavioral analysis, yes Minority Report-esque) is by shutting it down at the source - i.e. not letting it get gathered in the first place.
That means commercial data harvesting, because that's where 95% of it comes from. You may fear the government more, but they are not, for the most part, the gatherers of this data; it's the Googles and Facebooks (and many others) of the world that people freely and stupidly use, that are the problem. The ONLY way to ever shut down this kind of monitoring is by not spewing your personal data, likes, dislikes, etc. all over the place, foolishly thinking it's somehow private. NOTHING you put out on any kind of commercial "service" (unless you encrypt it yourself locally) will ever be private. Nothing. That includes every single email you send or receive through commercial providers.
Few people will stop using "free" (not really) email services (though the Lavabit CEO has), so it's difficult to imagine the problem being well-addressed in the near term, but I do think that people are slowly getting smarter about the problems, and the result of that will be more solutions arriving in the coming years that give people more control.
It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
That alone is good enough reason to repeal it, not to mention that we now need to push for term limits on Congressional representatives and Senators. Open-ended employment for these people has led to some of the worst corruptions of our political system.
It will be reformed in such a way that they won't be caught easily again.
What I really wish people would understand is that the only way to stop the data gathering and sophisticated analysis of individual behavior (and predictive behavioral analysis, yes Minority Report-esque) is by shutting it down at the source - i.e. not letting it get gathered in the first place.
That means commercial data harvesting, because that's where 95% of it comes from. You may fear the government more, but they are not, for the most part, the gatherers of this data; it's the Googles and Facebooks (and many others) of the world that people freely and stupidly use, that are the problem. The ONLY way to ever shut down this kind of monitoring is by not spewing your personal data, likes, dislikes, etc. all over the place, foolishly thinking it's somehow private. NOTHING you put out on any kind of commercial "service" (unless you encrypt it yourself locally) will ever be private. Nothing. That includes every single email you send or receive through commercial providers.
Few people will stop using "free" (not really) email services (though the Lavabit CEO has), so it's difficult to imagine the problem being well-addressed in the near term, but I do think that people are slowly getting smarter about the problems, and the result of that will be more solutions arriving in the coming years that give people more control.
That's trivially correct, but presumes that all such data gathering is inherently bad. There are certainly conceivable bad uses, but there are also tangible advantages to the consumer, such as benefitting from crowd-sourced data, targeted product information etc.. I don't regard anonymized consumer data as an intrusion of privacy, and so it seems to be me that the bad comprises mostly hypothetical future abuse, while the perceived benefits are current and actual. An important question then becomes - how much do we act on the fear of future misuse?
It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
That alone is good enough reason to repeal it, not to mention that we now need to push for term limits on Congressional representatives and Senators. Open-ended employment for these people has led to some of the worst corruptions of our political system.
As I said, I'd replace repeal with reconsider, but no argument with your second observation. I'd go further and say that the political system in the US is broken in many ways.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
I too doubt many politicians went through it in detail and/or gave it much in the way of deep thought. But there were almost certainly people in "the agencies" that did, and it was almost certainly authored with a great deal of input by them. I'm not even saying they were wrong to push for what they did, as it fits their interests, but I think oversight of these matters is incredibly weak and uninformed. Things need to be clarified and tightened down a lot. It won't hurt our national security, and anantksundaram suggested above, it may actually help in some ways, if it's not already too late.
It will be reformed in such a way that they won't be caught easily again.
I think perhaps you misunderstand the relationship between the lawmaking process and the operation of government agencies.
Actually I think it's unlikely that there was widespread high-level intent. To clarify, the agencies themselves always tend to ask for whatever makes their jobs easiest, while we expect our elected representatives to make sure that they don't overreach. Unfortunately this act was a real rush job, with good intentions and a determination to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of 9/11 outweighing caution and due diligence. It's a widely held belief that few politicians actually read it in detail before passing it into law.
I too doubt many politicians went through it in detail and/or gave it much in the way of deep thought. But there were almost certainly people in "the agencies" that did, and it was almost certainly authored with a great deal of input by them. I'm not even saying they were wrong to push for what they did, as it fits their interests, but I think oversight of these matters is incredibly weak and uninformed. Things need to be clarified and tightened down a lot. It won't hurt our national security, and anantksundaram suggested above, it may actually help in some ways, if it's not already too late.
Completely agree.
Personally I think Google is not nearly as much of a problem as the insurance companies, credit bureaus, and assorted data brokers like Acxiom and Intelius who may never have heard of. . . but should. They all happily buy and sell your data. At least Google keeps it to themselves.
EDIT: Here's a recent article on Acxiom. Still think the problem is the Google and Facebooks of the world? You might look carefully at some of these data companies that shy from the public eye. THAT'S where the bigger privacy intrusions are, away from the limelight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-quiet-giant-of-consumer-database-marketing.html?_r=0
EDIT2: You'll love this link
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/technology/1012/gallery.data_miners/
advantages to the consumer, such as benefitting from crowd-sourced data, targeted product information etc.. I don't regard anonymized consumer data as an intrusion of privacy,
I agree that anonymous (not anonymized, that implies after-the-fact) data gathering and analysis is okay. That has existed for decades. But that's not the trend of what's happening now, on the commercial side. It's all about very personal, individualized data.
An important question then becomes - how much do we act on the fear of future misuse?
Bingo. It's an important question to ask, and one that has ramifications for quite literally the rest of our lives and the lives of our children.
My views are strong on this topic exactly because of that; the time frame for abuse is essentially unlimited. Data gathered on each of us can (and much will) live on forever. It never goes away. Data storage is cheap and getting cheaper; data processing is cheap and getting cheaper; data harvesting methods are getting cheaper and more ubiquitous every single day.
Given that, what then are the odds of this data being misused or abused (or required for job interviews, or car insurance, or medical insurance, or hell, even getting a ticket to the movies at some far date in the future)? Just using simple logic, as the length of time grows, the odds of misuse or abuse grows. As the timeframe approaches "forever", the chance of abuse approaches 100%. This is an extreme formula to illustrate a point, but people need to understand that once this data is no longer under the control of the individual, the odds of it being abused over time is pretty likely. The more data out there, the more organizations that acquire it, and the more people happily posting and emailing their life stories via "free" (data harvesting) services, then the more likely Bad things are to materialize. I'm not sure I see any real end in sight, but I can hope.
Personally I think Google is not nearly as much of a problem as the insurance companies, credit bureaus, and assorted data brokers like Acxiom and Intelius who may never have heard of. . . but should. They all happily buy and sell your data. At least Google keeps it to themselves.
EDIT: Here's a recent article on Acxiom. Still think the problem is the Google and Facebooks of the world? You might look carefully at some of these data companies that shy from the public eye. THAT'S where the bigger privacy intrusions are, away from the limelight.
Acxiom is the devil. Yes, the data brokers are indeed Really, Really Bad, perhaps the worst of breed among the personal data harvesting/using/selling paths. I totally agree on this part.
What I don't agree with is that just because one party is worse, that other parties are a-okay. Again, the only way people can prevent abuse of their personal data is by not sharing it out with commercial organizations, to the degree humanly possible. Even the data that you think Google keeps private, will not be private forever. There are no laws to compel that, and even among Google employees, I can guarantee you that most of them do not have a full grasp of what happens with that data behind the scenes, though that's all I'll say right now.
sorry, rushing off now, won't b able to respond more today-
How can Microsucks sign this? Their Internet Explorer and Explorer are known to report everything that people do on their machines to the company. Maybe they just want to keep that information for themselves.
Any new law should require companies to disclose exactly the information that they store about their users and product buyers. The license agreements people accept and the terms of service that people accept are too vague. Companies should be required to say if they keep the text of e-mails, the web addresses people visit, the files on customers computers or their titles, and whether that data is aggregated for future use in creating profiles of any type for each user whether identified by name or any other means.
Here is something a lot of people do not understand which was obvious from the surprise when people found out. When the Government pull the national Security trump card there is not a whole lot you can do even private businesses have no recourse. If the Government claims national security they can even grab US companies technologies and patents and freely license them to other companies if they feel it services their needs.
I worked for company who supplied products to NSA and a few other government agencies. Our product was based on an Intel chip-set which they told us at the time they were about to EOL and within a year we could no longer buy the chip-set after they had told us it would be around for years and we told our customers the same thing. When the NSA was told within a year we would need to move them to a new platform they were not happy to say the least. A few months later they gave us a letter which they told us to give to Intel. This letter basically said our product with their chip-set was part of a national security matter and as such Intel could not discontinue the chip-set as long as the NSA needed the product.
Needless to say, we kept getting the parts from Intel without question. This is the who issue we have with the patriot act it allows the government broad definition of what is in national security interest. The above situation happen after 911.
Watch the NSA press for collusion charges between these companies next.