Privacy and the State

[teamsaint]

Obama got it dead right. There is no such thing as total security and total privacy.

It's a question of striking the right balance, and in times like these it's hardly surprising that the pendulum may be currently tilted towards rather more security.

If one single innocent human life is saved as a result that is surely justified?

Jack Straw's statesmanlike, non-partisan contribution in Parliament this afternoon was excellent. :ok:

But Scotty, the vast apparatus of the American and British states, including the security services, are responsible for taking many thousands of lives over the last few years.
I wish it had been otherwise.

as for reading jack straws memoirs......words fail.....

[MrGongGong]

But Scotty, the vast apparatus of the American and British states, including the security services, are responsible for taking many thousands of lives over the last few years.
I wish it had been otherwise.

I don't think the lives of those who have been killed so that we can carry on having cheap oil count as much as "our own people" ?
or maybe i'm reading it wrong ? :sadface:

[Bryn]

Paranoia:
1 a mental disorder characterised by delusions of persecution of grandeur
2 a tendency towards excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness

Having claimed that another failed to grasp the meaning of paranoia, perhaps you would like to review the first definition you offered. It simply makes not sense. What are "delusions of persecution of grandeur"?

A clinical psychologist friend gets quite irate when the casual, inaccurate, use (your second definition) is employed. It is that casual usage, she would argue, which demonstrates a lack of understanding of the word.

[ahinton]

My use of the word paranoia was perfectly correct. Your point about choice in privacy is correct, but is by-the-by; I was merely using the observation to refute yet another of Barratt's statistical claims.

Barrett, please! And on what grounds can you claim that your use of the term paranoia was/is correct?

[scottycelt]

But Scotty, the vast apparatus of the American and British states, including the security services, are responsible for taking many thousands of lives over the last few years.
I wish it had been otherwise.

as for reading jack straws memoirs......words fail.....

Team, it's governments that choose to go to war not security services. The latter's role is to glean information and, yes, sometimes the methods may not be squeaky-clean, and the information itself may not always turn out to be accurate. Still, the alternative is to do nothing and risk even more lives.

I'm not a natural fan of Jack Straw. That is my general opinion of most politicians of whatever hue. However, his comments today in Parliament that some of those who are currently screaming about privacy would likely be the very same folk who would be crying about the abject failure of the security services and government in the wake of another terrorist atrocity rings so very true, at least to me.

Damn the politics when the lives of innocent UK civilians going about their normal business could well be at stake?

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Piffling typo corrected in first definition - mea culpa. Because seeing conspiracy everywhere seems irrational suspiciousness and distrustful - pace Bryn's irate psychologist.

[MrGongGong]

Team, it's governments that choose to go to war not security services. The latter's role is to glean information and, yes, sometimes the methods may not be squeaky-clean, and the information itself may not always turn out to be accurate. Still, the alternative is to do nothing and risk even more lives.

I didn't know the Christian churches were in favour of waterboarding :yikes:
Strange thing Christianity isn't it ?

Surely the REAL alternative is to act ethically and honourably rather than lie and be complicit in wrongdoing ? or is that a bit simple ?
False dichotomies are false

[french frank]

In any case, far from refuting the argument, A-I-C has merely disagreed with it - or expressed an opinion without evidence. If (pace Bryn) paranoia means 'a tendency towards excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness', in order to claim that the views expressed were 'paranoia' it is necessary to prove that they are both excessive and irrational, whereas that is the point on which opinions differ.

Seeing 'conspiracy everywhere' is an inaccurate claim.

[Thropplenoggin]

Given the nightmare that was much of the 20th Century, it beggars belief that some on here don't see what could go wrong with mass state surveillance, even if done for ostensibly 'moral' reasons. We seem to be edging towards panopticon and the world Orwell feared, ironically, not in totalitarian states but in liberal democracies, which are so desperate to be secure that they would sacrifice a whole way of life. Much has been lost along the way - habeas corpus, for example, for those interred in 'Gitmo', some of whom are (or were) British citizens.

An Inspector Calls, who seems quite happy to accept what the US neo-con Project for a New American Century once called Total Information Awareness, is blind to how such overweening surveillance could be used for ill, as well as supposed good. If these were hand-written letters being open and read, would this feel like more of an invasion of privacy? Is the ethereal existence of our digital lives, the ghostly whisper of a phone call, to blame for this acceptance of intrusion by the state?

Of course, in a digitally-surveilled world, any intelligent terrorist would simply revert back to old (dead) media - pigeon post, letters. Total state surveillance won't prevent terrorist attacks from happening. That solution lies elsewhere. But it will prop up an economy. The sums of money involved in the spiralling defence/spy budgets in the US is astonishing. The privitisation of the military (and now intelligence - Snowden was working for a private firm with 20,000 employees. Are we to believe they are all law-abiding? Statistically impossible given human nature, I'd have thought.) would seem to undermine all those sacrosanct checks and balances our governments insist keep all this surveillance 'legal'. Just as it did with Blackwater (Academi) applying Geneva conventions in a war zone.

Ah, Leviathan! Ah, humanity!

[Mr Pee]

Ammy - it is of the nature of spooks that their activities are secret.

You may not see the point in this country having a secret service. I do. And in so doing I also accept that many of their activities will be covert, and not amenable to the open accountability which we require of normal servants of the state.

Quite right. I find the most surprising thing about these "revelations" is that so many people are surprised by them. I have no objection to the state monitoring the internet and social networking sites. If they weren't, they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And I do not share the paranoia exhibited by some here. I am confident that I have nothing to fear from such activities; indeed I feel safer.

[teamsaint]

Team, it's governments that choose to go to war not security services. The latter's role is to glean information and, yes, sometimes the methods may not be squeaky-clean, and the information itself may not always turn out to be accurate. Still, the alternative is to do nothing and risk even more lives.

I'm not a natural fan of Jack Straw. That is my general opinion of most politicians of whatever hue. However, his comments today in Parliament that some of those who are currently screaming about privacy would likely be the very same folk who would be crying about the abject failure of the security services and government in the wake of another terrorist atrocity rings so very true, at least to me.

Damn the politics when the lives of innocent UK civilians going about their normal business could well be at stake?

well the question of who "chooses " to go to war is interesting, but I suspect a bit of a distraction here.

Who benefits from war is a more interesting question. The security services, the state, and their paymasters in the banks and big money are all on the same side of the fence, and not on the same side as us, Scotty.
There surely isn't a whole lot of clear blue water between the security services and the state, is there?

[amateur51]

Quite right. I find the most surprising thing about these "revelations" is that so many people are surprised by them. I have no objection to the state monitoring the internet and social networking sites. If they weren't, they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And I do not share the paranoia exhibited by some here. I am confident that I have nothing to fear from such activities; indeed I feel safer.

Your feeling safe does nothing for me, Mr Pee :erm:

[scottycelt]

I didn't know the Christian churches were in favour of waterboarding :yikes:
Strange thing Christianity isn't it ?

Surely the REAL alternative is to act ethically and honourably rather than lie and be complicit in wrongdoing ? or is that a bit simple ?
False dichotomies are false

No the only REAL alternative is to stick to the subject of security services internet and phone surveillance and not to go off at your usual obsessive tangent about the appalling evils in your very own make-believe world.

Yes, It's that simple ...

[vinteuil]

Total state surveillance won't prevent terrorist attacks from happening. That solution lies elsewhere..

I agree. As the Soviet bloc discovered, massive state surveillance proves progressively counterproductive - the intelligence services find that they drown in the amount of material to be processed : the haystacks get larger and larger making it more and more difficult to find the rare needle. I really don't think our security services want - or wd be capable of dealing with - massive surveillance of the population at large. They will want, as always, to focus their efforts on perceived risks. I have no idea how competent they may be at this - but I think the worry about "total state surveillance" is a boojum.

[Thropplenoggin]

I agree. As the Soviet bloc discovered, massive state surveillance proves progressively counterproductive - the intelligence services find that they drown in the amount of material to be processed : the haystacks get larger and larger making it more and more difficult to find the rare needle. I really don't think our security services want - or wd be capable of dealing with - massive surveillance of the population at large. They will want, as always, to focus their efforts on perceived risks. I have no idea how competent they may be at this - but I think the worry about "total state surveillance" is a boojum.

This from the man who fraternised with the CIA's station head during 'Wagner nights' in Saudi Arabia. :whistle: :devil: (Now who's being surveilled? :winkeye:)