> In that world, it seems pretty clear who ends up in jail and who doesn't.
Very true. :(
It's such a difficult problem in general though. In the Navy we have a term "sea lawyers" for those who try to finangle the regulations for their own personal gain.
If there was an easy way to fairly resolve each possible scenario we'd have baked it into the laws already. But even where complex solutions are standardized, that depends on the person evaluating the standard; when I was teaching my discipline method for a given failure-to-study would have been way different from a Chief Petty Officer's.
I think the only way it could possibly work in the future you point out is that, given the data exists, that the ones doing the monitoring (if any) are not able to be the ones doing the deciding.
We say "don't combine the data in the first place" but I just don't see that as a realistic possibility. Someone will have that data, and they can "leak" it to the cops just as well as the NSA could.
I think if we own up to the idea that such a data-driven world is not only possible but likely, that next we need to accept that it will happen and develop countermeasures to maintain our civil liberties.
That doesn't have to be directed against NSA alone. The FBI can legally perform domestic surveillance already (with oversight), and I've already mentioned that people at $ISP or $CLOUD_CO can leak damaging information to the cops and kick off an investigation (and such information would be admissible in court, unlike NSA methods).
Maybe adopting FBI's oversight methods for NSA and similar is enough. Certainly I think we're long past due for defining and enforcing privacy protections on-line to match what we expect in the mail and on the phone. Perhaps those protections can also protect a person in the case that a company illegally provides data about someone to the government as well. But then now we're almost back to talking about CISPA again. :)
But I think just pushing for "don't get the data" is a brittle solution at best. That only really works if you're scared of the government alone. I'm concerned about the government, but they're not at the top of my list by any means of parties that could possibly harm me.
Very true. :(
It's such a difficult problem in general though. In the Navy we have a term "sea lawyers" for those who try to finangle the regulations for their own personal gain.
If there was an easy way to fairly resolve each possible scenario we'd have baked it into the laws already. But even where complex solutions are standardized, that depends on the person evaluating the standard; when I was teaching my discipline method for a given failure-to-study would have been way different from a Chief Petty Officer's.
I think the only way it could possibly work in the future you point out is that, given the data exists, that the ones doing the monitoring (if any) are not able to be the ones doing the deciding.
We say "don't combine the data in the first place" but I just don't see that as a realistic possibility. Someone will have that data, and they can "leak" it to the cops just as well as the NSA could.
I think if we own up to the idea that such a data-driven world is not only possible but likely, that next we need to accept that it will happen and develop countermeasures to maintain our civil liberties.
That doesn't have to be directed against NSA alone. The FBI can legally perform domestic surveillance already (with oversight), and I've already mentioned that people at $ISP or $CLOUD_CO can leak damaging information to the cops and kick off an investigation (and such information would be admissible in court, unlike NSA methods).
Maybe adopting FBI's oversight methods for NSA and similar is enough. Certainly I think we're long past due for defining and enforcing privacy protections on-line to match what we expect in the mail and on the phone. Perhaps those protections can also protect a person in the case that a company illegally provides data about someone to the government as well. But then now we're almost back to talking about CISPA again. :)
But I think just pushing for "don't get the data" is a brittle solution at best. That only really works if you're scared of the government alone. I'm concerned about the government, but they're not at the top of my list by any means of parties that could possibly harm me.