Neither party cares about the issue because the people don't care, and your conclusion is that the system is broken? As far as I can tell, the system is working fine. Polls of the public at large show mixed results, but I bet if you polled actual voters (skewing older) you'd find comfortable support for the status quo. Essentially, the privacy issues don't affect people's quality of life but people worry that terrorism will. Who are you to say that the system is broken because it reflects the priorities of the majority of voters, just because you disagree with those priorities?
If you had to personify the American polity, they'd be my mom, not you or me. She supports aggressive policing to keep drugs illegal (she'd probably vote to make alcohol illegal if that were on the ballot). She's pretty skeptical of Snowden, and would say "what do you have to hide?" but also thinks the government holds up her check deposits because she's got a foreign last name. She might argue with the details, but she supports the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, etc. She's a little skeptical of unions. She supported Hilary Clinton.
She's a bright woman. She works as an interior designer, but has a masters degree in chemistry from her home country.
My mom votes, in every election. I don't vote regularly, nor (statistically) do other people in my age group, but my mom does. I can't look at her, and at the status quo, and say: "the government does not represent the views of Americans."
I'll go you one further. Obama could give a speech in the Rose Garden this week carefully explaining that NSA requires access to American communications, all of them, in order to defend the country against terrorist attacks, and that while privacy is "important", the expectation of perfect privacy in your cell phone and Internet communications isn't reasonable because it helps terrorist cells without providing much benefit.
I would recoil from such a speech, but the public probably would not.
The American public currently has a weak expectation of privacy in their electronic communications. But they make virtually no meaningful demand for that privacy. Thwarting terror attacks are a much higher priority to them. Want evidence of that? Well, the body-conscious, vain, generally out-of-shape American public routinely submits to electronic strip searches to get onto airplanes. You think they care if someone's screening their calls to catch Abu Shahid?
They would accept that argument. And with that acceptance, the expectations of privacy and the notion of what "reasonable" searches are would be, in short order, redefined --- those rights being explicitly predicated on contemporary mores by the Constitution.
When I look at it from this angle, it becomes apparent that while privacy is inconvenient to the USG, and something they feel they have to work around, it's not something they're intent on eliminating. Despite the rhetoric from the tech punditry, the USG has not stated that it's reasonable for them to surveil US citizens; their defense has instead been that they are not surveilling them. I too think that's a falsehood, but it's truth or falsity is not the only thing that matters about it.
They have stated that it is okay for them to assassinate US citizens abroad though. If people don't recoil from that, I don't think cell-phone snooping is going to have much effect.
> Neither party cares about the issue because the people don't care
And why don't the people care? Corporate-owned media has a huge amount of influence on what people care about. But in the never ending search for ever increasing profits that is built into their structure by law, they, like the major political parties are "just giving people what they want" too by chasing ratings in order to gain larger market share and increase advertising revenue. So both intertwined systems, the political system and the mainstream media, are working fine, right?
> And why don't the people care? Corporate-owned media has a huge amount of influence on what people care about.
Again, I go back to my mom because she's the greatest insight I have into the typical voter. My mom doesn't watch the news. Her opinions are her own. She places a high value on social order, trusts the government, and assumes that the government wouldn't use any information they get from her e-mails to hurt her. And you know what? She's right. They won't. The government pretty much exists to protect middle-aged, upper middle class women like my mom. The status quo in this regard is consistent with her interests. She doesn't need a "corporate-owned media" to make her think that way.
I won't deny many such examples exist, but you can't deny that the MSM is nevertheless an influence on large swaths of Americans. Even those that are not so gullible as to accept what they hear on the news as fact unquestioningly, may be influenced more subtly by the range of opinions presented and how they are portrayed.
So maybe they invite three guests on to discuss a topic like privacy: one a DoD official, one from a conservative think tank and a centrist writer. Suddenly the range of "acceptable" viewpoints is conveniently narrowed and the remainder is implied to be "fringe".
Or maybe they massively inflate the actual threat of things like terrorist attacks (because fear and xenophobia get ratings too) and give it a disproportionate amount of coverage. Now everyone who watches or even flicks by that channel is maybe more likely to talk about it at the water cooler or whatever.
This can affect the broader culture, which can in turn influence people who don't even watch the news on TV*
So how do we get people to place a higher value on, say, their liberties and human rights instead of fear of the spectre of terrorism? Is it possible? Can we get people to understand and care about relevant historical examples?
Your points are well-taken, but in a democracy it's a hard argument to make to say: "people don't really think what they think they think because of the media."
> So how do we get people to place a higher value on, say, their liberties and human rights instead of fear of the spectre of terrorism? Is it possible?
I think people do care about their liberties and human rights, but they do so in concrete ways. I think you can get people to care by making it more concrete for people.
People on HN take it for granted that your average voter should be outraged by the FBI being able to look at someone's Facebook posts. But why? To my mom, Facebook is just one of those things that wrong with kids today--posting half-naked pictures of themselves for everyone on the internet to see. You're not going to get instinctual outrage from her on the issue.
With her, you might get some traction on the front that the government might use it to single out people from certain backgrounds. After all, she worries the government holds up her checks because she's got a middle eastern last name. Other others you might get traction on the front the government could use it to single out particular religious beliefs, immigrant communities, etc. Painting with broad brushes, there are ways to take the privacy argument and put it into terms that target Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, Mormons, Baptists, etc. But right now it seems like the arguments are couched in the language of young libertarian white techie humanists, and that's just not a major voting demographic...
> Your points are well-taken, but in a democracy it's a hard argument to make to say: "people don't really think what they think they think because of the media."
It's not that hard an argument -- there have been probably hundreds of studies on the influence of media on people's opinions and resulting actions. Why do you think advertising is a nearly half-trillion dollar industry worldwide? It's a significant chunk of GDP in the US and UK, for example, and not without reason: advertising through various media consistently makes a measurable impact on the buying patterns of consumers, and it's not exactly a huge leap to apply this to politics[0].
That point aside, I appreciate the insight, and I think you're on the right track as far as thinking about how to make the issues more concrete to people in a personal way.
The other, perhaps over-broad human nature question is how to get people care about this shit even if it truly only affects "others" - people of other countries, other social classes, other races and other religions. There are middle-aged, upper class voting people, white ones even, who care deeply that their government detains and tortures mulsim men in secret and not-so-secret prisons without trial, who care if activists are targeted for intimidation or treated similarly to terrorists, who can look at history and see that pervasive surveillance without meaningful oversight is always, always abused at some point and who aren't so scared of terrorism that they vote all their own rights away in order to feel safe. That is a much harder battle.
> see that pervasive surveillance without meaningful oversight is always, always abused at some point
I think that being more specific and using more examples would help a lot here. It's one thing to say "this will be abused" in some sort of abstract way. It's another to point to specific detailed examples of abuse (either here or in other similar societies).
I'll take it as a given at this point that a bunch of my emails and phone calls are sitting on an NSA hard drive somewhere. How is that going to come back to haunt me?
You are entirely correct. We need visceral examples. Even if they don't affect regular people directly they need to be the kind of thing that people instinctively recoil from. Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses, so we need vivid examples that make an emotional impact in order to win the public debate. I joke with friends that the NSA will be canceled overnight if we can just prove that they have been killing (american) babies.
The best example I've been able to find is the FBI's attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King into silence (actually suicide) by recording what was apparently a sexual peccadillo. It is a very concrete example of how surveillance can damage the fabric of society.
More recently, but much less vivid, is the example of the NSA snooping through Bill Clinton's email. If a former president is considered enough of a threat to record his email then something must be wrong.
> Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses
See, you're going in the wrong direction right of the bat. The people that disagree with you aren't stupid. A lot of them are smarter than you are. They just have different values than you do. Speaking down to them will never work.
I don't know what to say to that - you provided a very vivid and emotionally-laden photo as what the "other side" was using to justify their position and now you say that the other side is not using vividness and emotion to make their point? What is your point?
Sorry, I've found that arguments based on actual real problems don't resonate. Pointing out that bees kill more people each year in the US than terrorists, that the average american has 150x more chance of being killed by lightning than by a terrorist attack -- these straightforward statistical analyses don't convince because they aren't personal the way that photo is - practically everyone in the country spent weeks looking at versions of that photo. It just isn't the same.
> Sorry, I've found that arguments based on actual real problems don't resonate. Pointing out that bees kill more people each year in the US than terrorists
That's because this is a bad argument. Terrorism is about far more than just the number of fatalities.
Yeah, it is about the emotional reaction that causes self-inflicted wounds far greater than the original attack. Which is why I'm talking about finding arguments that are also emotionally compelling.
The thing is, the details of the 9/11 attacks were known to the government well before and were ignored or discounted. That actually argues the point that SIGINT like that of PRISM and XKEYSCORE is incredibly dangerous if it is seen as a panacea to the problem of human failure. Our signals intelligence is still susceptible to the vagaries of the humans on the receiving end.
So how do we get people to place a higher value on, say, their liberties and human rights instead of fear of the spectre of terrorism?
'rayiner answered your question:
[She] trusts the government, and assumes that the government wouldn't use any information they get from her e-mails to hurt her. And you know what? She's right. They won't.
Most people are not concerned about a theoretical invasion of their privacy, instead they would be very concerned with an invasion that has material consequences. Isn't this simple?
> She places a high value on social order, trusts the government, and assumes that the government wouldn't use any information they get from her e-mails to hurt her. And you know what? She's right. They won't. The government pretty much exists to protect middle-aged, upper middle class women like my mom. The status quo in this regard is consistent with her interests. She doesn't need a "corporate-owned media" to make her think that way.
This is very important and a strong reason why (some) people are OK with that kind of government. They have trust in the system because the system generally does protect their interests over the interests of other people.
But not everyone fits into that class and status. There are whole classes of people whose daily experience is that of gov't at various levels seeking to cause them harm, physically, emotionally, and economically. Political discourse and media representation does not include those people (arguably on purpose) and those people are not the focus of efforts to change how are society is broken and fails to provide prosperity for all its citizens. So long as there are people willing to have comfort and success off of the backs and lives of others, representative democracy has a huge failing point.
Her ability to be empathetic about others that are not like her exists in a social (in large part one-way media) framework that either encourages, or ignores or actively discourages such thoughts. To be passive you have to go with the flow, and in a society that overtly emphasized consideration for all its members, she would too because it would be more work to not care about them. Encouraging extreme passivity is beneficial to making every American a malleable consumer. I think that is our societal pressure.
I think average Americans do care, especially older ones who have a better understanding of the thinking led to America's founding. That understanding is that those in power always try to get more power, so our system of government was set up to prevent any person or subset from getting too much power, through balance.
The ability to spy on anyone's current and past internet activity and past phone calls is an impressive power.
One could hope it would be used responsibly and not abused, but those with a good understanding of the founding of the country would recognize this as too great a power for any group within the government. Even if it isn't being abused now, the risk it will be in the future is too great.
If you had to personify the American polity, they'd be my mom, not you or me. She supports aggressive policing to keep drugs illegal (she'd probably vote to make alcohol illegal if that were on the ballot). She's pretty skeptical of Snowden, and would say "what do you have to hide?" but also thinks the government holds up her check deposits because she's got a foreign last name. She might argue with the details, but she supports the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, etc. She's a little skeptical of unions. She supported Hilary Clinton.
She's a bright woman. She works as an interior designer, but has a masters degree in chemistry from her home country.
My mom votes, in every election. I don't vote regularly, nor (statistically) do other people in my age group, but my mom does. I can't look at her, and at the status quo, and say: "the government does not represent the views of Americans."