Techdirt. Stories filed under "liberty" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "liberty"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:29:56 PDT Washington Post: Yes, We Need To Give Up Liberty For Security Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121029/02482720866/washington-post-yes-we-need-to-give-up-liberty-security.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121029/02482720866/washington-post-yes-we-need-to-give-up-liberty-security.shtml is perfectly fine to "give up liberty" for security:
Discomfort with the government’s capacity, technical or legal, to collect and retain massive amounts of personal information is understandable. But the 2008 FISA amendments sought a compromise between two essential goals: preserving American liberty and robustly defending Americans’ lives and property. We favored the law and believe that it should be extended.
That's somewhat ridiculous. After all, as we've noted over and over again, almost no one seems to understand what's actually in the FISA Amendments Act, in part because there's a secret interpretation of it that only the government knows. This means that many, many people, including those in Congress, are clearly misrepresenting what's in the law. The fact that the NSA refuses to say how often it has used this secret interpretation to spy on Americans should be a pretty big warning sign -- especially as politicians who are either clueless or ignorant claim that it can't be used to spy on Americans.

And really, this is the root of the "don't give up liberty for security" quote. Once you do that, you're cooked, because it's a situation that only expands in one direction. Those who seek to hold back liberty will always make use of scare stories and FUD to seek to be able to spy further. You would think that the editorial board of the Washington Post, which has been covering this kind of mess for quite some time, would actually have some sort of ability to look back at history. Apparently its historical knowledge is close to nil.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> oh-really-now? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121029/02482720866 Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Space Tourism Is Almost Here Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/11454010177/dailydirt-space-tourism-is-almost-here.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/11454010177/dailydirt-space-tourism-is-almost-here.shtml mini-shuttle) to get people into space. On top of that, though, the private space industry is starting to kick in with more and more ambitious plans to offer rides into space -- or at least to the edge of space. Here are just a few more examples of these private efforts. By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100712/11454010177 Fri, 8 Jan 2010 14:02:34 PST More Surveillance Can Make Us Less Safe Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100108/0305177669.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100108/0305177669.shtml greater surveillance wouldn't have helped prevent the attacks. The data was all there, it just wasn't put together. And yet, in the time since then, the government has, in fact, continually focused on gathering more surveillance (warrantless wiretaps, anyone?), rather than on making better use of the data that is there. Back in 2002, in another post, we discussed how collecting more surveillance data in data retention schemes also made it harder to find the useful data and harder to connect the dots on the data that you had.

With the attempted terror attack on Christmas, it appears that this focus on doing more surveillance rather than better security was a major part in "failing to connect the dots" that allowed the plot to get as far as it did. The EFF points us to a report noting that the reason why Abdulmutallab was allowed on an airplane into the US in the first place -- despite widespread warnings, was that there was a backlog in processing all the data:
Abdulmutallab never made it onto a no-fly list because there are simply too many reports of suspicious individuals being submitted on a daily basis, which causes the system to be "clogged" -- overloaded -- with information having nothing to do with Terrorism. As a result, actually relevant information ends up obscured or ignored.
At what point do people realize that collecting more data doesn't make us more secure, and actually can do the opposite. As is pointed out at the Salon link above, the idea that you even can sacrifice liberty for security is wrong. The famous saying may say that you "deserve neither," but increasingly people are realizing that sacrificing liberty doesn't necessarily get you more security anyway.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> this-isn't-so-hard http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100108/0305177669