The Tor Browser and Government Surveillance

[Orbit]

I do, and think that you should, too. Sure, private intrusiveness is equally reprehensible, but it is not backed by the incredible parental-type authority as that of the state. We all remember the revelations of Ed Snowden. I don’t believe for a moment that all that has just stopped. The amount of surveillance done by the four levels of government in this country, and the absurd amount spent on appendages of violence (military and police) does not place us in a dystopian situation quite yet, but we certainly seem to be trending that way.

EDIT: Now, my feelings about this situation are colored by my dislike of “the state” and government in general; I tend towards the anarchic in my feelings and the libertarian in my politics. Even so, the facts cannot be ignored, nor my fears disproved.

How do you propose they combat violent extremists who organize online?

 

[Heyo]

How do you propose they combat violent extremists who organize online?

The old-fashioned way, by targeting violent extremists after procuring a judges permission to wiretap - not by surveilling the population.

 

[dybmh]

I wouldnt trust the government to not abuse their power regarding this

What do you think they would do?

 

[VoidCat]

What do you think they would do?

Well. I dont kniw. But did you hear about the bill regarding banning tiktok? It's more then a tiktok ban. I don't know if it passed but the wording in the bill is so vague that the government could ban anything they don't like on the internet. For any reason. I don't think I need to tell you why that's a bad idea. Give me a few I'll provide sources but if the government was willing to propose a ban on internet usage and hide it under the guise of oh we just banning tiktok I dont trust them at all with surveillaning the internet.

 

[VoidCat]

Tag: @dybmh
This is the video i got my info from:

The source used in the video is the bill itself:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text

Start from 15:41 itll break down kinda what they noticed about the wording

 

[VoidCat]

Well. I dont kniw. But did you hear about the bill regarding banning tiktok? It's more then a tiktok ban. I don't know if it passed but the wording in the bill is so vague that the government could ban anything they don't like on the internet. For any reason. I don't think I need to tell you why that's a bad idea. Give me a few I'll provide sources but if the government was willing to propose a ban on internet usage and hide it under the guise of oh we just banning tiktok I dont trust them at all with surveillaning the internet.

Looking at the link it seems to have been introduced but not passed. I looked at it 2 months ago seems there hasnt been any farther actions since then

 

[VoidCat]

@dybmh im not a lawyer or a lawmaker. But I've been hearing a lot about the Restrict act and problems it could cause. I dont know if what im hearing is true but if it is and this bill passes there would be far reaching consequences. Maybe what im hearing and have been reading isnt true maybe the government wouldn't interpret it the way folk saying it could. But i dont trust the bill or the government. And it explains why there's so much fear being driven up regarding Tiktok.

 

[Brickjectivity]

What do think? Too big-brothery or is it justified considering the situation?

We are already divided by language. I would not take much to make people stop trusting each other with dangerous technologies and ideas. Future generations possibly will demand suppression of technological knowledge (as we have occasionally done with ideas, philosophies, other technologies and religions), and technology will be officially consigned to silos of techno ministers. They will be given charge of the secrets, and the population will seize or destroy any unlicensed knowledge or materials. Unlicensed programs, tools and gadgets will be a no-no.

To keep that from happening I think your big brother scenario is a lesser evil. I don't like it either though.

 

[dybmh]

Well. I dont kniw. But did you hear about the bill regarding banning tiktok? It's more then a tiktok ban. I don't know if it passed but the wording in the bill is so vague that the government could ban anything they don't like on the internet. For any reason. I don't think I need to tell you why that's a bad idea. Give me a few I'll provide sources but if the government was willing to propose a ban on internet usage and hide it under the guise of oh we just banning tiktok I dont trust them at all with surveillaning the internet.

What I'm thinking of is not a ban or a limit on free speech. And there's a natural limit to what the authorities can actually accomplish with that sort of red flag system. If the threshold is too low / too sensitive, then they will be bogged down making house calls on those who don't need it. There's only so many warm bodies that are available to do that sort of wellness check.

 

[VoidCat]

What I'm thinking of is not a ban or a limit on free speech. And there's a natural limit to what the authorities can actually accomplish with that sort of red flag system. If the threshold is too low / too sensitive, then they will be bogged down making house calls on those who don't need it. There's only so many warm bodies that are available to do that sort of wellness check.

Well if it's just what you propose I wouldn't be oppose to it. But I can see the government using an idea like that as an excuse to do other stuff. Like how they are saying they just want to ban tiktok but the bill they got is supposedly a lot worse then that.

 

[VoidCat]

Well if it's just what you propose I wouldn't be oppose to it. But I can see the government using an idea like that as an excuse to do other stuff. Like how they are saying they just want to ban tiktok but the bill they got is supposedly a lot worse then that.

@dybmh. Basically if the government said thats what they wanted to do I would want to see the bill read it throughly see what folk say about it prior to agreeing with it. I could be fine if that's all they were going to do. But they also could say that's what they wanted to do and actually have more in mind.

 

[VoidCat]

@dybmh. Thinking on it more I dont know if I'd support such a bill. As I dont know enough about the real world ramifications. I would want to think on it farther. Are there any real world examples of any governments doing anything similar? Not like to prevent school shooting but anything really? How did it play out? Id have to look.

 

[Heyo]

Tag: @dybmh
This is the video i got my info from:

The source used in the video is the bill itself:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text

Start from 15:41 itll break down kinda what they noticed about the wording

:informative:

 

[Orbit]

The old-fashioned way, by targeting violent extremists after procuring a judges permission to wiretap - not by surveilling the population.

Something that is posted on the internet is public; it doesn't require a warrant. It's no different from patrolling the streets.

 

[Heyo]

Something that is posted on the internet is public; it doesn't require a warrant. It's no different from patrolling the streets.

I thought we were talking about privacy? Are there violent extremists who organize in open forums?

 

[Orbit]

I thought we were talking about privacy? Are there violent extremists who organize in open forums?

Yes

 

[Heyo]

Yes

Well, they need to be prosecuted and jailed asap. What's more dangerous than violent extremists are stupid violent extremists.

 

[Zwing]

I wouldnt trust the government to not abuse their power regarding this

Founding father James Madison, author of a number of the Federalist Papers and a defender of the federal system therein, in his Political Observations of April 20, 1795 made a clear statement on the danger of the federal government using the pretext of national security to increase its power over, and intrusion into, the private realm of the public:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.”

The “war” noted by Madison as being pretextual, in the particular case of the modern American “security state” was, of course, the “Cold War”, which provided the pretext of what William Buckley (even though a Republican!) rightly called our “totalitarian bureaucracy”. I could, myself, not have devised a more accurately descriptive term. Sociologist Robert Nisbet has indicated the Woodrow Wilson administration as representing the germ of this totalitarian bureaucracy in the U.S. He has noted not only the nature of Wilson’s repressions but also its unprecedented social scope in a nation that was not militarily threatened at the time and had not been threatened by a foreign power for over a century. Nisbet went so far as to hold that modern totalitarianism began, not with Lenin or Mussolini, but with the “progressive” Wilson, writing in The Twilight of Authority that:

"I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the West's first real experience with totalitarianism — political absolutism extended into every possible area of culture and society, education, religion, industry, the arts, local community and family included, with a kind of terror always waiting in the wings — came with the American war state under Woodrow Wilson."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” more bluntly stated what Madison did earlier on his side of both the Atlantic and of the political spectrum:

“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”

Now that the Cold War is a thing of the past, our totalitarian bureaucracy, loath to relinquish any of the powers (over us!) that it has assumed during that historic period, needs a new pretext, which it seems to have discovered in the ever-constant fear which all humans have for their welfare, particularly the threats of terrorism and crime. This is the hidden argument of the security state, that we are effectively in a constant state of war to defeat the efforts of those who wish to hurt and damage us and our society, and that “state of war” has simply continued the pretextual role which was originally supplied by the “Soviet menace”. There seems to have been a slow erosion of both the resistance to governmental interference the expectation of privacy in the lives of ordinary Americans which has occurred both during and since the end of the Cold War. Though the war has ended, the private intrusions interferences have not only continued, but grown more in frequency and regularity. It seems that once a pretext is acted upon by a government, that government then considers whatever powers it has assumed by pretext to be necessary in a continuing manner, because the thing about pretexts is that, one can always be found… Whether or not such is, indeed, necessary is an entirely different determination. For my part, I find that it is neither necessary, warranted, or desirable.

 

[Ella S.]

How do you propose they combat violent extremists who organize online?

Everyone should have a right to read, learn from, and even consider extreme ideas.

Violence is a criminal offense and will already be punished by court systems. Trying to punish people for crimes they haven't even committed yet is patently unjust.