Topic: France, surveillance, and the war on terror

[scottws]

This doesn't have anything to do with terrorism, but I still thought it was appropriate here:

Story: Cops charged after pot shop’s hidden cameras show them eating snacks

The story is more about how police raided a marijuana dispensary and ate some of the goods there, sort of in line with the line of journalism in the past year telling tales of police misconduct around the country.  What I found more interesting was the part about the police's handling of the security cameras.  Not just the officers in question, but also the police department's policy regarding them.

I find it incredibly interesting that law enforcement in this country from the local to the federal level wants to go all in on surveillance of the U.S. populous for the nebulous concept of "security", but it's at least one law enforcement agency's standard procedure to disable surveillance cameras when executing a search warrant as part of "officer safety protocol".  I find it incredibly hypocritical and scary.

This does have to do with terrorism:

In other news, I'm reading a (free) book called Little Brother.  It's fiction written by Cory Doctorow.  I'm only about 1/4 of the way in, but it's really interesting.  It's basically a telling about how a worse, post-911 terrorist attack results in U.S. law enforcement going all in with surveillance and tracking technologies and being proactive with the use of those technologies.  I suggest giving it a read if you have time.  He also has a sequel called Homeland that he released a couple years ago.

We need to stop allowing our government to take away our civil liberty in the name of stopping terrorism.  Sure, terrorism sucks and we shouldn't do nothing at all, but the number of American deaths due to terrorist attacks is downright microscopic in the grand scheme of things.  I read something the other day about the concept of "the ratchet effect".  The idea is that the government is turning a ratcheting wrench on our civil liberty and it's always clicking forward and does not have the ability to turn backward.  We need to stop that ratchet from turning forward another click, now, before more is lost forever.

[Cobra951]

The 60s through the early 70s illustrate how it's possible for the country to go toward less repression and more civil liberties.  It takes a massive grassroots effort, even several of them on different fronts.  But it can happen.  It's surprising that this connected age hasn't helped engender something like that.  We could really use it.

On the other subject we were discussing, encryption and the government assault on it, I ran into a great video by John Oliver.  Watch it all.  Don't ragequit in the middle thinking he's another tech-ignorant dittohead for the establishment.  (He's far from that in any case.)

[scottws]

Yeah, I suppose that's true about the 60's and 70's.  I think that American's have been living mostly comfortable lives (relative to the rest of the world) since then and that's why these grassroots efforts haven't surfaced since then.  People are comfortable and ambivalent.  But I do sense some discontent brewing...  It might boil over.  That said, there is a lot of right wing reactionary stuff going on too, so who knows which way it might boil over.

I'd heard of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, but never watched it until I came across his rant about Donald Trump (#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain) a couple weeks ago.  I love it and have been watching since.

I've been meaning to watch this week's episode (including the above) but just haven't had the chance.  I probably will tonight.

[scottws]

There weas a terror attack on Brussels, Belgium. My heart goes out to all Belgians.

That said, I still don't want more government surveillance.

[Quemaqua]

Some more current stuff on surveillance and privacy:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-29/fbi-and-nsa-poised-to-gain-new-surveillance-powers-under-trump
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/09/us-case-challenges-mass-internet-surveillance