so what good is it doing for us exactly? well, it's doing vital, important things that are so vital and important that we can't be allowed to know what they are. /nods
I just recently read the heavily dystopian YA book Feed. Combined with recent events... bleargh. Depressing. Why is it so hard for us to separate "legal" from "ethical"?
Oh, right, because on the whole we're incredibly politically uninvolved. The minute we start truly paying attention, the two separate just fine. :(
actually, i think a more direct analogy would be to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy: not only is it wrong, but also the government's own statistics show that:
a) it doesn't catch many wrong-doers. the administration is claiming all of two people supposedly convicted in part by tracking everybody's calls, and the NYPD admits a tiny and falling number of guns and evidence of crimes found on people randomly hassled.
b) it doesn't work. if we grant the administration's claims, that's two caught, and two who committed a terrorist attack (and may have committed other crimes in the past) for a stunning 50% success rate. great work, guys! :P meanwhile, NYC's crime rate is falling along with most other big cities', apprently as a result of demographic shifts... but crime hasn't been stamped out by any means.
i think that's a good analogy to the actual program. you're right: even a generous reading of the government's own claims about its successes (in both cases) shows it to be a mediocre tool at best, and to cause a lot of collateral harms.
i just meant to be talking about the particular claim that the tool is vital to how we catch terrorists. it sounds nice, but it's a) circular ("white house defends status quo as vital to the way we currently do business"), and b) not actually sufficient justification.
right: neither theory nor practice works. some people might tolerate the abuses if the theory was bad but the practice worked. say, for example, the NYPD could trot out thousands of violent criminals -- muggers, rapists, drug gang enforcers -- who it had put away solely with stop-and-frisk... and new york was as safe as, um, zurich? tokyo? while the rest of the US urban population stayed in their fortified homes at night, nervously fingering their panic buttons and/or very large guns.
i suspect a lot of people -- perhaps even some black people -- would put up with it because they'd be demonstrably safer. most people would, i think, put up with this sort of spying and secrecy in a declared war against a clearly active enemy. 'course, that's the royal road to 1984, but hey, it's not a cautionary tale for nothin'. :)
Not only is this scary, but if this is what the DEMOCRATS do when they're in power, what will the REPUBLICANS do the next time they're elected? The mind boggles.
The world isn't a safe place. It never has been, and it never will be. If safety is the #1 consideration, then we'll all hide under our beds while wearing our armor suits and our gas masks. One must accept some amount of risk simply in order to LIVE, but the government doesn't seem to understand that, probably because claiming to care about safety gains them more power.
The other problem with how the world isn't a safe place is that there are lots of monsters that *can* get you while you're hiding under your bed. I think many people who have faced those monsters would cheerfully trade a level of risk for greater freedom. I certainly would (and do whenever it's something I have control over).
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well, it's doing vital, important things that are so vital and important that we can't be allowed to know what they are. /nods
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I just recently read the heavily dystopian YA book Feed. Combined with recent events... bleargh. Depressing. Why is it so hard for us to separate "legal" from "ethical"?
Oh, right, because on the whole we're incredibly politically uninvolved. The minute we start truly paying attention, the two separate just fine. :(
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a) it doesn't catch many wrong-doers. the administration is claiming all of two people supposedly convicted in part by tracking everybody's calls, and the NYPD admits a tiny and falling number of guns and evidence of crimes found on people randomly hassled.
b) it doesn't work. if we grant the administration's claims, that's two caught, and two who committed a terrorist attack (and may have committed other crimes in the past) for a stunning 50% success rate. great work, guys! :P meanwhile, NYC's crime rate is falling along with most other big cities', apprently as a result of demographic shifts... but crime hasn't been stamped out by any means.
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i just meant to be talking about the particular claim that the tool is vital to how we catch terrorists. it sounds nice, but it's a) circular ("white house defends status quo as vital to the way we currently do business"), and b) not actually sufficient justification.
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i suspect a lot of people -- perhaps even some black people -- would put up with it because they'd be demonstrably safer. most people would, i think, put up with this sort of spying and secrecy in a declared war against a clearly active enemy. 'course, that's the royal road to 1984, but hey, it's not a cautionary tale for nothin'. :)
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The world isn't a safe place. It never has been, and it never will be. If safety is the #1 consideration, then we'll all hide under our beds while wearing our armor suits and our gas masks. One must accept some amount of risk simply in order to LIVE, but the government doesn't seem to understand that, probably because claiming to care about safety gains them more power.
The tree of liberty needs watering again...
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