Be you a lawyer talking privileged to a client, a priest talking privileged to a follower, a hot-line worker talking privileged to someone thinking about suicide, or a social service person talking to a child who been sexually assaulted, every ones communication is equally collected.
This is after all the result of ubiquitous surveillance. When people learn about it, the reaction is very simple. people stop talking. They do not call the lawyer. They don't call the priest. The person thinking about suicide won't call the hot-line, and the sexually assaulted child will stay quiet in fear of people finding out. After Germany introduced their ubiquitous surveillance law, this was exactly what the statistics ended up showing. I wonder, while hoping not, if the same result will happen in the US too after the current wave of news.
Bizarrely, this whole scenario is very similar to the privacy issues explored in Brunner's 1975 book "The Shockwave Rider"[1].
Perhaps, as in the book, we need to setup an independent encrypted communication service where people can vent their frustrations at pervasive surveillance.
Never mind PRISM. The week before the PRISM leaks, the news was full of hack attacks by state actors against US business and government targets. Why are we emailing and talking in the clear? That's just dumb.
Moreover, the toothpaste can't be put back in the tube. Short of transformative change in government, how do we know there isn't another PRISM at another TLA?
The only way to restore confidence in communications is to secure them against all attacks.
You're right, but I'd still like to see us make a giant collective bowel movement on the spilled toothpaste, and generally make it so undesirable for a government agency to use the toothpaste that they'll only do so when no other alternative exists, or only when it's actually very important to do so.
His Hugo-winning, perhaps most famous novel, "Stand On Zanzibar" also deals a bit as well with surveillance, terrorism and authoritarism (among others). A great read that manages to stay hugely relevant today. I'd definitely recommend it to any Sci-Fi lover.
After some quite heavy searching, I finally found the original source. Google is really not very good in finding articles written 4 years ago, and it is even more difficulty if you don't remember the language it was written in :).
I have no idea however from which article I myself originally read/heard it from, and what additional conclusion it might have added to the report. My best guess is that it was from a key note somewhere, likely Falkvinge or Schneier.
That's not a statistic showing that the data retention changed people's communication behaviour, it's a statistic that they report they changed it, or they predict themselves changing it. Whether these self-observations and predictions bear out in practice and after the topic has left the mainstream media is another matter.
Five years down the road, I doubt individual communication amounts have stagnated. Of course, we did get rid of mass data retention -- for the time being! --, so that's not much of an argument. :)
Its a survey. It would be unlikely that the government would fund the work of asking every hot line, every lawyer, every priest (and so on), and get the exact data to produce perfect data.
Its true that polls and survey can be wrong. Media can hype, and people can lie. However, polls and survey tend to point correctly where the trend lies if enough people are asked. This is why government and companies use those tools when creating data for decision making.
In the end, one is of course free to interpret a poll in what ever way one want, including ignoring it. There are numerous famous quotes about the failing of statistics (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Statistics). But in my view, this is as expected before actually researchers digs down, funding is paid, and someone starts to go through enough data sets to create something better.
Whether or not it's a survey that's extrapolated is not the point. But it's an extrapolation of people's self-observation and, even more unreliable, their predictions regarding their own behaviour.
11% said that they had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions
That's not extrapolated about predictions of the future. That is about the past situation at the time of the poll.
52% said they probably would not use telecommunication for contacts like drug counselors, psychotherapists or marriage counselors because of data retention
That's is how they would react at the present time of the poll, not predictions about the future.
6% believe to receive less communication since the beginning of the data retention
That is a prediction of the future.
So we got data from past, present and future. One is prediction, one is what they would do today, and one is about the past.
Its a common standard for survey. If it has been about voting, the questions would be: What did you vote last time? if it was election today, which party would you vote on? In the next election, who do you think will win?
Past, present and future. If someone want to ignore it, one is always free to wait until election day and tally the votes. We do not actually use the survey data to decide who wins elections. The survey will always be more unreliable than the actually tallied votes. The question one might then ask is why government pay for poll survey, and why they tend to be correct even if they are made from unreliable self-observation of a "few" questioned people. The answer would probably be somewhere in the profession of statisticians, and as Im not one, I don't have it :).
No, one is a prediction, one is what they think they would do today and one is about how they think they behaved in the past. I was simply making the point that people aren't necessarily reliable observers of their own behaviour. It's a common mistake in evaluating these kinds of surveys. (Also, even when they observe correctly, they might lie, but lets not get into that.)
An interesting statistic lacking this particular source of error would be a survey of e.g. suicide hotlines about the number of calls they get (I'm sure they keep such statistics).
Why would you hope not? I would rather people talked less in this situation. It means they've adjusted their behavior in accordance with their new, more accurate, understanding of the world.
It probably depends on what's more likely and less desirable:
- one lets others know about one's personal problem, and for some reason becomes enough of interest for some entity to bring up corresponding records;
- one doesn't talk and eventually attempts suicide, or continues to be sexually assaulted (and abuser never gets caught, if subsequent victims are silent as well).
(I personally at this moment would agree with belorn on this.)
This is after all the result of ubiquitous surveillance. When people learn about it, the reaction is very simple. people stop talking. They do not call the lawyer. They don't call the priest. The person thinking about suicide won't call the hot-line, and the sexually assaulted child will stay quiet in fear of people finding out. After Germany introduced their ubiquitous surveillance law, this was exactly what the statistics ended up showing. I wonder, while hoping not, if the same result will happen in the US too after the current wave of news.