What may annoy me even more, is that even in this article, Ars needed "balance" so much that they let some executive branch lizard blow his pompous bullshit at us without putting his name on it. That has got to stop. Anonymous speech is for citizens, not tyrants.

That's why I can't get behind the privacy movement. No one seems to be arguing that privacy is a right - it's just a privilege extended to those we like (citizens), but shouldn't necessarily be extended to those who oppose us (tyrants). Among those we don't trust, openness is necessary to avoid despotism. Among those we do trust, privacy is a fundamental freedom.

The NSA agrees with your sentiment 100%. Your only disagreement is on who is the tyrant.

Wait, no I can't. Those two speech acts are in no way alike. Only the former is even claiming to be "anonymous"; as for the latter, when my brother calls me, I know it's him even though the conversation is (or should be) private. In the sentence you quote, I wasn't talking about privacy. I was referring specifically to the value that society gets from journalists' reporting of anonymous speech. When the anonymous speaker has a unique point of view that is rarely heard, anonymity is quite valuable. When instead, as is usually the case, the anonymity is that of a well-heeled lobbyist for a wealthy industry, who has his arms run up 27 other reporters' asses in addition to this one's, anonymity only serves corrupt purposes. This article is an example of that.

Is that what you tell the traffic cop too?

If you have little or no influence over others, you should have a very high right to privacy. This typically also means a limited ability to fight against abuses of that privacy.

If you've got high levels of influence, through wealth, political power, criminal tendencies, or other means, then your right to privacy should be correspondingly diminished. Your actions by nature have a high level of impact on others.

That's a point I see few privacy advocates articulating. Actually, I've run into a few who point-blank deny it, or argue that only limited classes (usually governments) should be subject to sunshine.

Your argument really essentially calls for a monarchy. The deal in a democracy by definition is that the population at large is in charge: Everyone pays for public infrastructure, and everyone gets a say in how exactly the money is spent. If those people who are hired by the public for executing their wishes are allowed to work in secret, the democratic process can not work, as without any feedback as to whether your actuator is doing what it has been ordered to do, a control loop can not function. That is why people in particularly powerful official positions should not get any privacy with regards to their jobs. Their sex lives and medical records (etc.) still should be their private matter as everyone else's, obviously, and noone in the "privacy movement" says otherwise.

If you can't tell the difference between what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu and what happened to Fred Hampton I'm not sure what planet you're living on.

This is a setup for us to all start thinking "oh, metadata doesn't really mean anything". 'It doesn't mean anything, because its obviously not useful.'

So .. here's my delegitprop thought: If today, the line is "Feds are not achieving anything with metadata", then tomorrow .. or maybe a little later .. the line will become "metadata doesn't achieve anything".

So we'll see.

Who is asking the politicians if they actually do know what the word 'meta-' means? Because .. those who are collecting "meta-"data can facetiously use that word from multiple angles .. and these totalitarians (call them what they are, folks) are fastidious about never using words in this realm that they do not have clearly, internally at least, defined.

The NSA has its own dictionary of the English language, for internal use. It is used to promote internal doctrine, and it is used externally to position. Information positioning is a refined, pure, utter science in this realm. So this NSA dictionary should be on the table in front of any Senator, doing their job, in these meetings. I highly doubt it is relevant what I think, but the only way out of this mess is a total dox'ing of the agency, and a replacement with something else ..

...which is the polar opposite of what you are asserting, demonstrating that you chose to comment on the headline without reading the article at all.

1) Why are we wasting money collecting and storing it?

2) Why are we wasting time looking at it?

This does not muddy the waters to anyone with critical-thinking skills. Why does this invasion of my privacy need to happen if it is unable to achieve its own stated goals?

Edit:

My point was that people should be asking these questions, and these aren't hard questions to ask. Even just asking "if this has no impact then why are we wasting money" should be an easy question to ask for fiscal conservatives. I really don't see many people going the route of thinking, "this is ineffective, therefore we should just keep doing it because the metadata doesn't matter."

I don't understand why people see me asking these questions and automatically assume that I'm attacking them and defending the NSA or something.

It obviously has some impact somewhere, otherwise nobody would lose time creating it.

Its impact is in the government's ability to rule people by fear, once they decide to flip the switch of outright totalitarianism. That's the real purpose of the all-encompassing surveillance. It's not about catching "terrorists", it's about keeping the general populace in check.

That may be the eventual place that it ends up, but the road to hell is easily paved with good intentions. Statements like yours make it sound like you're about to break out into tales of the Illuminati (or whatever secret society you choose) and their designs to rule the world that stretch back to Medieval times.

Do you really believe that (e.g.) President Obama says, "Let me implement this, so that we may control the general populace through fear?" Or maybe could it be that those with the responsibility to protect (e.g.) their country are drunk on the information that the fire hose provides, and fear what tidbit of info they might miss if it is turned off?

Unfortunately I can't do that, since I don't know what they're up to :p

> Do you really believe that (e.g.) President Obama says, "Let me implement this, so that we may control the general populace through fear?"

You want to hear a "no", yes? :p But let's consider another question: Is whatever the NSA is doing up to Obama personally? Did Obama order the NSA to surveil the whole world? -Doubtful, especially since it started before his first term.

> Or maybe could it be that those with the responsibility to protect (e.g.) their country

Responsibility, you say? Tell me, who exactly are they responsible to, for anything they do? -You? What power do you personally hold over the NSA? -What about any other ordinary person?

Furthermore, if you're talking about the NSA protecting the country, how many other countries would be foolish enough to attack the world's prevalent Empire with the most massive army in the history of the world? Do you think the "protection" the all-encompassing surveillance (directed at the masses of ordinary people) is necessary?

Maybe I should have said <insert Leader or Beaurocrat here>. My point is that there is no single person at the helm twirling their mustache and laughing as their plan comes to fruition. If allowed to exist, the surveillance state will be put to use by malicious people (perhaps even a dictatorship / police state), but it's doubtful that it's part of some grand design by a single person (or group) to bring about Fascism in America.

> how many other countries

Terrorists[1] are country-less. They do exist, regardless of whether or not the US reaction to 9/11 is/was an over-reaction.

> Responsibility, you say?

There is no doubt that the people that make up the NSA, and the US military feel that their job is to protect America. That is the 'responsibility' in the same way that one would have a 'responsibility' to raise their offspring in the absence of a government to punish them if they didn't.

That said, I'm not an apologist for the abuses going on here. I'm just not on-board with the idea that the NSA consists of 100% malicious people doing malicious things all day long, while reveling in their malicious maliciousness... savvy?

> Do you think the "protection" the all-encompassing surveillance (directed at the masses of ordinary people) is necessary?

I do not. It's also seeming more and more like the NSA has been engaging in industrial espionage against civilian business to promote / protect US businesses. Which is definitely outside of their purview.

[1] I mean 'terrorist' in the conventional sense, not in the 'anyone that upsets the status quo' sense.

That's all well and good, but you're arguing against a claim I didn't make.

> If allowed to exist, the surveillance state will be put to use by malicious people (perhaps even a dictatorship / police state), but it's doubtful that it's part of some grand design by a single person (or group) to bring about Fascism in America.

I do claim, though, that there is a group of people with an intent at least roughly similar to that. Obviously, I can't prove that claim to you, but we can certainly make observations about what's going on and conclusions based on them.

It's really not difficult to see the signs: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment - and that's from way back in 2007!

If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective.

> There is no doubt that the people that make up the NSA, and the US military feel that their job is to protect America.

Sure, there are lots of people in there with good intentions. That doesn't change anything about what's going on overall, and why.

You're overlooking the fact that the senators aren't against whatever the NSA is doing. Most of them anyway, and the rest are kept in check or neutralized. But you're right about everything else you said. The senators' (and congressmen's) job is not to serve the people - they're serving the corporations that bought them, and some shadowy figures behind the scenes. Of course, they're in the game to climb higher in the hierarchy of power themselves, so.. all is well from their point of view.

But that was never the end goal of bulk metadata collection. Terrorism was the merely the excuse to invoke those powers. The end goal is and always has been, to give the U.S Govt unfettered access to all communications of it citizens for whatever purposes it desires without having to go thru the legal process (not even the ridiculously permissive FISA court).

Prediction - They will use every excuse in the book to hold onto this capability.

"We can't tell you exactly what those reasons are, but trust us, they're really important."

- are we going to see a day where a SWAT team raid your house for unclear reason, you are being tried under secret court that you have no influence over, and decision is made by an anonymous judge or secret jury (for their own protection, of course).

Crap, I say: capital punishment for everyone, even if it was only a jaywalking!

/sarcasm.

[0]http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/01/surveillence-of-citizen...

"A new paper published Monday by the New America Foundation... closely examines the 225 cases... the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata... appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases."

(That's 4 cases)