I'm a bit confused by the whole "liberty needs a lobbyist" argument. Lobbying for what exactly? Intelligence agencies to pretend to stop spying on you? I think that's as much as you can reasonably hope for lobbying to achieve.
The wider implications are earlier in the article. Wearable recording devices and biometric security devices shared in the cloud? Probably better to assume the government will compromise them if it wants to, and might well do anyway, just in case, with or without the blessing of Silicon Valley. That's something to take into account when deciding if you actually want them. It's not an entirely new phenomenon though; the same was true of brick-sized mobile phones a couple of decades back.[1]
Your chances of having your life seriously affected by PRISM may or may not be higher than your chances of having your life seriously affected by terrorism [2] but it's a stone cold certainty that public criticism isn't putting the spooks to bed. Intelligence agencies have never really depended on being in tune with public sentiment or in line with the law.
[1]There's a well-publicised trial going on at the moment in the UK over "phone hacking" in the 1990s, where the organizations snooping on people's voicemails were newspapers. In a beautifully ironic touch, one of the major revelations of the trial so far is that two of the media moguls in question were having an affair. They were incriminated by a Word document; a love letter that may never even have been sent, and certainly wouldn't have come to light if they hadn't had to hand over their computers to prosecutors.
[2]both are higher than the article's "1 in 20 million", but not high enough to be likely if you're not a major public figure
I'm constantly amazed that its like everyone has suddenly forgotten that during Occupy Wall St, protests before and since, and the entire Arab Spring revolution, it was portable and mobile recording devices widely dispersed amongst the populace that enabled successful revolution against government and evidence and checks of the abuses of power of police and other authorities.
To an extent, yes. Whether open communication aids or harms you depends on whose misdemeanours you're communicating, and to whom.
Two years on from Arab Spring, there are grainy new videos posted of abuses of power in Egypt every day. Whereas on the 27th January 2011, Mubarak's government was so disconcerted by the volume of criticism it was getting it actually largely succeeded in switching the internet off...
Which is kind of my point. Unless you're distributing devices which the users can't get their own images out of, but someone else can, then your fundamentally decentralizing the power structure.
The government is bigger then you, it has more resources then you and its been able to monopolize surveillance more effectively then you. But the pushback against that is not what I would argue we'd expect - you don't try and eliminate surveillance, you democratize it.
That sounds like a bureaucrats definition of success. "It's not about accomplishing real work, it's about the process, getting involved in the process, etc. etc." Seeing how wall st. is at all time highs using printed money, and the largest mega banks are still mega, it's a bit optimistic to call OWS a success.
Don't get me wrong, I think it was a great effort... and I really like the 1%/99% coining... but perhaps it's time to look at reality.
The wider implications are earlier in the article. Wearable recording devices and biometric security devices shared in the cloud? Probably better to assume the government will compromise them if it wants to, and might well do anyway, just in case, with or without the blessing of Silicon Valley. That's something to take into account when deciding if you actually want them. It's not an entirely new phenomenon though; the same was true of brick-sized mobile phones a couple of decades back.[1]
Your chances of having your life seriously affected by PRISM may or may not be higher than your chances of having your life seriously affected by terrorism [2] but it's a stone cold certainty that public criticism isn't putting the spooks to bed. Intelligence agencies have never really depended on being in tune with public sentiment or in line with the law.
[1]There's a well-publicised trial going on at the moment in the UK over "phone hacking" in the 1990s, where the organizations snooping on people's voicemails were newspapers. In a beautifully ironic touch, one of the major revelations of the trial so far is that two of the media moguls in question were having an affair. They were incriminated by a Word document; a love letter that may never even have been sent, and certainly wouldn't have come to light if they hadn't had to hand over their computers to prosecutors.
[2]both are higher than the article's "1 in 20 million", but not high enough to be likely if you're not a major public figure