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Privacy and Politics
I was thinking about the intersection of internet privacy and politics. You could even say I was having a bit of a mini-crisis. I like to think of myself as being pretty liberal, but I wondering how that fits into privacy. I was a little upset when I learned that Obama called Edward Snowden unpatriotic. I was kind of thinking that what he did was patriotic. Wasn't the NSA monitoring US citizens without warrants. That's morally wrong right? I think I would be pretty fine with the government monitoring someone if they had a warrant given to them by a non-secret court. I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some insight on this or if anyone else feels/has felt this way.
That's probably a good idea to talk to other people about politics. It's just that I feel like a moron in those discussions. Politics are a very confusing subject for me.
Just because you identify as a liberal, that doesn't mean you will automatically agree with everything said by someone else who identifies as a liberal. For starters, "liberal" is a broad category which covers a wide range of beliefs and policies. Then, someone else's definition of "liberal" will probably be different to your definition of "liberal". Even then, not everyone who self-identifies as a "liberal" is necessarily liberal. And, finally, it's possible to agree with some so-called "liberal" policies but not others.
For example, it is possible for someone to be totally in favour of equal rights for LGBT people - which is a liberal belief. But, because that person is in favour of LGBT rights, they're against people who are against LGBT rights, so they decide to be anti-Islam because some extreme Islamists terrorise LGBT people. So this person could be a rampant Islamophobe - which is not a liberal belief. But they describe themself as "liberal" because they support at least one liberal policy.
And none of this has anything to do with privacy. It is possible to be a liberal who advocates for maintaining privacy or a liberal who advocates for invading privacy, depending on the goal you're using the data for. Is it "liberal" to insist that everyone wear a body-cam and GPS at all times, if your goal is to prevent all violence against women, LGBT people, and ethnic minorities? That's a very liberal goal... isn't it? Doesn't it warrant a little invasion of privacy? After all, if you're not a violent woman-beater or gay-basher or race-killer, you've got nothing to worry about... right?
That dependes on your definition of "unpatriotic".
It could be argued that undermining the ability of a government to protect its citizens is extremely unpatriotic. After all, defending its citizenry is almost the highest duty of a government! And revealing government secrets would reduce the ability of that government to fulfil its duty: it undermines confidence in the government agency which had its records leaked; it reduces the ability of the government to use that leaked information for protective purposes; it exposes the methods used to obtain information which means those methods can be blocked in future. Reducing the ability of a government to protect its citizens is very unpatriotic!
Or so it could be argued - and quite validly, too.
Whether or not the government is using ethical means to carry out its duty is a whole different matter. It is possible to be unethical and patriotic, and it is possible to be ethical and unpatriotic.
I am not making any statements about whether Snowden's actions were patriotic or not, nor whether the U.S. government was ethical or not. I am only pointing out that the situation is not simple, and the issues involved are not black-and-white. There's a lot of murky shades of grey to be considered here.
There's some really interesting points being made here about how to interpret the word unpatriotic but no matter how it's interpretet it's always going to be a negative word and I think many people were just disappointed that Obama would use that word about Snowden.
Did people expect a sitting U.S. President to praise someone who stole government secrets and revealed them to the world? There is no possible alternate reality where that would happen. Anyone who expects this to happen has unrealistic expectations. And, as the saying goes, disappointment is just the gap between expectations and reality. If you adjust your expectations to align more closely with reality, you'll be less disappointed.
No I did not expect any praise but since his communication skills otherwise are quite elegant he could have handled that a lot better IMO.
Well it seems like the approach nowadays is just to align reality instead.
You've intrigued me, so I did some research and tracked down the press conference in which President Obama supposedly called Mr Snowden unpatriotic - and that's not quite what he said.
Here is the transcript of that news conference on 9th August 2013. And, here are the relevant excerpts:
He said, in answer to the question "Is Edward Snowden a patriot?" that "I don't think Mr Snowden was a patriot." That's subtly different to saying he's unpatriotic. It's saying that what Mr Snowden did was not actively the act of a patriot, which is not quite the same as saying it's actively un patriotic.
Not-something is different to the opposite of something. If you ask "Is that cup hot?" and I answer "No, it's not hot." that's not the same as me saying "It's cold."
Obama also didn't go out of his way to label Snowden as not a patriot or unpatriotic. It wasn't a statement that he made on his own initiative. He was answering a direct question put to him. And, there's no way in these circumstances that he can answer the question "Is he a patriot?" with "Yes." Noone is going to say "Yes, someone who leaks government secrets is a patriot." That's a recipe for disaster. So, he gave the only possible answer to that direct question: "No, he's not a patriot."
Tagging @Duncan and @lumbo7332.
I also find it interesting that, just a few months later, President Obama made exactly the same points about a government's ability to protect its citizens that I did (I had not researched this before I wrote my original comment):
From that point of view, Snowden is not a patriot.
Can you please stop researching and talk out of your ass like everybody else?
Thanks for the links. I stand corrected and I actually think what you call a subtle difference is a huge difference. I agree that Obama couldn't possibly have said he's a patriot in that situation and I'm not saying he should have either. He really is a smooth talker.
I'll confess: I spent my earliest days on Reddit in /r/AskHistorians, firstly as a historian and then a moderator. I already believed in sourcing before that, but that period really drummed home the importance of sources to me.
I can try harder to talk out of my arse, but I fear I may be too far gone at this point. I think I'm a lost cause. :(
Well, I didn't want to oversell it! :)
I just had my 11th cake day so I remember you people and how it used to be. I keep forgetting this place is like reddit 10 years ago.
Hmm. That makes me feel a little better. Just calling someone outright unpatriotic didn't sound like something Obama would say.
Or how about :
The U.S. President acknowledges Snowden's evidence exposing illegal wiretapping against our citizens, and though we don't condone the methods - we accept that we take responsibility in changing this.
Society is going through an upheaval probably not seen since the abolition of slavery. But this time it's on many levels because of technology change. Your having a mini-crisis is the sign of a thinking, reflective mind. Nothing wrong with that.
I suggest that the terms liberal and conservative are outmoded. Lately I've been using the terms 20th century and 21st century to distinguish for myself the change in attitudes in recent times. Liberal and Conservative especially as people struggle to use them today, fall into 20th Century thinking. I'm not implying that I've got it figured out myself, that is just my working method for now.
So what do you think are the 21st century ways of thinking?
I've lived more of my life in the 20th, but I'll give it a stab:
Connected is better. No, it's essential. No, it's almost everything. No, it's everything.
Jobs and careers are only means to an end, not an identity.
Children are. Uh....
History is no teacher. History is history.
Women and men are the same. They are people. Dead silence.
The N word is bad. The F word is fine.
Live and let live. YOLO.
Those of us living now will probably live forever. Because Technology.
"Everyone knows that." But not them. They're 20th century and they don't know anything.
Publicly life is great. Privately... there is no privately.
Networking? Everyone is always 'networked." You wanna hang out?
It's true because my friends and I agree it is.
If you have information, it's old information.
Everything is figured out or it's being figured out within moments.
Notice I didn't say a thing about politics, liberals, conservatives. Your turn.
Skip my turn. I have no idea what to say.
As a gay man myself, the "F word" is not fine. Just not. I don't know why you think it is, but it's not.
I think they mean "fuck". Like swearing in the 21st century is more acceptable than in the 20th. Do you mean that @DonQuixote?
Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry. F**k. And N****r.
It will assist greatly in future clarity and comprehension if you actually spell out any words you're talking about, rather than referring to them by their initials, or covering them up with asterisks.
Given the proximity of their reference to "the N word", I doubt they mean "fuck". "Nigger" is usually paired with "faggot", both being insults, rather than with "fuck".
You're probably right. I'm just too innocent sometimes.
I didn't say I thought it was, I was giving a shot at what is 21st century thinking. Everything I came up with is my take on what I see going on around me, online, offline. Society has gotten coarser and some taboos have gone and others seem to be taking their place. People once generally regarded have been discredited as times have change. Off-topic, but I thought the Three Body Trilogy was very illustrative of this.
One of the characteristics of US politics I find quite sad is the off-the-shelf, binary way it is presented. You're liberal or conservative. Democrat or Republican. And whichever you are means you believe this and that and the other thing. There's a whole world of politics beyond these options: what do you want from an economy? what is the nature of the state? how should a society interact?
I'm an anarchist. I want to live in a stateless, classless society. This is essentially because equality is the basis of freedom and I want to be free --- I want everyone to be free --- free, in a particular well defined way.
Privacy use deep importance to me because it's related to power. When states take our privacy away of we give it to corporations we lose power and they gain it. They gain the power to manipulate elections, to control policy debate, to hide policy. To control what we see, and believe, and know. This hints to why whistleblowers are so vital: they take power from the elite and give it back to us.
A brief comment on Islam. One characteristic of a free society is the free exchange of ideas. People may be equal (more explicitly, have equal rights, respect, and opportunities) but ideas aren't. Some ideas are well formed, reasonably argued and supported by evidence. Some ideas are based on faith and feelings, hope and guesswork. Some ideas lead to a free and fair and wonderful society, while others lead to genocide and slavery. Criticising Islam (or any religion, politics, and so on) is fine, as far as I'm concerned. All ideas are up for debate. What's not fine is declaring all Muslims to be criminals, or rapists, or dole bludgers, or terrorists --- this betrays the idea that all Muslims are subhuman degenerates, which is closely linked both to hierarchical, non-free ideas about society, and real, unjustified violence and abuse against Muslims.