The FBI is watching...
Our leaders and legislators have made it possible to gather information secretly, without a warrant, arrest a citizen without due process of law, and house citizens indefinitely in secret prisons. In essence, we have granted our government permission to make us dissapear.
Here's the basic problem with granting exceptions to civil rights. If citizens give permission to government to surveil without permission and arrest without the inconvienient neccessity of having to make a case -- rest assured, it will be used. If history teaches anything it is that power granted will be power used. And power used will eventually be power missused.
Granted, it starts slowly. But where does it end?
posted by Chris Dykstra @ 1:00 AM |
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1 Comments:
On the contrary. Deleting data and the records of what data was searched and how it was done is important is a mistake.
The ability hide (by deletion) what has occured is a greater invitation to abuse than data retention is.
There is also the inability to work on process improvement if the data and metadata are deleted. (When you find you had data about a subsequent event, but didn't uncover it, refining your search processes to find it next time is essential to improvement.)
For forensic value, I'd rather have all the data maintained.
There are legitimate privacy concerns, but the question is where does privacy become violated when disclosure is not a criteria. HIPPA law is a good example of this principle - CDC and other agencies can access private medical records to conduct research etc, but they can't disclose them. I consider this an acceptable balance between serving the common good and protecting privacy.
I'm wondering how this datamining is different. I'd much rather have my library books or Netflix rentals searched then my medical records - (not that any of them are particularly interesting reading.)
The sharing info issue comes down to treaties. We have foreign gov'ts with which we share intel. How they safegaurd the info they get from us, and particularly where they have nationalized businesses that can be problematic. We also contract out alot of technical gov't work. That adds more complexity. But complexity is a reason to be careful, not a reason to avoid action.
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