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0 pointshackinthebochs12y ago0 comments

Perhaps you should offer up your intelligent opinion as a counter? There is no risk in being thrown in jail because of data mining--NSA can directly observe what you do. There is no reason to mine to deduce that you may be or become an X sympathizer (where X is dangerous to the current power structure), they can simply observe you communicating with known X's or viewing information in support of X. Your concerns about data mining are misplaced and overblown.

There is simply nothing of interest to the government that can be learned about you by mining that they can't learn through direct means already deployed.

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VexXtreme12y ago· 1 in thread

I have already offered my opinion in the parent post but here goes again:

> There is no risk in being thrown in jail because of data mining

Not now. What about in 20 years when the concept of thoughtcrime finds its way into the legal system? Some countries already/still (whichever you like) already have that and people there routinely die because of accessing "illegal" information online.

> There is simply nothing of interest to the government that can be learned about you by mining that they can't learn through direct means already deployed.

False. Let's imagine someone likes to play out their wildest fantasies in a VR world using a device like Rift. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that person has fantasies about gay unicorns. It just so happens that the state has reverted to fundamentalist ways and such fantasies are now punishable by death. With all this data mining in place, what prevents law enforcement agencies from subpoenaing FB and tapping directly into that data feed and making arrests based on that? I know it's a far fetched scenario, but the principle applies to almost anything. Replace gay unicorns with whatever you like. People have murdered other people over more inane things.

Also, if you haven't heard about law enforcement agencies doing parallel construction based on tip offs from SIGINT programs, you should read up on that.

> Your concerns about data mining are misplaced and overblown.

No, my concerns are well placed. Just because there is no abuse happening now (and there likely is), doesn't mean there won't be any in the future - with the data that's being mined as we speak. Better to be safe than sorry and stop this nonsense dead in its tracks, don't you think?

And even if there was zero danger of getting harassed by the system based on the information you consume online, I don't want anyone to know what I think based purely on principle.

hackinthebochsOP12y ago

I don't disagree with your reasoning at all--I have made those same arguments myself at various times. Where we disagree is on the meaning of data mining. When I think of mining, I think of deducing facts that are not directly present in the data. For example, imagine the government deducing your attraction to gay unicorns by some tangentially related facts about you {likes unicorns, watches teletubbies, is a brony} -> {attraction to gay unicorns}. My argument is that such a thing is impossible. There is nothing of interest that a government could learn about you through indirect means (mining relationships out of disparate data), that they can't learn through direct observation. That is, instead of having to deduce your attraction to gay unicorns, they would simply observe it in the virtual world (leak regarding monitoring of WoW). Under this understanding of data mining, worrying about the government mining is misdirection--they will simply watch your avatar get sodomized in real time.

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