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0 pointschimeracoder11y ago0 comments

> Arguments against widespread surveillance are pretty much always founded on the assumption that the surveillance will be inaccurate.

That assumes that there exists some objective, mutually agreed-upon measure of "accuracy".

For example, Glenn Greenwald has said that there is no definition of what constitutes "terrorism" that is not inherently based on race[0]. This isn't saying that the measures we take to prevent "terrorism" are racist; it's saying that the actual pursuit - the goal itself - is inherently racist, albeit implicitly.

The argument in support of that claim is too long to go into here[1], but suffice to say that, if you believe that the word "terrorism" is simply a euphemism for rationalizing racist behaviour or suppressing legitimate political dissent, then no, you're not going to be happy when people find more accurate ways to target those individuals.

[0] You may or may not agree with this premise personally, but that's not the point.

[1] though easy to find online

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4 comments · 1 top-level

n09n11y ago· 3 in thread

I really can't take seriously the idea that the goal of the NSA or any other part of the US government is any kind of racial cleansing or suppression. It seems far more plausible that using race as a judge of threatfulness is a result of not having anything more accurate to go on. In which case, better targeting would actually make the program less racist.

chatmasta11y ago

Re: "suppression"

I generally fall into the same anti-paranoia camp as you seem to, as in "how bad can they really be?" But then I read articles like one posted here a while back, which I'm having trouble finding (anyone?), that described massive, tens-of-millions-of-dollars government research contracts ostensibly to "study the Arab Spring." The article talked about the discomfort of researchers, who were surprised to be pressured by the Pentagon into focusing their efforts on "potentially disruptive" American groups like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street.

Again, I can't find the article, but I remember my takeaway from it was that the Pentagon is actively pursuing research into how to identify, control, and suppress grass roots movements and protests in the US.

So, maybe we haven't seen evidence of suppression yet, but I suspect that's because there has yet to be an adequate trigger event in the US, or an "American spring" of sorts. When that happens, which I'm sure it will at some point, we will see the NSA putting their data to use against American citizens.

n09n11y ago

And that's a great thing. Look at the mess Egypt's government has become over the past two years. Keep that shit out of the US please.

chimeracoderOP11y ago

> I really can't take seriously the idea that the goal of the NSA or any other part of the US government is any kind of racial cleansing or suppression.

Perhaps not consciously, no, but we're talking about this in the same lens that people use when describing the war on drugs as "The New Jim Crow"[0], to assert that the war on (some) drugs is inherently a race- and class-driven fight, even if not done consciously by most parties involved.

> It seems far more plausible that using race as a judge of threatfulness is a result of not having anything more accurate to go on.

Again, you're assuming an uncontroversial, objective, and non-racist definition of "threatfulness". This is one of the few instances in which the phrase "begging the question" can be used correctly in an online discussion.

It might seem at first that such a definition would obvious, but that's actually very far from the case, as people like Greenwald have explained.

I don't want to try and explain this reasoning any further myself, not for lack of patience, but simply because Greenwald has already written about this this very eloquently and at great length, so anything I could write in this comment would be an ersatz rehashing of what he's said.

His essays on this are very easy to find online, so out of respect to his beliefs, I'd encourage you to read it "straight from the lion's mouth" rather than rely on whatever summary I could muster.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow

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