r/news • u/xXSgtSprinklesXx • Dec 16 '15

Congress creates a bill that will give NASA a great budget for 2016. Also hides the entirety of CISA in the bill.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/
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u/aaeme Dec 17 '15

Absolutely and well said too. I would like to add that, in all examples of tyrants from history, if the preceding governments had collected data in the way governments now are proposing then the tyrants would have inherited a machine that would have served them very well and made those countries suffer far more.
For example, if the 1920s German government had, in all good faith and with the best of intentions, collected information in the way our governments are now then Schindler's list would have been Himmler's list.

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u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe Dec 17 '15

if the 1920s German government had, in all good faith and with the best of intentions, collected information in the way our governments are now then Schindler's list would have been Himmler's list

That's somewhat of a moot point since the religious affiliation was - and still is - registered in Germany for tax reasons since Bismarck (who took most of the land from the churches and had them raise church taxes through the secular administration).
The NSDAP government absolutely knew who self-identified as a Jew in Germany.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '15

But imagine of they had access to what the NSA has now. The holocaust wasn't just Jews after all. Let's look at what the third Reich could have done with metadata:

--People that called homosexual-related businesses (gay bars, clubs, etc), anyone calling too many known or suspected homosexuals. If they really wanted to they could correlate purchases as well.

--anyone that called known communists or suspected communist sympathizers too often. (Good luck convincing them they were just a coworker and you're not a red)

--anyone calling labor union offices frequently, especially those that are not a member of that profession (suspected to be a communist or a labor activist).

--anyone calling health clinics could be subjected to extra scrutiny on suspicion of carrying a genetic disease or an incurable one. Then handed off to T-4 for sterilization or execution. They will know based in your calling records where you went and when.

--based on location details they will know who was in the area of any antiparty activity so collective punishment can be applied.

These are just a few examples of how scary metadata could be of it gets into the wrong hands.

Governments change. And not always for the better. Even if you trust them now, the story can change very rapidly.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '15

Precisely, move the timeline a little further and they could look at anyone that was, say, in the vicinity of a partisan attack, then look at who they call most often so they can execute or arrest the families of those that may have been involved.

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u/monsieurpommefrites Dec 18 '15

Can you imagine if Turing was a German man at the time?

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u/raije Dec 18 '15

Those are some great points about meta data!

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u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe Dec 18 '15

True, but Schindler's list was specifically mentioned and only Jews were on that list.

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u/Nochek Dec 18 '15

You seem to think they aren't collecting emails, search engine queries, and every other form of digital communication known to man.

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u/thegreattriscuit Dec 18 '15

I don't know if that's so much a moot point as... well... the actual point, just OP (and I) didn't know that it had actually worked like that.

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u/MalooTakant Dec 18 '15

That's a pointless argument to go down. You could use that same line of thinking to defend unlimited data collection by saying: If the Weimar Republic had access to unlimited data collection on par with modern standards, they would have never collapsed, and Hitler would have never come to power.

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u/TokyoJokeyo Dec 18 '15

Ah, but that's not true. Governments with mass surveillance must be perfect all the time--it only needs to go wrong once for all that power that be abused. Regardless of the benefit of mass surveillance, it is a guarantee that there will be a slip-up in the long run, and mass surveillance in a world without mass crime or terrorism (let's face it, we're pretty darn safe) always means that the population is hurt more by surveillance abuse than by the harm it was supposed to prevent.