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Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails on behalf of U.S. intelligence


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Aye but still - taken as a whole, the chance of *anyone* dying is higher. And I do think then that you need to start weighing up lives against freedoms.

Yes and the weight will almost always be heavier on it being better to be free. People don't stop driving or crossing roads, although the risk posed by them doing so is higher.

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Risk analysist writing about France in the independent calculated the risk over the last 2 years and says you're 5 times too high with that estimate. Risk is "less than two ten-thousandths of one per cent" - 0.0002% in the European nation to have suffered most in the last couple of years.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nice-attack-do-you-feel-like-youre-more-likely-than-ever-to-be-hit-by-a-terror-attack-this-is-why-a7140396.html

There's an obvious fallacy in this argument though. You're assuming terrorist related fatalities wouldn't increase if there was no effective surveillance. But that's the whole point of the discussion. I think it would, by at least a magnitude but maybe a lot more.

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Yes and the weight will almost always be heavier on it being better to be free. People don't stop driving or crossing roads, although the risk posed by them doing so is higher.

Yet roads are made safer and airbags are introduced to minimise this risk. I still consider myself as free as I was 20 years ago fwiw.

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Yes and the weight will almost always be heavier on it being better to be free. People don't stop driving or crossing roads, although the risk posed by them doing so is higher.

 

I think it's all well and good saying that if you're someone who hasn't lost anyone, is the thing. I like a rational analysis that keeps emotion out of it for most concepts, but I'm struggling a bit with this one. I read that blog post you linked to and came away thinking that I was happy with all three of those 'exceptions' being in place - even rationally. Yes it's a slippery slope, but I don't think we've 'slipped' yet.

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There's an obvious fallacy in this argument though. You're assuming terrorist related fatalities wouldn't increase if there was no effective surveillance. But that's the whole point of the discussion. I think it would, by at least a magnitude but maybe a lot more.

But still less than what you guessed to be the current risk. How low would the risk need to be for you to oppose blanket surveillance of private citizens?

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But still less than what you guessed to be the current risk. How low would the risk need to be for you to oppose blanket surveillance of private citizens?

Howay HF, we simply don't know what the risk would be without the current measures, so it's a stupid question. It's also about more than deaths and casualties, it's facile to compare this to road traffic accidents. What happened in Nice and Paris caused profound shock to the whole of Europe and damaged the social fabric of France more than any surveillance has ever done.

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Howay HF, we simply don't know what the risk would be without the current measures, so it's a stupid question. It's also about more than deaths and casualties, it's facile to compare this to road traffic accidents. What happened in Nice and Paris caused profound shock to the whole of Europe and damaged the social fabric of France more than any surveillance has ever done.

 

 

So it's not a case of weighing the risk against the loss of liberty at all for you.  There's no point at which you would think it was overkill. No matter how diminshed the threat ever was, you would want the government reading yours and everyone's emails and feel safer for it, because you're law abiding and anyone else doing anything they shouldn't should be weaseled out.

 

It's a strange view when we all know that any terrorist with the intelligence to pull off an attack never is or was ever ever ever going to use Yahoo though.

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So it's not a case of weighing the risk against the loss of liberty at all for you. There's no point at which you would think it was overkill. No matter how diminshed the threat ever was, you would want the government reading yours and everyone's emails and feel safer for it, because you're law abiding and anyone else doing anything they shouldn't should be weaseled out.

 

It's a strange view when we all know that any terrorist with the intelligence to pull off an attack never is or was ever ever ever going to use Yahoo though.

I believe secret services have probably prevented dozens of attacks through targeted surveillance. I don't believe the government has any interest in reading my or your email. I believe they could if they wanted to but I'm fairly relaxed about that. I believe if they couldn't, it would make life a lot easier for terrorists and organised crime gangs.

 

You haven't even responded to my point about the less tangible disbenefits of allowing terrorism to increase. The effect it has on individual families and society at large. I'll propose to you without the (real) threat of terrorism Brexit might not have happened. A tmajor terrorist incident in the US might well get Trump elected. As usual, it's not as simple as you make out.

Edited by Renton
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I believe secret services have probably prevented dozens of attacks through targeted surveillance. I don't believe the government has any interest in reading my or your email. I believe they could if they wanted to but I'm fairly relaxed about that. I believe if they couldn't, it would make life a lot easier for terrorists and organised crime gangs.

 

You haven't even responded to my point about the less tangible disbenefits of allowing terrorism to increase. The effect it has on individual families and society at large. I'll propose to you without the (real) threat of terrorism Brexit might not have happened. A tmajor terrorist incident in the US might well get Trump elected. As usual, it's not as simple as you make out.

 

Yahoo refusing to scan personal emails would not mean allowing terrorism to increase.  The societal impact of terrorism in the current age is less about an increased number of attacks on western soil or our ability to stamp them out or not.  It's more to do with coverage of what attacks there are changing to suit a 24/7 rolling news cycle.

 

"allowing terorism to increase"?  Our governments take many actions in full awareness that it will increase the terrorist threat, they disregard the threat as identified by advisors when making policy.

 

You're ignoring the fact that the planners of terrorist atrocities don't use yahoo to defend Yahoo sharing all their customer emails with government.  Nonsensical.

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Yahoo refusing to scan personal emails would not mean allowing terrorism to increase. The societal impact of terrorism in the current age is less about an increased number of attacks on western soil or our ability to stamp them out or not. It's more to do with coverage of what attacks there are changing to suit a 24/7 rolling news cycle.

 

"allowing terorism to increase"? Our governments take many actions in full awareness that it will increase the terrorist threat, they disregard the threat as identified by advisors when making policy.

 

You're ignoring the fact that the planners of terrorist atrocities don't use yahoo to defend Yahoo sharing all their customer emails with government. Nonsensical.

So in case I missed it in one of your posts or links, remind me of why the government want access to the prole's e-mails (not corporations) if it's not to flag serious crime? Nonsensical, as you say.

 

To say the societal impact of the attacks in Nice and Paris were a result of news coverage rather than the attacks themselves is just ludicrous. What happened was utterly vile and unprecedented out of war time. I don't want us to have to deal with a single incident like that again if it can be avoided.

Edited by Renton
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So in case ousted it in one of your posts or links, remind me of why the government want access to the prole's e-mails (not corporations) if it's not to flag serious crime? Nonsensical, as you say.

 

To say the societal impact of the attacks in Nice and Paris were a result of news coverage rather than the attacks themselves is just ludicrous. What happened was utterly vile and unprecedented out of war time. I don't want us to have to deal with a single incident like that again if it can be avoided.

 

Why do you say not corporations?

 

The collection posture is outlined on a slide Snowden leaked...

 

it_all_b.jpg

 

ALL of it!

 

As mentioned, corporations are targeted, here is a link to the Pretrobas story.  They were snooped on just as Brazil were about to auction oil fields....

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idUSBRE98817N20130909

 

The added benefit is being able to look at everyone's mails.  Whether journalists, lawyers, eco warriors, political party members, criminals. mistresses or ex-girlfriends.

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Why do you say not corporations?

 

The collection posture is outlined on a slide Snowden leaked...

 

it_all_b.jpg

 

ALL of it!

 

As mentioned, corporations are targeted, here is a link to the Pretrobas story. They were snooped on just as Brazil were about to auction oil fields....

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idUSBRE98817N20130909

 

The added benefit is being able to look at everyone's mails. Whether journalists, lawyers, eco warriors, political party members, criminals. mistresses or ex-girlfriends.

I meant why would people who are not closely linked to a large corporation be targeted? I accepted pages ago that corporate espionage will go on, some of it orchestrated by the US government. Doesn't really bother me tbh.

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