[liberationtech] And right on cue, the flush our civil liberties down the toilet boys rear their ugly heads

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Maxim Kammerer:
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> wrote:
>> I find it telling that the local news papers in Seattle referred to
>> their photos as 'potential suspects' on the front page. The use of
>> language is telling - it suggests that to be suspect is to be guilty. I
>> wouldn't be surprised if we saw people using the word potential as a
>> subtle replacement for suspect in the near future again and again.
> 
> I am not a native English speaker, but even if I do something as
> simple as going to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect, I immediately
> find a verbose explanation concluding with:
> “Possibly because of the misuse of suspect to mean perpetrator, police
> in the early 21st century began to use person of interest, possible
> suspect, and even possible person of interest, to mean suspect.”

I speak from experience with DHS personally here - the way that the DHS
has treated me in the last four years has been with this kind of
totalitarian mindset. I don't like it and it isn't just about me - there
are tens of thousands of people who also dislike it and a very few of us
speak out about it.

> 
> So I don't understand your objection to language being something that
> evolves. This reminds me of this hilarious tweet:
> https://twitter.com/evacide/status/264438312675201025 — “Phishing is
> not hacking. End of story.” — I guess that pointing out that hacking
> is anything but cracking ceased to be fashionable a decade ago.
> 


I don't object per se to the use - I find one specific aspect concerning
in how it changes behaviors. Our society is changing to treat everyone
as suspect by default - this is a very scary proposition. Such people
are treated very badly, often as if they are already convicted of crimes
detailed as sloppy notes in some nearly impossible to read file.

I also think that the State has the ability to change language - to
change connotations - in a very powerful and sometimes extremely
negative way. We see this with simple things like French Fry being a bad
name over night.

There is a really good book (I'm told) on this topic - Lingua Tertii
Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen by Victor Klemperer - a friend
suggested that I read it and its in the mail. I'll let you know what I
think after I've read more than what is on the Wikipedia.

So my objection if anything isn't an objection to evolution. Rather I
object to the the notion that all evolution is neutral, natural and of
benefit to the whole of society. We should take note, try to understand
and see what conclusions we reach.

Does that make sense?

> Now, closer to the subject of this thread. US homeland security is a
> joke, as is clear from the latest events (that were, like usual, blown
> outside of all proportions in the US however one looks at them, hence
> those little armies running around your suburbia — but that's beside
> the point). So it's no surprise that e.g. DHS will try to put the
> blame on something it needs but apparently lacks, like more
> surveillance. The way to oppose that is not to provide arguments that
> the present amount of surveillance is already too much (you will
> probably lose), 

I generally agree with you here. Though there is an important point - we
do not specifically have a process by which we have a say in
surveillance deployments. There are general budgets and general
discussions but rarely is is a matter of a vote or even a distinguishing
point between people we might decide between.

> but to expose the incompetence of your homeland
> security by forcing it to face two simple questions: (1) Why did it
> fail to profile two Muslim extremists as potential grassroots
> Jihadists via social media analysis that is already available to the
> relevant services (e.g., see @AndreiSoldatov's tweets and writeup);

This is an interesting point. Is it fail to say that they are Muslim
extremists? Why use the word Muslim at all here? They were from the
Caucasus region - how do we know that they weren't doing this as a
statement of Chechen resistance? We don't.

So rephrasing, why didn't we know there were insane people willing to
use violence against civilians? That is a very good question - I bet the
answer is between a lack of data and a matter of proportionality.

> and (2) Why did the huge homeland security apparatus fail to prevent
> the bombing at the tactical level (e.g., is your Police force capable
> of doing something actually useful, like detecting suspicious people
> in a mass gathering and checking them, or is that intellectual
> capacity only reserved to Secret Service and the like). Of course, I
> am not holding my breath, since asking such questions will require
> forgoing the usual calming excuse of a “disturbed individual” any time
> a Muslim in a Western country takes Jihadist preachings too close to
> heart, but I do believe the incompetence exposing approach could be
> effective in this case.
> 

In this - I agree almost entirely - it is said that they did run dogs
right before the explosion; I feel like to their credit, they may have
known, made a calculation about risk versus panic and were simply wrong.

I don't think that either strategy will clearly stop this increase of
authoritarianism. I think we are already seeing rolling out of more
surveillance equipment, more forced identification, more sympathy when
the police use excessive violence against a 'potential suspect' and more
discrimination of anyone who appears abnormal.

Dark times.

All the best,
Jacob