[liberationtech] Spin alerts

[Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes]

Of course they're not "justified," unless you want to flush civil liberties
down the drain.
On Jun 10, 2013 6:03 PM, "Todd Davies" <davies at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Two issues that are tending to get conflated in the wider discourse about
> PRISM, Boundless Informant, etc. are:
> (1) Are these programs justifieid?
> (2) Was it justified to keep the existence of these programs secret?
>
> Snowden has said his primary judgment was about question (2), but
> proponents of surveillance are acting as if all we need to address is (1).
> This is an important distinction because even conservatives like David
> Brooks have said they think the existence of these programs should be
> public knowledge ("The secrecy of the program was a mistake. I agree with
> that." - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/**bb/politics/jan-june13/**
> politicalwrap_06-07.html#**transcript<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june13/politicalwrap_06-07.html#transcript>).
> How can this "mistake" be corrected without whistleblowers like Snowden,
> when Congressional oversight is as deferential as it is?
>
> On (1), there is a poll out today that focuses just on phone records,
> which the Washington Post headline summarizes as "Most Americans back NSA
> tracking phone records, prioritize probes over privacy" (
> http://www.washingtonpost.**com/politics/most-americans-**
> support-nsa-tracking-phone-**records-prioritize-**
> investigations-over-privacy/**2013/06/10/51e721d6-d204-11e2-**
> 9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-support-nsa-tracking-phone-records-prioritize-investigations-over-privacy/2013/06/10/51e721d6-d204-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html>
> ).
>
> But once you read it, you see that these opinions depend heavily on
> whether the respondent's own party is in power:
>
> "In early 2006, 37 percent of Democrats found the agency’s activities
> acceptable; now nearly twice that number — 64 percent — say the use of
> telephone records is okay. By contrast, Republicans slumped from 75
> percent acceptable to 52 percent today."
>
> So rather than looking at overall public support at a given time, a better
> number to look at when assessing public support is the one from people
> whose party does not control the White House, averaged across different
> parties, which puts support well below 50% in this case. People don't get
> to remove the effects of their support for surveillance when presidents
> they don't trust take power.
>
> Todd
> --
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