Pew has the numbers:
Basically, very large portions of both parties alter their view on NSA surveillance based on who’s in the White House. Good thing that we can be sure the opposing party will never, ever win an election again, right?
Oy.
Via Kevin Drum, whose headline -“American Public is Fine With NSA Surveillance”- is over-the-top, since 47% (paging Mitt Romney!) of the public disapproves of NSA surveillance. Essentially, the public is split half and half.
My friend (and also boss) Chris at Dollars and Sense has a good roundup of NSA related links.
I think it’s more likely that people actually don’t particularly care one way or another, and that they’re actually answering the question “do you approve of the current administration?”, regardless of what is being asked.
Am I missing something? 47% of the public disapproved in 2006; last week, 41% of the public disapproved.
Also, it’s important to note that the question in 2006 specifically said the NSA is tracking terrorism suspects, while in 2013 it states the NSA is tracking millions of Americans. My guess is that in 2006 fewer people would have answered the 2013 question affirmatively. So support for NSA surveillance is almost certainly on the rise in the USA, even when partisanship is taken into account.
Perhaps they’re thinking of it as “Do you trust the current Administration to use the information gained properly?” For the record my answer would be “No” in either case. Didn’t like it under Bush, don’t like it under Obama.
Good point about the question differences. Whenever someone publishes a story about a survey saying “A recent survey shows that ‘x%’ of Americans approve of ‘y'”, I always look to see if the actual question or questions asked are published in the story. I’m a lot more interested in that than what the reporter interprets the questions to mean.
Right there with you, Ron. That having been said, I do think Kevin Drum has a point when he says that this is nothing new or surprising:
I’m all in favor of not legalizing domestic spying, but we already had that argument, and I lost.
—Myca
What’s sad is that none of the Democrats are employing the silly responses that we had to endure under Bush: accusing questioners of ‘hating America,’ ‘wanting the terrorists to win,’ etc.
Payback should be more harsh than this.
When I was in junior high and was just learning English, I read a book by an American author about a society where total surveillance was the law and privacy was simply non-existent. The novel (or was it a collection of short stories?) felt a lot more plausible, and not particularly less dark than 1984.
I’m afraid that we are moving toward such a society. I would really like to read the book again… but I have never been able to identify it.
The main character is convicted criminal (murderer and rapist) whose brain has been somehow modified to make him an effective criminal investigator. Cameras are everywhere, period. It is illegal to be off camera. Bathrooms, whorehouses, vehicles, bedrooms, offices – every single location is wired for video/audio, and records are kept for a long time and monitored/reviewed by computer vision systems. Premeditated crime has become extremely rare. The main character is trying to catch the few rich and powerful enough to try and commit crimes without being caught, while committing his own extra judiciary executions with plausible deniability. I do not think the reader was supposed to sympathize with him.
I was too young to catch the political leanings of the author… I would not like to see the world through his (her?) eyes though. Any chance anyone here is familiar with the book.
No government can be trusted with power like this, regardless of who’s in charge. And yes, Myca, I was wondering exactly why this is news. But there’s a news clip from 2007 floating around that supposed shows Senator/Candidate Obama claming he was going to shut this down. So maybe this is the media’s “But … but … he said he wouldn’t DO this?!” reaction. How credulous.
The claim that “Oh, we don’t listen to the content, so your privacy is preserved” is just bullshit, too. Your gynecologist calls you. You talk for 20 minutes. You hang up. You call your boyfriend and talk for half a hour. You hang up. You call your health insurance company. Then you call Planned Parenthood for about 20 minutes. Any idea what that was all about? I’m guessing she didn’t call you about a yeast infection.
P. J. O’Rourke, one of my more favorite authors, has said “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” I concur, and I don’t care who’s driving.
Oh, and a comment that has been floating around the right-wing blogosphere for years: “Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.”
I’ve been hearing that since about 1981. And not just from the right-wing.
My pastor is a part-time priest. His full-time job is as an academic specializing in public policy polling. He’s consulted for a few campaigns. He and I have had a few discussions. One thing I’ve figured out is never, ever, trust a story making a claim about a survey unless the story quotes the specific questions asked, the actual responses, and the sampling technique. Minimally ….
RonF – those are all in the link provided at the beginning of Amp’s article.
(If 1984 were an instruction manual, by the way, then the NSA and the US government are not following it very well right now. Part of the point of 1984 is that monitoring the population is not as important as giving them the impression that they are constantly watched. Having a secret surveillance project is in some ways the antithesis of 1984.)
Basically, very large portions of both parties alter their view on NSA surveillance based on who’s in the White House.
Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
Eytan Zweig: Oh, all we need is some quote-signs around the word “leak” and then the government are 1984-compliant.
*tinfoil hat off*
Sebastian, was it, by any chance, “Lacey and His Friends” by David Drake? Collection of three stories? It’s what immediately came to mind from your description, and the wikipedia description seems about right – I haven’t read it myself in quite some time.
Having a secret surveillance project is in some ways the antithesis of 1984.
You have to start somewhere. Put it up in secret first to get it going. If hints leak out, don’t worry – politicians will rail against it to get elected, but they’ll expand it once they get their hands on it. By the time it gets presented to the public they’ll shrug their shoulders as a fait accompli. For some, idealism and naievety replaces rational thought. For others, cynicism is an excuse to be lazy and avoid thought and the exertion needed for political action. Hell, 56% of the public finds this acceptable already. The work is more than half done!
The truest stories are the oldest ones. Americans should start naming their sons Esau. We’re not selling our birthright out for much more.
Tanen @11 and RonF @13 – see, your posts demonstrate what’s bugging me about this analogy. Do you really believe there’s only one model for an oppressive regime? Only one reason that constant monitoring is wrong?
“Payback should be more harsh than this.”
Payback? They’re being rewarded. The woman that the Tea Party targeting in the IRS happened under is now being put in charge of the IRS’s administration of Obamacare. The ruling class takes care of it’s own.
Heck no. Look at my post #6. Let me spin you out another scenario. There’s a anti-2nd amendment civil rights bill being proposed. You get a call from the NRA/Mayors Against Illegal Guns. A transaction is posted against your credit card for whoever called you and you call your Senator. Gee, what went on during those phone calls? What might someone decide to do with that information? Decide to send the building inspector, electrical inspector, the health inspector, the elevator inspector, the plumbing inspector, etc. to your business? That happens now in Chicago just for putting the wrong political sign in your window.
Come through (not up to) your front door using a no-knock warrant? It’s far fetched now, but for how long?
And that’s just the people who get the information through government-approved channels. What happens when an activist or a corporation or an organized crime syndicate or a foreign government hacks into that database?
Eytan Zweig:
It’s Tamen.
No, I don’t believe there’s only one model for an oppressive regime. I was criticising you for discounting one (of several) model but that point was apparently missed by you.
Tamen – my apologies for misspelling your name; typing on an iphone screen is not my strong suite.
As for the point of your comment on my earlier post – I’m afraid I’m still missing it. Could you please explain?
Yes, Ledasmom, this is the book I meant. Thank you for letting me know!
Now, I hope it is as good as I remember it… I’m kind of afraid. David Drake is the favorite SciFi author of two of my friends, but when I have tried to read their favorites books of his, I have been less than impressed. Until now, my theory was “You have to have been in the military AND cared for the people there, in order to appreciate him.” That I liked a book of his years ago is a bit of a surprise to me.
You argued that the current situation isn’t a good match compared with the book 1984 by pointing out that in 1984 the surveillance wasn’t secret (in other words you discounted that scenario). I pointed out a way that the current situation would match the 1984 scenario (by pointing out that the surveillance no longer is secret and that it may even have been “leaked” on purpose). My *tinfoil hat off* remark at the end would indicate that I don’t put too much stock into the scenario that the PRISM program was purposefully “leaked” to keep the population in line and hence it implies that I put more stock in other models. I didn’t state outright that I think there are several more models of oppressive regimes (besides the one described in 1984) as I’d consider that would be self evident for anyone having a minimum of history and sociology knowledge from school.
Ah, ok, thank you.
It’d take more than just awareness of the surveillance to turn the current situation into 1984 – the biggest difference is the attitude the government wants the citizens to take towards being monitored. The message coming from the US congress (and the UK government here), as well as the intelligence agencies, is “Don’t worry about the surveillance – it’s not intended to watch for you, it’s intended to catch bad guys. Sure, we’re looking at you, normal citizen, but we don’t care about your normal citizen activities, we just care about keeping you safe”. The message in 1984 is “You better watch out. We know everything you do, everything you think. Don’t even try to step out of line.” – those are very different attitudes. Oceania in 1984 wanted its citizens to fear monitoring. The USA in 2013 wants its citizens to feel comfortable being monitored. That’s very different, and the leaks aren’t going to change that.
Now, can we get from where we are now to 1984? Yes, certainly. But that would require some changes of direction along the path. My objection wasn’t to bringing up 1984, it was to specifically to the idea that 1984 is an “instruction manual”.
Anyway, all I really intended was a literary nitpick. My objection was not to the criticism of the government monitoring, but just to what seems to be people bringing up a book without apparently having read it (and by that I don’t mean the people in this blog; I wouldn’t have made the comment if the 1984 reference above wasn’t around the fifth one I encountered that day, some of which by people who clearly only know about the book third-hand). I’m not making any substantive points about what actually is happening in the US.
I see, I was just reacting to the very specific point you made about the surveillance being secret. It’s almost exactly 30 years since I read 1984 so I don’t remember the plot enough to argue around other points which makes the Orwellian society different or alike the society US (and many other parts of the world) are moving towards. I do know that I don’t like the PRISM programs and it’s ilk one bit and that I am quite frankly scared at how accepted it is by the population at large in the US and elsewhere.
I appreciated the Gin and Tacos post about this.
I suspect Obama will suffer as a result of this approach, but it is about time that someone spoke to the American public like an adult. Of course the politically expedient thing to do is to indulge the juvenile fantasies of the electorate, the ones where they get lots of things from the government but don’t have to pay for them and where they are kept safe from every potential threat with no limitations on their rights and liberties. You know what kind of person expects to get everything they want at no cost? Children. Bratty teenagers. Spoiled college kids. I have great respect for anyone willing to tell the public, “Look, make up your goddamn minds. You want us to prevent terrorism by the most aggressive means available. Well, this is the cost. If anyone has a better idea of how to stay on top of every potential terrorist activity on the planet we’d love to hear it.”
Leaving aside the fact that tacos are not dumplings (which of course puts everything on that site under suspicion) I completely disagree with the poster from Gin and Tacos.
He makes it sound as if there’s only two options: spy on everyone to the full extent of our technology’s abilities, and let the terrorists run around unopposed. Actually, there’s a lot of options in between, it’s a matter of balancing, and it is a perfectly defensible position to say that the balance has swung too far into ‘surveillance society’ territory.
That said, I think that it’s a lost fight. The technology is here, which means that it will be used by people with power. One of my best friends is a Computer Vision wizard… for years he was working in robotics and warehousing. About an year ago, he started working on surveillance technology, and he is suddenly much happier and a lot more interesting to talk to. The progress in that area is amazing. Have you noticed how far Google-Translate has come in the last few years? What about Shazam? Well, CV and FR are making similar progress, except that we do not hear about it. Well, you don’t unless you know a bunch of CS geeks and are one yourself. Technology is improving, data is accumulating, and scientists and engineers are geeking out on the subject.
Honestly, if my business had not picked up lately, I was going to ask my friend for a job. If they can hire an old commie henchman, they can hire a métèque créole.
They are a private company, and their only interest is lining up their pockets, but their corporate customers are already building impressive databases of their own customers shopping habits and behaviour. When you are shopping at at least one big supermarket chain, your path through the shelves is recorded and analyzed. Some really smart people are trying to recognize individual repeat customers. Last Saturday they had not succeeded. Today, who knows? Tomorrow, they will probably be done, and they will be trying to match them against their Facebook public pictures and against Google’s hoard.
So the only chance privacy has is citizens who are opposed to it. And the most we can do is try to put some restrictions on how surveillance tech is used, the longer we will have some privacy. Once we are dead, our children will not even see what the big deal is about.