Here is an interesting poll result.
CNN Citizens Favor Renewal of Data Collection
I personally would like them to get going again. If people around the world are following me through my phone apps, I am ok with the NSA listening in.
On a more disappointing note. The TSA got my 74 year old mother's cuticle scissors, but are apparently missing explosives. Oops.
Thoughts?
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16 comments:
This program is ineffective and ripe for abuse. The reforms in the USA Freedom Act are a good start.
A terrorist would have to be pretty dumb to use the phone.
--Hiram
All this assumes that terrorists make phone calls, a dubious assumption, in my opinion.
--Hiram
Considering the vast sums and incredible inconvenience of the TSA can only be justified by a great increase in our personal safety while flying, I am reminded that:
1) The shoe bomber actually GOT ON THE PLANE. Since then, six billion of us have taken off our shoes and nothing has been found.
2) The shampoo bomber actually GOT ON THE PLANE. Since then, you can't take long trips because 3 oz of shampoo isn't enough, and besides, it won't fit in that little baggie required. And no shampoo bombs have ever been found.
3) The underwear bomber actually GOT ON THE PLANE. Since then, and you might have predicted but still not believed, the TSA has been poking around our underwear. Yet nothing has been found.
The point is that the TSA is spending countless hours and effort on pointless and intrusive searches for NO improvement in security. The number of actual usable weapons (guns, long knifes) confiscated is only in the thousands, out of the millions of passengers every year, and if the 95% failure rate holds true, the only thing stopping terrorists is a lack of organization, or finances to buy a ticket, not the TSA.
And terrorists seem to find ways to mount their operations without using the phones. We spend billions of dollars trying to listen in on forms of communications that the people we are trying to track have every reason in the world not to use.
--Hiram
Of course it's mostly a closely-guarded secret, but my understanding that these combined activities have stopped large numbers of terrorist plots already. Now whether these activities can be conducted with a reasonable respect for individual civil rights, that's the difficulty. As I understand the compromise, it sounds reasonable.
One day on NPR one of the spy experts noted that the NSA loves that the data will be stored at the phone company sites, because now they can use the data storage facility for other things.
Besides they noted that NSA had moved on to other better methods now, that was why they were not fighting the change...
As I understand the change, the data will NOT be held by "the government" AND a warrant will be required to access the phone company's data. Sounds good to me. Nebulous "better methods" concern me, but if it nails the bad guys and ONLY the bad guys, I'm going to pretend it doesn't cross any lines.
There were news reports recently to the effect that the TSA misses virtually everything. I expect that's equally true of government monitoring of communications. We do these things because it's good politics, and campaign contributors have a lot of junk to sell, not because they make a difference.
--Hiram
That's a pretty cynical viewpoint, Hiram, almost as bad as mine. :-) I think in the case of the TSA, at least, it's simply evidence that government has trouble organizing and running a one-float parade. Certainly it is possible that politics-- especially the "we must do SOMETHING" sentiment-- and the political corruption that surrounds a massive bureaucracy are what drives these dismal results, but I prefer to believe that it isn't intentional wickedness. I prefer to believe that it is simply the inescapable incompetence of big government solutions. It would be interesting to know if those few airports where airport security has been privatized fared any differently, but I'm guessing those numbers will never be made public, if they are taken at all. You know how government unions are about letting comparisons be made.
TSA baggage screeners make between $13 and $22 per hour. You get what you pay for.
For comparison, the maximium salary of a TSA screener is nearly $10,000 less than a recruit police officer in Minneapolis.
I think the real problem with electronic surveillance is that it's so easy to render ineffective. It's vastly easier to screen someone at the airport that it is to spot a problematic communication. And it's just so much easier and cheaper for our enemies to innovate away from suspect communications.
Terrorism is a form of asymmetric conflict. Terrorists who have absolutely minimal resources, find ways to use those resources to tie up the resources of it's adversaries. When we spend tens of billions of dollars that could perhaps be otherwise to pursue peaceful endeavors to compile data too vast to ever be useful, in ways that undermine the credibility of government, the terrorists like it just fine. What did that cost them? A couple of cents of internet time in some anonymous cafe in the middle east?
--Hiram
Sean, you've got a point but I'm not sure it is applicable. Suppose we paid the TSA folks $50/hour, and left the stupid, politically-correct rules in place? Do you believe the results would be any different? Or would we still be standing in long lines, in our stocking feet, holding our little baggie of toiletries, while one of them checks out Granny's underwear?
I completely agree that we're doing a lot of security theater instead of actual security. Yes, let's get rid of all the nonsense that we don't need to do, and then hire folks who with more established law enforcement backgrounds to do the rest.
I LIKE it! Thinking about how to do the TSA part of that, though, do you think the government should be able to do an "instant background check" of everybody that goes through the airport? You could quickly find out who has been in a terrorist region lately, or had other "flags" showing, while the bulk of us "trusted travelers" (I have the card, myself) could sail through with no more and maybe even less scrutiny. I remember flying out of London and being asked some very "interesting" questions, under watchful eyes, before being sent on my way largely unbothered.
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