[Advocacy Advisors] PRISM

[Bence Damokos]

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 9:30 AM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Liam,
>
> Relatively minimal exposure, to me, does not mean a thousand times
> more exposure than we used to have.
>
> I've already posted this to wikimedia-l:
>
> "increasing surveillance ... does not decrease ... criminal
> activities. Ironically, ... increased surveillance might ... increase
> the number of inmates"
> -- http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42937.pdf
>
> There is also the reason from first principles that everyone is guilty
> of something if you look hard enough, and federal government employees
> are not exempt from mandatory reporting requirements. All of them are
> required to be truthful if asked what illegal activities they suspect
> in the course of their work, which is a common question for both law
> enforcement and intelligence gathering employees, who are charged with
> interpretation of the PRISM data.
>
> Can you think of any reasons that increased surveillance would not
> lead to increased incarceration?
>
I may perhaps not be up to date on the latest details of PRISM, but as I
understood, it is meant to spy on non-American citizens (with a bit of an
error rate). I would expect that the incarceration of American citizens
would not be a direct consequence of the programme, or at least one quite
minor, and at the most I would expect an increase in arrests or targeted
killings of foreign citizens (or in less extreme case, putting them on no
flights and sanctions lists) based on the info gathered.
Do you have some data to suggest that either of the possible outcomes could
have happened, or that the US incarceration rate is a bigger concern than
the possible breach of privacy of trusting internet users?

Best regards,
Bence

>
>
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12 June 2013 16:41, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Liam,
> >>
> >> Given that 1/1000th sampling of article readers' access logs has
> >> recently been increased to complete archival for 30 days, it seems
> >> preposterous and misleading to suggest that "we have relatively
> >> minimal exposure in the legal/technical sense." Would you please
> >> elaborate?
> >
> >
> > You're forgetting the crucial word "relatively".
> >
> >
> >>
> >> I would prefer using banner space to urge a boycott of and individual
> >> court actions against the companies who have been acquiescing to the
> >> government's data access demands until Congress passes a law
> >> abolishing and forbidding the practice of eavesdropping, because of
> >> the high rate of incarceration in the US.
> >
> >
> > If you would like to gain consensus that Wikimedia projects use the
> banner
> > space to promote a boycott of particular technology companies, then I
> > suggest you write a userspace essay to that effect and then try to gain
> > consensus on each project. Good luck with that.
> >
> >>
> >> Do you believe there is a
> >> direct causal relationship from the extent of surveillance and the
> >> number of criminal convictions involving mandatory minimum sentences
> >> in the US?
> >>
> >
> > I have no idea. Perhaps you could do some research into the matter and
> > publish in a criminology journal.
> >
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> >
>
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