I think that there should be a transparent system for targeted data gathering. You say, “Hey Mr. Judge, I need to investigate this guy. I need to know everything I can about him because… ” And then you provide a probable cause to investigate. The judge, knowing that his decision will be reviewed by the public, makes a decision in good conscience, and it’s sealed for 6 months. So for whatever length of time the judge permits, you get to get all the data that the judge says that you can collect, however little or much that is will depend on the situation. After 6 months, the decision becomes unsealed. Now, whoever it is won’t be notified that they’ve been watched, but they could go find out if they were so inclined. Anybody else could too. This makes everything very transparent.
“Oh no, then the terrorists will know we’re watching them…” Good! Maybe they won’t do whatever they were going to do. And then also, if we stopped spying on everyone we might have less enemies. We get into everyone’s business, and then tell them what they should do. We need to stop trying to take care of the world’s problems and start solving our own. If we accept that things posted publicly on facebook are public, and things sent in emails are pseudo-private (not intended to be public, but more like postcards than folded up letters, unfortunately) maybe we will stop being so public with our lives.
I read about a peer-to-peer social networking program. I don’t know how it works, but I might look into it. If I understand it correctly, all your data lives on your computer, and you control access to it. This sounds to me like the solution to one problem. Facebook shouldn’t own your data. You should own your data. Everyone should rent their data to google so that they can create awesome things like self driving cars and street view. I actually got that idea from a guy. I saw an interview with him on a news story. I can’t remember his name though. It was like Jason or something. He seemed like a pretty smart guy. Moved his hands around a lot. But all he said was that we should get paid for our information, and it makes perfect sense to me. It is our information, why aren’t we getting paid for it?
I don’t think that it will limit the government from taking it, but I think that it will help to monetize the middle class. Like an international market research program. Companies could pay a subscription based fee to have access to the data that is provided by us. There would probably be a broker of some sort, like amazon or google, that would get a percentage for connecting the buyer to the seller, and everyone would be happy. Right now, the facebooks and amazons and googles of the world are just taking that data and selling it to advertisers already. Why shouldn’t they pay us for it?
Anyway, I’m quite tangental sometimes, and what I really wanted to talk about was data gathering and the government. So, here’s the thing. They tell us that they are stopping attacks… but they can’t tell us what they stopped, or how, because it’s a secret. So, how do we even know that it’s done anything? I think that an entire country being watching by the government incites people to be fearful. We can’t trust our own people. Everyone’s a terrorist. Run! Hide!! Then, the terrorists win. Right? I also don’t think they’re stopping as many attacks as they say. I think that many of the attacks they claim to have prevented could have been prevented by getting warrants on suspected individuals and getting the exact same information they got by doing this massive dragnet on all americans.
And I think if the data gathering was transparent and targeted; then when you did target a suspect, if they did find out you were watching them, it might make them think twice about what they’re doing. If everybody assumes that they’re all just being watched all the time, and the government just doesn’t care about petty shit, they’re going to keep acting the way they do. If people know that the government isn’t allowed to watch them unless they suspect them of something, when they find out they are being watched, they’ll know that there’s resources being used on them, and they better behave. And I think that everyone else will just be who they’re going to be.
In conclusion to todays disjointed thought, I don’t believe that my right to privacy should suffer in an attempt to keep us safe, nor do I believe that it is an effective solution to the problem. Watch people and they will be more careful. They will still find a way to do what they want to do though. You can’t stop them all, and you’re better off spending your resources on preventing people from wanting to blow each other up. Educate and feed, house, and entertain. Build hospitals, housing and schools instead of military bases. These are the solutions to the worlds problems. But first, we need to fix the economy. And I think that selling our information might help fix the current imbalance.