Comment by baxtr
7 months ago
What is absent from your comment (and also from many arguing against you) is the discussion of trade-offs.
Yes, criminal gangs are bad.
And, for me, and probably many others here too, enabling governments to look at private encrypted messages of everyone is way worse.
Let’s find other ways to prevent these gangs from stealing cars.
I agree, but I haven't really seen anyone propose what that looks like.
> Let’s find other ways
Could you watch The Wire and point out exactly what you'd do differently. I'm picking this example, because the whole point of the show is that they're unable to do anything without a wiretap when faced with a sophisticated criminal gang.
I haven't watched The Wire yet, but I'm assuming ending the War on Drugs wasn't something they tried. It's funny how granting organized crime a monopoly over highly popular goods results in organized crime becoming pervasive and well-resourced.
One would think we'd have learned that lesson a century ago, yet here we are. Until anyone over the legal drinking age can go buy a bottle of Bayer Heroin at CVS, I don't want to hear about how the government is struggling so badly with crime that it thinks my privacy should be on the chopping block.
Yeah, there was an entire season about ending the war on drugs and how it was the only thing that actually worked lol.
Also, they caught the drug kingpin at the end of the show by physically following his lieutenants to a warehouse full of drugs and arresting them all on the way out. The only thing the wiretaps were used for was to build a conspiracy charge against the leader, who had been standing outside for months/years doing face to face meetings with everyone that was arrested, clearly being the one in control of every conversation. If somehow that's not enough to charge someone with conspiracy then it seems removing a small amount of freedom to change that would be far preferable to reading everyone's messages and banning encryption.
"The Wire proves the need for mass surveillance" is the dumbest take I've ever heard. It literally shows the complete opposite.
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> Could you watch The Wire and point out exactly what you'd do differently.
The whole point of the Wire is how meaningless those wiretaps ended up being.
On either side of the board, the kings stayed the kings, most of the other pieces were chewed up and spit out, a new crop of pieces would come along to replace them, and the game stayed the same.
No sorry, I can’t watch a series with 60 episodes just to debate you online.
Well, at least you took the trouble to find out how many episodes it has. That's something.
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You can still do surveillance in the same way that east germany used to.
Get a warrant, put hidden microphones and cameras into their light switches and ceiling lights.
Turn one of their members into a double agent and get them to spy for you.
Of course that's not as easy as total surveillance. Because it's not supposed to be. The extra effort isn't that hard if you're going against a criminal gang, but it's enough to prevent the state from going "fishing" by surveilling everyone.
Right, but the communication is happening over encrypted, disappearing messages. If you had a microphone or a camera all it would capture is a guy sitting in a chair tapping on his phone.
But all this assuming you found probable cause to surveil a citizen in the first place. Where's the probable cause coming from?
And that's assuming that they can even figure out who the higher level bosses are in the first place.
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Total surveillance is not what the Danish minister is arguing for. He is arguing that communication companies should be required to insert wiretaps following a court order, just like a POTS telecom company would.
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That’s _definitely not_ the entire point of the show.
Not only is it not the entire point of the show, you'd have a easier time arguing that the point of the show is that the fundamental problems behind mandates like "deal with crime" are not as simple as "get a wiretap."
Obviously one of the greatest shows of all time has multiple interwoven themes.
But the literal name of the show should be a clue that Wire taps are important. See how they evolve for one. Gangs are always learning, getting more secure with their communication and making it harder to build a case against them. What worked in Season 1 (pagers) doesn't work in Season 3 (burners). Once Season 3 is over everything about how burners were surveilled is then public record, so criminal gangs switch up once more, making it even harder.
Now if you made a show with all the criminals using encrypted, disappearing messages - that would be basically unbreakable. Which was my point.
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Should we base all our policy decisions on TV Shows?
Is there a better or more widely consumed source of how reliant police are on communication interception? It portrays the difficulty of pursuing criminals very realistically.
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Is The Wire a documentary, or a fictional TV show? Do you also criticise doctors who are careful and attentive with their patients because they don’t behave like Gregory House?
Fictional but incredibly well researched and based on experience.
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