Data Retention Proven to Change Citizen Behavior 261
G'Quann writes "A new survey shows that data retention laws indeed do influence the behavior of citizens (at least in Germany). 11% had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions and 52% would not use phone or e-mail for confidential contacts.
This is the perfect argument against the standard 'I have nothing to hide' argumentation. Surveillance is not only bad because someone might discover some embarrassment. It changes people. 11% at least."
Will it help? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wake up! Domestic spying is bad news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany is a place that knows what wiretaps and domestic spying is all about. Everyone's grandfather can tell them what the Nazis did to friend and foe alike [slashdot.org]. Public display of Nazi symbols is still against the law because it outrages so many. People who lived through the East German Police state [wikipedia.org] have more recent and personal reasons to fear this kind of monitoring. Domestic spying is about eliminating political opposition and the only way to save yourself from that is to run away. Eventually, even those who manage to keep out of sight by doing nothing are destroyed by the schemes of those in power. States that do this are out of control.
If you understand these things and how computers work, you have no choice but to use and advocate free software. Non free software has the ability to end freedom of press and every other right. We are well down that path, with newspapers raided [homelandstupidity.us], citizens spyed on, an unpopular war of aggression, torture and other evil things. You can have your privacy with free software and should demand it.
Re:Will it help? (Score:3, Interesting)
They spend more effort on convincing us it isn't what we think it is and that it is a good thing?
I won't even discuss things with my doctor (Score:5, Interesting)
not poor minorities from the ghetto. and certainly not poor fags.
it's no wonder gov't has no respect for private citizens when the folks that are hired have to open up their life history and medical record and thus _must_ have nothing to hide or be very good at hiding it.
Re:Will it help? (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the people who are in charge of the "War on Terror" in the US would not care, and the rest would convince themselves that any changes it might bring were a good thing anyway.
Rereading the longer post I had, it looks like I am doing the same thing, justifying posting this, even though it may be flamebait. So I'll post this abbreviated version and hope for the best.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:The perfect argument is... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you asked me my bank account averages that's one thing, to hand you the information it would take to drain them is another.
Generally when people say they have nothing to hide they mean within a legal context. In other words: I haven't broken the law.
The bottom line is that I know that the government does (or could) know my bank account information, my medical history, my cell phone calls, etc etc.
And saying I have nothing to hide from the government is also different from saying I have nothing to hide from you. Unlike most of the tin-foil cap brigade I'm pretty logical about the concept that if the government really had that much of an interest in me or that much intent against me there pretty much ain't but jack and shit I can do about it. But you on the other hand? I could probably stop you from whatever it is you think you're going to do.
Re:Will it help? (Score:5, Interesting)
You've got it backwards.
The correct answer is "They expand the data retention practices, and they make sure their subjects know about it".
The unmonitored Internet was a way to make sure that any two people, anywhere on the planet, could exchange ideas (and spam, and political flamewars on message boards, and even LOLcats) with each other.
Users of the monitored Internet voluntarily restrict themselves to "safe" (government-approvable) media, and their acquaintances, friendships, and relationships to pools of "safe" (government-approvable) people.
It's been said that "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".
That's not quite true. The unspoken assumption in the early '90s was that "censorship" meant "externally-imposed" censorship. Indeed, the Internet interprets externally-mandated censorship as damage and routes around it, but the Internet has no defense against self-censorship. Make the user scared to search for information about topic XYZ, and you've effectively censored the Internet where topic XYZ is concerned.
Pretty clever, and all it took to scare an entire planet into self-censorship was a few press releases and carefully-selected arrests and/or disappearances.
Re:Wake up! Domestic spying is bad news. (Score:3, Interesting)
That wouldn't have happened if they couldn't modify the source in the first place.
See? Having the source isn't a utopia, idiots still screw things up.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:3, Interesting)
After the Euro changeover the German Tax office had a large contingent of their officers seconded to the Balearics and Canaries for a couple of years for a reason. Based on the submitted tax returns the burgers were poor as church mice. At the same time the construction industry in Spain was undergoing a multibillion euro boom with German money appearing out of nowhere. Most of it is still untraced by the way (though some taxes have been collected).
In any case, it is the country where tax evasion is so ripe that tracking evaders has escalated to the point of being the secret services. And on top of all they actually dare bitching about black market economies and such in Eastern Europe. They should fix themselves first.
It's funnier than that (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that stuck in my head was that there's a relatively large disconnect between what people say in surveys and what they actually do. What people as in surveys isn't as much deliberately lying, or even being aware that they lie, but basically describing an ideal "self" that they'd like to be or were taught to be. They describe someone who's more socially acceptable. E.g.,
- A (formerly) hunter-gatherer tribe had traditionally a martial culture glorifying brave hunters and warriors. So in a survey almost all males described themselves as hunters and warriors. The problem? They had actually gradually switched to agriculture some time ago. Most of them didn't even have a weapon, and hadn't hunted or fought in their life.
- A community prided themselves in helping each other and doing stuff together and things like that. So in a survey they said that, yeah, verily, they work the fields together and help each other build a barn, etc. Except in practice the last time either actually happened was some half a century ago.
- At one point where meat prices went up, they asked people whether they eat more or less meat. Most said, basically, "screw this, I'll eat less of that until the prices come down. That'll show 'em." Except they also looked at sales data, and actually rummaged through that town's garbage to see what packaging people throw away. Meat consumption had actually gone _up_.
It turns out that you might be better off observing them, whenever possible, than asking people to describe themselves.
What I'm getting at here is, basically, yes, the same applies to "I have nothing to hide" declarations in survey. If people are under the impression that a nice person wouldn't do stuff they need to hide from their neighbours, they'll adjust their perceptions of themselves to think they are (closer to) that ideal nice person.
Additionally, I'd say that a lot of such behaviour changing is probably subconscious anyway. Probably the 89% just didn't spend much time analyzing and second guessing their own actions and conversations, nor asked themselves "exactly why am I not calling my old pal Mohammed Abd Jihad any more?" They just don't, and don't spend time navel-gazing and wondering about it.
For some probably cognitive dissonance kicked in a long time ago, and manufactured an acceptable model and an explanation anyway.
Surveillance can be good (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this creates a glass house society where you quickly realize that everyone is human, can much more easily sympathize with the poor, and the rich and powerful cannot get away with quite as much.
There are lots of other benefits of doing this, from law enforcement (in a non-Orwellian way) automation, to the relaxation of the executive branch, to having perfect forensic details of all kinds of events that would teach us about human society much faster than we've ever been able to learn about it before, to providing a vast source of entertainment and education.
The only issue with surveillance is when it is not universal and when the feeds are not available to all.
Re:Wake up! Domestic spying is bad news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hawthorne (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, that's for example this Airbus spying by americans I mentioned in my other post [slashdot.org].
If you are able to sufficiently distance yourself from your government in terms of feelings and day to day routine so as to allow yourself a chance to clearly think about stuff, than it's usually quite funny to decompose official arguments for something the government is doing and finding a real motive.
Like some instances of those red light cameras you mentioned.
Or strict gun regulations, "free" services provided by state to its citizens and so on.
Right now, in Slovakia, current champion in this regard is new press law: Officialy the purpose of the changes is to allow all the people (including politicians - they're people too, at least so far :) to demand the publication of their reply to any article if the article is about them. It does not matter whether the article is telling the truth or not. Of course a lot of people clearly see it as a way for current ruling parties to limit the amount of articles about them because ussualy they are criticizing them (because ussualy there is a lot of bad stuff to write about). Newspapers will then either fight it or at the (ridiculous) end will (for the fear of litigation) simply write only about entities which are not able to demand the publication of reply. :)
Re:I have a friend in the Navy.au ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Discussing the best use and deployment of military resources in a RTS, how best to use weapons, bombs etc in FPS's. Discuss how you keep on crashing your plane in the latest flight sim and find yourself on a no-fly list...
Re:Wake up! Domestic spying is bad news. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think the GP's arguments are as flawed as you claim.
A freedom is only worth as much as what you can do because of it. Since most people lack the resources to audit source code and change anything they don't like, the only advantage open source software offers them from the perspective under discussion is that they are trusting an anonymous group of people who talk up freedom a lot rather than trusting a group of people working for a company who have commercial interests.
This most certainly does undermine the original argument [slashdot.org], because it contradicts the claims about all the things you can do just because you're using "free" software.
In short, you could make an argument that open source is a necessary condition for the personal control under discussion, but that is not the same as demonstrating that it is sufficient for the same. And realistically, you ultimately get a "who watches the watchers" problem either way, so I'm not convinced that even the necessity argument is a particularly strong one in practice.
psychologists call it the "Hawthorne effect" (Score:2, Interesting)
"This behavior was documented by a research team led by Elton Mayo in the 1920s at the Western Electric Company Hawthorne plant. In studying the effect of lighting on productivity, the researchers found that, regardless of the lighting conditions introduced, productivity improved."