Greenwald Criticizes Universities' Funding-Driven Collaboration With NSA

An anonymous reader writes Speaking at "Secrecy Week" at the University of Utah, one of the two journalists who helped disseminate Edward Snowden's revelations about the scope of National Security Agency surveillance has criticized universities which open up their campuses to government agencies in exchange for funding. Ex-Guardian journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, one of Snowden's first contacts after his flight from the NSA, commented: "Even if you think that you're the kind of person who does not have things to hide, just living in a world where you think you're being watched and recorded it changes your behavior from being a free individual. I would submit, and I don't think that it's in dispute, that we are far closer to the tyrannical model than we are the free model."

we are far closer to the tyrannical model

[fustakrakich]

Eh, people are tyrants, whaddya gonna do? Either we will evolve out of it, or we won't.

Re:

[buck-yar]

Trickling the information out has seemed to desensitize the general population. People that think this all is BS, think so even more after each leak. People on the fence or indifferent, seems to have the effect of slowly boiling a frog vs tossing it in.

Re:

[NatasRevol]

Going to? Haven't we been hoping for that since ancient tyrants in the 3-5000BC era were around?

Re:

[rtb61]

Evolve with it. You even have the dimmest understanding of what you have written. Yep, "KILL ANY WHO RESIST" and quislings, cowards and psychopaths are the only one who temporarily survive and in the chaos that follows the whole species goes extinct.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

You even have the dimmest understanding of what you have written.

:-) More than you, apparently.

University Dick Pics

[Scottingham]

So...what you're saying is that university officials are giving the NSA my dick pics I sent over my campus email in exchange for funding?

No.

[waspleg]

The university officials are taking money to let the NSA fish the campus for possible dick pic thieves that they can hire.

Re:

[antdude]

Yes according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ... ;)

Curiously

[argStyopa]

I find it curious that this entire "privacy" thing - which should rightly transcend politics - seems to be largely a concern of the left in the American context: these are the same people that cheerfully support the expansion of government control into everything from health care to commerce.

Isn't that a little contradictory?

Re:Curiously

[GameboyRMH]

No, government control doesn't necessarily mean a loss of privacy, which I think also helps explain why right-wingers aren't against it: It's a gross invasion of privacy (which at least neoconservatives don't care about, because they "have nothing to hide" and don't mind the government in their bedroom) but it's not any kind of government control structure (in itself).

Furthermore, the NSA roughly falls under the "defense" part of government which in the eyes of the right, gets every free pass in the book of free passes and cartes-blanche.

Re:

[quintessencesluglord]

Ehh...

You could couch the discussion more broadly as influence, as in even privacy wouldn't matter much except for the broad range of powers government has to act upon it. Someone wealthy enough to have servants has a great deal less privacy, but their underlings don't have (mostly) the power to do anything with that knowledge.

In which case the distinction between left and right is less about privacy per se, but sphere of control- the right has areas where they deem government interference/oversight necessa

Re:

[buck-yar]

GameboyRMH, you're confusing the libertarian wing of the right with the neo conservative wing. There's a huge portion of right wingers that are very against this. Anyone who doesn't believe me, spend a week reading the general discussion on ar15.com.

Re:Curiously

[MillionthMonkey]

Agreed, it's totally curious and contradictory, unless you're capable of holding two thoughts in your head at once.

Re:Curiously

[MillionthMonkey]

The government isn't simply "too big" or "too little", as if it's either one or the other. Some parts of the government have atrophied while others have expanded and become tumorous. Dealing with health care and commerce is usually a government's job anyway, unless you want to live in Somalia.

Re:

[FizzyP]

Privacy is NOT largely a concern of the left. Yes, the left is concerned. So are the libertarians and much of the "new right". In fact, quite a few them seem to spend time on this site.

Re:

[FizzyP]

That's just not true. Much of the "new right" including the libertarians are very concerned about privacy. They are at least as concerned as the left. In fact, many of them seem to frequent this site.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

seems to be largely a concern of the left

Rand Paul has spoken out against the NSA more consistently than nearly anyone else, even more than Ron Wyden. Rand Paul is not part of "the left". Opposition to the NSA is not confined to the left, but it is confined to the extreme fringes. Privacy is unlikely to play any significant role in the 2016 elections. The vast middle doesn't care, and the fringes have no where to turn.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it this way - conservatives are opposed to social change, liberals want social change.

Surveillence cements the status quo as embodied by laws so things like marijuana legalization which depend on people breaking the law to discover for themselves that the law is bogus are harder to accomplish. See also the way the FBI tried to blackmail MLK jr with their surveillence. [eff.org] Nobody ever gets blackmailed by the state for supporting the status quo.

Re:

[spauldo]

Methinks you misunderstand what the left's trying to do.

The idea behind the left, at least in America, is for the government to provide services to the citizens in liu of corporations where it makes sense to do so. The argument within the left is "where does it make sense to do so." They tend to favor regulation more than the right, especially when it will create what they think of as a "level playing field."

The left believes that things like health care will never be properly provided by the free market,

Real world

[pbjones]

I'd say that 99 percent of the population won't change because they don't care about ES. They think more about colour change dresses than online privacy.

Re:

[spauldo]

Funny, the brits have been telling the Americans that for a while now.

Re:

[spauldo]

You're thinking couleur.

See the oxford entry [oxforddictionaries.com] which includes the French word.

The only way to get money is to collaborate

[plopez]

Research funding for is mostly coming from the US DoD and intelligenace agencies these days. As funding for NASA and civilian focused projects dries up, Congress keeps throwing money at the DoD and 'black box' agencies. If you want to fund your research universities you often have to take the military and intelligence money.

Private companies, by and large, do not want to spend money on R&D, they would rather externalize those costs to the taxpayer. If they REALLY believed in research they would spend some of their off shore ~1.8 trillion USD on pure research.

Re:

[Jim Sadler]

Funding opens the door for government intrusion. Even private colleges become agents of the government through funding. Land grant colleges usually have ROTC programs as a requirement of using the land. In order to keep federal money coming in it is rather easy for the government to seek cooperation in various covert programs. State colleges are even easier to push around by the feds. I would bet money that some covert studies have been done in which students were used as guinea pigs and had drugs o

Re:

[plopez]

Check this out, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . It was done by the US Public Health agency. That agency is paramilitary, why do you think we have a Surgeon General?