[Advocacy Advisors] PRISM

Wed Jun 12 07:30:35 UTC 2013

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?

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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