Nsa negative

Mass Surveillance Decreases Discrimination

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(__)Mass surveillance is less discriminatory because it targets everyone equally.

Hadjimatheou, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, 2014
(Katerina, Security Ethics Group, “The Relative Moral Risks of Untargeted and Targeted Surveillance” Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2014) 17:187–207 DOI 10.1007/s10677-013-9428-1)

There are good reasons to think that both the extent to which surveillance treats people like suspects and the extent to which it stigmatises those it affects increases the more targeted the measure of surveillance. As has already been established, stigmatisation occurs when individuals are marked out as suspicious. Being marked out implies being identified in some way that distinguishes one from other members of the wider community or the relevant group. Being pulled out of line for further search or questioning at an airport; being stopped and searched on a busy train platform while other passengers are left alone; having one’s travel history, credit card, and other records searched before flying because one fits a profile of a potential terrorist-these are all examples of being singled out and thereby marked out for suspicion. They are all stigmatising, because they all imply that there is something suspicious about a person that justifies the intrusion.

In contrast, untargeted surveillance such as blanket screening at airports, spot screening of all school lockers for drugs, and the use of speed cameras neither single people out for scrutiny nor enact or convey a suspicion that those surveilled are more likely than others to be breaking the rules. Rather, everybody engaged in the relevant activity is subject to the same measure of surveillance, indiscriminately and irrespective of any evidence suggesting particular suspiciousness. Such evidence may well emerge from the application of untargeted surveillance, and that evidence may then be used to justify singling people out for further, targeted surveillance. But untargeted surveillance itself affects all people within its range equally and thus stigmatises none in particular.

Mass Surveillance Decreases Discrimination- extension

(___)

(__) Surveillance increases democratic accountability and makes discriminatory bias impossible.

Simon, Arthur Levitt Professor of Law at Columbia University, 2014,
William H., 10-20-2014, "Rethinking Privacy," Boston Review, http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/william-simon-rethinking-privacy-surveillance

Broad-based surveillance distributes its burdens widely, which may be fairer.

For democratic accountability, panopticon-style surveillance has an underappreciated advantage. It may more easily accommodate transparency. Electronic surveillance is governed by fully specified algorithms. Thus, disclosure of the algorithms gives a full picture of the practices. By contrast, when government agents are told to scan for suspicious behavior, we know very little about what criteria they are using. Even if we require the agents to articulate their criteria, they may be unable to do so comprehensively. The concern is not just about good faith, but also about unconscious predisposition. Psychologists have provided extensive evidence of pervasive, unconscious bias based on race and other social stereotypes and stigma. Algorithm-governed electronic surveillance has no such bias.

(__)Mass surveillance solves discrimination.

Simon, Arthur Levitt Professor of Law at Columbia University, 2014,
William H. Simon, 10-20-2014, "Rethinking Privacy," Boston Review, http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/william-simon-rethinking-privacy-surveillance

More generally, broad-reach electronic mechanisms have an advantage in addressing the danger that surveillance will be unfairly concentrated on particular groups; targeting criteria, rather than reflecting rigorous efforts to identify wrongdoers, may reflect cognitive bias or group animus. Moreover, even when the criteria are optimally calculated to identify wrongdoers, they may be unfair to law-abiding people who happen to share some superficial characteristic with wrongdoers. Thus, law-abiding blacks complain that they are unfairly burdened by stop-and-frisk tactics, and law-abiding Muslims make similar complaints about anti-terrorism surveillance.

Such problems are more tractable with broad-based electronic surveillance. Because it is broad-based, it distributes some of its burdens widely. This may be intrinsically fairer, and it operates as a political safeguard, making effective protest more likely in cases of abuse. Because it is electronic, the efficacy of the criteria can be more easily investigated, and their effect on law-abiding people can be more accurately documented. Thus, plaintiffs in challenges to stop-and-frisk practices analyze electronically recorded data on racial incidence and “hit rates” to argue that the criteria are biased and the effects racially skewed. Remedies in such cases typically require more extensive recording.

Answers to: Privacy is a Right

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(__)Their understanding of privacy rights as personal will fail because its impossible in modern society.

Stalder, 2009,
Felix. Department of Sociology, Queens University "Privacy is not the Antidote to Surveillance." Surveillance & Society 1.1 (2009): 120-124.

So rather than fight those connections – some of which are clearly beneficial, some of which are somewhat ambiguous, and some are clearly disconcerting – we have to reconceptualize what these connections do. Rather than seeing them as acts of individual transgression (X has invaded Y’s privacy) we have to see them part of a new landscape of social power. Rather than continuing on the defensive, by trying to maintain an ever-weakening illusion of privacy, we have to shift to the offensive and start demanding accountability of those whose power is enhanced by the new connections. In a democracy, political power is, at least ideally, tamed by making the government accountable to those who are governed, not by carving out areas in which the law doesn't apply. It is, in this perspective, perhaps no co-incidence that many of the strongest privacy advocates (at least in the US) lean politically towards libertarianism, a movement which includes on its fringe white militias which try to set up zones liberated from the US government. In our democracies, extensive institutional mechanisms have been put into to place to create and maintain accountability, and to punish those who abuse their power. We need to develop and instate similar mechanisms for the handling of personal information – a technique as crucial to power as the ability to exercise physical violence – in order to limit the concentration of power inherent in situations that involve unchecked surveillance. The current notion of privacy, which frames the issue as a personal one, won't help us accomplish that.9 However, notions of institutionalized accountability will, because they acknowledge surveillance as a structural problem of political power. It's time to update our strategies for resistance and develop approaches adequate to the actual situation rather than sticking to appealing but inadequate ideas that will keep locking us into unsustainable positions.

Answers to: Privacy is a Right

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(__)There should not be a universal ethical rule against surveillance, the context matters.

Stoddart, 2014
Eric. School of Divinity, University of St Andrews "Challenging ‘Just Surveillance Theory’: A Response to Kevin Macnish’s ‘Just Surveillance? Towards a Normative Theory of Surveillance’." Surveillance & Society 12.1 (2014): 158-163.

I am sorry to say that I find Macnish's aim of a normative ethics of surveillance to be an unnecessary goal. I could be persuaded that a radically revised model of practical reasoning based on the Just War Tradition might have saliency for investigative strategies involving surveillance technologies. However, 'surveillance' is much too all-encompassing a term to be the subject of its own ethics. There can be no 'ethics of surveillance' but there may be norms appropriate for particular contexts of surveillance. This means examining specific domains in which surveillance is deployed, along with other strategies, to address concerns or challenges. For example, the ethics of surveillance in elderly care or the ethics of surveillance in education are valuable discussions to be had. My point is that it ought to be the ethics of elderly care that is foregrounded within which we would be seek to understand the ethical deployment of surveillance mechanisms.