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A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

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Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#61

Post by pdkl95 »

saosebastiao wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly the most amusing and dramatic explanation of what's happening. A simpler explanation might just be that Congress broadly supports what DOJ is doing, and cares a lot less about the integrity of specific online services than they do about DOJ's role in combating terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and foreign intelligence services.

The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion for well over 80 years now.

HN readers in particular should consider how technology has affected an important part of J. Edgar Hoover's political extortion: COINTELPRO[1].

Technology has made it a lot easier to discredit and disrupt political activists. An obvious example of how to map relationships to find potential organizers that might bring together a larger political movement is the NSA programs COTRAVELER[2], but the methods are not that different from "targeted advertising" or any Facebook-style social network.

Occupy terrified a lot of people in power specifically because it didn't have an obvious minimum spanning tree to target.

We even have documents from Snowden about GCHQ's version[3]. JTRIG even has a wide assortment of tools[4] available for disrupting and discrediting their targets. Their tool for "amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)" doesn't seem particularly useful for national defense or catching terrorists - they have other tools for feeding a specific target false information. On the other hand, amplifying the popularity of a video would be very useful for propaganda.

Obviously very little of this is proof. It was already frightening what J. Edgar Hoover was able to do decades ago. How would the same thing be done with the benefit of modern technology? Would you even notice it?[5]

A even better question might be: given how eagerly the advertising industry used tracking technology and data mining, would you consider it likely that a government agency with little restraint or oversight would refrain from doing the same thing?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

[4] https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog.html

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs (14 seconds of Max Headroom)

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#62

Post by throwawaymaroon »

tptacek wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panic. When cornered people make strange moves. It's easy enough to look at this rationally after the fact but I'm trying to imagine being in the focal point of such a powerplay and I'm not sure I'd make every move by the book.

Ok. You see, though, how his holding action probably harmed his users, right?

Sorry tptacek, but in attempting to optimize his actions (a worthwhile pursuit) your language slips into a noxious form.

His holding action didn't harm his users: the government harmed his users, and his holding action may not have prevented as much harm as we might have liked. Keep the blame for harm on the malicious entity.

If you're going to walk this tricky line of trying to cool hysteria about a hysterical situation, you still need to make it clear that you're oriented against the offensive parties. Something about your holding action serving to protect those that shouldn't be protected.

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#63

Post by idlewords »

tptacek wrote: post #43
poof131 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The President has all the power to curtail these abuses. Unfortunately, reducing your own power is not something that comes naturally to most people. Additionally, any reduction in the national security apparatus will be a political disaster if another terrorist attack happens, so inaction is the prudent political course. It’s a tough problem to deal with and currently it seems a majority of Americans are more concer…

The President technically has that power, but in reality the DOJ's policy is set by the Attorney General, and the historical relationships between Presidents and their A.G.s has tended to be fraught. Mostly, what the President can do in reality is fire the AG. But if Obama does that, he'll have to find and get confirmed a new AG. If you're outraged by NSLs, the new AG Obama could confirm in this climate is unlikely t…

That's an odd view of the relationship. The President gets to set policy, and the AG can comply or resign. The responsibility rightly lies with the President, and Cabinet officers are unlikely to resign over issues unless their own views are irreconcilable with their boss's wishes.

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#66

Post by pdkl95 »

raquo wrote: post #26
cowardlydragon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are Aldous Huxley's version of totalitarianism, where we are drugged and entertained into submission.

Yeah, but I'm wondering more about the inaction of other federal powers. Congress, President, I don't really know whose job it is, but someone in this country should have the power to deal with rogue government agencies? They don't appoint themselves.

Dan Geer at his important talk at Black Hat:

    The central dynamic internal to government is, and always
    has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature
    to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much
    money they can hand out. [...]

    Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter,
    that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes.  Does
    that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the
    Executive more?  I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially
    changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away
    from the Legislature.  While President Obama was referring to
    something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone,"
    he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no
    appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=642

http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt

While Congress has been occupied with infighting and stupid political theater, the Executive branch has been taking a lot of their power.

Is it "making war" when Congress is clearly abdicating their responsibilities? It has certainly done more damage to the country than any army has ever accomplished.

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#67

Post by jsnathan »

raquo wrote: post #27
jamoes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I truly don't understand why nothing is done about that. Why doesn't anyone lose their job over this, let alone go to jail? My suspicion is that the FBI and various three-letter-agencies have dirt on most of the elected representatives. The mass surveillance apparatus is the perfect tool for collecting blackmail material on current and future leaders.

That would also explain why corruption is allowed to happen, kinda. Is there a realistic exit from that situation?

IF this were the case, then the solution would be a whistleblower. Or someone hacking into the system, who makes the information collected public.

Of course this person would face even more risk than Snowden ever did.

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#69

Post by SCAQTony »

jacquesm wrote: post #58
ipsin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think it's a combination of things. Sometimes Congress is just on board with what's happening. Sometimes they don't have an idea what's happening. Other times, the surveillance state has their finger on the scale. I think the case of Jane Harman is the creepiest example of this -- a case where the DoJ withheld prosecution of a surveillance "friend", derived from NSA surveillance, so that she could contin…

Selective prosecution is one of the stronger abuses of power there is.

Damn straight! it's so demonstrable that our laws are being selectively enforced but what happens when Habeas corpus is selective enforced? We came damn close to losing it in 2006.

Re: A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

#70

Post by yuhong »

jacquesm wrote: post #3

Props to the man for sticking this out for so long. He first point blank refuses to comply, the FBI then withdraws the NSL but keeps the gag order in place and he then fights them for an additional decade to get the gag order lifted. That's tenacity. This reminds me of the Lavabit case, wonder why the one shut down their service and the other managed to simply reject the requests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabi…

Which reminds me that in iMessage, Apple still has the keys but the forward secrecy is enough to exclude it from CALEA because of the "encryption" exception. This of course caused FBI to complain, which among other example of encryption made encryption backdoors a political issue again.
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