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Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

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Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#401

Post by rhizome »

phaus wrote: post #267
rhizome wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be a lit crit to come to a solid conclusion that Rand should not be followed as a life plan. I feel the same way about "The Prince" and "The Art of War," both of which I haven't read because I don't want them poisoning my brain.

Edit: Apparently I'm not as cultured as I thought. I didn't know Machiavelli had his own version of "The Art of War". Obviously, my previous comment was unqualified. However, I did read "The Prince" and I think there's a lot most can learn from it. While I find the majority of the book reprehensible, there are many powerful people in our society that seem to think of it as a bible / instruction manual. Given the fact…

I didn't know there was a Machiavelli "Art of War" either. I meant the Sun Tzu.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#402

Post by nikdaheratik »

crdb wrote: post #293
nikdaheratik wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well considering that the quote was the entirety of the post, I don't see how you can then claim that responding with a second quote discrediting the first is in some way responding to the person and not the argument. There was no argument being made and if they tried to do the work of the commenter for them and make an argument, you'd then say they were putting words into the person's mouth. IMO, if you are relying…

> considering that the quote was the entirety of the post, I don't see how you can then claim that responding with a second quote discrediting the first is in some way responding to the person and not the argument The first quote laid out a case using a narrative as a metaphor. It explicitly states its position, and as such is an appropriate use of a quote. The second quote is entirely composed of appeals to emotion…

The work is still fiction and the characters described in the work become less and less helpful over time as it becomes difficult to try to fit them into the context of today's society. This becomes more true the further you get from the time the novel was written and it is this lens of time passed which allows us, as a society, to filter out many of the mediocre ideas that are no longer helpful and hold onto the works that are more fundamental.

So yes, time matters as does the context in which the works were written. The world itself has become more integrated and capital much more mobile and the role of government is also less clearcut than it was in the middle of the 20th century. Many of the dangers of overreach in government that the writer was worried about have been reduced but at the same time new dangers, including those of global corporations overreaching into our daily lives, have increased.

TL;DR: Snowcrash is probably more helpful to understanding this story than Atlas Shrugged.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#403

Post by rhizome »

mike_lang wrote: post #277
rhizome wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be a lit crit to come to a solid conclusion that Rand should not be followed as a life plan. I feel the same way about "The Prince" and "The Art of War," both of which I haven't read because I don't want them poisoning my brain.

EDIT: I as well assumed you were referring to Sun Tzu. I can't speak to whether my comments hold for Machiavelli's at all. If you've lumped "The Art of War" into the same category in your mind as Ayn Rand's writings, I suggest you to read it. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. Aside from being both commonly cited as influential (in greater or lesser unfortunate ways), there's really about zero similarity bet…

cited as influential (in greater or lesser unfortunate ways)

I definitely mean in the greater of unfortunate ways. That there's zero similarity is irrelevant, they keep showing up in the same places. They're not brothers, they're friends.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#404

Post by fungi »

Phlarp wrote: post #100
tptacek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Stamos' background, it's possible that she was specifically required not to tell him.

How do you slip something like this past a corporate security team? Stamos and @bcrypt never struck me as individuals that were "asleep at the wheel". Surely there was evidence somewhere? If Stamos wasn't briefed as to the situation and a security engineer found the rootkit on their own how could they be bound by the terms of an NSL / gag order?

> Yahoo execs deliberately bypassed review from the security team when installing the backdoor. In fact, when members of the security team found it within weeks of its installation, they immediately assumed it had been installed by malicious hackers, rather than Yahoo’s own mail team. (This says something about what the backdoor code may have looked like.)

https://diracdeltas.github.io/blog/surveillance/

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#405

Post by ddalex »

wcummings wrote: post #398
slantedview wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will defy you and in the process cost 10k+ people their jobs without them having any say or knowledge of this There's no way the govt. would do anything more than skewer (or attempt to) a few sacrificial lambs for violating a gag order. There's no political win otherwise.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws... "The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday." "The size of the daily fine was set to double every week that Yahoo refused to comply, the documents show." Two years ago

Such a fine can be challenged in open court, no? Or is there an order by a secret court preventing Yahoo challenging the fine in a regular court?

How do you defend yourself from secret orders issued by secret courts that forbid defending yourself? What is this, mafia or the government ?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#406

Post by ArkyBeagle »

dmix wrote: post #165
findK wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't the whole premise that the Big Companies actually control the government? "They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders." full weight? You mean like a small fine ? That's what happened to Wells Fargo. The govt . seems really angry about it, but what can they really do to a corp that is considered an entity?

Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. It's so important that these leaks go public for two critical reasons: 1) with that type of financial regulatory environment for public companies, the only way to create incentives for that type of consumer protection play is when it has monetary consequences if they do nothing…

Running a huge legal risk is not consonant with maximizing shareholder value.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#407

Post by kefka »

meowface wrote: post #329
kefka wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, that US govt bulk-scanning is terrifying, especially without warrants. But what happens when Facebook scans your private chats and reports your illegal doings to the police? ( http://www.infowars.com/facebook-monitors-your-private-messa... ) What data restrictions do we have that would prevent $dataCompany from sharing data with other actors? I'm sure a "privacy policy" can do something, but in the end,…

Yes, it's a frightening precedent. What Facebook's doing is essentially just as bad. Common carriers of communications (Facebook chat, Yahoo mail, etc.) should not be scanning mail. I think I'd grant an exception for the child pornography searching that most providers already do, since it's just comparing image hashes against a specific blacklist of hash and can never reveal private information about non-applicable i…

Why do you believe that child porn should be given a legal carve-out? Once the system to scan is in place, it matters not what's actually being scanned.

And there's the fact that CP is strict statutory. Meaning, I can get your email, and send you via a remixing network, a few dozen CP images. And you're now guilty.

If anything, adding in mens rea requirement would be the best choice. Or remove it as law, because it's evidence of a crime.

And the FBI does it, why can't I? /anger

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#408

Post by ArkyBeagle »

So you really think that a free email service will "protect your privacy?" Any of them?

Why would you think that?

FWIW, SIGINT is a major part of the present festivities in the Woah on Terruh. It's simply unrealistic to expect anything transmitted through ordinary means to be remotely private.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#409

Post by wcummings »

ddalex wrote: post #405
wcummings wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws... "The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday." "The size of the daily fine was set to double every week that Yahoo refused to comply, the documents show." Two years ago

Such a fine can be challenged in open court, no? Or is there an order by a secret court preventing Yahoo challenging the fine in a regular court? How do you defend yourself from secret orders issued by secret courts that forbid defending yourself? What is this, mafia or the government ?

Yahoo challenged it in FISA court, not open court.

"Yahoo took its case to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, also known as the Fisa court, which oversees requests for surveillance orders in national security investigations. The secretive Fisa court provides the legal authorities that underpin the US government’s controversial surveillance programmes. Yahoo lost its case, and an appeal."

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#410

Post by jsjohnst »

imglorp wrote: post #111
Phlarp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you slip something like this past a corporate security team? Stamos and @bcrypt never struck me as individuals that were "asleep at the wheel". Surely there was evidence somewhere? If Stamos wasn't briefed as to the situation and a security engineer found the rootkit on their own how could they be bound by the terms of an NSL / gag order?

In a large pipelined, distributed architecture, there's probably dozens of consumers of the databases that all look rather similar: they do some queries and pack up some reports for internal consumption. Marketing, ab testing, user experience, etc. Yet another consumer sharing 99% of the same code might not stand out.

At the risk of being downvoted for possibly being pedantic...

Knowing Yahoo's mail architecture very intimately, your analogy here isn't very accurate unless you get very abstract with your usage of the words "database" and "queries".

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