Does Yahoo violate its Terms and Conditions?
No, they allow themselves to do [whatever] to provide you with The Service, what ever that happens to be from NSL to NSL.
Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
111–120 of 302 posts
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#112I seriously think that to get a CS or EE degree (or similar) B.Sci degree, you should be required to take at least one full term length ethics course. Same idea as the ethics courses taught to junior law students. The internet is already fucked up enough with governments and rogue corporations messing with its AS-adjacency topology in non-free ways at OSI layers 1-3 , before you even get into stuff like writing backd…
Everybody at my school took one of those. It was all platitudes all the time. No substance at all.
Every once in a while I hear someone call for more people to have to sit in Platitude Class, and I can't figure out why.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you get a legally-binding order from the government of the United States of America, and exhaust your legal appeals, you either comply or go to prison. An ethics course won't do you any good.
This is why we (as a community/industry) need to have the equivalent of a prison/death threat. The government wins by making it personal, by threatening prison and death for your obedience. It's not an abstract threat. It is directed to a specific person not a company or security team. The people who comply can quit those companies but they don't. I'm not referring to the ones down the chain (e.g the security team wh…
> Create a climate of "snitches get stitches" and maybe they will think twice before selling out the lives of a billion people.
Committing crimes against people who defect is obviously not going to work. They'll just arrest you for it.
But suppose we create a certification. To get certified all you have to do is promise not to work on a specific list of things: Mass surveillance, backdoors, etc. To lose certification forever all you have to do is work on one of those things.
Then we can have companies offer to put it in their contracts with their international customers that they'll only hire employees and contractors with that certification. Any companies that aren't actually working on mass surveillance etc. are happy to do this because it gives their customers more confidence that they aren't, and if it becomes popular then any companies that don't will become suspicious and lose business.
Then all employees at all companies will have to think twice before working on such things, because it would mean giving up any possibility to work at any of the companies who won't hire such people, which with success will constitute most of the industry.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#114I know this is from October, but it warrants re-reading now. Today, Yahoo announced a hack of 1B accounts. They say they don't know who it is, but we can conclude it's not the US government because Yahoo is willing and legally able to publicly disclose it. Previously, Yahoo willingly assisted an attacker in compromising 1B accounts. In this case, they did not disclose the attack publicly, or even to their own chief i…
> US intelligence activities are actively harmful to American commercial interests because they destroy trust, particularly from customers elsewhere in the world.
We already stand as the most powerful country on earth. It's a great testament to ineptitude in government that this is the current reality.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to quit to refuse to help, fine, but I take serious issue with what you're suggesting beyond that. These are the legal actions of the United States government, executing the authority given to them to the people's elected representatives, and overseen by a judiciary duly selected according the constitutional procedures. Their legal and democratic authority is unassailable. Further, you don't know what mot…
I'm not so sure of that. For example, it's not clear that Congress has the authority to create NSLs, a sort of not-a-warrant. It's not clear that they can issue gag orders like this. Even if they could do these things with warrants, they're not---and that matters. The judiciary is not meaningfully overseeing the parts of the state where law enforcement and national security intelligence mix. The FISC is a great examp…
> It can't steer---we see this because it never refuses a request.
There are issues with FISC(like lack of transparency), but this specific point is unclear to me. Here are some possible scenarios where a low refusal rate wouldn't be a problem:
* The judge could informally tell the agent that the request needs to be amended before he'll grant it.
* FISC could publish clear guidelines on what is and is not allowed, so agents are never surprised and only submit legal requests.
* Agents only make requests in extraordinary circumstances, so every request comes with a lot of legwork and investigation done making it clear why it is necessary.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Options: - Refuse to take action. They want engineering done, they can bloody well do it themselves. Don't type a single keystroke in the direction of helping them. - Announce what is going on anonymously. Plenty of avenues for this. - Announce what is going on, publicly. See if they do indeed want to take you to court. - Quit. - Take down the service. Much easier if the service is only a part of your company. Helps…
If you want to quit to refuse to help, fine, but I take serious issue with what you're suggesting beyond that. These are the legal actions of the United States government, executing the authority given to them to the people's elected representatives, and overseen by a judiciary duly selected according the constitutional procedures. Their legal and democratic authority is unassailable. Further, you don't know what mot…
But don't usurp the sovereignty of the people of this country.
It's difficult to reconcile this idea of democratic sovereignty with the utter secrecy in which the operations under discussion are performed.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#117Great Yahoo - way to sink the ship.
Yahoo won't be the one and only lucky receiver, hello Google, Apple...
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you get a legally-binding order from the government of the United States of America, and exhaust your legal appeals, you either comply or go to prison. An ethics course won't do you any good.
Options: - Refuse to take action. They want engineering done, they can bloody well do it themselves. Don't type a single keystroke in the direction of helping them. - Announce what is going on anonymously. Plenty of avenues for this. - Announce what is going on, publicly. See if they do indeed want to take you to court. - Quit. - Take down the service. Much easier if the service is only a part of your company. Helps…
In other words, act the same way that most govt legislators would act when asked about any non public relations information...."but sir, I was just following your example..."
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wow. This is probably the worst comment I've ever seen on HN. You're suggesting that people who follow the law, which you disagree with, get blacklisted, following the model of criminals killing other criminals who follow the law. Because everything legal is good. People like you are what Stalin, Hitler, and Mao rely on.
Where did I say anything remotely like that? You're taking an ideological stance on privacy, one I generally agree with, and forgetting the motivator behind the overreaching laws, which is quite simply to ATTEMPT to do something to make this country safer. Does it work? I don't think so, but a lot of people do. It's pretty hard to quantify since the data isn't open, and by its nature can't be. It's a pretty severe ju…
One can never know the motivations of others, full stop.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
When your argument can also be used unchanged by the Nazis in the late 30s, it's probably not the best way to go.
> When your argument can also be used unchanged by the Nazis in the late 30s, it's probably not the best way to go. You either missed the entire 'democratic legitimacy' part of my point, or don't actually know anything about the Nazis in the late 30s.
Recall democratic legitimacy isn't necessarily moral authority. "The tyranny of the majority", etc.