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NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

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Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#91

Post by marksomnian »

coldtea wrote: post #33
mtgx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll start caring again about privacy when people start being dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night for participating in protests, not just against the government, but against large corporations, too. And many people will lose their lives in the process, or will be imprisoned for years until things change again, and so on. I guess we'll have to do real fighting for our human rights once again (unfo…

> They'll start caring again about privacy when people start being dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night for participating in protests, not just against the government, but against large corporations, too. They still will not, since it will be others, and a small minority, that does that and gets dragged, etc. The problem is that a society that stifles those small minorities (from labor activists in e…

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#92

Post by Allower »

endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

People care, our representatives do not care and do not understand. Its obvious dereliction of duty. I think its criminal frankly

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#94

Post by wu-ikkyu »

omginternets wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do I do, as someone who cares? No, seriously. Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Start my own political party, or enter an existing one and try to steer it in my direction? Try to get employed by one of these organizations and then promote a better understanding of their mission internally? Move to another country where people care more (which?) Identifying the problem is a good first step, but what can…

>Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Emphatically, yes. They're the ones challenging the NSA in court. Does it solve every problem? Of course not. Is it part of the solution? As long as the judicial branch continues to function correctly overall, yes. Hell yes.

Clandestine agencies are not subject to the same judicial process as the rest of us. Thats why they have "secret courts" and the magic words which trump the law: "national security".

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#96

Post by omginternets »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #94
omginternets wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Emphatically, yes. They're the ones challenging the NSA in court. Does it solve every problem? Of course not. Is it part of the solution? As long as the judicial branch continues to function correctly overall, yes. Hell yes.

Clandestine agencies are not subject to the same judicial process as the rest of us. Thats why they have "secret courts" and the magic words which trump the law: "national security".

Yes, and this modus operandi can be attacked through the court system.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#97

Post by captainmuon »

lmm wrote: post #30
endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

What do I do, as someone who cares? No, seriously. Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Start my own political party, or enter an existing one and try to steer it in my direction? Try to get employed by one of these organizations and then promote a better understanding of their mission internally? Move to another country where people care more (which?) Identifying the problem is a good first step, but what can…

Start a revolution. I'm only half joking.

I think we can't solve these problems within the current political and economical and system. We have to found a new radical political movement.

A lot of the problems we face: the crisis of representational democracy, populism, unemployment, xenophobia, the surveillance state, terrorism, ... cannot be solved individually, but I believe must be fixed simultaneously.

We got to get over the fear of the last 40 years against dreaming up Utopias. We should look at the past, at western democracy, socialism, meritocracy, communism, and see what worked and what didn't, and come up with an alternative. It will be as big a break as hundreds of years ago when people came up with the idea of a republic in absolutist times.

And here's why I believe the movement will grow: we can make the same promises Trump made, about prosperity, keeping one's identity, leading a meaningful life again... But as opposed to him, we can actually fulfill these promises.

And then we become really powerful, create parallel structures, and question the power of governments head on. It worked several times in history.

I'm intentionally leaving the deals vague, since I can't speak for everybody. But I believe core values will be tolerance, individual rights, decentralism, and openness to learn from mistakes and change.

I know it sounds crazy, but I think we won't get more freedom without a major rewrite or at least refactoring of society...

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#98

Post by freeflight »

This is pretty much the very same problem the German BND has right now, I'd guess pretty much any intelligence service which conducts mass surveillance has this problem of "surveil everything, except stuff from your domestic population".

How to find out if your target belongs to the domestic population without looking into any content of that target? German BND supposedly does some of the filtering by country domain extension i.e. users with a "@xyz.de" mail address are supposedly exempted from BND scrutiny.

Which is of course yet another flawed approach because not every German has a .de mail address. Case in point, I have an account with German mail provider GMX that ends on .net. That method would also make it stupidly easy to evade any scrutiny by the BND.

Imho this is a problem that doesn't have a good solution or any solution at all, for this to actually work in reality security services would need to be clairvoyant.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#99

Post by AJ007 »

lmm wrote: post #30
endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

What do I do, as someone who cares? No, seriously. Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Start my own political party, or enter an existing one and try to steer it in my direction? Try to get employed by one of these organizations and then promote a better understanding of their mission internally? Move to another country where people care more (which?) Identifying the problem is a good first step, but what can…

Actively oppose all political candidates who have done nothing to fight back.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#100

Post by driverdan »

lmm wrote: post #30
endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

What do I do, as someone who cares? No, seriously. Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Start my own political party, or enter an existing one and try to steer it in my direction? Try to get employed by one of these organizations and then promote a better understanding of their mission internally? Move to another country where people care more (which?) Identifying the problem is a good first step, but what can…

Some ideas:

1. Integrate privacy into your work. Educate your coworkers about the issue, refuse to implement anything that has a negative impact on privacy.

2. Stop patronizing companies that help the government spy.

3. As you said, donate to non-profits that fight against spying.

4. Contribute to open source projects that protect privacy.

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