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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

#151

Post by pvnick »

dude01 wrote: post #127

Putting on my marketing hat -- protecting privacy sure has lousy marketing. Privacy is so abstract and sounds passive. Why don't people talk about how upcoming politicians can be blackmailed by having this surveillance info lying around? Or our current politicians, who vote and decide on the powers granted the NSA, are easily blackmail-able with this surveillance info?

That's always been my biggest concern. It appears to have happened to Trump's team, which is very ironic because the republicans are supposedly the national security hawks that want this surveillance; but at the same time now the dems turn a blind eye because it happened to someone they despise.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#152

Post by Retric »

scaryspooky wrote: post #130
Retric wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not specifically Trump or even throwing out the filibuster in the senate. It's the kind of highly targeted gerrymandering and ad hock messaging based around new technology. Combined with doubts that votes are even being counted that's corrosive to the very idea of democracy. Of course Obama was going to cause a backlash, just like Bush did and Trump will. But, we have gotten to the point where 'power'…

The US was not designed as a direct democracy, though. Bemoaning the design only when 'your side' loses is a problem that should be relegated to young children. I haven't voted for the winner for quite a few elections now but I don't think throwing out the entire system is the right answer because I didn't get my way. If you want to start movements in individual states changing the first past the post system, I think…

Sure, the current system is based on past choices. That does not mean it's a good system. I don't really care about Trump vs Hilary. I do care that because I moved my vote went from token effort to completely pointless.

If you look at the history of US presidential elections the map used to be a lot more fluid. Compare say 1972 with 1964: http://www.270towin.com/historical-presidential-elections/ And compare that with the string from 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016.

That recent trend is not by accident. Both party's have carefully crafted their message to maximize their chances of winning. But, that divide is all about minimizing the power of choice which is inherently corrosive.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#153

Post by hammock »

talmand wrote: post #111
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this worth noting? The surveillance state is far bigger than any one person and has been operating clandestinely for decades.

Maybe because the title and bulk of the article directly attributes the problems discussed to Obama and his administration? That the ability to abuse such things was made easier during his term? The problem may be bigger than any one person, but that doesn't mean we don't discuss their possible role in that problem.

Who's to say that NSA did not blackmail Obama into expanding its powers or relaxing oversight?

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#154

Post by asdkjaskdjqi »

captainmuon wrote: post #97
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…

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…

> the crisis of representational democracy, populism, ...

Oh jeez what a travesty - the people getting what they want rather than a focus on "everyone but us first"!

> xenophobia, the surveillance state, terrorism, ...

Yes a reasonable fear of mass immigration from places that don't vet their refugees well enough isn't a legitimate concern and should be mixed in with an actual fear like the surveillance state.

> last 40 years against dreaming up Utopias

Venezuela is doing pretty good with their attempt at a utopia.

> But I believe core values will be tolerance, > individual right

Choose one.

Sorry bud, I don't mean to be rough. But I'd love to see the world through your rose colored glasses.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#155

Post by blahbwah777 »

spaceribs wrote: post #57
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…

Encrypt everything. I wouldn't trust the political process to work itself out in the near future, so a technical approach may be the answer in the meantime. I've moved all my friends to Signal not because we're having sensitive conversations, but because we're voting with our actions.

Along those lines:

I've setup family members and closest friends with a Raspberry Pi or in a couple cases cheap Intel Atom machines, that I can configure with Ansible.

I run a minimalist "Facebook clone" UI with photo gallery on each box. From their phones or laptop people drop files into a bucket, mostly just photos, and it's SyncThinged over to all nodes. When on local wifi, we can browse each others content.

It wasn't too difficult as we're a DIY group. Not at all interested in feeling like we're friends with the world or even just our former high school classmates.

I have no problem with notions that our government and laws should require our society fair and protective of everyone. That sort of thing. But giving it all up for private interests to enrich themselves, while life generally gets more expensive for the rest of us is bullshit.

Undermining this thing is do-able, in a simple to manage way these days thanks, once again, to open-source and commodity computing.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#156

Post by peterwwillis »

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…

> What do I do, as someone who cares?

Find a way to make other people care.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#159

Post by strictnein »

hammock wrote: post #153
talmand wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because the title and bulk of the article directly attributes the problems discussed to Obama and his administration? That the ability to abuse such things was made easier during his term? The problem may be bigger than any one person, but that doesn't mean we don't discuss their possible role in that problem.

Who's to say that NSA did not blackmail Obama into expanding its powers or relaxing oversight?

Who's to say serpent people aren't running the UN?

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#160

Post by yostrovs »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #95
yostrovs wrote: post #89

The word "Obama" is mentioned only once within the 81 comments so far posted...

Why is this worth noting? The surveillance state is far bigger than any one person and has been operating clandestinely for decades.

The "one person" is the President of the United States, the very person able to single handedly stop this and the one who takes responsibility for managing these things. If politics is to have any impact on governance, actions of all the political players have to be judged equally.
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