Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

circa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 225 posts

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#171

Post by cxromos »

acqq wrote: post #132
cxromos wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't dispute that fact. The Muslims in Bosnia are moderate in nature. It's traditional. Ottoman empire was against the type of Islam like the one that originated in Saudi Arabia. I don't dispute the fact that WMD was a stunt of the crony capitalism of Cheney and his friends. But those Muslims in Syria, 'moderate' rebels, were victims of Assad family for decades. It's bound to happen, sooner or later, for people to…

> The Muslims in Bosnia are moderate in nature. The real "moderates" haven't had a chance or influence. The Muslim Bosniak leader in the nineties was a known Islamist. He hasn't accidentally received the support of the Islamists abroad. The Wahhabis are there since that times (decades already): "Sharia Villages Bosnia's Islamic State Problem" (2016) http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/islamic-state-pre... Rega…

The Muslim Bosniak lader was a religious man, after decades of Communism, which prohibited the religion. This happened on all sides, and the atrocities were committed by the Christians, both sides, Catholic and Ortodox, between themselves and on Muslim population. Number of accounts in front of the International Court for War Crimes tells all bout that.

Ottoman empire was in war what you call Wahhabism. They were enemies then and they are enemies now.

Assad regime, his father and him, are of a different version of Islam, Alawites. Let's put aside the fact that Syria was dictatorship for decades, with Sunni population of 74%, and that of Alawites of 12%. One can't expect for 12% to rule for decades with an iron fist over the majority of the population without problems. As I wrote previously. The war in Syria started after Sunni population, students and the other children of Arab Spring, asked for the elections and Assad took military and tanks on them. Later on extremists found its way in. I'm just pointing out stupidity that caused the war. You're thinking is that of post-stupidity.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#172

Post by arca_vorago »

daxorid wrote: post #146
arca_vorago wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute first step is to take control of your devices. LineageOS or Replicant phone. GNU+Linux on computer, openwrt or similar on router/switches, ipfire similar on firewall. Firefox instead of chrome or opera. VLC instead of iTunes. Emacs/Vim instead of sublime. Blender instead of Maya. Etc. I'm working on this myself. It's not easy, but it is worth it. RMS was and is right: either the user controls the program…

Firefox instead of chrome Although I understand your sentiment here on philosophic grounds, it would be far more practical to run Chrome, because the likelihood of NSA hoarding effective chrome 0days is much smaller than hoarding FF 0days. Ideological purity is nice, but practical defense against the enemies of your ideology is better.

> the likelihood of NSA hoarding effective chrome 0days is much smaller than hoarding FF 0days

Based on what rational? I think the strongest influence on 0-days is market share. Hence why switching to gnu+linux alone isn't enough (but it's the right start). According to http://www.netmarketshare.com/ Chrome is now almost 60% of marketshare, and lets not forget how many people are using chrome on android devices.

I find your claim to not stand up to scrutiny.

Regardless, this is the mentality that has gotten us into the situation we are in anyway. It's like a technological variation of the ends justifies the means. No, I disagree and I find it to be a fundamental problem with the way many do their computing in the modern world.

While we do have Chromium, it has still had privacy issues, and Google has shown themselves untrustworthy when it comes to data sharing with the world. They had every opportunity to give us a GPL phone with linux on it, and instead we got a half-proprietary, non-rooted series of backdoored android phones. Relying on Google is not the way to go for those who care about privacy and security, as they have repeatedly violated their original motto of "don't be evil".

If we really wanted to base the discussion on data though, I would like to see numbers on fixed remote exploit bugs in both to see who is actively fighting this better. I also feel like once firefox has a 64-bit rust based render engine they will suddenly regain a lot of market share.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#173

Post by qb45 »

matt4077 wrote: post #71
Sven-z wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean nobody cares anymore? This is a very strange notion I see propping up more and more in people's minds, as they get overloaded with information they don't know what to do with. There are lots of very experienced people and resources allocated to this problem across the world working on it round the clock. But this is a hard problem. It's going to take multiple generations to achieve a mature resolutio…

I'm wondering how you think this process works. When you say: > There are lots of very experienced people and resources allocated to this problem across the world It sounds like a curing-cancer-style problem where what's needed is some scientific breakthrough for a specific problem... So... Who are these "very experienced people", and what "resources" are allocated, where? Or how far exactly is this "above my paygrad…

Off the top of my head, examples of people who have more means and expertise than a random HN commenter:

1. nonprofits like EFF

2. investigative journalists who search for truth and expose corruption instead of writing emotional pieces telling people what to think and helplessly worry about.

3. software, hardware and network engineers building end-to-end secure systems as opposed to ones designed for mining user data which inadvertently (or deliberately, you decide ;)) end up being abused by spies and hackers.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#174

Post by marcosdumay »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #48
ff10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly describing the reason why there is checks and balances. "People in power" is supposed to be a heterogenous group with different interests and formal functions. Your post suggests that it doesn't work properly in your country anymore. I wonder where exactly one could pinpoint the weak spots and systemic issues.

IMO the weak spot is that there's only one executive branch, and they have discretion over whether to enforce the law in any given case. They can choose not to arrest themselves, or prosecute themselves. If the system were structured with two executive branches, each of which had the power to enforce the law against members of the opposition executive branch, and a sense of opposition / competition could be maintaine…

Every place has only one executive branch. That does not make everybody there share the same goals.

You have a structural problem within your country, because the FBI should be clearly working towards arresting the NSA people, for example.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#175

Post by marcosdumay »

roywiggins wrote: post #66
awqrre wrote: post #55

I think that the privacy issue will get worst quicker under Trump, which is why I voted for him. I think that it is required, for it to get better, because people don't care enough yet.

When has accelerationism ever worked before?

Brazil since 2010.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#176

Post by daxorid »

arca_vorago wrote: post #172
daxorid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox instead of chrome Although I understand your sentiment here on philosophic grounds, it would be far more practical to run Chrome, because the likelihood of NSA hoarding effective chrome 0days is much smaller than hoarding FF 0days. Ideological purity is nice, but practical defense against the enemies of your ideology is better.

> the likelihood of NSA hoarding effective chrome 0days is much smaller than hoarding FF 0days Based on what rational? I think the strongest influence on 0-days is market share. Hence why switching to gnu+linux alone isn't enough (but it's the right start). According to http://www.netmarketshare.com/ Chrome is now almost 60% of marketshare, and lets not forget how many people are using chrome on android devices. I fi…

Hate to appeal to authority, but tptacek has addressed this many times previously, citing going market price differentials between FF and chrome bugs.

The security model of Chrome lends itself to far fewer serious vulnerabilities than in FF.

I do agree with you that rewriting the entire browser in a safe language like Rust would be a significant shift in the security situation.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#177

Post by spaceribs »

braveo wrote: post #129
spaceribs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But be careful not to be too obvious about it, because that makes you a target. Good. It's probably better that a young curmudgeonly asshole like myself that has zero respect for unquestioned authority go through the years long process of bringing a clear case of 4th and 5th amendment violations through to the supreme court. I personally would rather rot in jail in contempt if it meant that these questions of perso…

No you wouldn't, that's internet badassery coupled with youth at work.

Versus grumpy old person pessimism? Don't pretend to know my convictions.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#178

Post by spaceribs »

blahbwah777 wrote: post #155
spaceribs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

Very cool, do you have a github or suggestions on technical choices?

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#179

Post by logfromblammo »

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…

As someone who has dipped into the libertarian infinity pool of crazy, and flopped right over the side into the freefall insanity of pragmatic anarchism, I am aware that most lasting societal changes have only been accomplished by creating rivers of blood--the Reign of Terror, the Soviet Revolution, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, etc. And I am also aware that the new boss is usually either the same as the old boss, or quite a lot worse.

But nevertheless, after the reset, things often get better for a while--if you survived, that is--before they get worse again.

So you can either screw yourself up to do some bloody murder against those whom you believe to really deserve it, and make a real change, for better or worse (usually worse), or you can parade around making some fake change that lets you feel better about yourselves, but probably won't do any real damage, such as a devastating nuclear winter, or another miserable dark age of terror, brutality, serfdom, and slavery. You can pick out your targets now, and wait for the right time to pull the trigger. Or you can make signs and sing Kum-Bai-Yah. But maybe there's another option, that has never been tried before.

The usual problem is that the masters of the universe have no incentives whatsoever to change their own behavior or give up their own power. But there is a magical, mythical substance in the Illuminatus! trilogy called AUM. This was described as a drug that permanently changed someone from a neophobe into a neophile. It changed minds with one dose. So perhaps, like so many sci-fi speculations later found to have landed near the marks discovered by future science, a cocktail of known hallucinogens and entheogens might be employed to bestow an artificial chemical sense of compassion and empathy upon those who lack one of their own.

In short, black-bag some elites, and shoot them up with a witches brew of MDMA, LSD, DXM, Datura, nicotine, cannabis, salvinorin-A, high fructose corn syrup, fluoride, chemtrail distillate, et cetera (Poe's Law disclosure: the latter three were satire), and see if that can cure them of being selfish assholes. You flip the enemy to your side, and you gain power without killing anyone--or at least without producing dead bodies, as forcibly making permanent changes to someone's brain against their will could be construed as psychological murder.

It's the same problem as eradicating any parasite. If you kill 99% of them, that just leaves the niche open for that remaining 1% to repopulate. So you capture some, sterilize them, and release them back into the wild. Those continue to compete among their own kind, and then die off without progeny, which crashes the whole population enough that it can now be controlled by other means. Just as the parasites subvert others to work for them, you subvert the self-interest of the parasites so that they destroy themselves.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#180

Post by maxerickson »

asdkjaskdjqi wrote: post #154
captainmuon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good time to remember Mencken:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Post reply on HN