House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits • Hacker News Board

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#31

Post by anon11082016 » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

xir78 wrote: post #20

knz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turmp should be happy about this To be fair, Trump is hardly the the first President to seek renewal of such laws. > useful in cracking down on citizens and opponents who criticize him. There were multiple reports about "Dark Side" yesterday - https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dark-side-federal-unit-... What could possibly go wrong.....

He opposed it according to the article.

Yeah that won't stop people frothing at the mouth. Any day now, annny day Trump is going to start locking citizens up for criticizing him. Any day.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#32

Post by anon11082016 » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

wtf_is_up wrote: post #27

xir78 wrote: post #3

Turmp should be happy about this, it will be useful in cracking down on citizens and opponents who criticize him.

The precedence has been set for using FISA against your political opponents. I agree, this will be great for him.

Following in the footsteps of Obama.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#33

Post by dgllghr » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

PopsiclePete wrote: post #13

epmaybe wrote: post #8

I had a discussion with my mother regarding surveillance and privacy and how they relate to safety. I feel like she understands that surveillance when used in a nefarious manner can be detrimental to individual freedoms, but is pro surveillance regardless. This is because she believes that the benefits of keeping others safe outweighs the potential for misuse. How can I help her understand why people fight for privac…

You can't. Most people will choose safety over freedom every single time.

I completely understand where you're coming from, and I share some of that cynicism. But there are many contrary examples. Abolitionists fought in the US Civil War to end slavery. Russian journalists and politicians are killed left and right but continue to challenge Putin's dictatorship. The Kurds, though they have never had their own state, continue to resist both Turkey and ISIS. Protesters were attacked and killed for protesting the neo-nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA just last year.

I think it's as Thomas Jefferson said: "...all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Perhaps in this case, the suffering is not great and the vision of privacy is not strongly supported. But I disagree that people will choose safety over freedom every time.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#34

Post by pweissbrod » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #14

The President actually tweeted two incompatible positions this morning. Guess they picked the one they wanted.

Stable genius in action

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#35

Post by pdx » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

anon11082016 wrote: post #28

epmaybe wrote: post #8

I had a discussion with my mother regarding surveillance and privacy and how they relate to safety. I feel like she understands that surveillance when used in a nefarious manner can be detrimental to individual freedoms, but is pro surveillance regardless. This is because she believes that the benefits of keeping others safe outweighs the potential for misuse. How can I help her understand why people fight for privac…

Just show her what they did to Donald Trump. Via a BS dossier, they wire tapped him and his associates.

That was classic, and nobody would have ever known about it if the impossible hadn't occurred and he actually won. How many times did it happen before Obama did it and how many times in the future will it happen? Regardless of whether you're red or blue, this is not the path you should wish the country to follow.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#36

Post by cjbenedikt » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

dmm wrote: post #15

ProAm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than relying on the government to have your back What's the purpose of having a government again?

Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid is 50% of the federal budget. Defense is another 17%. So the purpose of the government is mostly income redistribution and defense.

Where do your nbrs come from? https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_fed_spending_pie_cha...

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#37

Post by nimbius » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

This has been a can kicked for many a mile. First bush, then obama, and now trump. The undocumented and largely ignored effect of FISA is that it is quietly driving cryptography to unprecedented levels of adoption. OpenPGP is part of Yubikey now, granting the average user HSM level security for their encryption for less than $50. Google has increased their cipherstrength and offers several multifactor solutions as well as foreign agent attack warnings for journalists. GPG offers curve25519 in light of just the implication of poisoned NIST primes. Signal sidesteps bugged SMS in favour of a hardened PFS channel of OTR deniable communication in video, voice and text. Letsencrypt is working to blanket the world in affordable, quick, and easy crypto for any site desired. Finally, tor's many exploits have been patched, and the protocols weaknesses have given way to more secure tools like i2p.

The government is largely focusing on iPhone at this point, and why not. Apple is an easy target to beat on for the woes of late stage capitalism and unchecked foreign policy, however any modern consumer tech company worth their salt has seen the writing for quite some time. Encrypt, and make sure you're out of the loop entirely.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#38

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

Andersos wrote: post #2

Privacy in the US is dead

Privacy in the world is dead (more precisely, dying), for all intents and purposes. The technological cat that enabled its demise can't be put back into the bag. Currently the problem is that certain classes of people have more access to "private" information than others, but once that goes away society will adapt to the new normal and look back with confusion at why we were so concerned about not being able to hide things.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#39

Post by TearsInTheRain » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

epmaybe wrote: post #8

I had a discussion with my mother regarding surveillance and privacy and how they relate to safety. I feel like she understands that surveillance when used in a nefarious manner can be detrimental to individual freedoms, but is pro surveillance regardless. This is because she believes that the benefits of keeping others safe outweighs the potential for misuse. How can I help her understand why people fight for privac…

I think a poignant explanation of the detriments of surveillance is Glen Greenwald's TED talk 'Why privacy matters'. Basically surveillance causes people to self censor, which is incredibly detrimental to society.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#40

Post by tzs » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

> The vote on Thursday was a victory for the Trump administration and the intelligence community, which opposed imposing major new curbs on the program, and for Republican leadership, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who had blocked the House from an opportunity to consider a less-sweeping compromise package developed by the House Judiciary Committee. They gambled that faced with an all-or-essentially-nothing choice, a majority of lawmakers would choose the status quo — and won.

Normally if you do not like what a House member does there is not much you can do unless you are in that member's district. In that case you can vote for someone other than them.

In the case of Ryan, though, you can do something even if you live in another district. The majority party decides on who will be Speaker. If Ryan's partly loses its majority Ryan goes back to being just an ordinary member of the House, one of over 400. You can indirectly vote against Ryan's speakership by voting against the candidate from his party in your district.