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

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

#91

Post by creaghpatr » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #17

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 phase it this way: Imagine if the party in power used state surveillance to monitor their opponent and the people who support them. The whole infrastructure is turn-key authoritarian, there's literally nothing logistical stopping this, only a handshake agreement not to. This should concern people regardless of their political affiliation or party loyalty.

No need to imagine, it literally happened this election cycle: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-governm...

Whether the renewal to continue spying into early 2017 was (figuratively) warranted is debatable, but with the official reasoning largely classified, the public may never know.

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

#92

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:35 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #56

nimbius wrote: post #37

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 we…

Trump has not signed this yet. It's not even on his desk yet IIRC. And he's tweeted about, implying that he disapproves.

damn, if he were to veto it I might have to like the man.

was hoping Ryan and gang could have stuffed it but I guess its hard when bipartisan results is code for Washington vs the USA

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

#93

Post by TallGuyShort » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #59

Something1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there isn't one yet, there needs to be one. Our government needs to be made more transparent, and we deserve to know their train of thought for these incredible and large decisions.

If you somehow convince them to require it of themselves you'll just get page after page of disingenuous paffle.

And it'll be done by some intern. Same as when you write or call them now.

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

#94

Post by dmix » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

keldaris wrote: post #77

dingaling wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The military refuses to answer Congress. Pedantically the NSA, FBI and CIA are not 'military' The DIA, NRO and NIMA are.

That's not quite right, the NSA is a DoD agency and the highest ranking civilian in it is the Deputy Director. The Director of the NSA is a military officer also in charge of USCYBERCOM. The FBI and the CIA are indeed civilian agencies (though the CIA has some caveats there).

It might be semantics but NSA being a national defence organization, under the same parent umbrella which forks to Army/Navy/Airforce/Marines, I believe it's fair to lump them in with the 'military':

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Do...

The NSA play(ed) a very large role in modern military deployments overseas, especially in the middle east and africa with their targeting systems.

The best counterpoint is the bill Obama passed before leaving office, expanding the data sharing between agencies and the more general significant expansion of scope of the NSAs activities in recent years to involve plenty of domestic and civilian issues (beyond politics) including supporting the efforts on the War on Drugs, DHS, and FBI activities.

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

#95

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

xir78 wrote: post #3

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

That's exactly what it would take to get laws passed to prevent it in the future.

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

#96

Post by saas_co_de » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #54

As Wyden[1] points out, Congress has nearly no information on what impact the FISA program has. How many Americans are targeted already? The military refuses to answer Congress. How many emails & other collections are swept up? The military refuses to answer to Congress. This bill explicitly allows it's use directly against Americans and declares which circumstances the FBI & other agencies need to use warrants and w…

> Congress has nearly no information on what impact the FISA program has

Apparently it has the impact that a big majority of congress will never vote against it. I wonder why that is?

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

#97

Post by matthewmcg » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #53

rocmcd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know if there is a place where representatives put their reasoning behind votes?

Not my representative, bu Justin Amash, an R from Michigan's 3rd District, posts the rationale for why he voted how he voted on most bills on Facebook. To my knowledge, he's the only one that does it with any degree of regularity.

I don't agree with many of his other positions, but Congressman Amash deserves credit for consistently standing up to his party and fighting government surveillance.

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

#98

Post by asimpletune » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #83

bgentry wrote: post #41

55 House Democrats, including Pelosi, voted against the USA Rights Act amendment that would have substantially limited the surveillance against US citizens. 65 House Democrats ultimately voted in favor of this bill and giving the Trump admin more unchecked surveillance powers. https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml

From what I've seen, Pelosi pretty consistently votes for expansion of state surveillance and other aspects of the security apparatus. So this vote is entirely in line with her general voting record...

Pelosi and Feinstein are the worst when it comes to privacy law.

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

#99

Post by iaw » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

JohnStudio wrote: post #69

bgentry wrote: post #41

55 House Democrats, including Pelosi, voted against the USA Rights Act amendment that would have substantially limited the surveillance against US citizens. 65 House Democrats ultimately voted in favor of this bill and giving the Trump admin more unchecked surveillance powers. https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml

What was the post-Obama efforts to dismantle the wire tapping program that Bush had put in place w/ the perceived powers of the executive? That's a serious question, since I don't really know history behind it.

There was no effort to dismantle the wiretapping...

* Bush implemented surveillance of citizens in response to 9/11

* Obama continued to support this program after it was revealed by Edward Snowden

* Now there's Trump

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

#100

Post by rconti » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:29 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…

It sounds like she DOES understand, you're just trying to convince her that privacy-fighters are right, which she may simply not agree with.

In other parts of society, there's a tradeoff behind what's good for society and what's good for individual freedoms.

Some people (say) don't want mandatory health insurance or helmet laws or whatever because they think freedom to choose is paramount. Others think it's insane that you'd EVER be opposed to something that might save even one life (what about the children??)

Sometimes these arguments are couched in terms of personal responsibility, the nanny state training us to rely on it and creating worse overall outcomes, etc etc.