Mass Surveillance in the United States • Hacker News Board

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#51

Post by parliament32 » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

apo wrote: post #27

> Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama,[3] and upon several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Mass surveillance is a bipartisa…

Regarding the national emergencies, here's the best part: You can't really declare a military national emergency without a declared war going on. But since the US wants to keep it's emergency-surveillance powers, and it can't choose random countries to go to war with constantly... they declared a "War on Terror", which (while sounding like a campaign slogan) satisfies the requirement for "the country is at war so we can take wartime measures". The best part is "Terror" isn't something that can legally ever lose/surrender (or win, for that matter), so this "war" (and the associated national emergencies) will go on for as long as the US government wants.

It's all very clever, really.

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#52

Post by carapace » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #48

carapace wrote: post #46

Item: Auto-autos (self-driving cars) and the accompanying infrastructure will be a defacto ubiquitous surveillance system. (Triangulation of gunshots in realtime, etc.) On the one hand we eliminate privacy, on the other we can eliminate crime. I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle. - - - - As a pulled-in-the-wool tinfoil-hat-wearing paranoiac the sad thing about Snowden was that the poor kid had to fl…

My friend was raped by the police, in the police station. Giving all the power to the police does not eliminate crime; it just changes who commits the crimes.

Dude that's horrible.

Let me try to be delicate.

Those "police" should fear ubiquitous surveillance, not you.

We have to exercise our democratic power to make sure that e.g. Internal Affairs can find and deal with criminals who have infiltrated police.

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#53

Post by lisper » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #51

apo wrote: post #27

> Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama,[3] and upon several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Mass surveillance is a bipartisa…

Regarding the national emergencies, here's the best part: You can't really declare a military national emergency without a declared war going on. But since the US wants to keep it's emergency-surveillance powers, and it can't choose random countries to go to war with constantly... they declared a "War on Terror", which (while sounding like a campaign slogan) satisfies the requirement for "the country is at war so we…

"Clever" is not exactly the word I would choose to describe the situation.

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#54

Post by lisper » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #29

We're heading into a world where privacy is obsolete. Slowly eroded "from the bottom" by the slow creep of the Overton window of what's acceptable by tech companies and "from the top" by advances in military surveillance tech and increasing willingness by western government to use this tech on their own citizens. In this environment will meaningful[1] political action even be possible? [1] Meaningful as in: outside o…

> In this environment will meaningful[1] political action even be possible?

No.

Anything else you want to know?

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#55

Post by isoprophlex » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #11

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #10

"a communication can be retained by CIA for longer than 5 years if it is enciphered" nice, so basically all communications through popular chat apps these days. no wonder they are asking for "backdoors" :) what happens when quantum computing decrypts these all? if it's 15 years from now, do they just throw us all in prison retroactively for something we said 15 years ago?

>what happens when quantum computing decrypts these all? if it's 15 years from now, do they just throw us all in prison retroactively for something we said 15 years ago? They're only gonna decrypt your messages if they want to throw you in prison. Welcome to arbitrary enforcement.

Everyone will be guilty of some arbitrary crime. But, as per the linked article, there's already a mechanism for prosecution without a just trial in place:

> According to documents seen by the news agency Reuters, information obtained in this way is subsequently funnelled to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.[168] Federal agents are then instructed to "recreate" the investigative trail in order to "cover up" where the information originated,[168] known as parallel construction.

We're all fucked and we're already in William Gibson's cyberpunk dystopia. Minus the cool drugs.

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#56

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

sbhn wrote: post #3

Its for your security for gods sake, stop complaining. If it saves just one life, n all that

Please don't post flamebait to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#57

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

marak830 wrote: post #42

apo wrote: post #27

> Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama,[3] and upon several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Mass surveillance is a bipartisa…

This is purely from an outside perspective btw, but from what myself and friends have conversed about, the us doesn't seem to have a left. At least not a particularly powerful political left.

There’s little to no absolute left in the US, but there is always a left side of the right.

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#58

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

apo wrote: post #27

> Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama,[3] and upon several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Mass surveillance is a bipartisa…

Progressive Dems like Bernie Sanders are considerably less friendly to mass surveillance than centerist Dems like Obama. Bernie votes against the Patriot act every time. You can elect people who will fight it. Folks just don't want too because it might involve pot getting legalized and "socialism"

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#59

Post by quaquaqua1 » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #55

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what happens when quantum computing decrypts these all? if it's 15 years from now, do they just throw us all in prison retroactively for something we said 15 years ago? They're only gonna decrypt your messages if they want to throw you in prison. Welcome to arbitrary enforcement.

Everyone will be guilty of some arbitrary crime. But, as per the linked article, there's already a mechanism for prosecution without a just trial in place: > According to documents seen by the news agency Reuters, information obtained in this way is subsequently funnelled to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.[168] Federal agents are then instructed to "recreate" th…

>minus the cool drugs

instead we have a very arbitrary channel to decide who gets to receive drugs our society produces, with all of their nasty side effects

For me, any psychoactive substance a doctor prescribes is like pharmaceutical grade krokodil

Re: Mass Surveillance in the United States

#60

Post by OrgNet » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #9

OrgNet wrote: post #6

I'm surprised that Apple is mentioned only once in this article...

Why?

I guess that I was wrong, because they also mention IPhones in a different paragraph... but they talk about IPhones 3 & 4, so we're due for a new leak that includes the latest versions...

For Comparison, Google is mentioned 3 times and they probably are part of all the same programs.