Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#191

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #159

metta2uall wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a future administration ever has the political power to implement totalitarianism we're stuffed. The lack of a mass surveillance system will not stop them as they will build one. Horrible totalitarian regimes have existed in the past with quite low-tech systems (e.g. East Germany, USSR).

I lived in a totalitarian regime similar to the ones you mentioned (Ceausescu’s Romania back in the ‘80s) and if his bad guys had had access to today’s surveillance tools we would have been really, really stuffed. As things were you “only” had to watch out for people who would rat you out to Securitate or to Stasi (in East Germany), not an ideal situation but manageable from a certain point on, one could live a decen…

Thank you for sharing your experience in a totalitarian regime.

I read The Aquariums Of Pyongyang [1] for a take on life and imprisonment in North Korea. Recommended read.

What is your take on Huawei giving 3G/4G technology to North Korea by proxy? Is North Korea technologically advanced enough to abuse technology to suppress its citizens?

Also, to get an idea of the amount of data collected nowadays [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aquariums_of_Pyongyang

[2] https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/frame_en.html

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#192

Post by skummetmaelk » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:49 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #49

> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.…

Just imagine the East German STASI with todays technology.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#193

Post by alwayslearning0 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:49 AM UTC

Tharkun wrote: post #171

Waterluvian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse for us non Americans. American public is generally more okay letting us get tested on. And we don't get to vote against it.

Yup. Apparently it's fine to spy on everyone else, everywhere else. Just not on US soil. Wiretapping everyone's communications, forcing SWIFT to forward details of everyone's bank transactions to the NSA. Because apparently the 7 billion non-Americans are all potential terrorists or some such nonsense.

Our continuous spying and surveillance of non Americans is the perfect answer to the naysayers that argue the government wouldn't spy on us if it could. It literally does everything it can to fuck everyone over it isn't legally not allowed to fuck.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#194

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:49 AM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #162

bamboozled wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why many Americans won’t give their guns away. Imagine (not saying it would be a good outcome), but what Hong Kong would be like right now if all citizens hard arms? Well maybe the whole thing wouldn’t have even started. But wow, it would be a very different scene. Instead it’s more a case of if the military wants to walk in and shutdown the place, it’s going to be a lot easier. Not entirely a gun rights advo…

Can't tell if the comment is satire. I guess it's best to assume it is and move on, since any discussion based on the assumption that it's not satire has already taken place many times, following predictable paths. Except that I can't keep myself from pointing out the orders of magnitude of difference in effectiveness between a cohesive, trained and organised force and a bunch of individuals, even if they were equall…

>> ... the orders of magnitude of difference in effectiveness between a cohesive, trained and organised force and a bunch of individuals

True for a head-on conflict, but the story in the article has the organised forces' equipment in a vulnerable place - 65Kft above a city.

Asymmetric activity in such a theatre would favour the armed civilian, for now at least.

Ground-based coordinated tracking with 1W laser on rudimentary automatic control could ground such devices. The gas-bag being a large, vulnerable target.

The relative ease of downing a tracking device, capturing, reverse-engineering then publicly reporting its capabilities should help keep them in check. For now.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#195

Post by davesmith1983 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:50 AM UTC

skummetmaelk wrote: post #192

apo wrote: post #49

> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.…

Just imagine the East German STASI with todays technology.

Go to China? You don't have to imagine.

Well the UK isn't much better now.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#196

Post by davesmith1983 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:51 AM UTC

jgtrosh wrote: post #144

taurath wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a new deal here. If everyone with power is allowed to just follow their incentives, we end up with an awful place for everyone. What is the contract between people, government and corporations that we can make that allows for the freedom in society that we value? It seems like both the corps and gov are teaming up against team people here.

In France we have a contract: if people are unhappy they rise against. If there's no risk of revolting, the fox is fearless in the chicken hen.

How many weeks of protest are in Paris now? It hasn't appeared to change anything.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#197

Post by Joeri » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 10:59 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #49

> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.…

The novelty here is a further reduction in cost by mounting it on balloons, but gorgon stare platforms for total surveillance have been rolled out in cities in the U.S. for several years now with plane-mounted camera arrays. Baltimore’s PD deployed it in secret in 2016 with money from a private donor without even informing the mayor.

The cost is rapidly falling to the point of inevitability for government actors and possibility for private players. Amazon balloons could track your physical shopping behavior to better target you with ads. Criminals could observe people and car movements in entire neighborhoods to better target burglaries and carjackings. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#198

Post by greglindahl » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

davesmith1983 wrote: post #195

skummetmaelk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just imagine the East German STASI with todays technology.

Go to China? You don't have to imagine. Well the UK isn't much better now.

The UK has put millions of its citizens in prison because of their religion?

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#199

Post by CapacitorSet » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

alex_duf wrote: post #147

jgtrosh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France we have a contract: if people are unhappy they rise against. If there's no risk of revolting, the fox is fearless in the chicken hen.

As a french person I don't see that going very well or being very effective. Now our police force (CRS) are just military and dress like robocop for any confrontation. People get hurt, the news outlets take the government side and the problems stays the same.

It's a matter of cost and disincentives.

Want to pass a law that cuts on workers' rights in a country that typically doesn't protest? Sure, go ahead. Want to do that in France? You'll think twice about it after the clashes of 1st May and of the gilets jaunes.

Re: Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

#200

Post by tandem_bike » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 11:16 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #49

> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.…

>"Cost has protected citizens of the world's liberal democracies from sliding into totalitarianism for a long time. Now the brakes are off. Surveillance technology costs are plunging across at the board and capabilities are skyrocketing."

That is false. The collective political will and desire to maintain Democratic institutions, not some prohibitive cost of surveillance capabilities, is what has saved us from totalitarianism.

You are putting the cart before the horse. Totalitarian states establish or use surveillance capabilities to maintain their own power, but many liberal democracies today have more expansive and effective surveillance than the Nazis or the Soviets could have come up with in even their wildest fever dreams.