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The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

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Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#161

Post by dr_dshiv »

nabnob wrote: post #44
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

People don't get how lucky they are with the idea and mythos of America. I think the world declines when we don't believe in the specific vision of government by the people for the people. Of course, just having the right philosophy isn't enough. We still need to embody it. But we are damn lucky to have such a good founding philosophy and I highly doubt if we could do better today.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#162

Post by shadowgovt »

syshum wrote: post #151
shadowgovt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2 The Twin Towers were destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, and an additional plane was crashed, via a successful conspiracy that could have been detected by blanket, passive surveillance. That's what changed. The threat model the US defense department is concerned about has changed significantly since WWII. The threat to Pax Americana is not direct military interv…

So that is how liberty dies, and terrorism wins... With thunderous applause from a scared and panic citizenry that unable to understand statistical risk instead believing the propaganda of fear that will ultimately see the erosion of both their liberty and the safety they so foolishly believed the government would provide if they just gave up that essential liberty

The threat model has fundamentally changed, and I'm not so convinced it's acceptable to tell people "We will change nothing because you probably won't die" when the mode of death strikes directly at perception of day-to-day safety.

American tolerance of that, from terrorism to gun ownership, is changing.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#163

Post by shadowgovt »

malandrew wrote: post #139
shadowgovt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I can point to an era in US history where an attack on a couple buildings resulting in thousands dead would have been brushed under the rug as "Well, death just happens." I'd even argue that's not a healthy response to a human-caused tragedy like that. Seeing death as normal and natural carries its own antisocial pathologies. War is more justifiable if "Everyone has to die some time."

That's a strawman that doesn't try to interpret the point I'm trying to make from the strongest possible position. I'm not suggesting that an event like that should be just brushed under the rug as "Well, death just happens." I'm saying that the response to that event such as the Patriot Act and other safety-above-liberty-at-all-costs measures would have received a lot more scrutiny and been seen as disproportional.…

My understanding of the history of American responses to being attacked inclines me to disagree with that assessment. Consider how many liberties were given up during WWII after Pearl Harbor---the government basically nationalized resource distribution. To say nothing of what Americans considered tolerable to do to their Asian-American neighbors.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#164

Post by rmrfstar »

mirimir wrote: post #140
shadowgovt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the laws discussed in this article, the FBI can gain access to the logs of one's ISP (or VPN provider) without a warrant. So they can trace a suspect's TCP traffic without any duty to notify anyone they're doing so.

Sure, but reputable (from a privacy sense, anyway) VPN providers don't even retain any logs. Some providers just run everything in RAM, so no data ever touches disk. And there may not even be a disk. And then you can route through Tor, I2P, Orchid or Lokinet. For any of those, getting logs from enough nodes to figure out browsing history would be nontrivial. I suppose you could then be charged with "evasion" or whate…

> Everyone will be running it, because it spreads so aggressively, and anyone who wants can use it, without leaving any traces.

This reminds me of 90s era cypherpunk optimism. If recent history teaches us anything, it is that surveillance wins the cat and mouse game.

There is no technical solution. We have to work through the legislature. That means convincing people that this apparatus is a threat to middle class professionals, not just "information activists" or whatever.

The abundance of throwaway accounts on this thread is a testament to the chilling effect these policies have.

Privacy is a losing frame. We need new ideas.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#165

Post by shadowgovt »

komali2 wrote: post #150
shadowgovt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did "you're fucked" mean the Constitution is degrading? That's, I believe, parent poster's point; without qualifiers, there's no conversation to be had on the topic. Because that is the dichotomy of early 21st-century America: objective measures of "how the country's doing" are at odds with subjective concepts like "Are we free?" You have to start by even coming to agreement that less "freedom" (and one should probab…

> You have to start by even coming to agreement that less "freedom" (and one should probably qualify that---freedom from what, freedom to do what) for more GDP, more safety, more prosperity is a bad thing. We don't have to agree at all. It is a bad thing. If you think trading freedom for the right to more plutocrat oversight is good, what's the point of even discussing at all?

> what's the point of discussing

Consensus; same as always.

And cross-pollination of ideas.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#166

Post by ta17711771 »

waffle_ss wrote: post #134
shadowgovt wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tricky number to tease out. One must ask how "actual amount of crime" is measured. Oftentimes, one finds a feedback loop between arrest rate counting and instances of crime counting that means all kinds of confounding factors enter into the number (including distribution of police patrol resources and likelihood police will let an infringement off with a warning).

It's not very tricky at all. A random sampling of citizens are asked if they experienced violent crime (including instances not reported to police), and if so, to describe the offender (ethnicity being just one component).[1] Year after year the random samples of victimization correlates with arrest rate by ethnicity. [1]: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245#Methodolog...

I wonder if any of those surveyed included banking crimes in their list that affected them.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#167

Post by ta17711771 »

cwkoss wrote: post #63
jimbob45 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette... Let's not pretend that things are materially worse than they were back then. We certainly aren't blackmailing civil rights leaders into suicide anymore within the FBI.

How do we know they aren't? King letter only came to light because citizens stole it from an FBI office. Maybe the FBI just has tighter security now.

Ding-ding-ding.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#168

Post by ta17711771 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #52
Jah6Aihe wrote: post #9

Here is what I do myself to avoid surveillance culture, in case anyone find it useful. 1. I always use local apps rather than webservices if possible. I use only free software, built from source, to be sure there's no tracker in it (I would love to find a way to whitelist which apps can access the network, but I haven't found a way for that yet). There's almost always a way to perform a task locally. 2. I have a copy…

Props to you for being so privacy-minded. I'd like to have such foresight but these habits seem so time-consuming I think I'd rather just not use the web again.

They're not that time consuming.

Compare it to knitting. It might take a few days to get good, or a few weeks to get great at it.

But after that? It's second-nature.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#169

Post by mirimir »

rmrfstar wrote: post #164
mirimir wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but reputable (from a privacy sense, anyway) VPN providers don't even retain any logs. Some providers just run everything in RAM, so no data ever touches disk. And there may not even be a disk. And then you can route through Tor, I2P, Orchid or Lokinet. For any of those, getting logs from enough nodes to figure out browsing history would be nontrivial. I suppose you could then be charged with "evasion" or whate…

> Everyone will be running it, because it spreads so aggressively, and anyone who wants can use it, without leaving any traces. This reminds me of 90s era cypherpunk optimism. If recent history teaches us anything, it is that surveillance wins the cat and mouse game. There is no technical solution. We have to work through the legislature. That means convincing people that this apparatus is a threat to middle class pr…

Yeah, I guess. I suspect that authorities are planning ahead. As we get further into the jackpot (see Gibson's Peripheral and Agency) there'll be more and more disorder and chaos. And so there'll be a need for more surveillance and control.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#170

Post by syshum »

shadowgovt wrote: post #162
syshum wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that is how liberty dies, and terrorism wins... With thunderous applause from a scared and panic citizenry that unable to understand statistical risk instead believing the propaganda of fear that will ultimately see the erosion of both their liberty and the safety they so foolishly believed the government would provide if they just gave up that essential liberty

The threat model has fundamentally changed, and I'm not so convinced it's acceptable to tell people "We will change nothing because you probably won't die" when the mode of death strikes directly at perception of day-to-day safety. American tolerance of that, from terrorism to gun ownership, is changing.

>>The threat model has fundamentally changed

Not really, Authoritarian governments through out history have still killed more people than all of terrorism put together.

The Threat Model is still Authoritarian government...

>I'm not so convinced it's acceptable to tell people "We will change nothing because you probably won't die"

What is not acceptable is telling people "just give up your liberty and you will be safe" history proved that is never the case, government will (not if, or can but WILL) abuse that power, and the end result will be mass death

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