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Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

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Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#81

Post by whatshisface »

baxtr wrote: post #72
eivarv wrote: post #24

The Norwegian parliament recently passed a bill that implements bulk metadata collection here as well. I tried debating with ministers, writing op-eds, and even organizing petitions (over 1000 security, privacy and tech professionals in a couple of days) before the vote. While every informed person I know thinks it's a bad idea, and every organization consulted massively criticized it as mass surveillance, a huge maj…

I’m almost at a point where I think a well programmed robot would do a better job using known heuristics and a method to test legislation for effectiveness.

All of the effort that goes in to exploiting the humans would turn to exploiting the heuristics.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#82

Post by l332mn »

chrisco255 wrote: post #77
casraso wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a specific example of such a process, check, and/or balance that the united states has that china does not?

The right to bear arms. The right to free speech. States rights. Hundreds of years of common law precedence. The 4th amendment. The fact that if a piece of evidence is acquired against you in an unlawful way it cannot be used against you in court as a US citizen. The right to a jury trial, etc etc.

Individual rights are not processes of checks and balances. Those rights can be withdrawn in a jiffy, whenever required or convenient. What good does the right to bear arms do you as an individual when you're deemed a dangerous criminal, or as a group when you're deemed a terrorist organization? What good does the right to free speech do you if your speech is inconsequential?

> The fact that if a piece of evidence is acquired against you in an unlawful way it cannot be used against you in court as a US citizen

The US has repeatedly manufactured and framed political dissidents when it has felt politically threatened historically. Those rights you're talking about were useless to them.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#83

Post by chrisco255 »

l332mn wrote: post #80
chrisco255 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started putting armed police in schools to defend against school shootings. Not to intimidate students. The school officers here are generally older cops working part time with not much time left before retirement. There still is a fundamental difference in the way that power is broken up in the US between states and federal and between different courts that are widely independent. You have a lot of levers to defe…

You don't think courts or government institutions in China are subject to or follow Chinese law, or do you think that the state is particularly prone to abuse of the law (moreso than in the US)? How do you suppose "fighting the CCP" would work in practice? If you are up against the legislative and judicial body itself, you have only the law to support you. It's not really a good sign as you think that people are winn…

Not at all. No. The CCP will bend the law and the laws don't go nearly far enough to protect the individual.

Obviously China is currently an authoritarian, uniparty state, so there's only one way to fight that: revolution.

> It's not really a good sign as you think that people are winning legal battles against the state anywhere, because that's merely a symptom of the state abusing the law in the first place.

Really? That's your argument? There are thousands of civil disagreement lawsuits that are generate from either unintentional mistakes or are grey area at best and far from clear even in statute. The law is of course, not a binary good vs evil thing.

> What matters is how much government abuse of the law that exists in the first place. It might be much higher in the US for all you know.

Obviously when the CCP controls the law, they are free to re-interpret it or rewrite it to place themselves clearly in those bounds. That's the beauty of absolute power, and the horror of it.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#84

Post by vkou »

pdonis wrote: post #78
vkou wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another way is to not give powers like this to governments in the first place. If politicians don't have decision making power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us by making a bad decision. It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a law that forbids a future parliament from repealing it.

> It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a law that forbids a future parliament from repealing it. Not giving powers to governments in the first place would be something at a higher level than parliamentary. In the US, it would be something like a Constitutional amendment. I agree that no such action, at any level, can ever be completely irreversible, in the sense that future citizens would never have to…

And who adds or repeals constitutional amendments? The government.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#85

Post by knolax »

chrisco255 wrote: post #75
casraso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans like to think they are immune to propaganda, or that for some reason other countries produce more of it than they do. What I have observed as someone not living in china or america is that they are roughly on equal footing and produce about as much deceptive trash as any other country, my own included. This means you will have a lot of americans answering your question by saying that america does less surve…

We started putting armed police in schools to defend against school shootings. Not to intimidate students. The school officers here are generally older cops working part time with not much time left before retirement. There still is a fundamental difference in the way that power is broken up in the US between states and federal and between different courts that are widely independent. You have a lot of levers to defe…

> generally far more rebellious culture.

Since the first English settlement in North America, America has had one successful regime change, China has had 3. It's rich seeing people who think standing around on the pavement and waiting for the police to come beat you is rebellion try to lecture others about "rebelliousness".

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#86

Post by l332mn »

chrisco255 wrote: post #83
l332mn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think courts or government institutions in China are subject to or follow Chinese law, or do you think that the state is particularly prone to abuse of the law (moreso than in the US)? How do you suppose "fighting the CCP" would work in practice? If you are up against the legislative and judicial body itself, you have only the law to support you. It's not really a good sign as you think that people are winn…

Not at all. No. The CCP will bend the law and the laws don't go nearly far enough to protect the individual. Obviously China is currently an authoritarian, uniparty state, so there's only one way to fight that: revolution. > It's not really a good sign as you think that people are winning legal battles against the state anywhere, because that's merely a symptom of the state abusing the law in the first place. Really?…

>Obviously when the CCP controls the law, they are free to re-interpret it or rewrite it to place themselves clearly in those bounds

That's the case with every state. Every state has absolute power. Every state, as the union of the legislative, judicial and executive branch are free to re-interpret, rewrite and judge according to how the state apparatus best functions. You seem to be confusing the issue at hand with your objections to the political structure of China. You know, the CCP has 90 million members, they have proper political processes according to Chinese law too. This is just the way politics works in China. Don't let your prejudice cloud your judgement. I get that you are dismissive of a one-party system, but I don't think that for example the union of the Democratic and the Republican party in the US shows any less totalitarian traits than the CCP at all. Given how there is practically zero correlation between votes in congress and the popularity of policies that are approved, I think they actually reveal a much more totalitarian form of government.

https://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congr...

The US two-party system is essentially next to useless in this regard. Given that the CCP is extremely popular among Chinese citizens, this shows that a multi-party system is not necessarily a more democratically legitimate form of government.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#87

Post by bundledock »

eivarv wrote: post #24

The Norwegian parliament recently passed a bill that implements bulk metadata collection here as well. I tried debating with ministers, writing op-eds, and even organizing petitions (over 1000 security, privacy and tech professionals in a couple of days) before the vote. While every informed person I know thinks it's a bad idea, and every organization consulted massively criticized it as mass surveillance, a huge maj…

Networks require metadata to function, so metadata will always be around to abuse unless you can somehow invent networks that don't require it, which I have a hard time imagining. That means the only available methods to fix this problem are probably legal and regulatory, not technical.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#88

Post by clairity »

aborsy wrote: post #22

Surveillance pertains to asymmetric information, a situation where a few in the society (those in power) have access to the information of the rest of the society (those not in power, namely, the public) but not conversely. The asymmetry of the information gives those in power great advantage over public. The rich and powerful claim, we monitor you to protect you, and to better serve you. The scope and the characteri…

right, the asymmetry needs to go the other way, e.g., sunshine laws. those in power should only be able to exercise power with complete transparency to the public, because of their ability to adversely affect many others, especially via tiny, hard-to-notice slices from each of us that erode our collective liberty and prosperity.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#89

Post by justanotheranon »

bouchard wrote: post #38

> In Canada key disclosure is covered under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms section 11(c) which states "any person charged with an offence has the right not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence;"[10] and protects the rights of individuals that are both citizens and non-citizens of Canada as long as they are physically present in Canada.[11] >In a 201…

in the Snowden leaks, there is a document that lists the opinions of NSA's legal counsel about a list of collection practices.

one of the questions is whether passwords sent across the network are considered metadata or content.

NSA legal says passwords are metadata. which means NSA can scan all traffic for passwords and steal them and no FISA warrant is needed, nor a subpoena.

of course NSA already has a dozen programs just for extracting passwords from UPSTREAM passive collection. and presumably this means everyone in the FVEYS gets access to everyone's passwords, since they pool their capabilities and collection.

whatever the Courts rule about local cops and passwords, it doesnt apply at the level of SIGINT collection, which enjoys its own separate and secret system of laws.

Re: Global Mass Surveillance – The Fourteen Eyes

#90

Post by justanotheranon »

there is no techinical solution to mass surveillance. Pandora's Box can never be closed and the average person will never throw away their cell phone and stop giving their Patterns of Life data to various Internet megacorps. Likewise, there is no political solution. Given the Patriot Act was so well designed to deceive is about mass surveillance, which we never would have voted for if we the governed were asked for our consent, it is therefore cosmically improbably that any politicians will be strong enough to cast the Deep State's One Ring into Mt Doom.

that leaves only one option.

acceleration.

i have slowly become convinced that the only solution to mass surveillance is to expand it as fast and as large as possible, in order to trigger a "Sum of All Fears" scale event, a spying scandal that eclipses all prior scandals, and which outrages hundreds of millions of people like never before. faith in govt and Democracy itself will be shaken and may not survive. that is merely the cost of restoring equillibrium and justice.

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