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Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

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Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the worry should be that people just shorten all that to "USA", and give up. I've done exactly that. Too bad, there are a lot of really nice people there that I consider close friends.

You seem to have been around (here at least) for a while... is there a story here, or are you just cutting off your nose to spite your face? EDIT: Removed leading "Honestly?". Am serious if an experience led to this.

I've lived on the US/Canadian border for several years and I've seen enough of US immigration to last me a lifetime.

The specific incident that made me decide to stop visiting the US took place at an airport but that merely made the bucket overflow, it was already pretty full.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#162

Why I'm worried about a surveillance state? Because the people in charge will have their records protected while everyone else gets the surveillance. Our president committed crimes his justice department jails people for (illegal drugs). Drug testing is a perfect example of the surveillance state. The people who don't get tested? The testers. The legislators. The people in charge. I know there are technical problems…

Case in point - the uk "contactpoint" database - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContactPoint - a database mandated by MPs that should contains all information about every child under the age of 18. Anyone excluded? Yep you guessed it - MP's children.

I read that whole thing. Pretty amazing it got as far as it did, and from what I understood reading the article it was the children of celebrities that were going to be excluded. Which makes me wonder what would be considered a celebrity.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rationale that includes P(B|A) but not P(A|B) is not a rational one. I have been asking you to evaluate the legitimacy of the rationale by considering P(A|B).

Given that terrorists are very rare then the P(A|B) using your terminology (where A = terrorist and B= bad record) will be very low. But for for a fixed P(A) and P(B) then the higher the value there is for P(B|A) the higher the value of P(A|B) will be. If you have an enornmous haystack to search it's more efficient to look first where you're most likely to find needles.

P(B|A) can be 100%, but if P(A) is astronomically small (and it is) and if P(B) very high (and it is), then P(A|B) will be so low that it becomes clear P(B|A) is absolutely worthless.

As an extreme example demsonstrating the necessity of considering P(A|B), suppose we observe that 100% the 9/11 hijackers had black hair (P(black hair|terrorist) = 100%). That observation is worthless because P(terrorist|black hair) is stupidly low.

Just because we can say something about the traits a terrorist will likely have does not mean that we can rationally use those traits to detect terrorists.

If you are proposing a P(B|A), it is on you to show that the P(A|B) is sensible. Just pointing at a high P(B|A) alone is worthless. That's how you make good "Tonight at 11', is [common household objects] killing you slowly?!?" headlines, but that is about it.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#164
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Done right". There's your problem. Done right, Marxism is a good thing. Done right, a dictatorship is the most efficient form of government. But we are, in fact, dealing in sloppy reality, where many things - by their very nature - cannot be done right. No matter how hard we try, or how earnestly we believe in fairies, these things will not be done right. They will inevitably devolve into tyranny.

"Done Right" means that he wants to provide a default assumption of trust for government actions. However, the bill of rights is based upon a default distrust, and he may want to research why that was the case.

No, it means I believe that with the right pieces of law (e.g., the bill of rights), we can govern ourselves relatively successfully (e.g., the United States government)

As clearly evidenced by the bill of rights and the US government, you don't have to implicitly trust your government to grant them power without finding yourself in the middle of a dictatorship police state.

(Yes, I know, some people believe the USA is a police state, but IMO they are the fringe and have never experienced a real police state)

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#165
post #145

My company will sponsor $5,000 for the best idea submission for mitigation techniques against these types of systems. Any suggestion on the best service to use host this / receive submissions? We will: 1) Open source all submitted ideas. 2) Let the community choose the top 5 and we will hold an internal review process for the top spot. 3) Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submissio…

> Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submission in details with some of the top information security experts in the world. That may be a bit prohibitive, given that they will still have to use air travel, possibly to and at least within the USA. I figure the people that come up with a mitigation against a system like this would be very smart to stay the hell away from claiming credi…

Hi there,

That is optional for the winner(s) :)

However, our company actually does have some of the foremost information security experts as investors (Founders / CTOs / CEOs of PGP Corp, Internet Security Systems, CipherTrust, PureWire, NitroSecurity among others).

We also work closely with some of the leading researchers at the leading engineering universities in the area of cyber security.

Always open to suggestion regarding the structure of the overall process for an event such as this!

Thank you.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#166
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most politicians, Tony Benn changed with time. Although in the unlikely way: the other way around . Tony Blair wasn't around Nassau (Trident, the successor to Polaris, was signed off by Thatcher, and it also precedes Blair). youtu.be/rokTiJfL4WY

Sorry, I was about as wrong as is possible!

no problem, History isn't simple (for many reasons)

Certainly, the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory involves, for Europeans, multiple risks. Many of them are similar to the risks and dangers faced by the citizens of any of the countries possessing an atomic arsenal. The usefulness and desirability of which may be subject to debate. Including whether the risks are worth to be taken in the service of a politico-military strategy of national defence (or, conversely, must be rejected in view of universal peace and total disarmament). It is up to each and everyone to take a stance according to their beliefs, their world views, their perception and ranking of hazards, et cetera. For us here, all this is irrelevant. Because in this case, the question does not even arise. Thanks to another dimension of NATO nuclear "sharing", which is highly reflective of transatlantic relations. Whereas in the nuclear power countries the debate can focus on the articulation of the nuclear force with an overall strategy (importance attributed, or not, to the concept of deterrence), here, to the contrary, the (U.S.) nuclear force, and the myth of the protective umbrella that accompanies it, is a pretext used to justify the lack of (European) strategy. As well as providing a comfortable smokescreen that allows the governments of the old continent to stay, ultimately, flawlessly aligned on the United States – even if this means to become accomplices of a nuclear strategy in the development and implementation of which they cannot even dream of having a little bit of say. Alas, they already feel happy when they are, more or less correctly and more or less timely, informed on the subject.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange question. How do you "pretend" something when the security personnel have your passport information, and for citizens, a lot more?

E.g. by buying a fake russian passport for $200, stating your nationality is Jewish.

It would be a career limiting move - to put it mildly - to try to pass Israeli immigration with a fake $200 passport that states that you are Jewish when you're not.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if they actually expect people to be honest about that. You paid a lot for that plane ticket, and these people can turn you away for what amounts to any arbitrary reason. Would you really want to tell them about how "undesirable" you are?

Apparently they do, if you are turned away for not being honest.

You're phrasing this as if he was dishonest, but he may have been merely forgetful. Ask me what I did 20 years ago and I probably wouldn't know either. Was that time I got taken into a police station for driving a French car in the Netherlands an arrest or not? I really don't know and I think if I judged that I'd never been arrested (not charged, nothing heard from since) that I would be on the right side of that line.

So this could easily happen to me. Or, it could happen to me if I still came to the US, which I don't.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#169
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brit, I have a huge problem with all this. In the old days of US funded IRA attacks against amongst other things, our government, we never let the terrorists win. We didn't budge our principles or give up core freedoms. Sure our side did some very iffy things to combat the terror, but it was still illegal. We didn't try to legitimise it by tearing up principles that applied to normal people. But once 9/11 happen…

9/11 was an inside job, designed (along other things) to take away personal freedoms.

Please leave.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#170

Why I'm worried about a surveillance state? Because the people in charge will have their records protected while everyone else gets the surveillance. Our president committed crimes his justice department jails people for (illegal drugs). Drug testing is a perfect example of the surveillance state. The people who don't get tested? The testers. The legislators. The people in charge. I know there are technical problems…

As Eben Moglen said in his speech in Berlin. If we don't do something soon, we are going to be living in the age past forgetting. Nothing will ever be forgotten again. Everything one do, everything one say, everything one reads, listen to, or think about is recoded and saved for all eternity.

This 5 years the article talk about. Do anyone really believe than in 5 years, they won't extend it further? It will continue to the point in which either everything is stored forever, or push back actually takes away this pandora box from the government.

No goverment ever want to be with less information about the population. If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social benefits could be rerouted away. If they could predict who is going to become political candidates, they could adjust information flows away or towards that person. If they can predict who is voting for who, they can direct support/anti-support to "encourage" the right result.

This is why I am worried about a surveillance state. With a large enough database of population information, and prediction models, democracy will be eroded to the point of destruction.

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