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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

#191

Post by Vivtek »

altcognito wrote: post #80
Vivtek wrote: 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.

In fact, it's not even the point. Invasion of privacy is by definition, done wrong . Are we willing to give up all of our privacy to prevent a very, very small number of incidents.

No, it actually is the point, because it's perfectly OK for Santa Claus to know whether you've been bad or good - Santa Claus is inherently trustworthy and won't tell your boss, deny you travel privileges, sell your company short, or give bad rich kids presents instead of coal.

So the day I see a reindeer with a glowing nose landing on my roof, I will consider allowing the elves to collect all the information they want, as long as the storage center is at the North Pole.

In the meantime, invasion of privacy will continue to be done wrong.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#192

Post by Strshps1MoreTim »

pyre wrote: post #187
Strshps1MoreTim wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules are made to broken (especially on a site called Hacker News) ;-) Plus I don't think jacquesm's "Please leave" has anything to do with the rules. Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite: 1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account…

Re: Item 1 and Item 2 Are you claiming that the government 'whipped up' the terrorist attack in under 24 hours?

No, a possible scenario is there was a group of Pentagon employes that knew about the missing money and were pushing for investigation for months. 9/11 was (among other targets) a way to delay the investigation, eliminate key people/evidence and give a lesson to the rest.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#193

Post by Strshps1MoreTim »

belorn wrote: post #170
dreamdu5t wrote: post #116

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…

So true. Most of the democracies/republics in human history were destroyed by power concentration in the hands of a few.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#194

Post by Strshps1MoreTim »

d0ne wrote: post #165
jacquesm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 suggestio…

Great idea d0ne. I hope you do understand, that what the boys in Washington hate most, are people thinking they have rights and taking actions to protect them. If this gets any coverage, don't be surprised by the pressure to give up (tax audits, no-flight list, credit ratings).

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#195

Post by gtirloni »

jacquesm wrote: post #162
ragmondo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone with power/influence enough. Like it has always been.

It doesn't matter if the person is known to the general public or not. Money/power/influence is what matters in our present world.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#196

Post by tripzilch »

belorn wrote: post #170
dreamdu5t wrote: post #116

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…

> If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social benefits could be rerouted away.

Surveillance is no replacement for legwork. They're not catching that many criminals (or "terrorists") with it right now, and in order to have an effect like you describe they need to catch most if not all of them. Surveillance isn't a panacea like that (even if you ignore the freedom aspect), even with perfect total information awareness, there's a ceiling of efficiency.

The thing you describe, to run smoothly is just about the same amount of trouble and effort for a government, as it would be to rule with actual justice, civil liberties, privacy, etc.

The truth is, all this surveillance shit is NOT really about protecting the public and reducing crime. It may be useful but not that useful, definitely not billons-of-dollars useful, the amounts that are being invested in this tech. It's about the state protecting its place, keeping the status quo and people covering their asses. In a healthy country, those two goals are aligned. In many countries, including the USA, they aren't. Also, money and power. Actually it's just power, money is secondary.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#197

Post by mindcrime »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
mindcrime wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here I think that would be accurate if it read: And some of the top information security experts in the world are working for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here There are some pretty goddamned smart people in the cypherpunk / hacker community, who would (and do) find this kind of surveil…

I'm with you on the 'some', I should have been more careful with the wording there. Yes, there are indeed lots of smart people who find this crap abhorrent and who will work to resist it. But I don't think they're the majority. Not even close. Individuals such as Phil Zimmerman are making a real difference. But money is a powerful motivator. Lots of people will do very stupid things when offered enough money. Governm…

For now this is an unbalanced situation.

Agreed. I was just trying to point out that there are at least a few talented folks on "our side".

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#198

Post by cheeseprocedure »

shmerl wrote: post #154
cheeseprocedure wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a chance to speak to one of the lead developers at Palantir a couple years back, and asked him about this apparent conflict of political ideals. His answer: by enabling agencies to properly apply the data they already have, Palantir's products reduce the pressure to further erode civil liberties in the pursuit of more data.

Didn't IBM help we know whom to sort their victims' data during the WWII? This kind of argument doesn't work.

I'm not sure that comparison is in the same ballpark. (I'm also not supporting his stance.)

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#199

Post by pyre »

Vivtek wrote: post #190
pyre wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They (the FBI) didn't know that this was connected to the director of the CIA when they started the investigation. They only made the connection to him after getting information from Google without judicial oversight.

No, the biographer also had a clearance. They were actually within their rights. Whether it was a gainful use of resources given the origin of the tip is dubious, but they weren't actually violating the judicial oversight requirement, as far as I understand it.

They didn't know who it was connected to at all before getting information from Google. Claiming that they both had clearances, and gave up a right to private email is trying to forgive these things after the fact.

Unknown individuals should be assumed to have privacy rights. You can't break into someone random person's house, then find out that they committed a crime, and say that the warrant-less search was now a-ok.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#200

Post by barking »

nitrogen wrote: post #188
barking wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but you have gone off on a tangent there. We weren't arguing about the effectiveness of the policy just the rationale behind it, I believe. I don't have any stats on that, do you?

Effectiveness is the only rationale that should matter. Also, you might benefit from having a look around http://lesswrong.com/ ; many of the arguments you will see on HN are grounded in the concepts of Bayesian rationality described there.

Thanks for the link, I'll have a look at it. What I meant by rationale was the reasoning behind the policy, it's actual effectiveness would, I guess, only become apparent in practice.
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