Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 90 posts

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#51

Post by jared314 »

mseebach wrote: post #49
kunai wrote: post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

The reason freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition and host of other freedoms are important is that, from time to time, you need to use them. Democracy isn't a guarantee that everything will be perfect, quite the opposite, but that we have a reasonable chance of rightening a wrong without erecting guillotines on the national mall. The challenge IMO isn't petitioning Congress, it's petitioning the…

That is one reason I wish this leak had happened two years ago, or two years from now, when it could affect the Patriot Act extension vote. The only thing members of congress can do now is try to defund it, because voting to repeal it might be political suicide.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#53

Post by amirmc »

zer0gravity wrote: post #41
kunai wrote: post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data: - hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain - Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client) - Installed ftp server ( vsftpd ) - Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer ) Planning to: - install my own xmpp server I want to create an integrated, user centered platfor…

I'm looking at doing something similar. Are you writing about any of this as you go? Would be interesting to learn about the hurdles.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#54

Post by notdrunkatall »

bdamm wrote: post #33
nano111 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a mesh network using the unused analog TV frequencies probably would be nice and useful

Or a mesh network consisting of wifi nodes might be good too. The trick is in the routing.

There's something like that already in the works:

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#55

Post by TeMPOraL »

zer0gravity wrote: post #46
tn13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I wonder why cant we create too many false positives for them to make the whole data meaningless ? Instead of hiding all our private communication we can generate fake communication across the whole internet which might raise flags in NSA's system. (I would have given more concrete examples but I am scared that tomorrow some NSA freak might knock on my door.)

What you're proposing is like this: I want to say a sentence to someone, but in order for an unintended listener not to understand what I'm saying I will say 10 sentences. Five of which will be "I will kill you and everyone you know" and "I will bomb America". Isn't that just a meaningless waste of energy? -- The government spies on you because you make it easy for it to do it. Instead, keep your personal data person…

> Isn't that just a meaningless waste of energy?

It is. People suck at being random, so there's a good chance that those "false positives" will actually be trivially filtered out. And even if not immediately, this is an algorithmic problem - they will just throw few dozen kUSD at some math and CS graduates to make it go away.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#57

Post by arethuza »

adrianbg wrote: post #48
_bfhp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause? It's always money. Lawrence Lessig makes this clear, in a TED talk no less ( http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t... )

The root cause is power, of which money is a conveniently quantifiable manifestation. Power-seeking has occurred continually over time since human populations became dense enough to extrude persistent hierarchies.

Dominance hierarchies are pretty common amongst animals - so we have probably inherited this bheaviour from our non-human ancestors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#58

Post by DanBC »

zer0gravity wrote: post #41
kunai wrote: post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data: - hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain - Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client) - Installed ftp server ( vsftpd ) - Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer ) Planning to: - install my own xmpp server I want to create an integrated, user centered platfor…

Hosting your own email server is sub-optimal for several reasons.

Email is still being sent as plain text. Encryption is possible even if you're using someone else's server.

Your deliverability is reliant upon other people's good will. Those people have no idea who Joe Sixpack in Idaho is, and have no reason to extend goodwill. Your deliverability is also subject to wingnuts using a variety of good and not so good blocklists. You may find your time is better spent doing work rather than working around various weird blocklist delisting policies.

Hosting your own email does nothing to prevent traffic analysis.

The only thing it does is to stop your email being held in a big bunch at an email providers servers, but you can do that by wiping it from their servers and holding a local store. (tl;dr use a commercial email provider but keep your email on your machines not theirs; encrypt everything before sending it; consider using tor if you want anonymity.)

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#59

Post by notdrunkatall »

mehwoot wrote: post #29
milhous wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good way to do it would be to radically downsize the federal government and return back to limited constitutional government. The less money they have, the less stuff they can do. Return power (and tax revenues) back to the states so that the people of that state can have a more powerful influence in state/local politics instead of everyone pleading, fighting, and begging at the national level in Washington. And si…

The less money they have, the less stuff they can do. Iran-Contra, anybody? And the president that was in charge was a small government hero. And since radical downsizing won't happen voluntarily, as both political parties are corrupt and incompetent, the only way I can see this happening is for the government to continue borrowing and spending money into oblivion, which will ultimately trigger an economic default. A…

Except they never starved anything. Government expenditures did not decline in any meaningful way.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#60

Post by mseebach »

jared314 wrote: post #51
mseebach wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition and host of other freedoms are important is that, from time to time, you need to use them. Democracy isn't a guarantee that everything will be perfect, quite the opposite, but that we have a reasonable chance of rightening a wrong without erecting guillotines on the national mall. The challenge IMO isn't petitioning Congress, it's petitioning the…

That is one reason I wish this leak had happened two years ago, or two years from now, when it could affect the Patriot Act extension vote. The only thing members of congress can do now is try to defund it, because voting to repeal it might be political suicide.

> because voting to repeal it might be political suicide.

Then provide political cover.

Post reply on HN