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

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

#81

Post by RyanMcGreal »

arethuza wrote: post #57
adrianbg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Constitutional politics to evolutionary psychology in four comments: this is why I keep coming back to HN.

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

#82

Post by IgorPartola »

DanBC wrote: post #64
zer0gravity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to start by holding my own data. (While you my be right that big providers allow to wipe your mails, they can make copies). I just don't want for a third party to relay my data in the first place. While your points are right there are solutions, and in the long run it's worth it

You make a good point, and I had forgotten about the legal requirements for some providers to make and keep copies.

More than that. Big companies have big backups. Once a piece of information leaves localhost it is logged somewhere permanently. Even if you go and purge all your email now, Google is not going to spool up tape backups and erase all copies.

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

#83

Post by rickhanlonii »

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…

Hanlon's razor is my favorite of all razors, and is the principle that keeps me calm in moments like this:

>Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I don't think that the (mostly lawyers) who represent us and run this country are malicious. They're just incompetent. They're simply not qualified to understand and make decions in the fields that they affect. So they call in 'experts' to help , who end up working for or being otherwise paid by a particular group or corporation. Of course these people are paid to bias their groups preference, so the 'expert' advise they give them is tainted, and the representative has no basis to detect the bullshit.

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

#84

Post by ryusage »

Qantourisc wrote: post #32

I still wonder why humans outside the US are of less value then the peaple inside it... Or aren't we humans ? Also where is StopWatching.eu ? Cause the site is made for us :p

To be fair, part of the US government's job is to protect its citizens against outside threats. Given that, I can't imagine anyone inside the US arguing that they should stop spying on other countries' citizens. I'm pretty sure that's the NSA's actual job.

And anyway, there's a huge difference between being spied on by a foreign government versus your own. My own government actually has some amount of authority and influence over me and my community, whereas some place like the UK has little to none, so it's less of a big deal.

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

#85

Post by lifeisstillgood »

pyre wrote: post #38
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dictator's wet dream I expect the same was said about satellites, telephone tapping, etc Our defence against dictators does not lie in technology but in the ballot box. 2. Again the ballot box is the defence, but the reason it gets used is people are educated about the technology and the implications of abuse. I doubt that a US to ernment that took away a right to silence would suffer a few outcries from geeks. The…

The government has more resources than common citizens have. Sure the government is losing privacy, but citizens can't be invasive of the government's privacy in the same way that the government is being invasive of citizens' privacy.

in aggregate we can, and will.

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

#86

Post by notdrunkatall »

ubernostrum wrote: post #74
notdrunkatall wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's almost as if there's a trend that people who go on and on and on about their commitment to "small government" principles suddenly abandon those principles the moment they're in power.

It's almost as if every politician does precisely that.

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

#87

Post by freshhawk »

tn13 wrote: post #44
zer0gravity wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.)

I do like the fuzzing idea, but you need some incentives in place. Bandwidth is pretty cheap these days but how would you convince people to install some software that just visited random websites and send randomly generated messages around? But how would actual people filter out the junk messages in a way that the NSA couldn't?

I seems unrealistic. Just run a Tor exit node and encourage a lot of other people to do the same, similar benefits and no downsides.

A more realistic and useful one would be for email clients sending mime email (almost all of them) to always send an encrypted version as well no matter the options in the client. No keys set up? Then just send random data that looks right.

Email providers might hate this because of the bandwidth but if you start sending a lot of encrypted data around right now you are going to match a profile you probably don't want to match. I think step one is to make sending encrypted text around a normal thing.

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

#88

Post by rickr »

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 have been messing around with this idea for a while with a few friends. I'd love to talk more if you're interested. You can find my contact details in my profile.

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

#89

Post by danbruc »

ryusage wrote: post #84
Qantourisc wrote: post #32

I still wonder why humans outside the US are of less value then the peaple inside it... Or aren't we humans ? Also where is StopWatching.eu ? Cause the site is made for us :p

To be fair, part of the US government's job is to protect its citizens against outside threats. Given that, I can't imagine anyone inside the US arguing that they should stop spying on other countries' citizens. I'm pretty sure that's the NSA's actual job. And anyway, there's a huge difference between being spied on by a foreign government versus your own. My own government actually has some amount of authority and i…

The distinction should definitely not be US vs foreign country citizens but unsuspicious vs suspicious people. Spying at unsuspicious foreigners is absolutely no better than spying at your own citizens - it's still a human rights violation.

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

#90

Post by pyre »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #85
pyre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has more resources than common citizens have. Sure the government is losing privacy, but citizens can't be invasive of the government's privacy in the same way that the government is being invasive of citizens' privacy.

in aggregate we can, and will.

Can and will invade the government's privacy how? Maybe by forcing them to be more transparent, but I don't view that as "invading the government's privacy."
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