Yes, it is time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: Both criminal - and a betrayal of the people of the United States of America.
The Criminal N.S.A.
61–70 of 116 posts
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#62Please talk to people who lived under oppresive regimes (former Eastern Block) and see for yourself what it meant to live in a society of paranoia, snitching, informants, secret service, fake patriotism etc.. embedded IN every aspect of social life (work, neighbours EVEN families).
Americans can't grasp this because they never experienced it, that's why you need to talk to people who did, otherwise your children will be sorry.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#63Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?
You can't do almost all of the things (facebook, gmail, etc) that the public has become very accustomed to and relies on as everyday conveniences with end to end encryption. Perhaps with some massive backing of major corporations and decades long education efforts you could make a little headway into surveillance-proofing all communications
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#64Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?
That's why I did this;
https://github.com/etherael/phoneme
It's not perfect, but I think the first step to widespread crypto adoption is getting people accustomed to the workflow of fully encrypted email. Phoneme + mailvelope is not a huge jump from the current gmail experience and just that initial taste might be enough to get more people on the right track.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#65The blowback from this mess could very soon be more severe than everyone might think. I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company operations in their jurisdictions. The bans in the foreign nations could easily stem from foreign business owners pressuring their politicians to ban American-operated companies under the guise of national security, privacy, and anti-American-power-mongering, but their…
> I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company operations
That will probably not happen.
But what will happen, and have a small but ultimately significant effect, is that American companies will lose some contracts, by the narrowest of margins in a decision... contracts they would otherwise have won by a narrowest of margins... due to the fallout from the NSA surveillance scandal.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#66Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…
We should be doing this. The United States' organic law is based on natural rights. Defined as the innate right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our rights do not come from the Bill of Rights. If the US repealed or diminished the Fourth Amendment then we'd have the Right of Revolution to alter or abolish said government based on the organic law. (Many people will disagree with this saying the US organic…
Who would punish governments for violating innate natural law, if not the people from whom they derive the power to govern?
This is just a corollary of what Niemöller said, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#67Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?
That isn't a sufficient solution. These spying programs are the beginnings of totalitarism. They have to be repealed.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?
I agree with this but why not take it a step further? We're hackers, working on tools/applications that facilitate the transfer of information - why don't we implement encryption from the get-go? There wouldn't be a need to 'popularize' something exists by default. GnuPG/PGP are fairly trivial to implement; here's some apps that are ripe for production: - Messaging application that exchanges public keys on first cont…
Governments can still gather the metadata of encrypted emails. Both PGP and S/MIME do not encrypt the subject line, sender or recipient addresses.
To use encrypted email and hide the subject line, you need to not use it (just say "Encrypted email") or something. This cannot be made automatic without impacting UX.
The To: header fundamentally cannot be removed. The sender can be inferred from the account within the email provider supplying the Government's feed.
I like the idea for MUAs to automatically encrypt after a mutual automatic key exchange though. I think PGP would be more suitable for this (no CAs required). Is there a standard email header that advertises "you can reply back to me with a PGP encrypted email encrypted to key ID X and I'll be able to read it automatically"? If not, somebody should propose one. Public keyservers exist so I see no reason a simple header like this wouldn't suffice. The rest is MUA implementation.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - note the lack of front-page coverage of this story in the New York Times 1. As of right now, the story is linked to on the front page in the Opinion box since this is an opinion piece and not a news piece. If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy. 2. The story of the NSA surveillance was front page on the NY Times when it broke and for about a week or two after. 3. The Mainstre…
> If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy. All "news" is someone's, or a group of someones, opinion. There's no such thing as objective journalism. > chicken little reddit-level bullshit It's only been a couple of weeks since people became aware that the largest spy agency in the world is spying on pretty much anything they can get a bead on. Perhaps cutting people some slack unti…
Nobody is claiming all news is objective. I also think that the constant claims about 'msm' 'ignoring' important stories is annoying, incorrect and in fact distracting from the proper discussion to be had.
There is in fact a very distinct difference between opinion articles and 'proper' news articles. You see, journalism is not a claim to objective truth, but a procedure aimed at achieving a minimum level of validity where it comes to events. When you read a news article, you should (to some extent) be able to trust its contents on the merits of the journalistic method. Whereas with an opinion piece, it's not bound by this procedure. Note - nobody is arguing 'absolute objectivity' here. It's a matter of trust in a procedure. Of course, it's fine to distrust the journalistic method, to not see it as absolute truth, but to deny or entirely dismiss the distinction is annoyingly daft.
Also, afaik, this story is still everywhere. If you want it to remain that way, start working for change - newspapers report on events, not 'the truth'. Make events happen, and it stays in the cycle.
Re: The Criminal N.S.A.
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?
How do we do that when people don't care about privacy?
By making the solutions so simple that they pick them because they don't care either way, but make it slightly more annoying for people still on non-end-to-end crypto services to communicate with those who are.
If there's enough people who care, then hopefully network effects would slowly take care of the rest.