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Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

schneier.com

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Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#101

Post by specialist »

tkellogg wrote: post #8
twoodfin wrote: post #6

It's interesting to compare the framing of this column with Schneier's commentary on the revelations of NSA surveillance in 2005: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/nsa_and_bushs_... It's full of "Bush did X", "Bush wanted Y". Now he says the NSA has "gone rogue". Huh. If Schneier is as unhappy with today's programs as he was with 2005's, then perhaps he should communicate a bit more clearly that today's o…

I don't think its as simple as "ending it with a phone call". Billion dollar programs don't ever get killed that easy.

I think you have the gist of it. The cliche is that it's easier to great a government program than to kill it.

Further, there have been numerous prior attempts to rein in people like Poindexter and Hayden. The champions of the surveillance state have been remarkably tenacious.

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#102

Post by dalek_cannes »

junto wrote: post #33

The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Neither Democrats nor Republicans will change this. Due to the way that the political system works, a third party isn't possible. In the UK we have a Conservative/Liberal coalition, where traditionally Liberals were strong privacy advocates, but now turn a blind eye to the massive Orwellian/Huxley-esque society g…

And a later and lesser thinker said (according to article):

"Trust but verify" - Ronald Reagan

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#103

Post by specialist »

dspeyer wrote: post #96
ihsw wrote: post #3

Personally I reserve trust for people, and I have standards and expectations for non-people. I'm sure General Alexander, DNI Clapper, and Michael Hayden are good people that would make excellent neighbors (if I were so inclined I would likely consider them personal friends) -- but in their official duties they are intractable foes. I would apply the same term "intractable foe" to every other person acting in their pr…

Do you buy food from a supermarket? Do you test it for salmonella and ecoli using your own bio-lab? Do you fly on commercial (or governmental) airlines? Do you personally preflight the plane? Even if you trust every member of these organizations, that isn't enough. It's them acting as organizations that allows them to achieve safety. If you don't trust organizations, you basically can't function in society.

Which organizations do you trust?

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#104

Post by mr_spothawk »

rayiner wrote: post #61
graedus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither party cares about the issue because the people don't care And why don't the people care? Corporate-owned media has a huge amount of influence on what people care about. But in the never ending search for ever increasing profits that is built into their structure by law, they, like the major political parties are "just giving people what they want" too by chasing ratings in order to gain larger market share…

> And why don't the people care? Corporate-owned media has a huge amount of influence on what people care about. Again, I go back to my mom because she's the greatest insight I have into the typical voter. My mom doesn't watch the news. Her opinions are her own. She places a high value on social order, trusts the government, and assumes that the government wouldn't use any information they get from her e-mails to hur…

It's on those of us who believe the government should not be behaving this way to help educate people like your mom about why stifling people like us is a bad idea and why we shouldn't pursue this course of action.

I feel like your statements are trying to support an argument against personal responsibility for the status quo. If we don't work to educate our children and those around us, we will continue to have terrible results.

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#105

Post by newnewnew »

jseliger wrote: post #34
junto wrote: post #33

The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Neither Democrats nor Republicans will change this. Due to the way that the political system works, a third party isn't possible. In the UK we have a Conservative/Liberal coalition, where traditionally Liberals were strong privacy advocates, but now turn a blind eye to the massive Orwellian/Huxley-esque society g…

The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Greens or libertarians, which I have been doing for a long time. Real change starts at the ballot box.

real change starts with the destruction of a massive unelected bureaucracy that has long outgrown its vestigial democratic organs

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#106

Post by Amadou »

harryh wrote: post #75
graedus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your points are well-taken, but in a democracy it's a hard argument to make to say: "people don't really think what they think they think because of the media." It's not that hard an argument -- there have been probably hundreds of studies on the influence of media on people's opinions and resulting actions. Why do you think advertising is a nearly half-trillion dollar industry worldwide? It's a significant chunk o…

> see that pervasive surveillance without meaningful oversight is always, always abused at some point I think that being more specific and using more examples would help a lot here. It's one thing to say "this will be abused" in some sort of abstract way. It's another to point to specific detailed examples of abuse (either here or in other similar societies). I'll take it as a given at this point that a bunch of my e…

You are entirely correct. We need visceral examples. Even if they don't affect regular people directly they need to be the kind of thing that people instinctively recoil from. Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses, so we need vivid examples that make an emotional impact in order to win the public debate. I joke with friends that the NSA will be canceled overnight if we can just prove that they have been killing (american) babies.

The best example I've been able to find is the FBI's attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King into silence (actually suicide) by recording what was apparently a sexual peccadillo. It is a very concrete example of how surveillance can damage the fabric of society.

http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl...

More recently, but much less vivid, is the example of the NSA snooping through Bill Clinton's email. If a former president is considered enough of a threat to record his email then something must be wrong.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pinwale/

It is also looking like the NSA->DEA->IRS flow of information might be a useful example simply because nobody like the IRS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/irs-manual-dea-inte...

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#107

Post by fetbaffe »

junto wrote: post #33

The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Neither Democrats nor Republicans will change this. Due to the way that the political system works, a third party isn't possible. In the UK we have a Conservative/Liberal coalition, where traditionally Liberals were strong privacy advocates, but now turn a blind eye to the massive Orwellian/Huxley-esque society g…

It's the cost of being a global superpower together with open borders.

If you seriously want to reduce surveillance at least one of these must be changed, but probably both. However both are politically impossible to change for any party.

The democrats and republicans act and sound the same because of issues of national security. If the US where to go into isolation mode it could drastically reduce it's threat level against it. However of course isolation would lead to other problems (similar to the one prior to WW2)

However I believe that these changes will not come as a change of policy from either party, rather through a huge crisis and a downfall of the US political system.

The UK has a similar problem as a regional power.

Edit: Added extra paragraph.

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#108

Post by harryh »

Amadou wrote: post #106
harryh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> see that pervasive surveillance without meaningful oversight is always, always abused at some point I think that being more specific and using more examples would help a lot here. It's one thing to say "this will be abused" in some sort of abstract way. It's another to point to specific detailed examples of abuse (either here or in other similar societies). I'll take it as a given at this point that a bunch of my e…

You are entirely correct. We need visceral examples. Even if they don't affect regular people directly they need to be the kind of thing that people instinctively recoil from. Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses, so we need vivid examples that make an emotional impact in order to win the public debate. I joke with friends that the NSA will be canceled overnight if we can…

> Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses

See, you're going in the wrong direction right of the bat. The people that disagree with you aren't stupid. A lot of them are smarter than you are. They just have different values than you do. Speaking down to them will never work.

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#109

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

saraid216 wrote: post #98
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So call tmobile or verizon they are thankful for your call after all.

That's an awesome non-sequitur and I hope you use it at parties.

Okay I will, if conversation permits. What are the chances? Probably low.

I'm thinking the premise is that tmobile and verizon care about your call and the conclusion is that you should call them. That conclusion doesn't follow the premise because you may not care that they care, but I presupposed you did because you were talking about trusting groups. When a tmobile support person thanks me for my call I do not trust that they are truly thankful.

Re: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet

#110

Post by squozzer »

denzil_correa wrote: post #16

The common pattern in the responses of most organizations is "word play". Skype - Skype wasn't changing its protocols to make it possible for the government to eavesdrop on users, because the government was already able to eavesdrop on users. Google and Facebook- Google and Facebook insist that the NSA has no "direct access" to their servers. Of course not; the smart way for the NSA to get all the data is through sni…

The phrase, "truthful, but evasive of bottom facts" comes to mind. Read it in some throwaway "how to succeed in business" book from the 1960s.
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