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Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

theguardian.com

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Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#161

Post by aneth4 »

I call bullshit.

It's almost impossible to argue that the public benefit of Groklaw is outweighed by the risk of the site receiving emails that will be exposed. Using the same position, every site on the internet should should shut down, people should stop sending all postal mail, using phones, and we should all go live in caves. This is really signaling surrender to the anti-freedom terrorists who occupy our national security department, and I think it's counterproductive.

If I'd had to guess, Pamela was ready to stop publishing Groklaw and wanted to go out making a big statement about a major threat to our future. I can thank her for that, though I think the message is somewhat muddied by the grandstanding defeatism.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#162

Post by DennisP »

saalweachter wrote: post #54
toyg wrote: post #6

This is a tragedy. We need to reboot email. Encrypt everything, including metadata -- given current hardware, the client can easily bruteforce it from a list of known keys. Build some sort of easy key distribution tool (connecting via p2p, dns, whatever, just build a goddamn UI). Ask existing transports to relax their restrictions enough to let fully-encrypted mail through, and build some intelligent webmail interfac…

I think we need to go one step further than encryption. We need to encrypt all communications expensively . Make algorithms which can be tuned to be arbitrarily expensive, computation-wise. Tune them so that it takes as much time as we can bear to encrypt and decrypt an email. Seconds, ideally. The goal is to make it so that some large fraction of our computational resources are taken up encrypting and decrypting com…

That's sort of an interesting idea. Of course without the key it's always absurdly difficult to decrypt...but if we're worried about them intercepting keys, this could make life harder for them.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#163

Post by anologwintermut »

samstave wrote: post #139
anologwintermut wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or…

> HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. This logic is broken. While more people may die from furniture than terrorism, what the NSA is doing is ensure that ZERO people are free. Period. You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means wi…

If the EFF comes out an announces they won't conduct any of their business because they have no privacy, we would rightly see an issue with it (and they do need privacy for some of what they do).

Chilling effects are an argument against having surveillance. They aren't something we should encourage purely because they allow to point and go: "NSA, look what you broke". That's what I meant about terrorism. If the you refuse to go outside because of terrorism, "the terrorists win." SImilarly, if you refuse to run your site that explains the law to people because the government twits the law to allow them to spy on you (even though you have nothing to hide in your professional capacity of operating that blog), then a different kind of terrorist wins.

Yes, if GrokLaw ran a wikileaks style legal blog which posted confidential stuff, the chilling effect would be necessary. In this case it isn't and since it's unclear when(or if) we will ever regain confidence that the NSA is not spying on us, we ought to minimize the damage.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#164

Post by Torgo »

MaysonL wrote: post #93
reitzensteinm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point, and this is a big reason why the "I have nothing to hide" argument comes from a position of childlike naivety. Even if you have nothing to hide, what about your members of parliament? CEOs? Mayors? President or Prime Minister? Judges? Police chiefs? Is there a single one that has never written an email or made a phone call that could destroy their career? What lengths would they go to in order to keep it…

Do you want the NSA or GCHQ knowing that your teenage daughter is pregnant before you do?

The nude pictures she texted to her boyfriend are now part of her permanent file as well.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#165

Post by dobbsbob »

c3d wrote: post #13
random42 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. This is a political fight. Technical means can drag the resistance longer, which is helpful, but the political system needs to be put in checks and balances against becoming a police state. There is no substitute of "taking roads and doing peaceful protests" as out of comfort zone they might be. We sometimes fall in love with our methods because that is what _we_ are good at, not what is necessarily the b…

We need technical tools to be able to communicate. If these tools are subverted, the political fight is harder to organize. So both go hand in hand.

They've been trying to subvert these tools worldwide especially after the Arab spring. Just google 'Smartphone kill switch' every government is lobbying handset manufacturers for one in order to prevent theft of devices so they can push a button and brick the device with a hardware backdoor, but of course that's not the real reason they want a kill switch for every phone in their country. They want it to blackout comms during social unrest.

Same reasons why the UK would want a powerful pf filter implemented by a Chinese corporation at every single one of their ISPs. It's not to block dirty pictures, it's to shut off everything during social unrest. If they just wanted to block porno they could do simple DNS censorship, but they dropped in serious filter controls.

Currently my country is looking into regulating all wi-fi APs. They already have a kill switch for phones and ISPs, now they want to make sure you can't even make an adhoc or mesh network for social unrest. Of course it isn't to kill communications, it's to prevent crime because some criminals broadcast MITM networks inside cafes, so we need sweeping regulations to stop them.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#166

Post by SmokyBorbon »

danso wrote: post #12

Huh? I just don't follow. Groklaw is not a site that depends on anonymous tips. The last few stories posted on Groklaw were on Apple vs Samsung and did not appear to require privileged confidential information. How is it that other groups that do directly go against the government, such as the ACLU and the EFF, continue to do so without a paralyzingly fear that they can't keep their communications secret? The logical…

Samsung doesn't like what Groklaw posted about them. Samsung makes a large donation to the Demoncratic National Commitee and receives an archive of every email, phone conversation, financial transaction Groklaw's owner has ever made. Samsung uses this information to destroy Groklaw owner's life.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#167

Post by rayiner »

samstave wrote: post #139
anologwintermut wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or…

> HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. This logic is broken. While more people may die from furniture than terrorism, what the NSA is doing is ensure that ZERO people are free. Period. You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means wi…

> You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means without the government's ability to actually be party to that comm.

That's reading a whole lot into the definition of "free." Were people "free" in 1950? If so, how do they become "not free" by introducing a new form of communication (created by the military, mind you) that is monitored more heavily than the ones they used to use?

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#168

Post by [deleted] »

samstave wrote: post #139
anologwintermut wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or…

> HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. This logic is broken. While more people may die from furniture than terrorism, what the NSA is doing is ensure that ZERO people are free. Period. You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means wi…

[deleted]

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#169

Post by efuquen »

samstave wrote: post #156
bostonpete wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like "We are 100% completely corrupt", "Every single thing that the US stood for has literally been murdered", and "America is dead" are so absurdly over the top that they undercut your message and turn off people who might otherwise be receptive to your comments.

While I am sure you are correct, I can't help that this is how I actually feel. The entire concept of "America", for me, has completely dissolved. The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal". All meaning from these terms has been removed. We live in an illusion. The actual reality we live in is a simple binary relationship: The haves. The have-nots. Those who have power (money) do literally anyth…

Reality check, the NSA, Bush and increasingly Obama, the whole US Government and it's justice system, etc. don't represent the American ideal. But with a few exceptions I would wager that I would rather live here then almost any other country in the world. What is "American" comes from you and what you viewpoint is of that ideal. For me what constitutes as American has much more to do with my relationships with people here, who I meet, where I live, then anything stupid the NSA or government does. I think overall what's kind of silly about this is you're taking something that realistically is extremely abstract to the vast majority of people (how many of use are dealing with Snowden's problems on a personal level here?) and applying it to a whole country and it's people.

Don't get me wrong, I think people should be angry with what's been happening, the eroding of the American dream, increased inequality, the continued militarization of the police and it's overall unaccountability, lack of privacy from both the government and businesses (let's not forget what type of data the Google's and Facebook's of the world legally have on you). It's going to take indignation and anger to result in the action that might change things.

But, to turn around and say some thing like "America is dead"? No, personally I see things that make me proud of my fellow Americans, the goals they're accomplishing, the big dreams they have, the relationships they develop and grow from. I see those things happening on this forum everyday. No, to me America is around and kicking all around, the proof is right here in front of you, and it's worth fighting for. I'm not willing to write it off just yet.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#170

Post by rayiner »

samstave wrote: post #156
bostonpete wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like "We are 100% completely corrupt", "Every single thing that the US stood for has literally been murdered", and "America is dead" are so absurdly over the top that they undercut your message and turn off people who might otherwise be receptive to your comments.

While I am sure you are correct, I can't help that this is how I actually feel. The entire concept of "America", for me, has completely dissolved. The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal". All meaning from these terms has been removed. We live in an illusion. The actual reality we live in is a simple binary relationship: The haves. The have-nots. Those who have power (money) do literally anyth…

You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria. Probably your whole life, the government has overstepped the boundaries of the 4th amendment when it came to poor black people. But I bet if I told you a few years ago about that, you wouldn't have said it made "the entire concept of America" dissolve for you. And rightfully so. The fact that some people in the government do some things you think should be illegal, does not mean that the rule of law has ceased to have force.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but America has always been deeply imperfect. You talk about the "last 13 years" but you know nothing about the history of America if you think it was better 30 or 50 years ago. But the arc of history has been that America has gotten less imperfect over time. We find NSLs and the resort to esoteric legal defenses on the part of the NSA intolerable today, but those are niceties in the grand scheme of things. Remember, we're a country where Bureau of Prohibition agents ransacked peoples' physical property looking for alcohol in the 1930's, a country that put Japanese-Americans in internment in the 1940's, a country where the President had to call the national guard down to Alabama to get the governor to comply with a federal court order. You think that reading through Facebook posts or asking the British government to detain someone in an airport for 9 hours is what marks the end of America? That's hysteria.

It should be noted that the surveillance programs seem pretty designed to stay on the right side of existing Supreme Court precedent. That's pretty much the opposite of the government doing "literally anything" it wants. That doesn't mean what its doing is right, but trying to skirt through holes in the law is very different from ignoring the law. And there was a time when the government didn't even bother with that pretense.

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