Perhaps a solution to this problem is for the NSA to provide "opt-in" well-known collection points for everyone. If only a small amount of metadata is what they use, then the massive copy everything on the wires approach is not needed.
Private companies and even individuals could choose to submit some activities that comprise useful metadata for storage and analysis. Those they choose to not opt-in would simply not have a data-stream piped to the well-known collection points. Maybe some variant of this approach?
If we still don't trust them (and likely won't for some time), we work collectively to do what the PandoDaily piece suggested which is use valley power to push for more effective oversight. In lieu of that, perhaps we have a collective checkbook pay for a counter-surveillance org to watch the watchers.
It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
201–210 of 329 posts
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#202I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of s…
The reality is that these systems were made possible by scale-out hardware architectures and open-source software solutions. It's plug-n-play and developers don't have to know where content is coming from.
Those parsers googlers wrote for the "white" FISA-based datasets probably also work on the "black" datasets from cable-taps.
Contributed to open-source? Your software is probably running at Ft. Meade too. Are you proud of that?
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
screw it, i'll repost my comment here too. I know i'll get the down-vote brigade but meh: Here's what bugs me about all the people chiming in about how messed up this all is. It's like you all think we live in some sort of utopia whereby we are the only ones doing this sort of surveillance. Every single sophisticated foreign intelligence is doing this back at us, their citizens and their enemies - probably with more…
> Fundamental extremists do exist and want to destroy Americans at any cost (including their lives). Why wouldn't we surveil their cell phones, email and IM accounts? They should. Ever heard of the practice of getting a warrant before surveilling someone's communications? (google it). At this point this seems to be a foreign concept to so many people because one side is suggesting no spying at all, while the other si…
More specifically, getting a warrant from something other than an automatic warrant dispenser.
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone on HN acts like there's no possible reason for people to support these types of activities, but there could be very legitimate reasons these engineers choose to do what they do. It could just be a challenge for them. Where else can you not only get away with, but be rewarded with a good salary and a pension for hacking into the most secure systems on earth? It must be thrilling to be 'Competing' against the…
It could also be that they're former "hackers" that were caught and turned into informants/employees/slaves in exchange for their eventual freedom. An example of this is Sabu ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabu_%28hacktivist%29 ), who would have been sentenced to 124 years in prison, but instead decided to work for the FBI.
This is a number floated as possible years of time, but it is not what he 'would have been' sentenced. We don't know because he decided to turn snitch.
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sometimes it's important to halt that process and stop and just say "this is definitely fucked up", and yes, not to question it any further. In my opinion, there are few things more tragic than someone carrying out actions with serious consequences on behalf of a belief that they refuse to question. I believe I understand your pragmatic concerns. It is hard to act passionately while simultaneously entertaining doub…
In a way I actually agree with nearly everything you say, I just think you haven't taken what you say to its logical conclusion. The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs. There's no “middle” in terms of ideology. Doing “nothing” is de facto maintaining the status quo, and acting to maintain the status quo is a positive action just as much as acting to abolish it is. The belief that the…
Thanks for the measured response. I hadn't really considered the strain that status quo beliefs/narratives put on those with marginalized beliefs/narratives. I actually live with a number of kids who are into anarchism/radical politics, so I've gotten a lot of exposure to more radical narratives. It's really disorienting/fascinating to meet people whose world-views differ so thoroughly from the norm.
I guess I just figured that those with radical beliefs became kind of immune to mainstream views, having rejected them. But you bring up a good point; it can be taxing to be viewed as a fringe element when you feel like you're the one who's right. I can see that being really frustrating.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this:
> The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs.
If one knows nothing about an issue (concerning some status quo behavior), it would be wise for them not to take an action on that issue without first learning more about it. But until they learn about the issue, would we really consider them to have a "positive" belief on the issue?
What about when they knew a few scattered facts but didn't necessarily have the whole picture? Again, we would not want them to take a stance. (Or, at least, I wouldn't.) Would that count as a "positive" action?
I'm not certain if inaction is necessarily endorsement. True, you are allowing something to happen... but you're allowing a lot of things to happen every day, things that perhaps should be changed or stopped but that you don't have the relevant knowledge of or the means to address.
Anyway, I'm generally with you on the NSA stuff... not feeling too comfortable with what they're doing. But radicalization and ideology kind of fascinate me (mostly from a philosophical perspective) so it's always interesting to explore these interactions (though they often devolve into flame wars, sadly).
EDIT: Perhaps you could claim one has a moral obligation to research and judge the impact of the social/economic system(s) they participate in. That feels like a separate (but related) discussion altogether.
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#206Today HHS announced that Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Red Hat will be helping fix HealthCare.gov. Now would be a good time for all four companies to issue press releases stating "We are very happy to lend our support to the Obama administration in exchange for their scaling back of domestic and corporate spying efforts."
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm constantly amazed that its like everyone has suddenly forgotten that during Occupy Wall St, protests before and since, and the entire Arab Spring revolution, it was portable and mobile recording devices widely dispersed amongst the populace that enabled successful revolution against government and evidence and checks of the abuses of power of police and other authorities.
To an extent, yes. Whether open communication aids or harms you depends on whose misdemeanours you're communicating, and to whom. Two years on from Arab Spring, there are grainy new videos posted of abuses of power in Egypt every day. Whereas on the 27th January 2011, Mubarak's government was so disconcerted by the volume of criticism it was getting it actually largely succeeded in switching the internet off...
Which is kind of my point. Unless you're distributing devices which the users can't get their own images out of, but someone else can, then your fundamentally decentralizing the power structure.
The government is bigger then you, it has more resources then you and its been able to monopolize surveillance more effectively then you. But the pushback against that is not what I would argue we'd expect - you don't try and eliminate surveillance, you democratize it.
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a way I actually agree with nearly everything you say, I just think you haven't taken what you say to its logical conclusion. The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs. There's no “middle” in terms of ideology. Doing “nothing” is de facto maintaining the status quo, and acting to maintain the status quo is a positive action just as much as acting to abolish it is. The belief that the…
This is weirdly Orwellian. If doing nothing is a 'positive action', than the words 'positive action' have no meaning. If think you mean to say that the effect doing nothing is to support the status quo, and morally equivalent to positive action supporting the the status quo, I still disagree, but you're on firmer ground. Apart from that, all you need to do is thematically replace privacy rights & surveillance with cl…
If you read my post carefully, you'll notice that I put “nothing” in quotation marks. You're close when you guess that I mean that “the effect doing nothing is to support the status quo, and morally equivalent to positive action supporting the the status quo,” but you have the direction of causation backwards. What I was trying to get at is that it's actually impossible to do “nothing”: you're always doing something, and if you're not, you're dead. The thing is, many actions which act to reproduce and maintain the status quo are ideologically defined as “nothing”: they're so normal that they're invisible.
I don't understand why you equate class struggle and global revolution with Bolshevism, or the implication that there's anything Orwellian about those things. That's completely disingenuous. There are several well known political traditions which advocate class struggle and global revolution but which at the same time have always fiercely been opposed to Bolshevism. Anarchist communism, left-wing communism, etc...
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#209I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of s…
screw it, i'll repost my comment here too. I know i'll get the down-vote brigade but meh: Here's what bugs me about all the people chiming in about how messed up this all is. It's like you all think we live in some sort of utopia whereby we are the only ones doing this sort of surveillance. Every single sophisticated foreign intelligence is doing this back at us, their citizens and their enemies - probably with more…
Before every gets up in arms about this, consider the world in which we live first.
We live in a world where a foreign power invaded our soil, captured our capital and burnt it to the ground, and we did not suspend our Constitution to deal with the threat.
We live in a world where an internal faction, in rebellion, threatened to end our existence as a country, and we did not suspend our Constitution to deal with the threat*
We have increasingly abandoned that ideal in favor of "the Constitution is not a suicide pact", but we have faced existential threats before and survived them.
So I, personally, need a stronger argument than "there are threats out there".
* Lincoln did suspend habeas corpus, and legal scholars can argue over whether it was done in the proper form, but the Constitution does permit the suspension in times of rebellion.
Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?
#210Reform is needed all over the place... it's just dismaying to see so many public institutions simply ignoring morals in favor of exploiting the letter of the law to the fullest extent.