Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 420 posts

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#411

Post by kllrnohj »

chris_mahan wrote: post #382
kllrnohj wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what was discussed was the NSA tapping in at ISP points, not digging up cables to splice them. And "discussed" is not accurate. It was proposed by a few but rejected by most as paranoid.

Wait a minute... "It was proposed by a few but rejected by most as paranoid." and yet is most likely what happened? so the most in "rejected by most" were wrong. Wrong! So when someone says: "You're just being paranoid", my reply will be: "Better paranoid than wrong."

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#412

Post by eyeareque »

dragonwriter wrote: post #278
eyeareque wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The difference should be that in a democracy you can't abuse your power without repercussions." Do you see the irony? Western governments are abusing their powers.. and they are getting away with it. Democracy means nothing if the government doesn't hold itself accountable.

No, democracy means nothing if the people don't hold the government accountable. Relying on the government to hold itself accountable makes democracy no different from monarchy.

Right, but as long as cable tv works and fast food restaurants are open the mass majority of people won't do anything about it.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#413

Post by late2part »

chris_mahan wrote: post #408
late2part wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your general premise and thesis, but the gun deaths from guns statistic, while pedantically accurate, ignores the context shown here: http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/ Firearms were used in 19,392 suicides in the U.S. in 2010, constituting almost 62% of all gun deaths Analogy with not using encryption?

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Since committing suicide is against the law, then does my analogy hold? Now using encryption or not using encryption does not matter in the context of being monitored by the NSA.

Since you've brought up the topic of poorly enforceable laws, when was the last conviction.

My reference re: not using encryption is that it is akin to suicide.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#414

Post by chris_mahan »

late2part wrote: post #413
chris_mahan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Since committing suicide is against the law, then does my analogy hold? Now using encryption or not using encryption does not matter in the context of being monitored by the NSA.

Since you've brought up the topic of poorly enforceable laws, when was the last conviction. My reference re: not using encryption is that it is akin to suicide.

Well, if you have life insurance and you commit suicide, your beneficiaries won't be able to collect (in most cases, there are a few policies...) because suicide is against the law.

It may be the reason suicide's illegal.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#415

Post by peterashford »

Joeri wrote: post #309
pnathan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'vw been thinking about this pretty hard this summer - I've been involved in some local tech activist stuff. My take on it is as runs: Fundamentally, what's needed here is the ability to have confidence that the intelligence system is not overstepping its bounds. The US founders' framework for building that confidence is to have multiple parts of power, whose interest is roughly aligned with countering each other. S…

It's wrong to portray this as a trade-off between more risk or less risk. In reality it's a trade-off between two kinds of risk. Without the NSA snooping there is a higher risk of terrorist attacks, but with the NSA snooping there is more risk of attacks on democracy. Imagine j. edgar hoover or richard nixon able to use all that NSA data for illegitimate purposes. How easy would it have been to supress dissenting pol…

One thing that needs to be taken into account is that terrorism is responsible for very few deaths at all. Guns and cars both cause more deaths. I'd love the US to do something about guns, but are you guys having a crisis about cars?

The response is utterly disproportionate to the risk.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#416

Post by CaptainZapp »

ajross wrote: post #314
CaptainZapp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like indiscriminately and illegally sucking up WiFi data with their street view mobiles? Including account information and passwords on unsecured WiFi connections. Even if the accusation of "violating laws" may be a tad hyperbolic in the great scheme of things it's not a stretch to deem Google one of the most hypocritical companies around.

Sniffing unencrypted wifi packets and (apparently accidentally) storing them is just as bad as deliberately breaking into someone else's network to steal data ? Come on. I remain amazed at the ability of people to project their own biases (Google is Evil in this case, probably via extrapolation from Apple is Insanely Great) onto things that one would hope would be objective moral points (spy agencies shouldn't be att…

  Sniffing unencrypted wifi packets and (apparently accidentally) storing them is just as bad as deliberately breaking into someone else's network to steal data? Come on.
Where did I say anything like that?

Paraphrasing -, or quoting something that has absolutely no relation to what was really said is a pretty dishonest and low debating tactic in my book.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#417

Post by CaptainZapp »

kllrnohj wrote: post #297
CaptainZapp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like indiscriminately and illegally sucking up WiFi data with their street view mobiles? Including account information and passwords on unsecured WiFi connections. Even if the accusation of "violating laws" may be a tad hyperbolic in the great scheme of things it's not a stretch to deem Google one of the most hypocritical companies around.

Receiving a broadcast isn't illegal - you shove it out into the air, you lost all privacy rights on that broadcast legally speaking. You can debate the ethics of it, but it wasn't illegal. And Google did get penalized for it.

I'm not sure about the storage issue. At least not in the EU, which has pretty heavy restrictions on data collection and storage.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#418

Post by chris_mahan »

kllrnohj wrote: post #411
chris_mahan wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute... "It was proposed by a few but rejected by most as paranoid." and yet is most likely what happened? so the most in "rejected by most" were wrong. Wrong! So when someone says: "You're just being paranoid", my reply will be: "Better paranoid than wrong."

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

A broken clock is always unreliable.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#419

Post by el_muchacho »

pnathan wrote: post #407
ufseagull wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>our vote actually has meaning; our votes actually change the elected officials, etc. We still can run a socialist candidate (c.f. Kshama Sawant 2013 in Seattle) and they aren't shut down via police action or other hardcore discrimination. See, my theory, call me a tinfoil hatter if you will, is that we are on the brink of losing our votes. 1) Collect extensive data on any and all citizens. Any especially politically…

I understand the implications of having surveillance and using that information to ... regulate... dissent to be acceptable dissent. I completely agree that we have wound up with certain things in place that are foundational to a police & authoritarian state. However , I don't see any direct evidence of police state action; no smoking gun if you will. So I believe it's better to confine ourselves to openly known fact…

> However, I don't see any direct evidence of police state action; no smoking gun if you will. So I believe it's better to confine ourselves to openly known facts & working to roll back the (already very bad) truth rather than looking forward to a (worse) fork in the road.

You didn't see any diret evidence of massive surveillance either. Yet it is quite clear it exists. All that means is you are willing to wear blindfolds. By not preparing yourself for the worst, you simply let it happen.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#420

Post by el_muchacho »

XorNot wrote: post #391
jerf wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What do you think they would've done to suppress dissenting political opinion?" Easy. You use government power on them. You "coincidentally" hit them with an IRS audit, one that's incredibly hostile and refuses to resolve itself. You hit their business with every inspection possible, held to the most stringent of standards. Even if, and perhaps especially if, they don't own it, and you find a way to sufficiently hin…

So again, you just listed a big list of things which don't actually require a covert surveillance program to implement because the whole point of suppressing people is to be rather overt about doing it. You then postulate the US government just ignoring the law altogether. You see the pattern right? All these are things where the US government does some questionably legal, pretty highly visible stuff to you. It's not…

> Or to put it another way: the Soviet government didn't start out surveilling their citizens before they just murdered all the ones who were considered dissidents. They started doing it after they needed to get better at murdering the dissidents. But the real problem, was the fact the government was willing to murder dissidents. Has the US government killed a bunch of your neighbors? Disappeared them?

Your faith in human nature is disarmingly naive. Remember Hitler has been elected. What keeps a democracy alive is not the people at its head or the people that elect their rulers but the structural foundations and laws. You can't trust men. Most of these foundations and laws have already been circumvented by the NSA with the benediction of the US government. That the government seems "nice" to you doesn't matter. As soon as the rulers can disregard laws, they will.

Post reply on HN