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NSA targets the privacy-conscious

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Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#121

Post by throwaway5752 »

pessimizer wrote: post #111
throwaway5752 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. If a credible actor poses a threat, they will attempt to do a competent job hiding their communications and data. Those that don't are by definition less competent and less likely to pose a threat. Pardon the bluntless, but it seems like an a priori conclusion that only people taking pains to hide their data/communications should be targeted. That is not because the vast majority of those people are…

>Fire in a crowded theater This is a quote by a judge in a trial that put someone in prison for passing out antiwar fliers. It's good to know the source of our philosophies. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States When we accept that "shouting fire in a crowded theater" isn't protected speech, we're backing up an argument that was used to put someone in prison for non-violent anti-state speech. N…

You are mischaracterizing the case and unfairly tarring the reputation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a truly great Supreme Court justice. Perhaps you would like this better:

"we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death"

Back to the other quote: it is a classic and excellent demonstration of the one of the greatest tensions in US Constitution, the balance between individual rights and societal good. It doesn't require any context.

Perhaps I should have used the blunter formulation, also from Justice Holmes:

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins"

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#122

Post by opendais »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #110
opendais wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you balance national security and personal liberty in this case? That's the million dollar question. That would be valid if they could point to any noteworthy success. The fact they can't ["because national security"] pretty much guarantees the program contributes very little real value. If they had anything to do with something important, say Osama's death, you think they wouldn't trumpet it out as "proof"…

Do you feel there might be information that they can't publicize? I skeptical and sympathetic to that at the same time. I really would say that it's a question of risk aversion & utitility. Even targetting a whole class of people the odds are probably astronomical of finding someone planning harm (1M:1? more than that?). To me it comes down to the negative utility of privacy invasion * the number of people targeted ?…

> Do you feel there might be information that they can't publicize? I skeptical and sympathetic to that at the same time.

XKeyscore is a (at a minimum) 6 years old.

You are telling me in 6 years they can't provide the broad strokes of a reasonable number of success stories?

The fact they can't stand up and say "Terrorist plot X was stopped by XKeyscore" from 4-5 years ago pretty much proves its a failure as far as I am concerned.

> I really would say that it's a question of risk aversion & utitility. Even targetting a whole class of people the odds are probably astronomical of finding someone planning harm (1M:1? more than that?). To me it comes down to the negative utility of privacy invasion * the number of people targeted ??? the probability of detecting & thwarting the one malactor, where ??? is an inequality.

Given that with sufficient information a person is able to force another person to do quite a few things via blackmail, its simply too dangerous to trust human beings with this tool. Especially an organization like the NSA where their only knowledge of Snowden's actions came after he released all of the information publicly.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#123

Post by dobbsbob »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #121
pessimizer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fire in a crowded theater This is a quote by a judge in a trial that put someone in prison for passing out antiwar fliers. It's good to know the source of our philosophies. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States When we accept that "shouting fire in a crowded theater" isn't protected speech, we're backing up an argument that was used to put someone in prison for non-violent anti-state speech. N…

You are mischaracterizing the case and unfairly tarring the reputation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a truly great Supreme Court justice. Perhaps you would like this better: "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death" Back to the other quote: it is a classic and excellent demonstration of the one of the greatest tensions in US…

Oliver Holmes already has one of the worst reputations, nothing any of us write can compare with the man's own words regarding his reputation. Here's part of his decision in upholding the the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. [...] Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Of course this has nothing to do with the NSA/GCHQ/CSEC collecting IP numbers of users of privacy software. Only a police state casts a wide net and then spies on it's own citizens to determine their innocence presuming they are already guilty by seeking out this software in the first place. It's the exact guilty by association kind of nonsense every police state throughout history has done.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#124

Post by me1010 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #96
pyre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'arrest filter' is only as good as the inputs. As it currently stands, I'm sure that things like "uses drugs recreationally," "is black," "is Muslim," and "is not Christian," would end up counting towards your 'arrest score.' And also because your arrest score is computed by a machine rather than a human, that will be used as an excuse to call it unimpeachable. E.g. "Machines can't be racist, so the arrest score…

Only as good as the inputs, yes. But if it's a halfway decent filter, it will include machine learning, e.g. a Bayesian filter, and if "is Muslim" turns out to have low correspondence with actual criminal activity that input will quickly be deweighted. Or perhaps paired with other aspects- e.g., perhaps "is Muslim" is of no consequence and "Googles Jihad" is also of no consequence, but "is Muslim" && "Googles Jihad"…

Perhaps you should watch "The Thin Blue Line" a few hundred times... and then repost...

I would be seriously concerned about a Bayesian filter being applied as the sole reason for arrests...

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#125

Post by throwaway5752 »

dobbsbob wrote: post #123
throwaway5752 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mischaracterizing the case and unfairly tarring the reputation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a truly great Supreme Court justice. Perhaps you would like this better: "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death" Back to the other quote: it is a classic and excellent demonstration of the one of the greatest tensions in US…

Oliver Holmes already has one of the worst reputations, nothing any of us write can compare with the man's own words regarding his reputation. Here's part of his decision in upholding the the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit…

He does not have one of the worst reputations. That's utterly ridiculous, you don't know a thing about the history of constitutional law if you think so.

Buck v. Bell was one of his worst moments, as well as the rest of the country's. Holmes didn't create the eugenics law in VA, and he didn't hold a gun to the head of the other 7 members of the court who voted with him, though. Eugenics is disgusting and is rightfully in the dustbin of history along with debtors prisons, lobotomization, slavery, and a number of other common practices we currently & correctly view as backwards and evil.

He stands heads and shoulders above the idiot "originalists" polluting the bench right now.

edit: You might as well say that Richard Feynman was a reclusive and socially awkward man. It is not a matter of opinion, it's just false - plainly incorrect. OWH is routinely on the top 10 most influential justices of all time. He remains one of the most widely cited in other SC decisions. But to pin him down on a couple of specific cases and overlooking his enormous influence on contemporary judicial philosophy is ignorant. Don't believe me? Just spent a minute of your time to research it and you'll see how silly it is.

edit 2: Most of what I found to make sure I hadn't lost my mind is even kinder, considering him the 2nd or 3rd most influential justices behind Marshall and closely tied with Warren.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#126

Post by lallysingh »

lucb1e wrote: post #120
higherpurpose wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amplify this by 100, and welcome to Minority Report, where you get a arrested for having a "very high score". This is where the "mass surveillance" and "let's monitor everyone just in case they might do something bad" thinking inevitably ends up.

> you get a arrested for having a "very high score". I was thinking more in terms of automated drone strikes, but yeah for the facade of democracy arrests may be the way to go for now.

Too expensive.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#127

Post by deciplex »

Zak wrote: post #40
jobu wrote: post #16

Because anyone trying to keep anything private or secure must be hiding something bad... That's just wonderful. After 10 years of pervasive surveillance and not being able to catch a single terrorist I can't believe the NSA is trying to rationalize it as being a good thing. It's too bad the bill to defund the NSA didn't pass: http://defundthensa.com/

Because anyone trying to keep anything private or secure must be hiding something bad The NSA does an awful lot of hiding things. It might therefore be reasonable to conclude that it is bad and should, at the very least have its funding cut.

A person is not a government agency ostensibly accountable to a democratic government and, therefore, public oversight. The NSA is. To the extent a democracy keeps secrets from voters, it is not a democracy. The US government keeps a lot of secrets.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#128

Post by toddnessa »

What I gleaned most from the article(s) is that it's becoming increasingly important for all of us in the tech community to take a stand ourselves along with TOR to promote online anonymity in our companies (& possibly even think about supporting the TOR Project itself in some way).

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#129

Post by pyre »

sliverstorm wrote: post #96
pyre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'arrest filter' is only as good as the inputs. As it currently stands, I'm sure that things like "uses drugs recreationally," "is black," "is Muslim," and "is not Christian," would end up counting towards your 'arrest score.' And also because your arrest score is computed by a machine rather than a human, that will be used as an excuse to call it unimpeachable. E.g. "Machines can't be racist, so the arrest score…

Only as good as the inputs, yes. But if it's a halfway decent filter, it will include machine learning, e.g. a Bayesian filter, and if "is Muslim" turns out to have low correspondence with actual criminal activity that input will quickly be deweighted. Or perhaps paired with other aspects- e.g., perhaps "is Muslim" is of no consequence and "Googles Jihad" is also of no consequence, but "is Muslim" && "Googles Jihad"…

> If a learning Bayesian filter targets a certain demographic, there probably IS something to it.

I'm pretty sure both Bayes and Laplace would not agree with the categorization of Bayesian probability as some sort of panacea for determining truth in criminal matters.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#130

Post by yry4345 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #84
higherpurpose wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amplify this by 100, and welcome to Minority Report, where you get a arrested for having a "very high score". This is where the "mass surveillance" and "let's monitor everyone just in case they might do something bad" thinking inevitably ends up.

... you get a arrested for having a "very high score". Considering this is PRECISELY how spam filtering works, it doesn't seem entirely irrational. Much like spam filtering, it would all come down to dialing in your filters and picking a good threshold. Hell, if the system was good enough, it could actually improve freedoms. We currently arrest many innocent people as part of the legal process (who are later exonerat…

> "it doesn't seem entirely irrational." (Yes it does...)

> "It doesn't have to be perfect to be better." (Yes it does...)

The problem used to be approached by presuming innocence (demanding perfection), rather than with a willingness to accept false positives (20 years ago spam filters weren't available as an analogy...). It is always possible to wrongfully judge someone, but it was never a valid or acceptable outcome ("It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - Blackstone). We accept that spam filters give false positives (not to mention that one person's spam is another person's opportunity), so I think comparing the justice system to detecting spam is a mistake, and more over that a goal of "prevention" itself is a red herring.

The goal of prevention encourages us to accept lower thresholds of guilt probability, and that is wrong. In other words, if prevention is an end, then it is worth deliberately (rather than accidentally) restricting innocent people on the basis of virtually any nonzero probability of guilt. 80% "guilty" by association (for using Tor for example), 45%, etc, would all be enough to justify legal action - and the thresholds would certainly depend on whoever is in power and has access to the database that week. This is a very different model than presuming innocence, and having not only a goal of 0 false-positives, but also providing satisfaction when the justice system is in error.

I think today we are mostly talking around the fact that a crime has to have been committed in order for it to deserve to be punished, and that, for that reason, prevention cannot be a valid goal in itself (but it's nice when it happens).

Rationalizing surveillance as a tool to "prevent" rather than to justly punish wrongdoers (which centralized surveillance does not do because it is centrally operated, due to the conflict of interest; everyone owning a camcorder on the other hand...) implies that the central database needs to go IMHO (and that individuals need to be empowered instead).

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