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It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

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Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#111

Post by [deleted] »

ripb wrote: post #87
lkbm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People being inconvenient in pushing for social change are insufficiently protected. The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. If he had, that would have been a major loss to society. And now we have reports of the NSA developing dossiers of minor crimes and non-crimes of inconvenient people's behaviors for future use in discrediting the…

>The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. Have you got any more on this? Would be interested to read.

[deleted]

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#112

Post by shit_parade »

unreal37 wrote: post #43
logn wrote: post #29

Regarding NSA and CIA, what do they have to do to get shut down completely? Do we wait until genocide? It doesn't seem like a re-org is the proper response to institutionalized torture, semi-automated assassination campaigns, and creation of a panopticon.

It's better to keep the good parts and reform the bad parts than to throw the entire baby out completely. Let's draw a parallel to something more tangible than the cyberwar we don't see. Recently there was a number of high-profile cases where police got into a clash with unarmed civilians, with disastrous results. Should police be shut down completely? Would you be safe in a city with no police? Many cities in the wo…

Are you aware of the recent guardian article about a Chicago police blacksite[0]? Your analogy is inappropriate in the face of systematic torture, killing, and corrupition of law by American institutions. Simplistic analogies will not fix this problem nor do they help the discourse.

0:http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/25/chicago-homan...

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#113

Post by LLWM »

joering2 wrote: post #96
CamperBob2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, would you rather be at war or be secretly spied on? No contest!! You need to reject this as a false choice. Unsolicited movie recommendation for you: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/

Other worth watching, to all those who live by "I don't care, I have nothing to hide mantra: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ Spoiler: it's not what you consider worth hiding, it's how the government will interpret it.

Do you really think the disagreement is because we've never heard that argument before? That all the people who think this way have just never been exposed to Brazil, or Minority Report, or any of the other thousand works of fiction in which this idea is shown?

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#114

Post by markc »

Oh oh, looks they got to him. Link is now returning a 403:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /essays/archives/2014/02/its_time_to_break_up.html on this server. Apache Server at www.schneier.com Port 443

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#115

Post by LLWM »

cryoshon wrote: post #92
tessierashpool wrote: post #64

the NSA's surveillance is an unprecedented power grab. add Moore's Law to the mix, let that policy sit for 20 years, and what kind of power do they have? they can predict everything, they can track everything, they have no oversight - what they're doing is setting themselves up to completely replace the government in 2035. hopefully, that's not deliberate. hopefully, they're just that naively convinced of their own g…

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Right now it's Orwellian and sophisticated-- if they have Amazon's level of data crunching and prediction ability, they might be able to predict certain things about you, and, on average, be more right than wrong. Wait until they have 20 more years of data on you, and 20 more years of advancing the quality of their algorithms and machine intelligences. You will be owned, and your b…

And the same will be true of all the billions of people that you think are making bad decisions today.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#116

Post by shit_parade »

RankingMember wrote: post #70
itg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should be left in the dark? I would not want the NSA/CIA shutdown unless the same is done with Russia's FSB or Pakistan's ISI.

Therein lies the rub. There is a middle ground here, but people are (rightfully) foaming at the mouth with anti-NSA rage. In my eyes, this whole situation (NSA going off the map and doing whatever they want) stems from giving them free range with little to no oversight. They simply need better oversight and real consequences for leadership who don't act in the public interest (as determined by a neutral party, albeit…

'foaming at the mouth' is an Orwellian characterization of what is a profound and rational aversion to totalitarian state surveillance. Stop using the metaphor of a rabies infected dog to describe those who wish to live without the government spying on them.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#117

Post by worklogin »

IgorPartola wrote: post #109
nickysielicki wrote: post #61

I don't understand why society thinks that certain things can be contained, while certain other things cannot be. The liberals will always be telling you that the drug war is a failure, and that drug users will be able to get their hands on drugs anyway, and we should embrace that fact so we can retain some level of control, and so otherwise innocent people don't have to interact with criminals. But guns on the other…

Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and…

>As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because

it's not simple, it's not all because of guns, and until you modify the 2nd amendment, there is no right of the government to remove guns from the public.

I could go on about how our homicide rate is not too far out of line with other developed countries, how many many gun deaths are self inflicted, how there are a million things that kill more people each year than guns, but this goes way off the NSA topic.

to crypto, that's been the whole discussion today with PGP, isn't it? That the reason it's not adopted is because it isn't easy.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#118

Post by worklogin »

boyaka wrote: post #108
justcommenting wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1- tor is broken. For what definition of "broken"?

Broken means it doesn't do what it claims, is assumed, or is known to do. I think the general consensus is that Tor is supposed to enable a person to browse the internet anonymously.

Are seatbelts and airbags broken because people still die in crashes? Most security mechanisms can be circumvented by a sufficient state actor. For most purposes, when not being targeted, Tor does its job.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#119

Post by IgorPartola »

worklogin wrote: post #117
IgorPartola wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and…

>As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because it's not simple, it's not all because of guns, and until you modify the 2nd amendment, there is no right of the government to remove guns from the public. I could go on about how our homicide rate is not too far out of line with other developed countries…

Agreed. Discussion for a different thread. I have pretty strong views against mass availability of guns as you can tell, but one issue at a time.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#120

Post by EdSharkey »

LLWM wrote: post #115
cryoshon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Right now it's Orwellian and sophisticated-- if they have Amazon's level of data crunching and prediction ability, they might be able to predict certain things about you, and, on average, be more right than wrong. Wait until they have 20 more years of data on you, and 20 more years of advancing the quality of their algorithms and machine intelligences. You will be owned, and your b…

And the same will be true of all the billions of people that you think are making bad decisions today.

This dragnet collection and _permanent storage_ of all movement and communications data is not justifiable, though.

Fundamental risk assessment fail!

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