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

Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

aclu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 69 posts

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#11

Post by newsat13 »

late2part wrote: post #7
devoply wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were legal you could call it unconstitutional. The point is do not want. But really Google is so much worse than the NSA. We can't do anything about Google though. He's like an uninvited guest to every party. And now we have Microsoft to contend with as well.

We implicity permit Google to have our info. We have not given informed consent to allow our government to take this data. Therefore it is an unreasonable search and seizure of our property.

This is incorrect. Most people don't realize this. Do you consent your car to store all your location information in the cloud? What if TV started storing all things you watch in the cloud? Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv". And tbh, I don't even think 80% of the population is cognizant about what is being collected and what it's used for. This is the reality and they have "accepted" it as-is. This is the situation we find ourselves with email (all email providers mark any other email as spam).

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#12

Post by Fnoord »

newsat13 wrote: post #11
late2part wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We implicity permit Google to have our info. We have not given informed consent to allow our government to take this data. Therefore it is an unreasonable search and seizure of our property.

This is incorrect. Most people don't realize this. Do you consent your car to store all your location information in the cloud? What if TV started storing all things you watch in the cloud? Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv". And tbh, I don't even think 80% of the population is cognizant about what is being collected and wh…

> Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv"

Supply & demand. If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met. Vote with your wallet.

Also, do not forget the second hand market for cars. This one's huge. There's still TVs and cars available which are dumb. There's still laptops available without Intel ME.

> This is the situation we find ourselves with email (all email providers mark any other email as spam).

What are you on about?

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#13

Post by nullc »

tptacek wrote: post #4
jMyles wrote: post #2

Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…

Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?

Why is it that you so predictably respond denying or apologizing for the government's unlawful surveillance (or, now that it has been proven, harassing people who are up in arms about it) in almost every related thread on Hacker News?

To answer the question: A lie with a grain of truth is inherently much more powerful, since research will seem to confirm it. Massive surveillance allows for the construction of the most convincing fabricated evidence with the minimum possibility of being shown to be a fabrication. It also, if needed, provides a plausible vector for the discovery of private information which is under the exclusive control of the forger and set outside of the domain of public inquiry or evaluation and, by practice, more or less excluded from the rule of evidence.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#14

Post by tritosomal »

In most cases, being liberal is a polite code word for being a pussy.

But really, anything empathetic, humanist. Anything playing devil's advocate in favor of reason. Anything anti-paranoiac, anti-xenophobic. Anything inclusive or pluralist. Anything that means playing fair, without being zealously competitive. Anything that engages the idea that we don't need to fight, or that there's no us versus them.

Anything that cares about the environment. Anything that cares about animals. Anything that hints at worrying about nice clothes and clean hands. Anything that considers the possibility and degree of high quality coffee preparations.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#15

Post by tedunangst »

nullc wrote: post #13
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?

Why is it that you so predictably respond denying or apologizing for the government's unlawful surveillance (or, now that it has been proven, harassing people who are up in arms about it) in almost every related thread on Hacker News? To answer the question: A lie with a grain of truth is inherently much more powerful, since research will seem to confirm it. Massive surveillance allows for the construction of the mos…

1. the hair on fire alarmism over imagined issues distracts from some very real issues.

2. some of those very real issues have very real solutions, but people still cry bloody murder because those solutions don't solve every imagined problem.

3. Exaggerating the scope of the problem conveys a sense of helplessness. What purpose is served by making people needlessly afraid? There's a point at which the harm caused by surveillance panic exceeds the harm caused by surveillance.

4. the hysteria results in people making stupid choices regarding email, messaging, etc. like "I can't trust the companies I know, so I'm going to trust companies I don't know". That's ridiculous. Or the fact that while Comcast may inject some janky notifications on web pages I visit, it's not straightup malware like rogue tor exit nodes inject.

5. It becomes impossible for anybody to actually discuss what's happening when every little molehill is a backdoor, or rootkit, or malware, or existential threat to cyber existence.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#16

Post by tptacek »

jMyles wrote: post #5
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?

Hey buddy. You never responded to me in the other thread. :-) Strictly speaking, it's not a requirement. But it gives incredible cover. It makes everyone think, "well, it's possible - they know everything that goes on." In other words, absent this sort of mass vacuuming, the individual targeting of a dissident might seem much more suspicious.

Don't normal people already sort of assume that? What's in doubt isn't the potential for the USG to learn these things, but the credibility of their unverified claims that they actually have learned them. I seriously don't see the connection between global surveillance and the USG's ability to lie convincingly: they can already lie convincingly.

Later

BTW: I felt like I responded to what you asked in other comments on the thread, and by the time I saw your comment, many other people had already responded. Nothing personal!

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#17

Post by baloneyman »

tritosomal wrote: post #14

In most cases, being liberal is a polite code word for being a pussy. But really, anything empathetic, humanist. Anything playing devil's advocate in favor of reason. Anything anti-paranoiac, anti-xenophobic. Anything inclusive or pluralist. Anything that means playing fair, without being zealously competitive. Anything that engages the idea that we don't need to fight, or that there's no us versus them. Anything tha…

I agree with this in large swathes, but I feel like bible beaters are all about nice clothes and clean hands and they're conservative as all hell

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#18

Post by tptacek »

tedunangst wrote: post #15
nullc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that you so predictably respond denying or apologizing for the government's unlawful surveillance (or, now that it has been proven, harassing people who are up in arms about it) in almost every related thread on Hacker News? To answer the question: A lie with a grain of truth is inherently much more powerful, since research will seem to confirm it. Massive surveillance allows for the construction of the mos…

1. the hair on fire alarmism over imagined issues distracts from some very real issues. 2. some of those very real issues have very real solutions, but people still cry bloody murder because those solutions don't solve every imagined problem. 3. Exaggerating the scope of the problem conveys a sense of helplessness. What purpose is served by making people needlessly afraid? There's a point at which the harm caused by…

I'd also add that none of us should need to apologize for civil, good-faith discussion on HN.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#19

Post by smokeyj »

Fnoord wrote: post #9
devoply wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were legal you could call it unconstitutional. The point is do not want. But really Google is so much worse than the NSA. We can't do anything about Google though. He's like an uninvited guest to every party. And now we have Microsoft to contend with as well.

> We can't do anything about Google though. Yes, we can! Don't use Google, or use certain settings in the applications which enhance your privacy. The default settings are not always the best settings for the user. Don't use Google Search. Use a search engine which respects your privacy such as the scraper DuckDuckGo (DDG). Don't use Gmail. Use an e-mail provider which doesn't scan through your e-mail. Where you got…

But you can't avoid google analytics..
Post reply on HN