Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers • Hacker News Board

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#101

Post by PavlovsCat » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:19 AM UTC

andrerm wrote: post #92

PavlovsCat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humane constant surveillance is an oxymoron. Surveillance has a chilling effect on even just developing as thinking person, so, if you accept the premise (for which there is no actual hard reason), you can have a humane system, maybe, but no humans in it. Even good thoughts sometimes require incubation in private. Mass surveillance restricts learning, communication, and down the road thinking, to such a degree, it's…

Governments and corporations will happily have majority of society not thinning and just following

Yeah, but not many persons in them would want it, and no person in the world would be exempt from it. It could very well be that even though everybody would be kinda unhappy, we wouldn't know why, or that it could be different, we might not have the words for our discomfort, etc.

But I completely agree that a world without human agency wouldn't mean it would be a dead world. It could be bustling with activity, but the individual agents could still be very repressed or outright empty, automatons if you will.

When I speculate about such extreme extrapolations, the one ray of hope I have is that we might colonize the galaxy, and something could gets away, by accident, be it people or just organic matter. But until then it could be a very long and very dark stretch.

Of course, that's assuming the universe isn't teeming with life anyway, in which case I don't think even the supermegaborg could conquer all of it. I'm just worried about our place in it, if we get to experience it or not, how and as who. FWIW I genuinely am, it's not just as a hyperbolic argument against mass surveillance (in combination with automation and military robotics, I would add).

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#102

Post by PavlovsCat » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #90

PavlovsCat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humane constant surveillance is an oxymoron. Surveillance has a chilling effect on even just developing as thinking person, so, if you accept the premise (for which there is no actual hard reason), you can have a humane system, maybe, but no humans in it. Even good thoughts sometimes require incubation in private. Mass surveillance restricts learning, communication, and down the road thinking, to such a degree, it's…

Let me be clear that I am not advocating for constant ubiquitous surveillance. Only I don't see a way to avoid it happening. There may be a severe disruption in civilization what with the climate and all, but one day "there will be lemon-soaked paper napkins." At best you can try to limit who has the surveillance tech, but to do that you have to have the surveillance tech, eh? The problem is circular. So, since we ca…

> I don't see a way to avoid it happening

Civil society outnumbers spooks by how much, and who needs who, who is paying for who? Simply withdrawing support and tax money could end it rather quickly.

I can't tell you how to organize people to do that, but it could actually just happen anytime, just a fluke, everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks enough is enough. High-tech requires constant, expensive maintenance, It's not like, say, a giant stone structure you can leave unattended for a few years or even decades.

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#103

Post by ajxs » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:39 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #83

andrekandre wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is trump conservative or is he right wing? even if they are usually conflated or found together, aren’t they pretty much different things?

Trump is a fascist, which is a little different. The high school political spectrum thing breaks down out of the context of the 20th century.

How is Trump in any way a 'fascist'? What do you think actually characterises fascism?

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#104

Post by stevenicr » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:50 AM UTC

stevenicr wrote: post #85

tbyehl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clinton and CALEA don't get enough credit for creating the infrastructure of the modern American surveillance state.

Recent developments made me realize that we need to add cloudflare to this list.

perhaps a downvote on that came from lack of reference, I had assumed most here had read the 'recent developments' from cloudflare, but perhaps there are those who would downvote that have only read headlines. I was not aware of how much cloudflare had become a part of the survielance state until I read the recent post from the ceo there.

Here are a few quotes to substantiate my outrageous claim:

-- because we have a very effective technological solution that provides security, performance, and reliability in an affordable and easy-to-use way. As a result of that, a huge portion of the Internet now sits behind our network.

-- ...monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained...

-- We will continue to work within the legal process to share information...

This is edited merely to show proof of the statement about surveilance. I am intentional taking parts of it out of context that includes their 'reasoning' and all that. This statement from me is not about whether this is a good or bad thing they are doing or for which reasons they do or do not, should they are shouldn't they, or whatever.

I suggest reading more about their side of the story they posted: https://new.blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8cha...

and read discussions on other threads around HN and other places on the web about the good, bad, etc on the issue.

It saddens me greatly to have to make that above statement that was downvoted by the way - there was a time when I placed great faith in the ability of cloudflare to protect free speech from the Xchans and those who peruse them (4 chan was used at one time to coordinate LOIC DDoS attacks against sites I maintain and several hosting companies that tried to handle that. So I was relieved with cloudflare at one time in protecting data transit - now it's become another instrument in censorship at the direction of the few to affect the many sadly.

That faith has now been destroyed as they have chosen to take a different route and instead suriveil and silence at the whim of changing goalposts.

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#105

Post by SanchoPanda » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

auslander wrote: post #96

There is a contradiction: "Although Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, doesn’t have access to the content of those backed-up messages, Google and Apple do." and " 'iMessage communications are end-to-end encrypted and Apple has no way to decrypt iMessage data when it is in transit between devices,' the guidelines state." I would say it is the other way around, FB and Google can access the content of messages, Apple can no…

They may be referring to messages which were sent as end to end encrypted, but were later backed up in Google drive or Dropbox etc. in plaintext. This is something I have done in the past.

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#106

Post by caf » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

As I read through I didn't think there was too much to this - if we're going to have big classified databases then strong auditing is absolutely essential and I'm glad it's happening (people selling the data in them to corporations and governments is absolutely a valid concern).

I'm happy I kept reading though, because I thought this bit down near the bottom was insightful:

Authentication, which often involves sharing information about the contents of a forthcoming story with the government, is a common journalistic practice that allows the government to weigh in on any risks involved in publishing the material of which the journalist may not be aware. By turning that process into a trap for journalists and sources, the government is sacrificing an opportunity to safeguard its legitimate interests and tell its side of the story.

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#107

Post by Buge » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #75

> On August 8, 2014, dozens of FBI agents raided Hale’s house with guns drawn and searched his computer and flash drives. This all happened during the Obama administration, which declined to file charges. Five years later, Trump’s Justice Department revived the case. The article fails to point out that it was the Obama administration that really turned up the heat on whistleblowers: https://www.politifact.com/punditf…

Kind of funny, since some people claim The Intercept has an anti-Obama and pro-Trump bias.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/90qn1h/ecuador_wi...

Even HN sometimes compares The Intercept to Infowars https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17582751

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#108

Post by Fjolsvith » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #77

js2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress is 535 people and is filled with relatively little expertise[1]. The United States has a population of 330M and is the largest and most advanced economy in the world. Of course Congress has to delegate to executive agencies. This is not abdication. Abdication is letting lobbyists and "model legislation" outfits author the laws which legislators have been known to almost literally just rubber stamp. [1] Just…

As the guy who said "we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya" I doubt Meadows has a very broad-minded approach to delegating responsibility to those with more experience and expertise. I wouldn't automatically discount the value that a restauranteur or real estate developer could bring to office. At least it would bring a bit of diversity of opinion compared to the roomful of lawyers. Though in this case, we're…

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#109

Post by carapace » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #102

carapace wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be clear that I am not advocating for constant ubiquitous surveillance. Only I don't see a way to avoid it happening. There may be a severe disruption in civilization what with the climate and all, but one day "there will be lemon-soaked paper napkins." At best you can try to limit who has the surveillance tech, but to do that you have to have the surveillance tech, eh? The problem is circular. So, since we ca…

> I don't see a way to avoid it happening Civil society outnumbers spooks by how much, and who needs who, who is paying for who? Simply withdrawing support and tax money could end it rather quickly. I can't tell you how to organize people to do that, but it could actually just happen anytime, just a fluke, everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks enough is enough. High-tech requires constant, expensive maintenanc…

> who needs who

We need them. That's why we pay them.

> everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks enough is enough.

And then? Do they tear down the machines and all the "spooks" are tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail? How do the farm animals know the pigs are not becoming humans? ("Animal Farm" reference, in case it's not clear.) How do you know bad guys aren't building and using spook-tech?

For example, do the drug cartels voluntarily give up their gear in this scenario?

Re: Administration Using the Full Power of the Surveillance State on Whistleblowers

#110

Post by jki275 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #97

js2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress is 535 people and is filled with relatively little expertise[1]. The United States has a population of 330M and is the largest and most advanced economy in the world. Of course Congress has to delegate to executive agencies. This is not abdication. Abdication is letting lobbyists and "model legislation" outfits author the laws which legislators have been known to almost literally just rubber stamp. [1] Just…

Abdication is a single man stonewalling all remotely-progressive legislation from even reaching a vote in the Senate.

Well, it's not one man, it's 53 men and women, and that's not abdication it's politics -- as practiced by both sides when in power.