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NSA targets the privacy-conscious

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Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#101

Post by Crito »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #89
bilalq wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally replace "seek privacy and security" with almost anything in that statement. I mean, out of all the people that prefer Coke over Pepsi, there are definitely some bad guys. While your statement is true, it doesn't really give any justification on targeted spying. That is, unless of course, we consider the desire to hide things to be a signal of being a bad actor. Thinking along those lines is a very s…

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…

> "So, that ignores your slippery slope argument about personal liberties, which are totally valid. How do you balance national security and personal liberty in this case? That's the million dollar question."

"National Security" is a fucking joke; there is nothing that needs to be balanced. Anyone interested in terrorizing others could (after driving across state lines if necessary) walk into a Walmart and walk out with a semi-automatic rifle, walk into the nearest mall, yell their grievances with the country and start shooting people.

We know that this sort of attack is possible in the US because plenty of lone-nutters have more or less done it already in the US. We know that terrorist organizations are receptive to this style of attack because they have carried out this style of attack in other countries (Mumbai in 2008 and Kenya in 2013 are obvious examples). Yet the two have yet to be combined in the US.

The only reason why this hasn't happened in the US is that, contrary to popular belief, there just simply are not many people interested in doing this sort of thing in the US. The notion that terrorists yearning to attack America are around every corner is a myth. Those people are a rounding error.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

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/

On the other hand, anyone who is up to something bad is going to try to keep it as secret as possible, no?

After 10 years of pervasive surveillance and not being able to catch a single terrorist

Questionable. I wouldn't expect the NSA to put out a press release every time someone is nabbed on the back of their information-gathering, that wouldn't be very smart.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#103

Post by pessimizer »

tomphoolery wrote: post #92
pessimizer wrote: post #20

Of course this happens, and it's an obvious technique. I'm sure that not having a facebook account adds to your score, using AdBlock adds to your score, mentioning the NSA online adds to your score, refusing cookies adds to your score, using Linux adds to your score, etc. That's how a police state works. (XKeyScore += 5) My mother was involved in civil rights, so she has a file. It's fine that I have a file too. Hope…

I wish I could find out my XKeyScore. I'm genuinely interested in how threatening the NSA believes average people are.

XKeyScore is the new credit report:)

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#104

Post by pessimizer »

Holbein wrote: post #87
pessimizer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not worried (edit: about anything immediate), I'm not failing to partake in anything that I ever would, and I don't live any differently than I ever have. You're projecting something onto me, and that's not a great way to have a productive discussion.

Well, when you say > You won't get to hear about how the trial turns out from your grave that's equally projecting something onto me, so... that's not a great way to have a productive discussion neither.

Do you think I'm accusing you of having been hit by a car? I'm not. It was an analogy.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#105

Post by cbsmith »

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/

No, because anyone trying to hide something is highly likely to be trying to keep things private and secure. Ignoring the moral, ethical, and legal concerns, it is a perfectly reasonable course of action. The moral, ethical & legal concerns are of course terrible.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#106

Post by cbsmith »

pyre wrote: post #78
josu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because anyone trying to keep anything private or secure must be hiding something bad... No, that's not the reasoning. People that do bad things try to hide them. Therefore, a good first filter to catch bad people is to target those who hide things. They can narrow the search field afterwards.

This is true, but saying "treat all people trying to hide things as potential terrorists" is a very wide net to cast (to the point of useless).

Is that really what happens though? They aren't treating them as potential terrorists. They are treating it as one of many signals that would almost certainly be associated with a threat.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#107

Post by anigbrowl »

pessimizer wrote: post #20

Of course this happens, and it's an obvious technique. I'm sure that not having a facebook account adds to your score, using AdBlock adds to your score, mentioning the NSA online adds to your score, refusing cookies adds to your score, using Linux adds to your score, etc. That's how a police state works. (XKeyScore += 5) My mother was involved in civil rights, so she has a file. It's fine that I have a file too. Hope…

That's how any sort of metric works - your credit score, your Acxiom consumer category score, whatever metrics Facebook and Google use to score user engagement.

This is just how life is when databases are ubiquitous. After I bought a house and my name began appearing in property tax databases I started getting lots of (paper-based) commercial spam for things homeowners are more likely to buy, like different sorts of insurance, refinancing, satellite TV service yadda yadda.

When it emerged after 9-11 that various government agencies had failed to 'join the dots' by not sharing intelligence information effectively, there was a lot of public support for better-coordinated and more proactive intelligence gather, notwithstanding warnings about the risk to civil liberties. So collectively we got what we asked for. The lack of public outrage or mass demonstrations against the NSA strongly suggests that a large majority are OK with this state of affairs, especially since they're used to data collection in a commercial context.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#108

Post by tesq »

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…

The problem with such a filter is it will be perceived as inefficient and broken by those evaluating it if it denies an officer the authority to arrest someone he's already detained or determined to be worthy of arrest.

It will be another system which grants permission at the whims of the department, one that absolves individual officers of blame, punishment and consequences for bias and abuse they'll continue to revel in.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#109

Post by pessimizer »

afarrell wrote: post #51
YokoZar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a reasonable view if there weren't a systematic campaign by the NSA, FBI, and DEA to lie to judges and prosecutors about the actual source of underlying evidence. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel... The EFF calls it Intelligence Laundering. The DEA calls it parallel construction. Either way it is sinister and immoral and a court hasn't had a chance to rule on it precisely bec…

I don't actually hold the view expressed. I've just been trying (and failing) to find a compelling way to articulate the following point: "The FISA court's warrant system is flawed because the validity of its warrants or their execution are never checked because the warrants aren't actually used to bring criminal cases." So, I thought I'd try sarcasm. But I couldn't come up with a concise way to address the fact that…

It worked for me. It read like obvious fiction as far as to what I know about the NSA and the last couple of administrations.

Re: NSA targets the privacy-conscious

#110

Post by throwaway5752 »

opendais wrote: post #97
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…

> 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 ??? the probability of detecting & thwarting the one malactor, where ??? is an inequality.

Maybe it's good we have risk averse and non risk averse groups, that the balance of power between those groups can change over time as necessary.

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