The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning • Hacker News Board

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#111

Post by waffle_ss » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

What is "the next stage," exactly? Does the nod to China mean that it's disappearing those who dissent from the state, turning ethnic minorities into organ donors + fertilizer and remarrying their wives over to the ethnic majority, building dragnet panopticons that lock you out of social existence entirely if its algorithmic eye deems you a problem?

The US wasn't founded on perfection and it certainly hasn't taken only correct steps since then. WWII wasn't the high water mark for freedom, either - Americans have stronger freedom of speech now compared to then for example.

This law is clearly a misstep but I hardly think it means it's time to stick a fork in the West.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#112

Post by nabnob » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #82

nabnob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

Would it be going too far to suggest that the founding fathers never intended for a full democracy in the first place? It makes for an interesting argument when viewed in the context of the electoral college.

Yeah, they never intended a full democracy. Initially only white men who owned property could vote (6% of the population when the United States was founded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...), so I think that's a fair statement.

All of the rights gained by different oppressed groups (right to vote, labor laws, tenant laws) came through struggle and direct action, not because those in power suddenly decided to grant those rights out of the kindness of their hearts.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#113

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

economicslol wrote: post #83

shadowgovt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2 The Twin Towers were destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, and an additional plane was crashed, via a successful conspiracy that could have been detected by blanket, passive surveillance. That's what changed. The threat model the US defense department is concerned about has changed significantly since WWII. The threat to Pax Americana is not direct military interv…

>As for individual citizens, it appears most still see the threat of asymmetric warfare as a more profound threat to their life and livelihood than passive, blanket government surveillance I don't think this necessarily follows. I don't think most Americans support the Patriot Act but its basically known at this point that Public Opinion has no effect on Policy here. Also how much the public understanding of what the…

Question wording drastically changes the results on polling whether people support the Patriot Act, but broadly speaking, it appears most Americans support its existence and most Americans believe it is in need of moderation. I don't think it's as simple as "Public opinion has no effect on policy;" it's that the policy response to "most people aren't happy, but nobody can gel behind a concrete changelist" is "stay the course."

I agree on the education question, but that's going to be a regular pattern in public polls. General public savvy on privacy issues and the power of technology to consolidate information has not kept up with technology. And, TBH, if the situation at hand is actually "Most Americans don't understand the problem well enough to articulate their wants in the context of the issue," that's a scenario where public opinion shouldn't drive policy. A democracy of the uneducated doesn't work.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#114

Post by parliament32 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

ancarda wrote: post #105

Jah6Aihe wrote: post #9

Here is what I do myself to avoid surveillance culture, in case anyone find it useful. 1. I always use local apps rather than webservices if possible. I use only free software, built from source, to be sure there's no tracker in it (I would love to find a way to whitelist which apps can access the network, but I haven't found a way for that yet). There's almost always a way to perform a task locally. 2. I have a copy…

>7. I use my own local dns resolver. Does that provide a usable amount of privacy? It doesn't seem like it would given your local BIND instance would have to talk to DNS servers on the Internet -- over plaintext -- and so would reveal your lookups anyway. I never bothered with a local DNS stack because I felt it wasn't worth the effort. Can someone say if I've missed something? Caching / performance seems like the on…

The privacy benefit is there's no centralized logs. If you're using your ISP's / CF's / Google's resolvers[1], there's a single place the bad guys have to log to get all of your DNS requests. Locally, your resolver talks to each authoritative server in the chain independently.. to find out who you're talking to, it's not a matter of just requesting logs anymore, they'd have to actively tap your connection and sniff traffic on DNS ports.

[1]Someone will start shouting about how 8.8.8.8/1.1.1.1 doesn't store logs. Yes they do[2][3]. They store full logs for "24 to 48 hours", so the bad guys can happily request your DNS logs (without a warrant now), as long as they request them once a day for the previous day.

[2]https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy

[3]https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/what-is-1.1.1.1/

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#115

Post by cryptonector » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

nabnob wrote: post #44

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

The U.S. gets over its problems and becomes a better place.

Slavery? -> Civil War, slavery over.

Jim Crow laws? -> Civil Rights protests, the Supreme Court finally realizes what the Constitution really says, and Jim Crow is over.

Prohibition causes gangsterism and mafia? -> the whole country did not get corrupted by it, and eventually the mafia got taken down.

And so on. Maybe not every problem, but there's a lot of big problems that have been overcome. And all the while not falling into various traps. For example, the Great Depression led to the Nazis getting into power in Germany, and Latin America was quite marked by the economic disaster that was the Great Depression, but the U.S. failed to get a Hitler or Perón -- that's huge.

This is made possible by a number of things, some of which are ideas, and some of which are accidents:

  - geography
  - luck: having brilliant founders!
  - a brilliant Constitution that splits power not
    just three ways, but also over N States (currently 50)
  - mutual distrust in the early days of the nation
  - a British background and fresh memories of the
    British civil war

This means that freedom -yes, freedom- has been available to many, and eventually to most/all Americans. The original ideas were made too aspirational by the stain of slavery, yes, but in the end it all worked out decently enough, even if it took time to get there.

This surveillance-state thing? Who knows, we may not overcome it. Or maybe we will. But are there large countries you'd bet will do better at getting over their problems? China? Brazil? Russia? Really, compare to other countries.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#116

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

waffle_ss wrote: post #111

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

What is "the next stage," exactly? Does the nod to China mean that it's disappearing those who dissent from the state, turning ethnic minorities into organ donors + fertilizer and remarrying their wives over to the ethnic majority, building dragnet panopticons that lock you out of social existence entirely if its algorithmic eye deems you a problem? The US wasn't founded on perfection and it certainly hasn't taken on…

I took "the next stage" to mean stages in the cycles of empires (ie towards decay+collapse), not to say the CCP is a positive evolutionary step in governments.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#117

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

hnta142356 wrote: post #95

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would my ISP be logging every or even any TCP packet coming out of my modem? I watch Netflix at full 4K and that consumes about 3GB an hour. Multiplied by the 50,000 in my neighborhood and it seems pricey. Some things I would be expecting them to log are DNS requests, DHCP leases, and access to ISP sites.

initial TCP connection. obviously they wouldn't log every TCP packet in an established connection.

They could though. Data storage is cheap and consumers can't generate enough fluff to cause an overflow. They probably don't for 95% of internet traffic. It's the outliers that get the most scrutiny.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#118

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #97

tjpnz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be going too far to suggest that the founding fathers never intended for a full democracy in the first place? It makes for an interesting argument when viewed in the context of the electoral college.

No, it's just historical fact that they feared mob rule and worked to try to keep the uneducated masses out.

Perhaps more accurately, they were of two minds about mob rule.

Jefferson believed in the idealized "happy yeoman farmer;" that common people, allowed to seek their own fate, would make a better government. Virtue (as a quasi-religious concept) dwelt in the heart of the aggregate public.

Adams believed in significant risks letting an uneducated mass of people determine their own fate. He didn't have to dig too far into the history books to find examples of why a government given over to the people tended to devolve into rule by a strongman. Government of a virtuous people demanded an elite who would be dedicated to the cause and educated to do it right.

The government built from people in these two camps of thought was a compromise government intended to tame the catastrophic risk-factors of the excesses of both scenarios.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#119

Post by ciarannolan » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

coronadisaster wrote: post #54

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

And the police killed nearly 6,000 people in the U.S. since 2015, without due process: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings/blob... (that equals to about 3 per day, I am surprised that I don't hear more about them)

Is due process required when someone points a gun at the police? Charges them with a knife? Tries to run them over?

I watch 2-3 new police bodycam videos per day thanks to some neat Youtube channels (Police Activity and Real World Police). I've seen maybe one or two shootings on those channels that were clearly wrong, out of hundreds that were justified or a reasonable person could find to be justified.

Wondering if there's a database of police shootings that includes more information about the circumstances of the encounter.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#120

Post by claudeganon » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

tossAfterUsing wrote: post #96

nabnob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

> Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Maybe we don't bother mentioning these very obvious historical circumstances. Instead, we can talk about what technological solutions exist already, or could exist in the near term, which would obviate these institutions of oppression. I am very interested in tools like Whatsat[0] and Sphinx[1] which protect com…

> Maybe we don't bother mentioning these very obvious historical circumstances. Instead, we can talk about what technological solutions exist already, or could exist in the near term, which would obviate these institutions of oppression.

These have never been solely technical problems, but political, moral, and organizational ones. States can simply make use or development of any technology illegal and bring the full force of its monopoly on violence to bear on those who run afoul of it. That has to be countered outside of just building things.

Ignoring history doesn’t make its lessons irrelevant.