Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us • Hacker News Board

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#141

Post by elwin » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:16 PM UTC

taway2012 wrote: post #116

tome wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This ideal is all but gone. Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first place?

I wish I had some authoritative references for this. Hopefully somebody else can write authoritatively or correct me. Based on my readings, slavery was always a problematic aspect of America. Even the founders debated whether to abolish slavery, but ultimately punted because they felt uniting the states was more important. That is, it was a tough compromise. Take a look at the book The Long March (about Lincoln). The…

William Freehling's Road to Disunion covers the topic thoroughly. Most of the founders expected slavery to die away gradually. The idea that it should remain permanently didn't appear for another 50 years and was never universal, even in the Deep South.

The book also explores the tensions between slavery and American ideals, and the many complications the tensions produced.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#142

Post by juanre » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:17 PM UTC

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Woody Guthrie:

[...]

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil

And be called by no name except "deportees"?

This is some time after 1948. Then, just as now, there were people who saw non-citizens as barely humans, in the US and everywhere else. But then there was Woody Guthrie as well, and the many people like him who saw the human in the foreigner.

What has changed in recent years is the reach of the mightiest power, and sheer number of people who find ourselves in the wrong end of its struggle for control.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#143

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:18 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #125

vacri wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's curious that you mention libertarianism in your first comment, but the leaders in most of those lists are the social democracies.

Just providing options. Personally, I'm skewed towards economic freedom.

Sure, though there are plenty of small government countries out there that aren't hell-holes (eg Vanuatu). It's just that social democracy is really quite philosophically different to libertarianism - the underlying ethos being 'everyone gets support' instead of 'every man for himself'.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#144

Post by furyg3 » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:23 PM UTC

Goladus wrote: post #120

nkoren wrote: post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

It would, perhaps, be enlightening to quote the entire sentence from the US Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the c…

You are interpreting this precisely backwards.

These "Rights" are unalienable. They are not to be given away, they are not to be taken away. Governments exist to secure these rights. To help protect these rights, the government may exist... but only by consent of the people being governed.

It may be true that the Russian government does not give these rights to it's citizens, or that these citizens yield these rights to the Russian government. Nevertheless, according to the morals listed in the DoI, the US government is founded on the belief that Russians have these rights, because they are human beings.

Therefore, the US government, when dealing with 'men' of any nationally, needs to respect the unalienable Rights which all men have been granted by their Creator. Anything else is hypocritical.

Edit: after thinking about it, it gets even better. Because foreigners have not consented to being governed by the US, the rights of foreigners not to be spied on by the US government would go even further than the rights of Americans. And yes, I know the DoI is not law. But if we Americans cannot simultaneously claim to believe in it's principles and make laws that contradict it without being hypocritical.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#145

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:24 PM UTC

TimJRobinson wrote: post #102

Derbasti wrote: post #59

The sad thing is, we don't have international law for these things. Thus, it is usually easier to ask a foreign intelligence agency if they could spy on a domestic suspect than to deal with it within the country. And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules for spying are most certainly governed by borders; Th…

Some kind of peer to peer encrypted data storage system (think bitcoin for data) would go a long way towards solving this. You could give sub keys to sites that want to access some of this data and because it's encrypted, distributed and peer to peer no one owns it and you control your data. Yes this would be crazy with todays infrastructure but in 10 - 20 years when internet is as previlent as electricity and everyo…

[deleted]

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#146

Post by bobbydavid » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

TimJRobinson wrote: post #98

As an Australian this is exactly how I feel. Over the past few weeks I've been moving many of my business systems off the cloud and onto self hosted servers and using less and less American servers because they clearly have no issue with taking foreigners information and with tens of thousands of contractors and employees able to access that information I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to…

Hopefully the data was encrypted while you were moving, since they're listening on the wires too.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#147

Post by jivatmanx » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #130

crusso wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It demonstrated that they had the right ideals but were unable to put them into practice in one fell swoop. As Lincoln pointed out - the framework of the Declaration was an ideal to be pursued. The Founders' wisdom in what they put into motion necessitated the eventual end of slavery. There's a big difference between moving toward the Declaration as an ideal as we still were in the time from the Founding until the ea…

Some of the Founders more than others. While many of them came from the North, where there were no slaves and slavery was generally unpopular, and some of the others like Washington and Jefferson held slaves but felt bad about it, there was a large enough contingent of Southern politicians who just plain favored slavery and had to be politically negotiated with. If you define "the Founders" as "everyone who attended…

It's also important to remember that this was before the industrial revolution, when almost the entire economy was agricultural, thus the South was far more powerful than the north.

The Civil War started right after the industrial revolution ended. By this time, the balance of power was greatly in favor of the North.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#148

Post by mpyne » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:41 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #23

jmadsen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, as a non-US citizen, are not protected by our constitution. Nor am I, a US citizen, protected from your government. I have no grounds to "raise outrage" at my government for spying on foreigners, much as I might disapprove. They don't break any laws when they do that. Moral rules, yes; disrespect to our friends and allies, yes; laws, no. When they spy on US citizens, they tear up our Constitution in doing so. Th…

You are factually wrong. You, as a US citizen, are most certainly protected from my government by the German constitution. Not when it comes to all basic rights in the constitution (only Germans have freedom of movement, freedom of labor and freedom of association), but most are universal and apply to every person. The US constitution is out of date and simply wrong on this point. Human rights are universal and every…

What about the Dutch government, and the Swedish government, U.K. government, and Canada, etc.? The EU itself has a data retention law that Germany doesn't follow, but don't the rest of the EU member nations participate?

FWIW I do feel that American citizens should have to 'participate' just as much in these schemes as the rest of the world, if these schemes are to exist at all.

I suppose what I can't figure out is why the reaction is devoted solely at the U.S., when it seems Germany is the only major Western society that cares that deeply about it.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#149

Post by mpyne » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:43 PM UTC

Derbasti wrote: post #59

The sad thing is, we don't have international law for these things. Thus, it is usually easier to ask a foreign intelligence agency if they could spy on a domestic suspect than to deal with it within the country. And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules for spying are most certainly governed by borders; Th…

> And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules for spying are most certainly governed by borders; This leads to this weird asymmetric situation where one particular domestic intelligence agency is able to collect almost all international data.

Pretty much this exactly. I don't think any part of our legal frameworks for security amongst the nations is really prepared for the migration to the Internet.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#150

Post by znowi » Sat, Jun 29, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

I see a lot of disillusion in Europe about the US. It's been going since the Iraq, but now it's a real wake up call. What's more alarming, it's slipping into anger and open opposition. This is not the change we've been anticipating.

Americans are in a tricky situation now. Who do you elect at this point to make things right? Does it even work? I think we've reached a major milestone here. I'm both frightened and curious as to what will happen. I believe what we do now will define our lives for decades to come.