Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping • Hacker News Board

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#171

Post by owenfi » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:33 PM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #37

toyg wrote: post #6

This is a tragedy. We need to reboot email. Encrypt everything, including metadata -- given current hardware, the client can easily bruteforce it from a list of known keys. Build some sort of easy key distribution tool (connecting via p2p, dns, whatever, just build a goddamn UI). Ask existing transports to relax their restrictions enough to let fully-encrypted mail through, and build some intelligent webmail interfac…

The Direct Project is an email encryption scheme that hopes to replace the mail and fax currently used by American physicians to communicate patient health information. It is a requirement for Stage 2 (2014) Meaningful Use certified EHR software. So this is going to be adopted on a large scale in the next year or two. It uses SMTP to transmit SMIME messages signed with X.509. Public keys for recipients are discovered…

One of the mechanisms for relationship building is Blue Button+[1]

We have a version of the java reference implementation up and running, so I can vouch for it. I have been thinking about it in context of the privacy atmosphere for quite a while now. On one hand I'm excited that such a technology could also be used for secure communication and on the other I'm worried that health records will be susceptible to the same coercion.

[1] https://secure.bluebuttontrust.org/

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#172

Post by walden42 » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:34 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #6

This is a tragedy. We need to reboot email. Encrypt everything, including metadata -- given current hardware, the client can easily bruteforce it from a list of known keys. Build some sort of easy key distribution tool (connecting via p2p, dns, whatever, just build a goddamn UI). Ask existing transports to relax their restrictions enough to let fully-encrypted mail through, and build some intelligent webmail interfac…

BitMessage is a reboot: https://bitmessage.org/

Fully decentralized, based on the idea behind bitcoin.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#173

Post by bricestacey » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #109

throw7 wrote: post #97

This is not surprising since "pj" guards his privacy and anonymity. Two things the surveillance state doesn't want you to have.

> This is not surprising since "pj" guards his privacy and anonymity. "Her". Pamela is a woman.

On wikipedia there is a quote, "I chose PJ, because it could be anyone, either sex, any nationality, anyone and no one in particular." Pointing out her sex, you're just being a jackass and for what?

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#174

Post by joe_the_user » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #138

anologwintermut wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or…

Groklaw isn't an organization, its a personal project, and its not shutting down because of the impact of the NSA revelations on Groklaw's mission, but because of the personal impact on the site operator. Groklaw is shutting down because Pamela Jones , in the wake of the NSA revelations, has made a "personal decision [...] to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible".

This

This clarification should be at the top the discussion

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#175

Post by guelo » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:38 PM UTC

MartinMcGirk wrote: post #75

alan_cx wrote: post #30

I hope those who treated me with scorn for suggesting the politicians and business people are effectively blackmailed by the mere existence of NSA type spying can now see it for real. No direct threat, not conversation, no deals. Just the fear of the knowledge that one is being comprehensively watched, and what "they" might have. This fear is enough to alter behavior, to conform. Again, at what stage can we describe…

As a UK resident, I feel like I can speak to the question of whether we can describe the UK (I pass no judgement on the US) as oppressive or a police state, so here's my take on it. I don't necessarily agree that GCHQ or the NSA spying on UK subjects is a great idea, I don't like the idea that all of my communications are collected and available to analyse should I ever blow anything up or should someone in GCHQ take…

You don't work in journalism or political activism and you don't care about people that do. Got it.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#176

Post by saalweachter » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #158

saalweachter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'm not sure who would win. One estimate I found was that there 150 million iPhone 5's shipped in the first year, and each one was about 25 GFlops. If 1% of that CPU was spent encrypting & decrypting communications to and from the iPhones, that is about 37,500 TFlops, which is just over the Rmax listed for the top supercomputer, Tianhe-2. Some numbers for the cost of that supercomputer are around $100 millio…

Current estimated total cost for just one of many fighter jet programs (F-35 joint strike fighter): $397 billion. That's when we're barely making noise about something that unequivocally provides no national security benefit unless we're planning on aerial dogfighting like it's WWI. There are dozens of similarly useless or near-useless defense spending programs, like the tanks the Army keeps saying it doesn't want. I…

That's $397 billion over many years; I am suggesting a target of $100 billion per year.

That's not to say we couldn't or wouldn't spend in excess of $100 billion per year on a boondoggle. We've done it before and we'll do it again. But I think $100 billion is the point at which money even becomes an issue. $1 or $10 billion and there's barely a point in trying.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#177

Post by jlgreco » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:42 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #167

samstave wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. This logic is broken. While more people may die from furniture than terrorism, what the NSA is doing is ensure that ZERO people are free. Period. You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means wi…

> You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means without the government's ability to actually be party to that comm. That's reading a whole lot into the definition of "free." Were people "free" in 1950? If so, how do they become "not free" by introducing a new form of communication (created by the military, mind you) that is monitored more heavily than the ones they u…

Red Scare 2.0: The absolute pinnacle of freedom.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#178

Post by jlgreco » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:47 PM UTC

dobbsbob wrote: post #155

jlgreco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would just find more contractors eager to bill the increased expenses.

Or they would force even more backdoors into proprietary hardware than they do already. For all we know Intel and AMD could have microcode to sabotage RNG and they can already decrypt anything with ease using a skeleton key to predict the randomness.

I've always (probably very naively) hoped that competition keeps chip makers honest. If anyone does something naughty then their competitors would probably discover it while reverse engineering the other's product.

Now that I say that, it sounds even more naive than I previously thought. All bets are probably off.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#179

Post by samstave » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:51 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #170

samstave wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am sure you are correct, I can't help that this is how I actually feel. The entire concept of "America", for me, has completely dissolved. The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal". All meaning from these terms has been removed. We live in an illusion. The actual reality we live in is a simple binary relationship: The haves. The have-nots. Those who have power (money) do literally anyth…

You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria. Probably your whole life, the government has overstepped the boundaries of the 4th amendment when it came to poor black people. But I bet if I told you a few years ago about that, you wouldn't have said it made "the entire concept of America" dissolve for you. And rightfully so. The fact that some people in the government do some things you think should be illegal, does n…

>It should be noted that the surveillance programs seem pretty designed to stay on the right side of existing Supreme Court precedent.

I am pretty sure that what is slowly being revealed by Greenwald from Snowden's files is proving this to be false.

Re: Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

#180

Post by samstave » Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #170

samstave wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am sure you are correct, I can't help that this is how I actually feel. The entire concept of "America", for me, has completely dissolved. The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal". All meaning from these terms has been removed. We live in an illusion. The actual reality we live in is a simple binary relationship: The haves. The have-nots. Those who have power (money) do literally anyth…

You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria. Probably your whole life, the government has overstepped the boundaries of the 4th amendment when it came to poor black people. But I bet if I told you a few years ago about that, you wouldn't have said it made "the entire concept of America" dissolve for you. And rightfully so. The fact that some people in the government do some things you think should be illegal, does n…

I talk abou the last 13 years because it was a coup by the intelligence apparatus, led by the Agents of the Carlyle Group to brazenly take over the american military completely.

I know a lot of what was done in the last 50 years - and in the last 40, there has been one agency specifically working night and day to subvert the structure of the government, and led by a few people.

The CIA, since its inception after WWII as it evolved from the OSS into what it is today was founded upon the SS where they absorbed as many SS officers the US culd get their hands on.

Up until 2001 - there was still a split between the MIC and "regular america" -- after 2001 - that split dissolved and the DHS was built to encapsulate all intel services under one branch, and under one puppet of the CIA cabal.