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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#181

Post by panarky »

jacquesm wrote: post #37

Holy crap. Groklaw? I'd never for one second thought that the fall out from the NSA debacle would reach so far as to cause Groklaw to be shut down. PJ feels extremely genuine here, she is definitely not using this as an excuse. Wow. There is something very unhealthy in the air or in the water these days. Lots of people seem to be totally immune to the consequences of rampant surveillance and frankly bizarre powers ex…

    I have now gotten for myself an email there,
    p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes
    to contact me over something really important
    and feels squeamish about writing to an email
    address on a server in the US.
PJ could help people understand the real issues if she explained that all plaintext mail is vulnerable. It's not only about the mail host, it's the network itself that's compromised.

Switching to Kolab is false comfort for people who are "squeamish" about sending mail to "a server in the US".

I'd love to see PJ publish her public key and encourage people to learn how to use it.

Re: Forced Exposure

#182

Post by einhverfr »

VLM wrote: post #161
einhverfr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is even more scary is that we have been in freefall in this regard mostly since at least Nixon signed the Banking Secrecy Act. This was followed by Carter signing FISA.... Regan followed, signing among other things legislation to allow the military to enforce drug laws domestically as an exemption to Posse Comitatus. This meant that the military was involved in surveillance at both Ruby Ridge and Waco, and also…

The purpose of elections is to give the populace the false idea that they have a choice. If they could actually change anything, they'd be outlawed.

What you can use elections for is to extort policies from elected officials. The problem is that means being willing to vote for the greater evil if you don't get the things the country needs and our country is unwilling to enter into that mentality.

Re: Forced Exposure

#183

Post by astral303 »

That is really sad.

We need some kind of a "want my privacy back" backlash or a movement. A slogan that we can unite against and spread the message across the populace.

It's the kind of slogan you use against not only the mass surveillance by the NSA, but also against vehicle miles traveled tax that puts a GPS in your car and against those insurance company OBD-II dongles (Progressive Snapshot) that record your driving and transmit it back. Against surveillance cameras on every city block. Against the idea that "if you have nothing to hide", then you will have no problem with surveillance.

Re: Forced Exposure

#184

Post by einhverfr »

Karunamon wrote: post #178
tilsammans wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We -- all citizens of Western countries -- should seriously stop voting altogether. And I mean full stop. When the next election comes, nobody votes. That'll destabilize things right quick.

Not ever going to happen. All you've accomplished then is abdicated your vote to people who did. Would be more realistic to elect a third party, meaning someone who is not part of the corrupt R/D duopoly.

More pragmatic would be to vote anti-incombant regardless of party until things change. Let the elected officials know that if they want a second term, they had better cooperate.

Re: Forced Exposure

#185

Post by ams6110 »

mcv wrote: post #97
demallien wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that it's useful to be talking about Obama specifically. Before Obama there was Bush Jr, who was the sitting president when most of these programs were put in place. It should be clear now that it's not one specific President, or one specific party, but the whole political class that has been corrupted. Thinking things will get better at the next election will absolutely not help things, unless the issu…

I lot of people were hoping Obama was the start of a new direction. I'm now hoping he'll be the last of the old direction. The big problem to solve is: how do you elect someone different? As long as the two parties get to decide who American can elect, democracy is a hollow gesture. And the media are all in the pocket of the main parties. Honestly, it seems like only Al-Jazeera US might be the only independent news s…

how do you elect someone different

Start by being intellectually curious about the person, who he is, what he has done on the past, what philosopies he is associated with. Quit labeling people who try to do this as wingnuts or racists or employing other logically fallacious arguments to try to shut down debate.

Re: Forced Exposure

#186

Post by pilif »

> is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US,

don't do this. Since 1999, email providers in Switzerland are forced to keep all logs and data for one year (currently in discussion to prolong this to 5 years) and hand all data over at the authorities request.

If you don't comply you will be punished by fines or even jail.

I once (early 2000s) received one of these orders and I honestly don't remember whether it had a judges signature, but I think it was just some police officer signing it, so I can't be sure whether there was (and is) any court oversight.

If you want your conversations to be confidential, don't choose a Swiss provider.

Re: Forced Exposure

#187

Post by bostik »

auggierose wrote: post #165
bostik wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume That brought back a quote from a past: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." I had to look it up to get the exact wording right. Was only half surprised that it comes from Orwell's 1984.

That implies you have not read 1984. You should.

Oh, I have. It's just far too long ago, and I had the misfortune of reading a translation. A bad one, at that.

So I couldn't place the quote. I just knew it from different context.

Much the same way it took me years to find a quote that my gradeschool math teacher used and which had lodged itself firmly in my brain. Namely: "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." - Confucius

Re: Forced Exposure

#188

Post by JonFish85 »

Well that's puerile. Talk about taking things to extremes--just like a child would do. "We can't go to grandma's right now? WE'RE NEVER GOING TO GRANDMA'S EVER!"

"What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7." Yeah? Well if you're using this as your benchmark, then you should never go out in public, because I guarantee you're on videotape someplace. Security cameras are everywhere. And let's not play games: your ISP has been monitoring your browsing & download history for decades. Nevermind phone calls, any tolls you paid while driving, any bill you paid via credit card, any flight you've taken, any country you've traveled.

Now this is broken and suddenly you care? Stop fucking playing the victim card for attention, I'm sick of it. And I'm not just talking about the Groklaw people, this goes for whoever jumps on the "OMG I'm shutting down now" bandwagon for a portion of the 15 minutes of fame going around.

You want to make a difference? Start getting involved in politics. Internet-rage does nothing but get you a few website hits before people go back to caring about the A-Rod scandal, or the Obamas' new dog.

Re: Forced Exposure

#189

Post by JshWright »

panarky wrote: post #181
jacquesm wrote: post #37

Holy crap. Groklaw? I'd never for one second thought that the fall out from the NSA debacle would reach so far as to cause Groklaw to be shut down. PJ feels extremely genuine here, she is definitely not using this as an excuse. Wow. There is something very unhealthy in the air or in the water these days. Lots of people seem to be totally immune to the consequences of rampant surveillance and frankly bizarre powers ex…

I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US. PJ could help people understand the real issues if she explained that all plaintext mail is vulnerable. It's not only about the mail host, it's the network itself that's compromised. Switching to Kolab is fa…

> I'd love to see PJ publish her public key and encourage people to learn how to use it.

That helps, but it doesn't mask the data groups like the NSA are really after (who is talking to who, and when).

Re: Forced Exposure

#190

Post by pron »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #90
pron wrote: post #39

I have said this on HN several times, and I will say this again. Dragnet surveillance of private digital correspondence by the US and other governments is wrong, and a gross, unjustified, overreaction to the real threat of terrorism. And yet, when taken as part of the whole picture that is the internet, government surveillance is little more than a drop in the ocean. While governments may collect a possibly significa…

A purely quantitative comparison between governments and corporations is completely pointless. Governments have a monopoly on the use of force, on law making and on many other things that we all depend on. Governments have much greater powers than any particular corporation, and hence the abuse of that power is a lot more dangerous.

> Governments have a monopoly on the use of force...

They do now, but that was not always the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services

> ... on law making

How elected representatives vote is public record. How corporations and lobbyists sway them, however, is not.

> Governments have much greater powers than any particular corporation

Yes, but unfortunately this may be changing. I don't think any government in the history of mankind has ever had as much information about people as Google does.

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