Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 479 posts

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#191

Post by downandout »

FrojoS wrote: post #184
downandout wrote: post #177

I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that this is happening, or that the Obama administration can't keep highly classified documents under wraps. That document was labeled Top Secret and was supposed to remain so until April 12, 2038. This whole episode shows evil on the one hand and dangerous ineptitude on the other.

Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.

It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#192

Post by mercurial »

austenallred wrote: post #88
newman314 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So roll over and take it like a champ? If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.

I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt it's "switch my service provider to AT&T."

Especially since AT&T data is probably routed to the NSA as well.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#193

Post by acjohnson55 »

snoshy wrote: post #83
robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Sadly, you forgot the most important factor in all of this: money. Vote with your wallet. Far more important and influential than voting once in 4 years.

Only if you have a big wallet. And that's the problem.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#194

Post by hereonbusiness »

digitalengineer wrote: post #82

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an…

I don't really get why governments would want to do most of this, it's mostly just a waste of money if they don't plan to establish a totalitarian regime.

I mean, they collect all those phone records, internet records, they know your movement patterns, and now what? What good can you do with it for your citizen ?

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#195

Post by loup-vaillant »

robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy.

I mean, democracy. Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the country (that's such an obvious conflict of interest).

Good luck, though.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#196

Post by bennyg »

ppod wrote: post #168
kriro wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the standard counterargument is started by asking them if they have any curtains or blinds and if so, why? [or you can ask them if they'd be willing to have a streaming camera installed in their bedroom]

People who argue very strongly against government intrusion often seem to ignore the distinction between private and public spaces. I have no problem with any amount of recording equipment in public spaces. Anywhere that a policeman could stand and watch; I see a camera as an efficient aid. I won't let a policeman into my house unless they have a warrant - and not because I have anything to hide, but because upholdin…

Then surely those cameras should be available to the public as well. If anywhere a policeman can stand also counts as anywhere anyone can stand, and if it's a public space as you say, then the people have just as much right to see what's going on as the police. Public is public, right?

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#197

Post by return0 »

newman314 wrote: post #79
austenallred wrote: post #55

A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you? More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.

So roll over and take it like a champ? If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.

It's kind of frightening that a boycott can be considered a better course to defend civil rights than democracy.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#198

Post by rlx0x »

robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Thats great, lets minimize government, lets privatize schools, police, prison, the fire department and everything else! "Ultra limited government" for the future! Lets deregulate everything, because you know you can trust Corporations!

The part you need to realize is, there already are on their way to your utopia. The point is, that you need a strong military, police and surveillance state in order to make the transition fully. There some people that don't like to be corporate slaves so you need power to force people into their brave new world! :)

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#199

Post by acjohnson55 »

andreyf wrote: post #59
adventured wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice printing all but eliminates the idea of anonymity for tracfones. All they'd need is one conversation, and they can look for you from there on using your voice. They can back trace who you are by who you talk to and so on; relatively trivial to figure out who you are from there, particularly assuming you make a few calls and or reveal any details.

I'm skeptical how accurate voiceprinting can be after all the distortion/compression of a cell signal. If you have a device you use to have contacts you want to keep secret from the NSA, you probably shouldn't call your friends on it.

Having done some work with watermarking, I would assume it's extremely accurate. There is so much information that makes it through the transmission process: your speech cadence, inflection, pronunciations, word choice, interjections, background noise, etc. The only way I'd feel reasonably comfortable defeating something like voice printing is using a text-to-speech engine.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#200

Post by silvestrov »

anemitz wrote: post #42
silvestrov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump. That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.

There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure. However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.

There is one reason: the government will make sure there are laws which enables them to require providers to give them decypted dumps. If the provider says "can't do", they will be shut down.

In the end the government can force the OS vendors to install keyloggers.

The ones who make the law always win.

Post reply on HN