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What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

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Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#21

Post by RivieraKid »

mtgx wrote: post #10

Let's just say this: have you at least pirated a song or a movie, smoked marijuana and bragged about it online, or done anything at all that you know could be seen as a crime, or even stuff that you think is "moral" but probably illegal? Okay. Then in a surveillance state you better not ever try to piss off the national leaders, or even the local ones (depends how far this gets), and you better not complain to your f…

This is what how it could impact avg people in the future. But it very probably won't.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#22

Post by rdouble »

bilbo0s wrote: post #19

I'm just going to repost a comment I made during an HN thread on trolling here: ---- "....However, on a general note, I think it is important to realize that every text message you send, every cell phone conversation you have, every post to the CNN forum you make, every tweet you send ... is directly attributable to your IP whether you use your own name or not. With Facebook and Google tracking everything you do, whe…

Now think about that in the context of a theoretical "internet and mobile phone profile check".

If you're a marketer you can already buy this data from various vendors. The way it works is since everyone signs up for various services with the same email address, they just figure out what your email address is, then scrape out your data from all the services you've signed up for.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#23

Post by stephengillie »

straight_talk wrote: post #9
dylangs1030 wrote: post #8

There are both clear and subtle implications for widespread surveillance. Whether they will practically impact your life and rights depends on chance and your private habits. Here's a broad list of consequences that is by no means exhaustive: 1. You can be indicted and charged with a number of felonies, most notably treason and violating national security, for your private correspondence and electronic habits. 2. Inc…

The biggest implication - it makes opposition impossible. In a few years there will be nobody to defend the average person rights. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#24

Post by rdtsc »

grey-area wrote: post #4

The danger as I see it is negligible to the average Internet user, until they become a person of interest to someone with the power to use these programs - a journalist say might pursue their work for decades without being interfered with, but with all their correspondence stored, only to find themselves undermined fatally by their actions at the age of 19 when they broke a story which the administration didn't like,…

> What I find disturbing about these tools is that they are far more suited to retrospective analysis, and therefore to discovering dirt on ordinary people and undermining the rule of law,

Aha yes. Access this kind of system would be Stalin's or any other brutal dictator's wet dream. This is what they'd get a hard on thinking about. "Oh, I wish I had a system where everyone would input their hobbies, interests, connections, all they messages (Facebook, GMail, Skype, etc) and then I would be able to read and access those things, all the phone calls, shopping habits, text messages, what kind of porn they like, who they like to joke about, what they eat,...mmm". Well guess what we have that here and now.

Retrospective analysis is the key here. I have mentioned in the past how the formula for a successful brutal dictatorship is this:

1) Complicated, ambiguous and broad laws (disobedience, being suspicious, obstruction of justice, obstruction of business, disorderly conduct, etc etc)

2) Total monitoring and control & archiving

Just those 2) are enough. With enough background material to scare anyone with jail, a criminal record, disclosure of shameful information ("I see you like foot fetishes, how would you like if your church friends found out about that?... Are you sure you should keep participating in this Occupy movement, think twice about it...") they can control and manipulate anyone.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#25

Post by nitrogen »

RivieraKid wrote: post #21
mtgx wrote: post #10

Let's just say this: have you at least pirated a song or a movie, smoked marijuana and bragged about it online, or done anything at all that you know could be seen as a crime, or even stuff that you think is "moral" but probably illegal? Okay. Then in a surveillance state you better not ever try to piss off the national leaders, or even the local ones (depends how far this gets), and you better not complain to your f…

This is what how it could impact avg people in the future. But it very probably won't.

It's not about affecting everybody. The vast majority will likely be left alone. It's about having the ability to affect everyone.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#26

Post by shirro »

There are broadly two types of innocent victims. Those who feel violated if they found someone had broken into their house and gone through their underwear and those who would be dismissive because their underwear was all clean and no real harm was done. Rather than trying to decide which victim reaction is correct by trying to assess if any real harm was done or not perhaps we could ask what possible justification there was for a stranger to be in their underwear drawer in the first place.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#27

Post by jhuckestein »

I clicked through to a post on zero knowledge web applications and thought it was pretty interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853294

The basic idea is build web applications that only store encrypted data on the server. All data is encrypted and decrypted on the client using JavaScript.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#28

Post by fab13n »

A question which is overlooked in this kind of answers is, how do you circumvent your mistrust of your own OS?

It's a foregone conclusion that Microsoft OSes have backdoors for the NSA, and it's not unlikely that they also know some exploits, which grant them access to many distributions of open-source OSes. If my OS reports everything to the NSA whenever I access it, encrypted cloud storage won't help that much; it will only make super-wide surveillance harder to scale.

Re: What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average Internet user?

#29

Post by straight_talk »

stephengillie wrote: post #23
straight_talk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest implication - it makes opposition impossible. In a few years there will be nobody to defend the average person rights. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva

Nice sounding statement, but power does corrupt. Quite a few experiments proofing it.
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