U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#231

Post by mpyne » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:36 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #230

mpyne wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already do with regard to medical information, in the form of HIPAA. HIPAA type records are not publically displayed when people walk outside. To the extent that a given condition is public people are allowed to note that. This is why assholes were legally allowed to call me pimple-face, for instance.

HIPAA type records are not publically displayed when people walk outside. No, but there are some things that ostensibly take place in public but should still be considered private, absent some urgently pressing higher need that can only be met by disclosure. To the extent that a given condition is public people are allowed to note that. This is why assholes were legally allowed to call me pimple-face, for instance. A…

> At some point of excess, wouldn't that fall under verbal abuse, harassment, or bullying, depending on whether you're considering laws or school policies, and thus not be considered free speech?

Perhaps. But should that point come the speech will lose protection because it is abusive, harassing, or bullying nature. Not because it describes my medical condition.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#232

Post by forgottenpaswrd » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 7:45 AM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #73

oinksoft wrote: post #8

Ah, I see I've arrived at Hacker/USA Government Abuses News. And I say that as somebody deeply interested in these stories.

Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting. HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!) It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of…

"It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense."

So you like playing with your tech toys completely indifferent to the actual effect of these toys in people's life.

This is called egoism and onanism, looking for granting yourself pleasure without caring for anything or anybody else.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#233

Post by sneak » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 8:25 AM UTC

krallja wrote: post #229

sneak wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet there would be a way to store e-mail accounts encrypted so only the inbox/outbox would be stored in plain text on Google's servers. What makes you think that's not being done now?

The fact that search works implies that the contents of your email are not encrypted.

It's easy to search encrypted data, you just decrypt it first.

What makes you think Google would be reckless enough to store unencrypted private data on disk, or incompetent enough to not implement search over an encrypted set of data?

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#234

Post by sneak » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 9:19 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #215

sneak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is way better than all the explanations I've been able to come up with for people about why it's important to defend weev.

That might be telling you that there isn't a good reason to do so.

Oh, I had good ones, and still do: things about unpopular speech being the canary in the coal mine, things like that. It's much the same explanation.

Mencken is just a lot more eloquent than I was describing it, though.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#235

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:19 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #233

krallja wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that search works implies that the contents of your email are not encrypted.

It's easy to search encrypted data, you just decrypt it first. What makes you think Google would be reckless enough to store unencrypted private data on disk, or incompetent enough to not implement search over an encrypted set of data?

My suggestion was to encrypt the data client-side and store the accounts encrypted, so Google couldn't themselves decrypt the accounts. The purpose is to think of ways to structure the technologies so the hosting providers don't have to be trusted entities.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#236

Post by run4yourlives » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #206

run4yourlives wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting. HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!) It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of…

It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense. Unfortunately, politics have invaded our tech oasis, and I don't mean HN. The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable; at this point, retreating to some new oasis and denying it won't make it go away. While I do want a site where I can see more articles about Erlang and lambda calculus, for no…

>The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable

You make this statement as if it was some sort of new happening. This is as old as technology itself. Finding new ways to kill each other has been the number one driver of technology progress, and always has been.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#237

Post by run4yourlives » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #232

run4yourlives wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting. HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!) It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of…

"It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense." So you like playing with your tech toys completely indifferent to the actual effect of these toys in people's life. This is called egoism and onanism, looking for granting yourself pleasure without caring for anything or anybody else.

No, it's called focusing on a particular topic at one time.

You cannot concern yourself with politics all the damn time any more than you can concern yourself with anything else exclusively.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#238

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 10:40 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #236

nitrogen wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense. Unfortunately, politics have invaded our tech oasis, and I don't mean HN. The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable; at this point, retreating to some new oasis and denying it won't make it go away. While I do want a site where I can see more articles about Erlang and lambda calculus, for no…

>The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable You make this statement as if it was some sort of new happening. This is as old as technology itself. Finding new ways to kill each other has been the number one driver of technology progress, and always has been.

The web was not invented to kill people.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#239

Post by run4yourlives » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 10:50 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #238

run4yourlives wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable You make this statement as if it was some sort of new happening. This is as old as technology itself. Finding new ways to kill each other has been the number one driver of technology progress, and always has been.

The web was not invented to kill people.

Ah, the web was invented to keep military sites in communication (presumably so that they could keep killing people) while the rest of the world was dying a horrible, nuclear death. So it kinda was.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#240

Post by GigabyteCoin » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 6:18 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #211

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? The government is actively sifting through his mail, more than 10 years after he was considered to be a threat... and a hippy environmentalist threat at that...

There are environmentalists and there are arsonists. His organization was the latter. And guess what: the government has to "sift through your mail" to deliver it. All they're doing with him is remembering what they saw. Because he belonged to an organization that burned shit down.

This is the version of "sift through" that I was referring to: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/sift+through

>to examine all parts of something

They weren't just reading the address and sending the domestic mail on it's way, as everyone expects they do.