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

Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 430 posts

Re: Forced Exposure

#281

Post by robg »

grellas wrote: post #256

It is really tragic that we have reached a point where something so wonderful as Groklaw cannot effectively function. Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbou…

Can you comment on the difference between the 1st and 4th Amendment? It seems the current issues we face are reducible to the broadest interpretations of "reasonable" searches under National Defense claims from the Executive branch. It's hard for me to see how the Public has much recourse here. Even if they were to convince their representatives to pass new laws, this still seems like a fight between the other two branches. The Executive branch could ignore those laws under Executive privilege claims. And the Court seems more than willing to abide by that use of Executive power.

Am I missing something? Short of a generational movement to move the Court on civil rights toward information privacy (akin perhaps to medical privacy claims), I really don't see an alternative. The Executive branch has every incentive to maintain their power here (and argue as such under the War Powers). And the Court seems all too willing to cede that authority.

Re: Forced Exposure

#282

Post by keithpeter »

chris_mahan wrote: post #276
JonFish85 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam." Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Googl…

No, but yesterday a friend of mine asked me how to back up her pictures from her computer. I told her to use a removable drive. My wife said: "Just store them on Facebook". I said: "The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet." My wife was shocked. Our friend said: "I don't want that." (She's from Hungary). We settled on 32 GB flash drives. Moral of the story: Just like Groklaw, the ordinary…

Of course, the people who the NSA and GCHQ are trying to find and track will not be using email or other forms of electronic communication or storage for anything.

It remains to be seen what happens to the general marketplace. I suspect we may see a number of startups specialising in organising face to face meetings...

Re: Forced Exposure

#283

Post by chris_mahan »

panacea wrote: post #205
knowtheory wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still falsely equating. Even if it were a slippery slope along a line, it's still a line. Not all of the points are directly adjacent to each other.

Let me try and phrase this in terms that aren't loaded such as 'slippery slope' or rhetorical geometry. I believe in the importance of a free press, and recent developments are troubling and lead to understandable concerns about the ability of ordinary people and journalists to discuss, report on, or investigate without undue duress, potential criminal activities by rogue agents exceeding their mandate as proscribed…

Hear Hear!

Re: Forced Exposure

#284

Post by JonFish85 »

chris_mahan wrote: post #276
JonFish85 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam." Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Googl…

No, but yesterday a friend of mine asked me how to back up her pictures from her computer. I told her to use a removable drive. My wife said: "Just store them on Facebook". I said: "The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet." My wife was shocked. Our friend said: "I don't want that." (She's from Hungary). We settled on 32 GB flash drives. Moral of the story: Just like Groklaw, the ordinary…

"The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet"

So accuracy isn't really something you're all that concerned with? It is my understanding (and certainly could be wrong) that the whole PRISM thing was the ability for the government to get their hands on any data they wished, not that they're making copies of everything. I believe metadata is stored, which is an entirely different animal.

Re: Forced Exposure

#285

Post by nbouscal »

prawn wrote: post #167

Chomsky noted in a speech recently ( http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth... ) that the very vast majority of us have absolutely no impact on the policy of our governments. Only the upper tiers have influence and the utter richest minority are likely to get what they want. In both the US and where I am in Australia, the two major parties are barely different and doubly so in regards to this wh…

The idea is great, but unfortunately it won't work for the majority of Americans. Paycheck-to-paycheck is a reality for way too many people. I know a lot of people who are opposed to Walmart, and wish that they could afford not to shop there, but they can't. The price is just too compelling. Feeding their kids is a lot more important to them than making a political statement.

Re: Forced Exposure

#286

Post by bengrunfeld »

Without sounding trollish, I believe there is a need for a completely new 'transfer of information' protocol that is as immune as possible to NSA (or other agency) snooping. She's right, the internet is broken. So rather than posting endless articles about how it sucks, and suffering heart-breaking tragedies like Groklaw shutting down, why don't we build something new, something truly beautiful, by which I mean something truly private?

To summarize my point, quoting PJ, "privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance..."

Re: Forced Exposure

#287

Post by thezilch »

At first I thought, pj is using the "NSA" scapegoat as a copout. Email is the reason??? Use GPG! But then I remember how difficult it is to get even my most technical friends to care about secure communications. GPG is a two-way street; for pj to communicate with groklaw constituents or partners or partners of partners, they'd ALL have to be using GPG. Otherwise, someone without it is going to leak what was assumed to be a secure thread. The weakest link conundrum.

Re: Forced Exposure

#288

Post by nbouscal »

jebblue wrote: post #215
rainsford wrote: post #169

Maybe I'm just not "getting it", but this seems like an incredibly odd decision. It is not a revelation that plaintext email can technically be looked at by people beyond the sender and recipient. And it's not clear what in any reported stories would specifically relate to Groklaw's use of email. What it seems to come down to is the general fear that the NSA COULD, from a technical perspective, be reading specific un…

My thoughts too, to me, ordinary email is like a conversation in the park. People can listen to that if they want, it's the public. Ordinary email goes over the public Internet. It seems to me to be a bit of elegant arm waving. To me the restrictions on encryption are of more concern. It's like saying we can't have a private conversation except within the bounds of what the government says is OK.

> ordinary email is like a conversation in the park.

That's really, really distant from how the average non-technical user thinks of email. They just drop the e and think of it as mail.

Re: Forced Exposure

#289

Post by samstave »

agilebyte wrote: post #275
mncolinlee wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, it would make more sense to store data with the NSA. They have that entire, taxpayer-funded Utah Data Center full of storage. Why not just open it up for people to backup their files cheaply? The slogan could be "It all ends up here anyway."

Absolutely, I bet someone in the govt is thinking about giving each citizen say 10GB of free space that is secure from: hackers , identity theft , foreign espionage etc. All the ones that won't use this offer can then be even more meticulously monitored.

Dear lord. This is the darkest comment I have read in a really long time.

Re: Forced Exposure

#290

Post by rangibaby »

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.

Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power? In Soviet-era Russia, intelligent people did their best to ignore the Communists: paying attention to them, whether through criticism or praise, would only serve to give them comfort and encouragement, making them feel as if they mattered. Why should Americans want to act any differently with regard to the Republicans and the Democrats? For love of donkeys and elephants?

EXCERPT FROM

Orlov, Dmitry. “Reinventing Collapse.” New Society Publishers, 2011-04-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Post reply on HN