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Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

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31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#31

I'm curious to what HN crowd thinks about a question related to all this. People are now under the assumption that US agencies are collecting all calls, emails, anything electronic for all citizens as it's technically possible and confirmation is slowly being revealed. If a crime was committed to a citizen, how would said citizen legally make a request for information the NSA or any agency has that would be useful as…

I know some people have already tried that and obviously failed. they just pull the "security" card and say any information they have cannot be disclosed in court because its a threat to national security. then they'd say those matters can only be conducted in a secret court where everyone has "security clearance", and oops - sorry plaintiff - you don't, so you're excluded from your own trial.

This was part of what happened to Ladar Levison, owner of Lavabit which was served with an NSL. He couldn't easily shop for a lawyer because he could only contact lawyers that were authorized to handle top secret material. And he had to appear at one specific court venue in Virginia even though he was from Texas.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't avoid google analytics..

> But you can't avoid google analytics.. That's the easiest to avoid. Ghostery, or a simple edit to your /etc/hosts file. The problem is that tracking is much more pervasive, and there are many more ways you can be tracked that are much harder to block than Google Analytics.

What about for iOS? Sure there's more pervasive methods, but I doubt any are as ubiquitous as GA. My ghostery plugin shows GA for nearly every website I visit.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#33
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Most people don't realize this. Do you consent your car to store all your location information in the cloud? What if TV started storing all things you watch in the cloud? Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv". And tbh, I don't even think 80% of the population is cognizant about what is being collected and wh…

> Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv" Supply & demand. If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met. Vote with your wallet. Also, do not forget the second hand market for cars. This one's huge. There's still TVs and cars available which are dumb. There's still laptops available without…

> If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met.

Such demand will never rise to substantial levels. The moment your solution to a problem requires the general public to (change their behavior/become educated about something), your solution is unworkable.

If the general public regularly changed their habits out of principle, Windows would have been displaced by Linux in the 90s and the banana and diamond industries would be dead or dying.

It doesn't work that way, and it's unrealistic to assume it ever can.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#34
>"To use a non-digital analogy: It’s as if the NSA sent agents to the U.S. Postal Service’s major processing centers to conduct continuous searches of everyone’s international mail."

It's worth noting that U.S. Post Office also records meta data of all snail mail:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/us/postal-service-confirms...

The last paragraph in the above link being completely laughable if course.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#35
> and even invited Russia to hack the emails of his political opponent

For the 1000th time. He didn't (and it's amazing how often this gets repeated) 'invite' them. He said they should release the documents if they already had them.

Note the story line and then the exact quote here:

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-putin-no-relatio...

"I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing".

Is not "hack Hillary Clinton". It's "if you've hacked Hillary Clinton release the emails". Key difference.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#36
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Most people don't realize this. Do you consent your car to store all your location information in the cloud? What if TV started storing all things you watch in the cloud? Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv". And tbh, I don't even think 80% of the population is cognizant about what is being collected and wh…

> Tomorrow, if all the car/tv manufacturers started doing this, what choice do you have? No, the option is not "do not use cars/tv" Supply & demand. If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met. Vote with your wallet. Also, do not forget the second hand market for cars. This one's huge. There's still TVs and cars available which are dumb. There's still laptops available without…

> If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met.

I keep hearing that, I just never see it. There are a lot of things nobody wants which corporations push in unison because they want them. And that's not even accounting for the meddling of the marketing department, which does matter.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can't avoid google analytics.. That's the easiest to avoid. Ghostery, or a simple edit to your /etc/hosts file. The problem is that tracking is much more pervasive, and there are many more ways you can be tracked that are much harder to block than Google Analytics.

What about for iOS? Sure there's more pervasive methods, but I doubt any are as ubiquitous as GA. My ghostery plugin shows GA for nearly every website I visit.

Adblock works on Android.

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can't avoid google analytics.. That's the easiest to avoid. Ghostery, or a simple edit to your /etc/hosts file. The problem is that tracking is much more pervasive, and there are many more ways you can be tracked that are much harder to block than Google Analytics.

What about for iOS? Sure there's more pervasive methods, but I doubt any are as ubiquitous as GA. My ghostery plugin shows GA for nearly every website I visit.

I thought iOS browsers' adblockers can at least do domain-based blocking, which is enough for the typcial GA case?

Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance

#40
post #35

> and even invited Russia to hack the emails of his political opponent For the 1000th time. He didn't (and it's amazing how often this gets repeated) 'invite' them. He said they should release the documents if they already had them. Note the story line and then the exact quote here: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-putin-no-relatio... "I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing". Is not…

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