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

Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

greenwald.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 696 posts

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#301

Post by tonymet »

sega_sai wrote: post #291

It is also interesting that US seems to be getting the surveillance state without any of the benefits such as low crime rate. In my view it is a valid choice for the country of having more crime Vs more surveillance, but in the US such a choice is not offered.

It’s baffling and makes you wonder about the strategic mission of the surveillance state. Surely they must be achieving some objectives – since they are heavily resourced, and capable. If not crime prevention, it must be political influence.

There’s a ton of evidence of foreign state intervention since WW2. And there are hints at domestic intervention since the 1960s . The likely focus is domestic political intervention, since it takes time for whistleblowers and stories to see the light of day.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#303

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #218

I really like this passage: >It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security. > But the core premise of the West genera…

I would like it a lot better without the mention to the "West", which, as usual, is a code word for: "I want to pretend my point extend outside the USA but I have absolutely no knowledge of how true that is. I don't intend to do any research because that would demand efforts from me so bear with my casual imperialism". Queue the purely American historical lesson following.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#304

Post by embedding-shape »

aydyn wrote: post #281
embedding-shape wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every places have echos of echo-chambers, but some are worse than others. At least on HN you can choose to see stuff heavily downvoted, in many other places moderators just remove posts as they see fit. You'll get more different point of views here than on many other places, but I'd be happy to hear what places you consider less of an echo-chamber than HN.

Wait a second, I instantly recognized your post as self-deprecating humor and not glazing and had a light chuckle. You mean that: >That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person. Is unironically what you think and posted in earnest? Thats WILD.

> Is unironically what you think and posted in earnest? Thats WILD.

That's exactly the point! We're both thinking very different, yet neither of us have explicitly (only implicitly) tried to insult each other. What place on the internet does that better than HN?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#305

Post by tonymet »

oefrha wrote: post #21

It’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.

The surveillance protects the regime, which mostly involves the US Federal government. Street crime, unless it’s organized by Cartels, is not a political threat.

You can see the counter example during the 40s-70s when the FBI targeted the mafia and local political corruption to take out the remaining organized crime strongholds .

Today organized crime doesn’t have much political influence. A sort of truce. So there’s no longer incentive for the feds to pursue street crime. Street crime yields no longer funnel into influence.

In fact, most political corruption today is coming from entitlements , which further bolsters political control.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#306

Post by jjulius »

jasonjayr wrote: post #253
prmoustache wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And these apps require a google account?

They require a phone that can log into an App store, so unless parents can work around that, then yes?

Nonsense. My kid just started kindergarten this past year - I've never been required to log into ParentSquare through a GMail address and I have only ever accessed it through a browser on a laptop.

(Damn, I failed at my attempt to stop posting.)

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#307

Post by collingreen »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #277
kakacik wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a nice outrage wave, but I have very hard time believing this will be a major topic in 2 weeks. People simply don't give a fuck en masse. Accept that many folks are built differently than you and me and stuff like actual freedom you may be willing to lay your life for may be meaningless fart for others, especially when its not hurting them now . For example US folks voted current admin willingly second time and e…

The Epstein stuff is a distraction. The previous admin had 4 years to do literally anything about it and they did nothing.

A distraction from what?

If anyone with power picks and chooses who gets justice then there is no justice, those people are corrupt, and they need to be removed from power and charged.

Whatabout whatabout whatabout. Charge, try, and imprison the guilty regardless of how much money they have, which political party they are part of, or how they vote. Anything else is madness.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#308

Post by wredcoll »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #303
dhbradshaw wrote: post #218

I really like this passage: >It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security. > But the core premise of the West genera…

I would like it a lot better without the mention to the "West", which, as usual, is a code word for: "I want to pretend my point extend outside the USA but I have absolutely no knowledge of how true that is. I don't intend to do any research because that would demand efforts from me so bear with my casual imperialism". Queue the purely American historical lesson following.

If we're nitpicking, is it queue or cue?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#309

Post by mindslight »

calibas wrote: post #187
otterley wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You’re the one making the assertion (not just that there is a violation but also that the activity is that “the government spying on everyone”); the burden of proof is thus on you. Attorneys challenge each other as a matter of course in every case before a court. This is how the adversarial system works. Perhaps what you meant to say is that “I don’t like the activity that is happening here,” or “I think some of…

You seem to be playing dumb here. You realize us "normal people" believe the Bill of Rights is to protect us from the government, and the 4th means the government doesn't get to spy on everybody indiscriminately? And yes, they are spying on everybody. They have access to things like cellphone metadata, which to a normal human being is a very clear violation of privacy. It's also my firm belief that our legal system h…

> It's also my firm belief that our legal system has been undermining these basic concepts for decades now. It benefits the federal government to make this all very vague, as if modern technology suddenly means you have no expectation of privacy anymore. They've also mixed in some of that wonderfully authoritarian "for purposes of national security".

Very well said. While the legal system's details are important for a few avenues of effecting change, they're often used to bog down conversions into "what is" territory rather than staying focused on "what ought". And "what ought", based on the ideals laid out in our country's founding documents, is very different from "what is" in the modern day.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#310

Post by intended »

WarmWash wrote: post #159
intended wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite. Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue. Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government…

I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...

There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation.

There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons.

Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate.

Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.

Post reply on HN