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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#341

Post by dragontamer »

md224 wrote: post #336
dragontamer wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the parent post is the #1 comment right now on this article, it is clearly hyperbole. Blatant Intimidation and Control is not what the US Government does. If you want proof, compare the US handling of the Washington Post to the British handling of The Guardian. The Washington Post and New York times have been free to publish everything. The Guardian however, just had spooks smash their computers this past weeke…

> History of the US is a sobering example, of the Government constantly giving up powers in favor of its citizens. Need I remind people of the Office of Censorship in 1940s, where Government agents read every single mail that was going across the mail system? Need I remind people of COINTELPRO in 1960s, the program the FBI used to spy on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr? Imagine you're in a relationship with someo…

Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today.

Your example is fallacious to begin with, because you assume a single entity is responsible for PRISM, Office of Censorship, and COINTELPRO. No, they are different: different governments of different eras... facing different problems even.

As new people enter and leave government, they will be prone to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. And it is the citizen's duty to continue to step it up and hold it in check. It takes work to keep the country together, everyone knows that fact.

If you cannot see the collection of people working together here, then you will fail to make progress. It is important to know who is making the mistakes and where additional oversight needs to be placed.

EDIT: In particular, Office of Censorship does not exist anymore. It has been completely shut down, the agency is dead period. COINTELPRO was an FBI program, shut down in the 1970s. Today, NSA is under criticism of PRISM.

Different agencies, completely different groups of people, are under criticism. Not a single person shared any criticism across the eras, let alone "repeated" the mistake.

Re: Forced Exposure

#342

Post by nanoscopic »

yafujifide wrote: post #305
gizmo686 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of masking real content with gibberish always seems hacky to me, and in security hacky is not a good idea. While I suspect you might be able to make it work, I think a better solution is to go to more of a bitcoin approach. Essentially, set up a new block-chain that allows transactions to contain 'large' messages (IE. large enough for long plaintext, but probably not enough to embed videos). Then, when you w…

Have you heard of bitmessage? It basically does what you suggest.

Bitmessage is essentially a torrent server where everyone gets a copy of everyone elses emails, so you get your email by downloading all emails.

Unfortunately in such a system, you have to download all emails, or request what you want in order to actual get the email you want.

The system either does not scale, or will leak information in order to remove the requirement of getting everyone elses emails.

Also, the government can collect -all- of the encrypted messages easily, and potentially eventually correlate who an anonymous id is based on their knowledge of who received messages on which day.

Basically, it sucks.

Re: Forced Exposure

#343

Post by computer »

JonFish85 wrote: post #284
chris_mahan wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's PRISM, one of tens of programs that exist. Look up XKEYSCORE, for an example that does include mirroring "all" internet traffic. Pot and kettle; make sure you read everything, and don't get caught in their "Oh no we shut down that specific program a long time ago!" plausible deniability schemes that neglect to mention the 7 other programs they run that do the same thing.

I think it's unlikely that the NSA is actually storing all photo's uploaded to Facebook long-term, of course.

Re: Forced Exposure

#344

Post by consonants »

gwu78 wrote: post #311

Can you follow the logic of the pj post? Snowden uses Lavabit email service. Snowden leaks top secret material belonging to US and UK. US demands Snowden's emails from Lavabit. Lavabit shuts down. pj reads news of Lavabit and concludes that email is not anonymous. (Email was never truly anonymous, unless you count anonymous remailers. Surely she knew this.) pj concludes that she should shut down Groklaw. (Why not jus…

It's not a completely logic-motivated decision, but that does not make it any less valid. Having your sense of privacy and safety breached is incredibly disturbing on an emotional level. I've been robbed, you end up feeling rightly violated at a very base level and left with a general disgust for everything and anyone involved.

Re: Forced Exposure

#345

Post by lukifer »

dllthomas wrote: post #322
lukifer wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a curious quirk of psychology that a single vote for a two major parties is considered to matter, despite being guaranteed not to sway the outcome, while a vote for a third party is considered "wasted". And even curiouser, choosing not to vote at all is considered the more rational option. Here's hoping that the people eventually figure out that instant runoff can be implemented state-by-state.

"Here's hoping that the people eventually figure out that instant runoff can be implemented state-by-state." I prefer approval, but hey, your state can have IRV and mine can have approval and thanks to the electoral college that doesn't break things! Unless we're in the same state, in which case we'll have to agree on something I guess.

Unpack "approval" for me?

Honestly, I'm in favor of any modifications to winner-take-all. "None of the Above" would be a major win for the protest vote, with a huge meta-electoral effect even if it never wins. And while it would boost morale and turnout for presidential years, the real effect would be seen if we elected Congress that way as well.

Re: Forced Exposure

#346

Post by guelo »

brianpgordon wrote: post #339
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…

> Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs These are vastly different issues. Providing social programs doesn't infringe on anyone's rights except by taxation, which the government is constitutionally entitled to perform to any degree it wants. In contrast, the tactics employed to s…

Yea, it's really annoying how libertarians always conflate the government's abuse of military and police powers with its role in moderating the excesses of capitalism. As a lefty political activist it makes it hard to form alliances on issues that we agree on.

Re: Forced Exposure

#347

Post by md224 »

dragontamer wrote: post #341
md224 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History of the US is a sobering example, of the Government constantly giving up powers in favor of its citizens. Need I remind people of the Office of Censorship in 1940s, where Government agents read every single mail that was going across the mail system? Need I remind people of COINTELPRO in 1960s, the program the FBI used to spy on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr? Imagine you're in a relationship with someo…

Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today. Your example is fallacious to begin with, because you assume a single entity is responsible for PRISM, Office of Censorship, and COINTELPRO. No, they are different: different governments of different eras... facing different problems even.…

> Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today.

This is a fair point, but I also think it can be useful to consider the perspective of government as a unified, evolving entity, much like it's useful to consider a forest as more than just individual plants that grow and die and are replaced by new plants.

> As new people enter and leave government, they will be prone to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. And it is the citizen's duty to continue to step it up and hold it in check. It takes work to keep the country together, everyone knows that fact.

I agree with this point. Perhaps the issue is why these abuses keep arising; is it just human nature, or are there institutional factors at work (factors that transcend the revolving door of individuals entering/leaving government)? I don't know the answer.

Regardless, we seem to agree that the NSA abuses are troubling and need to be pushed back on, so I suppose we're basically on the same page.

I think my disagreement was mainly with the notion that the government was continually "giving up" power in a linear, cumulative fashion. Every time one of these programs is shut down, are laws passed to ensure they can never arise again? If so, that would be reassuring.

Re: Forced Exposure

#348

Post by smsm42 »

dragontamer wrote: post #292
robg wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 br…

While the parent post is the #1 comment right now on this article, it is clearly hyperbole. Blatant Intimidation and Control is not what the US Government does. If you want proof, compare the US handling of the Washington Post to the British handling of The Guardian. The Washington Post and New York times have been free to publish everything. The Guardian however, just had spooks smash their computers this past weeke…

You are right, US is not there where UK already is. But unless people (and I don't mean 0.001% that hangs out on HN and like, I mean 99.999% that don't know what it is but vote) take serious interest in privacy and limiting government powers, we're moving in this direction, and moving there pretty fast. The fact that we have a president with which about 90% of the press are in deep and unquestioning love doesn't help either.

The "letter" of the law means nothing if the citizens are not ready to defend it. The congress can pass new laws, and as long as SCOTUS is ready to allow it - and experience teaches us when it comes to surveillance SCOTUS is ready to give a lot of allowances to the government - there's nothing to stop them but the citizens themselves. But if the citizens are more interested in voting in more government handouts for themselves than in liberty, then there's nobody else to stop it.

Re: Forced Exposure

#349

Post by [deleted] »

jgg wrote: post #35

Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates (“Can you find evidence that they’re abusing this new legislation?”, etc.), I'll go ahead and say it now: it's happening. There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, m…

[deleted]

Re: Forced Exposure

#350

Post by RockyMcNuts »

JonFish85 wrote: post #284
chris_mahan wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait, you're really gonna call BS on someone who doesn't pin their hopes on the fine line between 'can make a copy' and 'makes a copy?'

You realize the agencies have been using a bizarro definition of surveillance where they can capture everything and it's only surveillance once an agent listens to it? ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201... )

Snowden says they can do it. ISP sources confirm the government is trying to do it, but they are forbidden from disclosing the exact nature of what is done. You're really going to believe the people who have been busted lying about it and say anyone who doesn't is not concerned with 'accuracy?'

And what does metadata mean, anyway? If the government stores everybody you've been in a picture with, or who's looked at your pictures, but doesn't store the picture, is that really supposed to make us feel better?

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