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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#351

Post by crusso »

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…

These are vastly different issues

The funny thing is that they aren't. They're all about power. Power given to the few to control the many. Social programs just have that sugary coating that voters like to swallow, but the rotten corruption of power is at the center of all and its effects inevitably dominate.

Re: Forced Exposure

#352

Post by dragontamer »

md224 wrote: post #347
dragontamer wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 repl…

Because there is an inherent mismatch in privacy concerns and law enforcement / defense concerns.

Office of Censorship was created to counter the German / Japanese threat of spies during World War 2. It was seen as a necessary measure to help unite the country. The successful use of the Atomic Bomb is credited to the Office of Censorship, who helped keep the project secret. Quite possibly... the Atomic Bomb's details would have been leaked in WW2 if it weren't for the Office of Censorship.

COINTELPRO was then created in the 50s to counter the Soviet threat. In the 70s it was revealed it was being used for more than just that, and the project dismantled. In fact, FISA protections were supposed to prevent any large-scale domestic spying. The entire point of FISA was to stop future projects as they rose up.

As PRISM came up, despite FISA protections. Its important to realize how it happened. If you've been paying attention to Congress, FISA has in fact worked: Senator Wyden and Senator Udall have been criticizing these programs for a very long time. No one seemed to care in 2007 however, so the programs continued. I guess Edward Snowden has made things far more dramatic, and easier for the Press to talk about... but these are facts that have been discussed for some time now.

If there is a fault in FISA, its because Americans don't like listening to Senators. So no matter how many Senators you put in charge of watching the Intelligence Agencies, apparently no one will care unless a giant controversy is brought up by a non-politician.

Every few decades, peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us. Eventually, we as the citizenry work to dismantle the annoying and invasive defensive measures we give to law enforcement. (see Clinton Era in the 90s, where he reduced the size of Intelligence Agencies by half)

Then, an attack happens. The US returns to "war mode", and everyone is willing to trade privacy for security... at least for a few years. And that is when these new programs find their way into the system once again. The creation of Patriot Act led to the authorization of PRISM.

The important issue to see here, is that these programs are 100% legal. These agencies are always willing to follow the letter of the law. So... all we have to do is petition Congress to change the law. Section 215 of the Patriot Act: "Business Records Provision" is the law that legalizes the collection of Metadata. If it dies, the program dies with it.

Re: Forced Exposure

#353

Post by iamwil »

subdane wrote: post #337
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…

I agree with everything here and in the original post. What isn't clearly explained is how/why the government's behavior is prohibiting the continuation of Groklaw.

Apparently Groklaw runs on private email messages between her and her readers. If people cannot be assured of the privacy of their messages, then what they say is necessarily constrained. Given the nature of the topics on Groklaw, having privacy to discuss and subsequently post on it, is essential to the running of it.

Re: Forced Exposure

#354

Post by grey-area »

logn wrote: post #211

I posted this in response to the American being groped on travel to India, got -3 karma points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211 Now I'm reading this story, in which pj explains her story which was exactly my point from the comment linked above. What's the deal? Anyhow, yes, when the sum of human communication is read by the US government (and other governments and private intel corporations) then it's in…

Since you genuinely don't seem to understand, here's the deal: that story was about someone's personal experience of sexual harassment, and you posted a flippant analogy comparing it to invasion of online privacy. NSA surveillance is a big deal, but nothing to do with sexual harassment.

Re: Forced Exposure

#355

Post by grey-area »

grote wrote: post #109
igravious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part-solution. All tech geeks set up mail servers with encryption and volunteer to migrate their non-tech friends and family to new email homes. We also show how to configure encryption in their mail clients and start getting them to use native email clients rather than webmail. This will have two effects. It will send a message to Google/Microsoft/Yahoo!/insert big mail provider here/... that they have been lax in…

There is also https://mykolab.com that PJ now uses: If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jo…

NB

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243518

Re: Forced Exposure

#356

Post by brianpgordon »

crusso wrote: post #351
brianpgordon wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

These are vastly different issues The funny thing is that they aren't. They're all about power. Power given to the few to control the many. Social programs just have that sugary coating that voters like to swallow, but the rotten corruption of power is at the center of all and its effects inevitably dominate.

That's the opposite of what's happening. Money (power) is flowing from the few (the rich) to the many (the poor who actually use government services and social programs).

Re: Forced Exposure

#357

Post by crusso »

brianpgordon wrote: post #356
crusso wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are vastly different issues The funny thing is that they aren't. They're all about power. Power given to the few to control the many. Social programs just have that sugary coating that voters like to swallow, but the rotten corruption of power is at the center of all and its effects inevitably dominate.

That's the opposite of what's happening. Money (power) is flowing from the few (the rich) to the many (the poor who actually use government services and social programs).

Bam! ... and there you demonstrated exactly how they fool you. You're thinking about the social programs themselves - the bait or the distraction.

I'm talking about governmental power: the power to control vast amounts of money, the power to reward your friends and relatives, the power to snoop on your innocent citizens and punish your enemies through the force of law and perhaps physical violence.

They offer you trinkets, you vote for them, they gain power, they spend money they don't have, they abuse their power, they live like kings, they blame others for their eternal failures to implement utopia, they claim that if only you would elect them again and give them more of the money of the evil rich, they could solve all of society's problems... wash, rinse, repeat.

Re: Forced Exposure

#358

Post by dtanders »

brown9-2 wrote: post #206
gregd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, it's only two, short sentences in, "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum."

The point I am confused about is why a legal analysis blog is worried about government surveillance, so I am wondering if my perception of what Groklaw actually does is incorrect.

PJ doesn't (and likely never did) understand how email works.

Re: Forced Exposure

#359

Post by md224 »

dragontamer wrote: post #352
md224 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 repl…

Because there is an inherent mismatch in privacy concerns and law enforcement / defense concerns. Office of Censorship was created to counter the German / Japanese threat of spies during World War 2. It was seen as a necessary measure to help unite the country. The successful use of the Atomic Bomb is credited to the Office of Censorship, who helped keep the project secret. Quite possibly... the Atomic Bomb's details…

> Every few decades, peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us. Eventually, we as the citizenry work to dismantle the annoying and invasive defensive measures we give to law enforcement. (see Clinton Era in the 90s, where he reduced the size of Intelligence Agencies by half)

> Then, an attack happens. The US returns to "war mode", and everyone is willing to trade privacy for security... at least for a few years. And that is when these new programs find their way into the system once again.

I appreciate the contextualization. For some reason it's a bit less scary to conceptualize these abuses of power as an autoimmune disorder rather than some kind of intrinsic cancer that never seems to go into remission. Probably because it makes this seem less like an inevitable slide into totalitarianism and more like a simple overreaction to a perceived threat, an overreaction which becomes increasingly malignant. The proper response is to correct this overreaction and work to put in safeguards to prevent future overreactions.

I hope your observation that "peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us" is not implying this is a bad thing; on the contrary, it seems like the closest we'll get to rationality.

Re: Forced Exposure

#360

Post by brianpgordon »

crusso wrote: post #357
brianpgordon wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of what's happening. Money (power) is flowing from the few (the rich) to the many (the poor who actually use government services and social programs).

Bam! ... and there you demonstrated exactly how they fool you. You're thinking about the social programs themselves - the bait or the distraction. I'm talking about governmental power: the power to control vast amounts of money, the power to reward your friends and relatives, the power to snoop on your innocent citizens and punish your enemies through the force of law and perhaps physical violence. They offer you tri…

"Doing good things is how they get you! They get re-elected by doing good things, and that gives them the voter support to do bad things. Down with good things!"
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