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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#381

Post by dragonwriter »

robg wrote: post #374
dragonwriter wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Congress has not passed laws to the contrary. Congress did, in fact, pass the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 "to the contrary", expressly prohibiting (and criminalizing) many of the types of searches (both physical and electronic) for the stated purposes of "National Security" that had been done prior to the Act. Of course, the executive was successful in getting Congress to remove many…

Sorry, by "Congress" I wasn't referring to the version in place 35 years ago in the post-Watergate Era. As you note, the Congress of today has rolled back FISA and added new, more pliant laws (e.g., Patriot Act). We are in a different era where all three branches are gladly pushing the reasonable clause far beyond the intended use. That's the result and it is Constitutional because all three branches say so.

> Sorry, by "Congress" I wasn't referring to the version in place 35 years ago in the post-Watergate Era.

I am not sue that the "version" of Congress has changed as much as the attitude of the people toward the government. While abstract anti-government rhetoric is perhaps even more common now than in the post-Watergate Era, specifically directed outrage at particular abuses like the (far more pervasive today than in the Watergate Era) use of national security resources for surveillance of the population (and not just foreign communication) is far more muted.

Re: Forced Exposure

#382

Post by dllthomas »

lukifer wrote: post #345
dllthomas wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

Basically, you check yes or no for everyone, and the winner is the one with the most "yes" votes. Less expressive than IRV, but also simpler to understand and tabulate.

Re: Forced Exposure

#383

Post by jcromartie »

cookiecaper wrote: post #277
jcromartie wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, and do, force you to divulge your key.

I understand that they can, and sometimes may, force you to divulge your key, but it's not a consistent thing in the United States. There are judgments that require the divulgence, and judgments that claim such forced divulgence is precluded by the Fifth Amendment. In any case, you buy yourself a very large amount of time if you don't just leave all your communiques out for them to read in plaintext. If you're encryp…

The point is really that they could just change their mind. It's already obvious that the gov't will go to great lengths to violate privacy and what we assumed were constitutional protections, so why would they respect your 5th amendment right and not just demand keys in the future?

Re: Forced Exposure

#384

Post by Dylan16807 »

agilebyte wrote: post #310
chris_mahan wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 GB? How about a terabyte. Between the photos, the movies and the music, 10 GB is much too little. Heck, make it 10 TB, then you're talking.

That reminds me of the prostitute quote "Now We're Just Haggling Over the Price" by Winston Churchill.

Just don't pretend it actually applies. You replied to a comment talking about whether such a service would actually be capable of backing up people's data, not in the slightest a discussion of price.

Re: Forced Exposure

#385

Post by tambourine_man »

tambourine_man wrote: post #176
angersock wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, right, but for everyone that isn't a lean rockstar Node ninja programmer agile kanban expert--e.g., most of the population of the United States--it is far, far too easy to weigh going hungry against getting a "harmless" Facebook profile.

No programmer is going hungry in the US.

Replying to myself as this could have been misunderstood: programmers are not going hungry in the US, and yet, comply with things they may consider unscrupulous. We shouldn't, even if we were starving, but that's a tall order for most human beings.

I'm not intransigent, but I try not to redraw the line of how low I'll go according to context.

Re: Forced Exposure

#386

Post by gizmo686 »

nanoscopic wrote: post #342
yafujifide wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gove…

I haven't checked Bitmessage's protocals, but that it is not nessasary to identify the intended recipient. If you publish the ciphertext with no meta-data, then everyone can attempt to decrypt it. Only the intended recipient would succeed, but an ease dropper would not be able to identify who successfully decrypted the message. This raises an obvious scalability question, as you need to attempt to decrypt every message that is used in the network (in addition to simply downloading it which you have to do anyway). There are probably ways to mitigate this overhead without compromising security.

Re: Forced Exposure

#387

Post by agilebyte »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #384
agilebyte wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the prostitute quote "Now We're Just Haggling Over the Price" by Winston Churchill.

Just don't pretend it actually applies. You replied to a comment talking about whether such a service would actually be capable of backing up people's data, not in the slightest a discussion of price.

I can image a lot of people evaluating the price of having nothing to hide vs the capacity of 10GB -> 10TB. That is where the comment lead me.

Re: Forced Exposure

#388

Post by einhverfr »

rangibaby wrote: post #290
VLM wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I used to disagree with you and Mr Orlov, but there is a point where apathy is the correct response because it frees up energy to build a better future through other means.

Re: Forced Exposure

#389

Post by ENOTTY »

rolux wrote: post #164
ENOTTY wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked. This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.

I was using the term "blueprints" colloquially, meaning "plans" or "details". Quite a few of the leaked slides are exactly the type of material that one would expect the government to have "tighter controls on", compared to petabytes of mostly useless data.

I disagree. Training documents are meant to be shared to a much wider audience than the developers of the system. Data coming from the system is meant to be used in a report.

Re: Forced Exposure

#390

Post by ENOTTY »

kalkin wrote: post #204
ENOTTY wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked. This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.

If no actual surveillance data was leaked, though, that's likely because Snowden is an idealist. It seems that he had access to that data. If the next leaker just wants some cash, things could change. (Or, hell, maybe the previous leaker--maybe spy is a better word here--who didn't get caught because s/he didn't go public, or was purely the victim of an ultra-sophisticated phishing attempt!)

At this point, you and I are just speculating on which outcome is more likely. I'm arguing there are probably significant data controls. You're arguing that the data was accessible but not leaked because he was an idealist. Until there's evidence pointing either way, this is just speculation.

I would argue that the most direct way to prove the extent of spying would be to actually expose the data that was gathered. Therefore, after weighing the privacy of the unfortunate soul versus demonstrating to the world the power and pervasiveness of this system, he might have an incentive to leak the actual data, if he had access to it.

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