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Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

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Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#41

Post by unono »

adventured wrote: post #26
javert wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your suggestion for "doing something?" I can't help that most Americans are wrongly educated about thinks like civil rights.

The absolute easiest thing? Outrage + phone calls / letters. It would take a mere 1% of the US population to give a shit, and it would light D.C. up like a Christmas tree. Bury their phones and inboxes in just a few hundred thousand calls and emails per day and every member of Congress would instantly stand to attention and respond positive. It's such a trivial % of the overall population as to be disgusting that it…

Calling politicians won't work if both sides are called upon. They can work out a message to tell the public about how they're against spying but it will go on regardless. Money trumps everything. If there is economic or military incentive for something to be done - it will be done.

The only hope is to economically empower everyone so that a small elite doesn't form.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#42

Post by anemitz »

silvestrov wrote: post #23
tlrobinson wrote: post #17

I suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.

Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump. That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.

There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure.

However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#43

Post by prollyignored »

_pmf_ wrote: post #31

Question from a non-American: if not spying, what are they supposed to do?

There is no other way. I think the "right to privacy" is childish.

"Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not.

edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#44

Post by adventured »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #27
adventured wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans won't so much as lift their head away from Candycrush to bat an eyelash about it. If there were enough give-a-shit left in America, I don't think things would have gotten so bad to begin with. It's a broken, battered, unemployed, bankrupt, bitter nation being drown by a behemoth $6.3 trillion government system that nothing could possibly contain or restrain. The NSA has a budget the size of the economy of h…

Which nation is resisting these intrusions?

I didn't mean to imply it was unique to America. The sad thing is that it's a negative global shift against privacy. America's outsized influence on the world does bury it in responsibility for being a terrible role model / setting a bad precedent.

Seemingly all industrialized nations are dealing with these exact things at the same time (no coincidence, as it's being spurred by technology that is nearly universally available).

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#45

Post by snom380 »

h4rrison wrote: post #36

I will never understand the inherent distrust America seems to have in their government. Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they ar…

Have you even read the order? It calls for all CDRs to be handed over.

If you had read up on the abuses of the patriot act, including giving telephone companies retroactive immunity so they could not be prosecuted, you would understand some of the distrust.

This is about the government covering up and hiding its actions and how they interpret the law.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#47

Post by adventured »

chenster wrote: post #24
mtgx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. You should also be fighting it with every fiber in your body. Generations behind you gave their lives for rights like these, and the current generation seems to be giving them away because they are too busy chatting with friends on Facebook to care about it. And if you don't fight it now peacefully, you'll be fighting it in the streets in a bloody revolution, in a decade or two.

Can you still buy a pre-paid phone and remain anonymous on the phone bill in the states? Or they require ID now when purchasing such device?

Voice printing all but eliminates the idea of anonymity for tracfones. All they'd need is one conversation, and they can look for you from there on using your voice. They can back trace who you are by who you talk to and so on; relatively trivial to figure out who you are from there, particularly assuming you make a few calls and or reveal any details.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#48

Post by gfodor »

adventured wrote: post #40
waterlesscloud wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Develop new technologies that make this kind of thing impossible.

If they can't control said technologies, and put backdoors in them, then they'll make them illegal. That's a non-starter. A solution can only ultimately occur in D.C.

And if they make them illegal, they'll have their day in court.

I'd tend to agree the right place to start is building a technological solution to the problem. One that people actually will want to use.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#50

Post by anemitz »

tlrobinson wrote: post #38
richtr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is sound advice there is the problem that if you get very big/popular the government can knock at your door with sealed court orders to enable things like wiretapping. Case in point: "Microsoft’s tweaks to Skype could facilitate wiretapping" http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaki... If that has happened or not under the current system we will never know - which is the exact issue the…

Build open-source, encrypted, p2p networks. Fortunately the 1st Amendment is still mostly respected, at least relative to some of the others. [Edit] Now, monetizing such software is an interesting problem. Ripple/OpenCoin may have found one model: include a cryptocurrency that's used as credits in the system, and claim a large portion for yourself, which you can later sell. The problem is if they open source the soft…

I've also been considering the possibilities of an OSS security focused business. Random thoughts:

* Build infrastructure necessary for other developers to build provably secure products on, license this.

* Free consumer versions, paid/managed versions for corporations and governments.

* Things like secure telephony have business models built in where you could charge per minute (or message) (and probably still be less than incumbent carrier minutes).

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