Revelations about the French Big Brother • Hacker News Board

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#41

Post by logn » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

I have good info that NORAD has been tracking Santa for years with GPS tracking by remotely enabling cell phones he's carrying as presents.

In seriousness though, you're absolutely right and I feel the same way. I think the important thing here is that it's the first time the general public (and much of the tech community) has been presented this information in a straight-forward way. Also, people who had long ago deduced everything being revealed now (like me) will hopefully see the full extent of everything that's been happening. I have additional things I figure have been going on but which I loathe to discuss for fear of sounding paranoid. However, I used to feel that way when talking about the gov't reading email and tracking your FB activities, so it's nice to finally be able to discuss that with people and not seem like a lunatic or have the issue immediately dismissed.

edit:

But let me make a tinfoil hat prediction now, and I can point back to this post one day to maybe win a bet:

The private data collected on everyone is being shared with government workers (and private contractors) on all levels in some form. I think that many, many depts and orgs across federal, state, and local levels are privy to our personal/private data at least in aggregate/anonymized form whether they realize it or not. For instance, I think at least a small portion of police and fire responses are triggered by our private data, perhaps in a way that those responders don't even realize. It's a crazy idea and perhaps I'll head over to the TwoPlusTwo forums to begin taking bets :)

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#42

Post by mtgx » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:32 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

I hate, hate, hate comments like these. They serve absolutely no purpose other than saying I told you so.

Yes, some of us understood the spying is broad, but I don't think most of us expected the cables to be tapped directly, and take all the data like from a firehose and store it all. How can you say even that doesn't surprise you? And even if it doesn't you think 99% of the people out there understood this?

Does your mom or dad think it's okay their phone calls are stored and analyzed by the government?

Anyway, just because you (probably) knew this was going on, doesn't mean there shouldn't be a time to get outraged about it.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#43

Post by lttlrck » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:38 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #40

jgrahamc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a discussion on HN, not in a general public forum. Sure, the general public is probably surprised by what's been revealed but we should not be.

I've actually found the less technically savvy less surprised and less outraged.

Hmm. Maybe HN isn't the community I thought it was then.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#44

Post by d0vs » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:48 PM UTC

Here is an English translation: http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#45

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:48 PM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #25

Ok, so it seems this thing that we call free society is rapidly going off the rails. In addition to GCHQ and this crap from France, Netzpolitik.org recently dug up some interesting info on the publically known activities of the German secret services, which include tapping sea cables[1] and listening in on 5% of DECIX traffic[2]. So we now know for a fact that, while the general populace was blissfully disinterested…

Why does surveillance necessarily have to lead to "actual science fiction dystopia?"

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#46

Post by lttlrck » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:53 PM UTC

tomelders wrote: post #18

jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

And for what, with surveillance like this, how is there still crime and terrorism? either it's ineffective or they're overselling the capabilities or they're more interested in dissidents, and judging by the way activists and whistle blowers are being treated, i suspect this is the real reason these systems exist. EDIT: Or there's some other threat none of us know about and these systems are working perfectly at keep…

You think this means there should be no crime by now? How would that work exactly?

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#47

Post by pinaceae » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:00 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

or even more to the point, national intelligence agencies actually spy, news at 11.

if i were journalist i would compile a list of all of those agencies and then release a "story" each week.

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

enough to milk this topic for years.

i am austrian, so our HNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heeresnachrichtenamt would be my "scandal". they run a sigint station smack in the center of vienna, located in a WW2 flaktower. public knowledge, but just add Snowden, Morales, some other bullshit and voila, another great feat of journalism.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#48

Post by contingencies » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:02 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #40

jgrahamc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a discussion on HN, not in a general public forum. Sure, the general public is probably surprised by what's been revealed but we should not be.

I've actually found the less technically savvy less surprised and less outraged.

Some. I think it depends if you can explain it properly. That was supposed to be the media's job, in the 'self-regulating' system of democracy. Obviously, that failed. So now we have non-democracy, and little way out except...

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#49

Post by lttlrck » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:05 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #16

morsch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it's surprising is totally irrelevant and you should stop pretending it isn't, if that is what you're saying. But you've got an interesting point in that the desire has always been to capture everything -- while the technical means to do it have been available for a couple of years. Along with a further shift in how people communicate towards easily moniterable technology, that is the crux of the matte…

This is a discussion on HN, not in a general public forum. Sure, the general public is probably surprised by what's been revealed but we should not be.

Why would it surprise anyone (HN or otherwise) that the NSA is trying to do what is available COTS for enterprise, for auditing and law enforcement (CALEA), on a massive scale? Especially in the current environment of civil liberty erosion? Because its outside their domain and expertise and/or they really haven't been paying attention.

EDIT: the point is that I don't believe that HN should be anymore knowledgeable about this than the General Public because it is a specialized domain. It's not 'the Internet'.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#50

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:10 PM UTC

There are two possible conclusions: Everyone does it, there is no hope, just resign yourself to surveillance. Or, one can conclude that no matter how much you trust your own government to treat surveillance data correctly, whatever that might mean to you, some other government is out to get your business data, etc. with no compunctions, so you better secure your systems and communications.