Forced Exposure • Hacker News Board

Re: Forced Exposure

#411

Post by raintrees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:24 AM UTC

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…

Interesting: I see the same type of cycle repeated in our financial world, leading me to think it IS human nature...

Re: Forced Exposure

#412

Post by joveian » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:28 AM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #258

nanoscopic wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the process of developing a new messaging system to address exactly that issue ( anonymous communication where it is unclear who is talking to who ) The way in which it will work is having all users of the system constantly send encrypted streams to each other ( mostly gibberish ). When you want to send a real message you simply replace the encrypted gibberish with some real content. It will implement "onion"…

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…

I don' t have a list of urls right now, but papers on the lack of anonymity of bitcoin and bitmessage are not hard to find. It is a very difficult problem against NSA level attackers. Masking when content is being exchanged by exchanging something on a fixed schedule seems like one of the few things that can be done to at least mask something.

Edit: OTOH, this this does just mean they attack one or both nodes if they care when content is being sent.

Re: Forced Exposure

#413

Post by raintrees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:39 AM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #313

Zelphyr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, sadly, is the ultimate truth. We may have already lost this battle for one simple reason: the average person is too apathetic to care what their Government is doing to them. Its not "By the people For the people" anymore. Its By those in power (who aren't elected, by the way) For those in power.

When hasn't it really been like that?

I agree. I start getting wound up, only to be gently reminded by my wife that just because I am only now discovering it for myself does not mean it hasn't been there all along...

Re: Forced Exposure

#414

Post by raintrees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:55 AM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #201

bostik wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I have. It's just far too long ago, and I had the misfortune of reading a translation. A bad one, at that. So I couldn't place the quote. I just knew it from different context. Much the same way it took me years to find a quote that my gradeschool math teacher used and which had lodged itself firmly in my brain. Namely: "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." - Confucius

I like the Confucius quote. There IS a certain danger in taking shortcuts in your thinking. It's probably best to use shortcuts anyway when in discovery mode, but then to check those shortcuts rigorously.

Ha! Almost like "Trust, but verify" :)

Re: Forced Exposure

#415

Post by raintrees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:59 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #110

coldtea wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. So you intent of fixing just a small point of the whole mess (the surveillance thing) and not the overall mess (bad governments, something that affects 100% of our life and countries)? Not to…

"Everything can be outlawed, including mere use of unlocked general purpose computers as a non authorized professional in, say, 20 years time." I think that genie is well out-of-the-bottle. Did you see the article recently about installing linux on the microcontroller on a hard disk controller board? There's no end of "consumer electronics" that have "general purpose computers" inside them. Hell, I'm helping out some…

Fertile ground for David Suarez' Daemon...

Re: Forced Exposure

#416

Post by raintrees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:05 AM UTC

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…

George Carlin had it right yet again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxsQ7jJJcEA

Re: Forced Exposure

#417

Post by noisy_boy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:29 AM UTC

tilsammans wrote: post #149

quail wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama continues to push hard to steal what little privacy rights US citizens have remaining. He is openly hostile about it, and lies about it constantly. Am I exaggerating here? The scary thing is I'm not. He's not done. It's going to get worse.

We -- all citizens of Western countries -- should seriously stop voting altogether. And I mean full stop. When the next election comes, nobody votes. That'll destabilize things right quick.

Add a third option on the ballot for re-doing election with different candidates:

"Dont like either of these two (expletive) - come back with better ones".

If this option comes tops in the election, both parties pay a percentage towards the cost of next round. Can't say their donors would be very happy if this shit goes on for months. Oh my god, how will we function without a government? Well, its not like the government we chose is doing/gonna do all that better.

Atleast it'll slowdown most of the shitty laws that get passed with alarming efficiency.

Re: Forced Exposure

#418

Post by Myrth » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:38 AM UTC

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…

> These agencies are always willing to follow the letter of the law.

Only when they're not. Like one of the FBI's primary goals is to resist any law changes in favor of drug legalization.

Re: Forced Exposure

#419

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:29 AM UTC

BrandonMarc wrote: post #401

hyperventilator wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having more people on the government dole actually makes the problem worse. We need less government, as little as possible, and more self reliance. Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient be rid of it.

This, this, this! If you give a person / family just enough money to live off of, in exchange for their promise not to productively contribute and achieve (with the pride, joy, and happiness that can go with that) ... you have effectively turned them into slaves. A permanent welfare mentality = mental slavery. And tell me: are the people who are being "helped" happy, in the end? Do they live in peace? Travel their ne…

[deleted]

Re: Forced Exposure

#420

Post by dragontamer » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 1:29 PM UTC

Myrth wrote: post #418

dragontamer wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> These agencies are always willing to follow the letter of the law. Only when they're not. Like one of the FBI's primary goals is to resist any law changes in favor of drug legalization.

My my, not keeping up with politics, are you?

"The war on drugs is now 30, 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There's been a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color." -- Eric Holder, 2013

The Attorney General is responsible for the Department of Justice, which is in turn in charge of the FBI and DEA. Also, the FBI does not handle most drug related federal offences. That is the DEA. Get your agencies right!

Anyway, this would be the Attorney General bending the law. Legally, they are supposed to arrest you for smoking Marijuana. However... if the Attorney General bends the rules, and "fails" to arrest you on the charge, then the law is as good as broken. An official order from the Attorney General can stop the DEA from prosecuting Drug users, even without any changes to law.

And thus, the power of the executive branch. They can't change the laws, but Eric Holder is in a position to change the enforcement of laws. That is about as good as he can do, a future Attorney General / President may roll things back.

To Eric Holder, the Drug War is an anti-African American symbol. So it seems like he's doing what he can to stop it. He probably will crackdown on the obvious illegally operated Pot centers in California, but he's probably going to ease up the Drug War as much as he can.