Edward Snowden: Permanent Record • Hacker News Board

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#431

Post by rmc » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:16 AM UTC

ptero wrote: post #109

jonahbenton wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the case for both govt and private corporate surveillance? How widespread is the use of Alexa in your area?

The key difference is that you can decide not to buy corporate products you do not want, but have to comply with the laws. I am a lot less concerned about stupid things done by a majority for convenience (and I can choose whether to do participate or not) than about the law that forces the same stupidity down my throat. My 2c.

How do I decide to stop other people uploading photos of me to Facebook?

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#432

Post by rmc » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:19 AM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #231

apexalpha wrote: post #53

I can't speak for the US but this man has shifted so much of the political debate in my country and I think also in the EU in general. If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. After Snowden no one could ignore you anymore and privacy is an aspect in any public debate.

Can I ask what country this is in? Here in the UK, nothing had changed, and any debate that wasn't centred around condemning Snowden and justifying the actions of the security services, was very short lived.

Much much more websites are HTTPS now. LetsEncrypt was set up, and browsers are better at HTTPS. That benefits people in the UK. "Encrypt everything" was a result of knowing the NSA were hooving everything up.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#433

Post by microcolonel » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #429

microcolonel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet many of your fellow Canadian taxpayers (of which I am one) are not so thankful for this arrangement. Well, I pay absolutely all Canadian taxes to the full extent, and I can't make use of TFSAs; what do my fellow Canadians have any right to complain about? > Then again, I fall strictly in the "citizenship is a privilege, not a right" camp. Well, I am a citizen, and I've lived in Canada my whole life.

You claimed to be thankful for not being "double-taxed", from which I inferred you're a Canadian, living abroad, "thankfully" not contributing to the roads, schools and hospitals of this country from you which, once can assume, you hope to extract benefit from in the future. If you're a Canadian who lives in Canada and pays Canadian taxes, there's no controversy.

> You claimed to be thankful for not being "double-taxed", from which I inferred you're a Canadian

It's not "double-taxed", it's double-taxed. The U.S. system in fact makes it possible for the same income to be taxed twice at the full rate. And you didn't need to infer that I'm Canadian, I said it right in my comment.

I'm thankful I'm covered by the Canadian agreements, which allow me to credit my Canadian tax payments against (most of) my U.S. tax liability. I still have to file taxes in the U.S. like every other U.S. citizen, I still have to file FBARs with FinCEN like every U.S. citizen. I still have to pay Canadian taxes like everyone else who makes Canadian-source income, I still must pay the OHP like every Ontarian, I still must pay into CPP even though I may never be able to take it. Even if I didn't make Canadian-source income I would still be paying property taxes either directly or indirectly, paying sales taxes every time I bought something other than groceries, and that's where the roads and the schools get their money; though because of some combination of my personality and the quality of the schools I never did get more than primary school out of the system here before I left to work and began paying net taxes in my second year of full time employment.

I don't know why you're being so hostile. If somehow this arrangement allowed me to not pay taxes lawfully, how would that be my fault? It would be all of ours.

Frankly it's appalling that they manage to make things cost enough to justify these taxes, especially as every Canadian sees these obscene transfers of wealth from every taxpayer to Bombardier, the leniency extended to SNC Lavalin, the "equalization" process by which unproductive Canadians feast on productive ones for the privilege of living in equal comfort without ever considering moving for work; but I do pay them, you're welcome.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#434

Post by reeves23423 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:20 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #160

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #153

This made me realize I have heard ZERO news on Assange after his arrest, and the likelihood of him being tortured and rendered and railroaded of course means our nation (US) of laws and rights is a sham. Don't tell me it's boring, this should be a sideshow for the media like OJ. Rape trial? Russian meddling? Little guy vs the government? International intrigue? Crickets. A truly independent media would be tracking hi…

He is sitting his 50 week sentence in HM Prison Belmarsh in UK and has access to lawyers. Media is tracking his case. There is nothing to report. There are people who spew up conspiracy theories on the spot when they have not heard anything, from pure ignorance, yet they speak ill of mainstream media.

If they are tracking where is the news about Jullian Assange.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#435

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #386

grecy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm self published on Amazon and can speak to that, but I see that this is actually published by a publisher (Metropolitan Books) In that case, from what I have learned from speaking to a few NYT Best selling authors, he's getting peanuts per sale, though it's very likely he got an advance in the range of $50k. He won't actually get a cent from sales until his share goes above whatever his advance was.

> an advance in the range of $50k That... would not be very much for a book that can be expected to generate hundreds of thousands of sales.

An "advance" is just that: payment advanced against projected sales, and hence, per-volume royalties.

The publisher generally calculates the advance based on projected sales, and that's often all the money an author will see, though if an advance is "earned out" (sales exceed the projection), the author can earn additional royalty payments based on a percentage of the per-volume sales price. The usually cited figure is 10%, though this may vary.

TL;DR: Snowden is guaranteed the advance, but may earn more.

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/book-advances-and-royaltie...

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#436

Post by mises » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

TrueDuality wrote: post #226

mises wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a little. 5ghz is more common, so you won't get any thing there. WPA2 is significantly harder to crack, and I usually do it on GPU with pyrit or hashcat-ocl and a wordlist. WPA3 is out now, too, and I'm there aren't really any well-established procedures for it yet.

Just FYI WPA2 is pretty solidly and quickly broken (lookup KRACK attacks). WPA3 is unfortunately already partially broken (though currently joining the network / password breaking aren't fully broken, see Dragonblood attacks).

KRACK was a nonce re-use, not a core protocol flaw. WPA2's flaws are more around un-encrypted control packets; i.e. I can de-auth you without having to get session keys.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#437

Post by penagwin » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

acollins1331 wrote: post #245

davidw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> complicated Yes, like, say, having an accountant that can read and understand your taxes where you live in Italy and then use that information to file US taxes. And of course they'll need to understand the tax treaty between the two countries so you don't end up paying extra. Of course it's complicated and a huge pain in the ass! And that's with a relatively normal, stable, well-established country with a lot of US…

You do know you can file your own taxes for free (or very little $) online if you can read?

If you're a resident of the US with not too complicated income then this is true.

Working in a different country means you need to know _their_ tax laws, how much you need to pay the US, etc. It becomes complicated quickly, and if you're trying to minimize what you pay in taxes it's another story altogether.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#438

Post by snowden_report » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

craftinator wrote: post #399

snowden_report wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were. It's a minor point, but speaks to Mr. Snowden's reportedly inflated self-importance. It's up to all of us to take this report, and news reports and autobiographies, as seriously as you think they deserve. This provides background information not commonly kno…

You have, at this point in time, only three comments on HN, all related to Snowden, and are obviously using a throwaway account. You are also advocating heavily that the report, prepared by intelligence agencies in the US government, should be given credence, while you have developed none yourself. Really hard not to imagine you as a disinformation account created by a three letter organization.

I've been reading Hacker News for several months and this is the first time I felt motivated to comment. I'm using a burner account because I knew this was a unpopular side to support and didn't want to start an account (that I would rarely use, I'm pretty quiet) off on that. I didn't expect to be trusted on my non-existing record on HN, but wanted to present a side of the story not often told. I am not a "disinformation account". I have always valued discussion from all sides, especially opposing sides, and wanted to offer this resource.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#439

Post by rockinghigh » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #73

apexalpha wrote: post #53

I can't speak for the US but this man has shifted so much of the political debate in my country and I think also in the EU in general. If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. After Snowden no one could ignore you anymore and privacy is an aspect in any public debate.

That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or…

> Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US.

It actually changed a lot how some companies handle government requests for data. Apple for example, completely switched their strategy because they wanted to be seen as protective of customer data. They realized that data requests would eventually leak so they avoid storing identifiable data on the servers. They saw privacy as a competitive advantage.

https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request...

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#440

Post by snowden_report » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

jascii wrote: post #372

snowden_report wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent point. Using the "only a sys admin" example was pretty weak. I just chose it quickly as one example of his trustworthiness level from the report. A better example would be that Mr. Snowden claims he began collecting files after James Clapper's testimony, but in fact he began 8 months earlier (third point in the Executive Summary, page iii). My main takeaway form the report is that Mr. Snowden was…

As far as I know, none of the documents leaked by Mr Snowden have been found untrustworthy or fabricated. Digging in his past for inconsistencies and speculating about his motivation seem little more then a weak attempt at character assassination. What exactly are your goals in this discussion?

My first goal is to offer the under represented report for discussion, and encourage a better public understanding of the context and consequences.

My second goal is to offer opposing information to his account of events, which I though relevant in a post about hist autobiography.