51–60 of 479 posts
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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.
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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 suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.
This is precisely the type of attitude we should all have as hackers. It's easy to sit back and say "oh government this or corporation that sucks", we need to step up our game as builders of the software sitting on millions of devices. This is a privacy arms race -- and right now we're losing.
I can't say I'm surprised. It's well known the NSA is monitoring internet traffic (read this article in Wired, published in 2006: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustra... ) and they have a massive data center in Utah which they use for foreign data collection (read: phone calls). Under the FISA guidelines they can gather foreign data, but have to get a warrant for every US citizen they want to…
I have middle-class friends in Istanbul fighting a authoritarian government which is arresting people because of their statements on Twitter and Facebook - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-a.... So the data can easily be abused in a very negative way.
More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.
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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?
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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.
There are two problems:
1. If we don't call in the only people talking to Congress are those with the money interest, and they can go after the easiest targets. This is why money currently trumps everything.
2. These form part of the economic structure that keeps the small elite in power.
Now, I totally agree with you when you say "The only hope is to economically empower everyone so that a small elite doesn't form." The problem is we have been running the wrong direction since the 30's (I think Roosevelt-era social democracy lead directly to Reagan-era neoliberalism) and with the over-regulation of small businesses and the under-regulation of large businesses that is a tremendous uphill battle.
If you sit down and map out the scope of corporate control over our individual lives, you will probably come to the same conclusion I have, that this is not only the vital struggle of our day, but is one we are badly loosing.
A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you? More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.
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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.
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…