591–600 of 614 posts
Offtopic, but there's a problem on this site with this kind of story now. I'm not sure if it's the flamewar detection, or flagging, or some other automated system, but stories like this which are very popular and not remotely a flamewar, but an interesting discussion, are disappearing off the home page too fast in my opinion. This is a topic that will define a generation's attitude to technology and the internet, and…
Offtopic, but there's a problem on this site with this kind of story now. I'm not sure if it's the flamewar detection, or flagging, or some other automated system, but stories like this which are very popular and not remotely a flamewar, but an interesting discussion, are disappearing off the home page too fast in my opinion. This is a topic that will define a generation's attitude to technology and the internet, and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"My sense is that the people who make these policies really are "Beyond Elections". They are constants in our government." Yes, these people are our fellow citizens. There is no conspiracy, merely functioning democracy.
It may be a functioning democracy to whatever degree, but is it still a constitutional republic?
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"My sense is that the people who make these policies really are "Beyond Elections". They are constants in our government." Yes, these people are our fellow citizens. There is no conspiracy, merely functioning democracy.
"Citizen are involved" and "the democracy is not function as intended and/or there is a situation that can not be rectified democratically" are anything but mutually exclusive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"My sense is that the people who make these policies really are "Beyond Elections". They are constants in our government." Yes, these people are our fellow citizens. There is no conspiracy, merely functioning democracy.
"functioning" democracy?? are you joking? do you know anything about campaign finance?
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Given your assumptions, that makes sense; however, given what our parent commenter said, I came away with different assumptions. From our parent: I used to work in the antivirus industry, and, as I recall, anything that even hinted at a history of hacking or virus-writing would lead to instant dismissal and black-listing (from pretty much the entire computer security industry). I imagine that the same prohibition wou…
> From our parent: I used to work in the antivirus industry, and, as I recall, anything that even hinted at a history of hacking or virus-writing would lead to instant dismissal and black-listing (from pretty much the entire computer security industry). A number of notable, convicted hackers have done additional work (whether employment or successful entrepreneurship or both) in the computer industry (in security-rel…
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Source? If true, I completely missed that side of the story. The worst I could find after a quick search was that the UK allowed extraditions to Guantanamo even after learning about the torture happening there.
IIRC, Poland was the EU country that was the focus of attention. Skimming Wikipedia's most definitely totally truthy article on the subject [1] (actually, it has a lot of citations, so it should be easy to verify), the UK's only alleged black site was the US base on Diego Garcia, which is "UK", but not "basement in London". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_sit... Edit (T+18 minutes): Wikip…
This seems like a good time to remember that Google has been storing wifi access passwords in plain text on its servers, and (presumably) passing them between its data centers. It can be assumed that as a consequence of google's decision to store passwords in plaintext, the NSA now have access to every wifi access point that has been used by an android device. This is a massive security breach. I sincerely hope googl…
e.g.
Here's the password for this router, rotate this key every X days, upon rotation, connect to the computers of friends X, Y and Z to notify them of the password update.
I imagine such a system would require two passwords, one to change the password so only one device is responsible for rotation and a second to share with others so they can access the computing resource in question.
Alternatively, every device should function with individual passwords for every user. I still get frustrated that wifi only offers one password and doesn't give you the option to give out one password per user. Future wifi protocols should permit a user to try to connect to a wifi and wait until someone approves their access. Approval could be done by visiting the routers IP address and granting access through some form that shows which clients are requesting access at that point in time. Furthermore, the way in which a computer requests access to wifi could be accomplished by having that computer submit it's SSH public key to the router.
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If privacy is a human right, it's not (to me, at least) of the same caliber as "life, liberty, and security of person". People behave best because they have internalized social norms, those arguments and attitudes that we proudly expose.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Otherwise, how would you define "liberty" or "security of person"? You're free to do what you want as long as it doesn't encroach on…
A person has liberty if he or she is free to do anything lawful within a just framework of laws that is fairly enforced. Everything you do has consequences, however. Your freedom is thus freedom from having government stopping you from doing things that are within the law, but not freedom from consequences. (Note that article 12, as written, is qualified by the term "arbitrary". According to the right as written, you or I can be interfered with if the reasons for doing so are non-arbitrary.) Absolute privacy rights increase freedom from non-legal consequences -- this is a good thing when your social context is horrible (shun him! he's smoking mj!), but more often than not, removing social consequences is a net loss.
Privacy has a nice "liberty narrative" which makes it easy to defend (as you are doing) in the abstract, because it bears a close relationship to freedom (you are, without a doubt, "more free" if you have more control over what you choose to disclose). In practice, people behave best (on balance) when transparency is maximized, and they behave worst when they have absolute privacy and anonymity (see Tor, 4chan, freenet, etc.). In many game-theoretic contexts, "private information" is what leads to sub-optimal overall outcomes that tend to strongly preference the already advantaged.
Privacy rights, therefore, have much to do with the tension between the goals of the many and the goals of the few. The real problems lie not with privacy per se, but with asymmetries in its distribution.
What strikes me most reading NSA related articles, that for Americans the problem here is not the global surveillance itself, but the domestic spying . Wtf? Is my anonymity and freedom less valuable just because I don't have a USA signed piece of paper? It's a serious problem that touches everyone who uses digital communications (pretty much every human being on the word nowadays)and such data collection should be il…
However: 1) US citizens alone control the US government's actions, at least indirectly and in theory. NSA's domestic spying presents a threat to our democratic processes. NSA spying on US citizens is more dangerous than if they spied only on non-citizens, because it provides the NSA the means to control their ostensible masters--making any reforms to NSA's foreign surveillance operations impossible.
2) In realpolitik terms, most Americans simply do not think or care about foreigners. Any bill that ends NSA's authority to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreigners is a non-starter in our current Congress. By first ending NSA's domestic surveillance programs, we actually have a shot at eventually ending NSA's unethical foreign dragnet surveillance programs. In other words: baby steps.