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'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#61

Post by espeed »

yenoham wrote: post #19

When articles like this are submitted to HN, can we have a discussion on what us as individuals can actually do (if anything)? I'd rather drop 100 comments on general FEELING towards the news, for 1 or 2 comments suggesting 'Let's create a campaign site' or 'There is nothing we can do, lets just sit here in silence' Edit: For what it's worth my ONLY suggestion is that a campaign site similar to that for SOPA, etc. is…

Google was founded on the principle of "Don't be evil", it has the power and influence to effect change, and it helped lead the charge against SOPA. Why is Google so silent now?

"He who has the ability to act on an injustice, but who stands idly by, is just as guilty as he who holds the knife."

How Google handles this will be its defining moment. This is could be an opportunity for Google to win the world over by showing it truly stands on its principles, or it could be its downfall, destroying its credibility, losing the trust of its users.

Maybe Google is working behind the scenes putting a game plan together, or maybe it's getting something out of the situation -- let's hope it's the former. Like Eisenhower said, "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#63

Post by padobson »

dwiel wrote: post #36
padobson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we need a campaign against the "Nothing to hide" line. You could probably point out to them that there are so many laws now, they probably broke 10 of them before they left for work in the morning.

The path that seems to have worked best for me is to start with the argument that you can't have a democracy if the incumbent can spy on the opposing candidates to help dig dirt and that this data can and will be used for non-terrorist uses. The typical response is that they trust that they wont use it for non terrorist uses, to which I reply with the sharing of data between NSA and the DEA to arrest people as well a…

That could work in a full conversation, but it needs to be packaged up more for our sound-byte/online-comments/tweet culture. You could circulate a hashtag on twitter like #things2hide to get popular conversation about it going.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#64

Post by edw519 »

kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

When you were a child...

When I was a child, the President of the United States was murdered in front of thousands of onlookers and the primary suspect was murdered on live television (while I was watching) by a mob hit man. As far as we know, everyone behind this got away with it and got everything they wanted.

Since then, not much has really surprised me.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#65

Post by twoodfin »

Mordor wrote: post #59
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

Spying on people is terrorism and should stop ASAP.

So you'd describe what the folks at Bletchley Park did 70 years ago as terrorism?

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#66

Post by CaptainZapp »

rainsford wrote: post #41
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly. Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric d…

Well, the whole affair sounds a bit like a he-said, she-said. There are claims that Mr. Miranda was a courier and that they offered a lawyer and water during the 9 hour ordeal. The law office, which represents Mr. Miranda categorically denies that legal representation was ever offered to him, for example.

Now, I don't know the truth, but even assuming he had documents they wanted to get their hands on, or files on his devices that they thought pertinent they could have handled the whole thing in 30 minutes max and then let him go on his merry way.

That they held him - almost to the minute - for the legal maximum of 9 hours looks not only vindictive it looks as if they indeed intended to send a message.

Put that into context with other documented occurrences, like the totally senseless destruction of hardware and sandbagging the Guardian into this action (and yes, The Guardian has here more credibility then the UK government, which denies any threats, but that's just me) and we get a whole other picture.

While totalitarian police state may be an over exaggeration , we should be very careful about the direction this is going into.

Assume you're a journalist and suddenly the government(s) have a truckload embarrassing material on you (from Google searches, Facebook accounts, Skype calls and whatever your friendly operating system leaks directly to the NSA's vacuum cleaners) to directly blackmail you.

And no, I don't consider myself a member of the black helicopter faction, but nevertheless find those developments extremely worrying.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#67

Post by michaelt »

rainsford wrote: post #41
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly. Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric d…

Let's say you were the british security services, you didn't like Greenwald, and you wanted to show him who was boss. And his partner was travelling through an airport.

What would you do differently?

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#68

Post by swombat »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #24
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

>When you were a child, would any of you have believed.... Actually, yeah. I read 1984 at age 10, and somehow grokked enough about what that would mean. >Like a cheap sci-fi novel has become reality? Like Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, with a little Kafka thrown in. I'm not sure "cheap" is the word I'd use here. >I for one am more scared, appaled by what has been bubbling to the surface every week, almost every day since…

More than a little Kafka. The secret laws interpreted by secret courts with secret opinions being used to secretly murder citizens "legally" without the slightest hint of a trial is solid Kafka. The innocent people held in high-security prison indefinitely on secret charges because it's too difficult to work out a legal framework to set them free are also solid Kafka.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#69

Post by grey-area »

swalsh wrote: post #32
keithwinstein wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would any of you have believed Yes, honestly. For more than 20 years, the basic message of the cipherpunks and related communities has been that the NSA spends tens of billions of dollars to spy on everything "foreign" that it can possibly get its hands on, and its foreign adversaries are doing the same, so you'd better use PGP (or more) if you want any chance of keeping your communications secret from the governme…

In regards to your first paragraph, its a question I keep wondering. What was different about these leaks then all the previous? Why NOW are people caring?

For me this is important because we're getting closer and closer to a tipping point where complete surveillance (i.e. a full take on everyone) is possible.

That's not possible yet, but it's clear that they are working towards it, and in the case of the UK, they already have almost complete surveillance of all communications for a period of days, and then of metadata for longer. Coupled with the fact that almost every mundane action or movement is now tied to communications (often involuntary) via our phones or other devices, that makes it very hard to escape surveillance. That ambition of a full take has always been there, but only now is it becoming possible, and instead of restraining the security services, it appears our politicians are encouraging them. I'm not sure that they, or we, even understand the implications yet, or what will happen when this data leaks or is misused on a large scale.

Even just the analysis of public internet data (like twitter feeds) will at some point in the future have profound effects, let alone the private data our security services are collecting. Retrospective and yet complete surveillance will I believe be the most dangerous part of these programmes, not real-time surveillance. That wasn't possible in the past, and is only just possible now.

So because of the future implications of a full-take on everyone's life spanning decades and our developing abilities to make sense of all that data in instants, relating and cataloguing thousands of people, this is a qualitative change in surveillance capability, and these leaks have shed light on that in a way that previous ones have not.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#70

Post by hvs »

rainsford wrote: post #41
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly. Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric d…

I suppose we could just wait until it gets worse.
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