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Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#81

Post by bhauer »

I am absolutely no fan of Bernie Sanders. I disagree with him on a majority of policy matters.

However, this popular media framing, which blames the failure of this amendment on Bernie Sanders, is unhinged. It's not just this Register article; you'll see the same sniping at Sanders specifically in most articles that carry a negative opinion on the PATRIOT Act.

Being absent for the vote is shameful, sure. But how about laying the blame somewhere more meaningful? For example, on us Californians who re-elected Feinstein despite knowing she is absolutely abysmal on privacy. Californians like myself should carry this shame, not Sanders and Vermont voters. We Californians are sorry for voting so blindly and continuously re-electing terrible senators.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#82

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

_8j50 wrote: post #3

Actual terrorists(like 9/11 type, well funded) know better than to even touch anything digital for comms. They literally get a drone strike for having called a known terrorist or for going to a wedding other terrorists with cell phones go to. For home grown terrorism, how many school shootings happen when the people who know the shooter literally tell police/fbi beforehand about the state of the shooter. Are school s…

> they know the next terrorist attack will happen soon and it can't be prevented,

you have no idea what you're talking about. but here you are on the internet talking like you have a clue. get off this website.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#83

Post by curryst »

_8j50 wrote: post #72
lonelappde wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism has been removed of its meaning since 2001. Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions. Not everything bad is terrorism. A mentally ill person going on a murder-suicide rampage after beijg ignored by a girl is not a terrorist. A person acting in their self-interest in a way that contributes to systemic racism or oppression is not a terrorist. Hunting or t…

When a girl ignores him,he attacked not that girl but a social group out of misogyny or some other socio-political perception of injustice. So it is still terrorism. The point of the attack is to affect political(at the social level) change. This really is similar to jihadist terrorism,jihadism took away american's privacy and mass shooters with gripes against american socio-politics have americans living in trauma o…

The term terrorism refers to intended effect by the perpetrator. If the goal is to effect change by creating fear, it is terrorism. If the goal is revenge for perceived wrong doing, it is not terrorism.

I would argue most school shootings are also not terrorism. They do create fear, but my impression is that the intended goal is revenge rather than fear. It would be hard to frame them as terrorists; most of them leave behind notes expressing a clear desire for revenge but mentioning no kind of policy changes they want.

I do think most of the race/religion inspired mass shootings were terrorist acts though. Their goal seemed to be spreading fear in those communities.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#84

Post by mindslight »

ryanlol wrote: post #71
dgellow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where I live you can buy a SIM card with cash, load it with credit and surf on a 3G/4G network, without having to register the SIM or attach your legal name to it in any way. Where is that? My experience in Europe and Thailand is that I have to sign documents and show a proof of identity.

In Europe “I’m sorry, I didn’t take my passport with me, but I remember my passport number” has had a 100% success rate for me.

So then you're committing fraud or whatever. Once again, law abiding people bear the burden while bogeyman-with-beard just gives a false number.

One of the general difficulties with the government threat actor is that law abiding people have to thread the needle of both technical protection and legal requirements.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#85

Post by mindslight »

brenden2 wrote: post #32
gnulinux wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what's going on. Private browser has no visible difference to server or the party listening to your communication in the middle. The only effect it has is that it doesn't persist your browser history upon closing it.

There's a big difference between what's possible in theory and the reality of current practices. I think many people in this thread are missing that point.

Do you honestly think major ISPs haven't been deploying commercial DPI gear to datamine their customers' traffic, and selling the results to surveillance companies like LexisNexis?

Maybe I'm ahead of the adoption curve here, but I see no overall reason they wouldn't be.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#87

Post by newscracker »

foob4r wrote: post #79
rrtthu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If TOR had fiver-level speed I'd be on all the time. The trade off is just too high.

True although it's getting better every day. I do use it frequently and do run a few relays, and that's probably the only way to improve it.

Do you have any simpler resources on how to do it?

If it were simpler to run a relay on a provider that allows it, and it doesn’t cost much (say $10 a month) to give Tor users a little more speed, that’d be helpful. The last time I looked at the documentation, it seemed quite involved and complex (of course, I wouldn’t want the security of Tor users to be compromised due to any misconfiguration).

If there were something for Tor like Sandstorm for web apps or Algo for WireGuard, more people could run relays and help everyone.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#88

Post by foob4r »

newscracker wrote: post #87
foob4r wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True although it's getting better every day. I do use it frequently and do run a few relays, and that's probably the only way to improve it.

Do you have any simpler resources on how to do it? If it were simpler to run a relay on a provider that allows it, and it doesn’t cost much (say $10 a month) to give Tor users a little more speed, that’d be helpful. The last time I looked at the documentation, it seemed quite involved and complex (of course, I wouldn’t want the security of Tor users to be compromised due to any misconfiguration). If there were someth…

I use ovh (although the tor network is saturated with ovh) and https://tor-relay.co ; literally takes 5 mins after vm is provisioned.

Here's a giant list of hosts you can look into - https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/g...

I spent maybe an hour researching based my in criteria. You can host just an exit (most helpful), or a couple of relays (aim for 100mbps+, and decent bandwidth). You can get a lot for $5/month for each relay.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#89

Post by curryst »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #64
lonelappde wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism has been removed of its meaning since 2001. Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions. Not everything bad is terrorism. A mentally ill person going on a murder-suicide rampage after beijg ignored by a girl is not a terrorist. A person acting in their self-interest in a way that contributes to systemic racism or oppression is not a terrorist. Hunting or t…

I agree but I’d take it a bit further. Trying to change the behavior of a group of people by using violence is what I’d consider to be terrorism. By that definition, some school shooters would qualify as terrorists. When they target a category of people (like athletes) who haven’t bulled them, they’re trying to scare all people away from becoming athletes. I’d say, if you target specific people who directly hurt you,…

Their perception is that everyone in that group did hurt them. School shooters frequently blame everyone in the school for not helping them, and for having a higher social status than they do. I think their motivation is to flip the social hierarchy so they are at the top, and to punish people they think have wronged them (i.e. basically everyone).

The fact that it strikes fear into the rest of the nation is ancillary. They're usually more interested in the notoriety they gain than trying to create some kind of policy change.

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