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25 years of mass surveillance is enough

schneier.com

81–90 of 379 posts

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#81
I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need:

1. EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. Data needs to be our own property that we can lend, but can never give up our right to revocation.

2. Stricter controls, and stricter still penalities, need to exist against misuse and abuse. Many of the stories of abuse of data are most stark in their lack of repercussions, some of this is police unions, some of this is "deep state" people who scratch eachother's backs and grant eachother free accesses and immunity. Some of this is a voting issue as in we need to make it known to our candidates that it matters to us, and then push real political power in their hands.

Just to help the imagination of all here's where mass surveilance could plausibly add good to society, all stemming from legitimate use:

1. Criminals like porch pirates can be caught using a neetwork of Ring cameras

2. A lost pet/child can be identified and found by drone surveillance

3. Usage data of roads can be updated in realtime

4. Trends and Sentiment could be used to guide the government intra-elections improving the way government serves us

5. Police officers can avoid risky situations using drones as eyes instead of putting their own bodies in harms way

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#82
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. America stands for something, they wrote a whole document about it. There is a big difference between being "American" and being something like "German" because Germany has existed for so long as different governments and the thing that ties it together is not an ethos, but an ethnicity. Being American is different, there's no ethnicity that makes one American, there is only it's ethos. The ideals written…

Germany specifically hasnt existed for very long. its a younger country than the US, but it was made to combine people of an ethnicity

That kind of gets at my point. To be "German" means something different than being "American".

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#83
post #13

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like the…

No, Dem candidates are safe. The culture wars benefit both parties and their billionaire owners.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#84
It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets.

We live in war times and will soon see it happening

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#85
post #72

I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain. Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon.…

Are you advocating for inaction? If so, what do you wish to achieve?

I would advocate for a shift of power by creating greater individual rights over their data (as their irrevocable property) , and greater oversight and consequences for those in power (ab)using the data.

It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump calls Democrats "enemies from within," that's anti-American. When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent and instead plays "heads I win tails you cheated," that's anti-American. When Trump sends the FCC chair to suppress speech "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," or yucks it up with the president of El Salvador over suspending Habeas Corpus, that's anti-American. T…

While I understand the intention of what you're saying, you're still attempting a definition of the term "anti-American", which needs no definition as the term should be rejected as a whole.

[deleted]

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#87

It's a great write up thankyou. I propose we build and distribute easy to use services designed to run on our own devices, in our own homes, to take full advantage of 1st and 4th amendments, then distribute these services widely with billboards so that people have alternatives and can take advantage of these protections.

How about this, but also send them usb sticks with loads of data available on them that they thought was "private" including surveillance footage taken from flock cameras etc. That might be good motivation to be more aware. Not sure about the legality of this though lol

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#88
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-election... Here's a fun little interview. They had a program that apparently worked, for much cheaper than Michael Hayden's program (I think Trailblazer). Got shelved apparently due to "not expensive enough". 9/11 happens and Binney contends his ThinThread program could have stopped it. You don't want more dragnet surveillance; even beyond the abuses, it leads to it being harder to catch things

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#89

I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need: 1. EU style governmental…

> EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights.

No, I don't think we need Chat Control in the US or our government forcing ISPs and CDNs to block whole swaths of the internet just because a soccer game is on TV.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#90
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent When did this happen? I didn't realize Biden wasn't inaugurated. I could have sworn he was the President for 4 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_Unit...

If you go far into the user you’re replying to’s post history, you’ll find them unambiguously referring to the Jan 6 crowd as terrorists. They are very aware.

I know there’s a pretty strong norm against dragging people for their posting history here, but that’s in service of maximizing light vs. heat and I feel like pretending to be ignorant of recent events in order to relitigate something unrelated in the comments is wholly unproductive.

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