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Revelations about the French Big Brother

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Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#81

Post by grey-area »

eksith wrote: post #78
grey-area wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. Have you thought through the implications of this? To me capturing and storing all the information we generate is really dangerous, and there's no way I'd want a log of everything in my life to be accessible to my secret service, my government, police, and the secret services of anyone they might wish to share it with (in…

The only winning move is not to play. And before you complain this is impossible, for the record, Stallman has been doing the same for years. He doesn't own a cellphone. Think about that for a moment; mull over the implications. He's been saying for years that the allure of convenience is a mirage in terms of privacy. Is he doing something illegal? No, I think it's safe to say not. Most likely, neither are you. So wh…

I think it'd be a shame to sacrifice all the utility of the Internet and telephone services because of mass surveillance. I'd rather sacrifice some of the capabilities of GCHQ and the NSA instead.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#82

Post by sentenza »

harryh wrote: post #77
sentenza wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is best to do the following thought experiment: What if all communications data was available to "somebody"? Well, sooner or later, this "somebody" would use it for things that for them are no-brainers: For example fighting terrorism in case of "somebody" = law enforcement. But then what? Unfortunately, a situation in which somebody has all the data and is allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes is not…

That wasn't a thought experiment. It was a bunch of predictions with no supporting evidence.

We're talking about future developments of society in a rather abstract manner, so the whole discussion is always scraping along the edge of BS territory. However, I've stated clear assumptions each step of the way. Some of them may be wrong, but I am (unfortunately) confident that they're not.

Let's take the data usage expansion hypothesis. Already in the discussion about the EU data retention directive many stakeholders stated that they want access to the data for persecution of activities such as tax avoidance or file sharing. Even now, after they (mostly) lost their case, these people try again every few years. If they continue to persist and if they get a little bit of what they want every now and then (which has happened), we have the million steps scenario. I consider the situation unstable, because the resources of those that want to restrict the usage of gathered data (at least here in the EU) are dwarfed by the resources available to those that want to expand the usage.

Even the most extreme statement in my tale (the one about the caste system) has some footing in reality. When we still had the STASI here in Germany, the nature of what they did basically made them such a caste. Because STASI operatives had the job of spying on their surroundings with the tools available at the time, they had a general information advantage compared to everybody else. However, the rest of society avoided any contact with them (obviously only possible when they were not undercover) because of what they did. I once heard that children in school had to proclaim the professions of their parents at some point during the school year. If a child did not state a specific profession but just said "worker", everybody knew that the parents were STASI. Of course the child was then shunned by the other children.

While falling short of a fully developed caste system, this little example shows that a society with an extremely developed information gathering and processing apparatus can move in that direction.

I admit that using the word thought experiment was most likely wrong, but then it follows that one really can't make a Gedankenexperiment about the future of society, doesn't it?

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#83

Post by coldtea »

tptacek wrote: post #63
coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Snowden's "revelations" are completely unsurprising to anyone who has thought about this and the technology. I'm still waiting for him to reveal something actually surprising. To someone used to an abusive relationship, no abuse is surprising. "Oh, now he hit me with a metal club. Big fucking deal" That doesn't make it acceptable or non dangerous. So I wouldn't be waiting, like a mere spectator on something that do…

He didn't say "big fucking deal". A guy menaces you with a metal club. Then he hits you with it. That's a big fucking deal, and also not a surprise.

There's no reason to focus on the "not a surprise" part, as the comment did, except for trivialising the issue.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#85

Post by tptacek »

coldtea wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say "big fucking deal". A guy menaces you with a metal club. Then he hits you with it. That's a big fucking deal, and also not a surprise.

There's no reason to focus on the "not a surprise" part, as the comment did, except for trivialising the issue.

What are you talking about? The "not a surprise" part was the whole point of John Graham-Cumming's comment to which you're replying.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#86

Post by hindsightbias »

espadrine wrote: post #55
jgrahamc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a discussion on HN, not in a general public forum. Sure, the general public is probably surprised by what's been revealed but we should not be.

Being french, I am quite certain that this is a lesser news to french people than PRISM was to americans. Read the comments (if you can read french), and you'll notice that the reactions are all a sarcastic combination of "not surprised at all" and "that darn government probably didn't even get this right". To sum up the differences: - PRISM was legal. That said, in France, legal coherency is a joke. Laws conflict wi…

> so the government doesn't have much leverage to get information from companies

Google, MS, Facebook, twitter and cell phone companies don't have facilities in France?

Here's the manual for the Amuses Eagle product, a French company: http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/amesys/99_eagle-glint-ope...

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#87

Post by lucian1900 »

Aloisius wrote: post #76
lucian1900 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently, it was considered ridiculous to think that the NSA is spying on citizens of countries allied to the US. Now we have proof.

Ridiculous by whom? It wouldn't surprise me if we spied on our allies citizens and then sold the intelligence to our allies so they didn't have to. I mean, we have in the past warned allies that one of their citizens was planning an attack. It should have been obvious that meant we were monitoring their citizens.

It was considered ridiculous by the mainstream. If I told that to some of my friends, they would have thought I'm crazy. Not anymore.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#88

Post by bsaul »

hbbio wrote: post #54
bsaul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing, nobody will react. We already have the most impopular president of the last 50 years, one of the highest tax rates of modern country, highest unemployment rate, high abstention rate in elections, high immigration rates, high debt ratios, and the extremist political parties are on the verge of gaining massive support in the next european elections. That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous exp…

I have to agree with many things you say, but I can't figure out why "high immigration rates" may be a problem. If you imagine a country as a giant shop, the more customers the best.

it is a good thing when the country's growing. It creates additional tensions in the case of recession.
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