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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#91

Post by rolux »

willvarfar wrote: post #65
rolux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean protocols. While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. (But note that "protocols" may also have non-technological components.)

Its a subject I keep an eye on, e.g. freenet and off-the-record messaging. I think these systems cannot work :( If you can make a system that is immune to traffic analysis - http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/54088903127/onion... is my own blog but I'm about to shoot it down - then you basically have an open router and the spam abuse that implies. Any reasonably anonymous system will collapse under the weight…

Just two points:

- That's why I prefer to think about protocols, as opposed to a system (i.e. global implementation of one or more generalized protocols)

- You don't always have to solve the problem theoretically; solving it practically may be good enough. A system can be usable for a long time, before it collapses under abuse.

Re: Forced Exposure

#92

Post by mortov »

brown9-2 wrote: post #70

Can anyone explain for the uninformed how anything like surveillance affects Groklaw? I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.

Groklaw started with some serious in-depth background knowledge of the whole SCO - Linux stuff (there's too much to describe it as anything else).

That sort of information comes from having serious inside, in-depth background information.

You know, the sort of stuff serious investigative journalists /used/ to do. Like the Washington Post in 1972 when they reported on illegal activity by the President (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_m...) rather than the Washington Post in 2013 when the report on Presidential Broccoli (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07...).

We've seen a rare example of serious investigative journalism and how /our/ countries respond to it by targeting family and loved ones of the journalists. That's the way we used to say only the KGB or the Gestapo behaved in the Bad Old Days. Guess what ? The Bad Old Days are right here and right now.

No wonder PJ is concerned that continuing Groklaw may expose her to serious risk from the authorities. Commenting on court cases and filling in the background through back-channel information from Deep Throat (or whatever pseudonym they use today) sure does not seem to be worth that risk to me.

It's sad that any comment on this stuff makes it sound like you go around wearing a tin-foil hat.

Re: Forced Exposure

#93

Post by mcv »

rolux wrote: post #50
willvarfar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need entirely new communication protocols Whole new enforcement of privacy laws, you mean?

No, I mean protocols. While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. (But note that "protocols" may also have non-technological components.)

You need to fix both of course. The broken political situation needs to be fixed, but communication protocols need to be improved too.

And of course, as long as the current political situation in the US lasts, cloud services in the US cannot be trusted. Run your own server, or use a server abroad.

Re: Forced Exposure

#94

Post by gregd »

brown9-2 wrote: post #70

Can anyone explain for the uninformed how anything like surveillance affects Groklaw? I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.

Jesus, it's only two, short sentences in, "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum."

Re: Forced Exposure

#95

Post by rolux »

coldtea wrote: post #75
rolux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean protocols. While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. (But note that "protocols" may also have non-technological components.)

> While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. So you intent of fixing just a small point of the whole mess (the surveillance thing) and not the overall mess (bad governments, something that affects 100% of our life and countries)? Not to…

No, I'm just saying that working technology (like general purpose computers as affordable consumer goods) may be harder to ignore than "the voice of the people".

(In Philosophy, you'd call this position "materialist", I assume.)

Re: Forced Exposure

#96

Post by jacquesm »

nkurz wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

she

True, but is it a good impulse? http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

In this case, yes. PJ being a woman is very well known and it irks me when people automatically assume that anybody that runs a thing as successful as groklaw has to be a guy without checking. If you don't know use a gender neutral word or check, it's simple.

It's not purity in language, it is paying basic respect to a person who is named several times in full in this thread.

Re: Forced Exposure

#97

Post by mcv »

demallien wrote: post #81
quail wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama continues to push hard to steal what little privacy rights US citizens have remaining. He is openly hostile about it, and lies about it constantly. Am I exaggerating here? The scary thing is I'm not. He's not done. It's going to get worse.

I don't think that it's useful to be talking about Obama specifically. Before Obama there was Bush Jr, who was the sitting president when most of these programs were put in place. It should be clear now that it's not one specific President, or one specific party, but the whole political class that has been corrupted. Thinking things will get better at the next election will absolutely not help things, unless the issu…

I lot of people were hoping Obama was the start of a new direction. I'm now hoping he'll be the last of the old direction. The big problem to solve is: how do you elect someone different? As long as the two parties get to decide who American can elect, democracy is a hollow gesture. And the media are all in the pocket of the main parties.

Honestly, it seems like only Al-Jazeera US might be the only independent news station.

Re: Forced Exposure

#98

Post by ordinary »

rolux wrote: post #50
willvarfar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need entirely new communication protocols Whole new enforcement of privacy laws, you mean?

No, I mean protocols. While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower. (But note that "protocols" may also have non-technological components.)

Popular movements have accomplished incredible things over the centuries, and almost none (I'm hedging, I want to say there were none at all) of them were achieved by ticking a box on a voting form. The level of repression in the West today, while certainly not at its lowest point ever, is still lower than it's been for much of the past century.

It's easy to feel helpless and isolated, to feel like you can't do anything because the government is so big and you're so small. Realise that this feeling of helplessness is not based in reality. It is fostered; not by some kind of global conspiracy between government and business, but because it serves the interests of powerful people and institutions everywhere. There is no need for them to cooperate, for them to get together in shady backrooms to decide how next to disempower you. Their interests just happen to align.

But that isolation is not something you're forced into. You can break free. It's not easy, but if people suffering under military dictatorships can do it, then in our (still) relatively free society, we can do it too.

Anyone who feels like this should read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I'm rereading it these days (relistening, actually), and while it's certainly not perfect, you'll get a lot out of the shift in viewpoint.

Re: Forced Exposure

#99

Post by [deleted] »

demallien wrote: post #81
quail wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama continues to push hard to steal what little privacy rights US citizens have remaining. He is openly hostile about it, and lies about it constantly. Am I exaggerating here? The scary thing is I'm not. He's not done. It's going to get worse.

I don't think that it's useful to be talking about Obama specifically. Before Obama there was Bush Jr, who was the sitting president when most of these programs were put in place. It should be clear now that it's not one specific President, or one specific party, but the whole political class that has been corrupted. Thinking things will get better at the next election will absolutely not help things, unless the issu…

[deleted]

Re: Forced Exposure

#100

Post by voodoochilo »

that's what THEY want: get in bed with the big ones and scare the shit out of/shut up the small ones. result: complete control.

what a huge pile of shit for one single day.

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