Schneier: The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet 413
Nerdfest writes "Bruce Schneier writes in The Atlantic: 'Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we've learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it's easier that way. I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.'"
We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to win this is to get FISA eliminated. Without first eliminating the gag orders and the Star Chamber...I mean FISA courts, we cannot succeed on the whole.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FISA is way to entrenched to be simply eliminated after 35 years. Hell even when NSLs were initially created with the 1978 FISA act they were actually voluntary to respond to and there were no codified penalties for not complying. They were also extremely limited in scope for whom they could be used by and against. It wasn't until the 2001 FISA amendments as part of the Patriot Act that NSLs got especially heinous.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:4, Insightful)
FISA is way to entrenched to be simply eliminated after 35 years.
That's a good illustration of our system being one that features positive feedback loops. It has to keep getting worse until it collapses under its own weight.
It wasn't intended to be that way, but empirical evidence shows it to be the case. Judging by how every new law seems to have its own set of unintended consequences, I'm skeptical of anybody who would claim to be able to design a system that would be resistant against such biases.
Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
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Judging by how every new law seems to have its own set of unintended consequences, I'm skeptical of anybody who would claim to be able to design a system that would be resistant against such biases. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
Cf. the Chodorov Principle [mises.org]: "For every social problem A caused by government program X, problem A can be solved by abolishing program X."
Re: (Score:3)
Thereby creating Problem B, and worsening Problem Y, which was being alleviated by Program X.
No, returning to the previous problem, not creating a new one. The corollary to the Chodorov Principle is that:
* To solve problem 'p' program 'X' is instituted, however it has the side effect of causing problem 'A';
* To solve problem 'A' then program 'Y' is instituted, however it has the side effect of causing problem 'B';
* To solve problem 'B' then program 'Z' is instituted, however it has the side effect of causing problem 'C';
Rinse and repeat until the sum of side effect problems 'A'+'B'+'C'+...+'n' beco
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"For every social problem A caused by government program X, problem A can be solved by abolishing program X."
Thereby creating Problem B, and worsening Problem Y, which was being alleviated by Program X.
Which of course is impossible, because "abolishing program X" is something that never happens. Instead, we get government program B to solve problem A, which then causes problem Y, and because program B is impossible to eliminate, we get government program Z, which creates problem C and so on and so on and here we are - with lunacy like the failed ethanol program that won't die [mdpolicy.org], farm subsidies to rock stars (recently renewed AGAIN), and the PRISM program to fight terrorism, which was created by US foreign
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That's a good illustration of our system being one that features positive feedback loops. It has to keep getting worse until it collapses under its own weight.
The Republicans have been talking about starving the beast for a long time, often using it for their spending increases balanced with increased borrowing. Is the beast skinny now, or still fat? Looks fat to me.
It's best skinny, but Republicans gave up on trying to starve it a long time ago, and all they do now is fight with Democrats over where to get the fat from, and which body part to store it in.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:4, Insightful)
FISA is way to entrenched to be simply eliminated after 35 years. Hell even when NSLs were initially created with the 1978 FISA act they were actually voluntary to respond to and there were no codified penalties for not complying. They were also extremely limited in scope for whom they could be used by and against. It wasn't until the 2001 FISA amendments as part of the Patriot Act that NSLs got especially heinous.
Just because no penalties are codified on the document it doesn't mean unwritten penalties don't exist. Any time you piss a bunch of powerful people off there is a penalty whether it is written into the law or not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well it's a secret court. That, in itself, doesn't make it unconstitutional, but it certainly makes it susceptible to corruption and rot. They're rejection rate for warrant applications is something dismal. They've rejected... what? 11 out of the 34,000 warrant requests in the past few decades? It's a rubber stamp. They don't say no. And since it's secret, they really wouldn't get in trouble if they simply disregarded the constitution.
But whether or not the FISA court is corrupted and doing unconstitutional
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Interesting)
Eliminating FISA isn't the only way to win. (Score:2)
The other way to "win" is to move your company offshore - or start it offshore - and not sell your products or services to Americans, and hope the Americans get fed up enough to demand change.
Of course, that may just be trading one nosy government for another.
For governments, one way to "win" is to have a policy of creating direct bulk-data communications channels with other countries when possible, and use encrypted tunnels for all other communications so there is a "direct virtual connection" between the
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way to win this is to get FISA eliminated. Without first eliminating the gag orders and the Star Chamber...I mean FISA courts, we cannot succeed on the whole.
Sadly, I think it will take a lot more than getting FISA (and the Patriot Act, and the rest) eliminated. I for one don't believe that they will simply stop their secret spying if those get eliminated.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:4)
If the US wasn't so busy spreading Freedom(TM) around the world, maybe we wouldn't have so much terrorism/freedom fighting and not need FISA, NSA, etc., never mind a standing army.
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You don't have to eliminate the gag orders. They're blatantly unconstiutional.
I see a lot of people taking the attitude of basically "wait and see" when it comes to these gag order. This is absurd in the extreme. All such actions do is reinforce the fear and thrid hand authority of these "orders".
The best thing everyone in reciept of such a ga
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a top secret surveillance court.
Why? We needed no star chamber [wikipedia.org] before, why now? And what are you so terrified of, coward?
Your fear is not only cowardly but stupidly illogical. 45000 people die yearly on the American highways, only a few thousand have died of terrorism in out entire history. You want to be safer? Disband the TSA and the FISA courts, overturn the PATRIOT act, and spend the money on guard rails.
If you want to live in a nice, safe surveillance state, move to North Korea and leave my freedom alone.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Insightful)
But freedom is useless if crime and terror hit a certain level.
This is the wrong way round. Freedom is what helps stop "crime and terror" hitting that level. If the people are not free then the police concentrate on rounding up "politicals" and feel free to profit from taking things from the population. If you are in a free country then the police are afraid of ignoring the public and concentrate on stopping "crime" including "terror".
It's not a coincidence that the safest countries are the ones which have been long term democracies with high levels of freedom whilst the most dangerous are failed states and effective dictatorships.
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Freedom is never useless. It's the principle that this country was founded upon. Giving it up just means more human misery no matter how much crime there is. And we are not facing routine daily terrorist attacks.
Even with daily terrorist attacks I still don't see that turning our government into the one that George Orwell dreamed up is going to help anyway. It might stop some of the attacks, but not all of them and then we still have to live in a privacy-less dystopia.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Insightful)
While we didn't have daily attacks, the UK had 30 years of terrorism from one group on mainland soil. Even after all that we didn't turn into what US has after having only suffered one day of it and you're happy to kick freedom to the kerb? WTF is wrong with you?
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Informative)
And yet, the UK has one of the world's highest densities of CCTV cameras [crypticide.com], a capital police force that is one of the most aggressive in Western countries when it comes to hounding photographers [cnet.com], government-mandated Internet filtering [huffingtonpost.com], and is no slouch when it comes to excessive surveillance and implementing the worst the Americans could come up with [theguardian.com].
Sanctimony from the British is pretty misplaced.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:4, Insightful)
But freedom is useless if crime and terror hit a certain level.
Really? To what level must they rise? I wager we have lost more people to influenza in the past 10 years than terrorism. Perhaps we need cameras in the bathrooms to make sure employees are really washing their... hmm.... better not give them any ideas...
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Insightful)
so now its the..... (Score:4, Insightful)
So we were right in the 90s when we thought Facebook was a CIA front?
Trash cans tracking MACs.....FBI turning on my mic......1984 is only going to be 30 odd years late......
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We now know it's an NSA front.
Re: so now its the..... (Score:2, Informative)
Facebook existed in the 90s?? Goodness, I'm soooo late on everything. -.-
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Effectively yes. It was called AOL.
Fair disclosure: Facebook is just a place where all the attention whore, idiots hang out. AOL was that once.
Re: so now its the..... (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL was a competitor to compuserve/prodigy/delphi/BIX etc before the internet was popular and did indeed predate the WWW.
AOL also had insane high pricing. AOL tried very hard to keep their morons in only the AOL walled garden. Unfortunately they failed and now the morons are everywhere and can't be filtered away so easily.
About the only thing good AOL did was suck a large chunk of value out of Time Warner. Nice job redistributing the wealth Mr. Case.
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL [wikipedia.org]
Founded in 1985 as Quantum Computer Services, an online services company by Jim Kimsey from the remnants of Control Video Corporation, AOL has franchised its services
Also
In its earlier incarnation as a “walled garden” community and service provider, AOL received criticism for its community policies, terms of service, and customer service.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I kind of wondered about this when the d.root-server moved to the University of Maryland.
http://blog.icann.org/2012/12/d-root/
Maybe it's not a big deal, but somehow "University of Maryland" seems like just another way of saying "NSA annex B"
Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:4, Funny)
>> The government has commandeered the Internet
Somewhere, I'm sure Al Gore is pissed.
Re:Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, he is. He believes that what they are doing is unconstitutional.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/14/al-gore-nsa-surveillance-unamerican [theguardian.com]
Re:Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:4, Insightful)
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>> Al Gore's actions showed government can be beneficial for the internet
OK, I'll bite. What DID Gore do for the Internet?
Re:Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:5, Informative)
Introduced a number of bills that provided funding to the development of the Internet. And as said by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn:
as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.
The very pioneers of the Internet have acknowledged his contributions despite all the maligment he gets from the neckbeard crowd.
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Introduced a number of bills that provided funding to the development of the Internet. And as said by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn:
as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.
The very pioneers of the Internet have acknowledged his contributions despite all the maligment he gets from the neckbeard crowd.
Thanks for the interesting quote.
One minor correction, I don't think it's "neckbeards" that malign Gore, it's the right-wingers. They seem to need to hate everything that isn't part of their tribe and aren't hesitant to make up stuff to hate against.
We don't need transparency (Score:4, Informative)
We need the illegal surveillance of the world to STOP.
Now!
Re: (Score:3)
Well *thats* going to work. Say that to the rest of the world. While I agree with the sentiment, this is done by every good government and every bad government. People are getting upset at one or two countries that are effectively now the focal point for the mob.
I'd rather lobby for better oversight.
Its like arguing that Iran/NK should give up their nukes. Hehe.... *thats* successful.
Fact, that tech isnt going anywhere and its already in use by the side stealing IP from your endorsed pyramid scheme... e
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FTFY
It's much worse than that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Drop this idea of the "government" as some evil alien entity with unknown motives. The issue here is that the NSA is being a bunch of assbags to internet companies.. At the behest of other companies. In this case, security services contractors. Why does everyone forget the warnings about the Military Industrial Complex? This is the Security Industrial Complex and we're throwing away our freedoms so some slimy fucks can make a buck. There is a reason most of our "generals" are desk jockeys whose' primary job is shuffling papers and securing funding.
Some say never attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence. I say never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by greed.
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Oh please. The absurdity of Schneier (and your) position is the idea that the companies are on a different side of the issue than the NSA in the first place. Obviously there is quite a bit of value in huge databases of everything. It is companies, not the government, who led the charge in constructing and exploiting the databases. Now that they exist, government is simply horning in on them.
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My understanding was that they get paid well for their cooperation and for their time. They aren't losing money on the surveillance directly. Quite the opposite.
Re:It's much worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Drop this idea of the "government" as some evil alien entity with unknown motives. The issue here is that the NSA is being a bunch of assbags to internet companies.. At the behest of other companies. In this case, security services contractors. Why does everyone forget the warnings about the Military Industrial Complex? This is the Security Industrial Complex and we're throwing away our freedoms so some slimy fucks can make a buck. There is a reason most of our "generals" are desk jockeys whose' primary job is shuffling papers and securing funding.
Some say never attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence. I say never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by greed.
The point is there is still no way to defend yourself against a pissed off or curious NSA. if the NSA is pissed off you're done. If they are curious they'll learn everything about everything, including all about your life, your friends and family. There is nothing you can do to defend yourself against an agency that knows everything you do. What are you supposed to do? Tell them no and hope they play nice?
As a result everyone cooperates with any government agency. If you're in China or Russia you're not going to fight the FSB or the Chinese communist party. If you're in the USA you're not going to fight the NSA. But at least in the USA you have some rights and the NSA cannot legally spy on you, if you're in a foreign country then the NSA can legally spy on you and not only can you not fight the NSA but the NSA can use everything you ever did to convince you to cooperate.
So how exactly is it realistic for anyone not to cooperate with agencies that have so much power? You can cooperate or be destroyed trying to fight. The destruction of your business, but possibly of your personal life as well, most people aren't going to risk it.
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I've said it once and I'll say it again. "Enemy of the State" is a movie that gets more scarier and more precient with each passing year. It's only a matter of time until a senator really is outright murdered.
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Drop this idea of the "government" as some evil alien entity with unknown motives. The issue here is that the NSA is being a bunch of assbags to internet companies.. At the behest of other companies. In this case, security services contractors. Why does everyone forget the warnings about the Military Industrial Complex? This is the Security Industrial Complex and we're throwing away our freedoms so some slimy fucks can make a buck. There is a reason most of our "generals" are desk jockeys whose' primary job is shuffling papers and securing funding.
Some say never attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence. I say never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by greed.
The point is there is still no way to defend yourself against a pissed off or curious NSA. if the NSA is pissed off you're done. If they are curious they'll learn everything about everything, including all about your life, your friends and family. There is nothing you can do to defend yourself against an agency that knows everything you do. What are you supposed to do? Tell them no and hope they play nice?
As a result everyone cooperates with any government agency. If you're in China or Russia you're not going to fight the FSB or the Chinese communist party. If you're in the USA you're not going to fight the NSA. But at least in the USA you have some rights and the NSA cannot legally spy on you, if you're in a foreign country then the NSA can legally spy on you and not only can you not fight the NSA but the NSA can use everything you ever did to convince you to cooperate.
So how exactly is it realistic for anyone not to cooperate with agencies that have so much power? You can cooperate or be destroyed trying to fight. The destruction of your business, but possibly of your personal life as well, most people aren't going to risk it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa...first off the NSA's job is monitoring electronic communications. There are other ways to communicate that they can't "listen" to, and they are...were limited in what they can do. The CIA on the other hand is the proverbial "hound" in the statement, "Release the hounds!" They dispose, while the NSA listens. Everyone is barking about the NSA, I'd be more worried about the CIA operating on American soil. So far, that has come to the surface. They are far scarier in action than the NSA, folks
They have defiled the Internet (Score:3)
Basically if you are offering any products or services over the Internet now you are baiting your customers into being spied upon. Every email you send is inviting the recipient to reply and be spied upon. Its not just about what you do. Its about what others on the net do in response. Every action you take condoning the use of this medium is tricking other people to use it too.
They havent just usurped the Internet. They have contaminated it. They have defiled it.
No WE must Fight (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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Go to public meeting when the ELECTED Congressmen/women who write these laws.
They don't hold public meetings as much as they used to, especially if they're entrenched.
Re:No WE must Fight (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Go to public meeting when the ELECTED Congressmen/women who write these laws. Question then send a clear message change it or be removed from office.
Recently, the Tea Party folks tried this and the Occupy folks tried this. Result? Universal derision from major media, and specific derision from the opposite party's political leaders. Almost no changes to the insulated agencies or policies that ticked off ordinary people in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
What if Google, Yahoo, AT&T, Microsoft, AOL, Charter, Comcast, Verizon and all the rest stood together and told the government to piss off, and get warrants in open court? Sure, they could be sued, prosecuted and shut down, but the collateral damage would be so huge that even politicians would hesitate.
In short, I am calling for some backbone and civil disobedience from those whose business models are at stake.
Military Industrial Complex vs Android Robot (Score:3)
Classic dragnetting problem (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're focused on sucking in everything, you're not focusing on analyzing anything. Somehow, we didn't have the resources available to keep the Boston bombers under surveillance, but we have the resources to keep 300+ million innocent citizens under watch.
Re:Classic dragnetting problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but if they have a target they can analyze the data with respect to that target. If you get on their radar they can pull up & analyze everything they have on you. And it's cheap to store massive amounts of data. What it comes down to is the government will have supreme power over anybody they don't like... which is not a good thing.
They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me. My problem is what they could be intending to do with it. They are saving our lives forever in the databases and storing it forever, and often there are leaks like with Snowden. So if Snowden can leak all this, what happens to all the stuff the NSA has on us over the years? Could someday someone at the NSA decide to go rogue and leak it all?
Look up the term false positive. Now, imagine that the NSA does really well, and only has 1:10,000 false positives. If they test people with previous suspicious activity or where there is a warning from outside the system, the odds of it being wrong is 1 in 10,000. If they test everyone, there will be 30,000 false positives. For every cycle of tests for the population. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
So, you say, just get the false positive rate lower. The new term to look up is diminishing returns. It
Re:Classic dragnetting problem (Score:5, Insightful)
They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me.
Then you are insane, because you probably commit several felonies a day [kottke.org]:
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.
You're saying you don't mind if the government has access to absolutely everything you do, when at any time they could use that information to put you in jail - or at least make your life miserable - for years?
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I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me. My problem is what they could be intending to do with it.
Well good for you, but what about the rest of us? Do you base all of your political positions on "To hell with everyone else! What's in it for me?"
Re:Classic dragnetting problem (Score:5, Insightful)
a long as recording is done, government can operate on the model of "get dirt on everyone now, use when needed"
So its come to this...... (Score:3, Informative)
Fight with what? (Score:2)
It's not like there is equal power here and there is any way to put up much of a fight. Either they give the information to the NSA or the NSA takes the information. It's a lot easier to sell it than to deal with the hostile takeover or the underhanded means or the legal offensive. The average CEO is defenseless not only against the NSA but against any government agency.
Fighting is only a symbolic gesture. There is nothing anyone can do really to stop the NSA from getting what it wants.
Re:Fight with what? (Score:5, Interesting)
If corporations are really people, maybe they should take a look at the concept of civil disobedience.
What exactly would happen if Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft told the NSA to fuck off? There might be a few high-profile arrests. Internet services could be severely disrupted. But these companies have the greatest platform for expressing their views and fighting back since the beginning of history. Can you imagine the effect if Google dedicated their search portal to explaining what they were doing, why the Internet was suddenly broken, and urging ordinary people to flood Congress with demands to restore our civil rights?
These are huge public companies, but at least at Facebook and Google, most of the voting shares are controlled by the founders. They have almost complete control over their companies, and with that kind of power, they should perhaps consider exercising some responsibility.
Deep Web (Score:2)
Use the Deep Web and darknets. The internet as a medium is useful, you don't have to use one of a finite list of known gateways/providers.
The US fell into the trap (Score:2, Informative)
The Plan:
First you commit an unbelievably heinous and cowardly act.
Then you sit back and watch as they eat their own laws and freedoms...the very things you despise.
Then you win.
Why would terrorists waste the energy trying to change western culture when we'll happily do it for them?
Re:The US fell into the trap (Score:5, Informative)
Why would terrorists waste the energy trying to change western culture when we'll happily do it for them?
Because they don't actually give a flying flip about our laws or our freedoms. All they want is us out of the Middle East, all of the secular rulers of Islamic countries that we favor out of power, and for Israel left to their tender mercies.
As long as we stay on our side of the planet, they're relatively okay with mere contempt at us having our vaunted freedoms.
One in 20 million (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are your chances of being a victim [reason.com]. 230 deaths a year is the justification for all the tax dollars, trampled rights and illegal activity.
Re:One in 20 million (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
But of course we all know it's not just about terrorism. It's about control.
Myself, I would much rather live in a country with a tiny risk of terrorism than a marginally safer, ostensibly terrorist free police state.
And those are pretty much the de facto choices.
When life lacks balancing forces (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheeple are frequently painfully unaware of the processes that create decent societies, so when their once decent society comes under attack from within, don't even realise what they risk losing if they refuse to act.
The USA is an a cycle of spending ever large amounts on its Earth threatening military machine. The more the military grows, the more powerful the supporters of the military become, until every aspect of American life is shilling the wonders of a society that exists to serve and grow the military. No American now dares to question the obscenity of America's mass murdering butchers in uniform.
Spying follows the same pattern, but worse in this way. Whereas military investment usually fails to show clear positive results, spy programs merely have to prove they grab more data about more people to be seen as successful. Take Bill Gates and the NSA's ultimate spy platform, the Xbox One. This puts a camera, microphone and motion recognition system into the home of MILLIONS of Americans at ZERO cost to the US government. The sheeple actually pay to have the world's most sophisticated real-time spy device in their own living rooms (or children's bedrooms).
What US government would have said "No!" to Gates' proposal? Bill Gates promises to provide a running tally of each person who enters/leaves the same room as his console, 24/7. He promises that the running cost to the NSA is minimal, as each Xbone reports daily its record of individuals that appeared before it (the console sends head shots to the NSA cloud servers, so the NSA can link location with straightforward face recognition to put a name to each person tracked by the Xbone). Microsoft has already declared that the Kinect sensor system that allows this is always running, and the encrypted traffic that constantly flows from the console to the cloud defies the ability of any investigator to identify exactly what the Xbone is doing at any one time.
The vicious circle, or positive feedback, is fully active. All that remains is to worry about what future use a government may put the information it gathers to. America jails more people than anywhere else, and as with the military and spying, is rapidly accelerating the grown of the prison industry. How easily Clinton II or any future US dictator (your presidents ARE dictators, but with fixed term limits) could introduce new classes of 'thought crimes'.
The US Constitution should be amended to make all forms of government surveillance EXCEPT clearly targeted acts with individual court approval, illegal by principle. This especially applies to 'anonymous' full surveillance projects that claim that if the sources of data remain anonymous, that is OK. Freedom from ALL unwarranted surveillance should be added to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Conscience. The vast majority of the NSA and similar agencies should be dismantled (and there are plenty of real examples from history where nations have dismantled their spying organisations when they became abusive).
But good is NOT going to happen. The sheeple have been carefully groomed, and more importantly dis-empowered. The sheeple therefore do not provide a countermanding societal force of any kind, so the military, prison system, spying, and mainstream media propaganda programs continue to grow at a truly alarming rate. What happens when only one side is pushing? If you know anything about the History of our Race, you'd realise the answer is almost too scary to comprehend. America is going to be responsible for WW3. This cannot be prevented now. Every aspect of American society is preparing for the next World War (even if most of the sheeple are too thick to notice this, as they cheer their murderous troops in whatever nation exterminating slaughter they are currently engaged in).
When the real war finally kicks off, the NSA will provide the most comprehensive list of all those that need to be rounded up. Google's algorithms will weed out leaders and potential leaders of all effective anti-war sentiment. In many ways, this whole technological farce is playing out to return us to the times when the King could declare war, and the sheeple had no choice but to go along with the declaration.
Where are customers supposed to go? (Score:4, Insightful)
Schneier is assuming that it matters if a company's customers trust it. But with the relative lack of ISP competition in the US, where are customers of large ISPs supposed to go? What difference does it make whether their customers trust them?
Maybe they can apply some resources, (Score:3)
to ID the spammers and nuke the fuckers from orbit!
Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't "The Atlantic" reporting; it's an article by Bruce Schneier. This guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier [wikipedia.org]
Feel free to dismiss his concerns if you like, but don't dismiss them just because you don't like the mag they happen to be printed in.
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Informative)
you forgot to mention
Schneier is the guy who wrote blowfish, twofish, and previously worked with the NSA as an observer with AES, and is probably one of the foremost experts in cryptography in the world.
He is certainly the foremost expert and creator of good publicly available cryptography
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Informative)
He wrote one of the seminal (mathematical) books on the subject, (co)designed several high-quality algorithms which have stood the test of time and then had a somewhat damascene conversion on how security is much more dependent on people than on the technology, and has written several books on the subject. He is not the only expert (arguably, there is no field of research where there is just one expert), but he is a leading light.
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Insightful)
It did long ago, but it got subsidized by corporate and private interests. Universities, and nerds. AND OUR TAX MONEY. FOR US. FOR THE GREATER COMMON GOOD... sorry for all the caps. They have every right to produce and roll out their own hardware and bug it. But not on the networks we connect to the backbone. Let them monitor their backbones and sell it as a service. But really ATnT should care. But they don't they serve the same interests as the alphabet soup agencies, just under a different guise.
Not so they could catch terrorists "easier". We are defeating the very purpose for which the internet was "funded".
We **** Own **** our society and its works. Equally.
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By that token we are also responsible for voicing our opinions on how the internet should be managed both politically and economically. And academically. Or however it is you participate in your democracy.
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and Manhattan Island belonged to the Lenape tribe long before Europeans came to America. That doesn't give the tribe's surviving members the undisputed right to barricade the Holland Tunnel.* Times change.
* Although that would be kind of cool.
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And some people continue to buy into the rhetoric that it helps keep us safe.
This isn't about safety. It's about control.
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The actions of Columbus' crew predate thay kind of fraud by a century: "buying" gold (jewels) from the Taino indians in 1492 with glass beads and other trinkets. [athenapub.com]
How is that different from the government now buying our privacy from us with iPhones and other shiny gadgets?
Who is better publishing about security concerns? (Score:3)
Question: Is what was learned about the NSA is the only thing that isn't legal?
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Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't. The message was in reply to ackthpt dismissing the article based on its publisher, without regard to content. An appeal to the author's expertise is perfectly legitimate in that context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority [wikipedia.org]
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Funny)
Garbage. The comment he was replying to was indulging in "ad hominem [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]" and he was attacking that argument by pointing out that it wasn't even attacking the right person. The parent poster didn't even claim that Bruce is right.
I hereby declare a new logical fallacy; "Argument by yourlogicalfallacyis.com"
Re:The Atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)
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People in the US shouldn't be looking at non-US services. Traffic that crosses the border is the traffic that's most likely to be snapped up and actively analysed. Of course, that government-supplied incentive not to communicate with the outside world is horrifying in its own right.
Do you think that will make any difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
So they wont use US based servers and services? So where are they going to go? Any country they go to will have a government with a 3 letter agency spying on the servers and services and passing it to the NSA.
Not only that but the NSA could use other means to spy on multinationals and turn them into NSA friendly multinationals.
Re:Do you think that will make any difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as we actually know, the US is now behind the curve in protecting it's citizens from same-government spying. Well, maybe in the middle of the pack compared to European countries, but still not good. Of course, it may well be that those other countries just haven't had their scandals yet, but based on the evidence available it almost makes some sense.
But ultimately it fails - the NSA is supposed to be blocked from spying on US citizens, but is chartered to spy on the citizens of other nations. Moving data to where it's not commingled with US citizen data should mean more NSA spying, not less. Unless of course you believe the NSA is so obsessed with spying internally it's forgotten about its actual charter - which I can no longer dismiss as tinfoil hattery.
Re:Do you think that will make any difference? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.
Who here is against having their most intimate moments broadcast on the internet, in the name of security and safety? Who here wouldn't mind a few of their nude pics being printed out on the NSA workgroup printer, laminated, and taken home to be used in the shower? I for one think we need to embrace these privacy nudists, and what more, make their database public, so everyone will know that so and so's wife is really an A-cup, and that so and so's husband is coming up a little short. I think it's pertinent, and obviously well worth the taxpayer's money, that we know exactly how often your teenage son is whacking it up in his room, and what your young daughter was doing last night with her boyfriend. I think the world needs to hear about it, even if you don't; that way, when you step into the office in the morning, people can replay select moments from those audio / video recordings, so you can relive through them as well. I tell you, if we do not know whether the French President is truly worthy of being called France's best lover (or at least, well-endowed), then we haven't gone far enough.
What more, this will give all the people at church something to gossip about. Hell, people at school, at work, even the grocery store will finally be able to grade who is, and isn't, given their absolute best in the sack. We can publish rankings, and ratings (based off of viewer's actual footage), of just what a person is willing to do to please someone of the opposite, or even same, sex. We can print baseball cards, with their names and stats on the back, and candid poses on the front, and have people trade them around for a better set. We can even have a set for people in office: Hilary Clinton, Size, Waist, Bust, Favorite Positions, etc. I tell you, our public figures will lead the way here, in forming a truly transparent government; I'm sure someone will sneak a video camera into the White House, and find out exactly what goes on after-hours within. This could truly be a bold, new America...free from its Puritanical upbringings, ready to scare terrorists away with the sound of a hundred thousand pants being shed.
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Anywhere else, really.
Europe seems to take this stuff a lot more seriously.
But that's not really needed. What's needed here is to put pressure on the US government, and pulling business out of the US will do just that. Even if the net is still being spied on, enough harm to US corporations will get the lobbyists' attention.
Re:The Atlantic (Score:5, Interesting)
No foreign or multinational will use US based servers and services from here on out, or very very few naive ones will. People in the US are looking to use non US servers. That alone is a telling statement.
I wonder how many of us have started to write or say or do something, then after a moment reflection, decided not to do so because.... well, you know.
Even a Wikipedia search might make you interesting.
A distinct chilling effect is occuring.
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This subject of the article is not new, we have seen similar information for years. The same can be said with Snowden, he was just the most recent in a list of whistle blowers warning you of what's happening.
I agree with the articles point that you are not safe. I also agree that people fool themselves into thinking that if they play on the team they will be protected. Those points are not new, and not unique to TFA either. I have relatives that were young Germans in the 30s so hear from first hand accounts how "team" players were treated. In addition to personal experiences, I read history books which are full of examples of how there is no safety in being a "team" player and how much danger there is in a Government collecting this much data on citizens.
You dismiss the article because of the source, yet offer no counter to their position or opinion. The best you can do is toss out a Red Herring/Ad hominem fallacy to dismiss the thoughts in the article? Not that I would be surprised, this is /. after all.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
You dismiss the article because of the source, yet offer no counter to their position or opinion.
Well, to be fair, you're offering very little in return as well. What is your answer to Schneier's, "I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight." Is that even possible? Secret orders received from secretive agencies backed up by secret courts; what's an executive able to do to fight this, other than close up shop or shift the op to another jurisdiction?
I usually agree with Schneier (though I've not RTFA'd) and I do wonder what's a real patriot do when one day they wake up and find they're living in a fascist state and don't appreciate it.
I think the USA's done. Over. Kaput. Your politicians aren't even bothering to try to come up with plausible explanations for the !@#$ that's going on in your name. We're just waiting for it to fall in on itself and see what rises from the ashes.
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What will rise from the ashes is a new world order
No, that is what causes the ashes to begin with unless we act to turn the tide.
Re:The Atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that bio mention anything about him offering to pay the legal bills of those companies who decide to "fight"? Or offering to visit the company execs in prison when the feds put them there for running their mouths to the press?
Re:The Atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)
Or offering to visit the company execs in prison when the feds put them there for running their mouths to the press?
Doesn't the mere notion that a person could be incarcerated for talking to the press kinda indicate that there's something horrifically fucked-up about the situation?
The Constitution guarantees a right to free expression, and a right to a free press, so where the fuck does this idea that it's reasonable to take away someone's freedom for sharing information come from?
In other news, the SCOTUS recently ruled that it's perfectly legal to lie in a political ad. WTF, my fellow Americans... WTF.
Re:The Atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that bio mention anything about him offering to pay the legal bills of those companies who decide to "fight"?
I think the argument he is making is that the economically sound decision for those companies actually is to fight, given that their actions will eventually become known. Betraying your customers trust is never good for business in the long run. Those who fight are ultimately investing in goodwill, even if they lose.
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Re:One question that is never asked: (Score:5, Interesting)
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