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 don't need transparency (Score:4, Informative)
We need the illegal surveillance of the world to STOP.
Now!
Re: so now its the..... (Score:2, Informative)
Facebook existed in the 90s?? Goodness, I'm soooo late on everything. -.-
So its come to this...... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (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 things is more or less moot. The NSA is bypassing the FISA court. [commondreams.org] They couldn't even be bothered to get get a rubber stamp. [wikipedia.org]
How about a refresher:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The communications I have between me and my congressmen being "my papers".
The NSA most assuredly can't show probable cause of millions of americans with as many warrants as FISA gets.
And they're not particularly describing the thing they're searching for or the person they're searching for when they're recording EVERYTHING.
There's no legal way for the NSA to be collecting as much information as the leaked documents say it does.
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.
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: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.