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.
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......
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:The Atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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: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.
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: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: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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: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: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"
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:The Atlantic (Score:2, Insightful)
It's OK, the government isn't recording your data, General Alexander explained it all, they aren't interested in your data! Its only things like, who you spoke to, when you spoke to them, how often you speak to them, whether they speak to terrorists, whether they speak to people who speak to terrorists, whether you speak to people who speak to people who speak to terrorists, that sort of thing.
They know you are cheating on your wife, or stealing from your workplace (because you keep speaking to that woman, or visiting a bank website that doesn't have an account in your name), but they don't mind about that. Well the bank thing they do, but they will kick it over to the IRS and/or FBI when they get bored of trying to decide if you are a terrorist or not.
Remember, they only record your metadata. There's no data there! You are OK with that because they aren't tapping communications of Americans right? .
Re:Al Gore wants the Internet back (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Classic dragnetting problem (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 will cost a substantial amount to get the false positive rate to 1:100,000 from 1:10,000 (which will leave a mere 3,000 people being victimized by the government). Assuming, of course, that you're worried at all about false negatives. I suspect you'd need a new three-letter agency at least as big as the NSA to get to 1:1,000,000 false positives while keeping the false negatives at a reasonable rate.
Re:One in 20 million (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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?
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?
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: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.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Insightful)