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.'"
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.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (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: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:Classic dragnetting problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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:The Atlantic (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bruce Schneier (Score:5, Interesting)
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:One question that is never asked: (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:so now its the..... (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"
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.
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.
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.
Re:We can't win without eliminating FISA. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.