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> hostile to the core values of Western democracies. It seems the governments have a very different idea of what those values are than the people. Until those

by x5n1 11y ago

> hostile to the core values of Western democracies. It seems the governments have a very different idea of what those values are than the people. Until those ideas are aligned, governments are out to get the people. There is no point in any of this. Because ultimately, no matter what technical solutions you can come up with, force and law always trump those. Perhaps at some point you could make the argument that we don't explicitly know what the government does and that's why it's doing it and getting away with it. That's no longer the case. We know exactly what the government does, we don't think that it's right, and yet we can do nothing to stop it. So either we need to overhaul government or accept the status quo and quit bitching about it or trying to create technical solutions to fix social problems. If the government can mandate networks spy on computers, it can mandate manufacturers spy on users. As they are already doing this, fixing the network solves nothing. As for foreign adversaries spying on users, well if you are not in the US avoiding that is impossible as most of your computing experience is under regulatory capture by the US government.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
On the contrary, technical solutions trump force and law. Force and law only defeat political and military solutions. In the US, and perhaps other Western democracies, governments are the people and people are the government, not separate from each other. If a government is doing something, it's because the people value it, at least enough to not change it. Edit: Downmods? Really? Refute my claims rather than attempt to bury them.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mikestew 11y ago
  Your comment isn't inflammatory, nor do you seem to just be talking out your ass, so have an imaginary Internet point. I've up voted worse. However... > If a government is doing something, it's because the people value it, at least enough to not change it. I'm tempted to tell you that's bullshit, and others might feel strongly enough about it that they're clicking the down arrow. The NSA, for example, doesn't care which way I voted. So we have to sit around "knowing" they do stuff, but with no evidence. Finally, evidence comes out ala Snowden. Wait ten more years while we finally get around to passing laws to reign in the offending agencies/people. Add it all up and thirty years have gone by. Meanwhile, using the NSA example, they've found other ways to sneak around or outright flaunt laws, lather, rinse, repeat. It might look like no one cares, (rather than actually value it, as you say) but even if they do care the change doesn't come overnight.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    In the US, the people (OP's words, not mine), actually do control the government. Total take over can be accomplished in six years or less. Shut down can be accomplished in two or less. Yes, the US government has done and probably continues to do very bad stuff. NSA wiretaps are probably one of the least innocuous things it has done. IF the US people actually did want to shut it down and change the behavior of government, they could. I don't think most do (or at least, don't regularly think about it [but may agree if prompted to consider]), know how they could, or know what actual behavior/policy they would replace things with.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    After 30 years even if it changes, let's say during the Clinton era much changed. It lasts a decade and then the course corrects to the trajectory it was on before. The people that affected the system are now irrelevant or soon dead. The new generation has forgotten the past.
- alan_cx 11y ago
  Im not sure about your first sentence, but Im kinda with you. Seems to me, at the very least, the majority of people aren't that bothered by what our governments are up to. I think it somewhat trite for people who are against these things simply just snap to a position that says these governments are essentially omnipotent and rule regardless of our concerns. If the mass public were outraged enough, it would stop. In a democracy we cannot divorce ourselves form what our governments doing in out name. Its a cheap lazy cop out.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Well, the perhaps frightening scenario is that you arrive at a point where everyone assumes that someone else is 'taking care of it', when it fact, that person may be the only one even aware of it. I'm not sure we're quite in that situation yet, but certainly there are severe inequities in how similar situations are treated (which is supposedly not allowed). You would expect to see exactly that in a degraded democracy.
acabal 11y ago
> Because ultimately, no matter what technical solutions you can come up with force and law always trump those. That's a very important point that I think many who champion technical solutions conveniently set aside. Remember that in the US in the 90s--in other words, not that long ago--PGP was illegal and Phil Zimmerman was criminally investigated for developing and distributing it. Today PGP and GPG are some of the most powerful encryption tools we have available to us--tools that Snowden says we can still trust. If someone makes a better tool, or if these tools start to bother governments again, then governments could just declare them illegal. Then you're faced with the question of: "Do I encrypt my mail and risk a SWAT team blowing up my front door and shooting my dog, then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a protracted legal battle against the full might of the US government, or do I just forget about it?" The tech genie is out of the bottle, and the answer isn't more tech--it's getting people, and thus governments, to understand and champion these tools just like we do.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Right. In Vinge's True Names, all network traffic is monitored by governments. So it's necessary to use cover traffic and steganography, in addition to encryption. That's where Tor seems headed, with ever better pluggable transports for bridges, and maybe even ephemeral website-like bridges from AWS etc. But eventually, it may be necessary to get serious about steganography. With pervasive streaming HD video, covert channels providing even 0.1% of throughput would be workable. The harder challenge would be plausible deniability. If the steganography fails and that SWAT team arrives, you want them to discover that you've been compromised by covert-channel botnets. Just like every other user and server on the Internet.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Yes this works in fiction novels, in real life it usually doesn't work. I could list the reasons why, but show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. One big hurdle is that there are too many flaws in complex systems, and you have to mess up just once and that includes flaws in your technology for them to get whatever they are after. Perfection does not exist in reality. Using any sort of excessive technology makes you stand out as a target that's in need to introspection. All complexity has costs associated with it, to set up all of this is time consuming and expensive. etc. etc.
astrocyte 11y ago
You were on to something and then stopped... "no matter what technical solutions you can come up with, force and law always trump those." ^this applies much deeper and further then you might have realized.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Yes I like to win arguments rather than ...
  - astrocyte 11y ago
    Same could be said for the people you're complaining about ... As the world turns ...
superuser2 11y ago
>We know exactly what the government does, we don't think that it's right, and yet we can do nothing to stop it. We can do nothing to stop it because we are not in the majority. That is how democracy works. If you believe we should be able stop it anyway then you do not believe in democracy. Educate the public. Tell people why they should care. Get them to vote on it. Because right now most people are apathetic or positive on surveillance as a way of protecting them.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  The majority's rule is ochlocracy - a spoiled form of democracy - and that's another, much more general problem. Not sure about whenever this is the actual case or we have something worse. But I'm sure this (majority rule) is certainly not how modern democracy's supposed to work.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  I don't think democracy is in any way relevant. The UK just had an election where surveillance and GCHQ wasn't even allowed to be debated at all. No politician is even willing to acknowledge this stuff exists, let alone build an entire credible political party around it. Party democracy is a very low resolution way to hold people accountable. Ideally we'd have something better.
mikeash 11y ago
It's a constant refrain in techie circles that the people are against mass surveillance but are powerless to stop it. I don't believe this to be true. I think techies are looking at opinions within their own circles and making the incorrect assumption that the general population has similar opinions. From what I can see, we have mass surveillance because it is what the people want. We have the TSA because it is what the people want. We have drone strikes because it is what the people want. People are terrified of terrorism and want the government to take strong measures to fight it. This attitude may well be partly caused by the government, which benefits from this fear, but it is no less real for it. Our governments aren't the best but they are far from being lost causes when it comes to being responsive to what the people want. The problem is that what the people want is often bad. Efforts to make the government better represent the wishes of the population will fail to make any difference with stuff like this, because that goal is already achieved in this case. If we want this stuff to stop, we must first convince most of the population that it should. Without that, nothing else will be effective. And with it, change will come easily.
- x5n1 11y ago
  It's a good, reasonable, reasoned response. Unfortunately, it's mostly bollocks. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-america... A majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, More broadly, most Americans don’t see a need to sacrifice civil liberties to be safe from terrorism: In spring 2014, 74% said they should not give up privacy and freedom for the sake of safety, while just 22% said the opposite. Most say it is important to control who can get their information (93%), as well as what information about them is collected (90%). Fully 87% are aware of the federal surveillance programs; In most countries we surveyed in 2014, majorities opposed U.S. government monitoring of emails and phone calls of foreign leaders or their citizens.
  - mc32 11y ago
    I think one reason there is a disconnect between the survey results and reality is that the answers are the answers one gets in an imagined ideal framework. Kind of like asking people if they would rather eat healthy or known unhealthy food. And most people will answer healthy --because that is their idealized answer but in reality it's too much work for many people so they eat unhealthy food fully understanding the consequences. I think the same applies to the survey. Ideally people don't want intrusive government surveillance but at the same time it's not important enough nor egregious enough for them to mobilize over it, so they let it be --as long as it's not "too much".
wereHamster 11y ago
> and yet we can do nothing to stop it You live in a democratic country, right? So you can. But you won't with that sentiment. If everybody thinks like you then you indeed are helpless.
- alextgordon 11y ago
  If someone expresses the sentiment that they feel powerless to stand up to those in authority, then they probably don't live in a democratic country.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    You can stand up to authority all you want, it doesn't mean you'll achieve anything though. The whole point of democracy is to ensure that a single person with an idea can't just go and change things for everyone on his own.
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > If someone expresses the sentiment that they feel powerless to stand up to those in authority, then they probably don't live in a democratic country. Nonsense: in a democratic country, the minority typically are powerless to stop the majority. That's kinda the definition of a democracy. Now, some republics provide some protection for the rights of minorities, but even those can be removed with sufficiently strong majorities.
- exo762 11y ago
  > You live in a democratic country If we are talking about USA, than there is data[1] which indicates that not, its not a democratic country. [1]: http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...
mtgx 11y ago
> We know exactly what the government does, we don't think that it's right, and yet we can do nothing to stop it That's true to some extent (meaning that if everyone was fully against it and loud about it, I'm not so sure "We the People" could change that much). However, it's not that many people that know exactly what the government is doing. It's mostly the readers of tech media and sites like Reddit and HN that do. Most others may have heard that "NSA spies on everything", but deep down either they aren't very sure it's true, despite all the reports, or they actually don't understand what they are doing. John Oliver showed us that in one of his shows. When he told most people on the street about it they were like "Oh, okay. But they are doing it to catch terrorists right?" - and when he told them that their programs actually includes taking their nude photos too, most of those were then like "Wait - they are doing WHAT?!" That's proof most "normal" people aren't aware of the implications of NSA's spying programs - which are now also FBI's programs, and DEA's programs, and even the police's programs. Most people just aren't very well aware of all of that or of what it truly means. And the government along with the friendly media keep spinning it to misinform the public, too. For instance, when Bush passed the Patriot Act, he told in his speech that "we've passed these powers so we can read the terrorists' emails" (paraphrasing). Of course, most people heard that and thought "Hmm, so they need to read the terrorists' emails - okay, I don't see why that's a bad thing. Sounds like a very good thing, actually". Except, what Bush really meant was "We've passed these powers so we can read all of your emails and then determine, based on everything you've ever written, whether you are a terrorist". If he would've phrased it like that (which is actually its true meaning), the outcome may have been different for the Patriot Act. So bottom line is "we" (as in most people) don't actually know or understand what the government is truly doing, and in fact most people still need to be much more educated about this issue.
dunkelheit 11y ago
The more techies will understand this the better :) Any adequate response to continuing big-brotherification of the internet must be threefold: * technological (strong crypto everywhere, decentralization of data collection and retention) * UX (technology must be usable for a common person without security and CS background) * political (strict laws protecting privacy and related human rights AND general consensus that these rights are important) We technologists naturally tend to focus on the first point but getting it right is not nearly enough.
kelnos 11y ago
It seems the governments have a very different idea of what those values are than the people. I'm not convinced that's even it. There appears to be a large segment of the US population that believes Snowden is a traitor, and that the NSA were just doing their jobs to "keep us safer". Franklin's famous quote about those who trade essential liberty for security deserving neither comes to mind... but it seems that many people do believe that their right to privacy ends when there's the threat of terrorism involved. I hope that attitude is changeable, but if we want to have even a chance of reigning in our governments, we need to get these fearful government apologists to understand why their thinking is in error.
copsarebastards 11y ago
I somewhat agree, but I think that solving the technological problems pushes the government into taking actions that are more and more outside the realm of what generally-ambivalent people care about. People are generally less okay with the government opening their mail and inserting spy devices into their computers than they are with the government sniffing their network traffic, for example.

by x5n1 11y ago

jsprogrammer 11y ago

On the contrary, technical solutions trump force and law. Force and law only defeat political and military solutions. In the US, and perhaps other Western democracies, governments are the people and people are the government, not separate from each other. If a government is doing something, it's because the people value it, at least enough to not change it. Edit: Downmods? Really? Refute my claims rather than attempt to bury them.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mikestew 11y ago
Your comment isn't inflammatory, nor do you seem to just be talking out your ass, so have an imaginary Internet point. I've up voted worse. However... > If a government is doing something, it's because the people value it, at least enough to not change it. I'm tempted to tell you that's bullshit, and others might feel strongly enough about it that they're clicking the down arrow. The NSA, for example, doesn't care which way I voted. So we have to sit around "knowing" they do stuff, but with no evidence. Finally, evidence comes out ala Snowden. Wait ten more years while we finally get around to passing laws to reign in the offending agencies/people. Add it all up and thirty years have gone by. Meanwhile, using the NSA example, they've found other ways to sneak around or outright flaunt laws, lather, rinse, repeat. It might look like no one cares, (rather than actually value it, as you say) but even if they do care the change doesn't come overnight.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  In the US, the people (OP's words, not mine), actually do control the government. Total take over can be accomplished in six years or less. Shut down can be accomplished in two or less. Yes, the US government has done and probably continues to do very bad stuff. NSA wiretaps are probably one of the least innocuous things it has done. IF the US people actually did want to shut it down and change the behavior of government, they could. I don't think most do (or at least, don't regularly think about it [but may agree if prompted to consider]), know how they could, or know what actual behavior/policy they would replace things with.
- x5n1 11y ago
  After 30 years even if it changes, let's say during the Clinton era much changed. It lasts a decade and then the course corrects to the trajectory it was on before. The people that affected the system are now irrelevant or soon dead. The new generation has forgotten the past.
alan_cx 11y ago
Im not sure about your first sentence, but Im kinda with you. Seems to me, at the very least, the majority of people aren't that bothered by what our governments are up to. I think it somewhat trite for people who are against these things simply just snap to a position that says these governments are essentially omnipotent and rule regardless of our concerns. If the mass public were outraged enough, it would stop. In a democracy we cannot divorce ourselves form what our governments doing in out name. Its a cheap lazy cop out.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Well, the perhaps frightening scenario is that you arrive at a point where everyone assumes that someone else is 'taking care of it', when it fact, that person may be the only one even aware of it. I'm not sure we're quite in that situation yet, but certainly there are severe inequities in how similar situations are treated (which is supposedly not allowed). You would expect to see exactly that in a degraded democracy.

acabal 11y ago

> Because ultimately, no matter what technical solutions you can come up with force and law always trump those. That's a very important point that I think many who champion technical solutions conveniently set aside. Remember that in the US in the 90s--in other words, not that long ago--PGP was illegal and Phil Zimmerman was criminally investigated for developing and distributing it. Today PGP and GPG are some of the most powerful encryption tools we have available to us--tools that Snowden says we can still trust. If someone makes a better tool, or if these tools start to bother governments again, then governments could just declare them illegal. Then you're faced with the question of: "Do I encrypt my mail and risk a SWAT team blowing up my front door and shooting my dog, then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a protracted legal battle against the full might of the US government, or do I just forget about it?" The tech genie is out of the bottle, and the answer isn't more tech--it's getting people, and thus governments, to understand and champion these tools just like we do.

mirimir 11y ago
Right. In Vinge's True Names, all network traffic is monitored by governments. So it's necessary to use cover traffic and steganography, in addition to encryption. That's where Tor seems headed, with ever better pluggable transports for bridges, and maybe even ephemeral website-like bridges from AWS etc. But eventually, it may be necessary to get serious about steganography. With pervasive streaming HD video, covert channels providing even 0.1% of throughput would be workable. The harder challenge would be plausible deniability. If the steganography fails and that SWAT team arrives, you want them to discover that you've been compromised by covert-channel botnets. Just like every other user and server on the Internet.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Yes this works in fiction novels, in real life it usually doesn't work. I could list the reasons why, but show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. One big hurdle is that there are too many flaws in complex systems, and you have to mess up just once and that includes flaws in your technology for them to get whatever they are after. Perfection does not exist in reality. Using any sort of excessive technology makes you stand out as a target that's in need to introspection. All complexity has costs associated with it, to set up all of this is time consuming and expensive. etc. etc.

astrocyte 11y ago

You were on to something and then stopped... "no matter what technical solutions you can come up with, force and law always trump those." ^this applies much deeper and further then you might have realized.

x5n1 11y ago
Yes I like to win arguments rather than ...
- astrocyte 11y ago
  Same could be said for the people you're complaining about ... As the world turns ...

superuser2 11y ago

>We know exactly what the government does, we don't think that it's right, and yet we can do nothing to stop it. We can do nothing to stop it because we are not in the majority. That is how democracy works. If you believe we should be able stop it anyway then you do not believe in democracy. Educate the public. Tell people why they should care. Get them to vote on it. Because right now most people are apathetic or positive on surveillance as a way of protecting them.

drdaeman 11y ago
The majority's rule is ochlocracy - a spoiled form of democracy - and that's another, much more general problem. Not sure about whenever this is the actual case or we have something worse. But I'm sure this (majority rule) is certainly not how modern democracy's supposed to work.
mike_hearn 11y ago
I don't think democracy is in any way relevant. The UK just had an election where surveillance and GCHQ wasn't even allowed to be debated at all. No politician is even willing to acknowledge this stuff exists, let alone build an entire credible political party around it. Party democracy is a very low resolution way to hold people accountable. Ideally we'd have something better.

mikeash 11y ago

It's a constant refrain in techie circles that the people are against mass surveillance but are powerless to stop it. I don't believe this to be true. I think techies are looking at opinions within their own circles and making the incorrect assumption that the general population has similar opinions. From what I can see, we have mass surveillance because it is what the people want. We have the TSA because it is what the people want. We have drone strikes because it is what the people want. People are terrified of terrorism and want the government to take strong measures to fight it. This attitude may well be partly caused by the government, which benefits from this fear, but it is no less real for it. Our governments aren't the best but they are far from being lost causes when it comes to being responsive to what the people want. The problem is that what the people want is often bad. Efforts to make the government better represent the wishes of the population will fail to make any difference with stuff like this, because that goal is already achieved in this case. If we want this stuff to stop, we must first convince most of the population that it should. Without that, nothing else will be effective. And with it, change will come easily.

x5n1 11y ago
It's a good, reasonable, reasoned response. Unfortunately, it's mostly bollocks. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-america... A majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, More broadly, most Americans don’t see a need to sacrifice civil liberties to be safe from terrorism: In spring 2014, 74% said they should not give up privacy and freedom for the sake of safety, while just 22% said the opposite. Most say it is important to control who can get their information (93%), as well as what information about them is collected (90%). Fully 87% are aware of the federal surveillance programs; In most countries we surveyed in 2014, majorities opposed U.S. government monitoring of emails and phone calls of foreign leaders or their citizens.
- mc32 11y ago
  I think one reason there is a disconnect between the survey results and reality is that the answers are the answers one gets in an imagined ideal framework. Kind of like asking people if they would rather eat healthy or known unhealthy food. And most people will answer healthy --because that is their idealized answer but in reality it's too much work for many people so they eat unhealthy food fully understanding the consequences. I think the same applies to the survey. Ideally people don't want intrusive government surveillance but at the same time it's not important enough nor egregious enough for them to mobilize over it, so they let it be --as long as it's not "too much".

wereHamster 11y ago

> and yet we can do nothing to stop it You live in a democratic country, right? So you can. But you won't with that sentiment. If everybody thinks like you then you indeed are helpless.

alextgordon 11y ago
If someone expresses the sentiment that they feel powerless to stand up to those in authority, then they probably don't live in a democratic country.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  You can stand up to authority all you want, it doesn't mean you'll achieve anything though. The whole point of democracy is to ensure that a single person with an idea can't just go and change things for everyone on his own.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > If someone expresses the sentiment that they feel powerless to stand up to those in authority, then they probably don't live in a democratic country. Nonsense: in a democratic country, the minority typically are powerless to stop the majority. That's kinda the definition of a democracy. Now, some republics provide some protection for the rights of minorities, but even those can be removed with sufficiently strong majorities.
exo762 11y ago
> You live in a democratic country If we are talking about USA, than there is data[1] which indicates that not, its not a democratic country. [1]: http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...

mtgx 11y ago

> We know exactly what the government does, we don't think that it's right, and yet we can do nothing to stop it That's true to some extent (meaning that if everyone was fully against it and loud about it, I'm not so sure "We the People" could change that much). However, it's not that many people that know exactly what the government is doing. It's mostly the readers of tech media and sites like Reddit and HN that do. Most others may have heard that "NSA spies on everything", but deep down either they aren't very sure it's true, despite all the reports, or they actually don't understand what they are doing. John Oliver showed us that in one of his shows. When he told most people on the street about it they were like "Oh, okay. But they are doing it to catch terrorists right?" - and when he told them that their programs actually includes taking their nude photos too, most of those were then like "Wait - they are doing WHAT?!" That's proof most "normal" people aren't aware of the implications of NSA's spying programs - which are now also FBI's programs, and DEA's programs, and even the police's programs. Most people just aren't very well aware of all of that or of what it truly means. And the government along with the friendly media keep spinning it to misinform the public, too. For instance, when Bush passed the Patriot Act, he told in his speech that "we've passed these powers so we can read the terrorists' emails" (paraphrasing). Of course, most people heard that and thought "Hmm, so they need to read the terrorists' emails - okay, I don't see why that's a bad thing. Sounds like a very good thing, actually". Except, what Bush really meant was "We've passed these powers so we can read all of your emails and then determine, based on everything you've ever written, whether you are a terrorist". If he would've phrased it like that (which is actually its true meaning), the outcome may have been different for the Patriot Act. So bottom line is "we" (as in most people) don't actually know or understand what the government is truly doing, and in fact most people still need to be much more educated about this issue.

dunkelheit 11y ago

The more techies will understand this the better :) Any adequate response to continuing big-brotherification of the internet must be threefold: * technological (strong crypto everywhere, decentralization of data collection and retention) * UX (technology must be usable for a common person without security and CS background) * political (strict laws protecting privacy and related human rights AND general consensus that these rights are important) We technologists naturally tend to focus on the first point but getting it right is not nearly enough.

kelnos 11y ago

It seems the governments have a very different idea of what those values are than the people. I'm not convinced that's even it. There appears to be a large segment of the US population that believes Snowden is a traitor, and that the NSA were just doing their jobs to "keep us safer". Franklin's famous quote about those who trade essential liberty for security deserving neither comes to mind... but it seems that many people do believe that their right to privacy ends when there's the threat of terrorism involved. I hope that attitude is changeable, but if we want to have even a chance of reigning in our governments, we need to get these fearful government apologists to understand why their thinking is in error.

copsarebastards 11y ago

I somewhat agree, but I think that solving the technological problems pushes the government into taking actions that are more and more outside the realm of what generally-ambivalent people care about. People are generally less okay with the government opening their mail and inserting spy devices into their computers than they are with the government sniffing their network traffic, for example.