6 ms·

Where did the principle of secrecy in correspondence go?

105 points by jackgavigan 11y ago

cokernel 11y ago
Thomas M. Cooley's 1879 analysis of privacy of telegraphic correspondence (the "hampered by fears" link in the Guardian article) is fascinating: https://archive.org/details/jstor-3303981/ https://archive.org/details/jstor-3303981/
- dang 11y ago
  That would make a great submission in its own right, if you want to post it. Maybe wait a day or two since HN tends not to go for pile-on stories.
- zaroth 11y ago
  This is so beautiful... what I was trying to say here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384748 In brief, then, the doctrine that telegraph authorities may be required to produce private messages, on the application of third persons, is objected to, on the following grounds:-- 1. That it defeats the policy of the law, which invites free com- munication, and to the extent that it may discourage correspondence, it operates as a restraint upon industry and enterprise, and, what is of equal important, upon intimate social and family correspondence. 2. It violates the confidence which the law undertakes to render secure, and makes the promise of the law a deception. 3. It seeks to reach a species of evidence which, from the very course of the business, parties are interested to render blind and misleading, and which, therefore, must often present us with error in the guise of truth, under circumstances which preclude a discovery of the deception. 4. It renders one of the most important convfeniences of modern life susceptible at any moment of being used as an instrument of infinite mischiefs in the community. It is not necessary to enumerate these mischiefs. Any one can picture to his own mind what would be the condition of things in any neighborhood, if its whole correspondence were exposed to the public gaze. A single instance, in which the veil of confidential secrecy is thrust aside, will introduce some of these evils, but it will suggest the possibility that any moment all the others may follow. Inviolability of Telegraphic Correspondence. Supreme Court of the United States. Thomas Snell et al. v. The Atlantic Fire and Marine Insurance Company. February 1, 1879
  - cokernel 11y ago
    A minor nit: Thomas Snell et al. v. The Atlantic Fire and Marine Insurance Company is the opinion which follows Thomas M. Cooley's opinion you are quoting here.
    - zaroth 11y ago
      Oh that's funny, I copied the header text off the scanned page but it's for the next article in the book. Thanks for pointing that out.
nbadg 11y ago
This was a great article OP. But I think the author misses two critical points. Privacy and secrecy, in my mind, are questions of agency. In this context we're talking about information. You can, broadly speaking, only do three things with information: create it, retain it, and share it. If you're to have agency -- that is, the ability to independently control your own existence -- in a digital sense, that implies that you must be able to control those three things. And if you think about it in terms of actual physical speech, it seems so intuitive: it would be an extraordinary day indeed if there were widespread physical manipulation of the very words coming out of our mouths, if somehow some third party could magically eavesdrop at will over anything we speak. But we've acclimated ourselves to thinking of digital spaces as somehow separate, as if the perceived triviality of, say, instagramming food pics might also imply that there is any less of a violation of our personal agency. That, for me, is why "private-by-default" is and always has been so vital: without it, you're incapable of exercising any meaningful control over the digital world around you. I'm always sad to see this framing left out, because I think it's a very important perspective to have. The second, and likely more appropriate point (given that this is HN), is that this isn't just economics and geopolitics. It is a technical failure that allowed third parties to have any control over it in the first place. HTTP doesn't even protect security, much less privacy. HTTPS is a step forward, but if you think it's sufficient in protecting privacy, I would offer Facebook as a counterexample. Protection of data in transit is an insufficient condition for privacy, and therefore an insufficient condition for agency. It's perfectly possible to create a protocol to address this, to afford not just security but agency, and I am absolutely positive that there are people out there working on this (I know, because I'm one of them: https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse). But the hard part is overcoming the inertia we already have, and on that front, we are indeed back to economics and politics.
- nickff 11y ago
  Your narrative fails to explain what happened to Skype. Skype was a fully encrypted means of communication, and the only way to listen in on the parties talking to each other was to hack one of their computers. Then the NSA (and possibly other agencies) forced Skype to install a backdoor; this is one of many examples. There is no technological solution to the government compelling cooperation from any developers who venture to protect privacy. What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and ordered you to either give them a backdoor, go to jail, or be shot? The US government (for example,) has used many rationales to justify this behavior, including third party doctrine, and despite the obvious lack of any enumerated power to spy on citizens and residents at-will. Most other governments never pretended to provide privacy protections for their populations, these people were largely kept safe because of the sheer volume of traffic communications and the high cost of surveillance (before powerful computers and huge national governments). It seems that the problem is entirely political, as the government(s) will go to any lengths necessary to preserve their ability to look in on citizens. Powers that were once viewed as abhorrent and inherently totalitarian have become accepted through the collective passivity of an ever-more risk-averse populace.
mirimir 11y ago
Where did it go? From what I've read, it never existed, except as comforting bullshit. Read Bamford's books about the NSA. Read about the British Black Chamber.[0,1] [0] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684528708431876 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684528708431876 [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/gentlemen-reading-each-others-mail-a-brief-history-of-diplomatic-spying/276940/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/gen...
- thesteamboat 11y ago
  The Black Chamber typically refers to an American organization[0] although, to be fair, it was not the only use. > The term "Black Chamber" predates Yardley's use of it in the title of his book. Codes and code breakers have been used throughout history, notably by Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan England. A so-called cabinet noir was established by King Henry IV of France in 1590 as part of the Poste aux Lettres. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_chamber
twic 11y ago
You could easily miss the tiny text on the left where it says: Sponsored by: Silent Circle This doesn't necessarily detracts from the article, of course, but it's interesting metadata.
area51org 11y ago
Privacy as a legal construct is relatively recent. It's as old as the fourth amendment. 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.
- schoen 11y ago
  It wasn't called privacy then or analyzed as a right to privacy until 1890, although courts have agreed since then that "privacy" is part of what the fourth amendment protects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Privacy_%28article%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Privacy_%28articl... Sometimes courts have thought of the privacy protections in the fourth amendment as very narrow and specific. For example, they've carved out almost everything we do that's intermediated from fourth amendment privacy protections! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

105 points by jackgavigan 11y ago

Thomas M. Cooley's 1879 analysis of privacy of telegraphic correspondence (the "hampered by fears" link in the Guardian article) is fascinating: https://archive.org/details/jstor-3303981/ https://archive.org/details/jstor-3303981/

dang 11y ago
That would make a great submission in its own right, if you want to post it. Maybe wait a day or two since HN tends not to go for pile-on stories.
zaroth 11y ago
This is so beautiful... what I was trying to say here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384748 In brief, then, the doctrine that telegraph authorities may be required to produce private messages, on the application of third persons, is objected to, on the following grounds:-- 1. That it defeats the policy of the law, which invites free com- munication, and to the extent that it may discourage correspondence, it operates as a restraint upon industry and enterprise, and, what is of equal important, upon intimate social and family correspondence. 2. It violates the confidence which the law undertakes to render secure, and makes the promise of the law a deception. 3. It seeks to reach a species of evidence which, from the very course of the business, parties are interested to render blind and misleading, and which, therefore, must often present us with error in the guise of truth, under circumstances which preclude a discovery of the deception. 4. It renders one of the most important convfeniences of modern life susceptible at any moment of being used as an instrument of infinite mischiefs in the community. It is not necessary to enumerate these mischiefs. Any one can picture to his own mind what would be the condition of things in any neighborhood, if its whole correspondence were exposed to the public gaze. A single instance, in which the veil of confidential secrecy is thrust aside, will introduce some of these evils, but it will suggest the possibility that any moment all the others may follow. Inviolability of Telegraphic Correspondence. Supreme Court of the United States. Thomas Snell et al. v. The Atlantic Fire and Marine Insurance Company. February 1, 1879
- cokernel 11y ago
  A minor nit: Thomas Snell et al. v. The Atlantic Fire and Marine Insurance Company is the opinion which follows Thomas M. Cooley's opinion you are quoting here.
  - zaroth 11y ago
    Oh that's funny, I copied the header text off the scanned page but it's for the next article in the book. Thanks for pointing that out.

nbadg 11y ago

This was a great article OP. But I think the author misses two critical points. Privacy and secrecy, in my mind, are questions of agency. In this context we're talking about information. You can, broadly speaking, only do three things with information: create it, retain it, and share it. If you're to have agency -- that is, the ability to independently control your own existence -- in a digital sense, that implies that you must be able to control those three things. And if you think about it in terms of actual physical speech, it seems so intuitive: it would be an extraordinary day indeed if there were widespread physical manipulation of the very words coming out of our mouths, if somehow some third party could magically eavesdrop at will over anything we speak. But we've acclimated ourselves to thinking of digital spaces as somehow separate, as if the perceived triviality of, say, instagramming food pics might also imply that there is any less of a violation of our personal agency. That, for me, is why "private-by-default" is and always has been so vital: without it, you're incapable of exercising any meaningful control over the digital world around you. I'm always sad to see this framing left out, because I think it's a very important perspective to have. The second, and likely more appropriate point (given that this is HN), is that this isn't just economics and geopolitics. It is a technical failure that allowed third parties to have any control over it in the first place. HTTP doesn't even protect security, much less privacy. HTTPS is a step forward, but if you think it's sufficient in protecting privacy, I would offer Facebook as a counterexample. Protection of data in transit is an insufficient condition for privacy, and therefore an insufficient condition for agency. It's perfectly possible to create a protocol to address this, to afford not just security but agency, and I am absolutely positive that there are people out there working on this (I know, because I'm one of them: https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse). But the hard part is overcoming the inertia we already have, and on that front, we are indeed back to economics and politics.

nickff 11y ago
Your narrative fails to explain what happened to Skype. Skype was a fully encrypted means of communication, and the only way to listen in on the parties talking to each other was to hack one of their computers. Then the NSA (and possibly other agencies) forced Skype to install a backdoor; this is one of many examples. There is no technological solution to the government compelling cooperation from any developers who venture to protect privacy. What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and ordered you to either give them a backdoor, go to jail, or be shot? The US government (for example,) has used many rationales to justify this behavior, including third party doctrine, and despite the obvious lack of any enumerated power to spy on citizens and residents at-will. Most other governments never pretended to provide privacy protections for their populations, these people were largely kept safe because of the sheer volume of traffic communications and the high cost of surveillance (before powerful computers and huge national governments). It seems that the problem is entirely political, as the government(s) will go to any lengths necessary to preserve their ability to look in on citizens. Powers that were once viewed as abhorrent and inherently totalitarian have become accepted through the collective passivity of an ever-more risk-averse populace.

mirimir 11y ago

Where did it go? From what I've read, it never existed, except as comforting bullshit. Read Bamford's books about the NSA. Read about the British Black Chamber.[0,1] [0] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684528708431876 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684528708431876 [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/gentlemen-reading-each-others-mail-a-brief-history-of-diplomatic-spying/276940/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/gen...

thesteamboat 11y ago
The Black Chamber typically refers to an American organization[0] although, to be fair, it was not the only use. > The term "Black Chamber" predates Yardley's use of it in the title of his book. Codes and code breakers have been used throughout history, notably by Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan England. A so-called cabinet noir was established by King Henry IV of France in 1590 as part of the Poste aux Lettres. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_chamber

twic 11y ago

You could easily miss the tiny text on the left where it says: Sponsored by: Silent Circle This doesn't necessarily detracts from the article, of course, but it's interesting metadata.

area51org 11y ago

Privacy as a legal construct is relatively recent. It's as old as the fourth amendment. 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.

schoen 11y ago
It wasn't called privacy then or analyzed as a right to privacy until 1890, although courts have agreed since then that "privacy" is part of what the fourth amendment protects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Privacy_%28article%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Privacy_%28articl... Sometimes courts have thought of the privacy protections in the fourth amendment as very narrow and specific. For example, they've carved out almost everything we do that's intermediated from fourth amendment privacy protections! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine