10 ms·

Baseless Calls to Expand Surveillance Fit Familiar, Cynical Pattern

375 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

mason240 11y ago
Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind of encryption. After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...
- pfortuny 11y ago
  And throwing a cellphone into the trash can. You don't need to be Sherlock to trace those calls.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Didn't even need to trace the call... a good investigation would check the trash cans, dumpsters, and storm drains in a 20 block radius after a large scale bombing or attack.
- akerro 11y ago
  > Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind of encryption. They actually had unencrypted text messages on their phones and used cars. Why don't we ban unencrypted text message applications and cars?
  - xtreme 11y ago
    Bangladesh actually banned WhatsApp and other IM apps. http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-blocked-60682 http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-bloc...
- hokkos 11y ago
  ISIS use the Telegram app on their smartphone or on their laptop with BlueStacks to communicate as shown in this report where a journalist try to become an ISIS recruit : http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-special/video-attentats-de-paris-francais-candidats-au-jihad_1184197.html http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-s...
guard-of-terra 11y ago
Most things around my life in the last 15 years fit familiar, cynical pattern that politicians spit in our face and get away with it. That leads to desperation and learned helplessness. To give EFF a credit, they actually fight. Unfortunately, quixotically
- natch 11y ago
  I wouldn't say it's quixotic, because they do win many fights: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    Quixote did actually win some fights too. FSVO winning.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  ~Desperation and learned helplessness is good! It's part of the plan!~ ~I was thinking the other day, and I think I figured out the government's plan for ending terrorism. (Yes, I was wearing my foil hat. Thank you for asking.)~ ~What is the goal of terrorism? To make people afraid.~ ~How do you end terrorism? Option 1 is to stop the things that make people afraid from happening. But there is an option 2. You can just stop people from being afraid.~ ~So who is not afraid of terrorism? Who doesn't even feel a twinge of anxiety about being attacked by terrorists? That's right--terrorists.~ ~To stop terrorism, all we have to do is turn everybody into terrorists. Now we don't know how to actually turn an ordinary person into a terrorist, even though the federal TLAs are doing research experiments, but we do know how to treat everyone like they already are terrorists. Do it long enough, and people will eventually get the hint.~ ~So it all makes sense now. They want everyone to become a terrorist, so that nobody will be afraid of terrorists, which will destroy terrorism utterly, and so nobody can ever be a terrorist again. Brilliant!~ ~I'm sure the EFF means well, but if we stop treating everyone like terrorists, the terrorists win.~
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  I like how the EFF is described as quixotic and cynical in the same story (albeit by different commenters)
grandalf 11y ago
This kind of thing doesn't matter. Encryption simply can't be stopped by governments.
- ipsin 11y ago
  I think these lies absolutely matter. It's a war of propaganda that can lead to real legislation. I think the "PATRIOT Act" (and the "USA Freedom Act", for that matter) show that the surveillance state has a way of turning its will into law. To borrow a cliche, if encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption. I don't think encryption can be outlawed, but it can be hamstrung by weakened implementations and requirements to decrypt for "lawful requests".
- dahart 11y ago
  It certainly does matter to me, and your comment makes me wonder if it might matter to you and you don't know it. If you read it, the articles's thrust isn't largely about encryption, it's about mass surveillance. The reasons it matters to me: - The government shouldn't have the right to wire-tap all citizens at once. We already established that for analog telephones, but digital has become an excuse to undo the annoying requirement of establishing probable cause. If they have the right to listen to you through mass means, no encryption will help you. - They are spending our tax dollars doing this. The money matters, and they basically taking our money and using it against us. At best it's a waste of that money. - If they establish the right to curb strong encryption, you may be right in the sense that it doesn't matter to the criminals who use illegal and strong encryption. But it does matter to the vast majority of the law abiding world who get stuck with "encryption" that is readily readable by anyone who expresses an interest, and allows the govt to keep collecting mass surveillance unhindered.
  - alextgordon 11y ago
    Many websites require HTTPS and many of those are hosted in foreign countries. Banning encryption is like banning breathing. Yeah, they can, but we all still have to do it.
- celticninja 11y ago
cryoshon 11y ago
Why should we listen? France already massively ramped up their surveillance state after the Hebdo attacks (the perps were known to them beforehand anyway), and that did absolutely nothing to stop a much larger and more complex attack, also with known perps. A panopticon can't stop terrorists from lashing out violently, but it can certainly chill speech and promote totalitarian government. That's their angle: use the panopticon to get blackmail material on 100% of people, then anyone who is inconvenient or needs to be controlled can be dealt with painlessly. I can't understand how people can still give governments the benefit of the doubt when they've been exposed as liars repeatedly for years.
- pweissbrod 11y ago
  Perhaps the argument is that they couldnt keep a close enough eye on the "known perps". I feel like it is a fair/valid argument to support expanded/enhanced wiretapping of those with warrants ("known perps"). One could argue either way if it is the person's right to know if they are on a watchlist. I DONT feel like the argument for expanded/enhanced wiretapping for everyone is fair/valid. Aside from the fact that it feels draconian and cowardly, there isnt any hard data to back up its effectiveness.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > I feel like it is a fair/valid argument to support expanded/enhanced wiretapping of those with warrants ("known perps"). If the police have a warrant then they can tap your phone, bug your house, install a hardware keylogger on all your devices, etc. etc. That has been the case forever and nobody is objecting to it. The objection is to warrantless surveillance and mandatory backdoors.
- adam419 11y ago
  "And that did nothing to stop a much larger, more complex attack" Perhaps, but I think the best way to measure the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the program is not the number of attacks that have slipped through, but the proportion of those that were prevented compared to those that slipped through.
tptacek 11y ago
Does this EFF post say anything new, or is it voted to the top of the site because (a) anti-surveillance and (b) EFF? I find EFF to be a deeply cynical organization, even though I for the most part share their policy objectives.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Well it mentions all the nice articles about how various talking heads wanting to expand surveillance in one place. But yeah, if you are up to date on other news sources its nothing new.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Can you give examples of why you think the EFF is cynical? As a frequent donor, I would like another perspective.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    While I am not the OP (and support all of their agenda) - any organization that is payed to hold certain position becomes cynical because it is literally their job to spin any event into something that fits their agenda. It is the nature of the beast.
    - chishaku 11y ago
      Are they payed merely to hold certain positions or to take action (legal challenges, software dev, spread awareness) on issues that are important to many of us?
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    I don't know about cynical (perhaps I'm the one who's cynical), but they're inconsistent about certain things. Old EFF: The government must stay away from the internet. New EFF: The government needs to regulate the internet like a public utility. Old EFF: Hacking is not a crime. New EFF: The government must stop the zero day menace. They used to be much more libertarian in spirit.
- 11y ago
batz 11y ago
Security apparatus position in a nutshell: "If you give up your freedoms, we'll protect you next time." Great, thanks. Pricks.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Current position: "No, sorry, those freedoms were not enough."
AC__ 11y ago
Yeah no doubt this all feels familiar. Because they're(media & globalized governments, which are effectively a single entity) reading from False Flag Operations 101
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
javajosh 11y ago
What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media doesn't seem to question the assumption behind the questions that they're asking. They ask questions like should we give up our privacy in order to gain security? But of course this question assumes that it's possible to gain security by giving up privacy which is clearly false. Just look at totalitarian regimes - are they free of terrorist attacks? No.
- nly 11y ago
  > What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media Both the Guardian and the NYT have articles calling BS on this sort of thing.
- pc2g4d 11y ago
  Maybe it's an expression of a statism-vs-civil-liberties conflict on the left?
logn 11y ago
Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic shootings/terrorism. Well, body cams for police is maybe an exception. But schools, churches, and movie theaters get shot up weekly. I think the illusion that somehow the surveillance apparatus filters out white people and only focuses on terrorism lets Americans feel okay with it. Also I don't think most people realize how almost every action and thought in their lives ends up on a computer or going over the internet. Everyone just focuses on cellphone metadata, maybe because the full truth of what's being surveilled is too painful to contemplate. I would like to see some politician formulate a response the involves boosting these Middle Eastern economies and schools and "bombing" them with movies and music from LA. If we give these radicals some chance at a life then maybe they'll stop blowing themselves up and taking us with them. Also maybe we can consider that they're responding rationally to the endless intervention by the West into their affairs. Not that I'm justifying their actions, at all, but it's not healthy to dehumanize the enemy. It's what we did to the Japanese and we ended up fire bombing and nuclear bombing them.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  > Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic shootings/terrorism. I think the reasoning is that in domestic school/church/theater shootings, the perpetrator isn't engaged in long communications (and receiving instructions from) a leadership group.
  - talmand 11y ago
    It wouldn't be surveillance on you as part of a group, it would be on you as an individual. Most likely it would involve just enlarging the number of incidents or situations that would trigger a surveillance order on you. Doesn't matter, that type of surveillance will be incredibly easy in the near future. Whether we want it or not.
- tpeo 11y ago
  Humanity and morality aside, maybe politicians are also respoding rationally when encouraging punitive millitary interventions. Looking "tough" does more for re-election than trying to brew long term solutions. It's an unfortunate coincidence of inventives.
arca_vorago 11y ago
"One major reason Congress ended the broader program is that it didn’t work. Millions of dollars and over 10 years of effort later" That's the thing. They are convincing everyone that it's about security, but it's not. The military industrial congressional complex (the correct term before editing of DI's famous speech) has latched onto "cyber" as another money extraction through fear pipeline. We need to stop assuming their real purpose is security, and understand that instead it is about money and power. William Binney is the perfect man to go to about this sort of thing. He designed a system that would cost in the two digit millions that would be placed at core nodes and would encrypt/anonymize American's data unless a FISA warrant was obtained. They scrapped his program, and implemented a multibillion dollar program that didn't protect privacy, didn't ingest or connect data as well, and this was from the very top of the Agency! Corruption is a root cause of these issues. Congress isn't as dumb as they pretend, but they get big donations and re-election support when they pass stuff like this, and they are more concerned about that than any principles. All three branches of government are affected by this level of corruption and cronyism. Programs like this are designed for two things: 1. Make the middle-top MICC men (the startups in Mclean VA for example) lots of money. 2. While the middle men are rolling in that money, having torn up the constitution to get it, the oligarchy siphons the data through loopholes, and suddenly, they have enough data to plan the next evolution in the facist world government plan. You remember the saying, follow the money? Well, at a certain point, when you have billions, another few million isn't that big of a deal. At that point, it's all about power. Be wary of future calls to world governmental style bodies to be formed, and remember centralization is a weakness, not a strength! Mark my words.
lordnacho 11y ago
It would be pretty impressive if an algo existed which found most of the terrorists with relatively few false positives. If you look at a population in the hundreds of millions and the set of terrorists planning an attack, maybe in the dozens (?), you need a pretty powerful test if you're to inconvenience fewer terrorists than ordinary people. And that doesn't even touch on the issue of whether it's right to do so if it works. Has anyone here worked on similar identification algorithms? The closest I can think of is a friend of mine who markets drugs for extremely rare conditions. But then those people tend not to be hiding and can be approached via search keywords.
etangent 11y ago
IMO, there exist good arguments against surveillance. But why are supposedly rational geeks so irrationally prone to putting forward very bad arguments against it? See almost every reply in this thread to prove my point, but I will list a few: 1) If one took basic statistics, one would deem the proposition that "X is useless because [a target of X] has just slipped through" as outrageously wrong and a prime example of both selection bias and reliance on anecdotal evidence, yet somehow in the context of surveillance, this argument is taken at face value. You see otherwise smart people posting and retweeting this argument as if they thought it a valid one. 2) In almost any other context, a rational thing to do is to evaluate both sides and, if one seems beneficial but dangerous, propose laws to regulate it (aka: don't use surveillance for blackmailing political candidates since it contradicts democratic principles). Yet in the context of surveillance, a geek will talk in completely black-and-white terms, and not even consider proposing laws to regulate its impact. For an extended example, a common argument against surveillance is that places the entity wielding it "outside of law". Yet democracies have developed well-established methods for dealing with entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law. That is the reason why we have a president with a fixed term rather than a king, for example. 3) If surveillance can be used for blackmailing, then obviously it has to work quite well in the first place (be comprehensive, with ability to target specific individuals). Yet the same geek who argues that surveillance is dangerous because it can be used for blackmailing will also try argue, often in the same paragraph, that surveillance doesn't work, is not effective, or is very easily circumventable. To any impartial outside observer, the argument that "X is not effective! But X is dangerous because it is effective!" would seem like a contradiction, no? 4) Then there is the tired/insensitive argument that "more people die from furniture than from terrorism". First, this is probably only true in the West, and not in places like Nigeria or MENA (this is a good chart http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2015/11/blogs/graphic-detail/20151121_woc539.png http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...). Second, almost all animals (and yes, humans are primates/animals) pay a lot more attention to predators and to acts of violence between each other than to random accidents, and there is an evolutionary reason for that (which specifically is left as an exercise to the reader). I would also argue that, since this behavior is so incredibly prevalent among animals of all kinds, it's almost definitely not an example of a "maladaptive" cognitive bias. Finally, even if it were maladaptive, one can't just simply discount it (an entire country experiencing a fascist freakout against a minority group is not a good thing IMO, whether a result of a cognitive bias or not). 5) For almost every other technology, geeks will argue (often obnoxiously/pedantically) that it can be both good and bad, depending on how it is wielded (see nuclear power). But surveillance is also a technology, yet you almost never see a geek saying "surveillance can be either good or bad" -- no, to a geek, surveillance is bad, period. It's like surveillance is this one thing that technology-loving geeks can feel justified to act luddite about. Why is that?
B4CKlash 11y ago
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ~ Ben Franklin
firstprimate 11y ago
So this may be considered hijacking, but here goes. What the EFF, and many others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at the West because of 'our freedoms', or these are religious nutters who want to kill Westerners because jihad, porn, alcohol, the prophet told them to, it's in the Quran, etc. The larger picture reveals that it's chickens coming home to roost (and I am not going to go into the long list of foreign policy actions that create the resentment). The Western public should not expect that their government's actions do not have consequences. From a purely selfish PoV, you can expect that if your government is willing to kill/maim/oppress/steal/lie/cheat people of another nation, for whatever reason, that this will soon start happening to you (and it has - look around). Pushing back against initiatives like this is futile. The fear your government sows will override any concerns for loss of civil liberties. So long as they get to use words like terrorists, Islamic Extremism, radicals and militants they control the conversation. And every time you use those words you set your argument back. More pertinently, the West has a long, long history of violence against the other. Study that history as that is the only thing that will let you to question your presumption of superiority and allow you to open your eyes to the terrible suffering the West inflicts every day.
- ve55 11y ago
  >What the EFF, and many others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at the West because of 'our freedoms', I'm not sure why that's relevant, I don't see anything like that in this article. I don't see any usage of words like 'freedom', 'islam', 'extremist', etc., either. As far as I can tell this article is neutral or just nonpresenting with regards to what you've mentioned.
  - firstprimate 11y ago
    FTA: "But terrorism is aimed, in part, at pushing us to jump to conclusions and take panicky steps that inflict more pain and misdirect our resources toward failed and dangerous ideas."
nickff 11y ago
The most interesting part of this debate is how it mirrors the gun control debate, with the biggest difference between the two being the people advocating each position. Both debates are about the attempt to restrict something which is very difficult to restrict. In both cases,there is a fundamental principle of liberty at stake, but only the advocates for that liberty appear to care about that principle. Relatively few could be argued to be harmed by the weapons/encryption (in the manner which proponents of restriction believe they can prevent), and even where governments have abridged those rights, the results do not clearly demonstrate that restrictions are efficacious. Proponents also make their strongest pushes for increased restriction in the face of great tragedies in both cases. The only groups which seem to have consistent positions through these two debates are the libertarians, anarchists, and statists (; a strange list in my opinion).
ccvannorman 11y ago
Saying that surveillance doesn't stop all terrorist attacks so we should stop all surveillance, is like saying police don't stop all violent crime so we should fire all the police.

375 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind of encryption. After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...

pfortuny 11y ago
And throwing a cellphone into the trash can. You don't need to be Sherlock to trace those calls.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Didn't even need to trace the call... a good investigation would check the trash cans, dumpsters, and storm drains in a 20 block radius after a large scale bombing or attack.
akerro 11y ago
> Just a reminder, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers used any kind of encryption. They actually had unencrypted text messages on their phones and used cars. Why don't we ban unencrypted text message applications and cars?
- xtreme 11y ago
  Bangladesh actually banned WhatsApp and other IM apps. http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-blocked-60682 http://www.thedailystar.net/whatsapp-mypeople-line-also-bloc...
hokkos 11y ago
ISIS use the Telegram app on their smartphone or on their laptop with BlueStacks to communicate as shown in this report where a journalist try to become an ISIS recruit : http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-special/video-attentats-de-paris-francais-candidats-au-jihad_1184197.html http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-s...

guard-of-terra 11y ago

Most things around my life in the last 15 years fit familiar, cynical pattern that politicians spit in our face and get away with it. That leads to desperation and learned helplessness. To give EFF a credit, they actually fight. Unfortunately, quixotically

natch 11y ago
I wouldn't say it's quixotic, because they do win many fights: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eff%20wins
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Quixote did actually win some fights too. FSVO winning.
logfromblammo 11y ago
~Desperation and learned helplessness is good! It's part of the plan!~ ~I was thinking the other day, and I think I figured out the government's plan for ending terrorism. (Yes, I was wearing my foil hat. Thank you for asking.)~ ~What is the goal of terrorism? To make people afraid.~ ~How do you end terrorism? Option 1 is to stop the things that make people afraid from happening. But there is an option 2. You can just stop people from being afraid.~ ~So who is not afraid of terrorism? Who doesn't even feel a twinge of anxiety about being attacked by terrorists? That's right--terrorists.~ ~To stop terrorism, all we have to do is turn everybody into terrorists. Now we don't know how to actually turn an ordinary person into a terrorist, even though the federal TLAs are doing research experiments, but we do know how to treat everyone like they already are terrorists. Do it long enough, and people will eventually get the hint.~ ~So it all makes sense now. They want everyone to become a terrorist, so that nobody will be afraid of terrorists, which will destroy terrorism utterly, and so nobody can ever be a terrorist again. Brilliant!~ ~I'm sure the EFF means well, but if we stop treating everyone like terrorists, the terrorists win.~
Ensorceled 11y ago
I like how the EFF is described as quixotic and cynical in the same story (albeit by different commenters)

grandalf 11y ago

This kind of thing doesn't matter. Encryption simply can't be stopped by governments.

ipsin 11y ago
I think these lies absolutely matter. It's a war of propaganda that can lead to real legislation. I think the "PATRIOT Act" (and the "USA Freedom Act", for that matter) show that the surveillance state has a way of turning its will into law. To borrow a cliche, if encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption. I don't think encryption can be outlawed, but it can be hamstrung by weakened implementations and requirements to decrypt for "lawful requests".
dahart 11y ago
It certainly does matter to me, and your comment makes me wonder if it might matter to you and you don't know it. If you read it, the articles's thrust isn't largely about encryption, it's about mass surveillance. The reasons it matters to me: - The government shouldn't have the right to wire-tap all citizens at once. We already established that for analog telephones, but digital has become an excuse to undo the annoying requirement of establishing probable cause. If they have the right to listen to you through mass means, no encryption will help you. - They are spending our tax dollars doing this. The money matters, and they basically taking our money and using it against us. At best it's a waste of that money. - If they establish the right to curb strong encryption, you may be right in the sense that it doesn't matter to the criminals who use illegal and strong encryption. But it does matter to the vast majority of the law abiding world who get stuck with "encryption" that is readily readable by anyone who expresses an interest, and allows the govt to keep collecting mass surveillance unhindered.
- alextgordon 11y ago
  Many websites require HTTPS and many of those are hosted in foreign countries. Banning encryption is like banning breathing. Yeah, they can, but we all still have to do it.
celticninja 11y ago

cryoshon 11y ago

Why should we listen? France already massively ramped up their surveillance state after the Hebdo attacks (the perps were known to them beforehand anyway), and that did absolutely nothing to stop a much larger and more complex attack, also with known perps. A panopticon can't stop terrorists from lashing out violently, but it can certainly chill speech and promote totalitarian government. That's their angle: use the panopticon to get blackmail material on 100% of people, then anyone who is inconvenient or needs to be controlled can be dealt with painlessly. I can't understand how people can still give governments the benefit of the doubt when they've been exposed as liars repeatedly for years.

pweissbrod 11y ago
Perhaps the argument is that they couldnt keep a close enough eye on the "known perps". I feel like it is a fair/valid argument to support expanded/enhanced wiretapping of those with warrants ("known perps"). One could argue either way if it is the person's right to know if they are on a watchlist. I DONT feel like the argument for expanded/enhanced wiretapping for everyone is fair/valid. Aside from the fact that it feels draconian and cowardly, there isnt any hard data to back up its effectiveness.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > I feel like it is a fair/valid argument to support expanded/enhanced wiretapping of those with warrants ("known perps"). If the police have a warrant then they can tap your phone, bug your house, install a hardware keylogger on all your devices, etc. etc. That has been the case forever and nobody is objecting to it. The objection is to warrantless surveillance and mandatory backdoors.
adam419 11y ago
"And that did nothing to stop a much larger, more complex attack" Perhaps, but I think the best way to measure the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the program is not the number of attacks that have slipped through, but the proportion of those that were prevented compared to those that slipped through.

tptacek 11y ago

Does this EFF post say anything new, or is it voted to the top of the site because (a) anti-surveillance and (b) EFF? I find EFF to be a deeply cynical organization, even though I for the most part share their policy objectives.

fweespeech 11y ago
Well it mentions all the nice articles about how various talking heads wanting to expand surveillance in one place. But yeah, if you are up to date on other news sources its nothing new.
cryoshon 11y ago
Can you give examples of why you think the EFF is cynical? As a frequent donor, I would like another perspective.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  While I am not the OP (and support all of their agenda) - any organization that is payed to hold certain position becomes cynical because it is literally their job to spin any event into something that fits their agenda. It is the nature of the beast.
  - chishaku 11y ago
    Are they payed merely to hold certain positions or to take action (legal challenges, software dev, spread awareness) on issues that are important to many of us?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  I don't know about cynical (perhaps I'm the one who's cynical), but they're inconsistent about certain things. Old EFF: The government must stay away from the internet. New EFF: The government needs to regulate the internet like a public utility. Old EFF: Hacking is not a crime. New EFF: The government must stop the zero day menace. They used to be much more libertarian in spirit.
11y ago

batz 11y ago

Security apparatus position in a nutshell: "If you give up your freedoms, we'll protect you next time." Great, thanks. Pricks.

marcosdumay 11y ago
Current position: "No, sorry, those freedoms were not enough."

AC__ 11y ago

Yeah no doubt this all feels familiar. Because they're(media & globalized governments, which are effectively a single entity) reading from False Flag Operations 101

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

javajosh 11y ago

What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media doesn't seem to question the assumption behind the questions that they're asking. They ask questions like should we give up our privacy in order to gain security? But of course this question assumes that it's possible to gain security by giving up privacy which is clearly false. Just look at totalitarian regimes - are they free of terrorist attacks? No.

nly 11y ago
> What's surprising to me is that even the liberal media Both the Guardian and the NYT have articles calling BS on this sort of thing.
pc2g4d 11y ago
Maybe it's an expression of a statism-vs-civil-liberties conflict on the left?

logn 11y ago

Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic shootings/terrorism. Well, body cams for police is maybe an exception. But schools, churches, and movie theaters get shot up weekly. I think the illusion that somehow the surveillance apparatus filters out white people and only focuses on terrorism lets Americans feel okay with it. Also I don't think most people realize how almost every action and thought in their lives ends up on a computer or going over the internet. Everyone just focuses on cellphone metadata, maybe because the full truth of what's being surveilled is too painful to contemplate. I would like to see some politician formulate a response the involves boosting these Middle Eastern economies and schools and "bombing" them with movies and music from LA. If we give these radicals some chance at a life then maybe they'll stop blowing themselves up and taking us with them. Also maybe we can consider that they're responding rationally to the endless intervention by the West into their affairs. Not that I'm justifying their actions, at all, but it's not healthy to dehumanize the enemy. It's what we did to the Japanese and we ended up fire bombing and nuclear bombing them.

kzhahou 11y ago
> Notice we don't see calls for more surveillance after domestic shootings/terrorism. I think the reasoning is that in domestic school/church/theater shootings, the perpetrator isn't engaged in long communications (and receiving instructions from) a leadership group.
- talmand 11y ago
  It wouldn't be surveillance on you as part of a group, it would be on you as an individual. Most likely it would involve just enlarging the number of incidents or situations that would trigger a surveillance order on you. Doesn't matter, that type of surveillance will be incredibly easy in the near future. Whether we want it or not.
tpeo 11y ago
Humanity and morality aside, maybe politicians are also respoding rationally when encouraging punitive millitary interventions. Looking "tough" does more for re-election than trying to brew long term solutions. It's an unfortunate coincidence of inventives.

arca_vorago 11y ago

"One major reason Congress ended the broader program is that it didn’t work. Millions of dollars and over 10 years of effort later" That's the thing. They are convincing everyone that it's about security, but it's not. The military industrial congressional complex (the correct term before editing of DI's famous speech) has latched onto "cyber" as another money extraction through fear pipeline. We need to stop assuming their real purpose is security, and understand that instead it is about money and power. William Binney is the perfect man to go to about this sort of thing. He designed a system that would cost in the two digit millions that would be placed at core nodes and would encrypt/anonymize American's data unless a FISA warrant was obtained. They scrapped his program, and implemented a multibillion dollar program that didn't protect privacy, didn't ingest or connect data as well, and this was from the very top of the Agency! Corruption is a root cause of these issues. Congress isn't as dumb as they pretend, but they get big donations and re-election support when they pass stuff like this, and they are more concerned about that than any principles. All three branches of government are affected by this level of corruption and cronyism. Programs like this are designed for two things: 1. Make the middle-top MICC men (the startups in Mclean VA for example) lots of money. 2. While the middle men are rolling in that money, having torn up the constitution to get it, the oligarchy siphons the data through loopholes, and suddenly, they have enough data to plan the next evolution in the facist world government plan. You remember the saying, follow the money? Well, at a certain point, when you have billions, another few million isn't that big of a deal. At that point, it's all about power. Be wary of future calls to world governmental style bodies to be formed, and remember centralization is a weakness, not a strength! Mark my words.

lordnacho 11y ago

It would be pretty impressive if an algo existed which found most of the terrorists with relatively few false positives. If you look at a population in the hundreds of millions and the set of terrorists planning an attack, maybe in the dozens (?), you need a pretty powerful test if you're to inconvenience fewer terrorists than ordinary people. And that doesn't even touch on the issue of whether it's right to do so if it works. Has anyone here worked on similar identification algorithms? The closest I can think of is a friend of mine who markets drugs for extremely rare conditions. But then those people tend not to be hiding and can be approached via search keywords.

etangent 11y ago

IMO, there exist good arguments against surveillance. But why are supposedly rational geeks so irrationally prone to putting forward very bad arguments against it? See almost every reply in this thread to prove my point, but I will list a few: 1) If one took basic statistics, one would deem the proposition that "X is useless because [a target of X] has just slipped through" as outrageously wrong and a prime example of both selection bias and reliance on anecdotal evidence, yet somehow in the context of surveillance, this argument is taken at face value. You see otherwise smart people posting and retweeting this argument as if they thought it a valid one. 2) In almost any other context, a rational thing to do is to evaluate both sides and, if one seems beneficial but dangerous, propose laws to regulate it (aka: don't use surveillance for blackmailing political candidates since it contradicts democratic principles). Yet in the context of surveillance, a geek will talk in completely black-and-white terms, and not even consider proposing laws to regulate its impact. For an extended example, a common argument against surveillance is that places the entity wielding it "outside of law". Yet democracies have developed well-established methods for dealing with entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law. That is the reason why we have a president with a fixed term rather than a king, for example. 3) If surveillance can be used for blackmailing, then obviously it has to work quite well in the first place (be comprehensive, with ability to target specific individuals). Yet the same geek who argues that surveillance is dangerous because it can be used for blackmailing will also try argue, often in the same paragraph, that surveillance doesn't work, is not effective, or is very easily circumventable. To any impartial outside observer, the argument that "X is not effective! But X is dangerous because it is effective!" would seem like a contradiction, no? 4) Then there is the tired/insensitive argument that "more people die from furniture than from terrorism". First, this is probably only true in the West, and not in places like Nigeria or MENA (this is a good chart http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2015/11/blogs/graphic-detail/20151121_woc539.png http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...). Second, almost all animals (and yes, humans are primates/animals) pay a lot more attention to predators and to acts of violence between each other than to random accidents, and there is an evolutionary reason for that (which specifically is left as an exercise to the reader). I would also argue that, since this behavior is so incredibly prevalent among animals of all kinds, it's almost definitely not an example of a "maladaptive" cognitive bias. Finally, even if it were maladaptive, one can't just simply discount it (an entire country experiencing a fascist freakout against a minority group is not a good thing IMO, whether a result of a cognitive bias or not). 5) For almost every other technology, geeks will argue (often obnoxiously/pedantically) that it can be both good and bad, depending on how it is wielded (see nuclear power). But surveillance is also a technology, yet you almost never see a geek saying "surveillance can be either good or bad" -- no, to a geek, surveillance is bad, period. It's like surveillance is this one thing that technology-loving geeks can feel justified to act luddite about. Why is that?

B4CKlash 11y ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ~ Ben Franklin

firstprimate 11y ago

So this may be considered hijacking, but here goes. What the EFF, and many others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at the West because of 'our freedoms', or these are religious nutters who want to kill Westerners because jihad, porn, alcohol, the prophet told them to, it's in the Quran, etc. The larger picture reveals that it's chickens coming home to roost (and I am not going to go into the long list of foreign policy actions that create the resentment). The Western public should not expect that their government's actions do not have consequences. From a purely selfish PoV, you can expect that if your government is willing to kill/maim/oppress/steal/lie/cheat people of another nation, for whatever reason, that this will soon start happening to you (and it has - look around). Pushing back against initiatives like this is futile. The fear your government sows will override any concerns for loss of civil liberties. So long as they get to use words like terrorists, Islamic Extremism, radicals and militants they control the conversation. And every time you use those words you set your argument back. More pertinently, the West has a long, long history of violence against the other. Study that history as that is the only thing that will let you to question your presumption of superiority and allow you to open your eyes to the terrible suffering the West inflicts every day.

ve55 11y ago
>What the EFF, and many others, get wrong is that this is terrorism aimed at the West because of 'our freedoms', I'm not sure why that's relevant, I don't see anything like that in this article. I don't see any usage of words like 'freedom', 'islam', 'extremist', etc., either. As far as I can tell this article is neutral or just nonpresenting with regards to what you've mentioned.
- firstprimate 11y ago
  FTA: "But terrorism is aimed, in part, at pushing us to jump to conclusions and take panicky steps that inflict more pain and misdirect our resources toward failed and dangerous ideas."

nickff 11y ago

The most interesting part of this debate is how it mirrors the gun control debate, with the biggest difference between the two being the people advocating each position. Both debates are about the attempt to restrict something which is very difficult to restrict. In both cases,there is a fundamental principle of liberty at stake, but only the advocates for that liberty appear to care about that principle. Relatively few could be argued to be harmed by the weapons/encryption (in the manner which proponents of restriction believe they can prevent), and even where governments have abridged those rights, the results do not clearly demonstrate that restrictions are efficacious. Proponents also make their strongest pushes for increased restriction in the face of great tragedies in both cases. The only groups which seem to have consistent positions through these two debates are the libertarians, anarchists, and statists (; a strange list in my opinion).

ccvannorman 11y ago

Saying that surveillance doesn't stop all terrorist attacks so we should stop all surveillance, is like saying police don't stop all violent crime so we should fire all the police.