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We Only Have Hours Left to Stop the NSA Expansion Bill
- ataturk 9y agoNot sure if we're allowed to post links or whether this deserves its own topic, but this video is worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-qgmRnqces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-qgmRnqces Wiliam Binney explains what has taken place and why. He labels Dick Cheney and the Bush Admin for panicking after 9/11. What he fails to mention is that the Obama Administration brought the illegality to new lows.
- nerdponx 9y agoIs there anything states can do about this? And, if this passes, is there any way to protect myself? Obviously if the NSA is hoarding zero-days there isn't much you can do, but what are some practical steps? 1) avoid airports and security cameras 2) use an offshore VPN at all times 3) don't use the phone, use E2E encrypted calling like Signal 4) use cash as often as possible, or cryptocurrency Or does none of that matter?
- d33 9y agoWhat's your threat model? Unless you name what you're afraid of and what you're trying to hide, you're just feeding paranoia and it's unhealthy. And I'm not trying to say you should do nothing - the steps you suggest would at the very least increase the cost for NSA to collect data, potentially making it scale less or even make you fly under the radar. Still, if you want those rather uncomfortable actions to become habits, you'll need to have some motivation and for that you probably need to name your worries first.
- hood_syntax 9y ago> afraid of The government knowing literally everything about my life (yes, I know they almost certainly do already) > what I'm trying to hide More like what I'm trying to protect: the naive assumption that the government does not deserve to have this depth and breadth of information on literally every citizen for no legitimate reason.
- nerdponx 9y agoI have a deep moral opposition to this kind of spying, and making it more difficult is an end in and of itself. I also don't consider them terribly uncomfortable, but that is my opinion and no one else's. I also personally would prefer not to be spied on. I do not want my day-to-day activities monitored by anyone but myself. In the event that the government starts curtailing freedoms or particular kinds of behavior and thought, I do not want to be left susceptible. So I guess my threat model is "generalized spying". I assume I would be powerless to stop anything specifically targeted at me, so I would like to avoid becoming a target in the first place. If and when I start buying oxidizing chemicals, drug precursors, or ammunition, then you are more than welcome to start tracking my purchases and usage of those products.
- matte_black 9y agoWell it’s time to ask yourself, are those morals and values worth sacrificing your comfort, your sanity, and maybe even your life? Which do you value more?
- nerdponx 9y agoLuckily I'm not sacrificing any of those things.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>So I guess my threat model is "generalized spying" In this case, you should be proactive not only against NSA, but GOOG, FB, your ISP etc. You should look into Tails OS if you haven't already.
- nerdponx 9y agoGood point, and in fact I am. My Instagram account is long gone, my Facebook account will be gone before the end of the month (I use it once a week at most anyway), and I've long since stopped using any Google account for anything. I run multiple browser extensions that help me delete cookies, block Javascript, etc. The VPN should hopefully take care of my ISP. It try to avoid even sending emails to Gmail accounts. I haven't tried Tails, but I will look into it when I get some time free.
- bo1024 9y ago> Unless you name what you're afraid of and what you're trying to hide I think of it a little differently. I am trying to be part of a collective movement toward as much privacy as possible so that those who do need to protect themselves can have access to the tools they need and won't stick out when they use them. A sort of herd immunity. I guess a good start are habits that neutralize automated mass surveillance. Targeted surveillance would be a whole other ballgame and unfortunately I don't think our tools are at a place to make this feasible for me to practice.
- bluntfang 9y ago>I am trying to be part of a collective movement toward as much privacy as possible so that those who do need to protect themselves can have access to the tools they need and won't stick out when they use them. A sort of herd immunity. by creating a standard you are effectively creating an easy way and/or justification to automate against that standard. I think your logic is sound, but consider the big picture. The more people do things in a certain way, the higher the incentive to investigate that way.
- 1457389 9y agoThey don't need much more incentive to arrogate power; I don't think there is much hope in changing that calculus. >Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography.
- bo1024 9y agoSure, the principle doesn't always blindly work. If everyone uses one technology, that can be a single point of failure (one backdoor and we're all doomed). But think about https for example. It's just plain good for security and anonymity and everyone should use it as much as possible.
- bramen 9y agomight want to check if your potential offshore vpn is hosted in a country with an intelligence data sharing agreement with the united states or any of its intelligence partners
- mLuby 9y agoJust a reminder that most cryptocurrencies (esp Bitcoin) are inherently quite traceable. Cash is still king.
- ataturk 9y agoNone of it matters. Watch Binney talk about it--they have us all by the nuts.
- fghtr 9y agoI would suggest to try Qubes OS: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org
- willstrafach 9y ago> 2) use an offshore VPN at all times This would actually be far more likely to enable collection of your traffic, whereas US Persons cannot be queried.
- nerdponx 9y agoIs that so? What do you mean? This is the first time I've heard anyone say that.
- martin_andrino 9y agoAny specific reason of why should we "stop this" or is it just because EFF is cool and says so?
- iovrthoughtthis 9y agoIs anyone else fatigued? The effort required, ontop of just having a normal functioning life, to parse and make decisions around potential future law is incredible. Isn't this what elected officials are ment to do on our behalf?
- 0xfeba 9y agoYes. I give to the EFF and a few other select causes each year, but I just can't keep up with individual issues. I just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years.
- CWuestefeld 9y agoI just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years. You're not thinking that if the Democrats manage to take the White House, that this situation will improve - are you? I mean, most of this damage was done when Pres. Obama was in the White House and the Congress skewed more toward Democrats. The idea that the Democrats will defend our privacy and 4th Amendment is absurd.
- archvile 9y agoExactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know.
- chimeracoder 9y ago> Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know. Partisanship is one hell of a drug.
- at-fates-hands 9y ago> Three letter agency abilities were expanded As well as politicized and weaponized.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
- snowpanda 9y agoSeems like this only works with Twitter unfortunately.
- jessaustin 9y agoWow I thought the only "bad" law that was passing was a big tax cut. Shame on me for paying attention to the news media. Good timing for NSA, though! Suspiciously good...
- b6 9y agoI don't want to be discouraging to anyone. Please, do anything you think will be helpful. But the NSA's equipment is still in hundreds of network equipment rooms, and the data is being split off recorded and rifled at will. They'll tell you they're "not collecting" your data, but they are. They're just using some strange NSA version of English where siphoning your data and storing it on hard drives is not "collecting" it. I advocate the peaceful destruction of their facility in Utah and any other similar facility.
- twothamendment 9y ago> I advocate the peaceful destruction of their facility in Utah... How? Either voting doesn't work or we as a people are too collective stupid to vote for anyone different. How many like Reid, Fienstien and Hatch just keep getting elected despite their actions? Maybe we need some real people to run? Maybe we need to be smart enough to vote them in (and out when their time is up - I'm looking at you, Hatch). A there letter agency doesn't just disappear because we complain to each other. It is going to take years to undo what is being done.
- logfromblammo 9y agoShut the water off. There won't be enough cooling for the servers. Maybe shoot a hole in the bottom of a big, oil-filled transformer at the nearest power substation.
- giardini 9y agoThis is at least the second post on this topic in which logfromblammo has suggested that people perform criminal acts. (S)he earlier suggested keying cars and cutting tires. Those are simply wrong and criminal.
- jameskegel 9y agoI’m curious at what point civility breaks down in a failing state, at what level does his course of action make sense? I like to establish these limits before emotion can cloud judgement. He may be brash but he’s not wrong yet.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago> It would also give FBI agents the power to decide whether or not to seek a warrant to read American communications collected under Section 702 Hoover would be so proud. This bill basically legitimizes the relentless surveillance apparatus of his era by allowing the FBI to use the NSA's haystack resources without a warrant. Considering the way the FBI has acted in the last 100yr (big organizations can only change their operational culture so far so fast and government is particularly slow because the incentives discourage turnover), their mission and their jurisdiction I think this is very bad. There's no way this power can not be abused. Warrants are so trivially easy to get that the only reason to not get them for stuff like this is to do things that you can't justify asking for a warrant for.
- trisimix 9y agoIs there plan to bombard the american public on so many fronts that they accept mass surveillance? What the actual fuck is wrong with this country.
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoThat's exactly it. It's also pretty hilarious that the GOP is trying to extend the FBI's power and oversight - given the current situation with their dear leader.
- digi_owl 9y ago"we ram a bill to expand your powers through, you ease up on the investigation".
- pixl97 9y agoStep 1: expand power - in progress. Step 2: corrupt power - well it isn't like the FBI hasn't done that in the past.
- RickJWagner 9y agoSeeing how Comey (and top collaborators) basically ignored Hillary Clinton's obvious crimes WRT security, it does seem odd. Maybe they're buying some agents of their own, to even things out.
- mtgx 9y agoAnd FISA reauthorization always happens a few days before Christmas. Californians, remember to vote Feinstein out in the Democratic primary. She's been one of the main champions of this bill and type of mass surveillance (as well as the anti-encryption bills, which she's not giving up). It's probably one of the reasons why she decided to go back on her promise not to run again, so she can pass it once more in a few years. Her husband also makes big bucks from the defense industry and from government contracts - probably not a coincidence at all. She's one of the richest Congress people - again, likely not a coincidence.
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- peterwwillis 9y agoBad tax reform that benefits mostly corporations and the 1% reported by foreign news outlets get flagged here, but talk about a spy group or internet regulation and suddenly politics is fair game. I'm sick of the echo chamber and the pathetic rules of civility strangling human communication, the invisible voting down of opinions people don't like, the moderation filters that carve out a single world view catered to an angel investor's whims. I guess I'll just read the New York Times. It's annoying and devoid of useful commentary but at least I'll get a complete news feed and not have to watch a sad oppressive ecosystem strangle intelligent debate.
- murph-almighty 9y agoYour last sentence kinda struck home for me. 3 years ago I was able to get news from reddit that was faster and sometimes more reliable than, say, CNN. It now takes hours for a relevant story to siphon to the top because of certain vested interests downvoting it. It's made me miss CNN and NYT. I've started drifting back to conventional news outlets because bad actors destroyed the ones I loved.
- ataturk 9y agoNY Times is Carlos Slim(e). There is no news outlet that is objective anymore--none. Maybe there never was. "News" is just propaganda for whoever owns them now.
- strictnein 9y agoHN isn't a generic news site. Nor is it a site for the discussion of all social topics. Many people are here because of that, but it appears that you want something different.
- mistercow 9y agoWell, one of those things has to do with technology, and the other one doesn't.
- okonomiyaki3000 9y ago"We only have hours"? What are we supposed to do in those hours? Make phone calls that won't get through? Tweet? Forget it. Senators and congressmen don't fear their constituents so they're not going to listen to their constituents.
- logfromblammo 9y agoWe may only have hours left to watch elected representation completely ignore the welfare of the electorate again, but we probably still have months left to choose who exactly it is that we will be shoving up against the wall when the revolution comes. At this point, when they obviously don't fear losing their office, they need to fear something else. If you can't bring yourself to do physical violence, you can maybe plan out some property crimes. Keying cars and slashing tires is a traditional method of expressing anger against specific individuals, and those types of crimes are infrequently investigated, and even more rarely solved--at least when the insignificant people are the victims. When the catalytic converter was stolen off the bottom of my car, I never even saw a cop; I had to fill out the report myself, and the police apparently never actually did anything about it. Why should they, after all? They aren't working for us. Why not give them something to do for their real bosses? Watching C-SPAN last night, the shouting and chanting did nothing. There was no effect at all. The sergeant-at-arms will restore order in the gallery, and we will continue to pretend that those people don't matter. The sit-ins have done nothing. The communications campaigns had no effect. More of the same will yield more of the same. Try something different.
- macawfish 9y agoI get that you're angry. That's totally valid. I'm also angry and also have violent fantasies. I'm certain that everyone does, its a psychology fact. But why not channel your destructive urges into dismantling internalized oppression? The ways that you and I go about maintaining these very structures we are each so angry about? I'm a musician. I once played at a fancy downtown club that took my band's working/middle class crowd for granted. They had two shows every night: an early set with very expensive tickets and international artists, and a late night set with local artists and cheap tickets. They once made our audience... Hundreds of people... wait for an two hours, standing in the lobby, on valentines evening, because a bunch of drunk rich people had paid $150/ea for an earlier show, and they didn't have the guts to tell them to leave after it was over. We didn't get to sound check. I didn't get a monitor. Our friends and family waited for two hours to hear us play. We had to cut our set in half. After that I refused to play there anymore. This was a regular place at the time, but I told my friends that I was done, and explained myself. I loved the staff there. The sound was amazing. They had great food and lighting and all that. But I was tired of the management's priorities. They willingly engaged in segregating our communities to squeeze out the money. They weren't curating, they were leaching. I was over it. Know what happened? Not much at first. People kept asking me to play there. I said "nope, I'm done". Two years later, hardly anyone I know plays there ever. My little stand made a real difference. There are other venues in town that have been similarly 86'd by a few trusted leaders in the community. It makes space for new ways of doing things to let go of an old, tired staple. Why not find something like that in your life that you can do to take a stand?
- choward 9y agoI knew there was a reason the media decided to make a big deal about a military video from 2004 yesterday. Pure distraction.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- frickinLasers 9y agoDoes anyone have a source? I can't find the story anywhere. Edit: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/365718-house-set-to-vote-on-controversial-surveillance-bill http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/365718-house-set...
- equalunique 9y agohttps://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4478?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22fisa%22%5D%7D&r=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4478...
- Dowwie 9y agoYou can't hold a tide back with a broom
- LeoJiWoo 9y agoEFF has proven to be an ineffectual organization. They bungled NN(infuriating me to no end), and proven partisan at every turn, which would not be a problem if they were successful. But its clear we need a nonpartisan group who can successfully rally most of America on the left and the right.
- mschuster91 9y ago> But its clear we need a nonpartisan group who can successfully rally most of America on the left and the right. Why? Keep the Nazis and their friends where they belong: on the dustbin of history. There is no need to further legitimize Bannon and the rest of the alt-right bunch by rallying with them. They need to be fought relentlessly.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cryptonector 9y agoOne might hope that the Trump administration is wary of widening the federal government's ability to spy on its citizens. I do.
- pleasecalllater 9y agoAnd you will do nothing... as usually. You will just dream about having any influence on the world going on. I'm not a US citizen, so my voice doesn't count. But does your voice count if you are a US citizen? Nope. The corporations and politicians decide, we can just be allowed to have nice sits in the front row and watch how the corporations world grow. Happy watching. Tickets are expensive, and mandatory. Nice dreaming.
- adventured 9y agoIs that why women and black people can vote, because what citizens think and their voices don't matter? Is that why gay people can get married in the US (but not in 160 other countries), because what US citizens think doesn't count? (the majority in the US support gay marriage) Is that why the house and US Senate recently voted almost perfectly in step, overwhelmingly in favor, of rolling back civil asset forfeiture abuses? Congress has nothing to fear from it, they do however know their voters are angry about it. Is that why the Obama Admin put net neutrality into place, because votes & voices don't matter? It was in fact overwhelmingly demanded by Obama's voters. Votes, of course, matter in a big way as it turns out: had Hillary bothered to fight for the blue wall state voters, we'd still have net neutrality.
- microDude 9y agoI live in Oregon, where I am pretty sure my representatives will oppose this bill (as they have a history of doing so). What I really want to do is voice my opinion to my old state of Pennsylvania, where I am less confident. As more people move to where the jobs are at, the country will become more blue/red divided.
- equalunique 9y agoI find it very interesting that this bill is being pushed by Devin Nunes. In case anyone here is unaware, he is involved in an ongoing surveillance-related controversy - he is one of the leaders alleging a scandal that HRC 2016 campaign paid Fusion GPS to produce the Steele Dossier as evidence for the FBI to wiretap Trump Tower using an Obama-appointed FISA court judge. [0] I find the idea of him expanding the FISA court powers contradictory to his stated purpose of seeking justice in the matter of his supposed 2016 election scandal. Note that this idea is the EFF's interpretation of the bill & not my own view. If that were the case, then perhaps his intent is to leverage the expanded NSA powers to spy on the FBI, which he seems to believe is working against the current administration. This would not be the first time different parts of the US government were spying on each other. [1] I don't believe that is the intent of this bill. After reviewing, it seems more likely that the intent of the bill covers two goals: 1. To require added accountability to the FISA application process such that abuses of the FISA court are easier to identify. There are a number of sections in the bill which require disclosures by the FBI which were not necessary before. 2. To remove bureaucratic barriers limiting the Attorney General, who in the case of this political situation, will be relied upon to investigate the government itself. So I can see where the EFF is coming from with their take on this bill, and certainly there is a political divide over whether or not this bill is a good thing. Personally I am hoping it will pass.[2] [0] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/08/head-house-ethics-panel-finds-evidence-abuse-in-us-government-surveillance.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/08/head-house-ethics... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/12/feinstein-doesnt-like-the-cia-spying-on-her-committee-but-shes-fine-with-nsa-bulk-data-collection/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/12... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4478?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22fisa%22%5D%7D&r=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4478...
- bigbluedots 9y agoNon US citizens have been subject to warrantless surveillance by NSA etc for some time now. That was fine, apparently?
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