12 ms·
The Snowden Legacy, part one: What’s changed, really?
- incomplete 8y agothis, and pretty much only this: "Suddenly, everybody knows, and nothing's changed," security technologist and author Bruce Schneier told Ars. "It was never a campaign issue. We tried to make it one. We failed... the subsequent changes are very small."
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoChanges are small because the masses read about it and shrugged their shoulders.
- noja 8y agoThey shrugged their shoulders because we (the techies) didn't adequately explain it to them.
- __s 8y agoJohn Oliver discussed how to adequately explain in a segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M tl;dw people care when dick pics are being surveilled
- gaelian 8y agoI remember watching that segment and thought it was a great illustration of the problem of people not truly caring about their privacy unless given a highly visceral and easy to understand explanation. The thing is though, even this kind of explanation doesn't seem to stick over time.
- icelancer 8y agoThe Fappening should have triggered that type of reaction. It didn't. Because it wasn't the average person who got snooped on, just celebrities. And people love looking at celebrities, nude and otherwise.
- enraged_camel 8y agoNah, we did. Here's the hard truth: the overwhelming majority of Americans don't care about being surveilled. They may say they do, but at the end of the day, the issue doesn't affect most of them directly (or even indirectly) and therefore goes to the bottom of the pile.
- ThrowawayR2 8y agoThey're far more concerned with being able to put food on the table and being able to retire someday than anything else. Can you really blame them?
- brokenmachine 8y agoPeople are so consumed with living hand-to-mouth that they don't have the energy to care about current or future tyranny. So... well played, government.
- acct1771 8y agoBread and circuses until they realize they've been stripped. Then, Rome.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> we (the techies) didn't adequately explain it to them We’re also perfectly happy making money in the employment of those making the problem worse, e.g. Facebook. Silicon Valley has neither the political stamina nor moral high ground for solving this problem. In its absence, there isn’t a clear coalition leader.
- cmroanirgo 8y agoI always used a series of arguments on the "I've got nothing to hide" mentality. I've always responded, with: "Yes you do. Do you have curtains on your windows? Do you wear clothes? If you don't care about privacy, open your curtains and walk down the street naked." But the fact is that apathy is so high, that people don't give a damn when they're installing some app -- we're too focused on getting what we want (at that moment in time), and really not caring about sending up personal details to the cloud. When I try to talk about apps (eg Messenger, WhatsApp) that requires access to the contact list -- everyone I've spoken to really don't care. They don't care that my details are sent to some company (FB) because they want to use WhatsApp. When I try to talk about state level surveillance, I try to liken it to some sleazy guy taking photos up a woman's dress. It's wrong, no matter how you go about it. Just because I'm "in public" in no way suggests that I should be subjected to a "fully exposed" surveillance system. The same goes for the internet. Of course, this last part is non-legal rhetoric of mine, but I genuinely feel that if I think that I should have an expectation to privacy, regardless of my location, then the civil and polite thing to do is to respect that. State level surveillance all too easily disregards civility and politeness in the pursuit of their goals.
- godelski 8y agoI've had better success talking about hackers and foreign agents. Which are also a real threat. But if people are quoting Goebbels they probably don't think an evil person that would use these tools would rise to power. But when explaining how foreign governments and hackers can use the same tools (because NOTHING is unhackable), people get worried. A simple example: recently there was the article about the DEA and ICE putting cameras in streetlights [0]. It is easy for the common person to understand how such a thing could be hacked and used to stalk someone. But the examples you use should target your audience and illustrate why they personally should be concerned. Because talking about turnkey tyranny is fairly abstract to most people. [0] https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-cameras-in-streetlights/ https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillan...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> nothing's changed 2FA, E2E communications, TLS everywhere, tightening security on our phones and computers, Congress rolling back some of the NSA’s dragnet powers, allied countries switching to open source and re-evaluating intelligence sharing agreements, and a sharp rise in VPN use is nothing?
- auslander 8y ago> E2E communications What popular by masses E2E encrypted comms are there?
- GuiA 8y agoI’m surprised by the amount of my non techie friends who are using Signal.
- godelski 8y agoI try to get all my friends to use it. Since a lot like to use WhatsApp anyway it usually isn't too hard. But Signal doesn't have a push from a big company like WA does. Generally it is my friends from India that I can't move, because all of their communication is done with WA anyway. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that such a stronghold could happen for Signal too. But it needs to be spread by word of mouth.
- Forbo 8y agoWhatsApp and FB messenger now use the Signal protocol for their encrypted comms.
- jameskegel 8y agoI don’t trust them to implement the protocol without deviating from the accepted safe practices surrounding them. It is against their interest.
- lumberjack 8y agoEveryone is very aware of private mass surveillance now. Everyone knows that they are being tracked in their daily lives by Google and Facebook and they know in which way the are being tracked too. So maybe, not much changed in terms of laws but people are significantly more aware now. What used to be conspiracy theory is now accepted fact. Stallman is no longer the butt of the joke. Technologists that used to dismiss privacy concerns can no longer do so.
- code_duck 8y agoUnfortunately, a lot of the people who are aware have bought into the idea that it is not harmful or only associated with advertising recommendations that are beneficial to them, even. They don’t recognize the potential for misuse of their personal data and surveillance. Multiple times in coffee shops i have overheard conversations where a man in his 20s is saying opinions to that effect.
- godelski 8y agoI think this is because most people that are against it only talk about turn key tyranny. But few talk about how hackers can use the same things. How a foreign government can use the same tools (by hacking us), or as John Oliver pointed out, the government has your dick pics. And any nudes you sent.
- cuspycode 8y agoPeople who spy on their own countrymen should be regarded as traitors, in my opinion. And they should be prosecuted as traitors, and punished as traitors. However, the theory of the "Deep State" and its influences makes it difficult to accomplish this. How can we fix this?
- mycall 8y agoCreate a culture that is opposed to it. Films, TV, Advertising, Sports, Billboards.. when neighbors are expected to spy on each other then the fabric of society breaks down.
- mLuby 8y agoCulture is opposed to it. Hollywood movies and TV shows generally portray mass surveillance as a tool of oppression or as a last resort (The Dark Knight).
- nickpsecurity 8y agoI see the opposite: all the cop and terrorist shows have them stopping lots of big threats through their databases and/or ignoring the law (eg illegal searches). That's most of them my friends and family watch. You don't see a lot of them where they're constantly talking about how some terrorist is an incompetent idiot, the bosses want terrorist arrests in the paper, they need to motivate them to confess on video for an arrest, maybe supply them some weapons/training, and some guy gets paid $100,000 to do that. And then they do that a bunch more times hyping up the threat. Or just police work respecting Constitutional rights catching bad folks since most are sloppy with fictional Congress, cops and courts shooting down things like Patriot Act. Nah, it's stuff that reinforces what the government is doing or shows problems that wouldn't lead to rebellion. Pretty consistently. Especially the one or two episodes of Person of Interest I saw.
- chasil 8y agoThere is a very specific constitutional definition of treason. Another class of crime should likely be used. Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoHe (and Greenwald etc) moved the reality of mass surveillance in the West from somewhere between "it happens in other countries, but not here where we are Free" past "tinfoil hat derision" and into to a reality that we have to accept and deal with. For one person, it's quite an achievement. As for what has changed, Only in the movies would there be a neat resolution, and we go back to being safe. We can never go back. But at least we know where we are. Fixing it is now our problem.
- stirlo 8y ago^This The people of the west can no longer look at China/Iran/Russia and say they're police states without looking at what they've allowed in their own countries. Once China's "Social Credit" system is in full force and in the governments eyes working well (undoubtedly crime/social tension will decrease, at the cost of freedom) will the west start copying these technologies just like their spy agencies did after 9/11?
- zzzcpan 8y agoSocial credit is already a thing for the people of the west. Where people have to pass various checks for everyday things, so that ideologically wrong people could get punished and removed from ideologically right circles by not allowing them to get decent jobs and decent places to live.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoSocial Credit is merely a virtual representation of something that is already very real. Our reputations precede us, a decade of hard drinking, abuse and fighting in pubs will earn you a social score amoungst your local area, as will a decade of volunteer work with a local charity. Putting those online is not inherently a stupid or bad thing. Putting them online without a means to view them, without controls on who can view them, without ability to redress wrongs or corrections, without institutions that support it, yes that's crazy. We are never going back to a world where only your neighbours knew what you were like, but we do not either have to go to a world where only the Stasi or ad-tech firms do too.
- JoshCalbet 8y agoNow we have letsencrypt.org
- metildaa 8y agoAnd more and more normal people are on Signal & Riot. Hopefully Briar and Mastodon continue to improve, Briar for metadata free chats would be a great thing to normalize.
- buboard 8y agohow long until we find out something terrible about it?
- schoen 8y ago(I work on Let's Encrypt.) Let's Encrypt doesn't ever possess your private keys, doesn't know who connects to your site if you use OCSP stapling, and doesn't control what kind of cryptography you use when negotiating TLS sessions with your site visitors. Let's Encrypt also doesn't need any contact information from you when you obtain a certificate. Let's Encrypt certificates aren't trusted by Chrome without a proof of inclusion in public Certificate Transparency logs, so all issued certificates have to be disclosed. As I've said in a number of HN comments, the people working on Let's Encrypt generally still think that the CA system is too powerful, and are happy for your suggestions about how about it can made more transparent and less powerful.
- buboard 8y ago
- superkuh 8y agoIt doesn't really help the issue at large but in my personal life it was nice to say, "I told you so." and not get called a crazy person anymore.
- motohagiography 8y agoWorked in security for over decade before Snowden, kept finding things I couldn't talk about, knowing I'd found the tip of an iceberg in many places without being able to piece it together. When it all came out, was relieved not to be nuts, and was more interested in what regular people thought of the whole thing. Normal people know what "parallel construction," is and how elected governments will use these systems for political ends. What I don't understand is why it's not a bigger public issue with all the controversy around the current U.S. president. The scenario where a radical takes power and has control of these systems was the precise nightmare scenario everyone was concerned about, and yet mass surveillance just isn't a part of the popular discourse in the culture war. Is it because the other team wants to use it too, or is it because the current perceived radical tyrant isn't dangerous enough?
- saint_fiasco 8y agoFortunately Trump's supporters aren't fans of the intelligence community either, maybe partly thanks to Snowden.
- linkregister 8y agoThey're fans of the torture and assassinations though! In before I'm accused of mischaracterization, a quick web search will reveal Mr. Trump's emphatic glee regarding torture.
- superkuh 8y agoThe last 3 presidents have all supported the expansion of executive power, torture programs, and used (and expanded) the purely executive branch assassination program. They've all been terrible people who support torture and assassination. Obama and Trump take it even further by assassinating US citizens including minors.
- nabla9 8y agoSnowden revealed that big companies voluntarily cooperated with NSA+CIA (with the exception of Twitter) and provided api's for snooping. It would be nice to see if things have changed behind the scenes. My hope is that more of them are just complying with court orders and refuse cooperating with mass surveillance. Mass surveillance without cooperation is very expensive and don't always work.
- stirlo 8y agoYou should ask Joseph Nacchio from Qwest how that works out for them... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveillance_requests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveilla...
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe proper way to react is to sanction them. You all have the means - just stop buying from any collaborators ever again. They will get the message.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoNo, Snowden "revealed" the big tech companies voluntarily cooperated with the FBI. In quotes because we already knew that. PRISM simply takes data that the FBI requested via court order and ingests it into NSA data processing system.
- acct1771 8y agoNo, we didn't. We believed it. Media portrayed it. Now, we know it.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoNo, we knew it. The FBI has always had the ability to get data from communications companies for specific subscribers via a court order. This is as true for email and chat as it is for phones.
- throw2016 8y agoNothing, and no one cares. It's like the aged grandfather wheeled out at special occasions to reassure everyone they care, and promptly wheeled back out of sight. Life goes on. Snowden is an embarrassment for those who use human rights, freedom and democracy to further other interests. Hence the deafening silence. The entire ecosystem that supports dissenters with asylum, grand freedom narratives and wall to wall coverage about evil regimes and heroic protest closed shop for Snowden, Assange, Manning and others. Imagine the hysteria of the 'free world' in unison against the totalitarian chinese if there was no Snowden and a chinese dissenter leaked something like this, and his or her subsequent global fame as a defender of freedom. Now look as Snowden stranded in Russia and Assange in the Ecuador embassy. That is the pathetic state of pretension. And instead of demonizing others and filling pages upon pages scaremongering about totalitarian surveillance vs democracy, its surveillance that is being demoted to a lesser transgression, even something 'acceptable' if not 'necessary', and that's what Snowden changed.
- scottlocklin 8y agoIt's amazing and almost completely unremarked how pwned the NGOs are by western intel agencies. I mean some of them have always been known to be spook outposts (Freedom house), but ... it seems virtually all of them are.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lern_too_spel 8y ago> Imagine the hysteria of the 'free world' in unison against the totalitarian chinese if there was no Snowden and a chinese dissenter leaked something like this, and his or her subsequent global fame as a defender of freedom. That's a silly thing to imagine. China makes no secret of doing domestic mass surveillance (and censorship) far worse than anything in Snowden's leaks.
- _asummers 8y agoSemi off topic, but I used to work with his girlfriend 10 years ago or so. It was really strange seeing pictures of her and Snowden pop up in my Facebook feed, and even stranger seeing her on the stage of the Oscars for Citizen Four.
- Theodores 8y agoBy analogy... Our relationship with shops has changed over the last 30 years thanks to CCTV (affordable webcams) and point of sale systems. We went from an era where we were not expected to be 'filmed as we shopped' to taking it for granted. In the pre-CCTV days different strategies were needed for preventing slippage. Helpful shop assistants would ask suspicious customers if they 'needed any help'. Having stock locked away in glass fronted cabinets helped too, having all the goodies behind the counter or in hard to get to window displays helped too. There was a lot more going on than physical security though. If your prices were actually reasonable and if everyone in town loved your store then you wouldn't get robbed. Being locally owned rather than part of a chain helped as theft from a big chain could be imagined to be only costing some notional insurance company (in a thief's mind wanting to justify stealing). Community also mattered in that nobody wants to steal from a shop they rely on, so getting barred from the local newsagents was not a desirable outcome. Nobody would steal a packet of sweets from a shopkeeper who they knew the name of and depended on for their daily newspaper/milk/fags/top-shelf magazines. Kids could be watched or only allowed in two at a time, adults could be trusted due to soft levers of trust. Nowadays though you just wouldn't have a fortune in stock laid out ready for people to slip into their pockets, you would have CCTV, on every aisle, from both sides and from both directions. You would have some outsourced security contractor monitoring the CCTV and telling staff if they needed to apprehend anyone. There would be no 'he said vs shopkeeper said' discussion with the police, CCTV does the evidence providing bit. The thing is that the CCTV works without anyone looking at the monitor screens. The 'smile you are on CCTV' signs are a huge part of it. They instil fear in the souls of the shoplifter. Coupled with this there is no need for patrons to actually know the staff or for them to know neighbours that could also be shopping. With increased mobility (people shop far and wide these days) the nature of shopping has changed. The difference that the Snowden leaks have made is that we now know that the CCTV is 'everywhere', in our email and phone calls too. This ubiquitous spying works in a similar way to CCTV in retail - behaviour is controlled. We accept CCTV in retail in part because we want our pint of milk (or whatever it is) and there is no option to buy what we need from places that don't have CCTV. We are not going to buy a pasture and get a herd of cows going just to have that spot of milk in our tea. CCTV can't be objected to. Similarly in post-Snowden world we still have needs to communicate and we just have to accept the spying. That is what has changed, an acceptance of it.
- atoav 8y agoSnowden and Trump both showed how brittle the societies are that we are living in
- detcader 8y agoWhistleblowing always makes it more difficult for the human rights violators. Some of these people will finish their workday in government or tech companies and be with families and friends who really don't care about their actions, but even then, they still have to wonder and worry. "Do they think I'm spying on them, after Snowden reported that NSA men passed around private images of girls they found? Will I be named in the history books as a monster?" It's always worth it. It's karma.
- rubatuga 8y agoJust a comment to ask general HN members, do you think the Snowden legacy has resulted in a more stressful world? As they say, ignorance is bliss, but Snowden's allegations have forced the public to realize the extent of the surveillance being conducted. Humans (and crows) become stressed when being observed by others, and this could mean citizens now have a higher stress rate. Could it be that Snowden's legacy has resulted in a decrease in net productivity from stressed Americans?
- wallacoloo 8y ago> Could it be that Snowden's legacy has resulted in a decrease in net productivity from stressed Americans? In the short term, it’s entirely possible - there’s probably some productivity metric (it’s not exactly a well-defined term) that was negatively impacted. Long term, honesty is the pillar atop which so much of what’s good in life is built (and that does include some measures of productivity: effective business decisions are those supported by fact and grounded in truth). There’s just no frame of reference in which an honest person can support sacrificing the truth in exchange for some temporary, perceived improvement in quality of life. It’s a pointless endeavor, anyway: anything built on falsehood will, eventually, be exposed. Leaks happen. Though Snowden is exceptional, his story is hardly an exception to the rule.
- auslander 8y agoNot an American :) But it pushed me to un-google myself and switch all my data to Apple. They do security properly. I have not a single byte of Google code on all my desk/laptops and phones. No Chrome, no Android, no Gmail, no Google Maps. I do feel less stressed now, because i was aware of what he made public. As for general public, I believe it added stress, and it is right thing, it might lead to some changes, and slow down surveillance apparatus.
- auslander 8y agoSnowden's stuff is about how Gov sources your data. That is a good start, but is only one part of the problem. We need another Snowden to leak how corporations source, aggregate and store your data. A whistleblower from inside Google/Facebook/AdTech/CDNs.
- M2Ys4U 8y agoI'm slightly surprised that neither the article nor commenters here have mentioned Safe Harbor (or Privacy Shield). Well, maybe not _that_ surprised, this is a very American-centric community. Snowden's revelations had a direct effect on transatlantic ties, with the Court of Justice of the European Union holding that the EU-US Safe Harbor system violated the essence of the right to a private life. That's a big deal, and it's a very important piece of case law here now. I'm not sure if Schrems would have been able to make his case without those details being made public.