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Everybody’s worst nightmares when it comes to surveillance keep coming true. I’ve started to suspect the “I got nothing to hide” attitude that many privacy advo

Everybody’s worst nightmares when it comes to surveillance keep coming true. I’ve started to suspect the “I got nothing to hide” attitude that many privacy advocates criticize is at some level a defense mechanism for the realization that you’re completely owned and completely powerless. In other words, they know that if they really sat down and thought about what was in their Google searches, DNS lookups, or credit card purchases they would be very disturbed, so they choose not to think about it to maintain sanity. People are smarter than we give them credit for. Because many on HN know and consciously recognize the facts here, my question would be: how do you all cope with surveillance?

jeffbee 6y ago
I'm not seeing the problem. The feds got a search warrant to find searches for the term "guccifer" from before the term existed, and got a direct hit on the actual culprit. Not some kind of dragnet at all.
- analyte123 6y ago
  The affidavit does not say these were the only Google records, and the rest of the thread in the link talks about how this information was already public knowledge at the time.
onionisafruit 6y ago
Just what you said. I ignore it because I know the other option is living offline and maybe off grid.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  Seconded. Essentially hope that you’re such a small fry the machine won’t turn it’s gaze on you. Trying to vote for people who will curb it’s power and support those who blow the whistle or sound the alarm.
- runbyfruity 6y ago
  Are we really that lacking in creativity that we can't imagine a world in between "Panopticon" and "Oregon Trail"? Legislation that makes this illegal would be a great (and really easy) start.
  - tribby 6y ago
    I disagree with legislation being an easy path forward. legislation takes a long time. for example, we are 12 years into jewel v. NSA. even if you do change the law, lawmakers can create (and other governmental bodies can apply) other, conflicting law. it's very cat-and-mouse in the age of the PATRIOT act, secret courts, etc.
    - sthnblllII 6y ago
      Agreed. Legislation will even take an infinite amount of time to pass when the political parties in power don't want to pass it (despite any ineffective posturing to the contrary).
    - mapgrep 6y ago
      A court case in the judicial branch does not in any way speak to the difficulty of enacting legislation the legislative branch. Our system of government intentionally separates the creation of laws from their interpretation. It’s really not that complicated. If sufficient political will existed to enact stronger clearer privacy protections, legislation would be drafted and approved rapidly, and there is no reason Generating that political will is another matter.
  - awalton 6y ago
    > Legislation that makes this illegal would be a great (and really easy) start. Legislation is really working right now, with Congress sitting on 400+ bills and refusing to vote on them, and with known members of the government, including the actual President of the United States of America, committing crimes and the top law enforcement agent doing worse than nothing about it. Laws work in a society that values them. Once you throw that away, your authoritarians will do whatever fits their needs. And surprise, the authoritarians are doing just that right now.
- nuker 6y ago
  > I ignore it because I know the other option is living offline and maybe off grid. Better option is using simple privacy tools. VPN, incognito browsing, vetting apps and permissions and avoid Google services.
jariel 6y ago
Careful in speaking for 'everybody' - because I would imagine in many cases, 'most people' (though probably not 'most HN-ers') are fine with the rules in places so long as they are civic and actually followed, i.e. oversight, Judicial warrants, proportionality etc.. There are absolutely issues of legitimate natural security for many things, then it becomes a matter of how we balance privacy vs. the functional needs of the community. If the FBI legitimately discovers some crazies trying to make a nuclear bomb, I can imagine a Judge authorizing some kinds of searches which would not otherwise be allowed, and that 'most people' would find that justified. Of course, widespread surveillance, especially of the arbitrary kind (i.e. catch-alls) and information gathering relegated to local-yocal Police Forces, probably are going to be problematic in the view of 'most people'. And of course, there is the big hypocritical fact that bothers me a lot about this: that Google, who has absolutely no interest other that 'profit' seems to get a free pass on a lot of things while a national security apparatus, who's objectives are entirely in the realm of 'public service' - even when we don't always agree what those objectives are - are somehow more cynically scrutinized. So the question is: how much of a threat is Guccifer, and what are reasonable means that we can use to go after him? Which will probably always be a hard question to answer.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  I think the reason most people are fine is because they don't see the danger or don't feel that it's real. It's the "it won't happen to me" attitude. But when someone innocent gets caught up in it, then it's too late and there's no remedy.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Like, what if someone finds out they support BLM, drink cola, shop online, and watch movies over the internet, ... oh the horror! My impression is half of HN are into some sort of espionage or something. 50% of people's darkest secret is they sniff their hand after scratching their arse; and they do that in front of everyone without batting an eyelid. "But what if they get caught up in something", like what, the scandal over who ate the last snack in the break room?
perl4ever 6y ago
If someone wants to home in and destroy you, they've always been able to do that without total surveillance. If the records exist, and you're not guilty of the crime, hope exists that you could be cleared. Doesn't it make more sense for one's worst fear to be accused of something for which you are innocent but have no alibi?
- pooya13 6y ago
  Data leads to control (in the extreme case, the government knowing all your thoughts can pretty much control your life). Sometimes this control is warranted, like using anonymized data to prevent crimes, with a panel of independent citizens auditing the access to make sure it is benefiting the society at large as opposed to a minority. But sometimes it can be used nefariously. For example the state can push propaganda based on the private data of the citizens, making the government less democratic over time to promote the agenda of a minority. My position is we don’t trust that use is legitimate, and don’t assume that states access to private data is in the benefit of the citizens. The government is always assumed guilty until proven innocent.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  You're right, but then you have the problem of credibility. If Google's records are credible for this, then what's the chance that somebody will notice if some of those records are manufactured? It's like forging signatures - it's a problem because we trust signatures to some extent.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I don't exactly disagree in one sense, but this argument seems like it kind of generalizes to the idea that "better is worse", which I can't agree to. The more technical details of recordkeeping or surveillance that there are, the more likely a frame-up will have flaws that people notice.
    - sjy 6y ago
      I don’t think the argument generalises quite that far, but it does go as far as “more information is worse.” The presumption of innocence is a valuable principle to which this applies. We ignore evidence that suggests that someone is guilty of a crime until the court process has finished, and if they’re “probably guilty” we say they’re actually “not guilty” for fairness reasons.
Unesco88 6y ago
>Because many on HN know and consciously recognize the facts here, my question would be: how do you all cope with surveillance? Because it was predicted the public would acquise to the powers that be by smarter people then you 100 years ago. AKA the idea human beings are free is an illusion, see Decline of the west - Oswald spengler.
cmroanirgo 6y ago
As an Aussie it's becoming increasingly clear that my wish to run my own servers in order to maintain some semblance of privacy is quite likely going to become a massive liability to my freedom, if the current state of affairs continues much longer. To be clear, by hosting a website I'm liable to "authorities" wanting to access everything anyway. By using a website in this increasingly fascist world, it becomes increasingly likely that my websites/mail servers will look "interesting", simply because I'm not "toeing the line"
- microcolonel 6y ago
  > To be clear, by hosting a website I'm liable to "authorities" wanting to access everything anyway In America at least, a search of this nature has to be very narrow in order to be valid, even the secret ones.
  - fault_lines 6y ago
    In America, the validity of a search is rarely an impediment to carrying it out.
  - hypersoar 6y ago
    This is from Mapp v. Ohio, an old Warren Court decision establishing the exclusionary rule. It has long since been hacked to the bone.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I so wish you were right but this is very much not correct.
  - caconym_ 6y ago
    If you believe this is true in practice, I've got a bridge to sell you.
    - ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
      In case any were curious of the origin of this phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker
momokoko 6y ago
It is a combination of feeling powerless and feeling afraid. The majority is more afraid of what will happen if the government does not find the information to catch the person trying to hurt them, than they are about the government finding information about them and hurting them with it. Remember it is majority rules. Not even 80/20 but 51/49. You only need 51 percent of people to have less to hide. And people in the majority are typically not the ones that have things to hide for legitimate reasons. It is the people in the minority that are innocent of any wrongdoing , but be undesirable for some reason, that have something to fear.
- thatcat 6y ago
  Legislation isn't based on majority votes though...
  - bnj 6y ago
    Sorry, it’s not clear if this is meant in sarcasm—- maybe I’m misinterpreting, but how exactly is legislation passed if not by majority vote?
    - cam_l 6y ago
      Not OP, but at least in oz we live in a representative democracy. That means that though 51% may support the current government, any one piece of legislation only needs to have the support of the majority in parliament. It could have zero support in the community. It happens often enough when people are polled on the legislation itself, rather than party preferences, people overwhelmingly support positions which may even be antithetical to both sides of parliament. Climate change legislation has enjoyed overwhlming support in oz for years, even amongst a slim majority on the right. People overwhelming support environmental protections. But our parliament this week, under cover of covid, pushed through a massive regression in environemntal protections without even letting their own party discuss the legislation, let alone the opposition or the media.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Representatives are not always representative.
ck2 6y ago
many people still don't realize google has been scraping and tracking everything you've ever bought, for years https://myaccount.google.com/purchases https://myaccount.google.com/purchases
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  That's in your emails. Every email service provider has those records.
eanzenberg 6y ago
Its been 1.5 decades since the patriot act of the same rehashed tropes and fear mongering. Most citizens accept the high level surveillance for high level hackers and criminals. The fear of ‘they’re going to track Joe Schmoe to a strip club and ruin his family life’ hasn’t come close to materializing. Call us when it does. Until then, the dialog between elite tech bubbles like hn or slashdot of 15 years ago and the rest of the country won’t be productive.
- slg 6y ago
  This is the point the tech community needs to focus on. If we want the general public to care about these issue, we need to communicate the repercussions in ways that doesn't just allude to the ideals of "freedom" and "privacy". You need concrete examples of how this can and will go wrong in the short term for normal law-abiding citizens and they need to be scarier than "the government will know your porn searches" which clearly hasn't motivated anyone.
solipsism 6y ago
> I’ve started to suspect the “I got nothing to hide” attitude that many privacy advocates criticize is at some level a defense mechanism for the realization that you’re completely owned and completely powerless. Based on what? Why is it so hard for everyone to believe that the regular public, who haven't spent much time thinking about the complex implications of the eroding of privacy, just doesn't care that much? If they think about it at all, they calculate that is extremely unlikely it will ever negatively impact them. Whether they're right or wrong, that's what they think. Now what makes you think they're actually being driven by some kind of defense mechanism?
3np 6y ago
I spend most of my free time on my homelab and figuring out self-hosted alternatives. For everyone of us that does this and tries to fix a bug, report an issue, write some tooling, or add some tutorial for open source projects, the lower the barrier for others. For each of us that runs their own physical servers (and make your less technical friends use them!) we grow stronger. Use matrix.org (or whatever you believe in), self-host email, promote cryptocurrency. https://searx.github.io/searx/ https://searx.github.io/searx/ I choose to hope the war is not fully lost, yet. But the borders are closing in.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  I host my own matrix, but getting my friends and family to make the switch is proving difficult...
  - 3np 6y ago
    I see it as a long-term project. For now it's mostly me and a few other nerdy friends, and otherwise it's mostly like a "new IRC". Maybe in a year or so it'll be mature to bring people over.
    - d3nj4l 6y ago
      I don't know. It's not as easy to set up as Whatsapp, where you just need your phone number and everything else "just works", and doesn't have the added functionality of Discord, with custom emotes, voice and streaming and servers to effortlessly participate in multiple communities with their own separate channels. My family keeps messaging me on whatsapp because that's where all their friends are and they don't want to switch apps just to talk to me, and my friends are far more comfortable with our online hangout space being discord instead. Element is still rough as a client, and for my self-hosted homeserver I had to put in a couple hours to get video and voice calls working. Unless Matrix magically becomes 10x as polished within a couple years I don't see it becoming popular outside privacy enthusiasts.
      - 3np 6y ago
lern_too_spel 6y ago
The FBI can't see what you searched for without a warrant. They can find out that somebody searched for dcleaks, but they can't find who searched for dcleaks unless they have a warrant for the specific user. This isn't my worst nightmare, not even close.
- sneak 6y ago
  The US intelligence community agencies can access the data directly from Google via PRISM without a warrant, correlate it with their stored XKeyscore/MARINA data, and provide that to the FBI for parallel construction. If you read a number of federal search warrant applications, you will see how flimsy and inaccurate they often are. Judges aren’t in the habit of saying no to the FBI very often.
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    > The US intelligence community agencies can access the data directly from Google via PRISM without a warrant No, they can't. That's a bunch of conspiracy theory gobbledygook not supported by any documents. https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-... If you are an American or in the US, they must obtain a warrant to get your data from Google.
    - sneak 6y ago
      From that URL: > In response to outcry over PRISM, the U.S. director of national intelligence has released some details. Among other things, he says the government "does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers" and that PRISM-related activities are conducted "under court supervision." “unilaterally” is how the first is true: the providers participate and generate the data dumps for them. “supervision” is how the second is true: supervision is NOT a warrant. You have to be careful with the wording. I never claimed they had direct access. PRISM is a program that allows them to download account contents via a special app, which is integrated by these companies, with the cooperation of the companies participating. Google joined the PRISM program on 14 January, 2009, and were assigned the identifier prefix P3. PRISM collection does not require real search warrants, as it falls under Section 702 authorization, authorized by congress in 2018 until 2023 presently. https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://www.eff.org/702-spying They do indeed get the account information downloads directly from the participating companies. They do not have direct access to the companies’ servers (outside of the servers that run the PRISM integration, and perhaps not even direct access to those other than being able to submit PRISM data request jobs). The net effect is the same. Note that being American or being located in the US is insufficient protection against PRISM due to the way Section 702 works in practice as applied by the NSA. This is one of the reasons cited by Snowden about why he came forward: this secret new interpretation of FISA gutted previous warrantless search protections for Americans, sidestepping them entirely.
econcon 6y ago
>Because many on HN know and consciously recognize the facts here, my question would be: how do you all cope with surveillance? I also had this "I've nothing to hide instance" - not that I don't have my own nudes on my phone/Google drive/WhatsApp/telegram but because I know there are very corrupt people whoes greed knows no limit. Surveillance is obviously going to harm my privacy but I am prepared to give it away for greater good atleast the terrorists and other corrupt government officials will not be able to hide behind the privacy which commoners have demanded for themselves.
- minitoar 6y ago
  I am skeptical that commoners and govt officials will experience this the same way.
hkai 6y ago
This is an actual privacy concern. I often see people here on HN take issue with sites recording how much you spent on the page and which products you clicked - for marketing purposes, I have nothing to hide here. But the emails and searches is a different thing.
tootie 6y ago
Is it? There's nothing in this disclosure that says they were fishing. It just says they identified the searches. It's entirely conceivable they had referer logs from the Guccifer site showing hits from Google at specific times and subpoenaed all correlated searches. Law enforcement being able to retrieve this kind of information when it's part of a legitimate criminal investigation is good. The worst nightmare is that broad powers get abused but in this case they caught the right guy.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  It's also entirely conceivable they didn't, and parallel reconstruction has been well-established to be a part of the US justice system for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
  - tootie 6y ago
    Maybe. But there's nothing in this document to say they did.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      Is this not the FBI's own report? Why would they admit to something of questionable legality? That's like trusting the internal investigation from a police department.
      - Fnoord 6y ago
        An internal investigation from a police department should be conducted by a department which is not directly related to the people (police officers) who are being investigated. The reason for this, is to avoid conflict of interest. If such doesn't happen in your country, that makes your country less free than it IMO should be, but don't assume its like this everywhere in the world.
      - tootie 6y ago
        OP seems to be implying that this disclosure is incriminating of some kind overly aggressive search tactic. I'm saying it doesn't seem to imply that at all. This isn't proof of their innocence, it just isn't proof of their guilt. They _might_ be guilty of something, but there's currently no reason to think that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fxtentacle 6y ago
Nicely explains why conspiracy theory nuts are on the rise. "What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us [...] is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories?" https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capit...
fsflover 6y ago
> how do you all cope with surveillance I am doing everything I can, depending on how much free time I have. Using Qubes OS, Whonix, buying GNU/Linux phones etc... Searching with DuckDuckGo, using Firefox, OpenStreeMap etc...

jeffbee 6y ago

I'm not seeing the problem. The feds got a search warrant to find searches for the term "guccifer" from before the term existed, and got a direct hit on the actual culprit. Not some kind of dragnet at all.

analyte123 6y ago
The affidavit does not say these were the only Google records, and the rest of the thread in the link talks about how this information was already public knowledge at the time.

onionisafruit 6y ago

Just what you said. I ignore it because I know the other option is living offline and maybe off grid.

sjtindell 6y ago
Seconded. Essentially hope that you’re such a small fry the machine won’t turn it’s gaze on you. Trying to vote for people who will curb it’s power and support those who blow the whistle or sound the alarm.
runbyfruity 6y ago
Are we really that lacking in creativity that we can't imagine a world in between "Panopticon" and "Oregon Trail"? Legislation that makes this illegal would be a great (and really easy) start.
- tribby 6y ago
  I disagree with legislation being an easy path forward. legislation takes a long time. for example, we are 12 years into jewel v. NSA. even if you do change the law, lawmakers can create (and other governmental bodies can apply) other, conflicting law. it's very cat-and-mouse in the age of the PATRIOT act, secret courts, etc.
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    Agreed. Legislation will even take an infinite amount of time to pass when the political parties in power don't want to pass it (despite any ineffective posturing to the contrary).
  - mapgrep 6y ago
    A court case in the judicial branch does not in any way speak to the difficulty of enacting legislation the legislative branch. Our system of government intentionally separates the creation of laws from their interpretation. It’s really not that complicated. If sufficient political will existed to enact stronger clearer privacy protections, legislation would be drafted and approved rapidly, and there is no reason Generating that political will is another matter.
- awalton 6y ago
  > Legislation that makes this illegal would be a great (and really easy) start. Legislation is really working right now, with Congress sitting on 400+ bills and refusing to vote on them, and with known members of the government, including the actual President of the United States of America, committing crimes and the top law enforcement agent doing worse than nothing about it. Laws work in a society that values them. Once you throw that away, your authoritarians will do whatever fits their needs. And surprise, the authoritarians are doing just that right now.
nuker 6y ago
> I ignore it because I know the other option is living offline and maybe off grid. Better option is using simple privacy tools. VPN, incognito browsing, vetting apps and permissions and avoid Google services.

jariel 6y ago

Careful in speaking for 'everybody' - because I would imagine in many cases, 'most people' (though probably not 'most HN-ers') are fine with the rules in places so long as they are civic and actually followed, i.e. oversight, Judicial warrants, proportionality etc.. There are absolutely issues of legitimate natural security for many things, then it becomes a matter of how we balance privacy vs. the functional needs of the community. If the FBI legitimately discovers some crazies trying to make a nuclear bomb, I can imagine a Judge authorizing some kinds of searches which would not otherwise be allowed, and that 'most people' would find that justified. Of course, widespread surveillance, especially of the arbitrary kind (i.e. catch-alls) and information gathering relegated to local-yocal Police Forces, probably are going to be problematic in the view of 'most people'. And of course, there is the big hypocritical fact that bothers me a lot about this: that Google, who has absolutely no interest other that 'profit' seems to get a free pass on a lot of things while a national security apparatus, who's objectives are entirely in the realm of 'public service' - even when we don't always agree what those objectives are - are somehow more cynically scrutinized. So the question is: how much of a threat is Guccifer, and what are reasonable means that we can use to go after him? Which will probably always be a hard question to answer.

Aerroon 6y ago
I think the reason most people are fine is because they don't see the danger or don't feel that it's real. It's the "it won't happen to me" attitude. But when someone innocent gets caught up in it, then it's too late and there's no remedy.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Like, what if someone finds out they support BLM, drink cola, shop online, and watch movies over the internet, ... oh the horror! My impression is half of HN are into some sort of espionage or something. 50% of people's darkest secret is they sniff their hand after scratching their arse; and they do that in front of everyone without batting an eyelid. "But what if they get caught up in something", like what, the scandal over who ate the last snack in the break room?

perl4ever 6y ago

If someone wants to home in and destroy you, they've always been able to do that without total surveillance. If the records exist, and you're not guilty of the crime, hope exists that you could be cleared. Doesn't it make more sense for one's worst fear to be accused of something for which you are innocent but have no alibi?

pooya13 6y ago
Data leads to control (in the extreme case, the government knowing all your thoughts can pretty much control your life). Sometimes this control is warranted, like using anonymized data to prevent crimes, with a panel of independent citizens auditing the access to make sure it is benefiting the society at large as opposed to a minority. But sometimes it can be used nefariously. For example the state can push propaganda based on the private data of the citizens, making the government less democratic over time to promote the agenda of a minority. My position is we don’t trust that use is legitimate, and don’t assume that states access to private data is in the benefit of the citizens. The government is always assumed guilty until proven innocent.
Aerroon 6y ago
You're right, but then you have the problem of credibility. If Google's records are credible for this, then what's the chance that somebody will notice if some of those records are manufactured? It's like forging signatures - it's a problem because we trust signatures to some extent.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't exactly disagree in one sense, but this argument seems like it kind of generalizes to the idea that "better is worse", which I can't agree to. The more technical details of recordkeeping or surveillance that there are, the more likely a frame-up will have flaws that people notice.
  - sjy 6y ago
    I don’t think the argument generalises quite that far, but it does go as far as “more information is worse.” The presumption of innocence is a valuable principle to which this applies. We ignore evidence that suggests that someone is guilty of a crime until the court process has finished, and if they’re “probably guilty” we say they’re actually “not guilty” for fairness reasons.

Unesco88 6y ago

>Because many on HN know and consciously recognize the facts here, my question would be: how do you all cope with surveillance? Because it was predicted the public would acquise to the powers that be by smarter people then you 100 years ago. AKA the idea human beings are free is an illusion, see Decline of the west - Oswald spengler.

cmroanirgo 6y ago

As an Aussie it's becoming increasingly clear that my wish to run my own servers in order to maintain some semblance of privacy is quite likely going to become a massive liability to my freedom, if the current state of affairs continues much longer. To be clear, by hosting a website I'm liable to "authorities" wanting to access everything anyway. By using a website in this increasingly fascist world, it becomes increasingly likely that my websites/mail servers will look "interesting", simply because I'm not "toeing the line"

microcolonel 6y ago
> To be clear, by hosting a website I'm liable to "authorities" wanting to access everything anyway In America at least, a search of this nature has to be very narrow in order to be valid, even the secret ones.
- fault_lines 6y ago
  In America, the validity of a search is rarely an impediment to carrying it out.
- hypersoar 6y ago
  This is from Mapp v. Ohio, an old Warren Court decision establishing the exclusionary rule. It has long since been hacked to the bone.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I so wish you were right but this is very much not correct.
- caconym_ 6y ago
  If you believe this is true in practice, I've got a bridge to sell you.
  - ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
    In case any were curious of the origin of this phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker

momokoko 6y ago

It is a combination of feeling powerless and feeling afraid. The majority is more afraid of what will happen if the government does not find the information to catch the person trying to hurt them, than they are about the government finding information about them and hurting them with it. Remember it is majority rules. Not even 80/20 but 51/49. You only need 51 percent of people to have less to hide. And people in the majority are typically not the ones that have things to hide for legitimate reasons. It is the people in the minority that are innocent of any wrongdoing , but be undesirable for some reason, that have something to fear.

thatcat 6y ago
Legislation isn't based on majority votes though...
- bnj 6y ago
  Sorry, it’s not clear if this is meant in sarcasm—- maybe I’m misinterpreting, but how exactly is legislation passed if not by majority vote?
  - cam_l 6y ago
    Not OP, but at least in oz we live in a representative democracy. That means that though 51% may support the current government, any one piece of legislation only needs to have the support of the majority in parliament. It could have zero support in the community. It happens often enough when people are polled on the legislation itself, rather than party preferences, people overwhelmingly support positions which may even be antithetical to both sides of parliament. Climate change legislation has enjoyed overwhlming support in oz for years, even amongst a slim majority on the right. People overwhelming support environmental protections. But our parliament this week, under cover of covid, pushed through a massive regression in environemntal protections without even letting their own party discuss the legislation, let alone the opposition or the media.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Representatives are not always representative.

ck2 6y ago

many people still don't realize google has been scraping and tracking everything you've ever bought, for years https://myaccount.google.com/purchases https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

lern_too_spel 6y ago
That's in your emails. Every email service provider has those records.

eanzenberg 6y ago

Its been 1.5 decades since the patriot act of the same rehashed tropes and fear mongering. Most citizens accept the high level surveillance for high level hackers and criminals. The fear of ‘they’re going to track Joe Schmoe to a strip club and ruin his family life’ hasn’t come close to materializing. Call us when it does. Until then, the dialog between elite tech bubbles like hn or slashdot of 15 years ago and the rest of the country won’t be productive.

slg 6y ago
This is the point the tech community needs to focus on. If we want the general public to care about these issue, we need to communicate the repercussions in ways that doesn't just allude to the ideals of "freedom" and "privacy". You need concrete examples of how this can and will go wrong in the short term for normal law-abiding citizens and they need to be scarier than "the government will know your porn searches" which clearly hasn't motivated anyone.

solipsism 6y ago

> I’ve started to suspect the “I got nothing to hide” attitude that many privacy advocates criticize is at some level a defense mechanism for the realization that you’re completely owned and completely powerless. Based on what? Why is it so hard for everyone to believe that the regular public, who haven't spent much time thinking about the complex implications of the eroding of privacy, just doesn't care that much? If they think about it at all, they calculate that is extremely unlikely it will ever negatively impact them. Whether they're right or wrong, that's what they think. Now what makes you think they're actually being driven by some kind of defense mechanism?

3np 6y ago

I spend most of my free time on my homelab and figuring out self-hosted alternatives. For everyone of us that does this and tries to fix a bug, report an issue, write some tooling, or add some tutorial for open source projects, the lower the barrier for others. For each of us that runs their own physical servers (and make your less technical friends use them!) we grow stronger. Use matrix.org (or whatever you believe in), self-host email, promote cryptocurrency. https://searx.github.io/searx/ https://searx.github.io/searx/ I choose to hope the war is not fully lost, yet. But the borders are closing in.

d3nj4l 6y ago
I host my own matrix, but getting my friends and family to make the switch is proving difficult...
- 3np 6y ago
  I see it as a long-term project. For now it's mostly me and a few other nerdy friends, and otherwise it's mostly like a "new IRC". Maybe in a year or so it'll be mature to bring people over.
  - d3nj4l 6y ago
    I don't know. It's not as easy to set up as Whatsapp, where you just need your phone number and everything else "just works", and doesn't have the added functionality of Discord, with custom emotes, voice and streaming and servers to effortlessly participate in multiple communities with their own separate channels. My family keeps messaging me on whatsapp because that's where all their friends are and they don't want to switch apps just to talk to me, and my friends are far more comfortable with our online hangout space being discord instead. Element is still rough as a client, and for my self-hosted homeserver I had to put in a couple hours to get video and voice calls working. Unless Matrix magically becomes 10x as polished within a couple years I don't see it becoming popular outside privacy enthusiasts.
    - 3np 6y ago

lern_too_spel 6y ago

The FBI can't see what you searched for without a warrant. They can find out that somebody searched for dcleaks, but they can't find who searched for dcleaks unless they have a warrant for the specific user. This isn't my worst nightmare, not even close.

sneak 6y ago
The US intelligence community agencies can access the data directly from Google via PRISM without a warrant, correlate it with their stored XKeyscore/MARINA data, and provide that to the FBI for parallel construction. If you read a number of federal search warrant applications, you will see how flimsy and inaccurate they often are. Judges aren’t in the habit of saying no to the FBI very often.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  > The US intelligence community agencies can access the data directly from Google via PRISM without a warrant No, they can't. That's a bunch of conspiracy theory gobbledygook not supported by any documents. https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-... If you are an American or in the US, they must obtain a warrant to get your data from Google.
  - sneak 6y ago
    From that URL: > In response to outcry over PRISM, the U.S. director of national intelligence has released some details. Among other things, he says the government "does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers" and that PRISM-related activities are conducted "under court supervision." “unilaterally” is how the first is true: the providers participate and generate the data dumps for them. “supervision” is how the second is true: supervision is NOT a warrant. You have to be careful with the wording. I never claimed they had direct access. PRISM is a program that allows them to download account contents via a special app, which is integrated by these companies, with the cooperation of the companies participating. Google joined the PRISM program on 14 January, 2009, and were assigned the identifier prefix P3. PRISM collection does not require real search warrants, as it falls under Section 702 authorization, authorized by congress in 2018 until 2023 presently. https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://www.eff.org/702-spying They do indeed get the account information downloads directly from the participating companies. They do not have direct access to the companies’ servers (outside of the servers that run the PRISM integration, and perhaps not even direct access to those other than being able to submit PRISM data request jobs). The net effect is the same. Note that being American or being located in the US is insufficient protection against PRISM due to the way Section 702 works in practice as applied by the NSA. This is one of the reasons cited by Snowden about why he came forward: this secret new interpretation of FISA gutted previous warrantless search protections for Americans, sidestepping them entirely.

econcon 6y ago

>Because many on HN know and consciously recognize the facts here, my question would be: how do you all cope with surveillance? I also had this "I've nothing to hide instance" - not that I don't have my own nudes on my phone/Google drive/WhatsApp/telegram but because I know there are very corrupt people whoes greed knows no limit. Surveillance is obviously going to harm my privacy but I am prepared to give it away for greater good atleast the terrorists and other corrupt government officials will not be able to hide behind the privacy which commoners have demanded for themselves.

minitoar 6y ago
I am skeptical that commoners and govt officials will experience this the same way.

hkai 6y ago

This is an actual privacy concern. I often see people here on HN take issue with sites recording how much you spent on the page and which products you clicked - for marketing purposes, I have nothing to hide here. But the emails and searches is a different thing.

tootie 6y ago

Is it? There's nothing in this disclosure that says they were fishing. It just says they identified the searches. It's entirely conceivable they had referer logs from the Guccifer site showing hits from Google at specific times and subpoenaed all correlated searches. Law enforcement being able to retrieve this kind of information when it's part of a legitimate criminal investigation is good. The worst nightmare is that broad powers get abused but in this case they caught the right guy.

Judgmentality 6y ago
It's also entirely conceivable they didn't, and parallel reconstruction has been well-established to be a part of the US justice system for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- tootie 6y ago
  Maybe. But there's nothing in this document to say they did.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    Is this not the FBI's own report? Why would they admit to something of questionable legality? That's like trusting the internal investigation from a police department.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      An internal investigation from a police department should be conducted by a department which is not directly related to the people (police officers) who are being investigated. The reason for this, is to avoid conflict of interest. If such doesn't happen in your country, that makes your country less free than it IMO should be, but don't assume its like this everywhere in the world.
    - tootie 6y ago
      OP seems to be implying that this disclosure is incriminating of some kind overly aggressive search tactic. I'm saying it doesn't seem to imply that at all. This isn't proof of their innocence, it just isn't proof of their guilt. They _might_ be guilty of something, but there's currently no reason to think that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fxtentacle 6y ago

Nicely explains why conspiracy theory nuts are on the rise. "What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us [...] is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories?" https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capit...

fsflover 6y ago

> how do you all cope with surveillance I am doing everything I can, depending on how much free time I have. Using Qubes OS, Whonix, buying GNU/Linux phones etc... Searching with DuckDuckGo, using Firefox, OpenStreeMap etc...