10 ms·

25 years of mass surveillance is enough

822 points by iamnothere 24d ago

tastyfreeze 23d ago
Great essay. The Patriot Act may have been the obvious turning point but the FBI had public data collection programs even earlier. The goal was keyword watching of all network traffic. The desire for more collection is baked into government. It is hubris that leads powerful people to think if they only had more control they could stop all ills. The deceit of power makes people believe it doesn't matter what the outcome is if the goal is noble. That is why the founding fathers put restrictions on government power. The people that run it will always fall for the same traps of power because they are just like everybody else. So yes, it is high time to discuss how our rights apply in a digital age and put some reasonable restrictions on the power available to government.
throwitaway222 23d ago
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but it's not enough. The threats are real and active.
smalltorch 24d ago
It's a great write up thankyou. I propose we build and distribute easy to use services designed to run on our own devices, in our own homes, to take full advantage of 1st and 4th amendments, then distribute these services widely with billboards so that people have alternatives and can take advantage of these protections.
- 8by3 24d ago
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- Joker_vD 24d ago
  You mean the 3rd amendment, right?
  - theandrewbailey 23d ago
    Third Amendment is about not quartering troops. Fourth Amendment is protection against warrantless seizures. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
    - edoceo 23d ago
      Gotta take the "not" out friend.
  - 05hundred 23d ago
    I'm pretty sure 1st and 4th are the ones GP meant. The 1st amendment (free speech) in order to protect the right to host the service in the first place and the 4th one (unreasonable search and seizure) to protect against surveillance. Not sure how the 3rd (lodging of soliders in peacetime) would be relevant.
    - deleted 23d ago
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  - smalltorch 23d ago
    I mean 1 and 4. But you have me thinking about what 3 could mean in the future....and....I would be thrilled to provide a service with my compute to usa solider in need if that's what the future holds. Providing quarters meant food and beds back in the day, but I could see how this could translate to general web services, coms, ect in the future.
- tacomagick 23d ago
  We are trying, but the interop of these self hosted services currently suck. Fediverse is hard to get in to unless you have many users or you just have to join a popular instance. Who knows what they do in this instance, and it turns back into a loop.
  - convolvatron 23d ago
    I just don't think it's gotten to the point that anyone is interested. I wonder if we did do a better job that the aggressive filtering and monitoring wouldn't naturally move down the stack. for example we could completely obviate Facebook by having a standard mechanism for something like an rss feed. individuals or organizations could publish my stream(s) from their own leaf connections, set up cloud instances, or pay someone to host them. there could be a whole ecosystem of readers with various UIs and policy filters. people/organizations could add value by aggregating trusted streams or filtering them for content some people might find offensive. and at the end of the day it doesn't require people who just want to use it to set up persistent networking and storage. in any case we just got suckered into handing the keys to the internet to companies like Meta and Google, which make vast amounts of money to control the discourse in corrosive ways. all because we bought into the notion that nothing is real unless someone is making a buck off it. having a standard and a whole space of compatible programs doesn't preclude people from making lifestyle money selling filters and aggregators and content, but it kind of removes the Meta-style leverage over the whole system.
  - kreyenborgi 23d ago
    Fediverse doesn't actually solve a problem I have. I'm not on xitter or instabook or myspace and don't want to be. The one saas i really need is email, which is 1. Already decentralized and 2. Getting harder to self host every year due to the escalating war between slopspammers and security measures. Signal solves the async messaging and phone surveillance satisfactorily for my "threat model".
    - tacomagick 23d ago
      I host my own mail, I really did not have any issues for around 3-4 years i've used it. As long as you get your records correct imo it is also very easy to host and use, though Google keeps sending me TLS reports every day.
- module1973 23d ago
  How about this, but also send them usb sticks with loads of data available on them that they thought was "private" including surveillance footage taken from flock cameras etc. That might be good motivation to be more aware. Not sure about the legality of this though lol
  - YCisFlock 23d ago
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ReptileMan 23d ago
Mate I am afraid the world governments are just starting.
- FlockisYC2 23d ago
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N_Lens 23d ago
Surveillance and totalitarian control is a downward spiral of misery and suffering for everyone, even those in power. It reminds me of some quotes from the Tao Te Ching - Restriction breeds the disorder it's meant to prevent (ch. 57) The more prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons, the more the state falls into confusion. The more laws and edicts are posted, the more thieves and bandits there are. The world isn't a thing to be managed (ch. 29) The world is a sacred vessel; it cannot be manipulated. Whoever acts on it ruins it; whoever grips it loses it.
- FlowingRiver 23d ago
  Will add Chapter 46. "When the Tao is present in the universe, The horses haul manure. When the Tao is absent from the universe, War horses are bred outside the city." I would consider surveillance weapons against the people. I think this reflects all manners of international governance nowadays. Also Chapter 17. " When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised." If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy."
- api 23d ago
  Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward. It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement. People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop. I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss. I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.
  - N_Lens 23d ago
    I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.
deleted 23d ago
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RajT88 23d ago
> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like they will win a seat this midterm cycle are going to get arrested for "domestic terrorism".
- chinathrow 23d ago
  That's inline whit some of the goals of the people behind Project 2025 are calling for.
  - criddell 23d ago
    Can you be more specific?
- asaddhamani 23d ago
  As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground
  - ToucanLoucan 23d ago
    As a fellow trans woman, we've been the scapegoat for reactionaries, at least documented, since the rise of the Third Reich. And if we're honest, probably before that. Fixing society-scale problems is really hard. Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside is easy. People reliably choose easy.
    - cik 23d ago
      I'm not going to pretend to understand your stuggle, but I will echo it through my lens. I am not trying to hijack your point, inasmuch support it with my view. I uses to think that it was about fear of the unknown, or as you've said "Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside". I now firmly believe that it's a modern form of tribalism. Having an "other", whether as a scapegoat, a fear inducing device, or a target is simply too convenient to ignore. Whether or not one is a globalist is orthogonal to the fact that people ultimately decide, or evolve to see through a different lens.
deleted 23d ago
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Havoc 23d ago
At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win... Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service, sprinkle some flock cameras on top and you've got a complete surveillance state. Oh and of course you need some goons to scare people into compliance & later in some self-censorship for good measure. We could call the group "Frozen water". ...and we're basically already there on all of it except perhaps the "decrypt later" on https (and even that has rumours). Genuinely don't think this is stoppable anymore.
- Pannoniae 23d ago
  how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly. On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing. People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.
  - Havoc 23d ago
    >if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided No kings protests was a very respectable effort....peaked at 2.3%. Even the current administration inept as it is is basically home free on this one. Senate neutered, Courts sidelined, Treasury subjugated, loyalist in charge of military, JAG core silenced, secondary personal goons squad established and lavishly funded, Social media captured, Stats department dismantled, Cult of personality created, common enemy created (immigrants), distractions for the masses arranged (culture wars, UFC on whitehouse lawn), truth undermined (prez spouting nonstop lies & AI), oligarch class established, surveillance normalized, norm of kiss the ring & pay tribute established. Dunno about you but to me that looks like US democracy is so cooked the kitchen smoke alarm has gone off & everyone was too busy doomscrolling to notice. Hope I'm wrong but that list looks pretty fuckin comprehensive to me. Hell they even somehow managed to throw in a roman salute... >On a more positive note Yeah sorry...above isn't exactly that [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#Turnout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#T...
FLeXMurphy 23d ago
No Comrade Premier, it has only just begun.
- _bobm 23d ago
  Hear, hear!
choonway 23d ago
mass surveillance is like nuclear weapons. it will never go away.
BiteCode_dev 23d ago
> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of telephone or internet metadata. In other words, we gave the terrorists the victory by accepting being terrorized at the country level from a single act and destroying a lot of our freedom. Yeah us.
- laimewhisps 23d ago
  There’s lots of questions around who was actually behind 9/11, looking at who benefited the most is helpful. We may never know the truth but we know who the real “terrorists” are, because they’re terrorizing everyone now.
Kuyawa 23d ago
No it is not, and it will get worse. No matter who is in power, power stays. And power by definition is the capacity to control and plunder without restrictions All these years reading about liberty and philosophy has taught me that the only way out is to make money and disappear, be an eagle, watch the lions eat the sheeple from the top of a mountain, because the sheeple don't want to be freed and worse yet, they will point at you as if you're an outlier, a misfit, a problem that must be fixed by force, their 'democratic' force So fly high, find your peak and watch from there, we only have 100 years to live as we please, not to spend it fighting for those who don't want to be saved Do like Nero, let the world burn and enjoy watching, from afar...
andrewla 23d ago
I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain. Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon. But this is a hopeless fight.
- feanaro 23d ago
  Are you advocating for inaction? If so, what do you wish to achieve?
  - maerF0x0 23d ago
    I would advocate for a shift of power by creating greater individual rights over their data (as their irrevocable property) , and greater oversight and consequences for those in power (ab)using the data. It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.
    - pessimizer 23d ago
      > I would advocate for a shift of power[...] This is not advocating, this is wishing. It is as meaningful as "advocating" that you were rich and that Elon was poor, or "advocating" that you should be six inches taller.
- redberrytea 23d ago
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- kodoman 23d ago
  I am from the UK and we are quite far down the surveillance and control mentality (Flock actually seems a greater system of surveillance then what we have here but if such a system was created, the push back would be less). But a lot of people here are slowly beginning to see the benefits in self defense and gun laws that mean you are not dependent on the police, this kind of logic where people have want autonomy and policing becomes less popular as the inevitable abuses or neglect happen is something that creates change. I don't think it inevitable that this continues.
Varelion 23d ago
NSPM-7 is about to make mass surveillance magnitudes more oppressive and ever-present.
maerF0x0 23d ago
I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need: 1. EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. Data needs to be our own property that we can lend, but can never give up our right to revocation. 2. Stricter controls, and stricter still penalities, need to exist against misuse and abuse. Many of the stories of abuse of data are most stark in their lack of repercussions, some of this is police unions, some of this is "deep state" people who scratch eachother's backs and grant eachother free accesses and immunity. Some of this is a voting issue as in we need to make it known to our candidates that it matters to us, and then push real political power in their hands. Just to help the imagination of all here's where mass surveilance could plausibly add good to society, all stemming from legitimate use: 1. Criminals like porch pirates can be caught using a neetwork of Ring cameras 2. A lost pet/child can be identified and found by drone surveillance 3. Usage data of roads can be updated in realtime 4. Trends and Sentiment could be used to guide the government intra-elections improving the way government serves us 5. Police officers can avoid risky situations using drones as eyes instead of putting their own bodies in harms way
- petcat 23d ago
  > EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. No, I don't think we need Chat Control in the US or our government forcing ISPs and CDNs to block whole swaths of the internet just because a soccer game is on TV.
  - maerF0x0 23d ago
    Fair points, I did not mean undermining encryption or privacy, I meant like GDPR and right to erasure. It'd be even better if there was some form of royalty structure on our data used by companies. It'd be nice if I, at least, received a royalty check each time a data broker sold my data to the CIA.
seydor 23d ago
It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets. We live in war times and will soon see it happening
- ninalanyon 23d ago
  When those in power regard the people as the enemy their natural allies are other governments with similar attitudes. So you don't need to wait until another government gains access, you offer it instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
- godelski 23d ago
  > your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance Which has already happened. Though it is less obvious if high profile targets have been blackmailed or coerced. There's at least signs that some have. Even if not foreign governments, Epstein certainly had leverage
alex1138 23d ago
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-william-binney/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-election... Here's a fun little interview. They had a program that apparently worked, for much cheaper than Michael Hayden's program (I think Trailblazer). Got shelved apparently due to "not expensive enough". 9/11 happens and Binney contends his ThinThread program could have stopped it. You don't want more dragnet surveillance; even beyond the abuses, it leads to it being harder to catch things
Rover222 23d ago
I find it ironic that in the US, there's this social movement against Flock cameras - which have shown real results in tracking down criminals - while everyone walks around all the time with a personal tracking device in the form of a smart phone. That's wayyyy more invasive than cameras along roads.
- iamnothere 23d ago
  Don’t be That Guy please. This tired talking point gets walked out in every privacy discussion. Both things can be (and are) bad at once, but just because one problem exists doesn’t mean that others aren’t worth solving. In any case this article is about the whole spectrum of mass surveillance, not one specific company.
  - Rover222 23d ago
    [flagged]
    - iamnothere 23d ago
      Way to hand wave away all the negative effects of mass surveillance. Car theft is bad, but sleepwalking into dictatorship is worse. There’s also plenty of options for solving car theft that aren’t dystopian.
      - Rover222 23d ago
        Your phone in your pocket is a much more powerful surveillance device. That's my point, it's just pure hivemind to freak out about traffic cameras. I find it pretty dystopian that CVS has to lock up cheap products because society has failed to punish criminals.
        lowbloodsugar 23d ago
        CVS has to lock up products because society has failed to reward hard working people with a living wage. Claiming a society exists while at the same time claiming "fuck you, i got mine", isn't so much a society as "every person for themselves", which, ironically is what you're actually complaining about.
brandon272 23d ago
“Temporary” surveillance powers are never temporary.
- orangeberrytea 23d ago
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shevy-java 23d ago
> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 I see this more as an excuse used by a small corrupt elite wanting to enslave the people. The problem is that you do not have a real democracy in the USA. The current orange clown brigade shows this best (corrupt to the core), but it is not really much better with other roleplaying administrations. Sooner or later people will realise this too, even the not too terribly bright.
- laughing_man 23d ago
  I don't know why Trump's existence is evidence the US does not have a "real" democracy. As a group, we voted for him, and he went to the Oval Office. That's democracy. There are certainly governments outlawing political opponents in the first world, but that's not the US.
  - krapp 23d ago
    When the same guy wins when he gets the popular vote, and wins when he doesn't, that may technically be "democracy" in the sense that a vote occurred and votes were counted, but it clearly isn't fair (and it isn't, it isn't designed to be. If it were fair, the people might do something crazy like vote in a populist demagogue...) And yes, I would say that regarding the other side too.
    - laughing_man 23d ago
      That's just the way the US system is set up. You can't win the presidency by doing really well in the five largest states.
      - krapp 23d ago
        Yes, it was set up that way to keep slave-owning states in the union, which one assumes should no longer be an issue. I don't think you should be able to win the presidency by doing really well in the five largest states necessarily, but I definitely don't think you should be able to win the presidency by only doing well in a couple of swing states.
FlockIsYC 23d ago
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FlockisYC2 23d ago
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blueoranges 23d ago
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orangeberrytea 23d ago
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hulitu 23d ago
25 ? She must be new here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
calebm 23d ago
Proposal: limit access of these camera networks to local jurisdiction. Just like rip-stop fabric and cell walls, boundaries are required for stability, and making it where federal agencies have eyes everywhere is far too dangerous.
oknoooo7 23d ago
Even if you trust all current actors, the tapes of forever. The extremely detailed "Metadata" they have on you will still exist in your children's time.
AtlasBarfed 23d ago
Wasn't carnivore in the 1990s?
stephbook 23d ago
I think the problem is twofold: One, the move to digital lives made digital surveillance necessary. It wasn't enough to check attendance at the local mosque/far right rally. Then, the counter-move to encrypted communication meant law enforcement now had to rely on metadata. Second: A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. LG is snooping on you? I bet they won't see even a 10% drop in sales next year. When the citizenry as consumer blasts their data everywhere, it's hard to argue as parliamentarian that those same people want it protected. Now people use Apple Watches and Amazon Alexa in their own bedrooms! People say they want their data safe guarded, but their actions suggest otherwise.
- godelski 23d ago
  > A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. I think the problem is a bit more subtle. People do seem to care but feel powerless. In addition to that, complexity is high. When you tell people what is possible with massive data they label you as a conspiracy theorist because it's much easier to believe that Facebook is listening to you with a microphone than piecing that information together through thousands if individual pieces of data (especially when you're more likely to notice the hits rather than the misses). So now when they do record everything you say it feels like nothing changed. It's exhaustion, it's impotence, it's desolate. But that's different than apathy. People care, they are just overwhelmed
temptemptemp111 23d ago
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coldtea 23d ago
Enough? They're just getting started...
deleted 23d ago
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Henchman21 23d ago
"There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try." -- Karis Nemek
jan_m_savage 23d ago
Orwell is claimed to have written his books directed at the other side of the Curtain, but in fact, he was merely predicting the effect of power at the hands of the few self-elected (due to randomness -> wealth --> power). "All animals are equal, some animals more equal than others."
OddMerlin 22d ago
I’d venture it was enough the first day.
1vuio0pswjnm7 22d ago
"Surveillance is the business model of the internet; companies like Google and Facebook constantly spy on their users’ behavior." A few oversized websites acting as intermediaries is not "the internet" The internet is a medium. Internet subscribers pay for access to the medium The www is one use of the medium These mass surveillance intermediaries operating websites are not even the entire www But they aim to intermediate access to the rest of it Any subscriber can use the medium and they don't have to conduct surveillance For example They can sell widgets They can buy widgets Commerce They can also use the medium _noncommercially_ The "business model of the internet" is subscriptions. We pay for access to the medium The (most successful) business model of the www (so far) might be advertising. That could change But the www is not the internet. The internet is a medium, not what travels over it. It's not advertising, it's not content

822 points by iamnothere 24d ago

Great essay. The Patriot Act may have been the obvious turning point but the FBI had public data collection programs even earlier. The goal was keyword watching of all network traffic. The desire for more collection is baked into government. It is hubris that leads powerful people to think if they only had more control they could stop all ills. The deceit of power makes people believe it doesn't matter what the outcome is if the goal is noble. That is why the founding fathers put restrictions on government power. The people that run it will always fall for the same traps of power because they are just like everybody else. So yes, it is high time to discuss how our rights apply in a digital age and put some reasonable restrictions on the power available to government.

throwitaway222 23d ago

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but it's not enough. The threats are real and active.

smalltorch 24d ago

It's a great write up thankyou. I propose we build and distribute easy to use services designed to run on our own devices, in our own homes, to take full advantage of 1st and 4th amendments, then distribute these services widely with billboards so that people have alternatives and can take advantage of these protections.

8by3 24d ago
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Joker_vD 24d ago
You mean the 3rd amendment, right?
- theandrewbailey 23d ago
  Third Amendment is about not quartering troops. Fourth Amendment is protection against warrantless seizures. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
  - edoceo 23d ago
    Gotta take the "not" out friend.
- 05hundred 23d ago
  I'm pretty sure 1st and 4th are the ones GP meant. The 1st amendment (free speech) in order to protect the right to host the service in the first place and the 4th one (unreasonable search and seizure) to protect against surveillance. Not sure how the 3rd (lodging of soliders in peacetime) would be relevant.
  - deleted 23d ago
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- smalltorch 23d ago
  I mean 1 and 4. But you have me thinking about what 3 could mean in the future....and....I would be thrilled to provide a service with my compute to usa solider in need if that's what the future holds. Providing quarters meant food and beds back in the day, but I could see how this could translate to general web services, coms, ect in the future.
tacomagick 23d ago
We are trying, but the interop of these self hosted services currently suck. Fediverse is hard to get in to unless you have many users or you just have to join a popular instance. Who knows what they do in this instance, and it turns back into a loop.
- convolvatron 23d ago
  I just don't think it's gotten to the point that anyone is interested. I wonder if we did do a better job that the aggressive filtering and monitoring wouldn't naturally move down the stack. for example we could completely obviate Facebook by having a standard mechanism for something like an rss feed. individuals or organizations could publish my stream(s) from their own leaf connections, set up cloud instances, or pay someone to host them. there could be a whole ecosystem of readers with various UIs and policy filters. people/organizations could add value by aggregating trusted streams or filtering them for content some people might find offensive. and at the end of the day it doesn't require people who just want to use it to set up persistent networking and storage. in any case we just got suckered into handing the keys to the internet to companies like Meta and Google, which make vast amounts of money to control the discourse in corrosive ways. all because we bought into the notion that nothing is real unless someone is making a buck off it. having a standard and a whole space of compatible programs doesn't preclude people from making lifestyle money selling filters and aggregators and content, but it kind of removes the Meta-style leverage over the whole system.
- kreyenborgi 23d ago
  Fediverse doesn't actually solve a problem I have. I'm not on xitter or instabook or myspace and don't want to be. The one saas i really need is email, which is 1. Already decentralized and 2. Getting harder to self host every year due to the escalating war between slopspammers and security measures. Signal solves the async messaging and phone surveillance satisfactorily for my "threat model".
  - tacomagick 23d ago
    I host my own mail, I really did not have any issues for around 3-4 years i've used it. As long as you get your records correct imo it is also very easy to host and use, though Google keeps sending me TLS reports every day.
module1973 23d ago
How about this, but also send them usb sticks with loads of data available on them that they thought was "private" including surveillance footage taken from flock cameras etc. That might be good motivation to be more aware. Not sure about the legality of this though lol
- YCisFlock 23d ago
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ReptileMan 23d ago

Mate I am afraid the world governments are just starting.

FlockisYC2 23d ago
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N_Lens 23d ago

Surveillance and totalitarian control is a downward spiral of misery and suffering for everyone, even those in power. It reminds me of some quotes from the Tao Te Ching - Restriction breeds the disorder it's meant to prevent (ch. 57) The more prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons, the more the state falls into confusion. The more laws and edicts are posted, the more thieves and bandits there are. The world isn't a thing to be managed (ch. 29) The world is a sacred vessel; it cannot be manipulated. Whoever acts on it ruins it; whoever grips it loses it.

FlowingRiver 23d ago
Will add Chapter 46. "When the Tao is present in the universe, The horses haul manure. When the Tao is absent from the universe, War horses are bred outside the city." I would consider surveillance weapons against the people. I think this reflects all manners of international governance nowadays. Also Chapter 17. " When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised." If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy."
api 23d ago
Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward. It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement. People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop. I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss. I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.
- N_Lens 23d ago
  I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

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RajT88 23d ago

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like they will win a seat this midterm cycle are going to get arrested for "domestic terrorism".

chinathrow 23d ago
That's inline whit some of the goals of the people behind Project 2025 are calling for.
- criddell 23d ago
  Can you be more specific?
asaddhamani 23d ago
As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground
- ToucanLoucan 23d ago
  As a fellow trans woman, we've been the scapegoat for reactionaries, at least documented, since the rise of the Third Reich. And if we're honest, probably before that. Fixing society-scale problems is really hard. Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside is easy. People reliably choose easy.
  - cik 23d ago
    I'm not going to pretend to understand your stuggle, but I will echo it through my lens. I am not trying to hijack your point, inasmuch support it with my view. I uses to think that it was about fear of the unknown, or as you've said "Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside". I now firmly believe that it's a modern form of tribalism. Having an "other", whether as a scapegoat, a fear inducing device, or a target is simply too convenient to ignore. Whether or not one is a globalist is orthogonal to the fact that people ultimately decide, or evolve to see through a different lens.

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Havoc 23d ago

At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win... Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service, sprinkle some flock cameras on top and you've got a complete surveillance state. Oh and of course you need some goons to scare people into compliance & later in some self-censorship for good measure. We could call the group "Frozen water". ...and we're basically already there on all of it except perhaps the "decrypt later" on https (and even that has rumours). Genuinely don't think this is stoppable anymore.

Pannoniae 23d ago
how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly. On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing. People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.
- Havoc 23d ago
  >if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided No kings protests was a very respectable effort....peaked at 2.3%. Even the current administration inept as it is is basically home free on this one. Senate neutered, Courts sidelined, Treasury subjugated, loyalist in charge of military, JAG core silenced, secondary personal goons squad established and lavishly funded, Social media captured, Stats department dismantled, Cult of personality created, common enemy created (immigrants), distractions for the masses arranged (culture wars, UFC on whitehouse lawn), truth undermined (prez spouting nonstop lies & AI), oligarch class established, surveillance normalized, norm of kiss the ring & pay tribute established. Dunno about you but to me that looks like US democracy is so cooked the kitchen smoke alarm has gone off & everyone was too busy doomscrolling to notice. Hope I'm wrong but that list looks pretty fuckin comprehensive to me. Hell they even somehow managed to throw in a roman salute... >On a more positive note Yeah sorry...above isn't exactly that [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#Turnout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#T...

FLeXMurphy 23d ago

No Comrade Premier, it has only just begun.

_bobm 23d ago
Hear, hear!

choonway 23d ago

mass surveillance is like nuclear weapons. it will never go away.

BiteCode_dev 23d ago

> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of telephone or internet metadata. In other words, we gave the terrorists the victory by accepting being terrorized at the country level from a single act and destroying a lot of our freedom. Yeah us.

laimewhisps 23d ago
There’s lots of questions around who was actually behind 9/11, looking at who benefited the most is helpful. We may never know the truth but we know who the real “terrorists” are, because they’re terrorizing everyone now.

Kuyawa 23d ago

No it is not, and it will get worse. No matter who is in power, power stays. And power by definition is the capacity to control and plunder without restrictions All these years reading about liberty and philosophy has taught me that the only way out is to make money and disappear, be an eagle, watch the lions eat the sheeple from the top of a mountain, because the sheeple don't want to be freed and worse yet, they will point at you as if you're an outlier, a misfit, a problem that must be fixed by force, their 'democratic' force So fly high, find your peak and watch from there, we only have 100 years to live as we please, not to spend it fighting for those who don't want to be saved Do like Nero, let the world burn and enjoy watching, from afar...

andrewla 23d ago

I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain. Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon. But this is a hopeless fight.

feanaro 23d ago
Are you advocating for inaction? If so, what do you wish to achieve?
- maerF0x0 23d ago
  I would advocate for a shift of power by creating greater individual rights over their data (as their irrevocable property) , and greater oversight and consequences for those in power (ab)using the data. It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.
  - pessimizer 23d ago
    > I would advocate for a shift of power[...] This is not advocating, this is wishing. It is as meaningful as "advocating" that you were rich and that Elon was poor, or "advocating" that you should be six inches taller.
redberrytea 23d ago
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kodoman 23d ago
I am from the UK and we are quite far down the surveillance and control mentality (Flock actually seems a greater system of surveillance then what we have here but if such a system was created, the push back would be less). But a lot of people here are slowly beginning to see the benefits in self defense and gun laws that mean you are not dependent on the police, this kind of logic where people have want autonomy and policing becomes less popular as the inevitable abuses or neglect happen is something that creates change. I don't think it inevitable that this continues.

Varelion 23d ago

NSPM-7 is about to make mass surveillance magnitudes more oppressive and ever-present.

maerF0x0 23d ago

I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need: 1. EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. Data needs to be our own property that we can lend, but can never give up our right to revocation. 2. Stricter controls, and stricter still penalities, need to exist against misuse and abuse. Many of the stories of abuse of data are most stark in their lack of repercussions, some of this is police unions, some of this is "deep state" people who scratch eachother's backs and grant eachother free accesses and immunity. Some of this is a voting issue as in we need to make it known to our candidates that it matters to us, and then push real political power in their hands. Just to help the imagination of all here's where mass surveilance could plausibly add good to society, all stemming from legitimate use: 1. Criminals like porch pirates can be caught using a neetwork of Ring cameras 2. A lost pet/child can be identified and found by drone surveillance 3. Usage data of roads can be updated in realtime 4. Trends and Sentiment could be used to guide the government intra-elections improving the way government serves us 5. Police officers can avoid risky situations using drones as eyes instead of putting their own bodies in harms way

petcat 23d ago
> EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. No, I don't think we need Chat Control in the US or our government forcing ISPs and CDNs to block whole swaths of the internet just because a soccer game is on TV.
- maerF0x0 23d ago
  Fair points, I did not mean undermining encryption or privacy, I meant like GDPR and right to erasure. It'd be even better if there was some form of royalty structure on our data used by companies. It'd be nice if I, at least, received a royalty check each time a data broker sold my data to the CIA.

seydor 23d ago

It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets. We live in war times and will soon see it happening

ninalanyon 23d ago
When those in power regard the people as the enemy their natural allies are other governments with similar attitudes. So you don't need to wait until another government gains access, you offer it instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
godelski 23d ago
> your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance Which has already happened. Though it is less obvious if high profile targets have been blackmailed or coerced. There's at least signs that some have. Even if not foreign governments, Epstein certainly had leverage

alex1138 23d ago

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-william-binney/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-election... Here's a fun little interview. They had a program that apparently worked, for much cheaper than Michael Hayden's program (I think Trailblazer). Got shelved apparently due to "not expensive enough". 9/11 happens and Binney contends his ThinThread program could have stopped it. You don't want more dragnet surveillance; even beyond the abuses, it leads to it being harder to catch things

Rover222 23d ago

I find it ironic that in the US, there's this social movement against Flock cameras - which have shown real results in tracking down criminals - while everyone walks around all the time with a personal tracking device in the form of a smart phone. That's wayyyy more invasive than cameras along roads.

iamnothere 23d ago
Don’t be That Guy please. This tired talking point gets walked out in every privacy discussion. Both things can be (and are) bad at once, but just because one problem exists doesn’t mean that others aren’t worth solving. In any case this article is about the whole spectrum of mass surveillance, not one specific company.
- Rover222 23d ago
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  - iamnothere 23d ago
    Way to hand wave away all the negative effects of mass surveillance. Car theft is bad, but sleepwalking into dictatorship is worse. There’s also plenty of options for solving car theft that aren’t dystopian.
    - Rover222 23d ago
      Your phone in your pocket is a much more powerful surveillance device. That's my point, it's just pure hivemind to freak out about traffic cameras. I find it pretty dystopian that CVS has to lock up cheap products because society has failed to punish criminals.
      - lowbloodsugar 23d ago
        CVS has to lock up products because society has failed to reward hard working people with a living wage. Claiming a society exists while at the same time claiming "fuck you, i got mine", isn't so much a society as "every person for themselves", which, ironically is what you're actually complaining about.

brandon272 23d ago

“Temporary” surveillance powers are never temporary.

orangeberrytea 23d ago
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shevy-java 23d ago

> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 I see this more as an excuse used by a small corrupt elite wanting to enslave the people. The problem is that you do not have a real democracy in the USA. The current orange clown brigade shows this best (corrupt to the core), but it is not really much better with other roleplaying administrations. Sooner or later people will realise this too, even the not too terribly bright.

laughing_man 23d ago
I don't know why Trump's existence is evidence the US does not have a "real" democracy. As a group, we voted for him, and he went to the Oval Office. That's democracy. There are certainly governments outlawing political opponents in the first world, but that's not the US.
- krapp 23d ago
  When the same guy wins when he gets the popular vote, and wins when he doesn't, that may technically be "democracy" in the sense that a vote occurred and votes were counted, but it clearly isn't fair (and it isn't, it isn't designed to be. If it were fair, the people might do something crazy like vote in a populist demagogue...) And yes, I would say that regarding the other side too.
  - laughing_man 23d ago
    That's just the way the US system is set up. You can't win the presidency by doing really well in the five largest states.
    - krapp 23d ago
      Yes, it was set up that way to keep slave-owning states in the union, which one assumes should no longer be an issue. I don't think you should be able to win the presidency by doing really well in the five largest states necessarily, but I definitely don't think you should be able to win the presidency by only doing well in a couple of swing states.

FlockIsYC 23d ago

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FlockisYC2 23d ago

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blueoranges 23d ago

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orangeberrytea 23d ago

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hulitu 23d ago

25 ? She must be new here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

calebm 23d ago

Proposal: limit access of these camera networks to local jurisdiction. Just like rip-stop fabric and cell walls, boundaries are required for stability, and making it where federal agencies have eyes everywhere is far too dangerous.

oknoooo7 23d ago

Even if you trust all current actors, the tapes of forever. The extremely detailed "Metadata" they have on you will still exist in your children's time.

AtlasBarfed 23d ago

Wasn't carnivore in the 1990s?

stephbook 23d ago

I think the problem is twofold: One, the move to digital lives made digital surveillance necessary. It wasn't enough to check attendance at the local mosque/far right rally. Then, the counter-move to encrypted communication meant law enforcement now had to rely on metadata. Second: A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. LG is snooping on you? I bet they won't see even a 10% drop in sales next year. When the citizenry as consumer blasts their data everywhere, it's hard to argue as parliamentarian that those same people want it protected. Now people use Apple Watches and Amazon Alexa in their own bedrooms! People say they want their data safe guarded, but their actions suggest otherwise.

godelski 23d ago
> A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. I think the problem is a bit more subtle. People do seem to care but feel powerless. In addition to that, complexity is high. When you tell people what is possible with massive data they label you as a conspiracy theorist because it's much easier to believe that Facebook is listening to you with a microphone than piecing that information together through thousands if individual pieces of data (especially when you're more likely to notice the hits rather than the misses). So now when they do record everything you say it feels like nothing changed. It's exhaustion, it's impotence, it's desolate. But that's different than apathy. People care, they are just overwhelmed

temptemptemp111 23d ago

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coldtea 23d ago

Enough? They're just getting started...

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Henchman21 23d ago

"There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try." -- Karis Nemek

jan_m_savage 23d ago

Orwell is claimed to have written his books directed at the other side of the Curtain, but in fact, he was merely predicting the effect of power at the hands of the few self-elected (due to randomness -> wealth --> power). "All animals are equal, some animals more equal than others."

OddMerlin 22d ago

I’d venture it was enough the first day.

1vuio0pswjnm7 22d ago

"Surveillance is the business model of the internet; companies like Google and Facebook constantly spy on their users’ behavior." A few oversized websites acting as intermediaries is not "the internet" The internet is a medium. Internet subscribers pay for access to the medium The www is one use of the medium These mass surveillance intermediaries operating websites are not even the entire www But they aim to intermediate access to the rest of it Any subscriber can use the medium and they don't have to conduct surveillance For example They can sell widgets They can buy widgets Commerce They can also use the medium _noncommercially_ The "business model of the internet" is subscriptions. We pay for access to the medium The (most successful) business model of the www (so far) might be advertising. That could change But the www is not the internet. The internet is a medium, not what travels over it. It's not advertising, it's not content