7 ms·

Assange in 2011: "They have automated the process."

198 points by why-el 13y ago

pstuart 13y ago
Government spying on my Facebook account is bothersome in regards to privacy limits of power but it is Facebook and anything I put there I should expect to be public at some point. We need more public spying on the government....
- minimize_me 13y ago
  GMail? Dropbox (eventually)?
- cinquemb 13y ago
  >We need more public spying on the government... Are there public databases that collect information on officers/ agents? If not what kinds of information would be valuable (to the public) to collect/ what kind of processes would be good to use(crowd-sourcing, web-scraping, .gov apis, etc)?
tshile 13y ago
I'm curious if my friends, family, and co-workers that rolled their eyes at me or laughed at me when I explained why I deleted my facebook account years ago even remember the conversation, or what their response was, when they read the latest revelations about the government having access to their databases.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Deleting your Facebook account isn't a solution to this problem. Gmail may contain even more personal information. Dropbox contains your files and is essentially giving them access to documents you would have stored offline 10 years ago. The problem is that none of these services are safe anymore and we need specific legislation detailing what the government can and can't do with the information we have stored on them. The bigger problem for me is that as my data is being stored in the US by US companies and my countries laws don't apply - and the safeguards provided by the US constitution also don't apply. The NSA/FBI can do whatever they want with my data and have said as much[1]: "He said reports about Prism contained "numerous inaccuracies". While admitting the government collected communications from internet firms, he said the policy only targets "non-US persons"." I think we might start to see companies having data centres in multiple countries and allowing you to store your data in the one you choose or the one that follows your countries laws. Otherwise there will be an exodus of users from US internet companies. [1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541
  - grandalf 13y ago
    The best approach is to keep profiles/accounts on all of those services and use them periodically to create a "clean" trail. Meanwhile, if you need any actual privacy, find alternate/private channels. Considering the enormous amount of data being collected and the relative ease of setting up a clean trail, this kind of spying makes it even easier for low/moderate-suspicion individuals to achieve secure communications. For high suspicion individuals, this kind of surveillance makes it easy to create disinformation that appears to be real intel. The workflow required to leave a realistic "clean" trail while simultaneously engaging in secure communication could be designed into a purpose-built linux distro.
    - jedbrown 13y ago
      purpose-built linux distro That seems to be the intent of Tails [1]; see also [2]. [1] https://tails.boum.org https://tails.boum.org [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140
  - tshile 13y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that it was a solution to the problem. Just pointing out the problem seen long before today by many - for most of us here, this issue is not new. It's been discussed and debated for years. There's just now concrete proof that is irrefutable. I'm more excited about these recent revelations than shocked and appalled, because now it is finally a national conversation with real outrage behind it. I've been waiting for this for years. Being called crazy, paranoid, anti-American, etc for years for voicing concerns about this has led me to a position of vindication on some level; however small or petty that may be.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Deleting FB alone might not be a solution, but it's a part of it. Out of these, I only have a gmail account. No personal data in it is real. I never email anyone I know in person from that account, nor I give it to anybody who knows me. I think I'm on the safe side. I operate similarly with my phone and basically everything else.
- skore 13y ago
  Going back even further, there used to be a time when "Internet Citizens" were primarily weird geeks. Us weird geeks used to tell people "eventually, this will be everywhere, connecting everything and everyone" and in exchange, we received ridicule by "ordinary" people. Those weird geeks and their technology - They would sure like if everybody was on their tech mumbo jumbo thing. Fast forward ten years and an increasing number of people vomit their entire life online, constantly. First it was the iMac era, then the iPhone era, now the iPad era. With every era, a new demographic is being pushed into this new data reality and our calls from the beginnings go unheard. The thing is - we would really like to say "told you so", but it seems overly cynical by now. Especially considering that it's not just our wildest dreams, but also our worst nightmares coming true at an exponential pace. And even more than that - we really like people getting onto "our thing", so calling for caution now has a whiff of asking for exclusivity after our nice little in-crowd thing was blown out of proportion.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  No. They didn't care then and they don't care now. The government can data mine my facebook page as much as they want - it's my library lending record I'm worried about...
- Nursie 13y ago
  Facebook is where inconsequential nonsense goes. I guess I should be more concerned with gmail...
dsleno 13y ago
Prescient. Will these NSA spy revelations hurt US internet companies? If I am German or Russian or Brazilian... do I really want to go out of my way to feed the U.S. intelligence beast?
- pointernil 13y ago
  First: as such you probably already do feed them Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a. Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world?
  - jabbernotty 13y ago
    > Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a. > Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world? It is entirely possible to develop a product outside of the US of A. And it does indeed happen. Geez!
  - kcorbitt 13y ago
    On the other hand, there are relatively few governments worldwide that I would trust more (or distrust less, I guess) than that of the US to abuse this kind of information. The US isn't perfect, but a lot of places out there are worse.
    - koralatov 13y ago
      ``Being stabbed by a handsome gentleman is awful, but being stabbed by an ugly man is worse, so thank God I'm only being stabbed by a handsome gentleman!''
- JamisonM 13y ago
  The average German, Russian, or Brazilian probably thinks about the importance of their relative privacy with respect to their government even less than the average US citizen does. And the average US citizen does not really care. (This NSA thing is essentially an "inside the beltway" issue, not a ballot box thing.)
jeremy6d 13y ago
The problem with Facebook is not that government has access to it -- at least, that's not a problem unique to FB (Gmail, as one commenter says, is probably worse in terms of raw access to personal details). The problem with Facebook is that it is personal details specifically organized into a dossier-like format. It's one thing for the NSA, for instance, to be able to tap into the hose of undifferentiated data streaming through the network. It's quite another thing for that data to be specifically organized for the purposes of quickly discovering key information about somebody, such as their social network, their political interests, their latest photos, etc. all indexed and searchable. Think about the cost of taking Gmail's data and turning it into something useable by intelligence organizations -- work that FB "empowers" us to do for them! What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated). We need the ability to use the network for our own particular, peculiar interests rather than having to fit our interactions into some other authority's template for their interests. The idea that social networking never occurred before Friendster, FB, MySpace is ridiculous -- it just happened more informally before. I'd like to see a return to this informal mode of using TCP/IP, where the internet itself is the social network rather than merely a transport layer for some centralized system. This may make it harder for everyday people to benefit, but it also means they learn how to drive before they use the roads. Social networking's hyped-up promise has always been to passively connect people, but the promise of the internet has always been to allow people to actively connect (or not connect). Once we have a broader suite of tools for this latter purpose, we'll see people reject centralized dossier services like FB.
- deanclatworthy 13y ago
  This is interesting, and I had the same thought reading the article. One approach might be for the user to store the information on their own computer, and only when they enter (login) the social network, does their information become available, and only to those that they specifically give access to.
- resu_nimda 13y ago
  > What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated). Which would also make it much more difficult to use and less useful. We've organized our info this way because we like it and it makes sense, it's no surprise that it's useful to the government as well. In other words, I think the value to us and the value to them are very tightly coupled. And the thing is, outside of the hardcore techie bubble, most people don't care. So what if the government can see their friends and pictures, even track them to some degree? Why should they care? They're not going to migrate to some convoluted unstructured system just for the abstract and esoteric benefit of privacy.
junto 13y ago
I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.
- JamisonM 13y ago
  Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.
  - robotmay 13y ago
    Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      You could just agree to disagree with them without expanding such emotional energy. Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands. It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party.
      - criley 13y ago
        >It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party. The point of 23andMe is that they're trying to figure out what all the data means, using the data itself. You can go get your genome sequenced or a partial sequencing like 23andMe does and get the giant, raw output file. And sit and stare at it. I know I've played with that data in bio lab before. It's not exactly easy to infer data out of it. Which is why having a lot of different sets of data, and information about the person the data came from, can help us. Without a third party aggregating genomic data for study, we're not going to be able to understand the genome, and certainly not going to be able to deliver private, accurate and useful analysis of personal data.
pvnick 13y ago
I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is "What sort of society are we trying to protect?"
Shivetya 13y ago
Lets be honest. Most people scream about privacy violations but in turn are more than willing, hell you cannot shut them up, to tell you all about themselves, their stuff, their friends, and such. Even with legislation do you expect it not to be easy for any agency to just gather the information? At worst we will get an "Online Users Bill of Rights" which will only codify their rights to our privacy.
pajju 13y ago
+ We haven't committed any crime — then there's nothing to worry! And so spying on certain accounts is fine, if they need to investigate, track and analyze data for Intelligence. + I'm perfectly fine if they take my data — till its serving in the good interests of my family and people's safety. + It should only be in the good interests of our system and society. + But such credible data, should not be misused by the govt bodies or elected representatives!
- twistedpair 13y ago
  And we can always trust the government, right?
  - pajju 13y ago
    We have voted them up — they are elected representatives. And Life goes by Hope and Positivity!
    - smoorman1024 13y ago
      The NSA are not elected officials. They are appointed individuals. And they really don't need to report or justify anything they do.
    - _k 13y ago
      Lesterland http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...
    - kunai 13y ago
      Just because we voted people in doesn't mean they're gods as soon as they enter office. And positivity is useless if you just think everything can be fine as long as you have a positive outlook. That's foolishness. You SHOULD have alacrity towards this issue, but if you don't, that's your choice. In ten years, you will look back and wish you did something. Mark my damned words.
- smoorman1024 13y ago
kevinbluer 13y ago
"CIA calls Facebook 'Reason We Invented The Internet'" [1], gotta love The Onion :) [1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753&#x2F http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...;
euroclydon 13y ago
I've been following these discussions the past couple of days on HN, and there are a few calm minds who are very knowledgeable of the law, who's comments have been enlightening and reassuring ('rayiner and others). But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up the number of internet-connected computers in their house. I am comforted by the idea that Jack Bauer and Chloe have timely access to information to stop the bad guys, and that US secret agencies have little motivation or bandwidth to use this information for anything but national security threats (and hopefully kidnapping and such). Bad actors in these agencies can obviously do a lot of harm to individuals, but those cases will probably be personal and few, widespread malicious use of this data by agency employees would be easier to uncover. What I find most troubling is the ease with which the government can view my information and how I've steadily made it easier for them over the past five years by getting that iPhone, using Dropbox and Gmail. But, my life has seemed safe, prosperous and peaceful over that time and these services I use have had a profound impact on the efficiency and convenience with which I perform my daily routine.
- _k 13y ago
  Why privacy matters https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461&#x2F https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/12...;
  - palmer 13y ago
    That link is broken for me, but I found the article and enjoyed it. https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461 https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/12...
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Brilliant, you get comfort from a murdering, torturing, loose cannon nut job, who takes no notice of his superiors. Not to mention making mistakes that kill others. Amazing. Its a live cartoon. Might as well have faith in Batman. Yeah, I loved 24, but thank god its a wonderful fantasy and not real. Oh, forgive me, but what was the episode where Jack and co got the bad guys by looking at facebook?
6d0debc071 13y ago
I wonder whether the time has come to build some better tools for protecting privacy. Looking at the common implementations of encryption the publicly available free stuff has some fairly awful interfaces. It's especially a mess if you're looking at securely communicating with a website - I can't think of a single browser that supports anything like a decent standard of encryption for that.
znowi 13y ago
Assange is an exemplary case of how secret services operate. Containment plan is generally to discredit an inconvenient person via a character attack, which directs attention to a single person (and boy do the crowd loves gossip and celebrities), overshadowing whatever sensitive information there is to disclose. Make this person an unreliable source before they have anything to say. He's been labeled a rapist, a crackpot, or even an agent of the evil, with little regard to atrocities exposed by the Wikileaks. Yet like our beloved RMS, if you read the early texts, it is clear that they had seen it coming way before us - sane, normal people.

198 points by why-el 13y ago

Government spying on my Facebook account is bothersome in regards to privacy limits of power but it is Facebook and anything I put there I should expect to be public at some point. We need more public spying on the government....

minimize_me 13y ago
GMail? Dropbox (eventually)?
cinquemb 13y ago
>We need more public spying on the government... Are there public databases that collect information on officers/ agents? If not what kinds of information would be valuable (to the public) to collect/ what kind of processes would be good to use(crowd-sourcing, web-scraping, .gov apis, etc)?

tshile 13y ago

I'm curious if my friends, family, and co-workers that rolled their eyes at me or laughed at me when I explained why I deleted my facebook account years ago even remember the conversation, or what their response was, when they read the latest revelations about the government having access to their databases.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
Deleting your Facebook account isn't a solution to this problem. Gmail may contain even more personal information. Dropbox contains your files and is essentially giving them access to documents you would have stored offline 10 years ago. The problem is that none of these services are safe anymore and we need specific legislation detailing what the government can and can't do with the information we have stored on them. The bigger problem for me is that as my data is being stored in the US by US companies and my countries laws don't apply - and the safeguards provided by the US constitution also don't apply. The NSA/FBI can do whatever they want with my data and have said as much[1]: "He said reports about Prism contained "numerous inaccuracies". While admitting the government collected communications from internet firms, he said the policy only targets "non-US persons"." I think we might start to see companies having data centres in multiple countries and allowing you to store your data in the one you choose or the one that follows your countries laws. Otherwise there will be an exodus of users from US internet companies. [1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541
- grandalf 13y ago
  The best approach is to keep profiles/accounts on all of those services and use them periodically to create a "clean" trail. Meanwhile, if you need any actual privacy, find alternate/private channels. Considering the enormous amount of data being collected and the relative ease of setting up a clean trail, this kind of spying makes it even easier for low/moderate-suspicion individuals to achieve secure communications. For high suspicion individuals, this kind of surveillance makes it easy to create disinformation that appears to be real intel. The workflow required to leave a realistic "clean" trail while simultaneously engaging in secure communication could be designed into a purpose-built linux distro.
  - jedbrown 13y ago
    purpose-built linux distro That seems to be the intent of Tails [1]; see also [2]. [1] https://tails.boum.org https://tails.boum.org [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140
- tshile 13y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that it was a solution to the problem. Just pointing out the problem seen long before today by many - for most of us here, this issue is not new. It's been discussed and debated for years. There's just now concrete proof that is irrefutable. I'm more excited about these recent revelations than shocked and appalled, because now it is finally a national conversation with real outrage behind it. I've been waiting for this for years. Being called crazy, paranoid, anti-American, etc for years for voicing concerns about this has led me to a position of vindication on some level; however small or petty that may be.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Deleting FB alone might not be a solution, but it's a part of it. Out of these, I only have a gmail account. No personal data in it is real. I never email anyone I know in person from that account, nor I give it to anybody who knows me. I think I'm on the safe side. I operate similarly with my phone and basically everything else.
skore 13y ago
Going back even further, there used to be a time when "Internet Citizens" were primarily weird geeks. Us weird geeks used to tell people "eventually, this will be everywhere, connecting everything and everyone" and in exchange, we received ridicule by "ordinary" people. Those weird geeks and their technology - They would sure like if everybody was on their tech mumbo jumbo thing. Fast forward ten years and an increasing number of people vomit their entire life online, constantly. First it was the iMac era, then the iPhone era, now the iPad era. With every era, a new demographic is being pushed into this new data reality and our calls from the beginnings go unheard. The thing is - we would really like to say "told you so", but it seems overly cynical by now. Especially considering that it's not just our wildest dreams, but also our worst nightmares coming true at an exponential pace. And even more than that - we really like people getting onto "our thing", so calling for caution now has a whiff of asking for exclusivity after our nice little in-crowd thing was blown out of proportion.
lotsofcows 13y ago
No. They didn't care then and they don't care now. The government can data mine my facebook page as much as they want - it's my library lending record I'm worried about...
Nursie 13y ago
Facebook is where inconsequential nonsense goes. I guess I should be more concerned with gmail...

dsleno 13y ago

Prescient. Will these NSA spy revelations hurt US internet companies? If I am German or Russian or Brazilian... do I really want to go out of my way to feed the U.S. intelligence beast?

pointernil 13y ago
First: as such you probably already do feed them Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a. Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world?
- jabbernotty 13y ago
  > Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a. > Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world? It is entirely possible to develop a product outside of the US of A. And it does indeed happen. Geez!
- kcorbitt 13y ago
  On the other hand, there are relatively few governments worldwide that I would trust more (or distrust less, I guess) than that of the US to abuse this kind of information. The US isn't perfect, but a lot of places out there are worse.
  - koralatov 13y ago
    ``Being stabbed by a handsome gentleman is awful, but being stabbed by an ugly man is worse, so thank God I'm only being stabbed by a handsome gentleman!''
JamisonM 13y ago
The average German, Russian, or Brazilian probably thinks about the importance of their relative privacy with respect to their government even less than the average US citizen does. And the average US citizen does not really care. (This NSA thing is essentially an "inside the beltway" issue, not a ballot box thing.)

jeremy6d 13y ago

The problem with Facebook is not that government has access to it -- at least, that's not a problem unique to FB (Gmail, as one commenter says, is probably worse in terms of raw access to personal details). The problem with Facebook is that it is personal details specifically organized into a dossier-like format. It's one thing for the NSA, for instance, to be able to tap into the hose of undifferentiated data streaming through the network. It's quite another thing for that data to be specifically organized for the purposes of quickly discovering key information about somebody, such as their social network, their political interests, their latest photos, etc. all indexed and searchable. Think about the cost of taking Gmail's data and turning it into something useable by intelligence organizations -- work that FB "empowers" us to do for them! What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated). We need the ability to use the network for our own particular, peculiar interests rather than having to fit our interactions into some other authority's template for their interests. The idea that social networking never occurred before Friendster, FB, MySpace is ridiculous -- it just happened more informally before. I'd like to see a return to this informal mode of using TCP/IP, where the internet itself is the social network rather than merely a transport layer for some centralized system. This may make it harder for everyday people to benefit, but it also means they learn how to drive before they use the roads. Social networking's hyped-up promise has always been to passively connect people, but the promise of the internet has always been to allow people to actively connect (or not connect). Once we have a broader suite of tools for this latter purpose, we'll see people reject centralized dossier services like FB.

deanclatworthy 13y ago
This is interesting, and I had the same thought reading the article. One approach might be for the user to store the information on their own computer, and only when they enter (login) the social network, does their information become available, and only to those that they specifically give access to.
resu_nimda 13y ago
> What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated). Which would also make it much more difficult to use and less useful. We've organized our info this way because we like it and it makes sense, it's no surprise that it's useful to the government as well. In other words, I think the value to us and the value to them are very tightly coupled. And the thing is, outside of the hardcore techie bubble, most people don't care. So what if the government can see their friends and pictures, even track them to some degree? Why should they care? They're not going to migrate to some convoluted unstructured system just for the abstract and esoteric benefit of privacy.

junto 13y ago

I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.

JamisonM 13y ago
Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.
- robotmay 13y ago
  Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    You could just agree to disagree with them without expanding such emotional energy. Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands. It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party.
    - criley 13y ago
      >It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party. The point of 23andMe is that they're trying to figure out what all the data means, using the data itself. You can go get your genome sequenced or a partial sequencing like 23andMe does and get the giant, raw output file. And sit and stare at it. I know I've played with that data in bio lab before. It's not exactly easy to infer data out of it. Which is why having a lot of different sets of data, and information about the person the data came from, can help us. Without a third party aggregating genomic data for study, we're not going to be able to understand the genome, and certainly not going to be able to deliver private, accurate and useful analysis of personal data.

pvnick 13y ago

I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is "What sort of society are we trying to protect?"

Shivetya 13y ago

Lets be honest. Most people scream about privacy violations but in turn are more than willing, hell you cannot shut them up, to tell you all about themselves, their stuff, their friends, and such. Even with legislation do you expect it not to be easy for any agency to just gather the information? At worst we will get an "Online Users Bill of Rights" which will only codify their rights to our privacy.

pajju 13y ago

+ We haven't committed any crime — then there's nothing to worry! And so spying on certain accounts is fine, if they need to investigate, track and analyze data for Intelligence. + I'm perfectly fine if they take my data — till its serving in the good interests of my family and people's safety. + It should only be in the good interests of our system and society. + But such credible data, should not be misused by the govt bodies or elected representatives!

twistedpair 13y ago
And we can always trust the government, right?
- pajju 13y ago
  We have voted them up — they are elected representatives. And Life goes by Hope and Positivity!
  - smoorman1024 13y ago
    The NSA are not elected officials. They are appointed individuals. And they really don't need to report or justify anything they do.
  - _k 13y ago
    Lesterland http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...
  - kunai 13y ago
    Just because we voted people in doesn't mean they're gods as soon as they enter office. And positivity is useless if you just think everything can be fine as long as you have a positive outlook. That's foolishness. You SHOULD have alacrity towards this issue, but if you don't, that's your choice. In ten years, you will look back and wish you did something. Mark my damned words.
smoorman1024 13y ago

kevinbluer 13y ago

"CIA calls Facebook 'Reason We Invented The Internet'" [1], gotta love The Onion :) [1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753&#x2F http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...;

euroclydon 13y ago

I've been following these discussions the past couple of days on HN, and there are a few calm minds who are very knowledgeable of the law, who's comments have been enlightening and reassuring ('rayiner and others). But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up the number of internet-connected computers in their house. I am comforted by the idea that Jack Bauer and Chloe have timely access to information to stop the bad guys, and that US secret agencies have little motivation or bandwidth to use this information for anything but national security threats (and hopefully kidnapping and such). Bad actors in these agencies can obviously do a lot of harm to individuals, but those cases will probably be personal and few, widespread malicious use of this data by agency employees would be easier to uncover. What I find most troubling is the ease with which the government can view my information and how I've steadily made it easier for them over the past five years by getting that iPhone, using Dropbox and Gmail. But, my life has seemed safe, prosperous and peaceful over that time and these services I use have had a profound impact on the efficiency and convenience with which I perform my daily routine.

_k 13y ago
Why privacy matters https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461&#x2F https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/12...;
- palmer 13y ago
  That link is broken for me, but I found the article and enjoyed it. https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461 https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/12...
alan_cx 13y ago
Brilliant, you get comfort from a murdering, torturing, loose cannon nut job, who takes no notice of his superiors. Not to mention making mistakes that kill others. Amazing. Its a live cartoon. Might as well have faith in Batman. Yeah, I loved 24, but thank god its a wonderful fantasy and not real. Oh, forgive me, but what was the episode where Jack and co got the bad guys by looking at facebook?

6d0debc071 13y ago

I wonder whether the time has come to build some better tools for protecting privacy. Looking at the common implementations of encryption the publicly available free stuff has some fairly awful interfaces. It's especially a mess if you're looking at securely communicating with a website - I can't think of a single browser that supports anything like a decent standard of encryption for that.

znowi 13y ago

Assange is an exemplary case of how secret services operate. Containment plan is generally to discredit an inconvenient person via a character attack, which directs attention to a single person (and boy do the crowd loves gossip and celebrities), overshadowing whatever sensitive information there is to disclose. Make this person an unreliable source before they have anything to say. He's been labeled a rapist, a crackpot, or even an agent of the evil, with little regard to atrocities exposed by the Wikileaks. Yet like our beloved RMS, if you read the early texts, it is clear that they had seen it coming way before us - sane, normal people.