13 ms·

The Internet Is a Surveillance State

528 points by gits1225 13y ago

riveteye 13y ago
Privacy is an illusion, and a dangerous one. It allows dishonest people to appear honest, and further perpetuates the lie of 'normal'. It closes minds and turns us against other people who are just as human as ourselves. Privacy allows corporations selective access to our data, with the promise that it won't be misused, sold or released to those who wish to do us harm. This is a promise that no corporation can reasonably be expected to keep, if they fall under the jurisdiction of any institution greater then themselves (Like the US government). We have a lot of anxiety around people finding out our secrets, but only because we expect privacy in a world (or internet) where true privacy doesn't really exist. If you do a thing, and you do it anywhere beyond in your own mind, you have effected reality, you have changed the universe, it is public. As terrifying as that might seem.
- hga 13y ago
  In a country where the average professional commits "Three Felonies a Day" (http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...), you're damned right, "We have a lot of anxiety around people finding out our secrets" Basically, our normal lives exist at the sufferance of these "public servants".
  - riveteye 13y ago
    Selective enforcement has got to go. It's an infringement on all of our rights as human beings. Get rid of selective enforcement, and you get rid of ridiculous laws?
    - hga 13y ago
      But how do you get rid of selective enforcement? If for no other reasons than limited resources, prosecutors have to decide who they'll pursue and how hard. Disbarring a prosecutor from ever holding elective office is about the only thing I have been able to think of, and it's not hardly enough. Get rid of the ridiculous laws is more like it. Perhaps our Founders had a point when they were trying to create a limited government? Gerry Ford's best ever quote puts it in the modern context, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Address_to_Congress_.2812_August_1974.29 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Address_to_Congress...)
      - swombat 13y ago
        Getting rid of the laws is the obvious move. If smoking pot is a felony, and 30% of the population has done it, then the law that makes smoking pot a felony is obviously a bad law. A simple way to decide if a law is bad or not is to look at how many people break it each year. Any law that's broken by more than 1% of the population each year should be removed from the books.
        jeremy6d 13y ago
        This is one of the most sensible things I've read on HN, hands down.
        mindcrime 13y ago
        A simple way to decide if a law is bad or not is to look at how many people break it each year. That's one way. I'd go further and say that if the "crime" doesn't have a victim, and involves strictly voluntary / consensual actions & behavior among adults (children may be a bit of a special case) then it is no crime. I generally agree with Bastiat's[1] sentiments on this: What Is Law? What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. Where I disagree is the whole "from God" bit, considering that I'm an atheist. I consider the rights he is speaking of, as being a fundamental aspect of being a sovereign individual possessed of self-ownership and agency. [1]: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I don't buy Silverglate's thesis at all. Every long-form article of his I've ever read is awash in BS (for example http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323826704578356191646002254.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732382670457835...). There are daft laws that people sometimes break and get punished for, which could not have been foreseen and for which no moral culpability can inure. Those cases are exceptional. But the idea that people are typically committing three felonies a day and effectively living in a state of perpetual blackmail is just not true. He spends much of his book complaining (with some justification) that people such as securities traders have so much bureaucracy to deal with that they face a heightened risk of criminality through non-compliance. I think that both our regulatory and litigation systems are extremely unwieldy and that what we need is a bit less mechanistic proceduralism and a bit more bureaucratic autonomy and accountability but that's a far cry from the notion that pretty much everyone is a criminal.
- riveteye 13y ago
  I should probably add I'm in favour of full and open access to all data. For CIA Directors and Fishmongers alike. There should be no secrets. This half-assed 'privacy for the powerful, illusions of privacy for all!' approach is obviously not working.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- vixen99 13y ago
  Privacy or true privacy (which is it?) is a dangerous illusion? I don't know what you mean. What does 'as human as ourselves' mean? However the gist of your rhetoric could have been tailored nicely into an address by Stalin or Ceausescu.
hga 13y ago
"If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope." Blah. Ignoring for the moment that he's 6 levels removed from the agents in the field, notoriously the very few of them out there (last time I checked 90% of the CIA is desk bound in the US) are very bad at fundamental trade-craft, with the Camp Chapman attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack) as a telling extreme example.
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  Surely we can agree that the director of the CIA is going to be better a maintaining privacy than the average person.
  - stonemetal 13y ago
    Why should I agree to that? The director of the CIA is a political appointee not an uber spy. They probably have more security training than your average citizen but not much more.
    - theklub 13y ago
      I think it just says more about the types of people running the CIA. Not the smartest... not very moral... etc
  - hga 13y ago
    I don't think the example of CIA director John Deutch, who I tracked because of his prior role in the midnight execution of the MIT Applied Biology Department (I had a roommate in it at the time), give us any assurances of that. The bare bones from Wikipedia only hints at the severity of his crimes (read later, pardoned by Clinton in the latter's last day in office; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch#CIA_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch#CIA_career): "Deutch left the CIA on December 15, 1996 and later that year it was revealed that several of his laptop computers contained classified materials designated as unclassified." Specifically, he took sensitive compartmented information (SCI, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...), stuff which was covered by special access programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program) that required you to acknowledge each time you accessed it that it was so, and that you not leave the secured area with it, and put it on his personal PCs connected to the Internet, which he used to write up stuff which he emailed, again over that unsecured Internet, to people in the Clinton White House. It's hard to express just how bad this is, not to mention how this angered the community of people with "tickets" (clearances, which, BTW, I've supplied recommendations for two of my friends, one who went to the NSA, the other with a TS/SCI ... which I know nothing about, except we can and do discuss which technology he's using (e.g. Microsoft)). I would hope "the average person", after getting the usual training, and signing off on access to SCI, would understand and follow the simple idea that "Don't take it out of this room" means exactly that. "The average person" would, I think, know he wouldn't be protected from prosecution by political pull if he violated that simple, white line rule....
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cromwellian 13y ago
Schneier has a great article here on the many ways you are being tracked, but I think overlooks the fact that much of this record keeping happened prior to the internet. Almost all public activity generates a paper trail, and before the internet, your phone company, bank, grocery store, even your VHS rentals and public library, were keeping records on you. The internet makes it far far more efficient, but it didn't invent the collection of such records. I think the focus shouldn't be on the unavoidable "information radiation wake" you give off as you move through the world living your life, but on the ways people utilize this information. The government, and private entities, need to be constrained in how this information can be legally used, not in the collection of it, which I think is impossible. Consider health records, which lots of people are paranoid about. There's a lot of diseases we might be able to treat if people's health records were available to researchers. One might be able to detect correlations in disease from these records of millions of individual cases. But insurance companies and employers could potentially discriminate against you based on these records, so it is in your interest to keep your medical conditions secret. In cases, if you have a communicable disease, it is understandable you'd want privacy too. Point being, the biggest danger of loss of privacy is abuse by the state or other private entities, and if we could build safeguards against that, the fact that your phone signals give away your location, or your subway card shows where you've been, might not be so threatening.
- mcphilip 13y ago
  >I think the focus shouldn't be on the unavoidable "information radiation wake" you give off as you move through the world living your life, but on the ways people utilize this information. The government, and private entities, need to be constrained in how this information can be legally used, not in the collection of it, which I think is impossible. You clearly describe two options: preventing collection, and limiting utilization. I agree that preventing collection is impossible, but I don't think simply limiting utilization is enough. I think limiting utilization and retention is key. As long as the data exist, it can be utilized in the future.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    > I think limiting utilization and retention is key. I think the retention point is valuable. But it also seems sort of impossible in some arenas. Take Facebook. Say that the government can only retain information it collects for 6 months. Fine; but they could re-request that same data 6 months later. I suppose there is always a way around this (no extensions without a warrant), but in principle retention seems both critical and a minefield of potential confusion. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the topic.
matrix9 13y ago
You'd better encrypt your private data before uploading to web sites. Recommend to use some privacy oriented apps/sites spideroaks, securekeep.com
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Encryption doesn't defeat traffic analysis, and a lot of the recently reported surveillance is based on metadata to generate leads.
  - err_badprocrast 13y ago
    So what if you use something like a Russian VPN or Tor? It seems like that would only be vulnerable to attacks based on exact connection times and to traffic volume analysis, both of which could be avoided by generating fake traffic.
    - Herring 13y ago
      Too few people do that. They can afford to tag you for other kinds of surveillance. If the State wants your head, there's not much you can do even if you're innocent.
jetblackio 13y ago
I think instead of trying to fight the increased levels of surveillance by both governments and corporations, we need to focus on increasing the levels of transparency. I personally don't really care that governments and other organizations have information about me. There is always an inevitable paper (or electronic) trail associated with using the internet and various services. But I do care about the fact that the FBI can pull up information about me and I have no knowledge of it. If they collect information to combat terrorism, fine. But the 99.999 percent of innecent people being tracked have a right to be notified (and given a course of action for recourse) when they've been wrongly targeted, for whatever reason. I know, it's an idealistic dream, but it is more realistic than combating the inevitable surveillance practices that are just now coming to light.
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  Agreed with your first point, and additionally we should be voting with our money(where we can) on services that have privacy and plausible deniability built into them from the ground up. There are unfortunately few examples of this out there, Mega being the only one I can conjure up at the moment(if it even works and is as secure as they claim).
- goostavos 13y ago
  What would you expect an FBI informational notification to say? What would they notify you of, that your activities have warranted investigation? If anything, being notified that I'm being looked at would freak me out more than not knowing. We've entered this weird world of now needing to avoid appearances. The thing that troubles me the most about the government accessing ALL of my data is the idea of false positives -- or hell, even purposefully spinning one aspect of my data to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean. If we don't have access to the same information, how are we supposed to defend ourselves against accusations?
  - jetblackio 13y ago
    Well, I'd probably expect transparency to at least come in two forms: 1. Broad annual reports containing the number of individuals were investigated, or whose 'file' was pulled, and the number of investigations that resulted in some sort of prosecution. Basically, give me the figures that show me the efficiency of the NSA investigations. This would help combat just broad pulling of records without specific cause and purpose. You could go so far as to say that after passing certain thresholds of efficiency, their actions would be audited. Note that I realize this is not ever likely to happen, but just trying to give an example of how increased transparency could be done. 2. Individual notification. This is obviously much more difficult because they wouldn't want to tip off a legitimate threat to the fact they are under investigation. But the general alternative is not acceptable either. The government can't just investigate people and invade their privacy without good reason. So some how, individuals need to know. The checks and balances of Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches is an effective mode of government, but there is a second 'check': the one by the people. If I don't know my rights are being violated, how can I hold the government responsible? So, yes, some form of individual notification is necessary. Maybe the notification happens after the investigation is finished. Maybe I'm notified a year late. But one way or another, I have a right to face my accuser. Those are my thoughts on it anyhow.
mrt0mat0 13y ago
why not just flood the NSA with false data? We know what they monitor all data through those big ten companies. Couldn't botnets be configured to just start surfing the internet, maybe doing keywords that would trigger the government monitoring. I assume that enough junk information would fill up the gov. databases that they would have a harder time trying to figure out what's real and what's just useless data.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Because then the government would still have our private data, the only thing you'd have effectively done is made it that much more difficult for the government to do the one and only valid thing they could have done with that data (track terrorists, child pornographers and sex traffickers, etc.)
- aegiso 13y ago
  Which would no doubt brand us cyberterrorists if it managed to work.
  - pyre 13y ago
    Well, then the system worked! It shook out the terrorists among us into showing their true faces! </sarcasm>
Datsundere 13y ago
lol, there is no way Guns are going to get banned now. More people will buy guns cause of this. I don't know if the Government did this knowingly or unknowingly.
- Datsundere 13y ago
  Instead of voting me down, give me a proper argument. I'm stating a fact, if you don't like it counter argue. This is nothing different than what the us government is doing by abusing their power and the people that can vote down are doing the same.
trotsky 13y ago
I've honestly never really quite recovered from watching the dreams of the cypherpunks die so hideously and completely. I guess it's because the ideas / movement / whatever bubbled up when I was at that age when you think this is going to be the groundswell, my generation is going to cause a fundamental change in the world. If you're unfamiliar, there was a strong meme in the late eighties through early/mid nineties among a certain set that the perfect storm of public key encryption (still wonderfully unbounded in our minds) and the emerging global network would be a nexus point for personal power in privacy, anonymity and security and in many real ways break down the bonds of the states. It's worth noting that this was about the time that the soviet union fell, and many in the know had gotten a first taste of global presence by hearing about the people in the streets via usenet before it made the news. It wasn't that I was particularly a hard core believer or activist, at least compared to many I knew. But for those who understood what an immense impact the internet was going to have it seemed to everyone I knew - NSA, hackers, professors, that it was just how it would be. You couldn't hope to spy on pretty much anyone anymore when you could use perfect encryption to scramble a telephone call or an email. Kind of like when you knew everyone was about to have a touch phone. I was ideologically aligned and mixed in such circles, nerds were still outcasts so not really too big a world, but my life was busy with other things - but I watched from a distance, fascinated with all the ideas and things to come. I'm not sure I've every really been more sure something was going to happen, at least to a very significant degree. The government was sure too - that was when they came up with CALEA and people got upset but mostly scoffed - there was a real sense that they were just in their death throws. Things got pretty busy, Internet boom. Company got bought by an agency, every big name anybody needed to be on the Internet yesterday. Was a blast though a bit of a blur - ended up in SF as the whole thing worked itself into a nasty hangover. Can't remember worrying too much about when the cypherpunks were going to win but still knew it had to be coming, err well it's just about adoption. It really sucks to wake up after a bender and realize that you helped kill the dream that you were just waiting for someone else to make happen. Working infosec as california recovered put me face to face with reality pretty early in this cycle. Not only was the thing I was so sure of totally not how it went down, with shift from relatively petty financial fraud and wankers to states and srs.bsns abandoning defense to focus solely of offense it's been very hard to square. It's hard to believe many people ever feel so sure about something that turns out so absolutely opposite. Fuck, at least nobody killed rms.
finnw 13y ago
> Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like If only.
ommunist 13y ago
I always wonder how fast telepests start to call you once you register at some online service with your phone number. UKFast hosting I believe sells your data immediately. Comparison sites do the same.
dnautics 13y ago
There are two obvious ways to fight this. First, add a lot of noise. For example, you could change your name to something extremely common. You could broadcast inaccurate data about yourself. Secondly, whenever you do need privacy, use the social equivalent of a one-time pad. Never execute the same mechanism twice. For example, you could conceivably use a cantenna to access a distant wi-fi spot. You could buy the wireless cards with cash (and walk to the store where you buy it, preferably in a city that you don't frequent - and get there by car with good mileage so that there's limited trace of you being there), and buy a used laptop on craigslist with cash.... While surveillors can be open-minded, to a certain degree access to enhanced tracking technology will also engender a stronger reliance on the streetlight effect - and complete expurgation of the streetlight effect is impossible.
ilaksh 13y ago
There is no reason to trust large companies with our data. We should move to content oriented networking where data is encrypted by default and we can choose what networks our data goes into and how it is accessed. We should also use peer based grid/mesh networks as much as possible
websitescenes 13y ago
I am really surprised how people are reacting to surveillance revelations. These practices or obvious and have been in use for as long as I can remember. Did no one really know about widespread government surveillance? You don't have to look very hard to find evidence. Bottom line: this has been happening for a long time. Do really think that the military released the internet because it made them feel all fuzzy inside? Think about it.
Jupe 13y ago
I just don't get it. Hacker news, just days ago had a posting: "Police admit they're 'stumped' by mystery car thefts", and the collective response was something along the lines of "silly police don't know how to use google." And now, the "hackers" are in disbelief that the US government is actually reading their emails and listening to their phone calls. NSS! We got what we wanted here, folks. Information is free - free to be created, free to be read, and free to be copied, stored, decrypted and analyzed by anyone with the means and drive to do so. I don't know who said it, but "Don't put anything online you wouldn't want to appear above the fold of the Wall Stree Journal."
splitrocket 13y ago
Those who would stop this cannot: their whole lives are also part of the surveillance state. Politicians,generals, senators, prime ministers and CEO's all: their dirty laundry and skeletons in the closet that they thought were secret are no longer. No one of power will fight this because they are afraid of becoming its target.
giardini 13y ago
The USA is a Surveillance State. FTFY
- zobzu 13y ago
  If you think it's only the USA, you're fooling yourself pretty hard.
Datsundere 13y ago
This is a world where the hacker who identifies the raper gets punished more than the raper himself. What do you expect

528 points by gits1225 13y ago

Privacy is an illusion, and a dangerous one. It allows dishonest people to appear honest, and further perpetuates the lie of 'normal'. It closes minds and turns us against other people who are just as human as ourselves. Privacy allows corporations selective access to our data, with the promise that it won't be misused, sold or released to those who wish to do us harm. This is a promise that no corporation can reasonably be expected to keep, if they fall under the jurisdiction of any institution greater then themselves (Like the US government). We have a lot of anxiety around people finding out our secrets, but only because we expect privacy in a world (or internet) where true privacy doesn't really exist. If you do a thing, and you do it anywhere beyond in your own mind, you have effected reality, you have changed the universe, it is public. As terrifying as that might seem.

hga 13y ago
In a country where the average professional commits "Three Felonies a Day" (http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...), you're damned right, "We have a lot of anxiety around people finding out our secrets" Basically, our normal lives exist at the sufferance of these "public servants".
- riveteye 13y ago
  Selective enforcement has got to go. It's an infringement on all of our rights as human beings. Get rid of selective enforcement, and you get rid of ridiculous laws?
  - hga 13y ago
    But how do you get rid of selective enforcement? If for no other reasons than limited resources, prosecutors have to decide who they'll pursue and how hard. Disbarring a prosecutor from ever holding elective office is about the only thing I have been able to think of, and it's not hardly enough. Get rid of the ridiculous laws is more like it. Perhaps our Founders had a point when they were trying to create a limited government? Gerry Ford's best ever quote puts it in the modern context, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Address_to_Congress_.2812_August_1974.29 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Address_to_Congress...)
    - swombat 13y ago
      Getting rid of the laws is the obvious move. If smoking pot is a felony, and 30% of the population has done it, then the law that makes smoking pot a felony is obviously a bad law. A simple way to decide if a law is bad or not is to look at how many people break it each year. Any law that's broken by more than 1% of the population each year should be removed from the books.
      - jeremy6d 13y ago
        This is one of the most sensible things I've read on HN, hands down.
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        A simple way to decide if a law is bad or not is to look at how many people break it each year. That's one way. I'd go further and say that if the "crime" doesn't have a victim, and involves strictly voluntary / consensual actions & behavior among adults (children may be a bit of a special case) then it is no crime. I generally agree with Bastiat's[1] sentiments on this: What Is Law? What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. Where I disagree is the whole "from God" bit, considering that I'm an atheist. I consider the rights he is speaking of, as being a fundamental aspect of being a sovereign individual possessed of self-ownership and agency. [1]: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I don't buy Silverglate's thesis at all. Every long-form article of his I've ever read is awash in BS (for example http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323826704578356191646002254.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732382670457835...). There are daft laws that people sometimes break and get punished for, which could not have been foreseen and for which no moral culpability can inure. Those cases are exceptional. But the idea that people are typically committing three felonies a day and effectively living in a state of perpetual blackmail is just not true. He spends much of his book complaining (with some justification) that people such as securities traders have so much bureaucracy to deal with that they face a heightened risk of criminality through non-compliance. I think that both our regulatory and litigation systems are extremely unwieldy and that what we need is a bit less mechanistic proceduralism and a bit more bureaucratic autonomy and accountability but that's a far cry from the notion that pretty much everyone is a criminal.
riveteye 13y ago
I should probably add I'm in favour of full and open access to all data. For CIA Directors and Fishmongers alike. There should be no secrets. This half-assed 'privacy for the powerful, illusions of privacy for all!' approach is obviously not working.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
vixen99 13y ago
Privacy or true privacy (which is it?) is a dangerous illusion? I don't know what you mean. What does 'as human as ourselves' mean? However the gist of your rhetoric could have been tailored nicely into an address by Stalin or Ceausescu.

hga 13y ago

"If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope." Blah. Ignoring for the moment that he's 6 levels removed from the agents in the field, notoriously the very few of them out there (last time I checked 90% of the CIA is desk bound in the US) are very bad at fundamental trade-craft, with the Camp Chapman attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack) as a telling extreme example.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Surely we can agree that the director of the CIA is going to be better a maintaining privacy than the average person.
- stonemetal 13y ago
  Why should I agree to that? The director of the CIA is a political appointee not an uber spy. They probably have more security training than your average citizen but not much more.
  - theklub 13y ago
    I think it just says more about the types of people running the CIA. Not the smartest... not very moral... etc
- hga 13y ago
  I don't think the example of CIA director John Deutch, who I tracked because of his prior role in the midnight execution of the MIT Applied Biology Department (I had a roommate in it at the time), give us any assurances of that. The bare bones from Wikipedia only hints at the severity of his crimes (read later, pardoned by Clinton in the latter's last day in office; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch#CIA_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch#CIA_career): "Deutch left the CIA on December 15, 1996 and later that year it was revealed that several of his laptop computers contained classified materials designated as unclassified." Specifically, he took sensitive compartmented information (SCI, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...), stuff which was covered by special access programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program) that required you to acknowledge each time you accessed it that it was so, and that you not leave the secured area with it, and put it on his personal PCs connected to the Internet, which he used to write up stuff which he emailed, again over that unsecured Internet, to people in the Clinton White House. It's hard to express just how bad this is, not to mention how this angered the community of people with "tickets" (clearances, which, BTW, I've supplied recommendations for two of my friends, one who went to the NSA, the other with a TS/SCI ... which I know nothing about, except we can and do discuss which technology he's using (e.g. Microsoft)). I would hope "the average person", after getting the usual training, and signing off on access to SCI, would understand and follow the simple idea that "Don't take it out of this room" means exactly that. "The average person" would, I think, know he wouldn't be protected from prosecution by political pull if he violated that simple, white line rule....

deleted 13y ago

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cromwellian 13y ago

Schneier has a great article here on the many ways you are being tracked, but I think overlooks the fact that much of this record keeping happened prior to the internet. Almost all public activity generates a paper trail, and before the internet, your phone company, bank, grocery store, even your VHS rentals and public library, were keeping records on you. The internet makes it far far more efficient, but it didn't invent the collection of such records. I think the focus shouldn't be on the unavoidable "information radiation wake" you give off as you move through the world living your life, but on the ways people utilize this information. The government, and private entities, need to be constrained in how this information can be legally used, not in the collection of it, which I think is impossible. Consider health records, which lots of people are paranoid about. There's a lot of diseases we might be able to treat if people's health records were available to researchers. One might be able to detect correlations in disease from these records of millions of individual cases. But insurance companies and employers could potentially discriminate against you based on these records, so it is in your interest to keep your medical conditions secret. In cases, if you have a communicable disease, it is understandable you'd want privacy too. Point being, the biggest danger of loss of privacy is abuse by the state or other private entities, and if we could build safeguards against that, the fact that your phone signals give away your location, or your subway card shows where you've been, might not be so threatening.

mcphilip 13y ago
>I think the focus shouldn't be on the unavoidable "information radiation wake" you give off as you move through the world living your life, but on the ways people utilize this information. The government, and private entities, need to be constrained in how this information can be legally used, not in the collection of it, which I think is impossible. You clearly describe two options: preventing collection, and limiting utilization. I agree that preventing collection is impossible, but I don't think simply limiting utilization is enough. I think limiting utilization and retention is key. As long as the data exist, it can be utilized in the future.
- carbocation 13y ago
  > I think limiting utilization and retention is key. I think the retention point is valuable. But it also seems sort of impossible in some arenas. Take Facebook. Say that the government can only retain information it collects for 6 months. Fine; but they could re-request that same data 6 months later. I suppose there is always a way around this (no extensions without a warrant), but in principle retention seems both critical and a minefield of potential confusion. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the topic.

matrix9 13y ago

You'd better encrypt your private data before uploading to web sites. Recommend to use some privacy oriented apps/sites spideroaks, securekeep.com

cromwellian 13y ago
Encryption doesn't defeat traffic analysis, and a lot of the recently reported surveillance is based on metadata to generate leads.
- err_badprocrast 13y ago
  So what if you use something like a Russian VPN or Tor? It seems like that would only be vulnerable to attacks based on exact connection times and to traffic volume analysis, both of which could be avoided by generating fake traffic.
  - Herring 13y ago
    Too few people do that. They can afford to tag you for other kinds of surveillance. If the State wants your head, there's not much you can do even if you're innocent.

jetblackio 13y ago

I think instead of trying to fight the increased levels of surveillance by both governments and corporations, we need to focus on increasing the levels of transparency. I personally don't really care that governments and other organizations have information about me. There is always an inevitable paper (or electronic) trail associated with using the internet and various services. But I do care about the fact that the FBI can pull up information about me and I have no knowledge of it. If they collect information to combat terrorism, fine. But the 99.999 percent of innecent people being tracked have a right to be notified (and given a course of action for recourse) when they've been wrongly targeted, for whatever reason. I know, it's an idealistic dream, but it is more realistic than combating the inevitable surveillance practices that are just now coming to light.

knowaveragejoe 13y ago
Agreed with your first point, and additionally we should be voting with our money(where we can) on services that have privacy and plausible deniability built into them from the ground up. There are unfortunately few examples of this out there, Mega being the only one I can conjure up at the moment(if it even works and is as secure as they claim).
goostavos 13y ago
What would you expect an FBI informational notification to say? What would they notify you of, that your activities have warranted investigation? If anything, being notified that I'm being looked at would freak me out more than not knowing. We've entered this weird world of now needing to avoid appearances. The thing that troubles me the most about the government accessing ALL of my data is the idea of false positives -- or hell, even purposefully spinning one aspect of my data to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean. If we don't have access to the same information, how are we supposed to defend ourselves against accusations?
- jetblackio 13y ago
  Well, I'd probably expect transparency to at least come in two forms: 1. Broad annual reports containing the number of individuals were investigated, or whose 'file' was pulled, and the number of investigations that resulted in some sort of prosecution. Basically, give me the figures that show me the efficiency of the NSA investigations. This would help combat just broad pulling of records without specific cause and purpose. You could go so far as to say that after passing certain thresholds of efficiency, their actions would be audited. Note that I realize this is not ever likely to happen, but just trying to give an example of how increased transparency could be done. 2. Individual notification. This is obviously much more difficult because they wouldn't want to tip off a legitimate threat to the fact they are under investigation. But the general alternative is not acceptable either. The government can't just investigate people and invade their privacy without good reason. So some how, individuals need to know. The checks and balances of Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches is an effective mode of government, but there is a second 'check': the one by the people. If I don't know my rights are being violated, how can I hold the government responsible? So, yes, some form of individual notification is necessary. Maybe the notification happens after the investigation is finished. Maybe I'm notified a year late. But one way or another, I have a right to face my accuser. Those are my thoughts on it anyhow.

mrt0mat0 13y ago

why not just flood the NSA with false data? We know what they monitor all data through those big ten companies. Couldn't botnets be configured to just start surfing the internet, maybe doing keywords that would trigger the government monitoring. I assume that enough junk information would fill up the gov. databases that they would have a harder time trying to figure out what's real and what's just useless data.

mpyne 13y ago
Because then the government would still have our private data, the only thing you'd have effectively done is made it that much more difficult for the government to do the one and only valid thing they could have done with that data (track terrorists, child pornographers and sex traffickers, etc.)
aegiso 13y ago
Which would no doubt brand us cyberterrorists if it managed to work.
- pyre 13y ago
  Well, then the system worked! It shook out the terrorists among us into showing their true faces! </sarcasm>

Datsundere 13y ago

lol, there is no way Guns are going to get banned now. More people will buy guns cause of this. I don't know if the Government did this knowingly or unknowingly.

Datsundere 13y ago
Instead of voting me down, give me a proper argument. I'm stating a fact, if you don't like it counter argue. This is nothing different than what the us government is doing by abusing their power and the people that can vote down are doing the same.

trotsky 13y ago

I've honestly never really quite recovered from watching the dreams of the cypherpunks die so hideously and completely. I guess it's because the ideas / movement / whatever bubbled up when I was at that age when you think this is going to be the groundswell, my generation is going to cause a fundamental change in the world. If you're unfamiliar, there was a strong meme in the late eighties through early/mid nineties among a certain set that the perfect storm of public key encryption (still wonderfully unbounded in our minds) and the emerging global network would be a nexus point for personal power in privacy, anonymity and security and in many real ways break down the bonds of the states. It's worth noting that this was about the time that the soviet union fell, and many in the know had gotten a first taste of global presence by hearing about the people in the streets via usenet before it made the news. It wasn't that I was particularly a hard core believer or activist, at least compared to many I knew. But for those who understood what an immense impact the internet was going to have it seemed to everyone I knew - NSA, hackers, professors, that it was just how it would be. You couldn't hope to spy on pretty much anyone anymore when you could use perfect encryption to scramble a telephone call or an email. Kind of like when you knew everyone was about to have a touch phone. I was ideologically aligned and mixed in such circles, nerds were still outcasts so not really too big a world, but my life was busy with other things - but I watched from a distance, fascinated with all the ideas and things to come. I'm not sure I've every really been more sure something was going to happen, at least to a very significant degree. The government was sure too - that was when they came up with CALEA and people got upset but mostly scoffed - there was a real sense that they were just in their death throws. Things got pretty busy, Internet boom. Company got bought by an agency, every big name anybody needed to be on the Internet yesterday. Was a blast though a bit of a blur - ended up in SF as the whole thing worked itself into a nasty hangover. Can't remember worrying too much about when the cypherpunks were going to win but still knew it had to be coming, err well it's just about adoption. It really sucks to wake up after a bender and realize that you helped kill the dream that you were just waiting for someone else to make happen. Working infosec as california recovered put me face to face with reality pretty early in this cycle. Not only was the thing I was so sure of totally not how it went down, with shift from relatively petty financial fraud and wankers to states and srs.bsns abandoning defense to focus solely of offense it's been very hard to square. It's hard to believe many people ever feel so sure about something that turns out so absolutely opposite. Fuck, at least nobody killed rms.

finnw 13y ago

> Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like If only.

ommunist 13y ago

I always wonder how fast telepests start to call you once you register at some online service with your phone number. UKFast hosting I believe sells your data immediately. Comparison sites do the same.

dnautics 13y ago

There are two obvious ways to fight this. First, add a lot of noise. For example, you could change your name to something extremely common. You could broadcast inaccurate data about yourself. Secondly, whenever you do need privacy, use the social equivalent of a one-time pad. Never execute the same mechanism twice. For example, you could conceivably use a cantenna to access a distant wi-fi spot. You could buy the wireless cards with cash (and walk to the store where you buy it, preferably in a city that you don't frequent - and get there by car with good mileage so that there's limited trace of you being there), and buy a used laptop on craigslist with cash.... While surveillors can be open-minded, to a certain degree access to enhanced tracking technology will also engender a stronger reliance on the streetlight effect - and complete expurgation of the streetlight effect is impossible.

ilaksh 13y ago

There is no reason to trust large companies with our data. We should move to content oriented networking where data is encrypted by default and we can choose what networks our data goes into and how it is accessed. We should also use peer based grid/mesh networks as much as possible

websitescenes 13y ago

I am really surprised how people are reacting to surveillance revelations. These practices or obvious and have been in use for as long as I can remember. Did no one really know about widespread government surveillance? You don't have to look very hard to find evidence. Bottom line: this has been happening for a long time. Do really think that the military released the internet because it made them feel all fuzzy inside? Think about it.

Jupe 13y ago

I just don't get it. Hacker news, just days ago had a posting: "Police admit they're 'stumped' by mystery car thefts", and the collective response was something along the lines of "silly police don't know how to use google." And now, the "hackers" are in disbelief that the US government is actually reading their emails and listening to their phone calls. NSS! We got what we wanted here, folks. Information is free - free to be created, free to be read, and free to be copied, stored, decrypted and analyzed by anyone with the means and drive to do so. I don't know who said it, but "Don't put anything online you wouldn't want to appear above the fold of the Wall Stree Journal."

splitrocket 13y ago

Those who would stop this cannot: their whole lives are also part of the surveillance state. Politicians,generals, senators, prime ministers and CEO's all: their dirty laundry and skeletons in the closet that they thought were secret are no longer. No one of power will fight this because they are afraid of becoming its target.

giardini 13y ago

The USA is a Surveillance State. FTFY

zobzu 13y ago
If you think it's only the USA, you're fooling yourself pretty hard.

Datsundere 13y ago

This is a world where the hacker who identifies the raper gets punished more than the raper himself. What do you expect