4 ms·

Your iPhone works for the secret police

46 points by hype7 13y ago

tswartz 13y ago
Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch. I hope we learn more about how the NSA is scaling their operation due to the absurd amount of data they have. In East Germany they had to use lots of people listening to every phone and apartment bugged conversation. That doesn't seem realistic for the NSA. Do they have software that is processing the data looking for keywords or phrases? That seems useless because an actual terrorist probably doesn't say 'bomb' on the phone.
- hype7 13y ago
  I think it might be helpful to read the article: "But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."
- alive-or-not 13y ago
  Right, because the people in today USA are completely different then the people in East Germany 25 years ago. Information today is literally the ultimate power. "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Something devised 50 years ago might have looked for the word "bomb." These days, it would be self-training systems that even the operators would have little idea of what it was recognizing.
- hga 13y ago
  These are indeed the end times; I quote, with approval, The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/civil-liberties-american-freedom-on-the-line http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/civil-li...): "Few Americans believe that they live in a police state; indeed many would be outraged at the suggestion. Yet the everyday fact that the police have the right to monitor the communications of all its citizens – in secret – is a classic hallmark of a state that fears freedom as well as championing it. Ironically, the Guardian's revelations were published 69 years to the day since US and British soldiers launched the D-day invasion of Europe. The young Americans who fought their way up the Normandy beaches rightly believed they were helping free the world from a tyranny. They did not think that they were making it safe for their own rulers to take such sweeping powers as these over their descendants." Or in the acid wit of Iowahawk (https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/342683624216330242 https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/342683624216330242): "I'm grateful to the American heroes who stormed Normandy and made NSA monitoring of this tweet possible."
  - youngerdryas 13y ago
    I am not sure you realize that UK citizens go to jail if they express unpopular opinions on twitter.
    - hga 13y ago
      Oh, I do, that's one of mean reasons I find it remarkable I'm quoting from The Guardian with approval. And should I mention that yesterday was the 64th anneversary of the publication of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (http://ygwomanup.org/this-day-64-years-ago-orwell-published-1984/ http://ygwomanup.org/this-day-64-years-ago-orwell-published-...)? We all know what culture inspired it and The Prisoner.
      - youngerdryas 13y ago
        Although set in London I always thought 1984 was rather Soviet.
        13y ago
- betterunix 13y ago
  "Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch." Well, let's try this: which agency, the NSA or the Stasi, does the following describe: * Keeps records of who talks to whom * Knows personal details of most citizens' lives * Monitors the personal, business, and political communications of large numbers of citizens * Operates in secrecy * Has the cooperation of the nation's industry * Collects more information that it can possibly process * Claims to be working to protect the public No, the NSA is not kidnapping people; that's the CIA's job. The NSA is a signals intelligence service. The Stasi's signals intelligence/surveillance system is what is relevant to conversations about the NSA, and there is nothing wrong or stretched about the comparison. Where the Stasi had informants, the NSA has Facebook. Where the Stasi had wiretaps, the NSA has room 641A.
  - youngerdryas 13y ago
    We need to teach more history to the youngsters.
rdegges 13y ago
I never thought I'd end up pitching something I worked on in a Hacker News thread, but here it goes anyway: I actually just finished building an MVP of a product business with a friend that we're launching later today: https://www.burnerphone.us https://www.burnerphone.us Essentially, we sell these pre-paid disposable cell phone kits that 'expire' after 30 days of usage (and come with unlimited talk and text, nationwide US coverage). We actually built the thing with security in mind, specifically because of the incredible amount of information that's now gathered not only by phone companies, but by the government as well. Want to make a phone call that won't be personally associated with you, from telephone company phone records? If so -- you really need to use a separate device (a Burner Phone). Anyhow, sorry for the plug in this thread, but thought it could lead to an interesting converstation.
- awayand 13y ago
  GREAT idea! I ordered 5 of these with my credit card...
  - rdegges 13y ago
    We're currently adding in BitCoin / PayPal support right now -- nothing is perfect, but this is sort of a MVP. After payment is accepted, we wipe our database columns with any user information as well, basically making it as hard as possible to identify users.
  - dkroy 13y ago
    That made me laugh, I didn't even think of the fact that you needed to use a credit card. I suppose you could get a prepaid card.
  - hga 13y ago
    We laugh, but from The Wall Street Journal today (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732429910457852...): "U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove "By SIOBHAN GORMAN, EVAN PEREZ and JANET HOOK "WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities."
youngerdryas 13y ago
This could never happen on Android.
Terretta 13y ago
Annoying link-bait title. Given the iPhone's lack of fully integrated "Google Now" Apple seems notably less likely to be able to provide watchers with structured data that 'knows what you're doing before you do' than, say, an Android phone syncing with Google, or Blackberry phone with RIMM's cloud (in fact, we know RIMM made govt data pipe agreements). The only mention of "iPhone" in the article is in the headline. Nothing in the article itself singles out Apple. For today's TLDR crowd, the headline scanning takeaway is "damn, guess I better get any phone that's not an iPhone" when that's not the author's intent at all. I'd consider this headline actually harmful because it's not the device that's doing anything to you or with your data. It's not Apple, it's not Android, and it's not even Google Now software, no matter how potentially scary that big data insight might be. It's the corporations, the "all American alliance" he describes, that you sign ToS with, and the senators and representatives we elect to oversee the agencies that oversee them. Put the spotlight where it belongs. Put that in the headline.
- hype7 13y ago
  OK, I'm the article author, and I think that's great feedback. I didn't pick the title; originally it was "Rebuilding the Berlin Wall"… but editors will be editors :) I was a little annoyed at the arbitrary change, but on the basis of your feedback, went back and asked the editor to change it. It's still not exactly what I wanted, but it does address some elements of what you've written above. The iPhone clickbait is out. As a writer, honestly, it does get mighty exasperating when this happens. And, fwiw, you guys have all got insight into the messiness of the editorial/content process :) -- james
  - Terretta 13y ago
    Thanks for remaking the sausage.

46 points by hype7 13y ago

Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch. I hope we learn more about how the NSA is scaling their operation due to the absurd amount of data they have. In East Germany they had to use lots of people listening to every phone and apartment bugged conversation. That doesn't seem realistic for the NSA. Do they have software that is processing the data looking for keywords or phrases? That seems useless because an actual terrorist probably doesn't say 'bomb' on the phone.

hype7 13y ago
I think it might be helpful to read the article: "But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."
alive-or-not 13y ago
Right, because the people in today USA are completely different then the people in East Germany 25 years ago. Information today is literally the ultimate power. "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"
pessimizer 13y ago
Something devised 50 years ago might have looked for the word "bomb." These days, it would be self-training systems that even the operators would have little idea of what it was recognizing.
hga 13y ago
These are indeed the end times; I quote, with approval, The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/civil-liberties-american-freedom-on-the-line http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/civil-li...): "Few Americans believe that they live in a police state; indeed many would be outraged at the suggestion. Yet the everyday fact that the police have the right to monitor the communications of all its citizens – in secret – is a classic hallmark of a state that fears freedom as well as championing it. Ironically, the Guardian's revelations were published 69 years to the day since US and British soldiers launched the D-day invasion of Europe. The young Americans who fought their way up the Normandy beaches rightly believed they were helping free the world from a tyranny. They did not think that they were making it safe for their own rulers to take such sweeping powers as these over their descendants." Or in the acid wit of Iowahawk (https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/342683624216330242 https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/342683624216330242): "I'm grateful to the American heroes who stormed Normandy and made NSA monitoring of this tweet possible."
- youngerdryas 13y ago
  I am not sure you realize that UK citizens go to jail if they express unpopular opinions on twitter.
  - hga 13y ago
    Oh, I do, that's one of mean reasons I find it remarkable I'm quoting from The Guardian with approval. And should I mention that yesterday was the 64th anneversary of the publication of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (http://ygwomanup.org/this-day-64-years-ago-orwell-published-1984/ http://ygwomanup.org/this-day-64-years-ago-orwell-published-...)? We all know what culture inspired it and The Prisoner.
    - youngerdryas 13y ago
      Although set in London I always thought 1984 was rather Soviet.
      - 13y ago
betterunix 13y ago
"Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch." Well, let's try this: which agency, the NSA or the Stasi, does the following describe: * Keeps records of who talks to whom * Knows personal details of most citizens' lives * Monitors the personal, business, and political communications of large numbers of citizens * Operates in secrecy * Has the cooperation of the nation's industry * Collects more information that it can possibly process * Claims to be working to protect the public No, the NSA is not kidnapping people; that's the CIA's job. The NSA is a signals intelligence service. The Stasi's signals intelligence/surveillance system is what is relevant to conversations about the NSA, and there is nothing wrong or stretched about the comparison. Where the Stasi had informants, the NSA has Facebook. Where the Stasi had wiretaps, the NSA has room 641A.
- youngerdryas 13y ago
  We need to teach more history to the youngsters.

rdegges 13y ago

I never thought I'd end up pitching something I worked on in a Hacker News thread, but here it goes anyway: I actually just finished building an MVP of a product business with a friend that we're launching later today: https://www.burnerphone.us https://www.burnerphone.us Essentially, we sell these pre-paid disposable cell phone kits that 'expire' after 30 days of usage (and come with unlimited talk and text, nationwide US coverage). We actually built the thing with security in mind, specifically because of the incredible amount of information that's now gathered not only by phone companies, but by the government as well. Want to make a phone call that won't be personally associated with you, from telephone company phone records? If so -- you really need to use a separate device (a Burner Phone). Anyhow, sorry for the plug in this thread, but thought it could lead to an interesting converstation.

awayand 13y ago
GREAT idea! I ordered 5 of these with my credit card...
- rdegges 13y ago
  We're currently adding in BitCoin / PayPal support right now -- nothing is perfect, but this is sort of a MVP. After payment is accepted, we wipe our database columns with any user information as well, basically making it as hard as possible to identify users.
- dkroy 13y ago
  That made me laugh, I didn't even think of the fact that you needed to use a credit card. I suppose you could get a prepaid card.
- hga 13y ago
  We laugh, but from The Wall Street Journal today (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732429910457852...): "U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove "By SIOBHAN GORMAN, EVAN PEREZ and JANET HOOK "WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities."

youngerdryas 13y ago

This could never happen on Android.

Terretta 13y ago

Annoying link-bait title. Given the iPhone's lack of fully integrated "Google Now" Apple seems notably less likely to be able to provide watchers with structured data that 'knows what you're doing before you do' than, say, an Android phone syncing with Google, or Blackberry phone with RIMM's cloud (in fact, we know RIMM made govt data pipe agreements). The only mention of "iPhone" in the article is in the headline. Nothing in the article itself singles out Apple. For today's TLDR crowd, the headline scanning takeaway is "damn, guess I better get any phone that's not an iPhone" when that's not the author's intent at all. I'd consider this headline actually harmful because it's not the device that's doing anything to you or with your data. It's not Apple, it's not Android, and it's not even Google Now software, no matter how potentially scary that big data insight might be. It's the corporations, the "all American alliance" he describes, that you sign ToS with, and the senators and representatives we elect to oversee the agencies that oversee them. Put the spotlight where it belongs. Put that in the headline.

hype7 13y ago
OK, I'm the article author, and I think that's great feedback. I didn't pick the title; originally it was "Rebuilding the Berlin Wall"… but editors will be editors :) I was a little annoyed at the arbitrary change, but on the basis of your feedback, went back and asked the editor to change it. It's still not exactly what I wanted, but it does address some elements of what you've written above. The iPhone clickbait is out. As a writer, honestly, it does get mighty exasperating when this happens. And, fwiw, you guys have all got insight into the messiness of the editorial/content process :) -- james
- Terretta 13y ago
  Thanks for remaking the sausage.