13 ms·
Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying
- RexRollman 13y agoIt won't have any effect. Most people don't care, so long as they feel safe and aren't inconvienced.
- fchollet 13y agoMaybe you're right, maybe most people think that they have "nothing to hide" and want the government to "protect" them against the current boogieman (the USSR, now Islamists, tomorrow China?). But most people do care about Freedom and civil liberties, on a less "abstract" level. They just don't quite see the connection yet. And then it's our responsibility to inform those who don't care of the reality of what's happening and what is at stake --freedom of speech, democracy. Before it's to late to do it.
- will_brown 13y agoI think the public out cry of loss of civil liberties in this instance verse the relative lack thereof regarding the Executive creating the authority to name US citizens for extra judicial targeted drone strikes is very telling. It is not that people fear, or care more about the governmental power to intercept our electronic communications than the reality that citizenry might be killed without right to trial - they feel the loss of civil liberty in one instance is more likely to affect them personally, that is why it is important to remember "injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere." - MLK Jr.
- mpyne 13y agoI fear the next boogeyman will be MANPADs, based on a story I just read of French discoveries in Mali. I'm hoping that won't come to pass, or that we'll track down the missing MANPADs in time.
- ihsw 13y ago> Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses. As we move further into the 21st century and the world government's seek to expand their power, this strategy is seeing even greater success. This complements Orwell's 1984 very well, specifically because it matches Alduous Huxley's 'Brave New World' quite well. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Circuses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Circuses
- jpiasetz 13y agoSo what you're saying is they need to convince people that they aren't safe because the NSA is spying on them? Seems a fairly easy sell.
- mtgx 13y agoSome people prefer to be right about certain predictions, than do the right thing, and pushing the needle in the right direction. I really don't like such self-defeating comments. They cut through everyone else' "enthusiasm" and energy about doing something about it, and have negative impact on the movement for change.
- gridmaths 13y agoyeah... but were not most people here are we.. if HN isnt looking after the internet... who is ? Maybe its up to us to do our part [ along with reddit, 4chan, Anons, RMS/EFF ] so normal people can feel like the internet is their space ?
- mladenkovacevic 13y agoI guess this will be a test to see what Americans are made of... or rather what they've been turned into...
- xradionut 13y agoBaaaa Baaaaaaaaa Baaaaaa They have been turned into sheep over the last 6 decades by the media.
- mrt0mat0 13y agoI may be way off, but I feel that this issue is similar to Debt a few generations ago. they put it off to let the next generations down the road deal with it. Are we not doing the same thing with our civil liberties now? "why worry about it now, it's not a complete catastrophe yet." - narrow minded thinking in my opinion.
- sixQuarks 13y agoIt's not that most people don't care. It's that most people don't have the ability or desire to figure out the reality jigsaw puzzle. Meaning, by putting together small bits and pieces together, it's easy to see the overall picture of what's going on.
- spoiledtechie 13y agoSadly, I will have to agree. This is whats going to happen. Its going to be forgotten.
- Miner49er 13y agoIf this letter is ignored, then I think they should take it a step further and have another internet blackout (or something similar) for a day. If that fails they can make it a week, then a month, until it either becomes too expensive or the government gives in.
- IanDrake 13y agoHow is the NSA going to stop doing something they've never admitted to doing?
- alan_cx 13y agoIf desirable, stopping, or better regulating the NSA is the government's job. Of course they wont suddenly decide to stop.
- Spearchucker 13y agoStopping the NSA is about as likely as a snowball surviving Jenna Jameson's cleavage. More probable is renaming PRISM and (if the political heat [sorry] warrants it) splitting it into smaller entities, and then re-mount [ok, I'll stop now] the business-as-usual bike, as though nothing had ever happened.
- alan_cx 13y agoI volunteer for snow ball duty.... I know what you mean though. My point is that you need the political will, and politicians are way too scared of a bomb going off, and the people forgetting that they demanded privacy, asking why the NSA didn't magically know of it in advance. I do think the people need to once and for all decide on what they want, and once decided, be reminded of it every year or so. My opinion is that Im happy to take more risk of being killed in a terror attack and keeping freedoms. Since one is about 1000 times more likely to be killed in a car crash, I reckon we can have some freedom back.
- Spearchucker 13y agoWe agree.
- gridmaths 13y agoI think the NSA, the CIA, .mil .. all have many good people, who probably want to see better oversight. Many of them will be cringing at Abu Graib ... its about real oversight and balance of power and correct policy.
- DamnYuppie 13y agoPerhaps the bigger issue we need to discuss is are entities like the NSA providing value, honestly how many intelligence agencies do we need?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- BryanB55 13y agoCIA was definitely never 'officially' for domestic intelligence.
- DuskStar 13y agoNeither the NSA or CIA have jurisdiction inside the US, that's what the FBI is for. I think outside the US, the CIA does human intelligence, while the NSA did signals interception and other electronic intelligence.
- mpyne 13y agoThat's about right, but the NSA also is tasked with protecting the U.S. against other nations intelligence apparatuses. For instance NSA is tasked with producing (and now reviewing for approval) cryptographic schemes to protect government and national secrets, and in general devising new ways to conduct electronic intelligence so that they can devise countermeasures for the U.S. to use. If you've ever heard of TEMPEST fonts, that's just one example.
- joe_fishfish 13y agoI think you have the CIA and NSA's jurisdictions mixed up there.
- DamnYuppie 13y agoI agree that the above poster has them backwards. Yet I have never been clear on why we need a domestic spy agency given we have the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, DHS, and DOJ who are all actively engaged in monitoring internally. At what point to people start to realize that all of these groups will exist to serve themselves at our own expense?
- SeanDav 13y agoI see that Google, Facebook, Microsoft et al are conspicuous by their absence from that list. Kind of shouts out how little they feel for your (and my) data privacy.
- probably_wrong 13y agoWell, neither is YCombinator, while both Reddit and 4chan are. I agree they were probably contacted, but still I'd like to know, in any case, what was the procedure behind selecting those (and not other) companies.
- mtgx 13y agoIt would be pretty shocking if Microsoft continued the "Scroogle" charade after all of this. But you're right, I would've thought Google and the others would be the first to start a major lobbying campaign against NSA's surveillance powers. So maybe they don't really care about user privacy that much, or don't think this story will damage them too much in US or abroad, and that they don't really need to do anything to fix the broken trust relationship they have with their users now.
- youngerdryas 13y agoOr if Google continued their "Don't be evil" façade.
- doron 13y agoWell snooping on you to sell info to advertisers is a core business element. Bottom line - snooping is part and parcel of the business plan, they won't go against it, nor will they give it up.
- gridmaths 13y agoI would like to see Googles name on this action. Now is the time for Silicon Valley to step up.
- gridmaths 13y agoI dont really mean this as a criticism.. but it seems like a good opportunity to really send a message.
- justncase80 13y agoI wonder what would happen to these companies if they simply refused to comply with the order to give access to their data?
- sc00ter 13y agoThey'd allegedly get lucrative govenment contacts cancelled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying It has also been suggested that the insider trading charge were trumped up as retribution, in that the CEO was accused of purchasing shares with 'insider' knowledge of government contacts, but that he was prohibited by law from publicly disclosing those contracts.
- knowtheory 13y agoI dig the letter, but someone needs to have edited this for content. > "reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer" That's clearly factually incorrect. Snowden wasn't a career man, and also wasn't an officer. He was an IT infrastructure analyst. He's a support guy. Reading posts like this make the distinction (even w/in the intel world) very clear: http://qz.com/92509/edward-snowdens-lesson-to-both-businesses-and-the-nsa-your-it-people-are-your-biggest-risk/ http://qz.com/92509/edward-snowdens-lesson-to-both-businesse...
- blhack 13y agoThe spying will never, ever stop. This plays out as: The NSA etc. claim "Okay, we've stopped spying!" right up until they get caught again. Then the cycle starts over. -- There is no technically feasible way of ensuring that you're not being snooped on. Thus: you will always be snooped on.
- shpxnvz 13y agoI doubt that the NSA, or the executive branch, or the legislature, will ever be put in a position to have to claim that they've stopped spying. There will be brief outcry, some half-hearted claims by a few in charge that they will look into it, and after the next shooting or terrorist attack it will be on the second page, soon to drop off the radar completely. At least that's what I'd put my money on. They won't even be bothered to lie about it.
- ewbuoi 13y agoIt's funny how they put 4chan with the 'F's in the list of supporting companies instead of at the beginning where you'd normally find names starting with digits.
- crusso 13y agoYeah, 4chan shouldn't be your lead-in supporting web community when you're trying to look legitimate. It's bad enough that silly sounding names like "Boing Boing" are in there so early.
- chx 13y agoComplete waste of time. This is not where your problems are nor is it going to lead anywhere. May I offer http://chxrambling.tumblr.com/post/52584359139/why-are-you-so-outraged-now http://chxrambling.tumblr.com/post/52584359139/why-are-you-s... "you need to attack corporations bottom line for political reasons and make it very clear that's what you are doing"
- mladenkovacevic 13y agoIt is interesting to conjecture and theorize about the personality of the US intelligence community and just what price they are willing to pay to protect different types of information. For example: I wonder how much of their secrecy is really about protecting American citizens. After the Boston bombings (and 9/11 for that matter) there seemed to be no secrecy about the bombers. All types of information came out: that Russian intelligence had warned them about these guys, that one of them had already been investigated by the FBI for something else. All the information coming out had this open, non-secret feel. Same for 9/11: we suddenly knew about the movements and actions of the terrorists for months prior to the World Trade acts. How they trained, how they hijacked the planes, how Bin Laden had engineering insight and knew that hitting the towers at a certain height would make them collapse. PRISM seems murky as shit compared to that. It's almost like it's dealing in a completely different type of information altogether. This is what makes me wonder about what percentage of PRISM-type surveillance is really about locating some band of terrorists training in some desert camp. The secrecy around it seems much more likely to protect the spies than the American people. I do refuse to believe that the NSA employees are merciless warmongers looking to secretly destabilize nations and install puppet regimes while somehow profiting off of the anarchy that ensues (although a lot of US history is precisely that). I think most of them genuinely believe that they are doing good work that makes the world a safer place. But the personality of the organization they work for doesn't fit the rest of the picture and I just wonder what it is they are told in order to feel that the secrecy is justified.