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What is quite telling (at least within US media coverage) is that it is apparently only controversial that the NSA is spying on those in the US. The complete di

by noarchy 13y ago

What is quite telling (at least within US media coverage) is that it is apparently only controversial that the NSA is spying on those in the US. The complete disregard for everyone else in the world seems almost casual, as if it isn't an issue at all. But indeed, let's keep using encryption. It is, after all, the US government that has a long history(1) of trying to keep encryption out of our non-American hands. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U...

colinb 13y ago
Why would you expect the US government, or ANY government to respect the right of privacy of citizens of other countries? The first duty of government is surely to protect the interests of the country to which it belongs - note that I'm in favour of governments belonging to countries, not the other way around. And that first duty surely indicates that any government should do its upmost to pry into the business of anybody where doing so will offer advantage to its citizens. Furthermore, it would be weird if this didn't happen. And if your country, whichever one it is, isn't doing this, and some horrible thing happens which might have been avoided by this kind of spying, then your co-citizens will be rightly outraged and demand to know what the hell your government thinks it is doing. But, equally, your government might [ought?] to consider what it can do to protect its citizens from foreign spying. Most wicked in all of this is not that the spying takes place, but that it does so within the most diaphanous of legal frameworks. I understand that my government might want to spy on me if it thinks I'm involved in something illegal, but I damn well want a clear, unambiguous, legal framework that says who gets to authorise that spying, for how long, and on what grounds. Oh, and the person who does that authorisation had better be a judge, or an elected official that I can un-elect. All this we're-so-clever-because-we-found-a-way-to-subvert-the-law-by-cleve-interpretation nonsense needs to be stopped in a career ending way for those doing it. Oh, and the politicians who gave it a wink and a nod need to be named so we can decide what to do with them at the next election. In summary, countries spy on foreigners. Always have. Always will. But that doesn't excuse them spying on their own. That kind of behaviour has a bad reputation, for a bunch of historically valid reasons.
- lancewiggs 13y ago
  The current state is a sadly very country-centric perspective. I'd like to live in a world where we all were able to assert our rights, as stated most elegantly under the Declaration of Human Rights (1). Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Article 14: (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The USA's own Elanor Roosevelt was the Chair of the CHR, which drafted the Declaration, and the US is a signatory. (2) (1) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
  - Roboprog 13y ago
    Well, maybe, but I think I somewhat prefer the old fashioned way where at least a democracy or republic looked after the interests of its citizens, and hopefully the citizenry had some concept of ethics and fairness towards others in the world. Now we seem to have this attitude of "Justice for all (multinational) corporations!". Voting the wrong way is terrorism, as far as some of these interests are concerned :-(
- sentenza 13y ago
  So what you are basically saying is that the cloud and the free international market of services are dead. I would prefer if we managed to stop this nation vs nation view on things. But, since this is probably impossible, the way forward is to encrypt everything and stop using foreing cloud services.
- danbruc 13y ago
andyhmltn 13y ago
Yeah that's what has bothered me. Everyone is rattling on about spying on US citizens (which of course is justified) but hardly anybody seems to point out the blatant disregard for everyone else. As a non-US citizen (UK) the NSA supposedly has all my communications stored. I have no say in that and it seems that people are treating that as a non-issue. 'Ahh foreigners won't mind.' But we do
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ryusage 13y ago
  I feel like I'm a fairly open-minded guy, but I've just always taken it for granted that Intelligence agencies exist entirely for the purpose of keeping tabs on what other countries and their citizens are doing, in order to know about threats before they become problematic. I'm curious, do you think it would be unethical for British Intelligence to spy on someone in, say, Pakistan?
  - andyhmltn 13y ago
    There's a huge difference between keeping tabs on suspects and spying on everything that everyone does.
    - hackinthebochs 13y ago
      But how do you know a foreigner is a potential threat if you're not spying? If a government has a mandate to protect its citizens from foreign harm, it easily follows that the government would attempt to datamine the communications of the entire world. Why did you expect it to be any different? This sudden outrage is odd, honestly what did people think the NSA did with their tens of billions of dollars per year budget?
      - andyhmltn 13y ago
        That's not justification for spying on everyone all the time. Giving one organisation the power to look at everybody's communications is extremely stupid.

by noarchy 13y ago

colinb 13y ago

Why would you expect the US government, or ANY government to respect the right of privacy of citizens of other countries? The first duty of government is surely to protect the interests of the country to which it belongs - note that I'm in favour of governments belonging to countries, not the other way around. And that first duty surely indicates that any government should do its upmost to pry into the business of anybody where doing so will offer advantage to its citizens. Furthermore, it would be weird if this didn't happen. And if your country, whichever one it is, isn't doing this, and some horrible thing happens which might have been avoided by this kind of spying, then your co-citizens will be rightly outraged and demand to know what the hell your government thinks it is doing. But, equally, your government might [ought?] to consider what it can do to protect its citizens from foreign spying. Most wicked in all of this is not that the spying takes place, but that it does so within the most diaphanous of legal frameworks. I understand that my government might want to spy on me if it thinks I'm involved in something illegal, but I damn well want a clear, unambiguous, legal framework that says who gets to authorise that spying, for how long, and on what grounds. Oh, and the person who does that authorisation had better be a judge, or an elected official that I can un-elect. All this we're-so-clever-because-we-found-a-way-to-subvert-the-law-by-cleve-interpretation nonsense needs to be stopped in a career ending way for those doing it. Oh, and the politicians who gave it a wink and a nod need to be named so we can decide what to do with them at the next election. In summary, countries spy on foreigners. Always have. Always will. But that doesn't excuse them spying on their own. That kind of behaviour has a bad reputation, for a bunch of historically valid reasons.

lancewiggs 13y ago
The current state is a sadly very country-centric perspective. I'd like to live in a world where we all were able to assert our rights, as stated most elegantly under the Declaration of Human Rights (1). Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Article 14: (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The USA's own Elanor Roosevelt was the Chair of the CHR, which drafted the Declaration, and the US is a signatory. (2) (1) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
- Roboprog 13y ago
  Well, maybe, but I think I somewhat prefer the old fashioned way where at least a democracy or republic looked after the interests of its citizens, and hopefully the citizenry had some concept of ethics and fairness towards others in the world. Now we seem to have this attitude of "Justice for all (multinational) corporations!". Voting the wrong way is terrorism, as far as some of these interests are concerned :-(
sentenza 13y ago
So what you are basically saying is that the cloud and the free international market of services are dead. I would prefer if we managed to stop this nation vs nation view on things. But, since this is probably impossible, the way forward is to encrypt everything and stop using foreing cloud services.
danbruc 13y ago

andyhmltn 13y ago

Yeah that's what has bothered me. Everyone is rattling on about spying on US citizens (which of course is justified) but hardly anybody seems to point out the blatant disregard for everyone else. As a non-US citizen (UK) the NSA supposedly has all my communications stored. I have no say in that and it seems that people are treating that as a non-issue. 'Ahh foreigners won't mind.' But we do

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ryusage 13y ago
I feel like I'm a fairly open-minded guy, but I've just always taken it for granted that Intelligence agencies exist entirely for the purpose of keeping tabs on what other countries and their citizens are doing, in order to know about threats before they become problematic. I'm curious, do you think it would be unethical for British Intelligence to spy on someone in, say, Pakistan?
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  There's a huge difference between keeping tabs on suspects and spying on everything that everyone does.
  - hackinthebochs 13y ago
    But how do you know a foreigner is a potential threat if you're not spying? If a government has a mandate to protect its citizens from foreign harm, it easily follows that the government would attempt to datamine the communications of the entire world. Why did you expect it to be any different? This sudden outrage is odd, honestly what did people think the NSA did with their tens of billions of dollars per year budget?
    - andyhmltn 13y ago
      That's not justification for spying on everyone all the time. Giving one organisation the power to look at everybody's communications is extremely stupid.