14 ms·

Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

407 points by mh_ 13y ago

Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
I totally agree, I have been watching this totally pointless discussion about domestic spying all over the net. I was going to write about the topic, but someone did it already. My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population are so bad in geography that they don't know that they represent only less than 5% of world population. After all, it seems that only people who are voting in elections do matter at all. Maybe it would be a good time to vote with our wallets. It's also really funny how scared Americans are about Chinese manufactured hardware & backdoors. I just guess it takes a one to know one. Btw. WatchGuard firewall registration is very revealing, they want to know way too much about what the firewall is being used for.
- dasil003 13y ago
  > My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population are so bad in geography that they don't know that they represent only less than 5% of world population. Uh-huh. You've been watching those candid videos where they interview stupid Americans haven't you? Of course you probably realized that they are always filmed in heavily populated areas and there is always a cut between every interview. You know why? Because you can find ignorant people in any crowded place anywhere in the world. It's just more funny when it's Americans.
  - notimetorelax 13y ago
    There has been some research done in this area [1]. What interests me more is how does this compare to the other countries, if someone has the link please post it here. [1] http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2...
  - cpursley 13y ago
    I know from experience that Americans in fact, don't know their geography. Many couldn't find where they lived if you pointed it to them on a map. I had a neighbor who thought Amsterdam was a city next to Athens, Georgia (US State) and even after explaining where it was, that it was part of Holland, he asked me how the Germany trip was when I returned. And yesterday, the Indian gas station owner was flabbergasted that I knew about and where his home town was (Goa - relatively well known at least I thought). He actually asked 'how do you know that' and I wanted to say because I'm not a zombie.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      Not sure I see how this is germane. Are you saying your geography is good, but your statistics are absolute shite?
      - cpursley 13y ago
        I'm saying from general interactions with American neighbors, people on the street and my own family, they don't know geography. Mine's not great - pretty elementary compared to the rest of the world.
        dasil003 13y ago
        Okay obviously my reply went right over your head so I'll give it to you straight: neither you nor the GP has any basis to make that claim. In another reply actual data was presented showing that American ignorance of basic geographical facts is nowhere near 95%.
    - lttlrck 13y ago
      I know plenty of people in Europe that would have trouble locating major US cities on a map, but I wouldn't be so bigoted to say Europeans don't know geography.
      - cpursley 13y ago
        I'm not expecting them to find the city on a map (aside from their own), but you'd be hard pressed to find a European that didn't know that New York or L.A. was located in the United States.
stormbrew 13y ago
Interestingly, it seems as if a lot of my fellow Canadians are pacified by this line of thinking, perhaps not realizing that they're fair game.
bsaul 13y ago
Funny how citizenship seems to be a thing of the past to many people. Another weird side effect of globalization...
- brador 13y ago
  Many people now feel patriotic to ideals than imaginary lines drawn thousands of years ago. It's an interesting shift, and in some ways was started by the US having a constitution (set of ideals) as it's foundation rather than a particular leader, king, or ruler.
  - anon1385 13y ago
    Nationalism is a relatively modern phenomenon. The founding of the US was part of the rise of Nationalism. The idea that your nation (I assume you are american?) represents 'higher ideals' than others is rather nationalistic don't you think? From wikipedia: With the emergence of a public sphere and integrated economy in the 18th century, a broader sense of identification with one's country began to permeate society. In England, the early emergence of a patriotic nationalism can be traced to the period 1740-1790 and was spurred on by many of the writers and leading intellectuals of the day. Many symbols of national identity became widespread, such as the Union Flag being increasingly adopted as a national flag, the composition of patriotic songs such as Rule, Britannia! and the creation of John Bull as the personification of Britain by John Arbuthnot. The movement intensified and became overtly political with the late-18th century American Revolution and French Revolution; specifically the ultra-nationalist party in France during the French Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History
    - nraynaud 13y ago
      I have a candid question then: what did drive the mess of wars in Europe before that? Germany, Switzerland and Italy were a mess of little independent territories fighting each other. I don't think all of those wars where based on religious grounds.
rmc 13y ago
That's one thing that has annoyed me about the tech world's outrage and objections to the PRISM spying lark. They appear outraged that US citizens are spied on, with the implication that it was ok when non us citizens were spied on. Do I, a non us citizen, not have a right to privacy?
- jmadsen 13y ago
  You, as a non-US citizen, are not protected by our constitution. Nor am I, a US citizen, protected from your government. I have no grounds to "raise outrage" at my government for spying on foreigners, much as I might disapprove. They don't break any laws when they do that. Moral rules, yes; disrespect to our friends and allies, yes; laws, no. When they spy on US citizens, they tear up our Constitution in doing so. The outrage is less about the spying - although that is obviously very important - and more about the laws they are breaking.
  - Ziomislaw 13y ago
    well, what hitler and stalin did also was didnt break any laws, because they had changed them, just like US
  - barrkel 13y ago
    Outrage generally isn't triggered by breaking laws; rather, "moral rules" and "disrespect". A certain strand in the US considers the constitution an almost sacred document. Their outrage is less about laws being broken, and more about a perceived violation of sanctity. I'm fairly confident they don't feel the same way about e.g. driving 5mph over the limit.
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      Constitution is the highest form of law. IANAL but from what I understand all laws are made in such way that they shouldn't contradict constitution. If laws openly go against the constitution it weakness its position as the supreme law of a state/nation (for better or for worse).
  - 13y ago
ExpiredLink 13y ago
> we all bought into the dream.. The American dream didn't even work out for most US citizens. Merely the upper class. The rest of the world bought into practical consumerism more than into a diffuse dream.
- hartator 13y ago
  Is the european model better? I will trade my european passport for the US one anytime. But, sure, I also feel there is two kind of people, and if you are not an US citizen, you are screwed.
  - lispm 13y ago
    There is an european passport?
    - hartator 13y ago
      Basically, on your passport, you have both "european union" and the name of the issuing country.
    - muyuu 13y ago
      Yep, there are several. Any EU passport makes you an E.U. citizen.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    > Is the european model better? Better? Depends on who you are, I guess If you are part of the lower classes you have far better support systems available pretty much anywhere in Europe, with the exception perhaps of a couple of non-EU/EEA states. But just like the US, there's huge differences depending on where you are.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    I think that's generally a very bad idea if you don't want to live in the US. The USA is one of the very few countries in the world that will tax you even for your gains abroad while being resident abroad.
Yver 13y ago
What hurts me is that people are acting surprised that spy agencies are spying on people. Their job is to collect intelligence. If they can read your emails, they will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies
- grey-area 13y ago
  But should they do so without oversight and without limits?
- alan_cx 13y ago
  No one is saying that at all. I am amazed that people still do not understand the problem. And that really hurts, hurts us all.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  And I'm surprised they need to at least respect the law of the nation they are working over. Also I'm surprised people are acting like the being a corporate scumbag is something weird. Corporate scumbags are by their very definition corporate scumbags and must behave scumbaggy.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  Their job most certainly isn't mass surveillance of civilian populations. If they thought it was, they need to be disbanded.
drawkbox 13y ago
Yes but this is happening in other countries for both citizens and non-citizens, it is naive to think otherwise. Just as it was for Americans after 9/11, and even before. If there is lack of backbone on the people to stop it and they allow giving up rights with no fight or questioning it, it will continue. It is not distinct to the US, this is happening everywhere. Now we know factually (previously assumed) that it happens in the US as well, I think most people here in the US are just surprised it is also happening to them. That was the last place people assumed privacy, as a citizen. You'd expect intel agencies in every country to gather as much information as possible unless the people of that country object loud enough, I am not for it at all but it is the new game. I am sure this is also happening at gov't levels all over the world in addition to private companies. Business ideas and data stolen everyday, gov't intelligence agencies sifting right off the lines. The age of digital privacy just seems to be over sadly, too many technology tools to not abuse out there. Changing it will be difficult, encryption doesn't even help. Personal servers, computers etc are the easiest thing to get into. The only real protection would be at the service/cloud level and having stronger security/monitoring like financial + trading markets have. But then you have the situation where gov't intel agencies just go to them to gain access. Not even sure how to change it. Explicit protections in the Constitution are footnoted away with executive orders and fear based legislation. The permanent record your teachers used to warn you about, that exists now for real.
grey-area 13y ago
The other dangerous thing about this attitude of, oh, it's only foreigners, is that GCHQ and other US allies routinely sweep up communications from all over the world (in the case of GCHQ probably mostly from the US). So if you send information to Europe from the US, you're being spied upon, and the information relayed back to the NSA. The same goes for citizens of the UK subject to NSA spying who have data or contacts in the US. This distinction between us and them is used to tranquillise dissent in the US even as the NSA blithely ignores their own rules. In our increasingly connect world, does it even make sense to define rights based on where a person lives, or what country they happened to be born in? We should expect the same basic rights (right to a free trial, right to a free press, protection from torture) to apply to all people even if citizenship of a nation confers certain privileges.
- mtgx 13y ago
  What worries me is that their spying "partnerships" are so broad, that NSA receiving data on Americans from GCHQ, and GCHQ receiving data from NSA, works effectively as themselves doing the spying in their own country. So then this argument that "we don't spy on our own people", implying that "we have no data on our own people" is potentially misleading to the extreme. Of course, NSA already spies on Americans, but other countries (Canada, Australia, UK, and others) might not be so "brave", and they could be getting data about every one of their citizens from NSA, which makes it just as bad as themselves doing all the spying. So the "legal boundaries" of these spying agencies are effectively useless.
UVB-76 13y ago
I was going to write a comment to this effect on one of the many threads related to this subject, but figured it would fall on deaf ears. Americans should not underestimate the damage this scandal has done to the American 'brand'. Growing up, I was the Americophile of my friends. I loved American culture, I aspired to live the American dream, I fully intended to pursue American citizenship later in life. This is only the latest in a long line of realisations, but my view couldn't have changed more. I don't even want to visit the US again, let alone pledge my allegiance to it.
- Roritharr 13y ago
  Without wanting to sound alarmist, but I feel exactly the same way. I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting there solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale or feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore. I've been on the web for a very long time now, have read all kinds of chemistry, pyrotechnics and bomb-making newsgroups and websites and contributed to them. I've visited a school with over 50% muslim students and lots of my friends are muslim. I consider myself close to a maker, loving 3D Printers and Arduinos, Quad-Copters and the like... I post my political views openly on Google+ and Facebook and discus it via Twitter and Mail... I'm afraid to the extent i'm targeted and what would happen if I tried to visit the US.
  - UVB-76 13y ago
    > I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting there solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale or feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore. This is more a case of the straw that broke the camel's back for me, but I consider it a watershed moment nonetheless. Privacy is a fundamental human right, enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR, and one that I value dearly. Now it emerges the United States has been willingly violating my right to privacy for years. Rather than rectifying the matter, officials are saying it's okay because I'm not a US citizen — non-citizens obviously aren't entitled to human rights — and focusing their attention on punishing the person responsible for bringing this to my attention. That is unforgivable in my eyes.
dbuxton 13y ago
I went to this expecting to find a slightly puzzled reaction along the lines of, "even given the leaked surveillance, we all know that our own governments are doing similar stuff to us all the time and that we are protected neither by law nor by convention against it". I know that's a bit of an overstatement but it's particularly amusing to see Snowden sheltered by two of the world's most enthusiastic users of surveillance, namely Russia and China. FWIW I'm in the UK, where we're a lot luckier than most in terms of accountability, oversight and convention, but don't have an explicit constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. That said, it often bemuses people in Europe to look at the US and see almost no protection for what we understand as a basic right of "privacy".
- markdown 13y ago
  Don't you folks get watched by big brother everywhere you go? Isn't London the CCTV capital of the world?
nkoren 13y ago
The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the ideal which provided America's inner light; for all of America's mis-steps, the proclamation of this core ideal fanned the flames of some sort of tendency towards goodness. This ideal is all but gone. Today, the American government baldly proclaims that rights do not belong to human beings, but are conferred only by citizenship. the starkest example of this remains John Yoo's rationale (embraced by the Bush administration) for why the Geneva Convention does not apply to the Taliban: that the rights guaranteed by the Convention were not human rights, but rights granted to combatants of UN member states. Yoo argued that human rights did not exist, and that rights derive solely from citizenship. To be fair, the roots of that doctrine long preceded the Bush administration, and have continue to grow since. But when I look at framing of debate about rights -- and this applies not only to the NSA spying, but also to the outrage over the fact that the US President would order the drone assassination of, gasp, American citizens (as opposed to the thousands of other non-combatants he has killed in the same way) -- when I see this, it becomes clear that the ideals which inspired the declaration of independence are long since gone.
- sounds 13y ago
  Thank you for that. Can I just say, I wouldn't say the Enlightenment Ideal is all but gone. It's not even near death. We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US, but I'll start there. I believe the people were half-awake...but not completely unaware of who they were electing or what they would lose. The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die. They are self-evident. Like 3.14159 and 2.71828.
  - obviouslygreen 13y ago
obviouslygreen 13y ago
This outrage at American reactions is terribly hypocritical. Yes, people -- regardless of nationality -- should be upset when they realize their privacy is being grossly violated without cause, by any government. However, people seem to think Americans should be more concerned about other people's rights than their own, when the real problem is the violation of everyone's rights. Despite this, all anyone is really interested is their own rights, which is quite obvious considering the central complaint here is that Americans are wrapped up in themselves while the rest of the world has the same issue. How is that rational? Your rights are being violated, and that's supposed to matter to me more than the fact that my rights are being violated by my government in the same way? Yes, it's selfish, but it's also self-preservation. If people don't stand up for themselves when they need to, they will not be around to stand up for anyone else later. Many of us wring our hands at the various European financial crises; many of us worry about North Korea's potential to harm its neighbors; many of us anxiously watch for improvement in Middle Eastern politics. But just like anyone else, when we find out things where we live are worse than we thought, we look inwards to our own problems; that they effect others is terrible, but it's irrational and unreasonable to expect that to be our primary motivation.
- nsomaru 13y ago
  Perhaps its because our rights (as foreigners) are not being recognised at all. One thing is to violate whilst recognising, the other is to just not recognise (in which case no violation exists).
- disbelief 13y ago
  I don't think the author is saying "treat my rights as your primary motiviation", nor is he saying "you should be more concerned about other people's rights than your own." What he is saying is that the American discourse over these violations — violations perpetrated by agencies within America upon as you say everyone's rights — tends to dehumanize anyone who isn't American. It seems that if the NSA had been using their Prism dragnet to target only non-Americans, then there would be no public outcry at all — as if the real outrage is the fact that American citizens might be the target of these blatantly illegal and wide-reaching abuses of power. Perhaps, as you say, this is simply the American public "looking inwards" to it's own problems, but I'd argue that this is not your own problem. It's everyone's problem, and we all deserve equal treatment.
belorn 13y ago
> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all.. Maybe we should just create the "terrorist party", as in, we are all terrorist in the eyes of the US, so we might just have to get comfortable with the label.
Derbasti 13y ago
The sad thing is, we don't have international law for these things. Thus, it is usually easier to ask a foreign intelligence agency if they could spy on a domestic suspect than to deal with it within the country. And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules for spying are most certainly governed by borders; This leads to this weird asymmetric situation where one particular domestic intelligence agency is able to collect almost all international data. What we really would need is citizenship for data. In a way, it does not make sense that Facebook owns my data. My data should be my own, and thus be governed by whatever jurisdiction I happen to live in. Or put differently, one way out of this is to host your own email, backup, syncing, etc. That way the data is yours, and governed by the same rules as you. This is what I am doing. Or maybe, Google should split up into several legal entities that each are accountable for the data for one country. But clearly, that would just leave us all flocking to Iceland or the Vatican or something like that...
- TimJRobinson 13y ago
  Some kind of peer to peer encrypted data storage system (think bitcoin for data) would go a long way towards solving this. You could give sub keys to sites that want to access some of this data and because it's encrypted, distributed and peer to peer no one owns it and you control your data. Yes this would be crazy with todays infrastructure but in 10 - 20 years when internet is as previlent as electricity and everyone has many terabytes of space it's definitely viable. I really hope some smart minds are working on something like this in light of these revelations.
  - uxp 13y ago
    How is this any different than hosting your own federated OpenID service? Hell, I'm basically doing this already with XMPP, Email and a blog, but not OpenID because it's not as prevalent as it could be. This is already a solved problem that doesn't take terabytes of storage space. Though, like any common service or protocol, it could be more secure.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
tehwalrus 13y ago
The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my (rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need one legal system for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an international court system. I've blogged about this before[1], although I intend to rewrite much of what's on that old site since I don't think it's communicated very well. I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it lasted, but I'm now going to have to start taking my skepticism of US law seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can. [1] http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/ http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/
- harryf 13y ago
  A legal system as only as good as those who control it. One way to define what the law is, is that it's the will of the strong imposed upon the weak. In the Middle Ages for example the "strong" were barons who imposed laws upon the peasants through their men-at-arms. Today we have various competing legal systems fighting either for global control or defending their local "sovereignty". When we reach the point of one global legal system, we will have found a winner.
  - popee 13y ago
    > A legal system as only as good ad those who control it. Bingo!
mahmud 13y ago
Ugh! I cringed reading that. We wear blue jeans, drink Coke & eat McDonalds. We favor American companies (hands down) when we make purchases Well, thanks, but as an American I'd rather if people didn't have this subservient attachment to the U.S.
- tekacs 13y ago
  A lot of American companies make high quality, often cheaper-than-domestic goods. Favouring them is hardly a matter of subservience.
- disbelief 13y ago
  Yeah, the article could have done without that part and still stood upon its core argument. I think the author intended to start out with a little flattery to soften the blow, but it just comes across as patronizing and/or a bit outdated.
  - jopt 13y ago
    My sentiment exactly. I cringed at the thought of an argument based entirely on that. The last part, however > George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all.. redeemed the views to me.
  - vixen99 13y ago
    Neither flattering nor patronizing, I can see, merely a description of what the author saw. However a bit of condescension might well be in order from some quarters.
mosselman 13y ago
Why so black and white? US vs the rest? I don't care about what government says or does something, I care about what people do to each other, because in the end we are all people. It is not ok for a group of people to take it upon themselves to hurts everybody's privacy like has been done now. We'd have to stop whoever is doing this.
cpursley 13y ago
I'd argue that there are several countries that are more free than the United States in both terms of social issues and economics that make better role models. This might all be 'news' to the tech community - but Libertarian circles have been talking about this trend towards totalitarianism since what, the 70s? It might feel like it all started after 9/11, but this framework has been building up for decades. In fact, it's the natural trajectory to unopposed empire. The only thing I hope is that foreign nations accept us liberty loving Americans into their arms when the expatriation wave begins and are able to distinguish us from the assholes. It's coming - just look at the uptick in expatriation: www.nestmann.com/expatriation-statistics There's even publications dedicated to this like www.sovereignman.com and www.escapefromamerica.com/about
- jcromartie 13y ago
  Which countries would those be? I'm really on the fence at the moment, between becoming active in trying to change politics for the better, or just packing up and going somewhere that doesn't spy on literally everybody and throw you in jail over a stupid joke or rap song on facebook.
  - cpursley 13y ago
    Well, it depends on your political preference. Strong social liberty or strong economic liberty or something in between? It depends on what's important to you. Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/index/ http://www.heritage.org/index/ Democracy Index: https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034 https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_d... Human Development Index: http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Trends_2013.pdf http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Tre... Gun Freedom: http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html Press Freedom: http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html Drug Freedom: http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html Various other stats: http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx Just notice the trends - which countries are you seeing at the tops of most of the lists?
throwit1979 13y ago
This is going to be a little inflammatory but it's true. Why I will never take seriously foreigners' reactions to our wars, surveillance, human rights violations, etc: You people, and the governments and central banks who represent you, keep buying our debt and financing all of this. The US Government would be incapable of funding these programs and wars at low cost without YOU stepping up to the plate every single auction to buy up our treasuries at ridiculously low yields. I'll believe your outrage when I see action behind it.
- throwit1979 13y ago
  Either I'm wrong, or reality is unpopular on HN. It doesn't take much to google for the TIC data[1]. You really do finance this stuff. Average net purchases represent nearly 30% of the US Government's budget. The USG would have to curtail its programs by about this much if you didn't consistently buy our toilet paper. [1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/tressect.txt http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...
- vacri 13y ago
  I can't ever recall seeing 'buy US debt' pitched as an election issue, though it's nice of you to shift the blame to people who generally wouldn't understand what you're even talking about, let alone be aware of it going on.
TimJRobinson 13y ago
As an Australian this is exactly how I feel. Over the past few weeks I've been moving many of my business systems off the cloud and onto self hosted servers and using less and less American servers because they clearly have no issue with taking foreigners information and with tens of thousands of contractors and employees able to access that information I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism.
- bobbydavid 13y ago
  Hopefully the data was encrypted while you were moving, since they're listening on the wires too.
- giardini 13y ago
  "I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism." How long? I think this has been happening for some time now. There's no mechanism for watching the watchers. Furthermore as software developers we know that there's always an unaudited path to the data and people _will_ access it for their own benefit. Bloomberg had access to how Goldman-Sachs uses Bloomberg's terminals so Bloomberg employees took advantage. The NSA can see Bloomberg, Goldman-Sachs and every financial firms' queries and transactions, all telephone calls and all e-mails, all internet surfing (for starters), where they eat lunch and what road they drive home on. NSA employees will be tempted (or possibly allowed or even encouraged) to take advantage. And what better way to get money to pay for unauthorized or secret black operations? There may be much happening right now that is completely unauthorized (even by NSA) and completely out of the purview of those who supposedly are in charge. We may never, ever see the size of this iceberg. It could be spawning sizable financially autonomous mini-icebergs that continue to function even after this one has been melted down. This is a fscking nightmare scenario.
kenbellows 13y ago
Just to put it out there, while I agree that the sheer volume of snooping being performed by the NSA, why is it a surprise to anyone, anywhere, that any government is snooping on as much foreign traffic as they can? This is, and has pretty much always been, standard operating procedure for every major intelligence agency in the world.
nnq 13y ago
Nothing will change until all Americans get it once and for all that the attitude of being at war with the world and planning to win at all cost is actually opposite to being competitive and fighting hard to be the best in the world. We the foreigners that buy into the american dream always think of the latter as the "american attitude" whereas US gov and corporations always go for the first. And they only coincide in very restricted contexts, basically in fewer and fewer contexts as the world changes and becomes more homogeneous. To "win the war" when you're well above everyone else tends to equate to playing fair most of the time, you just use what you have and what you have is always better so you always win, but when the economical and cultural ground levels, if your goal is still to "win the war", you end up playing dirty and forgetting about human rights and values. ...the USA's attitude will only change when they wake tf up and realize that there is now war to be won, it's just about competing in a healthy "jungle". The current US gov's attitude to everything seems to us foreigners similar to your classical story of the PTSDd Vietnam war veteran that gets home after the war and keeps fighting imaginary wars, butchering his family and blowing up the neighborhood in the process, just because that's all he's good at.
juanre 13y ago
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Woody Guthrie: [...] The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills, Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says, "They are just deportees" Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except "deportees"? This is some time after 1948. Then, just as now, there were people who saw non-citizens as barely humans, in the US and everywhere else. But then there was Woody Guthrie as well, and the many people like him who saw the human in the foreigner. What has changed in recent years is the reach of the mightiest power, and sheer number of people who find ourselves in the wrong end of its struggle for control.
znowi 13y ago
I see a lot of disillusion in Europe about the US. It's been going since the Iraq, but now it's a real wake up call. What's more alarming, it's slipping into anger and open opposition. This is not the change we've been anticipating. Americans are in a tricky situation now. Who do you elect at this point to make things right? Does it even work? I think we've reached a major milestone here. I'm both frightened and curious as to what will happen. I believe what we do now will define our lives for decades to come.
- kevin_p 13y ago
  I think the article isn't really about elected representatives, it's about the attitudes of ordinary Americans. Like the author and many other pro-American Europeans, I've been pretty disillusioned by the recent reaction to PRISM. Like drone assassination before it, most Americans aren't saying "how dare our government do this" but "how dare our government do this TO US CITIZENS". (I'm not talking about spying on political leaders, the military etc - everyone does that to everyone else. But it seems that most Americans think it's perfectly fine to invade the privacy of ordinary people on a massive scale, just as long as those people don't hold a US passport.)
bobbydavid 13y ago
Practically speaking, context matters in privacy. For instance, if a person invades my privacy to learn my sexual orientation, I would feel violated. But if that person was my boss, I would feel much more violated. For an American like myself, domestic spying is scary for the same reason. The US government is my local government. They run our children's schools. They make me send in reams of silly tax documents. They make me wait in line at the DMV. They patrol the streets of my neighborhood with guns. When I call 911 (the emergency number), it's the US government who answers. In short, the US government -- my government -- is in a great position to abuse the knowledge gained from spying. It's this immediacy that heightens fear of domestic spying. Another thing to note is that there is a subtle but important distinction for Americans between the CIA and the FBI. The connotative equivalent of the FBI is the police and the connotative equivalent of the CIA is the army. Thus, watching the CIA spy on Americans feels ominous and sinister. It's the spying equivalent of martial law. What Americans don't realize, I think, is that for foreigners it is an issue of respect. That is, the underlying context of domestic spying outrage is that US citizens were _not_ outraged by foreign spying; that it's perfectly acceptable to spy on the foreigners as long as we protect our own privacy. In the end, privacy is about perception. To those who, like me, feel their privacy is being violated, please continue to make your feelings heard, both inside and outside the US. The more voices (especially tenacious ones) the better.
pasbesoin 13y ago
Many in "our" community assign a fair amount of credence to the statement: Information is power. We see the trend. A... -- I seldom haul out this word, but I will now -- "neo-Fascist" [1] regime absorbing a potentially exponential increase in information while seeking to increasingly restrict our access to and control over same. That is, I think, in good part what it boils down to.
dusanbab 13y ago
Brilliant and succinctly put!
freshhawk 13y ago
Perhaps it's because I'm Canadian and have lived in a world of "constantly aware of US politics but not governed by them" but I find the attitude the OP is now discarding to be superbly and painfully naive. Basically delusional. Imagine the feeling you would get when someone tells you "I entered by credit card number in that 'check if your credit card has been stolen' banner ad and it said I was safe, so that's good news". Same feeling. So while I'm glad the realization has been had, and the childish notion has been discarded, I'm really worried that this is some kind of common idea among educated non-Americans. Is the ability to read newspapers or follow politics (actual politics, not the circus of party politics) of any kind in that much of a decline?
alanning 13y ago
Foreign citizens have a very powerful ally when being spied on by the U.S. government: your own government. When the U.S. government is spying on its own citizens, who do we have to turn to?

407 points by mh_ 13y ago

I totally agree, I have been watching this totally pointless discussion about domestic spying all over the net. I was going to write about the topic, but someone did it already. My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population are so bad in geography that they don't know that they represent only less than 5% of world population. After all, it seems that only people who are voting in elections do matter at all. Maybe it would be a good time to vote with our wallets. It's also really funny how scared Americans are about Chinese manufactured hardware & backdoors. I just guess it takes a one to know one. Btw. WatchGuard firewall registration is very revealing, they want to know way too much about what the firewall is being used for.

dasil003 13y ago
> My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population are so bad in geography that they don't know that they represent only less than 5% of world population. Uh-huh. You've been watching those candid videos where they interview stupid Americans haven't you? Of course you probably realized that they are always filmed in heavily populated areas and there is always a cut between every interview. You know why? Because you can find ignorant people in any crowded place anywhere in the world. It's just more funny when it's Americans.
- notimetorelax 13y ago
  There has been some research done in this area [1]. What interests me more is how does this compare to the other countries, if someone has the link please post it here. [1] http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2...
- cpursley 13y ago
  I know from experience that Americans in fact, don't know their geography. Many couldn't find where they lived if you pointed it to them on a map. I had a neighbor who thought Amsterdam was a city next to Athens, Georgia (US State) and even after explaining where it was, that it was part of Holland, he asked me how the Germany trip was when I returned. And yesterday, the Indian gas station owner was flabbergasted that I knew about and where his home town was (Goa - relatively well known at least I thought). He actually asked 'how do you know that' and I wanted to say because I'm not a zombie.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    Not sure I see how this is germane. Are you saying your geography is good, but your statistics are absolute shite?
    - cpursley 13y ago
      I'm saying from general interactions with American neighbors, people on the street and my own family, they don't know geography. Mine's not great - pretty elementary compared to the rest of the world.
      - dasil003 13y ago
        Okay obviously my reply went right over your head so I'll give it to you straight: neither you nor the GP has any basis to make that claim. In another reply actual data was presented showing that American ignorance of basic geographical facts is nowhere near 95%.
  - lttlrck 13y ago
    I know plenty of people in Europe that would have trouble locating major US cities on a map, but I wouldn't be so bigoted to say Europeans don't know geography.
    - cpursley 13y ago
      I'm not expecting them to find the city on a map (aside from their own), but you'd be hard pressed to find a European that didn't know that New York or L.A. was located in the United States.

stormbrew 13y ago

Interestingly, it seems as if a lot of my fellow Canadians are pacified by this line of thinking, perhaps not realizing that they're fair game.

bsaul 13y ago

Funny how citizenship seems to be a thing of the past to many people. Another weird side effect of globalization...

brador 13y ago
Many people now feel patriotic to ideals than imaginary lines drawn thousands of years ago. It's an interesting shift, and in some ways was started by the US having a constitution (set of ideals) as it's foundation rather than a particular leader, king, or ruler.
- anon1385 13y ago
  Nationalism is a relatively modern phenomenon. The founding of the US was part of the rise of Nationalism. The idea that your nation (I assume you are american?) represents 'higher ideals' than others is rather nationalistic don't you think? From wikipedia: With the emergence of a public sphere and integrated economy in the 18th century, a broader sense of identification with one's country began to permeate society. In England, the early emergence of a patriotic nationalism can be traced to the period 1740-1790 and was spurred on by many of the writers and leading intellectuals of the day. Many symbols of national identity became widespread, such as the Union Flag being increasingly adopted as a national flag, the composition of patriotic songs such as Rule, Britannia! and the creation of John Bull as the personification of Britain by John Arbuthnot. The movement intensified and became overtly political with the late-18th century American Revolution and French Revolution; specifically the ultra-nationalist party in France during the French Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    I have a candid question then: what did drive the mess of wars in Europe before that? Germany, Switzerland and Italy were a mess of little independent territories fighting each other. I don't think all of those wars where based on religious grounds.

rmc 13y ago

That's one thing that has annoyed me about the tech world's outrage and objections to the PRISM spying lark. They appear outraged that US citizens are spied on, with the implication that it was ok when non us citizens were spied on. Do I, a non us citizen, not have a right to privacy?

jmadsen 13y ago
You, as a non-US citizen, are not protected by our constitution. Nor am I, a US citizen, protected from your government. I have no grounds to "raise outrage" at my government for spying on foreigners, much as I might disapprove. They don't break any laws when they do that. Moral rules, yes; disrespect to our friends and allies, yes; laws, no. When they spy on US citizens, they tear up our Constitution in doing so. The outrage is less about the spying - although that is obviously very important - and more about the laws they are breaking.
- Ziomislaw 13y ago
  well, what hitler and stalin did also was didnt break any laws, because they had changed them, just like US
- barrkel 13y ago
  Outrage generally isn't triggered by breaking laws; rather, "moral rules" and "disrespect". A certain strand in the US considers the constitution an almost sacred document. Their outrage is less about laws being broken, and more about a perceived violation of sanctity. I'm fairly confident they don't feel the same way about e.g. driving 5mph over the limit.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    Constitution is the highest form of law. IANAL but from what I understand all laws are made in such way that they shouldn't contradict constitution. If laws openly go against the constitution it weakness its position as the supreme law of a state/nation (for better or for worse).
- 13y ago

ExpiredLink 13y ago

> we all bought into the dream.. The American dream didn't even work out for most US citizens. Merely the upper class. The rest of the world bought into practical consumerism more than into a diffuse dream.

hartator 13y ago
Is the european model better? I will trade my european passport for the US one anytime. But, sure, I also feel there is two kind of people, and if you are not an US citizen, you are screwed.
- lispm 13y ago
  There is an european passport?
  - hartator 13y ago
    Basically, on your passport, you have both "european union" and the name of the issuing country.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Yep, there are several. Any EU passport makes you an E.U. citizen.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > Is the european model better? Better? Depends on who you are, I guess If you are part of the lower classes you have far better support systems available pretty much anywhere in Europe, with the exception perhaps of a couple of non-EU/EEA states. But just like the US, there's huge differences depending on where you are.
- muyuu 13y ago
  I think that's generally a very bad idea if you don't want to live in the US. The USA is one of the very few countries in the world that will tax you even for your gains abroad while being resident abroad.

Yver 13y ago

What hurts me is that people are acting surprised that spy agencies are spying on people. Their job is to collect intelligence. If they can read your emails, they will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

grey-area 13y ago
But should they do so without oversight and without limits?
alan_cx 13y ago
No one is saying that at all. I am amazed that people still do not understand the problem. And that really hurts, hurts us all.
Ygg2 13y ago
And I'm surprised they need to at least respect the law of the nation they are working over. Also I'm surprised people are acting like the being a corporate scumbag is something weird. Corporate scumbags are by their very definition corporate scumbags and must behave scumbaggy.
dreamfactory 13y ago
Their job most certainly isn't mass surveillance of civilian populations. If they thought it was, they need to be disbanded.

drawkbox 13y ago

Yes but this is happening in other countries for both citizens and non-citizens, it is naive to think otherwise. Just as it was for Americans after 9/11, and even before. If there is lack of backbone on the people to stop it and they allow giving up rights with no fight or questioning it, it will continue. It is not distinct to the US, this is happening everywhere. Now we know factually (previously assumed) that it happens in the US as well, I think most people here in the US are just surprised it is also happening to them. That was the last place people assumed privacy, as a citizen. You'd expect intel agencies in every country to gather as much information as possible unless the people of that country object loud enough, I am not for it at all but it is the new game. I am sure this is also happening at gov't levels all over the world in addition to private companies. Business ideas and data stolen everyday, gov't intelligence agencies sifting right off the lines. The age of digital privacy just seems to be over sadly, too many technology tools to not abuse out there. Changing it will be difficult, encryption doesn't even help. Personal servers, computers etc are the easiest thing to get into. The only real protection would be at the service/cloud level and having stronger security/monitoring like financial + trading markets have. But then you have the situation where gov't intel agencies just go to them to gain access. Not even sure how to change it. Explicit protections in the Constitution are footnoted away with executive orders and fear based legislation. The permanent record your teachers used to warn you about, that exists now for real.

grey-area 13y ago

The other dangerous thing about this attitude of, oh, it's only foreigners, is that GCHQ and other US allies routinely sweep up communications from all over the world (in the case of GCHQ probably mostly from the US). So if you send information to Europe from the US, you're being spied upon, and the information relayed back to the NSA. The same goes for citizens of the UK subject to NSA spying who have data or contacts in the US. This distinction between us and them is used to tranquillise dissent in the US even as the NSA blithely ignores their own rules. In our increasingly connect world, does it even make sense to define rights based on where a person lives, or what country they happened to be born in? We should expect the same basic rights (right to a free trial, right to a free press, protection from torture) to apply to all people even if citizenship of a nation confers certain privileges.

mtgx 13y ago
What worries me is that their spying "partnerships" are so broad, that NSA receiving data on Americans from GCHQ, and GCHQ receiving data from NSA, works effectively as themselves doing the spying in their own country. So then this argument that "we don't spy on our own people", implying that "we have no data on our own people" is potentially misleading to the extreme. Of course, NSA already spies on Americans, but other countries (Canada, Australia, UK, and others) might not be so "brave", and they could be getting data about every one of their citizens from NSA, which makes it just as bad as themselves doing all the spying. So the "legal boundaries" of these spying agencies are effectively useless.

UVB-76 13y ago

I was going to write a comment to this effect on one of the many threads related to this subject, but figured it would fall on deaf ears. Americans should not underestimate the damage this scandal has done to the American 'brand'. Growing up, I was the Americophile of my friends. I loved American culture, I aspired to live the American dream, I fully intended to pursue American citizenship later in life. This is only the latest in a long line of realisations, but my view couldn't have changed more. I don't even want to visit the US again, let alone pledge my allegiance to it.

Roritharr 13y ago
Without wanting to sound alarmist, but I feel exactly the same way. I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting there solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale or feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore. I've been on the web for a very long time now, have read all kinds of chemistry, pyrotechnics and bomb-making newsgroups and websites and contributed to them. I've visited a school with over 50% muslim students and lots of my friends are muslim. I consider myself close to a maker, loving 3D Printers and Arduinos, Quad-Copters and the like... I post my political views openly on Google+ and Facebook and discus it via Twitter and Mail... I'm afraid to the extent i'm targeted and what would happen if I tried to visit the US.
- UVB-76 13y ago
  > I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting there solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale or feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore. This is more a case of the straw that broke the camel's back for me, but I consider it a watershed moment nonetheless. Privacy is a fundamental human right, enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR, and one that I value dearly. Now it emerges the United States has been willingly violating my right to privacy for years. Rather than rectifying the matter, officials are saying it's okay because I'm not a US citizen — non-citizens obviously aren't entitled to human rights — and focusing their attention on punishing the person responsible for bringing this to my attention. That is unforgivable in my eyes.

dbuxton 13y ago

I went to this expecting to find a slightly puzzled reaction along the lines of, "even given the leaked surveillance, we all know that our own governments are doing similar stuff to us all the time and that we are protected neither by law nor by convention against it". I know that's a bit of an overstatement but it's particularly amusing to see Snowden sheltered by two of the world's most enthusiastic users of surveillance, namely Russia and China. FWIW I'm in the UK, where we're a lot luckier than most in terms of accountability, oversight and convention, but don't have an explicit constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. That said, it often bemuses people in Europe to look at the US and see almost no protection for what we understand as a basic right of "privacy".

markdown 13y ago
Don't you folks get watched by big brother everywhere you go? Isn't London the CCTV capital of the world?

nkoren 13y ago

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the ideal which provided America's inner light; for all of America's mis-steps, the proclamation of this core ideal fanned the flames of some sort of tendency towards goodness. This ideal is all but gone. Today, the American government baldly proclaims that rights do not belong to human beings, but are conferred only by citizenship. the starkest example of this remains John Yoo's rationale (embraced by the Bush administration) for why the Geneva Convention does not apply to the Taliban: that the rights guaranteed by the Convention were not human rights, but rights granted to combatants of UN member states. Yoo argued that human rights did not exist, and that rights derive solely from citizenship. To be fair, the roots of that doctrine long preceded the Bush administration, and have continue to grow since. But when I look at framing of debate about rights -- and this applies not only to the NSA spying, but also to the outrage over the fact that the US President would order the drone assassination of, gasp, American citizens (as opposed to the thousands of other non-combatants he has killed in the same way) -- when I see this, it becomes clear that the ideals which inspired the declaration of independence are long since gone.

sounds 13y ago
Thank you for that. Can I just say, I wouldn't say the Enlightenment Ideal is all but gone. It's not even near death. We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US, but I'll start there. I believe the people were half-awake...but not completely unaware of who they were electing or what they would lose. The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die. They are self-evident. Like 3.14159 and 2.71828.
- obviouslygreen 13y ago

obviouslygreen 13y ago

This outrage at American reactions is terribly hypocritical. Yes, people -- regardless of nationality -- should be upset when they realize their privacy is being grossly violated without cause, by any government. However, people seem to think Americans should be more concerned about other people's rights than their own, when the real problem is the violation of everyone's rights. Despite this, all anyone is really interested is their own rights, which is quite obvious considering the central complaint here is that Americans are wrapped up in themselves while the rest of the world has the same issue. How is that rational? Your rights are being violated, and that's supposed to matter to me more than the fact that my rights are being violated by my government in the same way? Yes, it's selfish, but it's also self-preservation. If people don't stand up for themselves when they need to, they will not be around to stand up for anyone else later. Many of us wring our hands at the various European financial crises; many of us worry about North Korea's potential to harm its neighbors; many of us anxiously watch for improvement in Middle Eastern politics. But just like anyone else, when we find out things where we live are worse than we thought, we look inwards to our own problems; that they effect others is terrible, but it's irrational and unreasonable to expect that to be our primary motivation.

nsomaru 13y ago
Perhaps its because our rights (as foreigners) are not being recognised at all. One thing is to violate whilst recognising, the other is to just not recognise (in which case no violation exists).
disbelief 13y ago
I don't think the author is saying "treat my rights as your primary motiviation", nor is he saying "you should be more concerned about other people's rights than your own." What he is saying is that the American discourse over these violations — violations perpetrated by agencies within America upon as you say everyone's rights — tends to dehumanize anyone who isn't American. It seems that if the NSA had been using their Prism dragnet to target only non-Americans, then there would be no public outcry at all — as if the real outrage is the fact that American citizens might be the target of these blatantly illegal and wide-reaching abuses of power. Perhaps, as you say, this is simply the American public "looking inwards" to it's own problems, but I'd argue that this is not your own problem. It's everyone's problem, and we all deserve equal treatment.

belorn 13y ago

> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all.. Maybe we should just create the "terrorist party", as in, we are all terrorist in the eyes of the US, so we might just have to get comfortable with the label.

Derbasti 13y ago

The sad thing is, we don't have international law for these things. Thus, it is usually easier to ask a foreign intelligence agency if they could spy on a domestic suspect than to deal with it within the country. And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules for spying are most certainly governed by borders; This leads to this weird asymmetric situation where one particular domestic intelligence agency is able to collect almost all international data. What we really would need is citizenship for data. In a way, it does not make sense that Facebook owns my data. My data should be my own, and thus be governed by whatever jurisdiction I happen to live in. Or put differently, one way out of this is to host your own email, backup, syncing, etc. That way the data is yours, and governed by the same rules as you. This is what I am doing. Or maybe, Google should split up into several legal entities that each are accountable for the data for one country. But clearly, that would just leave us all flocking to Iceland or the Vatican or something like that...

TimJRobinson 13y ago
Some kind of peer to peer encrypted data storage system (think bitcoin for data) would go a long way towards solving this. You could give sub keys to sites that want to access some of this data and because it's encrypted, distributed and peer to peer no one owns it and you control your data. Yes this would be crazy with todays infrastructure but in 10 - 20 years when internet is as previlent as electricity and everyone has many terabytes of space it's definitely viable. I really hope some smart minds are working on something like this in light of these revelations.
- uxp 13y ago
  How is this any different than hosting your own federated OpenID service? Hell, I'm basically doing this already with XMPP, Email and a blog, but not OpenID because it's not as prevalent as it could be. This is already a solved problem that doesn't take terabytes of storage space. Though, like any common service or protocol, it could be more secure.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

tehwalrus 13y ago

The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my (rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need one legal system for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an international court system. I've blogged about this before[1], although I intend to rewrite much of what's on that old site since I don't think it's communicated very well. I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it lasted, but I'm now going to have to start taking my skepticism of US law seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can. [1] http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/ http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/

harryf 13y ago
A legal system as only as good as those who control it. One way to define what the law is, is that it's the will of the strong imposed upon the weak. In the Middle Ages for example the "strong" were barons who imposed laws upon the peasants through their men-at-arms. Today we have various competing legal systems fighting either for global control or defending their local "sovereignty". When we reach the point of one global legal system, we will have found a winner.
- popee 13y ago
  > A legal system as only as good ad those who control it. Bingo!

mahmud 13y ago

Ugh! I cringed reading that. We wear blue jeans, drink Coke & eat McDonalds. We favor American companies (hands down) when we make purchases Well, thanks, but as an American I'd rather if people didn't have this subservient attachment to the U.S.

tekacs 13y ago
A lot of American companies make high quality, often cheaper-than-domestic goods. Favouring them is hardly a matter of subservience.
disbelief 13y ago
Yeah, the article could have done without that part and still stood upon its core argument. I think the author intended to start out with a little flattery to soften the blow, but it just comes across as patronizing and/or a bit outdated.
- jopt 13y ago
  My sentiment exactly. I cringed at the thought of an argument based entirely on that. The last part, however > George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all.. redeemed the views to me.
- vixen99 13y ago
  Neither flattering nor patronizing, I can see, merely a description of what the author saw. However a bit of condescension might well be in order from some quarters.

mosselman 13y ago

Why so black and white? US vs the rest? I don't care about what government says or does something, I care about what people do to each other, because in the end we are all people. It is not ok for a group of people to take it upon themselves to hurts everybody's privacy like has been done now. We'd have to stop whoever is doing this.

cpursley 13y ago

I'd argue that there are several countries that are more free than the United States in both terms of social issues and economics that make better role models. This might all be 'news' to the tech community - but Libertarian circles have been talking about this trend towards totalitarianism since what, the 70s? It might feel like it all started after 9/11, but this framework has been building up for decades. In fact, it's the natural trajectory to unopposed empire. The only thing I hope is that foreign nations accept us liberty loving Americans into their arms when the expatriation wave begins and are able to distinguish us from the assholes. It's coming - just look at the uptick in expatriation: www.nestmann.com/expatriation-statistics There's even publications dedicated to this like www.sovereignman.com and www.escapefromamerica.com/about

jcromartie 13y ago
Which countries would those be? I'm really on the fence at the moment, between becoming active in trying to change politics for the better, or just packing up and going somewhere that doesn't spy on literally everybody and throw you in jail over a stupid joke or rap song on facebook.
- cpursley 13y ago
  Well, it depends on your political preference. Strong social liberty or strong economic liberty or something in between? It depends on what's important to you. Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/index/ http://www.heritage.org/index/ Democracy Index: https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034 https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_d... Human Development Index: http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Trends_2013.pdf http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Tre... Gun Freedom: http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html Press Freedom: http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html Drug Freedom: http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html Various other stats: http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx Just notice the trends - which countries are you seeing at the tops of most of the lists?

throwit1979 13y ago

This is going to be a little inflammatory but it's true. Why I will never take seriously foreigners' reactions to our wars, surveillance, human rights violations, etc: You people, and the governments and central banks who represent you, keep buying our debt and financing all of this. The US Government would be incapable of funding these programs and wars at low cost without YOU stepping up to the plate every single auction to buy up our treasuries at ridiculously low yields. I'll believe your outrage when I see action behind it.

throwit1979 13y ago
Either I'm wrong, or reality is unpopular on HN. It doesn't take much to google for the TIC data[1]. You really do finance this stuff. Average net purchases represent nearly 30% of the US Government's budget. The USG would have to curtail its programs by about this much if you didn't consistently buy our toilet paper. [1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/tressect.txt http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...
vacri 13y ago
I can't ever recall seeing 'buy US debt' pitched as an election issue, though it's nice of you to shift the blame to people who generally wouldn't understand what you're even talking about, let alone be aware of it going on.

TimJRobinson 13y ago

As an Australian this is exactly how I feel. Over the past few weeks I've been moving many of my business systems off the cloud and onto self hosted servers and using less and less American servers because they clearly have no issue with taking foreigners information and with tens of thousands of contractors and employees able to access that information I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism.

bobbydavid 13y ago
Hopefully the data was encrypted while you were moving, since they're listening on the wires too.
giardini 13y ago
"I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism." How long? I think this has been happening for some time now. There's no mechanism for watching the watchers. Furthermore as software developers we know that there's always an unaudited path to the data and people _will_ access it for their own benefit. Bloomberg had access to how Goldman-Sachs uses Bloomberg's terminals so Bloomberg employees took advantage. The NSA can see Bloomberg, Goldman-Sachs and every financial firms' queries and transactions, all telephone calls and all e-mails, all internet surfing (for starters), where they eat lunch and what road they drive home on. NSA employees will be tempted (or possibly allowed or even encouraged) to take advantage. And what better way to get money to pay for unauthorized or secret black operations? There may be much happening right now that is completely unauthorized (even by NSA) and completely out of the purview of those who supposedly are in charge. We may never, ever see the size of this iceberg. It could be spawning sizable financially autonomous mini-icebergs that continue to function even after this one has been melted down. This is a fscking nightmare scenario.

kenbellows 13y ago

Just to put it out there, while I agree that the sheer volume of snooping being performed by the NSA, why is it a surprise to anyone, anywhere, that any government is snooping on as much foreign traffic as they can? This is, and has pretty much always been, standard operating procedure for every major intelligence agency in the world.

nnq 13y ago

Nothing will change until all Americans get it once and for all that the attitude of being at war with the world and planning to win at all cost is actually opposite to being competitive and fighting hard to be the best in the world. We the foreigners that buy into the american dream always think of the latter as the "american attitude" whereas US gov and corporations always go for the first. And they only coincide in very restricted contexts, basically in fewer and fewer contexts as the world changes and becomes more homogeneous. To "win the war" when you're well above everyone else tends to equate to playing fair most of the time, you just use what you have and what you have is always better so you always win, but when the economical and cultural ground levels, if your goal is still to "win the war", you end up playing dirty and forgetting about human rights and values. ...the USA's attitude will only change when they wake tf up and realize that there is now war to be won, it's just about competing in a healthy "jungle". The current US gov's attitude to everything seems to us foreigners similar to your classical story of the PTSDd Vietnam war veteran that gets home after the war and keeps fighting imaginary wars, butchering his family and blowing up the neighborhood in the process, just because that's all he's good at.

juanre 13y ago

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Woody Guthrie: [...] The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills, Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says, "They are just deportees" Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except "deportees"? This is some time after 1948. Then, just as now, there were people who saw non-citizens as barely humans, in the US and everywhere else. But then there was Woody Guthrie as well, and the many people like him who saw the human in the foreigner. What has changed in recent years is the reach of the mightiest power, and sheer number of people who find ourselves in the wrong end of its struggle for control.

znowi 13y ago

I see a lot of disillusion in Europe about the US. It's been going since the Iraq, but now it's a real wake up call. What's more alarming, it's slipping into anger and open opposition. This is not the change we've been anticipating. Americans are in a tricky situation now. Who do you elect at this point to make things right? Does it even work? I think we've reached a major milestone here. I'm both frightened and curious as to what will happen. I believe what we do now will define our lives for decades to come.

kevin_p 13y ago
I think the article isn't really about elected representatives, it's about the attitudes of ordinary Americans. Like the author and many other pro-American Europeans, I've been pretty disillusioned by the recent reaction to PRISM. Like drone assassination before it, most Americans aren't saying "how dare our government do this" but "how dare our government do this TO US CITIZENS". (I'm not talking about spying on political leaders, the military etc - everyone does that to everyone else. But it seems that most Americans think it's perfectly fine to invade the privacy of ordinary people on a massive scale, just as long as those people don't hold a US passport.)

bobbydavid 13y ago

Practically speaking, context matters in privacy. For instance, if a person invades my privacy to learn my sexual orientation, I would feel violated. But if that person was my boss, I would feel much more violated. For an American like myself, domestic spying is scary for the same reason. The US government is my local government. They run our children's schools. They make me send in reams of silly tax documents. They make me wait in line at the DMV. They patrol the streets of my neighborhood with guns. When I call 911 (the emergency number), it's the US government who answers. In short, the US government -- my government -- is in a great position to abuse the knowledge gained from spying. It's this immediacy that heightens fear of domestic spying. Another thing to note is that there is a subtle but important distinction for Americans between the CIA and the FBI. The connotative equivalent of the FBI is the police and the connotative equivalent of the CIA is the army. Thus, watching the CIA spy on Americans feels ominous and sinister. It's the spying equivalent of martial law. What Americans don't realize, I think, is that for foreigners it is an issue of respect. That is, the underlying context of domestic spying outrage is that US citizens were _not_ outraged by foreign spying; that it's perfectly acceptable to spy on the foreigners as long as we protect our own privacy. In the end, privacy is about perception. To those who, like me, feel their privacy is being violated, please continue to make your feelings heard, both inside and outside the US. The more voices (especially tenacious ones) the better.

pasbesoin 13y ago

Many in "our" community assign a fair amount of credence to the statement: Information is power. We see the trend. A... -- I seldom haul out this word, but I will now -- "neo-Fascist" [1] regime absorbing a potentially exponential increase in information while seeking to increasingly restrict our access to and control over same. That is, I think, in good part what it boils down to.

dusanbab 13y ago

Brilliant and succinctly put!

freshhawk 13y ago

Perhaps it's because I'm Canadian and have lived in a world of "constantly aware of US politics but not governed by them" but I find the attitude the OP is now discarding to be superbly and painfully naive. Basically delusional. Imagine the feeling you would get when someone tells you "I entered by credit card number in that 'check if your credit card has been stolen' banner ad and it said I was safe, so that's good news". Same feeling. So while I'm glad the realization has been had, and the childish notion has been discarded, I'm really worried that this is some kind of common idea among educated non-Americans. Is the ability to read newspapers or follow politics (actual politics, not the circus of party politics) of any kind in that much of a decline?

alanning 13y ago

Foreign citizens have a very powerful ally when being spied on by the U.S. government: your own government. When the U.S. government is spying on its own citizens, who do we have to turn to?