9 ms·

The Outrage about PRISM spying is wearing off already

96 points by Baustin 13y ago

ck2 13y ago
The way the average american thinks, if the police slowly came every other day and disappeared one of your neighbors, they'd shrug it off and say "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". Until it was their turn and there was no one to protest. This is why we still have the TSA grabbing your genitals and the NSA grabbing everything else. "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". Meanwhile congresspeople would write in exemptions for themselves and figure out how to do insider trading to profit from the activity (btw, they gave themselves back the right to do the insider trading).
- INTPenis 13y ago
  This and also never forget that on a global scale we are all living in the very upscale parts of the metropolis. Of all those sci-fi stories I've read where there is one major oppressive force with their boot on a smaller oppressed group, WE ARE THAT BIG TOTALITARIAN NATION! I'm saying we as in, we in the over-developed world. I'm personally a slav living in Sweden.
- regis 13y ago
  Whenever I fly I request a hand screening and it seems that more often than not the person screening me is more uncomfortable than I am. In the past I have literally walked a TSA employee through the procedure because he was to shy to touch me like he was "required" to. It's not only passengers who struggle with this stuff but also the employees of the companies that require this kind of behavior.
  - eksith 13y ago
    This was pretty much my experience as well. Also, a lot of the time, these TSA folks were just kids. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are still barely out of high school.
  - MattBearman 13y ago
    I flew out of Newark twice last month, and both times I was the only person who requested a hand screening, and both times the TSA employee doing the screening just seemed pissed off with me for making them do it. It does seem that sadly most people will just accept what ever ridiculous rules are forced upon them,
  - AndyKelley 13y ago
    I request a hand screening every time I fly as well. But I don't kid myself into thinking I'm effecting change.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - MattBearman 13y ago
    "and blowing himself on the plane" - I know you just missed a word, but good god that made me lol
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      There's gotta be a better way to say that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHe_BVY_9c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHe_BVY_9c
- diminoten 13y ago
  The problem with the NSA outrage is that it's about what the NSA could do with the data, not what they have done. The abuse of power is mostly theoretical at this point, and until we see confirmation that the NSA is using their knowledge of people for evil, it's all just speculation. The privacy violations are simply not enough for people to care, and I'm not 100% sure they're wrong.
  - Goladus 13y ago
    This is all true, but it still doesn't mean the problem shouldn't be addressed. And yes, the outrage is going to die down somewhat, the question then becomes how much is the media going to sell out their principles? Most people have to go back to their lives. But for journalists, it's their job to report on this sort of thing. Are they going to continue hammering for answers? Are they going to continue to report on whether anything has been done about secret warrants and the FISA court? Or are they going to give up at the first sign of fickleness in their audience and cater to their whimsy? Are they going to skip writing an article about the issue and instead write a meta-article about how people are no longer outraged about the issue?
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    If they are collecting and storing everyone's data, it will be abused. It's only a matter of time and gradually weaker requirements for accessing it. It needs to be stopped now before they can abuse it.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      Frankly, you don't know that. We can wax Orwellian as much as we'd like, but until you actually have evidence of these supposed abuses happening, most people will recognize your slippery-slope for what it is, and stop paying attention to you. Pre-crime goes both ways; are you really prepared to string up an organization for a crime it could commit, because you've "seen the future"?
      - LoganCale 13y ago
- thetabyte 13y ago
  "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." -- Martin Niemöller, 1946
  - rdouble 13y ago
    Then they came for the basement dwelling nerd, validating his entire existence.
    - thetabyte 13y ago
      Hm? Was that meant to be an insult to me? I'd appreciate hearing your full reasoning for the disparagement. From my perspective, I was only sharing a classic piece of literature that had a theme relevant to the parent's comment, with a message we all could learn from, that happens to be one of my favorite poems. I didn't claim to be out there, throwing myself on the line—though I did attend a protest on the matter, and have previously actively participated in a political campaign to support my views. Anyways, you were saying?
- rumcajz 13y ago
  In many ways it resembles the story of Weimar republic and Hitler's ascension to power. There have been of lot of speculation about why that may have happened, what kind of social forces have made the population behave in a way that ultimately harmed everyone etc. but there was no way to test it experimentally. Now there's a window of opportunity for social scientists to test the hypotheses and maybe even find out what's really going on in these kind of situations.
- goostavos 13y ago
  > "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". I think that's a touch of a generalization. I'm a guy that flies 4+ times a month, and I'm on a team of people who keep the same travel schedules. Not once has anyone I've ever known mentioned "safety" when the subject of TSA, or any invasive government program, comes up. No, the thing that we're scared of is not some vague notion of a terrorism, but being caught up in some power tripping TSA agents wet dream. You get groped because the alternative is causing a scene, getting detained, missing my flight, and thus missing out on the job which was my entire reason for entering the awful airport in the first place. A missed job means that there's no repeat next year, which puts my line of work and lively hood in jeopardy. Is it exciting? No. But it's reality. Talk of standing up to "the man" is easy, but action is several orders of magnitude harder. I have student loans, I have an apartment and family which would go under if not for my income. Things really aren't bad enough yet to put all of that on the line. So you go through "security," get your balls groped because it's better than the alternative, and you press on. I suspect that there are more like me than there are mindless "Gotta catch the terrorists at any cost!" people. Things would have to get much worse and actually tip the balance to where it makes sense to fight before I actually will. Don't think of us all as terrorist fearing surrender monkeys.
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    I don't, and won't, fly for as long as the TSA gropes and scans people. That limits my rapid travel abilities and has prevented me from doing certain things, but I would rather maintain my principles on that matter. Does it actually do anything? Probably not. Nonetheless, I refuse to ever subject myself to such treatment.
- tzs 13y ago
  > (btw, they gave themselves back the right to do the insider trading) I've seen that claimed with regard to the amendment passed to the STOCK Act a few months ago, but those claims were wrong. Is there some other change I missed?
  - ck2 13y ago
    They removed the disclosure requirement so it's impossible to find out who is doing what, so it's impossible enforce. http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-repeals-congressional-insider-trading-ban/ http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-rep... They are really good at loopholes for themselves, really good.
    - tzs 13y ago
      They did NOT remove the disclosure requirement. What they did was change the disclosure requirement so that except for members of Congress, candidates for Congress, the President, and the Vice President, the disclosures are not placed in an online database. So, enforcement against members of Congress, the President, and the Vice President has not changed. You can still look up their disclosures online. If you want to look at the disclosure of one of the other 28000 people covered, you can go look at the physical form they filed.
pearjuice 13y ago
Like any other outrage in the past few decades. We have become soft and there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of writing intellectual comments on the matter, we should go down the street, burn some tires, overthrow the government; stuff like that. Yet here I am,thinking that no one will be brave enough to initialize or follow me if I would. They made us soft and we obeyed. Don't tell me there is a civilized road to solving this because the stakes are way too high for anyone to turn in what we have become.
- astrodust 13y ago
  Americans don't know outrage. They've been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
  - pearjuice 13y ago
    The best part being these downvotes only proving the point.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      People aren't protesting because like the article says...they really don't care. NSA spying doesn't directly affect them in any tangible way, so there is no reason for the average person to be upset. If people were being physically yanked from their homes and interrogated related to NSA spying intel, then it might be a different story I believe.
  - jakejake 13y ago
    I don't think it's that we're not capable of getting angry or taking action. It's just that nobody can be bothered to do anything until something directly affects them. The effects of PRISM are easy to ignore for most people because its not easily visible. On top of that many people actually accept it because they feel its a necessary trade off for security. Add all that up with the fact that we get bored easily and that's how politicians are able to do just about anything they want. They just have to be a little more patient than the public.
mathattack 13y ago
I think privacy is already gone. I remember Geraldo Rivera going on a "Privacy is gone forever" rant after 9/11, and I was ashamed to admit that I actually agreed with him.
LoganCale 13y ago
There is a follow up protest to Restore the 4th, 1984 Day, planned for this upcoming Sunday, August 4. If there is one being held near you, please consider attending. Keep checking if there isn't one nearby, as they have been adding a few more locations in the past day. http://1984day.com/ http://1984day.com/
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  Do all of these rallies insist on using Facebook for organizing their privacy protests? The irony is stunning.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    Yeah, I find it stupid as well. I have the Facebook domain blocked at the /etc/hosts level and generally won't go there, period.
rambojohnson 13y ago
says "PC World" ...
JonSkeptic 13y ago
It's not surprising. The Zimmerman trial was an excellent distraction to get everyone's mind off of privacy and on to racial divisiveness. Now that the trial's long over, all that NSA stuff seems so distant in the memory of the average American. It was a brilliant move by the administration.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  Are you saying the Obama administration set up the Zimmerman trial just to distract people from the NSA stuff?
  - smky80 13y ago
    No, the people who tell the Obama administration what to do, told the media to make a circus out of the case.
    - adestefan 13y ago
      I can't tell if you actually believe this or if it's just sarcasm.
  - astine 13y ago
    It's highly unlikely that anything about the Zimmerman trial was a deliberate ploy to distract the American public from more pressing issues but... The president did explicitly weigh in on the trial which gave it more notoriety in the press. It's not impossible that he was hoping it would distract from the NSA issue. More likely though, there are just more people for whom race relations is a bigger deal than government spying.
VladRussian2 13y ago
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, accpetance
northwest 13y ago
"[...] the ten most searched terms, according to Google Trends, were: iOS7, PS4, Tim Tebow, Mac Pro, Kingdom Hearts, Miami Heat, IGN, Chad Johnson, NBA Playoffs, and the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC)." Probably the most important cause of this is the fact that the mass media are tightly controlled by a couple of extremely rich people. And they don't like change as they fear the loss of power. The current system works very much in their favor. Free and unbiased media is the basis for democracy.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  Another way to look at it would be to say that people care about things that directly affect them. The NSA stuff isn't something that really affects anyone's day-to-day life, whereas in the US there are just HUGE portions of the country that play PS4, watch sports, buy phones, etc. No conspiracy theory necessary.
  - northwest 13y ago
    > No conspiracy theory necessary. This is a saddening statement. What I'm saying has nothing to do with conspiracy. (When I say "controlled by a couple of extremely rich people", "a couple" might even be "a few hundred", but that's still "a couple".)
    - rayiner 13y ago
      You suggested that a few rich people control the media and tell people what to care about. That's pretty much the definition of conspiracy theory. Alternate hypothesis: you're in a tiny minority of people who think the internet is really important. Like, foundation of society important, as opposed to a convenient place to buy shit and message your friends and look up the release date of the latest Madden game. Surveillance of the internet seems more important to you than it does to other people, and you can't understand why and have to resort to an explanation involving the shadowy elite.
  - 00rion 13y ago
    The Zimmerman trial isn't something that affects everyone's day-to-day life, but the media chose to focus on it. Imagine what would happen if the media had instead focused on the NSA scandal. If that were to happen, things would change very quickly.
regis 13y ago
I am still outraged but I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the restore the 4th/1984 day stuff is the right way to go about it. That is a great way to spread a message but has about a 0% chance of shutting down the NSA etc... This stuff has recently caused me to fall into a bit of depression because I feel totally helpless. Does anyone else feel this way? What could we do?
- verandaguy 13y ago
  The distressing part about all this is that there is, in fact, very little to be done about this. For now, the best thing anyone can do is to keep the issue from dying. Raise awareness. Find reliable data to back up claims against PRISM and XKeyscore (data of which, I'm sure there are respectable amounts). The more people know, the more can be done about the issue. Protests, speeches, walkouts, boycotts, and, should worse come to worse, riots can be organized. Maybe more people working on the projects can be convinced to defect or sabotage the project. Just fight to keep this relevant.
  - regis 13y ago
    Definitely.... However, I have been working to keeping this subject alive but at a certain point people don't want to hear it and even more disturbingly I've found that many people don't think that our government would really do something like that even after reading about it.
- 00rion 13y ago
  Organize ourselves. The people need a way to influence the government more. We can do this through collecting money for specific causes and deciding, as a group, how best to influence politics, be it through billboard advertisements that shame particular representatives into acting in the interests of their constituents or by funding lobbyists to meet with congressmen etc. We need better tools to act as groups.
- jmccree 13y ago
  Until the NSA issue actually has an effect on the every day lives of the american population, it's going to be hard to get much support, when there are issues will actually make a difference in people's lives. We, the hackers and geeks, all see the frightening potential for abuse, but as it is now... the NSA does not make one bit of difference in the life of the average american. Taxes, health care, gun control, immigration, minimum wage, etc.. These are issues that will (or people feel will) have an impact in their day to day life. Furthermore, as a political issue, it's actually a problem that this is not a partisan issue. In the current polarized political climate, what politician wants to be seen working with the enemy? The democrats can't go after the spying as it's their party and president who are currently doing it. The republicans can't go against it as they originally started it and are the tough on terrorism party. When it comes to the NSA, the political machine is attempting to divide by zero.
rorrr2 13y ago
Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit. Did they stop the wars? Nope. It's what you do with that situation is important. I'd say an independent party should use privacy as an opportunity, a platform, name the responsible for the spying. Name the politicians who voted for it, name the judges to let it happen. Another good thing that will come out of it is the awareness of the encryption. More people will start using it. Assuming NSA doesn't have a magical anti-crypto algorithms, and it's a pretty solid assumption, NSA can spend trillions of dollars on hardware and still not be able to decrypt just one message.
- northwest 13y ago
  > Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit. I don't see it that way, b/c this is just 1 out of tons of measures that will be needed. Each measure will stimulate other measures, it's an interactive thing.
codersquare 13y ago
i haven't lived in America long enough, I'm Asian. I lived in Australia for long enough to know what democracy feels like, at least on the surface. But this incident is really something that I can't comprehend. What's happening to all those crouching potential heroes in American movies? The only hero I've seen so far is Snowden. Where have all those American brave cowboys gone? Where has the American dream gone? The dream of liberty, freedom, of a Fair country? Haven't lived in America myself, but from the self-confident, open-minded Americans I met, from Hollywood movies, I just can't understand why people are kinda OK with this incident. Why are people so tolerant to such a pretty big lie.
hankScorpi0 13y ago
Why is this surprising? This happens with every single item of news worth getting up in arms about. You are just seeing the receding area under the bell curve of social interest...
EGreg 13y ago
The problem of centralization, and its solution: http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21
neilk 13y ago
This is from July 7th. Almost a month ago. Maybe I suffer confirmation bias because I'm following the story, but it seems to be picking up steam to me. A few days ago, the US House of Representatives almost passed a law which would have curtailed the NSA's activities, and now we have the XKeyScore revelations which are still playing out. From the release of the Pentagon papers, to Nixon's resignation, took three years. The incident which ultimately led to the president's resignation was a side issue, buried in the back pages of the A section, for most of that time. I'm not sure if the US government is still capable of policing itself in that way. But however it plays out this isn't going to be over in a few weeks.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Failing to pass the law but coming close to passing the law means literally nothing. That is not a victory. And have you talked to people outside of the Internet about it? Plenty of people didn't ever care, and are now upset with Snowden for even having leaked what he did. This is not going to "pick up steam" any more than it already has, short of non-spying related leaks (Obama killed a guy with his laser vision, for example).
  - neilk 13y ago
    I think you're being unnecessarily negative. I like the metaphor Wyden had: "The side of transparency and openness is starting to put some points on the board." All-or-nothing thinking is not helpful. But you have a point. Snowden didn't come to the public with revelations about how these programs were persecuting anybody in particular. So the objections one might raise are more theoretical, about "turnkey tyranny", or that panoptic surveillance is itself an offense against the people. I have a feeling that if a more specific case came to light, it would change everything.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      It's not all-or-nothing thinking re: failing to pass the law. A vote count's closeness has very very little to do with how close the outcome actually was. It literally means nothing that the vote count was so close. I also don't think one case will do it. It'd have to be a trend (people literally snatched up in the night), a policy shift (all copyright abuse starts being enforced because now they have that data), or some kind of tragic action leading to the deaths (yes deaths) of people on US soil.
motters 13y ago
Relax. The Party is everything, knows everything. There are no spies, only brave members of the inner committee doing their duty for the empire.
aleprok 13y ago
I would right away move from Google, Microsoft, Apple, products if I had good alternatives. Basically I do not use any Apple products, but Skype is the only Microsoft thing I use. Duck Duck Go as search engine works, but still I like my personalized search results, they get me faster where I want to go. Though my search results should be secure and not spied upon. Duck Duck Go is also missing image search and some other problems like 25 Mb / 25 MB does not give me 0.125, but instead Provincial Trunk Highway 25, Brandon, Manitoba Then comes the problem of phone operation systems. Ubuntu Unity, Firefox OS could be nice, but they are long way to come here. Only mobile operation system options for me are iOS, Android or that damn Windows currently. It's pretty damn hard to stop using Facebook, Google+ or Twitter just for the reason of spying, because everyone of your friends is in one of them. If I decide to stop using these systems where I can be spied upon I most likely will lose ability to contact most of my friends who are not technically skilled to use something like torchat or does not care that much to learn to use it. If I leave these systems I can no longer easily inform my friends about the dangers of the systems they are using. Thing is walled gardens are walled gardens and they are hard to compete with. Do I wait that people create better and secure services or go offline and never come back?
arh68 13y ago
Wow, what a crap article. I've got a more to-the-point headline, if Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has trouble coming up with another: "World Doesn't Stop On A Dime To Fix Problems: Must Mean Nobody Cares". Classic spin-down.
mladenkovacevic 13y ago
For the average citizen it's all about reward and risk. A large population of the US is middle class and the risk of being detained, alienated or whatnot is far greater than the reward of complete liberty. And besides the surface illusion of liberty seems to be doing an alright job anyways. Now if the majority of US population sinks into poverty then the elite will have something to worry about. A far more likely scenario for the near future is that smaller countries become affected by citizen outrage, at which point they cut US political and economic influence out of their governments' decisions. You know how America imposes sanctions on Cuba? Well imagine that a large portion of the world imposes sanctions on the US. That might have some meaningful effect although an ongoing relationship with China alone might be enough to keep the US going for a while.
rasur 13y ago
*The Outrage in the USA about PRISM spying is wearing off already. The rest of the world however..
tehwalrus 13y ago
Elected officials don't have a reason to action any concern unless you're willing to change your vote over it (indeed, if lots of people are willing to change all their votes over it.)[1] Something like PRISM doesn't even get the requisite majority support (well, it does for email, not for phone records), let alone high enough priority to make people vote for some third "privacy party" candidate in the next presidential election, or to vote out legislators based on their support for it. It doesn't stand a chance of being changed. (except by a ruling that it breaches the 4th, which is rather unlikely, sadly.) [1] example from the UK; leaving the EU (most people would say yes, but wouldn't change their vote over it). House of Lords reform, too. If we ever get a referendum on either, boom!
wonderzombie 13y ago
Most people in the US probably assume that: * the agencies performing surveillance by and large have good intentions * surveillance has or will have no practical impact on their lives, because * they're not doing anything wrong, so they're probably fine, and anyway * they can't really do anything about it. As for the first, it reminds me of this Onion article: "Smart, Qualified People Behind The Scenes Keeping America Safe: 'We Don't Exist'"[0]. We have ordinary people, people with flaws and cognitive biases. They're hyper-sensitized to threats, convinced we're all in imminent danger unless we institute mass surveillance For Our Own Good. This is essentially a flawed premise (the road to hell, etc). The second is more or less correct. It makes no difference in one's daily life. In the third, I chose the word "wrong" deliberately. Most people incorrectly assume they've not done anything illegal, but most people don't have nefarious plans and therefore assume they've nothing to worry about. The third is also more or less correct, but it's a flawed premise that you, personally, have to be able to do something about it. I really think more people should be educated along the lines of "Don't Talk to the Cops"[1]. Even if you have no nefarious plans, the justice system's incentives are all aligned against you; they want convictions, not the truth. The adversarial nature of the system is predicated on you not being thoughtlessly compliant. [0]: http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-behind-the-scenes-keeping-a,17954/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-behi... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik. edited: formatting. wish I knew how to do bulleted lists.
null_ptr 13y ago
"There's some hard evidence that all this privacy stuff just doesn't alarm us all that much." I wish all these articles would stop the reinforcement of apathy in every spying article's opening paragraph. It sets the tone for the entire piece.
hoggle 13y ago
FYI this entry was just still among the top 30 stories on HN and is currently listed at #169. Can somebody explain this please?
GhotiFish 13y ago
But do you really care? Or are you more like my dogs, who can be distracted at any moment by a rustling in the leaves. "Oh, look, a squirrel!" their alert little faces seem to say. mmm hmm... Is all Stevens work this misdirected?
tshtf 13y ago
Not sure why this article has been flagged, but here's an anecdotal counterpoint. I run a public XMPP server listed on [1], and since the PRISM revelations the number of new user registrations has increased significantly. I've seen no sign so far of a downturn in new registrations. [1] http://xmpp.net/ http://xmpp.net/

96 points by Baustin 13y ago

ck2 13y ago

The way the average american thinks, if the police slowly came every other day and disappeared one of your neighbors, they'd shrug it off and say "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". Until it was their turn and there was no one to protest. This is why we still have the TSA grabbing your genitals and the NSA grabbing everything else. "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". Meanwhile congresspeople would write in exemptions for themselves and figure out how to do insider trading to profit from the activity (btw, they gave themselves back the right to do the insider trading).

INTPenis 13y ago
This and also never forget that on a global scale we are all living in the very upscale parts of the metropolis. Of all those sci-fi stories I've read where there is one major oppressive force with their boot on a smaller oppressed group, WE ARE THAT BIG TOTALITARIAN NATION! I'm saying we as in, we in the over-developed world. I'm personally a slav living in Sweden.
regis 13y ago
Whenever I fly I request a hand screening and it seems that more often than not the person screening me is more uncomfortable than I am. In the past I have literally walked a TSA employee through the procedure because he was to shy to touch me like he was "required" to. It's not only passengers who struggle with this stuff but also the employees of the companies that require this kind of behavior.
- eksith 13y ago
  This was pretty much my experience as well. Also, a lot of the time, these TSA folks were just kids. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are still barely out of high school.
- MattBearman 13y ago
  I flew out of Newark twice last month, and both times I was the only person who requested a hand screening, and both times the TSA employee doing the screening just seemed pissed off with me for making them do it. It does seem that sadly most people will just accept what ever ridiculous rules are forced upon them,
- AndyKelley 13y ago
  I request a hand screening every time I fly as well. But I don't kid myself into thinking I'm effecting change.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- MattBearman 13y ago
  "and blowing himself on the plane" - I know you just missed a word, but good god that made me lol
  - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    There's gotta be a better way to say that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHe_BVY_9c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHe_BVY_9c
diminoten 13y ago
The problem with the NSA outrage is that it's about what the NSA could do with the data, not what they have done. The abuse of power is mostly theoretical at this point, and until we see confirmation that the NSA is using their knowledge of people for evil, it's all just speculation. The privacy violations are simply not enough for people to care, and I'm not 100% sure they're wrong.
- Goladus 13y ago
  This is all true, but it still doesn't mean the problem shouldn't be addressed. And yes, the outrage is going to die down somewhat, the question then becomes how much is the media going to sell out their principles? Most people have to go back to their lives. But for journalists, it's their job to report on this sort of thing. Are they going to continue hammering for answers? Are they going to continue to report on whether anything has been done about secret warrants and the FISA court? Or are they going to give up at the first sign of fickleness in their audience and cater to their whimsy? Are they going to skip writing an article about the issue and instead write a meta-article about how people are no longer outraged about the issue?
- LoganCale 13y ago
  If they are collecting and storing everyone's data, it will be abused. It's only a matter of time and gradually weaker requirements for accessing it. It needs to be stopped now before they can abuse it.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Frankly, you don't know that. We can wax Orwellian as much as we'd like, but until you actually have evidence of these supposed abuses happening, most people will recognize your slippery-slope for what it is, and stop paying attention to you. Pre-crime goes both ways; are you really prepared to string up an organization for a crime it could commit, because you've "seen the future"?
    - LoganCale 13y ago
thetabyte 13y ago
"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." -- Martin Niemöller, 1946
- rdouble 13y ago
  Then they came for the basement dwelling nerd, validating his entire existence.
  - thetabyte 13y ago
    Hm? Was that meant to be an insult to me? I'd appreciate hearing your full reasoning for the disparagement. From my perspective, I was only sharing a classic piece of literature that had a theme relevant to the parent's comment, with a message we all could learn from, that happens to be one of my favorite poems. I didn't claim to be out there, throwing myself on the line—though I did attend a protest on the matter, and have previously actively participated in a political campaign to support my views. Anyways, you were saying?
rumcajz 13y ago
In many ways it resembles the story of Weimar republic and Hitler's ascension to power. There have been of lot of speculation about why that may have happened, what kind of social forces have made the population behave in a way that ultimately harmed everyone etc. but there was no way to test it experimentally. Now there's a window of opportunity for social scientists to test the hypotheses and maybe even find out what's really going on in these kind of situations.
goostavos 13y ago
> "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe". I think that's a touch of a generalization. I'm a guy that flies 4+ times a month, and I'm on a team of people who keep the same travel schedules. Not once has anyone I've ever known mentioned "safety" when the subject of TSA, or any invasive government program, comes up. No, the thing that we're scared of is not some vague notion of a terrorism, but being caught up in some power tripping TSA agents wet dream. You get groped because the alternative is causing a scene, getting detained, missing my flight, and thus missing out on the job which was my entire reason for entering the awful airport in the first place. A missed job means that there's no repeat next year, which puts my line of work and lively hood in jeopardy. Is it exciting? No. But it's reality. Talk of standing up to "the man" is easy, but action is several orders of magnitude harder. I have student loans, I have an apartment and family which would go under if not for my income. Things really aren't bad enough yet to put all of that on the line. So you go through "security," get your balls groped because it's better than the alternative, and you press on. I suspect that there are more like me than there are mindless "Gotta catch the terrorists at any cost!" people. Things would have to get much worse and actually tip the balance to where it makes sense to fight before I actually will. Don't think of us all as terrorist fearing surrender monkeys.
- LoganCale 13y ago
  I don't, and won't, fly for as long as the TSA gropes and scans people. That limits my rapid travel abilities and has prevented me from doing certain things, but I would rather maintain my principles on that matter. Does it actually do anything? Probably not. Nonetheless, I refuse to ever subject myself to such treatment.
tzs 13y ago
> (btw, they gave themselves back the right to do the insider trading) I've seen that claimed with regard to the amendment passed to the STOCK Act a few months ago, but those claims were wrong. Is there some other change I missed?
- ck2 13y ago
  They removed the disclosure requirement so it's impossible to find out who is doing what, so it's impossible enforce. http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-repeals-congressional-insider-trading-ban/ http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-rep... They are really good at loopholes for themselves, really good.
  - tzs 13y ago
    They did NOT remove the disclosure requirement. What they did was change the disclosure requirement so that except for members of Congress, candidates for Congress, the President, and the Vice President, the disclosures are not placed in an online database. So, enforcement against members of Congress, the President, and the Vice President has not changed. You can still look up their disclosures online. If you want to look at the disclosure of one of the other 28000 people covered, you can go look at the physical form they filed.

pearjuice 13y ago

Like any other outrage in the past few decades. We have become soft and there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of writing intellectual comments on the matter, we should go down the street, burn some tires, overthrow the government; stuff like that. Yet here I am,thinking that no one will be brave enough to initialize or follow me if I would. They made us soft and we obeyed. Don't tell me there is a civilized road to solving this because the stakes are way too high for anyone to turn in what we have become.

astrodust 13y ago
Americans don't know outrage. They've been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
- pearjuice 13y ago
  The best part being these downvotes only proving the point.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    People aren't protesting because like the article says...they really don't care. NSA spying doesn't directly affect them in any tangible way, so there is no reason for the average person to be upset. If people were being physically yanked from their homes and interrogated related to NSA spying intel, then it might be a different story I believe.
- jakejake 13y ago
  I don't think it's that we're not capable of getting angry or taking action. It's just that nobody can be bothered to do anything until something directly affects them. The effects of PRISM are easy to ignore for most people because its not easily visible. On top of that many people actually accept it because they feel its a necessary trade off for security. Add all that up with the fact that we get bored easily and that's how politicians are able to do just about anything they want. They just have to be a little more patient than the public.

mathattack 13y ago

I think privacy is already gone. I remember Geraldo Rivera going on a "Privacy is gone forever" rant after 9/11, and I was ashamed to admit that I actually agreed with him.

LoganCale 13y ago

There is a follow up protest to Restore the 4th, 1984 Day, planned for this upcoming Sunday, August 4. If there is one being held near you, please consider attending. Keep checking if there isn't one nearby, as they have been adding a few more locations in the past day. http://1984day.com/ http://1984day.com/

jamesbritt 13y ago
Do all of these rallies insist on using Facebook for organizing their privacy protests? The irony is stunning.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- LoganCale 13y ago
  Yeah, I find it stupid as well. I have the Facebook domain blocked at the /etc/hosts level and generally won't go there, period.

rambojohnson 13y ago

says "PC World" ...

JonSkeptic 13y ago

It's not surprising. The Zimmerman trial was an excellent distraction to get everyone's mind off of privacy and on to racial divisiveness. Now that the trial's long over, all that NSA stuff seems so distant in the memory of the average American. It was a brilliant move by the administration.

JonFish85 13y ago
Are you saying the Obama administration set up the Zimmerman trial just to distract people from the NSA stuff?
- smky80 13y ago
  No, the people who tell the Obama administration what to do, told the media to make a circus out of the case.
  - adestefan 13y ago
    I can't tell if you actually believe this or if it's just sarcasm.
- astine 13y ago
  It's highly unlikely that anything about the Zimmerman trial was a deliberate ploy to distract the American public from more pressing issues but... The president did explicitly weigh in on the trial which gave it more notoriety in the press. It's not impossible that he was hoping it would distract from the NSA issue. More likely though, there are just more people for whom race relations is a bigger deal than government spying.

VladRussian2 13y ago

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, accpetance

northwest 13y ago

"[...] the ten most searched terms, according to Google Trends, were: iOS7, PS4, Tim Tebow, Mac Pro, Kingdom Hearts, Miami Heat, IGN, Chad Johnson, NBA Playoffs, and the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC)." Probably the most important cause of this is the fact that the mass media are tightly controlled by a couple of extremely rich people. And they don't like change as they fear the loss of power. The current system works very much in their favor. Free and unbiased media is the basis for democracy.

JonFish85 13y ago
Another way to look at it would be to say that people care about things that directly affect them. The NSA stuff isn't something that really affects anyone's day-to-day life, whereas in the US there are just HUGE portions of the country that play PS4, watch sports, buy phones, etc. No conspiracy theory necessary.
- northwest 13y ago
  > No conspiracy theory necessary. This is a saddening statement. What I'm saying has nothing to do with conspiracy. (When I say "controlled by a couple of extremely rich people", "a couple" might even be "a few hundred", but that's still "a couple".)
  - rayiner 13y ago
    You suggested that a few rich people control the media and tell people what to care about. That's pretty much the definition of conspiracy theory. Alternate hypothesis: you're in a tiny minority of people who think the internet is really important. Like, foundation of society important, as opposed to a convenient place to buy shit and message your friends and look up the release date of the latest Madden game. Surveillance of the internet seems more important to you than it does to other people, and you can't understand why and have to resort to an explanation involving the shadowy elite.
- 00rion 13y ago
  The Zimmerman trial isn't something that affects everyone's day-to-day life, but the media chose to focus on it. Imagine what would happen if the media had instead focused on the NSA scandal. If that were to happen, things would change very quickly.

regis 13y ago

I am still outraged but I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the restore the 4th/1984 day stuff is the right way to go about it. That is a great way to spread a message but has about a 0% chance of shutting down the NSA etc... This stuff has recently caused me to fall into a bit of depression because I feel totally helpless. Does anyone else feel this way? What could we do?

verandaguy 13y ago
The distressing part about all this is that there is, in fact, very little to be done about this. For now, the best thing anyone can do is to keep the issue from dying. Raise awareness. Find reliable data to back up claims against PRISM and XKeyscore (data of which, I'm sure there are respectable amounts). The more people know, the more can be done about the issue. Protests, speeches, walkouts, boycotts, and, should worse come to worse, riots can be organized. Maybe more people working on the projects can be convinced to defect or sabotage the project. Just fight to keep this relevant.
- regis 13y ago
  Definitely.... However, I have been working to keeping this subject alive but at a certain point people don't want to hear it and even more disturbingly I've found that many people don't think that our government would really do something like that even after reading about it.
00rion 13y ago
Organize ourselves. The people need a way to influence the government more. We can do this through collecting money for specific causes and deciding, as a group, how best to influence politics, be it through billboard advertisements that shame particular representatives into acting in the interests of their constituents or by funding lobbyists to meet with congressmen etc. We need better tools to act as groups.
jmccree 13y ago
Until the NSA issue actually has an effect on the every day lives of the american population, it's going to be hard to get much support, when there are issues will actually make a difference in people's lives. We, the hackers and geeks, all see the frightening potential for abuse, but as it is now... the NSA does not make one bit of difference in the life of the average american. Taxes, health care, gun control, immigration, minimum wage, etc.. These are issues that will (or people feel will) have an impact in their day to day life. Furthermore, as a political issue, it's actually a problem that this is not a partisan issue. In the current polarized political climate, what politician wants to be seen working with the enemy? The democrats can't go after the spying as it's their party and president who are currently doing it. The republicans can't go against it as they originally started it and are the tough on terrorism party. When it comes to the NSA, the political machine is attempting to divide by zero.

rorrr2 13y ago

Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit. Did they stop the wars? Nope. It's what you do with that situation is important. I'd say an independent party should use privacy as an opportunity, a platform, name the responsible for the spying. Name the politicians who voted for it, name the judges to let it happen. Another good thing that will come out of it is the awareness of the encryption. More people will start using it. Assuming NSA doesn't have a magical anti-crypto algorithms, and it's a pretty solid assumption, NSA can spend trillions of dollars on hardware and still not be able to decrypt just one message.

northwest 13y ago
> Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit. I don't see it that way, b/c this is just 1 out of tons of measures that will be needed. Each measure will stimulate other measures, it's an interactive thing.

codersquare 13y ago

i haven't lived in America long enough, I'm Asian. I lived in Australia for long enough to know what democracy feels like, at least on the surface. But this incident is really something that I can't comprehend. What's happening to all those crouching potential heroes in American movies? The only hero I've seen so far is Snowden. Where have all those American brave cowboys gone? Where has the American dream gone? The dream of liberty, freedom, of a Fair country? Haven't lived in America myself, but from the self-confident, open-minded Americans I met, from Hollywood movies, I just can't understand why people are kinda OK with this incident. Why are people so tolerant to such a pretty big lie.

hankScorpi0 13y ago

Why is this surprising? This happens with every single item of news worth getting up in arms about. You are just seeing the receding area under the bell curve of social interest...

EGreg 13y ago

The problem of centralization, and its solution: http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21

neilk 13y ago

This is from July 7th. Almost a month ago. Maybe I suffer confirmation bias because I'm following the story, but it seems to be picking up steam to me. A few days ago, the US House of Representatives almost passed a law which would have curtailed the NSA's activities, and now we have the XKeyScore revelations which are still playing out. From the release of the Pentagon papers, to Nixon's resignation, took three years. The incident which ultimately led to the president's resignation was a side issue, buried in the back pages of the A section, for most of that time. I'm not sure if the US government is still capable of policing itself in that way. But however it plays out this isn't going to be over in a few weeks.

diminoten 13y ago
Failing to pass the law but coming close to passing the law means literally nothing. That is not a victory. And have you talked to people outside of the Internet about it? Plenty of people didn't ever care, and are now upset with Snowden for even having leaked what he did. This is not going to "pick up steam" any more than it already has, short of non-spying related leaks (Obama killed a guy with his laser vision, for example).
- neilk 13y ago
  I think you're being unnecessarily negative. I like the metaphor Wyden had: "The side of transparency and openness is starting to put some points on the board." All-or-nothing thinking is not helpful. But you have a point. Snowden didn't come to the public with revelations about how these programs were persecuting anybody in particular. So the objections one might raise are more theoretical, about "turnkey tyranny", or that panoptic surveillance is itself an offense against the people. I have a feeling that if a more specific case came to light, it would change everything.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    It's not all-or-nothing thinking re: failing to pass the law. A vote count's closeness has very very little to do with how close the outcome actually was. It literally means nothing that the vote count was so close. I also don't think one case will do it. It'd have to be a trend (people literally snatched up in the night), a policy shift (all copyright abuse starts being enforced because now they have that data), or some kind of tragic action leading to the deaths (yes deaths) of people on US soil.

motters 13y ago

Relax. The Party is everything, knows everything. There are no spies, only brave members of the inner committee doing their duty for the empire.

aleprok 13y ago

I would right away move from Google, Microsoft, Apple, products if I had good alternatives. Basically I do not use any Apple products, but Skype is the only Microsoft thing I use. Duck Duck Go as search engine works, but still I like my personalized search results, they get me faster where I want to go. Though my search results should be secure and not spied upon. Duck Duck Go is also missing image search and some other problems like 25 Mb / 25 MB does not give me 0.125, but instead Provincial Trunk Highway 25, Brandon, Manitoba Then comes the problem of phone operation systems. Ubuntu Unity, Firefox OS could be nice, but they are long way to come here. Only mobile operation system options for me are iOS, Android or that damn Windows currently. It's pretty damn hard to stop using Facebook, Google+ or Twitter just for the reason of spying, because everyone of your friends is in one of them. If I decide to stop using these systems where I can be spied upon I most likely will lose ability to contact most of my friends who are not technically skilled to use something like torchat or does not care that much to learn to use it. If I leave these systems I can no longer easily inform my friends about the dangers of the systems they are using. Thing is walled gardens are walled gardens and they are hard to compete with. Do I wait that people create better and secure services or go offline and never come back?

arh68 13y ago

Wow, what a crap article. I've got a more to-the-point headline, if Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has trouble coming up with another: "World Doesn't Stop On A Dime To Fix Problems: Must Mean Nobody Cares". Classic spin-down.

mladenkovacevic 13y ago

For the average citizen it's all about reward and risk. A large population of the US is middle class and the risk of being detained, alienated or whatnot is far greater than the reward of complete liberty. And besides the surface illusion of liberty seems to be doing an alright job anyways. Now if the majority of US population sinks into poverty then the elite will have something to worry about. A far more likely scenario for the near future is that smaller countries become affected by citizen outrage, at which point they cut US political and economic influence out of their governments' decisions. You know how America imposes sanctions on Cuba? Well imagine that a large portion of the world imposes sanctions on the US. That might have some meaningful effect although an ongoing relationship with China alone might be enough to keep the US going for a while.

rasur 13y ago

*The Outrage in the USA about PRISM spying is wearing off already. The rest of the world however..

tehwalrus 13y ago

Elected officials don't have a reason to action any concern unless you're willing to change your vote over it (indeed, if lots of people are willing to change all their votes over it.)[1] Something like PRISM doesn't even get the requisite majority support (well, it does for email, not for phone records), let alone high enough priority to make people vote for some third "privacy party" candidate in the next presidential election, or to vote out legislators based on their support for it. It doesn't stand a chance of being changed. (except by a ruling that it breaches the 4th, which is rather unlikely, sadly.) [1] example from the UK; leaving the EU (most people would say yes, but wouldn't change their vote over it). House of Lords reform, too. If we ever get a referendum on either, boom!

wonderzombie 13y ago

Most people in the US probably assume that: * the agencies performing surveillance by and large have good intentions * surveillance has or will have no practical impact on their lives, because * they're not doing anything wrong, so they're probably fine, and anyway * they can't really do anything about it. As for the first, it reminds me of this Onion article: "Smart, Qualified People Behind The Scenes Keeping America Safe: 'We Don't Exist'"[0]. We have ordinary people, people with flaws and cognitive biases. They're hyper-sensitized to threats, convinced we're all in imminent danger unless we institute mass surveillance For Our Own Good. This is essentially a flawed premise (the road to hell, etc). The second is more or less correct. It makes no difference in one's daily life. In the third, I chose the word "wrong" deliberately. Most people incorrectly assume they've not done anything illegal, but most people don't have nefarious plans and therefore assume they've nothing to worry about. The third is also more or less correct, but it's a flawed premise that you, personally, have to be able to do something about it. I really think more people should be educated along the lines of "Don't Talk to the Cops"[1]. Even if you have no nefarious plans, the justice system's incentives are all aligned against you; they want convictions, not the truth. The adversarial nature of the system is predicated on you not being thoughtlessly compliant. [0]: http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-behind-the-scenes-keeping-a,17954/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-behi... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik. edited: formatting. wish I knew how to do bulleted lists.

null_ptr 13y ago

"There's some hard evidence that all this privacy stuff just doesn't alarm us all that much." I wish all these articles would stop the reinforcement of apathy in every spying article's opening paragraph. It sets the tone for the entire piece.

hoggle 13y ago

FYI this entry was just still among the top 30 stories on HN and is currently listed at #169. Can somebody explain this please?

GhotiFish 13y ago

But do you really care? Or are you more like my dogs, who can be distracted at any moment by a rustling in the leaves. "Oh, look, a squirrel!" their alert little faces seem to say. mmm hmm... Is all Stevens work this misdirected?

tshtf 13y ago

Not sure why this article has been flagged, but here's an anecdotal counterpoint. I run a public XMPP server listed on [1], and since the PRISM revelations the number of new user registrations has increased significantly. I've seen no sign so far of a downturn in new registrations. [1] http://xmpp.net/ http://xmpp.net/