16 ms·

The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet

199 points by mxfh 13y ago

smutticus 13y ago
It makes me happy to see Schneier get more mainstream press these days. As someone who has followed his blog for years it's about freaking time he got more attention.
- humanspecies 13y ago
  Even if the only purpose is to propagate absurdly naive and ineffective ideas? What, google and apple "fighting" the US Government they've gladly been cooperating with since forever??? Why doesn't Schneier call them out for what these corporations really are, government snitches? What makes Schneier think any of these companies want to do what's "moral"?? This article is one of the most naive pieces I've ever read. It parts on the principle that these companies want to do what's moral, but the government is keeping them from doing it. That is absurd. Google, Apple and friends have been willingly cooperating with the government in exchange for perks, for immunity against FTC probes and so on. They're NOT gonna "fight" because they have nothing to fight against.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    Moral hazard cuts both ways, including giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Opportunity for wrong-doing doesn't confer guilt, it just means we should take the possibility seriously. Look at it this way: if every tech CEO is complicit without coercion (a strong possibility), the purpose of the article is to take away their shield, and convince the reader that those CEOs are morally culpable for not defending their customers. It's about calling the bluff by proxy.
diminoten 13y ago
Commandeering implies control, and the NSA does not have control. No one has "control" over the Internet. I also don't like this, "us vs. them" rhetoric that this story has turned some people towards, where the NSA are the unequivocal bad guys and we, the "little people", are the unequivocal good guys. That's a great way to get absolutely nothing done. The NSA is, despite everything we're being told by some people (Bruce), on our side. It's paranoid delusion to think the NSA is actively out to get us - at least ostensibly, the NSA is trying to help the citizens of the US. What we should be doing is asking for changes and modifications to how things are done. There are some not-so-big tweaks to the currently running programs which can feasibly be made without compromising these program's efficacy while also providing more insight into what's going on. We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) - it's possible. That's what we should be figuring out, not this chicken little/us vs. them bullshit.
- pdonis 13y ago
  the NSA does not have control. How do you know? The Internet backbone was developed using US government funding. How do you know that the US government did not put backdoors there? It did in the case of the long-distance telephone network. We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) I agree that this could be done in theory; I'm not sure it can be done in practice.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    I don't know in the epistemological sense, but there's just no reason to believe such a thing to be true.
    - Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
      Aside from the details that show the NSA having employees in companies install monitoring hardware worldwide? Or those that assist in providing data in return for some themselves? None of that counts to you because "there's just no reason to believe such a thing." You are essentially saying you don't believe anything you may have read in the past few years counts as control. What IS control then, other than the ability to control others, which the US/NSA has attempting to keep on top of since the shift in data traffic trends in the 1990s.
      - diminoten 13y ago
        Did you just ask "What is control, other than the ability to control others"? Do you honestly not recognize the shell-game you're playing with that question? You're responding to all of the things I said with tricks and games. You don't want to talk facts, so I don't want to talk with you. I'm done, unless you want to stop drawing conclusions and start painting a real picture.
        APoliteRequest 13y ago
        Could you acknowledge how having control is indeed having control? These installations didn't just trip and fall into place.
apalmer 13y ago
This line of argument is kinda weak. Personally I agree with the end goals, but the argument isn't compelling. Realistically these companies don't have much choice, and these businesses end users for the most part (the 99.99% that aren't technophiles) don't really care that the NSA is snooping. I think we need to step back from hoping that business will protect the people. The people will protect the people, and if the people dont, a for profit entity wont (and shouldn't) step in as guardian.
- Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
  "Realistically these companies don't have much choice" Of course they do. They can comply or not. If they do not comply they may face court. Of course it is impossible to say how that court would go since none of them are making a choice to stop being co-conspirators.
wil421 13y ago
It should read The NSA "HAS" Commandeered the Internet. As more and more information is gets thrown into the light, I find it disturbing that the NSA's capability has grown under the Obama Administration. I would think they would have less powers compared to Bush Admin post 9/11. Wait till they attach listening instruments onto drones and send them to scan the sky's across America under a directive from the FISA court.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I have to wonder what it's like for Zuckerberg, or Brin, or any of the other big internet moguls today. Here they are creating internet experiences made as addictive as possible, meanwhile gathering every damned little piece of miniscule information possible about each of their users: where they are, who their friends are, what they like, what they hate, their favorite colors, their favorite brands, and so on. Hell, people are happy giving away this stuff! And all of if can be plugged directly into a big honking machine to sell stuff! Then the government comes along and wants in on the action too. They start vacuuming up data gigabytes at a time. It must seem like the only people not getting in on this action is the common folks, the patsies. I have no idea and could care less what their official statements are. It's obvious they have no problem with gathering the information as long as they were the ones doing it. But in private, what kind of opinion must they have about all of this?
- apalmer 13y ago
  Their opinion probably is along the lines of 'Show me the money'. Really wondering what 'zuckerberg' or 'brin' feel like is kind of besides the point.
- shmerl 13y ago
  They are losing users now. People are more interested in privacy issues than before, and Google and FB were always weak on privacy by design. There isn't much they can do. It's their inherent deficiency.
S_A_P 13y ago
While I understand that Lavabit and others have taken a stand, Im not sure that I would call going out of business fighting. I see this as an NSA victory. If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses, what option will people have but to use less private alternatives? I would argue that a shut down is exactly what the NSA wanted from lavabit. Of course the flip side is that you don't want to be complicit in aiding the NSA, so the stance is honorable. I do think that it would take a company with the utility Google drawing the line for any traction to occur with the average person. Google would either have to: - suspend operations like the SOPA blackout - put up a fight very publicly to the point where there is so much transparency the NSA has no either back down or to penalize them in a way that would piss people off. Otherwise, this is and will always be a fringe topic.
- rhizome 13y ago
  A fundamental principle of Judo is, "don't be there when someone wants to hit you."
- ge0rg 13y ago
  If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses, what option will people have but to use less private alternatives? I think Ladar Levison answered that question, implicitly, in his shutdown announcement: "I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." It is high time to provide secure services hosted in countries without secret surveillance courts, or maybe even in countries where law enforcement has bigger problems to fight than "Internet crime".
  - drivingmenuts 13y ago
    Great if you live outside the US, but if you're inside the US, would not the very act of connecting to a foreign secure service automatically make you suspect? There is a much deeper issue here: as Americans, we need to decide how much protection we actually want. One group says everyone is responsible for their own protection, another says everyone needs protecting from everyone else, yet another group says we'll protect you if you don't look to closely behind the curtain, and so on e pluribus ad-infinitum ... Nobody has a good solution, yet. Personally, I don't mind the NSA spying on foreigners (that's their job) and if you're not from the US, I feel like you should have known that was a possibility. What I'd settle for at the moment is more independent oversight by people not intimately connected to the defense industry and less secret courts and judgements that make us look and sound like cartoon banana republic.
swombat 13y ago
If Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook simultaneously came out and published all statistics that the government is not allowing them to publish, and declared that they will continue to publish those as they come in and be entirely transparent about the tracking that the NSA asked of them, would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market? I don't think so. I think the NSA would fold if those five cards were played simultaneously.
- lukejduncan 13y ago
  Too big to fail civil disobedience
  - Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
    Too big to be considered anything but fellow conspirators.
- northwest 13y ago
  That's probably the best idea right now - uniting. Will they? They're of course competitors, they could be played off against each other by the government. Anyways, such talks would have to remain ultra-secret.
- apalmer 13y ago
  Well I hope this is not the case. I am against the NSA monitoring program. I think powerful commercial interests colluding to purposefully break the rule of law is a huge negative. Lets disconnect this behavior from the specific instance's moral outrage: If Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell simultaneously came out and ignored all EPA restrictions would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market? This sound like a good thing to anyone?
  - northwest 13y ago
    > I think powerful commercial interests colluding to purposefully break the rule of law is a huge negative. It happens all the time, though, if you look at the financial, banking, insurance and oil industry - even without the slightest (moral) excuse. And nobody goes to jail, just some ridiculous fines to pay. This time, there is a very serious moral imperative.
Shivetya 13y ago
I found this story on Atlantic which sums it up in words simple enough for about anyone to understand. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocopying-michelle-obamas-diary-just-in-case/278567/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocop...
shmerl 13y ago
>They're too large; they're public. They have to do what's economically rational, not what's moral. This is weird. Why should size dictate whether one should act morally or not. It's a very slippery logic.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Boo to whoever flagged this story to death.

199 points by mxfh 13y ago

It makes me happy to see Schneier get more mainstream press these days. As someone who has followed his blog for years it's about freaking time he got more attention.

humanspecies 13y ago
Even if the only purpose is to propagate absurdly naive and ineffective ideas? What, google and apple "fighting" the US Government they've gladly been cooperating with since forever??? Why doesn't Schneier call them out for what these corporations really are, government snitches? What makes Schneier think any of these companies want to do what's "moral"?? This article is one of the most naive pieces I've ever read. It parts on the principle that these companies want to do what's moral, but the government is keeping them from doing it. That is absurd. Google, Apple and friends have been willingly cooperating with the government in exchange for perks, for immunity against FTC probes and so on. They're NOT gonna "fight" because they have nothing to fight against.
- lukifer 13y ago
  Moral hazard cuts both ways, including giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Opportunity for wrong-doing doesn't confer guilt, it just means we should take the possibility seriously. Look at it this way: if every tech CEO is complicit without coercion (a strong possibility), the purpose of the article is to take away their shield, and convince the reader that those CEOs are morally culpable for not defending their customers. It's about calling the bluff by proxy.

diminoten 13y ago

Commandeering implies control, and the NSA does not have control. No one has "control" over the Internet. I also don't like this, "us vs. them" rhetoric that this story has turned some people towards, where the NSA are the unequivocal bad guys and we, the "little people", are the unequivocal good guys. That's a great way to get absolutely nothing done. The NSA is, despite everything we're being told by some people (Bruce), on our side. It's paranoid delusion to think the NSA is actively out to get us - at least ostensibly, the NSA is trying to help the citizens of the US. What we should be doing is asking for changes and modifications to how things are done. There are some not-so-big tweaks to the currently running programs which can feasibly be made without compromising these program's efficacy while also providing more insight into what's going on. We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) - it's possible. That's what we should be figuring out, not this chicken little/us vs. them bullshit.

pdonis 13y ago
the NSA does not have control. How do you know? The Internet backbone was developed using US government funding. How do you know that the US government did not put backdoors there? It did in the case of the long-distance telephone network. We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) I agree that this could be done in theory; I'm not sure it can be done in practice.
- diminoten 13y ago
  I don't know in the epistemological sense, but there's just no reason to believe such a thing to be true.
  - Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
    Aside from the details that show the NSA having employees in companies install monitoring hardware worldwide? Or those that assist in providing data in return for some themselves? None of that counts to you because "there's just no reason to believe such a thing." You are essentially saying you don't believe anything you may have read in the past few years counts as control. What IS control then, other than the ability to control others, which the US/NSA has attempting to keep on top of since the shift in data traffic trends in the 1990s.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      Did you just ask "What is control, other than the ability to control others"? Do you honestly not recognize the shell-game you're playing with that question? You're responding to all of the things I said with tricks and games. You don't want to talk facts, so I don't want to talk with you. I'm done, unless you want to stop drawing conclusions and start painting a real picture.
      - APoliteRequest 13y ago
        Could you acknowledge how having control is indeed having control? These installations didn't just trip and fall into place.

apalmer 13y ago

This line of argument is kinda weak. Personally I agree with the end goals, but the argument isn't compelling. Realistically these companies don't have much choice, and these businesses end users for the most part (the 99.99% that aren't technophiles) don't really care that the NSA is snooping. I think we need to step back from hoping that business will protect the people. The people will protect the people, and if the people dont, a for profit entity wont (and shouldn't) step in as guardian.

Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
"Realistically these companies don't have much choice" Of course they do. They can comply or not. If they do not comply they may face court. Of course it is impossible to say how that court would go since none of them are making a choice to stop being co-conspirators.

wil421 13y ago

It should read The NSA "HAS" Commandeered the Internet. As more and more information is gets thrown into the light, I find it disturbing that the NSA's capability has grown under the Obama Administration. I would think they would have less powers compared to Bush Admin post 9/11. Wait till they attach listening instruments onto drones and send them to scan the sky's across America under a directive from the FISA court.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I have to wonder what it's like for Zuckerberg, or Brin, or any of the other big internet moguls today. Here they are creating internet experiences made as addictive as possible, meanwhile gathering every damned little piece of miniscule information possible about each of their users: where they are, who their friends are, what they like, what they hate, their favorite colors, their favorite brands, and so on. Hell, people are happy giving away this stuff! And all of if can be plugged directly into a big honking machine to sell stuff! Then the government comes along and wants in on the action too. They start vacuuming up data gigabytes at a time. It must seem like the only people not getting in on this action is the common folks, the patsies. I have no idea and could care less what their official statements are. It's obvious they have no problem with gathering the information as long as they were the ones doing it. But in private, what kind of opinion must they have about all of this?

apalmer 13y ago
Their opinion probably is along the lines of 'Show me the money'. Really wondering what 'zuckerberg' or 'brin' feel like is kind of besides the point.
shmerl 13y ago
They are losing users now. People are more interested in privacy issues than before, and Google and FB were always weak on privacy by design. There isn't much they can do. It's their inherent deficiency.

S_A_P 13y ago

While I understand that Lavabit and others have taken a stand, Im not sure that I would call going out of business fighting. I see this as an NSA victory. If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses, what option will people have but to use less private alternatives? I would argue that a shut down is exactly what the NSA wanted from lavabit. Of course the flip side is that you don't want to be complicit in aiding the NSA, so the stance is honorable. I do think that it would take a company with the utility Google drawing the line for any traction to occur with the average person. Google would either have to: - suspend operations like the SOPA blackout - put up a fight very publicly to the point where there is so much transparency the NSA has no either back down or to penalize them in a way that would piss people off. Otherwise, this is and will always be a fringe topic.

rhizome 13y ago
A fundamental principle of Judo is, "don't be there when someone wants to hit you."
ge0rg 13y ago
If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses, what option will people have but to use less private alternatives? I think Ladar Levison answered that question, implicitly, in his shutdown announcement: "I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." It is high time to provide secure services hosted in countries without secret surveillance courts, or maybe even in countries where law enforcement has bigger problems to fight than "Internet crime".
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  Great if you live outside the US, but if you're inside the US, would not the very act of connecting to a foreign secure service automatically make you suspect? There is a much deeper issue here: as Americans, we need to decide how much protection we actually want. One group says everyone is responsible for their own protection, another says everyone needs protecting from everyone else, yet another group says we'll protect you if you don't look to closely behind the curtain, and so on e pluribus ad-infinitum ... Nobody has a good solution, yet. Personally, I don't mind the NSA spying on foreigners (that's their job) and if you're not from the US, I feel like you should have known that was a possibility. What I'd settle for at the moment is more independent oversight by people not intimately connected to the defense industry and less secret courts and judgements that make us look and sound like cartoon banana republic.

swombat 13y ago

If Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook simultaneously came out and published all statistics that the government is not allowing them to publish, and declared that they will continue to publish those as they come in and be entirely transparent about the tracking that the NSA asked of them, would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market? I don't think so. I think the NSA would fold if those five cards were played simultaneously.

lukejduncan 13y ago
Too big to fail civil disobedience
- Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
  Too big to be considered anything but fellow conspirators.
northwest 13y ago
That's probably the best idea right now - uniting. Will they? They're of course competitors, they could be played off against each other by the government. Anyways, such talks would have to remain ultra-secret.
apalmer 13y ago
Well I hope this is not the case. I am against the NSA monitoring program. I think powerful commercial interests colluding to purposefully break the rule of law is a huge negative. Lets disconnect this behavior from the specific instance's moral outrage: If Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell simultaneously came out and ignored all EPA restrictions would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market? This sound like a good thing to anyone?
- northwest 13y ago
  > I think powerful commercial interests colluding to purposefully break the rule of law is a huge negative. It happens all the time, though, if you look at the financial, banking, insurance and oil industry - even without the slightest (moral) excuse. And nobody goes to jail, just some ridiculous fines to pay. This time, there is a very serious moral imperative.

Shivetya 13y ago

I found this story on Atlantic which sums it up in words simple enough for about anyone to understand. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocopying-michelle-obamas-diary-just-in-case/278567/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocop...

shmerl 13y ago

>They're too large; they're public. They have to do what's economically rational, not what's moral. This is weird. Why should size dictate whether one should act morally or not. It's a very slippery logic.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

PavlovsCat 13y ago

Boo to whoever flagged this story to death.