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> We have to assume that the NSA has everyone who uses electronic communications under constant surveillance. We don't have to assume anything except that whic

> We have to assume that the NSA has everyone who uses electronic communications under constant surveillance. We don't have to assume anything except that which is provided by evidence. If you have the evidence, then allow it to present itself. Assumption leads to conspiracy theory and inaccurate information. I really don't think that's what this cause really needs. Is it just me or does Bruce Schneier's posts read more like propaganda than journalism? It's pretty awful and I'm surprised HN is eating it up. He tip toes on fear mongering through exaggeration, e.g. in OP getting people more hyped up and fearful of the NSA because they're tracking EVERYONE... except, it's only an assumption. Calls to action should not be based on assumptions.

hackinthebochs 13y ago
Oh brother, its as if some people have learned nothing from the last 6 months (or are actively shilling... apparently you only comment on NSA stories). When it comes to your personal privacy and security, you must assume that anything that is reasonably possible is being carried out by your adversaries. The recent leaks prove that the NSA will do absolutely anything within its power to further its goal of total information awareness. All of the NSA revelations could have been predicted (and were predicted) by anyone with some technological skill and a little bit of foresight. If you wait until proof is presented to you, you have already lost; your privacy and security have already been compromised. The game is to think ahead and protect yourself from all possible current and future attacks. There are some people who's very freedom depends on such foresight.
- csandreasen 13y ago
  In another context jonnybgood might instead be called a "skeptic" or perhaps even "capable of applying critical thinking skills" rather than dismissed as a "shill". Instead of mocking him for not paying attention over the last 6 months, you should go back and examine all of the leaked documents. You'll note that they speak quite a bit to the capabilities of the NSA, but don't reveal much about who they're targeting, why and what the ultimate goal of targeting would be. If you disagree, I challenge you to actual provide a leaked document that shows the NSA is specifically targeting ordinary citizens like the GP was calling for, rather than a secondary article from Greenwald, Schneier, etc., that makes broad assertions that because a spying agency with collecting foreign intelligence has the technical capability to conduct the most invasive possible infractions on the privacy of people it is not charged with collecting against, they must indeed be doing so. Your armed local police force has the technical capability of detaining citizens indiscriminately without regard to whether or not they violated the law, then summarily executing them without trial. That doesn't mean that's their job.
  - hackinthebochs 13y ago
    In another context skepticism would be warranted. This isn't such a context. The very nature of the problem of securing one's privacy demands the type of anticipatory thinking I describe. Skepticism that johnnybgood is advocating is a losing strategy from the start.
    - csandreasen 13y ago
      I agree - securing one's privacy is an incredibly important problem. That said, none of the leaks show any technology that wasn't publicly known beforehand (e.g.: packet sniffing, man-in-the-middle attacks, stored personal records obtained from internet/telecommunications companies, etc.). The fact that these are used on a much larger scale might be surprising to some, but not novel. We've known for a long time that large, well-funded intelligence organizations operate on a much larger scale than any lone or small group of hackers could. If you worry about your privacy on the internet, the solutions to these problems were known beforehand (e.g.: encrypt your traffic, authenticate those you communicate with, limit personal data stored in the cloud, etc.). Claiming that the NSA is an active threat to the privacy of Americans without the evidence to back it up is counter-productive. Schneier himself has written quite a bit about the importance of properly identifying your threats in the process of establishing good security. I guarantee that spokeo.com and similar sites have more dossiers on Americans that the NSA does, and I'd be willing to bet that information from those sites have been used more frequently for nefarious purposes against ordinary citizens. The NSA has the capability to target you - this leads to overblown articles making the leap from "the NSA collects massive amounts of metadata" to "the NSA collects massive amounts of American's metadata", incendiary discussion forums calling for the immediate shutdown of the NSA, imprisonment of top NSA officials, fear mongering about the NSA brought up in situations that have nothing to do surveillance, etc. What they don't have is the motive (seeing as how they're an agency charged with the gathering of foreign intelligence) or legal authority to spy on Americans. The evidence stating that they are actively spying on Americans just isn't there. Until credible evidence shows that NSA is invading the privacy of ordinary people, I'm going to worry about the credible threats. It creeps me out that I can Google my name and find 6 different websites willing to sell me my current and previous addresses, e-mail address, phone numbers, names of family members, etc. that they harvested from public records; it bothers me that anyone with a Pineapple device can trick my cell phone into connecting to actively hostile network if I forget to turn off the Wifi; it bothers me that I can turn on Collusion in Firefox and see that my browsing activity is reported to 40 different companies across every web page I surf to unless I turn off Javascript and frequently delete all of my cookies; it scares me that I get spam e-mail sent from the compromised accounts of people I know personally that tries to redirect me to malicious web sites; two years ago someone got my debit card number and pulled a little over $2000 out of a bank in Shenzhen - I worry about the security of sites I purchase from over the internet, which ATMs I draw from, what that waiter is doing when he disappears after I hand him my card. I consider myself a pretty paranoid person. At this point I don't feel threatened by the NSA (if I worked for a foreign government I would probably have a different opinion). I'm going to continue using every reasonable means to protect the privacy and integrity of data. I'm not going to do it because of the NSA - I'm going to do it because the internet is a security nightmare, and there are lots of people out there who would do lots of things to my data without any regard to my well being.
bostik 13y ago
I think he's mostly shortcutting conclusions. Not jumping, just cutting corners. As for evidence: we know from Schneier's previous posts that he actually has some hard evidence, having been provided yet-unknown-number of Snowden documents. In this case I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We can't, at the moment, know what the documents contain or what they prove. We do know that there are still more stories coming out based on the material. I think the technical term for withholding the evidence in this case is "embargo". > fearful of the NSA because they're tracking EVERYONE... except, it's only an assumption. "Only"? Really? How about the known fiber taps? The splitter rooms?[1] The fact that the NSA tried to belittle their activities by stating that they are "only touching 1.6% of all internet traffic"?[2] Their stated application of three degrees of separation? (Sorry, can't find a reference for this one now.) Considering that 1.6% of traffic can easily skip all the video and torrent traffic, it leaves quite a lot of communication data to trawl through. I don't remember seeing any good figures so I don't know how much of the global internet traffic routes through US but I guess it's a fair chunk. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A 2: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/nsa-internet-traffic-surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/nsa-int...
guelo 13y ago
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an obvious inference from the data we have. They are building 'pattern-of-life' profiles of all of us.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

hackinthebochs 13y ago

Oh brother, its as if some people have learned nothing from the last 6 months (or are actively shilling... apparently you only comment on NSA stories). When it comes to your personal privacy and security, you must assume that anything that is reasonably possible is being carried out by your adversaries. The recent leaks prove that the NSA will do absolutely anything within its power to further its goal of total information awareness. All of the NSA revelations could have been predicted (and were predicted) by anyone with some technological skill and a little bit of foresight. If you wait until proof is presented to you, you have already lost; your privacy and security have already been compromised. The game is to think ahead and protect yourself from all possible current and future attacks. There are some people who's very freedom depends on such foresight.

csandreasen 13y ago
In another context jonnybgood might instead be called a "skeptic" or perhaps even "capable of applying critical thinking skills" rather than dismissed as a "shill". Instead of mocking him for not paying attention over the last 6 months, you should go back and examine all of the leaked documents. You'll note that they speak quite a bit to the capabilities of the NSA, but don't reveal much about who they're targeting, why and what the ultimate goal of targeting would be. If you disagree, I challenge you to actual provide a leaked document that shows the NSA is specifically targeting ordinary citizens like the GP was calling for, rather than a secondary article from Greenwald, Schneier, etc., that makes broad assertions that because a spying agency with collecting foreign intelligence has the technical capability to conduct the most invasive possible infractions on the privacy of people it is not charged with collecting against, they must indeed be doing so. Your armed local police force has the technical capability of detaining citizens indiscriminately without regard to whether or not they violated the law, then summarily executing them without trial. That doesn't mean that's their job.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  In another context skepticism would be warranted. This isn't such a context. The very nature of the problem of securing one's privacy demands the type of anticipatory thinking I describe. Skepticism that johnnybgood is advocating is a losing strategy from the start.
  - csandreasen 13y ago
    I agree - securing one's privacy is an incredibly important problem. That said, none of the leaks show any technology that wasn't publicly known beforehand (e.g.: packet sniffing, man-in-the-middle attacks, stored personal records obtained from internet/telecommunications companies, etc.). The fact that these are used on a much larger scale might be surprising to some, but not novel. We've known for a long time that large, well-funded intelligence organizations operate on a much larger scale than any lone or small group of hackers could. If you worry about your privacy on the internet, the solutions to these problems were known beforehand (e.g.: encrypt your traffic, authenticate those you communicate with, limit personal data stored in the cloud, etc.). Claiming that the NSA is an active threat to the privacy of Americans without the evidence to back it up is counter-productive. Schneier himself has written quite a bit about the importance of properly identifying your threats in the process of establishing good security. I guarantee that spokeo.com and similar sites have more dossiers on Americans that the NSA does, and I'd be willing to bet that information from those sites have been used more frequently for nefarious purposes against ordinary citizens. The NSA has the capability to target you - this leads to overblown articles making the leap from "the NSA collects massive amounts of metadata" to "the NSA collects massive amounts of American's metadata", incendiary discussion forums calling for the immediate shutdown of the NSA, imprisonment of top NSA officials, fear mongering about the NSA brought up in situations that have nothing to do surveillance, etc. What they don't have is the motive (seeing as how they're an agency charged with the gathering of foreign intelligence) or legal authority to spy on Americans. The evidence stating that they are actively spying on Americans just isn't there. Until credible evidence shows that NSA is invading the privacy of ordinary people, I'm going to worry about the credible threats. It creeps me out that I can Google my name and find 6 different websites willing to sell me my current and previous addresses, e-mail address, phone numbers, names of family members, etc. that they harvested from public records; it bothers me that anyone with a Pineapple device can trick my cell phone into connecting to actively hostile network if I forget to turn off the Wifi; it bothers me that I can turn on Collusion in Firefox and see that my browsing activity is reported to 40 different companies across every web page I surf to unless I turn off Javascript and frequently delete all of my cookies; it scares me that I get spam e-mail sent from the compromised accounts of people I know personally that tries to redirect me to malicious web sites; two years ago someone got my debit card number and pulled a little over $2000 out of a bank in Shenzhen - I worry about the security of sites I purchase from over the internet, which ATMs I draw from, what that waiter is doing when he disappears after I hand him my card. I consider myself a pretty paranoid person. At this point I don't feel threatened by the NSA (if I worked for a foreign government I would probably have a different opinion). I'm going to continue using every reasonable means to protect the privacy and integrity of data. I'm not going to do it because of the NSA - I'm going to do it because the internet is a security nightmare, and there are lots of people out there who would do lots of things to my data without any regard to my well being.

bostik 13y ago

I think he's mostly shortcutting conclusions. Not jumping, just cutting corners. As for evidence: we know from Schneier's previous posts that he actually has some hard evidence, having been provided yet-unknown-number of Snowden documents. In this case I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We can't, at the moment, know what the documents contain or what they prove. We do know that there are still more stories coming out based on the material. I think the technical term for withholding the evidence in this case is "embargo". > fearful of the NSA because they're tracking EVERYONE... except, it's only an assumption. "Only"? Really? How about the known fiber taps? The splitter rooms?[1] The fact that the NSA tried to belittle their activities by stating that they are "only touching 1.6% of all internet traffic"?[2] Their stated application of three degrees of separation? (Sorry, can't find a reference for this one now.) Considering that 1.6% of traffic can easily skip all the video and torrent traffic, it leaves quite a lot of communication data to trawl through. I don't remember seeing any good figures so I don't know how much of the global internet traffic routes through US but I guess it's a fair chunk. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A 2: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/nsa-internet-traffic-surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/nsa-int...

guelo 13y ago

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an obvious inference from the data we have. They are building 'pattern-of-life' profiles of all of us.

deleted 13y ago
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