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This surveillance apparatus is built and operated by programmers and engineers. It goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers that I know. Sof

This surveillance apparatus is built and operated by programmers and engineers. It goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers that I know. Software people tend to place very high value on privacy and due process, and they tend to be anti-authoritarian. I can't understand why they haven't been leaking these massive violations to the press and public. They don't need to do "a Snowden". They don't have to even quit their job. If anyone in the world can engineer an anonymous leak, surely a software engineer building or operating the secret surveillance apparatus can do it. EDIT: The public is indifferent when it's abstract or they think it doesn't include them. I think most people would be horrified if a million snippets of mundane conversation were leaked from a complicit telecom, and people heard their own voice in there.

rayiner 12y ago
> We all know that this goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers. I don't know if your number is accurate for software developers in Silicon Valley, much less the engineering community as a whole. The anti-authoritarian/utopian strain of software developers is a distinct minority. In my experience, engineers as a group are pragmatic and lean a little bit conservative. They're pyramid builders--they build the infrastructure that sustains the status quo.
- spacefight 12y ago
  Let's cast a HN vote?
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Oh, look. Ron Paul is President!
- notastartup 12y ago
  if they were pragmatic and leaning towards conservative we would already have a union. We are anything but, just like the pyramid builders, we are slaves, build whatever is demanded, don't question it unless you are paid to, if you go crazy, you will be replaced by another slave.
- lawnchair_larry 12y ago
  90% might be a little much, but safe to say, he's definitely correct about the majority. I'm curious why you feel the need to respond to every thread (falsely) repeating that most Americans don't mind being the target of surveillance. What motivates this?
  - schoen 12y ago
    I mind being the target of surveillance (in fact, my job largely consists of advocating against it) but I think there are different communities and cultures of programmers, and those different cultures have different attitudes toward privacy, power, and authority. Inhabiting one or more of those cultures, we might not be very aware of the others. I read a bunch of people on Twitter and I was realizing just recently that almost all of them are people who are extremely suspicious of state power, extremely antiauthoritarian, and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to learn more about electronic surveillance and thwart it. These attitudes feel normal and familiar to me, but I don't even have to look very far on Twitter to find people who are harshly criticizing them. So one thing I've been thinking is that privacy advocates, rather than assuming that all programmers share our values, should be trying to figure out why some communities of programmers came to value privacy (and be skeptical of state power) so much, and whether there are paths to spreading those values in other communities.
    - schoen 12y ago
      To follow up on this point, I went to speak at a couple of free software conferences this year and all the audiences at each of them took for granted that we should be scared about electronic surveillance and try to make it as difficult as we can. The other speakers and I never even had to say that. I know that there are IT events at which people think electronic surveillance is OK and even make a living doing it. The obvious example is surveillance trade shows like ISS World (which folks have systematically taken to calling the "Wiretappers' Ball"), but even attending mainstream and broad-interest security events like the RSA Conference, a lot of the people in the "IT security" industry are selling things that are aimed at monitoring: mostly for corporate networks and at least partly in the IDS sense, but in any case figuring out how to capture and analyze lots of network traffic, and often explicitly viewing end-to-end crypto as a threat. Somebody is working for the companies that exhibit at ISS World. Somebody is working for VUPen and Hacking Team and Packet Forensics. Furthermore, some of those somebodies feel that their work is intellectually interesting and even in a classic hacker spirit because they work hard figuring out how systems work. I'm happy stigmatizing that work (and I hope that people come to feel uncomfortable about working to enable surveillance!) but I don't think we can deny that there are lots of geeks out there who are doing that work, and who are often even happy and excited about it.
skwirl 12y ago
Maybe this goes against the beliefs of 90% of the programmers and engineers that /you/ interact with, but I really don't think that it's 90% of /all/ programmers and engineers. Go join the hundreds of thousands of engineers in the defense industry and you'll understand.
- spacefight 12y ago
  Yeah, you'll understand. But it's not understandable, that the hundreds of thousands of engineers in the defense industry can sleep well at night.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I used to do software for the defense industry. I sleep great at night. I was happy contributing to the military superiority that allows the U.S. to stay on top, and yields to us the benefits of that position. That doesn't mean that there aren't limits to what I think is okay, but overall I think the U.S. military is still a net positive for the world, especially because of the security we provide for Europe that has enabled that continent to break its historical cycle of bloodshed and live in relative peace the last half-century. And as a practical matter--I don't think there is any other major country that would be as benevolent as the U.S. has been were it to be on top. Many have proven so (Germany, the U.K., etc).
    - insuffi 12y ago
      Hah! Benevolent! I'm glad you get to sleep well at night, while U.S. military terrorizes the world, and creates wars in order to finance itself. You're either ignorant or amoral. edit: eh. I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide, and OP has absolutely no problem with it.
      - 12y ago
felideon 12y ago
Maybe ignorance of the consequences of mass surveillance? Outside of the HN bubble, it may not be too difficult to convince someone that surveillance is a net good for your country. The recruiter spiel could easily be: "Not only do you get to feed your family, you get to -protect- them, too."
Colliwinks 12y ago
> We all know that this goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers Based on what? Within the bubble of hackernews, that's maybe true, but there are (evidently) a very large % of engineers who are either indifferent, or feel the opposite.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Software people tend to place very high value on privacy and due process, and they tend to be anti-authoritarian. A subculture of these "software people" (hackers, cipherpunks or whatever label you want to slap on them) do. A good deal of 9-to-5 programmers, the silent majority, so to speak, are highly varied in their political opinions.
tinco 12y ago
There's nothing to leak and there's nothing new here. Of course governments can tap phone calls. Every criminal knows, why do you think they use p2p encrypted phones? Every engineer knows, there's government tap devices in every datacenter. There's no violations, because it's the law. If you have a job you are not anti-authoritarian, don't kid yourself. The surveillance systems are not secret, they are just low profile. If there's anything to be mad about, then it's the public's indifference to their own privacy and social safety.
- shutupalready 12y ago
  > There's nothing to leak Yes there is: A million snippets of recorded phone conversations from Vodafone or whatever telecom would really shock you if it included your voice. > it's the public's indifference to their own privacy The public is indifferent when it's abstract or they think it doesn't include them. I think most people would be horrified if even stupid mundane conversations were leaked and they heard their own voice.
  - cowbell 12y ago
    >I think most people would be horrified if even stupid mundane conversations were leaked and they heard their own voice. That's actually an excellent idea. Auto dial all the people recorded and play back one of their conversations at random to them. That would generate a massive backlash overnight.
jgrahamc 12y ago
It goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers (that I know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily
forgottenpass 12y ago
Programming isn't "our world" anymore. If there ever there existed strong trends of viewpoints, that's largely in the past. It's a huge profession full of people just looking for a paycheck, or with different political beliefs entirely. Even the existence of Hacker News is proof this is true. The attitudes on display here are frequently disgust me as someone that grew up something that was called hacker culture circa 2000, back before "hacking" was latched onto by startup culture for cachet branding.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
I don't know which software people you mean, but "software people" built and operate Google, Facebook and countless other smaller companies and apps that wipe their asses with privacy. I don't see other people's privacy being a high priority in our industry, quite the contrary. We're complicit in creating a world of constant surveillance more than politicians and authorities are. And people who think violating privacy is consensual if you ticked the TOS checkbox and done for profit, but wrong if done by a democratically elected government and done for the public good (however misguided) are less concerned with ethics and more with political ideology. Programmers are not more ethical than other people, and definitely not when it comes to privacy. And we're not all libertarians and anarchists either. We're as conformist as fuck, hence the boring middle-class gentrification of places like SF when us techies come in. Let's stop pretending we're better than other people. We're the ones that are creating this mess, and those who have created this particular surveillance tech are not some evil outliers. We provide tech for money and wash our hands of the consequences, just like the weapons and drug dealers.
facepalm 12y ago
There seem to be plenty of hackers who think it is good fun to break into other people's computer systems and steal their data. Some of them are even glorified by the IT community. So I don't think morals are necessarily the strong point of programmers and engineers.
- mpyne 12y ago
  As an example, look at all the people who simultaneously supported Sabu hacking into government computers and email when it was part of LulzSec and opposed Sibu hacking into Brazilian computers and email when it was part of FBI. The "ethics" of these hackers isn't even about what people do, it's about who they do it against.
pling 12y ago
I've worked with people who build software like this. They are shameless assholes nothing more. They are no better than the engineers designing guns and bombs and and the chemists finding new creative waya of killing us.

rayiner 12y ago

> We all know that this goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers. I don't know if your number is accurate for software developers in Silicon Valley, much less the engineering community as a whole. The anti-authoritarian/utopian strain of software developers is a distinct minority. In my experience, engineers as a group are pragmatic and lean a little bit conservative. They're pyramid builders--they build the infrastructure that sustains the status quo.

spacefight 12y ago
Let's cast a HN vote?
- tptacek 12y ago
  Oh, look. Ron Paul is President!
notastartup 12y ago
if they were pragmatic and leaning towards conservative we would already have a union. We are anything but, just like the pyramid builders, we are slaves, build whatever is demanded, don't question it unless you are paid to, if you go crazy, you will be replaced by another slave.
lawnchair_larry 12y ago
90% might be a little much, but safe to say, he's definitely correct about the majority. I'm curious why you feel the need to respond to every thread (falsely) repeating that most Americans don't mind being the target of surveillance. What motivates this?
- schoen 12y ago
  I mind being the target of surveillance (in fact, my job largely consists of advocating against it) but I think there are different communities and cultures of programmers, and those different cultures have different attitudes toward privacy, power, and authority. Inhabiting one or more of those cultures, we might not be very aware of the others. I read a bunch of people on Twitter and I was realizing just recently that almost all of them are people who are extremely suspicious of state power, extremely antiauthoritarian, and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to learn more about electronic surveillance and thwart it. These attitudes feel normal and familiar to me, but I don't even have to look very far on Twitter to find people who are harshly criticizing them. So one thing I've been thinking is that privacy advocates, rather than assuming that all programmers share our values, should be trying to figure out why some communities of programmers came to value privacy (and be skeptical of state power) so much, and whether there are paths to spreading those values in other communities.
  - schoen 12y ago
    To follow up on this point, I went to speak at a couple of free software conferences this year and all the audiences at each of them took for granted that we should be scared about electronic surveillance and try to make it as difficult as we can. The other speakers and I never even had to say that. I know that there are IT events at which people think electronic surveillance is OK and even make a living doing it. The obvious example is surveillance trade shows like ISS World (which folks have systematically taken to calling the "Wiretappers' Ball"), but even attending mainstream and broad-interest security events like the RSA Conference, a lot of the people in the "IT security" industry are selling things that are aimed at monitoring: mostly for corporate networks and at least partly in the IDS sense, but in any case figuring out how to capture and analyze lots of network traffic, and often explicitly viewing end-to-end crypto as a threat. Somebody is working for the companies that exhibit at ISS World. Somebody is working for VUPen and Hacking Team and Packet Forensics. Furthermore, some of those somebodies feel that their work is intellectually interesting and even in a classic hacker spirit because they work hard figuring out how systems work. I'm happy stigmatizing that work (and I hope that people come to feel uncomfortable about working to enable surveillance!) but I don't think we can deny that there are lots of geeks out there who are doing that work, and who are often even happy and excited about it.

skwirl 12y ago

Maybe this goes against the beliefs of 90% of the programmers and engineers that /you/ interact with, but I really don't think that it's 90% of /all/ programmers and engineers. Go join the hundreds of thousands of engineers in the defense industry and you'll understand.

spacefight 12y ago
Yeah, you'll understand. But it's not understandable, that the hundreds of thousands of engineers in the defense industry can sleep well at night.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I used to do software for the defense industry. I sleep great at night. I was happy contributing to the military superiority that allows the U.S. to stay on top, and yields to us the benefits of that position. That doesn't mean that there aren't limits to what I think is okay, but overall I think the U.S. military is still a net positive for the world, especially because of the security we provide for Europe that has enabled that continent to break its historical cycle of bloodshed and live in relative peace the last half-century. And as a practical matter--I don't think there is any other major country that would be as benevolent as the U.S. has been were it to be on top. Many have proven so (Germany, the U.K., etc).
  - insuffi 12y ago
    Hah! Benevolent! I'm glad you get to sleep well at night, while U.S. military terrorizes the world, and creates wars in order to finance itself. You're either ignorant or amoral. edit: eh. I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide, and OP has absolutely no problem with it.
    - 12y ago

felideon 12y ago

Maybe ignorance of the consequences of mass surveillance? Outside of the HN bubble, it may not be too difficult to convince someone that surveillance is a net good for your country. The recruiter spiel could easily be: "Not only do you get to feed your family, you get to -protect- them, too."

Colliwinks 12y ago

> We all know that this goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers Based on what? Within the bubble of hackernews, that's maybe true, but there are (evidently) a very large % of engineers who are either indifferent, or feel the opposite.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

Software people tend to place very high value on privacy and due process, and they tend to be anti-authoritarian. A subculture of these "software people" (hackers, cipherpunks or whatever label you want to slap on them) do. A good deal of 9-to-5 programmers, the silent majority, so to speak, are highly varied in their political opinions.

tinco 12y ago

There's nothing to leak and there's nothing new here. Of course governments can tap phone calls. Every criminal knows, why do you think they use p2p encrypted phones? Every engineer knows, there's government tap devices in every datacenter. There's no violations, because it's the law. If you have a job you are not anti-authoritarian, don't kid yourself. The surveillance systems are not secret, they are just low profile. If there's anything to be mad about, then it's the public's indifference to their own privacy and social safety.

shutupalready 12y ago
> There's nothing to leak Yes there is: A million snippets of recorded phone conversations from Vodafone or whatever telecom would really shock you if it included your voice. > it's the public's indifference to their own privacy The public is indifferent when it's abstract or they think it doesn't include them. I think most people would be horrified if even stupid mundane conversations were leaked and they heard their own voice.
- cowbell 12y ago
  >I think most people would be horrified if even stupid mundane conversations were leaked and they heard their own voice. That's actually an excellent idea. Auto dial all the people recorded and play back one of their conversations at random to them. That would generate a massive backlash overnight.

jgrahamc 12y ago

It goes against the beliefs of 90% of programmers and engineers (that I know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily

forgottenpass 12y ago

Programming isn't "our world" anymore. If there ever there existed strong trends of viewpoints, that's largely in the past. It's a huge profession full of people just looking for a paycheck, or with different political beliefs entirely. Even the existence of Hacker News is proof this is true. The attitudes on display here are frequently disgust me as someone that grew up something that was called hacker culture circa 2000, back before "hacking" was latched onto by startup culture for cachet branding.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

I don't know which software people you mean, but "software people" built and operate Google, Facebook and countless other smaller companies and apps that wipe their asses with privacy. I don't see other people's privacy being a high priority in our industry, quite the contrary. We're complicit in creating a world of constant surveillance more than politicians and authorities are. And people who think violating privacy is consensual if you ticked the TOS checkbox and done for profit, but wrong if done by a democratically elected government and done for the public good (however misguided) are less concerned with ethics and more with political ideology. Programmers are not more ethical than other people, and definitely not when it comes to privacy. And we're not all libertarians and anarchists either. We're as conformist as fuck, hence the boring middle-class gentrification of places like SF when us techies come in. Let's stop pretending we're better than other people. We're the ones that are creating this mess, and those who have created this particular surveillance tech are not some evil outliers. We provide tech for money and wash our hands of the consequences, just like the weapons and drug dealers.

facepalm 12y ago

There seem to be plenty of hackers who think it is good fun to break into other people's computer systems and steal their data. Some of them are even glorified by the IT community. So I don't think morals are necessarily the strong point of programmers and engineers.

mpyne 12y ago
As an example, look at all the people who simultaneously supported Sabu hacking into government computers and email when it was part of LulzSec and opposed Sibu hacking into Brazilian computers and email when it was part of FBI. The "ethics" of these hackers isn't even about what people do, it's about who they do it against.

pling 12y ago

I've worked with people who build software like this. They are shameless assholes nothing more. They are no better than the engineers designing guns and bombs and and the chemists finding new creative waya of killing us.