18 ms·

UN: Nations hide rise in private digital snooping

112 points by Libertatea 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago
I think there will need to be another wave of global revolutions to end this. Even the vast majority of "democratic" governments are extremely reluctant to give this power up now, and the more they use it the harder they will fight against giving it up, which probably means violent and bloody revolutions will be necessary to regain the rights we thought we already (re)gained decades or centuries ago. When people caught doing it will be severely punished, then you'll know the tide has turned. Until then, even if new laws are passed to "limit" the surveillance, they probably won't change much, as they'll keep doing it in secret, and then get protected by higher-ups when getting caught.
- nmrm 12y ago
  > violent and bloody revolutions will be necessary to regain the rights we thought we already (re)gained decades or centuries ago. Digital privacy is one of these funny freedoms which everyone either greatly over or under-estimates. I don't think anyone with a firm grasp on politics really thinks digital privacy will spark violent uprisings, so I'll put the question another way: do you really believe you're morally justified in killing over domestic spying?
  - jcbrand 12y ago
    It's not "digital" privacy, it's just privacy. Even if you avoid digitally networked devices(which is almost impossible), your photos still appear on facebook et al, you're still being recorded by CCTV everywhere you go, your banking transactions and medical data is still being recorded etc.
    - meowface 12y ago
      Privacy isn't exactly a black and white thing. You have no expectation of privacy if you're in a public street, so being filmed isn't the worst thing in the world. If you're filmed in your own home, perhaps through your webcam, then that's a different story.
      - jcbrand 12y ago
        If the CCTV cameras weren't connected to the internet and their recordings were periodically deleted, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Even Richard Stallman has said as much. What however is happening more and more, is that recorded data is kept indefinitely and is networked. Have you heard what Binney has said what the software he wrote for the NSA does? There are various domains from where it gathers data (cellphone, banking, social media, gps etc.). These domains are graphed and mapped in such a way that they can pull out all the attributes any individual has from any any or all of the domains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc In other words, the data doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's all being graphed and correlated in order to build a comprehensive picture of your life.
  - john_b 12y ago
    I don't think anyone except a few fringe anarcho-libertarian types really expects masses of people to start a violent uprising solely because of government and corporate spying. What's really dangerous about ubiquitous spying is that it enables other abuses and forms of corruption that were previously impossible or cost-prohibitive. It's these abuses, which seem virtually inevitable in a privacy-less world, which will likely incite public anger and resistance.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  You can be as bloody and violent as you like, the genie is not going back into the bottle. Satellite imaging is improving, the cost of cameras and storage are falling, all manner of sensors are improving daily. I don't know what the answer is, but it is not some foolish violence.
  - pling 12y ago
    Civilian monitoring networks. We watch back?
    - jcbrand 12y ago
      I'm also starting to think that the genie is out of the bottle and the only solution is to "democratize" surveillance.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        I agree and I wonder if the right thing to do might be completely abandoning the concept of privacy. I think it might happen regardless of what we do, so maybe instead of trying to fight to the last drop of blood, we should just run full-speed in the other direction. Just embrace, as a society, that everyone can know everything about everybody, and learn to live honestly. It's just a thought that has been floating around my head recently.
        frabcus 12y ago
        I'm told David Brin's (non-fiction) "The Transparent Society" covers this idea in detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
        contingencies 12y ago
        Taking responsibility for your own actions is a key part of growing up and the central tenet of major world philosophies such as Buddhism. However, modern social science indicates clearly that people behave differently when they believe they are under surveillance and when part of large groups. So there is a real, psychological requirement for privacy and anonymity some of the time. There has to be space for this... a balance. In general, "behind closed doors" has been put forward as an appropriate scope for that in a physical sense, though we are increasingly digitally monitored there as well. For instance, it is not uncommon for national gestapo of various ilks to seize hardware and search for digital evidence when someone is 'suspected' of something (ie. pretty much as they please). Similarly, mobile and landline telephones and wifi access are monitored, as is probably cable TV activity. And in general, the population of many regions is uploading photos of each other in these environments, providing streams of public social network and other online activity that can accurately predict their movements in and out of the home. So pretending that "behind closed doors" means private doesn't really fly anymore. In addition to this personal privacy, we need an option for public anonymity ... including online.
contingencies 12y ago
You read it here last, from the UN Human Rights Commissioner. Zamyatin, Orwell, Chomsky, Hager, Binney, Drake, Assange, Snowden ... they've been on about this for a century. Ten years ago it was conspiracy theory, now it's mainstream social reality. Still, most people don't care to listen... secure in their televised Colosseum serial economic treadmill stupour... knocking back throwaway media to numb themselves to the truth, competing to buy fallacious fashion facepalm devices that actively discourage intellectual authorship, context, privacy or even direct unmediated expression... but perhaps the tide is finally changing? On the flip-side, this one's nicely timed, given the preface and thrust of Cypherpunks[0], for the same day as the review of Assange's case in Sweden... which according to Assange's recent interview[1] should get thrown out after tomorrow's appeal[2]. I wonder if the UN gets it now? Of course, it's semi-irrelevant anyway since the US will cockblock[3] them on actually actioning anything remotely related to real, functional, positive change, but it's a nice gesture on the human rights commissioner's part for national-level change-makers to point the finger at. 0. http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/ http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/ 1. http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embassy_refuge_julian_assange http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embass... 2. http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_veto_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Not news to this crowd, but still important to note. So many times as commentators we focus on evil companies, or evil governments, or evil agencies. Nope, it's all of the above. Or rather, nobody is evil, just each party needs data for various reasons. Governments trump everybody, so if your information is being recorded, it's accessible to a government somewhere. (And you can be assured that tons of information about you is recorded daily) Interesting (to me) is the fact that we've spent the last twenty years cranking out various sci-fi dramas about all the things that could go wrong in a future society. There was cloning, nuclear war (an old favorite), alien invasion, designer babies, prison cities, artificial intelligence, memory wiping -- tons of stuff. All the time, the people who produced and consumed such fiction said "You know, it's good that we bring up these ideas. We're going to need to deal with this kinda thing in the future. It's morally important. This is deep, thoughtful work." Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind. And now when you point it out to folks, they either think it doesn't matter or they're so overwhelmed they give up thinking about what they could possibly do about it. The unstated question is: Gee, why didn't somebody tell me about this!
- aerique 12y ago
  People have been pointing out the problems with snooping, surveillance and the effect of technology for decades now. It is not something people can say that it just snuck up to them. They either did not care or called people pointing the increasing attacks on our liberties "conspiracy nuts".
- 7952 12y ago
  >> Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind. Ironically that is caused by an increase in freedom that the internet brought about. We have long had the right to freedom of speech but it was expensive to interact with a large number of people. The internet made it much easier to actually use the rights heralded by politicians. I think sci-fi has done a better job of realising some of the social implications of this explosion in rights. For example in showing how national allegiance can be lost in favour of geographically desperate groups of like minded indviduals.
tokenadult 12y ago
I think we (everyone who participants here on Hacker News) have to learn how to be smart freedom fighters who can use nonviolent methods to overthrow dictatorships if we are to have any hope of reversing these trends, whether the snooping comes from governments directly or indirectly through poorly guided business corporations. We can't win this fight by imagining violent revolutions. Dictators become dictators by being practiced in using violence to gain power. We probably can't learn enough about violent means soon enough to overcome a slide to dictatorship in any country. I advocate nonviolent means to fight dictators for two reasons: I don't like seeing my innocent neighbors get killed, and I have seen nonviolent means work to overthrow dictators. The largely peaceful transition from martial law and one-party dictatorship to pluralistic rule by law with free press and free elections that I saw in Taiwan[1] is just one example of a people power revolution where the dictator was baffled because there were few violent incidents on the part of the opposition to stir up a violent response from the regime. There are other examples from around the world. An organization that collects real-world advice on how to win freedom even under dictatorship nonviolently, and how to keep the revolutionary movement from turning into another dictatorship, is the Albert Einstein Institution founded by Gene Sharp, an occasional nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. I have recommended before here on Hacker News that readers who are really, truly interested in winning freedom for themselves and guaranteeing freedom for people around the world ought to read the free, downloadable materials on the Einstein Institution website.[2] If you are not willing to learn the art and craft of forging a cohesive, effective resistance movement based on real-world examples, this is all just talk. Talk is cheap. I know actual freedom fighters who succeeded against dictators whose techniques included total control of all mass media with "prior restraint" of publication and complete domination of the country's education system and targeted assassinations of opponents. The dictators still lost. You (we) can win, but only if you (all of us) learn to fight effectively. That doesn't take violence. Winning in a people power democracy movement does take mental toughness, because the dictator's side could use violence, but always the people outnumber the rulers. The people just have to learn how to stand together, overcoming their own fear. Start your reading with From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation if you are wondering where to start among the several handbooks on the Einstein Institution website. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720 [2] http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/ http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Is funny how quickly the ground shifts. Not that long ago, discussions over this kind of stuff were generally the province of the institutionally paranoid and subjects such as echelon occasionally cropped up in sci-fi books and the manifestos of folk like David Icke, along with his rambling lizard bobbins. These days, my gran might mention these subjects over a cup of tea after talking about the cricket, and she's a dyed in the wool establishment conservative.

112 points by Libertatea 12y ago

I think there will need to be another wave of global revolutions to end this. Even the vast majority of "democratic" governments are extremely reluctant to give this power up now, and the more they use it the harder they will fight against giving it up, which probably means violent and bloody revolutions will be necessary to regain the rights we thought we already (re)gained decades or centuries ago. When people caught doing it will be severely punished, then you'll know the tide has turned. Until then, even if new laws are passed to "limit" the surveillance, they probably won't change much, as they'll keep doing it in secret, and then get protected by higher-ups when getting caught.

nmrm 12y ago
> violent and bloody revolutions will be necessary to regain the rights we thought we already (re)gained decades or centuries ago. Digital privacy is one of these funny freedoms which everyone either greatly over or under-estimates. I don't think anyone with a firm grasp on politics really thinks digital privacy will spark violent uprisings, so I'll put the question another way: do you really believe you're morally justified in killing over domestic spying?
- jcbrand 12y ago
  It's not "digital" privacy, it's just privacy. Even if you avoid digitally networked devices(which is almost impossible), your photos still appear on facebook et al, you're still being recorded by CCTV everywhere you go, your banking transactions and medical data is still being recorded etc.
  - meowface 12y ago
    Privacy isn't exactly a black and white thing. You have no expectation of privacy if you're in a public street, so being filmed isn't the worst thing in the world. If you're filmed in your own home, perhaps through your webcam, then that's a different story.
    - jcbrand 12y ago
      If the CCTV cameras weren't connected to the internet and their recordings were periodically deleted, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Even Richard Stallman has said as much. What however is happening more and more, is that recorded data is kept indefinitely and is networked. Have you heard what Binney has said what the software he wrote for the NSA does? There are various domains from where it gathers data (cellphone, banking, social media, gps etc.). These domains are graphed and mapped in such a way that they can pull out all the attributes any individual has from any any or all of the domains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc In other words, the data doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's all being graphed and correlated in order to build a comprehensive picture of your life.
- john_b 12y ago
  I don't think anyone except a few fringe anarcho-libertarian types really expects masses of people to start a violent uprising solely because of government and corporate spying. What's really dangerous about ubiquitous spying is that it enables other abuses and forms of corruption that were previously impossible or cost-prohibitive. It's these abuses, which seem virtually inevitable in a privacy-less world, which will likely incite public anger and resistance.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
happyscrappy 12y ago
You can be as bloody and violent as you like, the genie is not going back into the bottle. Satellite imaging is improving, the cost of cameras and storage are falling, all manner of sensors are improving daily. I don't know what the answer is, but it is not some foolish violence.
- pling 12y ago
  Civilian monitoring networks. We watch back?
  - jcbrand 12y ago
    I'm also starting to think that the genie is out of the bottle and the only solution is to "democratize" surveillance.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      I agree and I wonder if the right thing to do might be completely abandoning the concept of privacy. I think it might happen regardless of what we do, so maybe instead of trying to fight to the last drop of blood, we should just run full-speed in the other direction. Just embrace, as a society, that everyone can know everything about everybody, and learn to live honestly. It's just a thought that has been floating around my head recently.
      - frabcus 12y ago
        I'm told David Brin's (non-fiction) "The Transparent Society" covers this idea in detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
      - contingencies 12y ago
        Taking responsibility for your own actions is a key part of growing up and the central tenet of major world philosophies such as Buddhism. However, modern social science indicates clearly that people behave differently when they believe they are under surveillance and when part of large groups. So there is a real, psychological requirement for privacy and anonymity some of the time. There has to be space for this... a balance. In general, "behind closed doors" has been put forward as an appropriate scope for that in a physical sense, though we are increasingly digitally monitored there as well. For instance, it is not uncommon for national gestapo of various ilks to seize hardware and search for digital evidence when someone is 'suspected' of something (ie. pretty much as they please). Similarly, mobile and landline telephones and wifi access are monitored, as is probably cable TV activity. And in general, the population of many regions is uploading photos of each other in these environments, providing streams of public social network and other online activity that can accurately predict their movements in and out of the home. So pretending that "behind closed doors" means private doesn't really fly anymore. In addition to this personal privacy, we need an option for public anonymity ... including online.

contingencies 12y ago

You read it here last, from the UN Human Rights Commissioner. Zamyatin, Orwell, Chomsky, Hager, Binney, Drake, Assange, Snowden ... they've been on about this for a century. Ten years ago it was conspiracy theory, now it's mainstream social reality. Still, most people don't care to listen... secure in their televised Colosseum serial economic treadmill stupour... knocking back throwaway media to numb themselves to the truth, competing to buy fallacious fashion facepalm devices that actively discourage intellectual authorship, context, privacy or even direct unmediated expression... but perhaps the tide is finally changing? On the flip-side, this one's nicely timed, given the preface and thrust of Cypherpunks[0], for the same day as the review of Assange's case in Sweden... which according to Assange's recent interview[1] should get thrown out after tomorrow's appeal[2]. I wonder if the UN gets it now? Of course, it's semi-irrelevant anyway since the US will cockblock[3] them on actually actioning anything remotely related to real, functional, positive change, but it's a nice gesture on the human rights commissioner's part for national-level change-makers to point the finger at. 0. http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/ http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/ 1. http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embassy_refuge_julian_assange http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embass... 2. http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_veto_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Not news to this crowd, but still important to note. So many times as commentators we focus on evil companies, or evil governments, or evil agencies. Nope, it's all of the above. Or rather, nobody is evil, just each party needs data for various reasons. Governments trump everybody, so if your information is being recorded, it's accessible to a government somewhere. (And you can be assured that tons of information about you is recorded daily) Interesting (to me) is the fact that we've spent the last twenty years cranking out various sci-fi dramas about all the things that could go wrong in a future society. There was cloning, nuclear war (an old favorite), alien invasion, designer babies, prison cities, artificial intelligence, memory wiping -- tons of stuff. All the time, the people who produced and consumed such fiction said "You know, it's good that we bring up these ideas. We're going to need to deal with this kinda thing in the future. It's morally important. This is deep, thoughtful work." Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind. And now when you point it out to folks, they either think it doesn't matter or they're so overwhelmed they give up thinking about what they could possibly do about it. The unstated question is: Gee, why didn't somebody tell me about this!

aerique 12y ago
People have been pointing out the problems with snooping, surveillance and the effect of technology for decades now. It is not something people can say that it just snuck up to them. They either did not care or called people pointing the increasing attacks on our liberties "conspiracy nuts".
7952 12y ago
>> Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind. Ironically that is caused by an increase in freedom that the internet brought about. We have long had the right to freedom of speech but it was expensive to interact with a large number of people. The internet made it much easier to actually use the rights heralded by politicians. I think sci-fi has done a better job of realising some of the social implications of this explosion in rights. For example in showing how national allegiance can be lost in favour of geographically desperate groups of like minded indviduals.

tokenadult 12y ago

I think we (everyone who participants here on Hacker News) have to learn how to be smart freedom fighters who can use nonviolent methods to overthrow dictatorships if we are to have any hope of reversing these trends, whether the snooping comes from governments directly or indirectly through poorly guided business corporations. We can't win this fight by imagining violent revolutions. Dictators become dictators by being practiced in using violence to gain power. We probably can't learn enough about violent means soon enough to overcome a slide to dictatorship in any country. I advocate nonviolent means to fight dictators for two reasons: I don't like seeing my innocent neighbors get killed, and I have seen nonviolent means work to overthrow dictators. The largely peaceful transition from martial law and one-party dictatorship to pluralistic rule by law with free press and free elections that I saw in Taiwan[1] is just one example of a people power revolution where the dictator was baffled because there were few violent incidents on the part of the opposition to stir up a violent response from the regime. There are other examples from around the world. An organization that collects real-world advice on how to win freedom even under dictatorship nonviolently, and how to keep the revolutionary movement from turning into another dictatorship, is the Albert Einstein Institution founded by Gene Sharp, an occasional nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. I have recommended before here on Hacker News that readers who are really, truly interested in winning freedom for themselves and guaranteeing freedom for people around the world ought to read the free, downloadable materials on the Einstein Institution website.[2] If you are not willing to learn the art and craft of forging a cohesive, effective resistance movement based on real-world examples, this is all just talk. Talk is cheap. I know actual freedom fighters who succeeded against dictators whose techniques included total control of all mass media with "prior restraint" of publication and complete domination of the country's education system and targeted assassinations of opponents. The dictators still lost. You (we) can win, but only if you (all of us) learn to fight effectively. That doesn't take violence. Winning in a people power democracy movement does take mental toughness, because the dictator's side could use violence, but always the people outnumber the rulers. The people just have to learn how to stand together, overcoming their own fear. Start your reading with From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation if you are wondering where to start among the several handbooks on the Einstein Institution website. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720 [2] http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/ http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Is funny how quickly the ground shifts. Not that long ago, discussions over this kind of stuff were generally the province of the institutionally paranoid and subjects such as echelon occasionally cropped up in sci-fi books and the manifestos of folk like David Icke, along with his rambling lizard bobbins. These days, my gran might mention these subjects over a cup of tea after talking about the cricket, and she's a dyed in the wool establishment conservative.