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Julian Assange on Living in a Surveillance Society

259 points by tysone 12y ago

ThomPete 12y ago
To really understand where Assange is coming from I always found this to be one of the most useful descriptions of his goal. "... ccording to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary. ..." http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/ http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-an...
- pekk 12y ago
  Every entity working a PR angle emphasizes their own ethics. That's not unique.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    Including Assange, of course.
  - jevgeni 12y ago
    I'm surprised, how Assange is at all relevant. Frankly, I have a growing suspicion, that he's a sham. Does whistleblowing really need a gatekeeper? Most of the leaks, the really ground breaking stuff, was done by other people more worthy of praise: Maning and Snowden. Assange is basically in the business of running a website and promoting himself, whilst antagonising people who actually support and believe him. What bothers me the most, is how biased Wikileaks are. Sure, the U.S. does a lot of f'ed up stuff, but they are by far not the only players in the game.
    - pwr22 12y ago
      As a person I find Assange to be detestable
      - the_af 12y ago
        Not trying to be snarky, but why does it matter whether you find Assange detestable "as a person"? Your opinion on WikiLeaks (and surveillance, and whistleblowers, and illegal wars) is what's important. It would only matter if you found WikiLeaks ethically compromised because of something Assange did.
        dmix 12y ago
        When people can't attack the topic they love attacking the characters behind it. Humans are much weaker than ideas and much easier targets for motivated (or paid) attackers. As we've seen with the attempts to discredit Snowden with his past as a college-dropout.
        deciplex 12y ago
        > As we've seen with the attempts to discredit Snowden with his past as a college-dropout. I haven't heard that one, actually. It's probably the same anti-intellectual assholes who will praise e.g. Gates or Zuckerberg, et al, for dropping out of college to do some 'real work' too, rather than staying in the ivory tower or whatever.
        jevgeni 12y ago
        <sarcasm>Way not to go all passive aggressive there and not to ironically succumb to your own criticism.</sarcasm> Let me help you off your high idealistic horse and say, that it could be the case, that people do not actually want to attack the topic, but care for it. It might be the case, that these people see Assange as a liability to actual whistleblowing and a useful idiot for more authoritarian players out there.
        jevgeni 12y ago
        That's exactly the point. For whistleblowing Assange shouldn't matter at all. His personality shouldn't be front stage like that. He centralised whistleblowing in the public's mind, whereas it should be decentralised by definition.
- panarky 12y ago
  The essence of the Assange and WL strategy is to force their opponents to build elaborate defenses against leaks. These defenses will then degrade the effectiveness and potency of their opponents. From the source[1]. The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance. [1] http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    Yup thats what the quote is talking about in a more abstract manner.
  - dmix 12y ago
    There is a long history of this line of thinking among cypherpunks in the 1990s. If anyone is interested in the topic I highly recommend reading: This Machine Kills Secrets http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers/dp/B00B9ZCGHA http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers... It provides a great historical context which Wikileaks fits into from a look at the old usenet groups where hackers were building early anonymity networks (ala Tor), early versions of cryptocurrencies, and writing the crypto-anarchy manifesto.
  - omouse 12y ago
    It's funny when you work in a corporate environment of any sort and you read this and you realize that openness is the only way to be safe. Lack of transparency lets people hide corrupt activities which degrade the organization at some point.
  - webnrrd2k 12y ago
alecco 12y ago
An Assange story above the fold. Let's see for how long.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 12y ago
I found this section interesting: "I am more impressed with another of his oracles: the 1945 essay “You and the Atomic Bomb,” in which Orwell more or less anticipates the geopolitical shape of the world for the next half-century. “Ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make,” he explains, “will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance ... A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.” Prophetic is the word for Orwell. Think about the power of the simple AK-47 and how it fueled a half century of chaos in the 3rd world and compare it to the discipline enforced by the possibility of nuclear annihilation in the developed world.
- EthanHeilman 12y ago
  Thomas Friedman book title generator: "The Hoplite and the Drone". This is similar to History Professor Carroll Quigley's claim that a necessary condition of Democracy is citizen armies which require simple weapons. Since Computer Network and Automated warfare seems to offer the most complex and specialized warfare in human history, we will soon learn if this theory is correct. "Quigley concludes, from a historical study of weapons and political dynamics, that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy. Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use. This explains why democracy is so rare in human history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley Full text of Quigley's book "Weapons Systems and Political Stability": http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20Political%20Stability.pdf http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20... Full Text of George Orwell's "You and the Atomic Bomb": http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    Both can be correct. The US invasion of Iraq is a masterpiece of power projection to nearly the farthest point on the planet from the center of US military logistics. It might never be equaled. But the bulk of the trillions of dollars spent on the wars were spent in a futile effort to stifle insurgencies with no armor, no missiles, no aircraft, no artillery pieces, no ships, no fiber optics, no satellites...
dumadoo 12y ago
I'd like some clarification to the opening line: Turning Point: The top E.U. court orders Google to grant the “right to be forgotten.'’ Is he decrying that development as indicative of Orwellian reality or praising it as a positive development? (my understating is he meant the former)
- john_b 12y ago
  I believe it is the former, as one of the core ideas of 1984 (arguably the core idea) is that when a tyrannical power has control over language, they have control over history, and when they have control over history they have control over the present and future.
  - calimac 12y ago
    True
- gwern 12y ago
  Decrying. In, IIRC, his discussion/interview with Schmidt, he discusses takedowns of Guardian and other newspaper articles as how scandals of powerful figures can go 'down the memory hole'. I believe the right-to-be-forgotten is already being used that way, to cover up frauds and whatnot.
api 12y ago
I've wondered for a while about the idea of treaties to limit deception/propaganda and surveillance; "strategic intelligence limitation" treaties. We were able to do this successfully with nuclear weapons during the cold war in order to ratchet down on "mutually assured destruction." Otherwise we could have had the runaway production of bigger and badder nukes until something really awful happened. Might it be possible for the world's major powers to do this with the use of deception and surveillance? Negotiate treaties to ratchet down spying, eavesdropping, and propaganda activities?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  I don't believe treaties are viable. That's not to say that governments look upon the idea unfavorably... just as they'd be willing to limit nuclear weapons if the other country will also do so, they'd probably do as much about espionage. The trouble is that it's not an enforceable treaty. We can plainly see how many nukes the USSR has, and we can call them on it. Kruschev can't just say "Oh, that's not our nuke in a big silo in the middle of Siberia, it must be some rogue general's!". But if we catch spies, they can certainly claim that those spies aren't theirs. With the nukes, the Soviets would (in theory, don't believe this ever happened for real) either dismantle those weapons that were prohibited by the treaty, or we'd arm up ourselves in retaliation (since the treaty was broken). How do you do that with spies, if they don't back down? You've gutted your intelligence networks, it will take decades to get assets in Moscow once more.
- josefresco 12y ago
  The world already saw what nuclear warheads could do, so I think the threat was more more "real" and caused more caution. If there is a mass casualty (or financial?) event tied to cyber-espionage than you might see some calls for deescalation.
clamprecht 12y ago
After reading PG's post "Why would a government have created Bitcoin?"[0], I've asked myself the same question about the Internet. I admit it's going into paranoia-land, but that's healthy in moderation. Assange hits this point: "The Internet was built in a surveillance-friendly way because governments and serious players in the commercial Internet wanted it that way. There were alternatives at every step of the way. They were ignored." Has anyone else considered that the Internet was possibly a long-term plan to build a worldwide network that the US government could then monitor? I know I can't be the only one to have wondered this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423
- Zigurd 12y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "built." Internet protocols are not designed to make surveillance easy (or hard, for that matter). So the Internet, in principle, is not built for surveillance. But the US ISP market, data centers, backbone routers, backbone layer 2 technologies, and the "TV-izing" of the Internet are very friendly to the surveillance state. A plot from the beginning? Probably not. But do the NSA and other agencies put their thumb on the scales to influence commercial outcomes in their favor - they admit it openly.
- drcomputer 12y ago
  I think it probably crossed people's minds from time to time, with some directing their underlying intent for and some directing their underlying intent against, others neutral or ignorant. I don't know whether things like that that guide the construction significantly, or whether it's a law of perpetual averages. In that case, it doesn't really matter whether it's an explicit plan or an implicit one. Things move with the people. That's why there is supposed to be a system of balancing and checking, at least from what I recall in elementary school. > I admit it's going into paranoia-land, but that's healthy in moderation. I prefer to be overly analytical. Paranoia is not my cup of tea.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > "The Internet was built in a surveillance-friendly way because governments and serious players in the commercial Internet wanted it that way. There were alternatives at every step of the way. They were ignored." I find that idea hard to believe for two reasons. First, because I don't think there's any evidence the government ever foresaw the internet coming into widespread civilian use. Second, and more importantly, the structure of the internet is so easily explained by private sector programming culture. Did you know that /etc/passwd originally contained actual plain-text passwords? Is it any surprise that the core internet protocols, which arose in the same era, are based on plain text with no deep authentication, encryption, etc? Apparently, Google didn't encrypt the traffic between its data centers until news of the NSA undersea tapping broke out. Apparently in its early days, everyone at Facebook had access to user data. The same programming culture that gave us plain-text protocols like SMTP are alive and well today, and the idea that the government had something to do with why the internet is so easy to surveil is hard to reconcile with history.
MattyRad 12y ago
I like his point here "Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." But I'd like to point out an important difference: Google doesn't have the authority to arrest someone (or incite someone else, like FBI or EPA, to arrest someone). The NSA does. Further, the NSA has a vested interest in arresting people to justify its existence.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  The NSA cannot arrest people either. Hence the big hoohaa about whether they were tipping off the people who can. A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. Google and Facebook look like fluffy kittens in contrast. Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers. I don't understand how such a trivially debunked idea has turned into a global meme/conspiracy theory.
  - webjprgm 12y ago
    Google/Facebook don't have to sell your info to advertisers because the are advertisers. Either way it is used for commercial advantage.
    - mike_hearn 12y ago
      Yes, but so what? Would you prefer everyone had to pay for their services, meaning a) You need a credit card, excluding large chunks of the world population that doesn't have one b) Google/FB learn your real identity via the payment networks, verified to banking level I get that advertising is annoying. Regardless, painting it as some kind of scary privacy problem doesn't make sense and worse, muddies the water. People end up dumping tech companies into the same boat as governments even though they have hardly anything in common.
l33tbro 12y ago
So how exactly are we meant to "fight for it" in a world where everything we own will be soon talking to each other? Is Assange arguing for stasis? What is his vision for a commercial internet? The holocene is over Mendax. The internet has gotten too complex to speak about in the language of 1995 cyber-utopians. I can't see how privacy will be an add-on in the next few years. I wish I could, but it would be foolishly naive. You may say "well what about more transparency from government?". 2 years we were more or less being told everything is rosy by government: then PRISM leaks. You may fight for transparency, but it is not within citizens "best interests" to know what's going on. ∞
Stefanrio 12y ago
I've always wondered how many "tech" guys can seriously be so ignorant that they use facebook, or maybe it's just plain stupidity.
CyberDildonics 12y ago
Really fantastic article. He emphasizes the fact that the death of privacy is not the real problem. The real problem is the death of privacy for citizens, but not for their government, when it should be the other way around to have a balance of power. "The real reason lies in the calculus of power: the destruction of privacy widens the existing power imbalance between the ruling factions and everyone else, leaving “the outlook for subject peoples and oppressed classes,” as Orwell wrote, “still more hopeless.”"
CyberDildonics 12y ago
So it seems to me that a huge step forward would be to develop an IP standard that is always encrypted possibly through multiple asymmetric schemes. Is anyone working on this? Is it even an idea that is commonly known?
- bdhe 12y ago
  There are existing works on encryption-as-a-standard at both the IP and transport levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpcrypt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpcrypt
  - hdevalence 12y ago
    There's also DJB's CurveCP.
jordigh 12y ago
Ironically, I can't read this article without letting the NYT set a cookie on my machine. Can someone mirror it?
- burkaman 12y ago
  Can you just open it in an incognito window, or whatever the equivalent is for your browser? That worked for me.
pc2g4d 12y ago
At the bottom of the article: "A version of this special report appears in print on December 31, 1969, in The International New York Times." Whaaa?? There's a headline for you: "Assange pens NYT opinion two years prior to own birth"!
- MarkMc 12y ago
  Hmm clearly the timestamp has been set to 0 in unix time
  - jdumblauskas 12y ago
    or has it? :)

259 points by tysone 12y ago

To really understand where Assange is coming from I always found this to be one of the most useful descriptions of his goal. "... ccording to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary. ..." http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/ http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-an...

pekk 12y ago
Every entity working a PR angle emphasizes their own ethics. That's not unique.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  Including Assange, of course.
- jevgeni 12y ago
  I'm surprised, how Assange is at all relevant. Frankly, I have a growing suspicion, that he's a sham. Does whistleblowing really need a gatekeeper? Most of the leaks, the really ground breaking stuff, was done by other people more worthy of praise: Maning and Snowden. Assange is basically in the business of running a website and promoting himself, whilst antagonising people who actually support and believe him. What bothers me the most, is how biased Wikileaks are. Sure, the U.S. does a lot of f'ed up stuff, but they are by far not the only players in the game.
  - pwr22 12y ago
    As a person I find Assange to be detestable
    - the_af 12y ago
      Not trying to be snarky, but why does it matter whether you find Assange detestable "as a person"? Your opinion on WikiLeaks (and surveillance, and whistleblowers, and illegal wars) is what's important. It would only matter if you found WikiLeaks ethically compromised because of something Assange did.
      - dmix 12y ago
        When people can't attack the topic they love attacking the characters behind it. Humans are much weaker than ideas and much easier targets for motivated (or paid) attackers. As we've seen with the attempts to discredit Snowden with his past as a college-dropout.
        deciplex 12y ago
        > As we've seen with the attempts to discredit Snowden with his past as a college-dropout. I haven't heard that one, actually. It's probably the same anti-intellectual assholes who will praise e.g. Gates or Zuckerberg, et al, for dropping out of college to do some 'real work' too, rather than staying in the ivory tower or whatever.
        jevgeni 12y ago
        <sarcasm>Way not to go all passive aggressive there and not to ironically succumb to your own criticism.</sarcasm> Let me help you off your high idealistic horse and say, that it could be the case, that people do not actually want to attack the topic, but care for it. It might be the case, that these people see Assange as a liability to actual whistleblowing and a useful idiot for more authoritarian players out there.
      - jevgeni 12y ago
        That's exactly the point. For whistleblowing Assange shouldn't matter at all. His personality shouldn't be front stage like that. He centralised whistleblowing in the public's mind, whereas it should be decentralised by definition.
panarky 12y ago
The essence of the Assange and WL strategy is to force their opponents to build elaborate defenses against leaks. These defenses will then degrade the effectiveness and potency of their opponents. From the source[1]. The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance. [1] http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
- ThomPete 12y ago
  Yup thats what the quote is talking about in a more abstract manner.
- dmix 12y ago
  There is a long history of this line of thinking among cypherpunks in the 1990s. If anyone is interested in the topic I highly recommend reading: This Machine Kills Secrets http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers/dp/B00B9ZCGHA http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers... It provides a great historical context which Wikileaks fits into from a look at the old usenet groups where hackers were building early anonymity networks (ala Tor), early versions of cryptocurrencies, and writing the crypto-anarchy manifesto.
- omouse 12y ago
  It's funny when you work in a corporate environment of any sort and you read this and you realize that openness is the only way to be safe. Lack of transparency lets people hide corrupt activities which degrade the organization at some point.
- webnrrd2k 12y ago

alecco 12y ago

An Assange story above the fold. Let's see for how long.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Spooky23 12y ago

I found this section interesting: "I am more impressed with another of his oracles: the 1945 essay “You and the Atomic Bomb,” in which Orwell more or less anticipates the geopolitical shape of the world for the next half-century. “Ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make,” he explains, “will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance ... A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.” Prophetic is the word for Orwell. Think about the power of the simple AK-47 and how it fueled a half century of chaos in the 3rd world and compare it to the discipline enforced by the possibility of nuclear annihilation in the developed world.

EthanHeilman 12y ago
Thomas Friedman book title generator: "The Hoplite and the Drone". This is similar to History Professor Carroll Quigley's claim that a necessary condition of Democracy is citizen armies which require simple weapons. Since Computer Network and Automated warfare seems to offer the most complex and specialized warfare in human history, we will soon learn if this theory is correct. "Quigley concludes, from a historical study of weapons and political dynamics, that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy. Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use. This explains why democracy is so rare in human history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley Full text of Quigley's book "Weapons Systems and Political Stability": http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20Political%20Stability.pdf http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20... Full Text of George Orwell's "You and the Atomic Bomb": http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb
- Zigurd 12y ago
  Both can be correct. The US invasion of Iraq is a masterpiece of power projection to nearly the farthest point on the planet from the center of US military logistics. It might never be equaled. But the bulk of the trillions of dollars spent on the wars were spent in a futile effort to stifle insurgencies with no armor, no missiles, no aircraft, no artillery pieces, no ships, no fiber optics, no satellites...

dumadoo 12y ago

I'd like some clarification to the opening line: Turning Point: The top E.U. court orders Google to grant the “right to be forgotten.'’ Is he decrying that development as indicative of Orwellian reality or praising it as a positive development? (my understating is he meant the former)

john_b 12y ago
I believe it is the former, as one of the core ideas of 1984 (arguably the core idea) is that when a tyrannical power has control over language, they have control over history, and when they have control over history they have control over the present and future.
- calimac 12y ago
  True
gwern 12y ago
Decrying. In, IIRC, his discussion/interview with Schmidt, he discusses takedowns of Guardian and other newspaper articles as how scandals of powerful figures can go 'down the memory hole'. I believe the right-to-be-forgotten is already being used that way, to cover up frauds and whatnot.

api 12y ago

I've wondered for a while about the idea of treaties to limit deception/propaganda and surveillance; "strategic intelligence limitation" treaties. We were able to do this successfully with nuclear weapons during the cold war in order to ratchet down on "mutually assured destruction." Otherwise we could have had the runaway production of bigger and badder nukes until something really awful happened. Might it be possible for the world's major powers to do this with the use of deception and surveillance? Negotiate treaties to ratchet down spying, eavesdropping, and propaganda activities?

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
I don't believe treaties are viable. That's not to say that governments look upon the idea unfavorably... just as they'd be willing to limit nuclear weapons if the other country will also do so, they'd probably do as much about espionage. The trouble is that it's not an enforceable treaty. We can plainly see how many nukes the USSR has, and we can call them on it. Kruschev can't just say "Oh, that's not our nuke in a big silo in the middle of Siberia, it must be some rogue general's!". But if we catch spies, they can certainly claim that those spies aren't theirs. With the nukes, the Soviets would (in theory, don't believe this ever happened for real) either dismantle those weapons that were prohibited by the treaty, or we'd arm up ourselves in retaliation (since the treaty was broken). How do you do that with spies, if they don't back down? You've gutted your intelligence networks, it will take decades to get assets in Moscow once more.
josefresco 12y ago
The world already saw what nuclear warheads could do, so I think the threat was more more "real" and caused more caution. If there is a mass casualty (or financial?) event tied to cyber-espionage than you might see some calls for deescalation.

clamprecht 12y ago

After reading PG's post "Why would a government have created Bitcoin?"[0], I've asked myself the same question about the Internet. I admit it's going into paranoia-land, but that's healthy in moderation. Assange hits this point: "The Internet was built in a surveillance-friendly way because governments and serious players in the commercial Internet wanted it that way. There were alternatives at every step of the way. They were ignored." Has anyone else considered that the Internet was possibly a long-term plan to build a worldwide network that the US government could then monitor? I know I can't be the only one to have wondered this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423

Zigurd 12y ago
It depends on what you mean by "built." Internet protocols are not designed to make surveillance easy (or hard, for that matter). So the Internet, in principle, is not built for surveillance. But the US ISP market, data centers, backbone routers, backbone layer 2 technologies, and the "TV-izing" of the Internet are very friendly to the surveillance state. A plot from the beginning? Probably not. But do the NSA and other agencies put their thumb on the scales to influence commercial outcomes in their favor - they admit it openly.
drcomputer 12y ago
I think it probably crossed people's minds from time to time, with some directing their underlying intent for and some directing their underlying intent against, others neutral or ignorant. I don't know whether things like that that guide the construction significantly, or whether it's a law of perpetual averages. In that case, it doesn't really matter whether it's an explicit plan or an implicit one. Things move with the people. That's why there is supposed to be a system of balancing and checking, at least from what I recall in elementary school. > I admit it's going into paranoia-land, but that's healthy in moderation. I prefer to be overly analytical. Paranoia is not my cup of tea.
rayiner 12y ago
> "The Internet was built in a surveillance-friendly way because governments and serious players in the commercial Internet wanted it that way. There were alternatives at every step of the way. They were ignored." I find that idea hard to believe for two reasons. First, because I don't think there's any evidence the government ever foresaw the internet coming into widespread civilian use. Second, and more importantly, the structure of the internet is so easily explained by private sector programming culture. Did you know that /etc/passwd originally contained actual plain-text passwords? Is it any surprise that the core internet protocols, which arose in the same era, are based on plain text with no deep authentication, encryption, etc? Apparently, Google didn't encrypt the traffic between its data centers until news of the NSA undersea tapping broke out. Apparently in its early days, everyone at Facebook had access to user data. The same programming culture that gave us plain-text protocols like SMTP are alive and well today, and the idea that the government had something to do with why the internet is so easy to surveil is hard to reconcile with history.

MattyRad 12y ago

I like his point here "Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." But I'd like to point out an important difference: Google doesn't have the authority to arrest someone (or incite someone else, like FBI or EPA, to arrest someone). The NSA does. Further, the NSA has a vested interest in arresting people to justify its existence.

mike_hearn 12y ago
The NSA cannot arrest people either. Hence the big hoohaa about whether they were tipping off the people who can. A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. Google and Facebook look like fluffy kittens in contrast. Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers. I don't understand how such a trivially debunked idea has turned into a global meme/conspiracy theory.
- webjprgm 12y ago
  Google/Facebook don't have to sell your info to advertisers because the are advertisers. Either way it is used for commercial advantage.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    Yes, but so what? Would you prefer everyone had to pay for their services, meaning a) You need a credit card, excluding large chunks of the world population that doesn't have one b) Google/FB learn your real identity via the payment networks, verified to banking level I get that advertising is annoying. Regardless, painting it as some kind of scary privacy problem doesn't make sense and worse, muddies the water. People end up dumping tech companies into the same boat as governments even though they have hardly anything in common.

l33tbro 12y ago

So how exactly are we meant to "fight for it" in a world where everything we own will be soon talking to each other? Is Assange arguing for stasis? What is his vision for a commercial internet? The holocene is over Mendax. The internet has gotten too complex to speak about in the language of 1995 cyber-utopians. I can't see how privacy will be an add-on in the next few years. I wish I could, but it would be foolishly naive. You may say "well what about more transparency from government?". 2 years we were more or less being told everything is rosy by government: then PRISM leaks. You may fight for transparency, but it is not within citizens "best interests" to know what's going on. ∞

Stefanrio 12y ago

I've always wondered how many "tech" guys can seriously be so ignorant that they use facebook, or maybe it's just plain stupidity.

CyberDildonics 12y ago

Really fantastic article. He emphasizes the fact that the death of privacy is not the real problem. The real problem is the death of privacy for citizens, but not for their government, when it should be the other way around to have a balance of power. "The real reason lies in the calculus of power: the destruction of privacy widens the existing power imbalance between the ruling factions and everyone else, leaving “the outlook for subject peoples and oppressed classes,” as Orwell wrote, “still more hopeless.”"

CyberDildonics 12y ago

So it seems to me that a huge step forward would be to develop an IP standard that is always encrypted possibly through multiple asymmetric schemes. Is anyone working on this? Is it even an idea that is commonly known?

bdhe 12y ago
There are existing works on encryption-as-a-standard at both the IP and transport levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpcrypt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpcrypt
- hdevalence 12y ago
  There's also DJB's CurveCP.

jordigh 12y ago

Ironically, I can't read this article without letting the NYT set a cookie on my machine. Can someone mirror it?

burkaman 12y ago
Can you just open it in an incognito window, or whatever the equivalent is for your browser? That worked for me.

pc2g4d 12y ago

At the bottom of the article: "A version of this special report appears in print on December 31, 1969, in The International New York Times." Whaaa?? There's a headline for you: "Assange pens NYT opinion two years prior to own birth"!

MarkMc 12y ago
Hmm clearly the timestamp has been set to 0 in unix time
- jdumblauskas 12y ago
  or has it? :)