12 ms·

Here's a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn't own a cellphone, cos phones

by joeyspn 12y ago

Here's a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn't own a cellphone, cos phones were being used to track people. He also talked about the backdoors in several OS's. Everybody was laughing at his words. We're talking 10 years ago. Few months ago remembering this speech with old uni mates we talked about how damn right that excentric man was. He saw it coming, and tried to warn everybody... Maybe he's a bit of an "extremist", but he certainly has a point.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
I get annoyed by this because Stallman wasn't exactly predicting a hurricane, here. It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine. Nobody can prove it, but most people infer. Certainly since 641A and other even older signals those who pay attention received, the possibility of total surveillance was plainly apparent. The people who laughed it off were merely banking on the morality of government, but it was not a surprise at all that such things were technically possible. Those who paid attention already knew. Just no proof. He was not some oracle of technical insight that nobody else had or shared. Many people made such claims long before he did. His free software ideals put him in a very good position to be retroactively proven right about surveillance, because the people who are super into free software and the people who practice real opsec end up looking fairly similar. I'm not minimizing that he was right, just countering that we all were. And we failed to deliver the message and/or trusted in our government a bit too much. 641A should have been the catalyst. The EFF continues on it to this day. It took Snowden and the proof to get there, and we are still not there. I don't think we even know where the hell "there" is. Another important thing to remember is had we listened, nothing would have changed. Us heeding Stallman and others wasn't the problem, it was a state actor perpetrating while making it nearly impossible to know about it. It makes us kumbaya a bit, maybe democracy could have fixed it, but all of us were (and are) almost entirely powerless in representative government. Even Joe Biden said as much on VICE the other night, just about a different topic. Surveillance was going to happen. It was a done deal. The terrorists beat us the second those aircraft hit, because terror has driven us every minute since.
- Finbel 12y ago
  "Many people made such claims long before he did." Could you give an example? I also think it's dangerous to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government. Same argument could have been made against civil rights and suffrage movements throughout history.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    I think it requires a bare minimum of effort to enumerate the scores of commentators who predicted the surveillance state and the need for opsec, because it's in the bedrock of the computer security community itself. One needed only attend DEFCON, especially after 641A, to hear enough about surveillance and countersurveillance to last a lifetime. Hippies, free software, counterculture, copyleft, cypherpunks. All of that shares the same DNA. Stallman represents that culture sharpened to a point, and it's been the basic tenet of all of it that government does not have our best interest at heart. Cypherpunks exist, arguably, because of it. That'd be the example I'd offer, perhaps even that consumer cryptography itself exists. I also didn't say that. You added a bit. I disagree with the addition.
    - Finbel 12y ago
      I'm really confused here... you said "Many people made such claims long before he did." and I asked for an example. I didn't ask what movements he's a representative of and I don't know whether anyone who attended DEFCON heard about it. All I wonder is if their is one clear example of someone who made such claims long before he did? What did I attribute that you didn't say? I assume you refer to "to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government" and I can see what you mean but what point was you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not argue against taking action?
      - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
        That's just it, though, the movement is the example. If you can't get there abstractly, John Gilmore comes to mind. I also very clearly said nothing about action. You added that and I happen to disagree that we shouldn't act. Powerless in government is an orthogonal concept and you conflated them and disagreed with something I didn't say.
bobofettfett 12y ago
Every one in tech thought 10years ago there are backdoors everywhere - well there were backdoors everywhere 20 years ago. And everyone thought government agencies use phones for tracking. The public opinion might have been different, but in tech circles this was and is mainstream.
- icebraining 12y ago
  I thought so too, but the outrage on HN over Snowden's revelations showed otherwise. Many people here were baffled.
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  "...in tech circles this was and is mainstream." Things are different now. Take online tracking and privacy for example; many people in the tech community are perfectly fine with the online tracking carried out by Google and Facebook. They consider it relatively benign and useful. Some people (many?) are even happy to defend these companies over their tracking practices, are after all they are private companies, not government agencies. The degree of tracking by these companies is unprecendented and often it's not even anonymous. Google, for example, has an entire OS that tracks you by default. It's tied to your identity, so it's not anonymous. If you have a Google or Facebook account, these companies probably already know more about your online behaviour than you know yourself. At some point in the future, Google and Facebook may well be able to track you from cradle to grave. Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps. Even now, Google's push into education means they hoard vast quatities of data about the online behaviour of students. Even if you trust these companies, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree? I can understand how the general public may be unaware of the privacy implications of such pervasive online tracking, but what excuse does the tech community have for not highlighting these issues and their privacy implications? Most of the reaction from the tech community over online tracking is equivalent to a "yeah, so what?" shrug of the shoulders.
_ak 12y ago
Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe). Making that to be a big conspiracy to infringe upon everybody's freedom and privacy is what makes Stallman's position so ridiculous. It always sounds like the rambling of a technophobic. No, that's not entirely true. Like the rambling of an old man who wants computing and technology in general to be exactly like it was in the 70's when he was sharing a mainframe with his pals at uni, and who can't think of anything more innovative than that.
- emiliobumachar 12y ago
  Everything about mass survaillance shifted from "stuff of crackpot conspiracy theories" to "retroactivelly obvious all along".
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    It's as if the useful idiots haven't even noticed that their rhetoric today contradicts entirely their rhetoric from five years ago.
- Daishiman 12y ago
  > Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe). Bullshit; I remember trying to instill the same point to techies 7 years ago and a majority of technically competent people would say that, while possible, is not certain. Hindsight is 20-20.
  - tajen 12y ago
    Even today, very few people accept to believe that the NSA actually leverages their technology to do mass tracking. Few people have an idea of the scale of their operations actually. Most of them now think they have the gear, but that they only leverage it in state investigations.
_nedR 12y ago
This, exactly. Stallman is taking a stand here. We might think that he is a dangerous extremist for his actions and stances (Not using proprietary software, mobile phones, javascript-enabled websites). But what he is actually doing is sacrificing his life to make his points (which are for the most part completely valid). I would guess, even he knows that most of his ideals are impractical in today's world, but he is walking the walk and planting the flag firmly, saying this is "How thing should be". The difference between a crackpot and a visionary is that what the visionary says make more sense as time passes. IMO, Stallman's track record is infallible in this regard.
- jcrawfordor 12y ago
  As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him. What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating you find it. That said, it's worth noting that it's certainly not that he doesn't care about the privacy of others. I had to pull him away from lecturing innocent bystanders about paying at the grocery store with CCs.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    I guess the question is, what would happen if everybody actually listened to RMS and stopped using cell phones?
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      This is not a valid way of judging RMS or his claims. He isn't complaining about the concept of a technology that allows people to talk while on the go. Rather, he is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled. To answer seriously, however, the largest effect of reduced cell phone use would be that automobiles would be much safer, for their passengers and for everyone else.
funkyy 12y ago
Sounds like Nostradamus. He said few things and based on his reputation people since hundreds of years take anything important that happens and bend it to fit his prophecies. 10 years ago me and my friends were well aware that police etc can listen to your mobile phones - I don't see big deal here. And none of my friends were that much in to computers or security.
- krapp 12y ago
  Richard Stallman does have a lot of good ideas. But he also seems distrustful of anything that isn't entirely built on free software, and of anything at all to do with governments or corporations, and I think he gets praised for some keen insight when, really, anyone paranoid about the modern world and the government would have been just as insightful, although maybe not as literate. You shouldn't get credit for hitting a bullseye if you spray the target with an uzi.
  - paulsecwhatt 12y ago
    https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html Indeed. If only we had had Stallman right before Pearl Harbor, I'm sure he could have published a manifesto, saving everyone from the obviously impending doom and most importantly maintaining their FREEDOM!
MCRed 12y ago
Except that we knew all this 20 years ago. He's not really extremist at all. I guess he is just good at finding audiences that aren't up to speed.

by joeyspn 12y ago

jsmthrowaway 12y ago

I get annoyed by this because Stallman wasn't exactly predicting a hurricane, here. It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine. Nobody can prove it, but most people infer. Certainly since 641A and other even older signals those who pay attention received, the possibility of total surveillance was plainly apparent. The people who laughed it off were merely banking on the morality of government, but it was not a surprise at all that such things were technically possible. Those who paid attention already knew. Just no proof. He was not some oracle of technical insight that nobody else had or shared. Many people made such claims long before he did. His free software ideals put him in a very good position to be retroactively proven right about surveillance, because the people who are super into free software and the people who practice real opsec end up looking fairly similar. I'm not minimizing that he was right, just countering that we all were. And we failed to deliver the message and/or trusted in our government a bit too much. 641A should have been the catalyst. The EFF continues on it to this day. It took Snowden and the proof to get there, and we are still not there. I don't think we even know where the hell "there" is. Another important thing to remember is had we listened, nothing would have changed. Us heeding Stallman and others wasn't the problem, it was a state actor perpetrating while making it nearly impossible to know about it. It makes us kumbaya a bit, maybe democracy could have fixed it, but all of us were (and are) almost entirely powerless in representative government. Even Joe Biden said as much on VICE the other night, just about a different topic. Surveillance was going to happen. It was a done deal. The terrorists beat us the second those aircraft hit, because terror has driven us every minute since.

Finbel 12y ago
"Many people made such claims long before he did." Could you give an example? I also think it's dangerous to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government. Same argument could have been made against civil rights and suffrage movements throughout history.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  I think it requires a bare minimum of effort to enumerate the scores of commentators who predicted the surveillance state and the need for opsec, because it's in the bedrock of the computer security community itself. One needed only attend DEFCON, especially after 641A, to hear enough about surveillance and countersurveillance to last a lifetime. Hippies, free software, counterculture, copyleft, cypherpunks. All of that shares the same DNA. Stallman represents that culture sharpened to a point, and it's been the basic tenet of all of it that government does not have our best interest at heart. Cypherpunks exist, arguably, because of it. That'd be the example I'd offer, perhaps even that consumer cryptography itself exists. I also didn't say that. You added a bit. I disagree with the addition.
  - Finbel 12y ago
    I'm really confused here... you said "Many people made such claims long before he did." and I asked for an example. I didn't ask what movements he's a representative of and I don't know whether anyone who attended DEFCON heard about it. All I wonder is if their is one clear example of someone who made such claims long before he did? What did I attribute that you didn't say? I assume you refer to "to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government" and I can see what you mean but what point was you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not argue against taking action?
    - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
      That's just it, though, the movement is the example. If you can't get there abstractly, John Gilmore comes to mind. I also very clearly said nothing about action. You added that and I happen to disagree that we shouldn't act. Powerless in government is an orthogonal concept and you conflated them and disagreed with something I didn't say.

bobofettfett 12y ago

Every one in tech thought 10years ago there are backdoors everywhere - well there were backdoors everywhere 20 years ago. And everyone thought government agencies use phones for tracking. The public opinion might have been different, but in tech circles this was and is mainstream.

icebraining 12y ago
I thought so too, but the outrage on HN over Snowden's revelations showed otherwise. Many people here were baffled.
chestnut-tree 12y ago
"...in tech circles this was and is mainstream." Things are different now. Take online tracking and privacy for example; many people in the tech community are perfectly fine with the online tracking carried out by Google and Facebook. They consider it relatively benign and useful. Some people (many?) are even happy to defend these companies over their tracking practices, are after all they are private companies, not government agencies. The degree of tracking by these companies is unprecendented and often it's not even anonymous. Google, for example, has an entire OS that tracks you by default. It's tied to your identity, so it's not anonymous. If you have a Google or Facebook account, these companies probably already know more about your online behaviour than you know yourself. At some point in the future, Google and Facebook may well be able to track you from cradle to grave. Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps. Even now, Google's push into education means they hoard vast quatities of data about the online behaviour of students. Even if you trust these companies, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree? I can understand how the general public may be unaware of the privacy implications of such pervasive online tracking, but what excuse does the tech community have for not highlighting these issues and their privacy implications? Most of the reaction from the tech community over online tracking is equivalent to a "yeah, so what?" shrug of the shoulders.

_ak 12y ago

Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe). Making that to be a big conspiracy to infringe upon everybody's freedom and privacy is what makes Stallman's position so ridiculous. It always sounds like the rambling of a technophobic. No, that's not entirely true. Like the rambling of an old man who wants computing and technology in general to be exactly like it was in the 70's when he was sharing a mainframe with his pals at uni, and who can't think of anything more innovative than that.

emiliobumachar 12y ago
Everything about mass survaillance shifted from "stuff of crackpot conspiracy theories" to "retroactivelly obvious all along".
- jessaustin 12y ago
  It's as if the useful idiots haven't even noticed that their rhetoric today contradicts entirely their rhetoric from five years ago.
Daishiman 12y ago
> Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe). Bullshit; I remember trying to instill the same point to techies 7 years ago and a majority of technically competent people would say that, while possible, is not certain. Hindsight is 20-20.
- tajen 12y ago
  Even today, very few people accept to believe that the NSA actually leverages their technology to do mass tracking. Few people have an idea of the scale of their operations actually. Most of them now think they have the gear, but that they only leverage it in state investigations.

_nedR 12y ago

This, exactly. Stallman is taking a stand here. We might think that he is a dangerous extremist for his actions and stances (Not using proprietary software, mobile phones, javascript-enabled websites). But what he is actually doing is sacrificing his life to make his points (which are for the most part completely valid). I would guess, even he knows that most of his ideals are impractical in today's world, but he is walking the walk and planting the flag firmly, saying this is "How thing should be". The difference between a crackpot and a visionary is that what the visionary says make more sense as time passes. IMO, Stallman's track record is infallible in this regard.

jcrawfordor 12y ago
As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him. What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating you find it. That said, it's worth noting that it's certainly not that he doesn't care about the privacy of others. I had to pull him away from lecturing innocent bystanders about paying at the grocery store with CCs.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  I guess the question is, what would happen if everybody actually listened to RMS and stopped using cell phones?
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    This is not a valid way of judging RMS or his claims. He isn't complaining about the concept of a technology that allows people to talk while on the go. Rather, he is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled. To answer seriously, however, the largest effect of reduced cell phone use would be that automobiles would be much safer, for their passengers and for everyone else.

funkyy 12y ago

Sounds like Nostradamus. He said few things and based on his reputation people since hundreds of years take anything important that happens and bend it to fit his prophecies. 10 years ago me and my friends were well aware that police etc can listen to your mobile phones - I don't see big deal here. And none of my friends were that much in to computers or security.

krapp 12y ago
Richard Stallman does have a lot of good ideas. But he also seems distrustful of anything that isn't entirely built on free software, and of anything at all to do with governments or corporations, and I think he gets praised for some keen insight when, really, anyone paranoid about the modern world and the government would have been just as insightful, although maybe not as literate. You shouldn't get credit for hitting a bullseye if you spray the target with an uzi.
- paulsecwhatt 12y ago
  https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html Indeed. If only we had had Stallman right before Pearl Harbor, I'm sure he could have published a manifesto, saving everyone from the obviously impending doom and most importantly maintaining their FREEDOM!

MCRed 12y ago

Except that we knew all this 20 years ago. He's not really extremist at all. I guess he is just good at finding audiences that aren't up to speed.