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It is easy to fall into a nihilistic, hopeless attitude when faced with problems of this size. While this problem can affect anybody, I suspect the these feelin

by pdkl95 12y ago

It is easy to fall into a nihilistic, hopeless attitude when faced with problems of this size. While this problem can affect anybody, I suspect the these feeling about feasibility of change affect the people that create modern technologies in a specific way: it distracts and hides just how much power we retain, that cannot be collected by the people trying to place themselves at the top of rapidly centralizing power structures. The power I'm referring to is the power retained by whomever is actually implementing the world we live in. A tyrant can issue all the orders and threats they want - unless someone caries out those orders, the tyrant is just making a lot of hot air. Implementation is what matters in the end, and I think the readers of HN have a pretty good idea who it is that will end up implementing our future. So the next time someone asks you to implement some bit of the surveillance state, use your power and let some bit of that future go unimplemented. It may be a trivially small thing that may not affect much in the long run. Those little things add up, and the message it sends is important. I realize that it is hard to take a stand. There is always the possibility of being fired - or worse. Just remember that the engineers working around technology have an advantage over the typical "protest" crowds of the past: the people that want to use the surveillance state need engineers to make their tools. So take advantage of any little bit of power that you have and hold the line in some small way against this creeping tyranny. Above all, remember that tools like this very forum are available. I'm not saying there is no risk, and I'm not saying there won't have consequences. What I am suggesting is that unless we start making these principled stands right now, the situation is only going to get worse, and the sacrifices required to fix this situation only rise with time. Please. This is our future, and as clichée as it sounds, there is a lot of truth to the idea that the real power comes form strength in numbers. == /* speaking of the power held by engineers... I suspect "work to rule" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule ) could be a particularly effective tool in the hands of the people the keep important parts of the world running */

m4x 12y ago
You only need a few sympathetic hardware engineers to put in hardware back doors, however, and it's practically impossible to verify that the hardware you have is trustworthy by the time it's in your hands. A million engineers all making sure they don't implement surveillance functionality can't undo the work done by the handful of bad guys unless they're somehow able to inspect every piece of hardware down to the lowest level and verify manually that it's safe. The user has to do the same thing when they receive their hardware for obvious reasons. And software is no different. There are lots of FOSS devs who would refuse to help implement surveillance systems, yet there's no practical way to prevent one small team of bad actors from injecting code somewhere between software-conception and delivery-to-end-user. The only possible way to be confident about your technology would be to build it yourself from the ground up. You would need to design and fabricate the hardware yourself, from passive components up, and re-implement the entire software stack by hand. Even if you did all that, if you're a desirable target then you still face a very high risk that one of the people working somewhere in your project will be employed by your opponent and will compromise your system. The conclusion I have come to is that if you have anything you don't want intercepted, you simply can't use any modern device.

by pdkl95 12y ago

m4x 12y ago

You only need a few sympathetic hardware engineers to put in hardware back doors, however, and it's practically impossible to verify that the hardware you have is trustworthy by the time it's in your hands. A million engineers all making sure they don't implement surveillance functionality can't undo the work done by the handful of bad guys unless they're somehow able to inspect every piece of hardware down to the lowest level and verify manually that it's safe. The user has to do the same thing when they receive their hardware for obvious reasons. And software is no different. There are lots of FOSS devs who would refuse to help implement surveillance systems, yet there's no practical way to prevent one small team of bad actors from injecting code somewhere between software-conception and delivery-to-end-user. The only possible way to be confident about your technology would be to build it yourself from the ground up. You would need to design and fabricate the hardware yourself, from passive components up, and re-implement the entire software stack by hand. Even if you did all that, if you're a desirable target then you still face a very high risk that one of the people working somewhere in your project will be employed by your opponent and will compromise your system. The conclusion I have come to is that if you have anything you don't want intercepted, you simply can't use any modern device.