James Fallows has a calm, accurate assessment of the damage done by the NSA surveillance program.
In short: because of what the U.S. government assumed it could do with information it had the technological ability to intercept, American companies and American interests are sure to suffer in their efforts to shape and benefit from the Internet’s continued growth.
- American companies, because no foreigners will believe these firms can guarantee security from U.S. government surveillance;
- American interests, because the United States has gravely compromised its plausibility as world-wide administrator of the Internet’s standards and advocate for its open, above-politics goals.
Why were U.S. authorities in a position to get at so much of the world’s digital data in the first place? Because so many of the world’s customers have trusted* U.S.-based firms like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc with their data; and because so many of the world’s nations have tolerated an info-infrastructure in which an outsized share of data flows at some point through U.S. systems. Those are the conditions of trust and toleration that likely will change.
Whenever companies like Google are mentioned, the argument I hear is that Google gets all your personal data anyway, so why are we concerned that they turn it over to the government? Put simply, Google can’t arrest you.
The Red Pen
What if they already have, and we’re all actually living in Google prison with no hope of parole? [cue Twilight Zone music]
Baud
These are legitimate concerns, but I haven’t yet seen much empirical evidence that U.S. companies have been harmed financially from the disclosure.
I don’t disagree that there are different concerns between private collection of data and governmental collection, but 99% of Americans will be more affected by what Google does with its data than with what the government does. In any event, the key protection against governmental overreach is the warrant or subpoena requirement, and last I heard, the government still had to obtain some sort of warrant or subpoena (at least for Americans) before extracting any personally identifiable information from the data it collects.
Chyron HR
Corporations are people, too, my friend?
NotMax
To those who loudly proclaim they “have nothing to hide,” have always said that that is not, and never has been, what is in dispute. The brazen claim of unassailable, unaccountable, unfettered (and too often clandestine) access to your data is what is, and ought to be, challenged.
A reminder*, from my old blog, from 2006 (penultimate citation at the link, though a reminder about the Denver case just above it is also not untimely).
*one of literally scores of such over the course of the blog’s active run, chosen at random. Had I a nickel for every time I have typed or said “Give them an inch and they’ll take the ruler.” I’d have a Scrooge McDuck vaultful of nickels.
The Red Pen
@Baud:
I don’t know if “harmed” (past tense) applies, but there is some vocal concern, particularly among American companies offering “cloud services.”
Wag
@Baud:
The key protection is the warrant process, which has been turned into a farce by the FISA Court system.
Schlemizel
Pre-FISA days the NSA simply got calls routed through switches in Canada and Mexico making them international and subject to their screening. We know from discovered documetns that Germany was of the largest customers for collected data under the current rules and that many other countries asked for and received information.
If these foreign interests think they are going to be any more secure by avoiding US resources They will be eventually disappointed. My guess is the nice people at Al-Qaeda have not been fooled but maybe they are that stupid. We can hope. But lets us not be that stupid & assume that simply because this is now known & eventually some rule will be passed to contain it that the spooks don’t already have 5 ways around the rules and can capture whatever they want whenever they want
Nutella
@Baud:
Last you heard? The point of the secret court is that you don’t hear.
Baud
@The Red Pen:
From what I recall, those companies wanted more public transparency when the government issues a subpoena for information (a good thing), but I hadn’t heard that they were challenging the surveillance program itself (although I may have missed it).
@Wag:
I support reforms that provide greater transparency, oversight, and protections. But I don’t think we’ll get to a place where the government loses the technical capability to search “big data,” which is what I think a lot of advocates want to see.
joes527
FTFY
Baud
@Nutella:
Well if we don’t know anything at all, I don’t see any reason to keep talking about it.
Betty Cracker
@The Red Pen: Yep — so many core business functions are moving to cloud services, and non-US companies will surely jump on this as a competitor liability they can exploit. I just read somewhere that President Obama is visiting an Amazon.com warehouse to talk about jobs. (From what I hear, the jobs in Amazon.com warehouses are shitty, but anyhoo…)
I believe Amazon.com is the world’s leading cloud services provider? Maybe the prospect of lost profits will be enough to kick off that conversation about moving from a war to a peacetime footing, with attendant relaxation of wartime vigilance, spying, etc., that Obama mentioned before anyone ever heard of Edward Snowden.
The Red Pen
@Baud:
I don’t know the details of who’s doing what either, but the companies I’m thinking of would include Peer1 (the hosting company, not the boutique) and Amazon. I don’t think either company is implicated in data gathering, but since it’s all secret, how would you know?
Botsplainer
Jesusfuck, time to strap on your big boy panties, and quit trembling in urine-soaked fear like so many conservatives.
The government isn’t dragging Cheeto caked conservative bloggers from basements, nor is it forestalling the planning of the next revolution by college Maoists.
TheMightyTrowel
OT… some very accurate humour because the news this week has already sucked (and don’t get me started on Tony Abbot)
Baud
@The Red Pen:
I wasn’t aware those companies had said anything, so I’m thinking of something different.
geg6
@Baud:
I’m with you on the transparency, oversight and protections. And I agree that the idea that the government will ever be banned from ever using data mining is a pipe dream. But what I also believe is that I’m not so sure that banning such mining completely is such a great idea. If the transparency, oversight and protections are all there, I think it’s an important tool for defense, intelligence and law enforcement. What I can’t stand are the people who see it as only black and white, with none of the gray the real world requires.
Botsplainer
@The Red Pen:
Speaking just for me, I avoid cloud services. Not because of the government (squeeeeeeeeeal), but because of 1) hackers and 2) business shutdowns and 3) potential outages.
NotMax
@NotMax
Should apologize if the old blog linked to displays oddly.
Never did get around to updating the javascript I wrote for displaying certain elements to accommodate more modern versions of browsers once gave up on daily blogging.
aretino
Whenever companies like Google are mentioned, the argument I hear is that Google gets all your personal data anyway, why are we concerned that they turn it over to the government?
Thing is, as long as Google etc have the data, our government (or any other) can just buy it, even if they can’t get it for free any more, and Google will be happy to sell. It’s their business model, folks.
geg6
@Botsplainer:
I only use cloud on my phone’s email. Which I pretty much never use except when getting music or apps for the phone. If the government is into punk and my “Find iPhone” app, they are welcome to them.
Baud
@geg6:
I’m open to that possibility, but it’s hard to be confident because of the (somewhat understandable) secrecy that surrounds these programs. I don’t think the NSA is doing all this for shits and giggles, but I also believe that every institution — and especially those in the security arena — has a natural inclination to resist change in the way they do things, particularly when it comes from outside.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Baud: If we don’t know anything, then we are in the realm of the conspiracy theory, which is why Snowden’s credibility was and is so important. The more credible the person telling the tale, the less likely that you’re being led into the virtual lands of fnord.
I’ve been hearing variants of this for years. The only one I’ve considered taking seriously was the Bellsouth lineman who claims to have been involved in wiring extra rooms in the switching vaults. And I’m not sure how seriously to take him because he’s also wandered into Beckistan over the next few years, and I don’t know which came first. Did personal confirmation of that particular item make him more likely to take the rest seriously, or was that the first symptom I saw of his becoming delusional?
LAC
@Baud: Neither have I, nor have I seen any evidence that there are many legitimate foreign companies not eager to do business with the US. But, once again, anything to get us back to NSA BAD, Snowden GOOD arguments that mistermix loves.
RP
Some of the concerns about the fisa court are a little overblown. When the police go to get a warrant in a regular court for a regular criminal case, it’s not an adversarial proceeding. The subject of the warrant doesn’t get a chance to contest the request. Plus, law enforcement only goes to the court to get a warrant if they’re 99% certain the court is going to give it to them (this comes up on almost every episode of Law and Order), so we shouldn’t be surprised that the FISA courts grant every request. If they’re a rubber stamp, so is pretty much every federal and state court.
Donut
As the governments of some of our allies (Germany, UK) have made use of the NSA data themselves, are we sure that some of the negative reaction is not mostly histrionics and hyperbole going on in order for some in power to save face?
I am not saying I fully support the NSA programs wholeheartedly and without reservation, just wondering how true that particular observation is, that American interests and companies will suffer badly. It’s way too soon, one might plausibly think, to know what the real fallout is or will be. We are just able to guess at it, as of yet.
All those tech companies have invested massively in the huge infrastructure and architecture it takes to deliver their services. I am no expert on the tech sector, I will admit, but I cant think of who could really step into that space immediately and start to take over all that business from American firms. Anyone able to hazard a guess at that?
Corner Stone
@joes527:
I’m reminded of the Kim Dotcom in NZ case. Not Google, of course, but he was essentially extradited to the US at the behest of powerful corporate interests. IIRC.
burnspbesq
@The Red Pen:
Old news. From Day 1 of its existence, Wuala’s marketing has been based on (1) end-to-end encryption and (2) servers in Germany and Switzerland, as differentiators vs. Dropbox et al. That’s why I use them for anything that’s subject to the attorney-client privilege or is attorney work product.
RP
That is true, but the difference is access vs. use. The government may have access to our data once they get a warrant (and, granted, getting a warrant isn’t very hard), but they’re not sitting there keeping track of the DVD rentals and phone calls of 99.9% of the population. Google and other companies are constantly using that data to build profiles of their customers to sell us stuff.
The problem with this argument is that it starts from the premise that the government is abusing its powers and spying on american citizens for no good reason. I don’t see much evidence for that assumption.
The Red Pen
@Baud:
That was my point: Peer1 and Amazon haven’t been “out of the loop” in the NSA controversy, but their cloud platform business may suffer as a result of general distrust of US-based companies.
@Botsplainer:
1) Agree, but only because I trust my security architecture. If you don’t know what you’re doing (and if you’re not sure, then you don’t), you might be better off letting someone else secure your IT.
2) A definite concern.
3) See #1 — if you can’t handle you’re own outages, you’re probably better off outsourcing it.
Additional note on #1 and #3: my policy is never to outsource something because you don’t understand it. You are likely to end up with a crappy solution that costs too much — if you don’t understand it, how can you shop effectively?
The Red Pen
@burnspbesq:
So your clever plan to ensure attorney-client privilege is to transmit your data to a jurisdiction where it isn’t enforceable?
Corner Stone
@RP:
The main difference I see which leads me to not agree with your analogy is the key words in the quote above of “the subject”.
boatboy_srq
It’s high time the other major markets built their own major backbones: with consumer and business Internet adoption in Europe and Asia (especially China and India) high already and other regions rising rapidly, decentralizing the major Internet connectivity and core services can only be to the good. It will also give many of the IT professionals clamoring to come to the US reasons to stay home, and improve the tech job market in the US so that the education for a better economy mantras that proved so false in the last decade might finally hold some larger truth in the near future.
I’m still confused why there’s some much garment-tearing going on about this now. The foundations for the kind of Big Data intelligence-gathering that’s in the news were laid over a decade ago, marketed as a response to Teh Terrrrrrist Threat and trumpeted as part of the GWoT – and anyone who raised these questions at the time got shouted down by Conservatists doing the “with us or against us” chant. Now these same blowhards have their panties in a twist because they finally realised their phone calls and emails to their portfolio managers in the Caymans and Jersey and Singapore and to their mistresses in Rio are being monitored? Really?
It’s just more TABMITWH: it’s only a problem when the Scary Black Man can find out who your wife’s cheating with, whether your daughter’s pregnant, and how much in taxes you’ve saved by moving your S Corp to Bermuda, before you do.
Corner Stone
@Donut:
IMO, most of the noise from elected officials in power is almost definitely for the consumption of their respective citizens.
However, from the reported stories of massive protests, I tend to believe the people themselves aren’t very frickin’ happy about any aspect of this situation.
Debbie(aussie)
This might Internet some of you. We are rather excited. Someone might teach me hoe to get around geoblocking, not that I have much need. I know my son and heaps of gamer friends another IT persons will be impressed. The rest of world was treating us like they had to ‘physically’ send us the stuff. http://mobile.news.com.au/technology/australian-government-releases-its-report-into-it-pricing/story-e6frfro0-1226687671422
Corner Stone
OT but I see Chuckles Todd spouting something about the WH proposing a new Grand Bargain with the key piece being a reduction in corporate tax rates to fund some argle bargle something something.
This should be fun.
cleek
@Betty Cracker:
until these non-US companies find a way to get internet traffic to their servers without going through servers which are monitored by some government, they’re kindof irrelevant.
Corner Stone
@Debbie(aussie):
Are we doing that now? Just taking any noun we like and using it in innovative ways in sentences?
Damn you mobile device autocorrect!
Ramiah Ariya
First of all, the chilling effect of NSA spying is a long-term process. To people saying there is no financial effect yet on American companies, it is because it takes time for these things to play out.
Secondly, prior to the global internet, there were efforts by some countries to build their own networks. I have seen one in India called the INET at that time. These efforts were abandoned once the global internet became ubiquitous. These projects are certain to be reactivated, so that no sensitive traffic has to go through US servers.
Just Some Fuckhead
Which is then countered by “You should be arrested if you are doing something wrong.”
mistermix
@cleek: Here’s a scenario: you’re an Asian or European company. Instead of using Amazon’s Asian or Euro data centers, you use a local cloud provider.
burnspbesq
@The Red Pen:
No, my clever plan is that (1) if the IRS wants the information, they have to use a treaty request to get it, which is such a time-consuming and burdensome process that most agents won’t bother, and (2) in the rare case that an agent does go through with a treaty request, all he or she will get from the foreign government is gibberish.
cleek
@mistermix:
and the NSA is right there, watching you even closer, because they have very few restrictions outside the US.
or, maybe it’s China watching you. or the UK. or France.
this isn’t 1992: it’s insane to assume your internet traffic isn’t vulnerable to being watched.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: I just fucking hate the “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument. It is so not the point and Most of the people who use it should know better.
mistermix
@cleek: Yes, public networks are public. The concern is that the NSA can retrieve data directly from a server via a secret warrant in a US-owned data center, in addition to monitoring all traffic that goes over public network connections.
Debbie(aussie)
@Debbie(aussie): sorry about all the errors. I know, preview is my friend. But it is late here, I’m tired and I’m sticking to that.
The Red Pen
@burnspbesq:
Please be patient with my ignorance on this, but didn’t you say that this information was covered by attorney-client privilege? If so, how could the IRS legally obtain it, even if it was sitting in clear text in a folder on your desk at work?
Is that because you are encrypting the information before you send it? Perhaps you can answer a question I’ve had for a while: if the government seizes encrypted information, do they have a legal right to encryption keys if they don’t find them in a search? Does the 5th Amendment protect you from having to produce them?
Belafon
Chinese businesses have not been hurt by China’s controlling the internet. US companies will not be hurt by the US having any type of access on the internet. Once again, just because we’re the biggest to be outed, we’re not the only ones doing it. Making money will always trump privacy.
I’m one of those who thinks that collecting this data is not actually hurting anything because you aren’t going to find terrorism in it unless you know what you are looking for. “I wonder if someone is doing something bad” is not a search pattern on 100 billion data points, especially if the data points are of the form 555-2613. And, I bet, if you actually told people how using the data would work, a majority of American’s would be OK with it. What would be interesting is watching both sides explaining in their scariest voices why they are right.
Riccardo Cabeza
@NotMax: “Nothing to hide?” Let me cherry pick your electronic history. You’re guilty as hell.
Ted & Hellen
How can it truly be that so very many are so very, profoundly stupid?
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, most people know that if you are doing something wrong, you don’t do it in a place that could be monitored.
cleek
@mistermix:
is your assumption that other countries don’t have warrants and/or clandestine intelligence gathering agencies ?
cause… i hate to break it to you… but….
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon: You are more generous in your assessment of human intelligence than I am. For one thing, there is plenty that people do on the ‘net that may not be illegal but may not be something they want to be subject to public scrutiny.
The Red Pen
@Belafon:
How many Chinese web sites do you use?
Corner Stone
@Belafon: Say what now? I’m not sure I understand you?
Belafon
@The Red Pen: I personally haven’t used any because I don’t google in Chinese. My point in this was in response to this bullet point:
The point being that everyone knows you have no secrets in China, but we’re still dumping money in the country. Businesses will give whatever they need to to get the next dollar profit. The NSA’s activities will not hurt business. It’s a pointless angle to pursue, especially when the largest emerging market, China, tells any businesses to make sure it’s easier to access online data. Business will never be on our side.
Jasmine Bleach
Except some of us make sure Google doesn’t have information (or only has very little information) about us. This is actually fairly easy to do. You can do it, too!
Step 1–Don’t use Google+ (Google’s Facebook alternative), Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, etc.
Step 2–Don’t use Google for web searches. Use DuckDuckGo instead (they don’t track or bubble you).
Step 3–Use Ghostery or Disconnect as a web browser plug in. These block all of Google Analytics, Google AdSense, and Google+ tracking cookies from being installed on your computer. This disables Google’s main ability to find out where you’ve been on the web. If you want to avoid Google, you MUST do this because almost all websites with advertisements (just about all of ’em) use these Google tracking cookies.
Step 4–Don’t use Google Maps. Use OpenStreetMaps, and if you’re so inclined, help them to improve it.
Step 5–Avoid YouTube as much as possible (this one is the toughest for me). If you do use it, flush your normal cookies and use a script or web browser plug-in to flush your permanent flash cookies at frequent intervals (preferably after each YouTube page you visit).
Step 6–Don’t use Android devices.
Step 7–Don’t use Chrome.
Do the above and the only thing Google will ever have on you is a non-connected log of when you visited a single YouTube page, and anytime you e-mailed someone who uses a gMail address.
Eric U.
google hardly needs to be able to arrest you, they can get the regular cops to do it for them.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: Which is then countered by “You should have spoken up in the 1950’s when we turned into the national security state. Horse is out of the barn now.”
The Red Pen
@Belafon:
That’s a terrible answer. People in China don’t always Google in English, but they use an American company when they use Google, or book travel on eLong (Expedia) or use any number of American-based web sites.
Right, and we’re expanding our sites to sell services to the Chinese. Due to the point quoted above, they are not reciprocating. No one is going to put their data in “China Cabinet: the exciting new Dropbox competitor based at the People’s Ministry of Information in Shanghai.”
Now, thanks to the stain of NSA spying, people outside the US (and inside the US see burnspbesq) are going to avoid US information service providers.
The Red Pen
@Jasmine Bleach:
To what end? Do you use credit cards or debit cards? Write checks? How many accounts with various vendors do you have? Do you post to Facebook? How little data do you think is out there and what benefit are you achieving by making sure that Google doesn’t have any of it?
Belafon
@Corner Stone: I was trying to comment on his statement that “If you haven’t done anything you have nothing to hide” means your an idiot. Thing is, a lot Americans actually believe that. They also believe that there is, and has always been, some level of monitoring. As a real world example of what most Americans believe and how they act, when Boston locked itself down to find the bomber, most Bostonians were OK with it, and most of the country was as well.
The Red Pen
@Belafon:
Irony will never die.
P.S. I actually agree with Belafon’s post for the most part, I just love this typo.
Belafon
@The Red Pen: Most people aren’t going to avoid that any more than people stopped using their cell phones when the NSA story was announced. You’d be lucky to find 10 people (who don’t comment on blogs) that even looked at their phone before they made their next call and pondered who was listening.
geg6
@Baud:
The problem is that there will always be a need for government to keep some things secret. The question to me is are you paranoid enough that you are willing to give up all the things that are good about keeping secrets (security, defense, ability to track criminals and criminal activity in order to build a case [for instance, drug and/or weapons dealers], competitive advantage, etc.) in order to be absolutely sure that fallible humans will never ever misuse their powers under secrecy? Myself, I’m not. I get the need for some secrecy and, yes, I’m willing to trust that the vast majority of people in charge of those secrets won’t misuse them or their ability to gather more secrets. People are people and there will always be bad actors. I’m realistic and maybe just old enough to accept that I can never have complete privacy and that I do want my government to be able to defend itself and keep us as safe. I really can’t too exercised about them data mining my emails and texts if I accept that and I think we should just shore up all the legal protections as much as possible on the use of the data.
Belafon
@The Red Pen: I think my brain throws these out just to have fun. Actually, I think the English language needs to be replace with something that has better signals. Homophones suck, especially if you are in a hurry.
The Red Pen
@Belafon:
Well, nobody is listening (usually). Don’t confuse call detail and call content. But, yeah, I don’t think most people really care. People have a weird concept of privacy these days. Personally, I assume my data’s public unless I know I’ve kept it secret. My privacy is not really Google’s problem, it’s mine.
@Belafon:
Just remember this handy reference:
Your: Second-person possessive.
You’re: Contraction of “you are.”
Yor: The hunter from the future.
ericblair
@The Red Pen:
Drifting somewhat off topic, but there is a big US government concern about spyware or hidden circuitry in Chinese-made computing equipment. Lenovo computers are banned in certain environments, for example.
There’s a big problem with the mismatch between EU and US privacy regulation that limits what EU organizations can send to US sites (there’s an EU “safe harbor” provision that allows some data). This issue is years old and well predates Snowden. The EU regulations require specific handling agreements, a clearly defined data steward, and actual responsibilities for ensuring correct data. Cloud users in the EU are going to need non-US-situated cloud infrastructure anyways for this reason.
This doesn’t mean that EU governments can’t get access to that data; it just means that they will need to go through EU processes to get it. And it doesn’t mean that EU countries are necessarily more worried about privacy than the US is. Several EU countries can demand your passport on the street and you’d better have it on you, and search your person if they feel like it.
Jasmine Bleach
@The Red Pen:
To what end? My personal privacy, of course.
I use cash wherever possible. Don’t have accounts with any businesses except my bank and stock account (and credit card account, of course). I guess my doctor has an “account” about me.
Oh, I have an iTunes account under a false e-mail and name, and no credit card information (use cash paid iTunes gift cards to fill it).
I get it. You don’t care about your privacy, and probably 99% of people feel the same. If convenience overrules your concerns about privacy, you have every right to live that way. More power to you.
Enjoy the targeted advertisements, the filtered/bubbled search results on the web, and the NSA knowing just about everything about you, though.
I don’t care to live that way. For others who think the same way I do, I was just giving a short tutorial on how to make yourself more private.
Rafer Janders
@Belafon:
Homophonobe.
Gin & Tonic
@The Red Pen: If you’re nervous, you might not be able to remember the decryption keys. I know I get nervous when talking with law enforcement. Interesting if they could hold you, like a contempt charge, until you give up the info.
There are actually technical ways around this, too. Read, for instance, the docs for TrueCrypt. Basically two sets of keys, so if you have to divulge something it’s benign data, with the real nuggets buried further.
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
Your a disgusting bigot!
Zifnab
Is this really the red line? You can fuck up my credit score, expose private information to my employer and potentially get me fired, embarrass me in front of friends and family, put my name on a blacklist in retaliation for personal activities or affiliations, and generally make my life more expensive and miserable.
But you can’t arrest me, so I guess everything is cool.
Furthermore, why on earth are we so confident that any kind of firewall can exist at all? If your information is exposed, its exposed. There is no magic curtain which will prevent a public sector worker from seeing it if a private sector worker can see it.
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
Not living in Boston, nor having any close friends there, I’m unsure how they felt about it. But, I would imagine they found it akin to a police action to deny violent offenders the opportunity to harm more potential victims. Kind of like a school goes on lockdown when potential threats may be in the area.
In limited scope I can agree with these actions. I disagree this example says anything relevant about how people view their government monitoring any and/or all potential content they produce or interact with.
To your larger point, I think, the American people may or may not believe the old saying but that has little to do with how it is applied by people who should know better.
The Red Pen
@Jasmine Bleach:
Enjoy missing out on the 21st century.
Frankly, you don’t know what I choose to keep private and neither does Google and neither does the NSA. Still, I get to enjoy all that Google, Netflix and credit cards have to offer. Furthermore, I actually like targeted ads. If I’m going to see ads, I’d rather they be for products I might want to buy. When I watch off-air TV, I see non-targeted ads and it’s annoying.
Finally, I don’t think you realize how much the unblinking eye of the Illuminati can see. There’s some wisdom in hiding in plain site. And it’s more fun because you get to watch Game of Thrones.
keestadoll
@Omnes Omnibus: …And considering how fluid the parameters of “doing something wrong” is, such an apathetic attitude is even more frightening.
The Red Pen
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ll check that out. There are several “wheat and chaff” approaches to security where you make it impossible to distinguish actual information from false information.
I was just wondering whether you could be held (jailed) in contempt for not turning over keys. I guess I could not be lazy and check to see if the EFF has a FAQ about it or something. I was hoping burnspbesq had the 50-word summary cached in memory.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Jasmine Bleach:
You are so right.
I made the mistake of buying Skinny Puppy on iTunes once.
Two Men in Black stopped by my house the next day, demanding that I explain myself. “WTF is wrong with REO Speedwagon? Are you a terrorist, or what!?”
Luckily I had an old Peter Frampton album on vinyl on hand to show them I was ok, so they left me alone after that.
Scary stuff.
kc
@The Red Pen:
Yes, the highest achievement of the century is those targeted ads.
I appreciate the list, Jasmine, I’m going to try some of those.
boatboy_srq
@cleek: Perhaps, and perhaps not. Hosting product/service in some region whose intel machinery looks less like the NSA/FSB/DPRKSSD is obviously marketable now, regardless of where the consumers are.
The Red Pen
@kc:
I didn’t say that. I just said that I like them.
Make sure that you buy your straw with cash so the NSA can’t track your straw-men!
Keith G
@Zifnab: This is a very sensible formulation amongst a sea of center-right commentary.
There is a flow, a pattern, to the behavior of both our government and the corporations who provide retirement nest eggs for many government officials. This flow is not headed in a good direction.
For those who believe that conditions now are no big deal, I wonder if they are cool with the forward momentum that the plot points of this behavior lead to. Secrecy has always spawned a push for greater secrecy. A bureaucracy collecting data usually finds easy justification for more data. Officials holding policing powers are alway pushing for better techniques to identify bad actors and will always push the limits of common sense and Constitutionality.
No, I don’t think things are horrible right now, but that we are heading in a direction that leads to trouble – given what we know about how the powerful can act.
Seanly
When was our government ever a “world-wide administrator of the Internet’s standards and advocate for its open, above-politics goals”? As soon as the internet revolution started, there were calls for censorship & restrictions on the internet. Knowledge is power and having a more informed public (even if only a small percentage) is dangerous to the powers that be. In an ironic twist, the almighty drive to make a buck has helped keep the internet largely accessible to the plebes, but I think the 1% would lock down the internet if they could.
Seanly
EDIT: OK, we were administrators for the dnag thing. But I reject the view that our government has ever advocated willingly for the open nature of the current internet.
& no, I still can’t edit previous posts on Explorer 9
weaselone
Just a quibble. The NSA program itself didn’t do the damage. The NSA is supposed to spy on foreigners, that’s its job. The damage was done by an idiot who revealed details of how the NSA was spying on foreigners which has the added bonus of making it harder for the NSA to do its job.
The Red Pen
@Seanly:
Shortly after IPv4 became a standard, there was a brief discussion on news.admin as to whether there needed to be a mechanism for banning people from the Internet. I was mentioned by name, It made all of my hard work trolling so worth it.
fuckwit
@The Red Pen: Cash? How old-skool. Use Bitcoin.
Barry
@Baud: ” In any event, the key protection against governmental overreach is the warrant or subpoena requirement, and last I heard, the government still had to obtain some sort of warrant or subpoena (at least for Americans) before extracting any personally identifiable information from the data it collects. ”
Where ‘some sort of warrant’ means ‘secret court’.
Barry
@Belafon: “Actually, most people know that if you are doing something wrong, you don’t do it in a place that could be monitored. ”
(a) You overestimate people’s intelligence.
(b) Every freakin’ day, it turns out that some place thought to be unmonitored is being monitored.
Heliopause
Not to mention, all these companies and the government are constantly promising, “privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy.” Oh sure, they do it with weasel words and dense verbiage in your terms of service, but the promise is still there. Now, I’m one of those Balloon Juice sophisticates who doesn’t take these promises at face value, I give out the minimum amount of personal info I feel I have to in order to function online and I sure as hell don’t do Facebook. Still, while my default assumption is that large corporations and the government can spy on me it is absolutely not okay that they do. People who say, “we willingly give our personal info to Google and Facebook so what’s the big deal” should therefore have no problem with transvaginal ultrasound laws, since you willingly let the gynecologist scope out your privates so what’s the big deal, right? Or what’s the big deal with voter ID laws since we willingly submit to driver’s licensing and such? What’s the big deal with the Iraq war since we willingly pay our taxes even while assuming most politicians are liars? And so on.
Ajaye
Please direct me to one case where a US citizen was arrested for any run of the mill crime on the basis of NSA surveillance? Are low level analysts reading my e mail? Listening to my cell phone calls? Am I being persecuted for my political views as expressed on FB? No.
Corner Stone
@Ajaye:
Not to get all Beckistan on you, but how would one know?
Corner Stone
@Heliopause:
Sophisticate? Sir/Madam, I think not!
Corner Stone
Three BJ inspired words for you:
Yawn. Known. Burger.
That is all a true BJ sophistry…uh, sophisticate need know on this matter.
Corner Stone
@Seanly:
Hell, they keep trying it. Of course they would. All in the name of maximus profitus. They’d call it whatever they like, but access sold to the highest and most consistent payer would be the end result.
Thymezone
Not buying the scary scare story. Why do you think corporations spend gobs of money securing and encrypting their communications? Because they know that anything put onto a public network is not private, there is no privacy, there is no reason to expect privacy, there is no right to privacy. Communication by its nature is not private. Once you tell me something private, I own it and I have no obligation to keep it to myself. And of course corporations are rightly worried about other corporations or hackers using their access to public networks to screw them over, steal their secrets, or just steal whatever they can get their hands on, for their own purposes.
Meanwhile, Mister and Missus America go around blasting everything from financial transactions to pictures of their crotches onto public phone and other digital networks and stupidly and naively think they have a right to privacy. THEY DO NOT and will not and never have and never will. For a variety of reasons I am getting tired of enumerating for the ignorati. If you want privacy on a private method of conveyance, YOU have to provide it, work for it and pay for it. Nobody is going to give it to you on a silver platter. If you want your stories and transactions to be private then KEEP THEM PRIVATE. Your damned celphone carrier tells you in their terms of service that for all intents and purposes anyone can listen in on your calls. They don’t sell privacy to you, what made you think you had it?
Grow up people. This is the real world where people with their own agendas, from stealing your credit card data to flying airliners into skyscrapers or blowing the legs off marathon watchers … are using the same public networks you are, and you are acting like you are in a secured bubble of communications privacy that never existed and never will exist. Get used to it and deal with it.
johnny aquitard
@Thymezone: Didn’t you just do some time for trying to buy sex once too often from the wrong person?
Recall someone gave that as an explanation for your going incommunicado for some months.
I guess you didn’t work hard enough on a private method of conveyance, heh.
thymezone
@johnny aquitard:
No.
slag
This is dumb. You SHOULD be worried that Google gets all your personal data anyway. Seriously. As much as I appreciate the civil liberties argument, there’s a perfectly compelling privacy argument that doesn’t require nearly as much cognitive dissonance as you’re displaying here.