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Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be Abolished
First time accepted submitter MetalliQaZ writes "Last week, Dr. Joseph Bonneau learned that he had won the NSA's first annual "Science of Security (SoS) Competition." The competition, which aims to honor the best 'scientific papers about national security' as a way to strengthen NSA collaboration with researchers in academia, honored Bonneau for his paper on the nature of passwords. And how did Bonneau respond to being honored by the NSA? By expressing, in an honest and bittersweet blog post, his revulsion at what the NSA has become: 'Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.'"
Overridden by the NSA being the bad guys on Stargate.
The engineers are mere henchmen for the Brin. All hail the Brin and his manly spy glasses!
Google is a huge part of the surveillance machine. If you oppose surveillance, aren't you morally bound to stop enriching a big part of the problem? Is this what you signed up for? To help them build the apparatus of tyranny?
Maybe a mass wave of resignations among the 9 would effect positive change? Maybe we are all responsible to do our part to stop this monstrosity?
I am afraid to post this comment. I am sure that I will get categorized as a dissident for it. I would say a lot more, but my freedom of speech is chilled.
From the Winner of the prize:
"And like many American citizens I’m ashamed we’ve let our politicians sneak the country down this path."
From some of the politicians:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) : "It’s called protecting America," Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
"Protecting America!" - that's right up there with "Think of the Children!"
"Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that's brand new," Reid said.
Al Gore
In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a statement:
"This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans’ privacy."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was "glad" the NSA was collecting phone records.
"I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States," Graham said in an interview on "Fox and Friends."
The "Catbert" quote....
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) also claimed that reports of the NSA collecting phone records was "nothing particularly new."
"Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this," Chambliss said. "And to my knowledge we have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint relative to the gathering of this information."
Bold mine. I think Saxby doesn't understand "secret surveillance" means.
Senator Ted Cruz
Disturbing pattern emerging. Govt wants your DNA, prayer content & now...phone records?
And lastly, Mike Lee:
Mike Lee
#NSA surveillance of #Verizon cell phone records illustrates why I voted against Patriot Act
I think everyone who said he was "UnAmerican" or UnPatriotic" should apologize.
The paper in question is available here in case anybody is interested why the NSA granted him the award.
Interestingly, out of the first 13 posts on this topic, only 2 have been by named individuals, the rest by anonymous cowards.
Is everyone so scared of getting on the NSA's "of interest" list, no one want's to be identified? Maybe our new tyrannical overlords have won already.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
Without their consent? That's new.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
1.Google first is not spying on you. Partly because you actually know what they are doing, and spying requires secrecy, and google will tell you what they are doing.
2. Google cannot ruin your life like the NSA can.
3. You have no idea who collects more data.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You can opt out of Google, but you can't opt out of NSA
Fallacy. Just because you feel the NSA is overboard, and not conducive to a free society, does not mean you dont work on crytography and the such. The problem US citizens have with the NSA is not that they have the capability to capture data, but who they are capturing it on violates their oath.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If the NSA cannot even accurately profile somebody they are about to give an award to and predict his response, what good are they? It seems all this massive surveillance is not only hugely immoral and dangerous, it also seems to be completely broken with regard to its stated mission. WTF are they collecting this data for?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As per the congressional investigations into what we knew before Pearl Harbor -- and as per records in any public library before the 2001 reclassification act, AND testified to by the fact that some of the volumes and some of the pages are new, AND also to be confirmed by librarians that the substitutions did occur, followed by a failed lawsuit...
the US government, including the president, KNEW when, what, and where on Pearl Harbor ahead of time, but the president of the United States wanted to pressure Americans into accepting the war.
I call BS on your post, and further I call NSA slashtroturfing.
As of this point, NSA reclassification is being used against US citizens, for the benefit of the NSA.
This times eleventy billion. If congress, etc., didn't want the NSA they could change it. Besides, the ability to view private communication has been a core capability and even the purpose of national spy organizations forever.
The larger question is what government is allowed to do with it. Honestly it would be disappointing, even outrageous if the NSA didn't have the technical ability to collect this kind of data. Being on the cutting edges of information gathering and technology were crucial in the allies winning WW2, for instance. Certainly russia and china are champing at the bit to do it. This is the major reason why they keep pushing to "decentralize the internet" and wrest control from the US for their own purposes.
The hijacking of government for political purposes (e.g., the IRS scandal) is far more worrying simply because it's a clear indicator that those in power have no qualms about abusing it. Hence ultimately you could blame not congress but rather the electorate.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The NSA and CIA are not allowed, by law, to spy on American citizens. I don't see why this is so difficult for people to get through their fucking heads.
Google sucking up as much customer information as they can may be sleezy (maybe) and can be questionable, depending on how they are using, selling, whatever that data . . . but it is a far fucking cry from the nature of the NSA/CIA doing it to our own citizens (except when Google and other companies then hand it over to the NSA/CIA, in which case it is just as fucking vile again).
Even if doing so is in violation of your oath to defend the constitution? Isnt this how the corrupt cops think?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
On the contrary. We all have responsibility for national security. And what is being done today by our government in the name of national security threatens national security.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IRS scandal? Did you even read how that ended up?
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/there-was-never-any-irs-scandal-after-all/
It's not difficult; The concern is that these government organizations are blantantly, deliberately, and willing violating said law(s), and going ahead with mass spying on the public.
At least Google tell you up front that they're going to collect data on you in some form or another.. At no point do they ever state otherwise.
With the CIA and NSA, all we have is some dodged questions and weak promises that they're actually holding up to the letter of the law. We have no way to properly audit them to ensure that they're actually in compliance, and their congressional admissions are rather concerning that they in all likelihood aren't.
There are no LEGAL reasons to surveil the people of the United States en mass. It doesnt matter how safe you want to feel, what you ask for is illegal and has been for a very long time. The word Papers in the 4th covers not just paper, but all communications from now until the heat death of the universe. Time or technology does not change these ideals
Good-bye
Neither. There should be no warrentless spying of American citizens. Putting forth the forth the question who should do it tries to put me into a choice between people who can do it at varying levels of efficiency.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The NSA is just like a too big to fail bank. They believe they no longer need to hide their evil nature and criminal activity. They are, regrettably, correct in their belief.
The Wall Street banks, private sector entities with (in theory) strict oversight, gambled away other people's money, and then the victims were forced to hand over taxes to replace the money the banks lost. Expect the "punishment" that the NSA receives now that their bubble (secrecy) has collapsed to be equally punitive.
The world, regardless of your hippy views, is still divided up into nation-states. The duty of the US government is to protect and serve US Citizens, not the entire world. That mission includes spying on the citizens of other nation states from time to time, as do the governments of other nation-states spy on the US. If you're trying to claim that the US is the only nation that spies on its allies and others you're going to get laughed out of the courtroom, so your implied objection is DENIED.
Spying on EVERYONE, including US Citizens, is typical of a Government that is ill and out of control, and THAT is something that US citizens need to correct.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
And herein lies the problem: who gets to define who the "undesirables" are? How do we know they're undesirable? There's a large segment of the American population who think gays are undesirable. There's an even larger segment who think Muslims are undesirable. There are an amazing number of people on /. who object to pinko, gun-stealing liberals.
In my opinion, NSA apologists are undesirable, and should be the people we tap 24/7; it's usually ultra right-wing types who perform modern domestic-bred terrorism.
j/k. Even conservatives deserve privacy.
--- SER
It is not illegal to spy on other countries, just in other countries. I expect China to spy on us, I dont expect my own government to do it.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
1. Google IS spying on you. Anytime you see a "share on G+" logo, an embedded youtube video, or that google analytics is being used in a page's HTML, you are being spied on by google, a fact that is not understood by most people and is difficult for even experienced users to grasp the full ramifications of.
2. Google hands it's collected data over to the NSA. This is no secret and is widely documented fact. By doing this google is directly causal to any actions the NSA take against you.
3. It's irrelevant who collects MORE data, what is relevant however is that all of these giants, facebook, google, microsoft, yahoo, reddit, etc... are required by US law to comply with court orders to hand over information to the NSA.
The NSA does not collect much data at all personally; you won't see "NSA+", "Share on NSA", or "Login with NSA Connect" on any webpages ever. What the NSA does is go to those private industries that are tracking virtually every single page you view including most porn, news, shoping, and entertainment sites and they show them fancy court orders for them to hand over data on you and anyone else involved in the investigation. The NSA admitted to using "3 hops" of separation in their data collection demands so to day they could demand the entire contents of Google's data collection on every man woman and child is not a stretch. They'd only need a few dozen "suspects" to do so.
4. Google doesn't spend your tax dollars tracking you.
5. You can tell Google to buzz off if you want.
> All hail the Brin and his manly spy glasses!
Ah, but they are countered by the (other) Brin and his kiln-baked doppelgangers!
I'm not happy about Google either but Google has neither the power nor the inclination to throw me in prison because I wrote that I'd like to kill person X in an email that was never intended for any eyes but the recipient. Or put me on a no fly list when I criticise the TSA and say I want to go on a killing rampage and take out a bunch of them.
We are used to having genuine 100% freedom of speech with no exceptions when communicating privately with a friend. Due to PRISM and probably other NSA programs this is no longer the case. You have to assume that everything you write could be read by an NSA agent.
Privacy from a repressive government is completely different from privacy from a private company that merely wants to make as much money as possible. On the one hand you get targeted ads. On the other you might spend years in prison getting raped by your cellmate and then dying from HIV. That's why we should be more concerned about the NSA than Google. Google doesn't even have a reason to personally read our emails. The NSA does.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Does google analytics need javascript to work? I never whitelist it in noscript.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
One word, Shadow Profiles http://m.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a-facebook-shadow-profile/
Noscript. I would suggest you Google it but you might prefer to avoid them entirely. You could try bing, but that's likely a frying pan-fire situation.
if you're willing to trust Google to some degree, then DO Google it. They offer a few solutions themselves.
Now, try asking the NSA how to opt out of their tracking and see how far you get.
It is certainly true that monitoring everyone 24/7 as in 1984 increases security. It is also true that it leads to a lot of very unhappy people who are forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. Human beings simply are not meant to live like that. So your cure is far, far worse than the actual diseasae.
If the price for freedom from being watched all the time by hostile government agents on fishing expeditions to find illegal or suspicious (to them) behavior is losing 3000 lives every 10-20 years then it's a price that I and probably most freedom loving people are willing to pay.
Nuking every country other than the US would also make us very safe. A bit lonely but a lot safer from the occassional terrorist. The fewer people on the planet the fewer terrorists. Unfortunately for you safe at any price people there are ethical considerations.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
They have actually been very ufront with what they are doing. They spy on anyone, as long as there's a 51 probablity that he/she is not an american. (source)
This is what the relevant part of the PRISM code actually looks like:
boolean OK_to_spy(individual *TARGET) {
if( US_POPULATION < 0.51 * DATABASE_SIZE)
return TRUE;
else
error("Database is too small.");
}