Slashdot Mirror
Snowden and the Fate of the Internet As a Global Network
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "John Naughton writes in the Guardian that the insight that seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media regarding the revelations from Edward Snowden is how the US has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data proving that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. 'The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system,' writes Naughton. 'Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA.' This spells the end of the internet as a truly global network. 'It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.' Naughton adds that given what we now know about how the US has been abusing its privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable. 'Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?' writes Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission. 'Front or back door – it doesn't matter – any smart person doesn't want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity.'"
Nah, you can say whatever you want.
Of course, the Feds will be listening....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Try storing an encrypted container. When you want to access it, download it, decrypt it locally, do your work, reencrypt, and reupload. Unless your home PC is keylogged, you're safe. But if your PC is keylogged, whether you use cloud services is irrelevant.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Suppose your philosopher king came to you and said, "We want to set up our own national network with privacy/neutrality as the core principle, away from the prying eyes of our tyrannical neighbours".
What would you do differently? Can much of the problem be engineered out, at least at the network layer?
Is it just end-to-end encryption? Or anonymised routing? What's the collection of technolgies you'd use to make things at least better?
The "news" here is that the U.S. is better positioned to apply leverage to get the information and access it wants than other governments are. It also has a stronger military and a greater influence over international financial institutions. It's good to be king. Thankfully Putin and the Chinese Communist Party do not have the same reach, but they certainly do their best with what reach they can muster. Most of the posturing by EU officials is hypocritical. They directly benefit from the U.S.'s position and protection. That's why so many secretly cooperate.
The point is that if you put information or valuables where somebody else can get it, assume someone will. There is no permanently "safe" place for your information. There never has been. Why does anyone expect that there is?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
A member of my family has expressed the following concern: If a citizen of the United States is not committing a crime, what's wrong with the United States Government knowing the full text of everything that he reads and writes on the Internet?
They haven't been keeping up with current events, have they.
Have them google (if they know how), "IRS abuses".
You see, when the typical person on average commits 3 crimes per day, the State now has an unlimited supply of criminals - EVERYONE.
Mix it in with a For Profit prison system, politicians with agendas, and the increasing polarization of politics in the US, you WILL see abuses that we would have never thought could happen in the US.
EVERYONE has something to hide!
If Random Joe doesn't share it with anybody, they probably don't give a shit. The NSA is perfectly happy to let Random Joe sit around enjoying his porn collection. But when people start working together, they get interested. They care if Random Joe is going to share it with somebody at somepoint. And they're real interested in that. Even if they never decrypt it, they can tell that Random Joe uploaded it, and Random Bob downloaded it. Now, the interesting question is what is the relationship between Random Joe and Random Bob? That connection between those two is valuable information, and you can get it without ever decrypting the actual data.
My congressional rep is a pretty far right "We gotta stop the terr'rists" type. I've been trying to figure out the message that will ring with him, to help him understand what we have at stake here. I think it is this: Surveillance cannot become a condition of purchasing American goods and services, or we will lose business. And the solution is already in use in New Jersey:
"Under settled New Jersey law, individuals do not lose their right to privacy simply because they have to give information to a third-party provider, like a phone company or bank, to get service."
I don't want to play to stereotypes, but the reality is that New Jersey is host to some of the traditionally hard-to-crack criminal enterprises. Yet they have decided that the ability to do business must not take a back seat to making law enforcement a little easier. We cannot let surveillance become a condition of purchasing American goods and services.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's not a social problem. It's problem of power abuse. Making it harder to abuse can help contain the problem. If everyone uses end-to-end encryption, then centralized ubiquitous surveillance is impossible.
Is there really anything worthwhile on the non-Western Internet, at least from the perspective of most Westerners?
I know I couldn't care any less if I could no longer access Russian or Chinese websites, for instance. Due to language differences, they're already pretty much useless to me. I know this also holds true for most Americans and Australians, and many Europeans, too.
Yeah, I know, there are probably a small number of expats and academics who find some use in such information, but there aren't many of them. Aside from them, I don't think that Westerners in general would really miss those very foreign parts of the Internet if they suddenly disappeared.
Would you care if you could no longer send email to those countries? What about parts of Europe? What about India? India, China, and Asia represent something like 40% of the Human race... that's a huge portion of potential customers that now have a catastrophically negative image of storing their data in our country on our servers.
We've really screwed ourselves here.
Who did what now?
This is why:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Long story short? Unless the government has demonstrable cause to read/know the full text of "everything", it's none of their fucking business.
Government's trump card: National Security Letter
The Government declared the Constitution of the United States of America as a "worthless piece of paper".