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Inside the Decision To Shut Down Silent Mail
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost:: "Silent Circle's decision to shut down its Silent Mail email service may have come quickly yesterday, and the timing of the announcement admittedly was prompted by Lavabit's decision to suspend operations hours before. But the seeds for this decision may have been sown long before Edward Snowden, who reportedly used Lavabit as a secure email provider, was a household name and NSA warrants for customer data were known costs of doing business. ... 'When we saw the Lavabit announcement, the thing we were worrying about had happened, and it had happened to somebody else. It was very difficult to not think I'm next,' Callas said. 'I had been discussing with Phil [founder and PGP developer Phil Zimmerman] over dinner the night before, should we be doing this and what the timing should be. I was looking at it from point that I want to be a responsible service provider and not leave users in a lurch. [The Lavabit announcement] told me I have to start moving on it now.'"
Too bad that all the other service providers don't look at it the same way as Zimmerman. They apparently see the NSA money as a profit center. Their customer's data is simply something to be monetized in any way possible. All those crap "privacy policy" documents they've mailed to us over the years aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Don't be surprised to see Google, Facebook, Amazon et al, plus all the cloud providers, start showing lowered revenue in the next few financial quarters. As always, consumers will vote with their wallets.
Entitlement is not relevant. We have what we have.
IT'S A TRAP!!!!
This is called "oppression," when you live in fear of being the "next" target of government "scrutiny."
Instead of shutting these services down...why not move them outside of US control...you know...a different country.
I'm not buying the whole idea that this was done for the good of the users...this sounds more like co-ordinated effort to shut down secure communications with the assistance of the owners.
Why did you start cooking? Lavabit may have been stronghanded to close but these guys need to grow a backbone. It may be better, if you're going to cower away from the slightest pressure, to not bother to offer a service like this at all.
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing. Not sure how that would work out in a real world courtroom (I'd like to assume it would make it to court including a jury), but the companies likely don't want to chance it. Can't say I blame them in this case- it's looking like McCarthyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcarthyism) all over again. Sorry for the rusty geek skills.
Too bad that all the other service providers don't look at it the same way as Zimmerman.
Could be just realism. For some people, shutting down their business is not an option. Just because some people run this as an optional hobby does not mean that others can afford to shutdown on principle.
I do applaud them for standing on principle, but I would like to note that they clearly can afford to do so.
We never liked the choices available for secure email for mobile devices, because no email client with PGP encryption was available for smartphones. Instead, we had to install PGP Universal, which is a server-based version of PGP, designed for enterprise environments, which does the PGP encryption and decryption on the server, with PGP private keys stored on the server. Not a good architecture for consumers in today's climate. We strongly preferred to do PGP on the client side, but we were a long way from having a PGP client for mobile devices. And even if we had a PGP client, we would still be stuck with email metadata exposure on the servers, even with the message body encrypted. That's why we were unhappy with Silent Mail, and why we were discussing a phaseout for some weeks before these events. The Lavabit event made it clear we could not put it off any longer. --Phil Zimmermann (spelled with two Ns)
US businesses are run under US laws even if they are outside the US. This is related to that whole 'you can't bribery, even in countries where that's the norm' thing others have talked about in previous article's comments.
Basically in order to, as a US citizen, move your business abroad (without serious lobbying power) and forgoe the aforementioned issues, you're need to:
A. Reincorporate the business in a foreign nation.
B. Get your customer data transferred to the foreign nation without running afoul of US law.
C. Not have US citizens who are on the board/in key positions intimidated through legal or extralegal means to provide governmental access to the information.
Given that Zimmerman is one of the members of this particular company, and went through the predecessors to this with PGP, I'm pretty sure he's well aware of the legal ramifications both domestic and abroad at relocating his business.
I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
1) a million people didn't have access
2) individual reasonable suspiction was required to use it and
3) it was only for for terrorism cases
And no bullsh*t interpretations of the above rules.
And everybody that uses the system is subject to 24-hour monitoring even after they stop working. And long prison sentences for all violations. And 9 judge panels deciding on #2 and #3. Or maybe citizen panels.
I bet many people thought that's what we were doing already. Surprise!
I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
Why would you ever be "cool" with mass surveillance?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
There's negligible money in complying with these (illegal) 'requests' fro data. Why spread FUD? If you want to do something about it, fix the damn US government. Personally,I'm still surprised a few of those companies haven't moved to Canada.
1) Actually the number of people who have access to it is over a million, so this requirement is satisfied.
2) EVERYBODY is a reasonable suspect, so this requirement is satisfied.
3) Terrorism is defined by the law in such a way that hiding what you are doing is plausible grounds for suspicion of terrorism, so this requirement is satisfied.
Aren't you glad you're cool with mass survielance.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing. Not sure how that would work out in a real world courtroom (I'd like to assume it would make it to court including a jury), but the companies likely don't want to chance it. Can't say I blame them in this case- it's looking like McCarthyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcarthyism) all over again. Sorry for the rusty geek skills.
sure there is money involved for the taps. it's not an extra tax. of course this applies only to the ~5 biggest service providers of nsa. and it's not a secret that telephone providers are not the one's footing the bill for phone taps.
plus, what good is a jury consisting of people chosen by the court in secret who can only give a verdict that's secret and can't speak of it to anyone....
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
1) Never.
There is never a point in time when anything in my life is anyone else's fucking business. I keep myself to myself.
And no bullsh*t interpretations of the above rules.
You mean like
drugs==terrorism
child sex abuse==terrorism
child=<17 years old
1) How would you guard against that?
2) If it's based on individual suspicion, it's not mass surveillance anymore. Or do you mean everything is recorded but only released if an individual case merits it? That is not unreasonable in principle, but there would have to be an ironclad mechanism for releasing these recordings in approved cases only.
3) Maybe you also want to include kiddie porn. And drug trafficking. And seeding sedition. And copyright violations. And if you don't want to include any of that, there are plenty of legislators and voters who do want this. See how that works?
I also think that there are cases where mass surveillance would be warranted. But in practice I think the downsides and dangers, not to mention any honest person's right to privacy, far outweigh the potential benefits. Even if those benefits include not having the occasional occupied building or train blow up. Freedom does come at a price
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing.
These service providers should be replying to the Government with "Hello no, bitches. Read the damn Constitution of the United States of America." Personally, I would bury anti-personnel mines around my data centres and install batteries of automated / remote-controlled anti-aircraft / anti-drone / anti-missile guns.
It's not the threat of jail, but the threat that things can start going wrong for any provider that does not play ball with the NSA.
It's like the mafia thugs that come into the restaurant and sell the owner "insurance" because "a lot of bad things can happen, you know?"
There is a very short window of opportunity to stop the Panopticon now. Unfortunately, the people in power have made it clear that nothing in the political process is going to stop them. The solutions, if they come, will be outside of the political process. They made it that way, so people who resist ubiquitous surveillance and surrender of privacy can be seen as "radicals" and "terrorists" and worse.
There are some bad times coming, I fear.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If ever there was a bastion of freedom and personal privacy, it's Russia. As far as I know, they don't even have clandestine operations in the government. I heard it was abandoned when the USSR fell. You need look no further than the show of moral fortitude the Vladimir Putin made when offering Edward Snowden a year, knowing full well that the US government could invade at any moment under the slightest provocation. Freedom and Liberty are the founding cornerstones of not just Russian democracy, but the creed by which every Russian lives, from the top of the government and business all the way down to the lowliest citizen. Everyone there is given a fair shake and speaking your mind is rewarded with praise and admiration.
It's time we put our collective money where it is respected and get out of the US into a place that will let us live our lives the way we want. Out of oppression and government intimidation and into a land of openness, fairness, and true liberty: Russia.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why would you ever be "cool" with mass surveillance?
Fear. At least Francis Scott Key's contemporaries knew that you can't have a free nation of cowards. That's a boolean AND, not an OR.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When are things in somebody else's life your business. That's the issue.
There are no cases where mass surveillance is warranted. Thats what a WARRANT is for, enabling justified and warranted action in a very limited scope. The idea being that Liberty infringement is a more serious concern then being able to record everything for possible safety. In principle, mass surveillance is unreasonable for human beings.
Good-bye
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. There are options between colonoscopy-level-surveillance and nuclear-price-of-feedom.
I don't think there is any money directly attached.
Qwest said no, and lost all their government contracts, followed by the CEO being arrested for having used said government contracts' value in financial reports.
It isn't NSA money. Compared to the world's players, the NSA isn't that big. There are a lot of people who want that data too:
1: LEOs in the US. That NSA info gets forked over to Joe DA who is being forced by the private prisons to shove as many people in jail as possible (or be replaced by someone who can), the NSA stuff is a gold mine. Find people texting at a location after dark at a park? Criminal trespass charges. Kids texting out of school, curfew charges. People on parole seen on a camera by someone else, big cash as those arrestees go in for the long haul. With the fact that all but two states in the US are required by contract to maintain 90% bed occupancy, someone has to fill those beds. Don't forget all the marijuana charges and charges of conspiracy (two people talking about a grow room can felony charges.)
2: Insurance companies. Already, I have had to go through a physical because someone snapped a photo of me in a humidor and posted it onto FB, and the insurance company questioned if I were a smoker or not, then demanded the physical and drug test. Picture the gold mine they have.
3: Other country's NSA-departments. Knowing who is a system admin at another country's sensitive /secret/top secret depot is very important, as that person can be given the $5 wrench treatment (or one of their family members) until they give up and do a Snowden. Think the US is good, China has far better technology, intel, and manpower at sigint.
4: Companies and governments. If an area is starting to have water issues, get the people moving in to raise prices on that sky high.
So, the NSA by itself isn't a threat. That data in other people's hands is. It would be nice if Google, Apple, etc. would not just keep passively handing items to advertisers, because they are on the verge of losing their entire subscriber (not customer) base to foreign services.
We never liked the choices available for secure email for mobile devices, because no email client with PGP encryption was available for smartphones.
What about S/MIME? It's built into iOS:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/10/secure-your-e-mail-under-mac-os-x-and-ios-5-with-smime/
The most popular e-mail programs (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail.app, Notes) also support it. You can use a self-signed cert, or go to (say) Verisign ($20) for a cert that will be considered valid under most OSes.
We have one mail system operator's
Two. You forgot tormail.
I am cautiously optimistic. They must have found (or created) a loophole in the law, so the chances of prosecuting anyone may be small. But if the legislators are willing (and they seem to be warming up to change), all this spying, secret laws, and secret courts can be made very explicitly illegal.
His point was that around the world the age where someone becomes a legal adult varies significantly. The US's 18 rule is not universal. It's yet another example of the ignorance US citizens have (I am a US citizen) about the rest of the world.
On the other hand this guy might really be a pedophile and I just defended him. But given that this is slashdot, we should apply occam's razor.
" NSA warrants for customer data were known costs of doing business"
Since when is the NSA a law enforcement agency capable of swearing out a warrant?
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
Ha! I'd go one step further and threaten them with my sharks with lasers on their heads.
We're playing tough guy on the internet from our mommies basements, right?
Too bad that all the other service providers don't look at it the same way as Zimmerman.
So unless all service providers shutdown nothing will get done. The hard fact is the American people *DO NOT CARE* about this, you would have to forcibly take away all service provider options for them to act, and even then it's dubious as to whether they actually would. Are they shutting down their gmail and hotmail accounts en masse? No. What is happening now is *exactly* what they claim they need the right to bear arms for.
Considering that Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years, they're actually very doing very well, in relative terms, with freedom, privacy, democracy, etc.
those with power hate anonymity because it is the only defense the powerless have against the powerful
before it is too late we need a distributed, anonymous communication system that isn't controlled by any government, corporation, or other large organization
tor, freenet, i2p are good starts but they still rely on the centralized hardware layer
we need true peer to peer communication that any non-nerd can easily join by running a phone app, and nerds and their friends can easily contribute to
Well that depends, right? It's reportedly $25 a request. Do you know how many requests they are making? That could add up to a lot of millions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How do you think tons of drugs from Mexico and Colombia get into the US every day?
The Overlords want you to think that it is all due to corrupt policemen and politicians south of the border, but how does it get in and then gets distributed?
Same answer, corrupt policemen and politicians. But they want the market for themselves, so yes, you try to do it on your own, you're a terrorist!
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
Don't Bogart that joint, my friend. You've had enough already.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well that depends, right? It's reportedly $25 a request. Do you know how many requests they are making? That could add up to a lot of millions.
That really isn't where the profit is.
The profit is in not being blacklisted from government work, being harassed by the FTC, not having your car randomly crash into a tree and explode into flames, et cetera.
They told me if I voted for John McCain that government abuse would become so common that it would eventually come to be seen as inevitable. And they were right!
Oh please! The American public tweets their favorite sexual positions and post pics of themselves stoned on FB, think they are gonna give a rat's ass about privacy or the NSA?
I'm sorry but the NSA have the perfect position here in the states with the majority doing mindless exhibitionism so blatant you'll often be able to find out more about them than their lovers know which makes the few that still care about privacy stick out like sore thumbs and that much easier to track. The future is Big bro all right but its gonna be "Big Brah" and it'll be the public gladly handing over every scrap of info about themselves hoping to score a few more likes on whatever social shit is popular this week.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Can't they do that? I mean,it will not prevent the US Government from attempting the traffic tapping silently, but at the very least, They will be free from having to obey the request US Government and giving them legal access to their customer data
That's why I moved out of the US. The bad times will not be uniform, and some places will be less hit than others. I'm expecting it soon. 5-10 years soon.
Learn to love Alaska
Unfortunately the gov will promise us all the above, but do none of it behind the scenes.
And when they get caught, the courts will find an excuse to make it legal, retroactively.
I might say do all your communication offline, but offline surveillance isn't that far behind, at least with traffic analysis (there's no offline panopticon of message content-- yet). I've grown up damn near my whole life with computers, I'm ready to walk from them all if this is what it comes to. Thanks NSA, for breaking the Internet #thisiswhywecanthavenicethings
These service providers should be replying to the Government with "Hello no, bitches. Read the damn Constitution of the United States of America."
Your sentiment is admirable, but lets not be naive. Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio fought back against the government, just as you said. He is now jailed for six years.
Before someone makes the asinine argument that he was convicted of "insider trading", take note that he would be in the clear today if he had played ball, and the government awarded Qwest the contracts.
My point is, resistance has a heavy price. I don't think we should be so eager to demand that others become martyrs when it is clear we are willing to do so little to protect them. As evidence, I point to how little is being done for Snowden today.
As always, consumers will vote with their wallets.
And, as always, they will vote for convenience, privacy, especially somebody else's, be damned...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sure, self-hosting may work for now, until the government ups the ante by coming up with a new technical means of attack. At best, this will result in a technological arms race much like the one between malware makers and antivir companies. New exploits are being discovered and (ab)used as we speak.
The only real solution is a political one. The root of the problem is that the current government, in fact all three branches of the executive, legislature and judiciary seem to be of the opinion that their flagrant abuse of the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution as exemplified by the NSA surveillance programs is justified by the exigencies of the war against terrorism. Because all three are shaking hands, there is in effect no check or balance to the system.
There was a time when government employees, including the political class were known as "public servants", since their purpose was to serve members of the public. In present times, when the public is kept in the dark and lied to and bound by secret laws and ruled over by secret courts, tell me, who is the master and who is the servant?
We were a small ISP, and we got subpoenas multiple times per month. You don't say no to a court order, unless you want to spend some time in court/jail explaining to the judge why you feel like you shouldn't have to comply. This is fine if you're a hippie, have tons of time and money, nothing to lose, and could care less about eventually having a criminal record.
Due to CALEA, we were required to buy equipment to fulfill "tapping" requests from law enforcement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act You can thank Clinton and Congress (1994) for that.
It was another cost of doing business if you wanted to be a service provider in the U.S. Don't like it? You do something else....and so I did.
BlackBerry colludes with foreign governments to provide their encryption scheme to those who wish to spy. Additionally, if you don't run your own BES server, all your account passwords on the BlackBerry are sent to their servers from which all subsequent connections are made (to support push).
Some consumers are large companies. They might think differently than what you have stated.
Why spread FUD?
Is it FUD if it is "certain" and "beyond doubt" that private companies are taking money from government agencies to help them scoop up your private communications?
You make it sound like they have a choice (other than leaving the country or shutting down).
The American public tweets their favorite sexual positions and post pics of themselves stoned on FB
Some people do that stuff. And some people run large corporations and associations that guard their data and communications quite closely. America is not a homogenous group of pot-heads and sex-crazed teenagers.
Some people are criminal defense attorneys and healthcare law attorneys and civil rights attorneys that are busy suing the government to defend the rights of citizens. You think they want their private emails reviewed by big brother?
When the WebCrypto API will be incorporated into most browsers, wouldn't it be possible to develop a PGP version that runs completely in the browser? This way, it can run on mobile devices, and can be used with hosted webmail solutions.
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
But spying on facebook chats will solve this!
John Doe has invited you to Drug pickup September the 2nd 22:00
John Doe 11:00 ... Please share and invite all your friends who may want to participate in the bidding process! Peace!
Yo man! Those cocaine subs will arrive at (time & location)
Can't decide whatever to post as AC or aliquis. Score mod points and karma or forever be seen as a drug lord by the NSA.
You make it sound like they have a choice (other than leaving the country or shutting down).
I don't know. I have a suspicion that some companies are quite happy to lend a helping hand to the surveillance dragnet. Certainly the Guardian articles pointed to at least one company that was apparently quite willing to cooperate. I'm sure there's either increased revenues or increased chance of securing large government contracts as an incentive for them to comply. Probably the opportunity for big contracts is the bigger piece of the pie.
To the extent which they control the government, their privacy is well protected, mostly from us.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
FATCA (which applies to lots of countries, not only Switzerland) will, however, lead to giving customer data to the US.
It's basically blackmail by the US: Any bank that does not "voluntarily" release data on its US customers will be denied access to US dollar transactions in international banking. Since US dollars are rather important in international transactions, this is pretty much the death of any bank that does any sort of international business.
Swiss law prohibits turning over customer data to a foreign government, unless that foreign government can show probable cause for criminal acts. The US doesn't want to be bothered with such trivialities - the US government is accustomed to having full access to everyone's financial details.
Note that no one even thinks to criticize this - why should the IRS have all of your financial data? Is that not a violation of the 4th amendment, just as much as the NSA having access to your email and Internet data?
In any case, FATCA opens a loophole in Swiss law, by allowing US citizens to sign away their protections under Swiss law. Banks then require their US customers to do exactly this, or else their accounts will be closed. The wording of the document was dictated by the US, and it is shocking: Your financial data will be delivered to a US correspondence bank, to the IRS, and to unnamed third parties. You accept full liability for any data breaches or misuse. Finally, you not only renounce the protections of Swiss law and accept US law - you also accept the laws of other countries not specifically named.
No one with an ounce of sense would accept the terms of this document - except that they cannot otherwise have a bank account, and a bank account is a necessity of modern life. The truly wealthy will simply move their assets elsewhere; it's only the ordinary middle-class person who is screwed. The alternative - taken by 900 Americans in Switzerland last year - is to renounce your US citizenship and tell the US to f*** off.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing. Not sure how that would work out in a real world courtroom (I'd like to assume it would make it to court including a jury), but the companies likely don't want to chance it. Can't say I blame them in this case- it's looking like McCarthyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcarthyism) all over again. Sorry for the rusty geek skills.
How is Twitter not involved (they were not listed on the slide). And how did Apple hold out until 2012 (around the time that Steve Jobs died - suggesting that Steve Jobs was against the program and successfully held off the govt)?
I think the people voting with their wallets will be a drop in the ocean for companies like Google or Facebook. Most people don't understand the possible implications of what is happening or they just don't care...
I don't think there is any money directly attached.
Qwest said no, and lost all their government contracts, followed by the CEO being arrested for having used said government contracts' value in financial reports.
From what I understand he refused to cooperate with the feds, and while you might agree with him, he sold a bunch of stock with this knowledge (non-public information).
You can't just piss a partner off, sell your stock and play the surprised card when deals go south.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading
In SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. (1966), a federal circuit court stated that anyone in possession of inside information must either disclose the information or refrain from trading.[2]
DING DING DING!
And the founders of the US of A recognised you can't have a nation without having some rules to gouvern it.
The rest is a like the well-known(?) frog experiment: put a frog into a pan holding water and than keep heating it up gradually. In the end the frog will be dead without it once having attempted to jump outof the becoming-ever-hotter water.
That is where we are: gouverment/companies changing the rules gradually enough that we do not feel much, if any, change.
And alas, that method works as well for frogs as for humans ...
"Actually the number of people who have access to it is over a million, so this requirement is satisfied."
Reading comprehension fail much?
This is where the source of evil is actually - we as a society gave up our privacy long time ago only we gave it to private companies so that they can provide us 'free' services. I can imagine that if NSA's legal rights to monitor everything are curbed then they just purchase the info legally on the market. This and some other little problems are discussed in 'the Net Delusion" among others. I value Snowden's action but I do not believe it matters anymore.I hope I am wrong on that one.
Now that a void has opened in this market, I wonder what it would take to set up something very much like Lavabit had? Dunno exactly what they offered but from what I can read posthumously it was little more than a databsse-backed anonymous remailer. Anyone know the details?
Locate the servers in Iceland or similar but have the company be based elsewhere, just to make it extra hard to get international warrants and similar.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Can't decide whatever to post as AC or aliquis. Score mod points and karma or forever be seen as a drug lord by the NSA.
The things you do for karma.
They can see the message going from your pc to Slashdot. They'll know about your hypothetical drug-smuggling plans anyway. Isn't that lovely?
Kiddie with a (semi)nude picture of itself on their own phone => kiddie-porn manufacturer
Kiddie having received an above picture of same-agged other kiddie => pedofile
A couple of kiddies having a relationship and the older one of them (even by couple of a months) becomes 18 => pedofile
As a male taking a leak in the bushes and someone sees you => pedofile
Drawing a nude kiddie on paper => kiddie-porn manufacturer
And those are just the ones that went to court.
Sorry, can't remember good generic examples about terrorism, save for that pretty much everything gets tagged with it
Robbing a bank ? Terrorism
Someone sees you when you show a gun to some friends ? Terrorism
Taking pictures of a public object ? Terrorism
Disagreeing with some "authority" which tries to tell you that that is illegal ? You're (must be) a terrorist.
On other words: don't hold your breath. The ones with the authority probably have to much fun with having manufactured yet another reason to harras the common citizens and the citizenry is too eazy to scare (one way or the other) into cooperation.
This is far worse than the Panopticon. In the Panopticon you might be being watching at any time. In the UK/US are are being watched all the time, and being recorded all the time so that the authorities can go back and watch you in the past for at least two years.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Make access to the key dependent on cooperation of employees of different CLIENTS of the firm located in highly problematic jurisdictions for enforcing injunctions: Switzerland, Gaza, Somalia and India spring to mind. The Feds are playing legal games; we should do likewise.
If course there is nowhere you can go. That's the ridiculousness of the situation.
Here's why: once you start making any major country (any country) start thinking you are out to attack it, you're not going to have any place to hide. We've never had this freedom in the US. Never. Anonymity and privacy today is just as alive as it was in the best of times. It's just not as anonymous nor as private as we think it was. I would argue that it's even better today than it has ever been due to the sheer number of people and the anonymity that produces (security through obscurity, in one sense).
To find a perfectly anonymous source where you don't control all access points is effectively impossible. To search for it is to live a life of frustration. Just as the US Government, who has control over most of their secret information and installations, and billions of dollars to throw at the problem. And, yet, Mr. Snowden managed to out their secrets, as do spies from other countries every day. The human condition does not lend itself to anonymity.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
But if the legislators are willing (and they seem to be warming up to change), all this spying, secret laws, and secret courts can be made very explicitly illegal.
What good does it do to pass legislation against these laws when the CIA and NSA can just ignore them? They've already been ignoring laws and lying to Congress for years, what makes you think some new laws are going to stop them?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
What's the best place to move to?
So you sold your soul and now you're just working out the details?
Where is the outrage... where is the march on your local FBI office, where are the countless email, mailings, faxes to your elected officials? Seems the Obama supporters are stuck towing the same line as all the Democrats. I don't want to hear any complaining when Republicans take over in the future.... you're all chumps!
Don't complain when you're unemployed as your IT position is outsourced to a non-NSA participating country. Germany, Netherlanda, China or some African Country.... Soon, the small providers will relocate their ecommerce sites to non-US locations.... and when your IT job soon follows, don't complain about the loss. Remember you failed to speak up when your country needed you.
plus, what good is a jury consisting of people chosen by the court in secret who can only give a verdict that's secret and can't speak of it to anyone....
And, if what's happened to the "Osama" Seal Team 6 and various other people who might be privy to high-profile operational information is any indication, they'd probably be Disappeared anyway, regardless of their alliances. Things are getting bad.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
1) a million people didn't have access
A million people don't have access. If a million people did, that would mean there would be SOME kind of actual transparency (albeit small) and the public would be able to see what's being gathered.
Unfortunately, "bullshit" isn't in the legalese dictionary, so you'd still get screwed over.
What if he was ordered not to speak of the surveillance program that he refused to take part in?
Sure, it now costs $450. Consider: you will never need to file another American tax return (or pay for it to be done), nor will you ever again have to pay taxes to a country you neither live nor work in.
Anyway, what's your privacy worth? Would you like to share all of your financial data with unknown "third parties" and accept sole liability for whatever they do with it?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
So you think posting as AC will make the NSA not know you posted it? You are so cute.
Posting AC is security through obscurity.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Well, you must be. Otherwise you are a terrorist.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The United States can't be trusted any more. They have all the powers they need to be an unaccountable dictatorship.....and only the will to do so cynically is lacking. That is only a matter of time given how the US political structures reward amoral cynicism.
Only boring people are ever bored.
That's like asking "what's the best pizza". You may get general groupings around some types, but the choice is personal and varied. Where would you like to go? Do you speak any other languages? Is gun ownership a deal-breaker (as so many here claim it is for them and most Americans, when most Americans don't own a gun)?
If you want the best opportunity to be a millionaire, India and China are probably the top two. You are more likely to rise from poverty to riches there than in the US. There are lots of places with lower taxes. Places with gay marriage. What do you want? It's all out there, outside the US. You just have to look. But remember no place is perfect, even if it's better than the US in almost every way.
Learn to love Alaska
There's already off-line surveillance. The United States mail is being tracked by the NSA and the DEA.
By the way, in the past week it's come out that the DEA is doing the same tracking of phone calls and email as the NSA. To make it worse, they're instructing agents to "recreate" the investigation records to hide that tracking. So now we've got the US government with TWO databases of phone calls and emails of all US citizens.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yawn.
If 900 people wear pink shirts and 100 wear blue, who do you think will be easier to single out, the pink or the blue? I work with John and Jane Public every. single. day. and I can tell you the ones you are describing is a minority, especially if they are under 40. Like it or not the public at large, especially the young, have become exhibitionist and ego driven as hell and with the MSM glorifying this with everything from updates from celebrity tweets and FB shit to reality TV those that you describe are gonna be all the more rare and again VERY easy to monitor and track. Hell with $20 smartphones having GPS and the ability to FB and tweet on the go you are seeing more and more who happily broadcast where they are and what they are doing every second of the day!
Remember the STASI had one of the most successful repressions of populace in history and they "only" watched less than 10% of the population and with today's society being fueled by "likes" and other social crap frankly the NSA doesn't even have to waste energy monitoring the FB generation, one call to Google and FB and they'll know every detail they could possibly want. Meanwhile those like what you describe? THEY will get will get the full court press and chilling effect, look at how Naomi Wolf whose "crime" was giving lectures on the constitution and things to look out for as threats to a democracy is now on the watchlist and gets the full NSA treatment when she dares go anywhere. Again it really doesn't take much, especially when the public is happily segregating itself into the "Hey want to know everything about me? Just click the follow button" majority and the private minority, makes the NSA's job all the easier.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I am cautiously optimistic. They must have found (or created) a loophole in the law, so the chances of prosecuting anyone may be small. But if the legislators are willing (and they seem to be warming up to change), all this spying, secret laws, and secret courts can be made very explicitly illegal.
Yes....
Note that a number of network news folk were ignoring some of the TLA constitutional issues up to the point that it was obvious that they were targeted.
The hacking of FOX computers when FOX was a historic defender of some of this nonsense put the writing on the wall for all the networks that could read and were interested in reporting news.
The courts, congress, executive branch may be silent because of thick folders of transgressions that Hover would have coveted in his day.
We have seen worthy talent flushed from the political landscape because of IRS violations involving maids and gardeners. But many more float in the spinning bowl hanging on for their special retirement packages and legislated protection from responsibility.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.