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Schneier: The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet
Nerdfest writes "Bruce Schneier writes in The Atlantic: 'Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we've learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it's easier that way. I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.'"
Consider the source, take with grain of salt, etc.
It sure isn't the magazine it once was.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The only way to win this is to get FISA eliminated. Without first eliminating the gag orders and the Star Chamber...I mean FISA courts, we cannot succeed on the whole.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Schneier: Water is wet.
NSAnet?
So we were right in the 90s when we thought Facebook was a CIA front?
Trash cans tracking MACs.....FBI turning on my mic......1984 is only going to be 30 odd years late......
>> The government has commandeered the Internet
Somewhere, I'm sure Al Gore is pissed.
Something needs to be done about all this spying!
And not just Google and Amazon. There's a big long list.
Scott McNealy had it right back in '98 or so when he said "You have zero privacy now. Get over it."
We need the illegal surveillance of the world to STOP.
Now!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Bruce Scheier has been found to have committed suicide in a public park in DC in the middle of the night.
Um, TFA seems to labor under the delusion that someone other than the US GOVERNMENT created the Internet. Much of the work done was at the agency formerly known at ARPA back in the '70s, not some failed Presidential candidate from Tennessee. Just saying.
Drop this idea of the "government" as some evil alien entity with unknown motives. The issue here is that the NSA is being a bunch of assbags to internet companies.. At the behest of other companies. In this case, security services contractors. Why does everyone forget the warnings about the Military Industrial Complex? This is the Security Industrial Complex and we're throwing away our freedoms so some slimy fucks can make a buck. There is a reason most of our "generals" are desk jockeys whose' primary job is shuffling papers and securing funding.
Some say never attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence. I say never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by greed.
This isn't "The Atlantic" reporting; it's an article by Bruce Schneier. This guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
Feel free to dismiss his concerns if you like, but don't dismiss them just because you don't like the mag they happen to be printed in.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
No WE must Fight. Go to public meeting when the ELECTED Congressmen/women who write these laws. Question then send a clear message change it or be removed from office. The reason it has gotten so bad is not because big company's dont fight it its because we the electors choose to ignore it. I'm guilty as well but i do vote. Hound the bastards they dont want to get voted out of office the perks are great. Stop blaming others blame ourselves.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Unless the green robot has a new age weapon I suspect the faction with the guns is going to win over the interests of the technology industry.
I'm sure with enough electricity running through a CEO, they will commit to helping with ANYTHING. Good concept in theory, but i'd probably roll over too.
Was that the plan all along?
Why spend the money to win a fight if none of your competition does?
The other way to "win" is to move your company offshore - or start it offshore - and not sell your products or services to Americans, and hope the Americans get fed up enough to demand change.
Of course, that may just be trading one nosy government for another.
For governments, one way to "win" is to have a policy of creating direct bulk-data communications channels with other countries when possible, and use encrypted tunnels for all other communications so there is a "direct virtual connection" between the source and destination countries.* This will cost money and will have a performance penalty but it's worth it in both privacy and public relations terms.
*This is not a substitute for end-to-end encryption, but it will make country-in-the-middle snooping of otherwise-unencrypted or weakly-encrypted data that much harder, making wholesale snooping or keyword-triggered snooping by a country "in the middle" impractical.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When you're focused on sucking in everything, you're not focusing on analyzing anything. Somehow, we didn't have the resources available to keep the Boston bombers under surveillance, but we have the resources to keep 300+ million innocent citizens under watch.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Is it democratic?
Powers in charge, collecting information about their subjects, information that can and will be used against you?
Who tasked them with this? Or is it absolute power that corrupts, absolutely?
This subject of the article is not new, we have seen similar information for years. The same can be said with Snowden, he was just the most recent in a list of whistle blowers warning you of what's happening.
I agree with the articles point that you are not safe. I also agree that people fool themselves into thinking that if they play on the team they will be protected. Those points are not new, and not unique to TFA either. I have relatives that were young Germans in the 30s so hear from first hand accounts how "team" players were treated. In addition to personal experiences, I read history books which are full of examples of how there is no safety in being a "team" player and how much danger there is in a Government collecting this much data on citizens.
You dismiss the article because of the source, yet offer no counter to their position or opinion. The best you can do is toss out a Red Herring/Ad hominem fallacy to dismiss the thoughts in the article? Not that I would be surprised, this is /. after all.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
We might as well just throw in the towel and go back to using kite string with styrofoam cups to communicate (kidding). Seriously though, all the "fighting" in the world doesn't stand a chance against the almighty dollar. Anyone who fights can either be forced to cooperate or else probably be bought-off. Since clearly after all that CISPA protesting the govt just went ahead and did it anyway, that pretty much says loud and clear weather or not they have any interest in what the public has to say in the matter. So the only solution I can think of is that we gotta find an alternative; something decentralized that can't be easily bottlenecked and used as a point-of-origin to intercept and track what is supposed to be private. Global wireless mesh networking is the only alternative I can think of, but for as many times as I've brought it up, someone always shoots the idea down and insists its not possible (just like going to the moon used to be "not possible", right?).
the existing infrastructure is too closely controlled by the government and corporations
there needs to be peer to peer mesh networking which integrates with the current technology until we can wean ourselves off of the "controlled" infrastructure
large organizations are the enemy of individual freedom
That's a funny way of rephrasing "supporting the mass-murdering batshit insane globalist scum".
Bruce Scheier has been found to have committed suicide in a public park in DC in the middle of the night.
Or so they say.
Meanwhile, Mr. Schneier remains alive and well living under a secret, undisclosed false identity.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not like there is equal power here and there is any way to put up much of a fight. Either they give the information to the NSA or the NSA takes the information. It's a lot easier to sell it than to deal with the hostile takeover or the underhanded means or the legal offensive. The average CEO is defenseless not only against the NSA but against any government agency.
Fighting is only a symbolic gesture. There is nothing anyone can do really to stop the NSA from getting what it wants.
Big companies choosing to "fight". Right, much easier said than done. We like to imagine that this great coalition of people will rise up in the defense of these companies that choose to fight.
One, that coalition is much smaller than you can possibly imagine. Especially when you consider only those likely to make their voice heard. Plus, you have to discount all of the individuals that just assume the best of the political party they ascribe to when said party is in power. People will let things like this go if they are getting what they want in other areas, until a party power switch.
Two, these companies would have to spend a ton of money on lawyers fighting the government, who have an infinitely better mouthpiece for voicing their side and completely destroying the company's reputation in the process. All for a group that will say thank you while they slowly disappear.
Three, I thought we hated the big bad corporations. Now we want them to fight our battles with the government we generally side with against them?
As others have stated, the people with the power to actually do something about this is, well, the people. In a democratic environment, we (at least are supposed to) have the power to drive change. But this takes us back to #1 ... the vast majority of the people out there, I think you'll find, are more than happy to suck it up and accept this invasion into their privacy under the pretences of greater security while the government pays them off in a multitude of other ways.
and soon! Lest the fight may be brought to the USA. the world will only tolerate so much of your shit for so long. this doesn't just affect americans.
I've said it before and i'll say it again, If a war started against the USA to liberate its citizens from the oppressive regime, I'd enlist to fight for your freedoms as you helped once with ours. You think it pisses you off that all your information is handed to YOUR government imagine how unacceptable that feels to non americans knowing that YOUR government tracks everything we do.
Use the Deep Web and darknets. The internet as a medium is useful, you don't have to use one of a finite list of known gateways/providers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Bruce Schneier is sell-promoting at times, but he is the best we have for publishing about security concerns.
Question: Is what was learned about the NSA is the only thing that isn't legal?
Here's an idea, try fighting fire with fire. Like all of these conglomerates that create smaller subsidiaries to do there "dirty work" without getting caught, create a hosting company to push your website content. Whenever it is flagged by the NSA for not sharing, then create another and so on. Legally this can be done easily and will keep the NSA off your tail.
The Plan:
First you commit an unbelievably heinous and cowardly act.
Then you sit back and watch as they eat their own laws and freedoms...the very things you despise.
Then you win.
Why would terrorists waste the energy trying to change western culture when we'll happily do it for them?
This is a great article, save for the fact that Bruce Schneier himself is the CTO of a company that has implemented spying on their customers. He works for BT, and they have had numerous cases of not only admitting to spying, but implementing Phorm to monitor their customers' activity. Where Bruce tells other companies to fight, he refuses to acknowledge this issue.
When are you going to wake up? You're living in a giant concentration camp, run by Jews. They watch your every move, and censor any opposing views, and censor anybody telling the truth about the fact that JEWS are running your world, and using you as their slaves.
How can anybody NOT be aware of that fact, in this day and age?
Who runs your Congress?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asGvjbfIASA
So they wont use US based servers and services? So where are they going to go? Any country they go to will have a government with a 3 letter agency spying on the servers and services and passing it to the NSA.
Not only that but the NSA could use other means to spy on multinationals and turn them into NSA friendly multinationals.
Of course, one could also make a similar observation about things like the US Constitution. In both cases, we have had to fight an ongoing battle, political and legal, to maintain the freedom and openness built into the original. We haven't always had total success at this. The natural state is that our "rulers" constantly try to subvert such things that interfere with their power over us.
The NSA is just one of the more recent instances of this. Anyone at all familiar with US (and network) history should be able to rattle off a long list of similar actions on the part of those who want control over our lives.
Not that there is anything specifically "American" about this. It's hard to find any government (or corporation ;-) anywhere that doesn't behave similarly. It's just part of "the human condition", as the literary folks would express it.
Prediction: Legal measures to fix this situation will have no effect. The government will simply create a new secret agency with a new name, which will use different words to describe what they're doing, and it'll be just a continuation of the NSA's work. Does anyone have any accurate count of how many times this has already happened? (Likely not; some of them probably never became public. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Those are your chances of being a victim. 230 deaths a year is the justification for all the tax dollars, trampled rights and illegal activity.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
the existing infrastructure is too closely controlled by the government and corporations
there needs to be peer to peer mesh networking which integrates with the current technology until we can wean ourselves off of the "controlled" infrastructure
large organizations are the enemy of individual freedom
But we cannot do that for everything. For stuff which isn't important it can be anonymous. For just chatter and discussion it can be anonymous. But when you want to actually make decisions or actually do things then there has to be accountability.
You can be anonymous in what you read or say if it's not taken seriously. But if you want to be taken seriously then you cannot be anonymous. If you're reporting a crime you can be pseudo-anonymous but if you want to secure a conviction then you have to name names and if you do that then you have to name yourself.
correction, you do not have to name yourself, but you need to be pseudo-anonymous enough that you have an identity even if its virtual and you need at least a digital signature. You cannot be completely anonymous and be taken seriously.
Anonymous sources is not considered journalism. That is just rumor mongering.
Sheeple are frequently painfully unaware of the processes that create decent societies, so when their once decent society comes under attack from within, don't even realise what they risk losing if they refuse to act.
The USA is an a cycle of spending ever large amounts on its Earth threatening military machine. The more the military grows, the more powerful the supporters of the military become, until every aspect of American life is shilling the wonders of a society that exists to serve and grow the military. No American now dares to question the obscenity of America's mass murdering butchers in uniform.
Spying follows the same pattern, but worse in this way. Whereas military investment usually fails to show clear positive results, spy programs merely have to prove they grab more data about more people to be seen as successful. Take Bill Gates and the NSA's ultimate spy platform, the Xbox One. This puts a camera, microphone and motion recognition system into the home of MILLIONS of Americans at ZERO cost to the US government. The sheeple actually pay to have the world's most sophisticated real-time spy device in their own living rooms (or children's bedrooms).
What US government would have said "No!" to Gates' proposal? Bill Gates promises to provide a running tally of each person who enters/leaves the same room as his console, 24/7. He promises that the running cost to the NSA is minimal, as each Xbone reports daily its record of individuals that appeared before it (the console sends head shots to the NSA cloud servers, so the NSA can link location with straightforward face recognition to put a name to each person tracked by the Xbone). Microsoft has already declared that the Kinect sensor system that allows this is always running, and the encrypted traffic that constantly flows from the console to the cloud defies the ability of any investigator to identify exactly what the Xbone is doing at any one time.
The vicious circle, or positive feedback, is fully active. All that remains is to worry about what future use a government may put the information it gathers to. America jails more people than anywhere else, and as with the military and spying, is rapidly accelerating the grown of the prison industry. How easily Clinton II or any future US dictator (your presidents ARE dictators, but with fixed term limits) could introduce new classes of 'thought crimes'.
The US Constitution should be amended to make all forms of government surveillance EXCEPT clearly targeted acts with individual court approval, illegal by principle. This especially applies to 'anonymous' full surveillance projects that claim that if the sources of data remain anonymous, that is OK. Freedom from ALL unwarranted surveillance should be added to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Conscience. The vast majority of the NSA and similar agencies should be dismantled (and there are plenty of real examples from history where nations have dismantled their spying organisations when they became abusive).
But good is NOT going to happen. The sheeple have been carefully groomed, and more importantly dis-empowered. The sheeple therefore do not provide a countermanding societal force of any kind, so the military, prison system, spying, and mainstream media propaganda programs continue to grow at a truly alarming rate. What happens when only one side is pushing? If you know anything about the History of our Race, you'd realise the answer is almost too scary to comprehend. America is going to be responsible for WW3. This cannot be prevented now. Every aspect of American society is preparing for the next World War (even if most of the sheeple are too thick to notice this, as they cheer their murderous troops in whatever nation exterminating slaughter they are currently engaged in).
When the real war finally kicks off, the NSA will provide the most comprehensive list of all those that need to be rounded up. Google's algorithms will weed out leaders and potential leaders of all effective anti-war sentiment. In many ways, this whole technological farce is playing out to return us to the times when the King could declare war, and the sheeple had no choice but to go along with the declaration.
Which doesn't say much.
Like I believe this. What are they going to try and tell us next? That the US Military invented the internet in the first place?
What if Google said "well fine. I'm taking my ball and going home." ?
Basically if you are offering any products or services over the Internet now you are baiting your customers into being spied upon. Every email you send is inviting the recipient to reply and be spied upon. Its not just about what you do. Its about what others on the net do in response. Every action you take condoning the use of this medium is tricking other people to use it too.
They havent just usurped the Internet. They have contaminated it. They have defiled it.
before I looked at the paycheck which had said $4439, I accept ...that...my cousin woz like truley bringing home money part time on their computer.. there best friend has been doing this 4 only about 17 months and recently paid the mortgage on their place and purchased a gorgeous GMC. go to, .... http://buzz360.biz/?1=bo0349
Schneier is assuming that it matters if a company's customers trust it. But with the relative lack of ISP competition in the US, where are customers of large ISPs supposed to go? What difference does it make whether their customers trust them?
honestly, so when do we resort to violence? it's not gonna end any other way. it's already past the point of peaceful resolution. someone do something!
Every country is doing this. But i guess USA bashing is 'in' this year.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Very simple, the internet should slowly and effectively hand privacy to the users. The privacy of my message and its metadata should depend on me and my destination somehow. That's all, and any company offering that as much as possible should be prefered.
It fills some kind of "need" and people gotta have it. Much like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Run a switch between my house (verizon) and the neighbors (Comcast). Wireless routes between nodes by passing servers. Route traffic ourselves.
You can tell most of the users on this site are american from the slavish awe they evince for the nsa and for their helplessness before govt.
Why don't you dumb geeks stop polishing your guns in anticipation of the tyrant and be useful instead. Implement secMTP. Integrate encryption into every app. Make it as seamless and as easy to use as, oh, I dunno --- the bank? Hello? Anyone home? You've been handed an enormous gift in the person of Snowden. An intelligence agency is of no good to anyone if its shenanigans are public and futile before strong encryption.
I can imagine what it must think when the NSA reads this site. "Omg we're going to fucking get away with it, are these guys dumb or what." "Roger Wilco Bravo Bob, check out the anon go on an on about the constitution." "Ha ha ha ha. Hey, let's go fuck a cheerleader."
Losers.
Recent article mentioned NSA was only touching 1.6% of all internet traffic daily. How many of that 1.6% are children? Don't they get extra privacy protection? And until they can verify whether they are touching children or not shouldn't this be put on hold?
The NSA is touching YOUR children. Is that ok?
This must be stopped NOW, think of the children!
(hey it works for them to pass all kids of BS, why not we the people?)
If the NSA can find dirt on anyone, wouldn't that put the head of the NSA in charge of the country?
Seen this shit coming way back then. Fuck George Shrub and his fucking war on terror, and his 'homeland security' and his WMD's and bullshit wars. Fuck the whole bunch of them. While nobody was paying attention the last 50 years we became a nation of mindless consumerbots, all of us awash in propaganda and far too many who are virtually illiterate. And we've just kinda stood around the last 12 years, mesmerized by media and internet and getting our piece o' the "american dream" while the fuckers looted us blind, snuffed out the constitution, AURGHGHGHGHGHGHGHG!
to ID the spammers and nuke the fuckers from orbit!
Rick B.
... because the "crazy" people were right!
a small heads up, the US government started wikipedia to brainwash people, 80% of the population are actually robots and you dont even want to know what the aliens do to you in your sleep.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Time for a civil war and destruction of a corrupt government, get started. Only way out of it - full cleanup all the way through, no one left untouched.
what about your right to dissent against "laws" enacted by out of control governments / representatives? you have the right to ignore or disobey any "law" which you conscientiously object to or disagree with. this obviously includes your so called patriot act - Nazi Enabling Act.also included with this would be the dictats of el presidente, so called executive orders issued by der fuehrer of the fourth reich.
You know where citizens never have to worry about terrorism felling their perfect snowflakes? North Korea.
Spoiler: They don't hate us for our 'Freedom'; they hate us for our foreign (corporate) policy. George Washington was right re: foreign entanglements.
What would motivate executives of large Internet corporations (the Verizons, the Googles, etc) to fight the government on this issue? Number one, they are not the ones who are threatened by government spying. Number two, they have no political disagreement with the purpose of the spying, which is done by a capitalist government in defense of capitalism. So, to repeat myself, don't hold your breath.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo 1953
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I realise this will not come as a shock to most of the /. community but the internet was born out a government program under the Advanced Research Projects Agency. To pretend like government intrusion and monitoring was never built into the DNA of the net is naive in the extreme.
If you start with the assumption that anything you do on a networked device is vulnerable then you wont be disappointed when your online 'privacy' or 'rights' are violated by the very people who gave you the ability to expose yourself in such a way.
Its better to think of yourself as less interesting to the government than you would think. Yes, the government can spy on you and your online habits but chances are you are not interesting enough to be of interest. If you suspect you are then get clued up on how to protect your own privacy rather than bleat to the very people who are violating it in the first place.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Doesn't http://prism-break.org/ protect you against NSA?
Casteism
In the old days, modems connected to each other directly and computers didn't use an ISP. What's to stop people from creating neighborhood WiFi mesh networks that span cities?
Pier to pier or person to person was central to the thought design of the Internet.
This was an obvious need once the limits of the likes of the "Aloha" protocols were understood.
Yes routers and hubs were necessary but cross-bar hubs with queues of various depths and mesh topologies amplified the cross sectional bandwidth of he Internet.
Today with monsters like Google, Netflix, Yahoo, Amazon the model bends yet these big guys have quickly moved to many presence models with many, many machines and massive p2p resources behind a host name.