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RMS: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
Covalent writes "RMS describes how much surveillance is too much (hint: it's all too much) and how to combat, circumvent, and prevent future surveillance. How much of what is suggested is plausible? How much is just a pipe dream? Discuss!"
The article contains an extensive list of things we do that give too much data to centralized organization, and offers solutions to combat all of them. From the article: "The goal of making journalism and democracy safe therefore requires that we reduce the data collected about people by any organization, not just by the state. We must redesign digital systems so that they do not accumulate data about their users. If they need digital data about our transactions, they should not be allowed to keep them more than a short time beyond what is inherently necessary for their dealings with us."
Look at GMail, vs hush mail vs tormail vs lavabit and the like. The public just doesn't care and probably can't be made to care.
After more than a decade of the "war on terror" and its massive abuses, it's safe to say there is no democracy left to be withstanding anything.
It's too bad that the eminently sensible advice in that opinion piece will be ignored by techies because it comes from a guy perceived as icky.
It's too bad that anyone who takes that advice seriously and wants to act on it, then seeks out RMS for help, will likely be repulsed at some point.
In times of upheaval, ideologues are often the only people thinking straight enough to find a way out. Why did ours have to come wrapped in this particular package, a marketing nightmare that makes selling good sense so difficult even within the tech community?
I despair for the future and this is but one reason among legions.
Ad hominem much?
I'm a lot more worried about the US's homegrown religious fundamentalists than I could ever be of the middle-eastern ones that you seem to fear so much.
For starters, there's a whole lot more of them. Most are not individually dangerous, but they are collectively doing a lot more long-term damage.
The only way to stop surveillance of civilians is to have a clear and unequivocal constitutional amendment that strictly enshrines the right to privacy and limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
This is a lot tougher than it sounds as previous language that was pretty plain language to the people that wrote them (read the Federalist papers sometime) about limiting the right of the Federal government from infringing the rights of the people. The first and second amendments alone have been trampled with literally tens of thousands of laws that take away or limit said rights (I haven't even touched the other amendments).
What you really need is an entirely secondary constitutional amendment that spells out in plain language that "Shall make / not" means exactly what the dictionary says it does. Once you can do that and wipe out tens of thousands of laws that have been written to take away the effective meaning of your rights to begin with you can have an effective right to privacy.
The right to privacy is a wonderful idea, but it's worthless until we restore the concept of the "right" to begin with.
Looks like paid US shills are here already.
Destructive technology already existed in Jefferson's time (and besides, it was Benjamin Franklin who said it, almost twenty years before the United States of America declared its independence), and religious fundamentalists have existed since the dawn of religion.
As I see it, the biggest problem is that no matter how soft and simple lawmakers make it for the government to pursue avenues of investigation with legal checks-and-balances (ie, FISA court) those investigating are unwilling to follow those rules. It doesn't matter that FISA laws have provisions that allow investigators to follow phone or data traces or call routing and still obtain a legal warrant after the fact if they never bother to get that warrant, let alone get them in advance.
Blanket surveillance of everyone seems to me to violate rules that are supposed to guarantee people rights to privacy in their persons, papers, and effects without due-process. I am not a judge, but if I were, I'd interpret that to mean that the government isn't allowed to maintain anything more than basic vital records or basic direct-interaction records with people unless there's a reason. Investigating crime is a reason, but simply having a huge database to analyze after-the-fact is not.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
RMSDS
RMS Derangement Syndrome
Amongst other things, those who wait for any RMS story on Slashdot and pepper it with sockpuppet or anonymous posts attacking RMS in any way possible. Note the first two posts are like this.
Whoever you are, I hope this vitriol of yours doesn't bleed onto other people in real life. You do realize you have a personality disorder, I hope. There's nothing wrong with having such a disorder, it's accepting it and then getting help for it that shows the good person you really are inside.
In the meantime, please leave RMS and the rest of Slashdot readers alone. You'll never, ever be able to take away from him and us all the vast success of the FOSS/GNU movement, the fruits of which you undoubtably depend on every day, no matter what you say or do. You obviously know this, so please try and break the cycle and try to be a better person. Talk to someone about it, go and try to get some help, please.
I was watching an old Ellery Queen (shot in the 70s) episode last night, it featured a Russian diplomat, who asked if the detective's office was bugged. "I beg your pardon!" Queen's father roared furiously. "This is America!" I actually LOL'd...then cried inside.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Last I checked, Democracy is what gave us the Surveillance State.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
It's not exactly an accident that the NSA legitimized their mass surveillance through the PATRIOT act.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Internet-connected cameras often have lousy digital security themselves, so anyone could watch what the camera sees. To restore privacy, we should ban the use of internet-connected cameras aimed where and when the public is admitted, except when carried by people
I've actually thought that open and accessible cameras in public are a good idea - so long as they are accessible by the public. To me this would be akin to the many-eyes philosophy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law
Why do you despise freedom?
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
Funny, I saw him speak at HOPE in New York years ago, and he did none of that and was a rather upstanding guy.
I even directly asked him a question and he was perfectly polite and not crazy at all.
it's how that data is used.
We are going to be watched, because modern society is watching everything.
Democracy can handle the monitoring of everything, if protection and regulations are in place an enforced.
NSA? all that data they have in no way impacts democracy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Destroying the economy? you mean the economy that that by any measure has done nothing but improve for 6 years?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We don't have a democracy in nations like the UK or USA. 'Voting' does NOT equal democracy. In the UK or USA you can ONLY bring one of a number of shell-entities into power that represent the exact same interests. Liberal, Labour or Conservative - Republican or Democrat - whoever the sheeple 'vote' for, the same force controls the nation. The same over-arching agendas are pursued and implemented.
In the UK, a party that had sought to win power for decades (the Liberals) on an unchanging ticket that access to education was the most important issue for British people, increased the cost of university to the highest in Europe the moment they gained power- following the exact agenda Tony Blair had laid down, but couldn't achieve while a 'Labour' flavoured government was in power.
The sheeple have different expectations of the likely obscenities inflicted on them by 'left' and 'right' wing governments, so their masters implement more of their right-wing seeming agendas when Republicans rule, and agendas that seem 'left' flavoured when the Democrats rule. This way, across time, every agenda on the list gets implemented while the sheep shrug their shoulders and say "what do you expect from the Democrats?" and "what do you expect from the Republicans".
Of course, today things are so much worse, so the sheeple accept both left AND right-wing agendas from either party- war-mongering by Obama is positively applauded by all the George Soros controlled mock-liberal outlets, for instance.
NSA full surveillance (and the equivalent in most significant nations) is designed to ensure that the will of the sheeple CANNOT disrupt the status quo, or threaten the true rulers of the nation. NSA full surveillance achieves these three goals
1) provides near realtime feedback of the impact of propaganda campaigns in the mainstream media, allowing the control messages to be fine-tuned, or whole projects aborted if the sheeple are proving completely resistant (see Obama's failure to holocaust Syria as a recent example of this- even with saturated media demonisation of the ordinary people of Syria and their leaders, Obama could not get enough US sheeple to back his plans to bomb Syria back to the Stone Age).
2) to gather potential blackmail material on ALL powerful or influential people in the USA. A simple act, like having illicit sex, can compromise a person to such an extent, 90%+ of those so threatened would support an agenda they might otherwise oppose.
3) to identify arising grass-roots political and social organisations and their leaders, so such activity can (if needed) be co-opted or strangled at birth.
How can ANYONE challenge those currently in TRUE power (the puppet-masters behind people like Obama), when those in power how access to the NSA resources listed above? You simply cannot. All you can hope for are "palace revolutions" where the monsters end up fighting each other for supremacy. People-power revolutions (very rare in Human History) are impossible in nations like the USA, and that includes the 'revolution' of democratically voting someone else into power.
Yes, I plead guilty of hyperbole.
However "The absolute worst you can claim about American religious fundamentalitists, as far as terrorism goes" is where we diverge.
You're looking for terrorists. I'm looking at people who fundamentally threaten the next generations by undercutting education, libraries, women's rights, and critical research that the US could be at the forefront of (instead of letting other countries pass us by).
I haven't even mentioned their indirect influence on people who start wars, and their direct influence on causing major unrest and hate against the western world (Quran-burning, anyone?)
The most damage the foreign terrorists have done to the Western world is to turn us against ourselves, while they pop some corn over the fires set by our drones, and watch our "civilized and democratic" model being consumed by corporatism and paranoia, under the illusion of fighting to preserve our unsustainable way of life.
We are our own worst enemies.
In this instance, for the first time in many years, I agree with RMS. I now believe companies should retain the minimum possible data about customers, and lets solve the usability problems that come from that separately.
Don't like to re-enter your credit card and shipping info every time you buy from Amazon? It's just not that hard to solve that problem without Amazon keeping your data.
Recommendation engines? It's just not that hard to solve the problem of finding other products like this one without keeping customer data (remember when Netflix and Amazon had "lists" where customers would volunteer to group like items together - that was great!).
Targeted advertisement? Does anything think that has worked out well, rather than just being creepy and still failing to get the "time" aspect of targeting right?
Sure, I can accept that there is still info that a company needs to accumulate to do business well, especially for subscription-based businesses, but just like we now code with "least privilege" in mind, can we not also code with "least customer data" in mind?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All we need is a constitutional amendment that whatever the government does to the people, the people can do to the government.
If the government can read anyone's email, then I can read the email of anyone who works for the government. If they can listen to my calls, I can listen to theirs. If the can see my bank and medical records, I can see theirs.
FTFY
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'll never understand the hate for RMS entirely. As far as I've seen in several videos and interviews he actually seems fairly level headed. He seems to understand very well that what he chooses to do is his own personal belief. He thinks that belief adopted by others would be better for those individuals, but he's not trying to cram it down anyone's throat. At least I personally, after watching a few hours worth of his videos feel that way.
He definitely is a bit pretentious ("I wouldn't even accept an iBad as a present"), but the guy graduated magna cum laude at Harvard, and then went to MIT (to not finish his degree.) It would be hard not to be a little pretentious, and have more than a bit of an ego.
At least he's not Torvalds.
Engaging in historical revisionism to try and change how things were to how they think things should have been. Biasing it to twist the philosophies of historical figures and to retroactively smear the reputations of people they consider their enemies. And then try to push that shit on students all over the country by abusing their position.
They do nonsensical shit like try to put creationism into science classes, where it doesn't belong at all.
Except you give them too much credit. That's not what they're on about - they aren't capable of challenging things like evolutionary theory. They're all about letting teachers push their religion and allowing students to ignore science in favor of whatever they've been indoctrinated with by their parents.
Not to mention that our Fundamentalists also push crap like Quiverfull (breeding a Christian Army), Oathkeepers, and the Christian Dominionists who see the Federal government as their enemy and a barrier to their control. The only difference between our fundamentalists and theirs is they just haven't started shooting yet.
It seems to me that every time RMS has had an opinion on something it has been validated some time in the future. That's not to say that his solutions have been validated, just the problems he has pointed out. Every single problem that he has stated an opinion on, has come to haunt us. An almost always he is described as a crackpot when he states his opinions. I think RMS is one of the true visionaries in the world, he sees the future and suggests ways to avoid it. Sometimes his views are followed with great success (gnu/linux for example) Other times they are ignored, (copyright and patent problems stated way back when have been a thorn in the side of many software developers).
I read a few of the articles you talked about, and I sort of understand the hate now. His speaking style doesn't translate very well onto paper.
Obligatory Supplemental Educational Information: Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent.
I have met him, and while I wouldn't say I got that close, I got no such impression. In fact, at the time he was spending a lot of time self-grooming, specifically picking at knots in his hair to the point that it was almost distracting from the conversation, except that he was, in fact, completely keeping up and engaged with the conversation while grooming himself.
He may often have a lot of hair and beard (since then when I have passed him at the con, he has had shorter hair, but its easily been long enough since I saw him even in passing that It could have grown and been cut a few times) but, never really seemed ungroomed any of the half dozen times I have seen him in passing.
In fact, I hear from a couple of female friends that he is a bit of a flirt too.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"