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EFF Unveils Plan For Ending Mass Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a detailed, global strategy for ridding ourselves of mass surveillance. They stress that this must be an international effort — while citizens of many countries can vote against politicians who support surveillance, there are also many countries where the citizens have to resort to other methods. The central part of the EFF's plan is: encryption, encryption, encryption. They say we need to build new secure communications tools, pressure existing tech companies to make their products secure against everyone, and get ordinary internet-goers to recognize that encryption is a fundamental part of communication in the surveillance age.
They also advocate fighting for transparency and against overreach on a national level. "[T]he more people worldwide understand the threat and the more they understand how to protect themselves—and just as importantly, what they should expect in the way of support from companies and governments—the more we can agitate for the changes we need online to fend off the dragnet collection of data." The EFF references a document created to apply the principles of human rights to communications surveillance, which they say are "our way of making sure that the global norm for human rights in the context of communication surveillance isn't the warped viewpoint of NSA and its four closest allies, but that of 50 years of human rights standards showing mass surveillance to be unnecessary and disproportionate."
They also advocate fighting for transparency and against overreach on a national level. "[T]he more people worldwide understand the threat and the more they understand how to protect themselves—and just as importantly, what they should expect in the way of support from companies and governments—the more we can agitate for the changes we need online to fend off the dragnet collection of data." The EFF references a document created to apply the principles of human rights to communications surveillance, which they say are "our way of making sure that the global norm for human rights in the context of communication surveillance isn't the warped viewpoint of NSA and its four closest allies, but that of 50 years of human rights standards showing mass surveillance to be unnecessary and disproportionate."
if enough people were serious about TOR, they would crash it while trying to avoid NSA.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Almost no one has a public IP address directly on their workstation at home and it is preventing free open source telephone to be widely adopted.
What is needed is a telephony protocol that and can easily be proxied or tunneled and/or that does not need extra measurements for surviving NAT.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
They're absolutely right to suggest the first thing we have to do is increase widespread use of encryption technology. But the NSA and others have already said if we do that, they'll step up their game. We need to not just take our technology to the next level, we need to take our governance to the next level.
Politicians have proven themselves to be complete failures in working for the people. Sure, some countries have more luck than others - but there's nothing to suggest that that luck won't run out. Look at even the Scandinavian countries - their agencies are working for the NSA, their politicians are playing the exact same games. We need to reform our political system to reduce the amount of fuckery to a bare minimum. How do we achieve that? Complete and total transparency is vital, but not enough. Politicians are willing to openly defraud citizens in many countries already - it's not enough to know what's going on, we have to be able to hold them to account. And that's where I think elections are a farce. We don't choose who runs. We don't choose who gets to be on the final ballot. All of that is taken care of by big money interests, and even in the off chance we do get a good person into the system, they're outnumbered 100 to 1. And then the system starts to chew them up, convince them that their ideals are worthless and principles be damned, the system needs to continue operating as it has, as it will, with no real changes. Yea, one batch of idiots might do a slightly better job on one thing or the other, but in the end, as long as we continue to feed the system, it's no wonder we get governments abusing their power.
We need to have a government. We need to have a monopoly on violence, otherwise it gets to be dog eat dog very quickly. But a government that isn't held to complete account by the people is just another mad dog. The failures of our political systems have shown themselves clear. Institutional corruption. Control by a tiny minority. Ridiculous squabbling over issues that are settled science. Is this really the best we can do? I don't think so. Why are we still using politicians? Professional ones? We can have representatives, but I think it should be clear to anyone that a random person off the street will demonstrate as much intelligence and thought as an elected official - perhaps even more, as an elected politician has demonstrated the ability to say anything to get to that position. Why not do a sortition? Randomly selected individuals, and give them 1 year to govern. They can propose laws, but nothing passes until there's an approval vote by the citizenry. If the sortition does a good job (as judged by the people), they get a huge bonus. If they don't, they get the median wage, and the next sortition tackles the problems. How is this worse than giving a tremendous amount of power to a group of people who've constantly demonstrated themselves as a bunch of liars, power hungry, war mongering liars at that, and giving them free reign for 2, 4, 6 years?
Absolutely, increase and improve the technology. But don't ignore the technology running our governance. It's tremendously outdated, with countless flaws and bugs that have remained unpatched for millennia. It's time for a new release of Government.
Then we need more people willing to stand up for their principles, not less. If you give up, your privacy definitely won't be protected.
So you wouldn't mind giving me the password to all your email accounts
Go right ahead. There is literally almost nothing to see there - and Google has already seen it.
Just like Facebook has already seen the private messages people send each other.
Remember - three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead. Sharing anything with anyone puts it out there - people learn in grade school that even kids like to gossip about each other.
It used to be that people could be shamed about stuff in their private lives. Today, not so much. A politician is gay or lesbian? So? An alcoholic? So? A crackhead (Rob Ford, I'm looking at you)? So? Cheats on his wife (Bill Clinton comes to mind)? So? Is being treated for a mental illness? So? Had an abortion? So? Nobody gives a damn.
The more open we are as a society, the healthier we are. There was a time that victims of rape hid in shame. That LGBT lived in fear of being outed, and thrown in jail (Turing). That someone with a mental illness was seen as "mental" and not "ill". That teenagers who had kids were "sent away."
Most of us have evolved. We see honor killings as seriously f'd up and totally dishonerable. We see female circumcision of children as mutilation and abuse. And we also understand that the best way to remove the stigma of a problem is to talk about it openly.
TL;DR: Unless you're a hermit, privacy is and always has been a convenient social illusion with an ugly unhealthy dark side.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> you have to find a way to show the harm and make them feel personal *fear* of the surveillance to counter the fear motivating their support for it,
If there is one thing I've learned about the human condition, it is that most people simply can't conceive of a problem until it affects them or someone they know and identify with. For example, conservatives who are anti-gay marriage until one of their own kids comes out as gay.
I used to think that such myopia made a person venal, but it is really just a basic fact of life that we barely have enough time to keep our own lives in order, worrying about other people's lives always comes in a distant second. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, you have to make it personal if you want regular people to pay attention, it is just the way we are wired.