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Ask Slashdot: What Will It Take To End Mass Surveillance?
Nicola Hahn writes: Both the White House and the U.S. Intelligence Community have recently announced reforms to surveillance programs sanctioned under Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But do these reforms represent significant restructuring or are they just bureaucratic gestures intended to create the perception that officials are responding to public pressure?
The Executive's own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has written up an assessment (PDF) of reform measures implemented by the government. For those who want a quick summary the Board published a fact sheet (PDF) which includes a table listing recommendations made by the board almost a year ago and corresponding reforms. The fact sheet reveals that the Board's mandate to "end the NSA's bulk telephone records program" has not been implemented.
In other words, the physical infrastructure of the NSA's global panopticon is still in place. In fact, it's growing larger (PDF). So despite all of the press statements and associated media buzz very little has changed. There are people who view this as an unsettling indication of where society is headed. Ed Snowden claimed that he wanted to "trigger" a debate, but is that really enough? What will it take to tear down Big Brother?
The Executive's own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has written up an assessment (PDF) of reform measures implemented by the government. For those who want a quick summary the Board published a fact sheet (PDF) which includes a table listing recommendations made by the board almost a year ago and corresponding reforms. The fact sheet reveals that the Board's mandate to "end the NSA's bulk telephone records program" has not been implemented.
In other words, the physical infrastructure of the NSA's global panopticon is still in place. In fact, it's growing larger (PDF). So despite all of the press statements and associated media buzz very little has changed. There are people who view this as an unsettling indication of where society is headed. Ed Snowden claimed that he wanted to "trigger" a debate, but is that really enough? What will it take to tear down Big Brother?
The ONE think they fear is effective encryption.
It is a sad situation, because that will also get in the way of legitimate (and yes, it can exist) investigation, however that is the arms race they are forcing you in to.
NOT encryption-when-you-have-something-to-hide, but encryption of EVERYTHING, as standard operating principle.
Right now exception is a nice bold flag to them that you should be monitored, however if even 20% of the population are regularly using it, that no longer works.
We are starting to see some very small movements in the encryption systems to escape from the over-complex not interoperable situation they let themselves
be pushed in to, and THAT is a big part of the problem, but some people now get it, and in a few years we may well have a much better choice in the area of
easy to use, interoperable, and open enough to be trustable encryption systems... and then the monitoring will work much less.
They will of course still see who is 'communicating' with who for some forms of link, that will be the next step.. protect the content first.
Like many things, the governments stupidity is going to make sensible law enforcement more difficult.
Go USA! and all that.. sigh.
Had this been done at the time of the civil war, it would have cost considerably less than the cost of the war.
What makes you think the South would have gone along with that? Or that Lincoln and his Cabinet (the smartest men of their time, just as the framers of the Constitution were) didn't think of it? All Lincoln cared about was preserving the Union. If it was as simple as writing a check do you not think that he would have tried it? The South revolted because they saw the long term demographic writing on the wall. Nothing Lincoln could have offered them would have changed that. Recall that he didn't even make slavery an issue until after Antietam.
That is how they did it in Britain, Washington D.C. and basically the rest of the world.
Britain's economy was never dependent upon slavery in the manner of the plantation states of the south. It's more than compensating owners for their "property"; you're effectively destroying an entire economic system. The effects were felt far and wide and extended well beyond the monied interests of the plantation owners. You can't implement a massive economic and societal change simply by writing a check. It took the bloodiest war in American history to effect that change, followed by a generation of reconstruction, and the effects of the resulting economic dislocation were being felt well into the 20th Century.
When writing the US Constitution, there was another option -- abolish it in the future.
Then the Southern States refuse to ratify the Constitution. Now you've got two (likely more than two, since if you're not willing to compromise on this issue what other issues go unresolved?) weaker countries on the global stage. A stage they're sharing with a massive pissed off empire they just fought an eight year war against. No, there was a reason why principled men on both sides were willing to compromise on issues as dear as slavery. It's a shame that our modern "leaders" can't look back to that example, for the issues we face today are nothing like the issues those men faced. Can you imagine the current crop of "leaders" in Washington sitting down to draft a new Constitution? Those idiots would spend the next five years arguing over who was going to take the minutes of the first meeting.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nice in theory. Not so much in practice. With crypto, the devil's in the details. Here are just a few of the hard problems:
If it were easy to do it properly, end-to-end crypto would be ubiquitous.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.