Slashdot Mirror
Mass Surveillance: Can We Blame It All On the Government?
Nicola Hahn writes Yet another news report has emerged detailing how the CIA is actively subverting low-level encryption features in mainstream hi-tech products. Responding to the story, an unnamed intelligence official essentially shrugged his shoulders and commented that "there's a whole world of devices out there, and that's what we're going to do." Perhaps this sort of cavalier dismissal isn't surprising given that leaked classified documents indicate that government intelligence officers view iPhone users as 'Zombies' who pay for their own surveillance.
The past year or so of revelations paints a pretty damning portrait of the NSA and CIA. But if you read the Intercept's coverage of the CIA's subversion projects carefully you'll notice mention of Lockheed Martin. And this raises a question that hasn't received much attention: what role does corporate America play in all of this? Are American companies simply hapless pawns of a runaway national security state? Ed Snowden has stated that mass surveillance is "about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." A sentiment which has been echoed by others. Who, then, stands to gain from mass surveillance?
The past year or so of revelations paints a pretty damning portrait of the NSA and CIA. But if you read the Intercept's coverage of the CIA's subversion projects carefully you'll notice mention of Lockheed Martin. And this raises a question that hasn't received much attention: what role does corporate America play in all of this? Are American companies simply hapless pawns of a runaway national security state? Ed Snowden has stated that mass surveillance is "about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." A sentiment which has been echoed by others. Who, then, stands to gain from mass surveillance?
It's depressing. As a privacy-aware and generally technologically literate but not super savvy about encryption protocols, etc, I don't know what to do. I want to have some measure of privacy, but I don't want to step out of the mainstream phone ecosystem. These days is it mandatory for me to put my tinfoil hat on to get a bit of space to myself?
Since we live in a paradise and don't want anything to change ever, universal surveillance is a great way to make sure that no bad actors mess things up. Duh. What's wrong with you? What are you, POOR?
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
You want to give a government the resources and the power to "solve problems" and this is what you get.
Gee, power corrupts.
Imagine that.
In this oligarchy where does the corporation end and government begin anyway
Those with the money decide who we get to vote for, and what they do once they get into office.
Democrat or Republican, both wings of a single party: the corporate party.
While corporations will happily sell the government anything and everything, they usually do not care very much about whether it actually works. See, e.g., the "wonder scanners" for airports, multiple defense projects, and multiple public IT projects. My guess would be that unless doing surveillance (not selling tools for it) is your core business, like with Google, Facebook, etc., corporations care very little about establishing effective and efficient surveillance.
That said, of course come corporations are so deep in the governments backside that they effectively become an extension of it. Those may be different.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well since I need to type here too maybe we can blame the people who think they have nothing to worry about; the very same people who didn't think through government blackmail of every single politician, CEO, and political activist by using said system.
it's not possible to put something out on a wire and expect it to be private
i don't walk down main street naked and expect privacy
same problem
passing some law insisting everyone look away is going to be effective you think? that's your protection?
if you want privacy, go walk with someone on the beach next to the crashing surf (to drown out the telescopic mics)
otherwise, if you or what you are saying is interesting, someone can eavesdrop. that's not a new problem. it's always been that way
what is new is this bizarre psychological trick we play on ourselves that sitting in front of our computer connected to a network is magically somehow an intimate private experience. how? why does anyone expect that? it never was, and it never will be
never mind the government. you have snooping family members or friends who swipe your credentials. you have your internet provider, and every company who owns every node from here to your destination: they all can snoop. if the info you share is innocuous, who cares. that's the extent of my realistic expectations. if the info is important to you: why are you amazed and aggrieved that nodes on a public network is not magically private? the only problem is people's inability to look at the reality of the communication conduit and make peace with it's unavoidably public nature
why did we ever expect privacy on the internet? how did that trick of the mind ever come to be?
if you want privacy:
1. get off the Internet, or
2. invest in serious encryption. oh, it's a hassle? you want privacy on a public network and you expect it to be hassle free? what is wrong with you?
those are your only two choices
because just expecting government, corporations, or interested people not to snoop is just never going to happen, ever. disrespect is the norm. are you some sort of naive inexperienced fool to the pitfalls of basic human nature?
the problem is expecting no one to spy, or that you can enforce that, and expecting that something goes out on a public wire and is magically private. it's thinking about the nature of the problem all wrong. you think some law somewhere is going to give you protection?
now mod me a troll and continue the indignant outrage about a problem you can't solve and no one ever will
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They are active participants, and are salivating at the chance for its expansion.
The simple heuristic is: unless they are explicitly against surveillance and government intrusion, they are for it.
It's a new, untapped growth industry. One in which the customer has literally infinitely deep pockets, and wields the power of the law.
Is this a real question? Seriously?
where i grok and empathize with all the complaints about government surveillance, i am just left wondering how if they can spy on us so easily, why can they not provide us with better regulations for life. i mean with all the data analytics and voice/video/txt information, you think they would at least provide us with better standardized living.
What a load of crap
Any oversight that exists in the government surveillance biz was enacted after Obama got into office.
If you want to bother looking into it, you will find that most of the gross misuses occurred during Bush's tenure
fwiw, conservapedia is about as reliable as a John Birch pamphlet back when they were trying to scare everybody that Carter was going to invite Russian tanks to attack America
Because it's factually incorrect, but extreme left/right groups cannot be bothered with facts. This surveillance state began years before Obama entered office. His fault lies in failing to curtail it.
Might add to that: anyone using Facebook either doesn't understand privacy/technology, or doesn't want privacy for that corner of their life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
you guys still don't get it. the point is the government is a place of power over the entire population. they control everything, each citizen and every business.
You got that backwards. Business puts people friendly to their businesses in power. Business tell gov't what to do, with money and favors.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Just make sure to keep the dream alive and blame it on anything and everything but ourselves. No no no... We play no part. We are just helpless passengers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's not our fault people have computers with webcams and microphones that we can easily hack into and install monitoring software to record everything they say and do, because we're involved with the encryption and security standards and can design-in backdoors that we can access easily.
That's not our fault at all. Stupid citizens.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The only way to avoid technical surveillance is to keep everything sensitive away from email or phone calls or instant messages. There is no way to avoid being the target of the NSA and CIA if they really want to get your data. None at all. The NSA and CIA are creating these techniques against countries such as Russia, China, and Iran with devastating success. (Look at the Iranian nuclear weapons program getting hacked by Stuxnet.) You have no way to avoid the hacking of your data if they are really set in doing it.
Pretty much this. Ergo, if you are intent on inviolable secrecy, you wouldn't be posting on ye olde green line site... nor any other. Who then, is willing to give up the internet and the freedom of speech to ensure no measure of antiestablishmentarianism viewpoint is uttered and recorded?
That I can still post my POV freely from the south side of somewhere without being erased by a midnight death squad is proof enough that the battle for your freedoms is not yet lost.
Vote for candidates, serve on juries, impress the importance of participation on your sports-distracted friends... do what can as one of the minority who can still afford to pay attention
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What a load of crap
Any oversight that exists in the government surveillance biz was enacted after Obama got into office.
If you want to bother looking into it, you will find that most of the gross misuses occurred during Bush's tenure
fwiw, conservapedia is about as reliable as a John Birch pamphlet back when they were trying to scare everybody that Carter was going to invite Russian tanks to attack America
Bullshit.
Extrajudicial killings of US citizens are an Obama feature.
And at least Bush never lied about being against such surveillance.
There are many long time computer users who have felt that Apple products were for the less than able who wasted money on expensive software as they were on the helpless side with computers. And yes the corporations are probably even more guilty than our government of spying or contributing to spying on US citizens. As far as who will benefit from all the spying and snooping and analyzing well all of us will. We will gain and lose as well. Safety, convenience and financial opportunities may be created from data mining and analyzes. Loss of privacy and an inability to get away with crimes will punish most people a bit. Those under the table jobs and cash flows will soon be next to impossible to get away with. Even crimes like prostitution will become next to impossible as financial records are compiled and things like hotel records are traced to individuals. A car thief better have one heck of an explanation as to how he pays his rent, pays his bills, and pays for his food. A person can be held to account for every penny that passes through their hands as this technology becomes ever more present. So we all win and we all lose.
You are mixing random concepts here, applying the same label to them, and concluding that there is no privacy. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. But let's dissect it.
The first problem is comparing privacy from your family members to society as a whole. Sorry, but there is little power to be gained from peeking through the window of your older brother. And it will definitely not affect anybody else on your block. Now, if somebody were to drive down the street with a camera, film everybody and everything and put it on the Internet, that would be a whole different story. Google tried, and they had to blur faces, lower their cameras or stop altogether in different countries. The key difference is the scale of the operation, and number of people affected.
The second problem with your argument, is comparing police, state and government surveillance with private data collection. You might think Google, Microsoft, Facebook are evil, and should not hold your private data. You're probably right. However, none of these companies will kick down your door and shoot your dog. The very purpose of government surveillance is to retain power and control. That has always been the case, and the Internet and computers didn't change it. It has just made the rulers' job so much easier.
The beauty of total government surveillance is that it doesn't have to be total in order to achieve its goal. It is enough if most people merely believe they are watched most of the time, just like you describe. We start to self-censor. We'll be more careful about what we write, what we criticize, who we associate with. It fences our thoughts and ideas, and limits our ability to seek alternatives, which is precisely its purpose. The opposite is not privacy, it is freedom and liberty.
Those with the money decide who we get to vote for...
That is such bullshit. The idiots who believe their propaganda and expect them to bring back some juicy contracts decide who you get to vote for. The entire blame for all of it falls squarely on the voters' laps. They sell their votes to the bling.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
you have secret piece of info {X}
you are going to put it on a public wire, and expect that secret piece of info {X} to magically stay secret
where exactly does that erroneous perception come from?
i don't have a problem with laws against government surveillance invading your privacy: going into your house and rifling through your stuff, for example
but i also don't have a magic expectation that if i leave my secret stuff in the middle of main street, that no one is going to see it, never mind the government
to put something on a public wire, to let it go through a number of nodes you don't control, you don't know who controls them, and you don't even know what nodes those are... and then be amazed, shocked and flabbergasted that someone saw it?
where the hell did this disconnect with reality come from?
i'm not talking about the law or government conduct. i'm talking about basic perception of the problem. whether you live in a state that gives you full freedoms it respects or you live under a repressive regime, the problem stays the same: you don't get privacy when you put something on a public wire, ever. and you never will. not because of government. because of your conduct: "here's my secrets world, i'm putting them on public wires, but they will stay secret because magic"
if something is secret and important to you, you PROTECT it by not putting it in PUBLIC. you don't put it in public and then act amazed and devastated when someone, anyone, individual, corporation, or government, invariably snoops
but there is this common, weird perception that something on a public wire magically has the same tactical standing as a locked box in your basement. it's fucking insane this attitude. i said *tactical* standing. forget legal! the legal standing doesn't mean a fucking thing: if the law said "people walking down naked in the middle of main street cannot be looked at" do you magically expect that law to making a fucking difference?
then why is everyone so up in arms about the law? individual, corporate and government conduct about their secrets in *public* places doesn't mean a fucking thing because YOU put the info on a public wire you do not control
dear world:
if it's secret, don't fucking put it in public
signed,
common sense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Privacy will be an excellent discussion to have later at tea time, as a secondary, also relevant issue.
As a non-US national, my understanding of the situation is somewhat more somber.
> Yet another news report has emerged detailing how the CIA is actively subverting low-level encryption features in mainstream hi-tech products. Responding to the story, an unnamed intelligence official essentially shrugged his shoulders and commented that "there's a whole world of devices out there, and that's what we're going to do."
There seems no point anymore in denying it. At least, we're spared from the hypocrisy of "this is not what it seems"...
> Perhaps this sort of cavalier dismissal isn't surprising given that leaked classified documents indicate that government intelligence officers view iPhone users as 'Zombies' who pay for their own surveillance.
You know, I have a lot of discussions with a friend of mine. I would raise the issue of morality and he would go like; "there goes you and your morality". After a while, people start to abide by the law and forget:
a) it was based on what was once considered "moral";
b) it's a tool to serve society, itself a tool to serve mankind... not the other way around;
c) pretend b) is not valid and watch pressure get higher until you see things go awry, like the Bastille or Ferguson.
Karma will come back at you; or "you reap what you sow".
> The past year or so of revelations paints a pretty damning portrait of the NSA and CIA. But if you read the Intercept's coverage of the CIA's subversion projects carefully you'll notice mention of Lockheed Martin. And this raises a question that hasn't received much attention: what role does corporate America play in all of this? Are American companies simply hapless pawns of a runaway national security state? Ed Snowden has stated that mass surveillance is "about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." A sentiment which has been echoed by others. Who, then, stands to gain from mass surveillance?
As a citizen from a country supposedly friendly to the US, I'd like to state my opinion -- 100% personal, since I don't even represent my family.
1. The Americans as a whole gain something from mass surveillance, as that can prevent acts of violence;
2. Even other countries gain something, since there is some degree of cooperation between the US and other nations;
3. The world gains also, even nations opposed to the US, because nobody really likes terrorism -- even prior safe harbors for these extremists now see them as uncontrollable threats.
The problem is greed. Past the point of self-defense, surveillance becomes itself a weapon to win in diplomacy, to interfere with other populations, to ensure an advantage in business etc. It's a temptation too great for some to resist. And thus starts spying of things which are unrelated to defense.
When one considers his/her own country friend of the US, the feeling is of sadness and one searches for what errors might have been made to create such a situation; alas, there were not any mistake or offense which could produce such retaliation.
You get to think then about re-evaluating the friendship as a whole; what if you're invited to dinner at the house of a guy who called the Police on you, and they came and tried to find things in your house while you were absent?
I'd probably excuse myself and use the dinner's occasion to wash my dog.
Forget about fixing that, it's like selling rotten food, people will remember and eat at other places. Or maybe not, people these days have the memory of a mouse. A non-GM one, that is.
Oh, yeah, privacy would be nice, too...
A discussion about surveillance and no one has said "Sousveillance"? Or mentioned David Brin?
As a purchaser of surveillance data, I can tell you that the answer to the question of the original post is a resounding: No.
A previous poster mentioned his license plate being tracked by the civil authorities. Well, I can tell you that corporations do that too. Tow trucks now come with cameras to read your plate to see if there is a repossession order out for your car. And when they OCR your car, they dump it into a database with a geotag, and then they SELL that data. To people like me. I won't tell you what I do with it, but it's to your economic detriment.
So, yes, people with power, the government, the corporations, the wealthy, are all going to use information to try to rule you. What are you going to do about it? Complain about tech un-savvy idiots? Hide like discrete rams among the sheep? Or are you going to stand up and look back?!
There's a lot of smug above this in the comments, so if you are really so much better than everyone else: Prove It. If you've got the Talent, pick up the tools and fight for what you think is right.
what does "shooting the messenger" mean to you?
i am merely describing reality. i'm not making reality
you don't like reality. that's fine
but you respond by attacking the guy who tells you what reality is? what kind of person does that make you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
To first answer TFA's question, the answer is "yes" and "no". It really depends on the context. Has the NSA, CIA, DHS, FBI, ATF, and just about every other 3 letter acronym caused problems? Yes! Have they extended problems or made them worse? Yes! Are they the only actors when it comes to stealing data and unauthorized access? No, but they are the only agency immune to prosecution and punishment for those actions.
Now to your point. Sure, what I post on Slashdot or Facebook is considered public and I should not expect privacy on that data. That is only a portion, and not even the largest portion of what is being captured and placed under surveillance. What I store on my laptop, PC, or private device and do not share is definitely not public domain. If I turn on location detection on my phone I am asking to be tracked, when an operator uses access point triangulation from the device it's out of my control. The latter is due mostly to the Government mandating that this device information is available.
If you wish to claim that a person has no expectation of privacy I'll ask why that is? Because manufacturers knowingly reduced security to allow Government access, or because they are just idiots that don't care about consumers. The former is the answer, the latter is delusion.
If anyone was to mod you a troll, it should be for requesting it and not using punctuation. Perhaps because the opinion you provide is the same exact talking point that the politicians pushing for the back doors uses to justify it and never considers the actual problem or even hints at solving it. "If you have nothing to hide", "it's all connected anyway", and "too late to change things now" are all just excuses to maintain a status quo which harms individual liberty. Oh, and I have heard all about the founding fathers of the country being "terrorists" too so you can save that rhetoric.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Snowden talked about social control, economic espionage, etc etc... There are a lot of things that those could mean. Economic espionage could range from the somewhat innocent, possible necessary, such as monitoring potential dual application industry to ensure that weapons are not being made. But it could also mean that agencies are stealing incomplete intellectual property from citizens and giving it to huge businesses that can afford to complete and right protect it faster. Social control could mean that angry citizens are talked away from extremist groups that might operate among us, or it could mean that random agents choose people they personally dislike and harass them.
The important issues related to this topic have nothing to do with blame. People can't just drop their smart phones today any more than their cars. That's standard equipment, and one can get by without it, but only with hardship.
I'm worried primarily about two kinds of abuse: political capture of our nation (a coup through intelligence services) and theft from motivated American minds working to accomplish things that could benefit us all. The overarching problem is that there is absolutely no way for the average citizen to know these abuses are not happening.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ed Snowden has stated that mass surveillance is "about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." A sentiment which has been echoed by others. Who, then, stands to gain from mass surveillance?
Whoever has the best combination of intel and computer aided psychological operations tools. We The People can win, because we have the numbers on our side by an enormous margin. We just have to recognize that we're in a war and beat our plowshares into swords.
Learn big data. Learn information security. Learn hacking. Learn mesh networking and darknets. Learn cryptography and steganography. Build a client for your favorite communications platform and start spidering the new commons. Whatever tickles your fancy, or all of the above. Network with others with those skills. Get your friends to register and start aging off multiple social network personas, each with credible histories. Develop a following, or multiple followings with different personas, on new media.
Best case, none of the things that look like they are already happening actually come to pass, and you'll have a valuable career skill set. Worst case, you'll have the tools you need to defend the nation from a bloodless coup built on next generation propaganda.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
External military threats could harm rich people just as easily as poor people. The 9-11 attack killed quite a lot of rich shadow-government members.
So, you bet the spying is about protecting us from foreign threats. Absolutely.
It is also about gaining a superior knowledge of the current state of the market, trade secrets, not-yet-announced products, and so on. This allows those in power to practice stock market manipulation to their extreme profit. This seems blatantly obvious to me. I am surprised that it isn't equally obvious to everyone.
There is also the side benefit of being able to apply leverage against any social threats, as was demonstrated in the decisive dismantling of the Occupy movement.
I post as A/C. It doesn't matter. The intelligence agencies all know I am posting this. Or rather, they could know, if I was worth monitoring, which I am not.
People do stuff. People watch other people do stuff. People write down what people are doing. People sell the information about what people are doing to other people. People build a business out of using lists of what people do. Someone notices. That someone has imagination, paranoia, a bit of delusion, a computer, the internet, access to an online discussion board, and marginal social skills. That person begins to write on blogs, forums and discussion boards using terms like privacy, government, big-brother, 1984, intrusion, surveillance, spying, and hackers. Other people respond making predictions, drawing ill-conceived conclusions, extrapolating wildly and exaggerating, trolling, and flame-baiting. And, nothing changes and none of the predictions come to pass. And, people do stuff ...
You Are (The Government)
Hey, sit down and listen and they'll tell you when you're wrong
Eradicate but vindicate as progress creeps along
Puritan work ethic maintains it's subconscious edge
As old glory maintains your consciousness
There's a loser in my house and a puppet on a stool
And a crowded way of life and a black reflecting pool
And as the people bend, the moral fabric dies
Then country can't pretend to ignore it's people's cries
'Cause you are the government
You are jurisprudence
You are the volition
You are jurisdiction and I make a difference too
(Bad Religion)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This may or may not be a bit off-topic, but deals a bit with planting the seeds of making it somewhat harder to monitor/decrypt your computer communications stuff.
The issue here is not that someone is watching you now because you are doing Something AntiGovernment (synonym for "Evil"), but that someone is vacuuming up everything you do, and then later when you decide to do something Evil, they will go back to their massive records and check out what you previously did.
It would be nice to have a scheme to:
1. interfere with your ability to record and decrypt everything
2. have an unbreakable code for communicating with other people
Since they vacuum up everything, let's give them stuff to vacuum up. I think I'm going to post a lot of stuff in my gmail account or hosted filespace, big gobs of files that are just random data. Ha! Let them decrypt that! I might create a TrueCrypt volume or two, and then stick that on the web. If everyone did that, the TLA agencies might drive themselves nuts trying to figure out if those files meant anything or not. I might even name the files "LatestPopularHits.mp3" or "PiratedPornVideo.mov" and dangle it in front of the latest MAFIAA antipiracy dogs.
One nice thing about having files of random gibberish on the web is that they make great one-time pads for encrypting. It's already out there, so you and I can just agree on a certain file that's on Rapidshare or something, and we can use that to encrypt; concepturally, it could be as simple as a bitwise XOR with the random file. To guard against the NSA just trying every single file on the planet for a key (I wouldn't put it past them), we could even say, "Our one-time pad is the first 123kb of File A, plus the second 456kb of file B."
So, start dumping those gobs of random data onto the web! You could even email large amounts of random garbage to a dummy email account, and then deleting it, thus costing you no more than negligible bandwidth, while the GMails and NSA's out there try to record an accumulating pile of useless garbage that no longer exists anywhere except in their own archives.
Screw all this surveillance. Screw Big Brother.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Are you as worried about the first two? Does free expression only pertain to only what not where? Does shall not infringe only to apply active militia members?