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Privacy Behaviors Changed Little After Snowden
An anonymous reader writes: An article in Communications of the ACM takes a look at how Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillance have changed privacy behaviors across the world. The results are fairly disappointing. While the news that intelligence agencies were trawling data from everyday citizens sparked an interest in privacy, it was small, and faded quickly. Even through media coverage has continued for a long time after the initial reports, public interest dropped back to earlier levels long ago. The initial interest spike was notably less than for other major news events. Privacy-enhancing behaviors experienced a small surge, but that too failed to impart any long-term momentum. The author notes that the spike in interest "following the removal of privacy-enhancing functions in Facebook, Android, and Gmail" was stronger than the reaction to the government's privacy-eroding actions.
People can't change that radically. However the tech is going to be designed differently. That argument that happened before snowden where someone would tell the security expert he was being paranoid... that will go differently.
Corporate America is also taking the security more seriously. After Target and Sony they're starting to understand that they have to take this seriously... or else.
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I didn't change my behaviour because I was already doing what I could to protect myself from spammers, scammers, sniffers, man-in-the-middle attacks, and other such annoying and often illegal behaviour. Wherever encryption was available, I used it.
Being somewhat paranoid due to my periodic bi-polar "manic" periods, I already was convinced the goobernmints and corporations of the world were up to nefarious snooping and hacking. Snowden didn't "inform" me of anything; all he did was confirm what I already believed.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The state, which was formerly the institution from the people for the people, is now an institution to protect property and economic interests. Therefore, it must spy on us so unrest can be contained. However, this only works as long as the unrest (towards the owners) does not include 10-15% of the population. Therefore, you need media and companies which provide us with products and dreams. And to be able to perfectly match our dreams and needs you need information on us. Therefore, the companies spy on us too. Isn't that wonderful.
Why should it have made a difference? I had always assumed that this kind of surveillance went on. I was suprised that people were suprised by Snowden's revelations.
It's sad that people are more concerned with what companies are doing with their information than the government.
Why?
Unfortunately, there isn't anything really to do to increase your privacy unless you want to give everything up. Sure, I could start using PGP and encrypt all my emails. That would work great until I actually wanted to send and email to someone, because no one else I know uses PGP. I can use a "secure" search engine, but there is no way to tell if it is really secure or if I am just using an inferior product to make myself feel better. Sure, I can avoid Facebook and Twitter and everything else, but again, I then give up easy contact with those that do. The government has back doors into everything, so unless I avoid anything they might be able to access (which frankly is pretty much everything) there isn't anything I can really do.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
But the corporate media (including repeaters like /.) are designed to hew closely to the "firehose" reportage which includes drawing conclusions quickly so people stay focused on what's coming next, and anything undesirable that somehow gets reported doesn't stick around in the reported consciousness for long. This is inherently incompatible with real life where, as you say, real change takes far longer to be seen. Adherents to the firehose approach implicitly say their take is a good thing (obviously few would argue they're actively promoting something bad) despite the foreseeable adverse impact on the public's welfare.
Digital Citizen
This is the Facebook generation, who cheerfully gives all their email to Google, their personal info to Facebook, uses Tumblr to communicate with their friends, and uploads all their selfies.
They don't care about privacy. In fact, they go out of their way to destroy the privacy they could have had, in exchange for a tiny bit of convenience.
The state, which was formerly the institution from the people for the people
When was that?
First, as the Washington Post states, "Voter turnout in primary elections this year has been abysmal." People complain about government policy, yet don't exercise their power to change it. They would rather "like" something on Facebook, like that has some power to change policy. If you were able to get all those likes to turn to votes, you could have an impact on policy. Second, if you don't want companies tracking your Internet usage, stop clicking on advertisements. Get all your Facebook friends to stop clicking. Soon they will be unprofitable and will go away. Just complaining about it doesn't change anything. Protesting in the street doesn't change anything, unless you get people to change their habits. If you can't find anyone who supports your viewpoint to vote for, run yourself.
Of course the problem with this characterization is it somehow implies that this is something only people with mental illness believe.
The reality is, it is now an objective fact that it is true.
But for some reason this fact hasn't sunk in, and people keep acting like it's solely for paranoids and other crazy people to be concerned about.
And that's simply not true.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Look at what people willingly broadcast to the public over Twitter/Facebook.
Given that, why would you think they would care at all about privacy?
If you believe in privacy, you can't make the vast majority of people care about it. All we can do as computer professionals is try to provide as much privacy as possible, for those that do not know nor care...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From its creation until the first bribe. So, at least a few hours.
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There is too much news to cover the slow way exclusively.
You need at best a hybrid system with some aspect of the system being a firehose.
As to this all being corporate media's fault... can you give me a counter non-corporate media example that is better?
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The state, which was formerly the institution from the people for the people,
This is sarcasm, right? Please tell me no one is really this naive. The US was formed by a bunch of rich white people for their own interests. Hence why most states, even after ratification, maintained for many decades their requirements that one be a landowner to vote which basically denied the vote to poor white people, most freed blacks, and many others. And then even after some states relaxed that requirement for whites, they still imposed it on freed blacks.
is now an institution to protect property and economic interests.
It was always such an institution. What sort of white-washed history were you taught that you would actually believe such silliness?
"The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change"
- Edward Snowden, at the end of Terms and Conditions May Apply
It's sad that people are more concerned with what companies are doing with their information than the government.
Because people aren't allowed to be concerned about both things? Why this false dichotomy?
Vast majority of the consumers are like the frog in a pan that is being heated up very gradually. The frog doesn't realize it but it will be eventually cooked alive.
These consumers are slowly opting-in, slowly uploading their personal photos, slowly allowing their personal emails to be scanned until one day, they would realize how far down the road they have come.
I'm sorry, do I not fit correctly in your pigeonhole? I didn't mean to cause you any discomfort.
It's too damn complicated for level 1 techs, let alone end users and the general public, to attempt to opt of surveillance, or even intelligently express their dissatisfaction with government and corporate policies.
Politicians don't care and corporations do. These policies will persist until people's lives are strongly negatively affected. Will it require significant damage as a result of foreign powers hacking into the industrial grid? Probably. God knows we aren't in the streets protesting TSA security theater, and its difficult to get more privacy invasive than seeing folks naked.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
This could be because an oligarchy can get its way, even when the majority doesn't support it's actions.
Just suppose that following Snowden a large percentage of the population decided to significantly increase the security of the internet use. This would force the NSA et al to increase power of their automated collection systems to compensate and those of us already taking enhanced security measures would lose out. If the populous does nothing then the NSA can just continue as they were. ..... Nothing! (or at least nothing interesting to the NSA). He has wasted considerable time, his apple has gone brown and he has nothing to show for it. I am just as iritated as before, but now he is iritated as well.
Of course, one could argue that this lack of popular action simply makes security concious users stand out in the eyes of the NSA and attracts special attention. But perhaps this is also a good thing. Allow me to explain:
I start with the precept that the NSA will be able to gain access to practically everything I do online (and probably offline) no matter what I do. Given this, I would far rather be a special case. Imagine somone at NSA HQ clicking the "Collect and analyse all internet traffic from the UK" icon. Their computers hoover up some vast number of terabytes including mine and finds little of interest. The operative takes another bite from his apple and clicks the next icon "Collect and analyse all.....". My data has been spied on and I am iritated, but unless he finds a rotten bit of apple he isn't.
Now imagine that my security is rather better than most. The operative clicks the icon, but gets an error saying "Data from Huskydog not available". Gosh, thinks the operative, someone hiding their information, I must have stumbled upon an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell. He puts down his apple and starts to dig deeper. Eventually, after some time and effort he breaks in and
So, given that we wish to iritate the NSA (and that is probably we worst we can hope to do to them) perhaps the best solution is to have a significant number of special cases which stand out from the easy to access heard and thus require special time consuming efforts to spy on but with nothing to show for it in the end.
People can't change that radically. However the tech is going to be designed differently. That argument that happened before snowden where someone would tell the security expert he was being paranoid... that will go differently.
Corporate America is also taking the security more seriously. After Target and Sony they're starting to understand that they have to take this seriously... or else.
This. Security will be taken a little more seriously, which helps a little. There will be a *little* more oversight and pushback within government, which helps a little. It's not a fix; it's patch. What we're seeing is very similar to the response that small companies tend to make to a major security breach--they plug that particular hole, they tighten security a little bit, and they respond a little bit to public concern. It's a net positive but still not enough considering the risk of abuse of mass surveillance.
We only have evidence that they're abusing it a little bit right now--like for parallel construction, which is flagrantly unconstitutional. The concern, and the time when we'll see people more thoroughly changing their habits, will be when (1) people realize their phone calls are being coded or recorded or listened to (this will freak out EVERYONE on wall street, who make phone calls when they do illegal things), and (2) the government starts publicly using some of the information it collects to charge people, discredit people, or target people for being disappeared and people realize it.
That's how it works in the tyrannical states. We're not there yet, but we've been close in the past (think McCarthy or Hoover and what they could have done with this mass surveillance apparatus). We have a lot of great guys in intelligence and I hope that continues to be the case--but without strong institutional safeguards, that's not enough to count on.
Now our government could use the information more subtly, just to influence events by digging up dirt on key players. That will be much harder to stop and is less likely to change public use of the communications infrastructure.
I mean, do you seriously believe that the NSA doesn't have dirt on every single presidential candidate? They may not be using it out of respect for the integrity of the democratic process or out of knowledge of how bad the blowback could be, but still.
Yeah, but I only "saw" evidence of tampering when I was having manic episodes while unmedicated. Until you've dealt with clinical paranoia, you have no idea just how terrifying it is to think that every black SUV you see is an undercover cop, that everyone with a bluetooth headset is with CSIS/GCHQ/NSA/FBI/CIA, or to hear "voices" in the rumble of a furnace duct.
'tis scary shit, and far from realistic.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
it doesn't matter if your everyday joe changes or not because it's the software developers that got the wakeup call.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What exactly is it that I'm supposed to do?
Sure, I use SSL when it is available, I use AdBlock et al., I stay off of the social networking sites, but c'mon: What exactly is it that I'm supposed to do? If the government wants to snoop on me then it will. There's really nothing I can do about it.
"Encrypt all your email!" Mmhmm. Yeah, okay, sure. That will work out great when I want to send a message to my technologically normal friends and family. Web-based encrypted mail is a farce anyway - you're still relying on a Java applet, or some JavaScript, and you're trusting that it isn't leaking your keystrokes.
"Use SSL!" Great idea. Let's all use SSL. Except the NSA has the resources, reportedly, to break TLS / SSL. So... Back to zero once more.
"Use Tor!" Sure. Okay. Aside from the fact that it is slow, there have been plenty of articles here about how it's possible to track individual users on Tor - using the resources of a university computer lab. What do you think the government can do?
Basically, we're boned. These technologies are great against your neighbor next door or the 1337x0r h4x0r in the next country, but when it comes to the resources at the government's disposal, there's really very little you can do on the Internet, if anything at all, that can be kept private.
Love sees no species.
It's sad that people are more concerned with what companies are doing with their information than the government.
When a revolving door exists between corporations and Washington, and when corporations can buy public policy, what's the difference?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The idea to allow only land owners to vote is in a way sound. Have you ever owned a property which you the rented out? I have. I'm not even a slumlord, and am entirely reasonable as a person. Still, the kinds of things tenants do to your property will make your toes curl. I also worked in the car rental business to put myself through college. Same deal. Some people, for the lack of a better word, are just fucking nasty. Then you have the ones who are just out to destroy shit for the fun of it.
Why? No pride in ownership. No shits are given. Even today, I make the mistake of lending a tool or something to a friend. You'd expect that relationship would make a difference, but it doesn't. Now, I usually ask for collateral. If they destroy my stuff, I destroy their driver's license.
Requiring a vested interest of your voters might just get you better voters, huh?
Some people bemoan low voter turnout and voter apathy. I don't, because I have a more enlightened view of human nature: sometimes the best thing that can happen is nothing. If they can't be bothered to study up on the candidates or the referendums, abstaining from sharing their opinion is the correct and appropriate course of action.
I will not in any way attempt to say that I understand the entirety or magnitude of the issue. While I've known people with mental illnesses, that doesn't mean I can truly understand it.
But I lament that one has to describe internet privacy and security as something which you have to be in the throes of a clinical mental illness to appreciate.
Because these days, a perfectly sane and rational person should be assuming that governments are, in fact, spying on them. Or at the very least have the capacity to do so with shockingly little oversight.
But if people think that only clinical paranoids are, or should be, concerned about such things .. people will continue to act as it only clinical paranoids are concerned about such things.
And, that's just simply not true.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No. There's too much irrelevant celebrity bullshit and unimportant fluff to do that, but that kind of "news" is designed to distract, not inform. Only cover the important issues and there's plenty of time.
Any comedian (and yes, I realize what that implies about what a fucking sad a state of affairs we're really in). In particular, John Stewart, Steven Colbert and John Oliver are infinitely more informative than any allegedly-"actual" "news." And I mean "infinitely" literally, by the way -- measuring the valuable insight of, say, Fox News is like dividing by zero.
For example, John Oliver devoted an entire half-hour to government surveillance, including an interview with Edward Snowden where he (humorously) distilled these privacy issues into terms the general public would understand. I'm fucking appalled to have to say this, but that is many orders of magnitude better journalism than I've seen from any of those pathetically worthless toadies who actually call themselves "journalists" in decades.
And that's not even all! If you look at Youtube's autoplay list for John Oliver's videos, it appears that just about every goddamn episode covers an actually-important issue (civil forfeiture, the wealth gap, crumbling infrastructure, police brutality, net neutrality, etc.) and does it better than anyone in the mainstream media has managed since Walter fucking Cronkite!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This news is about as surprising as the Sun rising in the morning. As I, and others, have explained multiple times across the years - the average person isn't the tinfoil hat privacy nutter that so many here on Slashdot are.
is now an institution to protect property and economic interests
Are you sure about that? Like, have you done a poll?
Because most people seem like scared chicken shits these days, who would gladly hand over these freedoms they don't think they need any more for protection from turrists.
Why privacy because a citizen has it and a slave does not. The freedom to keep yourself to yourself versus being slavishly continuously exposed to the inspection and judgement of others. Privacy is about the choice to be private, loss of privacy is the loss of that choice, that choice being denied and even worse the association with public humiliation and degradation that comes with that loss of choice.
Now, strangely enough challenge those with power enough and you have to abandon privacy otherwise they will forcefully invade it with the claims that your attempt to maintain privacy is an attempt to hide conspiracy and seek to expose you supposed conspiratorial secrets with a life threatening armed assault. So requiring you to abandon privacy to a degree to enable them to spy. This as a personal defence, as they then no longer have an excuse for a physical raid, something they will be looking for in order to punish you via corrupt prosecution as punishment, not conviction, just the abuse of the prosecutorial procedure.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
1) Technology companies are pushing back, and it is enough to get the Intel folks to complain. This gives the average Joe more tools to work with.
2) Congress is also pushing back. I am amazed at how the Intel folks can say (with a straight face) "congress approved all this and was fully briefed and should have known". Because many in congress don't feel like they were appropriately briefed. I think that is behind the recent stalemate in congress.
What you call "the slow way" is called journalism. Journalism, like scientific work or any other work worth doing, takes time to do. There are plenty of examples of independent journalism being done well, some have already been shared in this thread by others. Here are some more that come to mind: Democracy Now!, NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal were both quite well done and worth watching reruns/archives (moreso the Journal), CounterPunch, Harry Shearer's weekly Le Show, and The Real News. All of these focus on issues of importance, get more deeply into those issues via interviews with those who have studied the topic in-depth via investigative journalism and those who work in the field, and leave you with pointers to more information you can study yourself. I'm sure there are so many more examples of this work being done well I didn't list but don't let that stop you from trying various sources and reading books (paper books, not DRM'd proprietary-driven computer-based readers that track you, threaten to cut off your reading, or deny you the other freedoms paper grants). You won't agree with everything you see, hear, and read but the point isn't to manufacture your consent, it's to get you thinking critically about the world outside the allowable limits of debate so often featured in mainstream coverage.
Digital Citizen
Even if you strip away the fluff there is too much. You have to pick and choose what you're going to investigate and what you're not.
Furthermore, the fluff is interesting to a lot of people so you have to report that as well. You do NOT have to investigate it though.
As to comedians being better at the news... no. Comedians are as good at science as they are at reporting the news.
They talk about what they think is funny and what will get the crowd on their side.
Let us say that something is happening that the crowd doesn't want to hear about or which the crowd is going to be irrational about?
Lets say the local government is spending too much money and they'll either need to cut services or increase taxes. Pretty common... notice how the comedians don't talk about that?
You've sadly fallen into the trap of thinking the daily show is an actual news program.
It isn't... May god have mercy on your soul. :D
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No, its investigative journalism. Not all journalism is investigative.
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John Oliver and his team are the best investigative journalists in the USA.
--
It's a poor workman who blames his tools; a rich workman can afford better tools.
If you find this funny, stop for a moment and consider WHY it is you find this funny.
Because it isn't in the slightest. Having this as the accepted reality of state formation in human society speaks volumes of us as species.
In medieval Europe, it was only the court jester who could, without [much] fear, speak uncomfortable truths to the king.
You misunderstand me: I'm well aware that it's not. The problem is that the "real" news programs are much, much worse!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's how we operate. We all know that overeating is bad for us -- down the road, but does that stop us? No. It takes a heart attack that we (hopefully) survive, or that of a loved one to make us change. We don't change behaviors just because we know we should, or demand change that we know is good for us. It takes a crisis.
Once these technologies are abused wholesale, then we'll see change. Until then, I wouldn't hold my breath.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As to jesters, that's nonsense. The various lords in the oligarchy which is actually what any feudal kingdom is... will of course tell the king when they think he's wrong.
That does not mean they'll do it disrespectfully. And the various protocols etc for that will shift from one king to the next.
As to this notion that the king will tolerate a jester contradicting him on political matters... No. In that setting, the jester's job is to DISTRACT the king from stressful matters. Which means if he brings up things bothering him that the king does not want to talk about... it will not be appreciated.
What is more, this reference has no baring on our current society.
We have freedom of speech. Nothing stops you from saying someone else is wrong. So you hardly need some fool to do it for you.
Really, your entire line of reasoning is just depressing. You're apparently some person that got comfortable getting their news from the daily show or something which is basically the news for idiots.
It is ENTERTAINMENT. If you HONESTLY think that is news, I pity you.
Good day.
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Having this as the accepted reality of state formation in human society speaks volumes of us as species.
I'm new here. Please enlighten me as to the reality of state formation in other species.
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