You can get anything from 30 years to a century in jail for things that goes into the hacking umbrella, even for things that traditionally you won't call attacking. And if you are outside US, a drone could visit you.
This usually goes attackers or people that exploits or just bumps against a vulnerability in US government/institution sites, but even if you do against an "evil" organization (and that it is not just a nsa/fbi cover operation or whatever) it could eventually be used against you.
Depends for what you use your mail, want to protect the content or the metadata that makes it possible to reach its destination? And your own email server could send directly to the remote destination server without touching anyone in the middle (at least, if both servers are outside US and in the same region) You are betting into another player for which you could not have inside knowledge or trust to know if is playing right or not. And sometimes you want to be sure that the email really comes from you and not from another person, maybe impersonating you.
Forgot this. Give power to the NSA. After all, they won't abuse that power, no? Well, they did, in 2008 NSA itself used to intercept phone calls from your fellow soldiers in Middle East to their loved ones, and even shared between them "interesting" calls. Are you prepared to not have that kind of privacy neither?
Is called damage mitigation, you can't change the past, so how you live in the present?.
And you could not had avoided it anyway, unless you are called Lester. The most you can do is making people aware of the current situation, so they can do something next time (i.e. vote for a 3rd party, or vote for no candidate, in big enough numbers maybe would have some effect). And this kind of discussions raise awareness.
For email, better use your own server, and don't mean one hosted in Amazon or Rackspace.
Regarding terrorism, you should be aware that this surveillance is mainly to protect the government from the enemies of the government, the more scary of them is the people, is why they are so vocal going against whisteblowers.
And about moving, most of internet goes thru US anyway, most of mail, most of social networks, no matter where you live. Some countries have their own version of PRISM too, and some could be "friendly" enough with US or US companies to have branches there. But living elsewhere puts you a bit farther from their information control.
Loosening ties with US or US based companies in general, using alternate solutions, seem to be the right approach.
Is not their problem if you feel that you don't have anything to hide. You could be committing 3 felonies a day without being aware of it. Anything that you did in your past could be used against you, even if not a matter of national security, or against some friend to frame you if they think you did something wrong. And could be in your side to prove that you are innocent, something that could be costly if even possible.
And not forget that the **AA are in bed with them, the wrong you did could be having a background music in the video you took in a birthday party or that silly theme that you were singing with your friends when drunk.
Don't think just in the present, and your precarious today's safety, Things will change. And for worse.
Which one? Android, Meego, Maemo, Tizen, WebOS, Firefox OS, Sailfish, etc? We have a lot, each one with their own strenghts and focus. Ubuntu Touch points toward integration between desktop and phones (as in you connect to a monitor and you have a desktop running from your phone) and having the same environment in phones, tablets and desktops (maybe in a bit smarter way than in Windows 8). And being Linux based, and in good part using common libraries (i.e. for a lot of them you can develop in qt/qml), or html5 apps, or being able to have compatibility layers (i.e. Preenv to run WebOS apps in Maemo) there is the possibility that a lot of apps could be shared or ported between them.
Had to be something that i could access also from my N9, be native app or light enough html. tt-rss is good, easy to put almost anywhere. But had also support for newsblur, that is open source if i ever have to host it myself, and have some social feedback and discovery that has proved useful (better than whats hot in google reader). The only missing piece of the puzzle still is search, that is in the pipeline.
PRISM affects far more than just americans. Of course, as they don't vote (not that americans vote mean or will accomplish anything, unless they are called Lester), they will act. That should give with time a big push to foreing search engines, social networks and open source software (specially mobile one)
"How much you can get wrong from metadata?" is a better question. A mistyped phone call could put you in deep water.
Thats the same problem of using tools that identifies with "99% of accuracy" on everyone. You have 1% of mismatching the right person, and an unknown percent (usually, pretty high) of matching the wrong person.
You, or someone that you care about will get a collateral damage, and it will be pretty ugly. They just don't admit when they are wrong.
Unfortunately this is another point of difference between the population of the US and the government of US. Think on it as a foreing government took over while the population remained, they won't care about what you think, unless they feel threatened and go against you.
He is just one guy. But what about asking the email and phone conversations of the top 0.1%? Think big, the real terrorists could be uncovered that way.
What about the end result? Give the government a big hammer and he will see everyone as a potential nail, even a joke, or an accident could put you in the wrong side of the stick.
And the government is a lot of people, with both clear big money behind bias, and people that could not do what is supposed to do with that information (Snowden is an example working against them, that was uncovered because he wanted to go public, think in others going against you for personal profit not going public).
Also could had prevented 1984 or Brave New World dystopias, that could lead to far more innocent victims and less than desirable life for all the rest. If everyone in the world is a virtual slave with no hope of rebellion, surely 9/11 like attacks would hardly happens, but i bet that you won't like that scenario.
Business could deserve (or at least, survive) what he have in store for them, their mothers or their deceased pet hamsters, but a chair could really harm them.
The best approach to close holes is education, not opening even more holes, forbidding closing existing ones, or making people accept to live with holes (after all, if we have no privacy because evil government, what more will do evil hackers over that?)
Is hard to be secure when you exploit 0day holes without warning the vendor to make Stuxnet and similar ones, or if you force companies to leave holes for you to enter. Those two policies are incompatible with being secure.
Also, putting people with access to virtually all (even private communications of companies/individuals) adds an specially weak point in the security. If politicians are so easy to bribe, why shouldn't be fbi/nsa agents or middle management?
Slashdot Mirror
You can get anything from 30 years to a century in jail for things that goes into the hacking umbrella, even for things that traditionally you won't call attacking. And if you are outside US, a drone could visit you.
This usually goes attackers or people that exploits or just bumps against a vulnerability in US government/institution sites, but even if you do against an "evil" organization (and that it is not just a nsa/fbi cover operation or whatever) it could eventually be used against you.
Depends for what you use your mail, want to protect the content or the metadata that makes it possible to reach its destination? And your own email server could send directly to the remote destination server without touching anyone in the middle (at least, if both servers are outside US and in the same region) You are betting into another player for which you could not have inside knowledge or trust to know if is playing right or not. And sometimes you want to be sure that the email really comes from you and not from another person, maybe impersonating you.
Forgot this. Give power to the NSA. After all, they won't abuse that power, no? Well, they did, in 2008 NSA itself used to intercept phone calls from your fellow soldiers in Middle East to their loved ones, and even shared between them "interesting" calls. Are you prepared to not have that kind of privacy neither?
Is called damage mitigation, you can't change the past, so how you live in the present?.
And you could not had avoided it anyway, unless you are called Lester. The most you can do is making people aware of the current situation, so they can do something next time (i.e. vote for a 3rd party, or vote for no candidate, in big enough numbers maybe would have some effect). And this kind of discussions raise awareness.
For email, better use your own server, and don't mean one hosted in Amazon or Rackspace.
Regarding terrorism, you should be aware that this surveillance is mainly to protect the government from the enemies of the government, the more scary of them is the people, is why they are so vocal going against whisteblowers.
And about moving, most of internet goes thru US anyway, most of mail, most of social networks, no matter where you live. Some countries have their own version of PRISM too, and some could be "friendly" enough with US or US companies to have branches there. But living elsewhere puts you a bit farther from their information control.
Loosening ties with US or US based companies in general, using alternate solutions, seem to be the right approach.
Is not their problem if you feel that you don't have anything to hide. You could be committing 3 felonies a day without being aware of it. Anything that you did in your past could be used against you, even if not a matter of national security, or against some friend to frame you if they think you did something wrong. And could be in your side to prove that you are innocent, something that could be costly if even possible.
And not forget that the **AA are in bed with them, the wrong you did could be having a background music in the video you took in a birthday party or that silly theme that you were singing with your friends when drunk.
Don't think just in the present, and your precarious today's safety, Things will change. And for worse.
Germans aren't happy about it neither. Will demand explanations to Obama when he visits them next week.
Why run Windows while DOS is mature?
Which one? Android, Meego, Maemo, Tizen, WebOS, Firefox OS, Sailfish, etc? We have a lot, each one with their own strenghts and focus. Ubuntu Touch points toward integration between desktop and phones (as in you connect to a monitor and you have a desktop running from your phone) and having the same environment in phones, tablets and desktops (maybe in a bit smarter way than in Windows 8). And being Linux based, and in good part using common libraries (i.e. for a lot of them you can develop in qt/qml), or html5 apps, or being able to have compatibility layers (i.e. Preenv to run WebOS apps in Maemo) there is the possibility that a lot of apps could be shared or ported between them.
Had to be something that i could access also from my N9, be native app or light enough html. tt-rss is good, easy to put almost anywhere. But had also support for newsblur, that is open source if i ever have to host it myself, and have some social feedback and discovery that has proved useful (better than whats hot in google reader). The only missing piece of the puzzle still is search, that is in the pipeline.
PRISM affects far more than just americans. Of course, as they don't vote (not that americans vote mean or will accomplish anything, unless they are called Lester), they will act. That should give with time a big push to foreing search engines, social networks and open source software (specially mobile one)
"How much you can get wrong from metadata?" is a better question. A mistyped phone call could put you in deep water.
Thats the same problem of using tools that identifies with "99% of accuracy" on everyone. You have 1% of mismatching the right person, and an unknown percent (usually, pretty high) of matching the wrong person.
You, or someone that you care about will get a collateral damage, and it will be pretty ugly. They just don't admit when they are wrong.
Wonder what icon it will have. That shape looks enough like a trashcan to help misplace some critical files.
Unfortunately this is another point of difference between the population of the US and the government of US. Think on it as a foreing government took over while the population remained, they won't care about what you think, unless they feel threatened and go against you.
He is just one guy. But what about asking the email and phone conversations of the top 0.1%? Think big, the real terrorists could be uncovered that way.
After getting all the private photos of your children, some NSA agents surely will think on them.
What about the end result? Give the government a big hammer and he will see everyone as a potential nail, even a joke, or an accident could put you in the wrong side of the stick.
And the government is a lot of people, with both clear big money behind bias, and people that could not do what is supposed to do with that information (Snowden is an example working against them, that was uncovered because he wanted to go public, think in others going against you for personal profit not going public).
Also could had prevented 1984 or Brave New World dystopias, that could lead to far more innocent victims and less than desirable life for all the rest. If everyone in the world is a virtual slave with no hope of rebellion, surely 9/11 like attacks would hardly happens, but i bet that you won't like that scenario.
Or a lot. But the worst thing will be, if even happen, that you will realize that you made it possible.
Business could deserve (or at least, survive) what he have in store for them, their mothers or their deceased pet hamsters, but a chair could really harm them.
Both clouds were leaking and pissing off users. Facebook must have real sysadmins.
The best approach to close holes is education, not opening even more holes, forbidding closing existing ones, or making people accept to live with holes (after all, if we have no privacy because evil government, what more will do evil hackers over that?)
Is hard to be secure when you exploit 0day holes without warning the vendor to make Stuxnet and similar ones, or if you force companies to leave holes for you to enter. Those two policies are incompatible with being secure.
Also, putting people with access to virtually all (even private communications of companies/individuals) adds an specially weak point in the security. If politicians are so easy to bribe, why shouldn't be fbi/nsa agents or middle management?
The list includes Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple, with Dropbox coming soon.
At last we will know who receives bribes in Washington and who really are behind the terrorist scare... oh, wait, you mean that is not for that?