Facebook has become the world's biggest distraction, and people living under authoritarian governments are so distracted by Facebook and similar sites that they have stopped paying attention to politics. Additionally, authoritarian governments have already started using publicly available information on Facebook to track down dissidents for prosecution. Facebook has little reason to fight against any government demands for information, especially in the United States.
I would place Facebook near the bottom of the list of sites that have made useful contributions to human rights or democracy. It is possible that 4chan has done more than Facebook to spread democracy and freedom.
Encrypt your email using PGP -- probably the best option, since most mail servers will capitulate to government demands and therefore privacy protection cannot be guaranteed without encryption.
Run your own mail server, if you have the technical skill to do so, and allow your less technically skilled friends to use your server
Similar options for IM -- use OTR or some similar encryption system, and if possible run your own XMPP server.
Funny how law enforcement officers were able to do their jobs before mass surveillance technologies became available. You know, back in the days where privacy was guaranteed by the technical limitations of law enforcement? Before wiretapping, before CALEA, before the crypto wars, back when privacy rights were actually respected in free societies, the police were still able to do their jobs.
Law enforcement agencies are more powerful today than at any other point in human history. Why are we not talking about reducing that power?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
American citizens have a right to privacy and are supposed to be free from broad, non-specific searches (e.g. like the NSA wiretapping program). The fact that we have strayed from our founding principles is another story entirely; the right has not been official revoked so much as simply ignored.
Software is never going to completely defend your privacy
Irrelevant; the point is to make it expensive to engage in mass surveillance, not to make it impossible.
the privacy of the millions upon millions of ordinary users who have never heard of your super-awesome encryption software
Yet the number of Tor users has been growing steadily over the past few years, and every time an authoritarian government tries to block Tor more people become interested in it.
Only the 'legalware' of challenging government (and non-governmental) intrusion in the courts can ultimately defend your rights.
And no, I think it's absurd that writing encryption software entitles you to lead the struggle vs survelliance.
You claimed that Julian Assange had no right to speak about online privacy because he had no experience with it. That is plainly false given his involvement with the cypherpunks movement and his involvement with a deniable encryption system. Now you are claiming that is not enough? Somehow, I think you are just an anti-Assange/anti-Wikileaks shill.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
You have the right to privacy; that right is not predicated on being a political dissident. The fact that these companies are undermining that right is what Assange is referring to when he says that you have been screwed.
There are more attempts to censor things now, but the level of successful censorship is definitely low. All the stuff you mention is accessible on the internet. The rise in attempts at censorship is partly down to a greater willingness to use lawsuits to silence critics or hide embarrassing information.
Do you think there were no communists in America in the 1950s, or that they were not producing any literature? Do you think that the McCarthy commission or the FBI under Hoover were not embarrassing people?
As for child pornography specifically the act of creating it is a crime, specifically child abuse. It seems like a reasonable balance to tolerate possession but prosecute creation. It isn't ideal but it also the best compromise.
My view on the child pornography issue is this: the danger lies with people who abuse children. Possessing child pornography does not prove that one is a child abuser, nor does fantasizing about child abuse. In the computer age, where data is rapidly copied between systems, distributing anything indicates nothing at all.
We live in an age of rapid, global communication -- the old economic arguments about possession fueling production simply do not apply anymore. The fact that most people find child pornography to be disgusting is no reason to make it illegal to possess. New technologies necessitate a new approach to prosecuting child molesters, and we need to make sure that we are actually prosecuting child molesters and not just picking up low-threat people who have some child porn on their hard drives (which in all likelihood was downloaded without any transaction or trade).
your position suggests that there was leas censorship in the fifties than there is now. Obviously that isn't true
Is that obvious? True, pornography and communist literature has been legalize, but we have since made the following things illegal or have otherwise engaged in censorship:
Child pornography (for a short period of time after pornography was legalized, it was not illegal to possess child pornography; moral arguments aside, we do censor this now, and to a much greater degree than pornography in general was censored in an earlier era)
Information on drug production (TiHKAL an PiHKAL cost Alexander Shulgin his research license)
Islamist literature
Source code for algorithms that crack certain ciphers or subvert certain security systems
Laws (yes, really, there are laws that you are not allowed to know about)
...and that only represents the list of things that immediately come to my mind. While there was quite a bit of censorship in the 1950s, I would say that we are either at the same level today, or even slightly beyond that level.
I will stand up an say it: no type of content should be illegal to distribute or possess. Sorry, I know it really hurts the "think of the children" and "oh my God terrorists will know how to make nukes" crowds, but we are supposed to be the country where people are free, inclusive of being free from censorship. Once we get into the business of prosecuting people because of files on their hard drives, documents on their bookshelves, or thoughts in their minds, we cease to be a free society (so I guess we are not a free society).
FTFY; what is at issue here is not whether or not you are free to produce "counterfeit" goods (which are probably being made by the same people who produce "genuine" goods), but whether or not you are free to run a mail-order business that sells those goods.
trying to pretend that companies attempting to prevent the unlawful copying of their movies is anything to do with the last two points is wrong, and dumb
Good thing I was trying to pretend that the US government was seizing domain names in the name of protecting those companies "intellectual property rights." We are not talking about companies suing people for violations, we are talking about a government action which was not prompted by a court procedure and which undermined the free and open nature of the Internet. If these companies were suing the counterfeiters in court, or suing people or importing infringing goods, you would have a point.
This will just push people toward less centralized systems; Tor hidden services come to my mind as does Freenet, but there are others out there.
It is time to admit that the age of copyrights is over, and the longer we wait in developing a new method of monetizing creative works, the harder it will become.
Which liberals would you be referring to? The majority of politicians in the United States are conservatives, with varying degrees of conservatism. Long before the TSA, so-called "liberals" in the United States government so no problem with our prison population or the enormous power that the law enforcement agencies in this country have amassed. You already have no representation -- when will you start voting third party or perhaps running your own campaign?
Free software is not developed by anonymous people. In theory it could be, but in practice people use their real names and someone is responsible for the servers and infrastructure used to manage the project.
Even if there were hundreds of anonymous people, there would be a few key contributors; tracking them down and suing them off the face of the Earth would be sufficient to kill a project.
That may be true of urban mass transit systems and commuter rail, but intercity rail in the United States is slow because it is still largely pulled by diesel engines and low-speed electric engines. We do not have a high speed rail infrastructure, and even the stretches of rail that can support high speed operations are bogged down by grade-level crossings, regulations, other rail traffic, and the condition of some of the rails and overhead wires.
Why do we need this? Maybe it is because I am an American, and I am still waiting for high speed rail in the first place, but I am not really seeing the advantage to this system.
There's really only one solution: hold software makers libel for security vulnerabilities
...and thus kill the free software movement.
The real answer is that dissidents need to start being more paranoid and more technically literate. A system that is used for personal entertainment should be kept physically separated from a system that is used to communicate with fellow dissidents.
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook has become the world's biggest distraction, and people living under authoritarian governments are so distracted by Facebook and similar sites that they have stopped paying attention to politics. Additionally, authoritarian governments have already started using publicly available information on Facebook to track down dissidents for prosecution. Facebook has little reason to fight against any government demands for information, especially in the United States.
I would place Facebook near the bottom of the list of sites that have made useful contributions to human rights or democracy. It is possible that 4chan has done more than Facebook to spread democracy and freedom.
Similar options for IM -- use OTR or some similar encryption system, and if possible run your own XMPP server.
Funny how law enforcement officers were able to do their jobs before mass surveillance technologies became available. You know, back in the days where privacy was guaranteed by the technical limitations of law enforcement? Before wiretapping, before CALEA, before the crypto wars, back when privacy rights were actually respected in free societies, the police were still able to do their jobs.
Law enforcement agencies are more powerful today than at any other point in human history. Why are we not talking about reducing that power?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
American citizens have a right to privacy and are supposed to be free from broad, non-specific searches (e.g. like the NSA wiretapping program). The fact that we have strayed from our founding principles is another story entirely; the right has not been official revoked so much as simply ignored.
Software is never going to completely defend your privacy
Irrelevant; the point is to make it expensive to engage in mass surveillance, not to make it impossible.
the privacy of the millions upon millions of ordinary users who have never heard of your super-awesome encryption software
Yet the number of Tor users has been growing steadily over the past few years, and every time an authoritarian government tries to block Tor more people become interested in it.
Only the 'legalware' of challenging government (and non-governmental) intrusion in the courts can ultimately defend your rights.
Thus explaining this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsa_wiretapping
And no, I think it's absurd that writing encryption software entitles you to lead the struggle vs survelliance.
You claimed that Julian Assange had no right to speak about online privacy because he had no experience with it. That is plainly false given his involvement with the cypherpunks movement and his involvement with a deniable encryption system. Now you are claiming that is not enough? Somehow, I think you are just an anti-Assange/anti-Wikileaks shill.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
You have the right to privacy; that right is not predicated on being a political dissident. The fact that these companies are undermining that right is what Assange is referring to when he says that you have been screwed.
Yeah, it's not like Assange was involved with the Cypherpunks or ever wrote any encryption software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose
New allegations surface that Julian Assange was sacrificing babies to Satan while raping women in Sweden! More at 10...
I guess you and I will never be friends then.
There are more attempts to censor things now, but the level of successful censorship is definitely low. All the stuff you mention is accessible on the internet. The rise in attempts at censorship is partly down to a greater willingness to use lawsuits to silence critics or hide embarrassing information.
Do you think there were no communists in America in the 1950s, or that they were not producing any literature? Do you think that the McCarthy commission or the FBI under Hoover were not embarrassing people?
As for child pornography specifically the act of creating it is a crime, specifically child abuse. It seems like a reasonable balance to tolerate possession but prosecute creation. It isn't ideal but it also the best compromise.
Agreed.
My view on the child pornography issue is this: the danger lies with people who abuse children. Possessing child pornography does not prove that one is a child abuser, nor does fantasizing about child abuse. In the computer age, where data is rapidly copied between systems, distributing anything indicates nothing at all.
We live in an age of rapid, global communication -- the old economic arguments about possession fueling production simply do not apply anymore. The fact that most people find child pornography to be disgusting is no reason to make it illegal to possess. New technologies necessitate a new approach to prosecuting child molesters, and we need to make sure that we are actually prosecuting child molesters and not just picking up low-threat people who have some child porn on their hard drives (which in all likelihood was downloaded without any transaction or trade).
your position suggests that there was leas censorship in the fifties than there is now. Obviously that isn't true
Is that obvious? True, pornography and communist literature has been legalize, but we have since made the following things illegal or have otherwise engaged in censorship:
I will stand up an say it: no type of content should be illegal to distribute or possess. Sorry, I know it really hurts the "think of the children" and "oh my God terrorists will know how to make nukes" crowds, but we are supposed to be the country where people are free, inclusive of being free from censorship. Once we get into the business of prosecuting people because of files on their hard drives, documents on their bookshelves, or thoughts in their minds, we cease to be a free society (so I guess we are not a free society).
people who don't understand it seem to think they should be able to control it anyway.
This is a direct consequence of the fact that people who do not understand the Internet also happen to be its principle users.
are we free to sell counterfeit goods?
FTFY; what is at issue here is not whether or not you are free to produce "counterfeit" goods (which are probably being made by the same people who produce "genuine" goods), but whether or not you are free to run a mail-order business that sells those goods.
trying to pretend that companies attempting to prevent the unlawful copying of their movies is anything to do with the last two points is wrong, and dumb
Good thing I was trying to pretend that the US government was seizing domain names in the name of protecting those companies "intellectual property rights." We are not talking about companies suing people for violations, we are talking about a government action which was not prompted by a court procedure and which undermined the free and open nature of the Internet. If these companies were suing the counterfeiters in court, or suing people or importing infringing goods, you would have a point.
This will just push people toward less centralized systems; Tor hidden services come to my mind as does Freenet, but there are others out there.
It is time to admit that the age of copyrights is over, and the longer we wait in developing a new method of monetizing creative works, the harder it will become.
Which liberals would you be referring to? The majority of politicians in the United States are conservatives, with varying degrees of conservatism. Long before the TSA, so-called "liberals" in the United States government so no problem with our prison population or the enormous power that the law enforcement agencies in this country have amassed. You already have no representation -- when will you start voting third party or perhaps running your own campaign?
Go ahead, put this in the airports, see if I care. Bring that crap near my beloved train stations, and we will have a problem.
That may be true of urban mass transit systems and commuter rail, but intercity rail in the United States is slow because it is still largely pulled by diesel engines and low-speed electric engines. We do not have a high speed rail infrastructure, and even the stretches of rail that can support high speed operations are bogged down by grade-level crossings, regulations, other rail traffic, and the condition of some of the rails and overhead wires.
Why do we need this? Maybe it is because I am an American, and I am still waiting for high speed rail in the first place, but I am not really seeing the advantage to this system.
...perhaps dissidents should not be carrying around cell phones? I thought that much was obvious...
My point was really about governments that spy on dissident groups' communication, as in this case from Vietnam:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Malware-Attacks-Target-Vietnam-Dissidents-498247/
There's really only one solution: hold software makers libel for security vulnerabilities
The real answer is that dissidents need to start being more paranoid and more technically literate. A system that is used for personal entertainment should be kept physically separated from a system that is used to communicate with fellow dissidents.