Comment by peterkelly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterkelly | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is the so-called "chilling effect" that's one of the most worrying implications of mass surveillance on a society... people feel afraid to speak out due to a concern they may be added to a list of some sort, and face negative real-life repercussions due to expressing their free speech.

There were a couple of times where I actually called the public contact numbers for NSA & GCHQ regarding particular stories about which I was especially upset, identifying myself by name and politely but firmly expressing my views. NSA told me to go away, but surprisingly the woman at GCHQ heard me out for several minutes and let me finish my rant. That's the British establishment for you I guess - they can be assholes, but polite assholes.

Snowden risked everything to inform us all of the crimes of the FVEY governments and the least we can all do is take inspiration from his actions and stand up and publicly make our views known, whatever they may be. The day people stop being willing to express their political views publicly is the day we lose something very important.

NSA - my name and XKEYSCORE selectors are in my profile. Feel free to add me to whatever lists I'm not already on.

It's not so much about mass surveillance but rather things like the TSA and stupid immigration policies which are at play here.

Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance. It's not even a breach of privacy in any sense, because that's exactly what petitions are for.

> Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance.

No. The goal of a petition is to show support for a course of action, and in this context, exercising freedom of speech in a democracy.

Taking the list of people who signed a petition, assigning a "risk score" to them because of their activism, storing it in a database for the future, and using that as a means to make decisions that affect those individuals freedoms is exactly the purpose of mass surveillance. In isolation, for one petition or one activity, it is a sensible thing. As a general practice it promotes the notion of thought-crime or pre-crime in which an individuals freedoms are curtailed because the individuals exercise of their freedoms is unpalatable to either the elected officials, or the entrenched bureaucracy.

Even taking that list and using it to discredit people isn't mass surveillance, it may just be mean, or stupid or even evil.

On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way. You just had to look harder for this information.

You are correct, taking a single data point and discrediting people with it isn't surveillance.

Taking the list, and merging it with the myriad of other sets of metadata, reports, and other resources at the government's disposal is what makes it a contribution to surveillance.

Taking all of those lists and resources, and performing that activity as a blanket activity across an entire population is what makes it mass.

Your argument is entirely unhelpful because you are arguing one specific activity, which on it's own, against a single person or group of people, might be sensible, but across the general population, without any reasonable suspicion of ill intent, leads to exactly the kinds of problems that we all piss and moan about when we get on an airplane (security theatre, screening for brown people, not terrorists, etc, etc, etc).

Also, unless that petition is material to their ability to do their job, what the hell does it matter?

> it may just be mean, or stupid or even evil.

Well, you could say that about the Nazis and Charles Manson, too. Couldn't you basically call anything just a "physical process" and get it over with? The rights of people are being violated by those sworn to protect them, and they feel helpless to change that. That is a problem, to put it mildly.

> On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way.

Yeah, it always was that way with too many people, and left unchecked, it will lead to the destruction of humanity. So I propose a new and much better way: when "researching" people, do not trust anyone who didn't give you positive confirmation of having spine, attention span and responsibility. I'm not saying signing a petition does that, but generally: go the other way. Do not waste your personal and professional time and energy on people who after all may remain on the wrong side of history. If the ground you stand on is not liberated ground at all times, reconsider your life. Don't be that guy obedient to what ultimately amounts to a bunch of deranged folk from a Stephen King novel or something. Realize that it would not be more than that, and that they too shall pass. The only open question is, whether they will take humanity with them, but there is no question in my mind about "their" (our) self-destructiveness. It's just not worth it to give in, in the really long run.

> "Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

-- from the movie "All the Presidents Men" (1976)

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it's important to distinguish between two things.

One is personal accountability for the views that you express, where people around you might dislike you for it. That's pretty unavoidable, but you can also choose who you associate with.

The other is the government threatening or implying a threat to its citizens for thinking or believing a certain thing. This is very bad in the long run for minorities in race, opinion, or otherwise. Changing which government you live under is potentially quite difficult, certainly harder than choosing who you hang out with.

> It's not so much about mass surveillance but rather things like the TSA and stupid immigration policies which are at play here.

There have been cases in the past where American citizens have been refused entry into the US: they've been denied boarding in a foreign airport, leaving them stuck there. I know, it is hard to believe, but it is true.

What's worrying is not so much that the petition to be considered as Mass surveillance... but that the petition coupled with data obtained through mass surveillance. Who knows what kind of flag it will raise signing this petition will have when coupled with a ton and a half of seemingly unrelated data.

What recourse one has to proove wrong some top-secret algorithm once said flag has been raised ?

Paranoia is extremely contagious and often countered with more paranoia.

This chilling effect has a counterpart which would be directly amplified by pardoning Snowden.

In short, if Snowden gets pardoned, it will encourage further people to leak confidential documents and violate the Espionage act since they will be emboldened by the thought they might get pardoned down the road.

That sounds great to me. We need more whistle blowers and more civil disobedience. We need to change, the US is a joke; a parody of itself. We have all of this freedom branding, but are afraid of that freedom. We cower behind a police state and express our fear as hatred for those who are different from us. We have exported the American Dream to the world and destroyed everything about ourselves that made this place special.

We have demolished the middle class. Our infrastructure is shit. Education is so expensive it often makes economic sense not to get educated. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on "defense" instead of investing it in fixing all of the broken shit we have going on.

Worse, our election system is so broken that we have to pick between two pieces of shit that don't represent anyone's interests. There is no nuance, it's one tantrum after another.

Who do we hate now? Who's personal life do we need to pry onto? Can we talk about how hot Kurdish freedom fighters are? Hillary is not a criminal, she's like grandma. Can you believe Tump has small hands? Look at his skin! Jobs?! You want jobs? Talk to the Mexicans who took your jobs. TPP? What TPP? NAFTA? What is? You want healthcare? Welcome to indentured servitude. National healthcare is for freedom-hating communist muslims. Public education? Too expensive. Of course, we have to spend $1.5 trillion on fighter jets, but that's basic common sense.

I am honestly disgusted by what we've become. We should change our slogan to "fuck the world, kill them all". Then, at least, we'd be honest.

> We cower behind a police state

I don't think you have any idea what a police state is.

Maybe you could enlighten me?

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_beli...

This is not true. Snowden had to fly to Russia and live there for three years before a hypothetical pardon. If that is the minimum for the possibility of a pardon, I don't think many people would find that emboldening.

That's not really true. Though i'm in favor of pardoning him on balance, it would definitely embolden other leakers. I'm quite sure that if I was someone considering leaking classified documents and I saw him get pardoned after spending 3 years in Russia, it'd embolden me.

Spending three years in exile is not great, but it's a far cry from a long prison sentence for leaking classified documents.

It should embolden other leakers. The official reporting for these things is corrupted beyond viability. But Obama won't pardon him. He's at least as conservative as Bush and in some ways far far worse (that he's a considered a constitutional scholar is laughable).

There are many axes on which you can be liberal or conservative. He is President, not a judge, and his job is to lead the country. There's not much point in acknowledging Obama's security policies without mentioning his social, fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies.

Obama may be one things, but lying on a political spectrum neatly is not one of them. In fact, it's pretty damn hard finding a president who HAS been straightforwardly liberal or progressive, much less one that played well with the constitution. I'm not sure why you expect those two things to align.

Especially if you plan ahead a bit better than Snowden did and emigrate to the country of your choice while you can still travel before leaking the documents.

There's only a handful of countries capable/willing to resist a US extradition request. Your choices are extremely limited.

Sure, you could try to go "underground" but you'd then become a top assassination target for the worlds most powerful security service. No one would ever know of your assassination either - you'd just disappear.

This is true. Still it's a lot of work and prep but I guess If someone is bent on releasing docs they're gonna hopefully plan out for the future.

The other leakers, the ones without great plans, have much weaker media followings.

Those potential leakers might be emboldened, but I doubt many would get away with it. There is also a great deal to be said for Snowden being right.

If the President pardoned him while denouncing other named leakers (Manning, et al), and highlighting that Snowden was the only one protecting the constitution. Then perhaps only the leakers strongly backed by the constitution would be emboldened.

If people are emboldened to blow the whistle on outrageous, secret, unconstitutional, anti-democratic activities of the US or state governments, then this is the best possible outcome.

However, if people emboldened to get their 5 minutes of fame for releasing some really juicy confidential or top secret info that has nothing to do with [your list here], this is the WORST possible outcome.

You act as if it is all arbitrary but I'd assert that, on balance, it's largely not. We have a system of laws and the contention is that many of these programs are extraconstitutional aka – illegal and in contradiction to the US constitution. When things are done in secret, there is no opportunity for the legal process to work, just as it largely has for many other cases over many years. It isn't perfect, but rogue actors and illegal program hiding behind governmental authority certainly cannot be argued as better.

Even the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it clear that soldiers have a duty to not obey an unlawful order. The idea is that we are all answerable to the principles in the constitution (and, if you believe, to a higher power or to the idea that some rights are considered inalienable).

So, no, I don't agree with your implicit assertion that all of this is arbitrary and depends only on the whims of the individual.

In theory, that's what impartial courts are supposed to be for. To make fair judgements on the specifics of each case.

If the public interest and the principles of freedom were served by the leak, then that should be treated very different than a purely self-serving (or dangerous) leak.

Seriously. I feel the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has just been thrown out the window. Parent comment is literally advocating "guilty even if you're innocent because someone else might potentially be convinced to commit a crime in the future"

Yes but you're being a bit naïve here. Things never really go like this.

Snowden didn't just blow the whistle on some shady activities, he dumped hundreds of confidential documents that put at risk the lives of hundreds of operatives working for your freedom and others'.

define "dumped." He tried internal channels, which unsurprisingly failed (as several legitimate whistle-blowers and even just employees have expressed) and then went to well-reputed journalists in the most professional, transparent, and safe way possible. They even leaked redacted materials slowly to emphasize this.

So: Why did you use the word "dumped" and can you explain explicitly what he did wrong?

Snowden dumped foreign operations on foreign journalists unredacted... already bad... who also aren't experts at INFOSEC or OPSEC. They then published a bunch of them with some redactions of names but not methods. Many of the methods were quite unique to the point that they helped identify Equation Group and some other stuff later. A number of others would've been blown simply because the targets would know what to look for, what components to replace, what systems were less vulnerable, and so on. I doubt anyone died but they definitely lost lots of SIGINT. It's a natural consequence of their specific mechanisms all being exposed at once to targets that read the news.

So, like Manning, he definitely leaked stuff he didn't need to leak that harmed NSA's foreign operations that Americans were OK with. The kind the NSA was created for. That's not whistleblowing like his domestic stuff that Alexander and Clapper lied about. That makes him a whistleblower on domestic leaks and traitor on most, foreign ones. I put in for pardon given benefit of the whistleblowing but he's certainly guilty of damaging leaks.

I just don't see a reason to charge him if lots of scumbags on top are still walking free despite clear potential for Contempt of Congress or perjury charges. A little unjust, yeah?

You're thinking of Manning, not Snowden.

Ah the Espionage Act. It's written by the organization that will penalize you if you speak out against them - but don't worry, they're dedicated to protect your speech even if you speak out against them.

Yeah, laws, acts, and shit suck, right? Because they weren't written by me, especially, by your tally. Maybe if you folks would stop worrying about being "put on some list" as if that'll happen because you say "Snowden should be pardoned!" What about the list for us good people that say "Snowden should be tried and jailed!" Don't you want to be on OUR list?

Good people? I believe the argument is that these "good people" would be counted as sheep compared to those that would be against the powers that be. So yes, you would be counted as "good sheeple"

Critiques can also be sincere, careful, and nuanced. Language like that permits one to dismiss an adversary without considering the critique.

My apologies. What exactly is your position here?

If doing so proves beyond a shadow of doubt that our government officers are lying both to the people of the United States and to their representatives in Congress, as Director of National Intelligence did, isn't that a good thing?

You could make the same argument about every single pardon, and yet nobody really worries about this outcome.

The solution to that is not to not sign the petition, but to lobby for proper whistleblower protection, so the whistleblowers go through the proper channels to expose the crimes without retaliation.

If the answer to that is "well, they'll never agree to that", then leaking will happen regardless of whether Snowden is pardoned or not.

Sounds like a positive outcome, to me.

And this is a problem how?

What if some whistleblower wannabe releases information about the next strike on [pick a target] just because he thinks words are better than weapons and we should "talk it out."

What about that kind of problem?

It depends. Are we talking about the constitution being violated in the process?

Depends.

Is it another strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital? How about a school or a wedding?

What about some jarheads in a chopper gunning down unarmed civilians?

Sounds awesome, let's get the ball rolling.

I used to work for the UK National Council for Civil Liberties - the UK ACLU if you like. (I was trying to prevent legislation removing right to silence in UK).

The organisation was well respected and had before I got there forced Britain's Security Services to admit and release to holding files on all the workers there - people who later became cabinet ministers under Blair / brown.

I have always assumed I also have a very thin file.

I am not ashamed of having that file or have having taken democratic action to change my society. What I am ashamed of is having done it so badly - the campaign did not really use web or email (This was the when of Internet cafes), I had no suit when I went to the Lords and got flustered on radio interviews.

So in answer to you, sign the petition. Be proud of your dissent and mostly do your best to make an effective protester. there is plenty of time to turn the ship around before western democracies become irredeemable. But we do need to Start. Why not here?

What is especially worrying (as partially evidenced by the OP) is that it's difficult--if not impossible, due to the proliferation of secret laws and secret courts--to know what is legal, both for oneself and for the government. Most people are not willing to test the legality of the no-fly list, so they will self-censor to avoid the risk of being added to it. The recent raid of Tor exit node operators in Seattle is enough to discourage future operators even if the raid was illegal. The government leverages a massive power and information asymmetry in the ability to argue its case in court and in the consequences for breaking the law.

chilling effects need to be kept in perspective; for example, while I'm completely fearless about telling off the govt whenever I wish, no way I'm going to reveal how I feel about Snowden to the HN community: I'd be ostracized!

We should hope that all perspectives could be voiced here, if they are reasoned well and non-combative. If we feel strongly about something, it usually signals the end of thought and the beginning of belief. It's valuable to understand an angle that challenges popular opinion, so that we can question our beliefs, begin to think again, and remember that everything is a probability, rather than an absolute.

Please consider sharing!

What about a negative opinions? OSTRACIZED! Didn't like someone's show HN? OSTRACIZED! Didn't make your post happy enough? OSTRACIZED! Cuss a bit? OSTRACIZED! Offend the army of apple/react/nodejs/cloud/social fanatics? OSTRACIZED!

Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)

(In the interest of keeping topicality, one could argue the above are examples of chilling effects in a community)

>Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)

people who care to take part and comment here might be more sensitive to social approval than the median - the quest for approval might ba a motive to participate. Therefore the loss of a few points might be more of a loss for them. In the long run that is not so good for the diversity of opinions, but so it goes...

You forgot the Android fanatics.

Got me wondering if one's PGP fingerprint (or other cryptographic fingerprints) are "selectors" in XKEYSCORE

Yeah,I would shocked if it wasn't. Its a unique fingerprint that can be used to collect large amounts of metadata of a subset of the population that is both technically able, not wanting to be listened to.

nailed it.

i appreciate the parent's frank concern regarding signing this Petition "God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US..."

your response is the body punch that reminds us who is the person at the heart of this petition and that whatever the risks referred to in the parent, they are minuscule by comparison

as you said "the least we can do"

Hold on... How is this a chilling effect from mass surveillance? Signing a petition is an act of public announcement that you support something.

It's a chilling effect because the current view in the US is that something as seemingly innocuous as peaceably assembling (virtually in this case) and exercising your right to free speech would possibly result in more data being added to "your permanent record" which, it is believed, has the potential to be used against you in unpredictable ways.

To be more specific, this (let's say) metaphorical file could have entries in it as a result of you signing a petition to pardon Snowden. While such entries could be myriad and varied in detail, I'll pick two hypothetical variations.

1) "Subject exercised right to free speech online."

2) At 1820Z, Subject did willfully and intentionally announce their position against the protection of national security, the lives of US Armed Forces soldiers, the lives of US Intelligence operatives, and the lawmaking authority of the legislative branch of the US Government by supporting an individual charged with espionage. Furthermore, by doing so, Subject did willfully and intentionally foment rebellion within the US general population by the "social proof" of his anti-authoritarian position.

Not knowing if, or which, entry might be made by the mass surveillance of even public forums, where there is no expectation of privacy, is the concern. Not that the speech is public, but that the speech isn't expected to be used in unknowable ways against the speaker.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com