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Comment by alanwatts | Hacker News Reader

Dr. King was monitored by the NSA for "thought crimes". Is that "100% tinfoil hat mode"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#NSA_mon...

How is that relevant to the fact that many people are more worried about marketers than the NSA? Nobody's questioning that some people are in fact so monitored. "I am more concerned about A than B" is not a claim that B does not exist, nor is it a claim that "I" am unconcerned about B.

>the fact that many people are more worried about marketers than the NSA?

How do you know this is a fact, was a global survey done?

>I am more concerned about A than B" is not a claim that B does not exist, nor is it a claim that "I" am unconcerned about B.

Indeed, however the phrase "100% tinfoil hat mode" does imply being unconcerned about B, and that anyone who is is a lunatic.

You seem to have a problem with adjectives. "Many" is not most. I don't need a "survey" to establish the "many" when I can just read many people expressing their concerns on HN. That's "many" enough for me.

Now, to be clear, by "people" I mean "humans" not "abstract sentients including AIs that don't yet exist", and by "concerns" I mean "things that are at least slightly negative to the thinker" and not "things that keep the thinker up at night wetting the bed and driving them to fits of existential madness", etc. etc.

Ah, my mistake. I misread it as "many more people..."

And how many "Kings" do you know personally?/s What me (and presumably, OP) trying to say is, that an ordinal person should be much more worried about their private data being collected and used (virtually) unconstrained by the shady companies than three letter agencies. This doesn't imply that mass surveillance isn't wrong and evil, these two things are orthogonal.

> Dr. King was monitored by the NSA for "thought crimes". Is that "100% tinfoil hat mode"?

Probably 'yes' for you, 'no' for him.

Sorry, but a random HN commenter is extremely unlikely to be targeted for the level of surveillance and treachery that Dr King was. If he feared it, he had good reason. If you are some random IT worker building the next smart pillow you cannot expect them to prioritize spying on you, that's all I'm saying. Mass surveillance isn't the same as targeted.

Fair enough. Though my concern is not for myself, but rather for any potential great leader who could be silently neutralized/blackmailed/extorted by mass surveillance techniques.

Whether the culprits' organizational classification is public or private is of negligible importance.

>Mass surveillance isn't the same as targeted.

Mass surveillance is the first step in the discovery process, targeted surveillance is the second step after a target has been flagged by the dragnet.

Actually, I'd say a random HN commenter is extremely likely to be targeted for surveillance and exploitation compared to general population at least. Not because they personally are important, but because of their jobs. So many administrators, programmers, etc. with access to relevant data.

Yes, I almost mentioned the Belgacom sysadmins in one of my responses.

How many people here work for Google, Facebook, Apple, etc? What if you could compromise their workstations and get privileged access to the backend of social networks, email systems, etc? We are being actively hunted and there's evidence of that.

Some years ago FreeBSD had an intrusion via one of the commiter's machine or stolen SSH key, I don't remember which any more, but I do remember that it took months for the package building infrastructure to get fully operational again. I think they never got to the bottom of that (who did it or why). Linux had a very similar incident if I'm not mistaken.

It's such a standard and effective method in human intelligence, that it's extremely naive to think an analogue wouldn't be used extensively in signals intelligence too.

Actually a random HN commenter is precisely the person to target, they're more likely to have technical skills and access to servers. It isn't just about surveillance it's about increased attack vectors when your information is distributed.

A random IT worker building the next smart pillow has no reason to target you...but the creepy pervy sales manager at the same company might have reason to.

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