Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

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So, let's say the NSA is collecting data on every person on the web, and they're able to see who is using these 'mass surveillance avoidance tools' and who isn't. The former category then actually stands out and becomes targets of more intensive surveillance because they're using tools that allow them to hide surveillance to a limited extent. Using such tools would flag the 'strong-selector' metadata collection system for further (targeted) examination, i.e.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)

This is of course what an outfit like the STASI or Gestapo would do, isn't it? If you're actually trying to hide from surveillance, the best tactic is to hide in plain sight, maintaining a cover story consisting of bland normal online presence that doesn't draw extra attention.

Of course living in an authoritarian panopticon and having to hide in this manner is an undesirable situation, and the solution is not technological, but rather political in nature. One basic issue is transparency, i.e. the public should be able to see what the intelligence agencies and corporations are up to with their surveillance programs. This is why Snowden's exposure of PRISM, XKEYSCORE, TRAFFICTHIEF, etc. was in the public interest, i.e. legitimate whistleblowing.

These are good points, but political solutions (by which I mean political changes within the system) are almost certainly never going to happen. More unrealistic than a technological solution addressing this, even.

Instead, social/cultural solutions might be the key. If only a few people use these mass surveillance avoiding tools, then yes, they become targets. But if almost everyone uses them and they become ubiquitous, the landscape changes some.

> These are good points, but political solutions (by which I mean political changes within the system) are almost certainly never going to happen.

I don't think political solutions are impossible, but if they are then our government is incapable of executing the public will. I think the key to generate this type of change is to tell a very compelling and broad story about why the current situation is unacceptable. Discussing {history lesson} or {personal security risk} doesn't seem to be a strong enough narrative. A very strong narrative can turn public opinion and force action by lawmakers. Over the last 100 years there has been a number of examples of popular opinion becoming so massive that the political system has to do something they clearly did not want to do.

* The draft is now reserved for emergency use only. Previously it was used for Korea and Vietnam, which were more about global power projections than direct threats to the US.

* The role of the US Military is moving away from World Police and limiting itself to more directly protect American interests. Troop deployments are highly scrutinized by the public and impact Presidential approval ratings.

* Cannabis went from the poster child for war-on-drugs to essentially unenforced federally and openly cultivated/traded/consumed in large regions of the country. Rules on Magic Mushrooms, MDMA, and Ketamine are beginning to loosen to.

* The end of COVID lockdowns and mask mandates in the US was largely determined by grassroots actions instead of top-down decisions.

>but if they are then our government is incapable of executing the public will.

I don't think it really even tries to.

Quite right. Look no further than Snowden to understand that our legislature is complicit in these deep-state surveillance activities. They don't even want to change, let alone have the ability to.

I think the line between political solutions and technologial/cultural solutions is quite blurry.

To get past those "using these tools makes you suspicious" phase, you have to convince everyone to both care and to use the tools.

Once they care that much, the political solution is also much more feasible.

The logic that anybody we can't see should be a suspect would then target our grandmas with landline phones who buy their groceries with cash or live in nursing homes. It would be a colossal waste of resources and detract focus.

The methods of the STASI were extremely crude and different to what is available today. They relied on human informants and collected lots of paper.

Or they can just filter for age, likelihood of technical proficiency (indicated by such things as education, prior employment, family, peer group, etc), and likelihood of “effective political concern” (or whatever we might call a person’s affinity for independence, skepticism, distrust of authority, knowledge of past authoritarian transgressions, knowledge of current authoritarian capabilities, and access and willingness to non-technical resources, eg time or money, needed to act on their concerns)

Here is where it kind of comes full circle on mass surveillance. If you do not have those data points, you cannot filter on them. Even if someone was once sloppy on real ID social media platforms, old data is less useful.

Good thing I only have a Google account and a bank account and link nothing else to me online. Try as I might, no search engine seems to know I exist.

Sure some genius might think their model has got me nailed but even when I had a Twitter a decade ago and asked for my data Twitter had my age, gender (details I had in my profile btw) and number of kids I have wrong.

The problem with tech companies is they’re run by people and people are pudding brains who believe in magic. The problem with AI, as Chomsky said, is people will believe it. It’s true because they’ve been believing these other terribly inept systems they built, whether technological or social.

Agreed, but they're not mutually exclusive.

The political solution requires a political consensus, and that's unreliable.

Defending your liberty with tools you own requires a social consensus, and that's unreliable.

Both are subject to change over time, thus both need to be worked on and managed.

That's why those of us "with nothing to hide" should use these tools and others like Tor. Drown any potential signals with plenty of noise.

Your point is valid, but in this context, going to the next level of targeting will require them to probably burn 0day to achieve it. If that's the case, not even the NSA can afford to do that en masse. And if they did for some reason decide to make that policy, it would be a gold mine for foreign governments to setup honeypots to collect every 0day in the NSA's arsenal like pokemon.

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