Hacker News Coverage of the NSA Stories (IMG)
danielmiessler.com
danielmiessler.com
Exhibit A, from yesterday:
"I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.
The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time."
This is the sort of tone that makes me want to leave this site for good. It's not that I'm not interested/concerned about this subject -- hell, hit me up for a beer and we can discuss politics all day long -- I just don't think that we need to discuss it here, in dozens of threads.
So at this point I am also considering leaving HN for good.
People say dumb shit all the time.
Just downvote it and move on. No need to get heated about it.
We may discuss business decisions over email, we might even exchange information via Facebook, even if we're sensible enough not to do this with critical information that doesn't mean our whole company knows the score.
It impacts the kind of promises we can make to our clients about the safety of their information and makes us have to consider the usage of these popular services.
As a brief example we have a facebook import function that enables a user to import some limited information about their friends. This means that if someone uses this function on our site then Facebook will probably track that access. That means that when someone is using our site someone else is tracking them. Sure that's not a big problems in most cases but it is in some. Do my terms and conditions even cover that? What if I've previously erroneously made the claim that we don't track usage on the site?
I understand that basically all I can really do is flag what I think should be flagged and whatnot, so this just falls into the category of "pointless whinging about HN degradation."
To Americans, it is a politics-as-usual discussion. To the rest of the world, however, there has to be a strong question as to how rational it is to federate much of the world's data to American corporations that fall under the realm of American intelligence and legal purview. This is going to have much broader influence on the data practices of multinational organizations.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837616
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837672
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837837
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837852
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837884
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837916
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837957
Now, I admit that the last of these is mine, but at least with that I'm showing the movements of the stories over the past few hours, and as a side-effect showing off someone's tool for viewing the movement of stories on HN. At least that different. Several of the others are screenshots showing pretty much exactly the same thing.
As someone who spent a number of years exposed to the world of spying during my time in Special Operations, it was clear that there was nothing new here. It was the same story replayed in a new format...a format that caught the attention of those who know what lies behind computer code. To me, that is what makes this entire thing ridiculous. The very people who know the technicalities behind hacking, the internet and all things to do with computing fell right into spreading a story that was dominated by fluff, lack of specificity and conspiracy theories.
I'll let you in on a secret...the coders who work for the NSA are not any different than the rest of the coding community. We did use Google...I mean we searched for people's name just like millions of other people do every single day. It's called open source information. Yet, apparently when the government uses it everyone wants to believe that it is a grave violation of our rights. What about a white supremacist group using it to track down a gay rights leader's physical address and harassing him? Is that not far worse? Shouldn't we be more worried about that?
I had thought that Wikileaks revealing the State Department reports and leaking reports from Aghanistan and Iraq would have convinced people that the government does not know significantly more than the rest of us. The way this story took over HN showed otherwise. Clearly, conspiracy theories still sell. They are urban myths. They have enough detail to stick in our minds but lack the specificity that would really answer the question: is this even realistically feasible or portrayed in a rational manner?
Unfortunately, I spent yesterday feeling as though there was nothing worth reading on HN. Every story was the same tired generalizations of the NSA. I learned nothing yesterday. Sad.
1. I assumed (and, honestly, thought it was public knowledge) that this was happening already.
2. The bulk of coverage (and reaction) seems to believe that NSA is listening to your conversations. In fact (if I am dissecting the news correctly) they are recording the key details (length of call, location, to whom) and the actual message or conversation (not sure about this one), but only using this information after a second warrant. Basically, they find a suspected terrorist by other means, get a warrant to access the records of his/her calls, and see who the suspected terrorist is in contact with.
3. If the system works as described above, I'm a bit squeamish, but don't see a huge issue. I mean, I'm okay with Facebook, Verizon, Amazon, Visa, etc all having loads of info on me in order to sell me stuff, but once the government (who is not out to make a profit) does it, I object? I'm not a fan of sacrificing freedom for security, but this logic doesn't really make sense.
I probably have some other thoughts floating around, but these are the ones I've been mulling over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/anti-survei...
The first is that because the companies you listed are out to make a profit, it is easier to understand how your data will be used. The very fact that the government has less clear motives is what makes their collection of data more unsettling.
Second, when a company is driven by profit and loss, they have incentives to secure data because the inability to trust a company with your data will lead to fewer customers. Sure, your data may get out in an attack, but over time, to the extent its valued by the consumer, more secure companies will stick around longer than those that are insecure. If the government loses your data, some people may be fired, but agencies as a whole will stick around and keep conducting business as usual. Third, along these same lines, a government data store means multiple sources of data collected into one target. To those with malicious intent, it seems logical that attempts to take that data will be more frequent.
Finally, those, familiar with the school of public choice, will recognize that government actors are out to "make a profit" just not in the traditional sense. As a former gov employee, I can tell you that while there are policies in place, the fact that many gov employees transition to private sector and vice-versa, data collected will in some way be used for profit and likely by someone you did not give permission to, as is the case with Amazon or Verizon.
When Aaron Swartz died, I remember being really surprised that the whole page was on that single topic. For some naive reason, I thought some variety of topics was an immutable law and could not disappear so quickly. I then checked reddit for comparison and I believe there was a single article about Swartz on the front page.
The mere fact that there are so many stories about it on the front-page and that the stories are getting so many votes & comments is a good enough proxy about the 'informed' populus.
Obama probably did not get much sleep last night - and he prollly won't get much sleep this weekend.
As much as I like him and supported his candidacy twice - this is an impeachable offense.
I doubt the pressure will subside easily though.
Personally? I've been on the wrong end of this trend for some time - from having my cellphone imaged at Ben Gurion to having my finger prints taken at Sea-Tac - both for no higher offense than deigning to visit a foreign country.
These things piss me off to the point where I'm writing a distributed database that securely syncs data between desktop, tablet and phone. It includes a form builder for flexibility, and multiple sync servers so that if one goes down (or is taken down), another steps in and continues.
We have skills. They give us the power to do things to change (or even just challenge) the status quo. And yet we're ok with patting ourselves on the back because Obama won't sleep for a night?
I think the real issue here is our belief system. Beliefs define values, which form the basis of our morals, on which we in turn base our ethics. While we believe what the US administration is doing is ethically and maybe even morally wrong, it doesn't challenge our values (the government provides public safety[1]) or beliefs (the US is the greatest nation on earth [2] - and by extension so are we, individually), so we let it slide.
[1] At what cost?
[2] Depending on your values, it isn't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML3qYHWRIZk
It seems to me that a simpler way is to have a different phone (e.g. a dumb phone) for your trip through Ben Gurion.
I am not a US citizen, but I lived there for 7 years. Being an immigrant was no fun. Every time I traveled it was 10 toes, 10 fingers being scanned, picture taken - as a matter of course. I don't even have an Arabic sounding name or fit any of the "terrorist" stereotypes that they probably look for - don't get me wrong, I am not saying they should, just saying that it's not as if that is the case. My name is Marc, and I am from Jamaica.
Not many red flags there - as far as I could see.
My Driver's license had a big red 'temporary' going across the bottom, and I had to renew it every year.
Needless to say, it was quite horrible.
It wasn't always like that for my entire stay, just in the last 3 - 4 years.
So I feel your pain.
As a matter of fact, it's the 1 major reason I wouldn't move to the Valley. As much as I love HN, YC, the tech scene - it's not worth it.
And now they are encroaching on the freedom of citizens. I feel your pain.
Reddit is the body politic of the future. Lots of 19 year olds who assumed the NSA could see everything and don't have much in the way of privacy expectations.
I guess my conclusion is that in general Americans trust their politicians/government, whereas in the UK the general public assumes they're the enemy and not to be trusted, so this wouldn't be a major surprise.
Probably comes from our history of invading each other and generally having oppressive governments we don't recognise as our own. Kind of sticks with the culture even after countries start ruling themselves. I mean, even when we didn't have foreign rulers, they were of a different class and could as well be foreign for all the common traits they shared with their subjects.
I find it surprising that people are surprised by the NSA revelations. I sort of assumed the NSA is in everything electronic. Probably the Chinese too.
"We have always been at war with Eurasia"
I'm guessing this is news now because it's been on the "regular people" news, because otherwise I fail to see what makes this one different from all the other ones from the latest years. But then again, I'm not a US citizen, so there's that too.