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Comment by pvnick | Hacker News Reader

Previously I would say the American public would riot in the streets should a reporter be charged with the crime of journalism. Based on the reaction to the revelation that the NSA is watching every single piece of Internet communication in the world, now I'm not so sure. The apathy to all matters beyond "Kim Kardashian is fat now" is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Edit: Just wanted to add in a thought. The only thing keeping a lawless government from pulling stunts like this is the fear of citizen revolt, and even then they generally proceed if the projected revolution strength is sufficiently weak.

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Because rioting is an immature, knee-jerk reaction people in countries without proper avenues of political expression, e.g. the poor or uneducated, take? Riots are a way to signal the elites that the population feels some way. The U.S. has non-destructive ways of doing that, even if less emotionally satisfying than burning shit to make a point.

Note that present polling indicates Americans, while holding a positive opinion of Snowden, still feel he should be prosecuted.

Non-destructive ways of doing that, like what? Electing a new President who very believably promises to do the opposite of what the last one did?

However, the problem is not that elected officials are not listening to the people, it is that there is little concern from the electorate about privacy rights.

Ultimately, the country does belong to you more for understanding the problems of eroding privacy rights more than someone who doesn't. One could argue that rioting would change the conversation in a productive way, but I expect it would further the cause of authoritarians if a group of people behind a minority viewpoint tried to advance their cause through the violence of rioting.

I firmly believe that democracy can only function with transparency and a free press, but those are means to democracy, not a goal in themselves. It makes no sense to wish for riots, which are intrinsically anti-democratic when not expressing the will of the majority, for the sake of making a country safer for democracy.

Much as when our country was torturing people, the problem is less that of a disobedient set of elected officials, and more that of some really bad ideas that are held by a large portion of the population. Unfortunately, right now the problem is not politicians who can be easily demonized, but a population that for now is largely ignorant about the power of data.

I'm not necessarily wishing for riots with innocent shopkeepers' livelihoods being trashed.

But I am saying that the normal democratic methods seem to fail us here -- this is a real "don't blame me, I voted for kodos" situation. If Obama, who was the most strident advocate against this stuff out of both parties in the 2008 primaries (except for maybe Kucinich), doesn't follow through on this stuff, what are the democratic options?

Has anyone considered that maybe Obama felt that he was actually able to tamp down the excesses he railed against, and was able to be convinced of the use of the NSA once he took office and was able to be briefed on what they actually do?

America wouldn't have lasted very long if a minority group set the cities on fire each and every single time an unpopular decision was made public.

P.S. the democratic options involve letting your representatives and elected officials know that you are pissed, whether that's through letters, complaining to the media, peaceful protests, or all of the above.

Sometimes the people don't naturally do what jbooth personally feels is right for the entire nation. Welcome to Democracy.

Did you read the first line of my comment where I said I wasn't in favor of actual violent rioting? It's right up there.

I've knocked on probably 1,000 doors and made probably 5,000 phone calls for democrats over the last 10 years. I'm not some slacktivist, and I'm not saying that the whole world needs to agree with me, although the accusation of arrogance is well taken.

We've seen no evidence that Obama changed anything about NSA wiretapping and a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that he probably didn't (how those drone strikes coming, and the medicinal marijuana crackdown)?

When someone runs and is elected by a majority as being "the opposite of Bush", it'd be nice if he actually did something different.

> We've seen no evidence that Obama changed anything about NSA wiretapping

The FISA was changed to require warrants in 2008 (though Obama was a Senator then, not sure what part he played in that as I don't remember the discussion from the time it occurred). The "watch list" the NSA was using was gigantic when Obama took office and was shrunk down to focus on those who might actually impact national security.

> how those drone strikes coming

Better than what we used to do, invade entire countries and drop 1000kg JDAMs everywhere, which involved far more "collateral damage".

That is, of course, unless you're saying that we should simply wait until a group blows up something in America and then go destroy whatever state the operational cell was working out of. I personally prefer disrupting the cell and leaving the state intact (as do the states that we surreptitiously work with...) as it involves less human sacrifice on both sides, but that might just be me.

> the medicinal marijuana crackdown

Yeah, I got nothing. The sooner we move away from giving a shit about marijuana the better, as far as I'm concerned.

> When someone runs and is elected by a majority as being "the opposite of Bush"

They were both "opposite of Bush" so I hope you had more in mind than that when you voted. As it stands though, if you think Obama is just like Bush then you might want to re-evaluate history, as time has a habit of helping us forget the bad and remember the good. There was a reason that as far back as 2004 that Bush was already well down the road toward becoming the most unpopular President in decades, and that's because there was much worse things going on than drones...

> The FISA was changed to require warrants in 2008

No, it wasn't. FISA always required warrants for certain surveillance, and the 2008 FISA Amendment Act increased the time period for warrantless surveillance, and added new exceptions to the warrant requirements, and it explicitly blocked investigations of illegal wiretapping that had occurred before the Act.

Well that was not what I had heard, so I'll assume I'm mistaken and apologize.

And then go read the damn law for myself. (Perhaps it's a good thing I mentioned Obama wasn't President at that time. :O)

Well, the democratic options are limited. Aside from calling your representatives in congress and encouraging everyone you know to do the same.

The electorate is uninformed and easily manipulated. Bias in the news media is generally to support the status quo and not rock the boat. Lively debate occurs mostly for easily understood and emotional issues. Covering complex issues with complex answers is not a winning strategy for aggressive ad revenue goals.

With an uninformed and easily manipulated electorate, elections are largely influenced by money. Corporations and wealthy people contribute the most money to election campaigns, and therefore have a significant amount of influence over policy decisions and positions. Gerrymandering is also a huge problem and further reduces the amount of debate and competition during elections.

Lawrence Lessig (through rootstrikers.org) is a pioneer in raising awareness on how damaging the above situation is to a healthy functioning democracy. Awareness is the best thing we can do to improve the situation. If you're interested, check out this TED Talk that Lessig did: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...

American public opinion is for prosecuting Snowden. This can be because they are un-informed or have a different value set from the mean of HN. If the former, how can we educate enough people to form a critical majority in favour of privacy reform?

If the latter, the process is slower and more complicated. A starting point would be writing and paying visits to decision makers. My impression has been that the lack of communication from U.S. citizens to D.C. has left decision makers with the impression that this is, at most, a foreign relations problem.

Not all elites are in D.C., mind you. Speak with influential and high profile individuals you know. Encourage them to bring this up in the media or at the next conference they are at.

Sound difficult? Convincing people to change the status quo should be. Rioting to short-circuit this process is the equivalent of dialectical violence. Less charitably, it is the making of noise and commotion in the hope that someone else will pick up the baton and do the leg-work for you.

And we can't dismiss the majority's viewpoint as "apathy" just because we don't agree with it or find it appalling. It's not constructive to do so. We're better off having a discussion of why people think this type of surveillance is good. They'll probably say "reduces crime/terrorism," and we can counter with "that's questionable, but even so, your rights and liberties are violated." Most would probably shrug, but that doesn't necessary imply apathy.

> why people think this type of surveillance is good

There's a difference believing that this type of surveillance is good and believing that Snowden should be prosecuted for leaking in the way that he did.

If anything I believe it would go the other way around; there are people who feel the surveillance is bad and still feel Snowden should be held to the same law that the rest of us are bound to.

> "that's questionable, but even so, your rights and liberties are violated."

A more pointed example might be: indiscriminate surveillance can be used by corrupt officials for political persecution of their domestic political enemies. Look no further than the recent IRS scandal to see the willingness and ability of people in positions of power using the levers of power against political opponents, even when the stakes are low or petty. The NSA database of information represents an unbelievable trove of opportunity for the very real prospect of the arbitrary abuse of political power, both by people within the U.S. government and by anyone who manages to illicitly gain access to that information (e.g. foreign hackers—and there's some evidence that Chinese hacking attempts on Google were aimed at the interface Google set up to provide information to the government).

>Based on the reaction to the revelation that the NSA is watching every single piece of Internet communication in the world, now I'm not so sure.

Except that's not what they're doing. People actually care about nuance, and things aren't black and white.

I understand the notion of having principle, but it's been several weeks now and we need to stop having arguments in absolutes and start actually talking about what actually happens, what is actually useful and what should be changed.

I think when you consider the "upstream" portion of the prism slide titled "FAA702 Operations" (the one about splitting the fiber optic cables) that yes, my statement is correct.

You think the government is watching every piece of data on the internet for only $20million/year? Really?

No, I think the government is watching every piece of data and that the $20 million/year refers to some bit of information we are not privy to. Btw, we already know this infrastructure exists [1].

William Binney, a well-known NSA whistlebower, has stated that there are 10-20 such installations around the United States [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

[2] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/al...

Edit: FWIW I'm not the one downvoting you. I hardly ever do so, and when I do it's certainly not just out of disagreement

I guess I don't see how 20 installations would be nearly enough to track all or even most internet communications in the US. Given that core routers are on the very edge of feasible performance, I don't see how you could do substantial spying there, which means your spying has to be closer to the edges, which means a lot more than 20 installations.

Moreover, such a large scale program really wouldn't centralize data in giant data center in Utah. When you're dealing with this much data, you need to process locally because the costs of transmitting data volumes that large is prohibitive.

>Moreover, such a large scale program really wouldn't centralize data in giant data center in Utah. When you're dealing with this much data, you need to process locally because the costs of transmitting data volumes that large is prohibitive.

This is pure conjecture on my part, but I would presume that the government doesn't have to rely on civilian infrastructure to transmit data.

You mean you think there's a classified fiber network operated by the government that covers the entire country and transports about as much data as the real internet?

So, are those cables marked on maps or with signs (like legit cables are)? Or can any idiot with a backhoe cripple this secret network at any time? It seems that a secret network would have much much lower operational reliability because of how many idiots we let drive backhoes in this country.

Dude, my brother works in excavation. Not cool.

Seriously, have you not heard of dark fiber? It's quite common for a network owner not to "light" many of the fibers in a particular run. Sometimes, this is because the capacity is not needed, but it's also common that the network owner's customers prefer to run their own multiplexers. Those customers could include the NSA or whatever agency in the government. Many such agencies certainly have built multiple classified networks this way.

Your average backhoe operator doesn't know what's in the pipe any more than the Dig-Rite spraypaint guy or even AT&T technicians do. The sign just says, "Buried Cable: Call Before Digging". Of course sometimes cables get cut anyway. That's why excavators get bonded. That's also why networks that aren't designed by "idiots" are redundant.

Sorry, no offense meant to professionals. I was thinking more of random guys who rent a backhoe for the weekend.

And yes, I know about dark fiber. Dark fiber networks don't have traffic but they're still on maps and have warning signs around them. There's a difference between burying fiber without using it and keeping the existence of fiber totally secret.

I guess I don't see how we could have a parallel internet whose existence was unclassified that no one noticed until now.

Well, I guess it depends on your definition. When I worked in telcom we called it "dark fiber" if the multiplexers at each end were operated by someone other than the owner of the fiber. This was "dark" in that the network owner didn't know anything about it besides who had access to the server closet in the CO.

The point is that the USA government leases a great deal of network capacity, both directly and indirectly through "cover" entities. Much of that is probably used to build any number of networks that carry "classified" data, including SIPRNet, NSANet, JWICS, and others so "dark" that we don't technically know they exist. Nobody would bother to deny the existence of these, nor the obvious fact that the actual fiber belongs to the same firms that own all other long-distance fiber: ATT, L3, XO, VZN, etc.

I suppose it's possible that some agencies operate the sort of "secret network" you were challenging, but since it costs at least ten times normal prices for spooks to do anything, they probably try to keep that self-built stuff to a minimum.

EDIT: Just so we're clear, the security of a network does not depend on no one knowing it exists or where it is. The NSA knows encryption: no one is going to "tap" their fiber and find out their deep dark secrets. A well-informed goat enthusiast with a backhoe could conduct a denial-of-service attack, but that doesn't scale and as I said these networks have redundancy built in.

The $20 million relates to PRISM, which is probably "just" the interface/analysis system for the FISA/NSL data that comes directly from the cloud providers.

The PRISM slide that mentiones splitting probably references the other program(s) that collect raw data.

Occam's Razor, people.

Makes sense because tapping into underwater cables seems much more expensive.

"The NSA spent more than 15 years working to develop the technology to tap these cable strands. The Navy has almost finished outfitting the nuclear-powered submarine USS Jimmy Carter with state-of-the-art technology for undersea fiber-optic taps, according to people knowledgeable about it."[0, Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2003]

[0]: http://cryptome.org/nsa-seatap.htm

The NSA is wholesale collecting data and later using a secret court to authorize them to query their own databases [1]. PRISM is not just an interface. It is officially known as SIGAD US-984XN which means it intercepts and collects electronic communications.

[1] Bamford, Binney and the ACLU at Defcon 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqIz-RNUL1g

If they charge Glenn Greenwald with a crime, I will be out on the streets.

> The apathy to all matters beyond "Kim Kardashian is fat now" is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

It is interesting you note this. This seems to lend credence to the 'Brave New World' theory over the '1984' theory of how the American people feel about the government.

I think we live in a sad middleground between the two.

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