FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software | Hacker News Reader

FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

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288 pointsojbyrne97 comments

In any other civilized country, after being caught spying, governments would be ashamed and massacrated by public opinion and politicians would review and stop their actions immediatly

.. but in US they(the big brother) have no shame at all.. they continue to do it as if theres nothing wrong with.. and people just act normal while civil rights get shattered appart in pieces..

people need to get real.. this is pretty serious.. this will have a great impact and damage not only on civil rights but also in business..

Im sure a lot of people form outside US are waking up and will start to build their own local versions of sucessful US bussiness.. and this is just the tip of the iceberg.. we can think of a lot of other things coming, and none of the are good for anybody

Your first sentence would imply that at least the UK, Germany and France are not civilized countries.

On a per-capita basis, the Netherlands is at the top with far more electronic surveillance than almost any other country, and the U.S. is at the bottom. (This may be only domestic LE surveillance, can't remember.)

The number of times the Dutch police have legally tapped telephone and internet lines may vastly exceed that of others such as the U.S. because the U.S. (thinks it) doesn't need a warrant and as such it's not being logged as a wiretap.

Some numbers of Dutch wiretaps: http://www.thehollandbureau.com/2010/03/07/the-netherlands-c...

Thanks for the citation. Excerpt from the article:

"That is 1681 per day. 84% of this tapping concerned mobile phones. Compare this with the news that there were 2208 taps in the United States in the whole of 2007."

It's comparing like to like. Neither numbers include intelligence-related surveillance, only domestic criminal law enforcement. The Dutch are wiretap-happy and the U.S., thanks to Title III, is relatively restrained.

The ability to intercept the communications of anyone on the internet without a warrant is relatively restrained?

Do you even have a source for your claims? How exactly are you comparing the two?

The U.S. courts publish non-intelligence wiretap stats per year: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=us+courts+annual+wiretap+statistics+201...

Intelligence gathering is rather different.

Why would you bother to wiretap, when you can listen to everyone, or get far more information through other means of data collection?

A) it's far more plausible to roll out pretty much any infrastructure in population-dense areas (i.e. netherlands, britain).

B) We really have no idea how much the US is wiretapping because apparently we don't need public warrants anymore because terrorists and freedom.

sorry: let me make it clear..

i consider US a high profile country when we get into account the "quality" and sofistication of its citizens..

its high developed concerning the consciousness and general inteligence of its people.. thats is exacly why is so scary

it makes me remember the question we keep making ourselves of why and how the sofisticated(and also high profile citizens) of the germany of the 30´s could be swallowed by the ideology of the nazis..

we end up believeing this is all about cultural matter.. for us looking outside of it looks that privacy its not that big deal, and when it is.. the governement get rid of it by making hocus pocus and creating virtual terror, so they can make people support they efforts to brake privacy and freedom

> i consider US a high profile country when we get into account the "quality" and sofistication of its citizens..

Based on...what, exactly?

im starting from the premisse that at least people have a good educational level to understand whats happening.. it gets higher in satelites regions like new york, SF, LA, chicago, seattle, etc..

but you know, generalizations are pretty much questionable, what do we really know?! :)

What I'd simply like you to see is that, while it's true that the US has a leading role in the history of humanity, the problem of mass surveillance enabled via corruption is very present in (at least!) Western Europe as well.

Don't worry, everything will be alright, so long as Americans get to keep their guns....you know...to protect their FREEDOM! The very freedoms they are giving up without a fight or even a word of protest. So umm...ah... U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

The way things are going we may need those guns. The 2nd amendment was written to allow the people to defend themselves from the government.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. (Thomas Jefferson)

You're missing his point. You could have all the guns in the world but that isn't going to change the fact that Americans don't care they are being monitored and spied on. Including the vast majority of ardent supporters of the 2nd amendment.

I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal.

I'm not saying you won't be alive. And I know guerrilla techniques can keep these kinds of conflicts going for decades. But what will you really have besides some quasi-freedom?

To me, the much more important weapons of (using your example) the Revolutionary War here in the U.S. were the intellectual weapons sharpened by the Enlightenment that were used to create the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the first place.

>I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal.

Those economic resource, of course, were taken from the population. Cutting off the oxygen in this area, so to speak, might be far more effective than guns. Guns, as it happens, are what implicitly lay behind the government's ability to take your money.

Do you mean, "Let's not pay taxes" as a revolutionary tactic? Would that really work in the world of complex financial instruments, deficit spending, international aid, etc?

The implicit violence argument behind taxes never held a lot of water with me. I pay taxes because I like interstates, Pell grants, enforcement of certain federal regulations (environmental, labor, etc), among other things.

Do those other things include Farm Bill, foreign wars, Gitmo, interntional aid to all the various regimes that receive it...?

If the Farm Bill supported welfare, then yes. The others... not so much.

But those things aren't direct effects of taxes, they're the direct result of legislative and executive action that can be, in part, enabled by taxes. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Simply knowing that citizens are armed will curtail the most egregious of police behavior. The 2nd amendment isn't about going to war on a national scale, its about the last line of defense against petty local thugs with badges.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I can say as one of the uniform-wearing types out of DoD that the effort to ensure military personnel won't carry out grossly Unconstitutional orders is far more important for national liberty than guns.

Your automatic rifle may match up well to a soldier's, but it won't match up at all to crew-served weapons, JDAM laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles, tanks, etc.

And even more important than technology is training, logistics, organization, and discipline which is something that all branches of the military will kick a militia's ass up and down the coast with.

The militia was intended to be a way to defend America against foreign invasion without having to maintain a standing army, as a standing army was considered dangerous for liberty.

But the Second Amendment wasn't intended to be used to fight against the government, or a standing army. Which is well, since the standing army is here now, and better than you at fighting.

Instead we do all we can to ensure that everyone from E-1 to O-10 understand what they're fighting for (the Constitution, not the military), who is in charge (the civilians), and what constraints are placed on their domestic operations (e.g. Posse Comitatus). That way an order to do something illegal like establish martial law in a town (for non-"Title 32" forces) would be instantly recognized as abnormal and wrong.

The military has about 2.3 million people, compared with 120 million civilians that could potentially fight [1]. Out of curiosity, how many of those civilians do you think would need to join a militia for it to be strong enough to resist the military?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces (see manpower infobox)

The problem is it's not a mere "numbers" game, otherwise there would have been no war with Britain when the Thirteen Colonies started fighting due to the extreme disparity in numbers between "available fighting colonists" and "troops Britain could transport across the Atlantic".

And that was in an era without aviation, aircraft like the AC-130 "Spooky" or A-10 Thunderbolt II could do horrendous injury to dozens or hundreds of people at a time. You would need things like man-portable ground-to-air missiles to have a chance against those, but there's absolutely no way things like those will ever be available to the general public; the risk of them being used against civilian airliners is far too extreme.

Then there's cluster bombs and even WMD's...

I realize the US military is much stronger per capita, but in a hypothetical contest, what's the chance of defeat vs. 120 million infantry in a militia?

It's not a question of "defeat". It's a question of control, whether that be control of infrastructure, control of territory, etc., and the advantage there lies with professional militaries.

Properly supplied and constructed, lines of control can be established that are nearly impregnable against the kind of assault a militia could hope to muster, especially considering that they won't have close air support like the military will.

More to the point, even during the American Revolutionary War itself a great proportion of the people had better things to do than join the militia or the Continental Army to overthrow the British. Many were avowed patriots. Some were Loyalists who were willing to fight for King and country. But most just wanted to get on with their lives and didn't do much to support or harass either side, and the effect would be even worse nowadays.

I mean if you could get 120 million militia in one spot to attack somewhere, that place would likely fall if only due to running out of ammunition. But 120 million people in one spot, fighting a military, is something that would not long last once the artillery and bombers are vectored in.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts.

This is exactly what I meant. War is about logistics first, efficiency second, and capita third.

Yes, but defend against what exactly? And when?

And even if it is so, would you rather way until it comes to such violence and massacre between the government and the population? You would really wait until US becomes another Syria?

His point was that if the gun defenders really cared that much about "freedoms", they'd help protect the 4th amendment and 1st amendment, too - right now.

To be fair, there are many (if perhaps not a majority) of people with guns who are horrified at what the NSA is doing. And in all likelihood, their owning guns probably doesn't dissuade the NSA from spying on them further. But the mainstream narrative seems to have sadly moved on from discussing the excesses of the government.

> and people just act normal while civil rights get shattered appart in pieces

Not all of us. There's a protest with some pretty high profile speakers going on this Sunday (http://1984day.com/). Were you planning on going? It seems that most of the "people are just bending over" commenters are the ones who don't attend or write/call their reps, making you included in your own ridicule.

actually i have pretty much abandon my "normal" life to pursue a dream by creating a software tool to make people more free.. and that before all of this that its happening right now..

i were very worried, not just because of governments, but also by the way companies are doing things and the way the cloud movement is heading to..

also im not based in US, the government snooping its just one part of the problems that we have.. that i wished to solve back than..

i hope that by the end of this year, this tool will get available, and it can be clear what we can do with it.. but i think that when the time comes, it will be clear that im making my part..

Those are times we should not be so selfish anymore, and have to make a stand.. we need to find our ways through the XXI century.. and that is not by copying or using the same weapons of the XX century.. i think that is one part of the problems we are facing.. we need our XXI century identities, we need to shape a new century.

It's too bad there are huge areas of the U.S. where there is no protest occurring within 600 to 1000 miles.

My free translation from the German (because I do not have the English version) of something somebody once said, or rather wrote:

"Behind the technological veil, behind the political veil of democracy reality shows itself: the universal servitude, the loss of human dignity with prefabricated freedom of choice. And the power structure does not appear 'sublimated' anymore in the style of a liberalist culture, appears not even hypocritical anymore (so that it at least retains the 'formality', the husk of dignity), but brutal, in that it throws over board all claim to truth and justice."

And for the philologically inclined:

> Hinter dem technologischen Schleier, hinter dem politischen Schleier der Demokratie zeigt sich die Realität: die universale Knechtschaft, der Verlust menschlicher Würde bei vorfabrizierter Wahlfreiheit. Und die Machtstruktur tritt nicht mehr 'sublimiert' auf im Stil einer liberalistischen Kultur, nicht einmal mehr heuchlerisch (so daß sie zumindest die 'Förmlichkeiten', die Hülse von Würde, beibehielte), sondern brutal, indem sie allen Anspruch auf Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit über Bord wirft.

(Herbert Marcuse: Konterrevolution & Revolte, Frankfurt ²1973, p.22.)

Remarkable to what degree that applies to our time. Some things seem to be so timeless...

The whole world keeps repeating itself. You should read Ecclesiastes! "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

at least now society in general has taken the red pill (by force?), if im allowed to use the matrix metaphor..

do we now will make the right choice? or we will continue to pretend that nothing happens? at least now we are more awake.. as you beatifully quoted someone who were awake and conscious before anyone else does..

Did´nt follow much of Marcuse myself, but Adorno are one of my favorite philosophers, thank you for sharing :)

> at least now society in general has taken the red pill

No, this echochamber has been forced to take the red pill. "Society in general" most definitely has not, if you take 'general' to mean 'majority'.

To which civilized country are you referring? Can you please be specific, so we can actually do some research and see if the claim needs rebutting?

Simply replace "any other" by "a".

It's a suspect definition of "civilized" that excludes every country in the world.

Yes, and? It can mean many things,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, but the thinking behind the new word was connected to modernism's active pursuit of progress and enlightenment.

In that sense, there are traces of civilization everywhere. But to call any country "civilized, period" would strike me as a mixture of hybris and aiming rather low. Even just the way "we" produce and process most of our meat means we're far from civilized. Not only do we not have civilized countries, I doubt we even have nominees.

If "civilized" is a label that can apply to no country at all, what was the point of changing the "any" to an "a"? Ok, things are better in Utopia. Moving back to the real world now...

Perhaps the Vatican?

This is not new in the US sadly. Just different tools.

Back then the FBI spied on many people using HUMINT. Filled out reams of paper detailing the activities of the people they spied on. All because they were 'different'.

I never believed that your typical American really cares about freedom, liberty and all that. For them what's important are 1) money and 2) have a home and watch tv.

Just me.

This is going on in all of our countries, not just the US. There was a student riot here when they jacked the tuition 300% and now the police demand cameras everywhere, hidden SIM card kill switches that wipe the entire phone rendering it a brick so they can prevent organizing during social unrest (they shopped this as anti theft measures, but of course only the authorities have control of the kill switch and you have to report your lost phone), special tags on vehicles to trace them at all times, drones, and ISP level spying because you have nothing to worry about if you're not a criminal right? My country is contracting the exact same intel corps the US is contracting which are run by ex CIA managers. My country is leasing the exact same software that uses previously unknown exploits to backdoor all our communications that the US is using like FinFisher/FinSpy and VUPEN. It's a giant festering dystopian industry straight out of 1984 with tentacles across the globe.

They are showing up to campuses here and offering huge salaries for "data analyst" positions. They are not even trying to hide the fact anymore that you will be spying on your own neighbors while developing these databases. They used to pretend it was to prevent terrorism and crime now it's blatent shredding of the bill of rights/constitution and developers are signing up in droves because they're the ones paying the most money and nobody else here is hiring. My country's version of CENTCOM is all over political commentary, newspaper articles and radio stations denouncing all detractors of this new fascist order. The politicians use this feedback as "proof" of positive feedback on their new rights slashing spy programs. The privacy watchdog in charge of the spy agency in my country was promptly sacked as soon as they took office. They now operate in total secrecy.

This isn't sustainable. Eventually all of us will rise up and cast off the 20th century dictator leftovers destroying our countries, starting wars, watching us through our smart TVs, creating food shortages, pumping up armnaments and fear.... It's only a matter of time the question is how far will they go and get away with this until we burn it all to the ground.

A century from now all of our descendents will study this period as the 21st century dark ages and those kids will wonder how anybody survived the great oppression.

You have a surprising amount of hope, my friend.

In other words, they own us.

They're starting to ask Apple and Google for the same kind of kill switch in Android phones and iPhones, and it's also promoted as a way to prevent theft.

Isn't that called "Find my iPhone"? We don't even NEED the authorities! :D

>In any other civilized country, after being caught spying, governments would be ashamed and massacrated by public opinion and politicians would review and stop their actions immediatly

Which country would that be? Because the governments do the same things all around the world, and in all "Western democracies" too.

After all, it's not something inherently American that forces them to do that.

It's them working to keep the status quo and keep the population sheepish to the tune of big private interests, an d those are international.

It's very simple: a free country is run by free software by definition. A free country has published laws that are implemented and debugged (adjudicated) in public.

If the FBI wants carriers to install software on their network devices, the FBI is implementing regulatory law as code in the network substrate. The source and its build and development process must be public. They have no magic tricks and there is no unknown capability that this could compromise. It's simply a requirement for a country governed by the law. It's how we watch the watchers.

Seeing as how we can't even get voting machine source code released, I have little faith that the spy state will cede its code in the near future. Given this, it's now time for all able-minded hackers to build tools for personal liberty and spread them far and wide. Godspeed.

The author of the code for section 215 of the Patriot act, Sensenbrenner, says it is being used totally beyond what he intended.

In this sense, it can be said to be executing arbitrary code, perhaps it can be said that the typical method of those in power is to look through the 10,000+ page laws, search for the weakest and most arbitrary provision, and exploit it to the fullest extent possible.

Of course, part of the reason for this is that no debugging was done - after receiving the law, the military went so far as to lie about how it was being used.

No offense but Sensenbrenner deserves his share of blame for this too.

People pointed out even back then that that Patriot Act was way overbroad and could lead to things exactly like this.

Militaries plan against the capabilities of a possible opponent, not just what they think the opponent intends to do.

Congress should never have let it get passed in the shape it was in, but Sensenbrenner should have written the legislation keeping in mind the capability it would give the Executive branch, not just presumed intent.

Its because some of the issues we are facing right now, that we should value even more the work of guys like RMS.

open software its not just about hackerism, education and freedom in the hacker sense of being able to understand things and how they work because they are open.. but also in the sense of transparency.. we effectivelly know what is running in our own machines..

open source its a pretty good weapon to achieve transparency.. and its something we need badly now.. (its not just about cryptography)

> it's now time for all able-minded hackers to build tools for personal liberty and spread them far and wide

A friendly reminder: As a start, pick your favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_%28file_sharing%29

Besides that, I'd say the biggest challenge will be to get our society running exclusively on open hardware.

By request I just posted this 2006 court opinion that says all email headers except Subject: lines are metadata. No wiretap order required to do a live intercept: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112961607570158342254/posts/9Cu7...

Wait so this captures HTTP request "metadata" - is that everything but the body of the request?

But it also sounds like more. They're talking about Facebook correspondence names, email address "to"s and "froms" - stuff you can't get out of HTTP "metadata" but have to analyze the content body and extract. So if they're analyzing content, isn't that a line they're crossing into content?

And how are "Internet search terms" metadata? I guess if it's part of the URL as query parameters it's metadata?

The problem for engineers is that what lawyers call metadata does not track the application/transport/Internet/link layer model we all know and love. A good rule of thumb is that unless it's in the body of a message and maybe a Subject: line, DOJ argues it's not content. URLs could go either way.

Re: Internet search terms, later in my article I try to address that: Whether the FBI believes its port reader software should be able to capture Subject: lines, URLs that can reveal search terms, Facebook "likes" and Google+ "+1s," and so on remains ambiguous, and the bureau declined to elaborate this week. The Justice Department's 2009 manual (PDF) requires "prior consultation" with the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section before prosecutors use a pen register to "collect all or part of a URL."

I'm skeptical of that claim by the article. The relevant paragraph:

There's a significant exception to both sets of laws: large quantities of metadata can be intercepted in real time through a so-called pen register and trap and trace order with minimal judicial review or oversight. That metadata includes IP addresses, e-mail addresses, identities of Facebook correspondents, Web sites visited, and possibly Internet search terms as well.

It sounds like the author is speculating about what "metadata" might mean. There is no evidence cited by the article to suspect otherwise.

I also doubt they're capturing "everything but the body of the request". HTTP-Basic authorization headers include usernames and passwords, and I doubt passwords are considered "metadata" under the law. Assuming that the FBI follows the law, these devices are probably more selective than that.

Fortunately, the author is right here to say you're incorrect. The article cited and linked to federal law with the PR/TT definition of metadata. It gave examples of header fields the FBI is asking for. It linked to and excerpted from original DOJ FCC documents offering additional examples of what the government believes to be valid metadata. It linked to and excerpted from a DOJ manual that spends about four pages talking about what's metadata or not. The author even posted a court opinion elaborating on what's metadata: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112961607570158342254/posts/9Cu7...

But clearly the author is just "speculating!" Sigh. I fear for the future of the republic.

It's kind of like the scene in Annie Hall -- "I have Marshall Mcluhan right here!"

> Judges are not always in a position, Boothby said, to understand how technology has outpaced the law.

How is it that this issue was not already addressed, yet?

Who runs this show?

It would seem that those with the ability to address this issue are close to those who benefit from the lack of understanding.

It depends on who you ask. But the DOJ and FBI and NSA are very good about getting what they want from Congress. I can't think of any clear examples in the last 15 years when Congress has rolled back surveillance authority. (They're thinking of doing it now re: email search warrants, but (a) it will have little practical effect because major companies already require it following a court decision and (b) even that limited reform is still not final and could actually make things worse.)

Remember, the Patriot Act was sitting on a shelf long before 9/11, with the DOJ looking for good arguments in favor of it:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20058797-281.html Long before 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice drafted the so-called Enhancement of Privacy and Public Safety in Cyberspace Act (PDF), which goes by the awkward and not very memorable acronym of EPPSCA. In July 2000, the Clinton administration forwarded EPPSCA to Congress, where it was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and met with a generally chilly response.

There are federal judges who do not use email. They have their secretaries print out their emails, handwrite their responses, and then their secretaries type them up.

Not forcing judges to be "eternal students" is like giving people democracy but closing all schools and media outlets.

Forcing them could be worse. Who would judge if they are student-like enough, and what would keep that entity from selectively enforcing the crap out of activist judges it does not like?

I have been reading the cypherpunks archives recently, and have noticed that Declan was pretty active on that list. Thought it worth mentioning, as his articles have been popping up on HN with increasing frequency.

Yep. Julian Assange and I go way back. :)

Not naming names, but...

> AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Comcast, and Sprint declined to comment.

I'll repaste a comment I made elsewhere, that seems applicable here:

If a company is approached by any spooky three-letter agency, the higher-ups of that company could possibly interpret that as a validation that they've made it 'big' -- and furthermore, they could see in that offer a security that three-letter agencies then have an interest in seeing the company continue to scale up and succeed (because of limited funds, three-lettered agencies can't just go merrily creating tools that work properly with the 'next facebook' every other 9 months... and furthermore, there's no knowing if they'll come across resistance when they solicit 'direct access' to the next company. Also, NSA would have just loved it if China and Russia was a big user of Facebook... so I can even imagine them doing something subtle to try to make that a reality).

Sadly, I do not see this trend ending anytime soon.

Indeed. That gives new emphasis to the notion of regulatory capture, wherein the regulatory agency has a vested interest in the continued success of its regulated clients. In this scenario, in a manner of speaking, the agency is seeking to be "captured," so that it can continue to leech lifeblood from the host.