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Comment by alan_cx | Hacker News Reader

I hope those who treated me with scorn for suggesting the politicians and business people are effectively blackmailed by the mere existence of NSA type spying can now see it for real.

No direct threat, not conversation, no deals. Just the fear of the knowledge that one is being comprehensively watched, and what "they" might have. This fear is enough to alter behavior, to conform.

Again, at what stage can we describe the US and UK, and their co-conspirators as fascist, police state, oppressive, and so on?

Or, do we have micro targeted oppression? Is that the modern way?

View on HN

While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this.

1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or not accept tips except via public comments but still operate.

2)Most of the people Groklaw corresponds with don't need anonymity either. Those that do presumably know it and hence, will not correspond with them absent secure means (once made aware of the need for them)

3) Groklaw isn't an email service provider, it's a legal blog/online magazine. As such, likely none of the NSA's mechanisms for getting information from email providers apply. Compelling individuals to hand over their own correspondence is, as far as we know, hard. It can get worse with freedom of the press issues.

So post a PGP key and say, if you really want anonymity, use this.(Edit) and use a mixnet or Pond, or something to send the message. PGP encrypted email from a new account just deals with the NSA's email intercept capability. If you are worried about their other abilities, you need something stronger then Tor since it fails for global passive adversary.

Of course, that wouldn't get them publicity

"So post a PGP key and say, if you really want anonymity, use this."

PGP only provides confidentiality, not anonymity. To get anonymity as well would require TOR.

Yeah, I realized my mistake, but Tor is not very useful against the NSA since it doesn't protect against a global passive adversary.

Maybe you should not so easily judge an operation you know nothing about. I will assume until proven otherwise by sufficient insight into the groklaw project that pj is an honest agent who sincerely feels that what groklaw does cannot be done with the nsa snooping in place.

> I will assume until proven otherwise by sufficient insight into the groklaw project that pj is an honest agent who sincerely feels that what groklaw does cannot be done with the nsa snooping in place

That's not what PJ said.

What PJ said is that she doesn't feel comfortable with using the internet with the NSA surveillance in place, and given her decision to minimize internet exposure, it is impossible for Groklaw to continue.

Its not about what Groklaw does particularly, its about her own comfort level with use of the internet at all given the surveillance situation.

>1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or not accept tips except via public comments but still operate.

That's what confuses me. The majority of Groklaw's content comes from PACER filings, which are public(at a cost). To my knowledge, they never posted anonymous rumors, and instead focused solely on the facts of the cases they cared about as presented on court. And honestly, if it's comments they are worried about... those are hardly private.

Groklaw never claimed it depended on anonymous tips. They claimed that it in general changes how people communicate and that the author is just as uncomfortable with an unauthorized person going through their email as if they were going through their underwear drawer.

I can say that pj has always been protective of her privacy, even when Groklaw was essentially focused only on the SCO vs. IBM drama playing out. She's also a paralegal by training with a tech interest (which explains her comments about the rule of law), but she was not necessarily an expert in technical infrastructure, protocols, etc. Typically she relied on experts and other collaborators for things which needed a hefty dose of technical know-how on her site.

So with that in mind I was quite shocked to read this morning that pj has abandoned the site, for the reasons you mention. But I can say that from what I've read of her over the years (I've had Groklaw on RSS for years now), it does kind of make sense if you look at it from her worldview; she values her privacy, geeks everywhere are saying that the NSA is literally reading every piece of mail sent by anyone to anyone, and the result is then not completely surprising...

> 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or not accept tips except via public comments but still operate.

I dont think Groklaw claimed it dependes on anonymous tips. The Groklaw fair well did indicate that they valued the privacy of their communications however just as they value not having anyone riffle through their underwear drawer.

> 2)Most of the people Groklaw corresponds with don't need anonymity either. Those that do presumably know it and hence, will not correspond with them absent secure means (once made aware of the need for them)

The need for anonymity was not claimed. No one siad lives or livelihoods were at direct risk. It was claimed that in general people act differently when they know they are being watched, recorded, or when it could be used against them in the future.

> 3) Groklaw isn't an email service provider, it's a legal blog/online magazine. As such, likely none of the NSA's mechanisms for getting information from email providers apply. Compelling individuals to hand over their own correspondence is, as far as we know, hard. It can get worse with freedom of the press issues.

I would assume that all of the email in question is likely to go through a email service provider and the NSA's normal mechanisms will work against that email provider. My understanding is that is uncommon for the NSA to compel "individuals to hand over their own correspondence" and that is normally happens at the email provider level.

> So post a PGP key and say, if you really want anonymity, use this.(Edit) and use a mixnet or Pond, or something to send the message. PGP encrypted email from a new account just deals with the NSA's email intercept capability. If you are worried about their other abilities, you need something stronger then Tor since it fails for global passive adversary.

What percentage of interested customers are lost when you add one more confirmation button in-between them and buying a product? I am sure a high percentage of people, interested in maintaing their privacy, are lost when GPG is required.

> What percentage of interested customers are lost when you add one more confirmation button in-between them and buying a product? I am sure a high percentage of people, interested in maintaing their privacy, are lost when GPG is required.

This is true, there are massive usability problems. But you keep infinitely more customers if you keep your service running and allow them to choose if they want anonymity. In fact, again, I think most people don't care for this case.

This is sort of the problem. Groklaw made the decision for their users in effect. We won't let you choose if you want privacy. I realize PJ is a party to those conversations and s/he gets to make privacy choices too for his/her end, but i am at al loss as to why someone accustom to public blog posts cannot conduct most of her correspondence about those public posts under the assumption they will be public.

1) there was a claim by her that some sources are anonymous 2) always leave avenues of information open 3) Who is the press? Congress currently is trying to define who is the press and who is not. They seem to forget the 1st applies mentions speech and press separately. As for the PGP key, I am quite sure when they want it a FISA court will force you to give them your private key and not to say that you did.

The government cannot be trusted with the information they are gathering. I don't care how many promises of "it won't be used", "it is private", "and it will be deleted". If anything the "leaks" from the IRS of people's personal information prove that no information is safe in the hands of government because they cannot keep their own people from misusing it.

Who is to say that someone decides something posted to Groklaw gets some politicians panties in a wad? All the privacy rules in the world won't amount to jack if he has friends who accidentally find and leak it. Its been done in other organizations, it will occur with the NSA data. Most likely it will start showing up during election season.

The new laws (I don't know how far they went?) that would declare bloggers "not the press" and under which bloggers lose even now debatable protection, together with the total collection of communication is really a good thing to make any blogger involved in controversies reconsider his future activity.

Still I don't believe that the NSA activity is directly what moved PJ. We know that they give tips to other agencies from time to time but it's still FBI who's in charge for the things inside of the US.

I remember that PJ already attempted to stop contributing directly to Groklaw. Now she really "closes the shop."

Groklaw isn't an organization, its a personal project, and its not shutting down because of the impact of the NSA revelations on Groklaw's mission, but because of the personal impact on the site operator.

Groklaw is shutting down because Pamela Jones, in the wake of the NSA revelations, has made a "personal decision [...] to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible".

This

This clarification should be at the top the discussion

Yes, but she also made it clear that she often gets tips from sources that prefer to remain anonymous. Given that she comments on some pretty high-level court cases, this makes her a target.

Take the Apple vs Samsung cases for example. It's very clear that these cases have become national political issues that have reached the desk of POTUS. What's to stop someone with close relations high up with relations to Obama, such as Tim Cook or an employee with close relations to the NSA due to collaboration between Apple and the NSA to ask a favor to figure out a leak that informed one of her blog stories? Given that parallel construction is official policy, we would have no way of knowing whether or not a corporate leaker was caught due to NSA involvement.

>HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this.

This logic is broken.

While more people may die from furniture than terrorism, what the NSA is doing is ensure that ZERO people are free. Period. You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means without the government's ability to actually be party to that comm.

While I cannot comment on any of these decisions to shut down their businesses - the fact that they are doing so shows that we are in a really really REALLY bad place with respect to any level of trust in the government.

America is dead.

So where do we live? Every single thing that the US stood for has literally been murdered in the last 13 years.

We are not the land of the free. We are not a home for the brave. We have zero moral standing on any issue. We are 100% completely corrupt and destroyed as any nation we were raised to believe in.

I believe this all leads to one place. A world war - but not between nations. Between humans and their governments.

The systems of control will be stamping out any resistance to their control in the next few years. It doesnt get better from here.

Comments like "We are 100% completely corrupt", "Every single thing that the US stood for has literally been murdered", and "America is dead" are so absurdly over the top that they undercut your message and turn off people who might otherwise be receptive to your comments.

While I am sure you are correct, I can't help that this is how I actually feel.

The entire concept of "America", for me, has completely dissolved.

The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal". All meaning from these terms has been removed.

We live in an illusion. The actual reality we live in is a simple binary relationship: The haves. The have-nots.

Those who have power (money) do literally anything they want in any situation. Legality is a tool to oppress the have-nots.

So, take my upvote for calling me out on being emotional - but also know that I am actually having difficulty with the reality of the world we live in.

Reality check, the NSA, Bush and increasingly Obama, the whole US Government and it's justice system, etc. don't represent the American ideal. But with a few exceptions I would wager that I would rather live here then almost any other country in the world. What is "American" comes from you and what you viewpoint is of that ideal. For me what constitutes as American has much more to do with my relationships with people here, who I meet, where I live, then anything stupid the NSA or government does. I think overall what's kind of silly about this is you're taking something that realistically is extremely abstract to the vast majority of people (how many of use are dealing with Snowden's problems on a personal level here?) and applying it to a whole country and it's people.

Don't get me wrong, I think people should be angry with what's been happening, the eroding of the American dream, increased inequality, the continued militarization of the police and it's overall unaccountability, lack of privacy from both the government and businesses (let's not forget what type of data the Google's and Facebook's of the world legally have on you). It's going to take indignation and anger to result in the action that might change things.

But, to turn around and say some thing like "America is dead"? No, personally I see things that make me proud of my fellow Americans, the goals they're accomplishing, the big dreams they have, the relationships they develop and grow from. I see those things happening on this forum everyday. No, to me America is around and kicking all around, the proof is right here in front of you, and it's worth fighting for. I'm not willing to write it off just yet.

So it's not bad enough yet? I have watched everything the progressive left has warned America about for the last twenty five years come true and at every turn I have heard the same thing, "You are overreacting."

Media Consolidation, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, Glass Steagall, etc.

The issue that Groklaw broaches specifically is one that has major consequences. Change in America comes from upstarts, individuals who put their fear aside and try new things. Things that often throw a wrench into the works of established economic interests. What is now being made clear is that any plans you make might just find their way into the hands of your disruptee.

PJ makes clear that she is scared, and to you it may not be rational, but that's not the point. She was willing to put herself at the front of a machine that regularly goes toe to toe with powerful entities. But now she is not and how many others will not even try in this current environment?

I am surrounded by young people and the prevailing attitude is that the game is rigged, why even try? I've watched progressives grow older and walk away as soon as they realized that they had something to lose and that their opponents are vindictive.

When that fear sinks in, it is over. No one does anything except the privileged who can't fail.

You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria. Probably your whole life, the government has overstepped the boundaries of the 4th amendment when it came to poor black people. But I bet if I told you a few years ago about that, you wouldn't have said it made "the entire concept of America" dissolve for you. And rightfully so. The fact that some people in the government do some things you think should be illegal, does not mean that the rule of law has ceased to have force.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but America has always been deeply imperfect. You talk about the "last 13 years" but you know nothing about the history of America if you think it was better 30 or 50 years ago. But the arc of history has been that America has gotten less imperfect over time. We find NSLs and the resort to esoteric legal defenses on the part of the NSA intolerable today, but those are niceties in the grand scheme of things. Remember, we're a country where Bureau of Prohibition agents ransacked peoples' physical property looking for alcohol in the 1930's, a country that put Japanese-Americans in internment in the 1940's, a country where the President had to call the national guard down to Alabama to get the governor to comply with a federal court order. You think that reading through Facebook posts or asking the British government to detain someone in an airport for 9 hours is what marks the end of America? That's hysteria.

It should be noted that the surveillance programs seem pretty designed to stay on the right side of existing Supreme Court precedent. That's pretty much the opposite of the government doing "literally anything" it wants. That doesn't mean what its doing is right, but trying to skirt through holes in the law is very different from ignoring the law. And there was a time when the government didn't even bother with that pretense.

>It should be noted that the surveillance programs seem pretty designed to stay on the right side of existing Supreme Court precedent.

I am pretty sure that what is slowly being revealed by Greenwald from Snowden's files is proving this to be false.

Supreme Court ruled phone metadata is not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

I talk abou the last 13 years because it was a coup by the intelligence apparatus, led by the Agents of the Carlyle Group to brazenly take over the american military completely.

I know a lot of what was done in the last 50 years - and in the last 40, there has been one agency specifically working night and day to subvert the structure of the government, and led by a few people.

The CIA, since its inception after WWII as it evolved from the OSS into what it is today was founded upon the SS where they absorbed as many SS officers the US culd get their hands on.

Up until 2001 - there was still a split between the MIC and "regular america" -- after 2001 - that split dissolved and the DHS was built to encapsulate all intel services under one branch, and under one puppet of the CIA cabal.

Even if you have other valid points, please take the conspiracy theories elsewhere. It just weakens your argument.

You're calling it a conspiracy theory simply because you have not followed what has actually happened.

Every thing I wrote there is actual history.

> Every thing I wrote there is actual history.

The one thing I see that is an easily verifiable fact claim in your post, to wit, "the DHS was built to encapsulate all intel services under one branch, and under one puppet of the CIA cabal," is clearly false, since:

* At the time DHS was formed in 2002, all intel services were (as members of the "US intelligence community"), already had a single head, the Director of Central Intelligence. This did not change with the formation of DHS.

* Both before and after the formation of DHS, the agencies making up the US intelligence community were scattered among numerous cabinet level departments (in the post-DHS-formation period, this includes the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, Energy, Justice, and Treasury), plus the CIA (which is not part of any department.)

* After the formation of DHS, in 2005, the DCI's role as head of the Intelligence Community was shifted to the newly created positon of the Direct of National Intelligence (DNI), a position separate from the leadership of any particular Intelligence Community member like the CIA.

It was a coup. Who was the first head of DHS? Where did he come from? Who put him there? Why?

It goes all the way back to his role in 'Nam and who he worked for there...

Once they setup the structure, with the DHS, then later creating the DNI - they created a separate entity that serves the goals of the cabal, Carlye is just a main face of that.

It was all about creating a structure that put true power in the hands of something outside the previous branches.

This seems more appropriate for Infowars or Godlike productions, especially your use of such acronyms as 'MIC' - a shorthand for 'men in charge' rather than any actual organization. Standardizing the terminology of conspiracy theories is a substitute for testing and validation.

I dispute your CIA conspiracy theory and suggest such extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which you have failed to provide and which is not supported by the historical record. Also, I'm not American and didn't grow up here, so please don't fall back on the usual counterargument that I'm too conditioned to see what you have convinced yourself to be obvious.

MIC: Military industrial complex.

It is a real thing.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mili...

>I dispute your CIA conspiracy theory and suggest such extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which you have failed to provide and which is not supported by the historical record. Also, I'm not American and didn't grow up here

Yeah, so you really are unaware of what has happened in the US. Everything I said IS a part of "historical Record" -- but not the one you'll find on CNN or FOX. You'll actually have to do some investigation and discovery.

Start with Smedley Butler, Operation Paperclip and work from there.

I'd be happy to lay out more info - and you can find some in my comment history.

Just because YOU have no idea what happened doesn't mean that what I say is false, nor that it is suddenly my job to educate you.

MIC: Military industrial complex. It is a real thing.

It is not 'a real thing.' It is an opinion (a perfectly valid one, I might add) about socio-political structures. There are many such lobbies in the body politic, and the existence of such sociopolitical factions have been observed by writers from Aristotle onwards. Cozy relationships, mutual interests, and even corruption falls far short of the sort of coup you purport to describe.

Yeah, so you really are unaware of what has happened in the US.

Not in the least - I read War is a racket and studied the Business Conspiracy many long years ago, thank you. You are the one making the case for an overarching conspiracy, it's up to you to offer up evidence for it. Namechecking this or that data point in history with no attempt at perspective isn't evidence, it's handwaving; and responding to requests for evidence with accusations of ignorance isn't argument, it's propaganda.

I do not object to your criticizing this government or government institutions in general, but I am sick to the back teeth of your axe-grinding, crappy sources, and empty arguments. Pardon my bluntness, but you're an outrage junkie. You like being angry about 'how bad things are' to the extent that you have adopted it as a premise.

You're getting better at this "This isn't America's worst; look at history" argument. I can tell it's been used on Hacker News quite a bit before :)

And yet it's not an "argument" so much as the cold, solid truth. There is like a 23-page DoJ PDF about the legal theory behind the NSA programs being discussed, an ongoing conversation at the POTUS level, an introductory guide by the NSA themselves into how some of those systems are meant to work, and much more.

If this is a police state, it's not a police state that I've ever read about in my history books. You think Putin is patiently explaining to all of his Russian citizens (and Snowden) the exact niceties of why their suveillance systems are needed to fight Chechnya-based Islamism, and patiently debating with parliamentarians in the Duma?

Even The Guardian notes how they preferred the U.S. to the U.K. to work their stories. Only in America would this type of thing even possibly be a debate the way it is.

Maybe I was unclear; I completely agree with rayiner (and, by extension, you). I've even made the same exact arguments elsewhere, today even.

I meant that it's an argument in that an argument can be either true or false. But yes, you're right.

Ah, sorry.

I did misunderstand, and felt I had to speak up accordingly. Some of my highest-voted posts on HN have been the ones where I've had to patiently remind people that America now is leaps and bounds better than America in almost any other decade by almost any conceivable measure.

Not every measure, for sure. But the history of America is one of constant (if slow) overall improvement; why throw that away? But now I'm preaching to the choir...

If it's any consolation, comments like those from 'rayiner and yourself prompted me to do an in-depth study of United States history from a quality-of-life perspective, and eventually led me to make the same arguments, so they are working, don't be disheartened :)

You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria.

The slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

Trouble is, government is not a logical entity.

That's cute but totally nonsensical. Logical fallacies are incorrect modes of inference in logical arguments. It's the people who are doing the arguing that must be logical, not the subject matter of the argument.

It's the people who are doing the arguing that must be logical, not the subject matter of the argument.

I don't follow you. If the system you're interacting with isn't logical in nature, then it's not useful to place logical constraints on it. You simply have no idea whether a slippery slope mechanism is at work.

If the people in charge are trying to nudge the Overton Window, then the slippery slope argument is an excellent description of the process at work.

So, I understand where you're coming from. At this point it feels like we should all just pick up our guns, go to the whitehouse and let them really know how we feel. But, there's still hope without that extreme. US History has shown other, more hopeless, situations eventually being fixed. In pretty much all the cases, it took awakening the masses for the change to come about. As powerful as the NSA & USgov seem to be, one thing can destroy it all - awakening the public. Also, the NSA/USgov is playing on our home-turf. Technology & internet is not something they hold an advantage above us on. One slip up on their part, or one good idea on an activist's part, and the masses could wake up and the NSA would fall to pieces in the course of a month or 2. Don't give up, just keep talking about it to anyone who will listen. Keep on increasing the probability of another Snowden. My family doesn't really care or fallow this NSA-stuff, but they have heard of it and it decreased their trust in the government. That's good enough. Just keep decreasing trust in USgov; increase probability of "A wild Snowden suddenly appears!". Eventually, something dramatic will happen and this whole thing will reach a conclusion. I can't say what that conclusion will be though... but it'll happen, it'll be spectacular... and then we'll all know where we stand after the dust clears.

also know that I am actually having difficulty with the reality of the world we live in.

I think your assessment of the world is significantly inaccurate.

I'd LOVE to have my view changed. Would you care to provide your assessment of the world? Seriously.

Every single thing that the USG has said since I have been paying attention - starting in 1986 - every single thing has been a lie. (I first became politically aware when I watched everything related to Iran-Contra with my father.)

It has been nothing but rinse-and-repeat of the same shit since that time. (2008 banking scandal? Try the SNL scandal of 80's)

Every single thing that the USG has said since I have been paying attention - starting in 1986 - every single thing has been a lie.

Sure it has. Every last little thing.

Now if you said that there always seems to be some scandal going on, then guess what, I agree with you. And guess what, that sort of shit has been going on since the founding of the Republic. And guess what, you can find shenanigans in the history of every monarchic, theocratic and republican government all the way back to ancient Rome and beyond. There is no Garden of Eden from which we've been expelled or Golden Age that we've lost, there's only your personal loss of innocence about how flawed humans are.

>Sure it has. Every last little thing.

Pedantic.

With respect to every major event, and every scandal; the position of the USG has invariably been proven to be false.

Iran-Contra, S&L, Gulf War, Iraq War, 2008 banking scandal, NSA (no not wittingly).

So - while you think I am an "outrage junkie" -- how about I actually have principals and fuck the USG and others who are unscrupulous assholes.

Yeah - I am upset about what is going on, and it's funny because you're comments are of the opinion I should just "get over it and realize that humans suck".

Sorry, that's not a position I'll take.

Yeah - I am upset about what is going on, and it's funny because you're comments are of the opinion I should just "get over it and realize that humans suck".

Sorry, that's not a position I'll take.

Then, and not coincidentally, you're doomed to eternal disappointment.

As for my own worldview, I adhere largely to three maxims: Hanlon's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor), suggesting that one should never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity; public choice theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor); and a cynical reading of the Federalist Papers.

You also failed to share your worldview as I had requested. I'd be certainly interested in hearing it articulated in a comment as opposed to the way you're just refuting mine.

>>> The sad part is I now even have difficulty with the term "legal".

That's because you have been taught that legal is roughly equivalent to right which is roughly equivalent to moral. US culture is very legalistic. All warning signs say "Don't do this - it's the LAW!" - because once it's the law, it is absolute, that's where it ends.

But I can bet nobody taught you - unless you're some rare exception - why things are or should be legal and where the "legal" comes from. US is unique in this regard as it was founded by people who actually thought about this question a lot - unlike most of other countries - and made a set of documents available - including, obviously, the Constitution, but also other works - that explain what they thought and why. But it is only a set of texts, each person has to find for himself/herself where their basic principles are and why the law must be such and not other. If the law has no basis under it, then what you feel is inevitable - since the law can be taken from you and perverted and made to say whatever people in power want it to say - and if you don't know what is beyond the law you have nothing left. You may not even be able to explain why what they are doing is wrong - after all, they have the law on their side, aren't they?

Thanks, I really liked your response.

I fully understand why laws are put in place when they are done so in an empirical fashion e.g. for your safety, ensuring certain codes are followed that ensure structrual soundness of a building, etc.

The problem is when we get people like Holder talking about how it is "legal" for the POTUS to use a drone to murder people in a foreign, supposedly, sovereign nation - even when those people are citizens of the US.

This is where I get confused on the value of "legality".

Insider trading by members of congress is "legal".

Fraudulent foreclosure has been "legal"

When what banks and governments do, while wrong, is called "legal" -- I cannot bring myself to respect anything they represent.

I do agree with your point from the perspective that it will turn people off and marginalize the argument that bad things really are happening. At the same time, a place where 10% of communications are read by the government is not 90% free. The liberty of a place declines exponentially with the violations of that liberty.

If the EFF comes out an announces they won't conduct any of their business because they have no privacy, we would rightly see an issue with it (and they do need privacy for some of what they do).

Chilling effects are an argument against having surveillance. They aren't something we should encourage purely because they allow to point and go: "NSA, look what you broke". That's what I meant about terrorism. If the you refuse to go outside because of terrorism, "the terrorists win." SImilarly, if you refuse to run your site that explains the law to people because the government twits the law to allow them to spy on you (even though you have nothing to hide in your professional capacity of operating that blog), then a different kind of terrorist wins.

Yes, if GrokLaw ran a wikileaks style legal blog which posted confidential stuff, the chilling effect would be necessary. In this case it isn't and since it's unclear when(or if) we will ever regain confidence that the NSA is not spying on us, we ought to minimize the damage.

> You are not free when you simpl cannot communicate with another human being via electronic means without the government's ability to actually be party to that comm.

That's reading a whole lot into the definition of "free." Were people "free" in 1950? If so, how do they become "not free" by introducing a new form of communication (created by the military, mind you) that is monitored more heavily than the ones they used to use?

Red Scare 2.0: The absolute pinnacle of freedom.

Warrantless surveillance certainly happened in 1950, but there did not exist the means by which data about almost everyone could be vacuumed up and correlated. It's entirely feasible to have an intelligence file on the majority of US citizens. In 1950, you would have to be in some way exceptional to have a file with the FBI.

Aside from the technology aspect, there was no Patriot Act and it would at the very least be difficult to detain citizens long term without charges. Sounds less free to me.

Electric communication has existed for 1837 with telegraphs, but really it is not a question of technology (means) but rather the ability to easily communicate with arbitrary people without overly board effective spying (ends). That is, this argument works as well for mail as it does for email, but the parameters are different.

G = Percent of people that the government can spy on for a form of communication (0-1 where 1 is everyone, 0 is no one).

D = Percent of personal data that gets sent using that form of communication (0-1 where 1 is everyone, 0 is no one).

G * D = Freedom Lost.

Using made up but reasonable numbers

Mail = 0.05 * 0.001 = 0.00005

Email = 0.4 * 0.99 = 0.396

Historically mail was used for almost all personal data but the capability to spy on mail was far lower (d= 0.8, G = 0.000001). As time increases communication privacy goes to zero (since both G and D will increase as an average over all means), unless, of course, the trend changes.

You drastically overestimate the government. The US gov can be taken down from the inside if the people want to. They don't want to. Every human alive today has more power at their fingertips than a King a hundred years ago, but go ahead and believe that this is the worst it has ever been, it is a popular fantasy.

Actually I am in no way saying it is the worst it has ever been.

I am saying that we are making zero progress as a species toward a free reality, and this is unacceptable.

Just because this version of America is "better than any other place" doesn't mean it is good.

I refuse to accept such apologistic BS.

Yeah it was worse. It is still bad and that is simply not acceptable.

we are making zero progress as a species toward a free reality

Oh, please. You yourself are providing an obvious piece of evidence against this claim: here you are, posting on HN about how disappointed you are with the US government. People used to have to be rich and/or politically connected to put their thoughts in a place where they could be read by a large audience.

Another piece of evidence is the fact that we are here discussing a public statement about the impact the NSA's activities are having on a service that provided significant value. A few decades ago the NSA was doing the same things they're doing now, but if it affected a particular individual, how were they going to get the word out? What newspaper would publish it? Now we don't have to rely on the media to get the word out.

I get that you're concerned, but please try to keep things in perspective.

Right, so we should all just sit back and let things go the way they are going because I am an uppity little whiner that wants to be able to have a conversation with someone who lives far away without the ability to have that conversation brought up by an NSA subcontractor at any point in MY FUCKING LIFETIME in the future?

Here is some perspective: The NSA is seeking to keep everything that anyone says for the duration of their entire life such that it is searchable whenever they want. That's downright dystopian.

And we are to expect that things are going to get better from here on out?

we should all just sit back and let things go the way they are

Did I say that? I was not saying things are good; I was saying that your claim that we are making zero progress towards a more free humanity is too extreme. We have tools today to fight this that past generations did not have; that's progress.

And we are to expect that things are going to get better from here on out?

Obviously they won't if we ignore the fact that change is not one-sided. The Internet gives governments more ability to snoop, but it also gives us more ability to communicate and coordinate. I think you are concentrating too much on the former and not enough on the latter.

I disagree. We are making progress towards a more free society. Would I like to see more progress, of course and so would most people but they are not going be in favor of trashing the economy and putting their families at risk over a theoretical increase in progress. I do agree that laws cannot be secret for obvious reasons, but I am not sure you can have no secrets.

>We have zero moral standing on any issue.

I'm afraid this and related claims are a little hyperbolic without an itemized list.

At first, I thought similar things. But then when you really look at Groklaw, an important reason for its success is its coverage of matters that probably did require a lot of anonymous sources.

> Of course, that wouldn't get them publicity

So they're shutting down to get publicity for...what?

As a UK resident, I feel like I can speak to the question of whether we can describe the UK (I pass no judgement on the US) as oppressive or a police state, so here's my take on it.

I don't necessarily agree that GCHQ or the NSA spying on UK subjects is a great idea, I don't like the idea that all of my communications are collected and available to analyse should I ever blow anything up or should someone in GCHQ take a disliking to me, but if I consider issue at hand, ie, do I feel oppressed or do I live under a police state, I'd say the answer is categorically no, I do not.

I do not live in fear of the police kicking down my door because I voiced an anti-government view online. I do not believe that if I openly start supporting the wrong party I'll "disappear" as happens in other countries. I believe that elections in the UK are free and fair (for the most part) and I also believe that if a party came along that tried to turn the UK into the kind of country where those things were a reality then they would be sharply booted out of office.

I also, incidentally, believe that if a party came along whose main policy was that they'd fiercely protect everyone's privacy they'd get precisely nowhere in the polls. Not because of any big conspiracy, but because people care more about their taxes and wheely bin collection rota's than about whether GCHQ knows who they email and why. Everyone I've spoken to on the subject already assumed they knew that anyway due to the fact that they are a spy agency. The tech-crowd's collective anger over the Snowden revelations isn't mirrored amongst the general population - at least in my experience. If it were, then no doubt things would change. That's how democracy works.

> I do not live in fear of the police kicking down my door because I voiced an anti-government view online. I do not believe that if I openly start supporting the wrong party I'll "disappear" as happens in other countries. I believe that elections in the UK are free and fair (for the most part) and I also believe that if a party came along that tried to turn the UK into the kind of country where those things were a reality then they would be sharply booted out of office.

I was discussing this with some tech-minded friends on IRC the other day, and they pointed out the "chilling effect" you could get with massive surveillance.

And I have to say I see their point. But after thinking about it some more I've realized that I've not once ever been scared to say something bad about the government (and yes, that's happened a lot).

But I have been scared to discuss these topics with my friends, here on HN, etc. It's only a matter of time before I piss off the wrong hacker, so there is a "chilling effect" going on... it's just not the one all my friends are warning me about. :-/

To me, the fact that you or I aren't scared isn't proof that a chilling effect does not exist. I'm not much of a "influencer" or "trend setter". Thus, even if i say something bad about the government, why would they bother? Things change when you're talking about journalists and political opposition. The fact that big brother is always listening makes a hell of a difference.

> Things change when you're talking about journalists and political opposition.

Sure, but I haven't yet found either American journalists or political opponents who were scared to tear into the U.S. government at any opportunity, or even any pretext for an opportunity.

It's one of the ways by which Americans have maintained freedom of expression in that regard, is to make complaining about the government so commonplace as to be utterly and completely ordinary.

You don't work in journalism or political activism and you don't care about people that do. Got it.

This isn't new, this was why Hoover stayed in power for so long. He had files on everyone.

Remember, information is power.

Is there a way for people to initiate impeachment of Obama / get rid of scumbags from the Government given the number of lies and mess that's already out there?

Like it or not but a lot of non-American users see these actions like a bid to take over the Internet. It is a sort of waging a war against the rest of the world. Treating ordinary citizens from outside America default as terrorists and subjecting 'em to round-the-clock surveillance is a gross violation of human rights.

Why is the world silent on this? Why do I read 'only American citizens deserve privacy' in every piece of debate and discussion out there?

IMO, a historic equivalent of this type of naked surveillance was when the Jews were stripped of their clothes under Nazi Germany (I know this sounds a bit over the top, but well it's not). The world needs to stop thinking that privacy is grant only to those who belong to certain nations.

[Edit: Thank you for the negative votes. The statements hold true despite your lack of respect for opinions.]

The remedies are the power of the purse, which won't necessarily be followed but which we are attempting and got very close in the first vote in the House, and/or impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate, which is an inherently political act. In practice, as the political lay of the land is today, I'm not even sure Obama would be impeached and convicted if he were "caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy" (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edwin_Edwards).

Touching on the Jews in Europe before and during WWII, first they were stripped of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (e.g. see this in two months: http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Third-Reich-Disarming/dp/1...). As you may have heard, the US is going in the opposite direction outside of what we're taking to calling "slave states" like New York and Maryland, and probably California soon. We have options, please see here for previous discussion before you dismiss this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155921

Agreed. But since this is about catching everyone else in bed on the planet it gets far more serious than a ... say a Monica Lewinsky episode. I believe breach of privacy globally is a very serious offence and it should be measured as such.

You and I bearing licensable firearms from the pop and mom stores is absolutely no parallel to the capability that the agencies possess. Strength of gun laws seems suspect in the era of drones, robotics and the goldmine of everyone's data and emotions.

The Monica Lewinsky based impeachment that wasn't followed by a real trial in the Senate was about perjury, not catching someone in bed (if the latter it was the worst kept secret in US history, do a search on bimbo eruptions). We (used to) expect better from our Presidents.

"licensable" firearms? I don't know what benighted jurisdiction you live in, but in mine we don't need no stinking licenses to buy or own them. We do need one to carry concealed (only a handful of states don't), but that's in part a different thing, but it still makes certain acts of terror more difficult and expensive. Please read the discussion I linked to which touches on that, and don't doubt for a second that the more forward thinking/paranoid or whatever members of the RKBA community aren't working through how to operate in an era of pervasive surveillance.

As SF authors and readers have for decades and decades, I'm checking now and the first story I read on this theme was "The Hunting Lodge" by Randall Garret, first published in 1954 in Astounding, I read it in the early '70s in a superb 1968 Robert Silverberg collection Men and Machines.

And pay attention to the maxim "Professionals discuss logistics".

> "licensable" firearms

By that I meant arms that are available for sale on the market. Sorry, it didn't come off as accurately as I intended. Will definitely read up Men and Machines, next.

True, the NSA doesn't respect the privacy of any non-American on the planet in bulk. This is more than just a privacy violation. Also the NSA might respect an Americans privacy if they are farther than three hops from a foreigner, kinda like saying they don't.

If you think this is just an American problem you are deceiving yourself.

The NSA "hoovers" information, but it doesn't refer to the vacuum cleaner anymore.

Ummm, no. I'm sure he didn't have files on my parents (well, perhaps aside from a pro-forma one on my father, who as an USNavy officer for 4 years in the '50s would I believe have gotten a Secret clearance as all officers do today), he had files on everyone "important". And e.g. the fruits of bugging Goldwater's campaign airplane, as ordered by LBJ. About the latter he said something to the effect of "If the President orders it...."

There's a qualitative difference between "The government has its eye on 'important' people" and "The government is spying on every phone call everyone makes" etc. (the metatdata collection we're pretty sure is happening from the Snowden leaks which included a blanket writ for all of Verizon Businesses' metadata).

I think the thing we need to consider is that they don't need to have explicit files per se on anybody anymore.

It seems more likely that if a file was needed on you, they could generate one by simply typing some PII (say, a name and address) into a computer form, which then causes form letters to be sent mail merge style to credit agencies, retailers, telecoms, and major social networks requesting your information. Then, as the relevant data comes in, it gets added to an electronic folder to be accessed by whomever thinks they need access to it.

For the most part it's true they could quickly generate a file, but they could have done that in 1998 as well (modulo the lack of things like Facebook at the time).

Being able to instantly pull up email contents would certainly be different in scale and scope though!

I doubt it; POP3 and SMTP are plaintext. Put a few wiretap in at major colos; build a few data centers, maintain a couple of essentially very large hashtables and it seems plausible that they could instantly pull up email contents.

It'd be a bit bigger scale than GMail search or whatever corporations use for e-Discovery in Outlook, but it'd be plausible.

Whether the government allocated budget to such a contraption is another matter; I think that would be a bigger concern than the technical plausibility of "store everyone's email for all time in perpetuity". I mean, if GMail was supposed to fulfill that vision (ha!) then it can't possibly be unreasonable for a determined government to build it.

Great point, and this is a big reason why the "I have nothing to hide" argument comes from a position of childlike naivety.

Even if you have nothing to hide, what about your members of parliament? CEOs? Mayors? President or Prime Minister? Judges? Police chiefs?

Is there a single one that has never written an email or made a phone call that could destroy their career? What lengths would they go to in order to keep it private? Do you honestly expect them to fall on their sword for the good of the nation?

Giving a shadowy group with essentially no oversight access to damn near every skeleton in the closet society has under the guise of "security" is analogous stuffing your house with munitions and trusting your kids not to play with matches.

Do you want the NSA or GCHQ knowing that your teenage daughter is pregnant before you do?

I would certainly expect it if Target already does, but then this just highlights how pervasive the problem is.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...]

The nude pictures she texted to her boyfriend are now part of her permanent file as well.

Wow, good point. Never considered it that way, only my own personal reasons.

It is interesting to reflect upon the phrase "I have nothing to hide". The first thing to note is that it is very selfish and self-centered: "I have nothing to hide". People who say the phrase don't seem to realize that other people may be doing perfectly harmless things in private that are illegal, or at least would get them ostracized.

The second point about the phrase is it has an implicit timeframe: "I have nothing to hide right now". Those who say it regularly seem to lack any foresight (or memory of history) or imagination and can't seem to visualize a future in which they might (even unintetionally) do something which will put them on the bad side of the law. They also don't seem to consider the possibility that the prohibition against ex post facto laws could be suspended.

Agreed. If you cannot rely on the people you elect to not be blackmailed then the system is essentially worthless.

People who say they have nothing to hide feel that way because they think they've done nothing wrong. They fail to realize how easy it is to take something you've done that was considered legal and suddenly make it illegal. Once the now illegal activity has become a social stigma then the information that you once participated in those activities can be used against you.

Example? Once upon a time sending an email to a person in a foreign country wasn't suspect. Now it is. Sending it to someone in a certain country can likely make you a target of the government. Whatever label is attached to the person you are corresponding to will then be attached to you. This was how it was done during the Communism scare in the US after World War II. You spoke with a known Communist? Then you must be a Communist.

Never mind easy blackmail material that people in positions of power tend to get themselves into.

Jones has shut down Groklaw before, in 2011. IT's her choice to make but I don't buy her reasoning, and I certainly don't think it supports your claim of blackmail.

Again, at what stage can we describe the US and UK, and their co-conspirators as fascist, police state, oppressive, and so on?

Well, don't let me stop you since you're obviously aching to do so to bring some excitement into your life. I stand by my opposing view that people today generally enjoy far more freedom than in the past, even as recently as in the cold war.

Look in a textbook at the definitions of "fascist" and "police state" - then read about Hitler's Germany (fascism) and the Cold War KGB (police state). You could even read about Stalin too.

Then you'll know at what point we can call the United States and the United Kingdom fascist and police states.

A different perspective is that we have never been as free as we are today, proven by the fact that we now know exactly to what degree we are not free, a luxury which is historically unique.

Not saying that's the case, just that i think we have never had a truly free society ever anywhere.

It worked for Hoover and Nixon. We're on a continuum here. Its not like all of the sudden the government decided to start spying on its citizens.

Oppression 2.0 - it is unevenly distributed.

Misquoting William Gibson:

"The fascism is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."

In essence, that was David Simon's argument in favor of things like PRISM, (paraphrasing) 'Finally an equal-opportunity way for the Iron Boot of Law to be applied!'.

I would put money that PJ was hacked illegally by large corporations long before the NSA took an interest in her. And that the government knew all about it. She mentions her apartment being broken into... That was almost certainly the work of powers she irked.

In fact PJ is probably the ONE person they have investigated and CHOSE not to bother. She probably had several illegal taps on her stuff way back when she started...this has been gearing up almost as long as Groklaw has been in business and we all "knew" about it, just didn't believe it. The only thing worse than speaking out against the government is speaking out against companies... And she's been doing that for years.

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