Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

After reading this essay by Bruce Schneier, I was reminded of advice I have given on Hacker News before. Schneier writes, "Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. Has any country that engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming totalitarian? Whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new ground."

Rolling back a surveillance state and establishing a government with more protection of individual liberties is something that has been done before. I have seen it done. I related at greater length here on HN my experiences living in a surveillance state that included government assassins to eliminate political opponents at home and abroad.[1] Getting rid of such a regime is not easy, but it is possible. It takes courage, and it takes unity among the courageous people making up the freedom movement.

I remind my freedom-loving friends here on Hacker News that there are resources to help you if you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter. If you are mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,[2] which are compiled by advisers who have helped bring about democratic transitions in various parts of the world. Not all of those movements have succeeded yet, but I bet on their long-term success in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, and wherever freedom is scarce. Remember that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in the Albert Einstein Institution publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from. Practice courage and practice collective action.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720

[2] http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html

As the Berlin Wall fell, the last thing the Stasi did was start shredding. That shredding only stopped when a mob physically seized control of the buildings it was taking place in.

The slower you take down a surveillance state, the more time they have to destroy the evidence of their wrong-doing. I don't know how you can prevent that. With any luck we can dismantle them, but we will have to cope with the possibility that after the dismantling is complete, the evidence that the dismantling was warranted will be long gone.

Give them time to shred! After all, who is to say what the finders of the data will eventually end up doing with it. Those documents are proof of wrongdoing, but they are also a source of possible future wrongdoing.

I absolutely understand where you are coming from.

However I think it is necessary we preserve those records, as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives does, so that crime committed by the surveillance system and its members can be investigated (being able to prosecute individuals like Erich Mielke is essential to allow the population to regain trust in their new government), and the people should be allowed access to their own files so they can have insight into the full extent of widespread untargeted surveillance.

You could consider such a preservation to be a shameful monument to what we became. It would be a lighthouse on the rocks, looking over the wreckage of countless ships, warning us to stay away.

I agree that any information left over from a totalitarian regime should be preserved and available to the interested parties. There's a great deal of value in preserving the shameful events of the past.

That being said, if I had to choose between stopping "shredding" (or whatever form the digital equivalent takes) and life / freedom / order / etc, I think I'd let them shred. We want those records, but they're among the least of many goals.

I completely understand. This is actually something that I have 'waffled' on several times.

What is putting me on the side of preservation right now is the hope that with preservation, future generations will benefit, but shredding the document would only help the existing victims. People living in Germany have something concrete to show their children when they teach them about the value of privacy. With that, hopefully the "anti-surveillance immunization" will span generations.

I think it's far more important to destroy the resources and apparatus that enables totalitarianism than to punish the people who participated in a previous police state after it's already collapsed.

After the DDR fell, Mielke wasn't going to be operating the Stasi any longer. Going after people like him might bring some emotional closure to people persecuted under the regime, but if the regime is gone, that's all it can do: there's no argument for deterrence. If a new police state emerges, it's not likely to be administered by the same individuals who ran the old one.

Keeping the resources used by the old police state on hand, and acting to cultivate public trust in the new government seems like a combination to be wary of. The corruptability of human institutions demonstrated by the existence of previous police states should caution us against putting excessive trust in any institutions.

CIA agents acquired the records after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/703303.stm

Yes, it was obviously a very chaotic situation, it doesn't surprise me that the CIA got their beak wet.

Whether the mission of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives was to destroy or preserve the records probably makes little difference in this case, those records were seemingly stolen before a policy towards the records was decided upon.

I don't want the CIA to have this data anymore than I wanted the stasi to have it.

Incidentally, I'm in there (for several reasons).

Why would they shred the information? They (the ubiquitous "they", meaning "someone with access") are much more likely to "take it with them" to some other organization or for private/personal use. The data is too valuable (to someone) to shred even years after collection.

The Stasi shredded it because they knew it was incriminating and, realistically, there was no way to smuggle out a copy or hide it. They were under siege (literally). The organization was finished and they knew it.

Perhaps digital records will be easier for enterprising individuals to smuggle out or hide, but even if that happens it seems likely that an effort will once again be made to keep the data out of the hands of the public.

When a spy agency is in its death throes, that data stops being valuable and becomes a liability to the surviving individuals that will no longer enjoy the protection of the agency. It becomes evidence.

During the chaotic storming of the Stasi headquarters, there were incidents of Stasi officers hiding among the crowds so that they could destroy even more documents even as the public seized them. The headquarters were being sacked, there was really no remaining chain of command that could realistically make them do that, but they did anyway.

Maybe Nicolae Ceaușescu, executed less than three weeks earlier, was in the back of their minds.

Shredding paper documents takes time. Deleting electronic records is almost instantaneous. I would say that we don't have much chance in terms of preventing it from happening.

Deleting electronic records is particularly instantaneous if they were stored with that eventuality in mind. I hope they weren't. I hope they have extensive unencrypted cold backups.

I am probably being very naive to think that we stand a chance though.

Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming totalitarian?

The UK?

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