Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

I like this article because, unlike the other two articles now high on HN's front page (one from the Guardian and one from the NYT), Schneier actually mentions other countries besides the US and UK:

The NSA's actions are legitimizing the internet abuses by China, Russia, Iran and others.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure his proposed solution is doable:

We need to figure out new means of internet governance, ones that makes it harder for powerful tech countries to monitor everything.

As he notes, this hasn't worked well in the past:

We need to avoid the mistakes of the International Telecommunications Union, which has become a forum to legitimize bad government behavior

As has every other international forum that tries to do "governance" (the United Nations itself being a prime example). The only international bodies that have worked reasonably well are the ones that develop standards, without making any political statements about how to use them: "mechanism, not policy". The IETF, which Schneier mentions, is such a body, and can certainly help on the technical side, but I don't see much hope on the political side if it has to be international. (For one thing, why would the governments of China, Russia, Iran, and others care what some international "governance" body says, any more than they care what the UN says?)

That's right. Internet utopians need to come to terms with the idea that the world is and always will be a cruel jungle. There is emphatically no fix for this. All of human history is testament to this cold, sad fact.

Quite; I think it would be more effective for him to run for office and solicit donations.

I think there is no solution that combines 1) decentralization 2) governance

Without 1 internet will die -fast-, so giving that up is not possible, aside from being a horribly bad idea in itself.

So there is no "governance" solution to this. There is a software solution though.

We do however need "governance" solutions to ensure that the software solutions remain legal. Decentralization and cryptography are only worth so much if useful solutions using them become illegal.

I think there is a governance solution, to wit a constitutional privacy amendment. But I appreciate you may not agree with this. I'm not at all convinced you can engineer around it.

It's pretty obvious you can engineer around it. What I think is a given, is that you cannot have a global privacy "amendment" passed.

I find it surprising that you use the word "amendment". Does it mean you understand that such a proposal would have zero chance of getting passed under most governments ? If so, you must be aware that such an amendment can never apply to the internet itself, even if the US were to implement it.

Read what the ITU tried to pass during it's last meeting, and then you'll see where governance leads. Sorry to tell you this, but >70% of the world's human population lives under extremely restrictive governments, and most of them wouldn't have it any other way. If internet rule was fair, there would be no freedom on the internet, not now, not ever, nowhere. Because 300 million Americans force their way on the rest of the planet is why internet freedom exists and the only chance it has for the future (and, ironically, probably at least 60% of those Americans don't agree with their government doing this, but don't know/care).

Even Europe has more invasive laws than the NSA uses. Refusing to give up encryption keys is a crime in Europe (even for people who don't live there). The mere fact that there has to be a warrant before tapping is implemented, and that ISPs and companies can see and even fight those warrants ... well it sounds absurd to me. Companies are never trusted with this information in Europe, and dozens of different agencies (ie. all members of interpol and their components) can request information like this. Most are not bound by the rules of the government the person investigated lives in.

You mistake my meaning. I'm talking about the context of the US government and the NSA in particular, the scope of whose powers are defined by the US constitution.

I find it surprising that you use the word "amendment". Does it mean you understand that such a proposal would have zero chance of getting passed under most governments ?

No, and I think you're reading too much into it. I'm talking about a constitutional amendment because it is the only way to put privacy on an equal constitutional footing with other governmental imperatives whose existence has been confirmed by precedent, and which would otherwise prevail in a legal challenge. As a law nerd, this strikes me as the most effective technical approach.

You're saying that just as technology has brought us very near to the tipping point for world-wide self-governance though.

I still think people are vastly underestimating the impact the first 3-billion-like Facebook post (or equivalent) will have on this world.

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