Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.
For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA isn't spying on people anymore.
The NSA is a spy agency, of course they are spying on people. Unless the NSA ceases to exist it will spy on people. They are not actively trying to claim otherwise (only that they try really hard to only spy on people who are in someway connected to someone who is not an American or has been designated dangerous).
Scheier's special prosecutor plus truth and reconciliation commission seems reasonable. But we're getting way off topic.
The comments will go away when the issue goes away. The issue isn't going to go away. Therefore, don't expect the comments to, either. Welcome to the world we now live in.
I think what's happening here is that you are being asked to go away. Your comments aren't adding anything to this discussion about a new iPhone.
The answer to all of the above, if we assume that talking about a product is 'helpful' to begin with, is "Yes." Privacy is simply something that people are going to consider and discuss from now on. There is no reason we should treat it differently from the other things we consider.
You might as we'll be discussing religion or politics here. This is not the place. I heard your warning the first ten times.
Change starts by making enough people aware of and angry about the issue that the politicians can't afford to support these programs any more. If we're just distracted the next time $TECH_TOY or $NATURAL_DISASTER comes along, then nothing at all will change.
I don't particularly care if people find my anger at the NSA's systemic intrusion of our privacy annoying. I care more about that particular issue than I do what a random person on the internet whom I've never met might think of me. I care more about keeping you talking about the issue than I do about you liking me.
There is no new information about the NSA there. Just more speculation.
It won't.
The adolescent libertarian smell combined with semi-hysterical, semi-supported outrage on this issue is rapidly beginning to stink.
We know that the NSA has their hooks into US hardware and software vendors. At this point, it's difficult to trust the promises that US-based companies make about security and privacy because we know that they're being compelled to lie. That's an extremely important variable in the discussion of a new piece of internet-connected hardware that collects biometrics. Dismissing discussion of it as "annoying" is juvenile and myopic.
I am a fan of hyperbole, but at least keep it coherent... At the very least, cheald is on topic while they are notoriously not.
For those of us in the other 200 odd countries it really is boring as hell to have to wade through your pointless, unsubstantiated paranoia.
For instance, something in the safe-harbor blabla says citizen data handled by public angencies in Europe is not allowed to go through US nor, obviously, to be stored in the US. This rule is not new: in my previous job we had to ditch gmail and gapps in order to comply, and it was f*ing painful.
So the GP is right. African governements in general do not have the means to spy on your electronic life.
Speak for yourself, not for the rest of us, please.
Wow - that has to be hands down the absolute most ignorant, ridiculous and bullshit comment I have ever read on HN.
This is The Best place to be talking about the National Security Agency Technologically spying on everyone, building in parallel infra and forcing the biggest tech companies in the world via court gags and threats to providing them with access to encrypted user data.
Your comment is mind-boggling, to me, how you could even think this is not the place!
Edit: Toned it down a notch.
Your comment makes a good point, but it's too hysterical.
To quote him. Please explain how he "did no such thing"
To put it another way: the problem is not the topic. It's the tactic of derailing every other topic that people want to talk about just because you think something else is too important to be ignored. That tactic, as well-intended as it might be, has a history of driving good users away from once-good fora precisely because it's so annoying to not be able to talk about anything else.
Thank you for your succinct statement, I have very little faith we will get through this any time soon given the reaction I see on HN, Reddit and other sites where the most seemingly qualified among us to do anything cannot even comprehend how pernicious this problem is.
Fingerprint scanners are not yet prevalent in modern smartphones, and fingerprints are one of the primary ways that law enforcement can trace / track individuals. If the NSA, which has already been shown to have backdoors into Apple's systems, was able to access fingerprint data on a massive scale, this would be a massive affront to privacy for millions of users around the world.
pilif's comment was absolutely relevant to discussion of the iPhone 5S launch, as one of the phone's primary new features has the potential to be a massive security and privacy breach given information we've recently learned regarding Apple's close relationship with the NSA.
Do you that the NSA loves us all and is just, y'know, kinda watching out for us?
We all need a big brother to save us, right?
I'd say HN is one of the most important grass roots forums for this today.
Technology - aka OUR industry - is going to rapidly change in response. I think it's critical that there is discussion.
I'm actually really interested in your view. Do you think everyone questioning NSA surveillance of iPhones is wearing tinfoil hats?
"We should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it."
That is a useful comment that would further the discussion. So I will now respond to that, since I don't want to debate what snark means.
I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive. They are similar to all the old comments on stories about Microsoft where people would say things like "Micro$oft is obviously evil" and such.
So if a comment is interesting and useful, and happens to be about the NSA, then great. I haven't seen many of those.
> I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive.
Perhaps our energy would be better spent pointing out why these comments are naiive and misinformed, rather than discussing whether they're worth saying at all, then?
(Meta-meta-point: I wish I could collapse comment threads on HN.)
If the NSA wants to target you specifically, you're fucked no matter what unless you move to a cave. No point in being needlessly worried. I'm more worried about this causing someone to cut off my finger while stealing my phone than I am the NSA coming after me.
So yes, by all means, keep talking about it.
It is a perfectly cromulent word.
At this point, the overwhelming evidence is that we are being spied upon at a scale never seen before in history. Legal checks and balances such as search warrants are consider inconveniences to be routed around with border confiscations.
I would begin to believe things are changing when I see officials on both sides of the Canada-US border going to jail--yes, jail--for things like spying on their ex-spouses or for routing around search warrants.
You know what? Neither are derisive comments that imply the NSA is not, in fact, violating our privacy. You'd have to be out of your goddamned mind to actually think they've stopped.
Clapper's testimony to congress?
We are dealing with the realm of speculation, but it is not speculation fueled by some sort of tinfoil hatted lunacy. With the role that smartphones fill in peoples' lives today, you are just going to have to come to grips with the fact that, going forward, some people are going to consider the privacy of new devices to be very relevant, and well worth discussing. Don't be surprised when people error on the side of caution.
You want to talk about battery life and color? Well I want to talk about display DPI and privacy. Learn to cope.
I assume you mean digitally record, unless you're wearing gloves. ;)
> In one case, after the government learned that a foreign intelligence target had ordered new computer hardware, the American manufacturer agreed to insert a back door into the product before it was shipped, someone familiar with the request told The Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet...
Compelling.
So from that you extrapolate all devices made by US companies are secretly under the control of the NSA? Pretty big logical leap there.
That leads me to believe that you're either part of an organization that's subverting the internet and assisting the NSA or you're willfully ignorant.
Fact is, your other comments point that you have not well-researched the situation.
Every week there's a new revelation of just how deep the surveillance really is-- not just "metadata" but ALL data is being collected. The NSA hacks into companies, pays off others for cooperation. Backdoors. Broken encryption. It's all there out in the open thanks to the documents that have been leaked.
You do harm to the liberty of others by dismissing these facts.
> It's all there out in the open thanks to the documents that have been leaked.
You dismiss his point that unsubstantiated documents is largely the source of all this speculation and then you remake a bunch of unsubstantiated claims, saying they are all proved by the aforementioned documents.
Even Obama and the NSA itself has backed this up.
They'd been trying to extradite Snowden ffs, get your head out of the sand.
That is to say: there are some things that we know and are verified (e.g. that there is a program, called PRISM, etc.) but other things where there's a lot of speculation, but less or no verification (e.g. that the iPhone is backdoored.)
Some of us like to distinguish between these things. Some of us don't. It doesn't help to call people names over it, though.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-iphone-slides-in-der-spie...
(Sorry for the BI link, but the relevant slides are shown immediately)
> In one case, after the government learned that a foreign intelligence target had ordered new computer hardware, the American manufacturer agreed to insert a back door into the product before it was shipped, someone familiar with the request told The Times.
> At Microsoft, as The Guardian has reported, the N.S.A. worked with company officials to get pre-encryption access to Microsoft’s most popular services, including Outlook e-mail, Skype Internet phone calls and chats, and SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage service.
Please do your duty as a human being and read more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet...
They obviously have broad powers to spy on individuals through a variety of channels, which isn't, or shouldn't be, news.
Who said what they're doing is illegal? The whole problem is that the entire surveillance regime is completely secret and completely legal.
If you can comprehend what is going on here, you should be loud and obnoxious about it. Get people talking. Make it the focus and refuse to give up that focus. The only way this is going to change is to get so many people angry about it that it becomes more politically advantageous to oppose than support it. If you get angry about hearing about it, then I'll take that - you now have an incentive to help get it changed so people will shut up about it.
I'm not trying to stop you from having the discussion. Can you just label the thread "NSA can get your fingerprints off that iPhone 5S" and have at it. There is a time and a place for everything. Everyone here has heard about the NSA situation by now. The word is out.
Nope. I'm just asking you to not ask others to not discuss their politics. You're more than welcome to not participate in the conversation if it's not useful to you.
We really can't discuss the finer points here because no matter how polite I am, I will simply get voted down for not agreeing with the HN politics. By the way, recently I heard a few tech heavy-weights come out in favor of the NSA (e.g. Larry Ellison, Max Levchin).
If you are comfortable with the current NSA behaviour, you are part of the problem.