EFF Dismayed by House's Gutted USA Freedom Act | Hacker News Reader

EFF Dismayed by House's Gutted USA Freedom Act

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158 pointsspenvo37 comments

PBS Frontline is running a ~3 hour documentary, released in two parts, the second installment was released today, of the entire post 9/11 NSA surveillance episode, up to and including the Snowden leaks @ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-sec...

Well worth a watch.

So while this is fantastic - if you pay attention to the first part of it - there is still a heavy dose of propaganda tied to the perception of how this all came about - as if it was some surprise emergent behavior that is outside anyone's expectation that this would have occurred.

As opposed to the reality that the whole thing is decades in the making and we can track exactly who built this thing. (Hint: who build PNAC?)

Joe knows! Allow me to just... drop this here....

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

Terry Gross's interview last week with two of the subjects of the FrontLine series, Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe was also excellent:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/frontline-doc-explores-how-sept-11...

Do you think it is well worth a watch for people who have been following the issue? I thought it was a nice introduction but there was hardly anything shocking or new in the show.

Was it entertaining? I guess, but professional documentaries that reinforce your world view are usually somewhat entertaining. Was it informative for someone that has read the coverage in the Guardian/FirstLook/NYT/WaPo? In all honesty, no.

Part two was kind of disappointing.

They went after Google, glossed over Facebook and did not even mention Microsoft whom is the only one so far (outside of the telcos) "partnering" with them.

Major funding for FRONTLINE’s broadcast season is provided by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I do not believe that those grants are completely without perks for the big doners.

That said- I don't think MS is the most interesting story here. Google has earned their reputation with Eric Schmidt's cavilier attitude and hypocrisy.

And Microsoft "earned a reputation" of the "privacy-friendly" company than they goes behind our backs to weaken their own crypto systems to make data collection easier by the NSA/FBI from their services. At least Google/Schmidt was pretty honest about their intentions regarding privacy. Microsoft is just selling us out.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/13/nsa-docs-detail-efforts-to-...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

Also Google has always tried to be at the forefront of securing their services, such as adopting wide encryption and PFS early on.

I'm not defending Google, and I'm going to quit Gmail as soon as a good end-to-end encryption e-mail services comes around, but of the two, I definitely see Microsoft as the worse one in terms of privacy.

I appreciate your thoughts here.

I'm amused by the fact that we're both looking at this from a "lesser of two evils" perspective and coming to different conclusions. The reality is they both just suck. The degrees of suck exist, but I don't even want to be debating it when we're in this deep on privacy violations.

MS sucks because of the residual arrogance of the average MSFT employee, and their failures on data colleciton.

GOOG sucks because of the privacy disconnect between the officers and the engineers. I don't understand how they can have some of the talent they do working on "privacy" when their executive can be such an ass.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions [...] They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next"

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"

"people who take issue with their homes appearing online can just move after Google cars photograph their homes or businesses"

I really want to understand why some of the security experts they have would enter into this kind of faustian deal. Is it the nice car & the expensive mortgage eventually overcomes all ideals?

I appreciate that Chrome is probably one of the best private browsers available today. But if your motivation truly is privacy and if the company funding your work has its principal revenue source in advertising, where do you draw the line? Where is the threshold where your sacrifice in principles is no longer worth the opportunity to work on "privacy"?

By most reports this bill was watered down on the express meddling of the White house.

This is very unfortunate in that Senator Obama had clearly promised in his pre-election speeches to explicitly push for what this bill was (somewhat) trying to do. Watch this point-by-point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vixVPE4LBAU#!

Now that he is in a position to do so, President Obama is fighting tooth-and-nail to make this a toothless(!) bill.

Why?

Why? Because... he's a politician?

So was everyone else involved with the bill. That explanation is insufficient.

The question was why did he say one thing then do another.

No, the question was not that general. The question was, verbatim: "Now that he is in a position to do so, President Obama is fighting tooth-and-nail to make this a toothless(!) bill. Why?" Many other politicians did not fight this bill tooth and nail, so that doesn't explain why Obama did.

Wouldnt be great if bills were edited in github or something analogous so you could see who committed the gutting? Oh well, back to my ipython notebook.

Sorry, git blame might be able to hold people accountable for their decisions. This is the reason it would take revolution or something equally disruptive to introduce it.

I'm always surprised at how many people naively suppose that bloodshed will automatically generate political reform.

You have sort of a logical fallacy there. You're presuming that people assume "if (bloodshed) then (reform)" but I think what is generally assumed is "if not(bloodshed) then not(reform)". Using boolean algebra, let p be (bloodshed) and q be (reform), then what is assumed is !p -> !q which (and it's been a little while since my boolean algebra classes) would be identical to q -> p, i.e. the inverse of what you said, reform implies that there was bloodshed or rather that reform cannot happen without bloodshed. In that light, I think how many people naively supposing that reform can only come from bloodshed is pretty surprising. However, it seems to be the case that the threat of bloodshed tends to be a strong motivator for action; however, the action is not always what's desired. What is viewed as an external threat (e.g. Oklahoma City Bombing, McVeigh et al are viewed as dangerous extremists not "America's own sons") and thus reaction to their wishes--apparently that the US move away from a dominant federal government--was largely in the reverse; whether by their actions or others, the federal government since 1995 has probably gotten considerably more powerful.

More than interesting. It would be a way to account what people say and what they do.

What is the most serious attempt out there of trying this?

I would want a law saying all bills must be put through a system that can be audited to see precisely who makes the changes.

And if it allows pull requests like GitHub, anyone could fork a bill, make a change, and people could comment on the best proposed recordings.

I think this could honestly get people more involved in politics in a productive way, rather than watching talking heads spout reactionary crystal ball gazing on the 24 hour news networks.

Which is why there isn't such a thing. :)

I nominate this idea of the month. Github for all bills.

You're hardly the first to think this up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance

Of course, this would require politicians to have some basic technical literacy. Though I wouldn't imagine using a VCS to be difficult, even for an unacquainted person.

That's why GUIs and potentially always watching directories would be perfect for them.

It doesn't really require much of the individual MP or Congresspersion, just their office.

It would be interesting to trace the true lineage of this (or any) legislative edit.

It has a smell if an outside source, as though our laws are not written by our lawmakers.

An article on The Hill (http://thehill.com/policy/technology/206686-privacy-advocate...) says that the change was made at the behest of the Obama administration:

"[A]fter moving through the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, where it saw some changes but retained the support of privacy advocates, last minute negotiations between House leadership and the Obama administration have left the bill with weakened language when it comes to banning mass surveillance, advocates say."

Disappointing on many levels.

Because we all know how the Tea Party-heavy House has done whatever Obama wanted

The House leadership loathes the "Tea Party" types with a burning passion, e.g. along with the rest of the Republican establishment has made it very clear they prefer a Democrat winning to a "Tea Party" type. And is ever ready to cut a deal with Obama; there's no surprise here, especially with how much power a House majority leadership team has.

This is a blatant lie. If you look at any actual survey data, the Tea Party is strictly a wing of the Republican party and it has been nothing but good for the political fortunes of the Republican party, which is extremely concerned with what the Tea Party wants. Without the Tea Party, the Republicans would not have had the House all these years.

The two are not mutually exclusive (although if you can supply some evidence this extreme concern with what the "Tea Party" wants translating into substantive action by the national Republican Party I'm all ears).

If you're completely unaware of how the Republican establishment has been at war with its base LONG before the "Tea Party" (e.g. at least as far back as Goldwater in 1964), you need to read up on the relevant history before making such unproductive accusations.

Heck, how about brushing up on basic human psychology, since the concept of ingratitude (in this case, of the Republican establishment) would appear to be beyond your imagination.

I would assume that by using "Obama administration" in this context it was meant to be purposefully vague. The Executive Branch is massive. This could be anyone from the Pentagon, CIA, DHS, to many others who just happen to eventually report to the President. Many of these organizations have the motivation to maintain their current legal powers.

According to the EFF (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/eff-dismayed-houses-gu...):

"Many members of Congress, the President's own review group on NSA activities, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board all agree that the use of Section 215 to collect Americans' calling records must stop."

It could be possible that the President overruled his own policy review group. But I find it unlikely given his propensity for consensus.

If you want to see the differences between the version introduced in October of 2013 and the most recent amended version see here:

https://gist.github.com/dfc/1819eace21dc47358f38/revisions

Sadly I have never had much luck/success with the bill changes interface on opencongress.org.

If such watered down "solutions" are what we get for just about the most arcane form of surveillance (phone calls), then what are the "solutions" for electronic surveillance (where the real surveillance happens) going to look like?

With a name like the USA FREEDOM Act, how could you go wrong?

It is always amusing to see how they come up with the short titles:

USA FREEDOM Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection, and Online Monitoring Act

Much as a Democratic Peoples' Republic is likely to be none of the 3.

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