Comment by rustyconover | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rustyconover | Hacker News Reader

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I think we should all look at the example of Mohammad Ali's appeals to the Supreme Court regarding charges of dodging the draft. In a documentary about Ali, I recall the one of the supreme court justice's clerks going back through the record, and it turned out the Ali's beliefs (being a member of the Nation of Islam) did qualify him as a conscious objector much like the Seventh Day Adventists. Before this point the courts has ruled the N.o.I. didn't deserve the same treatment for its members. Ruling for Ali posed a large problem for the Supreme Court, if they ruled in a way that set a large precedent that many people could claim they were objectors the country would have huge problems feeding the established "war machine" (the draft). So the justices went back through the record and found a technicality, as such they found a way Ali wouldn't be found guilty of dodging the draft due to a procedural error. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States for all the details.

I expect if the court comes to review the facts in this matter they will either be impeded in succeeding due to national security concerns or find a way to decide for the plaintiffs in the smallest possible way to not upset the established order. Very rarely are judicial decisions groundbreaking in precedent. They are more like the tree trimmers of legislation and executive privilege, they typically only trim branches not cut down entire trunks as this ruling would possibly do for Internet surveillance.

So this the world we live in, encrypt your life.

> encrypt your life

Absolutely. The problem is: communication is a "network good", you don't do it alone. How do you want the "Facebook people" to understand the gravity of the situation? We all do communicate with Facebook people.

I genuinely do not understand conversations where people talk about the evils of mass government surveillance and then accept the evils of mass corporate surveillance.

GCHQ supposedly operates under UK law and needs warrants to search their huge databases and operates under the oversight of elected representatives. While that's unacceptable it's more regulated than the chaos of corporate data misuse.

Because mass surveillance by a group that can use violence and deprivation of liberty to enforce its will is a lot scarier than mass surveillance by a group who can't.

Its not that people accept one and not the other, its that one is much more serious, and is impossible to opt out of.

Companies have done all of this in the past read up about the pinkertons and the blacklists run by companies in the USA and elsewhere.

But then again Facebook won't send men in blue full body armour and automatic weapons after you. Agreed that government can get to the corporate data through few hoops, but it feels safer to share with a corporation than with organizations allowed to inflict violence on people.

Perhaps it feels that way because your farmland is not being poisoned by cocacola giving you industrial waste and calling it fertiliser; or because your children are not being killed by Nestlé miss-selling formula; or because your family is not being tortured and murdered by Shell Oil and the like. Perhaps you don't know anyone who died at Bhopal?

This is a tiny fraction of the fucking scary things that big companies do today.

CocaCola- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3096893.stm

Nestlé- http://www.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree

Shell torturing and murdering campaigners- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8090493.stm

Bhopal- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

You're right of course. It feels that way because of a. companies we're talking about, b. fact that I live in the so-called first world. I probably haven't made that explicit enough, thus making the comment sound much more general than it was supposed to be.

To restate: being a Facebook user in Europe feels safer than government surveillance. Dealing with Nestlé or Coca Cola in poor countries - obviously not so much.

Also thanks for the other two examples, haven't heard about them before.

You do know that in the past American companies used private armed police who where not averse to extra judicial killings.

Yes, I am aware of that. I was trying to make a point about interacting with Web companies in first world countries in current sociopolitical climate, not about corporations around the world in all history in general.

That's because Facebook is still young, and hasn't finished their Company Town yet.

/the little plot of employee housing in Menlo Park is not what I'm referring to - company towns are usually a financial trap

Nailed it. That put words to a feeling I was searching for. Government collection supposes everyone is or will be a criminal, while corporate collection is less offensive on the surface.

They may want to mine my data to display the appropriate Target ad to me, but that feels a lot more benign than surveillance purely for the sake of possibly removing my freedoms.

Once Facebook has your info, federal, state, and local governments can get it just by asking. They're not really separate anymore.

You're neglecting a critical little detail: Once Facebook has your data, there's (currently) nothing you can do to stop them from subsequently electing, or being forced, to hand it over to someone whose use-case is, let's say, "less benign" than mere ad targeting.

GCHQ routinely violates law and lies to its oversight committee, MPs, ministers and Parliament about it. Please do not hold them up as a paragon. Even after Snowden, ministers are not even aware of what JTRIG is, and GCHQ will not comment on intelligence matters even to them.

They are a prime example of an agency gone rogue, and their efforts for mass surveillance and against encryption are not a new thing - ask Brian Gladman.

Do you have any examples of the routine viation of law or lies ro oversight committees?

Which laws do you think GCHQ have broken?

Normally when I ask people this they mention things like RIPA, but fail to notice the excemptions in RIPA for a bunch of GCHQ activity.

Here's what IOCCO say: http://www.iocco-uk.info/

I'm much more worried about governments because of the potential synergy of mass surveillance with their other powers.

Probably because a lot of HN commentators jobs/employers rely on weak privacy laws to make their business model's work.

Facebook can't forcefully imprison me so there's that

You actually believe that agencies like GCHQ and NSA have "strong oversight" and are "heavily regulated"?

If you do, here's a little something to shaken that belief:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/09/edward-snowde...

I agree (while not supporting GCHQ here).

We have lost what we used to think of as privacy. We need to find a new model for managing data / information. IP law is not really upto it but at least has a fairly coherent model.

But yes, government is evil, capitalism is nice does not wash.

I can control what a corporation knows about me and they can't throw me in jail.

I'd say its a weeeeee bit of a difference. Admittedly, the average person may not be able to do the first part...so its probably something that should be reduced and legislated.

Perhaps the situation isn't grave. After all, despite EFF's best efforts, NSA is no more than a casual meme among all the Facebook people.

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