Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance

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99 pointseevilspock65 comments

> Economic losses to US businesses due to lost sales and declining customer trust.

Whenever I have a discussion with friends on this topic, this is what I focus on.

For many people, safety has a higher political priority than privacy. However, when you start saying that mass surveillance kills jobs, it gets much more attention because economic issues are usually on par or above safety concerns.

This is why I don't understand Google's and Facebook's (and IBM's and Cisco's and RSA's, for that matter) response to this thing. If they really wanted to stop these programs, they would make a SuperPAC and run ads everywhere saying "NSA" and "job killers" in the same sentence as many times as possible.

> For many people, safety has a higher political priority than privacy. However, when you start saying that mass surveillance kills jobs, it gets much more attention because economic issues are usually on par or above safety concerns.

Then there are people like my wife, who thinks disclosure hurt the US politically and economically, thus rationalizing that it is Snowden's fault for revealing all these surveillance programs, not the NSA's for having them in the first place. I think that attitude, combined with "safety > privacy" and "I have nothing to hide" are very common amongst more politically-aware people. I, unfortunately, can't come up with many good, non-tinfoil rebuttals.

"I have nothing to hide" is in this context synonymous with "I am not associated with wikileaks or any other know activist group able to anger the powerful" and "I am not journalist about to make government angry" and "I am not developing tor or some encryption tool" and "I am not defense layer in important case" and "I am not involved with occupy wall street" and so on.

The spying on commission investigating NSA was already revealed. "Nothing to hide" theory presumes NSA did it just for fun and had nothing to gain.

I have nothing to hide too. However, that is because I am not politically significant. The privacy and protection against agencies are not that needed for random Joe, however random Joe still benefits from fair democratic process even if he chosen not to be active. They are needed for politically active people not currently in power.

Or, imagine something like Petraeus scandal. Ability to see someones mails and ability whose browsing habits are about to become public knowledge is huge. Ability to see opposition or activists or defense lawyer plans can make huge difference even if they are not involved in anything illegal or unethical.

When people close to me tell me they have nothing to hide I immediately bring up something embarrassing about them. Then ask them how they would feel if [colleague|student|boss] knew it.

Once people directly realize what it means to have no privacy they generally get the concept. It's just in the abstract that people have a hard time understanding it. Bring it hometo her in a very personal way, because that's what it's about.

So, if you, I dunno, cheated on her, and a friend who knew about it told her, then it would all be that friend's fault, right? People have weird ethics ...

I think it has something to do with shame vs guilt cultures.

The non-tin-foil response is about check-your-privilege. You might happen to be lucky to be in the less vulnerable, less suspicious group today, but there are regular innocent folks who are targeted for all sorts of reasons.

But blatantly, nearly every person who comes face-to-face with visceral awareness of loss of their privacy will care. If you have an actual peeping Tom looking in your windows, you care very much, even if you know they are from the NSA and not just some random creep. Real basic emotional awareness of loss of privacy completely changes how we behave and feel.

All your wife is really saying is that it's all too abstract for her — she doesn't really feel like her privacy is lost.

Personally, I use the argument that it's not about what's illegal or unacceptable now, it's about the future. In the 1920's, nobody thought hanging out with a couple of communists in college one time would come back to bite them. It's unreasonable to think that it would. But it did.

So it's not that what you're doing is wrong, or that you have something to hide. It's that someday, something you do today could come back on you. Better it be something that you choose to share than something the government discovers and keeps records of.

I think the reason it hurt the US politically and economically is because the trust they shared with the rest of the world was damaged. Arguing that it should have been kept a secret to avoid it shows a very US-centric view of the world where you're thinking only about the well being of your country. As others said, it has a lot to do with your privilege.

> I, unfortunately, can't come up with many good, non-tinfoil rebuttals.

You could make a "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" argument based on analogy: A reveals B to be the rapist of C, hence A is to blame for the punishment that befalls B?! Or, closer to reality (sadly), C gets accused of smearing the precious reputation of B by saying something.

PS: As for the "nothing to hide" fallacy, as if everyone who is concerned had "something to hide"! Perhaps you could remind her that even if she (thinks she) has nothing to hide, an orthogonal reason to care, perhaps the strongest, is that by resisting in whatever ways you can -- by changing your own behavior, for a start -- you contribute to the preservation of liberty.

I, unfortunately, can't come up with many good, non-tinfoil rebuttals.

It's an assertion that all crime is permissible, if the perpetrator is not caught.

> "I have nothing to hide" are very common amongst more politically-aware people

Do you mean politically-UN-aware? Take your pick:

- Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide': http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...

- 3 Reasons the ‘Nothing to Hide’ Crowd Should Be Worried About Government Surveillance: http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/12/three-reasons-the-noth...

- Privacy And Why It Really Matters (skip down to "The cost of losing privacy": https://markopolojarvi.com/privacy.html

- Nothing to hide argument (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

- "I’ve Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (PDF): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

> "safety > privacy"

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

- above two quotes of Bruce Schneier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_t...

- Sir Tim Berners-Lee Blasts “Insidious, Chilling Effects” Of Online Surveillance, Says We Should Be Protecting Whistleblowers Like Snowden: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/sir-tim-berners-lee-blasts-...

- chilling effects already in evidence: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2412564

Good links, one more: http://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-t...

Ask her why she wears clothing if she has nothing to hide.

Unfortunately every argument in our society right now must be focused around how the issue at hand relates to money.

Also unfortunately, the "many people" you mention are shortsighted and prone to be scared by the fear-of-the-week. They're not reliable at picking the right things to care about, and are extremely susceptible to being riled up by the media.

I tend to focus on the destruction of the free press that the NSA's surveillance implies. Sources can't be kept confidential, and so nobody will speak to journalists. Additionally, nothing is really "off the record" anymore because of surveillance. Unfortunately, this argument of mine neglects the moribund/state owned mainstream media, which really doesn't have any need for confidential sources or off the record conversations anyway.

>If they really wanted to stop these programs

There's your answer, isn't it? They don't want to stop these programs. They benefit from the economic espionage. Actions speak louder than words.

I suggest the NSA work is a big job creation scheme, there are a lot of contractors and vendors providing services and facilities to this (big) branch of the government. A lot of tax dollars are spent on this. And the effectiveness is questionable, because it's secret. We know big federal government IT Contract outsourcing failed to deliver Health Care Gov, I suspect there are a myriad of failed systems we're just not getting to hear about. I talk about cost to the tax payer.

It is because the people with MBAs and the people on the Board don't really care that much. They'll protest and engage in a little bit of legal action but they don't want to go all out to fight it.

Google and Facebook just posted record profits, why are the MBAs supposed to care?

I never said they were supposed to care. :P

The article uses few facts, or the facts aren't detailed. I admit doing that when I comment sometimes, but it's wrong and I expect a journalist to prove his point (and help us convince other people in turn). Example:

> The deterioration of internet security as a result of the NSA stockpiling zero-day vulnerabilities

Not quantified. It would be an awesome figure to reuse.

> Brazil reportedly scuttled a $4.5 billion fighter jet contract with Boeing

It's been criticized on HN: Most people believed blaming it on the NSA was a PR move [4], whereas the real underlying reasons where certainly more complex and not related.

> The CEO of the European firm reported that within a month after the first revelations of NSA spying went public, his company’s business jumped 45 percent

Totally irrelevant if the company is small.

> The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has estimated that repercussions from the spying could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry some $22 to $35 billion over the next few years in lost business.

That's the best fact of the article. However I'm not sure Americans are impressed with it. In fact the country [1] doesn't mind spending $6 trillion for a war in Afghanistan [2], so they count those $35b as just another defense cost. Besides, the NSA itself was reported by Snowden with a budget of $14b in 2013 [3].

[1] I'm aware that's not what most US citizen like, but as a country, US did spend this money.

[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-wars-in-afghanistan-iraq-to-...

[3] http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4672414/leaked-snowden-doc...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931035

The article is summarizing the report by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. The linked PDF contains some of the figures you ask for, such as:

> The CEO of Artmotion, one of Switzerland’s largest offshore hosting providers, reported in July 2013 that his company had seen a 45 percent jump in revenue.

This tells us the company is large within the country, and Switzerland isn't exactly small potatoes.

I think what you are looking for is the PDF itself, not the summary of the PDF that is this article :)

I've often wondered if the NSA is constitutional. Not what they're doing, but the organization itself. The constitution, from my understanding, grants the federal government power to do certain things. Therefore, if the constitution doesn't specifically grant the federal government the power/ability to run, say the NSA (or other federal department), does that not warrant the entire thing unconstitutional?

Not really; the Constitution establishes the Federal government as responsible for national defense. Assuming you can construe the NSA as necessary for national defense then the NSA is constitutional (though not necessarily its activities).

Technically speaking, you are correct. Practically and legally, everything Congress does is jammed through Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants it the authority to "regulate" interstate commerce.

Also, what w4 said. But again if you want to get technical, the Constitution restricts Congress's authority to provide for the common defense to having an army or a navy, but not an Air Force, and not a National Security Agency.

> But again if you want to get technical, the Constitution restricts Congress's authority to provide for the common defense to having an army or a navy, but not an Air Force

It allows Congress to raise "Armies" (plural) and a Navy, and it allows Congress to choose how to equip and train the Armies it raises. I don't see that it prevents it from choosing to a equip one of the armies primarily with fixed-wing aircraft, training it in doctrine for employment of such equipment, and give it the name "Air Force" to distinguish it from other armies that are differently equipped and trained.

and boy, does this need an amendment: when a farmer can be sued and forced to not grow food for his own family, and the suit is found valid because of Article I Section 8 we have a huge problem.

Eh? What's this?

There's a structure in the US and its states that regulate what (subsidized?) farmers can grow. I don't know if it's solely the USDA. Anyway, if a farmer is supposed to be growing soybeans, they cannot grow (for example) potatoes. There have been cases of farmers having crops meant for family consumption that have been sued (or raided? -- something way over the top for the violation, anyway). IIRC, the big gun that it used is the interstate commerce clause. So if a spud farmer in Idaho wants a few bushels of wheat for his family, his growing it would (supposedly) impact market value on wheat prices.

There's some scary stuff in the farming regulation. There was a law in the works called NAIS (national animal ID system)that severely intrudes on people's right to raise their own livestock. It was stirring up a storm of controversy in homesteaders' circles a decade ago, though I don't know the current state of that is.

A mischaracterization of Wickard v. Filburn, which is nonetheless one of the worst decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court - taking an unusual circumstance that obtained during WW@ and generalizing it to a fundamental aspect of the Commerce power. However, it's sort of off-topic here. Wikipedia has an extensive discussion of the case.

> A mischaracterization of Wickard v. Filburn, which is nonetheless one of the worst decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court - taking an unusual circumstance that obtained during WW@

While, the court process and decisions occurred during WW2, the law and the acts which, under it, created the controversy occurred before US involvement in WW2, it was more about the Great Depression/New Deal than the War.

You're right, but I have always felt that the urgency of the wartime context tilted the balance of the court's opinion towards an overbroad endorsement of the government's side, and that that tilt has persisted via precedent.

I will go back and reread it to see whether that impression is correct or whether I've imputed my own bias to the court's decision since I read it, but given that I'm generally of a more statist bent than most people here I don't think it's just personal bias.

I assume tertia is referring to something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

Wickard v. Filburn established that all activity, including washing your dishes, is economic activity that congress can regulate under the commerce clause.

No, Wickard v. Filburn didn't establish that that is true of "all activity", and if one thought that it did then one would be forced to conclude that that result was overturned in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) and United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).

> Practically and legally, everything Congress does is jammed through Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants it the authority to "regulate" interstate commerce.

Actually, virtually all of Congress' enumerated powers are in Article I, Sec. 8. The interstate commerce clause, specifically, is unlikely to be cited in a defense of the NSA -- more likely, the Necessary Proper Clause of Art. I, Sec. 8, along the military powers in the same section (and the obligation to protect the states against invasion in Art IV, Sec. 4) would be more likely -- those who view the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the military in Article II as a power of that office might be inclined to cite that "power" along with the Necessary and Proper Clause of Art. I, Sec. 8, instead.

Modern interpretation of the commerce clause, as spoken about in Thomas' dissent in Reich v. Gonzales, means that the 10th amendment is relatively meaningless nowadays. Combine this with the Unitary Executive (bush/Cheney's keystone), and you have a congress with all the power to ignore government limits, controlled by the executive branch.

I love how people still make noise about NSA, while gladly using facebook.

Facebook does not have the power to imprison you or mark you as a suspected terrorist and put you on a no-fly list and freeze your bank accounts.

But it has the power to completely undermine public discourse and thus democratic decisionmaking.

The NSA can (and does) use Facebook to mark you as a suspected terrorist and put you on a no-fly list. The NSA doesn't have the power to imprison you or seize your bank accounts without the help of a judge.

However, the balance of power in our society has now shifted to the point where the NSA is trivially capable of securing the judges' cooperation. So the "help of the judge" will be granted anytime the NSA asks for it, and in a practical sense they can still do all sorts of unpleasant things to you at will.

Also, if a judge starts being uncooperative, the NSA has a lengthy dossier on his adultery, homosexuality, communist tendencies, suspected terrorist links, etc. It would be a real shame for that dossier to find its way to the public, wouldn't it...?

That is a reason to oppose the NSA, not Facebook.

Facebooks ability to use my kids and cat pictures is not comparable to government ability to read political activists or journalists emails. Random person ability to know what school I did go to is not as dangerous to justice as governments ability to read communication of defense in high profile case.

By your logic, everyone who make noise about NSA should go underground to keep the right to complain.

I don't care about the cat pictures at all, but my kids is another matter.

Living in a country where rule of law is not to be taken for granted, it is a great source of concern to me that some idiot^H^H^H^H^H naive relative/friend/acquaintance might be unknowingly feeding organized crime with personal information about me and my family.

Unfortunately, Americans will always believe the world is America. When Facebook the corporation opens up their services to the world, they fail to acknowledge that they are changing stuff they are unaware of, but for good and ill. Their cavalier use or privacy data can and will (or most probably, is) be used by all sort of rouge agents, and not just to perform relatively petty crime like CC fraud or identity theft, but also to enable violent felonies.

NSA does not really bother me... it's the thug that shows up one good day and demands you to fork $200USD per week or else...

Every level of government, right down to the municipal level, can ask Facebook to hand all that data over at any time. They don't even need a court order if they claim it's an emergency or involves a child. https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ Facebook admits to turning over data on tens of thousands of people in the USA. https://govtrequests.facebook.com/country/United%20States/20...

Yes, but I kind of assume that political activist does not keep his super secret emails on facebook.

Contact list and location history are scary enough, and I'm not a political activist.

It's not just that, though. All of the casual information that you post on Facebook, including timestamps and whatnot, can all be used to infer and create a detailed portfolio as to your personality, location, political views, sexual orientation, interests, commonly visited places, employer, etc. EXIF data from photographs alone is a goldmine.

There was actually a practical example of a man FOIAing his documents from Facebook, which revealed that they had over a thousand pages specifically devoted to him alone on every facet of his life. Even though he was only a "casual" user (one wall update a week, or so). You can see it in the documentary film Terms and Conditions May Apply.

As for me personally, I've never had a Facebook account. Although virtually no one is impervious, reducing social media presence is still always useful to get rid of the blatantly incriminating things.

Unfortunately, the biggest threat is perhaps, what other people are saying about you. I have no idea about what's going on there...

"incriminating". You don't want to use that word. Because if you're actually doing something illegal or immoral, that is not a compelling reason for us not to act on it.

The idea that you need to be able to hide your political speech is a problem to start with. You won't be saved from tyranny by that power - if you use it, you already experience it and tyranny needs no reason to kick in doors beyond suspicion. Accurate intelligence is what you need when you're trying to do things right (or you've executed all the dissidents and the remaining ones are still a real threat).

Those who want to hide don't interest me. If there fears come to pass, I'll be long dead, and they'll have sat by and done nothing while it happened.

Of course you need to be able to hide your political speech; people automatically temper their opinions to conform more with the group or choose to remain silent in situations where everyone's political speech is visible. Without the ability to keep cloistered political speech as a realm to discuss and test ideas without condemnation, the political speech landscape begins to look horrifically uniform and (inevitably, because they control the media) pro-state. To reiterate, if the state has the ability to spy and understand 100% of online political speech, people will self-censor their speech, preventing different ideas from propagating.

This is currently the case-- radical political ideas have been accompanied by state surveillance and attempts at discrediting for a long time, and the current crop of NSA totalitarianism is no different.

There's still a big gap between "illegal activity" and "things I would prefer random strangers in the government not know about me".

...then they came for the Facebook users, and I said nothing, because I didn't use Facebook...

b^)

I don't use Facebook.

It still massively affects you (assuming you are in the US), because of the 4th Amendment. That's the one that prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

A key factor in whether a search or seizure is unreasonable is whether or not you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The standard for what is a reasonable expectation of privacy is what society considers to be reasonable, not what you individually consider to be reasonable.

So even though you are not on Facebook, all those people who ARE on it and are sharing publicly the most intimate details of their lives are moving the 4th Amendment boundary between searches and seizures that require a warrant and those that do not.

It doesn't matter, they are still building a profile on you and selling it. These are called "shadow profiles".

Good luck with that. Even the credit reporting companies get confused and can't figure out who I am accurately. And I actively help them since I like having credit cards and the ability to get mortgage loans.

Facebook has built a platform that's much more accurate and comprehensive than anything experian has, because experian isn't in the business of selling your political beliefs and sexual orientation and a hundred other demographics to marketers.

You can file a FOIA request with Facebook to see what they have on you. Other people have, and have gotten their dossiers. Have you had a phone number or mailing address in the past 10 years? If so, they've gotcha covered.

Why do you wonder? Unless you have no public-facing products or publications you are personally directly involved in, it's perfectly rational to use social media for things that would be out in public and subject to whatever scrutiny anyone cares to apply to them, AND, at the same time, "make noises" as you so dismissively put it.

I sometimes wonder about using any site--including HN. Facebook would be easy to give up(It actually makes me more depressed, and the people I want on there left, or never joined.) HN is hard to give up.

HN tends to punish people using Tor or other methods to obfuscate their tracks. On the four or five other accounts I've abandoned, this is then first that allows me more than 3 minutes on the site without invalidating my token due to inactivity. I suspect because it's been a valid IP every time (or so they think).

You should not expect privacy on computer systems you do not own. HN included.

"On computer systems" has a hollower ring now than it did a decade ago. Everything is on a computer system now. Even face to face interactions leave a plethora of metadata behind.

The nature of privacy has always been a function of social norms and technology, but given the directions we're headed in these days I think it's easy to make a case that the average citizen has given up a lot more privacy, then they have gained in convenience.

My life was easier when it took me an hour to download a megabyte and I spent more time outside... and I say that as a web developer.

facebook won't declare me an enemy combatant and murder me if I say something they don't like.

While that is very true, should you state your grievances on Facebook, then it makes you easier to target.

All those anti-Israel comments on FB at the moment - bingo, you've been tagged as probably anti-Semitic, potentially a Muslim terrorism supporter and worth putting on a watch list.

Now if you happen to go to a humanitarian demo that is judged to be pro-Palestine then you are highly liked to be filmed (especially in the UK). The contents of those police cameras are later downloaded and processed. Face recognition software cross-references you with Facebook and other public people databases.

Searching....ping....found target...

- Name: <Tertia>...

- Anthropology: Caucasian

- Source: Facebook NSA hook

- Threat score: 1.3

- Upgrading threat score: + 2.5

Auto triggers:

- Flag Homeland Security

- Tag passport

- Watch social security number

- Track internet usage (log level: all)

It is probably an exaggeration as of today, but this is the system that the NSA is aiming for.

The difference is that they choose to use Facebook.

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