EFF’s Game Plan for Ending Global Mass Surveillance

I can't even get my close friends/family to install something as simple as textsecure. :(

9. Raise awareness of the practical and moral risks of mass surveillance.

My own view is that the risk of surveillance is predicated on the reliability and intent of the Watcher (in this case, the USG through the NSA). If you had a Watcher who never makes an assessment mistake, and who's intentions are always "good" (in the narrowest sense of being in your personal best interests) - who could object to such a thing? But we are faced with a world with plenty of Watcher governments who would oppress their people with this power, and already are. Citizens living under such regimes in places like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, are people for whom the risks of mass surveillance are real, now.

Officially endorsed mass surveillance is a lost opportunity to emancipate resistance movements from the surveillance of their oppressive governments, which is a huge moral risk to us.

It's important to remind ourselves what the USG/NSA thinks they are giving up if they give up mass surveillance: they think that America needs to know everything because everything is potentially useful in assessing a threat (or an opportunity). To surveil the world (and interpret the data properly) theoretically minimizes a nation's risk of attack, and maximize it's effectiveness in virtually every field (diplomatically, economically, scientifically, etc). That's a lot to give up.

1. http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/043/0430914...

I don't like lobbying much, but the fact is that our US political system is less a democracy than an auction. I don't see much prospect of 'a global movement that encourages user-side encryption.' I was all over PGP in the early 90s but honestly I don't remember the last time I bothered to encrypt something, and if you asked me for my public key I'd need to generate a new one. It's not like I don't know how, I just can't be bothered.

Now the horse has bolted and the barn is empty.

> Pressure technology companies to harden their systems against NSA surveillance

Tech companies are only going to be heard in one way: by boycotting the ones that don't have their customers best interests at heart.

> Create a global movement that encourages user-side encryption

User side encryption is great but with the number of exceptions and the way users have been trained to click 'ok' and 'accept' whenever presented with a dialogue box you'd need a major attitude change before that could become effective. In short, nobody cares because they believe they are not the ones in any kind of trouble or under suspicion.

Even here on HN where there is I'd hope a better basic understanding of these issues there are plenty of people in the 'I've got nothing to hide' camp as well as those that believe the state is holy and should be given every benefit of the doubt. This goes for the USA as much as for other countries.

> Encourage the creation of secure communication tools that are easier to use

That one might actually work. But there will always be a fundamental conflict between security and ease of use.

> Reform Executive Order 12333

Not enough data.

> Develop guiding legal principles around surveillance and privacy with the help of scholars and legal experts worldwide

Lots of paper will be produced, lip service will be paid and nothing will change.

> Cultivate partners worldwide who can champion surveillance reform on the local level, and offer them support and promotion

That's pretty vague but it might work and at least help some situations but for the most part the adversaries are nation-states and those have a lot more power and capabilities than you're going to be able to deal with from a local point of view. Bottom line: if they want your data they'll have it.

> Stop NSA overreach through impact litigation and new U.S. laws

The NSA will simply continue to do what it is doing today, only it will try harder to stay out of the public eye.

> Bring transparency to surveillance laws and practices

Good luck with that. Even today we don't have the whole story about what happened 40 years ago, let alone that we'll get transparency in such a timely manner that those directly affected by these activities will be able to make a stand.

As you can see from the above I'm not exactly bullish on this effort, I sincerely hope they'll make an impact but I think that the only place where you could really make change is at the ballot box and sadly that one does not figure into the plan at all.

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/

Another example: privacy activists were saying we should all move to Firefox after the Snowden leaks but ignore how Chrome is very far ahead of Firefox in terms of security and exploit mitigation. So agreed, we shouldn't entirely dismiss Google.

Although I think the centralization and incentive structure that has been a result of Gmail/Google and the ad-based software economy are the big reason why the NSA is so powerful regardless of crypto/tech-breaking capabilities.

All they need is a warrant - handed out via secret courts - and they get everything on any persons life, from anywhere in in the world. This results in a greater risk over IMO, but Google is not entirely to blame for that.

All the client side TLS improvements in the world don't change the fact that Google -- even just through Google Analytics and Gmail -- is set up to collect everything that everyone does online.

In fact, all of these developments (while super awesome, and not by themselves bad!) are entirely consistent with the goal of giving surveillance access to US interests, but not to anyone else.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the focus should not be on increasing the cost of surveillance, because ultimately it's the taxpayer (us) that foots that bill.

If you want to see a great résumé, check out Michal Zalewski's - it's on his website.

He is also responsible for American Fuzzy Lop, which is an incredible fuzzing tool for application software[1].

In fact, read his book, The Tangled Web as well, because that should be on every developer's shelf, security engineer or otherwise. It has security best practice checklists covering how the internet and browser works with enough technical detail for developers to safeguard themselves against the most common pitfalls.

Google also employs Eduardo Vela Nava on their security team, who is known for his research in browser encodings, legacy compatibility settings and how these lead to serious security flaws (see Web Application Obfuscation). If there is a way to trigger cross-site scripting on a web application, Vela Nava can achieve it (and he can find it as well). He is a leading expert on web browsers and their various (in)security mechanisms.

Then you have Chris Evans, who leads the Chrome Security team and singlehandedly wrote vsftpd, the primary ftp server shipped with Red Hat and SuSE. He built the Chrome security team into what it is today by hiring the best talent from around the world.

This list goes on, and on, and on. Google has attracted many of the greatest minds of this generation in information security.

[1]: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/

Doing your job is really hard when you can't use things like analytics services, or detailed logging, or proper feedback. Everything has to be open source, self-hosted and some things other businesses can easily use are just flat-out impossible to do. Any business that does something you want but that requires that data be sent to it will just not be used.

Few companies that don't explicitly have the word "private" in the description of their core product will be very inclined to jump through all these expensive hoops. Hopefully changing the legal situation so the NSA can't just jump in and grab whatever it wants will help this a lot.

As for technical solutions - I seriously doubt that will stop much when you're facing what is effectively a new version of COINTELPRO. Especially when your enemy has access to not only the government purse, but also the giant pile of money at Goldman Sachs[2].

I fully agree there is a lot that needs to be fixed in terms of technical solutions - encryption must happen - but this is of government agencies going rogue and they need to be reined in if we want to keep what's left of this country.

--

Serious question for everybody:

Many high-level people in the government seem to be explicitly violating the constitution while generally acting like know the law can't touch them, and the NSA and CIA seem to be very successful controlling the situation (CIA: avoiding prosecution for torture when it should have been easy to at least get a trial, NSA: forcing bill amendments like the recent Section 309 mess, not to mention the blatant 4th amendment violation of most of their recent activities). These kinds of activities should be solved by legal prosecution and regulation, but those solutions seem to be growing less and less likely.

If the intelligence community has replaced some or all of the Constitution... at what point can w4e start calling this a coup? Also, at what point does actively trying to subvert the constitution - the thing most of these people should have taken an oath to defend - does this not meet the very definition of "making war" against the country?

[1] https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836...

[2] ibid, towards the the end of "Part One"

/* before claiming that I'm wearing some sort of tinfoid hat, do read the article[1] */

Maybe if we were all running Tor exit nodes or something, but naïve chaffing sounds pretty ... well, naïve.

https://pixelated-project.org/

Both are very user friendly, very promising, and still in early BETA.

1: https://www.mailpile.is/ 2: https://protonmail.ch/

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html

> Should we accept mass surveillance, like nuclear weapons, as inevitable? If so, it should follow that we should adopt a "mutually assured destruction" inspired doctrine, whereby multiple countries agree on the limits of surveillance.

it may be, but the MAD analogy doesn't hold up because nuclear weapons have immediate and distinct effects. surveillance is hard to witness and hard to measure. MAD also uses the threat of nuclear use to keep other parties in check, while surveillance uses, what, the guarantee of use? it doesnt match up.

> Perhaps the world would be more comfortable if constantly surveiled, but wholly informed. Who has my data? What have they done with it? Can I see it?

i don't see that as particularly feasible

> Or maybe, everybody should be able to surveil everybody. True openness, and therefore predictable accountability.

perhaps we may move toward enlightenment about one another's secrets someday, but i'm personally skeptical of that path as a solution to surveillance.

secrets act as a stabilizing force. keeping something unpleasant can keep people in harmony. if the shock of reveal is great enough, it can break down relationships and the institutions they form, and i wouldn't want to risk doing that en masse. uncovering the unpleasant truths make us stronger, but we have to recognize that it's a process, and not all wounds should be opened at once.

but that's not wholly relevant anyway, because there wouldnt be a perfect symmetrical reveal of information. it would be a gradual and asymmetric reveal, which means that the holders of the information could use it to their advantage. you'd end up with a class of people who hold the secrets that could manipulate the other classes. it's not a pretty idea for believers in equitable society.

We absolutely need a Peace movement that can overpower the current stance of the war movement. We absolutely need to make peace. Probably the only thing that will get us out of this situation is the hardest thing - the most impossible thing - for any of us to do: defeat our enemies by becoming friends with them.

We have to work harder to defeat intolerance, hatred, bigotry. These things fester, and are contagious - and they are the lynchpin of the argument being used by the powers to enact their heinous rules and laws, which enslave us all.

We need a platform of peace that actually really makes peace happen. Some way of getting the rabid ideological Christian crusaders at the same table as the extremist Muslim terrorists. Some way to bring these massive differences - which are utterly arbitrary and without real substance - to the point where the human beings, on the other side of the books and vitriol, see each other and treat each other as any two humans are capable of doing - with peace, with love, and with an honest and sincere desire to see the party across the table survive, flourish, and prosper.

We need to encourage people to be intolerant of intolerance. This is the biggest issue. The NSA wouldn't have any fish in the pond, if we were to gain a level of human understanding, compassion, and cooperation, between the warring factions.

However, this is a difficult task. Maybe we, the human species, won't ever be up for the task. Unless challenged by something else, from elsewhere ..

Because once Congress publicly disavows the NSAs actions, I suspect then working against Congress would result in rogue status.