U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
wsj.com
wsj.com
Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured/untaxed drivers on the roads.
Don't want to sit around in databases? Well, here's a nice list of just a few of the things you can't have:
Bank account; Car/motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit/debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years)
Unless of course you're a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot of this!
I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone.
If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you're running about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery life of which will only increase.
I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can't see a way out here. I can't see the 'line', any more.
It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. The memory of tyrannical governance was fresh. Information is no different, if the government posses this information - so should the citizens.
We just need a lot more of that and we'll be good :)
Normal people don't have a moat.
A major reason that e.g. home invasions are risky (and thus are deterred) is that the criminal doesn't know when the mark or the neighbors will be away from home, what security may be in place or whether there is anything worth stealing. If you put that information on the internet for anyone then every time you come home from work all your electronics will be missing.
Replacing that "security through obscurity" with actual physical security is not something most people can afford.
Anyway, the whole idea that the state needs to operate in secret to perform its duties is ridiculous and only serves bad actors. Who would seriously wish for a secret police force anyway? Maybe we should be focusing on preventing and deescalating, through systemic and scalable solutions, instead of masked weekend warriors kicking down doors and shooting people. Also, if you want a laugh - here is a funny story about what happens when you allow the DEA to operate in secret: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/540/a...
I don't know, that's not such a bad analogy. To put it another way, a key is just a really funny way to write down a bunch of numbers, and a key-lock is just a really esoteric number-pad.
People have actually broken into houses by cutting working keys from pictures they took of victims unlocking their doors—so it's not even obscurity aiding the security per se (or rather, it used to be, but then we greatly standardized the way key-locks work.) Instead, it's just concealment, like the concealed face of a credit card in your wallet.
You should learn about how CIs are blackmailed, used, and discarded, and, often enough die. If informants were outed and the use of CIs ended, it would be a benefit to everyone.
Wikileaks? Cables? We lost all our allies, right?
Don't fear radical transparency. It will be to your benefit.
Undoubtedly, the power between the people and the government is unbalanced, but unrestricted transparency is not a one stop solution to the problem.
We live in perhaps the finest times of this specie's history, and it's foolish to limit and harm ourselves out of an unspecified anxiety that somebody, somewhere could do something to harm us. We cannot live in fear.
Let's stipulate all the bad wickedness you would like me to think there is. How much of that has the actual means to threaten the US in any economically or militarily significant way?
With radical transparency may find that we're harming ourselves more by overspending on security theater, and that, for all their wickedness, most of those wicked people can't afford a bus ticket to the next town, much less to actually do anything with their wickedness.
Yes. Your intentions aren't malicious. There are many millions of people whose intentions are malicious. It takes very few of them to do you, your family, your neighbors serious harm.
It shocks me how many people on this site seem to not understand that sometimes.
How is it logical that a few kids in SF building some world-changing piece of software is expected, but a few kids in _____ building a piece of software and whaling a few executives in the DOD, DOJ, DOE and damaging critical national infrastructure is beyond possibility.
How how does is it not clear that exposure of an infrastructure of information gathering would eradicate our ability to do anything but read newspapers about what's going on in the rest of the world?
Yes we need better or different protection against domestic spying. As always technology is ahead of the government, and the professional politicians are simply not technology savvy enough to understand the implications of what they let happen.
We need a continuation of the values and knowledge development that our current tech-centric generations hold. When young people start not caring about how their tech works, is when we'll end up with more of the same convenience over propriety issues we're currently dealing with.
I think you underestimate them; i would say they are full well aware of exactly the implications, and that it seems to them like their wet dreams are coming true.
> When young people start not caring about how their tech works, is when we'll end up with more of the same convenience over propriety issues we're currently dealing with.
I'm sorry, but i think this ship has already sailed. Or do you believe that currently a majority of "young people" do in fact "care about how their tech works"?
Come off it, and stop watching "24" reruns. The risk you face, I face, everyone faces, is practically nil. We all know the numbers. You have no need to pay more attention to terrorism than you pay to lightning, or slipping in the bathtub.
Moreover, this is true in places that don't have an HSA, an NSA, a CIA, or an FBI. There is no difference in outcome regarding terrorism in Latvia where they all they can afford is to deploy an anti-terrorism potato, or in Alabama, where you have camo'ed citizens armed-up and waiting for ISIS to invade.
And, 24 was rubbish, if it's any consolation.
Yeah it's a huge mess here in Sweden. /sarcasm
That said, I feel like the right to bare arms was included specifically for overthrowing oppressive governments (and in case the British came back?).
At what point does a government become sufficiently oppressive as to be overthrown by the people? Without defining that, I feel like government can just keep employing the "but terrorists" excuse and the overton window to keep stripping us of more and more of our privacy and rights.
As for the second thing you said, sounds like you probably just need a little more soma.
This means dismantling the five main pillars that are used to nullify, misdirect, or otherwise diminish the power of the vote - both a a signaling mechanism that members of the electorate can use to unify themselves, and as a reliably severe punitive tool that the electorate can use to avenge themselves when their "representatives" betray their interests. Listed in no particular order, they are
1. Gerrymandering (aka partisan redistricting) 2. Closed primaries 3. Private campaign finance 4. The "revolving door" that allows private industry to offer well-paid sinecures to public "servants" who have systematically betrayed the public's trust. 5. Myriad restrictions on ballot access.
It's important to recognize that while each of these pillars diminishes the power of the vote, the really insidious effect comes from their interaction. But those knock-on effects can all be stopped by addressing the fundamental - and fundamental anti-democratic - structures at their roots.
Eliminating any one of these abominations tilts the balance back in favor of the good guys. All of them together can be lethal to the ambitions of people who's own ambitions are anathema to a self-governing republic.
[1] - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_TRACKING_AP...
That's pretty much when I understood what "oligarchy" meant and how very much there we were.
Snowden didn't help my mental picture of the country.
If the license plate tracking gets to that point within metropolitan areas (presumably where cameras are most dense) or they start doing it from blimps or whatever, at least there is precedence for striking it.
It's not going to stop the collection but it should at least prevent the data being used against you in court. Of course, parallel construction. Sigh...
People like Edward Snowden have said surveillance can be used for good purposes. For example, fast forward and imagine auto insurance companies using this traffic monitoring data: Instead of structuring their prices based around age/gender/racial/class discrimination, they can use actual statistics to determine a little more about how safe someone is driving. Or instead of civil engineers having to waste time, money and other resources doing traffic studies...what if they could see the effects of their work in real-time? I think this technology could be used for very good purposes if there was just some transparency and rules surrounding it.
Who has no problem? The gov or the people?
It's easy to reverse some of this. If they're recording license plates and they or someone else will do it regardless, then stop having license plates. The justification for having them doesn't really apply to self-driving cars anyway.
Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical. That clearly isn't the case -- the constitution has been preventing police from searching your home without a warrant since 1789, even though they absolutely do have the operational capability to do that.
More to the point, even if they're not prohibited from spying, as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost. Encryption works. Tor works. In many cases the lack of prohibition on spying would be irrelevant if not for the existing prohibitions and impediments to strong anonymity, as with regulations on digital money transfers.
What's interesting is that your conclusion is still mostly right. Government secrecy is the cancer of democracy. But governments being transparent to their people in no way requires people to be transparent to their governments.
You seriously believe that? You think the government makes common sense decisions? So ok, no more plates. How long until we hear about them logging the serial numbers broadcast by our tire pressure sensors? Or what about the unique magnetic signature of our vehicles detectable by all the loops already embedded in the road? If the government has the technical ability to do something that will expand power and responsibility, it will do it. It has been demonstrated time and time again.
> ... as long as we're not prohibited from defending against that spying we haven't lost.
Yeah we'll see. Tampering with NIST, clipper chips, export controls. This is not sustainable, people will eventually tire. Also, the argument sounds very similar to what was said about TSA security theater: "No, we aren't impeding your freedom of movement - you can take the bus!" Guess what, the TSA is at the bus station now. "No, we aren't violating your fourth amendment rights - if you want to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures than you can use encryption!" Guess what happens next. It is a bullshit argument - I shouldn't have to run myself ragged.
> Your argument seems to be that you can't effectively prohibit something that technology makes practical.
No, my point is that you can't prevent something technically practical while the government operates in secret, enjoying a monopoly on information. That is why warrantless home searches aren't extremely common, because it would be impossible to do in secret - old papers have very little to do with it.
Decisions like that are made in the open. You can tell if your self-driving car has a license plate on it and keep lobbying to remove it until they do.
> How long until we hear about them logging the serial numbers broadcast by our tire pressure sensors? Or what about the unique magnetic signature of our vehicles detectable by all the loops already embedded in the road?
So it's a cat and mouse game. So what? If they want to log RFID tags they have to spend a billion dollars putting readers everywhere, at which point people rip the tags out and the readers are useless. Find some other way (and some other billion dollars) to fingerprint individual cars and people will realize that it's profitable to sign up their self-driving car to transport Uber passengers and suddenly tracking the cars is meaningless. And so it goes.
> Tampering with NIST, clipper chips, export controls. This is not sustainable, people will eventually tire.
All of those things failed. Nobody gets tired of winning.
> Also, the argument sounds very similar to what was said about TSA security theater
The analogous thing to not having TSA security theater is not having mass surveillance. You're arguing the opposite -- mass surveillance for everyone. You can't make the slippery slope argument when you want to start at the bottom.
> No, my point is that you can't prevent something technically practical while the government operates in secret, enjoying a monopoly on information.
Which I'm not disagreeing with. Government secrets should be aggressively minimized. But once again, governments being transparent to their people in no way requires people to be transparent to their governments. And there is apparently some dispute about what is technically practical.
> That is why warrantless home searches aren't extremely common, because it would be impossible to do in secret - old papers have very little to do with it.
Which is all we need to do here. Make it so that spying on you requires them to physically enter the space you're in so that it's only practical to do it according to the rules with probable cause rather than in bulk in secret.
Yes, and rarely. I've spent 5 minutes trying to think of such an example and failed, maybe you have something in mind?
> If they want to log RFID tags they have to spend a billion dollars putting readers everywhere, at which point people rip the tags out and the readers are useless.
Lol, you throw out a cost like it would be some sort of problem for them to spend money that isn't theirs. You know how you keep people from ripping the tags out? You require manufactures to install them in every vehicle manufactured after September 1st 2007. If people actually start tampering with this legally mandated safety device, lean on the states to add it to the vehicle inspection requirements... for safety. But few will tamper with the tracking, er, safety device - because it adds convenience to their lives and they can't even be bothered to install PGP.
> All of those things failed. Nobody gets tired of winning.
Only the clipper chip failed. Also, I'm tired - as are many of my friends and coworkers. Up until two years ago about 80% of my time was spent as a security researcher, I burned out. I'd like a systemic fix, because I'm tired of the game.
> ... not having mass surveillance. You're arguing the opposite ...
I argue the opposite as a method of harm reduction, I thought I made it clear in my top post that an end to state spying would be ideal. Where you and I part ways, I think, is that I believe that it is impossible to prevent and verify. You seem to actually believe the whole "consent of the governed" thing.
> ... only practical to do it according to the rules with probable cause rather than in bulk in secret.
Until they start monitoring power consumption, in the interest of finding grow houses. [0] Or monitoring sewers in the interest of catching bomb makers. [1] Please don't suggest that we add this to the cat and mouse game, where I now need to invite strangers over for pee parties and hook my dryer up to a noise generator that randomly turns it on in order to stay ahead in the privacy game.
[0] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2469854/internet/bitcoi...
[1] http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/sewer-sensors-detec...
Because self-driving cars will be in constant contact with some central digital infrastructure that will be tracking everything ("for quality control purposes") and the authorities can far more easily and effectively tap into that data than place license plate readers along the roadside. Tying the "session" together between purchasing information (that's already centralized and freely accessible), car route, and user history, is a piece of cake.
Your suggestion of a democratization of spy programs is actually one of the premises of "The Circle", the book is meant to paint a dystopian future.
They were more brutal because they substituted brutality in lieu of these sorts of technological innovations. They couldn't spy on everyone, so they had to crucify the few opponents they could definitively catch (or some sacrificial lambs, when they couldn't.)
Not to mention, it's much easier to overthrow a brutal dictator. Your government is killing your friends, drafting your family into the military, and sending your coworkers to work camps? Hell yeah, we won't stand for that! But if your government is just quietly watching, while your family is sitting at home, with food in their fridge - will you pick up a weapon to fight against that regime? Will your friends, family, neighbors?
You are right to point out that the majority of people are just comfortable enough, struggling to pay for debts they incurred in one way or another and generally have no incentive to fight totalitarian overreach of the state.
Unfortunately the institutions for the indoctrination of the young are set up in a way by now, that they are very good at producing hyper-focused well-working replaceable cogs for industry, together with their Ayn Rand reading, libertarian overlords in one nice package. They do all that, while setting you up for a life of indebted servitude, if you don't happen to choose a profession that requires you to be highly compliant with the current system to be successful.
So I guess if there is one thing to fix it would be education, a properly educated general public would hopefully be less apathetic and compliant than it is today. Technology has the potential to make education much more widely available and independent of having to assemble in one place and be subjected to abuse and brainwashing of authority figures.
Ok, go ahead and square that with the operation of the government today. I'm pretty confident you will find it impossible to construct a convincing argument.
EDIT: There would need to be a concomitant cultural change as well. As it stands folks are not aware of or engaged with what their government is doing.
Even if we replaced every government official today, it could quickly devolve back to its current state.
Theoretically. First you would need someone with these beliefs to run for office. You would need them to win office, in a position where they have the power to change the laws. Then you would need them to resist the temptation to listen to lobbyists trying to change their mind. Then you would need a vote to pass. Then you would need the government agencies to agree (just because the law says something, doesn't mean everyone agrees). Generally this would take going to a high court who forces the government to comply. Hopefully that court is public and not a private rubber stamp committee.
Theoretically, we can revoke government positions. But we need politicians to do it on our behalf, and we don't really have politicians who are willing to do that.
You can repeat the Constitution until you're blue in the face, but just because something sounds easy on paper doesn't mean it's easy or even plausible in reality.
Pulling off such a takeover is possible, though it would be a lot of work. Voter turnout for Senate and House has been between 36% and 53%.[0],[1] Traditionally campaign finance has been considered a barrier to electing good representatives; however, the hold campaign advertising has over our election process may be weakening. People under 35 spend less time consuming traditional media where campaign ads run and more time on YouTube and social media. A campaign focused on voters under 35 might be enough to create significant change. In California, for example, there are almost enough people between the ages of 18-35 to make a win possible if those people voted as a team.[2]
[0]: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0397.p...
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_Sta...
[2]: http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/california/demograp...
Not at this rate. I think officials see the Snowden-fallout and say, "hey, that wasn't so bad. the public barely cares. Yo Comey, hit the press & equate encryption to child abuse; we can win this narrative." Lack of transparency is certainly an issue, but i'd say the bigger one how to make sense of this information to the public.
It's worth noting that no longer do citizens have the ability to arm themselves with "the same class of weapons" as the government. Unless you're willing to sell APCs and cruise missiles to private parties, there's no way a rebellion can outgun country's military.
1. A law requiring the government to delete this data after a certain amount of time.
2. Legal penalties for abusing this data. Perhaps standards for how the data must be protected.
There is/was almost zero prosecution of individuals involved in the global financial collapse of 2008. Occupy Wall Street protestors, on the other hand, were beaten, arrested, maced, and so on.
Rules against authority figures in this country are for show at best. Didn't used to be that way, but here we are.
The only thing you can take from them is funding. So did Congress -- took away money from IRS and brought their operational budget to those levels from 2008.
And now - pick one that is correct:
A) The director of IRS cut off $80MM bonuses promised to all those hard working ants that scrutinized non-profit applicants and further lost backup tapes that have been miraculously found years later; OR,
B) The director of IRS cut off funds for customer support telephone line, forcing people to wait minimum 30 minutes on the line before a real person answers, admitting on the record that majority of taxpayers won't be able to reach out for help in this tax period.
Any solutions to this clear abuse of power and disrespect to fellow citizens??
True. Network effects negate the advantages of encryption. You can't use TOR to hide when posting to FB, in other words.
I seem to remember one of the Pirate Bay founders said something along those lines. Not even because it's "already lost" but because we need to start treating the cause and not the symptom. Yeah it's great that we can use encryption to avoid government snooping for now, but how long will that be feasible? The long-term solution would be to stop them from doing it in the first place.
Actually it's even more serious. If you try to avoid it it's a criminal act and your labeled as a criminal. To be very honest I'd rather move to a remote place getting away of this evolution.
Honest question: What's stopping you?
A huge number of people say they'd readily give up life in a nation that infringes their privacy for a different life away from prying eyes, but very, very few people actually bother to do it. There are plenty of nations where surveillance is still at the 'none' level, beyond a few paper records for things like passports and car registration. And generally they're quite cheap to live in and have nice weather. So why are you still living in the apparently awful conditions where you are now?
Could it be that privacy is actually much less important to you than ready access to, say, a good internet connection?
Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance, it's used primarily to keep law and order.
We don't live in some authoritarian state where it's used for nefarious means, it's used to keep the public safe.
And seriously, why would you care if you're sitting on a database? What difference does it make to anything?
And I want to know when this mythical time was when we all had total privacy? I don't understand what bothers people so much about a person in a CCTV monitoring station looking at them sitting on a bus, or a spook reading the emails I send to my parents. Honestly, no-one cares.
Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter.
"Honestly, no-one cares."
That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example.
It would be political suicide for a UK politician to use the data the police and security forces have for political gain (assuming they got caught of course). It just doesn't happen.
> "That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example."
It's nice there are people out there making sure things don't get too out of hand. I just question their underlying beliefs about our need for privacy.
Also the "no-one cares" goes both ways. I seriously doubt the state cares about my conversations with friends, most people just aren't that interesting. Perhaps Hacker News suffers from collective delusions of grandeur ;)
I'm actually fine with a CCTV operator in a monitoring station viewing the feeds. I'm also OK with the recordings being kept a short time in case they are needed to investigate something not spotted at the time. What I'm not comfortable with is them being kept more than a month or so. CCTV footage kept long term may be linked with Face recognition for detailed and personal tracking.
Likewise with the ANPR, I would be OK with it kept and accessible for a month or so (although I think a judge should approve searches both on a particular event (time and location) and for searches on a particular number plate.
We may not yet live in a authoritarian state but can you rule out one occuring in the next 50 years? What if legal and reasonable things today are outlawed, gay rights roled back and they search the ANPR for people who may have frequented gay bars or the archived communications data for anyone who used Grindr.
In my view the collected knowledge is more dangerous than the terrorists to a free society and oversight and limits on retention are required.
You are right though that the majority of the public do not feel this way yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't oppose the surveilance where not fully justified and try to educate them.
I would also note precisely what you said "people I know feel safer with surveilance" and while I think you may be right I'm really not sure how much safer they actually are.
The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading.
I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up.
I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.
Well I'm don't. At times there may be suspicions and warrants to go after lawyers and journalists but at other times that may endanger whistleblowers and it should be overseen by judges issuing warrants.
> The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading.
Prove it. And how would we ever find out that the government were misuing surveilance? A whistleblower could immediately be identified by correlating movements with the relevant journalist or internet traffic. Secondly trusting today's government and security services isn't enough you need to trust all future ones too.
> I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up.
I never called for the security services to be disbanded, CCTV to be removed or ANPR to be stopped. I said limit retention. Is it possible that some crimes will not be solved that could have been with unlimited retention - Yes. Is it also possible that legitimate speech, whistle blowing and reporting could be deterred by the current surveillance - Yes. These things have to be balanced.
> I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.
So am I. With the emphasis on "little" and "greater good". Your approach seems to be "all" privacy with little information on the "greater good" that will come from it or acknowledgments of the harms done. I believe of association, thought, speech and movement are also goods that are damaged by omniscient government (if people avoid doing legitimate things because of the surveilance).
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Overall though I agree with basically everything you say. I'm just tilted a little more towards longer retention and more information than you I guess.
I concede it is possible that I jumped in here and made blanket statements that aren't 100% realistic. The general sentiment does reflect my opinion though.
Thankfully this is why we have democracy, so a more tempered approach most people agree with can be used :)
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By the way your comments come across as more balanced and reasoned than I lot I read expressing basically the same viewpoint.
There are plenty of people who hold positions of government power that have done far worse than abuse surveillance for their own ends.
I'm from the UK and I absolutely, utterly disagree with what you are saying, most of which is baseless.
There have been abuses, there are corrupt intentions at work and there most certainly are people who do not think this level of surveillance is a good thing.
I don't particularly mind CCTV coverage of cities, if we still live in 1970 and technology limits it to essentially manual viewing of feeds to follow criminal suspects. In that world, ordinary citizens walking around a city centre are items of data that are discarded forever as soon as the tape reels run out. Even if they're kept, the volumes of data involved are so huge that they're effectively lost in time anyway.
The world we live in today is not that world. We are not far from being able to use facial recognition to track the whereabouts of every single citizen and save it forever, indexed along with the video recording of them at the time. We already have the capability to do that using cellphones. We can save the entire life history of individuals using these records and collate them into a viewable form near-instantly.
As I alluded to in my earlier post, the way we're going it's not a huge leap to imagine voice recognition allowing for phone calls to follow suit. Why is voice recognition important? Because it turns weeks and weeks of trawling through transcripts into a search query with instant results.
It's a completely different ball game. It's permanent, searchable, indexable super-fast memory. 'Forgetting' becomes obsolete.
In the old world of tape CCTV cameras, my neighbours knew more about me than the Government. Now, it's almost certainly the other way around, and if not, only because they've decided not to type 'stegosaurus' into the Big Database of Everything.
If someone is logging your access to a something, they are required to provide you with the logs on request.
I think Europe at least would go for it. In Japan telephone cameras are required to make a clicking sound. This is an extension of the concept.
For the life of me I do not understand why both major parties aren't having conniption fits right now. Are these the same parties that, on a bipartisan basis, told Nixon to get lost? Shut down some of the intelligence community's overreach in the 70s? Impeached a U.S. President for lying under oath?
Both parties over the previous 50 years have taken strong stands -- both separately and together -- in regards to strong oversight of privacy and freedom. Would Reagan have put up with this? Carter? Ike? JFK? It's inconceivable. During those times, yes, there was plenty of illegal mucking around -- but wholesale bulldozing of citizen's privacy? It's something from a dystopian sci-fi novel of just 15 years ago.
Surely this has to come up there somewhere near as important as all those other political scandals. Surely it would be a popular measure. But instead, what I'm seeing is somebody trying to introduce a bill to nibble around the edges, then others adding amendments so that the bill to reduce NSA spying actually increases it. It's like they're being incentivized to go in exactly the wrong direction.
It just doesn't make sense to me. There is some missing piece to this puzzle. When I see guys like Hayden, with his cocky attitude; there's something he knows that I don't know, and it's not that AQ is some kind of clear and present danger. It's something else. (Sorry to sound so mysterious. I'm truly at a loss.)
We might need to embrace it, make everything transparent and collaborative, and figure out how to make use of the information to create a state that is better than what currently exists.
This is a tech problem. We created this, all while saying something like "Yeah, but all that ethical and philosophy stuff isn't really anything I need to worry about. What I need are eyeballs"
The government takes the blame in many cases because they hold all the trump cards -- they can take the data from anybody that's collecting it. They can also send you to jail, which commercial providers cannot directly do (yet). But the problem is with the tech. We have met the enemy and he is us.
In the case of government, it's definitely not complicated to classify the aggregate behaviour as unqualified bad (in term of result), regardless of the intention of the individuals working within the systems.
Search keyword: "wumao" which means paid internet commentator or "public opinion molder".
- Systematic execution for the crime of belonging to a particular ethnic group or religion
- Open and openly arbitrary disappearing, detention, and torture of intellectuals for the crime of writing articles critical of state-sponsored religious and political doctrine
- Use of force against people who commit such crimes as selecting their own sexual partners, disobeying their parents, being seen in public with members of the opposite sex, texting members of the opposite sex, being homosexual, etc. Or, more commonly in the "developed" world, failure to investigate or pursue family-based vigilante "justice" against same.
- Failure to acknowledge women as people and rape as a crime
- Committing violence against, or being complicit in violence against, children who dared to go to school
- Corruption to a degree that renders the public health infrastructure so dysfunctional that tens of thousands of people die needlessly
- Outright censorship of any reporting that paints the state in a negative light
---
"Knowing things about citizens" is dangerous because it enables the state to be far more effective in pursuing policies like the above. We ought to limit the government's knowledge of the lives of its citizens because that makes it much harder to effectively implement policies like these.
HOWEVER, HN sounds downright ridiculous when it declares that being listed in a database is comparable to being summarily executed for criticizing state religion.
The existence of worse does not make better good.
The state of things in the US is scary, and Saudi Arabia existing doesn't make it less so.
Edit: I'd argue that corruption of The State by lobbyists, special interest groups, and shadowy Super PACs cost thousands of lives a year in the USA.
This definition [1] even uses this very argument as an example:
"The counter to the relative privation argument when applied, for example, to compare America with other more tyrannous countries is to note that the proper comparison to make should not be between America and other tyrannies but between America and the ideal of freedom."
I find it a scary way to look at the world and to me it always comes off as less an honest argument and more like somebody who understands fallacy using it to persuade the reader for their own benefit.
Like the sort of thing they'll tell you as they are locking up your cage. "Hey, you're lucky it's dry unlike the cages the bad guys use!" the voice under the helmet said.
> Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore?
I am arguing the specific assertion that surveillance makes America morally equivalent to or less than the countries we oppose. That does not seem to be true. Apologies if that's not what parent meant.
Of course this doesn't make America "good" or even okay, but it is entirely possible to have severe problems while still being a "good guy" relative to the likes of Iran.
I just get spooked by those comparisons. I think I agree with you in the end that ultimately we the relative good guys and it's important to keep that in mind. In Fact it's our role as the relative good guys that makes it so damn important to make sure we exercise our rights to free speech and political freedom to make sure we stay the good guys.
2. Snowden, Manning, Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond
3. Don't know about this one. I think it's worth mentioning Racism, Islamophobia and Islam or race related violence here.
4. #opDeathEaters
5. I don't know about this one either, but school seems mostly like a tool to incur debt. So not necessarily a plus.
6. You watched the Healthcare debate, right?
7. Surveilled reading is more dangerous than censoring books, full stop. But if you're looking for censorship, there's plenty to go around. Try finding a copy of the Sony leaks these days. Look at what is happening to social media.
The Iraq war has not killed over a million people by almost any estimate. Actual body counts are around 100,000 and most estimates place it around 500,000 for all lives lost. This is not explicit in deaths caused by American troops.
Snowden, Manning and all are not always looked at in the same light as some see it. Not all state secrets are inherently bad.
Here's the thing: countries can transition into totalitarianism quickly.
1930 Germany was very, very different than 1940 Germany. Hitler's rise to power happened in the blink of an eye, before most people understood what was happening.
This is why "oh, being listed in a database is nowhere as bad as being summarily executed" should be consolation. Such mindsets breed complacency, whereas what we need is constant vigilance and an extreme intolerance for policies that grant the government more power without any oversight.
And the one can lead to the other.
Al-Awlaki? He was not accused of killing anyone himself, but got drone striked for writing terrorist propaganda. So did his son (for having Al-Awlaki as a father, no less). That seems like a pretty close fit.
Corruption to a degree that renders the public health infrastructure so dysfunctional that tens of thousands of people die needlessly
That's a funny example. Most people in western non-US countries would say the US meets this definition handily.
All that said, your point stands. There are worse governments than the US government. But lots better too.
But when did the US and UK start comparing themselves to the most oppressive rather than the freest in the world?
This happens but you tolerate it because it's consistent with your arbitrary local culture. Consider pedophilia (having "wrong" sexual feelings) which comes with chemical castration and an attempt to "cure" it along with imprisonment of course. You don't even have to abuse anyone to suffer some of these consequences. Sound familiar? Have you ever met any self-confessed pedophile who hadn't been arrested for a related crime? Until they're outed, they're forced to keep their feelings secret from everyone because it's a kind of western thought crime. This leads us to imagine that all pedophiles rape children. They don't any more than 60 years ago all homosexuals raped children.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars
Basically you can Google the title and click on first result to see it without limitations of a paywall
I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/tracking_vehi...
Its intended purpose being innocuous wouldn't stop someone from abusing it.
I ask as your question seemed a bit strange to me.
I am not sure if you are alluding to the fact that individuals trying to evade the law wouldn't know to change their tires, or if car licensing & insurance is much different than I imagined in the US (and individuals get a new license plate each year or something crazy).
Edit: also thanks for the link! I really had no idea RFID was hidden in tires! Makes me wonder what else they are hidden in...
> Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more
> frequently than their license plate over the lifespan
> of their car?
a rfid label on the inside of the tire would work exactly the same and not compromise the tire structure.
In this particular incident their company was tasked with processing all of those photos to identify/track a guy who had murdered his wife and was on the run. Sure enough the system had snapped a pic of him driving, with his dead wife in the passenger seat.
A good use of the tech in that scenario, but I'm sure it's being used for mass surveillance as well.
I don't necessarily mind police using this for their benefit, but not long ago we didn't have all this technology and information so easily available. So there must be oversights and appropriate usage, or we are just giving them unfettered access. Warrants should have to be obtained to get this sort of information, I think.
Whenever DHS apologists use the "air travel is a privilege, not a right" line, this is what I point them to. Between random C&BP highway checkpoints and TSA patrols on Amtrak, harassment-free travel of any form seems to be a privilege nowadays.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_int...
"Arms" are hunting shotguns, pistols. Can't own fully automatic ones, or rocket launchers or fighter planes.
Drones will be illegal soon as well probably.
Basically you can get on your horse and start traveling through the country roads and woods, besides that you need to have "papers".
There is only one fundamental right, and it is to not have force initiated against you. (Why? Simply because that is in the self-interest of each rational adult human.)
Ergo, the government cannot properly stop you from air travel, moving about freely in the country, etc.
> "air travel is a privilege, not a right"
Travel is a right. It's a constitutionally granted right.
I find the whole argument that interfering with the travel of every single person on a single _particular_ mode of travel is somehow constitutional a bit vacuous. What about that mode of travel is so special? (AFAICT, "safety"). That the government is also interfering with road travel is ridiculous.
Travel, within the United States, is a constitutional right, one that has been upheld by the Supreme Court (see [1] and [2]): "Since the Constitution guarantees the right of interstate movement…"; the decision in [2] cites even earlier [3] Supreme Court cases that asserted this right.
This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our
constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens
be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by
statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this
movement. That [394 U.S. 618, 630] proposition was early stated by Chief
Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849):
"For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed, we are
one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States;
and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass and repass
through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States."
We have no occasion to ascribe the source of this right to travel interstate to
a particular constitutional provision. 8 It suffices that, as MR. JUSTICE
STEWART said for the Court in United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757 -758
(1966):
"The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a
position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that
has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.
". . . [T]he right finds no explicit mention in the Constitution. The reason,
it has been suggested, is [394 U.S. 618, 631] that a right so elementary was
conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger
Union the Constitution created. In any event, freedom to travel throughout the
United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the
Constitution."
It reads like the premise of a dystopian science fiction novel.
I can't help but guess that the reaction is going to be a big shoulder shrug, because, to but it bluntly, things aren't that bad for most people. If you are white, have a good job, follow the law, and make sure to richly kiss ass if and when you come in contact with the police, life in the USA is rich, full; it's like heaven.
If I have heaven, am I going to risk it just because of some law enforcement techniques which are only questionable in the abstract?
Even more troubling, people are people, and when this is seriously abused -- and my money says it'll happen within the next 20 years -- how are people going to explain it all away?
I am left with the troubling thought that we are creating for ourselves a dystopian society never dreamed of even by sci-fi writers. Rome had nothing on this, nor does North Korea. The attention a known dissident would receive in former East Germany is a cakewalk compared to the kind of surveillance we're giving each citizen who's guilty of nothing. The only thing we're waiting for is the logical and natural corruption of large systems of people to take place.
It's bad, it's dystopian, but it doesn't seem to be THAT bad yet.
But the problem lies in the tools and information available. All it takes is for one of the parties in power to decide they want to use it for their own unscrupulous purposes. And suddenly, they have more information than the Stasi could have dreamed of.
There's no guarantee there will ever be anyone in power who wants to abuse this. But it's a dangerous situation we've put ourselves in.
If we're starting a betting pool, my bet would be on the system limping along as it is for the forseeable future. Average citizens won't even really notice the growing surveillance. Criminals will, but no one will care about them. Certain protest groups, like whatever form the future Occupy takes, will see the system used to their detriment, but ordinary people will still not care. Always safe to bet on apathy, and relatively safe to bet on the politicians / powers-that-be realizing they can already have most of what they want without creating a repressive hellhole--which would cause more economic and social problems than it would be worth.
There's a similarity between the attack against Dr. King and the method described in the JTRIG documents: "COINTELPRO". Instead of being stopped by the Church Committee, the program probably got a renaming and reorg[2] to move away from the "failed branding". Regardless of the name, the tactics are being used (it's just modern marketing tricks).
It is easy to see the enemy that is loud and disruptive, and a lot harder to notice who is responsible for these newer, more subtle attacks that - especially when the attacker understands P.R. and branding
[1] and identifying relationship graphs ix exactly what you get from simple logs of telephone metadata. Throw a few JOIN clauses into your query, and you can do the COTRAVELER trick of extending those relationship graphs into many other areas.
[2] similar to how "Total Information Awareness" got renamed and moved around
I don't think we should over-estimate how widely read those works of fiction actually are, so there may not be a reconciliation. This, reality, is literally the first time some people have thought about the implications of mass surveillance with modern technology. SF geeks are, once again, ahead of the curve. :)
Movies like Minority Report are good primers for the concept of a panopticon. But I must have read 10's of stories involving panopticons in Analog and F&SF on all sides of the issue, in all variants. I remember a particularly good one involving how to get away with murder in a panopticon society. Iain Banks' The Culture with it's benevolent, quite desirable panopticons (the Minds).
Oddly, I don't remember any stories that remind me of what's going on now, which is a battle between those who want to protect security at any cost, and those who simply don't trust the government, any government, with the kind of power necessary to even come close to the level of protection they seem to be aiming for, which is total.
Though I am open to examples to the contrary.
How would they know that you have good stuff inside the car? Other databases.
Just because they're building the gallows slowly and using such wonderful rope doesn't make the eventual hanging any less troublesome.
EDIT:
You know, 70 years ago today the Red Army found out what could be done with good record keeping and decent surveillance, and at what scale.
Imagine, just imagine, if you could type your favorite demographic into a terminal, get a list of everyone fitting that and some other criteria, and then a list of addresses and doors to knock on.
Mankind and government has never done well with such power.
Sure, until any of the above changes. Or you piss off the wrong person with connections. Some of which you may have little control over.
And to be honest - to not be raked over the coals simply to exercise my right to freedom of movement is not exactly "heaven" to me, it's the basics of a free society based on laws.
As for your comments about movement - try to keep some perspective! While the TSA is an icon of everything wrong with our security climate (security theater, irrational assessment of risk, irrational assignment of resources, and a banal humiliation meted out to those who can't afford to skip the lines) it is, at least theoretically, under our control. The next President could dismantle the whole thing (although I'm not sure what statutory restrictions there are - certainly the President and Congress could change things if they wanted).
No one wants to be the one to dismantle the TSA, because when the next attack happens (not if, when) they'll get the blame.
How exactly does this sound like heaven? Sounds incredibly restrictive and authoritarian to me. Always make sure you're not saying or doing the wrong thing. What happened to 'land of the free; home of the brave'?
I suspect if your plate failed to read you may well end up being pulled over - not sure on the punishment.
The obvious solution of using another car's plate is defeated by noticing that a car appears to be driving on opposite ends of the country simultaneously :D
In London, cash is no longer accepted on the bus. Same deal for subways. The smart card (Oyster) is purchasable without ID but not disposable without showing ID and a deposit is charged. Paper travelcards are available at much higher cost per journey.
Smaller towns have cash bus tickets :)
Taxi may be viable but it's a matter of chaffing; are you hailing, or calling a private hire company/using Uber? The former is far more expensive here and also not really viable in many cities.
The train is also drastically more expensive unless you buy advance tickets online (on the day tickets can be obscene, hundreds of pounds for a 200 mile journey).
Bicycle is viable, for now.
Basically, most methods are trackable, there just might be levels of indirection. Buying a ticket online or using a bank card is just an algorithm away from entering the 'log where you are' zone.
But then, we're all carrying cellphones right? :D
(For example, imagine 10 LEDs arranged so that each LED illuminates 1/10th of the license plate, where 1 LED is on at a time. If the frequency is high enough, to human eyes it'll appear as though the entire plate is illuminated equally, but any photo will have one spot (or two spots) illuminated much more than the others.)
Back in the early 2000's, plane spotters identified CIA planes used for extraordinary rendition by recoding registration numbers and locations.
Maybe David Brin was right after all[2]. Automatic license plate scanning is trivial now. It would be pretty easy for anyone to build a node of a system like this.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1
It would be an interesting act of protest to track the movements of powerful people, so as to compel them to take privacy more seriously.
We see the start of this with dash cams. Sure, they don't do the recognition thing, but they do decentralise surveillance.
I think it's worth considering possibilities in this area as a supplement to outrage and protest.
I think combining each states' databases as described in the WSJ will actually improve this number and is actually a prudent decision.
1: http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-pri...
"This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored, incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.”
The show aired at a time when cars were facing steep criticism, as plans for the new interstate system threatened to destroy or disrupt neighborhoods in many U.S. cities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/d...
Personally, I think we'll have the technological capability to do this within a couple decades.
Cars will never be allowed to not be uniquely identifiable, for hopefully-obvious reasons that have nothing to do with Big Brother.
That's only true if everybody has equitable access to the recordings! Putting the keys to the castle in the hands of the people running it leads to doom.
I just think about the future much more positively. You have to believe in justice for it to ever be real.
Didn't the majority of the country agree this summer that police should wear cameras at all times. And the police protested this development. (Remember police brutality debate?)
I'm against the license plate system, but people on this site often don't seem to appreciate there is democratic support for many of these programs.
I am surprised that a consumer ANPR solution isn't on the market.
Much to the chagrin of our rent-seeking overlords, whom see speed traps and red-light cameras as a means of revenue generation rather than safety measure.
Edit: I have to agree with the other commenter though - red light cams were meant to bring in revenue to the city of Chicago. They bought into the program by outsourcing to a third party company (big shock, most of chicago looks like the poster child for a corporation owned city). They're not making the money they expected on the deal though.
A company called RedFlex installed cameras here. They subsidized the installation cost in exchange for a cut of tickets.
RedFlex admitted to bribing city officials to get them to install cameras.
The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.
Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border with Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn’t been previously disclosed is that the DEA has spent years working to expand the database “throughout the United States,’’ according to one email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.
The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering.
A spokesman for Justice Department, which includes the DEA, said the program complies with federal law. “It is not new that the DEA uses the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity,’’ the spokesman said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the government’s use of license-plate readers “raises significant privacy concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government’s asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern.’’
The senator called for “additional accountability’’ and said Americans shouldn’t have to fear ”their locations and movements are constantly being tracked and stored in a massive government database.’’
The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program.
The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads to steer police toward suspects.
The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls.
By 2011, the DEA had about 100 cameras feeding into the database, the documents show. On Interstate 95 in New Jersey, license-plate readers feed data to the DEA—giving law-enforcement personnel around the country the ability to search for a suspect vehicle on one of the country’s busiest highways. One undated internal document shows the program also gathers data from license-plate readers in Florida and Georgia.
“Any database that collects detailed location information about Americans not suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy questions,’’ said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s unconscionable that technology with such far-reaching potential would be deployed in such secrecy. People might disagree about exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance technologies, but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn’t be done in secret.’’
License-plate readers are already used in the U.S. by companies to collect debts and repossess vehicles, and by local police departments to solve crimes.
In 2010, the DEA said in internal documents that the database aided in the seizure of 98 kilograms of cocaine, 8,336 kilograms of marijuana and the collection of $866,380. It also has been connected to the Amber Alert system, to help authorities find abducted children, according to people familiar with the program.
One email written in 2010 said the primary purpose of the program was asset forfeiture—a controversial practice in which law-enforcement agencies seize cars, cash and other valuables from suspected criminals. The practice is increasingly coming under attack because of instances when law-enforcement officers take such assets without evidence of a crime.
The document said, “…DEA has designed this program to assist with locating, identifying, and seizing bulk currency, guns, and other illicit contraband moving along the southwest border and throughout the United States. With that said, we want to insure we can collect and manage all the data and IT responsibilities that will come with the work to insure the program meets its goals, of which asset forfeiture is primary.’
A number of lawmakers have been planning to offer legislation to rein in what they call abuses of asset-forfeiture laws. The Justice Department recently announced it was ending its role in one type of asset seizure, known as “adoptions,’’ a process by which local officials take property, then have the assets adopted and sold by the federal government. Often, that allows the local agency to keep a higher percentage of the money from the seizure. The policy change doesn’t affect the bulk of asset seizures in the U.S.
The national vehicle database program was launched in 2008 and opened to participating state and local authorities a year later. The initial focus was on tracking cars moving on or near the Southwest border, in order to follow the movements of drugs and drug money, according to officials and documents. Requests to search the database are handled by the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas, which is known as EPIC in law enforcement circles. EPIC is staffed around the clock to both take in and send out information about “hits’’ on requested license plates.
The effort began in border states like Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, but the goal has always been expansion, according to current and former federal officials and documents. Officials wouldn’t say how many other states are now feeding data into the system, citing concerns that disclosing such information could help criminals avoid detection.
The federal program hasn’t always been embraced by states. At a 2012 hearing, Utah lawmakers balked when DEA officials sought to have license-plate readers in the state feed into the database—one of the few times the agency has provided even limited facts about the program. That same year, a DEA official made a general reference to the program at a congressional field hearing about the Southwest border, saying it was built to monitor and target vehicles used to transport bulk cash and other contraband.
Under questioning from Utah lawmakers, the agency said the program began with an effort to track drug shipments on the Southwest border, and the government wanted to add monitors on major drug-trafficking routes like Utah’s Interstate 15, in order to hunt a wide array of criminals. That alarmed privacy advocates, who noted at the time that the DEA’s map of major drug routes included most of the national highway system.
The agency has reduced the time it holds the data from two years to 3 months, according to a Justice Department spokesman.
The EPIC database allows any police agency that participates to quickly search records of many states for information about a vehicle. One May 2010 redacted email says: "Anyone can request information from our [license-plate reader] program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user.…’’
The data are also shared with U.S. border officials, according to an undated memorandum of understanding between the DEA and Customs and Border Protection officials. That document shows the two agencies specifically said that lawmakers might never specifically fund the work, stating: “this in no way implies that Congress will appropriate funds for such expenditures.’’
The disclosure of the DEA’s license-plate reader database comes on the heels of other revelations in recent months about the Justice Department, as well as the agencies it runs, gathering data about innocent Americans as it searches for criminals.
In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals Service flies planes carrying devices that mimic cellphone towers in order to scan the identifying information of Americans’ phones as it searches for criminal suspects and fugitives. Justice Department officials have said the program is legal.
Earlier this month, the DEA filed court documents indicating that for more than a decade it had gathered the phone records of Americans calling foreign countries, without judicial oversight, to sift through that data looking for drug suspects. That program was canceled in 2013.