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Comment by joeyspn | Hacker News Reader

Here's a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn't own a cellphone, cos phones were being used to track people. He also talked about the backdoors in several OS's. Everybody was laughing at his words. We're talking 10 years ago.

Few months ago remembering this speech with old uni mates we talked about how damn right that excentric man was. He saw it coming, and tried to warn everybody... Maybe he's a bit of an "extremist", but he certainly has a point.

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This, exactly.

Stallman is taking a stand here. We might think that he is a dangerous extremist for his actions and stances (Not using proprietary software, mobile phones, javascript-enabled websites). But what he is actually doing is sacrificing his life to make his points (which are for the most part completely valid). I would guess, even he knows that most of his ideals are impractical in today's world, but he is walking the walk and planting the flag firmly, saying this is "How thing should be".

The difference between a crackpot and a visionary is that what the visionary says make more sense as time passes. IMO, Stallman's track record is infallible in this regard.

As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him.

What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating you find it.

That said, it's worth noting that it's certainly not that he doesn't care about the privacy of others. I had to pull him away from lecturing innocent bystanders about paying at the grocery store with CCs.

I guess the question is, what would happen if everybody actually listened to RMS and stopped using cell phones?

This is not a valid way of judging RMS or his claims. He isn't complaining about the concept of a technology that allows people to talk while on the go. Rather, he is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled.

To answer seriously, however, the largest effect of reduced cell phone use would be that automobiles would be much safer, for their passengers and for everyone else.

Then again, in the case that an auto accident does occur, there might not be someone with a cell phone to immediately call emergency services.

"911, 911, we had an accident because everybody in the car kept texting and facebooking during the whole ride. 911, 911, it's a good thing we have cellphones and tablets with us!"

Just to point out a bit of an overly binary comparison: There is a middle ground here — consider a powered-off, pre-paid phone. No constant texting and so on, but also there for emergencies (in which instance, you turn it on exactly when you actually want to be tracked — by emergency personnel).

More to the point, if people - en masse - refused to use cellphones that tracked you, someone would be selling cellphones that don't. And then RMS would presumably carry a cellphone.

Someone did(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...). He ended up in jail on trumped up charges.

as jessaustin remarked, "[RMS] is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled."

Listening to RMS would mean that if you do carry a mobile device, that it would use entirely free software including all drivers and bootloaders, that it only communicates with other hardware running entirely free software (i.e. only basetowers or wifi routers running free software), and that all the internet services accessed ran entirely free software (e.g. private email servers instead of gmail, pump.io & GNU social instead of twitter & facebook, mediagoblin instead of youtube, wikipedia, yacy or some other free software for search, etc.

yes, though the specific softwares are unimportant. anyway, what is your point?

It'd probably inconvenience him because he wouldn't be able to borrow one from people next to him.

This reminds me of that article that made the rounds a little while back about the Amish. How they absolutely use technology, they just have a different perspective on it than we do. It strikes me that Stallman does the same for principles. What we think his principles are is not the same way he considers them.

I have his book, and his practicality has always struck me, juxtaposed against his idealism, it just looks really strange. You don't expect to see him doing certain things. But then you ask him about it and he's got a perfectly reasonable explanation. I've read so many stories about people that have interacted with him in precisely that way.

Both Stallman and the Amish take a very long view. Every decision they make carries the entire weight of the future and must be considered in that light. They both fight against the constant march of modernity. They are institution builders.

As a person who is only one person, society only changes when one person can reveal or demonstrate to others the concepts that form the ground of the argument.

Otherwise it's just crap stuffed up in your own head.

For him, it is more irritating to live in a world that thinks it is okay to regularly violate people through crossing boundaries of what they consider personal information. For you, it is more irritating to go into a public space and have to deal with other people's opinions.

Everyone is fine with things as long as things are perfect for them. But you can't just wear blinders over your eyes when other people are obviously suffering, and just because you can't empathize with why those people are suffering doesn't make their suffering any less deserving or worthy of understanding, lest you expect the world to treat your suffering in the same cold, disconnected, blinded manner.

I'm sorry he embarrassed you, he would probably embarrass me too in the day to day minutia. But I absolutely stand by him mentally, because I believe and value the world he believes in and values. In theory everything is honky-dory. In practice, society and the individual actually has to deal with problems as they exist. Otherwise they fester and turn into more difficult problems that take a long, long time to understand - some of which are very very difficult to understand after enough time has passed and enough damage has been done.

I can't tell you how much I as a programmer and computer scientist, how much I have benefited from the movement that came from Richard Stallman. I can't tell you how much my mind has benefited from it. I don't care that his actions contradict his core philosophy. They are attempts at connecting a gap between theory and real life.

If the source of code was as privatized and closed as some kinds of knowledge can be, I'd be nothing. I consider it a privilege to share an existence with a person who has helped shaped the world in that way, no matter how annoying or crotchety or irritating he may become. There is always a difference between the ideal a person represents and the person they are. It comes at a high cost to be a public figure, but some people see the value of the world they want to create for everyone to be worth more than that - and maybe that's what the people around him who allow him to use their cellphones see too.

I don't really see where you're getting your opinion on me here.

The thing I found irritating was RMS constantly borrowing my phone (and having to help him use it each time...). He can have whatever opinions he wants.

Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe).

Making that to be a big conspiracy to infringe upon everybody's freedom and privacy is what makes Stallman's position so ridiculous. It always sounds like the rambling of a technophobic. No, that's not entirely true. Like the rambling of an old man who wants computing and technology in general to be exactly like it was in the 70's when he was sharing a mainframe with his pals at uni, and who can't think of anything more innovative than that.

Everything about mass survaillance shifted from "stuff of crackpot conspiracy theories" to "retroactivelly obvious all along".

It's as if the useful idiots haven't even noticed that their rhetoric today contradicts entirely their rhetoric from five years ago.

> Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe).

Bullshit; I remember trying to instill the same point to techies 7 years ago and a majority of technically competent people would say that, while possible, is not certain.

Hindsight is 20-20.

Even today, very few people accept to believe that the NSA actually leverages their technology to do mass tracking. Few people have an idea of the scale of their operations actually. Most of them now think they have the gear, but that they only leverage it in state investigations.

> Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago\

"In 1996, a detailed description of ECHELON was provided by New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager in his 1996 book "Secret Power – New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network""*

This was common knowledge in the 90's ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

It wasn't common knowledge at all. When I tried telling people about ECHELON I was told it was a crack-pot conspiracy theory, despite the evidence being available.

There were a few people who actually extrapolated the technical abilities to their possible extents and realized what was possible, indeed probable, but they were not the majority.

Despite Nicky Hager's testimony before the European Parliament in 2001, here in Australia, many people didn't even realise the DSD existed (Now ASD) until about 2011, and a lot of their abilities weren't known until 2013. The collusion between the ASD and other foreign departments was ignored, or even seen as positive, by any main-stream press coverage at the time.

Saying this was common knowledge in 1996 is attributing your specialist knowledge to the entire population, who couldn't, and still can't, really be bothered by said knowledge. You may have known about it, but the vast majority of the world didn't. And now that they do, they sadly still don't really care.

As an example, there's now an Academy Award winning documentary relating to mass government surveillance available online, legally, for free. Do you think I can get any of my non-tech friends to watch it?

"Saying this was common knowledge in 1996 is attributing your specialist knowledge to the entire population, who couldn't, and still can't, really be bothered by said knowledge."

Bad effects from smoking were know for years, same with the effects of asbestos, DDT. These days, it's fracking, global warming, junk-food and lack of exercise.

These ideas were all and are currently in the media. People being the irrational beings they are pick and choose what they want to believe. Belief doesn't change the truth.

The effects of smoking, Fracking, DDT, asbestos, global warming and junk-food have all had industry campaigns defending them. The only one in your list that hasn't is lack of exercise. This isn't to say that everything is a conspiracy driven by industry, but to illustrate that popular belief is often driven by popularist campaigns.

I would say that truth doesn't change belief, and unfortunately, it's belief that people act on.

If your mobile carrier offered a product to find the nearest gas station/hospital/supermarket 10 years ago (at least mine in Austria did), then of course it worked like that. At least in Austria and Germany, media regularly mentions police being able to locate people's phones by sending "silent text messages". That also uses the same principle. How else? People that knew about such tools and features, but did not realize that this obviously can be abused, how ignorant must they have been?

There's quite a difference between "we can know where you are if needed" and "we track where everyone is at all times, and provide this information to the authorities."

We're at the point now where we pretty much assume that the former implies the latter. It was not always thus.

The "we track where everyone is at all times" is a fundamental principle of mobile telephony. Your carrier always knows in which base station you're logged in, otherwise you wouldn't be able to send or receive anything.

It is a radio that ids itself with local towers. How would you build a cellphone that you could not track easily?

Yeah, in 2000, after a car accident, I was surprised that the 911 dispatcher couldn't locate me using my cell phone.

I guess people are talking about 2 different things though, one discussion is about the implications of a radio (you and others are talking about this) and the other is about government capacity to gather the information revealed by using a cell phone.

It could use an ephemeral device ID and make its paging-channel connection back to its home network via a Tor-like mix network. I know that sounds like goofy sci-fi talk, but you can actually do this today with free software on Wi-Fi: run TCP-only Mumble over Tor to connect to your Mumble server, and periodically generate a new random MAC address (like Apple’s new phones do) and set up a new Tor circuit.

What’s left is how to pay for the Wi-Fi access anonymously, if people aren’t willing to share it with you for free. If your wireless network access is all done through a centralized company, like a cellphone carrier, you could easily use one of the Chaumian centralized-issuer digital cash schemes from the 1990s: the “bank” is your cellphone company, and they sign a “blinded” form of a bunch of “coins”, which you later sign over to wireless base stations in exchange for bandwidth. The protocol assures that the base station can confirm that the coin hasn’t been double-spent and that it’s properly signed by the bank, but the base station and bank together cannot figure out which coin it was.

Sometime around 1996 or so I went to the National Cryptologic Museum, which is adjacent to NSA headquarters. There was a guy with a little folding table outside the museum selling cellphones for some reason. At the time I joked that you'd think that would have to be the absolute worst place to sell cell phones since anyone leaving what is essentially the NSA museum would know better than to buy a cell phone there. They could eavesdrop and track everything!

It was a joke, of course, but it anchors in my head that I was certainly aware of the vulnerabilities of the technology at the time.

Off topic digression - I was there with a couple friends, we were all scruffy looking 20 somethings. In the parking lot, a middle aged man approached us and if we were being recruited by the NSA. A reasonable guess, I suppose, given how we looked and where we were. Anyway, he then proceeded to go on a rant about how we should never work for them or it would destroy our lives and we'd regret it. It's strange this guy went to Ft Meade to hang out in a parking lot and tell people not to work for the NSA.

The museum itself is definitely worth a visit if you're in DC. It's a short drive outside the city.

https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/

I get annoyed by this because Stallman wasn't exactly predicting a hurricane, here. It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine. Nobody can prove it, but most people infer. Certainly since 641A and other even older signals those who pay attention received, the possibility of total surveillance was plainly apparent. The people who laughed it off were merely banking on the morality of government, but it was not a surprise at all that such things were technically possible. Those who paid attention already knew. Just no proof.

He was not some oracle of technical insight that nobody else had or shared. Many people made such claims long before he did. His free software ideals put him in a very good position to be retroactively proven right about surveillance, because the people who are super into free software and the people who practice real opsec end up looking fairly similar.

I'm not minimizing that he was right, just countering that we all were. And we failed to deliver the message and/or trusted in our government a bit too much. 641A should have been the catalyst. The EFF continues on it to this day. It took Snowden and the proof to get there, and we are still not there. I don't think we even know where the hell "there" is.

Another important thing to remember is had we listened, nothing would have changed. Us heeding Stallman and others wasn't the problem, it was a state actor perpetrating while making it nearly impossible to know about it. It makes us kumbaya a bit, maybe democracy could have fixed it, but all of us were (and are) almost entirely powerless in representative government. Even Joe Biden said as much on VICE the other night, just about a different topic.

Surveillance was going to happen. It was a done deal. The terrorists beat us the second those aircraft hit, because terror has driven us every minute since.

"Many people made such claims long before he did." Could you give an example?

I also think it's dangerous to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government. Same argument could have been made against civil rights and suffrage movements throughout history.

I think it requires a bare minimum of effort to enumerate the scores of commentators who predicted the surveillance state and the need for opsec, because it's in the bedrock of the computer security community itself. One needed only attend DEFCON, especially after 641A, to hear enough about surveillance and countersurveillance to last a lifetime.

Hippies, free software, counterculture, copyleft, cypherpunks. All of that shares the same DNA. Stallman represents that culture sharpened to a point, and it's been the basic tenet of all of it that government does not have our best interest at heart. Cypherpunks exist, arguably, because of it. That'd be the example I'd offer, perhaps even that consumer cryptography itself exists.

I also didn't say that. You added a bit. I disagree with the addition.

I'm really confused here... you said "Many people made such claims long before he did." and I asked for an example. I didn't ask what movements he's a representative of and I don't know whether anyone who attended DEFCON heard about it. All I wonder is if their is one clear example of someone who made such claims long before he did?

What did I attribute that you didn't say? I assume you refer to "to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government" and I can see what you mean but what point was you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not argue against taking action?

That's just it, though, the movement is the example. If you can't get there abstractly, John Gilmore comes to mind.

I also very clearly said nothing about action. You added that and I happen to disagree that we shouldn't act. Powerless in government is an orthogonal concept and you conflated them and disagreed with something I didn't say.

Ah I see, I suppose we interpret what I asked for differently. I had hoped for en example of some specific statement (perhaps from John Gilmore) that can be dated to more than 10 years ago, thus proving that "Many people made such claims long before he did."

It's not even that I doubt you, just that nagging feeling in the back of my head that say "He haven't given an example of a person making such a claim dated earlier than 10 years ago." I have to apologize because I feel that this has more to do with some mild form of OCD on my part.

Yes, you clearly said nothing about action (I don't see why you're adding "also" because that was exactly what I was addressing in my last comment?). I'm not sure what you mean by "Powerless in government is an orthogonal concept" and thus I wouldn't know how I conflated them (not even sure what "them" refers to, action and governemnt, powerless and government?)? I do agree that I made a strawman and for that I apologize, to clear this up could you answer the question in my last comment: "what point were you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not to argue against taking action?"

Interestingly, though, those movements very much relied on their cohesiveness around a single, fundamental grievance.

Eventually they reached a 'cultural' tipping point and that brought about cascades of change.

Currently the field looks a bit different, as there's been an exponential growth in both the quantity of information, and the effectiveness of its delivery (via the media, technology) at lower costs.

This is, of course, not an argument in favor of inaction... I just think we should be wary of the fact that it's now a lot easier for capital to change culture (by way of advertising and private-interest media) than it is for culture to rally around a sustained idea long enough to produce legislative change.

(And remember a lot of these forces work in both directions, however I do believe the biggest benefits of technologies' reach will always be concentrated among those with capital)

> It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine

I totally don't agree. Every Ukrainian can tell you what actually is happening. Media on the other hand are different story. They pretend some things aren't real and other are real ( depending on the country's origin opinion ).

I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly what is happening there, but I know a lot, a lot of Ukrainians ( here in Berlin ) that most certainly can tell you the story in a sustainable way that matches all the dots.

I don't want to sacrifice those hundreds of people on that Malaysian airplane that vanished, because "nobody knows what is happening". Sorry.

For the other part of your comment I mostly agree.

P.S. I don't want to do politics in HN, that's why I didn't write my opinion.

Right. You actually supported my point. The Ukraine thing was an aside and I don't want to open it up (much like you), but as you say, most Ukrainians can say what is happening. But can they prove it? The media aspect corresponds to the proof of the thing. I think short of a signature on an order to shoot down the airliner, there will always be just enough doubt to keep the nearly obvious conclusion at arm's length.

We said the same thing in different ways, because surveillance was almost identical. We all knew. We could explain it, probably even whiteboard it. But we had no way to show the world in 30 seconds without any ambiguity. Snowden gave us that. The government records your phone calls. Here's the unequivocal proof. Bam. Now you have peoples' attention, and it's turning out not even that is enough.

Neither of us are sacrificing anyone, rest assured.

Every one in tech thought 10years ago there are backdoors everywhere - well there were backdoors everywhere 20 years ago. And everyone thought government agencies use phones for tracking. The public opinion might have been different, but in tech circles this was and is mainstream.

I thought so too, but the outrage on HN over Snowden's revelations showed otherwise. Many people here were baffled.

"...in tech circles this was and is mainstream."

Things are different now. Take online tracking and privacy for example; many people in the tech community are perfectly fine with the online tracking carried out by Google and Facebook. They consider it relatively benign and useful. Some people (many?) are even happy to defend these companies over their tracking practices, are after all they are private companies, not government agencies.

The degree of tracking by these companies is unprecendented and often it's not even anonymous. Google, for example, has an entire OS that tracks you by default. It's tied to your identity, so it's not anonymous. If you have a Google or Facebook account, these companies probably already know more about your online behaviour than you know yourself.

At some point in the future, Google and Facebook may well be able to track you from cradle to grave. Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps. Even now, Google's push into education means they hoard vast quatities of data about the online behaviour of students.

Even if you trust these companies, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?

I can understand how the general public may be unaware of the privacy implications of such pervasive online tracking, but what excuse does the tech community have for not highlighting these issues and their privacy implications? Most of the reaction from the tech community over online tracking is equivalent to a "yeah, so what?" shrug of the shoulders.

Except that we knew all this 20 years ago. He's not really extremist at all. I guess he is just good at finding audiences that aren't up to speed.

Sounds like Nostradamus.

He said few things and based on his reputation people since hundreds of years take anything important that happens and bend it to fit his prophecies. 10 years ago me and my friends were well aware that police etc can listen to your mobile phones - I don't see big deal here. And none of my friends were that much in to computers or security.

Richard Stallman does have a lot of good ideas. But he also seems distrustful of anything that isn't entirely built on free software, and of anything at all to do with governments or corporations, and I think he gets praised for some keen insight when, really, anyone paranoid about the modern world and the government would have been just as insightful, although maybe not as literate. You shouldn't get credit for hitting a bullseye if you spray the target with an uzi.

https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html

Indeed. If only we had had Stallman right before Pearl Harbor, I'm sure he could have published a manifesto, saving everyone from the obviously impending doom and most importantly maintaining their FREEDOM!

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