Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance

nytimes.com

139 pointsobeone44 comments

See the discussion on this article from yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9663415

"Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations."

Except I don't see anything other than that. I don't see the world saying no to servailence. I see Europeans complaining about the NSA while turning a blind eye to their own governments doing the same thing, but that's nothing new. I see Americans demanding the government do whatever they can do 'stop terrorism.'

I only see people agreeing with Snowden and really being annoyed with the survailence because I frequent the small groups of people that do. Outside of that, I don't see it.

There's been congressional and judiciary action and an abundance of discussion. You can't claim there is public indifference: congress would never move on an otherwise niche issue unless they were fearful.

There's a plurality of people concerned about increasing security in light of all the recent hackings of public data. This issue is intimately related to surveillance, and is undeniably of rising concern.

This is the start! It took two years to get rolling, but there is the potential to get back on the right track.

Despite that, I think the fact that major tech companies are bringing encryption into the fold as a standard feature, along with the judicial branch knocking down the NSA calling their practices unconstitutional certainly counts for something, if not for a lot of effort from a lot of concerned members of society.

Do you think the Patriot Act would've been allowed to lapse if it weren't for Snowden? It's possible, but seems very unlikely.

The USA Freedom act may not be perfect, but it helps and there's no way it would exist without the documents Snowden released.

Also:

- NSA's phone spying program ruled illegal by appeals court ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/07/us-usa-security-ns... )

- Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech On Encryption, Privacy ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/apples-tim-cook-delivers-bl... )

- Fuck these guys - Brandon Downey, Google Security Engineer (https://plus.google.com/+BrandonDowney/posts/SfYy8xbDWGG

> Do you think the Patriot Act would've been allowed to lapse if it weren't for Snowden?

I see no evidence that Snowden's revalations had anything to do with that.

> The USA Freedom act may not be perfect, but it helps

http://news.antiwar.com/2015/06/02/senate-passes-patriot-act...

This Freedom Act? The one that does extend Section 215 of PATRIOT Act?

That one?

"Administration officials say the NSA program and the metadata collection will be back up and running within a day after the president signs it back into law, which again the indications are will happen very soon. Officials made no mention of any changes in the operation of the program, despite the nominal reforms."

The PATRIOT act has lapsed in name only and even then it appears to have done so only because the Senate excells in doing nothing. Then a few days later it does get exended (and the Whitehouse is just itching to sign it into law) under a new name no one can complain about. FREEDOM ACT, see it's all about your freedom, while it extends surveillance. Rand Paul gets his 'see I blocked government surveillance' and the government gets its surveillance. It's a win-win for the Government.

The NSA's actions were 'illegal' before. They will continue to do it. No one seriously expects them to stop. They'll just change program names.

Apple can use a little bit of media attention to sell cell phones.

And Google? Really, Google, the company along with Facebook that basically is synonymous with surveillance and tracking.

None of this shows any mass rejection of the governments surveillance programs, because there hasn't been any.

I may be cynical, but I see the opposite. I really want to believe Snowden is right about this, but what I see is governments passing more obscure laws to create more legal loopholes, and in fact doubling down on the investment in "security" infrastructure.

I don't see a trend of governments demanding accountability from their spies. Quite the opposite. The conservative government is about to try to pass yet another version of the Snooper's Charter, and you know what, I think this time they may well succeed, since the tories have the majority and have only just won their seats. Even if they vote to betray the human race by passing the Snooper's Charter, it will be forgotten by the time the next election comes round.

Looking around Europe, I don't see a lot of visible concern about this. Occasional articles, etc, but most people don't get why this is important.

The only positive trend at all is the increase in use of encryption that he notes. And to balance out that positive trend, what do we have? Governments of the world starting to make noises that "encryption should be illegal".

Will Apple, Google, Facebook, etc, keep fighting for encryption if it's made illegal? Dubious.

We're losing this battle at the moment.

Another cost is the trust people put in technology. This could really result in ugly situations. What I'm scared of is that it could turn into a situations where people believe they have privacy, and it would be impossible to prove otherwise. You'll either end up paranoiac or it would effectively result in a society of political control.

I wonder if it's possible for an investigator or a hacker to use suspicious behavior to lure the NSA and prove that they were being under surveillance while they are effectively innocent. It would be difficult to present it, since it would require legal and technological explanations.

Basically, we are in some kind of technological singularity, at least for most people. Humans on average are no longer smart enough to understand and cope with the technological developments around them.

Even if you knew everything that was going on (as Snowden largely did), and you could prove that it's evil, most humans don't have the intellectual skills required to understand it, no matter how calmly and clearly you try to explain it. It's beyond their ability to understand.

You'd think someone would have the wit to have Pardoned him by now, no?

Did you see the episode of John Oliver's show recently about the subject? Oliver went out and asked people about it, and the general response was "Who is Edward Snowden? Didn't he release some documents that compromised the safety of the U.S.?" and "NSA? Privacy? Meh."

On HN and Reddit, there's plenty of knowledge of the subject because that's the kind of stuff we're interested in and concerned about. But most of society apparently couldn't care less.

Shrug, that "most of society" is getting integrated more with sites like Reddit etc. Exposure to previously not-discussed knowledge is increasing, and people's diet of the mainstream media is (very slowly) weakening.

True, but I think even most who read things like Reddit don't necessarily follow the main stuff that's posted. Reddit's kind of a mixed bag of information, and people go there for all sorts of stuff. I know I generally skip over a lot of the stuff on the front page, even if it might be a big deal, if it doesn't look particularly interesting to me.

When I said HN and Reddit I should've said the more technical crowd.

I still frequently hear the "I'm not doing anything wrong, what do I care if they're recording me?" argument.

For those people I love this quote from Snowden himself:

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say" [0]

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_...

I hadn't heard that before. That's a really good quote/counter-argument

I keep seeing this John Oliver segment brought up in threads related to Snowden & the NSA - it's a comedy show! While interesting, it is not statistically significant proof that "most of society apparently couldn't care less." 0.33% of the US is more than 1 million people. They show ~8 tourists in Times Square on a cold morning in April.

Additionally, being able to identify Snowden is not necessarily indicative of public awareness and concern around issues of civil liberty, privacy, etc. When you do go looking for these numbers they of course vary wildly based on the poll source, questions asked, etc. As a quick example, these two pew reports[1][2] can be interpreted pretty differently.

Does anybody know of any great analysis that's been done in this space?

[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/14/nsa-opinion/country/unit... [2] http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=1858375&pid...

True. But his bit follows pretty closely with what I've experienced (and I've heard others say the same). My friends within the tech sphere pretty much all understand the issue and have an opinion on it. For the most part, my friends outside of the tech sphere generally don't care -- the ones that do are usually pretty into current events and generally know more about what's going on in the world than I do.

I know that's still not statistically significant, but I haven't really seen much analysis on it, so I go with what I've got.

Sadly no idea who John Oliver is until you mentioned him (English man living in Switzerland).

Quite sad that a lot of Americans don't know who Snowden is, I think most Europeans do (in a completely unscientific anecdata kind of way, you understand..)

I wished this were true. But I really don't see it. Of the non-IT folk around me nobody seems to give a damn. And even of the IT folk there are quite a few in the 'governments are great, shut up and let them do their job' or 'if you've got nothing to hide' or 'that Snowden jerk is a traitor and a supporter of the terrorists' groups. Which is a real pity, they of all people should know better.

What has changed post Snowdens revelations is that the governments are passing laws left, right and center to make their previous illegal behaviour legal and to reboot their programs under different names. And of course better security procedures to prevent the next Edward Snowden from either doing the deed or getting away with it without being caught whilst still within the borders.

It's better than nothing, but the world is - alas - not saying no to Surveillance, if only.

You don't need 90% support to cause a "revolution". When communism started falling around 1989 in many countries most hid in their homes, while the few fought in the streets.

Most people don't care about fracking either. In fact, I think the majority support it when it's being sold as "cheaper energy!". Yet fracking is starting to get banned in multiple countries and the activists are causing a lot of trouble for those in the US as well.

The world may be saying "No" but it's saying it with a whisper.

For anything to change, the world will need to say it with a scream. If every politician that voted for snooping were to be recalled or lose their next election, that would change things.

Just saying "the right thing" to pollsters but voting the bums back in won't change anything.

Bring him home!

The World also says No to Crime and that is the crux and fine balance.

"World says no to surveillance"

Headline is deceptive.

Loading the New York Times itself has plenty of third party cookies.

The world uses Google and has no idea what cookies and flash tracking is.

Most people I speak to say "Who cares?"

But you have the choice to use or not use those sites. You also have the ability to block those things. You can't block government surveillance.

If you know how to block tracking by Google and the New York Times, you have the expertise to throw the Feds off the trail, too.

How many people know how to do this?

If you think technical expertise is enough to throw Feds off your trail, you are sorely mistaken.

It's probably a matter of degrees. Clearly there must be a degree of expertise that would be sufficient. However, it's not likely that most of us reading this discussion would have that.

I think you would need to be knee-deep in all the security journals and following every detail. Most of us don't have the time.

Except for the part when they will care eventually. Secrecy loves silence

I just don't get "The world says no" part.

The world says "meh".

It's unsettling to see how irational people become when faced with the question of privacy.

It is obvious that in the next 10 years, privacy will become frowned upon.

I personally see surveillance as progress, and am ready to embrace it. Feel free to ask me anything about that.

What is it like being so brave?

It's just common sense, really.

It really isn't common sense, it is common but not sensical.

Privacy is a great good and a lack thereof has vast implications none of which are beneficial to the whole of society. Privacy may be well worth the occasional death-by-terrorist or even the drug problem (which is far larger than terrorism). And who am I kidding, it's not as if the terrorists and the drug traffickers are the real target of this surveillance, it's basically the prelude to a statist future where any progressive will be 'on the radar' before they even realize they're worthy of the term.

If you choose to assume that privacy is inherently good, of course you will reach conclusions that say we should prioritize privacy over other things. Not really useful to people who recognize that privacy was nothing more than a temporary artifact of urbanization happening before widespread access to technology, and on the balance made people measurably less happy.

Other people with far better writing skills than me have written entire tomes on the subject.

This is a nice start:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/20/glenn-greenwald-pri...

As for privacy being nothing than a temporary artifact of urbanization and on the balance making people less happy: where do you get these conclusions? Do you honestly believe that before urbanization we didn't have meaningful privacy? Does the fact that you have privacy really make you less happy? How come?

Just because someone has written a thing - and even gotten it published - doesn't mean there is any truth to what they have written. Otherwise your link could just be to my comment.

Can you sum up in a sentence or two why you feel this way?

EDIT: Parent edited post, used to saw something to the effect of:

"I support surveillance AMA"

Consider the alternative.

It can boil down to a metaphysical question about what is civilization and society, and how far the control goes.

I get that government must protect citizens by reducing the amount of crime, just like parents would take care of their kids by controlling them at times.

But if you want society to evolve and move forward, you have to let that slim amount of freedom in place. Creativity and opinions matter. It's not just preventing crime.

The inevitable risk is that the government or corporations could use this information advantage, and not really prevent crime at all since criminal would be even more careful. It could turn into situations of black and white like in china where saying something would put you in trouble.

Although it is true that the NSA should be able to investigate data when there is reasonable suspicion (a good example is finance, dealing with large amount of money should mean you're being monitored), I don't think it should be mandatory for all civilians.

Civilization implies a social contract, but is it really a good idea to have more and more dependency and supervision by government ? I think not. And even if you have mandatory logging of data, it would still require a very tight access process to prevent abuse.

The argument is dependency and how individuals behave when they know they might be under surveillance. It can have a dire consequence on the moral of society in general.

I don't trust the government.

I don't value surveillance as a tool to prevent crime.

What I ultimately have a problem with is people's expectation of privacy. I believe that privacy contributes to a lot more harm than good, and I want it gone. Surveillance, while not quite the "total transparency" I want, contributes to that.

I can't imagine a future in which keeping secrets is affordable or sustainable. It will keep getting harder as technology improves, and we should embrace that. The first step is to lower our reliance on privacy, and that's a step that very few people are ready to take or even consider. I believe this to be a problem.

The challenge we're facing today is not "How can we maintain privacy?" but "How can we deal with reality?".

That explains why I despise those that blindly seek privacy.

I think you are confusing the intimate privacy of individuals and business secrecy.

Privacy is about talking without restraint, giving an opinion you might be scared to tell in front of some people you don't trust entirely.

For example, I recently had a one year class with a teacher, and the students really hated how detached the teacher was. They tried to tell him several times in nice manners, but he could not hear it, so they gave up. It was excruciating for them. They were fending for themselves while they was equipment, a nice room, and everyone was coming, but the teacher was so uninvolved in teaching and helping it was depressing.

When a executive came to listen and write a take our opinions about the school program, the teacher could not be here, and it really made a difference, because they would not have spoken if he was there. This is privacy. You must be able to talk without fears.

There are things that must be public, and other that must not. Feedback and opinions must be constantly made possible without fear of arguments, bad blood, firing, etc.

I agree that corporate privacy/secrecy should not exist, and that there are many things like accounting that should be made public since there is no intimacy. There are many laws that make a difference between the intimate privacy of individuals and financial secrecy.

War...HUH...what is it good for? Absolutely nothin..say it again!

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