Hacker News Reader

MisterWebzon German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA

Pretty sure I've read somewhere in the HBGary email leaks about a company that bought and developed exploits and sold them to the government.

MisterWebzon I just want to say "fuck everything", hold up my hands and walk away.

It's a community where people regularly talk about ways to limit the NSA's power and who are actively encouraging people to use encryption to weaken their data mining capabilities. Do you think that doesn't raise any red flags?

We already know they're more likely to target encrypted connections, so what does mean for those who enable encrypted communication?

You can go ahead and make fun of this like you did a few comments below, but if you believe this couldn't happen then I think you've been living under a rock the past few weeks.

MisterWebzon I just want to say "fuck everything", hold up my hands and walk away.

It's really scary that we're at a point where not using social media can reveal something about you.

If they somehow manage to get an IP address associated with the shadow profile, they can use XKeyScore to see which websites you've visited. If they see you've been reading a lot of articles about the NSA ordeal, browsing wikipedia a lot, visiting websites related to cryptography and visiting a website called hacker news, they'll target you as 'politically dangerous' and you'll be put in the 'nihilist, anarchist, hasn't talked to the opposite sex in 5 years'-list.

MisterWebzon The Road to Luna

A lot of people here fervently complaining about eOS again.

The most important thing is that there's finally a linux distro with a team behind it that really cares about design. I think it's a huge step forward, and when eOS gains in popularity, I hope other teams follow in their footsteps.

No, distros like Linux Mint aren't the right way forward. Stripping off everything until what you have left is a taskbar isn't exactly my idea of good design.

MisterWebzon Google outage reportedly caused big drop in global traffic

And then there's the NYTimes outage from a few days ago.

MisterWebzon Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month

That's impossible, because around here the minimum wage for an adult working a full time job is around 10x that figure.

MisterWebzon Google outage reportedly caused big drop in global traffic

If that's true, then we should be seeing similar outages affecting other services too.

MisterWebzon Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school.

That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.

MisterWebzon Syrian Electronic Army hacks Washington Post Web site

Recently, security researchers say the group has also started to engage in more sophisticated attacks, including using Trojans and and targeting Voice over IP (VOIP) services. Those attacks and this week’s Socialflow and Outbrain compromises suggest the SEA may just be getting started.

Fear mongering at its finest. These people aren't doing anything that isn't already being done by others.

I'm expecting a lot more "cyber warfare" and terrorism-related fear mongering in the following months. We already saw an increase in politicians complaining about Chinese cyber attacks, but the leaks put an end to that. Let's see who they'll focus on next.

MisterWebzon The NSA is turning the Internet into a total surveillance system

There are german politicians that propose to take extreme measures such as banning US companies if they don't comply with stricter regulation. And you'll see there's a lot of other stuff going on in Europe. Of course you won't hear about that in your US-centric media.

MisterWebzon NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls

The first thing that comes to mind is that they're apparently firing 90% of their sys admins. Their internal workings are definitely being affected.

MisterWebzon Obama to Offer Plan Meant to Ease Concerns on Surveillance

The Obama administration was also planning to release a previously classified legal analysis explaining why the government believes it is lawful under a provision of the Patriot Act known as Section 215 for the N.S.A. to collect and store logs of every phone call dialed or received in the United States.

Good idea, let's concentrate on phone records and ignore the collection of worldwide internet traffic.

MisterWebzon NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls

That's ridiculous. You think they would self-inflict this huge PR nightmare upon themselves?

They were doing perfectly fine before the leaks, getting cooperation from major tech companies and other countries and their reach was constantly expanding.

It's silly to think they'd give all that up by setting in motion something which could potentially piss of its own citizens and its allies, just for the off chance that people might become numb to it. Then what happens? They continue their operations just the same way they did before?

MisterWebzon Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

By engaging in a line of comments that is so far from reality

Just because it's far from your reality doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else. People are constantly bombarded with articles about the US engaging in potentially illegal and unconstitutional activities that affects a lot of internet users, so it's only natural people get upset about it and let their emotions run wild, thus resulting in the "paranoid" comments that we now regularly see.

You should take the time to show these people an alternate point of view, because your comment will not only be read by the person you're replying to (who may or may not change his mind), but also by the thousands of lurkers who don't even participate in the discussion.

MisterWebzon Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

You can increase the quality of HN threads by replying to such "paranoid" comments with a counter-argument instead of complaining.

MisterWebzon Lavabit abruptly shuts down

It's exactly this kind of sacrifice more people need to make if they want to see some real change.

MisterWebzon Lavabit abruptly shuts down

Please do. If there's anything I can do to help, reply to this comment as I don't have any contact info on my profile.

MisterWebzon Ask HN: How to stop requests to ajax.Googleapis.com and load jQuery locally?

I'll try and see if that works, thanks.

MisterWebzon Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

First they came for the terrorists, then they came after the drug dealers...

You're right though, it is a ridiculous premise. There's no profit to be made from genocide.

MisterWebzon Firefox 23 is available

Same here. However, it's still not showing local resources that are not being loaded because the path or the name of the script or stylesheet is wrong.

MisterWebzon U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

There's nothing I've said that warrants the downvotes.

Maybe you're getting downvoted because you're complaining about downvotes and not actually contributing anything to the dicussion?

MisterWebzon HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

I think I pinpointed the exact moment HN's decline started. It was when my inane, rage induced comments about the NSA were getting upvoted.

Let's not ban politics, let's just drastically lower the amount of noise in political threads.

MisterWebzon Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA

On the other hand, why wouldn't they try to protect themselves by trying to defund the NSA programs by proposing a new bill? There's public outrage which they can use for their own benefit and they could easily frame this as defending the American citizens while covering their own asses, but they're not doing that either. In fact, the amendment that was proposed to defund the NSA phone surveillance didn't pass, so what's going on?

Also, blackmail isn't that easy. If something embarrassing is revealed about a politician who seemed to be critical of the NSA, you think people wouldn't start pointing fingers to the NSA and accusing them of blackmail?

MisterWebzon Ask HN: Where do we discuss the mass surveillance problem?

Set up an IRC channel?

MisterWebzon FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

The ability to intercept the communications of anyone on the internet without a warrant is relatively restrained?

Do you even have a source for your claims? How exactly are you comparing the two?

MisterWebzon FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

The number of times the Dutch police have legally tapped telephone and internet lines may vastly exceed that of others such as the U.S. because the U.S. (thinks it) doesn't need a warrant and as such it's not being logged as a wiretap.

Some numbers of Dutch wiretaps: http://www.thehollandbureau.com/2010/03/07/the-netherlands-c...

MisterWebzon After NSA's XKeyscore, Wikipedia Switches to HTTPS

The NSA could probably identify anyone on the internet given enough time and resources. I think the point of this is to make mass surveillance difficult, so they'll only target people flagged as suspicious instead of everyone.

MisterWebzon After NSA's XKeyscore, Wikipedia Switches to HTTPS

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Switches to https automatically when visiting Wikipedia, even if you're not logged in.

MisterWebzon Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport

And the NSA will successfully catch the people who have stolen nuclear weapons by collecting worldwide unencrypted internet traffic?

MisterWebzon NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

While I'm sure he's very capable and very much an expert in his field, I don't think he's this charming super politician that planned an elaborate scheme to sway the conference attendees' opinions by appearing to be sensible and calm in front of hecklers.

I mean, can you imagine how horrible this would have turned out if he didn't stay calm? It's basically standard procedure to stay calm and try to explain your way out of it. Sure, he got some applause, and the heckler got some applause too. I think anyone could have imagined something like that happening.