northwest

Yeah, I should stop saying intelligent things. ;-)

This reminds me of how the Occupy movement was handled by the authorities.

> I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans?

Of course it is. That's not the question, I guess.

The question is: How much difference regarding power (generally expressed in money/wealth) is healthy to society?

> "What we're finding is power diminishes all varieties of empathy"

Another reason to stop the decline of the middle class and to begin to reverse this trend.

> At one point, one of the guys asked to use the bathroom. I showed him where it was and went back outside the house. I remember thinking he had been in there longer than was normal.

If you leave cops roaming around your house alone, you may need to consider your hardware compromised. Also, in such a situation, cops would have the opportunity to plant bugs or even "evidence".

Don't worry, you won't find it on the front page.

Is this real life?

There is a conflict of interest between this post and HN:

HN's goal is also to promote YC start-ups (directly and indirectly), and they happen to be US-based.

> The latest developments around PRISM and the NSA dragnet operations uncovered by Edward Snowden, in my view, severely damage the fragile fabric of the new global ecosystem, which we so sorely rely on in order to collectively tackle truly urgent global issues such as energy, pollution, food, climate change, (cyber-)terrorism and inequality.

This seems really central to me.

A system that's corrupted by the use of mass surveillance will ultimately lead to bad/wrong policy decisions (decisions which favor a few ultra-rich people). And everybody knows the weight of the impact of US policy decisions on the rest of the world (= humanity).

> What about an alternate messaging system addressIng these issues ?

In case he was talking about unencrypted email, it's obvious:

-> Only use encrypted email (with an email client).

In case he was talking about encrypted email, all the "metadata" is still open (sender/receiver address, time/frequency, message subject). Then you can cross-reference that data with other data to get a more precise picture of the users.

-> Only communicate using one of the "darknet" platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_%28file_sharing%29

> They are also working on a special BitTorrent-powered browser, which lets users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own.

Great idea.

If this came as a plugin, it would probably spread faster.

(This is btw how I think any next-gen social network should work - no more central servers, everything distributed.)

> Obama has his own reality distortion field.

Another possibility would be: He has (or thinks he might have) a gun to his head and fears to meet a JFK-like fate (for himself or his family). In this case he should step down and denounce the degree of corruption of the system.

EDIT: ...because in case he's unable to have enough courage to correct the issues, stepping down and stating why would open up the possibility for the People to have a frank discussion about the system in place and to correct it for the next x decades to come. Because don't kid yourselves, the system itself is sick and it's not with cosmetics that it will be fixed and future corruption eliminated.

Also, rest assured that the US government will continue to put enough pressure on foreign/European governments to continue mass surveillance on their behalf.

If there is no fundamental structural change in the US, the Western World will remain a surveillance society and the current degree of democracy will be so much weakened that the term "democracy" will need to be "redefined".

He had the "balls" to say on TV something to the tune of "the US doesn't have a spying program at home".

That should be enough for everybody to understand even Mr Hope-and-Change is lying now.

If you're implying he's got a gun to his head, he should just step down and say "I can't do my job any longer".

Exactly.

It will be just another tasteless joke, until they are made just as transparent for us as we have been transparent for them, all these years.

It's a trap! https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex

1. Make some cheap meaningless concessions

2. Let people fall asleep again

3. Continue to build the surveillance state

4. This time, hide it even better

He could still just sell it to someone in another country. Neither the service nor his 10 years of work would be lost.

Also, what prevents the guy from setting up that service in a European country (Switzerland is not subject to EU laws)?

I don't see why his 10 years of work would be lost.

I suppose it's time we have a public open hardware effort in order to break the telcos' unhealthy monopoly.

I agree, an economic incentive would certainly add value to the ecosystem and allow it to grow faster.

Remember when WiMax was being discussed? How come it still isn't being sold yet? Could it be that it's because providers felt threatened?

I suppose it would take meshnets to a whole new level.

Question:

Could it be interesting to have the main project leaders set up a website allowing everybody to pay hackers to come to your home and set up the required equipment ready-to-use?

Yeah, it's not really popular, these days. And don't count on it becoming more popular any time soon.

> Transparency first involves coming clean. Not a little bit at a time, not only when you have to, but complete disclosure about everything.

I have this uneasy feeling that they will fight this as long as they can. I'm not sure true transparency will ever happen, without drastic measures.

Their strategy will probably be:

1) Wait for the end of the revelations

2) Assess the level of public outrage

3) Make the cheapest concessions possible (a bit like Ms Merkel recently canceling the old "spying pact" that was never used)

Again, war is a huge business. (And this of course includes the so-called "war" on terrorism.)

I believe that's the main reason (if not the only reason) why it is being kept alive (today by using the cheap manipulation technique of fear).

Absolutely spot on.

And: People are repeating "Never forget." - and at the same time, people seem to have forgotten that there was a time when we had no terrorism (true story!).

The question nobody's asking anymore: What is the reason for terrorism? How did we get there?

Nowadays, fighting some symptons seems to be all we can come up with. (The only reason I can see for this is: Because it's big business.)

Are you threatening me? ;-) Kidding aside, I almost never downvote (power = responsibility)

> We live in a world doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

But now, we have storage and much faster circulation of information. Which means we can track these "mistakes", dig them up easily whenever they're about to be repeated and discuss them again (better yet, "fork" the old discussion and adapt it to the current issue).

Maybe somebody should build the perfect tool to do just this. (I feel it doesn't exist yet, but the need is now clearly here.)

EDIT: I tried to hint at that (in this case regarding surveillance only) here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6152935