salient

OH, no it's real. Remember US was the one that came up with SOPA and ACTA, too. It wasn't China. It was US, the land of the free. They wouldn't be "trolling" 3 times in a row. They're serious about this.

What's disturbing is that even though they know which data is from US citizens, they still won't discard it, and can even use it. I mean, maybe I can understand if they "incidentally" collect the data of some people - although doing that for tens of thousand of people a year is really pushing it since all sorts of people could be in that "incidental" collection, and US persons could actually be targeted this way, and then masked as being "incidental collection".

But even after they know they are Americans, they still keep it? That's just unacceptable. This other story puts things in an even scarier perspective, because of what they can do with that data if it gets trickled down to other agencies (parallel construction, etc:

https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-a...

Yes?

https://www.aclu.org/national-security/police-requests-cellp...

The type of surveillance NSA can do is quickly trickling down to FBI, DHS, DEA and even the police. Even this wasn't too long ago:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-...

Some police departments are also working on face detection systems, or even "pre-crime" in New York:

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/08/microsoft-and-bloomberg-...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/16942-dhs-creates-...

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/5/22/dissent_or_terror...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0718/Lic...

And these are just examples that I remembered off the top of my head, and did some quick searches on them now.

The funny thing is that we're probably just a few decades away from doing that, too.

Microsoft shares all vulnerabilities with NSA as soon as they find out about them, and long before they fix them, anyway, which is like giving them access to a lot of backdoors into Windows. Adding one more from rand_s doesn't change the situation that much. Then there's TPM and all that other fun stuff. Until Microsoft overhauls their Windows security policies, you can never really trust Windows to keep you safe, even with the latest updates.

If Microsoft has been collecting billions in revenue with an invalid patent for years, could the court (or EU Commission?) force them to reimburse that money?

This headline almost makes it seem like this is a bad thing. How about: "FAT patent invalidation saves Android OEM's from Microsoft's illegitimate rent-seeking?"

> However, software can be audited, the hardware cannot be

Exactly. So work on solid security/privacy principles, rather than take the easy way out and hope for the best.

Sounds like a good move to me. Intel has been awfully quiet about this.

Hey, stealing is stealing. Right US government?

I guess they don't like it much when they are on the other side of a copyright trial. So why does Obama keep pushing for stricter and longer copyright laws in the TPP treaty then?!

It's definitely something someone with too much power would say or think, especially in the context of the NSA.

I don't know how it will do as a niche thing in enterprise, but I think it's very unlikely it will ever catch-on with with mainstream users. It just seems too much of a hassle. Now turn that into an NFC ring of sorts that does the encryption for you, and you may be on to something, but even then it still seems something only geeks would use. Heck, it's hard enough to get people to use software-based encryption solutions.

Awesome, I've been waiting for this. Now CyanogenMod should be the most secure OS out there against snooping, even compared to Google's own Android. Too bad Google isn't taking steps to offer end-to-end encrypted communication for Android devices.

Does he really expect this to go well in the long term? Tyrants never learn from history, do they?

This is why I think it's insane when I see Bitcoin-based services built apps for iPhone first. How naive are they? It's obvious as night and day that Apple would try to ban Bitcoin apps if they try to get into payments themselves.

We should try and stop them, of course, but why risk it by making iOS your first platform, and even your only platform for a while, if you you're building an app that has a very high chance of getting banned by Apple for arbitrary self-interested reasons.

If you want competition, stop letting local governments make "deals" with the ISP's to bring such and such Internet or service to that area. Almost always that ensures the company will get a monopoly in that area.

It's precisely for this reason why I'm against states making deals with ISP's even if it means bringing gigabit fiber to their areas. Will it still be fast enough 10-15 years later? Because you can bet they aren't going to upgrade it anymore after they get their local monopoly. I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago, too, when they made the first deals from which they got their current monopolies.

Yeah, the last thing we need is another manual for how governments should control the society in the future, as if 1984 wasn't enough. My guess is the people in NSA are already thinking about how to implement a Minority Report-like pre-crime system, that can be shared with all government agencies.

I'm hoping one of the results from the NSA reform will be that we'll properly name who and what exactly is a terrorist. The government spies on everyone, and then to justify their spying they're calling all of them potential terrorists. That line of thinking must go.

I don't know if these things make a difference or not, but there are 1/3 votes needed for ECPA reform, with 3 days to go:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-ecpa-tell-g...

She should be recalled. She's done enough damage as the Chief of Intelligence Committee in Senate, and she's going to do more in the next 5 years if we let her. I still remember getting my stomach turned by how aggressively she pushed the FISA Amendments Act renewal, last year, before Christmas, with no real debate.

I think his point was that they're all doing it for selfish reasons, not for some "principles". The principles are the public agenda, but they're really doing it because they're starting to lose business overseas - fast. So now they've taken on this "principled" crusade against the government.

I don't really mind it as long as it really works, and it's the outcome I wanted to see anyway, but I think it should be seen for what it really is. If this was really about principles, they would've done something about it years ago, not after they see their financials or relationships overseas drop because of it.

I knew making corporations hurt over their cooperation with NSA willingly or unwillingly (by not having proper security) is going to play a major part in turning this around, although it's still early days, so I'm cautiously optimistic right now, but also very skeptical at the same time, because I'm not going to believe the first time the government says "That's it everyone - we reformed the NSA. You can all relax now". It's going to take serious reforms and transparency to make me believe it's truly "over".

I think TACK is targeting browser vendors, and convergence is targeting browser users. But it doesn't look like it has been updated since 2011 (still in beta, too), and there's no add-on for Chrome.

So you're saying that if the government is passing the boundaries of legality and morality, people should just keep their heads down and not say anything?

Frankly, I'm disgusted by you "American" attitude towards this. I've seen more non-Americans who support Snowden than Americans, which is really very depressing. Because those are supposed to be your American values, of freedom, privacy and basic human rights. But it's like after 9/11 you've all been brainwashed to believe those aren't very important, and what matters most is "national security" at all costs.

Do you really think most of that spying is done to catch terrorists? How naive, are you, really? Is the spying on every single European to catch the terrorists? The spying on EU and Latina American countries to catch terrorists?

When secrets are dirty, they should be exposed - at all costs. Yes, even if it means endangering people's lives. Why? Because people have also given their lives in the past to earn those rights. Their lives shouldn't be wasted because "governments knows best".

> The majority of the population is ok with this stuff

Not according to polls since the Snowden leaks came out.

Also, I've yet to see real evidence of the mass surveillance over the past decade helping stop terrorist plots. They said it was 50 "terror events". They lied even about those. It was more like 1, and even that wasn't a big deal.

It should've happened before Snowden's revelations, and have their morale down after everything they've been asked to do. They just seem upset about "getting caught" now. Well, cry me a river.

You mean like this?

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5184168/fda-approves-new-1...

There were some interesting discussions about the abolition of patents in Europe in the 19th century, that speak to what you're saying:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130503/17414322946/discus...

NYT doesn't like Bitcoin much, does it?

You can use just one. Some like to play it safe, though, and keep an "active wallet", where they have a small portion of their money (especially if they have a lot of Bitcoins), and they keep the rest backed-up (and encrypted) and somewhere safe, locally, to protect themselves against hacks.