
How Latest Snowden Leak Is Headache for White House - justcommenting
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/02/20/how-latest-snowden-leak-is-headache-for-white-house/?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks_0
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bsimpson
> “It’s hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of technology executives
> that are out there that are in a position of saying that they hope that
> people who wish harm to this country will be able to use their technology to
> do so,”

What horseshit!

Calling out the government for blatantly overreaching the constitutional
authority it claims grants its power isn't even a little bit the same as
hoping terrorists choose _your_ technology to harm people. That claim is not
only intellectually dishonest, but it distorts the discourse to utter nonsense
(which is precisely why they frame it like they do).

~~~
fit2rule
This whole story is pitched in the most dialectic terms - you're either with
us, or against us.

But this fails to indicate there is a third way - we can use technology to
make peace far more readily and easily than we use it to make war. I've got
more Syrian, Iranian, and Libyan friends than ever before - and it would not
be possible without technology being used to overcome cultural barriers to
understanding.

Yet the hatred and vitriol still flows. We are expected to be
nationalist/patriot members of society, but when we personally make the
decision to extend that society beyond the artificial borders constructed by
the state to which we grant sovereign control, obviously _someone_ is going to
lose out. In the case of technology being used peacefully, its those who
profit from war machines - military-industrial producers of hate and violence
- who we must stand up to. Until such a time as the Western public is
dissolved of its subservience to thugs and criminals - those who run the
military-industrial establishment which corrupts all of humankind - we will
continue to be oppressed between two forks of the same argument.

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Create
We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question
whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with
the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States
government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

[http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html)

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism
itself.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999](http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999)

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DickingAround
I use Gemalto, and not just in my cell phone. The cyber-war the While House is
waging on the tech community is ill advised. If anyone at in the federal
government is smart enough to read hacker-news I hope they see that they're
attacking the wrong people.

~~~
nullrouted
Can I ask you a serious question? I don't condone the government hacking at
all and find it atrocious but...How is this any different than China, Russia,
Israel, UK, Germany, etc. who all try to breach tech companies to gain
information? I agree that this is very illegal but at the same time I also
question making the US the villain when every country is trying to do the same
thing. Companies should invest in security to prevent these things from all
actors whether they be hacked for profits or government backed.

~~~
fit2rule
Its different in that America pitches itself as a land of freedom, equality,
liberty. This is no longer true at all - you cannot have liberty, egality,
freedom, if you cannot trust your own lines of communication - and because of
the heinous apparatus constructed by the Five-Eyes nations (its not just the
US, its also its disgusting partners) you no longer have true freedom,
liberty, egality. These repressive dictators have granted themselves the only
freedom to communicate safely, they have granted themselves full liberty over
the right to alter others' communication, and they are well and truly on their
way to creating an imbalance of power guaranteed to enslave us all.

You simply _cannot_ trust your own communications any more. What you write,
may not be what others read. If you're a journalist or a rising author, or
perhaps just a leader of opinion in a broad public base, you can no longer
trust that your communications will not be tampered with, altered,
intercepted, interfered with. Of course this has _always_ been the case,
except that in the last 2 decades of Internet ascendency, we've all been
relatively hopeful that the world is changing because our lines of
communication are open wider. Alas, this is no longer the case. All hope has
been dashed by the Five-Eyes oppression designed to reign in their own
citizens - not find terrorists, but rather give these heinous organs of
repression the ability to interfere in any industry they choose, with any
person they sight, for any reason whatsoever. What was once a dream of hope is
now an incredible nightmare, and America - loudest of all the arrogant Western
nations claiming moral high ground, proud proclaimer of its own
exceptionalism, can no longer do so. The fact is: there _IS_ no difference,
any more, between the oppression felt by the Chinese, or that now enacted on
any member of the Five-Eyes state.

The door has been slammed shut on freedom, equality, liberty.

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sandworm
> "...there are opportunities for the private sector and the federal
> government to coordinate and to cooperate on these efforts, both to keep the
> country safe, but also to protect our civil liberties."

Sure. Corporations often cooperate with the hackers caught climbing around
their systems. "I see you've already taken my keys. Perhaps we can come to
some sort of key-sharing arrangement?"

~~~
bigiain
Remember when they shut down all domestic airliner manufacture after those
private sector company's products were misused back on 9/11?

Oh, that's right, politicians and government bureaucrats care about being able
to fly easily - it's just _your_ privacy they don't give a damn about.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076351)

