
I just want to say "fuck everything", hold up my hands and walk away. - benwerd
http://werd.io/entry/5213969abed7de1978b43b2d/government-the-last-great-gatekeeper-is-ripe-for-disruption
======
angersock
Here's the really insidious thing about the whole situation, and something
that I don't think has gotten enough airtime:

We are all at the mercy of the people in our social graphs who don't keep
things secret. _I_ might stay off of Facebook, encrypt all my email, and avoid
using smart phones, but anybody I'm in contact with who _doesn 't_ is being
continually mined. Shadow profiles of me are showing up on services I'd never
use willingly because my friend shared their address book with Facebook.

We really only have three groups to hold responsible: ourselves (for
developing these technologies), our government (for using these technologies
to oppress us), and every other citizen (for voting the government into power
and playing along when we ask to mine their data).

The core issue we're seeing is that it is no longer really possible to ignore
the fact that most consumers are liabilities to our privacy, and that they'll
gladly sell out their fellow man for the dullest of shiny trinkets.

Honestly, the most insidious part of all this isn't our loss of privacy or our
trust in some beneficial Big Brother: it's the distressing fact that we can't
trust anyone else anymore, and that we've shown that democracy is impossible
with such an unworthy populace.

Make no mistake-- _that 's_ the real tragedy here.

~~~
themodelplumber
> _Shadow profiles of me are showing up on services I 'd never use willingly
> because my friend shared their address book with Facebook._

Is that really so bad? The worst I've seen is "this is a picture of John"
which is not an abuse that's limited to social networks. And if this happens
really often, you can complain to your friend about it. And if you can't
complain to your friend, you can complain to abuse. And if abuse doesn't do
anything (not likely) you can send a legal notice.

To jump from "a friend can mention me, talk about me, etc." to "there is no
privacy anymore" is...well, I just can't get there, sorry.

Do we have privacy problems? Yes. Are these examples really selling that? No.
I can't remember any case in which a friend sold me out for a trinket; if you
do have a common example, cite it. That would really help us all here.

~~~
ctdonath
_Is that really so bad? The worst I 've seen is "this is a picture of John"_

Yes, it is - when there are a bunch of "this is a picture of John" posts
mostly by identifiably pro-1st/2nd/4th/10th Amendment[1] types, facilitated by
face recognition software confirming it's the same John, whereby data mining
can determine that there is an un-tracked person named John who is most likely
a pro-1st/2nd/4th/10th Amendment type and, because of his pointed absence from
social media, likely rather hardcore about it and worth tracking with
particular interest.

Tom Brown (famous tracker) tells a story of his tutor telling him "go to the
grandfather tree." He scoured the woods for the curious plant, and found
nothing. Standing in a clearing wondering what was meant, he realized that the
space he was standing in - an unusually empty space in an otherwise dense
forest - must have been created by a very large and very old tree that had
subsequently fallen and rotted away, leaving a space other trees had been
unable to grow in. Moral: an apparent absence can, coupled with identifiable
effects, be indicative of something very interesting; to wit if there's a lot
of pictures of someone but nothing from that someone he's probably hiding
something.

[1] - terms for various passionately-defended civil rights here

~~~
MisterWebz
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.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You really think they have a special state-security list for _nerds_?

~~~
anigbrowl
Of course they do! We nerds are the smartest people in society and frankly
everything would fall apart if it wasn't for our intellectual heroism.
Naturally this makes us the #1 threat to the Evil Overlords, with whom we
shall soon have a final showdown on the fields of Nerdageddon.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well damn, nothing on my Bitbucket profile can be weaponized!

------
FD3SA
It is heartening to read that a small percentage of the technical community is
now willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are
political. Specifically, the metastasising bureaucracy which is emboldened
with each successful power grab is becoming increasingly difficult to dislodge
since they've built up so much momentum.

This is an excellent start, but a mere tip of the iceberg. The political
malady is more malignant than most imagine [1].

1\.
[http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth...](http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/)

~~~
baddox
The sad thing is that even among the people willing to admit that the majority
of the developed world's problems are political, most of them are under the
delusion that more/better/different politics is the solution.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
So you're an anarchist?

Because if you're going to pretend that anarchy or proprietarianism is somehow
_not politics_ , then I've got some news for you.

~~~
pessimizer
Or a libertarian, pretending that a police state enforcing a total ordering of
property and any contract that can be conceived of isn't politics.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I wouldn't call any person who advocates an oppressive police state a
libertarian.

~~~
baddox
pessimizer's point is that he believes the very institution of property
requires something he calls a state. I would disagree, and point to the fact
that territorialism in the animal kingdom is an institution of private
property without anything most people would call a state.

------
personlurking
The problem with all of this "make the gov't own up and stop the spying" thing
is you can't prove what is hidden. The NSA could make a statement tomorrow
saying "ok, you win, we'll stop" without really stopping. They could even give
an actual compelling argument about stopping, without really doing it. There's
no way to prove they aren't doing it (though I suppose that ties into the fact
that the big tech companies are also allowing them to do it).

~~~
jlgreco
Yup.

Even in the best case scenario
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Recovery_of_the_Stasi_fil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Recovery_of_the_Stasi_files)),
encrypted electronic files are easier to shred than paper.

------
joonix
There is actually a huge vacuum right now and it's in the "country" space.

There is an opening in the market for a well-run nation-state that offers (1)
independence, particularly from US influence, (2) pro-entrepreneurship, pro-
technology, pro-science, extremely nimble governance, (3) accessibility to all
of the world's educated people (hand-selected individuals chosen based on
their skills), (4) safety, (5) low, efficient taxation, (6) communication
privacy (7) banking and transaction privacy, (8) high quality education.

Basically, just as global banking has its Switzerland, its Hong Kong, its
Singapore, global internet/cloud and the tech community needs its own haven.

Not only that, this country could also fill in the banking privacy niche as
well. Read up on FATCA and how it's violating the privacy of millions of
Americans living overseas.

I wish this country could be a New Zealand or Australia but unfortunately they
are completely beholden to US interests and would never be able to be
independent. I really believe there is huge demand for an "elite" city-state
that fills the needs I've described above but there's absolutely a market
failure.

This new country would likely not be democratic but run by a powerful
technocrat, probably a Jobs or Musk type, perhaps with a Board of Directors.
The corporate model seems to work.

------
alan_cx
Problem is, you have to sell the idea of accepting a perceived risk.

We have to ask the public if it is OK that every now and again really bad
stuff may happen, and NOT to blame the politicians for it. Because, in the
end, that is why politicians want to do _everything in their power_ to remove
risk. Why? Because we demand it. Something goes wrong, we blame them. We find
any way possible to blame them, and demand to know why they didn't stop it.

Now, I am happy and always have been happy to trade freedom for risk. Question
is, is any one else?

~~~
cortesoft
Do you mean you are willing to trade risk for freedom? As in accept some risk
for more freedom?

------
ghc
When I was young I always daydreamed about being a programmer/hacker in a
dystopian cyberpunk future.

I don't know whether or not I should be alarmed that my daydreams and reality
are converging.

~~~
anonymous
It's not true cyberpunk future until we have Rebel-brand leather pants.

------
robotmay
I've been feeling very similarly recently. Most people here in the UK don't
understand or care about the privacy issues being revealed. I'm just one very
small fish in a big ocean of ignorance. And frankly; I'd like to be ignorant
too.

Maybe I should chuck it all in, buy a canal boat, and carve wooden spoons for
a living.

~~~
keithpeter
There is, in Birmingham UK, a chap who regularly ties up to the mooring on the
Selly Oak canal, near the Vale University residence, who makes and sells
wooden owl sculptures and stools for your garden.

He has an iPhone, and I _think_ I saw him on facebook last time I walked past.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the 'normalisation' of the Internet/Web? It is
no longer 'special' or a 'new world' but just a part of everyday. That means
the balance of privacy/disclosure will have to be negotiated again. In the
street, I can be stopped by a police constable and asked my name, date of
birth and address. My bag can be searched, and I can be asked to turn out my
pockets. The police would need a search warrant signed by a magistrate to
enter my house. Magistrates are trained, they will only sign warrants under
certain circumstances.

Is Facebook the street or your house?

I'm still thinking all this through... but yes, I think you will see a shift
away from splurging everything over the Web. Of course, the people GCHQ are
supposed to be trying to catch will already have adopted other communications
methods...

~~~
bitwize
Are you sure he's not a witch?

Try asking him about cakes that can change your fate. :)

~~~
keithpeter
I'm not having any of _those_ cakes thank you very much.

Seriously, there is a bit of 'maker culture' happening round here at present.
Quite nice but the 'pieces' tend to be expensive.

~~~
robotmay
Yeah Birmingham seems to have become quite trendy, especially around the
Jewellery Quarter too. Cardiff hasn't quite hit the expensive end yet, and
there are a number of decent little galleries cropping up with craft work,
which is great to see.

------
reirob
I loved the comment:

 _" Friends don't let friends use cleartext," my friend Marcus Povey writes.
I'd argue that friends don't let friends put their trust in algorithms that
can be backdoored, socially engineered and compromised without our knowledge._

Somehow I feel too that technology cannot be anymore the only answer to the
problem of global surveillance. I think there is a growing need for change of
our social consciousness about the values that we want to survive.

~~~
LoganCale
Absolutely it's not the only answer. But it's still and always will be a
critical component. It's illegal to trespass, but we still use fences and
gates and locks to keep unwanted people out of our property.

~~~
unclebucknasty
The difference is that we don't erect fences to keep the government out of our
yards, because the government is supposed to be us and the government is not
supposed to be trespassing. This, as opposed to bad guys who break the law.

In other words, the government is supposed to enforce the law when someone
hops your fence. But where do you go for justice when the government is the
one hopping your fence?

This is not being pedantic. I believe it is the wrong posture to advocate for
a technology-based response. We should not be building fences against our
government. It implies that a continuing adversarial relationship between the
people and our government is on some level acceptable. And, it sends the
message that whatever the government can access is fair game.

Instead, we should demand that the government be brought back into the will of
the people and Constitutional principles _by law_. And it should be backed by
not only true whistleblower protection, but _obligation_ for fear of
conviction by complicity.

~~~
quantumpotato_
Well put. Is it possible to fight against the police state without putting
technological fences around it?

~~~
unclebucknasty
I would say that the degree to which we defend ourselves with fences is the
degree to which we are "losing". The very need for fences is born of
government encroachment. If we constantly need more, better, and bigger
fences, then it can only be a measure of the degree of this encroachment.

And, ultimately, this cat and mouse game is one that we will lose. The
government has unlimited resources, including those which we ourselves
contribute, ironically. And, of course, the government has the law on its
side. Therefore, it is only by changes to this law and subsequent real
enforcement that we have a hope. Otherwise, they will use the force of law,
including these very powers that we are trying to curtail.

There is no "winning" against this, save for a reclamation of the law.

~~~
quantumpotato_
You have a very valid point. But until the law is changed significantly so
that you say "we, the people" have our freedom, do you think technology should
be used to protect against government? Or do you recommend citizens abandoning
their fences and working to change the law?

------
decasteve
I'd like to hear what others are doing. This events of the past few days have
prompted me to a few measures. What is everyone else doing (or have done)?

Since the NSA story broke up until today I have done (or in the process of
doing): Pidgin XMPP + OTR. Switched to DuckDuckGo + StartPage for searches.
Email hosted on my own server. File backup off the cloud and on to a SSH/SFTP
server in house. Thunderbird + Enigmail (PGP): sending emails out signed only
at the moment and explaining why. Firefox + many privacy add-ons. No private
communications over social media networks.

------
snitko
_> We have to learn how to play politics. There will be voices who call for
revolution, or who publicly declare that playing this game is tantamount to
aligning ourselves with government. I don't believe that these are productive
discussions._

It's not aligning yourself with government, it's begging your masters to throw
you a bone. What kind of incentive do you think a protest creates? Would
politicians suddenly shut down all surveillance programs simply because people
on the streets are protesting? If you were a politician, would you? Not
likely. You're already elected, you're paid and you have private interests at
your back who DO pay you money that directly depend on your ability to pass
laws in favor of those interests. The best a protest can do is to incentivize
government to create an appearance of change.

Look at history. Protest rarely solved anything. They either transformed into
bloody revolutions (which didn't do any good either) or were largely ignored.
No, you don't need to protest. You need to ignore the government as much as
you can and tell others to. Use Bitcoin instead of govt currency and don't pay
them a cut in the form of taxes, use Bitmessage instead of email, use VPN and
TOR, don't send your children to school where they are indoctrinated. And
never ever vote. Voting is begging your masters. Have some pride.

~~~
ph0rque
_don 't pay them a cut in the form of taxes_

Illegal. You will be jailed for a very long time. Not something the I, or the
average Joe Schmoe, will be willing to risk.

~~~
snitko
I certainly wouldn't advocate tax evasion, it would be immoral to ask people
to risk the leftovers of their freedom and confront IRS. What I meant was,
don't give them a cut unless your transactins can be effectively tracked. When
you tip someone in cash, most likely they're not paying any taxes from that.
And there's currently no law requiring you to pay taxes in Bitcoin unless you
previously converted it to fiat. Also keeping your savings in gold, silver or
Bitcoin saves them from another tax - inflation.

~~~
rsofaer
The government presumes that tipped workers get a certain amount in tips, and
taxes as if they got it.

------
bhauer
> Hey, everyone! I live in California, my email is hosted by Google, I keep
> documents on Dropbox, and my server is hosted in Dallas, Texas.

I like it. I'd add the last sentence below:

I live in California, my e-mail is hosted by my server located at a data
center in Los Angeles, I keep documents on my personal servers, and those
servers are hosted in my data center and at my home. I use GPG, and my key
is...

------
Zigurd
In addition to the other problems mass surveillance has done, it has done
something akin to spreading toxic waste in a playground. Who would want to
play in that?

A big part of technology is playful. A big part of playfulness is pushing
boundaries: What if everyone had everyone's genome? What if we injected
computers into our bodies? In a surveillance state that is as appetizing as
bathing in industrial effluent.

The technology industry is poisoned, and the only enthusiasts left are
enthusiastic authoritarian snoops, and those people are disgusting sickos.
It's like waking up and finding you work for the TSA and fondle balls for a
living. Ick.

------
rdl
It would be interesting to start applying filters on email based on recipient
MX. i.e. if I see your MX is @yahoo.com, I don't send the mail (or send a mail
suggesting you move to a better mail provider). Depending on who I am, I may
or may not send mail to gmail. If I see it's a self-hosted well configured MX,
I probably will send mail and trust in starttls.

(You can't just rely on domain extensions due to things like Google Apps for
your Domain which lets you customize the domain.)

------
pdenya
I like the idea of stating your communication preferences but it seems strange
to put that right in your bio like he's done at
[http://werd.io](http://werd.io) as if where you keep your documents says a
lot about you as a person.

Unrelated, this was difficult to read with that blog styling. "font-size:
.9em" for body text seems like a bad idea. Raising the font-size and line-
height makes this whole site look much cleaner.

------
Zoomla
Should we all automatically forward all our incoming email to Obama

~~~
brewdad
THAT would be great. Some poor intern gets flooded with email until the entire
WH server infrastructure melts. Of course, you'd definitely be packed off to
Gitmo for your act of terrorism.

------
maerF0x0
A little chris hedges , Cornel west and Noam chomsky is in order.

------
gopher1
Brilliant. With an Office Space reference thrown in for good measure!

------
prteja11
These incidents seem like coming straight out of "Atlas Shrugged". different
circumstances, similar outcome and government is the reason for the events.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The
Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often
engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an
emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real
world. The other, of course, involves orcs._

------
EGreg
I think most of the outrage is about two things, which are missed by people
who point out the problem is political and that snooping is technically
"legal":

1) The disconnect between policymakers / lawmakers and the general population,
that built up over time. While in some areas people are content to look away,
or don't care that much about, in the area of civil rights and privacy
apparently enough people care to keep raising a stink about this. It's not
that something is technically illegal. It's a question of how did we get to
the point where it's not. Where you don't need a warrant to read anyone's
email, or demand any US company hand over pretty much any info on anyone.
Where are the 3-branch checks and balances for things like National Security
Letters, for example?

[http://i.imgur.com/GPyb5uC.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GPyb5uC.jpg)

2) The natural people's reaction to advancing technology. Since recording
everything everywhere is now becoming possible, we should get used to it. We
are unlikely to successfully outlaw this anymore than we can successfully
police pirating of songs. If governments aren't going to record you,
corporations will. Facebook keeps a "shadow profile" on everyone including
people who didn't sign up. They use this data for various corporate purposes.
All we can do is perhaps regulate what purposes they cannot use the data for,
but it's extremely hard to prevent them from collecting it. So organizations
will collect data, because it's in their interest -- stores, for example, will
soon track your shopping habits as you move around the store, and optimize
their sales for this. They might do facial recognition or some other biometric
thing.

#2 is the more interesting issue and I think it falls into the bigger issue of
people coping with advances in technology. Google glasses on everyone's head?
Cameras everywhere giving you a ticket as soon as you speed over the limit for
10 seconds? (Don't laugh, we already have many tollbooths implementing
speeding tickets by simply timing how long it took you to get from one to the
next.) Cameras in every parking lot signaling the tow truck as soon as you
leave? 3d printing guns from models? Anyone able to release a virus on a
subway? Etc etc.

I've always said that terrorism is a problem of technology. 1000 years ago it
was literally impossible for 5 people to kill 1000, but nowadays our society
will begin more and more to watch everyone. As it becomes easier, surveillance
(and, what's more unnerving, automatic curation and analysis by computers!!)
will become an accepted part of life. Remember how you felt when you thought
you could upload copyrighted stuff to YouTube and get away with it?

Before: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/youtube-the-big-
cop...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/youtube-the-big-copyright-
lie.html)

After: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/youtube-vs-fair-
use...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/youtube-vs-fair-use.html)

Here we have a case of "big brother" copyright enforcement being made possible
through cross referencing the fingerprint of EVERYTHING uploaded into YouTube.
We learned to live with it, and few people complain. But this is just the
beginning :(

10 years from now, your children may get taken away by the state because you
have been caught surfing the wrong sites or saying stuff to siri (uploaded to
Apple servers) that has been proven to correlate highly to child molestation
or neglect. It won't happen right away, but instead an indexed archive of your
activities will be retrieved and analyzed and a case built.

And if a government doesn't do it, then an insurance company might do it to
raise your rates, etc. If you park your car in a parking lot and do not enter
the diner within 5 mins, as determined by the computer, you'll get an
automatic ticket. And so forth.

Thankfully many of these problems will be eliminated before they even become
issues. You won't have to park your car because self-driving cars will make
owning a car a luxury. You won't need to worry about your kids' college future
because education will be delivered via the internet to every home. Etc.

~~~
sologoub
You seem to be conflating a few things here. The "expectation of privacy" is
what really matters. The technological advances are a means to an end. If you
expect privacy in filming your family gathering in your private residence,
then Google Glass or no Google Glass, you would not expect the world to see.
In fact, one could argue that the idea of "circles" in G+ creates the
expectation of privacy by giving you a (false) sense of control over who has
access to it.

The 4th amendment language is really quite amazing: "The right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to
be seized."

When I think "papers, and effects" in today's world, that includes my
smartphone, computer and all "papers" that are handled by Google and any other
provider or stored on any medium I can possess. Just like people of 200 years
ago did not expect others to read their mail, I don't expect it now. (Though I
understand that it is now common practice.) Unfortunately, because such
concepts have been abused and twisted in the court of law, Google now finds
itself compelled to argue that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy
when using email[1]. Do you expect your postman to read your letters too? Are
these that different from an email?

If we, as the society (or the people), establish clear boundaries on what we
expect and demand it, all will be fine with the world. A "shadow" profile on
Facebook aimed at selling ads is a far cry from contents of my private
correspondence. In fact, I welcome more relevant ads - they are less annoying.
But that does not mean I will expect that there is no boundary between my
private and public persona.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2013/08/20/its-
not...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2013/08/20/its-not-a-
surprise-that-gmail-users-have-no-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy/)

~~~
EGreg
I'm saying I think technology will turn us into Eloi from te time machine. Or
the borg.

------
par
you and me both buddy.

