

Obama, tech executives met to discuss surveillance - moskie
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/09/us-usa-security-obama-tech-idUSBRE9780IC20130809

======
darkchasma
I was certain that Bush Jr. was going to go down in history as the worst
president in my lifetime. But if Obama doesn't straighten this out soon, it's
going to be him. Which is very disappointing, because he showed so much
promise before he was elected. But under his watch, whether directly or
indirectly, he's created the least free regime of any president ever elected
in the US.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
It's a mistake to think that the Presidents are really in the driving seat
when it comes to issues like this. None of them since Eisenhower come out of
the military establishment or have any deep background in security policy, so
they're reliant on, and credulous of, advisers who are completely bound to the
military-intelligence-security-industrial complex.

Obama has dozens of generals and spy chiefs and policy "experts" telling him
that if he veers off course the sky will come crashing down on his head. So
will the next President.

No one with the immense responsibility of a modern President is going to be
able to bring themselves to overrule the expert "advice" of the entrenched
mil-sec-intel establishment unless they're already very thoroughly acquainted
with its failings.

It is folly to expect a single man to be able to fix this mess. The only way
out is to fix the legislative and policy failures that allow the whole
structure to exist.

~~~
ihsw
That's fine, the problem is Obama is a liar and a hypocrite. Yes he didn't
know that he was making empty promises, but usually when you sign up for a job
you know ahead of time whether you can do the job.

Lying during the interview process usually gets you disqualified with
prejudice, but he was elected again.

It'd be nice if he apologized after discovering that his promises were a bit
excessive.

~~~
Gormo
Obama is a liar and a hypocrite. Bush was a liar and a hypocrite. Clinton was
a liar and a hypocrite. Bush Sr. was a liar and a hypocrite.

Did all of these individuals go into office intending to become liars and
hypocrites? Or is it more likely that the political system is so dysfunctional
that it's not possible for anyone who takes office _not_ to become a liar and
a hypocrite.

We've seen that electing different individuals to the same offices isn't
solving these problems. It's time to start figuring out how to fix our broken
institutions.

~~~
ihsw
Here's a start:

Through the Electoral College, your vote changes without your consent. Entire
states "turn blue" when 49% of it are in fact red. Democracy? Hardly.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_\(United_States\)#Contemporary_conflict)

As a matter of official policy, elected politicians can define constituency
boundaries and as such they can manipulate district boundaries at their
discretion -- more often than not to their and their party's benefit.
Democracy? Hardly.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering)

Both result in hyper-majorities and as such the far left and the far right
unilaterally wield power. Compromise is universally interpreted as
capitulation, so there is no middle-ground where they meet. Unless, of course,
it has to do with spying on Americans.

------
helloNSA_
Execs -> Obama "You said no one would find out about this shit if we played
ball! WTF! We pay you assholes a lot of money!"

Obama -> Execs "Relax, we have the NSA working on Lavabit to get Snowden's
emails right now. As soon as we have some truth to mix in with our lies we'll
have him discredited with false allegations of CP or some other horse shit.
The pleebs' short memories and NFL football will take care of the rest."

Execs -> Obama "It had better or the Secret Service will fall asleep on the
job one day."

Obama -> Execs "Cocaine and hookers on me!"

~~~
pekk
Just make up any wild story you want, that's great.

------
epistasis
>"There was broad concern among privacy advocates and the private sector about
the impact of the NSA's surveillance efforts. Several of the private sector
representatives worried that the international backlash against NSA collection
of foreign data would harm American global competitiveness," American Civil
Liberties Union President Susan Herman said.

This is very encouraging. Though I doubt that civil liberties groups have much
pull on the White House or Congress, hopefully having all these large tech
companies on board will add some pull to the message.

Throw in "global economic competitiveness" and/or "jobs" and it can almost
counteract the "terrorism" propaganda war.

~~~
malandrew
I'm honestly surprised that no country has seen the massive opportunity to
pull ahead here economically. Given the that the legal clusterfuck for tech
companies continues to snowball, it is only a matter of time before more and
more tech companies start asking themselves if the US is the right
jurisdiction to set up shop. I would imagine that Lavabit and Silent Circle
are having this conversation now.

If I were in the congress or parliament of some progressive country, I'd start
outlining a ton of bills on privacy, patents, etc. with the goal of creating
an economic safe haven for many types of tech companies. Since software is
eating the world, it seems like it would be one of the most attractive
economic opportunities to develop. Iceland is the obvious choice for this, but
I would hope that Germany would jump on this. On top of bills that support the
economic environment for tech, I would add a ton of bills surrounding support
for foreign nationals who want to move to the country to found and build such
companies. Give software and hardware engineers a fast track to citizenship
and a decent tax structure on gains from the companies they build, then give
VCs decent tax benefits on their gains.

This is as good an opportunity as any for some countries out there with a
decent but still subordinate tech economy to take two steps forward.

------
andyl
Who in the room was the advocate for open internet?

I don't want my future to look like the Apple Store or AT&T's closed network.
I won't accept it.

~~~
mh-
the first sentence..

 _Google Inc computer scientist Vint Cerf and transparency advocates also
participated in the meeting [..]_

~~~
malandrew
I would hope that Tim Berners Lee, Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen would all
be there. Even Stallman should be present, since he most often is right
despite coming across as a madman to some, and because he drops the anchor so
far in the direction of privacy that people like TBL and LL look like the
rational moderates that they are in this conversation. Unfortunately the
radicals in favor of the surveillance state already have the ear of the
President and Congress in this conversation. The presence of Stallman would
add a much needed balance.

Who else does the HN community think should be present advocating on behalf of
the free and open internet?

~~~
SimHacker
John Gilmore!
[http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Gilmore_v_NSA/](http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Gilmore_v_NSA/)

"That's the kind of society I want to build. I want a guarantee -- with
physics and mathematics, not with laws -- that we can give ourselves real
privacy of personal communications."

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

------
dictum
>Since the NSA's vast data-gathering programs were revealed in June, the
president has repeatedly said he would encourage a national conversation on
the need for U.S. surveillance while respecting people's right to privacy.

Let me build a straw man of what I think will be the argument:

"If you're against mass surveillance[1], your position isn't reasonable. We
must protect our country. Protecting our country requires watching for people
who want to do us harm. If you love America, you should let us protect the
nation, and that requires the practices our agencies do. We guarantee data
will be used only following the correct procedures and safeguards[2]. We
cannot tell too much about the programs or the groups and individuals who want
to harm us will use this knowledge to put those who serve the nation and all
American citizens at risk."

[1] Of course the term won't be "mass surveillance", but some
Luntzian/Orwellian expression: "protecting our communications"

[2] _We will establish the procedures and safeguards._

------
petegrif
Now that it's dawning on people that this is going to kill the US's
international cloud computing business the big money lobbying will kick in and
we'll probably see some action.

~~~
grbalaffa
Don't worry, they will work it so that there is a very expensive and
labyrinthine process for privacy "compliance" for companies operating in the
US which will _purely by coincidence_ be so expensive and convoluted that only
the big companies will be able to afford it. Just to reiterate, this will be
100% accidental and will in no way reflect an intent on the part of the
established players to create a de-facto barrier to entry for potential
competitors. You know you can trust them because the meeting was behind closed
doors and both they and the president refused to comment on it.

------
DanielBMarkham
"...Herman added that despite such meetings, "It's not clear yet that the
White House appreciates the need to scale back these surveillance programs
substantially instead of just rationalizing or tinkering with them.".."

I welcome any attention the president can give this issue. I also acknowledge
as Commander in Chief it is his role to be publicly responsible for this mess.
As Chief Executive, at any moment he can pick the phone up and make
substantive things happen n this issue. Having said that, what we really need
is legislative relief.

Here's hoping we don't get a feel-good PR statment and posturing geared to
divide the electorate instead of solving the problem. I have my fingers
crossed.

------
SmokyBorbon
It's time to start calling them "collaborators".

~~~
spoiledtechie
Wow, thats perfect....

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dreamdu5t
Are you people stupid? This is PR! It's so transparent.

~~~
dreamdu5t
I'm downvoted, yet there's _no_ evidence this meeting produced anything
substantive, or was anything but a PR move by the president.

Vague statements about "dialogue" regarding a secret meeting, and people
actually take this seriously? It's ridiculous.

~~~
greenyoda
I agree with you that it's probably PR, and that Obama isn't about to
dismantle the whole NSA machinery that's been operating for years now under
his administration. My guess is that you were downvoted for asking "Are you
people stupid?", which is not a particularly civil way of addressing your
fellow HN readers.

