

The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet - mxfh
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-nsa-is-commandeering-the-internet/278572/

======
swombat
If Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook simultaneously came out and
published all statistics that the government is not allowing them to publish,
and declared that they will continue to publish those as they come in and be
entirely transparent about the tracking that the NSA asked of them, would
their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market?

I don't think so. I think the NSA would fold if those five cards were played
simultaneously.

~~~
apalmer
Well I hope this is not the case. I am against the NSA monitoring program. I
think powerful commercial interests colluding to purposefully break the rule
of law is a huge negative.

Lets disconnect this behavior from the specific instance's moral outrage:

If Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell simultaneously came out and ignored all EPA
restrictions would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the
stock market?

This sound like a good thing to anyone?

~~~
dwiel
The point of civil disobedience is that those doing don't believe that the
official methods for determine what a good thing is are working. Comparing
this suggested action to oil companies and the EPA is like comparing Ghandi to
the KKK.

~~~
ihsw
Oh come on now, there are extremest libertarians too, and they abhor the idea
of environmental regulations. They truly believe that the impact of "market
corrections" applies wholeheartedly to the largest of corporations, and
environmental damage is certainly detrimental enough to cause consumers to
react accordingly.

The fines and environmental regulations imposed against corporations are
viewed very poorly by libertarian extremists, so the comparison is apt.
Advocates the KKK certainly identify with the likes of Ghandi, too.

~~~
jivatmanx
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
market_environmentalist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
market_environmentalist)

------
S_A_P
While I understand that Lavabit and others have taken a stand, Im not sure
that I would call going out of business fighting. I see this as an NSA
victory. If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses,
what option will people have but to use less private alternatives?

I would argue that a shut down is _exactly_ what the NSA wanted from lavabit.

Of course the flip side is that you don't want to be complicit in aiding the
NSA, so the stance is honorable. I do think that it would take a company with
the utility Google drawing the line for any traction to occur with the average
person. Google would either have to: \- suspend operations like the SOPA
blackout \- put up a fight very publicly to the point where there is so much
transparency the NSA has no either back down or to penalize them in a way that
would piss people off.

Otherwise, this is and will always be a fringe topic.

~~~
ge0rg
_If they could shut down all of these niche secure email businesses, what
option will people have but to use less private alternatives?_

I think Ladar Levison answered that question, implicitly, in his shutdown
announcement: "I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their
private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

It is high time to provide secure services hosted in countries without secret
surveillance courts, or maybe even in countries where law enforcement has
bigger problems to fight than "Internet crime".

~~~
drivingmenuts
Great if you live outside the US, but if you're inside the US, would not the
very act of connecting to a foreign secure service automatically make you
suspect?

There is a much deeper issue here: as Americans, we need to decide how much
protection we actually want. One group says everyone is responsible for their
own protection, another says everyone needs protecting from everyone else, yet
another group says we'll protect you if you don't look to closely behind the
curtain, and so on e pluribus ad-infinitum ...

Nobody has a good solution, yet. Personally, I don't mind the NSA spying on
foreigners (that's their job) and if you're not from the US, I feel like you
should have known that was a possibility.

What I'd settle for at the moment is more independent oversight by people not
intimately connected to the defense industry and less secret courts and
judgements that make us look and sound like cartoon banana republic.

~~~
adaml_623
Do you mind if the UK, Russian, or Chinese security agencies spy on you? After
all that's their job? And by spy I do mean trojan your personal machine and
keep you in a database?

~~~
sigkill
Consider me the devils advocate, but wouldn't foreign spy-ing be better than
local spying if they can't make use of that data to incriminate you in your
daily life?

~~~
adaml_623
Better in that sense I agree but not 'good'.

------
diminoten
Commandeering implies control, and the NSA does not have control. No one has
"control" over the Internet.

I also don't like this, "us vs. them" rhetoric that this story has turned some
people towards, where the NSA are the unequivocal bad guys and we, the "little
people", are the unequivocal good guys. That's a great way to get absolutely
nothing done. The NSA is, despite everything we're being told by some people
(Bruce), on our side. It's paranoid delusion to think the NSA is actively out
to get us - at least ostensibly, the NSA is trying to help the citizens of the
US.

What we should be doing is asking for changes and modifications to how things
are done. There are some not-so-big tweaks to the currently running programs
which can feasibly be made without compromising these program's efficacy while
also providing more insight into what's going on. We can have our cake
(terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) - it's
possible.

 _That 's_ what we should be figuring out, not this chicken little/us vs. them
bullshit.

~~~
jivatmanx
Keith Alexander believes that terrorists live amongst us, trying to implement
Sharia and create a Caliphate. To fight this, he needs to "Collect it all".

It's just as important to understand his motivation as it is to understand
ours, and assess the reasonableness of each in comparison to the other,
comparing our current situation to others in history that were similar, and
the result they had.

~~~
diminoten
Firstly, does he seriously believe that, or are you just demonizing him
because it'll get you agreement? If he said something to that effect, that's
concerning, but if he hasn't, can we stick to things which have actually
happened?

And secondly, is not the motivation to stop terrorists in the US from harming
US citizens a noble goal, in theory? Now granted, we shouldn't have to
sacrifice our privacy to get that done, but it's not like Keith Alexander is
_trying_ to harm the US. He wants to help, and depending on who you ask, may
be misguided, on the money, or completely wrong in how he plans to help.

It'd be more useful to _correct_ than to _abolish_ , because abolishment of
the NSA and it's surveillance programs is never, ever going to happen, nor
should it. ZERO surveillance (this might be arguable, I suppose) results in US
citizens dead on US soil. Unacceptable.

~~~
apalmer
Very few movers and shakers in the history of the world are intrinsically
'evil' in their own judgement. Whether Alexander is purposefully trying to
harm the US or not is immaterial.

Agree with you on the charicterization going on here, its one thing to feel
his motivations are a given way, another to imply he has public made
statements indicating this to be fact.

~~~
diminoten
I don't much care what Alexander judges himself to be, I'm talking about his
actions and motivations for those actions. He's not trying to destroy the US,
he's trying to keep it safe. He is _possibly_ misguided or flat out wrong
about how to do that, but it's not as if he's actively working to harm US
citizens, as many people here would claim.

~~~
Sauer_Kraut
Why do you keep stating such things as "he's trying to keep it safe" or "NSA
is trying to help the citizens of the US."

Do you have information on this or do you keep on stating your opinion as
fact?

~~~
diminoten
Do I really need to show you the NSA's charter?

[http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Key_escrow/Clipper/nsa.charter](http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Key_escrow/Clipper/nsa.charter)

I'm not interested in getting into an emotional mud-slinging contest with you.

------
smutticus
It makes me happy to see Schneier get more mainstream press these days. As
someone who has followed his blog for years it's about freaking time he got
more attention.

~~~
humanspecies
Even if the only purpose is to propagate absurdly naive and ineffective ideas?

What, google and apple "fighting" the US Government they've gladly been
cooperating with since forever???

Why doesn't Schneier call them out for what these corporations really are,
government snitches? What makes Schneier think any of these companies want to
do what's "moral"??

This article is one of the most naive pieces I've ever read. It parts on the
principle that these companies want to do what's moral, but the government is
keeping them from doing it. That is absurd.

Google, Apple and friends have been willingly cooperating with the government
in exchange for perks, for immunity against FTC probes and so on. They're NOT
gonna "fight" because they have nothing to fight against.

~~~
lukifer
Moral hazard cuts both ways, including giving someone the benefit of the
doubt. Opportunity for wrong-doing doesn't confer guilt, it just means we
should take the possibility seriously.

Look at it this way: if every tech CEO is complicit without coercion (a strong
possibility), the purpose of the article is to take away their shield, and
convince the reader that those CEOs are morally culpable for not defending
their customers. It's about calling the bluff by proxy.

------
Shivetya
I found this story on Atlantic which sums it up in words simple enough for
about anyone to understand.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocop...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocopying-
michelle-obamas-diary-just-in-case/278567/)

------
wil421
It should read The NSA "HAS" Commandeered the Internet.

As more and more information is gets thrown into the light, I find it
disturbing that the NSA's capability has grown under the Obama Administration.
I would think they would have less powers compared to Bush Admin post 9/11.

Wait till they attach listening instruments onto drones and send them to scan
the sky's across America under a directive from the FISA court.

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shmerl
_> They're too large; they're public. They have to do what's economically
rational, not what's moral._

This is weird. Why should size dictate whether one should act morally or not.
It's a very slippery logic.

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apalmer
This line of argument is kinda weak. Personally I agree with the end goals,
but the argument isn't compelling. Realistically these companies don't have
much choice, and these businesses end users for the most part (the 99.99% that
aren't technophiles) don't really care that the NSA is snooping.

I think we need to step back from hoping that business will protect the
people. The people will protect the people, and if the people dont, a for
profit entity wont (and shouldn't) step in as guardian.

~~~
Sauer_Kraut
"Realistically these companies don't have much choice"

Of course they do. They can comply or not. If they do not comply they may face
court. Of course it is impossible to say how that court would go since none of
them are making a choice to stop being co-conspirators.

------
DanielBMarkham
I have to wonder what it's like for Zuckerberg, or Brin, or any of the other
big internet moguls today.

Here they are creating internet experiences made as addictive as possible,
meanwhile gathering every damned little piece of miniscule information
possible about each of their users: where they are, who their friends are,
what they like, what they hate, their favorite colors, their favorite brands,
and so on.

Hell, people are happy giving away this stuff! And all of if can be plugged
directly into a big honking machine to sell stuff!

Then the government comes along and wants in on the action too. They start
vacuuming up data gigabytes at a time.

It must seem like the only people not getting in on this action is the common
folks, the patsies.

I have no idea and could care less what their official statements are. It's
obvious they have no problem with gathering the information as long as they
were the ones doing it. But in private, what kind of opinion must they have
about all of this?

~~~
shmerl
They are losing users now. People are more interested in privacy issues than
before, and Google and FB were always weak on privacy by design. There isn't
much they can do. It's their inherent deficiency.

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PavlovsCat
Boo to whoever flagged this story to death.

