
UK surveillance “worse than 1984” says new UN privacy chief - fukusa
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/uk-surveillance-worse-than-1984-says-new-un-privacy-chief/
======
deltaprotocol
Seriously, I read several posts here that I'm absolutely sure where written by
NSA/GCHQ agents working very comfy to try and manipulate technical opinion.
Anyone with a brain and enough technical knowledge (which can be assumed of HN
readers) knows the situation is much worse than 1984, beyond Orwellian,
absurd, ridiculous, disgusting.

If you where a Secret Agency, and you knew the top 100 news/forums for
opinionated technical people, would you not set a division of monkeys to try
and confuse people? They win if some people even "doubt" or "question"... we
must all be 100% sure of what is happening, 24h a day, ready to feel
threatened and abused by cameras, abusive permissions, tracking devices,
dragnets. We must feel the disgust 24h a day.

~~~
cryoshon
Yeah, I definitely get this vibe quite strongly too. We know they're out
there, if not here. HN readers understand the scope of the dragnet and the
systematic analysis of content and metadata. In part, this is why I am
patrolling around to offer good objections to the idiots. I am highly
suspicious of very-upvoted yet very dumb/uneducated/intentionally misleading
comments in this thread, also.

The objections are too canned/simple/easy to shoot down, and they rely on
emotion rather than facts.

The tech crowd's acquiescence to the surveillance state is absolutely
necessary for it to function as designed.

~~~
deltaprotocol
"The tech crowd's acquiescence to the surveillance state is absolutely
necessary for it to function as designed. "

Well said!

Since we have the toolset to understand what is happening, we must be the main
source of outrage. When we come online and do our stuff, we represent our
families, our friends, or coworkers. Everyone around us that do not have the
same tools to understand/interpret the abuses and the propaganda.

We like to think that everyone should understand what is going on, but this is
impossible in a short/medium or even long term. People use the Internet like
they use the building they live, or the house. They haven't built it and they
don't understand, and don't need to understand how it was built or its
internals. They are the users. They presume the architects/engineers involved
where responsible, good people, that did a good job and wanted for them,
future residents, to have a nice home.

If you are an engineer building a Shopping Center, and you get to know how the
company you work for is abusive towards its employees or how they are
overpricing resources in a public contract or manipulating prices, or doing a
dirty job using an unsafe structure or bad materials, it is you who should
act. You can't expect someone else or everyone to act, to understand what you
understand because you are in a position to understand. If you do not act, if
you do not take a position, if you do not represent the ones that are unaware,
you become the same as them.

The only way we can make out of this bizarre situation is if everyone of us
takes his role in society, whatever society, with his/her heart. Do it with
love towards your neighbour. There is no other way. In tech, we are often
quite cold because we deal with machines, but we are still flesh and bone
behind screens, and our love should be directed to protecting the users.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It would sure help if we didn't have to act alone. If we were part of some
larger organization (Engineers' Guild or some such) that would protect members
with money or legal aid, when they took a moral stand. Even advise about the
right path.

Loving your neighbor is good; but income for my family will probably take
precedence most of the time.

~~~
cryoshon
So we need a union? I agree.

How about something along the lines of the Guild of Engineers and Scientists?
A broader base of smart people would be helpful, but I'm not sure if it'd
dilute the effectiveness of speaking out.

~~~
nosuchthing
Unions have become antiquated and corrupt..

A Guild/Collective for Tech Engineers, Scientists

    
    
      • Transparent decision making + expenditures (opt in/out services)
      • Challenges and certifications for members
      • Recruiter / job match type service

------
dijit
All these words and nobody is talking about Tempora[0]?

I mean, tempora is pretty bad, rank and file stronger than the collection
obtained by NSA, metadata is stored, content is stored, there are examples of
"owning" certificate authorities and even examples of downgrading SSL/TLS to
not include perfect forward secret ciphers.

And this is done for any content that passes UK borders. :|

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)

~~~
rhino369
The whole reason the privacy debate hasn't reached critical mass amongst the
general population is because there is no actual impact. It's entire
theoretical for almost everyone. 99.99 of people aren't being actually spied
on. Despite the fact that the western governments can spy on everything you
do. They just don't. They can't spy on all of us.

Sure they can get my info. Or anyone's info. And they could totally
reconstruct my life. But they only have the resources of to do this to maybe a
couple thousand people. Out of a billion westeRners.

Sure my emails are probably buffered for a little while. But as long as I
don't ride a jet into the Sears tower nobody will actually read them.

The people asked themselves: if a tree fell in the woods and nobody heard it,
did it make a sound. And our answer is no it didn't.

The fact is the biggest intrusion in our lives is Google, Facebook, Amazon,
etc. Google literally exists to spy on you. It's a many many billion dollar
industry.

The nsa could potentially read my email or track my location. But Google
definitely already does.

~~~
Zirro
"The nsa could potentially read my email or track my location. But Google
definitely already does."

From the leaks we know that they both do the same thing, which is to use their
computer resources to sift through all emails they get their hands on, build
profiles of people and connect them with each other. Neither could afford to
have humans reading all the data coming at them.

The difference is that Google uses their conclusions to show you the most
profitable ads, while the NSA keeps their conclusions to themselves until the
day of your potential arrest.

Whether people consider the creation of such a profile to be spying is up to
them, but my personal suspicion is that people would strongly object if they
understood what was being done with their data.

~~~
rhino369
The NSA doesn't get my email unless it gets a FISA warrant since I'm in the
USA. Court records show they get about 3000 warrants a year. I'm pretty
confident I'm not one of those.

The problem with google though, is that anything Google knows about me can be
sought by the NSA with just one of those FISA warrants.

Google and Facebook are essentially NSA Reserve Branch.

The NSA also isn't charged with making criminal cases. There is a conspiracy
theory about "parallel construction" but too much crime is totally unsolved
for the NSA to be secretly feeding law enforcement data on a large scale.

I also wouldn't be so sure that Google or Facebook won't fuck with your life.
Plenty of American companies have done extraordinarily evil things before.
Then again so has the government.

~~~
cryoshon
Did you really just call parallel construction a conspiracy theory? Hell no it
isn't, and you are being dishonest or ignorant by claiming it's not well
founded.

Let's quote Wikipedia:

"In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations
Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents
to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against
Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance. The use of
illegally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the Fruit of the
poisonous tree doctrine.

Two senior DEA officials explained that the reason parallel construction is
used is to protect sources (such as undercover agents or informants) or
methods in an investigation. One DEA official had told Reuters: "Parallel
construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades
old, a bedrock concept.""

That's a formal government advisory to its agents that they should cover up
the way that they actually encountered evidence. And that is total bullshit
because it completely invalidates your right to a fair trial, among other
rights. This isn't the NSA, solving crimes, it's the government law
enforcement agencies querying the NSA database in order to solve cases they've
already opened.

[0]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

------
mtgx
People here are missing the point, where it's "less", "more" or "just the
same" level of surveillance as 1984 is kind of besides the point.

The point is he's asking for a Geneva convention for the Internet, and I think
that would be a good thing to have, even if some abuses will exist, at least
we'll have a _framework_ other than the current "whatever the spy agencies can
come up with in terms of surveillance is a-okay".

~~~
tajen
Correct. In the same way that government-organized torture in Singapore
wouldn't be published in La Haye because they've never signed any
international treaty about it, citizen spying is legal in the Western world
because there is no global treaty about it.

You're right that we need a framework, like a Geneva convention for the
Internet. However, I'm afraid that the willfulness and the balance of powers
isn't the same as for the Geneva convention itself.

------
mc32
>So the situation in some cases is far worse already."

So, that's the thing, in some ways it's worse. It has more detail, it's
voluntary and less intrusive. The one thing which is quite different is it's
not a system to control people, by control I mean controlling as in Orwell's
vision.

And, for the most part, with few sheepish objections, people are willing to
trade in their privacy in exchange for services rendered. People in practice
value free resources and services over privacy, else we would have seen a
system of micropaymets or economic alternative take root but it has not.

At some point people may change their minds and may want to hold on to their
privacy and begin paying for services, maybe, but for most people that is not
the case at this time.

~~~
cm2187
Most of the people I know do not understand/realize the extent to which they
are spied on. If GCHQ was opening their paper mail every day and keeping a
copy of all their correspondance and they knew it, they would start a
revolution.

~~~
tobltobs
They just don't care. Even when Cameron said: “In our country, do we want to
allow a means of communication between people which […] we cannot read?”
nobody cared. Maybe if they start implanting transponders into peoples heads
there would be a small uproar, but forget a revolution in the UK against
surveillance, this will never happen.

~~~
JupiterMoon
That they "just don't care" is not in my experience true. When it is explained
most people I've spoken do care. However, then they ask "and what can we do
about it?" and the answer is either "change everything about how you do
things" or "not much"... And then they don't care enough to go beyond this
stage or they are just confused and scared. Either way back to facebook the
next day.

------
Paul_S
Disclaimer: I am one of the most paranoid people I know and I know some pretty
radical left-wing hippies.

I never understood why people hate CCTV cameras - they are in public places.
Places where anyone can film you at any time. Public places are not private.
Online surveillance has better arguments against it but 90% of Internet
surveillance is by permission (possibly given by people who are not fully
aware they are giving it). It is not as bad as this hyperbole makes it out to
be.

But if articles like this is what it will take to finally get mesh network
projects off the ground then I'm happy to be outraged.

~~~
anonymousDan
I don't have any citations to back this up, but I had an interesting
discussion with someone from one of the defense research labs in the UK
regarding the accessibility of private CCTV cameras to the security services
(I collaborate with them as part of my work). He said that what people don't
realise is that in fact a very significant proportion of the private CCTV
cameras in the UK have their management outsourced to a few large private
sector companies. Gaining access to their systems is obviously a much easier
proposition than having to negotiate with the actual owners of the properties.
Whether this happens already I don't know, but I think it's a relatively
plausible way for a government to build up a worrying monitoring capability.

~~~
sillygeese
You can rest assured that the cameras are being used by the government. All
over the West, they're clearly showing us they don't want us to have any
privacy.

As for the article, it is, of course, _some_ sort of propaganda. I guess
they're just acclimating us to being aware that we're monitored all the time,
everywhere.

That way we're easier to lead down the slippery slope all the way to where
ever we're headed. But it's not good.

People need to wake up and start seeing that governments are _obviously_ not
working towards _our_ interests. It's amazing how the masses still don't see
it.

Do we _want_ surveillance? No. Are we going to be surveilled anyway? Yes, of
course. It's not about what _we_ want - it's about what _our rulers_ want.

~~~
cryoshon
Yes, the propaganda is quite thick on this topic.

They don't want us to have privacy because (duh) knowledge is power, and they
want even more power. Maligning opting out is covered safely by the "if you
aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" cliche (which is never
challenged in the public channels) and allegations of surveillance are still
shut down by the "conspiracy theory" smear.

They're ready for widespread rebellion and attacks on government
installations. Many of the people-tracking systems that they have in place
were tested against guerrilla IED networks in Iraq, and they've armed every
government agency to the teeth-- even the US Department of Education has a
SWAT team [0].

[0]:
[http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware-t...](http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware-
the-us-education-department-swat-team)

------
JumpJumpJump
In '1984' every room of every house and apartment was monitored, if this is
currently not the case in the UK, the quote is hyperbole.

~~~
imglorp
Orwell was right about many things, perhaps not the letter of tech details.
Some are far worse.

He was right about the military industrial complex, about being at constant
war with somebody for a manufactured purpose, about shifting alliances and
villainization of the new enemies. He was especially right about a government
using ubiquitous information about its populace to control it, and the crime
of speaking out against the government.

And you are wrong about the every room thing: it's not just TV's in every room
but everywhere.Your cellphone follows you along with its mic, gps, camera,
wifi, BT, NFC, UTDOA, GPS, and CGI. If you leave that behind, then face
trackers, license plate readers, UAVs, RFID tags, ezpass, TPMs, etc etc follow
you everywhere you go.

He especially did not see the compute power of correlating thousands of inputs
on each individual.

~~~
bostonpete
> He was especially right about ...the crime of speaking out against the
> government.

You lost me here. In 1984, the populace was afraid to speak out against the
government, even in private to close acquaintances. I don't believe this is
the case at all in our society -- both individuals and the media seem very
willing and able to criticize the government freely.

~~~
imglorp
Instead of thanking whistleblowers for their bug reports and fixing the
problem, the current administration is pursuing them with every means at their
disposal.

Edit - things are not looking great for journalists either.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
Whistleblowing, like all things must be done in a correct and legal way.
Randomly spreading FUD because some large institution functions in ways you
don't fully understand is not going to help as much as it will force them to
spend money on damage control because you caused them damage. It's a vicious
cycle and neither affected party is good when both are doing unlwaful things.

------
SixSigma
> Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there
> are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined.

As a regular visitor to the English countryside, where are these rural cameras
?

~~~
notahacker
Hanging round the necks or sitting in the pockets of tourists, most probably.

Seriously, most CCTV cameras are attached to buildings. If there are people
genuinely expecting privacy standing outside because they can't see anyone
inside the building observing them, then I have an invisibility cloak to sell
them.

------
philip142au
Is the UN chief worried that hes being surveilled by every company and
government? It's always ok when it's happening to everone else but when it
hurts those in power then things change.

------
EGreg
Not sure what the UN or any organization would be able to accomplish in an
ecosystem of organizations and improving tech.

The genie is out of the bottle. Welcome to the big data revolution.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169)

------
nbevans
A lot of CCTV cameras in the UK are privately owned, not state owned. I would
guess the majority are actually.

~~~
chopman
But they would happily, or at least with a warrant, give the recordings to the
government should they ask for them.

~~~
nbevans
But that is still far away from the '84 doctrine of "watching everyone all the
time".

~~~
peterwaller
You don't need a video link to be meaningfully watching someone.

------
spacecowboy_lon
Sorry this guy sounds like a minor career technocrat angling for a budget
increase and pandering to the crowd.

Possibly pointing a finger at the Euro states that still have mandatory ID
cards and allow local government to run their own secret police as well as the
main federal ones - might be more useful.

~~~
nsajko
Relevant link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the_European_Economic_Area#Overview_of_national_identity_cards)

------
xacaxulu
Christopher Hitchens has an amazing book called "Why Orwell Matters" and I
strongly advise reading it. He also does a takedown of Kissinger in "The Trial
of Henry Kissinger".

------
AndrewOMartin
UN privacy chief "sensationally cites 1984" says commenter on Hacker News.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
All he needed was a reference to Gun Control, Hitler and Bob Heinlein and he
would have a full house :-)

------
amyjess
Enough with the hyperbole.

The fact that you can criticize the government without being sent to minilove
for crimethink is proof enough that things aren't "worse than 1984".

~~~
nitrogen
_Surveillance_ is worse. In 1984 there was one camera and one microphone per
room. Now we carry multiple cameras and microphones and tracking devices
everywhere we go. In 1984 the party had to break into an apartment to read a
person's journal. Now our most private thoughts are stored in text messages,
private Facebook posts, and Evernote, within easy and undetectable reach of
governments. Behavioral analysis can tell surveillance operators things about
us that we don't even know about ourselves. Every person we talk to on the
phone, every page we like, every link we share on our blogs can be wired
together into a graph of our identity, ideas, and social networks (see
software like Palantir).

------
PlzSnow
Perhaps the UN privacy chief should actually read 1984, then he would realise
how silly he sounds.

~~~
cryoshon
It's perfectly reasonable: in 1984 they didn't have cell phones or internet
histories.

No chances for Big Brother to snoop on what kind of information you're seeking
or what kinds of comments you'll make when you think you are anonymous. No
physical tracking device on people at all times. No network construction of
who each individual talks to and when; no harvesting of metadata.

1984 had a bunch of CCTVs without enough people to monitor all of them, no
recording capacity, and an extreme political indoctrination regime to help
make up the difference by having informants. Ingsoc is a child's view of
dystopia, now-- we have far surpassed it.

~~~
varjag
Do you _really_ believe you are in a dystopian world surpassing 1984?

~~~
opnitro
I think he means we have the capabilities to be in a world surpassing 1984.

~~~
varjag
Doesn't mean much if the capabilities aren't being exploited. 1984 wasn't a
book about technology. It did feature mass surveillance exceeding anything we
have today, even if described in 1940s state of art terms.

~~~
cryoshon
The actual surveillance of 1984 was facile compared to today; today we are
infinitely more surveilled than was described in the book. We carry cell
phones which are fountains of data regarding our communications and movement,
and we use the internet, which is a very large window into the content and
often intent of our minds, not to mention ANOTHER fountain of information
about our location and communications. On top of that, there are probably more
CCTV cameras, dashcams, airborne cameras (with ARGOS), and body cameras today.
Hell, they even have microphones and cameras in public buses / bus stops /
metro trains.

These cameras are all infinitely more utile than in 1984 once they are linked
to facial recognition and gait recognition technology. In 1984, you could be
an unnoticed face in a crowd if you weren't under investigation-- not so in
our reality. You step outside, and the fact that you did so is tied to your
identity and dossier and noted for later.

Like I said before, Ingsoc of 1984 was a primitive surveillance society which
still relied on humans to manually collect data on each other's conversations
and movement patterns. It just doesn't scale as cleanly as an automatic
computer system does. There wasn't any ability to create dossiers on 100% of
people passively, nor was there any ability to sort people based off of
various patterns, nor was there any ability to build sentiment maps, etc.

As far as exploitation goes, I'm not going to say that our society is
blatantly coercive using surveillance in the way that Ingsoc was. Wild abuses
of the surveillance apparatus is utterly undeniable, however. Consider that
whistleblower Russ Tice has said that Obama was being surveilled before his
presidential term. Consider the terms "LOVEINT/SEXINT" and the JTRIG group.
These are serious, democracy-eradicating abuses whose purpose is blackmail,
not finding terrorists. I will also say that the current trend of politicians
trying to outlaw cryptography and the sentiment there there should be nothing
beyond the government's reach is taking us even further into totalitarian
territory.

Then there's the whole "we never voted or asked for this and now it won't go
away" thing. As far as I can tell, the government doesn't have the consent of
the governed to pursue these programs.

~~~
ptaipale
> We carry cell phones which are fountains of data

But only because we choose to. We don't have to.

~~~
rdancer
There is a perfectly plausible way to implement all the things we want,
without all the surveillance. The surveillance is not necessary, and by and
large isn't even incidental, to the good parts we want.

And even if you forgo your own personal spy device, all of the other mobile,
stationary, and airborne devices will make up for the hole, mostly. Choice
doesn't really come into it.

~~~
varjag
My mom still says "not over the phone" when discussing any sensitive subject,
in 2015. She learned this trait from my grandmother. Now grandma wasn't an
anti-communist or dissident: she was a Party member and a WW2 vet. She was for
world peace and for victory of Communism worldwide.

This was just basic communication hygiene routine, one of the many, you had to
do in USSR to stay alive and well. People doing it didn't even think it was
wrong, it was as natural as washing your hands after taking a dump.

You guys thinking that the West outdid 1984 just because there are DPI
switches around are making me cringe.

------
veidr
Fuck off with hyperbolic mouth-frothing; in the novel _1984_ , the government
cameras were _in your house_.

Even China and the UK haven't done that yet, nor are they close to it.

~~~
mattgibson
Oh, really?

[http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/462230/Edward-Snowden-
re...](http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/462230/Edward-Snowden-revelations-
GCHQ-harvested-webcam-pics-including-sexual-material)

~~~
veidr
Yes, really. That the government is hacking private webcams en masse is a
flagrant criminal act. The collusion of purported democratic governments to do
this kind of thing is a threat to the rule of law itself.

It's a very serious problem, and absurd, over-the-top exaggeration doesn't
help.

Like when people say, "Working at McDonald's is slavery!" No, it isn't. Actual
slavery is a whole different level of badness. Obviously.

And along those same lines, odious though it is, government spies hacking your
webcam to see your dick pics is not as bad as the government _installing
mandatory government cameras inside the homes of all citizens_. Obviously.

So I don't think Cannataci is helping with this kind of hyperbolic statement.
It could reasonably be argued that government surveillance in the UK and the
US today is worse than it was in East Germany and the USSR -- and that's very
alarming. The notion it's as bad as the fictional dystopia of _1984_ is absurd
and unhelpful.

