
The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset - urs2102
https://backchannel.com/obamas-parting-gift-to-trump-expanded-surveillance-powers-1c0df058d838#.o9oj35h2j
======
rayiner
Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is
politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats
on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are
more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus
rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to
want to spend limited political capital on the issue. To the extent policy is
necessarily subject to political compromise, privacy doesn't seem to even make
the top 10 of issues Democrats are willing to fight for.

It seems inevitable to me that the same generation that willingly hands over
all their personal information to Google and Facebook, and sees government
mostly as a positive force for enforcing civil rights and increasing social
equality will embrace the expansion of the surveillance state.

~~~
hedora
Wow. That has not been my experience at all. People on most sides of me are
afraid of being rounded up, or are afraid someone they know will be rounded
up.

(They are not worried about it happening this year, but are extrapolating 5
years.)

This is amongst mid-westerners and west coast types. East coast liberals I
talked to years ago were part of the DC or military machine, and think 100%
surveillance is just a natural tool for vetting politicians: "You have to live
inside DC norms since birth or will be blacklisted, even if it is just a joint
in high school... Otherwise, how will the ruling class keep running things?"

This was pre-Snowden, but after the at&t leaks, and they didn't believe NSA
universal surveillance was possible inside the US. Maybe their tunes have
changed. Anyway, maybe that demographic is the type of 'mainstream democrats'
you are talking about. Is it some other group?

(I'm talking about my social circles, not trying to stereotype entire states,
regions, though the above reads that way no matter how I word it)

edit: I see you live in DC. Called it, I guess. :-(

~~~
woofyman
>People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up

Rounded up for what? No one I know has that fear.

~~~
hedora
Being from china, eastern europe, south/central america, the middle east or
being black. There's also persecution for being a single mom or lgbtq, but
that doesn't fall under "rounded up".

I haven't talked to any climate scientists recently, but I suppose living in
antarctica for a year gets you on the "maybe losing your job" list.

The "america first" chant on Friday didn't help. Neither did the "for
americans" rhetoric.

~~~
mc32
Thinking that only the "Trump voters" are safe is a kind of thinking that
borders on hysteria and is hard to take seriously. Undocumented immigrants are
the only people who should have a reasonable concern of being deported.

It's not like other countries don't deport undocumented immigrants either
whether leftist or rightist so I don't see how when the US does it it's
especially denouceable. [keep in mind, that Obama deported more than W].

I've lived in other countries [China as well as Eastern Europe], and it's not
uncommon for regular police to either enforce immigration themselves or
cooperate with the immigration office when people overstay their visas or
sneak in.

~~~
hedora
One of those groups (east europe/russia) is being defended by trump. Others
have escalating troubles that predate him.

There's plenty of blame to cover both parties.

People seem more concerned that the system elected him than anything else. How
bad (in this discussion, xenophobic) will the next president be?

I have noticed a profound, bipartisan disappointment with both parties.

~~~
mc32
Many people in the press conflate border control with xenophobia and anti-
immigrant sentiment. I didn't vote for the guy but my take is he isn't looking
to kerb legal immigration (with the exception of people form "terrorist
hotbeds") so much as require all immigrants to get the proper visa as well as
get expelled if they overstay a visa --normal operating procedure for most
mature governments.

I can understand the preoccupation that he might especially kerb people from
the ME. However I see this constant conflation seemingly to scare all
immigrants into thinking that the new administration is "anti-immigrant"
whereas I see it as anti-illegal/undocumented immigration.

~~~
many_bells_down
This conflation creates division. The same occurs with a myriad of other
issues. Someone could have supported Trump at the inauguration on Friday,
marched in support of women's rights on Saturday, and been entirely consistent
in the views they were espousing. However, a common viewpoint is that these
are somehow mutually exclusive when in fact they are far from it.

~~~
mc32
Exactly. Many people were/are surprised by the large proportion of [white]
women who voted for Trump and some people continue to think that only
misogynists could have voted for Trump.

It's clear many people are _trying_ to sew division where none exists in order
to advance an agenda [in the immigration case there are people who because
they favor unregulated immigration do purposely conflate things in order to
raise concern with legal immigrants --people completely unaffected by any new
immigration laws]

------
saycheese
Please stop pointing fingers at the American "government" and realize that the
issue is really the average American.

The US public has had over 10 years to figure it out, blaming the government
is just causing more problems, not less; to understand why it's been 10 years,
Google "Room 641A", which was exposed in 2006.

Sure, there are people in America that are opposed to mass surveillance, but
the bulk of Americans willfully allow it.

If you think the issue is important, do me a favor: find 10 people next week
that do not believe it is an issue, help them see it is, and get them to the
point that they want to help do the same thing you just did the following
week.

Even if only 5 of the 10 people go on to do the same the week after, if that
pattern went on for a year, by the end of the year mass surveillance would no
longer exist; happy to explain, but math is a basic viral coefficient[1]; that
is if only one person reading this did it and succeed, which would mean in
less than three months the majority of the US would have been "converted" to
supporting change.

[1] [http://nichevertising.com/viral-coefficient-
calculator/](http://nichevertising.com/viral-coefficient-calculator/)

~~~
westoncb
I think this is a great idea, and I may give it a go.

If you are initiating anything else like this, though, I'd make one
suggestion: we need some materials that can be honed in their effectiveness in
communicating the danger, as what has been done to make it a reality so far.
It's a complex issue, and most ad hoc attempts to explain it to a random
person will end in disinterest on their part.

Seems like one wiki page for techies and one for non would be a decent
approach. For the most part, it would be best to have potential _teachers_ use
the resources on the wiki rather than students—but they could hold a
repository of illuminating examples, analogies etc. until effective approaches
for communicating to each audience type stabilize.

Edit: probably the main benefit of this isn't making teachers more effective,
but rather that it would make it easier for potential teachers to get on
board. As it stands I'd need to go do a bunch more research and collect
specific figures personally before I'd feel prepared to teach anyone.

------
BoringCode
> (If you’re wondering what data the NSA collects, its own site[1] offers a
> list and this statement: “The standard operating procedure for the Domestic
> Surveillance Directorate is to ‘collect all available information from all
> available sources all the time, every time, always.’”)

The linked site is a PARODY. There is no such thing as the Domestic
Surveillance Directorate, that would be the FBI. How the author of this
article fell for that, I don't know.

[1] [https://nsa.gov1.info/data/](https://nsa.gov1.info/data/)

------
stordoff
I agree with the main point of the article, but feel like it undermines itself
in a couple of ways. Firstly (and by far most importantly), the alleged quote
from the NSA[1] comes from a parody site which explicitly states "[t]his
parody website has no connection whatsoever to the National Security
Agency"[2]. If a reader isn't already convinced of the potential harms of mass
surveillance, (accidentally, presumably) using such quotes makes the arguments
easier to discard.

Secondly, and this is more of a pet peeve of mine, is the "top highlight" that
appears mid-way through the article. I know they aren't really comparable, but
"mass surveillance is bad, but, by the way, we are totally tracking every
interaction you make with this article" doesn't feel like a particularly
consistent position to hold.

[1] > The standard operating procedure for the Domestic Surveillance
Directorate is to 'collect all available information from all available
sources all the time, every time, always.', per
[https://nsa.gov1.info/data/](https://nsa.gov1.info/data/)

[2]
[https://nsa.gov1.info/about/about.html](https://nsa.gov1.info/about/about.html)

------
jbpetersen
Mass surveillance in the digital age is a Pandora's box that's been opened.

Without comprehensively putting extreme restrictions on what people can put
online, there is only ever going to be an exponentially growing trove of data
to mine that reveals implications far removed from whatever whoever made it
available intended to communicate.

While it may be possible to significantly cut back the amount of surveillance
done on communications intended to be private, I think people need to accept
that the automation of surveillance and of inferring likely connections from
it are developments which irreversibly change how society functions going
forward.

What's more, technology has a very persistent tendency to become accessible to
more people over time. I have yet to see any reasons this wouldn't be true
specifically in the case of automated surveillance. Remember the story about
someone trying facial recognition to tie pictures of strangers on the subway
to VKontakte profiles? That's just a small taste of the implications.

I think it's realistically possible to push back a large portion of the
surveillance that invades private communications, likely by technological
means more often than legal ones. And I think the article highlights that
possibility, especially at a time when distrust in government is reaching a
peak in America and elsewhere. That said, I'm waiting for the Pandora's box of
wide access to powerful surveillance tools using publicly available
information to be seen for what it is.

------
marcoperaza
Putting the debate over actual necessity aside, it's not a great political
move to be the one to actually abolish any of these programs. God forbid a
future attack is shown to have been planned through a medium that you or your
party ended surveillance of.

Realistically, I don't expect to see these programs change much until
terrorism ceases to be a force in the world.

~~~
carbocation
> until terrorism ceases to be a force in the world

I think you're basically implying this, but I think it's worth elaborating:
there is no particular reason for terrorism to cease being a force in the
world if things stay grossly similar to the way they are today.

Unlike, say, war, which requires state actors to maintain aggression,
terrorism requires just one individual with an idea. Even addressing root
causes won't eliminate terrorism entirely. Unless people cease to be afraid
(perhaps due to improved numeracy / statistical thinking), the threat of
terrorism will forever loom.

~~~
mozumder
Which is why government allows for surveillance directly in its constitution.
Search warrants have always existed.

There is no government without a search warrant, since no government allows
privacy against the state's will.

Until you are your own king, you will always have to live under the permission
of government.

~~~
Cyph0n
Right, but there is a procedure behind obtaining a search warrant, which is
nothing at all like giving the government blanket surveillance powers.

~~~
slarrick
I'm not well versed on the details of U.S. government surveillance, but is it
not the case that collection of phone logs, for instance, does not entail the
government directly infringing on or even caring about 99.999999% of the
public's private activity? My understanding is that these types of
surveillance programs technically exist so that logs can be pulled up
retroactively or algorithmically in rare but important cases.

I am asking because I am intellectually curious. It seems to me that _on
average_ people could stand to gain from surveillance and possibly predictive
algorithms for crime. I would like to better grasp the other side of the
argument.

~~~
hedora
That argument has been made by repressive regimes to justify all sorts of
witch hunts: "Our records say you were friends with John; you should have
known he would be branded a subversive traitor. Why didn't you turn him in
first?"

Stats make this even worse: "Sorry. The computer said we have to lock you up
for your own good."

Also, the framers of the US constitution had a deep mistrust of government
(they just overthrew the brits!). The right of revolution is something they
teach (at least used to teach) in US schools:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution)

Tl;dr: If law enforcement is too effective then you can't defend yourself from
unjust governments. This is why we have juries and the right to bear arms /
form [state in addition to federal] militias.

~~~
slarrick
Thank you for your reply. Your argument makes sense to me, however I am still
having some difficulty understanding how ultimately surveillance is anything
but negligible in aiding law enforcement to oppress U.S. citizens - compared
to the government's already existing enormously superior weaponry. IF the
government were out to get me, I can't imagine how I could stop them, even if
they had only basic information about me. UNLESS I am a criminal mastermind,
in which case it seems like the government would NEED information about me to
stop me, which would probably be a good thing? I dunno... do you at least see
where I'm coming from? I haven't formed a concrete opinion about it all, and I
am a student of cyber-security. Presently considering all points of view.

EDIT: I guess your point is that the surveillance information can be used to
/justify/ an attack on a citizen, so that the public accepts it. But somehow I
imagine the government could already easily falsify records to do exactly that
without deep troves of info?

~~~
hedora
The ideas I presented are from a long time ago. Arguably, modern military
technology made grass roots revolutions impossible in first world countries
(or will soon, given drones, etc).

Dragnet surveillance creates capabilities like "shoot the 1% of people in this
city most likely to oppose me." A more effective / socially acceptable version
is already being implemented in China. They have a number that measures how
good of a citizen you are. As I understand it, it can be used to vet people
for all sorts of things (employment, credit, housing, law enforcement
targeting, etc).

So, now, if you say something wrong in private, you might end up begging for
food on the side of the road.

Of course, the input to the score is secret; presumably it can be adjusted up
or down by (abusive?) people in authority.

Even if I am wrong about the details of the Chinese system (maybe it has great
checks and balances for all I know), it is easy to see how government agents
could abuse such a system.

------
dahart
> Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

Calling all engineers! We do have the power amongst ourselves to add technical
impediments to surveillance to the services we're building, and to the
internet as a whole.

The technology exists to prevent surveillance, we just need to care, and to
use it. Also keep in mind that net neutrality would be an _automatic
byproduct_ of an internet that prevents automatic surveillance.

> “The standard operating procedure for the Domestic Surveillance Directorate
> is to ‘collect all available information from all available sources all the
> time, every time, always.’”

This will never change, and I would go so far as to suggest it's even a
reasonable position to take, from someone who's job it is to collect
information for the government. What we need to do is make our internet usage
_unavailable_ to onlookers.

~~~
RA_Fisher
Net neutrality by encryption seems like a much better idea than government
imposed NN. It's optional and not one size fits all.

Let's encrypt all the things!

~~~
saalweachter
I take it you've never had WiFi drop your connection when you start using a
VPN?

~~~
RA_Fisher
Yep, and then I switched to OpenVPN! :)

------
nope40756
The article cites the NSA's data collection methods by linking to
[https://nsa.gov1.info](https://nsa.gov1.info) This site describes itself as
"a parody of nsa.gov" in the footer of every page. Don't believe everything
you read.

------
EGreg
Once again, why do we need to store these files "in the cloud"? Why do signals
need to go to California so that two people in an Indian village can talk to
each other? Email, IRC, the Web, Git, IPFS and many others don't have to work
that way. The world of always-on broadband ruined what was a great software
ecosystem that didn't assume you were either "online" or "offline", but cared
whether one machine was reachable from another machine. Broadband led to
centralized platforms like facebook.

 _Now that the bulk of our most valuable “papers and effects” are online, they
are vulnerable to being tracked and searched by the NSA without the agency
ever securing a warrant, asking our permission, or leaving a trace._

That can to a great extent be mitigated if there was software for communities
to host their own private networks, and only send signals out when necessary.
The way the original telephone switching worked.

Communities would be more resilient, too, and could help each other in the
event of a disaster. We should decentralize cellphone signals and power
generation eventually too.

Our platform is an attempt to make a standard platform for such decentralized
social networks: [https://qbix.com/platform](https://qbix.com/platform)

------
erikpukinskis
I think "presumption of privacy" is going away. The next generation will see
bubbles of privacy as something you can create, by force, not something
guaranteed by societal norms.

Frankly, I am a little surprised when I see other technologists advocating for
governmental/corporate/societal reform of privacy-respecting practices. It
seems like a losing battle to me. We are headed toward a time when you can buy
a $100 vial of drone dust at Best Buy, dump it into the air, and 30 minutes
later have a live 3D video feed in every window within a 5 mile radius. Maybe
it will take 100 years, but every year between now and then will be a shade
closer to that reality.

Even if we could get strongly worded laws from Congress, I just don't see that
stopping bad actors, inside government or out. It feels a little bit like bow-
and-arrow culture trying to legislate that government agents shouldn't be
allowed to use these new "gun" things. You can to legislate, but bigger forces
are afoot. The physics of information is changing very fast.

------
tomludus

      One reason that leaders as diametrically    opposed as Obama and Trump can be aligned on surveillance is simple: The majority of Americans don’t care.
    

The reason why this keeps getting worse and worse.

~~~
pitaj
Just for future reference, please don't quote using the four-spaces code
block. It can make it difficult to read on mobile, and often requires
scrolling from side to side on desktop.

Please, instead, use the `>` (meme arrow). While it does not add markup, it
does make it significantly more readable. Thanks.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> `>` (meme arrow)

It's much older:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_quoting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_quoting)

...and it looks suspiciously similar to the "diple" used by ancient Greeks:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/30/quotati...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/30/quotation_marks_long_and_fascinating_history_includes_arrows_diples_and.html)

~~~
pitaj
Oh I'm sure it is. I just called it that because it's funny.

------
tomkin
When Obama says that Snowden created serious security implications, do you
think that's from a point of privilege, or simply placing ideology over
practicality? Based on everything I know, both Obama and Snowden appear to be
fairly authentic characters. It seems weird that they would have opposing view
points. If we're to assume the best ideals are forged though intelligent
reasoning and debate, shouldn't they have both concluded the same? Glenn
Greenwald has proven himself to be less than authentic at times. If I could
pass a criticism Snowden's way, it was _who_ he went to, not _what_ he did. Am
I wrong to feel this way?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Fairly authentic characters regularly have drastically diverse viewpoints. For
instance, Republicans and Democrats. Parties on both sides have fairly
authentic views[1] on various moral points, that end in very, very different
opinions. And no amount of intelligent reasoning or debate will bring either
party closer to the other.

[1]Both parties ALSO have fairly unauthentic views, on how they will in fact,
happily sell us out to a corporation for a side gig when they leave office.
But they tell us they won't and that's shameful to even suggest that's what
they're doing.

------
dirkg
These articles are just wishful fantasy. Our history has shown that people are
perfectly willing and happy to tolerate any form of govt abuse as long as they
get their dose of reality tv and 'justifications' from mass media, all you
need to do is mention the T word and 'keep America great' and you can do
whatever you want.

Even if people cared, which they don't, the govt has zero incentive to
actually do anything, because increased surveillance gives them more power and
more power to abuse the system.

~~~
Fricken
America already has all the power to abuse the system. They have a standing
military. The reason the government is the government is because they maintain
a monopoly on violence. Freaking out about surveillance is like freaking out
about the compass in Rambo's survival knife when he's got a rocket launcher
aimed down your throat. The compass is new I suppose. The rocket launcher has
been there so long we don't even notice it any more. Whether or not the
government abuses it's powers is strictly a matter of whether or not it feels
like abusing it's powers. With or without trendy new surveillance
capabilities, the logic of that doesn't change. Why this isn't obvious is
beyond me.

~~~
slarrick
Honestly, I do not disagree. In some ways I imagine that mass surveillance may
even be necessary for the protection of the country, considering the potential
for destruction that even a few people with the right technology and planning
possess. Following your logic, it seems that the mass surveillance maybe has
more potential to help than to hurt (since the govt already possesses plenty
of resources for destruction).

Given how many people on here are adamant about anti-surveillance I feel like
I must be missing something... like I get the overall premise but it seems to
exclude a lot of important considerations...

------
jwatte
It is basically impossible to hide yourself if you want to take part of
society. Just standing there, you send out information about yourself body
posture, dandruff, IR signature, ...)

Therefore, it is much more important to make sure we have full insight into
those who have power. Sunlight is an effective disinfectant!

------
coldcode
Trumps stance on the intelligence community might be a good thing, as they all
leave leaving the government with a desire but no experienced people to do the
work. Of course that also leaves us wide open to be attacked. So maybe this
causes a reset of sorts.

~~~
saycheese
Clearly you don't understand Trump, he's just positioning himself with the
intelligence community; as far as I am able to tell, his first visit to a
government agency was to the CIA headquarters.

------
arzt
For any constitutional law experts: have there been any efforts to amend the
4th amendment to explicitly take into consideration private information held
by third parties (ie abrogate FISA)?

~~~
saycheese
Constitutional amendments are very hard to do, and in the context of mass
surveillance, highly unlikely without the public demanding in as a majority.

------
Mendenhall
The average citizen doesnt know or care, and in this day and age many would
trade "freedom" for what they think will give them "security". This story is
already over.

~~~
saycheese
Saying changing is not possible is unreasonable; see this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459166)

------
nope40756
The article cites data collection methods by linking to
[https://nsa.gov1.info](https://nsa.gov1.info) That site describes itself in
its footer as "a parody of nsa.gov" Don't believe everything you read.

------
battlebot
This is a thinly-veiled "Bash Trump" article. It is purely speculative what
the Trump administration will do at this point. Obama was shitty on civil
liberties, Bush was the one who caused us so much harm to begin with. But if
we want privacy then we have to fight to get it back the same way Americans
are fighting to get back their full 2nd Amendment rights. It can be done, but
this stupid, petty, left vs. right false dichotomy has to end--there are only
statists and individualists, that's all there is. You have those want to
coerce and those who want to be free.

~~~
mirimir
So Mike Pompeo won't be CIA Director?

