
UN: Nations hide rise in private digital snooping - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/un-nations-hide-rise-in-private-digital-snooping/2014/07/16/350ac6e4-0cd2-11e4-bd4e-462c357f0998_story.html
======
DanielBMarkham
Not news to this crowd, but still important to note. So many times as
commentators we focus on evil companies, or evil governments, or evil
agencies.

Nope, it's all of the above. Or rather, _nobody is evil_ , just each party
needs data for various reasons. Governments trump everybody, so if your
information is being recorded, it's accessible to a government somewhere. (And
you can be assured that tons of information about you is recorded daily)

Interesting (to me) is the fact that we've spent the last twenty years
cranking out various sci-fi dramas about all the things that could go wrong in
a future society. There was cloning, nuclear war (an old favorite), alien
invasion, designer babies, prison cities, artificial intelligence, memory
wiping -- tons of stuff. All the time, the people who produced and consumed
such fiction said "You know, it's good that we bring up these ideas. We're
going to need to deal with this kinda thing in the future. It's morally
important. This is deep, thoughtful work."

Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest
dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind. And now when you point it
out to folks, they either think it doesn't matter or they're so overwhelmed
they give up thinking about what they could possibly do about it. The unstated
question is: Gee, why didn't somebody tell me about this!

~~~
7952
>> Meanwhile we were all happily building and participating in the largest
dystopian society that has ever happened to mankind.

Ironically that is caused by an increase in freedom that the internet brought
about.

We have long had the right to freedom of speech but it was expensive to
interact with a large number of people. The internet made it much easier to
actually use the rights heralded by politicians.

I think sci-fi has done a better job of realising some of the social
implications of this explosion in rights. For example in showing how national
allegiance can be lost in favour of geographically desperate groups of like
minded indviduals.

~~~
happyscrappy
Yes, he has a strange definition of dystopia. In Star Trek the leadership
clearly knows where everyone is at all times, is that a dystopia? Very few
people go full Stallman, although they could.

~~~
gglitch
Maybe he's thinking of a Huxleyan dystopia. Very few of us would call the
setting of Brave New World a utopia, but very few of the inhabitants of that
world would call it anything else. Our joyful new information-dense world has
brought with it compromises that the culture hasn't really assimilated yet,
often isn't even aware of yet.

------
contingencies
You read it here last, from the UN Human Rights Commissioner. Zamyatin,
Orwell, Chomsky, Hager, Binney, Drake, Assange, Snowden ... they've been on
about this for a century. Ten years ago it was conspiracy theory, now it's
mainstream social reality. Still, most people don't care to listen... secure
in their televised Colosseum serial economic treadmill stupour... knocking
back throwaway media to numb themselves to the truth, competing to buy
fallacious fashion facepalm devices that actively discourage intellectual
authorship, context, privacy or even direct unmediated expression... but
perhaps the tide is finally changing?

On the flip-side, this one's nicely timed, given the preface and thrust of
Cypherpunks[0], for the same day as the review of Assange's case in Sweden...
which according to Assange's recent interview[1] should get thrown out after
tomorrow's appeal[2]. I wonder if the UN gets it now? Of course, it's semi-
irrelevant anyway since the US will cockblock[3] them on actually actioning
anything remotely related to real, functional, positive change, but it's a
nice gesture on the human rights commissioner's part for national-level
change-makers to point the finger at.

0\.
[http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/](http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/)

1\.
[http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embass...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embassy_refuge_julian_assange)

2\.
[http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html](http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/2014/07/15-july-2014.html)

3\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_veto_power)

------
higherpurpose
I think there will need to be another wave of global revolutions to end this.
Even the vast majority of "democratic" governments are extremely reluctant to
give this power up now, and the more they use it the harder they will fight
against giving it up, which probably means violent and bloody revolutions will
be necessary to regain the rights we thought we already (re)gained decades or
centuries ago.

When people caught doing it will be _severely_ punished, then you'll know the
tide has turned. Until then, even if new laws are passed to "limit" the
surveillance, they probably won't change much, as they'll keep doing it in
secret, and then get protected by higher-ups when getting caught.

~~~
nmrm
> violent and bloody revolutions will be necessary to regain the rights we
> thought we already (re)gained decades or centuries ago.

Digital privacy is one of these funny freedoms which everyone either greatly
over or under-estimates.

I don't think anyone with a firm grasp on politics really thinks digital
privacy will spark violent uprisings, so I'll put the question another way: do
you really believe you're morally justified in _killing_ over domestic spying?

~~~
jcbrand
It's not "digital" privacy, it's just privacy. Even if you avoid digitally
networked devices(which is almost impossible), your photos still appear on
facebook et al, you're still being recorded by CCTV everywhere you go, your
banking transactions and medical data is still being recorded etc.

~~~
meowface
Privacy isn't exactly a black and white thing. You have no expectation of
privacy if you're in a public street, so being filmed isn't the worst thing in
the world. If you're filmed in your own home, perhaps through your webcam,
then that's a different story.

~~~
jcbrand
If the CCTV cameras weren't connected to the internet and their recordings
were periodically deleted, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Even Richard
Stallman has said as much.

What however is happening more and more, is that recorded data is kept
indefinitely and is networked.

Have you heard what Binney has said what the software he wrote for the NSA
does?

There are various domains from where it gathers data (cellphone, banking,
social media, gps etc.). These domains are graphed and mapped in such a way
that they can pull out all the attributes any individual has from any any or
all of the domains.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc)

In other words, the data doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's all being graphed and
correlated in order to build a comprehensive picture of your life.

------
lotsofmangos
Is funny how quickly the ground shifts. Not that long ago, discussions over
this kind of stuff were generally the province of the institutionally paranoid
and subjects such as echelon occasionally cropped up in sci-fi books and the
manifestos of folk like David Icke, along with his rambling lizard bobbins.

These days, my gran might mention these subjects over a cup of tea after
talking about the cricket, and she's a dyed in the wool establishment
conservative.

------
tokenadult
I think we (everyone who participants here on Hacker News) have to learn how
to be smart freedom fighters who can use nonviolent methods to overthrow
dictatorships if we are to have any hope of reversing these trends, whether
the snooping comes from governments directly or indirectly through poorly
guided business corporations. We can't win this fight by imagining violent
revolutions. Dictators become dictators by being practiced in using violence
to gain power. We probably can't learn enough about violent means soon enough
to overcome a slide to dictatorship in any country.

I advocate nonviolent means to fight dictators for two reasons: I don't like
seeing my innocent neighbors get killed, and I have seen nonviolent means work
to overthrow dictators. The largely peaceful transition from martial law and
one-party dictatorship to pluralistic rule by law with free press and free
elections that I saw in Taiwan[1] is just one example of a people power
revolution where the dictator was baffled because there were few violent
incidents on the part of the opposition to stir up a violent response from the
regime. There are other examples from around the world.

An organization that collects real-world advice on how to win freedom even
under dictatorship nonviolently, and how to keep the revolutionary movement
from turning into another dictatorship, is the Albert Einstein Institution
founded by Gene Sharp, an occasional nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. I have
recommended before here on Hacker News that readers who are really, truly
interested in winning freedom for themselves and guaranteeing freedom for
people around the world ought to read the free, downloadable materials on the
Einstein Institution website.[2] If you are not willing to learn the art and
craft of forging a cohesive, effective resistance movement based on real-world
examples, this is all just talk. Talk is cheap. I know actual freedom fighters
who succeeded against dictators whose techniques included total control of all
mass media with "prior restraint" of publication and complete domination of
the country's education system and targeted assassinations of opponents. The
dictators still lost. You (we) can win, but only if you (all of us) learn to
fight effectively. That doesn't take violence. Winning in a people power
democracy movement does take mental toughness, because the dictator's side
could use violence, but always the people outnumber the rulers. The people
just have to learn how to stand together, overcoming their own fear.

Start your reading with _From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual
Framework for Liberation_ if you are wondering where to start among the
several handbooks on the Einstein Institution website.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720)

[2] [http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/](http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/)

~~~
pling
I think a non-violent approach is unrealistic. History tells us that tables
only turn when soldiers refuse to shoot citizens on order of the government
and turn the guns back against them.

The best interim approach is to destroy all means of facilitating the
dictatorship. In this case that means destroying the tools by which we work,
destroying the banks, the commerce regimes and the communication and logistic
platforms muck like the Russians did when they pulled out of the Eastern Bloc.
No one has to be hurt to do that but people _will_ go hungry, jobless and
penniless. This will however open their eyes to the situation.

I'm not advocating this as a solution nor would act upon it but I'm without a
better option in my mind.

Edit: to the down voters. This is not reddit. Don't down vote because you
disagree, down vote because it's not relevant. This is relevant discussion.

~~~
asgard1024
It has been shown (for example in Altemeyer's research on authoritarianism)
that violence increases authoritarian tendencies among population, while
violent attacks against nonviolence decrease those tendencies.

This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong, with the 2nd amendment.
The reason why soldiers refuse to shoot against citizens is because they are
unarmed and have moral upper hand. Once that happens, the powerful people have
to give up, because they themselves can only rely on other people to stay in
power.

~~~
dublinben
>This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong

They got it right in 1776-1783 when they put their lives on the line, and
fought for their independence. Britain never would have "given up" their North
American colonies peacefully.

~~~
jude-
What made the American Revolution succeed through violence were the facts that
(1) it was a war of attrition against a foreign, remote power, and (2) it was
bolstered by another foreign, rival remote power. Due to its far-flung nature,
it cost British Empire a LOT of money to keep the war effort going, and
moreover at a time when they were hurting for cash (since this was just after
the Seven Year's War with France). The Americans and French were able to make
it too costly for Britain to continue to hold on to the colonies.

Britain also tried to take America back in the War of 1812, but was again
thwarted by the costs of maintaining a war abroad (and the war had come to a
stalemate by 1814).

Unlike most revolutions we see today (which are revolutions at home, and
become civil wars if they turn violent), the American Revolution succeeded
through violence because it was against a foreign adversary and because the
Americans were able to make it too costly for Britain to maintain their war
effort. These preconditions do not apply to local revolutions, where no side
has an economic incentive to stop fighting until the other sides are crushed.
Each factions' lives are on the line, largely eliminating the cost
consideration. It's not like King George III or the members of Parliament were
in danger of losing their lives, families, and lands if the Americans won.

