

How We Killed Privacy - Libertatea
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/23/how_we_killed_privacy_nsa_surveillance

======
belorn
"How we killed privacy: in 4 Easy Steps", the registration guide for creating
an account.

I honestly thought that was the article, until I saw the "click here for the
actually article" button.

~~~
jimworm
How wonderfully ironic.

------
jdbernard
The title of this piece is "How _We_ Killed Privacy -- in Four Easy Steps".
Honestly this just makes me angry. I did not ask for this, I did not have part
in any of these steps:

1\. _Decades-old Privacy Laws_ : All of the laws and cases cited were passed
or occurred before I was born. Starting a few years after I reached a voting
age I have been involved: showing up for elections, writing my representatives
about these laws and laws like them, communicated that how they voted on these
laws would directly affect how I vote in the next election. What effect has
that had? Tell me what else I realistically can do within the current
framework to change these obsolete laws. Tell me how I can influence the
judgements of a secret court like the FISA court, or have any effect as a
private citizen on the modern interpretation of decades-old cases like Smith
vs. Maryland.

2\. _Our Evolving Use of Technology_ : in general, yes, people have been very
quick to jump on Facebook, Twitter, etc. and share all the details of their
private life. Again though, people like me who are in the industry (and the
type to read HN) have warned people over and over and over again that anything
they put on the internet is basically in the public record. Every misuse of
volunteered information that this article is hemming and hawing about was
foretold by someone like me and by me in conversation with people I know. For
goodness sake, the AOL Search Query leak happened 7 years ago and even then it
was old news that the aggregate data that people give to search engines and
social media could be used to unmask and identify them. We were hoping news of
that leak would be a wake-up call to the public about an issue we had been
raising for _years_. So again, tell me what more I could have done.

3\. _Our Consent to Being Tracked Online_ : My thoughts on this "point" mirror
those of the previous one. I have done everything I can to influence people I
know to be more careful with how they allow themselves to be tracked. We
collectively have written blog posts, articles, comments, and tried to create
technical solutions around this issue, but we are ignored. What else can we
do?

4\. _Our Response to Terrorism_ : Haha, yeah. I sure had a big role in this.
/sarcasm When 9/11 first happened, people like me were urging caution
domestically. We wrote letters to representatives, blog posts, talked to
people, etc. warning them against losing our freedom in pursuit of security.
When the illegal wiretapping was exposed under Bush we protested. We warned
that this was just the tip of the iceberg, as we clearly see now. When the TSA
started pushing out the body scanners, we protested, the public protested, but
the agency continued on with impunity. I have argued against the Department of
Homeland Security since its inception. Against the ever-expanding scope of the
NSA, the TSA, the executive branch in general through it's ever-growing list
of agencies. What good has all that done me?

Don't you _dare_ say that I had anything to do with the erosion of our
privacy. I have fought it every step of the way. At this point I am re-
evaluating how much our family needs to be online at all. I will readily admit
that we face none of the physical brutality and oppression that were present
in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, but the information machinery is already
past that point in America. My heart hopes that it is not too late to correct,
but fears that we are just waiting for the physical to catch up with the
digital. My family stays in America for the same reason people stay anywhere:
this is our home. I love my country, but I feel helpless to fix it. The people
do not have power in the United States.

