
Help Shut the Government's Surveillance Backdoors - sinak
https://shutthebackdoor.net/
======
mwsherman
The NSA doesn’t obey laws. Or, more precisely, we don’t know if they obey
laws.

Or, when we think a law limits their behavior, it will be challenged, where
‘challenged’ means ignored until it is discovered, then tried in secret.

Functionally, laws don’t matter here. Their existence, and their content, are
not predictive of the NSA’s behavior.

~~~
mpyne
> Or, more precisely, we don’t know if they obey laws.

Do you _know_ that any agency in the U.S. obeys laws? Do you verify this
everyday, across the entirety of the USG?

That was always the striking thing to me about these leaks as compared to the
NSA investigated by the Church Committee, is that in this case you see an NSA
actually trying to comply with the law. This is why MUSCULAR is only overseas,
or why only phone metadata was being collected, and only after legal approval
by FISC _and_ the FAA by Congress in 2011, and why all their slides talk about
"USPERs" and non-USPERs.

If you want change in what NSA is permitted to do then the law is a _great_
place to start. If nothing else it would make it clear to the rank-and-file
NSA employee (the same ones Snowden went to bat for on his NBC interview) that
there are new, _clear_ boundaries instead of reliance on court orders and
Supreme Court precedents.

~~~
lostlogin
NSA trying to comply with laws? What? No. Trying to comply with US laws maybe.
The rest of us out here that make up the majority of the world have the NSA
breaking our laws with impunity. We don't get a say or a vote, we just get to
hear the anguished cries of Americans worried that US laws may have been
broken.

~~~
mpyne
> The rest of us out here that make up the majority of the world have the NSA
> breaking our laws with impunity.

When the rest of the world starts upholding things like First and Second
Amendment principles even for their own citizens, I will worry more about the
U.S. reciprocating by extending Fourth Amendment principles to those who seek
to harm the people of the U.S.

But that is still a long ways off it seems. Are women in takfiri-controlled
areas able to freely protest or even attend schools yet?

The ironic thing is that you say you don't even "get a say", but you do. Our
President has had to focus attention on _foreign intelligence programs_ to try
and appease _non-American_ audiences, precisely _because_ of the fact that
non-Americans "get a say", which is something that the Chinese and Russian
leadership will never have to worry about. Do you protest SORM to Putin? If
you've _ever_ (directly or indirectly) used a .ru site, or a site hosted in
Russia, you should.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I will worry more about the U.S. reciprocating by extending Fourth Amendment
> principles to those who seek to harm the people of the U.S.

Fourth Amendment (and Fifth Amendment) protections protect the US from a
government _pretending_ to be protecting them from "people who seek to harm
the people of the US" without actually doing so.

While the direct targets are the most obvious victims of denials of due
process protections, the more significant victim is the public at large -- due
process protections increase the cost of security theater so as to limit the
extent to which it is easier for the government to cut corners and engage in
show punishments of scapegoats for propaganda purposes rather than do the hard
work of finding the real guilty parties.

And for real, organized, enemies against which legal process is inadequate,
well, that's what declarations of war against specific enemies. But permanent,
open-ended, unconstrained war -- and arbitrary executive use of war-
appropriate processes -- against whomever the current executive thinks might
be a threat is another thing altogether.

------
dfc
It is unthinkably strange that this "call to action" does not include a link
to the full text of the ammendment. Why do the organizers think that it would
not be useful for people to read the ammendment that they are urging support
of? Is it too complex for my feeble mind to comprehend? Or am I assumed to be
so sheeplike that I will blindly support something merely because the page
casts the ammendment as "anti-NSA"?

From what I can tell the page is urging support for: [http://amendments-
rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_05551914...](http://amendments-
rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_055519141339143914.pdf)

Ms. Lofgren also has ammendment regarding mandated backdoors in chips,
firmware and tech standards: [http://amendments-
rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_05651914...](http://amendments-
rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_056519141329382938.pdf)

~~~
sinak
That's a good call, we'll add a link to the amendment now. The amendment was
only made public this morning so we didn't have it when we were making the
site last night. The whole site was made in about 16 hours, so apologies it's
not more fully-baked.

Edit: Link added.

Edit: Just re-reading your comment. We definitely don't think you're sheep-
like or feeble-minded. In fact, quite the opposite. It was simply an
accidental omission.

~~~
dfc
I appreciate your candor and response and I apologize if it seems like I am
picking on you. The truth is that this omission seems to be the norm, so these
comments should not be read as directed at you but at online activists in
general.[^1]

In my opinion there seems to be a problem of priorities and perspective. The
goal is not "making a site" instead it should be "creating an awareness
/advocacy campaign." When viewed from this perspective collecting materials
for citizen education is the first step, or "1\. Register domain, 2. Collect
materials for education" and at the very least "X. Collect materials, X+1.
Launch site."

[^1]: The most recent that I can remember:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841903)

------
cik
The problem is that this fight is only about a small, very small part of the
equation. It's the entire Black Budget we need to see shut down.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black-budget/)

~~~
grkvlt
You aren't seriously suggesting that _all_ secret funding be cancelled, or
made public? What about the huge number of legitimately secret projects that
_must_ be funded covertly to prevent adversaries discovering and exploiting
defence and national security capabilities.

I think this debate has caused a lot of people to wrongly equate 'secret' with
'evil' or 'immoral' and 'unethical, which is not the case. Look at the
specifics, don't make unjustified sweeping generalisations...

~~~
dublinben
At the risk of asking an unanswerable question, what kind of "legitimately
secret projects" do you think must remain funded by a covert budget?

~~~
logfromblammo
The kind that are completely incompatible with an open, democratic society,
obviously.

The fundamental problem is that any secrecy sufficient to hide weakness from
an adversary can also hide corruption from the beneficiary. We literally
cannot tell the difference between the cost of running a legitimate defense
operation and the cost of all the director's cronies buying beach cocktails
all morning, country club fees all afternoon, and hookers and blow all night.

If you look hard enough at just the publicly reported budget items, you can
see worse! Corruption does not become less prevalent under a thicker layer of
obfuscation!

And, obviously, if you write down on your budget that you need tax money to
intentionally give Southern black men syphilis and then leave it untreated
just so that you can see what happens to them, some people might have a
problem with that. But then again, you might ask for tax money to kidnap and
imprison people with Japanese ancestry until the war with Japan ends, and
people would be too busy to notice it.

If giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to
teenaged boys, adding secrecy is like putting a teenaged girl in the mix. Any
rational parent would, quite sensibly, attempt to ensure that the boy only had
access to, at most, one of those three things at any given time, because any
two in combination inevitably results in utter disaster.

------
brightsize
I just called Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, my rep from eastern WA. The woman who
answered was quite pleasant, but didn't know anything about this amendment.
She said that I was the first person to call about it, and that they needed
more people like me who "pay attention". Since my rep is a far-right
Republican, I'm hoping that she has enough libertarian in her to vote the
right way.

------
praxeologist
I don't trust that passing new laws will do anything when existing law is
being broken. Show me people being thrown in jail and I will believe they are
serious.

~~~
nullc
This doesn't make it worthless. Making things more illegal increases the costs
and the risks it makes the tools more fragile and decreases cooperation of the
private sector.

It doesn't replace other approaches— changing the design of the services we
use to make this kind of surveillance closer to a mathematical impossibility—
but its still worthwhile.

------
lazydev99
There is certainly a lot of things that NSA may do, but the website references
FISA 702, but doesn't understand it:
[http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/topics/section-702](http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/topics/section-702)

This is not a back door but an order given to a US company AND the person
CANNOT be in the US, regardless if the person is a US person or not.

~~~
mpyne
> but the website references FISA 702, but doesn't understand it:

One of the very first Snowden leaks was a complete misunderstanding of the
leaked program (PRISM), so why should it be shocking that FISA 702 is
misunderstood here?

------
john_b
This is great and I hope that people do call their representatives, but I
wonder if it would be more effective if the pro-privacy and civil rights
demographic would organize on a more permanent basis to call representatives
rather than on an issue-by-issue basis. To some extent, this describes the EFF
and the ACLU, but I'm thinking more of ordinary people who understand that
these kinds of reforms need to happen, but aren't interested in being a member
of such an organization.

Each time a new bill starts making its way through Congressional committees
someone spins up a new issue-specific website, which is good, but it seems
like there must be a lot of overhead in organizing on an issue-specific basis
and that a lot of work (collecting emails, convincing people that _this_ issue
is worth their time to call, etc) is duplicated. Maybe individual grassroots
political advocacy could even be incentivized in a "gamification" kind of way
if it had a more permanent organizational structure with account or email
records that persisted across issues? I don't really have anything concrete
though; mostly I'm just thinking out loud.

~~~
declan
> if it would be more effective if the pro-privacy and civil rights
> demographic would organize on a more permanent basis to call representatives
> rather than on an issue-by-issue basis.

EFF, and to a lesser extent the ACLU, has been doing this for over 20 years.

>more of ordinary people who understand that these kinds of reforms need to
happen, but aren't interested in being a member of such an organization.

You don't need to be a member of EFF to sign up for their alerts.

------
Canada
That's great. I'm all for political advocacy, but we still need better
technical safeguards and culture that eagerly uses them.

~~~
thomasfromcdnjs
[https://pack.resetthenet.org](https://pack.resetthenet.org) does a good job
at listing tools for citizens to use

------
zmanian
I got a confirmed yes from Anne Eshoo. Anyone else have a report?

------
shutupalready
> _The amendment would block the NSA from using any of its funding..._

Why is the legislation is written to cut off funding as opposed to making the
act itself illegal?

In fact, why not do both, i.e., deny the use of funds _and_ make the action
(warrantless searches and backdoors) illegal?

------
donohoe
Done and done.

~~~
dave809
I think a little bit of bragging is good, it can create a bit of social
pressure for others to act. More people should publicly share what they've
done

So, your awesome, if I was a US citizen I would be calling right now.

------
austincheney
Instead of laws and wishful thinking why don't people take action toward an
alternative technology:
[http://mailmarkup.org/value.xhtml](http://mailmarkup.org/value.xhtml)

You can tell the people who really care about this subject from those who just
need something to whine about by looking at the contributions they make.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
There isn't really an either-or here. Do both.

------
cesarbs
Does my call count if I'm not American but live in the US as a worker?

~~~
mratzloff
No. If you are not a US citizen, you don't have a vote, and therefore you do
not have a representative in Congress.

That said… I doubt they have any capacity to actually check if callers are US
citizens.

~~~
declan
If you're a permanent resident (a "green card" holder) you can do something
more effective than merely filling out a web form or phoning a
congresscritter's aides. You can donate money to help the pro-privacy
politicos (very few) or aid challengers to the anti-privacy politicos (many,
but unlikely to succeed).

[http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml](http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml)
"An immigrant may make a [political] contribution if he or she has a 'green
card' indicating his or her lawful admittance for permanent residence in the
United States."

The real way to do it, which I've written about occasionally for the last
decade, is to identify the worst surveillance offenders of each major party.
Narrow down the list to ones who are electorally vulnerable (this excludes
Feinstein, for instance). You'll need to spend millions of dollars on ads
reminding voters how thoroughly the incumbent disrespects the Constitution.
Also encourage contributions to the incumbent's challenger. Only do this where
you're likely to win. Committee chairmen would be ideal. Be thoroughly non-
partisan and focused only on surveillance.

Once you do that, and have a Cantor-like upset against the pro-surveillance,
anti-privacy incumbent, suddenly privacy will be taken far more seriously on
Capitol Hill. Politicians will respond better to this than a useless $1,000
PAC contribution.

