

Groklaw news website abandoned over US surveillance - ColinWright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23768810

======
Arjuna
Previous discussion:

 _Forced Exposure_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6242569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6242569)

 _Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243081)

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nileshtrivedi
> I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know
> that ensuring privacy online is impossible.

This shook me to the core. What can we do to fight back?

~~~
mpyne
Stop overinflating news stories to avoid scaring people without the technical
training required to separate fact from hyperbole?

I say this because the things PJ is concerned about have been problems, at
least in concept, since she's been using the Internet. CALEA dates from 1994.
FISA dates from 1978. ECPA dates from 1986. Even without the NSA scraping
email metadata, if she's ever sent an email across international boundaries in
the past couple of decades it has undoubtedly ended up in the hands of the spy
agencies of multiple nations.

Additionally, plain-text SMTP/POP3 has _always_ been very leaky of your
privacy, and even if you can encrypt to your MTA/MDA, there's no guarantee
that every intervening hop would use encryption.

What's worse, you've all managed to spook poor PJ into thinking that
encryption is useless.

So in short you've (the "royal" you) all managed to burst the illusion of a
bubble she was quite content to live in, and do good work in before, and at
the same time managed to burst the _reality_ that strong encryption cannot yet
be defeated by even nation-level assets without humongous computing ability
(ability which the NSA has more pressing targets for, for the foreseeable
future).

~~~
anon1385
How disgustingly condescending.

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rocky1138
Scary.

