
The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever - nicolas_
https://www.wired.com/story/the-age-of-mass-surveillance-will-not-last-forever/
======
loteck
One silver lining of living in these United States is that you can be assured
that complex technology picked up by cities and counties (and often even
states) will be implemented carelessly and wielded by only the hammiest fists.

The political winds shift and blow away any short term cover the operators
ever enjoyed.

The ACLU's CCOPS efforts were launched in 2016 [0] and have since resulted in
multiple cities across the country wresting oversight of local surveillance
technology into the hands of deliberative bodies.

I joined a local effort to put this oversight model in place in my city, and
we're on track to receive unanimous approval from my (large) city council this
year. It takes work to do it. You will have to get hands on if you want to
participate in this change.

ACLU NorCal has put together a nice guide on how to build the movement in your
city if one has not already begun. [1]

[0] [https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-
technology/surveillance-...](https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-
technology/surveillance-technologies/community-control-over-police-
surveillance)

[1] [https://www.aclunc.org/publications/fighting-local-
surveilla...](https://www.aclunc.org/publications/fighting-local-surveillance-
toolkit)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Sounds like something I’d like to get behind, but then in the first paragraph
it makes it sound like it’s something only “people of color” need to worry
about. That’s a miscalculation I think. Getting control from many police
forces means needing republican support, and everyone should be concerned.

~~~
loteck
What I can tell you from experience is that people of color, and religious
people, are the most likely to get activated on this idea at the early stages.
They can be among the most impacted by the harms of mass surveillance
technology, and are among those that stand to gain the most from controlling
it.

They also are often already organized, and often already have the ear of
elected representatives from their past activism.

All of these things combine to make it a very good idea to engage those
communities at the outset of an effort. I am not a person of color, nor am I
religious, but I have been able to play an important role in my city's effort.

Technologists need to help, not necessarily lead, these community efforts.
Email me if you'd like more support on getting started!

~~~
mixmastamyk
Perhaps, but when courting support, dumping half to a local majority of the
potential audience in the first paragraph is ill-advisesd. Locally, police
surveillance is equal opportunity.

~~~
loteck
There is no such "dumping." The plight of those communities is real, and it is
used as an example. There are many more examples not mentioned, but that
doesn't mean they are excluded from the inventory of harms a coalition will
represent and work to fix.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Perhaps you don't have any rural republican friends but as a centrist, I do.
And I can assure you they wouldn't make it to the second paragraph. Diversity
is important in more ways than one. Not including "white" voters is a recipe
for failure.

~~~
Press2forEN
I appreciate you pointing this out as I stopped reading right there.

When I read "people of color" anywhere, I assume myself excluded.

~~~
lovegoblin
> When I read "people of color" anywhere, I assume myself excluded.

Maybe you should keep reading, then.

------
leetcrew
this reads more like a hope than an actual argument. AFAIK, the protests in
hong kong are more about sovereignty than government surveillance (though I
would be happy to be corrected). I don't get the impression that the average
american cares very much about surveillance, whether it's by corporations or
the government. they might make some offhand remarks about how they don't like
it, but you don't see anything like the BLM or occupy protests. it's too
abstract. I don't really see any mainstream politicians even discussing mass
surveillance by the government. at most, they might make some empty threats
toward google/facebook/twitter.

~~~
loteck
In my city, we are working on an ordinance to put oversight of surveillance
technology into the hands of a community commission. Definitely hundreds, but
possibly thousands, of people have called in, emailed in, or otherwise
commented in support of our efforts.

Saying the public doesn't care about surveillance is oft-repeated
reductionism, even around HN, and I think we could level-up ever so slightly
by widely admitting that average people are just as complex as you, and have
lots of interesting cares, when the context is right.

~~~
leetcrew
> Saying the public doesn't care about surveillance is oft-repeated
> reductionism, even around HN, and I think we could level-up ever so slightly
> by widely admitting that average people are just as complex as you, and have
> lots of interesting cares, when the context is right.

I'm not arguing they are simpletons who just don't understand tech, but it's
quite clear that most people don't care enough to do anything about it. take
me as an example. in the abstract, I dislike being the subject of
surveillance. but in practice, I don't care enough to sacrifice the
convenience of the google ecosystem. I certainly don't care enough to replace
my android phone with an iphone, even though I could afford it.

~~~
newen
You could have said the same thing about food back in the early 20th century.
I dislike adulterated food just as much as anybody but in practice I don't
care enough grow my own food even though I could afford it.

------
olivermarks
Sadly I think this Snowden article is nonsense. I don't see any way of rolling
back global surveillance going forward. It's great to organize on a local
level to make a point but the extent of data capture by shadowy state
sanctioned organizations has been going on for decades and is now that data
cam be parsed and manipulated by increasingly sophisticated AI. Add in divide
and rule social engineering and cancel culture and we are rapidly accelerating
into an era that is extremely Orwellian. I'm also disappointed to see Snowden
write '..a youth rebellion that relied on lasers and traffic cones as sword
and shield, and that it would come to paralyze one of the world’s richest and
most powerful governments'. For me this is nonsense. Rioting and lawless
behaviors are arguably being allowed as part of a 'problem, reaction,
solution' crackdown to justify future more draconian policing. There is no
paralysis.

~~~
paulpauper
agree. once rights are forfeited, they cannot be reclaimed. Patriot Act will
not be undone anytime soon.

~~~
olivermarks
This is a global problem created by the offshore capitalist empire, US law is
local in comparison...

~~~
Avicebron
Agreed. This is just cement to bind together the tragedy that is the offshore
capitalist empire, less and less freedom and less and less rights. I'm so
disapointed with what was done to the world, it's turning into a homogeneous
panopticon with no end in sight

------
nickalaso
We can and should fight back, this makes the job of the surveillance state
harder. But my concern is, that I think the problem will eventually get much
worse than it is today.

I believe that eventually this kind of surveillance will be run almost
entirely by sophisticated Artificial Intelligence. It partially is already,
but as the technology improves, the amount and quality of the automated
surveillance will increase.

Masks, lasers, cones, they might be quite effective against current
technology, but that is going to change as the technology improves and an AI
can determine your identity from your gait, or a combination of other features
such as the width of your shoulders, the length of various bones in your body,
etc. China is almost certainly already working on this kind of software as a
direct response to the Hong Kong protests.

Governments will continue to work towards innovating and improving their
surveillance programs, specifically in a way that reduces the amount of actual
humans that are involved (to reduce the probability of another like Snowden)
as well as reduce the visibility of the program to not trigger and go against
human's "desire to be free" the article mentions.

------
drummer
> Today, the Hong Kong uprising is in ashes and the mass arrests have begun.
> If you ever needed proof that networks are balanced on the knife-edge of
> liberation and oppression, here it is.

Don't take freedom for granted.

------
GekkePrutser
Great to hear from Snowden. I hope he's right. Basically all this misery is a
direct result of 9/11, without which none of this would ever have been
allowed. Of course it was tragic but the measures introduced were overblown
and ignored the real cause of the issue. He is right and I do see the privacy-
first movement slowly creeping from the shadows into the mainstream. About
time!

However I shudder to think what the Corona crisis will do to society. As we've
seen with 9/11, it usually takes many years for the worst abuses to really
emerge. The crisis itself sets the public opinion in motion, first fought
(like in many places they are now) when the measures are actually needed. But
eventually everyone seems to get in line behind it, though by that time the
actual crisis is already over. Then nobody criticises the measures anymore
even though they're no longer needed. They get used to the sense of 'safety'
when there is no more rational danger.

The 9/11 attacks were much more a result of poor US intelligence processes
than of the tools they had available to them! Even the response to that
realisation was baffling: The answer to having too many agencies that don't
communicate was... to build yet another agency. :/

I'm not looking forward to a world where the virus is gone but everyone has
become a hardcore germaphobe, and the government enforces this by law. I have
strong hayfever so part of the year I'll be coughing and sneezing, but it's
not contagous at all. Fun times ahead with a lot of suspicion around me :( I'm
afraid Corona will be gone in a year or 2 but all its negative effects like
social distancing, masks and mandatory quarantines will persist much longer
under the label of 'safety'. We were pretty safe before Corona, thank you very
much. I know these things are needed now but they won't be forever.

In the same way we've been groped by airport security for 20 years now and all
our comms catalogued in order to obtain some kind of undefined idea of
'safety' which nobody cares to elaborate because of 'security concerns'. We
never find out know how this information has really helped, ostensibly because
'the bad guys can learn from that', but then again, in almost every case the
'bad guys' were just using tech like plain unencrypted SMS anyway and were
plainly operating on the radar. The truth is that too many people make too
much money around it all for it to be reconsidered.

Of course I will fight overzealous Corona measures (after Corona is gone) just
like I've fought surveillance (by promoting safe tools), but it takes a long
time for public opinion to really sway back and do something about it.
Basically, people are lemmings :(

~~~
ausbah
even in the midst of a pandemic most people are far from being a "hard-core
germaphobe". most people who follow Covid avoidance advice do completely
sensible things like wear a mask in public spaces, social distance when
indoors with other people, and wash / hand sanitize their hands more.

if those actions continue for the foreseeable future, I don't think society is
really worse off in anyway - at least not that I can see

~~~
GekkePrutser
Yes, right now people are fighting it even though it's common sense to have
these measures.

But eventually they'll get used to it and the false sense of safety it gives
them when the danger has already passed, and they'll be fighting to give it
up. Wait and see! People have a slow momentum.

------
pcl
Written by Edward Snowden, fwiw.

~~~
082349872349872
Last I heard (several years ago), Snowden's position is that he'd be happy to
stand trial in the US, as long as the proceedings were public. Is that still
the case?

------
jjcon
Surveillance isn’t going anywhere - nearly every country is utilizing it (be
it widely known or unknown) and that trend is only increasing.

The hope of democratic nations is to use it well, with ample checks, balances,
and protections. It is arguably a necessity for national and international
security. Proper checks should keep it confined to this space.

Surveillance has been in use for decades by most countries, somewhere along
the line we forgot though that the enemy isn’t surveillance itself, it is
abuse.

~~~
gentleman11
You have to trust that an unbroken line of honest surveillance users will
exist at all points in government and business, decade after decade, across
all political parties and industries. How exactly is that going to happen when
even convenience store chains are recklessly using ai driven mass surveillance
now?

------
pdog
The article doesn't really explain why mass surveillance or surveillance
capitalism has to end.

In fact, if the exemplary tools of resistance are lasers and traffic cones, it
sounds like the system is well on its way to being perfected.

------
LockAndLol
I wonder how they'll try and combat anonymous networks like TOR and I2P once
these become faster and more popular. Thanks to federation and distributed
technologies, I think they'll have a hard time snooping on people.

But that's maybe 20 years away

------
sneak
Ha, well played, Doctorow. I preordered a dead trees copy of this release of
Homeland/Little Brother (both of which I had already read) to read the Snowden
intro. It arrived not long ago, and I did just that.

Today it’s in Wired. :D

------
na85
Is the page not loading properly for me, or is this "article" just a single
paragraph?

~~~
ip_addr
[https://archive.is/HPt5G](https://archive.is/HPt5G)

------
justanotheranon
[https://www.nccgroup.trust/globalassets/our-
research/us/whit...](https://www.nccgroup.trust/globalassets/our-
research/us/whitepapers/cryptopocalypse_reference_paper.pdf)

remember this presentation from a few years ago?

The Factoring Dead: Preparing for the Coming Cryptopocalypse.

the only reason global mass surveillance is even technically possible os
because turnkey mass scale crypto exists.

if NSA and FVEYs could not conceal their own penetration and exfiltration of
all the world's data, then they would not be able to do it on a scale like we
saw reveales in Snowden's leaks. cryptography PROTECTS the Surveillance State
MORE than it protects us Plebians. the asymmetrical advantage of weilding
cryptographic supremacy is what makes NSA's regime physically possible.

all modern crypto is based on a handful of crypto primitive math algorithms.
we blindly trust them to be secure because nobody yet knows how to crack them.
but if some lone wolf math genius pulled an Isaac Newton and invented a
solution to FACTOR and proved P=NP, then crypto as we know it would cease to
exist. no more RSA, no more ECC, no more AES, no more SHA3.

this wont even require quantum computers, because it is presently unknown
whether there exists a classical solution to insoluble problems like FACTOR
and P=NP.

what if a classical solution does exist? what if it is found in the next 10
years?

i believe it will be found.

i agree with Snowden's sentiments. the mass surveillance state is an anomaly,
a blip of time where a lack of mathematical progress was met with the rise of
the global Internet, where it was convenient for NSA to use crypto as a weapon
against all of us. post-cryptopocalypse, life is going to be very inconvenient
for NSA and the FVEYs. the cost of hoarding secrets will become too great
compared to the risk of losing those secrets due to a newly leveled
cryptographic playing field. leveled in the sense that anyone can
realistically attack any known ciphers.

the future of cryptography is its past. the 18th century. manually designed
cryptosystems intended to have very short shelf lives, because they get
cracked so frequently. only militaries and banks will have the resources to
design and deploy cryptosystems. since it will be so much more expensive to
deploy encryption, only truly important secrets will be encrypted at all.
there will be a massive cultural shift in how our Intelligence Agencies
operate. they won't even resemble themselves as they are today.

for this reason, i am a radical optimist about the fall of the mass
surveillance state.

------
foolzcrow
Thank you. Tracing our every move and our every thought is a clear human
rights violation. Slavery is alive and well.

~~~
kyleee
probably wise to have a new word for it other than slavery, though I
sympathize with the sentiment.

~~~
jxramos
* surveillery * digital captivity * chains of surveillance

~~~
omgwtfbyobbq
I think webs is more palatable than chains.

------
xwdv
The only reason we have mass surveillance is because we don’t have a way to
surveil only those who should be surveilled. But I agree, once there’s a way
to do so, mass surveillance will end in favor of highly targeted surveillance.

~~~
feanaro
This is only if you believe that dragnet surveillance is not done on purpose,
in order to control the masses.

~~~
xwdv
Control the masses to do what exactly?

~~~
AndrewBissell
What _not_ to do is the better way to pose the question.

~~~
mac01021
Ok. Not to do what?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Not inconvenience those in power.

Remember there are enough laws that no one is in compliance with all of them.
That leaves anyone unpopular at risk of retaliation. Therefore, the more data
points you have on an opponent, the more control you have.

~~~
mac01021
Are you saying that citizens with a mind to criticize an
administration/senator/whatever are regularly blackmailed into refraining from
doing that?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Blackmailed? No need. Retaliated against, punished, neutralized, ruined,
stalked? Often.

\- [https://whistleblowersofamerica.org/2019/04/01/what-is-
whist...](https://whistleblowersofamerica.org/2019/04/01/what-is-
whistleblower-retaliation/)

\- [https://whistleblower.org/timeline-us-
whistleblowers/](https://whistleblower.org/timeline-us-whistleblowers/)

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy)

\- [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kxzq/dmvs-selling-
data-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kxzq/dmvs-selling-data-private-
investigators-making-millions-of-dollars)

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT)

\- [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danielwagner/she-
told-t...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danielwagner/she-told-the-dea-
its-agent-was-a-stalker-then-things-got)

\- [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-us-government-
employee...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-us-government-employee-
charged-computer-hacking-and-cyber-stalking-scheme)

Think you're safe at home?

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge)

Think it is new?

\- [https://theconversation.com/j-edgar-hoovers-revenge-
informat...](https://theconversation.com/j-edgar-hoovers-revenge-information-
the-fbi-once-hoped-could-destroy-rev-martin-luther-king-jr-has-been-
declassified-118026)

