
United States of Secrets (Part Two) - plg
https://video.pbs.org/video/2365250130/
======
plg
So in light of this, which BTW is pretty horrendous when one sees it laid out
like this, does anyone publish "best practices" for the everyday citizen?
Maybe EFF?

On the one extreme (my guess: 98% of the population) one shares anything and
everything on social networks, no concept of encryption, or VPNs, lots of
sensitive info sent unencrypted over email, location-enabled smartphone, etc
etc.

On the other extreme I guess is the snowden/greenwald approach, only even boot
into Tails onto a laptop that has been inspected for mal(hard)ware, only ever
use Tor, always use PGP, never unencrypted email, etc. Only problem is that
the everyday person cannot interface with the rest of society this way (e.g.
their job).

So what are suggested best practices? ... and let's be realistic, the everyday
person cannot for example host their own email (although I wish the day comes
soon when this is possible)

~~~
rdl
For a completely average US citizen, I don't think NSA spying _has_ a
practical impact today, at least directly -- it's almost all future risk. It's
very serious future risk, that NSA will start to use its capabilities for
entirely unlawful and immoral things (political activities, repression) vs.
just spying on too many people when going after a smaller number of people.

So, the correct thing for average individuals today is to stop this from going
farther -- not trying so much to mitigate the effects today. There are two
main tools for the individual: politics, and commerce.

I'm willing to vote single-issue on reigning in NSA; I'd vote for Brian Schatz
or Ted Cruz based on this single issue, even though I hate them otherwise.

As for commerce: I'll choose companies which resist spying activities (Google,
Twitter, Sonic) over companies which cooperate completely (Telcos, eBay,
etc.).

(legal challenges kind of fall in between; if I had the resources, I'd
certainly fight vs. settle on these issues, individually or as a company, but
it's not fair to expect others to do so)

If I were a foreigner, I wouldn't be able to directly influence US politics. I
would lobby my government to end EU Safe Harbor and any other pressure they
can put on the US Government, and to fix my own crazy data retention laws. And
I'd probably prefer domestic companies, even when they also spy, just to put
pressure on the US.

~~~
headShrinker
> For a completely average US citizen, I don't think NSA spying has a
> practical impact today, at least directly -- it's almost all future risk.

While I think it's true. The keyword is direct. Though it should be mentioned
that indirect impact is measurable, now.

> 1 in 6 writers has avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would
> subject them to surveillance. Another 1 in 6 has seriously considered doing
> so.

Source: [http://www.pen.org/chilling-effects](http://www.pen.org/chilling-
effects)

~~~
dfc
I have seen this survey before and I have to say I am a little suspicious of
how they came up with this pullquote. I do not understand how the 11% who
responded "have seriously considered" is presented as "1 in 6 have seriously
considered." This is from Question 12.a in the survey.[^1]

    
    
      12   Over the past year or two, have YOU done or seriously considered
           doing any of the following because you thought your communications
           might be monitored in some way by the government?
      
      12.a Avoided writing or speaking on a particular topic
      
      %% | Response
      ------------------------------------------  
      16 | Yes, have done  
      11 | Have seriously considered
      70 | No, have not
       3 | Not sure/Not applicable
      ---+--------------------------------------
      27 | NET Yes/Have seriously considered
      73 | NET No/Not sure
    
    

"Have seriously considered" is not even "1 in 6 respondents excluding the
respondents that answered 'Yes, have done so.'"

I hope I am missing something obvious but as far as I currently understand the
survey/math this quote is _fucking shameful._ Getting popular support for
privacy protections is not going to happen by giving up the moral high ground.
It is hard enough to fight against the "weak on security issues" label, it is
going to be next to impossible to overcome "weak on security AND cannot be
trusted to tell the truth."

[^1]: Page 24
[http://www.pen.org/sites/default/files/Chilling%20Effects_PE...](http://www.pen.org/sites/default/files/Chilling%20Effects_PEN%20American.pdf)

~~~
tbrake
> "Have seriously considered" is not even "1 in 6 respondents excluding the
> respondents that answered 'Yes, have done so.'"

Interesting. Yes, correctly excluding those 16, 11/84 isn't even close to
1/6\. Incorrectly dividing by the NO answers (11/73) is. I'm inclined to
believe whoever came up with the quote made that mistake.

------
plg
PS if the link looks strange try
[http://video.pbs.org/video/2365250130/](http://video.pbs.org/video/2365250130/)

(i.e. not https)

ironic

~~~
plorg
MP4 video stream, direct from the PBS CDN:

[SD]
[http://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/videos/frontline/69be704d-8ed9-4...](http://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/videos/frontline/69be704d-8ed9-4ea5-80b9-be79f3e95ab6/133379/hd-
mezzanine-16x9/b3fc5ae0_00003212-16x9-mp4-baseline.mp4)

[HD]
[http://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/videos/frontline/69be704d-8ed9-4...](http://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/videos/frontline/69be704d-8ed9-4ea5-80b9-be79f3e95ab6/133379/hd-
mezzanine-16x9/b3fc5ae0_00003212-16x9-mp4-2500k.mp4)

(It wasn't working for me, so I played with the Chrome debugger)

~~~
sitkack
I was getting a 404 on the original link but these still loaded.

------
vinhboy
Why do they keep saying that ANY websites can track you through your cookies.

They also seem to imply that google purposefully made the PREF cookie so the
NSA can use it to track people. If anything, google is a victim themselves
here.

I love Frontline, but come on, this is just not accurate. Unless a lot of the
things I understand about the browser is wrong.

Whenever I see inaccuracies in tech reporting, it makes me wonder if there are
similar inaccuracies in other fields that I do not recognize because it's not
my specialty..

~~~
unreal37
If the NSA can track the request from your browser to the adsense/doubleclick
servers, then they can track where you go around large parts of the Internet.

I didn't get the sense they were saying the NSA made Google make that cookie.
Just that Google was denying that cookie was used for tracking, except 8 years
ago when they said it was.

I suspect we don't fully understand the level of ability the NSA has to
monitor a specific Internet user. It might be accurate to say that, if they
want to track you, they will easily know every site you visit surfing around
the web due to ad tracking cookies by all the various ad companies. I bet they
can tie a Google PREF=ID to you by name and IP address.

~~~
vinhboy
Yes I understand that. And I agree the NSA is wrong for doing that. But I felt
like the show is implying that google is purposefully doing it to allow the
NSA to track you. When it seems to me that Google got outsmarted by the NSA.

~~~
wordofchristian
Actually the summary of that whole segment seemed to simply be that, 1\.
google is really good at tracking users 2\. NSA became very interested in that
fact. 3\. NSA piggybacked on Google's tracking without them knowing.

I didn't get that they were saying google knew that the tracking cookie was
being used in this way. Only that they were setting the example of how best to
spy on people.

------
acqq
Includes:

Soltani: "A Personal Hit on Me" by Google

[http://video.pbs.org/video/2365249799/](http://video.pbs.org/video/2365249799/)

------
Create
We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question
whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with
the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States
government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

[http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html)

