

On the freedom to speak - espeed
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/54268127504/on-the-freedom-to-speak

======
rayiner
The whole Lessig/Palantir issue is so illustrative of the tech community's
bizarre insistence on ideological purity on political issues, and consequently
illustrative of why tech as an industry has so little political influence
despite having money and people.

~~~
espeed
This view held by those in power that "idealists are weak" is an idea ripe for
disruption.

The view was stated in a post yesterday "Freedom: The Big American Lie"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962459)):

 _To snub and even to wound your most zealous supporters, as Obama has done,
is regarded as a mark of maturity in Washington. This is not because snubbing
or wounding them is a brave thing to do, but exactly the opposite: Because the
righteous attitude of the idealist is repugnant to the men of power, who know
that idealists are, in fact, men of weakness, entitled to neither courtesy nor
respect._

Maybe the culture of power could be disrupted if a world dominated by bankers
and takers was usurped by these makers whom learned to thrive in a culture of
openness and sharing. Maybe this change in culture could usher in a New
Camelot. Idealistic? -- yes. Possible? -- absolutely, if leading founders make
solving this problem their next challenge.

The US was founded on a set of ideals
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream)).
This country was started by founders. It can be restored by founders.

~~~
rayiner
Idealists are weak in a democracy because their devotion to ideological purity
makes them unable to form the coalitions, which are necessary to have any
political impact in a majoritarian system.

Its silly to claim that "makers" are idealists by nature. Most of the "makers"
I know are engineers, and if anything engineering as a profession has a
distinctly conservative, "don't rock the boat" mentality. E.g. I wouldn't call
any of the civil engineers I know high-minded idealists, but rather intensely
pragmatic and carefully conservative (which is kind of what you want in your
bridge-builders...).

The "American Dream" bears little resemblance to the founding principles of
the republic. Much of what he perceive as the "American Dream" is populist
rhetoric added to the American narrative by Andrew Jackson and FDR, along with
nationalist rhetoric added during the Cold War.

The country was founded by lawyers, another profession not exactly known for
its idealism. The American "revolution" was a deeply conservative one, mostly
seeking a return to the status quo as it was before the British, drained by
wars with France, started hitting up the colonies for money. Indeed, much of
the American polity viewed the radicalism of the French Revolution with
skepticism and distaste (at one point Thomas Paine was arrested in France and
scheduled to be executed).

~~~
espeed
First you said...

 _The whole Lessig /Palantir issue is so illustrative of the tech community's
bizarre insistence on ideological purity on political issues, and consequently
illustrative of why tech as an industry has so little political influence
despite having money and people._

Now you say...

 _Its silly to claim that "makers" are idealists by nature._

BTW, in case my usage of "makers" needs clarification, I am using "makers" in
the PG sense of the word
([http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)) where
"makers" == hackers, painters, _founders_.

Successful founders find ways to solve problems.

Elon Musk founded Tesla, SolarCity, and SpaceX on a set of ideals, i.e
"principles that one actively pursues as a goal," and he has found a way to
achieve these ideals that most thought were "impossible."

If Elon Musk and enough other successful founders decided to run for office,
the world would be a different place.

~~~
rayiner
Your confusion is predicated on your conflating "the tech community" with
"makers." The tech community definitely has an idealistic streak. But it a
small subset of the larger engineering world, which really does not. To the
extent that you can ascribe an ideology to a profession, all those chemical
engineers and civil engineers are not "hackers" or "painters" but rather
"pyramid builders."

~~~
espeed
Your confusion is predicated on your glossing over that I said _these makers_
, in direct reference to your statement about "the tech community" being
idealists. And in the context of the tech community (as you framed it), the
makers who are hackers/founders (as I framed it) are an even smaller subset of
the tech community and thus the engineering community at large.

------
jaekwon
Lessig (or something) is deleting my comment on Disqus. Here it is:

\----

The the government's claims of transparency and audibility of the NSA's PRISM
program is analogous (if not directly related) to the claims of Palantir's.
Search for "immutable auditing" below:

[http://www.palantir.com/wp-content/static/pg-analysis-
blog/2...](http://www.palantir.com/wp-content/static/pg-analysis-
blog/2009/07/Privacy-and-Civil-Liberties-are-in-Palantirs-DNA.pdf)

But even with such an audit trail to the core, it is known that it isn't
sufficient:

[http://www.informatik.uni-
freiburg.de/~accorsi/papers/imf09....](http://www.informatik.uni-
freiburg.de/~accorsi/papers/imf09.pdf)

I wager that for any given system that touts immutable audibility, there is a
way to hack around it. Privacy through automated means is impossible. At best
it is a kind of DRM that the NSA can easily work around secretly if it wanted
it. What we should be advocating instead is Perfect Forward Secrecy in our
internet architecture, and the dismantling of PRISM and related data centers.

Prof Lessig, in your book "Code", you are using the issue of copyright to
condone the current direction of the surveillance state and offering red
herrings as "balancing" compromises. Such a balance is impossible in the face
of concentrated storage of (even encrypted) storage data by intelligence
agencies. As long as the NSA can tap the wires and record information in vast
databases for cold storage, we are absolutely in risk.

More technical discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966942)

P.S., FTFY: "I have not, AND would not ever, accept money from Palantir..."

------
kevinpet
This is a good example of why I don't have the enthusiasm most of this
community has for Lessig. His single issue lately is money in politics, to the
extent that he seems to be blind to anything else.

The criticism which he linked to primarily pointed out that he was speaking
well of a company that exists primarily to enable the surveillance state. My
reading of the mention of contributions to politicians in the last paragraph
was to point out that this company is contributing to people who Lessig almost
certainly does not agree with politically.

But Lessig's response is entirely focussed on not being tainted by any
contributions.

He seems to get it what the root of the criticism is: " The essence of the
criticism is that Palantir is a bad company, or that it has done bad things,
or that it has been funded by bad people."

But his response is "I am completely in favor of questions being raised of
anyone like me (meaning people trying to push a particular public policy)
about whether mentioning a company or their product is done in exchange for
money."

No one ever raised this question. It's not a suspicion. I think what we'd like
to know from Lessig is:

1\. Do you think it's okay to engage in wholesale spying on Americans, as long
as it's subject to what you consider the appropriate oversight?

2\. If you don't like spying, are you speaking well of Palantir because you
don't think they are involved in it, or are you just interested in the one
aspect of their technology and not trying to promote the company as a whole?

~~~
npsimons
Not that I'm defending Lessig or Palantir (I'm definitely not a fan of
Palantir), but I think the point Lessig was making is that of all the options,
having one that is accountable and traceable is probably the least bad. That
is to say, agencies (both public and private) are going to (and have!) use
data gathering technologies; we may not be able to prevent it. The best we
_may_ be able to do is ensure that the chain of custody is unbroken, and
evidence isn't manufactured, manipulated or otherwise called into doubt. That
and start enforcing warrant requirements again.

~~~
grey-area
_That and start enforcing warrant requirements again._

I think enforcing the law (or creating new laws) and revoking the Patriot act
would be far more effective than any technical measures after collection. The
restrictions of the Palantir system sound about as effective as Snapchat (that
is, not at all effective for a determined user). If you can read it and see
it, you can spread information and use it in an uncontrolled way. That's not
even considering other attacks like photographs, duplicates of the memory,
hacks etc. - once the information has escaped the system into the brain of one
user, there is no way to control access.

The best solution is for that information to be collected only when _strictly
necessary_ and deleted after use, not stored. That's inconvenient and less
effective for spy agencies, but more effective for the privacy of everyone
else. If you want to stop universal surveillance, we have to control the
collection of the data - anything else is too late in the process to make any
meaningful difference and will be subverted over time, as the NSA abuse of
their mandate has demonstrated.

------
jtchang
What type of technology would allow us to be absolutely certain that a piece
of information was only used for an explicit purpose?

My first thought was a chain of custody with public/private key encryption for
viewing the information. Perhaps file systems that record access?

~~~
jbert
It's analagous to media DRM. Nothing "works" if the user has admin access on
the viewing device. And the only way to ensure that is a "trusted computing"
chain all the way from processor boot.

Which is possible, but you have to lock out any viewers who can't demonstrate
a secure chain from boot to viewing app (so you can trust the viewing app is
"yours" rather than the device owners).

And there's always the analog hole. Unless you can rely on a 'Eurion'
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)-like](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation\)-like)
mark to stop recording, people can always capture data at the point of
display-to-retina.

The only other approach is the after-the-fact blamethrower, where you tag each
copy steganographically so that you know who was the original source of any
leaked or circulated copies. That wouldn't stop a Snowden though.

~~~
whatusername
Isn't the display-to-retina capture handled by physical security? Ie -- aren't
most top-secret (not sure the exact classification but you know what I mean)
facilities controlled in regards to what electronic equipment you can take
inside?

~~~
jbert
Yes, good point. But it all depends on level of risk, type and amount of data
etc.

You don't need any electronics for a film camera. Or any metal, for that
matter. It's a risk to take such an item in, but maybe it's worth it for your
use case.

And I guess if it's small amounts of text, there's always human memory (or
writing on your skin?).

So you are (obviously I guess) trusting the people accessing the data to not
abuse it, "helping" that trust with whatever technical countermeasures make it
harder to move bulk data.

------
javajosh
What a remarkable response. Lessig reacts to the substance, rather than the
emotion of the criticism, making distinctions that need to be made, and
answers the criticisms in language that's easy to understand.

He'd make a great lawyer.

~~~
espeed
Well, he is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law
([http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig](http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig),
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig)
:-).

~~~
javajosh
Yes, I know. I was making a funny!

------
dram
Sounds like great news for Glenn Greenwald. Can we see the audit trail for
Team Themis and understand more about how Palantir was contracted to be paid
$3.6MM for malicious datamining to attack a US journalist?

------
espeed
Jeff Jonas ([https://twitter.com/JeffJonas](https://twitter.com/JeffJonas))
has been working on a similar immutable audit system at IBM. It's part of his
G2 Sensemaking system that started as a skunk works project in 2011...

Sensemaking on Streams – My G2 Skunk Works Project: Privacy by Design (PbD)
(2011)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2011/02/sensemaking-...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2011/02/sensemaking-
on-streams-my-g2-skunk-works-project-privacy-by-design-pbd.html)

Found: An Immutable Audit Log (2007)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/11/found-an-
imm...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/11/found-an-immuta.html)

Immutable Audit Logs (IAL’s) (2006)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_au...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_audit.html)

Yesterday’s Technology Review Story: Blinding Big Brother, Sort of (2006)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/yesterdays_t...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/yesterdays_tech.html)

Also see...

G2 | Sensemaking Two Years Old Today (2013)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2013/01/g2-sensemaki...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2013/01/g2-sensemaking-
two-years-old-today.html)

G2 | Sensemaking – One Year Birthday Today. Cognitive Basics Emerging (2012)
[http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2012/01/g2-sensemaki...](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2012/01/g2-sensemaking-1-year-
birthday-today-cognitive-basics-emerging.html)

------
aortega
I have the sensation that palantir and prism must be related in some way.

~~~
gregors
It's because the CIA is a major backer of Palantir. Palantir put out the site
[https://analyzethe.us/](https://analyzethe.us/) Tracking and analyzing is
what they do.

The CIA is also a major backer of mongodb and they aren't getting called out.
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/mongodb-maker-10gen-
closes-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/mongodb-maker-10gen-closes-
undisclosed-round-from-u-s-intelligence-investors/)

~~~
mpyne
"Next in the WUO news: Department of Defense a major backer in corn foodstuff
development programs. Corn farmers remain suspiciously silent about the whole
thing. Do the corn farmers realize how their corn is being used???"

~~~
moham
there's prototypical government subsidy and research through universities and
then slowly out to private sector, and then there's direct capital injection
for start-up from "private" venture capital firm run by the CIA.

