Yes, I think this page could use a "how can I help?" section; that doesn't just say "vote for us", that is. Ways to help people help themselves get organized around this issue.
I suppose a simple way, without getting involved politically, would be to stop using any service which is hosted in the US or by a company that falls under US jurisdiction.
A stampede of users leaving the likes of Google, Facebook, etc. would put pressure on those companies to use their resources to fight it 'at home'.
I realise this is a relatively naïve POV, but you only have to see how quickly Instagram reversed their ToCs a few months back - after users started closing their accounts in droves - to see how this can prompt the big boys into action.
You could also argue that there's a real opportunity for a European competitor to launch a rival to these services, under the guise of our strong data protection laws (in the UK at least). So if a DropBox or Gmail clone (for example) started to get traction, again it would put pressure on.
It may tap the cables, but if you encrypt then they're going to struggle to get at anything. Ultimately if they want access to your data they need a warrant.
> I suppose a simple way, without getting involved politically, would be to stop using any service which is hosted in the US or by a company that falls under US jurisdiction.
I'm not sure it's that simple, nor is that entirely practical. It's not the companies you need to put pressure on. I would image that some of them aren't entirely excited at the idea of working with the NSA, but they aren't given much choice.
The unfortunate truth is that lobbying DC is the most effective way to enact this kind of change. You can do this online to some extent by using services like Votizen.com. Lobbying by Silicon Valley and others in tech certainly worked for the JOBS act.
I think we can help the most by clearly communicating with family and friends what the issues (as we see them) are.
I just spent about 40 minutes crafting a long email that I sent to about 40 family members and close friends detailing why I thought people needed to contact their elected politicians, sign the https://optin.stopwatching.us/ petition, etc.
Seriously, if we can, as individuals, each change several people's minds on this issue, that helps.
It's unlikely that the powerful institutions will give up their powerful tools.
What I do think might work, though, is a system added to it where every human query is logged & their human peers can ask, "WTF Carl? Why are you looking at data on your ex wife? Or, Why are you looking at your political enemies?"
I think the humans inside those institutions would not limit their power, but they would want to keep an eye on their peers to make sure their peers are not abusing their power.
Those query & access logs can be periodically reviewed by their peers, and their superiors, and those logs should be kept as long as the data is, & queryable just the same as any other data.
Im 99.99% against this sort of thing, but even I have to reluctantly accept that wheels don't get un-invented. So, proper regulation and oversight is the only way to go.
"We are appalled to learn of the unprecedented surveillance of Internet users worldwide through PRISM and similar programmes."
There has not been a shred of evidence that PRISM gives the government any capability that it did not already have with FISA. All we learned was the name of the system that some companies use to respond to FISA requests, a name that they weren't even aware of. There is no practical difference between the U.S. companies listed on the PRISM slides and U.S. companies that are not; FISA covers them all. The initial claims by Glenn Greenwald that PRISM gave the NSA direct access to company servers have been refuted a hundred times over and walked back by Greenwald himself. If you were just now appalled to learn about the changes made to FISA with the PATRIOT act, you are 12 years behind the times.
For me, the big takeaway is that information is being stored in advance of it being 'collected' (as they are [mis-]using the word). I don't think that is an interpretation that the lawmakers anticipated, and it is an incredible end-run with potentially cataclysmic effects for liberty.
We all know that information can be leaked or misused. In fact, I think it is a truism: all 'secret' information is eventually leaked or misused.
The old process, where the government had to go to court to even start to collect information about a suspect was a completely different thing with less horrific side-effects.
And yes, we learned that the government may not have direct access to servers of the social media companies, but dispelling that claim brought the issue of internet backbone access to the fore.
I don't follow. "Information is being stored in advance of it being 'collected'" - what exactly do you mean? Your GMail e-mail is stored with Google. The government can only get it with a FISA request targeted at you or someone yo e-mailed (via a request aimed at their account).
Way to miss the point. This kind of pointless pedantry focused on the wrong argument is one of the most self-damaging and hateworthy features of the tech community.
What was the point, then? What exactly happened recently that we are supposed to be so upset about? If PRISM was nothing, that leaves the Verizon phone metadata leak, and nothing more.
The existing outrageous actions of the government were finally given attention by the media, a large slice of the populace finally seems to have noticed and the government has been compelled to actually admit and address the issue. [1]
We should be upset that these outrageous policies ever existed. We should be upset that it took this damn long for the media to treat the issue with the gravity it deserves.
And we should be happy as hell it actually 'took' as a news story this time, let alone managed to stay in the news for weeks.
To the privacy conscious, it's irrelevant whether Snowden told us anything "new". What's relevant is that (for whatever reason) this long-festering problem was finally brought to the forefront in a way that has demanded attention.
I suppose if you didn't mind any of the "old news" that the government was abusing the constitution, or had made your peace with it, this might seem a pointless story.
[1] Though that's a long way from a fix, it's significantly better than the dismissive "with us or against us" defenses of the past.
Thank you. IMO, this is the most factually correct and honest basis for the prevailing sentiment that I think there is. It bothers me, though, that the cause has to be renewed and sustained with misinformation. Where was this outrage when the PATRIOT act was renewed in 2011? There certainly was some, but from what I recall it was orders of magnitude less than it is now. This is why it seems to me like the outrage is based on the recent factual misconceptions. Even worse, conspiracy theories are being thrown around that go far beyond even what Greenwald originally claimed PRISM was, and those theories aren't being scrutinized and further fuel the fire.
If we are going to have a debate on what the scope of electronic surveillance should be, it should be an honest one. I just feel like we're replacing the ridiculous unfounded "TERRORISTS GON DESTROY 'MURICA" sentiment with an equally ridiculous unfounded "GUBMINT OUT TA GITCHYA" sentiment. I don't like having to choose between those two options.
I tend to agree. However -- 12 years later, I'm willing to look past the "GUBMINT OUT TA GITCHYA" angle if that's what it takes to sway public opinion/attention.
Calm and objective hasn't so much as slowed this down.
What outrageous actions? What outrageous policies? What long-festering problem? You haven't said a damn thing, just as Snowden has yet to expose any wrongdoing on the part of the NSA. He has said that the NSA is spying on everybody, but all of the evidence he has presented has shown nothing of the kind and in fact shows that procedures to protect our privacy and 4th amendment rights are in place and being followed.
The point is we have renewed, solid evidence that our governments are constructing a global surveillance state. This fact has been shoved into our public awareness over the last few weeks, and hopefully will continue to be at the top of our minds until it's resolved, because the conclusion of such a process, left unchecked, is the end of individual freedom.
The fact that "some of it was known in the past" does not make it any less worthy of our attention today.
My point is exactly that we do NOT have renewed, solid evidence that our governments are constructing a global surveillance state. All we have is sensationalism. This is not a "pedantic" point. In fact, we have explicitly learned that they do NOT have a backdoor to get your data from tech companies. We learned that to do so they must use a FISA order, which we have known since 2001.
If you don't have anything positive to contribute and you really think this is not worth your time, then why don't you just go away? Why the pedantic need to argue some minor sub-points when everyone else is talking about the big picture?
No one cares about your arguments, and you don't seem to care about other people's arguments either. I think the best solution for everyone is if you just go and argue somewhere where people might care.
I am very fact based, and when someone makes a claim that " we have renewed, solid evidence that our governments are constructing a global surveillance state" I expect that there are some facts to back it up. Sweeping mass sentiment is not evidence in and of itself. Facts are not "pedantic" to me; to me evidence is the only rational basis for belief and action. And quite frankly, there hasn't been any new solid evidence presented for this "surveillance state" aside from Verizon turning over phone call metadata. I am sorry that this discussion has made you angry, but I don't feel that what you are saying is warranted. I have been reading what people have been writing very closely, which is how I arrived at the position I hold. If you want to provide the new evidence of this "surveillance state" I will read every word you write, but if the evidence is suspect I reserve the right to call it out. That is not "pedantic." I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Here is one new thing - The president has admitted that this programme exists while before in congressional committees it was denied.
The president stated that nobody listens to your data when evidence has been presented to the contrary.
No one had ever before seen a FISA court order. Most of the public was not even aware of Fisa courts. Most of the public did not know that this court has granted all requests, but two. Most of the public was not aware of secret courts interpreting secret laws while handing down secret judgments. The public did not know that a warrant was not needed but mere policy in many cases.
Etc, etc, etc.
All of this is new. The leaked documents are TOP SECRET. If top secrets becoming public knowledge is not new then what is!?
So, hang on, the person has an opinion and lists the facts they believe support it. You call them a pedant, hateworthy, that nobody cares and that they ought to 'go away' because of 'the global surveillance state' or something. You don't have to agree with the person but basically, you're being a dick. Please don't.
His opinion is starting from a vastly different set of facts than most of the people commenting here. He thinks the discussion is about provable facts. The discussion is about likelihoods and evidence. He thinks the discussion is about news. The discussion is about doing something about a programme that's been building up for a decade or more.
From two such completely alien starting points, there is little possible useful argument. I've been in enough online arguments in my time to recognise a lost cause.
I didn't get that impression but that's neither here nor there. If you're convinced discussion with someone is a lost cause, the best thing to do is likely something other than flying into a mouthfrothing nerdrage at them. Surely something you've also noticed through experience in online arguments.
Governments plural. The naive part of this campaign is the assumption that the US is the only government doing this, rather than the one with the leakiest operation.
Asking EU governments to censure the US when they have their own programs (the UK clearly does) is just naked anti-Americanism.
If PRISM was "nothing," why is everyone involved so worried? Why are they giving such careful, specific denials about what PRISM does? Why are they talking about how much harm it does to our intelligence gathering if people know about PRISM?
The series of "least untruthful" statements by the Obama administration, its allies in Congress, and the leaders of the NSA and FBI suggests that there is in fact a story here.
"If you were just now appalled to learn about the changes made to FISA with the PATRIOT act, you are 12 years behind the times."
The leaked documents are TOP SECRET. By definition top secret documents are not public knowledge. If top secrets becoming public knowledge is not new then what is?
Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin on a lot of issues, including privacy. Having many parties, regardless of stance, would at least allow for more varied discussions.
This is why I'm so glad this NSA dustup happened during Obama's presidency (note: I voted for him). I think if this had happened during a Republican administration, particularly the last one, even less would be made of it. I think there's a really good chance it would have been reduced to a partisan scuffle and people that identity Republican would have been less inclined to find it offensive. I think the hilariously consistent approach to our privacy and the Patriot Act by both administrations creates an opportunity for the public to react to the facts relatively independent of their party affiliations.
Yes, but it also means that the party in power, currently the Democrats in the Senate and Executive Branch, have a stake in the status quo, as did the Republicans previously. Witness the contrast between candidate Obama in 2008, piously railing against privacy invasions and warrant-less wiretapping, and a defensive, contrite President Obama this month, smoothly reassuring us that NSA analysts won't monitor content without a warrant.
By the time the 2014 elections roll around, this issue will be all but forgotten by the vast majority of the electorate. At least, that's what both parties are probably counting on.
Yeah, and politicians know how to deflect attention from this issue. A few months before the election, if people are still talking about the NSA, you can expect the media to suddenly start reporting on a scandal involving some politician, or how the economy is taking a new downturn, or how we gave Syrians some kind of deadly weapon. The people in charge of this country know how to deal with reporters: give the reporters a scoop, and they'll forget whatever it was that they were reporting on before that.
I also think this brings to light the fact that we have a rising fidelity stake in the politics of other nations and I'm left wondering if in the absence of a Pirate Party here in the US, maybe I ought to at least be contributing actively to these efforts overseas.
Seems like a stub in many ways (not the article, the party, considering the utter lack of any seats anywhere), but I think that is in line with the PP in other countries; they all learn by doing. Though in the US they might need extra love I think, to offset people being squeamish about the name :P
we have a rising fidelity stake in the politics of other nations
And vice versa. As glad as I am about some things in Europe, I would dread a world where the US actually "falls". I think it would be like the gulf stream stopping... The US could be more enlightened, sure, but it also could be much worse, and then I'd be (not) writing this from a Russian colony or something. So act local, too, you deserve it, and "we" want you to have it.
Thanks, I realized shorty after. Yeah, it needs support and awarenesa, since a party that nobody knows exists might as well not. "Support our friends in the US" with a link the the US PP would make a nice footer for antiprism.eu... !
How do we know there isn't a European equivalent of PRISM? The American one was kept secret for quite some time and it's not like European countries are any less technically advanced or motivated.
We know that GCHQ in the UK is doing something similar. But unlike the US system, we may have a chance to make a difference here since the EU is already pretty strict on data protection laws.
I was under the impression that the data protection laws don't really say much about what the government can do internally, or even whether they play by the rules.
A loose federation would make it harder at the Europe-level, I would think. Don't national laws, or at least allegiance to laws at the national level, trump EU laws?
Can the EU issue the equivalent of national security letters? In the US, it seems like the exploitation of obedience to authority (1963) and the fear of federal prison helped keep PRISM secret. I can't imagine the same thing happening in the EU.
At the state level, I reckon it is possible that things are happening, but even in that case, how hard is it for an EU citizen to move across their nearest border and set up life their in order to whistleblow against their home country? Does the EU have whistle-blower protection laws where I could work in country away, move across the border to country B, blow the whistle on country A, and not fear extradition to country A since I'm protected under whistle blower laws?
> Don't national laws, or at least allegiance to laws at the national level, trump EU laws?
No. The EU issues directives which EU countries have to turn into laws. The implementation details vary from country to country, but save a few exceptions, laws the meet the minimum requirements of these directives must be enacted. This doesn't always happen in practice but it's a violation of EU law. Sometimes the laws just aren't enforced, like the UK's implementation of the EU cookie directive.
No idea about any of the rest of your comment. Perhaps someone better informed will chime in.
For our values, we have been derided as “pirates”. For our hope that every person may be free to access all of human knowledge, we have been called “pirates”. For our belief that one need not ask permission to participate in governance, industry, culture, and other aspects of society, we have been called “pirates”. For our insistence that citizens should not be surveilled and distrusted as if they are criminals, we have been called “pirates”. For our rejection of authority and profit-seeking when it does not serve the common good of all people, we have been called “pirates”.
We reclaim this label of “pirate” and abjure its derogatory, incendiary implication. We are Pirates. We stand for the liberty, equality, and solidarity of all human beings, and against all threats they may face.
I myself am not sure if I would like "Freedom Party" or something like that better. When someone calls themselves "The Good Guys" without irony, I get nervous. So at least given the choice between those extremes (which of course is not the actual choice, the PP could have plenty of names that neither "offensive" nor meaningless), I would prefer irony and alienating those who don't get said irony.
Related fun fact: Here in Austria there is a party that gets translated to "Freedom Party". It is a right-wing party, who is known for their anti-foreigner stance and having members that are close to Nazi views. Every now and then they are in the media for it, even though they are (usually) not as extreme as for example the NPD in Germany or similar parties. However, still far from what most people would consider "Freedom".
So really, I think picking something more neutral as you name would probably help showing that you aren't just a marketing institution.
However, I still think that the name is bad, because of what it stands for, historically. I can understand the reason behind it, but that's something really internal. You can tell that to people that already are interested into the pirate party, but even if there were people that would share your views the word "Pirate" simply does not make them sound like a serious alternative.
Of course, names are bad and for the sake of neutrality maybe they should be called after numbers. Not even colors are really neutral anymore.
It isn't really the "Freedom Party" when they demand this: "For our rejection of authority and profit-seeking when it does not serve the common good of all people, we have been called 'pirates'."
How can I pursue my own interests—how can I have freedom—if I have to serve some nebulous "common good," just as if I lived in a communist state?
The philosophy you're looking for is libertarianism.
Right. And freedom, or even the idea of individual existance, is not nebulous at all? Or maybe that's also related to acting stupid and squinting, i.e. nothing ultimately holds up to scrutiny, but sometimes you just gotta agree on what is likely meant in the current context, and move on?
I think the assumption here is simply the average human being, who is happy when in company with other happy human beings, not the alienated, necrophile collector of things and symbols who "lately" have become so numerous they actually think just wearing shirts and shoes while running countries or companies makes them a fully fledged fucking person, haha.
If you honestly cannot think of anything that profits you without hurting others, then wtf are your interests? How can others have freedom, whatever it is, when your interest, whatever it is, is profiting off them, instead of doing work that profits off, say, chaos and energy by making it useful at least to you, if not others as well? How can you yourself even have any meaningful development as a person that way?
If you plant a fruit tree in your garden, and only you get to eat the fruit, and it makes you happy, then we're all better off for you being happier, and those who create ideas and tools that last longer and reach farther than just their belly are considered cooler still. But the purely parasitic BS has to go, and since it tends to make people lazy and ignorant, there is fuck all they will be able to do about it once the kindling actually catches. Is that okay for you, can we move on now?
Why do some people understand that murder is not okay, but don't apply to the same into, say, deceiving others into self-harm from which they profit? I think it's privilege. It's mighty easy to have endless discussions about what a gun actually is when you don't have one pointed at you.
If I plant a fruit tree in my garden, I no longer buy that fruit from a local farmer. Thus, I hurt the farmer.
If I build Facebook, I hurt MySpace. If I build Spotify, I hurt iTunes. If I build assembly robots that save businesses and consumers millions, I take away jobs from factory workers.
Anything you build upsets the good of someone else; that doesn't make it wrong.
This article mentions Funding of Privacy-Conscious Software, one thing that concerns me is, I am quoting from Wikipedia here, "..As of 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's $2M annual budget comes from the United States government..".
So, the United States government funds programs that help secure the identity of the people and the government also spends money on surveillance programs such as PRISM.
Can't the government just stop funding projects such as Tor any time they please? In such scenario, aren't we at the mercy of the very government to protect our identity that runs surveillance programs?
It's disappointing that the reaction to PRISM outside the US has not been one of fury. Non-US citizens have been hit worse by this but nobody in the mainstream European political landscape is making any noise about it. Is it because they don't have the temerity to risk relations with the US by publicly criticising them? I suspect it has more to do with not wanting to draw scrutiny to their own programs for mass surveillance.
I'm particularly surprised about Germany's reaction. Obama was scheduled to speak this week in Berlin, in the same spot where Kennedy gave once a famous speech (the Branderburg Gate). Now, I won't pretend that I'd expect the German government to cancel his speech, but I'd hope at least some hard questions would be asked.
I mean, Germans know exactly what happens when surveillance gets out of control - the Wikipedia page about the Stasi [1] is pretty good, including lines such as "counting part-time informers, the Stasi had one informer per 6.5 people" and "As the GDR began to fall, the Stasi did as well. They began to destroy the extensive files that they had kept, both by hand and with the use of shredders. When these activities became known, a protest erupted in front of the Stasi headquarters". Can anyone imagine US citizens storming the NSA, or the FBI? Even today those files are being reassembled, because people wants to know what happened.
And yet, what happened during the conference [2]? Angela Merkel essentially stepping in defense of Obama. She could have said she didn't agree. She could have remained quiet. And yet she speaks (mildly, though) in his favor, even while by her own admission "the questions have not yet been satisfactorily addressed". That was disappointing.
Merkel isn't exactly a proponent of digital privacy[1][2]. It's unbelievable that the government of a country where the Stasi were operating in living memory aren't incensed by this. If anyone's interested in a film showing what life was like under the regime, The Lives of Others is a haunting exploration of that period, particularly relevant to what's happening right now.
Depends on how you define "difference". In a way, of course it makes a difference. That domain wasn't registered recently, now there is a webpage there. It has words on them, people can read it. That it doesn't magically make the NSA disappear doesn't mean it doesn't make a difference.
Any and all change begins with thought, speech and action in individuals, then in groups. Some things took a LONG time, and consisted of many small things. Even "reading and talking about an article about something that matters instead of watching cats on youtube or discussing font sizes" can help, IMHO. Unless you think it distracts you from doing something that would have even more impact, I don't see the problem? I get impatience, but not futility.
If the respective pirate parties put in enough of an effort, informing the public, organizing protests, petitioning local and EU authorities and so forth they might get some of this through. I still think that even then it would be unlikely…
Of course I'm hoping that they succeed. But I see no reason to kid myself into believing that there is a high probability that this will work.
Since I'm living in Münster, where a lot of the German Pirates are and know quite a few of them, I'll be the first one to join any protest or demonstration they organize locally.
Since I rate the chances of it making an actual difference as pretty low - No.
Also, I don't have a clue how to organize SHIT.
And as far as making the world a better place goes, I'm currently looking into the possibility of automated vertical farming with hydro- or aquaponics. Even if I just have a teensy bit of success with that it would probably have a larger impact than organizing protests, an activity about which I know NOTHING.
They are already effecting change; seeing this on the front page has made me have much less respect for the Hacker News community. How can so many people be so stupid, and on HN of all places?
AJAX and REST sure are evil. The fact that 229 people have upvoted this is certainly proof that web-based UIs are something that we as hackers ought to oppose.
We are all aware that PRISM has been exposed to be nothing more than a user interface to information provided by companies that receive a search warrant after the request has gone through courts and lawyers, right? Surely 229 users of Hacker News cannot be that uninformed about PRISM, after so many front-page articles on the subject giving so many opportunities to hash out the details of what it is and is not, that they imagine it to be something nefarious?
It's good to be skeptical, and it's important to counsel against irrational or knee jerk judgements. But you're way, way too far on the other side of this.
When a related warrant, having "gone through courts and lawyers", turns out to have been a blanket demand for all call data from all Verizon customers, I think it's reasonable to assume that perhaps the checks and balances aren't as robust as we'd hoped.
And for those outside the US, a response like this seems quite reasonable to me. After all item #2 is "Uncover the facts".
Note the .EU domain name and the non-US/Europe focus of the content. As far as I've seen reported or stated by US representatives there's no going "through courts and lawyers" for non-citizens. PRISM may very well not have changed any of that but it was at least a wake up call outside the US for the fact that using US-based companies puts decisions about your data privacy in the hands of governments that view you, as a foreigner, as having absolutely no rights.
This is particularly scary because people have so far been used to considering the Internet as a sort of borderless global place and when it comes to privacy from government snooping it definitely is not.
Thats why much of this is a call for more transparency and law within Europe, including banning things that may be happening in the US, whether they are or not. We know that some European governments are doing things along these lines (with lower budgets). We had the Stasi in Europe, just a few years ago; we invented the Panopticon, and we have had a very mixed record.
Not my point at all. If I put my data in a European datacenter I'm in the same legal jurisdiction as the potential government snoop. If I put it in the US the USG may be more or less prone to snooping than my local government but what I'm sure of is that I will never have any legal standing to challenge it if it does snoop.
I knew this before of course. And before I assumed the snooping was low enough that I didn't care that I didn't have any legal standing to challenge it. Now I'm not so sure.
So does this mean I don't have to listen to people on HN complain about Netflix/Xbox Live/Pissroulette/etc. not being available outside the US anymore? Thank God!
"We are all aware that PRISM has been exposed to be nothing more than a user interface to information provided by companies that receive a search warrant after the request has gone through courts and lawyers, right?"
The Obama administration is awfully worried about people knowing about the existence of that front end. There are high-ranking officials committing perjury before Congress in an attempt to cover this story up. Somehow I doubt that they are worried about a mere front end.
Really, your response follows the same line of reasoning as the least untruthful statements being made to Congress right now. You are being pedantically specific -- PRISM itself may indeed just be a front end -- while ignoring the real story here, which is the NSA's ongoing wholesale surveillance. You are ignoring the fact that the NSA is keeping information that might be indicative of criminal activity, a dangerous mixture of intelligence gathering with law enforcement. When members of the Senate are saying that this is the tip of an iceberg, I do not think you can just write off this story as some misinformed reporters hyping up a front end.
It is not just an interface. The NSA is collecting data and using secret courts. The programs are clearly unconstitutional. If they are needed and the people want them, let's pass a Constitutional amendment. That's how it's supposed to work.
If the NSA were making individual wiretaps based on criminal suspicions, that would align with the Constitution. Instead, they are wiretapping almost everyone in the US.
Sounds like a great idea - and sponsored by the pirate party I see. They seem to be the ones trying to plant cookies on my computer, to 'improve' my web browsing experience.
