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[dupe] Groklaw news website abandoned over US surveillance (bbc.co.uk)
82 points by ColinWright on Aug 21, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments


Previous discussion:

Forced Exposure

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6242569

Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243081


> 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?


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).


How disgustingly condescending.


talk to your representation, bear the inconvenience and reduce usage of known invasive service, and vote.


Just saw this one: Troll the NSA :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzUxY0j-Y0A

On a serious note however, I do not think people who've worked in the Government long enough (i.e. those who stand to gain from snooping.) will budge. It'd take a lot more effort to displace the tyrannical succession because it is kind of 99.99% in place already.



Oh this one is cool :-)


Scary.




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