I think most people feel powerless, either financially or technically.
Many people I know think what the NSA is doing is completely wrong, but they have problems logging into facebook and getting their email to work, they just feel powerless because they don't understand the technology behind the world they live in.
How can they stand up to something they can't even begin to comprehend?
The NSA could literally do anything they wanted to most people and they wouldn't even know about it.
And then we have a much smaller group of people in the tech industry (most people who frequent Hacker News), who know what the NSA is doing is horribly horribly wrong, but are afraid of being destroyed financially, socially, and professionally for standing up to them.
It feels like swimming up a waterfall. The NSA can so easily ruin lives by planting illegal material on your computer, then tip off the local cops who get a search warrant, then they seize your computer and find the illegal material on your computer.
And you life is ruined.
I mean, they are so powerful technologically speaking, they can ruin lives without so much as lifting a finger.
For many people, law enforcement doesn't even have to bother planting illegal material. They only have to twist the description of a target's behavior until it fits the requirements for violating a law (e.g. CFAA[1]), or catch the target committing any of the other federal crimes[2] he/she unknowingly commits on a regular basis.
1. Couldn't a random hacker do that? Or a hacker affiliated with a private institution (e.g. News of the World)?
2. There's this terrible virus going around that locks you out of your PC or server meaning you lose all your data unless you pay the ransom of $500 in bitcoins. With this new trend in un-regulated crypto-currency, this scam cannot be stopped through the traditional means - financial/bank account freezes. Does this give any privacy proponents pause for thought? Also there's the old hack your webcam and blackmail you which has led people to commit suicide. Again, malicious hackers, not a gov't conspiracy There's actually a reason we've given power to police/enforcers in every aspect of life: because criminals are ruthless and prey on the innocent and gullible - physically, financially, and of course, now cyber-ly.
3. You've actually started to glean the important point in how we deal with cyber evidence as a society. Nobody's life has ever been ruined by getting put into an internal watch-list. But when list become enforceable (like the No-Fly list, or the McCarthy-era communist list) then lives are ruined. This is similar to your point about planting evidence: when the local police and prosecutor get brought into it, lives are at stake. I again wonder though why a spy agency would need to hack evidence onto your computer when they could simply plant in your house; that has happend thousands of times by dirty street cops, while your example - being carried out by a gov't agency - has never been reported to happen even once.
The Snowden documents revealed that Germans visiting the Tor project website would be subject to permanent NSA surveillance. Does that make you more or less likely to click the link below? If the answer is "less likely", how does it feel to be intimidated out of your free expression?
It's because of the American separatist mentality. Your average gun toting, freedom loving American sees the world through a very polarizing lens. Not long ago, I read the book American Sniper by Chris Kyle [1], about a Navy SEAL who is the most successful American sniper of all times. The good guy/bad guy dichotomy is very apparent throughout the book. He claims his life's priorities are "God, Country, Family", in that particular order. Reading this can be a bit uncomfortable to a liberal minded individual. And when Chris Kyle fought and killed all those insurgents, I have no doubt he was doing it in the name of freedom; but the freedom he was seeking was freedom from Muslims.
A person like this - and his viewpoint is not alien or even radical in America - sees the USA as a nearly sole force of good, the home of the free and enlightened. Logically, someone like that would not wish to place limits on the military capabilities of the USA, as he still sees the world in a confrontational light.
Put simply, a large part of the American public sees the world in a confrontational way and doesn't wish to reign the military capability of their government.
Under the ideas of capitalism, gun rights and the constitution, such Americans feel they are serving an enlightened, balanced mechanism, and they want it to go on.
TL;DR Americans want freedom from you; they take the freedom from their government for granted.
That's an incredibly one-dimensional reading of the American worldview. The culture that you are describing exists, but it's hardly representative of the country as a whole. It is not very well represented in, say, the White House or the editorial board of the New York Times. The so-called American Establishment, which has an outsized influence, is well-educated and not particularly religious (and often not Christian). A relatively low percentage have served in the military.
It goes deeper than that. The White House plays off the ignorance and emotion of this group to do their bidding. This is what these people are dying for - giving us cheap fuel and preventing China from getting their hands on it.
Now ask yourself - do you agree with the decisions of these non-religious and well educated people? Yes, it started with Bush and Obama largely pulled them out. But Obama has failed in bringing order and instituting a functional society. Whether that country is even culturally capable of that after the trauma they've been through is debatable. But that's where we're at.
Why did nearly 4500 soldiers die in Iraq? To provide cheap fuel and block China? Yes. But I'll leave the mathematics of the total estimated amount of oil in the ground and preventing China from getting it to someone else.
As ISIS has demonstrated though, we're not even competent at maintaining an imperialist vassal state.
Seems like a lot of money for what's in the ground.
First, I apologize if that came across as one dimensional, but it's a very complicated issue which is difficult to really cover in a single HN comment. I also don't lean one way or the other - I think the American hegemony has served humanity very well, and an intelligence advantage is critical to that.
But, on the other hand, just as there are countries "on the brink of nuclear capability", which posses the technology and material and can develop a bomb in few months time (like Japan for example) - so is USA approaching an "on the brink" police state, with huge surveillance capabilities, militarized local police and a whole lot of armed federal agencies and national guard units. These capabilities, in the wrong hands or at a time of crisis, can lead America down a very dangerous slope.
So I definitely don't take this issue as a simplistic one.
However, more to your point:
1. The "American Establishment" is part of the problem, not of the solution. It's a classic case showing failures of checks and balances and of a shady power grab in the executive branch. The support of NSA activities is not a partisan affair.
2. In the Snowden case, a significant part of the media chose to label his actions as treason. Some did so directly, and others through adopting the official White House line. It was even worse with Manning.
3. The constitution, free market and gun rights lend America the notion of the "land of the free". That resonates across a significant part of the American public, and that's certainly a common perception (not necessarily a hawkish one). Freedom is a concept that's rooted deeply in the American mind. It's easy for an ordinary citizen to assume that a country placing so much emphasis on freedom would act in good faith to uphold it.
If you survey Americans about "what is the most free country of the world", they would say USA. They wouldn't believe you if you told them the USA has more monitoring measures to track its own citizens in place than any other country in the world, North Korea, China and Russia included.
So while my post was a bit one dimensional, so I say is the perception among the American public, and this good faith the public has in the country has given each administration a blank check to do as they please.
As an American, I don't think there's a way to stop this through the democratic process: If a whistle blower publishes details showing the government is running "Project X", and we "kick the bastards out" that authorized it via the ballot process, and the government shuts down "Project X" as a result, all the NSA needs to do is rename it "Project Y".
I'm seriously at a loss as to what to do about this problem.
I agree, it is hard to know what to do. I called my congressman several times, including before every relevant vote. He voted to defund the NSA, was a co-sponsor the Freedom Act and then voted against it after it got gutted, for what it's worth.
Money is the language of power in American politics. If we want change, we need well-funded organizations that understand how to wield influence in Washington. I donate to the EFF and the ACLU.
Technology businesses also have money and know how to lobby. In fact, I think that's our strongest leverage point. Stop using the services of companies that work with the NSA or have architectures that enable surveillance. Tell them why you're doing it. I have been slowly divesting myself of known PRISM-collaborators including Google, Apple, Skype and Facebook (the ones I used). I deleted my Facebook account. I moved my email to Fastmail.fm. I started using startpage.com. I maximized the opt-out in my Google account. I installed CyanogenMod. This will be my last Apple laptop. I stopped using Dropbox and switched to ownCloud. There is still further to go. There are services where I haven't found viable open/private/secure alternatives (maps, video chat, youtube is ubiquitous). I got SSL certificates (free) for my site and set up a Tor hidden service.
I started using and supporting security and privacy oriented technologies. I spun up a Tor relay on my VPS to donate the unused bandwidth to the Tor network. I started routing my email and chat connections through Tor. I started using TextSecure and OTR. (Sadly, almost nobody I know use them.)
One of the best parts of cancelling my Google Apps account was that it asked for feedback. I wrote that while I love the service, as a foreigner I can't in good conscience use it while the political environment in the USA is what it is. I doubt it will change anything, but it's something I guess.
Take to the streets then, peaceful protest, make noise, make it aware to every man woman and child that this is an important issue, that your freedom is something you value.
Peaceful assembly with a forceful message is one of the only ways this can be changed, Americans need to stand up and be heard or it's only ever going to get worse.
Any time this is attempted, it is met with enormous governmental show of force. No matter how peaceful the dissent, the US government is not tolerant of it.
It is? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't seen legally organized protests (yes, you do have to file the appropriate paperwork) recently which have actually been shut down by an enormous governmental show of force. Do you have any examples?
Let's fund a pay-per-install Tor Browser program. It would start by paying ISP techs BTC to install Tor Browser on every customer's computer indiscriminately. Maybe even make Tor start up in the background. If everyone is using Tor all the time, nobody is suspicious, and we can go back to having relative free speech on the Internet at least.
You get good people in at the top that actually reform things and change the organizational culture. It's very fixable. We've already come a very long way. The FBI used to blackmail politicians. The CIA used to frequently replace foreign leaders and even pulled that trick on us one time.
Now we have a much more subtle form of unconstitutional behavior. Like Bush before him, Obama thinks it's his "#1 job is to protect America." He forgot that he swore an oath making it his #1 job to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."
Better technology will provide us real privacy, an informed society, and eventually the truly free countries all humans deserve.
> The CIA used to frequently replace foreign leaders and
> even pulled that trick on us one time.
It will be really interesting in a couple decades if we ever get to see a glimpse of what has been happening behind the scenes in Ukraine and Venezuela, not to mention throughout the Middle East.
I just feel sorry for all the people who are having to endure such violence. I can't even imagine the horror.
Your pessimism is not supported by history, as was my point. You have to explain how we got from an FBI that blackmails people to an FBI that really and truly does not.
Yeah, the FBI no longer blackmails politicians. Instead, we have NSA, which conducts mass surveillance on the entire population and does who knows what else. If you think history shows some sort of improvement in these trends, you're hopelessly optimistic.
I'm sorry, but is your optimism supported by history?
There's no way to hold above-the-law institutions to the same standards as the public, by definition. Curb the NSA's budget and they turn to the black budget. Restrict them legally, and they find ways around it.
The only way to win is through ubiquitous deployment of anonymizing technologies that take the power away from corrupt, centralized institutions permanently.
Another thing you can do is find out who of your friends is or has ever worked at the NSA, and refuse to communicate with them. Refuse to give them jobs. Refuse to sell them products and services. Shun them, stomp them, and starve them out!
DOX the NSA.
Let them feel America's outrage for real, and in public. Let's embarrass these asshats, and make their lives a living Hell. Treat them like dirt until they wish they were in Russia with Snowden.
Even though Americans make a big deal about freedom and liberty, the only thing most of them ultimately want is to be able to maintain their lifestyle.
Think about it: what do people do when they go to work on Mondays? Are they thinking and worrying about their eroding freedoms and devising of ways they can stop zealots like the NSA? No. They are planning for the weekend, when they can hang out with their friends and family, go on a short trip, play video games, and so on. They are thinking about saving some money so they can buy that gadget/car/house they wanted. They are worrying about the problems their kid has been having at school. They are stressing about what happens if they lose their job. And so on.
This is the root of the problem: people are so far removed from political issues, so distracted with their own problems and priorities, that they don't even know the names of their own politicians, much less have the cognitive capacity to recognize and critically analyze what is going on their country beyond what the media feeds them. And when they finally get home after working for eight, ten, twelve or more hours everyday, their brains are so fried they can't even think straight.
And you want these people to put everything aside and overthrow the NSA?
Most Americans are not aware of their freedoms having been eroded in any meaningful way. Certainly not, to the degree that the linked to poem suggests, that they might eventually be rounded up by a government death squad because looking at Boing Boing pushed their XKeyScore rating past the red line.
Americans tend to see things through party politics and identity anyway - and as such, you'll see a much bigger uproar over things like Obamacare and gun legislation after Newtown than you likely ever will over this, because this is such a new phenomenon that the party controllers are only now coming up with ways to either take credit or lay blame. Most Americans don't care about this, at worse it's a drama that plays out now and then on the news, and a minor inconvenience when they fly. It's a nonevent.
And there have been protests, and hearings, and what have you - but if what you're expecting is violence in the streets, if you're expecting a revolution like Syria - that's not going to happen.
>but if what you're expecting is violence in the streets, if you're expecting a revolution like Syria - that's not going to happen.
No, absolutely not, violence would only set this issue back (imagine if the NSA now had a "valid" reason to target people, for inciting violence).
>Most Americans are not aware of their freedoms having been eroded in any meaningful way.
People need to see that their freedoms have been eroded which is one of the major issues, which is why their needs to be peaceful assembly and people making noise so that the average American fully understands the extent of the NSA's breach of privacy and civil liberties.
> that they will be rounded up by a government death squad because looking at Boing Boing pushed their XKeyScore rating past the red line.
Sure people aren't being rounded up by a government death squad, but tracking peoples every movements via phone and every single detail on their online personas is an incredible breach of privacy and civil liberties. It's only a matter of time until it escalates and you have to remove a weed before it takes hold in your garden, while it's still small enough to manage.
>Most Americans don't care about this
Then it needs to become an issue that Americans care about by the people who do understand how terrible the actions of the NSA are (in this case, most HN readers)
> but tracking peoples every movements via phone and every single detail on their online personas is an incredible breach of privacy and civil liberties.
I've argued with people about that. They typically say they have nothing to hide so they couldn't care less that the government was watching them. And then there are people inside programming circles who say this is just an inevitable part of the information age, and all governments do it, and we should simply learn to live with it.
On the other hand, there's an old man at my gym who on more than one occasion has told me that Obama and the Democrats are going to lead the US into some kind of Stalinist new world order (just wait and see.) This isn't even on many people's radar yet.
>Then it needs to become an issue that Americans care about by the people who do understand how terrible the actions of the NSA are (in this case, most HN readers)
I agree with you entirely. It's a good fight to fight but.. I think it's going to take time before it stops becoming a 'fringe' issue for most Americans.
Yeah, sure. But you pointed at Americans specifically for succumbing to cognitive dissonance. It is a human flaw, not an American one. Therefore, your musing amounts to: why do humans in general espouse contradictory viewpoints?
It's certainly a valid musing, but its scope is far broader than you were letting on. (At least, that was how I read it.)
You don't actually think the U.S. is the only country spying on its citizens or the world right?
The only reason it's even a huge deal is because of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In countries without a similar constitutional guarantee your spy agencies probably aren't even breaking the law. They're probably watching everything you do with total impunity.
I'm aware that it's not the only country, all countries have some form of intelligence agency, that's really besides the point honestly, the US has by far the largest, most automated system with frightening capabilities that is targetting everyone around the world.
>They're probably watching everything you do with total impunity.
I'd rather ere on the side of rationality here and without any evidence to the contrary I'm going to doubt any systems exist that are as large and thorough as the NSA's in my own country.
All governments have the technical capacity to secretly scan the internet traffic of their citizens. The only question is whether they choose to do it or not.
Really? I can't click on any link on the web about Independence Day without being bombarded with messages about freedom and liberty which leads me to believe that it is in the minds of US citizens when this day comes about
Words like freedom and liberty are part of the standard rhetoric around the holiday, yes, but few are consciously thinking about those ideas. Practically speaking, the words are on the same level of symbolic pageantry as the fireworks, hotdogs and beer. But I don't think that disconnect is special to fourth of July or to Americans -- in my experience most holidays as well as religious ceremonies are similarly disconnected from their meaningful origins.
Yes, there are plenty of messages about "freedom" and "liberty", but that doesn't mean the concepts are truly in the minds of the posters.
"Freedom" and "liberty" seem to be more like buzzwords used on the 4th of July than they are concepts pondered and/or specifically celebrated by the citizenry at large. (But perhaps that's just my biased/warped perception.)
The average person just doesn't care, and anyone who tries to tell them otherwise is labelled a conspiracy nut and ignored. The only response they give to finding out that the government knows their exact gps location 24 hours a day and can listen to any and all of their communications is "So what?" Companies like Foursquare exist because people not only don't care about issues like this, but are actively trying to help them.
I imagine it has to get much worse before it can get any better. Many Americans view the government as the answer to every problem, and thus continue voting to grant it more power. Nothing can turn the tide except mainstream rejection of the that idea.
Because our schools SUCK. Not 100% of them, but 95+% of them.
The schools do not teach independent, rational thinking, nor do they do a decent job teaching American history or historical American political values.
In fact, they are much more likely to attack them. For example, by claiming that the Founding Fathers were slaveholding bigots, or that early settlers were genocidal. Both of which are oft-repeated claims that are much more false than true.
If we wanted to avoid all this, we would have needed to have separation of School and State, in the same way and for the same reasons we [are supposed to] have separation of Church and State.
But the founders of the USA were mostly slaveholding bigots. In fact, one the greatest free thinkers of his time - Thomas Paine - was ostracized by those founding "fathers" for speaking out against the founders' slavery, religious bigotry, and misogyny.
The larger problem with the NSA and the generalized public, is that the problem is too far removed from everyday life. Most people can't figure out where the 'on' button is to their phone or computer, let alone find and download gpg software - or understand the difference and incompatibilities of S/MIME certs versus pgp keys.
And, of course something can be done about the NSA:
1. Encrypt your email.
2. Don't use Google or gmail.
3. Accept bitcoin for purchases.
However, I imagine many that know better complain about the "man" rather than educate the public and insist on changing their own habits.
In short - it's your fault - you give the NSA the power they have.
> For example, by claiming that the Founding Fathers were slaveholding bigots, or that early settlers were genocidal.
This is not the first time you have attempted to recast the movement towards truth in academics into "real American" victimhood. You may be distressed to find that the world still does not change because of your desires, that it will not ignore the beliefs in black inferiority put forth by men like Jefferson, and that it certainly will not ignore that even as late as the Civil War the people in charge of this country--among them some guy named A. Lincoln--thought it best to deport black people at the end of slavery because they were unable to conceive of an integrated world.
Heroification of impressive-but-flawed individuals has approximately fuck-all to teaching anything of use with regards to this problem. But you know that, you just for some reason have a problem with the idea that the Founding Fathers were, as a product of their time, kind of a bunch of bigoted dudes, and you really have to beat that drum that it upsets you and it's kind of tiring.
Your comment is a completely unwarranted attack on my personal character. Plus, you're arguing about something different from what I was arguing, as if I had argued it. Finally, you're taking a derogatory tone. Your comment is not part of a civil intellectual discussion.
First they came for the Whistleblowers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Whistleblower.
Then they came for the Boing Boing Readers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Boing Boing Reader.
Then they came for the Linux Users, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Linux User.
Then they came for people who mocked the NSA, and I did not speak out— Because I was not mocking the NSA.
Then they came for the Jews (they always eventually come for the Jews even when Jews think they are mainstream), and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me.
I would like to suggest that voting provides a way out. If the NSA had a smaller budget, things might be better. If every branch of our military had a smaller budget, things might be better. Congressmen do listen to us, and if collectively we spoke against the military, there might be success.
Honestly I have no idea how to fight politically. I think we all feel powerless. But there are some things you can do. You can run a tor relay node. You can learn about these technologies and help development efforts. You can participate with Freenode and I2P. You can encrypt all of your connections end-to-end and avoid services that are known to cooperate with 3 letter agencies.
But no matter what angle you pick, you're going to be fighting up hill. It's going to suck, and you aren't going to feel like you're making any progress on your own. But if enough of us rally behind the technologies that protect our rights as human beings, then maybe we can reverse the tide.
I would tend to agree, but voting is just the first rung of what you might think of as a ladder of commitment:
Voting
Organizing others
Donating money to fund full-time campaigners
Volunteering for leadership positions/running for office
Each step on the ladder requires more commitment, and will therefore be taken by fewer people. But to succeed, a movement needs all of them.
If you vote, and nothing changes, and you're asking what comes next, maybe you're ready to move to the next rung. Start a meetup in your community. Give to the EFF or the ACLU. Run for office yourself, or identify a good person who should be running and help them do so.
The second to last line betrays a misunderstanding of the current order of things. (Unless the writer thinks it is the Muslims or the KKK that are coming for us.) Jews in general are no longer the victims.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me
I should not need to remind this crowd but if anyone feels doubt over what can and must be done, simply search YouTube for "Eben Moglen"; you can't go wrong.
Many people I know think what the NSA is doing is completely wrong, but they have problems logging into facebook and getting their email to work, they just feel powerless because they don't understand the technology behind the world they live in.
How can they stand up to something they can't even begin to comprehend?
The NSA could literally do anything they wanted to most people and they wouldn't even know about it.
And then we have a much smaller group of people in the tech industry (most people who frequent Hacker News), who know what the NSA is doing is horribly horribly wrong, but are afraid of being destroyed financially, socially, and professionally for standing up to them.
It feels like swimming up a waterfall. The NSA can so easily ruin lives by planting illegal material on your computer, then tip off the local cops who get a search warrant, then they seize your computer and find the illegal material on your computer.
And you life is ruined.
I mean, they are so powerful technologically speaking, they can ruin lives without so much as lifting a finger.
It's very scary and very real.