Snowden to warn Brits on Xmas telly: Your children will NEVER have privacy Celebrity whistleblower Edward Snowden will hit Britain's TV screens tomorrow to warn families: "A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all." The ex-NSA sysadmin – temporarily exiled in Russia after leaking documents about the US and the UK's massive internet surveillance operations – will give this …
As social media matures as a concept so will our treatment of it.
Not without some serious education. As one of the authors of the Hacker Highschool materials I would urge anyone with talent in that area to contact Glenn Norman - we need to educate those kids in THEIR language before they are indoctrinated too far. Because that's what it is: indoctrination.
We might be happier if the massive collection of data were being used for law enforcement purposes to benefit everyone. If, upon finding your house broken into and burgled, the police could run a few database queries and announce that the spy systems recorded a suspect phone spent half an hour in the vicinity of your house earlier and detected a laptop querying for an ESSID matching your home network from a new location.
Or even if the police would just use it to more efficiently identify and convict drug dealers. How about if every stolen mobile phone and laptop was met by tracing the device and catching whoever stole it?
But that isn't what we get here. The collected information is classified very highly. Even the existance of it is classified highly. It isn't being used to benefit the people. It's being used for political purposes. The only way this will ever be used to catch criminals is if they happen to offend someone rich or powerful enough to justify breaking out the secret toolbox. Another case of one law for the rich and powerful, another for the commoners.
"But as for mass survelliance, a quick check of the crime clear up rate would suggest that criminality is still, on balance of probability, something you can get away with."
You are assuming that the object of mass surveillance is preventing crime, rather than facilitating it.
Kids don't understand what privacy is. Privacy to most of them is being able to sneak in a beer or a cigarette with no one watching. Abstract concepts like hyper aggressive behavior control (advertising) are beyond them. They'll discover what privacy really means one day, but to kids and young adults our definition of privacy is about as relevant as what kind of denture cream Grams uses.
If you have children over 5 years, you can do the following experiment to test this statement.
Try the following:
- sneak silently to your kid's room
- suddenly open the door
- quickly step aside, to avoid being hit by any item your kid is throwing at you. (optional)
Now again, what did you say?
Give it another 5 years and you won't be allowed to go on a plane, buy a car or file your tax returns unless you have some sort of digital footprint. Heck some plane companies already check passengers for their Facebook accounts, you don't have one? Well that's odd?! Come over here in this room with the nice man in the suit we need a chat about why we can't snoop in the obvious places, what are you hiding friend?
My aunt doesn't have a passport, a driving license, my uncle and aunt don't have a computer, mobile phones or tablets. My cousin has tried to get them going on one but they simply can't see the point. That's the honest truth. They refuse to have credit or debit cards. They do everything face to face in banks and government offices and they only use cash. They hated having to get a bank account when their pensions were no longer collectable from the post office. It's not paranoia, they simply cannot be arsed with modern life being so damned complicated. They are not alone. There are thousands out there who are not traceable and they don't appear "on grid" they're not enemies of the state or freaks, their simply not into modern life, they won't an easy time but to the government they're almost dissidents.
When I first started playing with technology many years ago, this is not a nice world anymore. I am almost ashamed that I helped create this world. I was one of those 8bit micro kids, brainwashed in junior school to push technology as the saviour of freedom. It's brought some marvellous advancements, like the medical sciences and it's brought us so much free time we don't know what to do. It's also making us slaves to the machines, suspects in the eyes of the governments around the world. It's sad, sad world we all helped create. We need to ensure we fight to ensure that we not all "guilty until proven innocent", that we are as we should be, "innocent UNLESS proven guilty".
"....t's sad, sad world we all helped create...." Oh STFU you hyperventialting, melodramatic, whining sheep. Please do explain what is so "terrible" or "sad" about your comfortable lifestyle, maybe you'd rather swap it for living in a hut in the jungles of the Central African Republic, wondering which "freedom-fighter" group or militia is going to hack your arms off, that's if you don't die of malnutrition or some easily curable diseas first. What a complete load of baloney. When did being such a whining ingrate become so fashionable?
Its not so much how the situation is right now, but this is the tip of the iceberg, we keep on allowing whatever surveillance new technology allows and the precedence is very much set to suggest the governments of the world will keep demanding more and more. Ultimately, the only thing that really keeps governments in line is the underlying worry that if they do anything too bad the population will revolt, thats much harder and easier to stop if your surveilling everyone all the time, so it provides successive governments with more room to do what they please will still making sure control is in place. The people who think we are worried about now or actually are worried about now are missing the point...its what things are like in 20, 30 50 years time i worry about and why people should ask questions and worry.
"......its what things are like in 20, 30 50 years time i worry about and why people should ask questions and worry." Of course, because - seeing as we actually have no idea what will happen in even twenty years - it is quite easy for you to indulge in rampant, hysterical, paranoid fantasy and pass it off as intelligent thought. It's just as valid to say we should forget all about it as the Aztecs said the World is due to end next year (or whenever). It is quite obvious the only fact displayed in your posts is your limited grip on reality, lack of perspective, and complete surrender to irrational fears.
Can someone please define privacy before getting involved in a debate.
Is it the right to remain anonymous whilst doing something legal.
Is it the right to remain anonymous whilst doing something illegal.
The NSA, GCHQ are doing what they have always done, it just seems that now most people actually hand them their details on a plate. You want Facebook et al to remain free, Ok no problem but there is a price to pay.
The internet does not force you to do anything that you don't want to do. If you want privacy; don't do anything in public. The internet is after all very much a public affair..
This is a debate that could go on for ever but at the end of the day each person is responsable for his own acts.
Here is a clue what privacy isn't - it isn't anonymity, and here's the proof:
A conversation between two parties may be private but simultaneously not anonymous.
Privacy is the most fundamental protection an individual has. Without it all other protections, rights and freedoms are as good as worthless.
"Privacy is the most fundamental protection an individual has. Without it all other protections, rights and freedoms are as good as worthless."
Well, what happened back in the old days when there was basically no expectation of privacy because everyone in the community kept up with you?
"Well, what happened back in the old days when there was basically no expectation of privacy because everyone in the community kept up with you?"
You kept up with everyone else, so there was a balance. You also knew who could be trusted with sensitive information and who could be relied on to gossip to anyone who would listen. You had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Now the balance has been upset. Governments routinely snoop on their own and other nations' citizens, with no oversight - they "keep up with you" while ensuring you cannot do the same with them, all justified using the opaque and unassailable argument of "National Security"
"You kept up with everyone else, so there was a balance. You also knew who could be trusted with sensitive information and who could be relied on to gossip to anyone who would listen. You had a reasonable expectation of privacy."
But when the community is small enough or connected enough, then it's hard to hide things from ANYONE because SOMEONE with loose lips will notice and spread the word. The very FACT you were trying to cover things up DREW attention to you. Before it was the rumor mill, then it was the tabloids, now it's the Internet.
In the old days it was difficult to keep anything private from ones peers because people were involved with each other- nosy if you like. At the same there were "firewalls" against the wider dissemination of personal information especially upwards. Group solidarity gave some protection to dissidents provided that their peer group did not disapprove of them too strongly. Individuals who passed inappropriate information upwards were soon identified and sanctioned as narks, creeps, bosses men, grasses quislings or whatever.
Indeed, privacy within ones own castle walls was assumed. It speaks volumes about how society as a whole has built a 'safe by default' mindset that is impractical and frankly, dangerous both physically and to our societies.
Instead of seeing the others in our community as people just like ourselves (except they have poor choice in paint colors and really ought to tend their yard better) we see them as either an active, or potential, paedo/terrorist/serial killer.
We've built an unnecessary and foolish 'extra line of defense' into our families and communities that we're so busy guarding we never see the actual enemy when/if he does approach. Anybody alive and working in physical security will tell you guarding against unknowns and/or every conceivable risk is the best way to have your defenses breached and go broke.
You defend against the known and maintain agility and extra capacity to deal with unknowns. Defending against and unknown is the height of folly, cause it's unknown you know...
"You defend against the known and maintain agility and extra capacity to deal with unknowns. Defending against and unknown is the height of folly, cause it's unknown you know..."
The trouble is, what if every threat against you, known AND unknown, is EXISTENTIAL? The one threat that's no holds barred is the existential threat: deal with it or die, no exceptions.
Two things: An unknown cannot be a threat, existensial or otherwise. Calling something unknown a threat is not only dangerously unbalanced behavior in a world with more unknowns than knowns, it's simply not a valid sentence.
Lastly, lots of people suffer from a serious deficiency in risk assessment and risk management capabilities. Because of that they overvalue possibilities, no matter how unlikely, and deem them all existential. The fact of the matter is the overwhelming majority of Humans will never face an existensial threat.
If we assume a natural death (old age, disease, accident) is not an existensial threat, but a certainty, then only a minuscule minority will face such a threat. A person facing two existential threats in their life is a statistical anomaly. If someone faces three or more, valid, existential threats in a lifetime that person is the threat, not the other way around. A serious examination of reality and perhaps a raging substance abuse problem would be in order.
Ever heard the phrase, "What you DON'T know can kill you"? Just because you don't know of a threat doesn't remove it as a threat. A snake in the grass, a hidden hole in the ground, a sniper on the roof. If it can hurt or kill you, it's a threat regardless of your knowledge of it. And think about how the Cold War played out: two superpowers each staring at an existential threat in the opponent. Existential threats trip human instinct and there's basically no way we know to defuse that.
Well sure, unknowns can kill you, but until it has presented itself it is a mere possibility, not an actual threat. You can't prepare, or even begin to prepare, for possibilities, for unknowns, you simply don't know how. By attempting the impossible you are reducing the effect of your defensive resources. You're looking in all the wrong places, because you don't know where to look, or even what you're looking for. You're running full-tilt down a road and won't even notice when the possibility became a threat.
Running wide open, all the time, is simply bad math. Even apex predators rest. In fact an aware restfulness is their default state. They are aware of their situation and are able to respond with blinding speed if a threat arises. They are able to instantly mobilize all their defensive resources because those resources weren't used up running around in a state of constant near panic.
It's popular with Humans right now to do exactly the opposite: Run wide open, all the time. Stretching resources that far, all the time is a guaranteed path to failure. Like a rubber band that's stretched taut all the time, it stretches further and further as its cellular structure is gradually torn apart and fails completely when you change its state. We add more and more people, always looking out for everything, and they consistently miss the actual threat.
The other type of existential threat is the kind on which you have no input or control. In your Cold War example there was precisely zero you could do about that. Nothing. Why worry over it? Why expend your resources in vain and leave yourself open to a threat that can actually harm you? It's a dangerous waste. There is absolutely no difference between a paranoid man who dies from potassium deficiency because all yellow foods have mind control drugs in them, and a man who is hit by a bus while keeping an eye out for an asteroid. Both wasted what life they did have in constant fear that served no purpose. Where's the fun in that?
"Well sure, unknowns can kill you, but until it has presented itself it is a mere possibility, not an actual threat. You can't prepare, or even begin to prepare, for possibilities, for unknowns, you simply don't know how. By attempting the impossible you are reducing the effect of your defensive resources."
Two words: contingency planning. Learn to expect the unexpected.
"The other type of existential threat is the kind on which you have no input or control. In your Cold War example there was precisely zero you could do about that. Nothing."
That's assuming helplessness, but we can't think that way. Because, while the threat exists, it's hard to tell whether or not we CAN or CANNOT influence the threat. Indeed, in the Cold War, many times the actions of each side caused reactions on the OTHER side, giving concrete evidence of having an influence.
Ok. You're spot on that you have to be prepared to deal with the unexpected, but the more resources you allocate to the unknown the less capable you are to deal with any threat when/if it does appear. Every specific defensive tactic you employ prior to identifying the threat weakens your responsive capabilities unless you are extraordinarily lucky and the threat targets that specific resource. But hinging your defense/safety on luck isn't much of a security measure.
Expected the unexpected is one thing, actually devoting resources to an unknown always results in a suboptimal capabilities. Take the F-35 for instance. That aircraft is probably the best extant example of allocating resources to unknowns. That plane is epically awful, if it weren't so expensive it would be hilarious. It's a weapons system designed for any situation, and does nothing well. It doesn't even fly well. It can't meet its most basic requirement because its over resourced. Its over preparedness also make it extremely expensive, so much so that on order to maintain it, other less complicated and more effective resources had to be eliminated to pay for it.
It's the same thing with what we're doing right now. We are devoting resources to unknowns and the end result is that nothing works well, even when no threat is evident. A system that can't maintain steady idle is a system that fails when stressed.
Your last paragraph is another great example of the folly of over preparedness: The inability to assess and manage risk was a known weakness in the USSR. They were terrified of 'The West' and they could not discriminate between threat/non-threat: Everything was a threat!
So we exploited their fear. We scared them into allocating resources to unknowns and we eventually destroyed their economy. The country destabilized itself by using all its resources against possibilities, they left themselves vulnerable to internal stresses and they collapsed. They couldn't fix any of their problems because their national resources were tied up in SB-22 mobile launch platforms. We forced the USSR out of existence because we scared them.
Losing your country seems like a strange price pay for security doesn't it? You'd think we'd know better, but here we are acting out of fear of everything and bleeding countries and continents to death. We're acting just like the Soviets did and we're experiencing what they did, a gradual weakening of political structure and a rise in defensive spending, and paranoia, looking for enemies in your ranks, suspecting everyone. I'm not sure who decided we would let terrorists pick the music, but they did, and we're dancing to it, right towards impotence and poverty. That's not what I call defense.
The internet does not force you to do anything that you don't want to do. If you want privacy; don't do anything in public. The internet is after all very much a public affair..
It's not that easy. Most adults without a tech background have no idea just how much data they hand over when using online resources, and the sole aim of the likes of FB and derivatives appears to be to goad our kids into an online life before they are old enough to realise the damage that can cause to their lives.
You're absolutely correct, we do need a definition of Privacy. The challenge is that capitalized Privacy is a concept, not a thing. Concepts tend to defy universal definition because they mean something different to everyone.
As a civilization, we have chosen a hierarchical, top down process (government) to draw the boarders around a concept and define it for everyone within their territory. The primary role of any government is to define concepts. Every single act of government is either defining or defending those definitions. Rebels and insurgents are those who disagree with the governments definition of those concepts. In a democracy the definition of a concept is (in theory) a reflection of the voters. In a dictatorship a concept is whatever Admiral General Aladeen says it is. In a theocracy a concept is defined by a god (in theory).
The flaw in defining a concept, regardless of who is doing it, is that some concepts, like privacy or freedom, exhibit behaviors with an analogue in Heisenberg Uncertainty. The more you define those concepts, the more you change their meaning: If Freedom is defined, it is no longer freedom, it has become something else entirely. Simply by defining Freedom you have eliminated it, for it to exist it cannot be bound, at all.
Similarly, some concepts, such as Freedom are also digital. They are or they are not, they are not subject to analog or quantum definition or analysis. It is impossible to subject those concepts to anything beyond yes/no, is/isn't, 0/1 because the concept has ceased to exist once you try. You can't have a little Freedom, or most of Freedom, you either have all the Freedom or none of it.
It's a very big mess all the way around. A government must define concepts, or it is not a government. However, in defining concepts it also eliminates those concepts from existence within its territory. Therefore a government can never be successful, it can never fulfill its purpose for being. All governments are failures by default from the instant they are created.
The side effects of failure through existence are how you end up with a country like the US which enshrines Freedom but denies women the freedom to show their titties outside of a windowless room but gives me the freedom to buy the .50 BMG mobile anti-aircraft emplacement I use to vaporize groundhogs. A country where you are free to extort money from sick people but not free to grow certain plants. A country where I'm free to advance my knowledge as far as I like, but I'm not free to share it with whoever I please. A country where I'm free to buy whatever I want (see cannon) but I'm not allowed to purchase software or music, only license it, where buying something does not transfer its ownership. A country where private corporations and law enforcement are free to access to my banking and healthcare records for no apparent reason, but I'm not allowed to withdraw more than $50,000 cash without filing out forms, waiting 48-72hrs and getting phone calls, and once a visit, from the FBI, because you're only free to move finite amounts of cash around.
None of it makes any sense and it's all royally fucked up.
"Right is right, wrong is wrong."
..and your definitions of "right" and "wrong" are the correct ones, yes?
Maybe my definitions don't match with yours. Are you right or am I right?
You might want to debate your definitions of "right" and "wrong" with various people from various countries around the world.
@ AC Weds. Dec. 25th 00:54 GMT
OK, you have been trusted with data....
-Who holds the data? The local library? ConglomoMegaCorp? GCHQ or NSA? A charitable NGO?
-Who is the data about? Business customers? Taxpayer records? Sweet old Mrs. Jones from down the street's phone, email and internet browsing records? Foreign agents working for potentially hostile regimes?
-How is the data going to be used? Upselling someone to additional services? Linking people to certain misdemeanors that happen in their neighborhood? A background check that is required for employment or government benefits? Collecting a list of people opposed or in favor of a certain political or public policy course of action? Making sure that the government has a list of people who have paid their taxes?
-What safeguards are on the data and the processes around the use of the data to make sure that there are no false positives and user error is minimized?
-What are the potential consequences of being in the database you have been trusted with? Does the subject get a an email saying that our after-Christmas sale is coming and now is the time to save!, save!!, save!!!? Do the subject get blackballed from receiving a government clearance, contract or permit? Do the police come around asking discrete questions to the subjects friends? Does somebody read whatever of the subject's correspondence and conversation transcripts of that might be able to be retrieved? Do you get a late notice saying that your account is past due, and can you please send in a payment? Does the subject's bank account get frozen and you find the cops waiting for him with a pair of handcuffs and a SWAT team? Does your wife or employer find out something that can damage your home or business relationships?
-Who's respect and trust did you earn? Your customers, who are looking for quality footwear at reasonable prices? The guy running accounts receivable, who wants to wheedle every penny out of customers that he can? Your boss? The local citizens who enjoy your hometown's public recreation program? Some empire builders whose priorities might be viewed as misplaced or shady by the public at large? Law enforcement? Relief workers building schools for Congolese war orphans?
Depending on answers to the above, what is broadly considered "right" might change. So without THAT data your point is rather facile and it comes across as a rant about how important you are and how Snowden has offended or wronged you or your beliefs in some as yet unknown way.
The problem is the spying was a bit of a shock, but not a real surprise. The attempt to weaken the security of all devices, is much scarier. The fact that *we* are paying for this abuse, is probably the worst of all worlds.
Probably scariest of all, is building surveillance tools that could be used for *political* as well as *criminal* purposes. The fact that "terrorism" has become the proxy for every excuse the government has to hide its dealings from our elected representatives.
The fact of the matter that there is no terrorism. It is criminal behaviour plain and simple. I don't care which made up deity/cause you kill for, it is still an act of depravity. The "oxygen of publicity" only works because a small brutal act can manipulate the public if it is sufficiently depraved. And all the players take advantage of this. The media amplifies crimes out of reasonable proportions to sell newspapers. The government amplifies crimes out of all proportion to justify its own existence and "keep us safe" (tm). And groups looking for power without merit, "claim" responsibility.
And this is Christmas, and the war is over.
P.
Not so much a surprise, but it was the end of the time when we could convince ourselves it wasn't happening.
There was a time when you installed software on your computing device and it just did what it said on the tin. That just isn't true when it comes to phones. Ironically, for some reason I trust W8 less than W7 just because it has a phone-like interface. I find I have an irrational philosophical dislike for the latest windows and OSX versions because of what I've seen on mobile devices. I wonder if anyone else feels the same. I now consistently lie when registering for things and use my own domain with multiple email addresses to prevent consolidators tying things together behind the scenes. I don't trust google either.
There was a time when we thought, "I'm too insignificant to spy on." It turns out, it isn't true. Perhaps the NSA/GCHQ isn't after me, but the fact that they are building infrastructure so that no-one can escape is downright creepy. In the old days, if you disagreed with the government you could move, go somewhere where no-one knows you. Now, everywhere is homogenising and its beginning to feel claustrophobic.
The next time the economy collapses and a group becomes a scapegoat for things that have gone wrong. It is going to be very ugly indeed.
".....The next time the economy collapses and a group becomes a scapegoat for things that have gone wrong. It is going to be very ugly indeed." Aw, your paranoia was quite entertaining, right up to that bit of silliness. You really need to peel back the tinfoil and realise that the NSA and GCHQ have been doing this for decades, and long before the Dummicrats cooked the mortgage market and triggered the most recent economic crisis.
"The problem is the spying was a bit of a shock, but not a real surprise. The attempt to weaken the security of all devices, is much scarier. The fact that *we* are paying for this abuse, is probably the worst of all worlds"
Agree with that wholeheartedly. I think most of us suspected that the spy agencies overstepped their written remits and broke the law, but we assumed this would be the occasional risk taken to catch someone almost certainly involved in espionage or terrorism. To wake up to the fact that they are doing it all the time to pretty much everyone, and the various governments and courts haven't just accepted this but legalised it, is chilling.
I find it interesting how so many of the same people who are against the NSA spying are also using facebook and google. There's an argument to be made that those companies are much worse than the NSA. If you don't want to be a hypocrite, then quit google and facebook and switch to privacy-based sites, such as Ravetree, DuckDuckGo, HushMail, etc. You may not be able to get away from the NSA, but at least you can prevent google and facebook from exploiting the crap out of you.
If you're not an expert you can easily get sucked in by those new "we will protect your privacy" services that show up. I recently did a check on VPN providers, and just took the first 10 that showed up in Google (below the sponsored links) who purported to keep you safe as part of their sales arguments.
EIGHT out of those 10 where US based, so were basically lying, ditto with many email services - hell, I've even found people on LinkedIn that advertise themselves as specialists providing Swiss level security, and when I started data mining I found them using Gmail. How is the average man in the street going to tell them apart from the good guys?
Answer: not yet, but I have some fairly evil solutions for that coming. Publicly.
"There's an argument to be made that those companies are much worse than the NSA."
I can choose to use the services of Google et al, or their competitors, or none at all if I want. It's a free market and I decide if I want to exchange personal data in return for their services. There is no equivalent free market in espionage. I don't get to choose which government agencies snoop on me, what personal data they gather or who they share it with, and I certainly don't get anything in return.
"You get the freedom to spout your tinfoil-attired claptrap."
Actually he had this freedom before the "security" services were able to snoop all and everything. Prism and the various add ons have merely created a new enemy in the form of government, rather than defending anybody against anything.
All the attacks foiled in the UK appear (from the more detailed and authoritative press reports) to have been stopped by good old fashioned policing or by luck, not by mass surveillance and recording. Look at the murder of Lee Rigby - how the f*ck was he helped by all this surveillance? FFS, MI5 even knew years ago about the two primitive, thicky arsewipes behind the crime. Maybe if they put more resource into proper security actions instead of ineffective but sexy, glitzy hi tech big budget data scooping then they would have stopped these two. The same applies to the Boston bombers in the US.
But people like you Matt, you're a Christmas gift to SIS and the politicians. Your (worryingly) devout belief in the benefit, the moral rectitude, of mass surveillance, your willingness to swallow all the bilge served up to justify it, regardless of the evidence. You throw around terms against other commentards like "tin foil hatters" and "sheeple", but if there's anybody believing myths and hopelessly following the government line, then it's you, Mr Bryant.
However, as its Christmas I'll raise a glass to you, Matt, and hope you and your family have a good one.
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