Oi, Obama. Rein your spooks in, demands web giants' alliance

A fascinating opportunity

This does seem to have opened up the doors to competition - no cloud if it is UK/US/CN/AUS/IS/NZ.... I hope folks make the most of it (admittedly someone who uses dropbox all the time - albeit with host encryption)

Fox raises defense against another Fox

Their complaint is that the hens they raise and eat are theirs alone. As one of the chickens in this scenario, I am looking for a solution that does not involve getting eaten.

It is possible for all of those companies to blind data in such a way that even they cannot see it and hence cannot be induced to turn it over. They don't want to get into that solution because they want to snoop on us themselves.

We need to put in place protocols that make it impossible for any of them to snoop on us and then force those protocols into use.

In addition to a technical solution we need a social and political solution that says the use of ill-gotten data is illegitimate. The fact that they can use that data to your disadvantage should be removed. In the case of Law enforcement, I don't care *what* the charge is, if their evidence was obtained pursuant to illegally snooping the case should be tossed.

At the very least, we need to get joint custody of things such that a single corrupt judge or jurisdiction cannot obtain the data without convincing other custodians who may be more ethical.

Oh dear, what a crying shame.

How odd that anyone would think that the likes of an Obama or a Cameron or a Putin [who is a cool dude spook himself] do not do what spooks want, and as they are told to do.

Surely no one actually believes that Cameron types are actually in command and control of anything. That is just too ridiculous a notion for more words.

And yes, that is sad and mad indictment too of the present state of spookery everywhere, given the fact that things are so austere and confrontational.

But as I sure you be aware, there are things afoot which are causing the status quo real virtual concern for they do not have the intellectual ability or physical facility to deal with it with either IT or media. Such are in many and some cases, NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive Opportunities which Engage and Empower Exploitation and Export of Zeroday Vulnerabilities with Stealthy Invisible Operational Support ..... Non-Attributable Security Protection.

Their motive is money. They know snooping is bad for business. As far as they are concerned snooping on their customers should be limited only to themselves in support of extracting more money from them via accurate consumer profiling.

La Brea Tar Pits calling Governments Black.

I find the list of accusers as funny as funerals.

With all the totally denied spying these massive data collectors are guilty of, and especially the top ones (often times) 'hand in glove' data sharing with at least one (if not all) governments they are pointing fingers at...

This is a shameful comedy of errors.

No innocents in these groups. Spying, Data Collecting, buying and selling...

Extreme political bias...

Then, colluding to say they don't???

That would be like the deadstream media giving an unbiased and truthful news report....

It ain't so, Joe.

But it is fun to watch

Extra-territorial data collection is not governed by any law.

As a non-US person, none of this is going to help me in the slightest. Comments on 'Reform Government Surveillance' are completely missing the point, just as every article that highlights PRISM is completely missing the point.

The world can be divided into:

(a) US-persons in the US communicating with US-persons in the US where the IP packets never leave the US,

(b) everyone else.

Communications in group (a) have some protection from the Fourth Amendment, and PRISM is subject to a bit of judicial oversight. RGS may be relevant for these people by providing a bit more transparency and overnight. But good luck on trying to persuade anyone to reverse Smith v. Maryland and prevent warrantless collection of metadata (for which there is no "legitimate expectation of privacy"). And well done to Google et al. for making it highly questionable whether there is any expectation of privacy for email at all.

But if you are in group (b) then RGS is not going to help at all. Almost inevitably your data will leave your shores and then it is open house for interception.

"Collection of data by any nation from outside its territory is literally lawless and not restricted by any explicit international treaties"

"There is no extraterritorial obligation on states to comply with human rights…The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."

It is very unlikely that my email is captured by PRISM, but it is a racing certainty that it is captured by Tempora and the NSA extra-territorial taps.

We have known since 2001 that the NSA has been installing taps on undersea fibre-optic cables. Good luck on trying to persuade GCHQ and NSA to stop reading their taps. Even if they said they had stopped using them, would you believe them? This is extra-territorial - THERE ARE NO LAWS. Good luck on trying to get agreement on an international treaty to restrict surveillance - it ain't gonna happen!

As for the self serving RGS suggestion that "Governments should not require service providers to locate infrastructure within a country’s borders or operate locally", some sensible European governments are requiring data to be processed locally precisely to avoid access as the data leaves their borders. I would want something much stronger before I felt happy about my health data being captured by GCHQ/NSA.

"If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past several months, it’s that the Internet is a very different place from what we thought it was. If you’re sending e-mail “in the clear,” you no longer have to ask if it’s being read—we know it is. The question is who’s reading it. In this environment, we’re not going to preserve our privacy from dragnet surveillance through legislation or wishful thinking. The only guaranteed way forward is through technological solutions, and these can’t just be modestly better or easier to use than what we have today. They must be spectacular."

What is needed for email is default encryption (even a single click is too arduous) and encryption of the metadata so that even if the owners of the servers wanted to reveal traffic data, they would be unable to do so.

TL;DR US communications have some protection for the Fourth Amendment and RGS might help them. For everyone else, extra-territorial surveillance is not governed by any laws and is not going to stop. The only way forward is a technological (encryption) solution so that even the server owners can't read the data.

Rein your spooks in. I see what they did there.