Forced Exposure(groklaw.net)
groklaw.net
Forced Exposure
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175
414 comments
Americans! Every time someone wants to introduce gun control, you bang on and on about your right to keep and bear arms being necessary to the security of a free State.
Well, your free state is in jeopardy. Now is the time to assemble your well-regulated militia to secure it!
Well, your free state is in jeopardy. Now is the time to assemble your well-regulated militia to secure it!
The scripture quoted in the article is Jeremiah 10:23. History verifies the truthfulness of that scripture. Government by man has not brought a better world, even when rulers have had high ideals and the best of intentions. Instead, "man has dominated man to his injury." -(Ecclesiastes 8:9)
You cannot just quit internet, you just can-not.
Aren't there any secure email providers like lavabit in Europe or Asia .
Whenever I think about NSA now , in a corner of my mind , I see Dan Brown Saying, " I told you so". With a copy of Digital fortress (his book about NSA) in his hand.
Whenever I think about NSA now , in a corner of my mind , I see Dan Brown Saying, " I told you so". With a copy of Digital fortress (his book about NSA) in his hand.
What about using a secure electronic drop box like Wikileaks does? Crypto still works.
Lets not try to code our way out of this.
We succumb to terror pushing away meaningless bits of code on Github as a crypto projects in response. Some projects flourish sure but the same forces that profit off the court-less killings of others are collating your data, your pet projects. Harvesting your stolen info out of botnets.
Giving you a salary for technician work keeping infrastructure ticking.
Enough enabling the beastly mess that is privatized 'national' security. The payments to infrastructure providing companies for data access. The kidnapping/torture/drone fire of others when technological routes don't work.
If you have a career with Dell, AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and many others, start making demands or make resumes. Stop being complicit.
We succumb to terror pushing away meaningless bits of code on Github as a crypto projects in response. Some projects flourish sure but the same forces that profit off the court-less killings of others are collating your data, your pet projects. Harvesting your stolen info out of botnets.
Giving you a salary for technician work keeping infrastructure ticking.
Enough enabling the beastly mess that is privatized 'national' security. The payments to infrastructure providing companies for data access. The kidnapping/torture/drone fire of others when technological routes don't work.
If you have a career with Dell, AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and many others, start making demands or make resumes. Stop being complicit.
Sad but also very understandable. Thanks pj for all your hard work throughout the years and for being one of the most diligent watchdogs in the foss community.
OMG.. Groklaw shut down!?
I'm in shock.
I'm in shock.
Want to keep your rights and freedom? It's time to act, now. History is full of great things going all the way down. Don't wait for the Superman.
For me, personally, this is much more sad than Lavabit shutting down. Groklaw was an icon, it has huge significance.
I do not know whether this - i.e. shutting down - is a good strategy in general. It raises some awareness, it might cause some change ... but what if change does not happens? What other means of protest will we have?
I do not know whether this - i.e. shutting down - is a good strategy in general. It raises some awareness, it might cause some change ... but what if change does not happens? What other means of protest will we have?
How feasible is Freenet for email? We can use PGP today, but the metadata is available to all. But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously that that used pseudonymous PGP keys - one per story, rather one per person, and posted encrypted messages on Freenet?
A sad day indeed. The government has become "the terrorists".
When folks like Lavabit and Groklaw preemptively shut down because they cannot take the security & privacy of their communications for granted, it makes me wonder the converse: how are other companies that deal in sensitive information (patents, lawsuits, competitive bids etc.) dealing with it?
Have they resigned themselves to it? Are they devising new corporate communication policies that assume always-on surveillance? Are they thinking things will improve after this storm has passed?
Have they resigned themselves to it? Are they devising new corporate communication policies that assume always-on surveillance? Are they thinking things will improve after this storm has passed?
So about botnet data, here is one NSA related company that deals with data the coders are jailed over, Endgame Systems[1].
"botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million."
Folks like the industrious pj have much to worry about when 'outside channels' are made into a a for-profit process. Combine 'parallel investigations' with 'outside channels' with a healthy dash of money for the ringleaders and some for the heads of the companies they pay (Google) and you plenty of reason not to talk law or much else over Email.
It is becoming a desperate situation for noncombatants.
[1] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
"botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million."
Folks like the industrious pj have much to worry about when 'outside channels' are made into a a for-profit process. Combine 'parallel investigations' with 'outside channels' with a healthy dash of money for the ringleaders and some for the heads of the companies they pay (Google) and you plenty of reason not to talk law or much else over Email.
It is becoming a desperate situation for noncombatants.
[1] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
Wow. Crazy.
PJ presents it generically, but I can't help wondering if that is for legal reasons and something specific has happened that cannot be told.
Either way, a tragedy - the world needs, right now, exactly people like PJ and websites like Groklaw.
PJ presents it generically, but I can't help wondering if that is for legal reasons and something specific has happened that cannot be told.
Either way, a tragedy - the world needs, right now, exactly people like PJ and websites like Groklaw.
While I understand her (1) personal reasons for shutting down Groklaw, this is an extraordinarily bad decision for privacy and democracy.
In the last few weeks quite a few providers of private communications and/or freedom (for some definition of freedom) have shut down. Lavabot, Freedom Hosting, etc. If the US could shut down The Guardian they would.
This leaves fewer and fewer secure channels for private communication, and less and less information about what is actually going on.
This is an incredibly dangerous road to walk down, and is akin to the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's. We all know how that ended.
(1) edited his to her - thanks for pointing it out rolux
In the last few weeks quite a few providers of private communications and/or freedom (for some definition of freedom) have shut down. Lavabot, Freedom Hosting, etc. If the US could shut down The Guardian they would.
This leaves fewer and fewer secure channels for private communication, and less and less information about what is actually going on.
This is an incredibly dangerous road to walk down, and is akin to the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's. We all know how that ended.
(1) edited his to her - thanks for pointing it out rolux
Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates (“Can you find evidence that they’re abusing this new legislation?”, etc.), I'll go ahead and say it now: it's happening.
There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be.
I find it hilarious that in most of the threads I've read on here for months, that people who have actually lived in oppressive regimes say that the US is at least displaying a likelihood of being on the slow descent to Hell, while people in the US are quick to point out that it's still fine because we have elections and we aren't being forced out onto the streets and shot in the back of the head.
Read any book on history, strategy, authoritarianism or "real" conspiracies and it's abundantly clear that the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume; I will not be surprised when we find out in 30-50 years that the tech companies were not only complicit in passive surveillance, but in active manipulation to control public opinion and perception.
Further, people self-actualize and learn to evolve to higher ideals, so once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and make every personal detail of a person's life that passes over an electronic medium open to dissection and survellience, you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities.
It's actually less difficult than it was 50-100 years ago to control public opinion. Before, you'd have to burn books and control every major newspaper and broadcasting corporation. Now you can just astroturf on Reddit or Twitter, or edit Wikipedia is subtle ways, and have the same effect.
There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be.
I find it hilarious that in most of the threads I've read on here for months, that people who have actually lived in oppressive regimes say that the US is at least displaying a likelihood of being on the slow descent to Hell, while people in the US are quick to point out that it's still fine because we have elections and we aren't being forced out onto the streets and shot in the back of the head.
Read any book on history, strategy, authoritarianism or "real" conspiracies and it's abundantly clear that the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume; I will not be surprised when we find out in 30-50 years that the tech companies were not only complicit in passive surveillance, but in active manipulation to control public opinion and perception.
Further, people self-actualize and learn to evolve to higher ideals, so once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and make every personal detail of a person's life that passes over an electronic medium open to dissection and survellience, you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities.
It's actually less difficult than it was 50-100 years ago to control public opinion. Before, you'd have to burn books and control every major newspaper and broadcasting corporation. Now you can just astroturf on Reddit or Twitter, or edit Wikipedia is subtle ways, and have the same effect.
Holy crap. Groklaw? I'd never for one second thought that the fall out from the NSA debacle would reach so far as to cause Groklaw to be shut down.
PJ feels extremely genuine here, she is definitely not using this as an excuse.
Wow. There is something very unhealthy in the air or in the water these days. Lots of people seem to be totally immune to the consequences of rampant surveillance and frankly bizarre powers executed by the current set of governments. And all that in the name of the war on some nebulous entity that could not even capitulate if it wanted to (and that's assuming such central command and control even exists).
2013 is fast shaping up to be a year of notoriety, so many things happening in so many places that are all linked to governments overstepping their powers.
Who would have thought 20 years ago that we'd see US whistleblowers hiding in Russia of all places. That there would be meaningful comparisons drawn between the Russian government and the UK government when it comes to dealing with the press, that we'd see torture committed by the people we routinely thought of as the good guys.
It's a weird world we are living in at the moment.
Since comments are turned off there:
Thank you PJ for all the extremely hard work and the dedication. A lot of good came from this, I'm quite sure that there were some cases where both the plaintive and the defense were spending as much time reading groklaw as they were reading their email. It certainly counted for something.
PJ feels extremely genuine here, she is definitely not using this as an excuse.
Wow. There is something very unhealthy in the air or in the water these days. Lots of people seem to be totally immune to the consequences of rampant surveillance and frankly bizarre powers executed by the current set of governments. And all that in the name of the war on some nebulous entity that could not even capitulate if it wanted to (and that's assuming such central command and control even exists).
2013 is fast shaping up to be a year of notoriety, so many things happening in so many places that are all linked to governments overstepping their powers.
Who would have thought 20 years ago that we'd see US whistleblowers hiding in Russia of all places. That there would be meaningful comparisons drawn between the Russian government and the UK government when it comes to dealing with the press, that we'd see torture committed by the people we routinely thought of as the good guys.
It's a weird world we are living in at the moment.
Since comments are turned off there:
Thank you PJ for all the extremely hard work and the dedication. A lot of good came from this, I'm quite sure that there were some cases where both the plaintive and the defense were spending as much time reading groklaw as they were reading their email. It certainly counted for something.
I have said this on HN several times, and I will say this again. Dragnet surveillance of private digital correspondence by the US and other governments is wrong, and a gross, unjustified, overreaction to the real threat of terrorism.
And yet, when taken as part of the whole picture that is the internet, government surveillance is little more than a drop in the ocean. While governments may collect a possibly significant amount of correspondence and analyze some of it, almost all online data, e-mail correspondence as well as photos and documents, search history, browsing history, our physical location, the driving, running and cycling routes we take, the busses we use and more, is constantly collected, analyzed monitored and used, all day every day, by private corporations. These corporations are even less subject to oversight than any democratically elected institution, and their employees are less carefully screened.
Government surveillance is wrong, but at least it raises an outrage that, in time, is almost certain to bring about change. Corporate surveillance is a more dangerous beast. It employs manipulation and deceit rather than plain-old secrecy, and worst of all – it causes little outrage.
Some have compared the current state of things to George Orwell's Big Brother government, but those who've read the book know that Big Brother does not rule through secrecy and intimidation. Big Brother is never mistrusted, never hated, and never feared or suspected. People subject themselves to his control willingly. Big Brother is loved. That is how absolute power is gained. And that is why a democratic institution has little hope of ever attaining Big Brother status, especially in America where any government is automatically suspect. The real danger to our privacy and our freedom, the true potential Big Brother and the danger that dwarfs any government surveillance online, is Google, Facebook and their ilk.
And yet, when taken as part of the whole picture that is the internet, government surveillance is little more than a drop in the ocean. While governments may collect a possibly significant amount of correspondence and analyze some of it, almost all online data, e-mail correspondence as well as photos and documents, search history, browsing history, our physical location, the driving, running and cycling routes we take, the busses we use and more, is constantly collected, analyzed monitored and used, all day every day, by private corporations. These corporations are even less subject to oversight than any democratically elected institution, and their employees are less carefully screened.
Government surveillance is wrong, but at least it raises an outrage that, in time, is almost certain to bring about change. Corporate surveillance is a more dangerous beast. It employs manipulation and deceit rather than plain-old secrecy, and worst of all – it causes little outrage.
Some have compared the current state of things to George Orwell's Big Brother government, but those who've read the book know that Big Brother does not rule through secrecy and intimidation. Big Brother is never mistrusted, never hated, and never feared or suspected. People subject themselves to his control willingly. Big Brother is loved. That is how absolute power is gained. And that is why a democratic institution has little hope of ever attaining Big Brother status, especially in America where any government is automatically suspect. The real danger to our privacy and our freedom, the true potential Big Brother and the danger that dwarfs any government surveillance online, is Google, Facebook and their ilk.
> But for me, the Internet is over.
This is how I've been feeling about it for the last few weeks.
This is how I've been feeling about it for the last few weeks.
I guess I don't get it. Didn't we "know" about things like Carnivore in the 90s? Isn't it rather expected that unencrypted communications are going to be gathered? You don't even need a nation-state to do so. Anyone with physical access can place taps, and parsing and saving port 25 traffic ain't exactly Manhattan Project level work.
I agree it's upsetting and citizens should be demanding oversight. But to assume your plaintext transmissions over uncontrolled wires are somehow private seems absurd. It's like the silliness people got whipped into over Google's WiFi collection which was essentially passing "-s 0" instead of "-s 64" to tcpdump.
I agree it's upsetting and citizens should be demanding oversight. But to assume your plaintext transmissions over uncontrolled wires are somehow private seems absurd. It's like the silliness people got whipped into over Google's WiFi collection which was essentially passing "-s 0" instead of "-s 64" to tcpdump.
This to me is the most pernicious thing about this whole surveillance business. The mere presence of a comprehensive surveillance apparatus, even when you don't live in a totalitarian state when jack booted thugs pay you a visit to "get your mind right", does incalculable damage to the first amendment. In a free society, it's "game over" without the first amendment. This is in some ways even more damaging than the actual surveillance (which in theory could be shut off today) because once the public feels they've lost the freedom of speech, it is extremely hard to convince them otherwise. Look at how hard it has been for the citizenry of forer communist countries to embrace and internalize the freedoms we in the US have had for a few hundred years.
This is such depressing news. And I've been trying to think of a way to solve this technically, but the Government has the five dollar wrench, and all we have is the crypto.
Code will not be enough, the system only respects one thing, money. If enough people move to services outside of the States, the real people in power will tell the government to reinstate at least some civil liberties and human rights. But even then, don't expect too much.
As mixmax said, this is "akin the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's." It will start with moving to hosting and services outside the country and will eventually be followed by people physically leaving the country. As James Joyce said, "silence, cunning... exile"!
It's not so bad. I've been an expat for 26 years and I've never looked back.
Code will not be enough, the system only respects one thing, money. If enough people move to services outside of the States, the real people in power will tell the government to reinstate at least some civil liberties and human rights. But even then, don't expect too much.
As mixmax said, this is "akin the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's." It will start with moving to hosting and services outside the country and will eventually be followed by people physically leaving the country. As James Joyce said, "silence, cunning... exile"!
It's not so bad. I've been an expat for 26 years and I've never looked back.
Can anyone explain for the uninformed how anything like surveillance affects Groklaw?
I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.
I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.
Groklaw has been a jewel in the crown of the free internet. We are all unbelievably impoverished by its passing. This is truly awful.
Comment of the CEO of the service PJ chose for her communications: http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=625
"While we’re happy to provide a privacy asylum in a safe legislation, society should not need them. Privacy should be the default, not the exception."
So it's come down to privacy asylums and digital refugee camps now. WTF?
"While we’re happy to provide a privacy asylum in a safe legislation, society should not need them. Privacy should be the default, not the exception."
So it's come down to privacy asylums and digital refugee camps now. WTF?
relevant link...(Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw's Pamela Jones)(2011) http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/google-real-names-and-g...
...Can PJ not figure out GnuPG? Is she officially retiring from any and all digital correspondence contrary to her notice that "[her] email [addresses] still work"? She says she's getting off the internet to whatever extent possible, and then asks people to continue to send her mail. I also find it cute that people believe facilities based in other Western nations are outside of the NSA's reach.
I gotta say that stopping Groklaw, which is a public site anyway, because someone else might be reading it, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, despite the emotional ploys in this article. She can write and save drafts locally in a (GASP) local word processor and encrypt anything she chooses to upload to remote storage. The government will then not be able to read unfinished Groklaw articles. Does this resolve the issue?
This whole article should've just been a public key and a PO box address with this note: "I will not acknowledge plaintext mail. If you are uncomfortable transmitting encrypted data over the wire, please send a USB disk to this box."
I gotta say that stopping Groklaw, which is a public site anyway, because someone else might be reading it, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, despite the emotional ploys in this article. She can write and save drafts locally in a (GASP) local word processor and encrypt anything she chooses to upload to remote storage. The government will then not be able to read unfinished Groklaw articles. Does this resolve the issue?
This whole article should've just been a public key and a PO box address with this note: "I will not acknowledge plaintext mail. If you are uncomfortable transmitting encrypted data over the wire, please send a USB disk to this box."
at the risk of encouraging brainless anger responses.
yes lets all bend over and take it up the ass...
because someone says what they learned makes them not want to use e-mail? this is precisely the opposite of how to stand up to oppression.
no matter what it is the response should not be "well i'm going to stop being free and let them oppress me" you may as well just lay down and die in my mind...
you are born free whether you like it or not and nobody can take that away but yourself.
yes lets all bend over and take it up the ass...
because someone says what they learned makes them not want to use e-mail? this is precisely the opposite of how to stand up to oppression.
no matter what it is the response should not be "well i'm going to stop being free and let them oppress me" you may as well just lay down and die in my mind...
you are born free whether you like it or not and nobody can take that away but yourself.
Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbounded passions in people that lead to oppression. In other words, the private life that each of us leads will hugely influence the way we are governed.
Governments are always ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them. That is the default because it is hard-wired into the human condition. And this is the major factor not grasped by those today who assume that society is evolving to a point that, if only right-thinking people with good motives are given enough power over our lives, they will somehow magically transform society for the good through government action. In reality, if any persons - right-thinking or not - are given largely unchecked authority over our lives, abuses will inevitably follow. As they gather huge amounts of power, their purpose in life becomes to guard that power jealously and to increase it as opportunities permit. No bureau has ever abolished itself. Farm programs from the depression era thrive today as ever, though the logic for their existence has long since vanished. Politicians of all stripes promote expanded budgets for their own areas of preferred government expansion and spend money they don't even have in vast quantities with little or no accountability to the people they supposedly serve.
This is why it is vital in a free society that its people be educated and morally grounded to value their rights as individuals and to resist and distrust unchecked authority in the state. Do we have that today? Perhaps, but only in a very weakened form. Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs. There is very little residue in our society of the old-fashioned principled belief that it is wrong to have vast centralized power with very few checks upon it. In her sign off piece, PJ notes: "Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term." This is lamentable but it is a mere symptom, and not the cause, of our ills. Politicians make the law as they go, with no accountability, only because they are allowed to do so by those whom they govern. And, if someone already has vast power over you, it is but a small step to extend that power in a technological age by using technology to spy upon, intimidate, and control people. Why, when these leaders are allowed to lord it over us as they see fit, should they suddenly develop scruples in gathering information that only serves to enhance their power to do what we are already letting them do without so much as a peep of principled opposition?
Privacy is in significant peril, and it is a serious loss when Groklaw goes down over this issue. But assaults on privacy are but a symptom of a deeper malady as modern society increasingly believes that it can hand over massive forms of unchecked government to its politicians in the naive belief that such power can be used wisely if only we have right-thinking leaders at the helm. The answer, as de Tocqueville noted years ago, is not to place faith in leaders but rather to take personal responsibility in our lives and to curtail the powers of those who govern. I guess we shall just have to wait and see if this is possible today.
In the meantime, we can praise those who fight the good fight, and PJ has been a supreme example of this. Tireless, talented, and astute, she has been a wonderful force for good over the past decade. May she find a powerful new outlet for those talents as she moves forward, even in a difficult environment.