I think you misinterpreted my post. I wasn't claiming these were new problems. I was just claiming that now more than ever (since software is eating the world) we need communities like /. raising the alarm. I was also admitting that I underestimated the importance of these things back when I was reading /. as a high schooler in the late 90's (I, too, have a low digit ID on slashdot.)

Indeed. I remember the evolution of ECHELON in the 90s having the same impact in some circles. And then Carnivore coming out a decade later. If someone doesnt (at least) know of SHAMROCK and MINARET they really have no context.

Also Clipper/Skipjack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Unfortunately, people had already forgotten about the Clipper Chip when Al Gore got the nomination the first time.

I believe we'd still have better outcomes from a candidate who was trained in the sciences than an alternative completely ignorant about technology.

I make mistakes when I'm writing code all the time. But as a science professional, I test my code against an objective reality, characterize my bugs, then change my approach.

Politics could use a lot more of that.

And I'd also offer that in the mid-90s key escrow wasn't as bizarre an idea. We were just starting to grapple with mass physical communication transitioning to digital.

And while I hate the dragnet currently used, targeted, court-approved interception of communication content is a good to society (via an effective law enforcement branch, hence an effective court system, hence rule of law).

same story here. Low number ID, privacy advocate, etc since the 90s.

the part that disgusts me recently is that when these conspiracies are turned into fact by post-facto released information from official sources, a good amount of the reaction is "So? Everyone already knew that anyway."

I feel like that reaction is so blasé that it will ultimately be the deathknell of the personal privacy movement.

Whether or not the propagation of that kind of attitude and reaction to such things is state-induced is another question, but the damage that such opinions do to such activism is definetly real. If I were an adversary to a cause, I would definetly consider those kind of tactics against the ideals of my enemy.

Yeah, it's funny. We all heard about ECHELON a long time ago, only to find out it was true and that not many people care because they don't really get what it means.

Ask not what the damage is on activism. Ask what is the damage to real human freedom.

Hear, hear. I had a conversation last week where I mentioned that 20 years ago, on Usenet of all places, people were saying that due to the growing size of corporate databases, privacy had already been dead for a long time.

22 years ago: "You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!"

Not a great movie in the traditional sense, but they hit on some important stuff. I loved when the one fed was reading from the Hacker Manifesto...

    This is our world now... the world of the electron and 
    the switch, the beauty of the baud.  We make use of a 
    service already existing without paying for what could 
    be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, 
    and you call us criminals.  We explore... and you call 
    us criminals.  We seek after knowledge... and you call 
    us criminals.  We exist without skin color, without 
    nationality, without religious bias... and you call us 
    criminals.

    You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, 
    cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for 
    our own good, yet we're the criminals.

    Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.  
    My crime is that of judging people by what they say and 
    think, not what they look like. My crime is that of 
    outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive 
    me for.

    I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

> We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons

This sounds like it was written by an angsty 14-year-old who has no idea what actually goes into building and maintaining public infrastructure. Not, of course, that telecoms are always good citizens, but still.

Also this indicated quite a good understanding of 'hacker' culture at the time. It's from http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html

Oh, definitely. I'm just intrigued by how my perception of that culture has altered over time, especially as I've become more involved with the world 'behind the curtain', and the true magnitude of the industry required to produce all our modern amenities.

Long distance calls in those days were prohibitively expensive. He was writing about the public telephone system and BBSs, not the Internet. You did not dial a BBS outside of your area code (and sometimes not even within the area code because there might be toll charges).

Yeah, I was around then.

Long distance calls were expensive because they were trying to pay off billions of dollars of basic infrastructure - the phone network that we're only now replacing nearly half a century later. Those fancy exchanges that the phreakers were exploiting? Those had to be invented, prototyped, tested, mass produced, installed, maintained... and that's not even considering tens of thousands of kilometers of telephone wires and poles, negotiating land rights, etc.

We only think of long distance communication as being next-to-free today because our information tech is already bootstrapped, computers are a billion times more powerful, and the market across which those costs are amortized are at least a million times bigger.

17... cute. I wonder how many it is today.

Thank you for sticking up for what's right.

> FFS FB threatened to sue me for that which I revealed even here on HN.

Can you talk more about this? My curiosity is piqued!