So privacy for those in positions of power but not for us plebes.
One generally needs a certain number of petition signatures to appear on a ballot, but apparently not needed just to legally be a candidate.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registeri...
I like the enthusiasm, but this would get you slapped by the IRS (eventually). Any other ideas?
Maybe if we just pay each other in a ring through a legal escrow? Everyone puts in $5,001, the escrow pays everyone back $5000.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party
For those curious:
It would be a great act of civil disobedience.
I would like to add, just think of the chaos at the primaries if the act of declaring candidacy one also declares they are running for the R|D nomination. The voting machines can barely deal with 20 presidential candidates. Imagine what would happen if you had to thousands of people running for a congressional seat!
Some are more collective.
These programs are all or nothing by design.
Admittedly that's a high bar, the next best choice is one that claims to keep no logs and has successfully defended such a claim to law enforcement. Not a long list here, but there are some.
E.g. one connection each in China, Russia and USA, and three more in the opposite direction of geopolitical allegiance if you’re super paranoid.
More generally, as long as you're not interacting with domestic Chinese people, authorities don't care much about what you're doing. That's what I've seen providers claim in darknet forums. And that was my experience when I leased VPS in Hong Kong. Once I made it clear that I wouldn't be interacting with domestic Chinese people, all was cool.
I have used one Russian VPN service, Insorg. They're one of the oldest. I've read about others, but don't recall names. And it's my impression that Russian authorities also mostly care about interactions with citizens.
So anyway, I typically start with a mainstream VPN service. Then I chain one or two notoriously hard to coerce ones. And for Mirimir, IVPN is the final one. Because I've written stuff for them, basically, so using IVPN earlier in chains would be stupid.
No, but their use is extremely common anyway.
Although Tor is better, because the connection reroutes dynamically. And worse, because anyone can volunteer to be an entrypoint or endpoint - this matters because a very well-resourced adversary could conceivably control both your entrypoint and your endpoint, and use a timing correlation attack to de-anonymize you. But I don't know that nested VPNs are immune to that either, given the level of invasive surveillance 5-eyes has over the entire internet.
And re dynamic circuits, I did a crude hack: https://github.com/mirimir/vpnchains
I only use Tor via nested VPN chains. The VPNs mainly provide backup anonymity, in case Tor circuits are compromised. And they also anonymize me vs Tor use, which may avoid attention.
When I don't care so much about anonymity, I just use nested VPN chains. Throughput is 5-10 times that for Tor, latency is lower, and I'm not limited to TCP.
edit: I apologize for the inflammatory tone, but I think this is concerning enough of a step forward to warrant a bit of hyperbole.
Some districts can lead initially, the rest can catch on
You can generally only sign for one candidate per election.
Or one guy going to court and losing to screw everyone.
I often encourage (and practice myself) looking for a tip email address to your favorite outlets and sending them...well a tip when there’s a story going on they haven’t yet reported, but one feels especially is need of wider dissemination.
Feels almost civic.
Strongly encouraging it here, too :)
But to be clear, this is just a reduction in friction of the previous process which was to just call a judge of a secret FISA court which no one is really allowed to know the details of.
So this is likely just a move to reduce some red tape, and increase data ingress.
The secret court has reviewed your criticisms, in secret, and finds them to be [redacted]. Govern yourself accordingly.
The secret court has [redacted].
This week on Fox News, [...].
This is simplifying the process to imply it’s nothing more than just a phone call away. I do not think any court works like that. They still have to argue their case before a judge of the court which also allows third parties to submit material in the case.
Simply saying “no one” is suppose to know about these courts is portraying this process as something unconstitutional and nothing more than a secret society of government friends. If by no one you actually mean the public, then you have a point. There’s national security concerns around these type of things that you’re ignorantly ignoring.
You act as if this court has no existed for over 40 years and under multiple administrations from both side of the aisles.
I’d wager a phone call or email is likely all that was needed in many cases.
By “no one” I mean some sort of counter-balancing entity.
I’m not sure why you think I’m acting like this didn’t exist under multiple administrations. I’m aware of that, and not OK with any of it.
I was not OK with original passing of the patriot act, or the continued renewal by both parties.
Look elsewhere for partisanship, I’m an equal opportunity dissenter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
From Senator Mike Lee's webpage[0]:
The Lee-Leahy amendment will strengthen third-party oversight of the FISA process. Specifically, it requires FISA court judges to appoint an amicus curae (a neutral third-party observer) in any case involving a “sensitive investigative matter” so long as the FISA court does not determine it to be inappropriate.
The amendment will also empower the amicus to raise any issue with the court at any time and give both the amicus and the FISA court access to all documents and information related to the surveillance application.
0: https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/5/senate-pa...
Even calling it a rubber stamp is an exceedingly generous definition of probable cause.
It passed by one vote. He missed it.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2020/05/12/congress-...
What media do you think should cover this? FOX News? CNN? MSNBC? Do you think Rachel Maddow should report on this? Who is going to report on this kind of stuff?
There are plenty of stories being written, but not about this. Pretty much at all. That is the problem, and I don't know how assigning blame certain outlets would change that. We don't know if pitches are getting rejected, or the money is in other topics, or anything, but the simple fact is that it's not happening and it's something that affects everybody in the US (and beyond, I'm sure).
Looks like you're getting the usual HN anti-intellectual downvotes and my upvote wasn't enough to drag you out of the gray.
It should be on the 5PM, 7PM and 11PM local news, and every cable org.
There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American law is that everyone is nominally the same. Declaring a vague category of citizen out of bounds of the law is absurd.
Yet it’s hardly new for congress to exempt themselves from the laws they pass. Political campaigns are exempt from robocalls for instance. It’s an unfortunate reality.
Prohibiting law enforcement/intelligence used in national defense is very different.
Edit: Putting this here since I've reached my reply cap. There was a request for citations. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/report-footnotes-show-fbi-k...
Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but this needs a source.
However, it's also fact that Steele himself was well known to Russian intelligence, and while it's clear he was no friend to them he was a known enemy - They were specifically trying to feed him disinformation[1][2]
Did he bite bad bait? That's the question that doubters bring up. The "pee tape" thing is so bizarre I think it's likely true, but on the other hand I think that at this point Trump could just own it.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/christopher-steele-f... [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/steele-dossier-disinformation-u...
It isn't about POTUS, it's about the notion that preventing US counter intelligence from doing their jobs with respect to illegal influence on political campaigns. If what you say is true, and the Clinton campaign was seeking foreign assistance, shouldn't we know about and prevent that?
It is not a party a vs. party b issue.
Your point might hold true if the people being exempted from surveillance weren't also the people deciding who can be exempted from surveillance. But since they are, it is counterproductive to the privacy cause to allow Congress to give itself these kinds of special rules.
Force everyone in society to play by the same rules, and everyone in society will get the benefits. Allow Congress to get into the habit of exempting themselves from social systems or problems, and those problems will continue to exist.
In other words, when setting up incentives you have to think pragmatically about the entire system in the long term; you can't always just focus on short-term goals to the exclusion of everything else. Local optimums[0] aren't just a problem in AI, they're also a problem in real life. Because of the long term consequences, we're not interested in forming privacy castes in scenarios where doing so will make it harder for us to improve the system in the future.
Collectively the two are Congress.
If you're tasked with the public welfare you should get greater scrutiny, not be granted special privileges from it.
It's the classic case of those writing the law carving out an exception for themselves.
Someone's borrowing history at a public library has strong federal protections. Shouldn't someone's browsing history get the same treatment?
Rand Paul has introduced an amendment that goes up for vote tomorrow that would disallow this surveillance on American citizens, which of course is not expected to pass.
McConnell is drafting language to prevent this from being used on “federal election candidates” which of course is expected to pass.