It's a tad embarrassing that lawmakers (who aren't even computer scientists like c'mon are we for real here?) somehow forgot how and who broke the Enigma Machine. Alan Turing did that.
Same thing with the Tor browser developed by the US Navy. Either everyone has access to a tool which can guarantee that you can blend in with the rest of the crowd, or every civilian has a special color and we all pop out while the lawmakers and police are somehow wearing grey.
How did cypherpunks and computer scientists get blasted from the government like this? Shouldn't there be some laws regarding digital privacy for US citizens?
Somehow AD revenue is caked everywhere but I can't use a computer without the FBI wanting my social security card? What the duck. Shucks I thought this was America.
This is already happening. When the NSA decided the best approach to combat terrorism was to scoop up all emails, text, voice and internet browsing of every citizen on a daily basis, they inadvertently created a way we can all "blend in" now.
A perfect example is the Jan 6th capitol attack. It was being planned out on the open, on social media channels. They didn't use any obfuscation in their language and still, even with all the technology they have, the massive surveillance machine couldn't stop it from happening.
I still firmly believe encryption is needed for privacy, but over the last 10-15 years, the insane amount of data being vacuumed up is allowing people to hide in plain site.
While the rest of your point is salient, this example is flat out false. The FBI and multiple police departments were aware of what was about to happen and warned those in charge. It was summarily ignored, because the people in charge believed the rioters were on their side. It could have easily been stopped had they reacted with even a fraction of the force they did with the BLM protests a year earlier. The events of January 6th was a result of institutional prejudice and nothing less, not a lack of information from surveillance.
But that is what happened, and most people are oblivious to this fact.
The idea that the government can use your mobile phone to spy on you is so widely understood that even the dumbest popcorn movies make sure to show fugitives ditching their phones and criminals collecting/discarding them before they discuss business without explaining why. Everybody understands the purpose of a "burner" phone.
The point is that we voluntarily paid/pay to build and maintain the tracking infrastructure. That's what most people don't realize.
But they do, that's what's baffling. The number of people I have heard parrot the "Bill Gates put a tracking chip in the vaccine" has me both baffled and worried. These are people who appear to be otherwise completely sane and mostly rational. When I've pointed out that's literally what their phone does, so why would Bill Gates waste any money putting something in a vaccine (ignoring that's not even physically possible) - I get a "well that's different".
They are concerned, but as a non-technical person for some reason they just can't quite wrap their heads around what is happening.
I think it's more that there's no other option.
They need their phone, and they don't like all the tracking just like you or I don't like the tracking, but that's their only option if they want to use a phone.
It's hard to disentangle the two effects, but there is a burgeoning symbol of status in people literally displaying their vaccine cards. It hasn't completely undone the damage, but it does seem to ameliorate it.
In the past addictive properties were enough to get people to do absurd things like roll up leaves, light them on fire, and deliberately huff the smoke. That's arguably more harmful than what mobile devices do to us.
> I think you mean Enemy of the State?
Given the topic of mass surveillance, this doesn't sound like much of a distinction...
It doesn't really matter that they quantitatively have access to more to them, from the POV of law enforcement though they had access to everything that was available if they wanted it then and they don't now. Law enforcement chafes and pushes against any attempt to limit them because their self image is that of protectors and good guys so what they do has good reason even if people don't want them to, it's a whole self justifying greater good/ends justify the means self justifying loop a lot of place fall into, including tech companies. You see it constantly with unjustified searches, stops and seizures, given a limit, eg the requirement for probable cause for a search, police find any way around it they can to justify the action they already want to take, eg smell of drugs or 'acting suspicious'.
There are definitely crimes that go unsolved because police can't monitor everything 24/7, that irritates a group tasked with 'protecting' society so they push back. We feel the same thing in software engineering to a certain extent, governance, architectural approval, etc all suck to work with but they exist for a reason in big orgs but just because they're useful agencies doesn't mean they suck less when you're held up because the architects take 3 months to approve something and want 20 Powerpoint decks to do it.
The dates however are spoiled,it’s going to need a total clean.
I am the walrus.
See Lasswell. "Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasswell%27s_model_of_communic...
Back in France at the time of Richelieu, there wasn't a concept of free speech or religious freedom. Thus if you said that you thought the king was an idiot, you could be hanged. Or you doubted the Church, or doubted God existed.
Remember, blasphemy could be punished by death at that time.
Nowadays, in most free democracies you are free to say you don't believe in religion, or think the leaders are idiots and there are minimal consequences.
It's arguably different industrial complexes that have lead to mass surveillance, perhaps mostly the military-security industrial complex, that has lead to the current path; fear as a distraction from what's really needed is healing and strengthening the individual to not be brittle and prone to manipulation.
Indeed. But those conversations/meetings were visible, risky etc. They were thus possible to monitor/attack and they weren't scalable.
From the perspective of law enforcement, criminals being able to discuss crimes or make payments without there being a phyiscal exchange is a nightmare. In the past, they could monitor meetings between criminals. Now they basically need to look over the shoulder of criminals in order to prove that CriminalA spoke to CriminalB. It must be extremely difficult.
Even end to end encrypted systems know who is talking to who, and how often, and where those two parties are (due to client IP geolocation).
In aggregate, you would still be able to identify which group of people used which endpoints, but aggregate information won't hold up in court.
Yes, geolocation would solve that, but I would expect such people to absolutely disable the GPS, so you'd need to rely on cell tower pings, which are not found on the same servers.
Something really has fundamentally changed with the introduction of instant encrypted messages. I'm for that change, and against the government attempting to ban it.
what has changed is, like you say, how trivially easy it is to send instant encrypted messages. what was once the domain of spy agencies and organized crime is now practical for my mom to ask me what I would like for dinner. one wonders why the FBI finds that so concerning.
This is perhaps one of the more simple and persuasive arguments against domestic surveillance and spying that I’ve heard.
I would argue that the conversations that have gone online are the interactions that were previously happening in-person (at least in term of criminal activity), to which the FBI didn't have access before.
There is something Orwellian with the idea that there shouldn't be a word that can be pronounced in the country that the government cannot record and listen to after the fact. The limits of what is legal or not have always moved (see homosexuality, drug and alcohol consumption, etc). So a 100% enforcement of the law is counter-intuitively undesirable.