I find it highly ironic that you are making this statement today. Today, where it came out that the IRS leaked confidential infos on one political group to their political enemies [1].
I have no idea how you can make such a statement. Is it just naivety or what are your intentions? If information "is there" it is going to be used. No matter how sophisticated the flagging system is, the data is not stored in some secret vault only accessible to the great inquisitor.
The recent IRS events clearly demonstrate that government institutions are absolutely unafraid to abuse available data for intimidation if necessary. These are no just a rogue employee stalking his ex, but actions on a targeted, ideological level. The only data that can not be abused is the data that does not exist.
[1] http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-t...
You say that like it is a new development. It is not.
This is not to give it a pass or say it's okay. Just pointing out that there is nothing in recent events that signals a significant departure from what has been happening since the last century and beyond.
Hopefully we can pinpoint the leaks, identify why they occurred, and develop safeguards to prevent abuses of highly confidential data in the future.
Send the assholes who used their government position for evil to prison and make THAT the top news story.
EDIT: The system will repeatedly be broken in an ever-changing environment. That doesn't mean that we should turn against our government as a whole. Patch the holes, prevent it from happening in the future, do our best to allow the right amount of transparency, and move on.
The origin is that you should not let a few bad apples spoil a barrel, because if you pack a barrel of apples for the winter and leave a bad apple in it, it will spoil the barrel. Therefore any time you find a bad apple, INSPECT EVERYTHING CAREFULLY.
Today it has reversed meanings, "Oh just a couple of bad apples", and this version is almost always wrong. Where you've found one bad apple, there are likely to be more. Do not leap to make excuses, leap to investigate carefully. That is the healthy response.
As for spying, give people access, and incentives for accessing, and I guarantee that it will be abused. Oh, most Americans won't be targeted. But anyone running for office whose policies those in power don't like...?
The state was built to serve the interest of the general public and yet today does not produce the necessary signals to indicate it is functioning correctly to that purpose. We are experiencing asymmetric information:
* the state holds whatever privileged data it wishes for the length of time and purpose that it finds appropriate within the law and determines whether to reveal or withhold this data at present or some future date
* the state also determines the correct interpretation of the laws in court orders, position papers and executive orders -- and these orders can also be considered privileged data, so the same principle applies about whether to reveal or withhold this data from the public
* any indiscretions in the use of that privileged data by the state may or may or may not be detected by the state itself and, if detected and as it pertains to privileged information that may or may not be known to be held by the general public, the news of this detection and optional remediation may or may not be later revealed to the general public
* any successes by the state cannot be audited outside of the state itself, so the general public is reduced to the hope that the results were satisfactory and correct
Yes, I would argue that the current system is broken.
Yeah, 95% of them are making all the rest look bad.
I'm glad you're so certain.
> Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, BUT the alternative is much scarier.
That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now.
I'd argue a lot has changed.
The U.S. has always militarily dominated everything that could hurt it. Soon after our independence, we were intervening in Latin America because in the 1800's, set off from the Old World by two huge oceans, Latin America is what could have hurt us. As the world became smaller, we built a bigger Navy, and by World War I we had the largest in the world. Ever since World War I we have maintained military supremacy in any domain that mattered (naval, air, nuclear, space, etc).
Arguably this is just a continuation of the trend onto the internet, now that the digital sphere matters.
I'm also curious what "threat" this is supposed to protect us from.
There are enough communication mediums to choose from that it's pointless to monitor any of them. It's trivial to find or create one that isn't being monitored. It's not stopping criminals, it's just taking freedom from normal citizens.
I don't think the government needs to be reading our text messages. I do think it's silly to pretend nothing has changed in 200 years. Electronic warfare is going to be a thing, and I want to live in a world where the U.S. has the upper hand in it, not China.
We're going to have to figure out a way that accommodates U.S. dominance over electronic networks while reasonably protecting everyone's' privacy. We're not going to do that by burying our heads in the sand and pretending nothing has changed in 200 years.
Can you please explain why "I want to live in a world where the U.S. has the upper hand in it, not China"?
I find it odd that many Americans tend to adopt this Us vs. Them mentality.
My personal perception is that China needs America to consume it's products and America needs China to cheaply produce the stuff it wants. So it's more give and take vs. outright rooting for the home team etc. etc.
Of course not. But like everywhere else it's full of people who see no problem using force abroad to further their own prosperity. The difference between Americans and Chinese is that Americans are in a much better position to do so.
> Can you please explain why "I want to live in a world where the U.S. has the upper hand in it, not China"?
Because China would be a far less benevolent world hegemon than the U.S. Because being a citizen of the dominant world power is, all else equal, better than being a citizen of a country that lives in the shadow of that power?
> I find it odd that many Americans tend to adopt this Us vs. Them mentality.
There has never been, in the history of the world, any sane population that thought: "gee, wouldn't it be great if some other country had military dominion over ours?" Now, most people have to resign themselves to that state of affairs, but Americans do not, which makes them particularly conscious of the fact that they do in fact enjoy many benefits from their place in the world.
There are nearly a million Iraqi dead, killed in a war George W. Bush intentionally started, based on evidence he personally knew to be false.
> gee, wouldn't it be great if some other country had military dominion over ours?
You know, I rarely dream of military dominion over Denmark, or subjugation by. Maybe it's the civilization speaking.
The USA is a walking embodiment of a stereotypical second-amendment nut - "I need my gun in case someone else has a gun!". Better get two!
> most people have to resign themselves to that state of affairs, but Americans do not
You're trolling, right?
Because Switzerland is the example of a country that said "Don't tread on me".
The USA on the other hand has waged war on and committed horrible atrocities against its neighbors constantly. Quick, name two countries whose democratic government you haven't destroyed. (No seriously, you've destroyed many (ten? more?) peaceful democracies and attacked other countries for not being democracies.)
The USA is the bully. More than the bully, the murderers. The looters.
And you seem to have elected yourself their chief spokesman. What gives?
It seems like "they're going to do surveillance so we need to do surveillance" is the wrong approach. All that does is increase the possibilities for abuse: By enemies and dictators, by corrupt bureaucrats, by foreign attackers who break into the domestic surveillance apparatus for their own purposes.
What we should be doing is to implement technology that will make surveillance harder for everyone. That leaves the U.S. at no disadvantage without invading everyone's privacy.
And it keeps us from having to fight an asymmetric war. If China has access to every U.S. company's trade secrets, the fact that the NSA has access to every Chinese company's trade secrets is a very poor consolation prize -- our trade secrets are more valuable. The economic damage that attacks on computer systems can do is greater against the U.S. than it is against its enemies. We don't need our government to do everything it can to exploit security vulnerabilities in order to conduct unconstitutional surveillance, we need it to help us (or get out of the way) in reducing the vulnerabilities.
And the two alternatives are pretty clearly opposed to one another. You can't have bureaucrats interfering with efforts to make the internet more secure in order to reduce the effectiveness of China's surveillance apparatus just because they're afraid it will reduce the effectiveness of the NSA's surveillance apparatus. You end up fighting a civil war instead of fighting the attackers.
Watching funny cats on YouTube isn't so important that I should give up my privacy. Some mega-corp's website going down for a day or two is less worrisome to me than knowing the government is watching me.
And it will immediately, although not fatally, impact land line telephones, which I believe do significant backhaul over IP.
The economic devastation would be huge. Banks could not process payments, utilities could not be managed in some areas, software companies would basically lose all productivity.
Heck even many hospitals would be unable to access medical records.
There would be serious wide spread repercussions that would leave a lasting impact on, if nothing else, our economy.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/chinese-cyber-spyin...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_bomb
and of course:
Furthermore, if the government has already screwed up their systems and made them publicly available in the first place, how can you be so sure they'll competently implement their surveillance systems?
I should note that I'm not arguing that the government should read text messages. I tend to think that if you're sending something in clear text so some flunkie at AT&T can read it, its no problem if the government can too. My point is that you can't just ignore the real security concerns. The U.S. has never been about liberty at the cost of security.
Also, this is one rare case where I would accept reasoning by analogy with a physical analog: mail. People have an expectation of privacy when sending letters, and they should rightly expect e-mail and text messages to be treated similarly.
The threat from the [insert latest bogeyman's name here] is no reason to limit the freedoms of US citizens or spy upon them. It calls for the administration to take decisive action to prevent unauthorized access to critics systems.
Systems can be easily isolated and access totally restricted to trusted persons only. The rest is for movies.
The real question is why is no one looking at the US administration and asking simply, "why are you not prepared for this?"
Solving these threats along with SPAM and DOS attacks is child's play if you are really serious, yet it is played out in he media as if we can't do anything about it other than restricting personal freedom and creating national citizen surveillance systems.
Blame the boogeyman not the admin.
This approach means that every US citizen is a potential threat the the system and is treated as such making total nonsense of the entire premise of keeping America safe by these means.
I feel lucky that I am NOT a US citizen after all...
There is a very delicate balancing act being preformed with peoples "rights" to privacy, but the US government is not going to stop monitoring because people want a false sense of privacy.
It's like saying "There are lots of black people in prison, hence it's a good idea to stop and frisk them, just in case, because you know the track record". That sort of circular logic is why I feel my blood pressure go up every time I think about it.
It's partial fear mongering, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.
"Nothing has changed to make it necessary now."
That's pretty naive. If you don't want rampant terrorist attacks and criminal activity, then the government needs to stay one step ahead of the small percentage of citizens who do not want to follow the laws that keep us civil. Yes, some laws were created against the best interests of American citizens, but transparency will only help get those corrected.
These people who don't respect the rule of law.. why do you think they're not in government?
"...some [US] laws were created against the best interests of [all] American citizens..."
because "...you don't want rampant terrorist attacks and criminal activity..."
defined as "...citizens who do not want to follow the laws that keep us civil..."
Reconstructed: US government has a system of laws that are against the best interests of all US citizens because some of those citizens don't like the laws the US government uses.
Really? That's deep.
But, there are some laws that might be outdated or against the best interest of society. I'm not sure how those situations should be handled when it comes to monitoring.
I actually had drug and tax laws in mind and was hinting at the issue of politicians being paid and influenced by corporations against the best interests of humanity. Though tax laws obviously don't matter in the context of text message snooping, it's just an example to help reinforce the point that the legal system isn't perfect and neither are those who enforce it.
I'm glad you're so certain we had no government surveillance.
See how far "they" have gotten? They made us afraid of texting certain keywords to other people using a medium that's supposed to be usable for private one-on-one communications. In a country that values freedom of speech over nearly everything else.
Free to say what you want as long as no government has an issue with it I guess.
Of course we don't know whether SMSes are actually monitored. Of course it's very well possible that nothing might happen if you text your buddy something involving bombs. But the fact that something might happen was so convincing to you (and me, honestly and I don't even live in the US) that you decided not to do it.
To me, that's greatly concerning as it shows that the oppression is already happening and we are already censoring ourselves even over private media.
People are watching you, so be careful what you say.
Pretty sure that trips a few flags. I feel sorry for the poor NSA guy having to read through all my texts. Worst. Afternoon. Ever.
If the NSA is already storing all of the things, why do we keep having scandals about government breaking rules to get records of things? Google publishes specific numbers of requests for records... There was a story a month or so ago about feds reprogramming a guy's smart card specifically to track him... AP just broke the story about the subpoena for two months of phone records... if the NSA already has all this stuff, why doesn't everyone in the government just secretly get it from them instead of going to all this extra trouble to get records from companies all the time? I'm concerned about all the above abusive surveillance stories, but doesn't the fact that we're having all these stories prove that they don't have total surveillance yet?
The fact is that text messages are extremely insecure. If the US govt is willing to spend hundreds of billions on spy satellites and submarines, isn't it reasonable to assume that they would spend a couple million to gather all text messages? They're not supposed to spy on US citizens, but there are enough loopholes to allow it.
Just because the NSA has huge amounts of data doesn't mean that the FBI has unlimited access to that data.
The NSA historically doesn't share information with other agencies. Many claim that the NSA knew the details of 9/11 but were not allowed to share this information. Then the Patriot act and "secret patriot act" came along and more information is allowed to be shared between agencies, but not unlimited information, as far as the public knows.
I guess it would exert secretive power over its citizens? What point are you trying to make? America has finally realized the Maoist ideal it always wanted to achieve?
It is never read by humans though unless flagged.
And hopefully there are checks-and-balances in place to alert others if a government employee is accessing data about someone that he personally knows.
It's not as easy as "only save texts with the words bomb and weed in them". It's all saved, then analyzed, then retained a few years, then eventually deleted. Is that acceptable for the US government to do?
It's also amusing how sure you seem about some things, while also adding in a few "hopefully"-s here and there. The truth is, you don't have any idea what they're doing because they don't tell anybody.
Well, the US government did grant immunity to the big TelComs for their participation in the "Domestic" surveillance program a few years ago...
That tells me all I need to know.
RedPhone anyone? http://www.whispersystems.org/
With the criteria for being "flagged" remaining secret. Are you a dissident? Now the government can make your life difficult by leaking information about your brief extramarital affair. Maybe the government will concoct a sexual assault case against you to shut you up.
Correct. Since the NSA is prohibited from operating within US borders, it's the FBI who snoops on US citizens.
Because you are laying it on just a little thick along with scaremongering.
Provide proof that China is evil. Different != evil.
"the unknown is scary"
That's just a stupid statement. If all you knew was Nazi Germany, would you maintain the status quo?
Your call whether that's just a cultural difference. I don't know what "evil" means here.
Let's face it, the poor everywhere get screwed while the rich get away with it. It's just different shades.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
Western example... http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigg...
dm2 was positing China as this fearsome bogeyman where the only option is China vs. US, winner takes all.
How about internment camps then? Does that better suit your strawman?
Whereby Eisenhower's Executive Order 9066 caused Japanese American citizens to be plucked off the street and put into camp against their will for MULTIPLE years with NO recourse. All because of unfounded fear. Not so different is it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
I know people that this directly affected so I feel strongly about this issue.
While I can and do respect your skill and experience in security, this however is an area I doubt you have much actual experience or proper perspective in.
I would recommend visiting Manzanar or one of the other camps if you have not had the opportunity to do so. These are not nice places and caused severe hardship to the people imprisoned there.
Plundering the worlds oceans in attempt to feed the billion+ population is borderline.
Are those issues just cultural differences or seriously unethical?
Starting wars because of oil is not? Concentration camps?
"Are those issues just cultural differences or seriously unethical?"
Point I'm trying to make is that America is not as lily white as you think it is.
The US doesn't spend half of our GDP on the military for shits and giggles.
Regarding your Nazi Germany comparison, I don't know enough about the holocaust to speculate on the reasons why it happened or what could have been done to prevent it. I wouldn't kill any innocent human, no matter their religion or race. Groupthink, racism, fear, and ignorance might be partially to blame but it would be difficult to be in a position to actually make a difference during those times. Electronic warfare is not comparable to the holocaust. But the potential of power changing hands after 50+ years of control isn't something that shouldn't at least be discussed.
But there's always the refrain that war is a job creation machine and any attempt to dial it down is met with accusations of being unpatriotic (case in point, whoever downvoted me). Not quite that simple.
Do you have any evidence for this? The Wiretap Act clearly prohibits it, if they are doing it, it's definitely illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/04/6585-2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_L...
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13164...
Of course, smart criminals would not use unencrypted text messages that could be intercepted. But catching the low-hanging fruit is better than nothing.
None of the links you post have anything to do with "storing all text messages". Exaggeration like this just turns people cold to bothering to read about genuine privacy concerns.
The issues you post are real and probably wrong and should be challenged legally, where evidence exists (a lot of the AT&T stuff is based on evidence from a single former employee), but when you confuse Warrentless Wiretapping with "storing all text messages", it makes me want to not listen to what you're saying.
Only select people under investigation would have their entire text message conversations read by a human.
Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. Can other agencies have access to this data? Yes, Patriot Act.
There is a very easy way to test their capabilities. Send a text message with keywords involving bombs and political figures and see what happens. I'm not going to do it, but it would be an interesting experiment.
Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, but the alternative is much scarier. The US has to maintain information dominance on the internet. Allowing other countries to dominate the internet could tip the scales of power. The US carries the big stick right now, if China gets the upper hand (and they are trying unimaginably hard) then what? What will the sleeping dragon do? I have nothing against China at all, but the unknown is scary and I simply would rather the US maintain indisputable dominance.