The webcam story blowing up is probably a good answer to roc's question about "Why is this not enough?". If they find something that sends some rage into the community, then I would expect this to bubble up again.
What is the real difference between this and what China was trying to do to gmail? The government wants to get access to private emails of people they don't like without having to demonstrate real evidence that the person has done anything wrong.
The biggest difference to my eyes is that the one targets "human rights activists who would like to bring down the government" while the other targets "terrorists".
Yeah, yeah. There is the whole "we're just going to take the emails". However China only went down that route after Western companies got leery of handing emails over due to the negative publicity that was incurred when Yahoo did so a few years back.
Good point. However, the similarity is also just as simple - the "instincts" of our Federal government is not all that different than the Chinese Communist government.
If only the silence meant that people were sharpening their pitchforks. Unfortunately, this is the USA -- we would rather die by a thousand paper-cuts than stand up and say "No!"...
Particularly when those cuts are delivered by people wrapped in the flag, promising safety.
It seems we have healthier debate over the government's ability to pass blanket public-space no-smoking laws, than the executive's new-found legal ability to ignore the constitution, the judicial and the legislative at its whim.
You can get tens of thousands to protest the deficit, or health care reform, or gay rights - but the steady erosion of our rights barely raises an eyebrow.
It's the whole "I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care if they are watching me" standpoint that most people have. The problem of course is that the people watching you are the ones who decide what's wrong. Of course there is the famous other quote: "If I have nothing to hide then why do you need to watch me?" or something like that.
I like that quote. It is a good description of what happens when people ignore basic rights infringements. The core of the US's glory is our rights, and if we let them be taken away for any reason... well... that's not why I came to the US.
In any case, what was the quote from Ben Franklin? "He who lets his rights be taken away in the name of security, deserves neither."
Obama selected Joe "I wrote the Patriot Act" Biden as his VP. This is the same Joe Biden who tried to ban Turing machines because they could be used to encrypt files that the government would be unable to crack.
Plenty of people knew this, but voted for Obama anyway.
For many people, "the government is violating privacy rights" is not a genuine policy position. It's just a club to beat their political opponents with.
This is not how US politcs works. If you agree with a side on some points and disagree with others you are ostracized by all groups. It is stupid, but unfortunately the US is a place where (for example) you are pro-death penalty and anti-abortion or pro-abortion and anti-death penalty. If you are pro both or anti both, almost everyone hates you.
You almost had a point here, but your unfortunate choice of terms demonstrates a lot of what's wrong with US politics. Rather than referring to the pro-choice movement as such, you've adopted a label, pro-abortion, that is simply misleading. Here we have a debate over women's reproductive health rights, and it gets reduced to misleading soundbites like "pro-abortion."
In the same way, I think much of what is being protested in this thread comes from the false dichotomy between "pro-security" and "anti-security" that ignores how important the ideals of personal rights are to the debate. US politics is well-characterized by a practiced reduction of complex political issues to misleading soundbites.
Just goes to highlight why electoral reform is important. When we start talking about more expressive ballots (i.e. expressing more than just a tactical first preference), your options aren't nearly as limited.
I have no idea where you got this info but it is not true. I'm not a big Biden fan but he did not have anything to do with crafting the Patriot Act. Here, go to the Wikipedia article and do a search for Biden, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_USA_PATRIOT_Act , you'll come up empty. You will find names like Specter, Leahy, Sarbanes, Lott, Hatch, Daschel, etc. Biden did vote for it, but so did 98 of his useless colleagues. Russ Feingold was the only true patriot in the senate.
"When I was chairman in '94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill--back then,...I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the Patriot act] was my bill." - Joe Biden
Whatever you may think about Joe Biden, I can guarantee you he's a better VP than Sarah 'Drill baby drill' Palin (who now, ironically, has a TV series on Discovery where she talks about the natural beauty of Alaska that she kept trying to destroy).
(The comment I am about to make is not supported by a link to a paper published by a widely respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal. You can safely assume that it contains nothing but falsehood and moderate accordintly.)
It's possible that the purpose of the comment was merely to express an opinion, and that the commenter had no intention of persuading you, or anyone else, of anything.
Right, cuz that's what we're about here at HN, just expressing opinions. We don't care about which opinions are right or wrong, we just want people to be able to express themselves and have a positive self image.
I'm happy he just said what he meant, instead of all the 'extensive footnoting' that sometimes goes on here. Footnotes do not make your arguments more solid, on the web you can find articles to link to support just about any position.
No extensive footnoting is needed for saying that the sky is blue. The evidence of Palin's incompetence is easily available to anyone with an actual interest.
Whatever you may think about implementing an entire e-commerce site in full-screen Flash and flat XML files, I can guarantee you it's a better solution than implementing an entire e-commerce site in a hybrid Java and ActiveX environment with an Access 97 backend.
Yes, and if your "ballot" had only had those two options, I would hope that you choose the former, as horrendous as it is. What's really objectionable, though, is that the political system in the US effectively presents you with a narrow set of unpalatable options.
An audience of voters that has been given two options, one of which is a disaster on wheels will choose the lesser of two evils. America needs a serious third party contender.
I think people will protest what they know about. Regardless of your opinion on the people taking part in the tea party protests, there are a lot of people taking time off work or away from other activities to go to rallies. The economy is the front and center issues right now, and I really don't know what has to happen for online privacy to get a stage.
I am more concerned about the organizations that were so vocal during the last administration, since they seem to be out to lunch now. I really think your beliefs about what is right and wrong shouldn't change just because someone else got the job. I guess I want consistency of message and action.
> "I am more concerned about the organizations that were so vocal during the last administration, since they seem to be out to lunch now."
Which organizations and how has their message or activity changed? Last I checked the EFF and ACLU were rolling right along with their press releases, briefs and lawsuits.
> "I really don't know what has to happen for online privacy to get a stage"
How about this? Why is this not enough?
Why was the revelation of wholesale privacy invasion as in the well-publicized AT&T/San Fran case not enough?
Why is the revelation of easy-access warrant-free 'meta-data wiretapping' not enough?
"Why is this not enough?" - this is a little higher Maslow's hierarchy then worries about jobs. Plus, the fourth estate has totally failed the people by not going after this. I am still amazed with a 24-hour news cycle how little is covered.
Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive.
Most of the tea-bagging protesters are protesting stuff that is way over their head, but they don't need a good technical understanding of since the issues are dumbed down to terms which fit their competence. I'm afraid this issue has been dumbed down as well. "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about."
Of course they'll treat this like a once-size fits all psuedo-ratiocination and utter it whenever something about "privacy on the internet" pops up.
Basically, I don't think this'll find its way on stage until it's too late. Like roc said, this alone should be enough.
I really don't believe anything anybody says when they use phrases like "tea-bagging", "tree hugger",or "pinko". I have lived in rural areas most of my life, and I don't think any of the current discussion is over these people's heads. I think it is a comfortable way of dismissing and diminishing people. It makes you feel superior. This has happened since the beginning of the country (ignorant colonists) through the ages (anti-war protestors, suffrage).
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Just to be clear I wasn't actually disagreeing with you. Just adding to what you said.
So you don't like the phrase "tea-bagging" and you don't like someone seemingly decreasing a group of people's relative value. I'm on your side.
Saying "tea-bagging" was lazy. Forgive me. As for the second cause for offense (perhaps too strong a word), well someone has to be qualified to make decisions. That's why we're a republic and not a democracy, because a mob (a group of people) can be ignorant.
And keep in mind that I was talking about technical understanding, not intelligence.
Anyway, I don't really have time for this right now, which is part of the reason I wasn't too careful choosing my words before. And this post will probably turn out to be not-so-fleshed out too, which I don't really care about right now.
I tend to get a little touchy about this type of "word" stuff.... Your right, mobs are often ignorant, but some of the key moments in our history of civil rights were described by one side as mobs.
I am not sure technical understanding is really the necessary item. I think it comes down to understanding the implications on your daily life. I know I get caught up in explaining the technical workings of things, but the best explanations to a general audience are almost always the little stories about what this will do in real life (tech example: technical specifications vs an Apple product introduction).
I guess I am in "the technical understanding makes it much easier to see all the implications, but I think understanding just the implications is good enough" camp. I am not sure this is a good thing, but with all the stuff in life, it might have to do.
Taking an example, I think the whole school webcam spying story is ripe for this type of thing. Really, I think the technical understanding is well above the heads of most people (including some tech writers I see). But, the implications won't be lost on any father of a teenage daughter. I expect that with our current media's prejudice towards the juicy, if the student who was suspended at the start of this was female and not male, well...
I appreciate why you're touchy, but think about it:
GOVT DEATH PANELS!
That's all you need to know, to realize that the assessment of "semi-facts, lies, and emotion blended into an easily palatable gruel" is, in fact, the majority of Tea Party-er thinking.
Not all of the people who are against socialized healthcare believe the "death panel" idiocy. Not all of them pretend they're doing some revolutionary act by joining the Tea Party.
But they're all hopelessly ignorant of how socialized medicine really works. And what the word "socialism" means.
Well, putting the whole bill http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3590/text on a billboard would be rather tough, so that's the sound bite that summarizes some of the believed implications of section 3403.
This actually goes along with the back and forth between myself and RevRal. To have a technical understanding of the bill, you probably need to be a serious specialist lawyer (after waiting for the RFP and rule making). Since most people don't fit those qualification, you tend to see people explaining the implications to people. One of the implications mentioned is cutting off money to do life saving procedures based on a medical panels ruling. In a world where people use the words "prolife" and "prochoice", I don't think "GOVT DEATH PANELS" is such a stretch.
(now to really wander) As to government socialized medicine. I grew up under US gov provided health care. They very nearly killed one family member, lost critical records on another, and misdiagnosed my and my brother's backs. I don't think all of those people are "hopelessly ignorant". I would imagine quite a few have family members "served" by the VA. Go google IHS and "don't get sick in June".
> It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing.
Every system entails rationing.
In a private system, your resources and your choices determine how decisions are made.
In a "public" system, govt decides. Yup - they'll take resources that you might have used for for your care and spend it on someone else and deny you care.
We already hear "we're not going to pay to care for fatties or smokers". If they're not going to get care, I think that it's wrong to take their money. That's just me.
At the risk of being further downvoted :).
The proper definition of "rationing" is ; Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies.
http://www.answers.com/topic/rationing
The conflation of private and governmental actions is exactly one of the things that has gotten us into the current troubles. If I choose to buy cake and not pencils today, I am not rationing myself. If the government says I can only have so many pencils or cake, I am subject to rationing.
Government is the only authorized agent of force. Private citizens are not allowed to force others to do their bidding. That is against the law: you cannot take my cake from me by force. Unfortunately, with our government becoming more and more unlimited, the force it can exert is correspondingly larger.
> Most of the tea-bagging protesters are protesting stuff that is way over their head
Oh really? You need to keep up. While the story used to be "ignorant", when folks actually looked at them, instead of relying on the US-lef "anyone who opposes me must be dumb" stereotype, they found that the Tea Party folks were, on the whole, better educated etc.
Man, this whole tea-party thing was fairly inconsequential to the point I was trying to make. I brought it up as an example and because my parent brought it up.
This was the supplement I was trying to tack onto my parent's comment: "Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive." This concerning internet privacy.
And I said "tea-bagging protesters" as a quick, lazy, way to refer to a group of people. My intent wasn't pejorative, but I am aware of the sexual act. I just didn't make the connection while writing.
I am aware of the seething tone of my comment, but besides that I didn't say anything untruthful. I could have said this:
Most [members of almost any group of people] are [discussing|protesting] stuff that is way over their head, but they don't need a good technical understanding of since the issues are dumbed down to terms which fit their competence.
I emphasized the word "need" for a reason.
If a person has a low level of competence or technical understanding of a subject, then it makes sense that you're going to have to dumb down the communication in order for them to get some semblance of understanding.
Thus, we place our trust in qualified experts. Thus we (generally) accept what is taught to us in schools about chemistry and mathematics, because it's better than re-learning it for ourselves and because we assume we're learning from an expert.
But my position on internet privacy is a little different. I feel that you do need a minimal technical understanding of the issue. A technical understanding that most people don't have, thus the issue slips by. All this in response to this part of my parent's comment: "I really don't know what has to happen for online privacy to get a stage."
So again, I'm basically saying I don't think this'll find its way on stage until it's too late. Because there aren't enough people who have enough technical understanding of this issue.
So, This: Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive.
Then the Tea-party thing as an example of where the issue would slip through (though I admit I may be wrong on this point).
Then This: I don't think this'll find its way on stage until it's too late. Because there aren't enough people who have enough technical understanding of this issue.
Anyway, this is all my fault for not writing clearly enough. I'm outta here. I should also apologize if I sound like an irritated a-hole. I didn't sleep last night.
So let's say we have a process that has consequences.
If I get you right, you believe the crowd doesn't need a technical understanding of the process as long experts (people with the technical understanding) provide a dumbed-down explanation. Except in the case of internet privacy where the crowd needs a minimal technical understanding of the issue. My basic belief is that a minimal explanation of process and an explanation of the consequences of the process is enough for the crowd.
Would you say internet privacy is different from say health care because of the technical nature or because it is more abstract or......
> But my position on internet privacy is a little different. I feel that you do need a minimal technical understanding of the issue.
> Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive.
What technical understanding do you think that someone needs in this case?
I'll help - do they need to understand more than "if your mail is hosted by Yahoo, Yahoo stores it" and "if your mail is in outlook, it's on your machine or that of your employer"? Those those two pieces of information establish where your mail is stored both before and after reading.
Note that the distinction that the DoJ was trying to make, that read mail stored outside your control isn't private, is not a technical issue, but a legal one.
> And I said "tea-bagging protesters" as a quick, lazy, way to refer to a group of people.
If it had been a similar reference about a different group of people, you have been driven out as a racist.
On the contrary, living in Europe I see you in the US as a great example of society which dares to stand up and say "No!". By comparison, you are exceptionally well-educated, conscious and actively taking care of your rights.
Living in the US, I accept the claim that not many get together to say "No". Compare to Asian/European countries where the slightest rift creates huge protests.
To cite UK as an example, we always hear British Airways going on strikes(not saying it's a good/bad thing); When was the last time we heard such a thing in the US? I often bring this up in conversations and a common argument thrown at me is that US is an individualistic society - neighbors are strangers to each other. Not all are interested in the big picture to change things. The common man in the US, lured by the media is content in accepting stories on the face value. I have this friend who listens to the radio archives of 60s/70s and often cites "Weather Underground" as an example of changing face of US.
could you provide some cases where in the last 20 years you see "US as a great example of society which dares to stand up and say "No!""
> Living in the US, I accept the claim that not many get together to say "No". Compare to Asian/European countries where the slightest rift creates huge protests.
What gives you the impression that "the slightest rift causes huge protests" in Asia and Europe?
I will be oversimplifying now, but still my observation is that in western Europe most people who oppose to something are those for whom it's a way of life, like leftists (or, contrary, extreme right-wing people). Insane example: people who created Baader-Meinhof, they didn't remotely know the real sides of life of the people they supposedly represented; they just found a way to utilize rage and pump their egos.
On the other hand there are post-communist countries, where I come from, where most of the people just don't care; they look at the west, want to become a middle class and they choose to be opportunistic.
But in the US people, common folk -- not any extremists, even if they just want to be a middle class, are quite good informed what they want, what the govt should do for them and what not, and are caring of it. This is deeply rooted in a foundation of the US.
Maybe you will have a clue what I have in mind when you compare the bureaucracy needed to create and maintain a business in the US and in the EU.
> I used to live 15 minutes from the Capitol Building.
So you lived in the imperial seat in the US, the one are where 75% of people are working for the government (directly or indirectly), and the one place that actually GREW during the current recession ... and you use that background to argue that Americans-as-a-whole are naive and love big intrusive government?
Capitols attract protests. I work two blocks from my state capitol, and I see more protests than I have anywhere else. I doubt the percentage of government employment is as high here, but it's still decently high.
There are more variables involved than you're accounting for. I'd say your logic is more flawed than hers.
I also live a few blocks from my state capitol building and I rarely see protests. Maybe one or two a year with 20 or 30 people. It just doesn't happen.
There have been crazies ranting about how the government reads all your e-mail for years. Now that they're ACTUALLY trying to do that, no one is listening, because it's the same message as before.
If the people spouting unfounded conspiracy theories all the time would just shut the hell up, then maybe people wouldn't see this as crying wolf.
> There have been crazies ranting about how the government reads all your e-mail for years.
Yeah, those of us who were protesting Bill Clinton and Al Gore's backing of the Clipper Chip 17 years ago were just lunatics. It's not like we managed to stop a horrible government program or anything. It's YOU young heroes who are the first ones EVER to stand up for your rights against government monitoring communications.
I'm not sure if they read all email, but they definitely warrantlessly monitored telecommunications during the Bush administration, severely enough that our government had to pass a bill saying you couldn't sue your phone company for breaking surveillance laws.
I'll echo the advice I heard from Phillip Zimmermann back in the early 1990s: If everyone consistently used encryption for all their email (that's 'everyone', and 'all'), then the effectiveness of government access to email would be lowered to a near-moot level. The sheer complexity and resource requirements to decrypt _all_ email traffic would exceed the government's capabilities. I know the NSA has incredible capabilities....but not that incredible.
Yes, I know this creates a new moving target. However, that beats being a sitting duck, though.
Only partly. It still leaves header information open, so the government is still able to see who you talk to. Through traffic analysis they can see what groups you're likely to sympathize with, even if they can't see the membership roles. And they're able to tell when those groups are planning something, even if they don't know what.
Exactly, this is what the NSA wiretapping case was about. They weren't listening in on all the calls, they were gathering information on who was calling who and for how long. This is the most traditional wiretap because it requires a lot less effort and provides a lot of information.
In fact, 'traffic analysis' is exactly what you would use to focus the actual decryption power available to you towards the more likely sources of paydirt.
And storing all email until you might want to decrypt it would be another possibility, though that might be prohibitively expensive. This is actually one of the few cases where spam has a net positive effect, increasing the size of the haystack considerably.
Another solution would be everyone using their own mail server (which itself uses TLS). Mail still isn't encrypted, but all the tunnels they travel through would be.
But I guess this is just as hard as encrypting one's email, given the number of people which don't even mind having their mail systematically analysed by a big, profitable company.
Even that wouldn't help if your server is hosted in the US. If they really want access to your e-mail, they can just have your hosting provider give them access (or get the data for them), and under the Patriot act, they can't even tell you about it.
Another other solution would be to use e-mail providers (or hosting solutions) outside of the country. Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, for example, have excellent connection to the US fibre networks (my company has its own pipe from Level 3 from Seattle to Vancouver). Host a server there, and no amount of government intervention is going to get your data, and hosting companies here (well, the good ones) won't give your data up without a subpoena or a warrant (and are able to tell you).
By "own mail server", I meant a server which is behind your own walls: at home. Of course having a server behind the walls of a remote company isn't much better that using Gmail.
I think the obvious problem is that encrypted email is hard. key signing parties and stuff do not appeal to someone who wants to jot off a quick note. What we really need is encrypted webmail (to the point that the plain text never lands on the google server) and that's hard.
"For its part, the Justice Department has taken a legalistic approach: a 17-page brief it filed last month acknowledges that federal law requires search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181 days old. But, Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne writes in a government brief, the Yahoo Mail messages don't meet that definition.
"Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" Rhyne wrote in a motion filed last month"
Am I missing something here? How is web-based email not in electronic storage? Where is it then?
Lawyers who don't understand technology are trying to convince a judge who doesn't understand technology that technology works in impossible ways. News at 11.
It's in the cloud, silly. See, the way it works is, clouds are flimsy things, so it's easy to just run tubes right through them and it doesn't even hurt. All the poor Justice Department wants is to run its own tube through the cloud before the terrorists do!
Update from the bottom of the article: "the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation."
First, this title editorializes the article, and summarizes it too aggressively.
Second, while I agree that there's a problem here, the DOJ doesn't simply want "warrantless access rights" to "most US email". What it's claiming is more subtle: that mail that is older than a certain threshold and that has been open requires only a court order, and not a bona fide search warrant.
You misread. They are claiming that mail older than 181 days or mail that has been opened falls under the lower standard.
Edit: To your main point, I think your emphasis on the fact there is still a court order is misplaced. Of what practical value is a court order if there is no burden to show probable cause (instead only 'relevance to an ongoing investigation'), and you have no opportunity to challenge (or even know about) the order. How many requests under such a standard do you really think are going to be turned down?
You're right. Thanks! But, I wasn't moved to comment by the 181 day standard or the "opened" standard, both of which are, excuse my bluntness, retarded. The real issue I have is the fact that there's still a court order involved.
There is a subtle but important difference in what they mean by the two. For a search warrant you have to demonstrate "probable cause" - i.e. that the evidence you expect to find is in the emails.
For a simple court order (which would just be an order to hand over something) they only have to demonstrate suspicion.
I wonder if it's time we started pushing for encrypted email as a default. Mail/Calendar/Documents hosted in encrypted form online, and can only be decrypted on personal devices owned by users themselves. I really don't trust any machines other than my own when it comes to entering passwords. Do you?
I am extremely disappointed in the Obama Administration and outraged. This is unacceptable and we as a society MUST push back and demand this be stopped.
So it's probably time to pull all my email out of Gmail and onto my own email server. At least the gov't hasn't yet routed around that basic personal liberty and property right.
Surely many geeks will be moving away from freemium webmail that's wide open to the gov't, but where will they be going? Does anyone know of a good open-source Gmail front-end clone? If somehow this doesn't exist, open-source developers unite, let's do this!
It's also relevant to understand how we got here, a read a little history to avoid repeating it. An oldie but goodie:
The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling
http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
The book is about the incident where the Feds first raised the legal issue of reading anyone's email without a warrant, and in a way it became the war that launched a thousand Internet legal advocacy organizations; which is where we are right now.
2. Obama administration wants warrantless access rights to most US email (cnet.com)
3. Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued (philly.com)
It's pretty clear to me that even the most well-intentioned government powers eventually wind up being used in the most sinister and disturbing ways.
Edit: for posterity, the other story is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1270579