For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA isn't spying on people anymore.
I'm not snarking at all. I'm observing that comments about the NSA are entirely apropos given the current climate we live in. Yes, you're right, at this point, it would take something extremely radical to convince us that the NSA isn't spying on us anymore. Therefore, we should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it.
The comments will go away when the issue goes away. The issue isn't going to go away. Therefore, don't expect the comments to, either. Welcome to the world we now live in.
But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn't help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul?
You might as we'll be discussing religion or politics here. This is not the place. I heard your warning the first ten times.
We're talking about it, aren't we? We haven't forgotten this issue, distracted like children by the latest shiny toy. Even in the face of the things that traditionally kill news stories, we're talking about it.
Change starts by making enough people aware of and angry about the issue that the politicians can't afford to support these programs any more. If we're just distracted the next time $TECH_TOY or $NATURAL_DISASTER comes along, then nothing at all will change.
I don't particularly care if people find my anger at the NSA's systemic intrusion of our privacy annoying. I care more about that particular issue than I do what a random person on the internet whom I've never met might think of me. I care more about keeping you talking about the issue than I do about you liking me.
No, we aren't talking about anything. The original comment speculates that the NSA has a backdoor into every iPhone, and uses that as the foundation for a comment about whether it's a good idea to store a copy of your fingerprint locally on the device.
There is no new information about the NSA there. Just more speculation.
If you are in Europe then you may have better enforced laws protecting you. If you are in Africa your government might not have the expertise and resources to spy on you. If you are in China, well...
Ok, I kinda misunderstood the GP's point, but even then, as Europeans our governments still have gone some lengths in protecting Europeans' privacy.
For instance, something in the safe-harbor blabla says citizen data handled by public angencies in Europe is not allowed to go through US nor, obviously, to be stored in the US. This rule is not new: in my previous job we had to ditch gmail and gapps in order to comply, and it was f*ing painful.
Oh brother. We care about legitimate privacy issues but now you are suggesting that becoming the equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church on these matters will somehow be effective.
It won't.
The adolescent libertarian smell combined with semi-hysterical, semi-supported outrage on this issue is rapidly beginning to stink.
Sigh. I'm not advocating in any way for being obnoxious douchecanoes for the sake of desperately screaming for airtime. I'm saying that this is an important issue related to the topic of discussion, and that I'm not going to let the fact that talking about it annoys some people dissuade me from talking about it.
We know that the NSA has their hooks into US hardware and software vendors. At this point, it's difficult to trust the promises that US-based companies make about security and privacy because we know that they're being compelled to lie. That's an extremely important variable in the discussion of a new piece of internet-connected hardware that collects biometrics. Dismissing discussion of it as "annoying" is juvenile and myopic.
Talking about privacy implications of a new device in a discussion about said new device is now the equivalent of picketing the funerals of soldiers because you don't like gay people?
I am a fan of hyperbole, but at least keep it coherent... At the very least, cheald is on topic while they are notoriously not.
You called discussing the NSA spying on everyone, subverting the American system as well as the faith in the constitution similar to evangelising that Jesus loves you?
Wow - that has to be hands down the absolute most ignorant, ridiculous and bullshit comment I have ever read on HN.
This is The Best place to be talking about the National Security Agency Technologically spying on everyone, building in parallel infra and forcing the biggest tech companies in the world via court gags and threats to providing them with access to encrypted user data.
Your comment is mind-boggling, to me, how you could even think this is not the place!
He did no such thing. Making a passing reference to the NSA whenever remotely possible is not discussion, let alone action. Perhaps we could leave such talk to the submissions that are actually about the NSA? Believe it or not, many of us are already familliar with the topic; as we are of Jesus.
I don't think that this was a passing reference - a passing reference would have been him saying "I wonder if the NSA can read my text messages on this phone" when texting is an expected feature on any modern phone.
Fingerprint scanners are not yet prevalent in modern smartphones, and fingerprints are one of the primary ways that law enforcement can trace / track individuals. If the NSA, which has already been shown to have backdoors into Apple's systems, was able to access fingerprint data on a massive scale, this would be a massive affront to privacy for millions of users around the world.
pilif's comment was absolutely relevant to discussion of the iPhone 5S launch, as one of the phone's primary new features has the potential to be a massive security and privacy breach given information we've recently learned regarding Apple's close relationship with the NSA.
>But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn't help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul?
To quote him. Please explain how he "did no such thing"
He's talking about this submission, not this site. There are dozens and dozens of other submissions where NSA discussion is more on-topic, and anybody here is free to submit their own article on the topic for discussion. That way, people that want to discuss the NSA at that moment can do so, and people that want to talk about something else can do so, too.
To put it another way: the problem is not the topic. It's the tactic of derailing every other topic that people want to talk about just because you think something else is too important to be ignored. That tactic, as well-intended as it might be, has a history of driving good users away from once-good fora precisely because it's so annoying to not be able to talk about anything else.
How is it not on-topic to discuss NSA surveillance in a discussion about one of the world's most popular internet-connected devices collecting biometric data under the control of a large American corporation?
It is becoming crystal clear that people really do not understand how important this issue is, the degree to which it permeates this industry and how farked we are if we cannot begin to understand the foundational position we require in order to change it.
Thank you for your succinct statement, I have very little faith we will get through this any time soon given the reaction I see on HN, Reddit and other sites where the most seemingly qualified among us to do anything cannot even comprehend how pernicious this problem is.
With all due respect, howling "snark" is at least as annoying and creating at least as much noise. Think about that for a while. There are up and down arrows for expressing your discontent. Everything else--including this--is noise, not signal.
And yet, the OP's comment is the top-voted comment in the thread, which would indicate the the democratic consensus of the HN readership is that this is worth talking about.
Well now you are backtracking into a semi-legitimate interpretation of your comment as not snarky. If you didn't mean to snark you could have just originally said
"We should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it."
That is a useful comment that would further the discussion. So I will now respond to that, since I don't want to debate what snark means.
I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive. They are similar to all the old comments on stories about Microsoft where people would say things like "Micro$oft is obviously evil" and such.
So if a comment is interesting and useful, and happens to be about the NSA, then great. I haven't seen many of those.
I chose brevity, and can see how it would be interpreted as snark. I wasn't aiming for that, but it was a simple question that deserved a simple answer, IMO.
> I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive.
Perhaps our energy would be better spent pointing out why these comments are naiive and misinformed, rather than discussing whether they're worth saying at all, then?
The security and related technological implications of the device seem relevant to any potential user and completely on topic to me. Agree it's unfortunate that battery life, form factor etc are overshadowed by recent revelations, and regrettable that Apple chose such a tasteless feature in the circumstances.
Comments about the virtue of weight and thinness never go away, are they helpful? Comments about the importance of good UI design never go away, are they helpful? Comments about IT security never go away, are they helpful? Comments about performance never go away, are they helpful? Comments about the importance of battery life never go away, are they helpful? Comments about privacy never go away, are they helpful?
The answer to all of the above, if we assume that talking about a product is 'helpful' to begin with, is "Yes." Privacy is simply something that people are going to consider and discuss from now on. There is no reason we should treat it differently from the other things we consider.
Most of those topics are not sidelined by "everything they tell us is a lie and should be replaced by uninformed speculation." If we're discussing the importance of battery life, a comment such as "How do we know they aren't lying? Maybe the new iPhone doesn't even have a battery and requires you to turn a hand crank." is not helpful.
You know what I like? Talking about tech stuff on tech sites. You know what I don't like? Random NSA comments on anything that has to do with some device which operates on electricity.
Now you're making a suggestion that somehow people simply "want to believe it," as if we're wandering around with tinfoil hats muttering on street corners.
At this point, the overwhelming evidence is that we are being spied upon at a scale never seen before in history. Legal checks and balances such as search warrants are consider inconveniences to be routed around with border confiscations.
I would begin to believe things are changing when I see officials on both sides of the Canada-US border going to jail--yes, jail--for things like spying on their ex-spouses or for routing around search warrants.
But they are! And this is a very important issue to be dealt with. I'm very disappointed by all the companies and all governments involved, and I earn money writing iOS and cloud-applications. And I understand it's bad for business, but the issue is too important to be ignored.
The new iPhone will have an option to store your fingerprint. This has EVERYTHING to do with the NSA. It is highly relevant. How can you be so blind and not see it?
Sarcastic or not, it's an important point. You are giving up a significant attribute of your identity to the protection of a US technology company. Whether that bothers you (or not) depends on how much you value your privacy.
If they don't already have your fingerprints on file, which depending on where you live happens as a kid in case you go missing, get a drivers license, etc.
If the NSA wants to target you specifically, you're fucked no matter what unless you move to a cave. No point in being needlessly worried. I'm more worried about this causing someone to cut off my finger while stealing my phone than I am the NSA coming after me.
You know what? Neither are derisive comments that imply the NSA is not, in fact, violating our privacy. You'd have to be out of your goddamned mind to actually think they've stopped.
> For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA isn't spying on people anymore.
The NSA is a spy agency, of course they are spying on people. Unless the NSA ceases to exist it will spy on people. They are not actively trying to claim otherwise (only that they try really hard to only spy on people who are in someway connected to someone who is not an American or has been designated dangerous).
Please stop using snark. Use snide, sarcastic, or cynical instead. Snark is a word that's better off being forgotten in some dictionary of colloquial terms.
"Snark" means "snide remark" and is absolutely not an HNism. Hell, I think I learned it from my mother (who no doubt used it at me). Despite heavy use, the word retains clear meaning, even as used by stanleydrew above in his otherwise foolish comment.
MORE snark? I think a case could be made that the comment you responded to was snarky, but just barely. The comment several levels up that was the first labeled as snarky is one I just can't see being such.
For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA isn't spying on people anymore.