Forced Exposure - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 <comment><USER2> It is really tragic that we have reached a point where something so wonderful as Groklaw cannot effectively function.

Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbounded passions in people that lead to oppression. In other words, the private life that each of us leads will hugely influence the way we are governed.

Governments are _always_ ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them. That is the default because it is hard-wired into the human condition. And this is the major factor not grasped by those today who assume that society is evolving to a point that, if only right-thinking people with good motives are given enough power over our lives, they will somehow magically transform society for the good through government action. In reality, if any persons - right-thinking or not - are given largely unchecked authority over our lives, abuses will inevitably follow. As they gather huge amounts of power, their purpose in life becomes to guard that power jealously and to increase it as opportunities permit. No bureau has ever abolished itself. Farm programs from the depression era thrive today as ever, though the logic for their existence has long since vanished. Politicians of all stripes promote expanded budgets for their own areas of preferred government expansion and spend money they don't even have in vast quantities with little or no accountability to the people they supposedly serve.

This is why it is vital in a free society that its people be educated and morally grounded to value their rights as individuals and to resist and distrust unchecked authority in the state. Do we have that today? Perhaps, but only in a very weakened form. Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs. There is very little residue in our society of the old-fashioned _principled_ belief that it is wrong to have vast centralized power with very few checks upon it. In her sign off piece, PJ notes: "Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term." This is lamentable but it is a mere symptom, and not the cause, of our ills. Politicians make the law as they go, with no accountability, only because they are allowed to do so by those whom they govern. And, if someone already has vast power over you, it is but a small step to extend that power in a technological age by using technology to spy upon, intimidate, and control people. Why, when these leaders are allowed to lord it over us as they see fit, should they suddenly develop scruples in gathering information that only serves to enhance their power to do what we are already letting them do without so much as a peep of principled opposition?

Privacy is in significant peril, and it is a serious loss when Groklaw goes down over this issue. But assaults on privacy are but a symptom of a deeper malady as modern society increasingly believes that it can hand over massive forms of unchecked government to its politicians in the naive belief that such power can be used wisely if only we have right-thinking leaders at the helm. The answer, as de Tocqueville noted years ago, is not to place faith in leaders but rather to take personal responsibility in our lives and to curtail the powers of those who govern. I guess we shall just have to wait and see if this is possible today.

In the meantime, we can praise those who fight the good fight, and PJ has been a supreme example of this. Tireless, talented, and astute, she has been a wonderful force for good over the past decade. May she find a powerful new outlet for those talents as she moves forward, even in a difficult environment.

<comment><USER3> > Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government > claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or > to expand social programs

These are vastly different issues. Providing social programs doesn't infringe on anyone's rights except by taxation, which the government is constitutionally entitled to perform to any degree it wants. In contrast, the tactics employed to supposedly fight terrorism often impact rights which are protected by law.

<comment><USER4> _These are vastly different issues_

The funny thing is that they aren't. They're all about power. Power given to the few to control the many. Social programs just have that sugary coating that voters like to swallow, but the rotten corruption of power is at the center of all and its effects inevitably dominate.

<comment><USER3> That's the opposite of what's happening. Money (power) is flowing from the few (the rich) to the many (the poor who actually use government services and social programs).

<comment><USER4> Bam! ... and there you demonstrated exactly how they fool you. You're thinking about the social programs themselves - the bait or the distraction.

I'm talking about governmental power: the power to control vast amounts of money, the power to reward your friends and relatives, the power to snoop on your innocent citizens and punish your enemies through the force of law and perhaps physical violence.

They offer you trinkets, you vote for them, they gain power, they spend money they don't have, they abuse their power, they live like kings, they blame others for their eternal failures to implement utopia, they claim that if only you would elect them again and give them more of the money of the evil rich, they could solve all of society's problems... wash, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER3> "Doing good things is how they get you! They get re-elected by doing good things, and that gives them the voter support to do bad things. Down with good things!"

<comment><USER4> Promising good things is not equal to "good things". Doing a few good things is really easy when you have shitloads of other peoples' money to work with - but even then, they fail over and over to deliver what they actually promise.

Detroit's city managers promised and did a whole lot of good things, didn't they? They were a regular Santa Claus with the handouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Holy crap. Groklaw? I'd never for one second thought that the fall out from the NSA debacle would reach so far as to cause Groklaw to be shut down.

PJ feels extremely genuine here, she is definitely not using this as an excuse.

Wow. There is something very unhealthy in the air or in the water these days. Lots of people seem to be totally immune to the consequences of rampant surveillance and frankly bizarre powers executed by the current set of governments. And all that in the name of the war on some nebulous entity that could not even capitulate if it wanted to (and that's assuming such central command and control even exists).

2013 is fast shaping up to be a year of notoriety, so many things happening in so many places that are all linked to governments overstepping their powers.

Who would have thought 20 years ago that we'd see US whistleblowers hiding in Russia of all places. That there would be meaningful comparisons drawn between the Russian government and the UK government when it comes to dealing with the press, that we'd see torture committed by the people we routinely thought of as the good guys.

It's a weird world we are living in at the moment.

Since comments are turned off there:

Thank you PJ for all the extremely hard work and the dedication. A lot of good came from this, I'm quite sure that there were some cases where both the plaintive and the defense were spending as much time reading groklaw as they were reading their email. It certainly counted for something.

<comment><USER6> That 'something unhealthy' is called privilege, and most people assume that it will protect them from government atrocities.

Little do they know that privilege is given at the behest of the oppressor, and can be revoked instantaneously.

I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this.

<comment><USER7> > I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - > and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this.

Absolutely. Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam.

(And that is doesn't make that much of a difference if they store their data with Google, Apple, or directly with the NSA. If the blueprints of PRISM can't be kept from leaking, then subsets of the actual data will leak as well. Five or ten years from know, you'll have a huge grey market of -- medium to low quality, outdated, etc. -- surveillance data.)

<comment><USER8> "Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam."

Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Google Docs / Microsoft Office 365). They care that their pictures can be accessed by their friends without having to attach them to email. No average person is running away from the cloud for this reason--they're running towards it because overall, they still feel it makes their lives easier.

<comment><USER9> No, but yesterday a friend of mine asked me how to back up her pictures from her computer. I told her to use a removable drive. My wife said: "Just store them on Facebook". I said: "The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet." My wife was shocked. Our friend said: "I don't want that." (She's from Hungary). We settled on 32 GB flash drives.

Moral of the story: Just like Groklaw, the ordinary people will stop trusting the internet because people in the know (in her case lavabit founder) say not to trust it.

Ordinary people, for the most part, trust the geeks they know to guide them through the computing landscape.

<comment><USER8> "The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet"

So accuracy isn't really something you're all that concerned with? It is my understanding (and certainly could be wrong) that the whole PRISM thing was the _ability_ for the government to get their hands on any data they wished, not that they're making copies of everything. I believe _metadata_ is stored, which is an entirely different animal.

<comment><USER10> Wait, you're really gonna call BS on someone who doesn't pin their hopes on the fine line between 'can make a copy' and 'makes a copy?'

You realize the agencies have been using a bizarro definition of surveillance where they can capture everything and it's only surveillance once an agent listens to it? ( [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/07/nsa_lexicon_how_james_clapper_and_other_u_s_officials_mislead_the_american.html) )

Snowden says they can do it. ISP sources confirm the government is trying to do it, but they are forbidden from disclosing the exact nature of what is done. You're really going to believe the people who have been busted lying about it and say anyone who doesn't is not concerned with 'accuracy?'

And what does metadata mean, anyway? If the government stores everybody you've been in a picture with, or who's looked at your pictures, but doesn't store the picture, is that really supposed to make us feel better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates ("Can you find _evidence_ that they're abusing this new legislation?", etc.), I'll go ahead and say it now: it's happening.

There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be.

I find it hilarious that in most of the threads I've read on here for months, that people who have actually lived in oppressive regimes say that the US is at least displaying a likelihood of being on the slow descent to Hell, while people in the US are quick to point out that it's still fine because we have elections and we aren't being forced out onto the streets and shot in the back of the head.

Read any book on history, strategy, authoritarianism or "real" conspiracies and it's abundantly clear that the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume; I will not be surprised when we find out in 30-50 years that the tech companies were not only complicit in passive surveillance, but in active manipulation to control public opinion and perception.

Further, people self-actualize and learn to evolve to higher ideals, so once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and make every personal detail of a person's life that passes over an electronic medium open to dissection and survellience, you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities.

It's actually less difficult than it was 50-100 years ago to control public opinion. Before, you'd have to burn books and control every major newspaper and broadcasting corporation. Now you can just astroturf on Reddit or Twitter, or edit Wikipedia is subtle ways, and have the same effect.

<comment><USER12> > the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the > information they consume

The comparison that some have made between the US Government and Stasi is more accurate than you think, with regards of _Zersetzung_ :

> By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which > had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too > crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far > less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their > supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given > that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even > its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" > perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any > "inappropriate" activities.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung)

Data _mining_ is a very interest challenge and represents a major step in large-scale computing technology, but it pales in comparison to data _manipulation_.

Imagine for a moment if the intelligence-surveillance apparatus were redirected outward: methods used for parsing human communication would be re- purposed for disseminating seemingly-human propaganda. Who you're responding to on Twitter, reddit, or HN may not be a person.

Imagine for a moment if spammers were quite a bit more convincing in their emails, and that their poor grammar and spelling were improved.

<comment><USER13> see also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> ...Can PJ not figure out GnuPG? Is she officially retiring from any and all digital correspondence contrary to her notice that "[her] email [addresses] still work"? She says she's getting off the internet to whatever extent possible, and then asks people to continue to send her mail. I also find it cute that people believe facilities based in other Western nations are outside of the NSA's reach.

I gotta say that stopping Groklaw, which is a public site anyway, because someone else might be reading it, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, despite the emotional ploys in this article. She can write and save drafts locally in a (GASP) local word processor and encrypt anything she chooses to upload to remote storage. The government will then not be able to read unfinished Groklaw articles. Does this resolve the issue?

This whole article should've just been a public key and a PO box address with this note: "I will not acknowledge plaintext mail. If you are uncomfortable transmitting encrypted data over the wire, please send a USB disk to this box."

<comment><USER15> GnuPG is not a solution for this. The problem is not just about the contents of the message, but knowing your communication habits. GnuPG can't encrypt who your message is going to, being replied to, when, or even the subject.

The NSA probably isn't storing all the contents of voice calls either, but it really doesn't matter all that much. They can still tell who you communicate with when and how often. That's not conducive to democracy or free speech.

Furthermore, because of how few people use GnuPG or other such tools, I would expect you'd only be targeted harder for using them.

<comment><USER14> > GnuPG is not a solution for this. The problem is not just about the contents > of the message, but knowing your communication habits. GnuPG can't encrypt > who your message is going to, being replied to, when, or even the subject.

GnuPG is PART of a solution to this. _If_ you do need to hide the recipient, sender, subject line, etc., then you'll have to bolster your solution with other offerings. One suggestion may be to use temporary email addresses created through Tor, so that the gathered mail header data is not meaningful. Another suggestion would be to encrypt the data and dump it onto a filehost and send the link through a non-email channel. But in any case, it is crucial that the _content_ of one's messages remains private.

>Furthermore, because of how few people use GnuPG or other such tools, I would expect you'd only be targeted harder for using them.

Indeed this is the case now, but as we get more people set up with GPG, it will no longer be an effective method of discrimination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I understand her (1) personal reasons for shutting down Groklaw, this is an extraordinarily bad decision for privacy and democracy.

In the last few weeks quite a few providers of private communications and/or freedom (for some definition of freedom) have shut down. Lavabot, Freedom Hosting, etc. If the US could shut down The Guardian they would.

This leaves fewer and fewer secure channels for private communication, and less and less information about what is actually going on.

This is an incredibly dangerous road to walk down, and is akin to the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's. We all know how that ended.

(1) _edited his to her - thanks for pointing it out rolux_

<comment><USER17> Obama continues to push hard to steal what little privacy rights US citizens have remaining. He is openly hostile about it, and lies about it constantly.

Am I exaggerating here? The scary thing is I'm not. He's not done. It's going to get worse.

<comment><USER18> We -- all citizens of Western countries -- should seriously stop voting altogether. And I mean full stop. When the next election comes, nobody votes. That'll destabilize things right quick.

<comment><USER19> It is a curious quirk of psychology that a single vote for a two major parties is considered to matter, despite being guaranteed not to sway the outcome, while a vote for a third party is considered "wasted". And even curiouser, choosing not to vote at all is considered the more rational option.

Here's hoping that the people eventually figure out that instant runoff can be implemented state-by-state.

<comment><USER20> _" Here's hoping that the people eventually figure out that instant runoff can be implemented state-by-state."_

I prefer approval, but hey, your state can have IRV and mine can have approval and thanks to the electoral college that doesn't break things!

Unless we're in the same state, in which case we'll have to agree on something I guess.

<comment><USER19> Unpack "approval" for me?

Honestly, I'm in favor of any modifications to winner-take-all. "None of the Above" would be a major win for the protest vote, with a huge meta-electoral effect even if it never wins. And while it would boost morale and turnout for presidential years, the real effect would be seen if we elected Congress that way as well.

<comment><USER20> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting)

Basically, you check yes or no for everyone, and the winner is the one with the most "yes" votes. Less expressive than IRV, but also simpler to understand and tabulate.

<comment><USER19> Belatedly: thanks for sharing. It does seem an easier sell, because the counting process is so easy to understand. It's not as favorable to third parties as IRV, because "[X] Minor [X] Major" obviously doesn't carry as much weight as "[1] Minor [2] Major", but at least it still kills the spoiler effect. While IRV seems more "pure" in an information theory sense, Approval is elegant in its simplicity.

<comment><USER20> That's mostly my views as well, yeah. There are a couple (narrow) weird cases with IRV, too... but IRV is unquestionably a tremendous improvement over FPTP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This to me is the most pernicious thing about this whole surveillance business. The mere presence of a comprehensive surveillance apparatus, even when you don't live in a totalitarian state when jack booted thugs pay you a visit to "get your mind right", does incalculable damage to the first amendment. In a free society, it's "game over" without the first amendment. This is in some ways even more damaging than the actual surveillance (which in theory could be shut off today) because once the public feels they've lost the freedom of speech, it is extremely hard to convince them otherwise. Look at how hard it has been for the citizenry of forer communist countries to embrace and internalize the freedoms we in the US have had for a few hundred years.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have said this on HN several times, and I will say this again. Dragnet surveillance of private digital correspondence by the US and other governments is wrong, and a gross, unjustified, overreaction to the real threat of terrorism.

And yet, when taken as part of the whole picture that is the internet, government surveillance is little more than a drop in the ocean. While governments may collect a possibly significant amount of correspondence and analyze some of it, almost all online data, e-mail correspondence as well as photos and documents, search history, browsing history, our physical location, the driving, running and cycling routes we take, the busses we use and more, is constantly collected, analyzed monitored and used, all day every day, by private corporations. These corporations are even less subject to oversight than any democratically elected institution, and their employees are less carefully screened.

Government surveillance is wrong, but at least it raises an outrage that, in time, is almost certain to bring about change. Corporate surveillance is a more dangerous beast. It employs manipulation and deceit rather than plain-old secrecy, and worst of all – it causes little outrage.

Some have compared the current state of things to George Orwell's Big Brother government, but those who've read the book know that Big Brother does not rule through secrecy and intimidation. Big Brother is never mistrusted, never hated, and never feared or suspected. People subject themselves to his control willingly. Big Brother is loved. That is how absolute power is gained. And that is why a democratic institution has little hope of ever attaining Big Brother status, especially in America where any government is automatically suspect. The real danger to our privacy and our freedom, the true potential Big Brother and the danger that dwarfs any government surveillance online, is Google, Facebook and their ilk.

<comment><USER23> Corporations can't put me in jail.

<comment><USER24> Not directly, but who do you think runs the jails and lobbies for stricter laws to fill those jails?

<comment><USER25> "Corporations" are not a single entity. Some are more aligned with the development of society, some hinder it. It is harmful to lump all corporations in one group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _> is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US,_

don't do this. Since 1999, email providers in Switzerland are forced to keep all logs and data for one year (currently in discussion to prolong this to 5 years) and hand all data over at the authorities request.

If you don't comply you will be punished by fines or even jail.

I once (early 2000s) received one of these orders and I honestly don't remember whether it had a judges signature, but I think it was just some police officer signing it, so I can't be sure whether there was (and is) any court oversight.

If you want your conversations to be confidential, don't choose a Swiss provider.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe I'm just not "getting it", but this seems like an incredibly odd decision. It is not a revelation that plaintext email can technically be looked at by people beyond the sender and recipient. And it's not clear what in any reported stories would specifically relate to Groklaw's use of email.

What it seems to come down to is the general fear that the NSA COULD, from a technical perspective, be reading specific unencrypted emails. But before the recent news stories, did PJ (or anyone else) really send and receive emails thinking "there is no way the NSA, or anyone else, can see this email"?

As far as chilling effects go, the knowledge that a multi-billion dollar signals intelligence agency is technically capable of reading an unencrypted email seems pretty mild. Is free speech and free communication really so fragile that it rests on the idea that casual communication you make no special effort to protect is totally out of the reach of large police or intelligence organizations?

<comment><USER28> My thoughts too, to me, ordinary email is like a conversation in the park. People can listen to that if they want, it's the public. Ordinary email goes over the public Internet. It seems to me to be a bit of elegant arm waving. To me the restrictions on encryption are of more concern. It's like saying we can't have a private conversation except within the bounds of what the government says is OK.

<comment><USER29> > ordinary email is like a conversation in the park.

That's really, really distant from how the average non-technical user thinks of email. They just drop the e and think of it as mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Chomsky noted in a speech recently ([http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth...](http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/)) that the very vast majority of us have absolutely no impact on the policy of our governments. Only the upper tiers have influence and the utter richest minority are likely to get what they want.

In both the US and where I am in Australia, the two major parties are barely different and doubly so in regards to this whole issue. A vote is not going to mean a great deal.

But a vote that can make some difference is voting with our wallets. Can very conscious purchasing decisions made by more and more people remove some of the influence held by the very richest on our planet? Is that too dreamy?

Where possible, I try to avoid purchasing from the biggest brand in any category, but there'd be a lot, lot more I could do about this. If we imagine the typical food pyramid, but fill it with brands and apply it to every product and category showing the richest and most influential at one end and the delightful smallfry at the other, could we help motivate people to make better decisions about where they spend their money? Or even where they earn it? Earn a fraction less to work for a smaller supplier perhaps.

Apps, surveys, social media, gamification - these are all things that might help people make more careful decisions. Ride a bike, grow food or buy from independent greengrocers at least, seek out furniture that's locally made, etc.

Give me a site/app that asks me about my life and rates my efforts or motivates me to make a better choice in everything I do. Help me identify brands that feel independent but are actually owned by corporate monsters.

<comment><USER29> The idea is great, but unfortunately it won't work for the majority of Americans. Paycheck-to-paycheck is a reality for way too many people. I know a lot of people who are opposed to Walmart, and wish that they could afford not to shop there, but they can't. The price is just too compelling. Feeding their kids is a lot more important to them than making a political statement.

<comment><USER30> Sure, but there are other small steps that can make incremental differences. Cheaper than driving a car (insurance, registration, fuel bought from a megacorp) is riding a bike now and then. Or getting coffee from the little place on the corner rather than the chain. Or even buying from the third biggest fast food company in the country rather than the first biggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is such depressing news. And I've been trying to think of a way to solve this technically, but the Government has the five dollar wrench, and all we have is the crypto.

Code will not be enough, the system only respects one thing, money. If enough people move to services outside of the States, the real people in power will tell the government to reinstate at least some civil liberties and human rights. But even then, don't expect too much.

As mixmax said, this is "akin the Intelligentsia leaving Germany in the 20's." It will start with moving to hosting and services outside the country and will eventually be followed by people physically leaving the country. As James Joyce said, "silence, cunning... exile"!

It's not so bad. I've been an expat for 26 years and I've never looked back.

<comment><USER32> >> _If enough people move to services outside of the States_

What service can we trust at this point?

After the Evo Morales flight debacle, it's pretty clear that their five dollar wrench works equally well on other nations as well.

The internet is broken, everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It is almost a cliche at this point, but it is worth remembering Martin Niemöller's words. He made the same mistake that many people are making today: thinking they don't have to worry because they are not the people whom the government is persecuting today. And the unfolding of events taught Martin Niemöller a very painful lesson. In an ideal world, the public would hear his words and learn the lesson without having to repeat all the mistakes of the past.

He wrote:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

</comment><comment><USER34> Want to keep your rights and freedom? It's time to act, now. History is full of great things going all the way down. Don't wait for the Superman.

<comment><USER35> > _It 's time to act, now_

Suggested courses of action?

Tried and didn't work:

* voting

* not voting

* protesting online / offline

* writing about these issues, raising awareness

What options do we have left? Violence? Hopefully there's more.

<comment><USER36> What a joke. Please educate yourself about the history of successful social movements like labor rights, civil rights, environmental protection, etc.

The privacy movement has not even begun to begin what is necessary to change the law. For example: can you name the leading organization that works solely on privacy? There isn't one. The issue is only sort-of covered if you add up the partial work of a bunch of different orgs, like the EFF, ACLU, NRA, Emily's List, etc.

So: want to move the needle? Start an organization, raise many millions of dollars, collect thousands of contacts, and then run a big scary public and grassroots campaign. Give money to privacy-friendly politicians, and spend independent money to defeat opponents of privacy. Recruit privacy-friendly folks to run for local, state, or federal office. Take meetings with corporate, regulatory, and congressional staff to find folks who are sympathetic to the cause. Run privacy conferences. Pay people to write privacy blogs. Pick a nasty law and create a test case to get it into litigation. Etc, etc.

Now you might say "we shouldn't have to do that." And you're right. But: life isn't fair. Black people should not have had to risk lynchings in order to vote, but they did--and they did it. And they fought it.

<comment><USER37> >Please educate yourself about the history of successful social movements like labor rights, civil rights, environmental protection, etc.

Given that the current context involves opposing government power, I'm not sure labour rights and environmental protection are relevant examples; both resulted in massive expansion of the effective scope government power.

Civil rights would perhaps be a slightly better example simply because what was being fought against were largely government creations (e.g., legally compulsory discrimination). And even then the civil rights movement had a visible violent side[1].

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1ds5fa/a_march_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1ds5fa/a_march_on_washington_with_loaded_rifles/c9tg5ax)

<comment><USER38> _Civil rights would perhaps be a slightly better example simply because what was being fought against were largely government creations (e.g., legally compulsory discrimination)._

And the "solution" was to exchange these for other government creations, like the EEOC. Which on net resulted in a massive expansion of the effective scope of government power (not least because many of the previous government creations were at the state level, but what we have now is mostly federal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This doesn't make sense to me. There's a simple technical solution: stop using email for tips and setup a secure web form on the site. Can someone explain why this wouldn't solve the problem?

<comment><USER40> She'd be subject to NSLs and court orders and warrants. In fact it could even attract those things. She's cutting to the chase.

<comment><USER39> But the medium she uses to accept the tips doesn't impact NSLs or warrants. Web form or email are both subject to the same laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I guess I don't get it. Didn't we "know" about things like Carnivore in the 90s? Isn't it rather expected that unencrypted communications are going to be gathered? You don't even need a nation-state to do so. Anyone with physical access can place taps, and parsing and saving port 25 traffic ain't exactly Manhattan Project level work.

I agree it's upsetting and citizens should be demanding oversight. But to assume your plaintext transmissions over uncontrolled wires are somehow private seems absurd. It's like the silliness people got whipped into over Google's WiFi collection which was essentially passing "-s 0" instead of "-s 64" to tcpdump.

<comment><USER42> I know. We're all so gullible and dumb right?

Tell me. You're speaking with a friend in a public square or park in your town. You're not speaking in code with your friend. Judging by what you just said I expect you assume your every conversation is being monitored.

We have certain expectations of privacy and basic human decency. Just because it's possible to wiretap and hoover up all unencrypted communications I wouldn't have concluded that the spooks are doing so because I would have thought they wouldn't stoop to this behaviour. Sure there was a little bit of info here and there but there's nothing like hard evidence (Snowden-style) for changing ones mind.

You don't have to show us all how smart you are, we know already -- so you can keep these types of comments to yourself.

<comment><USER14> >Tell me. You're speaking with a friend in a public square or park in your town. You're not speaking in code with your friend. Judging by what you just said I expect you assume your every conversation is being monitored.

You should be aware of the possibility that someone may be eavesdropping in this situation, yes.

>We have certain expectations of privacy and basic human decency.

Our expectations of privacy are valid in private contexts, like a home or business. Public contexts, like a busy shopping center or the internet, do not contain inherent guarantees of privacy. Even though one can normally assume that no one dangerous is listening in, it's a risk you always take when you engage in any conversation or behavior in a visible location.

>Just because it's possible to wiretap and hoover up all unencrypted communications I wouldn't have concluded that the spooks are doing so because I would have thought they wouldn't stoop to this behaviour.

This is pretty naive. Whenever there is a large benefit:cost ratio in play, people should expect that someone at some point _will_ stoop to that level. The ability to record and filter huge portions of worldwide communication is obviously hugely beneficial to all nation-states, so they're obviously going to do it. There are even some who would argue that this is not fundamentally immoral, so it's an even less clear-cut case than things that are obviously fundamentally immoral, meaning it should've been even more expected.

These monitoring programs have been occurring for a long time, most likely since Snowden was a child.

>You don't have to show us all how smart you are, we know already -- so you can keep these types of comments to yourself.

I think just the opposite. We should be using this as an opportunity to educate everyone on the critical importance of encryption (analogous to placing your comms in a sealed envelope, instead of leaving them bare on a postcard), not express moral outrage that some people would "stoop so low". I guess if you're into that, you can do that too (I find it trite, personally), but it shouldn't be done at the expense of the resolution to this problem, which is widespread adoption of full client-side encryption.

<comment><USER43> > Our expectations of privacy are valid in private contexts, like a home or > business. Public contexts, like a busy shopping center or the internet, do > not contain inherent guarantees of privacy. Even though one can normally > assume that no one dangerous is listening in, it's a risk you always take > when you engage in any conversation or behavior in a visible location.

Or even if you talk in your house with your door wide open. Does anyone else remember Star Trek VI?

But either way we also don't expect _every_ conversation we make outside to be monitored as a matter of course. To the extent that NSA is doing this we are right to be very upset.

The flipside is that even before email there were few options for communications between third-parties that could not be intercepted _at all_ (without a full warrant) by the U.S. government within the U.S. Probably USPS was it (though later telephones received that same protection). And there were about zero methods if you were talking international communications (maybe diplomatic pouch was safe, probably nothing else was). So in that regard modern comms are still an improvement.

But I do agree with you that things people _need_ to have private, need to be encrypted, as there are more threats out there than just the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sad but also very understandable. Thanks pj for all your hard work throughout the years and for being one of the most diligent watchdogs in the foss community.

</comment><comment><USER45> The solution at least for the time being is not going to be over the pipes, it will have to be real world.

A 1 GB USB costs approximately 4$ , you can encrypt the information and use the regular mail with no return address. To avoid cameras in the post office you can use a 3rd party or a real world dropbox.

This sounds so sci-fi dystopian it's hard to believe it actually a plausible solution.

ps. Don't forget to use gloves, make sure "they" can't track your purchase, and also check if the drive is clean as a whistle.

</comment><comment><USER46> For me, personally, this is much more sad than Lavabit shutting down. Groklaw was an icon, it has huge significance.

I do not know whether this - i.e. shutting down - is a good strategy in general. It raises some awareness, it might cause some change ... but what if change does not happens? What other means of protest will we have?

<comment><USER47> He's not shutting down to raise awareness, but because he feels unable to conduct the blog without feeling his communications with his readers are private.

<comment><USER48> She. I remain surprised by how often this mistake is made, given her name is on every page and the whole thing a few years back where someone accused her of being a fiction made up by IBM.

Also, I wonder what the other contributors she had given post privileges to think of this (I thought she had stepped down/away from some of the cases groklaw was covering).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Can anyone explain for the uninformed how anything like surveillance affects Groklaw?

I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.

<comment><USER49> Groklaw started with some serious in-depth background knowledge of the whole SCO - Linux stuff (there's too much to describe it as anything else).

That sort of information comes from having serious inside, in-depth background information.

You know, the sort of stuff serious investigative journalists /used/ to do. Like the Washington Post in 1972 when they reported on illegal activity by the President ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_m...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_media)) rather than the Washington Post in 2013 when the report on Presidential Broccoli ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- politics/wp/2013/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- politics/wp/2013/07/09/president-obama-says-he-loves-broccoli/)).

We've seen a rare example of serious investigative journalism and how /our/ countries respond to it by targeting family and loved ones of the journalists. That's the way we used to say only the KGB or the Gestapo behaved in the Bad Old Days. Guess what ? The Bad Old Days are right here and right now.

No wonder PJ is concerned that continuing Groklaw may expose her to serious risk from the authorities. Commenting on court cases and filling in the background through back-channel information from Deep Throat (or whatever pseudonym they use today) sure does not seem to be worth that risk to me.

It's sad that any comment on this stuff makes it sound like you go around wearing a tin-foil hat.

<comment><USER50> I may have missed it, but I don't recall any back channel information from Deep Throat type sources there. What I recall was a lot of documents readily available to lawyers but somewhat a pain in the ass for average people to track down and get copies of, especially for free.

Note that I am not saying there were none...just that I never noticed them. Anyone have an example or two?

<comment><USER49> Sure, look at [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/20/groklaw- sh...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/20/groklaw-shuts-nsa- surveillance)

States explicitly "Groklaw relied in some cases on email tips from readers and other anonymous sources".

Following the early days of the SCO reporting it was obvious there was unreleased information being shared. There was even lots of discussion about whether Groklaw was some secret group of IBM agents and stuff like that due to the knowledge and insight being displayed at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A sad day indeed. The government has become "the terrorists".

<comment><USER6> The government has always been the terrorists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> When folks like Lavabit and Groklaw preemptively shut down because they cannot take the security & privacy of their communications for granted, it makes me wonder the converse: how are other companies that deal in sensitive information (patents, lawsuits, competitive bids etc.) dealing with it?

Have they resigned themselves to it? Are they devising new corporate communication policies that assume always-on surveillance? Are they thinking things will improve after this storm has passed?

<comment><USER53> I doubt many companies care about it.

My personal information for my apartment is stored on an FTP server and their offices use WEP encryption on their WiFI. They have a scan of my passport, every facet of information about me; if their storage was compromised it would be fairly devastating to their tens of thousands of clients.

Unfortunately I have no clout regarding the storage of this information, and no choice as to who I store it with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can you follow the logic of the pj post?

Snowden uses Lavabit email service. Snowden leaks top secret material belonging to US and UK. US demands Snowden's emails from Lavabit. Lavabit shuts down.

pj reads news of Lavabit and concludes that email is not anonymous. (Email was never truly anonymous, unless you count anonymous remailers. Surely she knew this.) pj concludes that she should shut down Groklaw. (Why not just warn everyone that she will comply with legal requirements, like Google and myriad other web-based businesses do, for example. Millions of people still use these services even with that warning.) pj concludes that she should no longer use "the internet" (cf. email). (Huh? Email is but one use of the internet; it was designed ages ago and was never intended to be anonymous.)

Are people who leak top secret material and are wanted by US authorities sending emails to pj? If not, then please help me understand pj's logic.

If Snowden sent emails to pj, and pj, like Lavabit, does not wish to comply with authorities and hand over whatever they've got, then I guess shutting down Groklaw makes sense. I guess.

You cannot have a right to privacy as Brandeis envisioned it when you lack any reasonable expectation of privacy. Reading pj's post it sounds like she's abandoned _all_ expectations of privacy with respect to the internet (which includes email among so many other potential uses). This reeks of "all-or- nothing" thinking.

Lawmakers have no reason to exceed the expectations of their employers. If you the voter and taxpayer expect zero privacy, you should not be surprised if that's what is delivered.

<comment><USER55> It's not a completely logic-motivated decision, but that does not make it any less valid. Having your sense of privacy and safety breached is incredibly disturbing on an emotional level. I've been robbed, you end up feeling rightly violated at a very base level and left with a general disgust for everything and anyone involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Comment of the CEO of the service PJ chose for her communications: [http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=625](http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=625)

"While we're happy to provide a privacy asylum in a safe legislation, society should not need them. Privacy should be the default, not the exception."

So it's come down to privacy asylums and digital refugee camps now. WTF?

<comment><USER57> Years ago, when I was a little involved with the FSFE, I did a bit of graphics design for some people there. One thing I made was that small graphic one you see in the header there.

Seeing it again now after years... Weird.

Then I went to [http://planet.fsfe.org/](http://planet.fsfe.org/) and found out they're still using my site design there.

Wow. I'm floored.

This is... I don't know. With the storm brewing right now, they need help. _People_ help.

Guess I know what to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> > But for me, the Internet is over.

This is how I've been feeling about it for the last few weeks.

<comment><USER32> The internet is imploding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I posted this in response to the American being groped on travel to India, got -3 karma points: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211)

Now I'm reading this story, in which pj explains her story which was exactly my point from the comment linked above. What's the deal?

Anyhow, yes, when the sum of human communication is read by the US government (and other governments and private intel corporations) then it's incredibly destructive to the human condition and society.

We're fucked. Time to start fixing this for real. Open up your IDE's and/or text editors and get to work. Make sure to open source (GPL or Affero GPL) everything. Work on decentralized P2P encrypted networking. Good projects: cjdns ... see you on the flip side. Hack the Planet!

<comment> grey-area Since you genuinely don't seem to understand, here's the deal: that story was about someone's personal experience of sexual harassment, and you posted a flippant analogy comparing it to invasion of online privacy. NSA surveillance is a big deal, but nothing to do with sexual harassment.

<comment><USER59> Thanks, I appreciate your feedback and the other commenter's. It didn't occur to me it would be interpreted as flippant or off-topic. Anyhow, IMO it was a serious and equivalent analogy, as I think pj's story shows. Anyhow, I was just curious, I don't actually care about downvotes.

<comment> grey-area I think the problem is that it is no way equivalent, and sexual assault is psychologically far more damaging. I don't think you can compare the complex damage to body and self-worth triggered by that meaningfully to the limited intrusion most of us feel at having machines storing and cataloguing our every move. With respect, I don't think pg's story shows the two are similar at all - she's taken a decision to withdraw from being a conduit for leaks (probably because she doesn't want her life destroyed by a NSL), but has not had sexual contact forced on her. It's just a completely different thing.

The biggest dangers I see with the surveillance state are more in the future, when complex filters are run on our data in decades to come, and segregate us into cohorts of users which can then be targeted and related at will. When that capability catches up with the data storage capability and starts to churn through decades of data, we truly will be in a dystopia far beyond our imagining today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Groklaw has been a jewel in the crown of the free internet. We are all unbelievably impoverished by its passing. This is truly awful.

<comment><USER20> On the plus side, so far as it goes, I don't think we could make a better case for "chilling effects"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> That is really sad.

We need some kind of a "want my privacy back" backlash or a movement. A slogan that we can unite against and spread the message across the populace.

It's the kind of slogan you use against not only the mass surveillance by the NSA, but also against vehicle miles traveled tax that puts a GPS in your car and against those insurance company OBD-II dongles (Progressive Snapshot) that record your driving and transmit it back. Against surveillance cameras on every city block. Against the idea that "if you have nothing to hide", then you will have no problem with surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER62> At first I thought, pj is using the "NSA" scapegoat as a copout. Email is the reason??? Use GPG! But then I remember how difficult it is to get even my most technical friends to care about secure communications. GPG is a two-way street; for pj to communicate with groklaw constituents or partners or partners of partners, they'd ALL have to be using GPG. Otherwise, someone without it is going to leak what was assumed to be a secure thread. The weakest link conundrum.

</comment><comment><USER63> Would just like to mention mailpile: [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail- bac...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail-back)

They aim to create an self-hosted e-mail client with (among other things) a new take on encryption usability. I think this is one step in the right directoin of making e-mail encryption easier to use. If you think so too, back them :)

</comment><comment><USER64> OMG.. Groklaw shut down!?

I'm in shock.

<comment><USER42> A part-solution.

All tech geeks set up mail servers with encryption and volunteer to migrate their non-tech friends and family to new email homes. We also show how to configure encryption in their mail clients and start getting them to use native email clients rather than webmail.

This will have two effects. It will send a message to Google/Microsoft/Yahoo!/insert big mail provider here/... that they have been lax in protecting the privacy and interests of their users. Of course, given the free-as-in-beer model of webmail it was long apparent to some that the user was actually the product and the advertiser was the actual customer. If a user is seen as a mere data-point then there is little incentive to assure these mere data-points privacy. maybe this will be the kick in the pants the big providers need. Maybe that model is irredeemably broken and always has been but we just didn't know it yet.

Email should be like snail mail. Everybody acts as their own mail server and mail client in snail mail land. Your inbox is the physical letterbox and you would never let some corporation provide that value in return for some dubious positive (convenience? a nice interface to your mail store? the ability to search your mail store? ...)

The second effect is that it sends a message to the spooks and claws back a vital channel of our privacy. We can work on safe and easy anonymous browsing and safe and anonymous and federated social networking and whatever else further down the road -- mail needs to come first.

Think about it. There are enough tech geeks. Every geek should need to know how to do this anyhow. This will scale. We need to build a movement around this. When something in the political arena forces the immeasurably invaluable Groklaw offline something tangible needs to be done. We have had a series of ever more alarming wake-up calls (though I hate how clichéd that sounds) since the first Snowden revelations. We need to start acting on these calls. Sure our response needs a political dimension (a global moratorium on digital mass surveillance) as well but I think that this technical part-solution has got legs.

What do you think?

<comment><USER65> There is also [https://mykolab.com](https://mykolab.com) that PJ now uses:

If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US.

<comment> grey-area NB

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243518)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> How feasible is Freenet for email? We can use PGP today, but the metadata is available to all. But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously that that used pseudonymous PGP keys - one per story, rather one per person, and posted encrypted messages on Freenet?

<comment><USER67> It's just non-feasible. Freenet is a distributed file/web database, not realtime internet.

<comment><USER66> Email does not have to be real time.

<comment><USER67> Maybe realtime was not the best choice of a word, but Freenet cannot handle email in any case.

Freenet is a global distributed p2p file database. Email does not fit that medium.

<comment><USER66> > Email does not fit that medium.

Why not?

Email can be implemented in a global p2p file database. Every "email" simply adds another file. Privacy can be ensured with encryption (as long as the encryption is not broken, at least). See existing Freenet message boards for an example.

It may not be Internet RFC821/822 (and subsequent standards) Email, but it is email.

What part of this will not fit the Freenet model?

<comment><USER67> How would you send the new file to your recipient?

<comment><USER66> The same way that message boards do this already on Freenet.

See [https://freenetproject.org/understand.html](https://freenetproject.org/understand.html).

Something like:

Publish a site using a USK (perhaps one per recipient), containing all encrypted messages sent recently. Update the site with an additional message when you need to send one. The recipient checks it for updates periodically.

I'm not sure if my understanding is inaccurate, but since Frost already achieves something like this, I don't see that it's automatically impossible such as what you seem to be inferring.

In fact, now that I look, there's: [https://freenetproject.org/freemail.html](https://freenetproject.org/freemail.html)

I'm dubious about the safety of using non-Freenet clients, but surely this demonstrates that it's possible to build a messaging system built over Freenet?

<comment><USER67> Yep, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Americans! Every time someone wants to introduce gun control, you bang on and on about your right to keep and bear arms being necessary to the security of a free State.

Well, your free state is in jeopardy. Now is the time to assemble your well- regulated militia to secure it!

</comment><comment><USER69> Wow. Crazy.

PJ presents it generically, but I can't help wondering if that is for legal reasons and something specific has happened that cannot be told.

Either way, a tragedy - the world needs, right now, exactly people like PJ and websites like Groklaw.

<comment><USER47> From the way he presented it, I would be very surprised if there was anything specific that cannot be told.

<comment><USER5> she

<comment><USER70> True, but is it a good impulse? [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html)

<comment><USER5> In this case, yes. PJ being a woman is _very_ well known and it irks me when people automatically assume that anybody that runs a thing as successful as groklaw has to be a guy without checking. If you don't know use a gender neutral word or check, it's simple.

It's not purity in language, it is paying basic respect to a person who is named several times in full in this thread.

<comment><USER71> > ... If you don't know use a gender neutral word ...

"it"?

<comment><USER40> "They" generally works, it's just not commonly used and so sounds a little odd. Try using "they" instead of instead of "he" and "her" for a few minutes to see. It works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Why do they "require" email in order to function? Can't they handle communication via a web based application which is part of the site? A few forms here and there, some https...

</comment><comment><USER72> What does the NSA have to do with Groklaw? They don't get anonymous tips from whistleblowers do they? This is weird. Someone please explain.

</comment><comment><USER13> _My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it 's possible. I'm just an ordinary person. But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible. I find myself unable to write...._

\-- the crux

</comment><comment><USER73> The scripture quoted in the article is Jeremiah 10:23. History verifies the truthfulness of that scripture. Government by man has not brought a better world, even when rulers have had high ideals and the best of intentions. Instead, "man has dominated man to his injury." -(Ecclesiastes 8:9)

</comment><comment><USER74> You cannot just quit internet, you just can-not. Aren't there any secure email providers like lavabit in Europe or Asia .

Whenever I think about NSA now , in a corner of my mind , I see Dan Brown Saying, " I told you so". With a copy of Digital fortress (his book about NSA) in his hand.

</comment><comment><USER75> relevant link...(Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw's Pamela Jones)(2011) [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/google-real-names- and-g...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/google-real-names-and-groklaws- pamela-jones/1454)

</comment><comment><USER76> Frankly, I don't understand that.

E-mails are unsafe for private communication. What the recent revelations did is that they showed that e-mails _really are unsafe_.

If you are really afraid that you are under surveillance, switch to PGP. It's not hard.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is not surprising since "pj" guards his privacy and anonymity. Two things the surveillance state doesn't want you to have.

<comment><USER20> pj is a woman: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I hope if they really insist on doing this that they will be ready to cover the Lavabit lawsuit when the secrecy is removed.

</comment><comment><USER79> It could be they were served a "National Security Letter".

Could this happen to a site like HN? And if so, would we know?

</comment><comment><USER80> What about using a secure electronic drop box like Wikileaks does? Crypto still works.

</comment><comment><USER81> at the risk of encouraging brainless anger responses.

yes lets all bend over and take it up the ass...

because someone says what they learned makes them not want to use e-mail? this is precisely the opposite of how to stand up to oppression.

no matter what it is the response should not be "well i'm going to stop being free and let them oppress me" you may as well just lay down and die in my mind...

you are born free whether you like it or not and nobody can take that away but yourself.

</comment><comment><USER82> Such utter bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER83> Lets not try to code our way out of this.

We succumb to terror pushing away meaningless bits of code on Github as a crypto projects in response. Some projects flourish sure but the same forces that profit off the court-less killings of others are collating your data, your pet projects. Harvesting your stolen info out of botnets.

Giving you a salary for technician work keeping infrastructure ticking.

Enough enabling the beastly mess that is privatized 'national' security. The payments to infrastructure providing companies for data access. The kidnapping/torture/drone fire of others when technological routes don't work.

If you have a career with Dell, AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and many others, start making demands or make resumes. Stop being complicit.

<comment><USER84> That's nice to say. Get angry, be outraged. But what do we _do_ , day-to-day, while things are still a mess? How do you organize a revolution under the noses of the people you're revolting against?

The code still has a purpose, even if it's not the "right" solution, long- term.

<comment><USER85> Revolution is not what you think. It consists of the small actions of millions of people. The small actions are usually more revolutionary than the large.

The NSA has just created a huge market for guaranteed secure communications infrastructures. The technology is there. It may need some extensions but it is there.

Some ideas (again no time for a startup now and this is too important):

1\. An email-like service based on TOR with content encrypted via public key encryption end to end.

2\. The second is an encrypted voice network. This can't encrypt metadata a swell in a way that central offices can't see it, but the contents could be encrypted easily enough.

The code is a means to an end. We can't code our way out of the problem. We _can_ build businesses that get us out and code is supportive of that.

<comment><USER86> Encoding your own mail means that you are playing by rules of the game NSA has set up. The only way is to make your own game and make them play by _YOUR_ rules. If you encode your communications there is a barrier that they will break down directly by making you disclose the keys while threatening with Tax audits, jail time etc. Or by breaking down encryption commications. They are the largest employer of IT/Security/Cryptographers on the face of the earth.

So the only way to do this is to make them not play their game.

Frankly whole cancerous security apparatus has been fueled by privatized sector just like the one with privatized jail system.

Sad to say this but there only way I can see this being resolved is political/etc. Start websites cover the stories. Find methods of figuring out whether they are listening to you or not. For example set up fake drug deals so you can draw them on fact of monitoring your communications. Sue them every instance you find them breaking down your doors. Yeah I know it is not pleasant.

Just like OP said there is no easy way out of this.

Also make working for contractors of NSA and being employee of NSA being a very unpatriotic and scummy thing to do - akin to digging around underwear drawer of your next door granny neighbor.

My 2c.

<comment><USER85> > Encoding your own mail means that you are playing by rules of the game NSA > has set up.

well, actually, I was talking about encoding other people's email, for a fee. The goal is to change the game and change the rules. The NSA has created this market. Let's use this to reshape the game.

> If you encode your communications there is a barrier that they will break > down directly by making you disclose the keys while threatening with Tax > audits, jail time etc.

This is true, so the game is not just to get your own keys taken care of but _everyone else 's_ and locate the business in a country that will be better interested and able to stand up to NSA interests here.

> Or by breaking down encryption commications. They are the largest employer > of IT/Security/Cryptographers on the face of the earth.

Again true, which is why the game has to change.

> So the only way to do this is to make them not play their game.

So the new game is to make sure as much traffic as possible is encrypted. All of the above take time. They could bug the end points, they could break down the encryption with massively parallel supercomputers. They could threaten individual users of the service.

So the game is to make sure that everyone encrypts everything every time (or at least that enough do to make individualized efforts prohibitive on a dragnet scale).

We know they don't like that game. They've been trying to get control over all encryption since the days of Clinton but they haven't yet.

> Frankly whole cancerous security apparatus has been fueled by privatized > sector just like the one with privatized jail system.

Very true. BTW, read "The Servile State" by Hilaire Belloc if you want a really depressing read....

> Sad to say this but there only way I can see this being resolved is > political/etc. Start websites cover the stories. Find methods of figuring > out whether they are listening to you or not. For example set up fake drug > deals so you can draw them on fact of monitoring your communications. Sue > them every instance you find them breaking down your doors. Yeah I know it > is not pleasant.

If someone wants to, great. I am not in the US at the moment so my options are more limited.

> Also make working for contractors of NSA and being employee of NSA being a > very unpatriotic and scummy thing to do - akin to digging around underwear > drawer of your next door granny neighbor.

How do we do that? How many of us know such contractors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> So about botnet data, here is one NSA related company that deals with data the coders are jailed over, Endgame Systems[1].

"botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million."

Folks like the industrious pj have much to worry about when 'outside channels' are made into a a for-profit process. Combine 'parallel investigations' with 'outside channels' with a healthy dash of money for the ringleaders and some for the heads of the companies they pay (Google) and you plenty of reason not to talk law or much else over Email.

It is becoming a desperate situation for noncombatants.

[1] [http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems](http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems)

</comment><comment><USER87> Without sounding trollish, I believe there is a need for a completely new 'transfer of information' protocol that is as immune as possible to NSA (or other agency) snooping. She's right, the internet is broken. So rather than posting endless articles about how it sucks, and suffering heart-breaking tragedies like Groklaw shutting down, why don't we build something new, something truly beautiful, by which I mean something truly private?

To summarize my point, quoting PJ, "privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance..."

<comment><USER88> I2P.

It's been built. I've been asking for years for people to start adopting it. Nobody has been interested.

[http://www.i2p2.de/](http://www.i2p2.de/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well that's puerile. Talk about taking things to extremes--just like a child would do. "We can't go to grandma's right now? WE'RE NEVER GOING TO GRANDMA'S EVER!"

"What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7." Yeah? Well if you're using this as your benchmark, then you should never go out in public, because I guarantee you're on videotape someplace. Security cameras are everywhere. And let's not play games: your ISP has been monitoring your browsing & download history for decades. Nevermind phone calls, any tolls you paid while driving, any bill you paid via credit card, any flight you've taken, any country you've traveled.

Now this is broken and suddenly you care? Stop fucking playing the victim card for attention, I'm sick of it. And I'm not just talking about the Groklaw people, this goes for whoever jumps on the "OMG I'm shutting down now" bandwagon for a portion of the 15 minutes of fame going around.

You want to make a difference? Start getting involved in politics. Internet- rage does nothing but get you a few website hits before people go back to caring about the A-Rod scandal, or the Obamas' new dog.</comment>


Virtual reality porn and the future of loneliness - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/11/virtual-reality-porn-and-the-future-of-loneliness/

<comment><USER2> The whole "porn = loneliness" equation is really getting old. People with sex lives watch porn. People in relationships watch porn. Females watch porn. Couples watch porn together. Couples make porn together.

Masturbation is natural, normal and healthy, and it's about time we stop the false "watches porn = lonely loser" equation.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. It's like we're running a giant experiment on everybody, using powerful digital technologies , without even a safe process for estimating and controlling the risks and optimizing for positives.

And we do this without even achieving a scientific consensus on regular pornography and it's impact - without even understanding the results of the previous technology, if any. Maybe we should understand that before?

<comment><USER4> Life itself is a giant experiment for which no-one really knows the answer to.

I am pretty much for being open and accepting of our own humanity (desires, flaws, quirks), without tabooing the fuck out of everything and trying to control what other individuals think and do with themselves. Education, information, critical thinking and a sharp change of culture into acceptance is what I think we need, not a "safe process".

<comment><USER3> >> Education, information, critical thinking and a sharp change of culture into acceptance is what I think we need,

Just out of curiosity , would you apply similar rules to hard drugs ? Are the any limits to your approach , places where a slower process that tries to minimize risks, should be applied ?

<comment><USER4> I'd apply the same logic to hard drugs, with emphasis in treatment, not criminalization, if you develop addiction or other problem. I think a big chink of the drug problem is the alienation it creates, in part due to being illegal and a taboo. If it's just something you can do, it probably loses half the appeal, and information about its risks and intricacies are probably more generally available.

I emphasize critical thinking, so yeah I think there are limits to my approach, especially when it concerns other people more directly (e.g. hurting others is not ok).

Process is generally warranted as well when a large group of people have to interact directly and the consequences are more fatal, such as traffic. In fact, I am pretty much for there being processes, not necessarily for minimizing risks, but to reduce conflict in a functioning society. What I don't like, I guess, is micro-managing daily behavior of people without a _very_ good reason.

EDIT: I also think process should be revised constantly for an evolving society, again, with an emphasis in acceptance and critical thinking, not just accepting the status quo. The last thing we need is 18th century law causing problems today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well!

> For most people (the asexual population and the abstaining Japanese youth > notwithstanding), sex with another person, especially in the context of > meaningful intimacy, is a source of joy.

> Watching porn by yourself all the time, although physically stimulating, is > spiritually the opposite of this.

Participating in autosexual intercourse can absolutely be both meaningful and a powerful source of joy. It consists in the appreciation of one's own body, mind, and spirit as a full and complete flowering of the universe. Consensual sensory experiences allow that being to approach its own devotion fully.

On a less metaphysical note, this is really a marvelous denouement to the sexual brinksmanship that's infested society over the past few millenia.

From an individual perspective, I love having sex with myself. When partners I find attractive want to share, so much the better. It's not as much fun trying to convince them to, though, that part pretty much sucks, and this provides the best BATNA ever in that negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER6> > It's not difficult to imagine a future where a cohort of the male population > — especially those who have trouble connecting with members of their > preferred sex — sits at home many nights with the Oculus Rift strapped to > their heads, living out their sexual fantasies in VR, having their > psychology further shaped and distorted by the persistent absence of > connection with real life people. Regardless, the future of porn is here, > and it is fucking intense.

There's already a hit song about basically this. From 1979. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF4Z6smOrZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF4Z6smOrZw) Also related: this film from 1973 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld) .

<comment><USER7> I teach in a college. our challenges are four: pot, porn, poker, and playstation. This combines porn and playstation. I fear they will next find a way to bring in pot. That'll be a problem.

<comment><USER8> Surely anyone who is wasting time on porn and/or Playstation is capable of smoking pot at the same time. I'm not sure why you think this would require some sort of tie-in at the production end.

<comment><USER9> Just make a VR version of strip poker and you can have all four!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite explanation for the Fermi paradox [1]: we're not seeing any alien life because they have figured out a way to entertain themselves which is far more appealing than searching for ET life forms.

Anyway, before embarking on regular VR sessions with pr0n, see this video first [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox)

[2] [http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge](http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge)

<comment><USER11> Relevant SMBC: [http://www.smbc- comics.com/comics/20131122.png](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comics/20131122.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our culture (at least in America) is poorly equipped to deal with the sexual freedoms that technology is increasingly granting. Porn is definitely a problem and a source of loneliness for many, but just like video games, its not the technology itself that is the problem.

<comment><USER5> I presume you don't intend to suggest that the _freedom_ is the problem? I would propose we attempt to fix the stifling antisexuality of everyday social life, rather than the newfound capacity to meet bodily desires individually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73799908&postcoun...](http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73799908&postcount=309) is perhaps relevant. (Japan a couple of years ahead as always?)

</comment><comment><USER14> "This new technology is totally gonna make everyone lonely and messed up!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely not what I was saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "As Mike Kovalsky said at the end of our interview, "We really believe that virtual reality will drive the relationships between humans in the next years.""

More like _divide_ the relationships between humans.

</comment><comment><USER16> On one hand I'm ok with more and more dudes being taken out of the game because they're too busy fapping to increasingly more realistic pornography. At the same time, it's not obvious that the kind of men that are happy to fully migrate their sexual needs to VR porn weren't already out of the dating pool in the first place. They likely were already consuming regular porn as surrogate for their sexual lives.

On the other hand, I realize that women aren't going to sit still, and they're probably going to have to adapt to this new world, meaning they'll possibly follow along and slowly dating might become mostly virtual.

<comment><USER17> That depends on them being interest at all.

As an Norwegian i came upon an article a year or two ago, based on book by a social scientist that had found that the Norwegian family was changing.

As the female part of the population has gained more equal economic terms, a pattern had emerged where a single "stud" man was being passed around from woman to woman. Once she found herself pregnant he was shown the door.</comment></comment>


Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://boz.com/articles/advice-not-permission.html <comment><USER2> >The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision.

That's a good observation. There are times when permission is truly required, but in most cases asking for advice should be a smart way to at least start the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Conversely, give advice not permission.

If someone comes to you asking if you'll be on board with their plan, you can turn it around and say "ultimately you need to make the call on this, but here's my advise".

<comment><USER4> Similarly, when I'm giving advice, I usually phrase it like "if I were doing this, I'd do X" rather than "you should do X", to make it clear I'm just presenting a point of view rather than telling someone what to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not crazy about either. Asking advice assumes they know enough to advise. If possible, I want constructive feedback. Maybe they see something I completely missed. But people giving advice often are trying to tell you how to do the whole thing rather than saying "I know nothing about 90 percent of that. But this 10 percent here, I can talk about that for the next hour and you would probably learn a few things."

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd ask for neither. I'd ask for help instead.

I'd say: " _This_ is what I have done towards goal X. Will you be willing to do _that_ towards the same goal."

</comment><comment><USER7> The other approach, which was popular in some parts of Europe during the mid 20th century, is a practice that grew out of various Socialist and Communist movements and which is often given the umbrella term "democratic centralism". That term covers a wide variety of practices, but in places like Germany and Sweden it was understood to consist of "Get everyone together and allow them to argue an idea as fiercely as they can, but then once a decision is made, everyone needs to commit to it and take full responsibility for it."

And that method had various successes, especially in industrial settings.

<comment><USER8> I had a manager try to do this. After we all argued, he would make the decision of which idea we all had to commit fully to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great read, even if he did quote Pitbull.

<comment><USER10> Pitbull, surprisingly enough, seems to be quite the business person. If you'd like evidence of this, and you, like me, think his music is aweful and his voice grating, take a look at how well he's done. He is more of an entertainer by trade, and he has performed in front of some very illustrious bodies, and invested his time in lucrative ventures. He's overcome a lack of musical talent with really good business moves... In some ways it reminds of Taylor Swift, who, going against her public image, seems to be incredibly shrewd and activistic in business matters, and has repeatedly given big tech companies the bird.</comment></comment>


Chocolate, bioterrorism and the birth of Brazilian funk - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/27/bioterrorism-in-bahia-witches-broom-chocolate/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that's a stupid plan in retrospect, perhaps when they took their decision it was _obvious_ that ruining the livehood of a whole region would cause the worker to take power. Or, since they all ended up gov official, perhaps they don't give a shit about the workers, but instead did this to create a political situation which would benefit them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incredible.

<comment><USER4> Probably much more common that people thinks. And much more devastating also. There are a lot of similar examples in Europe and America

<comment><USER2> Do you have examples in Europe?</comment></comment></comment>