Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/86-civil-liberties-groups-and-internet-companies-demand-end-nsa-spying

by fchollet • 13 years ago

412 42 13 years ago

IanDrake• 13 years ago

How is the NSA going to stop doing something they've never admitted to doing?

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

If desirable, stopping, or better regulating the NSA is the government's job. Of course they wont suddenly decide to stop.

Spearchucker2• 13 years ago

Stopping the NSA is about as likely as a snowball surviving Jenna Jameson's cleavage.

More probable is renaming PRISM and (if the political heat [sorry] warrants it) splitting it into smaller entities, and then re-mount [ok, I'll stop now] the business-as-usual bike, as though nothing had ever happened.

gridmaths4• 13 years ago

I think the NSA, the CIA, .mil .. all have many good people, who probably want to see better oversight.

Many of them will be cringing at Abu Graib ... its about real oversight and balance of power and correct policy.

DamnYuppie• 13 years ago

Perhaps the bigger issue we need to discuss is are entities like the NSA providing value, honestly how many intelligence agencies do we need?

RexRollman• 13 years ago

It won't have any effect. Most people don't care, so long as they feel safe and aren't inconvienced.

fchollet• 13 years ago

Maybe you're right, maybe most people think that they have "nothing to hide" and want the government to "protect" them against the current boogieman (the USSR, now Islamists, tomorrow China?).

But most people do care about Freedom and civil liberties, on a less "abstract" level. They just don't quite see the connection yet.

And then it's our responsibility to inform those who don't care of the reality of what's happening and what is at stake --freedom of speech, democracy. Before it's to late to do it.

will_brown• 13 years ago

I think the public out cry of loss of civil liberties in this instance verse the relative lack thereof regarding the Executive creating the authority to name US citizens for extra judicial targeted drone strikes is very telling.

It is not that people fear, or care more about the governmental power to intercept our electronic communications than the reality that citizenry might be killed without right to trial - they feel the loss of civil liberty in one instance is more likely to affect them personally, that is why it is important to remember "injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere." - MLK Jr.

mpyne• 13 years ago

I fear the next boogeyman will be MANPADs, based on a story I just read of French discoveries in Mali. I'm hoping that won't come to pass, or that we'll track down the missing MANPADs in time.

ihsw• 13 years ago

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

As we move further into the 21st century and the world government's seek to expand their power, this strategy is seeing even greater success. This complements Orwell's 1984 very well, specifically because it matches Alduous Huxley's 'Brave New World' quite well.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Circuses

jpiasetz• 13 years ago

So what you're saying is they need to convince people that they aren't safe because the NSA is spying on them? Seems a fairly easy sell.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

Some people prefer to be right about certain predictions, than do the right thing, and pushing the needle in the right direction. I really don't like such self-defeating comments. They cut through everyone else' "enthusiasm" and energy about doing something about it, and have negative impact on the movement for change.

gridmaths4• 13 years ago

yeah... but were not most people here are we..

if HN isnt looking after the internet... who is ?

Maybe its up to us to do our part [ along with reddit, 4chan, Anons, RMS/EFF ] so normal people can feel like the internet is their space ?

mladenkovacevic2• 13 years ago

I guess this will be a test to see what Americans are made of... or rather what they've been turned into...

xradionut• 13 years ago

Baaaa Baaaaaaaaa Baaaaaa

They have been turned into sheep over the last 6 decades by the media.

mrt0mat0• 13 years ago

I may be way off, but I feel that this issue is similar to Debt a few generations ago. they put it off to let the next generations down the road deal with it. Are we not doing the same thing with our civil liberties now? "why worry about it now, it's not a complete catastrophe yet." - narrow minded thinking in my opinion.

sixQuarks• 13 years ago

It's not that most people don't care. It's that most people don't have the ability or desire to figure out the reality jigsaw puzzle. Meaning, by putting together small bits and pieces together, it's easy to see the overall picture of what's going on.

spoiledtechie• 13 years ago

Sadly, I will have to agree. This is whats going to happen. Its going to be forgotten.

Miner49er• 13 years ago

If this letter is ignored, then I think they should take it a step further and have another internet blackout (or something similar) for a day. If that fails they can make it a week, then a month, until it either becomes too expensive or the government gives in.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

I see that Google, Facebook, Microsoft et al are conspicuous by their absence from that list. Kind of shouts out how little they feel for your (and my) data privacy.

probably_wrong• 13 years ago

Well, neither is YCombinator, while both Reddit and 4chan are.

I agree they were probably contacted, but still I'd like to know, in any case, what was the procedure behind selecting those (and not other) companies.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

It would be pretty shocking if Microsoft continued the "Scroogle" charade after all of this.

But you're right, I would've thought Google and the others would be the first to start a major lobbying campaign against NSA's surveillance powers. So maybe they don't really care about user privacy that much, or don't think this story will damage them too much in US or abroad, and that they don't really need to do anything to fix the broken trust relationship they have with their users now.

youngerdryas• 13 years ago

Or if Google continued their "Don't be evil" façade.

doron• 13 years ago

Well snooping on you to sell info to advertisers is a core business element.

Bottom line - snooping is part and parcel of the business plan, they won't go against it, nor will they give it up.

chm• 13 years ago

En effet, ces noms brillent par leur absence.

But before jumping to conclusions, we'd have to be sure they were contacted for this? Maybe the authors of the letter assumed these companies wouldn't sign?

It would be telling if they refused to participate.

gridmaths4• 13 years ago

I would like to see Googles name on this action.

Now is the time for Silicon Valley to step up.

gridmaths4• 13 years ago

I dont really mean this as a criticism..

but it seems like a good opportunity to really send a message.

justncase80• 13 years ago

I wonder what would happen to these companies if they simply refused to comply with the order to give access to their data?

sc00ter• 13 years ago

They'd allegedly get lucrative govenment contacts cancelled:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying

It has also been suggested that the insider trading charge were trumped up as retribution, in that the CEO was accused of purchasing shares with 'insider' knowledge of government contacts, but that he was prohibited by law from publicly disclosing those contracts.

knowtheory• 13 years ago

I dig the letter, but someone needs to have edited this for content.

"reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer"

That's clearly factually incorrect. Snowden wasn't a career man, and also wasn't an officer. He was an IT infrastructure analyst. He's a support guy.

Reading posts like this make the distinction (even w/in the intel world) very clear: http://qz.com/92509/edward-snowdens-lesson-to-both-businesse...

blhack• 13 years ago

The spying will never, ever stop.

This plays out as: The NSA etc. claim "Okay, we've stopped spying!" right up until they get caught again.

Then the cycle starts over.

There is no technically feasible way of ensuring that you're not being snooped on. Thus: you will always be snooped on.

shpxnvz• 13 years ago

I doubt that the NSA, or the executive branch, or the legislature, will ever be put in a position to have to claim that they've stopped spying.

There will be brief outcry, some half-hearted claims by a few in charge that they will look into it, and after the next shooting or terrorist attack it will be on the second page, soon to drop off the radar completely.

At least that's what I'd put my money on. They won't even be bothered to lie about it.

ewbuoi• 13 years ago

It's funny how they put 4chan with the 'F's in the list of supporting companies instead of at the beginning where you'd normally find names starting with digits.

crusso• 13 years ago

Yeah, 4chan shouldn't be your lead-in supporting web community when you're trying to look legitimate. It's bad enough that silly sounding names like "Boing Boing" are in there so early.

chx• 13 years ago

Complete waste of time. This is not where your problems are nor is it going to lead anywhere. May I offer http://chxrambling.tumblr.com/post/52584359139/why-are-you-s...

"you need to attack corporations bottom line for political reasons and make it very clear that's what you are doing"

mladenkovacevic2• 13 years ago

It is interesting to conjecture and theorize about the personality of the US intelligence community and just what price they are willing to pay to protect different types of information.

For example: I wonder how much of their secrecy is really about protecting American citizens. After the Boston bombings (and 9/11 for that matter) there seemed to be no secrecy about the bombers. All types of information came out: that Russian intelligence had warned them about these guys, that one of them had already been investigated by the FBI for something else. All the information coming out had this open, non-secret feel. Same for 9/11: we suddenly knew about the movements and actions of the terrorists for months prior to the World Trade acts. How they trained, how they hijacked the planes, how Bin Laden had engineering insight and knew that hitting the towers at a certain height would make them collapse.

PRISM seems murky as shit compared to that. It's almost like it's dealing in a completely different type of information altogether. This is what makes me wonder about what percentage of PRISM-type surveillance is really about locating some band of terrorists training in some desert camp. The secrecy around it seems much more likely to protect the spies than the American people.

I do refuse to believe that the NSA employees are merciless warmongers looking to secretly destabilize nations and install puppet regimes while somehow profiting off of the anarchy that ensues (although a lot of US history is precisely that). I think most of them genuinely believe that they are doing good work that makes the world a safer place. But the personality of the organization they work for doesn't fit the rest of the picture and I just wonder what it is they are told in order to feel that the secrecy is justified.

Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying

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