NSA - The Price of Hypocrisy

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ueberwachung/information-consumerism-the-price-of-hypocrisy-12292374.html

by spdy • 13 years ago

117 30 13 years ago

faz.net

jcromartie• 13 years ago

Kind of a silly tangent, but: it looks like Keith Alexander is wearing a Casio F91W, which is infamous for being the watch of choice of terrorists, particularly Osama bin Laden and numerous Guantanamo detainees. It's also popular with hipsters and hackers. I wonder if it was some kind of dog whistle? Or the same wardrobe people that put him in an EFF shirt to make him appear "relevant" did it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F91W#Claimed_use_in_terro...

Shish2k• 13 years ago

Kind of a shame that "using cheap, high-quality equipment" is now evidence of criminal activity. As if I wasn't inadvertently on enough government watch lists already :(

(See also: encryption, tor; next up, using any OS that isn't certified NSA-backdoor-compatible?)

joseflavio3• 13 years ago

"the word “cloud” in “cloud computing” is just a euphemism for “some dark bunker in Idaho or Utah.”"

I always said that and I believe that the "cloud" is just some intermediary paradigm, in some time and hopefully soon, people will host all their data at home and will only upload it encrypted to on line vaults to have them backed up and redundant for accessing.

For now, I am really looking forward for an Evernote / Dropbox hosted outside of USA/UK/etc to start.

Xylakant3• 13 years ago

I do not think so. Hosting your data at home is significantly more complex than cloud hosting (dropbox, icloud) and will always be - bandwidth is the smallest of all issues. There's absolutely no gain if data is stored on shrink-wrapped boxes that are remotely administered by a provider because then, all data will just be collected at home. So you'd need a trustworthy and extremely simple and robust (open source?) solution that allows every, even the computer-illiterate persons to set up a storage at home. I don't see that coming soon.

joseflavio3• 13 years ago

I agree with you that today there is absolutely no way, but in the last 5 years the internet changed a lot. Several Europeans countries are subsidizing the optical fiber infrastructure, so the bandwidth will not be problem. To solve the complexity issue, I think the solution could be a of "home server" or "home box", I guess it will could be even provided by your ISP (each day these home boxes come with more capabilities).

jbattle• 13 years ago

here's what you do - design a beautiful cube that has a few ports (USB, firewire, whatever). It should also connect to the local wifi network. It'd ship with Dropbox-like software so synching files to it over the home network is dead simple.

Then, you make some sort of lifetime guarantee that you'll keep up with changes in storage and interface technology. Guarantee that the thing will be later upgraded to seamlessly translate people's wedding photos to the next big image format. Guarantee you'll keep it forward and backwards compatible to future OS updates. Guarantee it'll work with future phones and tablets, etc.

Maybe even build in some kind of automated off-site backups in case of fire, theft, flooding.

If you made it simple, and if you earned people's trust that this is really an investment - I think you could really clean up with local home storage.

amirmc2• 13 years ago

"I don't see that coming soon"

I disagree. There are many signs that at least some people are moving in this direction. Think of things like SpaceMonkey, OwnCloud, various plug computers, the 'Raspberry Spring' (small embedded ARM devices) and many others besides.

Sure, these don't fulfil all of your criteria but the fact that they exist at all indicates that we're on the right path.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

It has big meaning in business where it generally means the organization isn't going to run it's own servers. Or even own them if they aren't requiring a private cloud. Although amusingly, here in the medical sector, the cloud often still has to be in the same state for legal purposes.

stephencanon• 13 years ago

“outside the US/UK/etc” means “in a country with weaker constitutional protections against government search and seizure”, for the most part. Be careful what you wish for.

iandundas• 13 years ago

As has been proved, the USA is not the pinnacle of these things (any longer?). I'd happily try my luck with a German Dropbox

dredmorbius2• 13 years ago

My vision: a Federated model in which users self-host using something like FreedomBox (https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/).

The hardware is small, cheap ($20 - $200, or more if you prefer) and low-power. And the truth is: having _any_ dedicated box means you're getting more hardware allocated to your use and data than most SAAS providers provision on a per-customer basis. With modest amounts of RAM and an SSD performance will top most cloud services.

The software is self-configuring. One thing the Debian team has been working on for nearly two decades is how to take all the pain out of deploying systems, and while it's not perfect, it's really damned good. With a focus on "sane by default", there's no initial package selection.

The "Federated" bit says that your data is replicated on other nodes, either of your specific choosing or based on an arbitrary selection. That can include encryption of non-public data.

And there's a possible business model: set up self-hosted systems for individuals or businesses, or host small numbers of sites (it would take a lot of work for the feds to track down tens of thousands of providers rather than a handful of large players).

Email, webhosting, file storage, email, messaging, social networking, on an open framework.

Uchikoma• 13 years ago

"It’s probably not a coincidence that LiveJournal, Russia’s favorite platform, suddenly had maintenance issues – and was thus unavailable for general use – at the very same time that a Russian court announced its verdict to the popular blogger-activist Alexei Navalny."

This was news to me.

w_t_payne• 13 years ago

I am glad somebody else out there is interested in the debate that lies at the intersection of the surveillance state and the "internet of things".

betterunix• 13 years ago

"First of all, many Europeans are finally grasping, to their great dismay, that the word “cloud” in “cloud computing” is just a euphemism for “some dark bunker in Idaho or Utah.”"

It is not as though there were no warnings:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

blisterpeanuts2• 13 years ago

I have to say, this whole NSA Snowden revelation has shaken a bunch of us out of our little fantasy bubble, and we have lost all faith in Google and other internet services providers to protect our private information.

But the real catastrophe here is that these U.S. companies have suddenly and irrevocably lost the trust of the rest of the world, as the article rightly points out. Software is one of America's last bastions of competitiveness and our stupid government has managed to undermine even that.

So long, Internet. It was fun while it lasted. I just hope there will still be a few good paying jobs left after the crash, maybe in the field of cryptographic communications; that seems like it's got a lot of potential in our post-privacy era.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Yup, next time the ITU tries to assert control over some aspect of the Internet, it's going to be a lot more difficult to prevent because of this.

snitko2• 13 years ago

Why do you blame companies? If you were the CEO of Google and a government official came to you with a request for a backdoor and a solid promise to make life real hard for you if you refuse to cooperate, what would you do?

avoutthere• 13 years ago

I like to think that I would react as did Todd Beamer and the other passengers of Flight 93. Sometimes circumstances call for heroic action at the risk of one's self.

blisterpeanuts2• 13 years ago

I guess I would put up a very public fight over it, take them to court, make it a cause celebre.

Google's reputation is, after all, based on "do no evil", is it not? Hundreds of millions of people all over the world trusted them to ethically handle ads and personal data and all that. Google took a principled stand on Chinese spying and censorship, remember, and it cost them probably billions of dollars in business in mainland China.

A reputation, once lost, is not easily restored.

NSA - The Price of Hypocrisy

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