'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/sending-message-miranda-gchq-nsa

by qubitsam • 13 years ago

405 152 13 years ago

kleiba• 13 years ago

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press?

I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like a cheap sci-fi novel has become reality?

Who's the real terrorists in 2013? I for one am more scared, appaled by what has been bubbling to the surface every week, almost every day since Snowden.

muyuu• 13 years ago

The US and UK governments among others are textbook terrorist states at this point.

The war on terror rhetoric is plain pathetic now. Any self defence measure taken by citizens would be classified as terror by these governments now.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

I honestly believe that the "morals" (for lack of a better word) of the UK government haven't actually got any worse over the last 50 years or so - what has changed is that now technology allows so much more so they are quite happy to do it.

For example, in the 1980s there was an almighty fuss because an excellent journalist found out that the UK government had wasted vast amounts of money on a failed spy satellite project - that had Special Branch raiding magazine offices and occupying the BBC offices in Glasgow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_affair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_%28journalist%2...

[NB I can strongly recommend Duncan Campbell's "Secret Society" series from 1987 - some of them are on YouTube and they really are scary/tragic - a lot of his concerns are rather prophetic.]

api3• 13 years ago

As an outsider (American) it's long appeared to me that the British government thought 1984 was a utopian blueprint rather than a dystopian novel. :(

teh_klev• 13 years ago

You don't have to trawl through YouTube looking for them, you can find pretty much all of DC's broadcast material here:

http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/broadcasting

api3• 13 years ago

Well, I can say that if Osama bin Laden "hated our freedom," then... well... 9/11 worked, and he won.

dhimes• 13 years ago

This is the saddest truth.

GotAnyMegadeth• 13 years ago

When I was a kid I assumed that was already happening, and was relieved to find out that it wasn't.

keithwinstein3• 13 years ago

would any of you have believed

Yes, honestly.

For more than 20 years, the basic message of the cipherpunks and related communities has been that the NSA spends tens of billions of dollars to spy on everything "foreign" that it can possibly get its hands on, and its foreign adversaries are doing the same, so you'd better use PGP (or more) if you want any chance of keeping your communications secret from the government. This is even more true post-9/11 and post-2008 than it was in 1993, milestones that have hardly gone undiscussed in the public discourse about government intelligence gathering.

The M-x spook feature of emacs is not a new thing!

After all, 40 years ago the Nixon Administration sent thugs to burgle Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, looking to steal medical records that would reveal embarrassing information about Ellsberg. Hopefully _that_ has gotten better and will never be repeated, but this stuff is just not unprecedented in our history and not something an informed observer would rationally disbelieve.

Popular books like "Blind Man's Bluff" document the storied history of the U.S. and adversaries' going to extraordinary lengths to snoop on each other's undersea communications for 70 years. Boeing and Airbus have been publicly accusing each other of profiting from U.S. and French espionage since forever.

I think if you read the 2001 European report on Echelon, and coverage of the 2002-2003 U.S. and British spying on the U.N. discussions of the Iraq war resolutions, and the 2005 New York Times coverage of warrantless wiretapping, and the 2006 revelations of NSA back rooms in AT&T fiber closets, and the 2006 USA Today coverage of the NSA call records program, and the subsequent public outcry, culminating in the 2008 FISA Amendments Act that retroactively immunized the telephone companies for their participation (an Act that then-Senator Obama voted for), all to much controversy and angst in these parts, you would not find the contents of the recent Snowden disclosures that surprising.

I do think the Snowden disclosures have added incrementally to the public understanding and made it much more precise, although in the places where they hint at something more dramatic -- e.g. the PRISM program -- the conflicting statements (and relative silence from Snowden himself) mean that so far we are still mostly in the dark about what PRISM really is or does. The PowerPoint slides are nice but it would be a lot nicer to have somebody who actually knows this stuff, or at the least something more verbose than PowerPoint.

Obviously, the Snowden disclosures also have performed a valuable service in bringing this matter back into the public discourse, because most people do not pay that close attention and probably do not remember the 2001 Echelon report or the 2003 and 2005 and 2006 articles or the debate over the 2008 law and they probably stopped using M-x spook back when Clipper stopped being a threat. And the Snowden slides seem to be causing Congress to pay closer attention to the issue, which is a good thing even if they may not literally be giving the committees any information they didn't already have. And of course the theatrics of running away to Hong Kong and getting stuck in Russia and getting locked up for nine hours in Heathrow and having a newspaper's hard drives smashed by British spy thugs are extraordinary and read like a spy novel.

But if the question is -- for somebody who did pay attention (as an informed amateur outside observer) to the debate post-9/11 about tearing down "the wall" between intelligence collection and criminal investigations, and who followed the prominent discussion in major national newspapers over the last 15 years, would you have believed the recent Snowden materials?

I think the answer so far has to be yes, and more than that, you would have known most of what has come out so far already, albeit with less precision and less certainty.

I'm less on top of the way the U.K. treats their news outlets, but I think the recent stuff is not out of character for them, given their routine use of their official secrets act to suppress information. We're more fortunate in the U.S., partly as a result of cases like the Pentagon Papers that could have gone the other way if things had shaken out differently.

[This thread has summoned up memories of visiting the NSA (well, super.org, which is practically an NSA subsidiary) as a high-school student in 1999 and trying to grill them about Echelon and the Menwith Hill facility, and also about whether they could crack RSA. They were not very responsive to any of those questions, which I guess was good training for the future. In their machine room, they had a CM-5 with all the blinkenlights just like in "Jurassic Park" which was definitely the coolest part of the tour. They said they had a debate about whether they would have to classify the CM-5 blinkenlights (which display, like, the 17th bit of every megabyte in memory or something like that) but apparently they decided it was ok.]

swalsh• 13 years ago

In regards to your first paragraph, its a question I keep wondering. What was different about these leaks then all the previous? Why NOW are people caring?

ordinary• 13 years ago

The M-x spook feature of emacs is not a new thing!

I was just looking at the code for that, 5 minutes before I read your comment. It was written in May 1987. A comment near the top says "Help defeat the NSA trunk trawler!". It's interesting how our preceptions of this kind of counter-surveillance tool (primitive as it is) has changed from "OK, man, that's just crazy talk" to "Huh, I guess it really is happening!".

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

As for the systems themselves, based upon what I've read, I've come to the tentative supposition that their data storage, categorization, and compartmentalization is relatively minimal and undifferentiated. [1]

This would be in line with what we learned about the structure (or rather, lack thereof) of intelligence systems of the State Department and military that allowed Manning to acquire such a broad range of documents undetected.

What I've seen cited of the documents from "agency who shall not be named" appear to describe and show that definitions of and limits upon what is searched for, are largely manually constructed and executed by the human operators performing those searches. "You may search for this OR that, but not both. You may search for this other but only in conjunction (AND) with this other term.

It all reminds me rather of one job I had that involved extensive data mining. I started with a mass of raw detail records and winnowed things down. It was entirely up to me what ended up being winnowed out, and I required both extensive knowledge of the domain and careful and precise execution in order to come up with the correct results.

The whole "unnamed agency" situation has developed rather a similar smell, for me.

As an aside, today when I read about the Manning sentencing, one of my first thoughts was, "Supposing that this prosecution has been 'fair' and 'necessary' (not that I necessarily agree with this supposition), then where is the prosecution and sentencing of those responsible for the criminally negligent design and management of the data intelligence systems he 'exploited'?"

For all its vaunted capabilities, I suspect that data management at the NSA is similarly fucked up, and that there are managers and contractors who should and would, in a fair world, be sent to prison for this.

[1] Perhaps with a few exceptions, e.g. for senior government officials and favored members of the private "elite" class, e.g. the C suite and board of Goldman and the like.

alistair772• 13 years ago

I listened to an interview with the Home Secretary, Theresa May, yesterday. She explicitly stated several times that she had no say in the Miranda's detention as it was a police matter. Odd, then, that she is responsible for the secret services and it is MI5, not the police, who are the primary in all anti-terrorism investigations.

josephlord• 13 years ago

The police in the UK do have sufficient independence to arrest against the Home Secretarry's wishes and MI5 have no arrest powers they normally get the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police to do the arresting I believe. However I think that if she had politely suggested that they be careful not to stretch anti-terror laws to far that they would have probably listened.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

When you were a child, would any of you have believed....

Actually, yeah. I read 1984 at age 10, and somehow grokked enough about what that would mean.

Like a cheap sci-fi novel has become reality?

Like Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, with a little Kafka thrown in. I'm not sure "cheap" is the word I'd use here.

I for one am more scared, appaled by what has been bubbling to the surface every week, almost every day since Snowden.

I'm glad that I'm not 'crazy' anymore. It's a good thing that it is out in the open now. It was more frightening when nearly everyone ignored it.

swombat• 13 years ago

More than a little Kafka. The secret laws interpreted by secret courts with secret opinions being used to secretly murder citizens "legally" without the slightest hint of a trial is solid Kafka. The innocent people held in high-security prison indefinitely on secret charges because it's too difficult to work out a legal framework to set them free are also solid Kafka.

einhverfr• 13 years ago

I'm glad that I'm not 'crazy' anymore.

Someone called me 'crazy' today for mentioning the Guardian hard drive story. I wonder.... how many people have blinders on :-(

The thing is I am not convinced the technology is actually good enough to make sense of what they get. They have to decide to look at someone first. This means that it is a way to discredit and jail or worse people who become sufficiently inconvenient to the powers that be.

rainsford2• 13 years ago

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly.

Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric didn't seem to match what really happened (at least to me). A non-UK citizen (as far as I'm aware) was transporting classified information through a UK airport almost certainly for the purposes of releasing that information, information the UK government considers damaging if it was to be released. The information is confiscated, but the man himself is let go. And afterwards, the man's journalist husband more or less openly threatens the UK government with the release of more classified information in retaliation. That's not quite how I remember sci-fi police state stories usually going.

CaptainZapp• 13 years ago

Well, the whole affair sounds a bit like a he-said, she-said. There are claims that Mr. Miranda was a courier and that they offered a lawyer and water during the 9 hour ordeal. The law office, which represents Mr. Miranda categorically denies that legal representation was ever offered to him, for example.

Now, I don't know the truth, but even assuming he had documents they wanted to get their hands on, or files on his devices that they thought pertinent they could have handled the whole thing in 30 minutes max and then let him go on his merry way.

That they held him - almost to the minute - for the legal maximum of 9 hours looks not only vindictive it looks as if they indeed intended to send a message.

Put that into context with other documented occurrences, like the totally senseless destruction of hardware and sandbagging the Guardian into this action (and yes, The Guardian has here more credibility then the UK government, which denies any threats, but that's just me) and we get a whole other picture.

While totalitarian police state may be an over exaggeration , we should be very careful about the direction this is going into.

Assume you're a journalist and suddenly the government(s) have a truckload embarrassing material on you (from Google searches, Facebook accounts, Skype calls and whatever your friendly operating system leaks directly to the NSA's vacuum cleaners) to directly blackmail you.

And no, I don't consider myself a member of the black helicopter faction, but nevertheless find those developments extremely worrying.

michaelt• 13 years ago

Let's say you were the british security services, you didn't like Greenwald, and you wanted to show him who was boss. And his partner was travelling through an airport.

What would you do differently?

hvs• 13 years ago

I suppose we could just wait until it gets worse.

koide2• 13 years ago

So a government can apply terrorism law to a person having information that's damaging to its interests?

That certainly looks like police state to me. And I'm not even mentioning the 9 hours detention, not needed at all to recover the damaging information.

Amadou• 13 years ago

One key part of the story is that the UK government basically accused Miranda (and Greenwald and Poitras) of aiding terrorists by intending to publish that classified information. That's a hairsbreath away from the charge of aiding the enemy that Manning was (just barely?) found innocent of in the US.

I think that defining news reporting to be aiding the enemy is pretty darn close to a lot of what one sees in sci-fi police states.

chalst• 13 years ago

the man's journalist husband more or less openly threatens the UK government with the release of more classified information in retaliation

Greenwald goes to lengths to refute this interpretation in the article and elsewhere.

Mordor• 13 years ago

Spying on people is terrorism and should stop ASAP.

twoodfin3• 13 years ago

So you'd describe what the folks at Bletchley Park did 70 years ago as terrorism?

lttlrck2• 13 years ago

No.

https://www.google.com/search?q=spy+define

edw519• 13 years ago

When you were a child...

When I was a child, the President of the United States was murdered in front of thousands of onlookers and the primary suspect was murdered on live television (while I was watching) by a mob hit man. As far as we know, everyone behind this got away with it and got everything they wanted.

Since then, not much has really surprised me.

antman2• 13 years ago

-would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century

no I always thought it would be at one day in the late 20th century. Probably because my parents had found and bought me in comics "1984" and the "Animal farm" when I was a kid

Keyframe• 13 years ago

Coming from a country where this was the norm only 20 something years ago, I never had any thoughts that it would be otherwise in US or anywhere else basically.We were on the edge of Iron curtain, why would I think cold war main conflicted parties would live within their borders without mechanisms such as this, albeit toned down? Cold war never stopped, it switched objectives from war to control and finance.

drzaiusapelord2• 13 years ago

I guess if you ignored the decades of reporting on the NSA and recent items like Echelon, Carnivore, Total Informational Awareness, etc you might be a little surprised. Or the equivalant programs in Germany, France, England, Israel, Australia, Canada, etc that have also surfaced.

dalore• 13 years ago

Yes but when you professed such beliefs you were labelled a conspiracy nutter.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't listening.

zanny• 13 years ago

I was born in '91, and grew up under the Internet, and from a very young age (3?) I realized everything that was leaving my home on a network connection was easily recorded and monitored. I never assumed otherwise. Anything I don't want my Internet provider, government, or hostile snooper to know I just don't put online.

I don't think I ever expected any less, since I was raised knowing the horrors and atrocities of the last hundred years between ww2 and the treatment of the Japanese and the cold war and the treatment of pretty much everyone.

wslh• 13 years ago

I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like a cheap sci-fi novel has become reality?

Not surreal but I ask the HN community: will this ignite a hacker revolution against the government(s)? At one point the different governments are in a weaker situation since there are a huge amount of cybersecurity attack vectors against them.

adammichaelc• 13 years ago

What do we do about it?

Is it possible to disrupt the government? Somehow create a system that renders them obsolete?

betterunix3• 13 years ago

Governments of some kind are needed as soon as you have a large enough population. Our ability to cooperate and peacefully resolve our problems breaks down when there are too many people involved. At the very least we need courts and agreed upon laws, or else we will just splinter off into little gangs that start killing each other whenever there is a disagreement.

The problem here is not the existence of a government, but the specific government that we have. Here in the USA we have soldiers enforcing our laws, and a legal code that can and frequently does turn a routine traffic stop into a multiyear prison sentence. The major political parties in this country are united in their support for this tyranny. In addition, we have spent decades ceding more and more power to the executive branch and creating a government that operates behind a veil of secrecy.

For the Americans here, I propose the following: be brave, vote third party and risk "the other guy" winning. In exchange for a few years with the wrong lizard in power, you will have sent a strong message to the major party that thought it could count on your vote. If the major parties do not learn, eventually the third parties will have so many people voting for them that they will replace the major parties. Either way we will have made progress towards repairing our government.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Well, my wife would have. But she was born and raised on the other side of the Berlin wall.

adrianwaj• 13 years ago

"Who's the real terrorists in 2013?"

Comfort-maximizing system-lickers.

rdtsc• 13 years ago

When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press?

Yes. But I was living in the Soviet Union ;-)

wissler• 13 years ago

When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen...

A child with a proper education in history would not have been surprised. Nor would a child with a proper education think it was perfectly fine to have the institution of government so intrusively involved with the education of children.

hans0l074• 13 years ago

I could sense anger wash all over Mr.Greenwald again, as he typed that one out (which might have resulted in the typo I noticed "...They threatened the Guardian with prior restrained(t?) and then forced the paper to physically smash their hard drives in a basement..."). Heck, I was upset just reading it.

a3n• 13 years ago

"Here is David Miranda explaining to BBC what it's like to be forced to turn over your passwords to security agents who have detained you under a terrorism law, so they can troll through your emails and Facebook account and Skype program while you are detained. Just watch that short video and judge for yourself."

As I read this I tried to imagine how to reset my digital life, now that all my passwords are exposed. You just about have to become a brand new person, and abandon every account you currently have. Any change to a current account would be observed by the NSA and GCHQ. To the extent that this guy had any privacy or security at all, he's screwed for the rest of his life.

lifeisstillgood2• 13 years ago

They already were reading his gmail, if he still used it. What they may have got were his PGP keys, which presumably he was using to talk to his boyfriend. I doubt however he had any real stuff on his laptop. That would be insane for a reporter who seems to have been as careful as Greenwald.

Nope, straight forward intimidation. I cannot imagine how they thought it would work, so either we assume the security services are incompetant, or there is some other cunning plan. Sadly the latter is very unlikely these days.

ihsw• 13 years ago

The difference is low-level thugs were able to get access rather than the automated collection services operated by the GCHQ, so now low-level thugs have his passwords.

The most salient point is how regular individuals are authorized to receive user passwords, and they're able to use them too. The article clearly states that the low-level thugs checked his email within his presence rather than him communicating the passwords to more secure individuals.

6cxs2hd6• 13 years ago

forced to turn over your passwords

Forced, how? Threat of detention beyond the 9 hour window?

If so, it's easy to speculate I would call their bluff and refuse. But in the situation, probably not so easy.

What about using a hidden volume in TrueCrypt for plausible deniability? [1]

I suppose that would work effectively for documents. There's no plausible deniability for stuff like Facebook and Gmail. They can easily see if you gave them access to the real/full thing, or not.

However given the revelations David Miranda of all people would have to assume his Gmail, FB, et al have _already_ been compromised.[2] So the only interesting, still-private stuff would be any documents.

[1] http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/plausible-deniability

[2]: Not that this makes it right to demand the passwords at LHR.

grecy• 13 years ago

Yesterday I made the observation that the document he was given in detention said:

"You must answer all questions and hand over any data or documents requested" and

"If you fail to comply you could be prosecuted under ..Terrorism Act."

You have no rights. You will disappear in a very deep, dark hole for a very long time if you try to call their bluff.

Welcome to the Patriot Act/Terrorism Act world.

polymatter• 13 years ago

Threat of detention beyond the 9 hour window?

No, the threat of 2 years in jail.

"The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), Part III, activated by ministerial order in October 2007, requires persons to supply decrypted information and/or keys to government representatives. Failure to disclose carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail."(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingd...).

TrueCrypt is no escape if they have reasonable suspicion there is a hidden volume. And you will have to prove that there isn't one.

api3• 13 years ago

Oh they're sending a message alright. I'm just not sure it's the message they want to send.

autonomy77• 13 years ago

The policy of intimidation is working - it doesn't matter if the NSA/GCHQ really do have the technology which is actually capable of performing this scale of surveillance - something which I'm entirely unconvinced of, incidentally - they are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and being quite successful at it too. Are they capable of trawling so much data to the depth that is claimed? Probably not. Are they capable of intimidating individuals with wide reaching knock-on effects including among the general public? Absolutely. So which method is having the most impact? The threat is far more effective than the reality. Make people scared - it saves you having to actually do anything.

ohwp• 13 years ago

If you think there is nothing that can be done you should take a look at Gene Sharp's theory of nonviolent resistance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp

ttt_2• 13 years ago

" If subjects do not obey, rulers have no power."

boi_v22• 13 years ago

Gene Sharp is excellent, I am reading From Dictatorship to Democracy.

On the subject, I think the biggest problem is how to make people understand how serious this is, make them see that the similarities between what is happening and totalitarianism and even fascism is to disturbing.

Today I was speaking with a friend about faceCrap and he just doesn't care about it, he doesn't even try to get properly informed and said that no one would do anything against him because the information he shares is not relevant. I tried to explain the problems with the greed ones controlling the information (hence truth) of the planet, the political and economical advantages it brings to people that doesn't care about society and how his data could say a lot about him but at the end he told me I am paranoid :).

So the political problem we are facing, in my opinion, is a consequence of lack of interest and even selfishness.

acheron• 13 years ago

Of course, remember that the Guardian was perfectly fine with the government harassing journalists as long as it was not them: http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/20/despite-its-battle-with-th...

alistair772• 13 years ago

The Press Regulation Scheme is in no way similar to the use of MI5 and police resources to interrogate an individual who ,for all in intents and purposes, seems innocent of any terrorism related crime. I see no conflict here with the Guardian's stance on these issues.

cabalamat2• 13 years ago

While dare say the Guardian isn't perfect (not that it's relevant) I would distrust anything coming from Spiked, a magazine whose modus operandi is to be contrarian on every issue. They are, in effect, professional trolls.

rahoulb• 13 years ago

"Spiked" used to be "Living Marxism", which was the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP members I used to know (only a handful) would revel in their own inconsistency - so since the demise of the RCP I can fully understand Spiked carrying on that particular tradition.

grey-area2• 13 years ago

Of course, remember that the Guardian was perfectly fine with the government harassing journalists

It's fairly simple:

Journalists who break the law to bribe police and others for information, hack voicemails of private individuals, and intrude on the privacy of individuals should be punished. These things are not in the public interest, there is no excuse for doing them just to make money by publishing the (often prurient) details of someone's life.

Journalists who shed light on what the state is doing (even if that means publishing secret documents), if they can argue that is in the public interest, should not.

Of course there are some grey areas between the two, but the constrast of Murdoch's News organisation bribing policemen and the Guardian publishing stories based on top-secret documents from a whistleblower is an edifying one I think.

anon13852• 13 years ago

Reporters are not immune from the law, despite the rhetoric coming from the Murdoch press. The police investigations into the News Of The World and The Sun are about clearly criminal behaviour: bribing police officers, harassment, phone and email hacking, theft and perjury. There was very little 'public interest' in any of that illegal activity.

Most of the Leverson suggestions were about correcting a power imbalance between normal members of the public and the media/government elite. Making it easier for ordinary people to seek reparations from a newspaper is not 'government harassment'. Requiring papers to print retractions after being proven wrong in a court of law is hardly the same as the prime minister personally ordering the destruction of computers, confiscation of equipment and detention of journalists to prevent reporting about an issue.

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

Another way to look at it was The Guardian was perfectly fine with consequences being meted out when people were illegally invading the privacy of others.

wil4212• 13 years ago

Lets condemn places like China, Russia, and Syria for they way they limit or monitor electronic communications but when the US and "Friends" do it its for mumble mumble TERRORISTS mumble mumble....

If the laws don't allow us to monitor our citizens lets just change the laws or interpret the words differently.

rainsford2• 13 years ago

Except the US and friends aren't really "doing it" in the same sense that China, Russia, etc are. Those countries develop powerful surveillance capabilities and use them to target political dissent, among other anti-democratic things. Nothing that's been reported about the US comes even close to that sort of usage.

JackpotDen• 13 years ago

use them to target political dissent

locking up a dissenter's partner doesn't count, right?

king_jester• 13 years ago

While not specific to NSA programs, the US gov't at the city, state, and federal levels have targeted political organizations, including infiltrating such organizations and tracking the movements of members in such groups. For examples see the information about spying on leftist groups for the 2004 Republican National Convention or how the NYPD targeted and helped dismantle occupy wall street last year.

drzaiusapelord2• 13 years ago

If FISA makes it illegal to discuss who is getting threatened via secret court orders, how would you remotely know if there are or aren't any chilling affects?

This is an important part of this argument. When we make it illegal to discuss the crime, the warrant, and have secret court proceedings, you can't just sit there on your high horse and tell us there is no abuse. You are not allowed to know of any abuse.

wil4212• 13 years ago

Nothing that's been reported about the US comes even close to that sort of usage.

Nothing that's been reported. Or Hasn't happened yet....

GVIrish• 13 years ago

The US and friends may not be openly targeting and censoring political dissent yet, but clearly the first step is developing the capability. If they develop the capability in an environment without any meaningful oversight or accountability, true abuse is one simple step away.

Hell, they may already be using it for political purposes. How would any of us now barring a whistleblower exposing it? That is why this situation is so dangerous.

yenoham• 13 years ago

When articles like this are submitted to HN, can we have a discussion on what us as individuals can actually do (if anything)?

I'd rather drop 100 comments on general FEELING towards the news, for 1 or 2 comments suggesting 'Let's create a campaign site' or 'There is nothing we can do, lets just sit here in silence'

Edit: For what it's worth my ONLY suggestion is that a campaign site similar to that for SOPA, etc. is put together - ideally on GitHub or similar so it can be rapidly put together.

nwh• 13 years ago

I don't really see a solution, and I'm assuming that nobody else does really. Citizens and foreigners (like me) have equally little power over what their governments do, just a mild decision between two parties come election time. The general population seems to be apathetic about it all, I don't think I know a single person who has any opinion other than the tired "nothing to hide" line.

padobson3• 13 years ago

Sounds like we need a campaign against the "Nothing to hide" line. You could probably point out to them that there are so many laws now, they probably broke 10 of them before they left for work in the morning.

davidw• 13 years ago

I don't really see a solution, and I'm assuming that nobody else does really

Bullshit.

There's plenty ordinary people can do. Look at the results here:

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/24/19658896-hou...

That's close enough that the right application of pressure, work and money would have made a difference. Perhaps in the Senate it would take other numbers, but no one said it'd be easy.

Indeed, it's not. It'll take hard work, time, and money.

Comments like yours are a complete and total waste of time - they accomplish nothing other than to suck energy out of people who might otherwise do something. I helped to get a law changed - every so slightly - in Italy, which is not an easy place to do politics. Tons of people basically laughed at me for even trying, but here it is: http://www.governo.it/Notizie/Presidenza/dettaglio.asp?d=690... - it's imperfect, but it's progress, at least.

I'm not much of a fan of political articles like these on this site, but this poster at least has the right idea. Instead of hyperbolic, sophomoric babbling about how the US is "a terrorist state" he's asking "what can we DO?". That's the right first step.

In terms of the 'nothing to hide' line, turn the thing on its head: if Snowden had that kind of access, think how many other people there are who could be paid to spy for the Chinese, Russians, or simply competing US companies. What if politicians lean on them to spy on ... [insert some movement the individual identifies with]. With very little oversight, it seems. You can't trust people when there are no checks and balances.

hyperventilator• 13 years ago

As a peaceful protest / 4th Amendment exercise, please consider attaching an encrypted file with EVERY email you send from now on. It's easy enough to do using TrueCrypt. It needn't be a file the recipient needs to decrypt, or keep. You needn't even remember the password. If everyone did this every time they send an email to anyone, it would flood the Internet with literally millions, then billions, of encrypted files, thereby demonstrating our resolve to maintain some level of privacy, and protecting most if not all of us "fish" in the "school" from the "sharks" who prefer to eat us one at a time (a la Edward Snowden and Ladar Levison). When fish in a massive school move together in coordinated ways, it frustrates predators. If this idea seems worthwhile PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE

This accomplishes three things. 1) It makes you familiar with encryption for when you actually need it. 2) It increases the cost of surveillance and 3) It gives you an opening to discuss the topic with non-tech friends when they ask about your gibberish attachment.

espeed6• 13 years ago

Google was founded on the principle of "Don't be evil", it has the power and influence to effect change, and it helped lead the charge against SOPA. Why is Google so silent now?

"He who has the ability to act on an injustice, but who stands idly by, is just as guilty as he who holds the knife."

How Google handles this will be its defining moment. This is could be an opportunity for Google to win the world over by showing it truly stands on its principles, or it could be its downfall, destroying its credibility, losing the trust of its users.

Maybe Google is working behind the scenes putting a game plan together, or maybe it's getting something out of the situation -- let's hope it's the former. Like Eisenhower said, "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

uptown• 13 years ago

'Google was founded on the principle of "Don't be evil"'

I wish people would stop quoting this. It means nothing, and is not binding in any way. It sounded good, and it was a great marketing slogan - but it means absolutely nothing in reality.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

"Don't be evil" wasn't a founding principle, but one suggested by an engineer early in the company's history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

I've got my own very grave reservations about the company, but it has done some good stuff. I'm hoping we'll hear from them eventually. Truth is, much of The System is the way it is because the various participants have one another by the balls.

ajays• 13 years ago

"Dear Google, please save us!"

You might as well have said, "Dear God, please save us!"

Sorry, but you won't be saved by any corporate entity; they're in bed with the surveillance state anyways. It is people like us, yes, you included, who have to take up the baton and run with it.

Here are things you can do:

- Talk to your non-techie friends, and bring them up to speed

- Explain to them why "giving up rights for temporary safety" doesn't work

- Tell them why this sort of surveillance is against the core democratic principles this country was founded on

- Suggest to them that they should vote out any politician who supports such policies. In the end, it is the Congress' job to keep checks and balances; and they've failed miserably. Time for all of them to go.

xhrpost• 13 years ago

Why is Google so silent now?

Because they are legally required to be silent. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732394990457853...

zby• 13 years ago

There is this annual event "Freedom not Fear" - which is about fighting the Big Brother - and this year a huge coalition (http://blog.freiheitstattangst.de/bundnispartner-2013/) in Germany and Austria plan demonstrations for the September 7, and other countries will join (Poland and Czech Republic are confirmed): http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2013...

On September 27-30 in Brussels there will be workshops and hearings with MEPs: https://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_201...

Organize a local event - add it to the list - don't be afraid that it is small, even if not many people come locally - you'll be a part of a global crowd.

Twitter hashtag: #fnf13 IRC: #fnf PirateIRC (irc.piratpartiet.se / irc.piraattipuolue.fi / irc.pirateparty.org.uk)

keithpeter• 13 years ago

"When articles like this are submitted to HN, can we have a discussion on what us as individuals can actually do (if anything)?"

I think we need to start explaining the privacy/surveillance issue and how the advent of powerful technology makes universal surveillance possible and, as others have commented, rather banal.

As one example of a possible 'hook':In the UK, there have been reports on the extent to which ordinary police officers are using the National Police Computer for purposes unrelated to police work (checking out boyfriends/girlfriends for instance). I imagine the potential for misuse is much higher with the comprehensive capturing of data from all communications. That might get people thinking.

TausAmmer• 13 years ago

Government is us, when stomach tries to fight with brain over trivial details like food you or giving, amount, quality and so on. One day brain will kill stomach with all the control mechanisms, it dies too.

"For the benefit of all".

We already live in virtual reality where most of the things we do is just to numb our perception. Nothing to do with advancements in energy, space travel, consciousness. Going where no man has gone before.

And we lough and down talk anyone daring to, so we create spying/regulatory system, government that picks oddities and puts them in place. It works well, very well, so well that now we are stuck in place where we want to be, beer Fridays, pizza Saturday, sunny ice cream Sundays, something to look forward after week long slavery you hate so much.

It is so complicated and weaved trough all of us and all out needs/wishes/predicaments. To long and want something, you create opposite situation that makes that "something" so amazing.

Sometimes I wonder, what would take this organism(humanity) to evolve/change. Searching for health(happiness) in cancer(fear)? Or total annihilation for something else to come in play.

xradionut3• 13 years ago

We are semi-rational animals. Not many of us can handle the "Truth", it's fucking depressing.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

Just pay attention to the messaging coming from some of these media sources. The gov't propaganda is growing less subtle; making it easier to identify who is working for whom.

ttt_2• 13 years ago

I can almost picture NSA analysts vulturing all over the private data collected of these enemies of the state.

How soon utnil they send out the drones into the foreign lands where they have not so great a political strongarm?

"Drone bombing in brazilian airport kills dozens"

"Sadly it was necessary as one of the passangers carried terrorist intel that would put our free world at risk"

peteretep• 13 years ago

Controversial article that made me think:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100231711/why-do...

ganeumann• 13 years ago

Straw man. Nobody argues he's above the law. They argue because:

- The law is to detain suspected terrorists, nobody thinks the UK believed he is a terrorist, so they were abusing the law;

- If, as the UK government now says, they just wanted any electronic devices he had so they could see what he was carrying, that would have taken less than an hour to confiscate them and ask for whatever passwords Miranda had, not the close to nine hours they held him.

Nobody is above the law. I am sure the reason Miranda was travelling from Berlin back to Rio and not Greenwald was that Greenwald knew he would be detained and thought perhaps Miranda would not. But just like Miranda is not above the law, neither is the UK government. If they misuse a law to harass and intimidate then they should be held to account.

There's always some jackass journalist who thinks they should take the other side, no matter how contrary to the facts, to get some attention. I am just surprised it's at outfits like The Telegraph and Reuters.

anon13852• 13 years ago

I am just surprised it's at outfits like The Telegraph

I'm not sure why. David Cameron could literally murder a baby on live TV and Dan Hodges would describe it as a 'political headache for Miliband'. Nobody takes him seriously; his columns are just fodder for Telegraph readers looking to confirm what they already believe.

Not to mention all the wacko conspiracy theories about climate change that they print.

koide2• 13 years ago

There's always some jackass journalist who thinks they should take the other side, no matter how contrary to the facts, to get some attention. I am just surprised it's at outfits like The Telegraph and Reuters.

Why would you be surprised? It's a given that NSA and friends have people to write stories for them on "reputable" sources. No need for jackass journalists.

eertami• 13 years ago

All this did was remind me that Dan Hodges is a massive tool.

smegel• 13 years ago

If they do succeed in "shutting the leaks down", I wonder if that would be enough for supporters to finally release all the docs publicly. Or for Assange to give out the key to one of his insurance files.

I wouldn't get my hopes up though, these so called leakers seem more stringently against full pubic disclosure than the people they are leaking against.

jstalin• 13 years ago

I love his coining of the term "state-loyal journalists." Greenwald, Snowden, et al deserve Nobel Peace Prizes...

TallGuyShort• 13 years ago

Obama wins peace prize, Obama administration supports spying, Snowden leaks spying, Obama calls Snowden a traitor, Snowden wins peace prize? Wow.

padobson3• 13 years ago

Almost anything can be crowdsourced nowadays. 237 years ago, the founders of the US tried to crowdsource power. I don't see why we can't reboot that whole idea.

Political candidates, lobbying initiatives and legislation can all be directly impacted, in the current framework they exist under, by crowdsourcing. While Kickstarter and Indiegogo have shown us it's possible with art and industrial design and dozens of other media, there's not a go-to place to do it for politics.

So if this community really wants to change our dystopian future, then that's the answer. We could have the NSA completely defunded in a year if we wanted.

coldcode• 13 years ago

The one good thing I see is that cross-party-lines anger by some politicians is actually happening. The party leaderships are fighting it but for once they might be powerless to stop it.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

There are people who've been planning these things all along, just to give you a hint:

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society.

Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.

Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen.

These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

Author: Zbigniew Brzezinski, United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

You can find this at: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162691-the-technotronic-era-...

espeed6• 13 years ago

Brzezinski is Obama's advisor.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

Ok, now I really need to throw up.

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

The British government looks like a farcical bully in this. A playground bruiser that intimidates his way down the hall before promptly slipping over.

Destroying the hard drives was an exercise in dominance, 'do as we say or face the consequences' which had no impact (aside from inconvenience and the cost of a couple of Macbook Pros) to The Guardian but has made the UK .gov look foolish.

Pulling Miranda, abusing the terrorism laws, sending a message is another dominance play but it's back fired awfully. Brazil is annoyed, GG is annoyed, America has calmly washed it's hands and said "leave us out of it". In terms of strategic decisions it can't be described as an excellent one. What's the UK .gov gotten out of it? Some encrypted data and social network passwords, it's not a win.

If you're in the UK and you think this is unacceptable for our government to be trying to intimidate the journalists who're revealing the uncomfortable level of surveillance we now live under, and what the security apparatus has become, then write to your MP. That's what they're there for. We can't just hope that it'll surge through the halls of Parliament, we need to be heard that we think it's not acceptable and not representative of what we want Britain to be.

boi_v22• 13 years ago

Honestly I don't think the "write to your MP" action would have any result, for me this is just another tool to make people think that Democracy is being exercised, anyway, I am not saying that you shouldn't do it, please do it, but don't stop your actions there because it is just not enough.

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

It's a piece of the puzzle, it's a way for them to know what the concerns are and they can choose to act or ignore. You're right, it shouldn't just stop there but people should shout from every rooftop even if it's potentially ineffective.

jasonkolb2• 13 years ago

This is taking quite a scary turn, but not, I think, in the direction that the governments are intending. Rather than intimidate people into silence they are actively creating a movement of people who are abhorred and appalled by these tactics. Kick that dog enough times and you're going to create an organized movement that can fight back. This is how unrest happens.

What I don't think they realize is that the dog they're kicking is also the most technically capable one on the planet. They're not poking Al Qaeda with a stick, they're poking every programmer and hacker who cares about privacy with a stick. While they may have unlimited financial resources, I would pit unlimited technical resources and creativity against that any day of the week. If they manage to create an organized group of highly technical opposition I think they're going to be very surprised by how capable it is.

xradionut3• 13 years ago

"While they may have unlimited financial resources, I would pit unlimited technical resources and creativity against that any day of the week."

They are the ones with unlimited technical resources. You don't have armed drones nor biological nor nuclear weapons. You are an hostage like everyone else. You might as well accept that fact for now and just enjoy life.

jasonkolb2• 13 years ago

I have to respectfully disagree. They have unlimited financial resources, which translates into unlimited storage capacity etc. But NOT (IMO) unlimited technical resources in the sense of brainpower and creativity. When I say technical resources I'm referring to the ability to create new tools.

For example, I know for a fact that a large number of intelligence tools are written on top of open source projects. That base did not come from the technical resources of the government (in most cases) but rather the collective ingenuity of the hackers and programmers that built it for various reasons. You can already see projects springing up with the intent of circumventing government technical oversight. This is going to result in an endless game of technical whack-a-mole where one side is motivated by a paycheck and the other is motivated by ideals and the desire for liberty.

FELICIA-JOY• 13 years ago

The US government spying on citizens is not new at all. It has happened for as long as our nation has been one.

It may be more insidious now because the technology to aggregate spying on "we the people" is available. Welcome to the truly post-privacy era.

Furthermore, the average person is not outraged by this. Cue the shock and awe for one to ten minutes after the biggest breaking stories about it and after that, for the common (wo)man, its all yawns.

Plus, it is quite a dilemma. How does the government protect against terrorism while trying to protect the citizens' privacy when a citizen, or anyone moving among us citizens, could be a terrorist or sympathizer?

The intent is not bad but what could come of this kind of stealthy access is bad if it falls into the wrong hands or becomes guided by ill-intent.

EthanHeilman• 13 years ago

The US government spying on citizens is not new at all. It has happened for as long as our nation has been one.

The mission and organisational capability of the government as changed dramatically. Nations in the late 18th Century (1776+) didn't have intelligence agencies per se. Some had military intelligence that was focused outward and they had various figures and organisations that would informally engage in domestic espionage usually in an extremely targeted fashion. Remember that formal police departments didn't exist until the 20th Century. Most of what we think of as the Government didn't exist in your Great-Grandfathers time. None the following existed in the US in my Great-Grandfathers time:

1. Intelligence agencies CIA/NSA/CSS/NRO,

2. Dept. of Defense,

3. Welfare,

4. Police Local, State, FBI, DHS,

5. FDA (Drugs were unregulated),

6. Income Tax/IRS,

7. EPA and consumer protection agencies,

8. Public Education in its present form,

9. Federal Reserve Bank

The US Federal Government was the Postal Service to most citizens. It is really important to understand that we are living at the height of Federal power in the history of the US.

The closest thing that Europe pre-18th Century had to the NSA was the Inquisition and it was more focused on "investigation".

baggachipz• 13 years ago

Presumably, the Snowden leak files are distributed among Guardian employees. In order to insure against the destruction of all copies of these files due to a worst-case scenario, wouldn't it be a good idea to distribute the files globally? If the Guardian wants to maintain control of the divulgence of leaks, they could encrypt the leaks as a series of files in a bundle and distribute it over, say, BitTorrent. They could then release the key to decrypt each leak file as they see fit.

eeeeaaii• 13 years ago

"sending a message" == getting you to doubt, think twice == instilling fear == creating terror == being a terrorist

Fighting terror with terror. How can it be that no one in the UK government agencies responsible for this can see the irony? How can it be that they don't understand their actions are degrading society just as much as those of the terrorists?

Malstrond• 13 years ago

the remains of the hard disc and Macbook

Yet the picture shows a (PCIe?) extension card, which can not be found in Macbooks. The green PCB isn't a Macbook part either. And no part of a HDD is shown at all.

b8sell• 13 years ago

fuck the NSA

'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

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