New Scandals Show How Pervasive Mass Surveillance Is in the West | Hacker News Reader

New Scandals Show How Pervasive Mass Surveillance Is in the West

theintercept.com

157 pointslisper35 comments

Wake me up when someone goes to jail.

When you start sending the perps to jail for violating others' constitutional rights, they'll fall in line pretty quickly.

Until then, these "scandals" are no different than Kim Kardashian's nip-slip or that Paris Hilton video.

Came here to tell you that us non-Americans down in New Zealand are doing a great job in the five eyes, but don't have a constitution. It turns out we do, just not in one document. You prompted me to learn something. https://gg.govt.nz/role/constofnz.htm

i think they both hilton and kardashian had nip-slips and leaked videos.

maybe that's the future though; privacy is premium service wherein you can dole out whichever tasty bits you like while all the other pleebs live out in the open.

No, that's not really the future. Here's the future: you don't get any privacy, period. Get over it. Live with it. Doesn't matter who you are - you don't get any.

Oh, and you know what? The future has already arrived.

> Doesn't matter who you are - you don't get any.

Really? I doubt it. The rich and powerful get plenty of privacy and protection. It's just the us remaining 98% that don't.

No, the rich and powerful pay boatloads of money for privacy, but don't get anything of substance in return.

That seems hyperbolic.

If nothing else, the thoughts in my own head are secret enough.

Nearly everyone has smartphones, even the most privacy-conscious people. Until we find an alternative to the current devices, which have a mic/camera/gps that could be turned on remotely, I don't think we will be able to combat the invasion of privacy

The most privacy-conscious people really don't. Kaspersky Lab's CEO and his phone:

http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/6719/26720365.10e/0_a119d_872...

Too bad that phone also has an always on mic, and a network connection from where it can receive instructions.

But probably a removeable battery.

> even the most privacy-conscious people

No, we don't. Are you sure you know many "most privacy-conscious" people?

> I don't think we will be able to combat the invasion of privacy

That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We won't be able to combat the invasion of privacy if everyone stops fighting.

It is not only technology which enables this new wave of mass surveillance, it is also that people believe the "if you don't do any bad ..." bs again. Our governments wouldn't stop their surveillance programs even if we would all stop using mobile phones and the internet.

It is just history repeating itself. People which did experience the last mass surveillance times are now a minority group.

you don't even need a phone to track people.

facial recognition tech, shitty surveillance cameras, and algorithms could likely be used in combination to tease out any persons exact location for a given time to a pretty high degree of accuracy.

Yeah but for the moment the government doesn't have a live feed to every surveillance camera and most are privately owned.

get a phone without GPS (yes there are such phones) and physically remove the microphone and use a wired headset.

It can still be triangulated from the phone towers.

Yes, you can also be tracked via CCTV, your payments, bioinformatics and general information, it's easy to build profiles for most people and knowing pretty much where they'll be and when.

And much more precisely via wifi - the local mall offers its shop very specific information on shopper browsing habits this way.

What about using voip such as Google voice?

Still need internet connection, tracking a device over wireless is arguably just as easy, even if you rotate your mac addresses.

why can't they triangulate your location by your cell signal (using a stingray, for example)?

It's practically out of control. How do you educate a whole population on how it all works to help them avoid the mass surveillance trap?

Even if everyone was fully aware of the impact that mass surveillance could have, I bet many would still not really care.

I mean, a large amount of people use Facebook willingly.

You're kind of right but I think it's more because people believe in this manta: "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear".

Which basically means, goodbye free speech and thought.

Also, this is part of out of control :)

I believe that as more and more atrocities happen because people made the mistake of thinking something resembling free thought still pertains, we may see changes here.

This harks back to some discussions we had where people were looking at the stunning success of the US Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) community and wondering if its model could be used in this domain, and I and I think others pointed out that that wouldn't have happened without myriad atrocities from the authorities getting us riled up in the first place. That's only barely started happening, if at all, in this domain, so the US RKBA model not yet relevant.

And of course we should well hope those atrocities don't happen in the first place, victories built on bloodshed, especially of the innocent, tend to be ugly and embittering.

More importantly, how do you stop it? These systems have the ability to destroy or compromise anybody that speaks up against them. Everyone has secrets.

And if you don't, it is trivial for a motivated party to fabricate them in a realistic enough manner to fool a jury.

Influx by Daniel Suarez comes to mind.

Absolutely. Just looking through this¹ thread (that’s currently on the front page) reveals a few real-life examples.

――――――

¹ — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12874587

Individual accountability.

Indeed, everybody has secrets, so what's the big deal? If everybody's secrets were out, then it would just become the new normal.

I think the privacy war is as winnable as the war on terrorism. It's better to figure out how best to build a post-privacy world then to cling to old unachievable ideals.

Maybe we can get a semblance of privacy by flooding the system with so much data, real and fake, that it requires real detective work to dig up reliable information about someone.

Do you draw your curtains? Close doors? Close the toilet door? Do you wear clothes on a hot day? Do you leave bank statements out when friends are coming? Do you have performance appraisals publicly? Do you mind if everyone sees every email/text you ever sent? Would you be happy if your doctor saw you and treated you in the waiting room? Humans have an inherent desire for privacy a lot of the time where I am.

>I think the privacy war is as winnable as the war on terrorism.

You think the war on terrorism is winnable? So you predict that after some date in the future, that no one will ever commit an act of terror again forever till the end of time?

I think you don't understand either of the two concepts you're equating.

I'm afraid that AI is / will be very good at digging up this data. Worse, if someone in power has a problem with you, it's very easy to just manufacture it.

Once the government took over the schools it was already too late. And that happened a long time ago. The government run public education system is always going to reinforce the party line.

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