Every now and then we have defining moments of global consciousness. This has the potential to be one of those moments and we should never let a good crisis go to waste.
The danger here is that if we do nothing, that will be seen as tacit acceptance of the world's largest spying apparatus. While I acknowledge there's some necessity globally, domestic spying through secret courts is more synonymous with the Gulag than the American dream.
Stand up for what you believe in; this is one time you can.
I grew up in the Bush v1- Clinton era with Operation Sundevil, the Steve Jackson Games raid, NSA clipper chip, DMCA, Communications Decency Act, PGP legal battles, etc. The movie Sneakers from 1992 was a great example of the NSA paranoia that existed at the time.
The result? Won some, lost some, and the world moved on.
What's different now is that this surveillance is legal at scale because the majority of the populace wants it to be. They're more afraid of terrorists than having privacy. Look at the polls: Hacker News (and techies in general) seem to be in quite a bubble in this regard.
We have more clout than we did in the 90s, but the difference now is that there's a big Terrorism counter argument to anything we say. A majority of the USA prefers to have the electric eye of Sauron to watch over them, because the alternative -- more freedom that might lead to more terror attacks -- is too scary for them to accept. In that sense, the terrorists have won.
There are two viable paths going forward, in my view:
(a) Work to convince people they want privacy, and don't want Brin's transparent society - this slows what appears to be the inevitable; (b) Work to ensure accountable oversight of surveillance. No more FISA secret courts, but real public courts and judges and warrants.
What's not likely viable is
(a) encouraging people to stop using social networks -- they won't, we broadly LIKE being noticed by others, it gives meaning to our otherwise alienated capitalistic existence; (b) encouraging government to stop tracking people -- they're just getting into the game that Google and Facebook is in.
If a company can track people, so will the government. The key is that government can and must be held accountable to a degree that companies don't have to be. The US public has chosen not to exercise this power to date out of ignorance, laziness, and/or lack of desire.
The likely outcome of all of this is a resurrection and growth in the "darknet", where younger techies go to hide.
It's time for a new political party. Forget the people who say it can't be done. Now is the time. We are stuck in a rut and its time to get out. You have a choice, be lazy and accept what is happening or step up and make change. Its clear our current system is rotten.
> The danger here is that if we do nothing, that will be seen as tacit acceptance of the world's largest spying apparatus.
Your acceptance is not required for the spying programs to continue operating. The sooner you realize that is the sooner you'll realize that your choices are currently very limited.
This discussion has propelled us internally to completely review all our networking infrastructure, both of us and for our customers. We will definitely be letting everyone one know when we feel 'compliant' for privacy, and where we can't be, and allow for users to opt-out or permanently delete any history we may keep. I think it's been great for us to make this happen and I hope other businesses also look to this as an opportunity.
On that note - it should also be an opportunity for any experts here who do security reviews to get some exposure.
What is to be done? The answer is easy. It has always been easy. Stop saying "not in my name" and start saying "over my dead body". That's what we did. It works. Do it.
Alexis is a good speaker. It's refreshing to see a founder talk about his startup in down-to-earth terms instead of being egotistical and speaking in platitudes.
He's actually improved over time. I saw him on a panel and he was rolled over by a MPAA/RIAA shill. I'm glad he's grown more confident and poised on screen.
One thing I do is send a ddg search result link in email when it's relevant to the conversation. No one link will cause anyone to switch, but continued familiarity might help whatever makes the final nudge.
Perhaps the number one priority of those in tech should be to educate the public about the potential intrusiveness of data surveillance.
Politicians and idiot TV hosts have made statements akin to "all they are collecting are phone numbers, times and cell tower data".
Ha! Give me that and access to other sources such as LinkedIn, Facebook, your email on Gmail, your Google docs, IRS and state tax filings, court documents, vehicle registration, travel records, Amazon, Ebay, college and university records and a myriad of other publicly and not-so-publicly available data and those phone numbers become powerful unique identifiers through which I can learn just about everything about you, your family, your friends, colleagues, occupation, hobbies, history and more.
There's nothing innocent or insignificant about "just collecting phone numbers".
Glossing over the data that you could glean from reddit was a mistake. Even if there isn't that much valuable data directly from reddit's back-end it's probably more useful to tie it to data from the same users extracted from other websites. You shouldn't have down-played that.
I think it's time we give up on the idea of communicating privately over a centralized network. Wiretapping was invented only a few years after the invention of the telephone[1]. It won't be stopped by technology and certainly not by legislation. People need to get used treating the Internet as a public space: cover your mouth when you cough, don't pick your nose in public and don't communicate sensitive information over the Internet.
The next big thing (hopefully soon) will be communication through a decentralized, infrastructure-less device.
It seems like no matter what you do, it will always be possible for someone to tap into a wire or node between point A and point B (unless some revolutionary point-to-point information teleportation is invented). So isn't the next big thing just the strengthening (or proper application) of encryption?
Otherwise, how can a "decentralized, infrastructure-less" system really guarantee any privacy beyond simply making it more of a hassle to wiretap?
The outgoing chairman of the FCC was interviewed recently [1] and alluded to new ad hoc networks created by cell phone users, to be used in times of emergencies where networks get overloaded.
Reddit has information that can be used to identify the author of a submission or comment. I was a disappointed to hear the soft stance on protecting reddit user data.
Hanging out in /r/redditdev and /r/ideasfortheadmins, you'd be surprised how often ideas come up that could potentially harm users that some admins will either champion or agree with.
I guess it's the same as any small company in that everyone is going to have an opinion, I just wish they had someone more anal about protecting users first on their staff.
I do my best to speak out against anything that could compromise user privacy/security, but in the end it's not up to me!
This is all nice and good. Unfortunately, it means absolutely nothing. Since we know that lying is (by law) part of what corporations are forced to do when addressing questions of "national security", no amount of denies, press releases, public outrage or congressional talk will restore trust. Even new legislation specifically forbidding snooping will not help, since we can never be sure that there is no "secret legislation" specifically allowing it - and forcing companies to comply.
I am sure lots of people want to genuinely change the situation in the US. Unfortunately, we can not believe it. For all the talk that the reddit co-founder will, as a private person, make, the simple question to reddit-the-company: "are you snooping on me" has no meaning whatsoever. Either the answer will be a "no comment", or it will always be perceived to be lie.
> Since we know that lying is (by law) part of what corporations are forced to do when addressing questions of "national security", no amount of denies, press releases, public outrage or congressional talk will restore trust.
What law are you referring to? The FISA gag orders do not mandate lying.
There is an answer that will restore confidence: Open systems for endpoints, including firmware, and zero knowledge in the cloud. That may require you to pay where ad supported services had been free. But every piece of it could be productized in weeks.
Funny that none of the cloud service providers has put that forward as a way to restore their credibility.
Good piece. His personal concern is for "chilling effect".
His public concern beyond that is for blackmail of national leaders. That actually worries me less, as the public is becoming much more tolerant of "vice" in its leaders. (For example -- President Obama is an admitted cocaine and pot user; President Bush was an admitted drunkard and widely-suspected cocaine user; President Clinton was a widely-suspected adulterer and pot user.)
I think one of the ways this bullshit is solved is liquid democracy. Allow people to transfer votes to people they feel are experts via a bitcoin like system. 90% of people have only an interest in a very small subset of topics that they vote on. They aren't qualified to cast a vote, why not allow them to delegate to an expert? Of course buying votes would be highly illegal.
I have some ideas and some plans in mind for getting around this. If anyone in particular would be interested in helping to set up or back a privacy-oriented startup aimed at defeating a lot of what's been going on, then please get in touch via my profile.
Tangentially ontopic: I remember an offhand comment from someone in the intel community a few years ago that went along the lines of "you can't really have privacy unless you run your own DNS servers". Can they really store all dns lookups?
The entire conecept of pre-crime is everyone is a suspect, and you can never be proven innocent because you haven't yet committed the crime you are alleged to eventually commit.
It's scary stuff yet surprisingly innevitable given the direction of AI.
Off-topic but I wish there was a way to filter out all these NSA stories. It has really destroyed Hacker News for me and I hope it doesn't go on for too long.
This is about the revealing of a surveillance state that the Stasi and Gestapo would have wet the bed over.
I'm glad that people on Hacker News have their priorities straight and these NSA stories are rising to the top rather than some banal discussion over the color of iOS 7 icons.
Hastily-transcribed transcript for those who can't watch the video:
Q "NSA and PRISM - what's the sentiment in the valley?"
A "Maybe this is indicative of the fact that I live in New York; that I've never really been part of that herd. We are as citizens I think really upset, really frustrated because we have an expectation that whether it is our private property offline or online, that it will be respected, and that's what the Fourth Amendment protects. And needless to say it was rather disappointing to see all this news come out and apparently much more on the way."
Q "You're building a startup that could become the next Reddit or Facebook: At what point do you say, 'I think I got to get a Lawyer?'"
A "Yeah it will certainly come up a lot sooner for founders and founders who were maybe thinking, 'move fast and break things' will now think 'move fast and break things but don't break the constitution.' And this is an opportunity for us as citizens to start to draw a line in the sand for what is off-limits and private in the digital age."
Q "If the government asked you for information, what information could you give them?"
A "Well there really isn't any. When people use reddit as a platform to publicly share links and publicly have discussions. So the primary use of the site is that is in public so there really isn't a ton of useful data there."
Q "What advice do you give these young folks who are building these companies and this is becoming a reality?"
A "There's my investor hat, my founder hat, and my citizen hat - and that citizen hat trumps everything else. And I want to make sure that the environment we are starting companies in has a government that respects the our right to privacy so that these kinds of discussions going forward aren't even a factor or an issue and I think the ability for us to use this technology has sort of outpaced - unfortunately - some of our legislator's understanding of what kind of laws they should be writing. Whether it's making sure our elected officials understand the internet and understand technology is just as important though as making sure we get more of these people who inherently and innately understand this technology into office. I think the other interesting thing is more and more founders are really rallying behind companies now that are themselves built on a model of respecting privacy. One that I know rather well is called duckdduckgo and it's a venture backed by USV here in New York - a search engine competitor to google and their core business proposition is 'we don't track anything you search for on our site.' And so I imagine more startups to kind of take that lead."
[+] [-] josh2600|12 years ago|reply
Every now and then we have defining moments of global consciousness. This has the potential to be one of those moments and we should never let a good crisis go to waste.
The danger here is that if we do nothing, that will be seen as tacit acceptance of the world's largest spying apparatus. While I acknowledge there's some necessity globally, domestic spying through secret courts is more synonymous with the Gulag than the American dream.
Stand up for what you believe in; this is one time you can.
[+] [-] parasubvert|12 years ago|reply
The result? Won some, lost some, and the world moved on.
What's different now is that this surveillance is legal at scale because the majority of the populace wants it to be. They're more afraid of terrorists than having privacy. Look at the polls: Hacker News (and techies in general) seem to be in quite a bubble in this regard.
We have more clout than we did in the 90s, but the difference now is that there's a big Terrorism counter argument to anything we say. A majority of the USA prefers to have the electric eye of Sauron to watch over them, because the alternative -- more freedom that might lead to more terror attacks -- is too scary for them to accept. In that sense, the terrorists have won.
There are two viable paths going forward, in my view: (a) Work to convince people they want privacy, and don't want Brin's transparent society - this slows what appears to be the inevitable; (b) Work to ensure accountable oversight of surveillance. No more FISA secret courts, but real public courts and judges and warrants.
What's not likely viable is (a) encouraging people to stop using social networks -- they won't, we broadly LIKE being noticed by others, it gives meaning to our otherwise alienated capitalistic existence; (b) encouraging government to stop tracking people -- they're just getting into the game that Google and Facebook is in.
If a company can track people, so will the government. The key is that government can and must be held accountable to a degree that companies don't have to be. The US public has chosen not to exercise this power to date out of ignorance, laziness, and/or lack of desire.
The likely outcome of all of this is a resurrection and growth in the "darknet", where younger techies go to hide.
[+] [-] theklub|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihsw|12 years ago|reply
Your acceptance is not required for the spying programs to continue operating. The sooner you realize that is the sooner you'll realize that your choices are currently very limited.
[+] [-] marquis|12 years ago|reply
On that note - it should also be an opportunity for any experts here who do security reviews to get some exposure.
[+] [-] twoodfin|12 years ago|reply
I'm curious where the line is you're trying to draw.
[+] [-] daywalker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|12 years ago|reply
--Julian Assange, receiving the Global Exchange Human Rights Award http://wlcentral.org/node/2818
[+] [-] hawkharris|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nrsolis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kn0thing|12 years ago|reply
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130219190155-44...
[+] [-] btipling|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kn0thing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|12 years ago|reply
One thing I do is send a ddg search result link in email when it's relevant to the conversation. No one link will cause anyone to switch, but continued familiarity might help whatever makes the final nudge.
[+] [-] robomartin|12 years ago|reply
Politicians and idiot TV hosts have made statements akin to "all they are collecting are phone numbers, times and cell tower data".
Ha! Give me that and access to other sources such as LinkedIn, Facebook, your email on Gmail, your Google docs, IRS and state tax filings, court documents, vehicle registration, travel records, Amazon, Ebay, college and university records and a myriad of other publicly and not-so-publicly available data and those phone numbers become powerful unique identifiers through which I can learn just about everything about you, your family, your friends, colleagues, occupation, hobbies, history and more.
There's nothing innocent or insignificant about "just collecting phone numbers".
[+] [-] xtc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omd|12 years ago|reply
The next big thing (hopefully soon) will be communication through a decentralized, infrastructure-less device.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping#History
[+] [-] electrograv|12 years ago|reply
Otherwise, how can a "decentralized, infrastructure-less" system really guarantee any privacy beyond simply making it more of a hassle to wiretap?
[+] [-] draggnar|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12968
[+] [-] eggnet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarlson|12 years ago|reply
I guess it's the same as any small company in that everyone is going to have an opinion, I just wish they had someone more anal about protecting users first on their staff.
I do my best to speak out against anything that could compromise user privacy/security, but in the end it's not up to me!
[+] [-] gonvaled|12 years ago|reply
I am sure lots of people want to genuinely change the situation in the US. Unfortunately, we can not believe it. For all the talk that the reddit co-founder will, as a private person, make, the simple question to reddit-the-company: "are you snooping on me" has no meaning whatsoever. Either the answer will be a "no comment", or it will always be perceived to be lie.
[+] [-] jacobparker|12 years ago|reply
What law are you referring to? The FISA gag orders do not mandate lying.
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
Funny that none of the cloud service providers has put that forward as a way to restore their credibility.
[+] [-] CurtMonash|12 years ago|reply
His public concern beyond that is for blackmail of national leaders. That actually worries me less, as the public is becoming much more tolerant of "vice" in its leaders. (For example -- President Obama is an admitted cocaine and pot user; President Bush was an admitted drunkard and widely-suspected cocaine user; President Clinton was a widely-suspected adulterer and pot user.)
[+] [-] makerops|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greedo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _b8r0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] g8oz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brador|12 years ago|reply
It's scary stuff yet surprisingly innevitable given the direction of AI.
[+] [-] rkuester|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kn0thing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommoor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gzavitz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daywalker|12 years ago|reply
This is about the revealing of a surveillance state that the Stasi and Gestapo would have wet the bed over.
I'm glad that people on Hacker News have their priorities straight and these NSA stories are rising to the top rather than some banal discussion over the color of iOS 7 icons.
[+] [-] aaronsnoswell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] payomdousti|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevetursi|12 years ago|reply
Q "NSA and PRISM - what's the sentiment in the valley?"
A "Maybe this is indicative of the fact that I live in New York; that I've never really been part of that herd. We are as citizens I think really upset, really frustrated because we have an expectation that whether it is our private property offline or online, that it will be respected, and that's what the Fourth Amendment protects. And needless to say it was rather disappointing to see all this news come out and apparently much more on the way."
Q "You're building a startup that could become the next Reddit or Facebook: At what point do you say, 'I think I got to get a Lawyer?'"
A "Yeah it will certainly come up a lot sooner for founders and founders who were maybe thinking, 'move fast and break things' will now think 'move fast and break things but don't break the constitution.' And this is an opportunity for us as citizens to start to draw a line in the sand for what is off-limits and private in the digital age."
Q "If the government asked you for information, what information could you give them?"
A "Well there really isn't any. When people use reddit as a platform to publicly share links and publicly have discussions. So the primary use of the site is that is in public so there really isn't a ton of useful data there."
Q "What advice do you give these young folks who are building these companies and this is becoming a reality?"
A "There's my investor hat, my founder hat, and my citizen hat - and that citizen hat trumps everything else. And I want to make sure that the environment we are starting companies in has a government that respects the our right to privacy so that these kinds of discussions going forward aren't even a factor or an issue and I think the ability for us to use this technology has sort of outpaced - unfortunately - some of our legislator's understanding of what kind of laws they should be writing. Whether it's making sure our elected officials understand the internet and understand technology is just as important though as making sure we get more of these people who inherently and innately understand this technology into office. I think the other interesting thing is more and more founders are really rallying behind companies now that are themselves built on a model of respecting privacy. One that I know rather well is called duckdduckgo and it's a venture backed by USV here in New York - a search engine competitor to google and their core business proposition is 'we don't track anything you search for on our site.' And so I imagine more startups to kind of take that lead."
[+] [-] kn0thing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notdrunkatall|12 years ago|reply