Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and human rights is actually founded on the violation of law....Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.
There are lots of really interesting and cogent replies from Snowden on this thread already, I'd encourage everyone to check it out.
I find his points about governmental accumulation of power to be close to and validating that made by Assange in his very interesting Wikileaks manifesto, "Conspiracy as Governance" [1]
"[T]he very essence of the [Nuremberg] Charter is that individuals have intentional duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.” - U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert K. Jackson 1948
I find the rest of that specific comment particularly amazing:
> How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.
> How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.
> You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.
> Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
> We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.
> In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.
I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved to ensure that can't happen (e.g. Koch brothers donating $1billion dollars in the next election cycle, Citizens United, etc). Sure, there will be some pandering by both sides of the aisle next election about how they're the only true candidate that will protect individual rights, but once they've been sufficiently elected and absorbed by the machine, they'll continue along the trend that started 50+ years ago. Obama was a constitutional lawyer ffs.
But hey, as long as gas prices are low, Netflix stays up, and I can get my $10 Domino's large pizza delivered to my front door, I'll vote for whoever sounds good and promises me the most shit. /s
>Much like physics post-Manhattan project, an entire field of research that was broadly apolitical realized that work intended to improve the human condition could also be subverted to degrade it. [1]
At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans, Japanese or Russians did? I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day of the week.
Do I like the tools the NSA has in its possession? No. But I am happy they got there (and have access to them) before the Chinese, Russians or Arabs did. Are there going to be disasters like Hiroshima and Nagasaki thanks to these tools? I don't think so.
Will the NSA and the government misuse the tools and make mistakes? Definitely. Their effectiveness must be constantly monitored and questioned. (Huge respect for Snowden for making that possible.)
But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.
A good thing about America is that while the "politics" lag behind citizens and US companies try at least to solve partially the problem. I liked these bits:
Google encrypted the backhaul communications between their data centers to prevent passive monitoring. Apple was the first forward with an FDE-by-default smartphone (kudos!)
We often denigrate US and his biggest companies like: Apple, Google or Microsoft.
So I agree since then in the politics nothing big has been changed but I'm glad to see that now we take care about things like https or generally how our data is protected.
Companies won't solve the problem, because the problem is in a different domain.
"Our data" may be sort of safe, but the civil rights are being eroded, which is a much bigger issue. Having such powerful entities living in complete independence from the government, and with complete unaccountability, is a social disaster.
Besides, the data owned by a user in the more "immediate" sense, may be sort of safe, but don't forget that you're not the only possessing data about you; there is a large ecosystem, and such entities will be always a step ahead in the game.
In absence of accountability/civil rights, such entities are completely free to rape you, independently of your technical private defenses.
We have to ensure that our rights aren't just being protected by letters on a sheet of paper somewhere, or those protections will evaporate the minute our communications get routed across a border.
Section 3 prohibits the election or appointment to any federal or state office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion or treason.
Section 3 was used to prevent Socialist Party of America member Victor L. Berger, convicted of violating the Espionage Act for his anti-militarist views, from taking his seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920.
HBO here in Colorado was scheduled to show Citizenfour at 7pm local time. At approx 6pm I turned it on to get it ready. Black and silent. Continued black and silent up thru 9pm local when it was supposed to have ended. All other cable TV channels and local/public channels have worked normally during this period that I can tell. HBO worked fine yesterday and every day before for as long as I can remember. Unprecedented black out.
suspicious is saying it mildly. I wanted to post this here and on Reddit for public record in case this is evidence of a censorship attempt by NSA/gov or
aligned entity.
I feel like a tin foil hat wearer to even post this but its frightening enough and serious enough that it should be recorded somewhere, as insurance.
Colorado, a dominant provider of local cable TV service, hesitant to say which city. again, all other channels are working normally. and HBO had no similar blackout effect observed by me ever before. so the cause is both unknown and suspicious.
It took me about three seconds to find your city, address, consulting company -- and that you're a Pisces. Do you really live in a world where the spooks block HBO but can't figure out who you are from this post?
AFAIK, HBO (here, for me, my provider) had a total visual/sound outage on that day, only, the day that Citizenfour was to debut on air. HBO worked fine every day before. and every day since. I made no changes. and I've seen no explanation for it.
"Snowden", "NSA", and similar keywords are auto-flagging triggers. The HN team has algorithms in place to minimize discussion and awareness of these topics.
Similar to the HN penalty, reddit also seems to have some Snowden countermeasures in effect. It was a very popular IAmA, but the Android AMA app, displayed only 2 answers for it, and the 3 people who wanted to answer, Laura Poitras, Ed Snowden and Glen Greenwald, were limited to about one answer per 10 minutes, so for the whole hour they could answer about 10 questions. This limits usability and civil interactions a bit.
People should really choose boards without such censorship in place.
I love that you completely guessed the incorrect answer, and then moved right to calling it censorship and critiquing Reddit based on your assumption. Snowden's account was rate-limited because accounts with no activity are more scrutinized for spam purposes. If the other accounts were (and I see no evidence of that, since Glenn Greenwald has done his own AMA before), it's the same reason. That limit exists because new account creation is so trivial. It also exists on HN in different ways, you forget.
It took me several thousand comment karma on Reddit until I stopped noticing the rate limit entirely. I can't speak to the Android issues.
Either way, the moderators worked it out; there was some confusion about the accounts downthread. I don't begrudge someone speculation, but when you then immediately move to acting on your speculation and decrying a community incorrectly, you should probably check if you're correct first.
grey-area|11 years ago
There are lots of really interesting and cogent replies from Snowden on this thread already, I'd encourage everyone to check it out.
AceJohnny2|11 years ago
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070129125831/http://iq.org/cons...
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
turbojerry|11 years ago
recondite|11 years ago
> How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.
> How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.
> You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.
> Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
> We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.
> In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.
I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved to ensure that can't happen (e.g. Koch brothers donating $1billion dollars in the next election cycle, Citizens United, etc). Sure, there will be some pandering by both sides of the aisle next election about how they're the only true candidate that will protect individual rights, but once they've been sufficiently elected and absorbed by the machine, they'll continue along the trend that started 50+ years ago. Obama was a constitutional lawyer ffs.
But hey, as long as gas prices are low, Netflix stays up, and I can get my $10 Domino's large pizza delivered to my front door, I'll vote for whoever sounds good and promises me the most shit. /s
nickysielicki|11 years ago
What an incredible analogy.
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_s...
Sven7|11 years ago
Do I like the tools the NSA has in its possession? No. But I am happy they got there (and have access to them) before the Chinese, Russians or Arabs did. Are there going to be disasters like Hiroshima and Nagasaki thanks to these tools? I don't think so.
Will the NSA and the government misuse the tools and make mistakes? Definitely. Their effectiveness must be constantly monitored and questioned. (Huge respect for Snowden for making that possible.)
But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.
DAddYE|11 years ago
Google encrypted the backhaul communications between their data centers to prevent passive monitoring. Apple was the first forward with an FDE-by-default smartphone (kudos!)
We often denigrate US and his biggest companies like: Apple, Google or Microsoft.
So I agree since then in the politics nothing big has been changed but I'm glad to see that now we take care about things like https or generally how our data is protected.
pizza234|11 years ago
"Our data" may be sort of safe, but the civil rights are being eroded, which is a much bigger issue. Having such powerful entities living in complete independence from the government, and with complete unaccountability, is a social disaster.
Besides, the data owned by a user in the more "immediate" sense, may be sort of safe, but don't forget that you're not the only possessing data about you; there is a large ecosystem, and such entities will be always a step ahead in the game.
In absence of accountability/civil rights, such entities are completely free to rape you, independently of your technical private defenses.
dreamfactory2|11 years ago
panarky|11 years ago
Reminds me of Lessig's "Code is Law".
http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html
tobylane|11 years ago
username3|11 years ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_s...
The movie is currently available for free as the movie is used as a public evidence in a lawsuit
logn|11 years ago
Is there any legal reason why this couldn't happen? Edit: aside from age if we're talking presidency.
logn|11 years ago
Section 3 prohibits the election or appointment to any federal or state office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion or treason.
Section 3 was used to prevent Socialist Party of America member Victor L. Berger, convicted of violating the Espionage Act for his anti-militarist views, from taking his seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920.
- source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
And as far as pardoning oneself as president, it's possible: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/19...
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
mkramlich|11 years ago
suspicious is saying it mildly. I wanted to post this here and on Reddit for public record in case this is evidence of a censorship attempt by NSA/gov or aligned entity.
I feel like a tin foil hat wearer to even post this but its frightening enough and serious enough that it should be recorded somewhere, as insurance.
Colorado, a dominant provider of local cable TV service, hesitant to say which city. again, all other channels are working normally. and HBO had no similar blackout effect observed by me ever before. so the cause is both unknown and suspicious.
tacos|11 years ago
mkramlich|11 years ago
AFAIK, HBO (here, for me, my provider) had a total visual/sound outage on that day, only, the day that Citizenfour was to debut on air. HBO worked fine every day before. and every day since. I made no changes. and I've seen no explanation for it.
numinit|11 years ago
rndn|11 years ago
spcoll|11 years ago
See: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
"It appears that any article with NSA in the title gets an automatic penalty of .4".
3327|11 years ago
rurban|11 years ago
People should really choose boards without such censorship in place.
jsmthrowaway|11 years ago
It took me several thousand comment karma on Reddit until I stopped noticing the rate limit entirely. I can't speak to the Android issues.
Either way, the moderators worked it out; there was some confusion about the accounts downthread. I don't begrudge someone speculation, but when you then immediately move to acting on your speculation and decrying a community incorrectly, you should probably check if you're correct first.
Shivetya|11 years ago