Looks like some people are flagging this. It just dropped from 1st place to 10th, even though it has 72 points in 40 minutes.
To those who think the NSA stories shouldn't be brought back up towards the top of HN until this mess is sorted (for months if it needs to be), for those who think the future of our world is not more important than some change of license on MySQL documentation, I hope you lose your flag privileges, you traitors.
If we can't focus on an important story for a few months, we deserve all the crap we're gonna get.
Usually I'm one of the first to complain about such things, I don't like it when HN gets too political. But this is too important of a discussion to ignore. We can still talk about the latest JS framework or NoSQL engine and some quirky startup and still dedicate some mindshare something that threatens it all.
I agree, we can't let this issue fizzle away, which is probably what the some politicians are hoping for. The encroachment on our natural rights is far to important, especially to us, since we can all grasp the gravity of collecting even the most seemingly trivial data, whereas the general public does not.
At a fundamental level the questions we have to answer are:
What does it mean to be free?
What is the proper role of government in that context?
What do we allow government to do in that context? What are their limits?
This, in a way, is what I feel is lost.
As a simple example: Why is it that a total stranger (TSA) can touch every part of your body and even have you strip searched just because you are travelling? Why is it that I, as a parent, can't tell that person to keep his/her hands off my little girl? What happened to the presumption of innocence?
At any US airport you are presumed guilty and have to demonstrate your innocence by being subject to search and seizure (swiss army knives, shampoo, etc. taken away --your property).
This TSA problem is an analog of the surveiilance problem. The vast majority of the people logging 1.6 billion person-trips per year [1] are not terrorists. Yet, 100% of them are presumed guilty and subject to search and seizure. And we allow it.
Now we have a situation where 100% of Americans are presumed to be potential terrorists in the future [2]. Based on that
We now justify logging and tracking your every move and every communication.
Steve Wozniac is right, this is what we were told others did to their population, not us. We were above that, better than that. Right.
There is a technology solution to the crisis of trust caused by the NSA revelations: Internet services could start offering secure email and communications.
It would be much better to not trust Internet services with your security, because you'd still have to trust them.
A better solution would be to add your own encryption on top of all of your communications, and to toss out your cell phone. Patterns can still be created by what websites your IP visits (or any VPN exit that is linked to you), who you contact, and where you go. Deploying a relatively secure communications system ends up with you talking to a few people "securely", but not anonymously.
It also depends on how much you trust your OS (Microsoft has been working with the NSA since 2007, in what ways, we may never know).
Google or any other online service could gain a lot of trust by offering open source clients that enable encryption by default and easy to use ephemeral-key systems for real time communication and PKI for email and documents in their cloud.
That is not a solution. Democracy itself is broken when the government spends a black budget attempting to spy on its own citizens. Making it more difficult for them to do this, calling that a 'solution' and leaving the politics aside is a massive mistake. Internet services already offer secure email. This is not a problem that can be solved by encryption.
Let's say that we could fix democracy next week. What about technologically capable governments with no democracy, or attenuated democracy? The week before the PRISM story broke, the news was that US government and industry was getting p0wnd by foreign hackers.
My stomach churns at many of the outrageous over reaches of the US Government: secret kill lists; secret criteria to get on secret kill lists; indefinite detention without due process; warrantless wiretapping; warrantless collection of all electronic communication; illegal wars (perhaps the most debatable, but I would go toe to toe with anyone in a real discussion on this vis-a-vis the UN Charter)
I agree it is our duty to speak up, be heard and demand better of our government; however, my stomach churns equally at the notion of people thinking they grew up in a country so much different than it is today. It does not matter how far you go back there have always been these kinds of governmental abuses: the genocide of Native Americans; slavery; indefinite detention of Japanese in internment camps; apartheid (separate but equal/Jim Crow Laws); covert wars (support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan; Nicaraguan contras; installing the Cuban Batista regime; installing Saddam and the Ba'ath party); illegal wars: Vietnam (again debatable); war time atrocities (May Lai Massacre); torture (during Vietnam US military had interrogation handbooks that directed stipping POW's naked in the forest and covering their orifices with honey and allowing flys and bugs to swarm); Watergate (manipulated elections); CIA infiltrating organizations such as the ACLU.
We can not blindly look at our current state of affairs and yearn to be what we once were, because we were never anything different, it is far more important to look toward history and not allow the same mistakes to continually be repeated. I think one of the most important things to take away from Wozniak's words is how the dialogue has changed and we will not blindly fall in line to the tune of patriotic propaganda but ordinary citizenry will stand up and be the true check on the government that was always intended. When I look at the US Constitution I see two things, rights and powers, and I must say I feel a lot more comfortable when the balance is greatly in favor of rights over powers. Allow me to end with one of my favorite political quotes, “Every generation needs a new revolution.” Thomas Jefferson (Note, I believe revolutions can be accomplished through non-violent means)
> however, my stomach churns equally at the notion of people thinking they grew up in a country so much different than it is today. It does not matter how far you go back there have always been these kinds of governmental abuses
I think you get it wrong. Because even if they were abuses before, they were clearly illegal and you could make a case against them. Now, they enact laws to make constitutional rights null and void. It's way worse because it opens up the Pandora box on all new kind of abuses with no way for the Law to protect yourself.
>Because even if they were abuses before, they were clearly illegal
Not the case. Some of the examples I give were in fact codified into law. Examples: slavery; Jim Crow Laws; Vietnam.
Try telling those people affected by separate but equal, that we have it so much worse today, because they could make a case, and that they had law protecting them. Long before Brown v. Board and Brown v. Board II the Supreme Court heard cases on separate but equal/Jim Crow laws and found them constitutional.
You are correct that some of my examples were not codified into law, but we have those examples today such as the IRS having directives to target certain groups for additional scrutiny, it does not make it any better that such behavior is a directive only and not codified into law. I believe there is no answer that fits every situation, but in theory at least there is a mechanism to challenge Unconstitutional laws, but good luck challenging a secret directive that violates Constitutional rights.
To those who think the NSA stories shouldn't be brought back up towards the top of HN until this mess is sorted (for months if it needs to be), for those who think the future of our world is not more important than some change of license on MySQL documentation, I hope you lose your flag privileges, you traitors.
If we can't focus on an important story for a few months, we deserve all the crap we're gonna get.