I feel like we've identified this problem to death.
I think now the real question is, as an internet community, what are we going to do about it?
Are we going to build something that 'routes around' this? Are we going to protest? Or are we just going to keep identifying the problem and complaining about it on Twitter?
I'm not saying that I'm not one of those people too - I'm just saying we need to start thinking about action and not identification.
It seems to me that the only way to bring about real policy change in the US is to organize politically. If you can deliver votes in November, then you can get things done.
Part of the problem is that other than the EFF and ACLU, there isn't really a "privacy lobby" in the US. And neither of these organizations are effective in shaping election outcomes.
What is needed is something like the 2nd-ammendment lobby or the "Family Values" lobby--one that not only talks about policy, but one which also rewards allies and penalizes enemies at the ballot box. The way that the NRA and the Christian Coalition do it is through grass-roots organizing, and a massive donor base that they basically direct in a centralized manner, which puts them in an unassailable negotiating position on Capital Hill.
Don't look at the "Family Values" lobby, they get lip service but no serious favorable actions in return for their votes. One reason they're fading away (the main other one is that Carter's attacks on their schools are a distant memory).
Here's the contents of my top comment, which I think frames the concept well:
"Until we have specific, actual, real privacy atrocities I can't see this effort getting the traction of any of the groups you've specified. Labor had company towns and less but still specifically abusive employers, with plenty of specific people maimed or killed in unsafe workplaces or labor actions. Environmentalists had deformed children from Japanese industrial mercury dumping, and, oh, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. Gun grabbers have killed, maimed, or otherwise grossly abused thousands of people and that continues to this day.
"What specific incidents, with victims most will empathize with, can the privacy effort point to?"
Oh, there's a whole bunch of pre-Church Committee, especially J. Edgar Hoover (died a few years before the former) ... incidents, but the current authorities can and will say they aren't like those abusive folks 4 decades ago.
And in e.g. the case of MLK they were famously unsuccessful. I claim you need atrocities committed upon "victims most will empathize with"; the latter excludes "rioting hippies" and the like, especially after the Weather Underground and company started bombing and killing people.
It's interesting what external events are formative. For me, it was the SSC being cancelled (thus, wanting to be in private business and then funding science vs. government-funded big science at risk always to Congress), the MOVE bombing in a nearby city (learning that even a black mayor can be racist, as well as incompetent), and Challenger ("perfect systems aren't", kind of the Rumsfeld thing).
I think 2A/RKBA, drugs (== black/latino community, generally; white people rarely go to prison for drugs and white/asian communities aren't torn apart by the drug war), and maybe people with garden-variety secrets (cheating on a spouse, cheating on taxes, looking at questionable porn, etc.) are the strongest natural allies in terms of turning out the votes. These are pretty evenly split left/right.
Funding could be from cloud providers who are getting screwed; even Google probably loses a marginal $100mm due to this issue, so for them funding a PAC with $25mm would be a rational choice. Plus, being anti-NSA is a great recruiting/retention thing for employees, so any worthwhile tech company could probably justify PAC support just as an HR and marketing expense.
You could probably get the tea party side, and civil libertarians in general, for free, but they're not a meaningful political bloc. The problem is at least some of the tea party side would be pro-military and might view support of NSA as supporting the military.
Such implicit pessimism is a bit premature. We've already had one legislative wack at the problem and the results were close and extremely promising, e.g. they didn't break down in any conventional way (by party, region, etc.)
We already know from history that the American system can draw back from this sort of thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee), it's way too early to assume that won't happen again. (One caveat, the Church Committee did its work after the death of J. Edgar Hoover.)
On that point, I think some of the best action right now would be raising general awareness to the population, particularly the extremely negative consequences this could have on the nation. Despite what some may believe, I feel the US is still a popular sovereignty. These government programs persist because there is a very large (if not majority) portion of the USA that believes these programs are good because they keep us safe from terrorism. Until you change that view point, no 'routing around' is going to solve anything.
I think we must also assume that protesting (both to our peers and our so-called "representatives") won't achieve much, at least for the foreseeable future. There's too much money being poured into the right pockets, and too many of the wrong people in the wrong places in government to dislodge. And even if this particular group of authoritarians are removed, there are plenty of replacements waiting in the wings to take their place.
For this reason, I think your first option ("build something that 'routes around' this") is the best. Granted, it's easy to hand-wave and say that this can be done -- but we cannot otherwise assume that the people and agencies which have lied to us in the past will quickly turn over a new leaf and respect our Constitutional rights. We must assume that they will continue to snoop on us, and respond appropriately: peacefully, and cleverly.
I'm not a big fan of Bruce. He does have some valuable technical things to read though, you just have to take his personal opinions with a grain of salt.
Agreed. I've found him to be startlingly ignorant in declaiming on real world stuff I'm a domain expert in; he just doesn't realize it when reciting generic talking points.
In this article, he made a very clumsy attack on the current Internet ecosystem; there's a good case to be made for it (see other comments in the topic), but he didn't make it and sounds like a generic anti-business crank.
Which might be the truth, the really startling omission in this article is the ultimate fate of Joseph Nacchio, who was convicted of the very nebulous crime of insider trading. Even if you think government was or might have been right about him, you ought to accept that a lot of executives will assume in this Three Felonies a Day legal environment that the government will get them some way, some how if they resist like Nacchio indisputably did.
Comments
I feel like we've identified this problem to death.
I think now the real question is, as an internet community, what are we going to do about it?
Are we going to build something that 'routes around' this? Are we going to protest? Or are we just going to keep identifying the problem and complaining about it on Twitter?
I'm not saying that I'm not one of those people too - I'm just saying we need to start thinking about action and not identification.
I'm hoping that's the next article Bruce writes.
It seems to me that the only way to bring about real policy change in the US is to organize politically. If you can deliver votes in November, then you can get things done.
Part of the problem is that other than the EFF and ACLU, there isn't really a "privacy lobby" in the US. And neither of these organizations are effective in shaping election outcomes.
What is needed is something like the 2nd-ammendment lobby or the "Family Values" lobby--one that not only talks about policy, but one which also rewards allies and penalizes enemies at the ballot box. The way that the NRA and the Christian Coalition do it is through grass-roots organizing, and a massive donor base that they basically direct in a centralized manner, which puts them in an unassailable negotiating position on Capital Hill.
Don't look at the "Family Values" lobby, they get lip service but no serious favorable actions in return for their votes. One reason they're fading away (the main other one is that Carter's attacks on their schools are a distant memory).
The concept of the applying the lessons of the 2nd Amendment lobby was extensively discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185138
Here's the contents of my top comment, which I think frames the concept well:
"Until we have specific, actual, real privacy atrocities I can't see this effort getting the traction of any of the groups you've specified. Labor had company towns and less but still specifically abusive employers, with plenty of specific people maimed or killed in unsafe workplaces or labor actions. Environmentalists had deformed children from Japanese industrial mercury dumping, and, oh, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. Gun grabbers have killed, maimed, or otherwise grossly abused thousands of people and that continues to this day.
"What specific incidents, with victims most will empathize with, can the privacy effort point to?"
Martin Luther King was spied on and blackmailed by the FBI. It's a bit dated, but a good place to start.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette...
Oh, there's a whole bunch of pre-Church Committee, especially J. Edgar Hoover (died a few years before the former) ... incidents, but the current authorities can and will say they aren't like those abusive folks 4 decades ago.
And in e.g. the case of MLK they were famously unsuccessful. I claim you need atrocities committed upon "victims most will empathize with"; the latter excludes "rioting hippies" and the like, especially after the Weather Underground and company started bombing and killing people.
E.g. I was just past the threshold of becoming politically aware when this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing and it shocked and appalled the nation.
It's interesting what external events are formative. For me, it was the SSC being cancelled (thus, wanting to be in private business and then funding science vs. government-funded big science at risk always to Congress), the MOVE bombing in a nearby city (learning that even a black mayor can be racist, as well as incompetent), and Challenger ("perfect systems aren't", kind of the Rumsfeld thing).
I think 2A/RKBA, drugs (== black/latino community, generally; white people rarely go to prison for drugs and white/asian communities aren't torn apart by the drug war), and maybe people with garden-variety secrets (cheating on a spouse, cheating on taxes, looking at questionable porn, etc.) are the strongest natural allies in terms of turning out the votes. These are pretty evenly split left/right.
Funding could be from cloud providers who are getting screwed; even Google probably loses a marginal $100mm due to this issue, so for them funding a PAC with $25mm would be a rational choice. Plus, being anti-NSA is a great recruiting/retention thing for employees, so any worthwhile tech company could probably justify PAC support just as an HR and marketing expense.
You could probably get the tea party side, and civil libertarians in general, for free, but they're not a meaningful political bloc. The problem is at least some of the tea party side would be pro-military and might view support of NSA as supporting the military.
Such implicit pessimism is a bit premature. We've already had one legislative wack at the problem and the results were close and extremely promising, e.g. they didn't break down in any conventional way (by party, region, etc.)
We already know from history that the American system can draw back from this sort of thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee), it's way too early to assume that won't happen again. (One caveat, the Church Committee did its work after the death of J. Edgar Hoover.)
We also won the Cold War/Clinton era "Crypto Wars"; this account is U.K. centric (I'm amazed at their success), I'll note we won earlier in the US: http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars (HT betterunix in this current discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302520).
On that point, I think some of the best action right now would be raising general awareness to the population, particularly the extremely negative consequences this could have on the nation. Despite what some may believe, I feel the US is still a popular sovereignty. These government programs persist because there is a very large (if not majority) portion of the USA that believes these programs are good because they keep us safe from terrorism. Until you change that view point, no 'routing around' is going to solve anything.
I think you make a good point.
I think we must also assume that protesting (both to our peers and our so-called "representatives") won't achieve much, at least for the foreseeable future. There's too much money being poured into the right pockets, and too many of the wrong people in the wrong places in government to dislodge. And even if this particular group of authoritarians are removed, there are plenty of replacements waiting in the wings to take their place.
For this reason, I think your first option ("build something that 'routes around' this") is the best. Granted, it's easy to hand-wave and say that this can be done -- but we cannot otherwise assume that the people and agencies which have lied to us in the past will quickly turn over a new leaf and respect our Constitutional rights. We must assume that they will continue to snoop on us, and respond appropriately: peacefully, and cleverly.
I'm not a big fan of Bruce. He does have some valuable technical things to read though, you just have to take his personal opinions with a grain of salt.
Agreed. I've found him to be startlingly ignorant in declaiming on real world stuff I'm a domain expert in; he just doesn't realize it when reciting generic talking points.
In this article, he made a very clumsy attack on the current Internet ecosystem; there's a good case to be made for it (see other comments in the topic), but he didn't make it and sounds like a generic anti-business crank.
Which might be the truth, the really startling omission in this article is the ultimate fate of Joseph Nacchio, who was convicted of the very nebulous crime of insider trading. Even if you think government was or might have been right about him, you ought to accept that a lot of executives will assume in this Three Felonies a Day legal environment that the government will get them some way, some how if they resist like Nacchio indisputably did.
I wouldn't read anybody that you would not have to take his personal opinions with a grain of salt.
Middle of the road, all-too-careful opinions are totally off base with reality.