Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: yor_on on 09/06/2013 13:40:33
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"Nancy Paterson, who works on IXMaps with Clement, says the internet is not a random collection of network links, routing data in the most efficient way possible. Instead, the way data moves across the net is tightly controlled according to the business interests that run the subnetworks within it. This control makes blanket monitoring feasible." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23669-spy-program-shows-just-how-well-us-knows-its-people.html?full=true
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points_by_size
Kind of sux, doesn't it?
Read this too, it's about USA, but I think it's about us all.
"When the founders wrote the Fourth Amendment, they had a specific antagonism against what were called general warrants, as you might know. General warrants is when the British troops would come in with a warrant and say: "We have the right to search your house. We're looking for something. Looking for what? We can't tell you. We're going to ransack your house." That's a general warrant. They can turn your life upside down, and the colonialists [sic] hated that.
So the Fourth Amendment specifically bans general warrants. It calls for specific warrants in which the things to be seized and the persons to be seized are specifically named. There's a reason for that. It's to protect against arbitrary government power. And what they've done is to trample over the Fourth Amendment by basically instituting a general warrant on the Internet." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html
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https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-privacy-through-the-prism-of-the-us-government-15059
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html?hpid=z1
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You gotta luv it..
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/intelligence-chief-blasts-nsa-document-leaks
So, if you have anything, anything at all, that I don't know, don't come complaining if I need to force it out of you..
After all, you should have told me before..
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And this is Google statement.
http://googleblog.blogspot.se/2013/06/what.html
Well, using 'third parties' to sift through the data from nodes will give you 'plausible denial', won't it? then again, it's not only USA. Sweden have its own agency sifting, most (All:) Countries do. That doesn't make it alright though, especially not when you have no guarantee for what information they will use, for what ends. You can give commercial companies 'tips' unofficially this way, you can ruin someone you don't like, and on and on and on. It's a hell of a lot of hidden power in this type of game, and it's definitely being played by people without trust, although demanding you to 'trust them' :)
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
Why he blew that whistle.
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The USA has had a traditional distinction between "External" intelligence with CIA & NSA, and "Internal" intelligence with the FBI. This is not unusual - the UK has its MI5 and MI6.
- "External" intelligence is not really legal in the countries in which it operates - it may receive a bit of assistance in "friendly" countries, and be tolerated in "neutral" countries. So these organisations are used to operating outside the law, without warrants.
- "Internal" intelligence is meant to protect the rights of citizens, and so has a legislated process to protect citizens with Court-ordered search warrants, etc.
- However, this split assisted foreigners who entered the USA and conducted the 2001 hijackings: External security flagged visitors as "suspicious", but the organisational barriers meant that they were not known to Internal security.
- The Homeland Security Act sought to break down these communication barriers between the security organisations - which assisted collation of some of the WikiLeaks revelations
- ..but it also meant that organisations used to operating without warrant now had access to domestic as well as international communications
- The Homeland Security Act is designed to restrict knowledge of the Homeland Security Act
- So possibly the statements made by the Google Security officer merely reflect his knowledge of the legal intercept process, and he probably cannot speak about the Homeland Security Act (and perhaps is not even allowed to know about it)
- Revelation of these security changes has caused some understandable consternation amongst US citizens
Those of us in the rest of the world have always been "fair game" for intelligence agencies of all countries, and so this should not really be a surprise to any of us.
For a humorous look at intelligence gathering (after the advertisement): http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/
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I was amused by one comment that justified espionage on the basis that the world was using US technology.
To paraphrase: "We invented the transistor, so therefore we have a right to read everyone's email..."
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Maybe I'm naive, but the internet has been a great equalizer in many way. Like drug resistant bacteria, I think the harder the government and commercial elements tries to control it, the faster people will find ways to circumvent that control, and the government and coorporations also invite attacks and backlash from hacktivists. Legal or not, society will not accept the fundamental hypocrisy of a government that says "we have the right to monitor any form of communication by anyone for any reason and collect that information and not tell you" but "you have no right to monitor our communication or share information about our activities with the media when you think they might be illegal." Respect for law and order always disintegrates when people believe that laws mean nothing to the people who govern them.
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Beautifully written Cheryl, and good words too. Although sometimes I see something different. I see people that think that they have enough arranging their own lives, without having to have to bother with things, as what 'democracy' mean. "thats why we have a government, isn't it? To let us go about in our own way, them taking care of 'business'?" Or to some similar tune. Then again, I hope I'm wrong. I do like your ideas better, and it may well be so that when the writing is on the wall people will start to ask themselves what a democracy should mean.
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and i agree Evan, it is sort of funny :)
But it is true, in this modern world we believe us to be able to 'own' things, even the human genome, by law and patent rights. In the end it may be so that we pay royalties for what words we use :) on a daily basis, and those thoughts we have might also be patentable?
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But there is a difference between espionage, and taking control over citizens private lives, as emails and other digital information. One is the old school, the other, to me, becoming a form of dictatorship. Dictatorships have always used people informing on their neighbors, as Stalins Russia and Hitlers Nazism, at least as I've read. This is the exact same to me, although 'not used'. Face book, and the way people hang out themselves, and friends, is also a perfect example of it, to me, called 'social networks'. Knowing someone read everything I put on the Internet (probably also storing, at least parts, of all global information they gather) makes me rather annoyed.
What gives anyone this right?
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One might think of it this way, why not DNA mark up every citizen, as it is born? If I accept this behavior, controlling the free flow of information, and reading and keeping it, then DNA mark ups and cameras, everywhere, is just one small step away. Then the police won't be needed to ordinary police work any more. We will just need good lab technicians. and from that we can take it one step further and operate in microchips marking out what we do and go. Because, if you're 'honest' you should have noting to fear, from that information, right?
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In a way those micro chips already are there, in our cell phones, as long as it is on :) And possibly in some types of credit and ID cards, and also whatever else we will use containing a live connection. Everything should in the future, according to some hi tech dreams, go 'live' via WiFi, from ones refrigerator to ??
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"start page" search engine (https://startpage.com/) allegedly allows you to google-search without google knowing it was you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixquick#Startpage.com) ...
[ Invalid Attachment ]
https://startpage.com/eng/prism-program-exposed.html
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Hmm, let's take it again. When you go up on Facebook to share your, and others, life with friends and stuff, then that's a innocent activity, mostly. What a intelligence agency makes of it may not be so. Using efficient storage and good search algorithms they can sift through Facebook fairly quick, quicker if they know what they are looking for. to them Facebook is a 'open book' in my eyes, and a information godsend. A real life village would be much harder to sift through, getting information, but that 'digital village' is just as closed as its, and yours, security makes it. And even if you consider yourself to be 'a little fish amongst fishes', expecting yourself to go unnoticed, you should still think twice before sharing friends information, without their consent.
Now, someone wanting to sift through Facebook, would either need a access to the physical machines, or passwords etc for them, or, as in this case, access to the nodes used to direct all flow of digital traffic, in and out. The last one is the simplest one, and is the one used here if I got it right.
Because as a intelligence gatherer it's not the machines you're interested in, it's the information. And if you can get that by 'social engineering', as in fooling or socially forcing someone, then that's easier than hacking or cracking a good system. In the case of a Government it comes down to 'plausible geniality' for it, when it comes to the general public, and the same I would guess goes for those allowing a government access to those nodes. Which in fact makes it possible that Google is as unknowing as they say, although a few still should be involved. It all depends on how you get that physical access to the nodes, and from where. You can use 'National Security' as a excuse for getting to them if you're a government naturally, but a government should, in a democracy, be the servants of the public, not their masters.
And as we all use those nodes, more or less, leaving our own country digitally, we're all getting compromised and used by those agencies activities. so even if this had been happening solely on American soil the problem still wouldn't be a purely domestic one. It's about what you think a democracy should be, and about what you think personal integrity and privacy should mean.
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Freedom is never absolute - you do not have absolute freedom to trample on or speak out against other people's feelings, health or welfare, for example. (I guess Privacy and Security are feelings too...)
- We have seen tragic cases where sensitive teenagers have effectively been killed by spiteful comments of their peers on social media.
- And we have seen serious cases where hate speech has incited violence against the maligned groups - but sometimes hard to prosecute.
- In general, a more severe threat to peace and national security is due to individuals and groups conspiring to take violent action against other people or public infrastructure. To detect and prevent these actions requires constant monitoring for suspicious activity by governments and citizens of all countries.
- But even more serious is where governments offer financial and/or materiel support for such activities, by direct military intervention or by supporting terrorist organisations. To detect and publicise these actions requires constant monitoring for suspicious activity by the governments and citizens of all countries.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/eternal-vigilance-price-liberty-quotation)" is a quotation from the early 1800s. It still applies in the 21st century.
The smartphone may be freedom's best friend today - what someone says in a closed room can be exposed on national TV.
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That depends on ones level of trust, wouldn't you say? The problem I see is the one where no one regulates, neither knows, what information those agencies handle. And there my own trust level ain't that high :) There can be all kinds of reasons why a agency avoids discussing what type of information it use naturally, but in a democracy trust should be regulated by restrictions made by, and for, its citizen. And keeping that personal integrity is what we all need, I think, and some privacy too :)