Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Thanks.

The surveillance watchdog within the Department of Defense did not know about the sweeping National Security Agency (NSA) program that collected information about American phone calls, according to a Tuesday report from The Guardian.

@ GCHQ: It's important to note that the UK have Acts the US envies when it comes to Secrecy — the Official Secrets Act (more details on the Acts here), as well as the DA-Notice System, which requests the media not to report on certain areas^note  Which is formally voluntary, but everyone sticks to anyway.

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state's eavesdropping law, one of the strictest in the nation that made audio recording of any person, even in public, illegal unless that person gave their consent.

Hmm. A minor plot point from last week's The Good Wife just changed...

The latest NSA data vacuuming program will collect phone calls and store them for up to a month, allowing the NSA to search through past communications.

I have zero problems with that.

Oh, Microsoft, you couldn't have handled this any worse, could you?

Defending your decision to crack someone's e-mail now of all times...

"According to an FBI complaint, Microsoft in 2012 discovered that an ex-employee had leaked proprietary software to an anonymous blogger. Fearing that could empower hackers, Microsoft's lawyers approved emergency "content pulls" of the blogger's accounts to track it down. Company investigators entered the blogger's Hotmail account, then pored over emails and instant messages on Windows Live. The internal investigation led to the arrest on Wednesday of Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee based in Lebanon."

Hmm, I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect that your Hotmail account will remain entirely private from Microsoft under all circumstances — they do own it, after all.

Anyone heard of Reset the Net?

Not me. Sounds interesting, but is it really as easy as the video makes it sound?

I'm not seeing allot of actual detail there. Little suspicious

Those corporations, of course, are doing it because major corporations care deeply about the individual right of privacy that all of their consumers have, and are fighting fiercely to uphold Constitutional values. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that many major corporations are engaged in behavior they really don't want the government to know about. The 1% has your best interests at heart.

I know you're being sarcastic, but I know someone at Google and I can assure you that they do care deeply about privacy.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:34:16 AM by storyyeller

Well that's Google though.

They are the worst evil corporation in history

Worse than IG Farben?

Nah worst as in they're doing a terrible job at being an evil corporation.

Besides, IG Farben no longer exists, it's all about Monsanto now.

Inside the NSA’s Secret Efforts to Hunt and Hack System Administrators.

Is Revealing Secrets Akin to Drunk Driving? Intelligence Official Says So.

@drunk driving comparison:

This logic is so full of fuck, my mind would be ravished beyond consent if I were to click on the webpage alone.

The comparison isn't a bad one, from a purely logical standpoint. I'll copy/paste the appropriate quote from the article: "Not every drunk driver causes a fatal accident, but we ban drunk driving because it increases the risk of accidents. In the same way, we classify information because of the risk of harm, even if no harm actually can be shown in the end from any particular disclosure."

It's a response to the question "why is it illegal to release harmless information?". The analogous question would be "why is drunk driving illegal even if it doesn't cause an accident?". The answer to both questions is that it's because you don't know that it won't cause harm beforehand, and you can't undo the harm once it's happened, so we have to minimize the possibility of causing harm in the first place, instead.

Of course, making the comparison is a stupid move from a PR perspective, if only because the exact attitude displayed by Culminus.

edited 23rd Mar '14 10:06:09 AM by NativeJovian

There's also the incredibly important difference that while drunk driving accidents are just that (accidents), surveillance is something done by certain people deliberately, and furthermore, funded with taxpayer money. There is no natural, random enemy in play here, it's all about people and what they can or can't get away with.

The analogy wasn't about surveillance. It was about releasing classified material to the public.

Of the two scenarios, one of them is not done to make a stand for basic human rights to privacy and due process of law in the event of outrageous and institutionalized abuse.

So we should ignore any harm that it may result in, because it was done with good intentions?

edited 23rd Mar '14 11:25:44 AM by NativeJovian

Jimmy Carter apparently tries to avoid using e-mail because he thinks the NSA is watching.