On one hand it's annoying that this is how our government behaves. On the other, in this case at least, they're welcome to the records of my spam emails. I truly wonder if anyone is using Yahoo as anything other than a spam-catcher at this point, or for years now.
To be clear though, the underlying government behavior is reprehensible, and needs to be curtailed. Governments and LEO's are inherently lazy, and if you let them investigate broadly instead of forcing them to specify, they will.
Governments are lazy because citizens don't want to pay for them not to be. I don't think this changes your argument much, but this is a rare case where other-izing government actions doesn't reveal much; even the lazy approach being taken here has broad public support.
I'd disagree. Governments are lazy because citizens don't hold them accountable for not doing their jobs properly. Why? Same reason we collectively complain about politician or gov't office X doing their jobs poorly yet they've been in office/haven't changed for 20 years--we're too apathetic.
You said "they're welcome to the records of my spam emails", which implies that your own email account has no connection to the problem under discussion. Then you generalized that if you are not in danger then no one is.
Worse in what material way? You might be surprised to know that AOL was doing things like encrypting even intra-datacenter links as early as 2006. While they would probably not have resisted such an order they would have at least implemented it competently.
Recently I was interested in a position with a large and reputed to be IT-savvy company. Their online application gave applicants the choice of "fill out tiresome form with data they already have" or "log in with Yahoo." I thought there MUST be some other choice I missed. I reread the page. searched the page. Refreshed the page. Nope.
Just Yahoo. WTF? The 90's called, etc... And, when I did a search for similar application forms, I found out it was hardly an outlier.
I started to get interested: More searching uncovered a significant percentage, maybe 10-15% overall, of major technology employers use a job application system that only accept Yahoo identities. It must be some quirk of job application portal vendors. But there it is. Anyone applying to more than one position will find several of these. And since you can't re-use the manually entered identity information across companies, the incentives to use a Yahoo identity are pretty strong. Time-to-payback is the second one you encounter.
It's disingenuous to describe FISA as "expiring next year", without mentioning that Congress is very likely to immediately reauthorize it in some form.
I almost wish Clinton gives Feinstein a cabinet position by then. In 2012 she almost single-handedly pushed the FISA Amendments Act reauthorization on the Senate floor (with some behind the scenes push from Obama as well).
But I fear it wouldn't make a difference, and she'd keep pushing for it from whatever high position she would be given as well.
I'm going to get hammered into the ground for saying this but...
The US spying wouldn't be nearly as bad if it was more transparent about it. I know, that sounds crazy, but let me explain. Right now we have secret information dragnets collecting godknowswhat, with no independent oversight (that we, citizens, can examine) and no public definition for when an item moves from automated analysis into the realm of strangers looking at it.
Plus there's no strict definition for where the dragnet's flags begin and end. For example is an illegal poker game a justified flag? Cheating on your taxes? Cheating on your wife? Where is the line? Is it only when human life is endanger? And what about the awkward subject of industrial espionage? Will the US help US companies beat foreign ones? Will it help one US company beat another US company? How much does the US Gov really value free capitalist markets if they cheat?
My point is, the public themselves won't ever allow this spying to stop for the simple reason that people value security over privacy, and they constantly demand more security (e.g. after every terrorist attack ever "why didn't you stop this?!"). So if it is here to stay, we need to have the most transparent and checks-and-balances system we can.
Yes, sure, criticise me. But do you know how many US spying programs have closed since Snowden? ZERO. So if we aren't going to close them let's at least make them less secret, provide better oversight, and provide better controls.
The transparency that you're suggesting would totally defeat the purpose of the program. Terrorists would just use the channels that they know are not being watched.
You seem to be under the persuasion that these programs are intended to catch criminal behavior.
They are not.
The NSA engage in what's known as "strategic listening". This is the 'measuring half' to strategic communication - which means propaganda.
Propaganda messaging gets tracked to see how well it penetrates target societies and knowledge from surveillance about personal associations, trust networks, how information generally flows through society allow propaganda programming to be adaptively retargetted and remessaged.
Similarly, these surveillance programmes are used to give American businesses a leg up in competition (the international oil auctions from a few years ago are a well known example of this). Surveillance capabilities were installed by the CIA in their fake Twitter application "ZunZuneo" because having dossiers on potential future political activists gives US intelligence leverage over potential future public servicepeople.
Surveillance is and has been about power and control - it's a misunderstanding to think that the line stops with some kind of criminal behavior or other. Therein, I think the framing of the question - as much as I like the approach - will inevitably fall short of really addressing the issue.
28 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadTo be clear though, the underlying government behavior is reprehensible, and needs to be curtailed. Governments and LEO's are inherently lazy, and if you let them investigate broadly instead of forcing them to specify, they will.
You can't trivially turn money into good oversight, because of the agency problem: quis custodiet?
I don't think "custodet" is a possible form of that verb; the present subjunctive would be "quis custodiat" ('who would guard?').
(On other days I post comments just like yours … something thematic there, I fancy. cui custodiendum?)
I'd disagree. Governments are lazy because citizens don't hold them accountable for not doing their jobs properly. Why? Same reason we collectively complain about politician or gov't office X doing their jobs poorly yet they've been in office/haven't changed for 20 years--we're too apathetic.
This is the generalization to the other people. "If I do not use Yahoo, then no one does".
A lot of normal people may still be using Yahoo account for real communications.
Worse in what material way? You might be surprised to know that AOL was doing things like encrypting even intra-datacenter links as early as 2006. While they would probably not have resisted such an order they would have at least implemented it competently.
Just Yahoo. WTF? The 90's called, etc... And, when I did a search for similar application forms, I found out it was hardly an outlier.
I started to get interested: More searching uncovered a significant percentage, maybe 10-15% overall, of major technology employers use a job application system that only accept Yahoo identities. It must be some quirk of job application portal vendors. But there it is. Anyone applying to more than one position will find several of these. And since you can't re-use the manually entered identity information across companies, the incentives to use a Yahoo identity are pretty strong. Time-to-payback is the second one you encounter.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...)
But I fear it wouldn't make a difference, and she'd keep pushing for it from whatever high position she would be given as well.
The US spying wouldn't be nearly as bad if it was more transparent about it. I know, that sounds crazy, but let me explain. Right now we have secret information dragnets collecting godknowswhat, with no independent oversight (that we, citizens, can examine) and no public definition for when an item moves from automated analysis into the realm of strangers looking at it.
Plus there's no strict definition for where the dragnet's flags begin and end. For example is an illegal poker game a justified flag? Cheating on your taxes? Cheating on your wife? Where is the line? Is it only when human life is endanger? And what about the awkward subject of industrial espionage? Will the US help US companies beat foreign ones? Will it help one US company beat another US company? How much does the US Gov really value free capitalist markets if they cheat?
My point is, the public themselves won't ever allow this spying to stop for the simple reason that people value security over privacy, and they constantly demand more security (e.g. after every terrorist attack ever "why didn't you stop this?!"). So if it is here to stay, we need to have the most transparent and checks-and-balances system we can.
Yes, sure, criticise me. But do you know how many US spying programs have closed since Snowden? ZERO. So if we aren't going to close them let's at least make them less secret, provide better oversight, and provide better controls.
They are not.
The NSA engage in what's known as "strategic listening". This is the 'measuring half' to strategic communication - which means propaganda.
Propaganda messaging gets tracked to see how well it penetrates target societies and knowledge from surveillance about personal associations, trust networks, how information generally flows through society allow propaganda programming to be adaptively retargetted and remessaged.
Similarly, these surveillance programmes are used to give American businesses a leg up in competition (the international oil auctions from a few years ago are a well known example of this). Surveillance capabilities were installed by the CIA in their fake Twitter application "ZunZuneo" because having dossiers on potential future political activists gives US intelligence leverage over potential future public servicepeople.
Surveillance is and has been about power and control - it's a misunderstanding to think that the line stops with some kind of criminal behavior or other. Therein, I think the framing of the question - as much as I like the approach - will inevitably fall short of really addressing the issue.