NZ Professor Advocates Civil Disobedience Against Mass Surveillance 321
nut writes "We're all aware of how much surveillance we are under on the internet thanks to Edward Snowden. Gehan Gunasekara, an associate commercial law professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, wants us all to start sending suspicious looking but meaningless data across the internet to overload automated surveillance systems. Essentially he is advocating a mass distributed Bayesian poisoning attack against our watchers."
Re:Excellent Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
We should do this, and make user-friendly encryption tools more widely available to the non-geek community as well.
Tools are not the problem. The problem is that at a certain scale you need some infrastructure to distribute and authenticate encryption keys and at that point you'll run into the same problem we're at now: You have third parties you'll have to trust. Doesn't matter then if you have to trust them not to hand over your data (like Google and ISPs do) or your encryption keys.
It's not a technical problem, it's a political problem.
Re:You first! (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is what fear looks like.
Re:You first! (Score:5, Insightful)
The man has won. People are too afraid to do anything that gets any attention since the over reactions are a clear and present danger. In a sense the terrorist won too since America seem to be loosing all the rights defined in the constitution. It saddens me that the tools that can be used to increase communication and understanding around the world have turned inward to monitor, cower and censor us.
Re:You first! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that really sounded like it came from the East Bloc in the 80s.
Re:Need to Do More (Score:5, Insightful)
Just sending a bunch of keywords in email isn't enough - emacs has had a spook function [gnu.org] since the 80s so they are kind of used to that stuff by now.
Yes, yes... whatever. Tell me, did you witness the Occupy protests? Did you see how the feds and local police coordinated to stamp that out? Did you see how even the mainstream media glossed over and under reported the events, and how there seemed to be "no real message" to the protests... except there actually was? At one point NYC Financial district was packed with people, that evening I was at a friends house and we watched the news, even scanned several local channels, not a mention of it... They wouldn't believe me that it even happened until I pulled up a video on my phone.
So, what you've got to do is not just encrypt data, but form a network of peers that you regularly encrypt data between. The system triggers on perceived organized networks of people, or what it thinks are "cells".
Also, I take offense at labeling the sending of encrypted data across a network as "Civil Disobedience". If IPv6 hadn't had mandatory encryption removed from the standard to keep PRISM running, would everyone then be a Civil Disobedient? Hell, everyone going to the government websites and pressing [F5] a bunch would be more of a Civil Disobedience than sending encrypted messages. I don't send ANY Unencrypted emails in the first place -- PGP is my SPAM filter FFS.
Do not go gentle (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas
Re:Excellent Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
We should do this, and make user-friendly encryption tools more widely available to the non-geek community as well.
Tools are not the problem. The problem is that at a certain scale you need some infrastructure to distribute and authenticate encryption keys and at that point you'll run into the same problem we're at now
Oh if only there were some decentralized trust management system like PGP!
If only someone from the 1970's could travel Half a Century into the future to tell us about Diffe-Hellman key exchanges.
If only Six Degrees were about level of separation required to link all humanity to an Erdos Number of One. [wikipedia.org]
WHY! Oh Why? Why have I wound up trapped in this Math Forsaken Timeline AGAIN?!!
Please, sir! Tell me they haven't outlawed plotting the series of Zn+1=Zn*Zn+c too?!
Security be damned, I just couldn't live in a world without beauty...
Re:You first! (Score:5, Insightful)
While we were jerking ourselves off in the streets over finally nailing Osama, we forgot to consider that he had already achieved what he wanted the better part of a decade before he was snuffed out. He's bogged us down in military action on at least two fronts that has gone on for over a decade and shows no signs of resolving (or gave certain government agents the justification to carry out actions they already desired in the first place), he's given politicians the tool of fear to leverage the American people into accepting the erosion of every vital liberty that we were founded on, and he has contributed to significantly speeding along our national debt to astronomical new heights.
The saddest part is that everyone playing Reddit-liberator in 2013 couldn't have given the slightest fuck when everyone else was screaming about what was being done the dozen years prior to this. Thus, we end up with things which dwarf The USA PATRIOT Act (which was to have sunsetted years ago, but like inch you give the government, will never be given back).
Frankly, I don't even know that any amount of dissent and disapproval from the citizens will ever amount to anything. If principles, law, and opinion mattered, they wouldn't have been doing these things in the dark to begin with. At best, a wave of overwhelming disapproval will scurry them all back into the dark (where they'd rather be, anyway) to carry on as they have for years with total disregard for the public.
Meanwhile, those who would risk exposing the government or make their dissent a focus of their attention wind up with the IRS being thrown at them like a rabid dog. They end up on no-fly lists. They end up on watch lists. They end up being investigated. Their entire histories end up being investigated. Their every association investigated. Intimidated. Threatened. They end up charged with espionage and treason. They end up running to other nations for their lives, for exposing those within a free government who are working to squelch the very freedom that government is meant to protect. The sad thing is, these are not the lunatic ravings of a paranoid conspiracy nut. Not any longer. These are documented incidents and practices in the mainstream press (and until the press were the victims of targets of these investigations, surveillances, intimidations, and threats -- even they weren't bothering to report on these stories). What was once the unthinkable fantasy-land of paranoid guys who see black helicopters everywhere is now both real and, apparently, accepted.
And that is why I say "you first" in response to the urging for civil disobedience, dissent, and political activism (at least as far as constitutional issues go). Because, when you take that bold step forward, most of your fellow citizens are taking a giant step back. Hell, half of them are flat out against you.
Re: Watch for the next FALSE FLAG ATTACK after thi (Score:5, Insightful)
En what? 9/11 barelly killed half of what diarrhea kill EVERY DAY. Fighting diarrhea is far less costly than fighting this so called terrorism. The real terrorists are these states instilling fear of terrorism in the population. And let me laught when they say that they have so good information about a next terrorist attack that they need to stengthen the security worldwide and not just where the next attack would be. This is probably an attempt to talk about something else than snowden and the surveillance state in the medias...
Re:Need to Do More (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Need to Do More (Score:5, Insightful)
I think all long-running protests turn into that. The Tea Party protests were just as bad, and for much the same reason: The protesters were protesting a vague idea, but had nothing specific to unify them.
Re:Do not go gentle (Score:4, Insightful)
With a quite different atmosphere (yet still relevant IMHO), a quote I really like from Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon (a really good series of books):
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes – between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
Re:Need to Do More (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, how many times do you see the exact same uniquely-styled terrorist attack? The mere fact that they're looking for people with pressure cookers and backpacks tells me that they wouldn't know what to look for on their best day. It's just like how now everyone has to take off their shoes at airports, but we all know there's no shoe-bombing suspects being caught by it.
Re:Need to Do More (Score:4, Insightful)
well the point isn't to BE a terrorist...and it definitely isn't to protect terrorists. The point clearly, unless you're clueless, is to stop our government from being Big Brother and effectively disrupt their collection efforts enough to make waves...we don't even have to shut them down perse.
Although the intentions may be admirable and the potential for good great, the issue here is that secret oversight of secret collection over previously protected persons isn't protecting our privacy. Furthermore it creates the potential for HUGE abuses...the nearly omniscient possibilities for market manipulations, personal investments, vendettas, stalking, etc are mindblowing...yet we're being told effectively...don't worry we've here to help. I was thinking basically the same thing in that if we create a program to include certain words in routine and random communications...they'll have to tweak their methods...keep up this cat and mouse game for long enough and someone at the top will start to notice. Hopefully we can increase the costs of collection enough too that someone will notice. I'm sure I can poke holes in this idea until I'm blue but the point should be to find a way to make the system better. And although it's a mighty enticing idea to leach into every ISP and IT system in the US to try and look at everything...just because you can doesn't make it right...regardless of your intention. I guess though that we've forgotten that the ends do not justify the means.
Re:Need to Do More (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with your assessment. I went to NYC's occupy protest with my 5 yo daughter...there wasn't any danger the police were quietly respectful and from what I saw got along great (I'm sure there were exceptions...there always are but overall there wasn't any BS heavy handedness). Regardless I'm very concerned and against this current program as it is a bastardization of the Intelligence Oversight program designed to specifically NOT target US citizens. While they're trying to say they're not targetting US citizens here...they're simply playing a spin machine to twist the definition to suit their desire.
WTF??? Was "Re:Need to Do More" (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, maybe this is just whooshing over my head, but ... "so the authorities have no hope of finding the actual terrorists"?
But, but, I WANT them to find the "actual terrorists".
I DON'T want them to accuse innocent people of being terrorists. I don't want them to break down doors with guns blazing because someone didn't answer the door fast enough. I don't want them to frighten young children (or adults that have the mental capacity of young children) at airports. I don't want the police to pay a visit to people just because someone Googled "pressure cookers" while his wife Googled "backpacks". I don't want them to arrest people for wearing suspicious T-shirts, or kick people off of airplanes because they are speaking Russian (or Arabic, or Spanish) to each other. I don't want them to shoot to kill because someone dark-skinned is running for the train. I do not want the police to act on false positives.
But I definitely DO want them to catch the "actual terrorists" before they can commit their acts of terrorism!
Re:WTF??? Was "Re:Need to Do More" (Score:5, Insightful)
But I definitely DO want them to catch the "actual terrorists" before they can commit their acts of terrorism!
Here's a better alternative: ask yourself what causes someone to become a terrorist; then ask yourself whether you're doing something in that list; then ask yourself whether those things you're doing are necessary and important enough that it's worth it to have terrorists being formed due to you doing them; then, if the answer is "no", stop doing them. That's a good way to not have terrorists appearing, or at least to not have a majority of them appearing, meaning you won't have to worry about catching that which doesn't exist anymore.
An alternative is to do a cost-benefit analysis. In which position, relative to all other troubles are terrorism-caused violence, destruction and death? 1st place, 2nd, 3rd, 100th, 1000th? Adjust your priorities accordingly. If something kills 'n' more people than terrorists, it should be worth 'n' times more of your time than terrorism. Terrorism kills on average what? A few hundred people every year? There's stuff out there that kill a few hundred thousand people every year. Ask yourself: why aren't you worried a thousand times more about those?
Terrorism is a very minor problem. Giving it all this attention is a cognitive failure. There are much more objectively important issues out there.
Re:Need to Do More (Score:5, Insightful)
in all my time living in the US (born here and with a couple of exceptions lived here all my life) I've never heard of anyone being arrested for downloading such material anyway
Which means that it's a say-so law. Normally it's not enforced, but if they want to go after somebody and can't make real charges stick, they'll charge them with this. Even if they aren't convicted and don't plead guilty to it, it's a sword to hold over their head. Think Aaron Swartz.
Worse is that I don't see how such a law can possibly be Constitutional, so it's a pure intimidation tactic. You could appeal a conviction all the way to the Supreme Court if you have millions for legal fees and are willing to gamble 20 years of your life on the outcome, or you could just plead guilty to the other charge with the 10 year sentence, and hope to get out in five. This isn't a law, it's a federal thuggery provision.
Re:WTF??? Was "Re:Need to Do More" (Score:5, Insightful)
Bull feathers!
The cause of most wars and terrorism is us-versus-them. Different religions provide a dividing line between "us" and "them", but it can just as easily be ethnic origins, skin color, language, political views, gang affiliation, or any other marker.
Re:WTF??? Was "Re:Need to Do More" (Score:5, Insightful)
But I still completely disagree that it should be anybody's goal to ensure that "the authorities have no hope of finding the actual terrorists."
The problem is that someone's an actual terrorist only after actually committing some terrorist activity or at least helping someone who did. Trying to go after people who are "thinking about" committing an act of terrorism is going after someone for a thought crime. No, the appropriate approach is to focus on prevention. You try the best you can, upper bound by an objective cost-benefit analysis, to prevent such acts from being successful. And if it so happens that one such act goes through the prevention efforts and end up happening, then you go after those who *now* have actually become criminals to prosecute and punish them to the full extent of their *actual* crime.
There's no place in a free society for thought crimes. Widespread surveillance is unneeded both in principle and in practice.