Info Leak Wars To Get Messier 350
jfruh writes "As we discussed this weekend, David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, was detained while transporting encrypted data on the Snowden affair from Berlin; all his electronics were seized. Over at the Guardian offices, British police destroyed more of the newspaper's hard drives. Privacy blogger Dan Tynan sees where this one is going: reporters like Greenwald are going to stop even bothering to be circumspect with their revelations. Sorting through the contents of such infocaches to redact sensitive information just gives the government time to track you down. Eventually, the information will just be dumped online, warts and all, as soon as someone who wants the information public gets ahold of it."
Idiots (Score:3, Informative)
'Nuff said.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
No, why? They're desperate to know what's out there, so it's best to provoke a dump.. You know, adding a little laxative to the mix.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets see ... because they made it public they had the data? thats we fucking stupid on their part.
Next we're going to hear something even stupider, like they ONLY had a copy on the laptop that was seized or some bullshit.
You have to be a moron to talk about having the data BEFORE its in the hands of the public. That means the first time its mentioned is when its front page news fully published in a large paper. Front page could be the front page of a website too for that matter.
You do not say 'we've got
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)
All the Snowden data is stored in a safe place outside the UK (and the US of course) according to the people at The Guardian. This is standard procedure for all sensitive information and this was also the case with the exclusive parts of the Wikileaks material. They told the intelligence agents this but they didn't care and proceeded to destroy only the local storage media. So stupid!
The data is out there. It cannot be removed or contained in any way. This is how it is in this day and age, and this is a good thing. Information still wants to be free.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
one word: bittorrent
Re: Idiots (Score:3)
To amplify the reasons for the Grauniad destroying the computer (in sight of, but not in contact with "GCHQ officers") rather than facing the risk of it being seized after a court battle, they (the Grauniad, corporately) were concerned that forensic analysis of the computer if seized, might lead to exposure of communications with other "sources". It w
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Some
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
There was some speculation that by destroying the HDDs they were forcing the Guardian to communicate over the internet, which of course they have a full wiretap on. Bugging a newspaper's offices could cause an even bigger shitstorm, but this way they just carry on doing what they have been doing for years.
One would hope that the Guardian journalists know how to use VPNs to communicate securely, but I suppose GHCQ figured it was worth a try.
Re: (Score:3)
You can still trace a VPN. They may be more worried about what servers copies are on. Each time they access a server, it's an opportunity to try to track down a copy and destroy it. If they are smart though, they'll use random Internet access locations and will make it difficult to actually track anything down.
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I don't understand why they don't take legal action. They should be able to find a pro-bono lawyer; the Guardian is probably happy to assist with its legal department. There must be some laws left in the UK, or at least embarrass the higher courts by forcing them to make a official ruling. For example, if the law is ultimately ruled unconstitutional, it's evidence of incapacity of the parliament to make constitutional laws.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand why they don't take legal action.
Because unfortunately there's no law to say you can't behave like an asswipe. The detention was legal enough within the letter of the law (the less said about the spirit of it, the better), and he was released after the stipulated maximum amount of time. As for destruction of equipment, I'm sure there is some precedent making that legal.
There's only one way to get around a government's thuggery and intimidation, and that is to blow them wide open.
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Because unfortunately there's no law to say you can't behave like an asswipe.
As you noted, just the opposite is true. The law explicitly *encourages* cops to act like asswipes -- as long as TERRORISM!
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)
But they have taken legal action.
Letter from Miranda's attorneys [theguardian.com]
Even if you don't agree with Miranda's position, the letter is still worth reading, as it lays out the facts in meticulous detail.
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The problem here is that there is no written constitution in the UK. Whatever the parliament passes as laws (along with interpretations by the courts et al) in fact is the constitution.
Re: (Score:3)
There is however the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [wikipedia.org] enshrined in UK law as the Human Rights Act 1998. It's not as good as the US Constitution but a lot better than what we had before it, despite the current view of it here as a terrorists' charter (oh the irony).
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, We're British -- No Miranda Rights!
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
They must have thought Christmas had come early - he was foreign, gay *and* a being labelled as a potential terrorist.
That's not going to help the feds/governments in the long term though. The more they rough up the journalists, treat them like enemies and make their lives generally more difficult - the more they are likely to be treated in the same manner. Why go to all the trouble of being polite, redacting sensetive bits and playing by the book when you know that the next time you go through an airport, your pants are coming down and you better hope you got some lube in...
When one team starts playing hardball, the other team often starts doing the same - and the journalists will probably see these sorts of infractions nothing short of a badge of honour - but on the flipside, the potential trouble/egg-on-face for the governments just went up and up.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If push comes to shove, the victors will eventually be Western governments closing the door on journalists. For example, China, and the mention of how many/few prisoners they have for execution is a state secret (as per a previous /. article on them stopping organ harvesting). However, if the US had prisoners slated for execution for organs and hid the numbers as a state secret, the world would be stating it was a Holocast in the making.
Journalists have been allowed free reign, but if governments start ac
I have two words for you: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
For anyone who hasn't read it, Transmetropolitan is where it's at.
Re: (Score:3)
"If push comes to shove, the victors will eventually be Western governments closing the door on journalists. F"
Absolute bullshit. It's been done before, and it's never worked.
I have NO reason to believe it will work now any better than it has any other time in history.
Re: (Score:3)
Absolute bullshit. It's been done before, and it's never worked.
Lincoln was pretty successful with locking up hundreds of editors of newspapers who published against his war of domination against the Confederate States of America. Heck, so much so that schools still teach that he was a hero for causing the murders of nearly a million Americans. Even FDR couldn't wreak that much mayhem.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. The whole reason they are slowly ratcheting this stuff up is that they are on the outlook for any 'heroes.' They go ahead, perform some obvious vile acts, on the public, to see who comes running to save the sheep. Then they mark or dispatch whoever shows up.
You're dealing with predators, something akin to hyenas...they hunt in large packs, and believe that they have strength in numbers. What more, they're intelligent. They're looking for lions...they've found that if they trap a lion away from the pride, they can taunt and kill a lion at their pleasure. But they also know that if a pride is in the area, and they stumble onto one, they'll get shredded.
So, that is the current state of affairs -> the sheep have chosen hyenas as their shepherds, and the hyenas are wisely looking to destroy anyone else before showing their true colors to the sheep. And the hyena, for all the jocularity surrounding it, is a very dangerous predator...arguably more so than a lion. Let's put it this way: their females are so androgenized, that their clits resemble the male's penis. They're kind of the wolves of the Africa, from my understanding, except wolves are less viscous.
The sad part is, this whole scenario has happened before. Every few decades, the world, if the history books are anything to go by, tries this crap; and it always fails. A government decides "Now is an excellent time to censor our people's freedom of speech / go into a national security lock-down mode" -> the home economy, which was suffering at the beginning of the lockdown, gets worse during the lockdown; corruption multiplies, as external observation / safeties / checks and balances are viewed with suspicion, resulting in needed reports being thrown out, or delivered too late; and the people become increasingly unhappy, which impacts both productivity, as well as security / etc. On the whole, it's bad: a temporary market correction is turned into a decades-long depression.
The government forgets that it is here to serve the people -> that is its reason for existence. It can make mistakes, fess up to them, and survive; it's better if it does that, and shows that it is indeed working to go in the right direction now as well. But nowadays, it's just people desperate to hold onto power that long since fled them; a game of bluff, played with themselves, because there might still be one person out there who does not know that they've been lied to.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
except wolves are less viscous.
Has any real research been done into their comparative viscosity? I'd dearly love to see a wolf/hyena drop experiment [wikipedia.org].
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
They detained him for exactly the reason you kidnap the action hero's wife/girlfriend/mother: people are a lot more likely to break if you threaten someone they care about than if you threaten them directly. Added bonus: not technically a journalist, not technically protected by whatever media shields are available in the UK.
Re: (Score:3)
not exactly. Miranda (Greenwald's partner) was the one who actually carried snowden's memory card and gave it to Greenwald. so the government wasn't just warning Greenwald that they'd go after his loved ones, they actually were harassing a guy who passed state secrets on to the press.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had evidence they would have arrested him.
As it was they held him for nearly the full allowed time without charges (which basically never happens).
And they took all his stuff.
And, according to Glenn Greenwald, they didn't ask any questions about terrorism.
This was intimidation, pure and simple.
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I like the way it's called stealing when Snowden does it but not stealing when the NSA does it.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is a good question.
So far the UK government is claiming that GCHQ wouldn't dream of doing anything as evil as the NSA and that everything they do is all above board and legal like.
Were evidence to materialise to the contrary it would be very embarrassing for the government, especially people like William Hague who's been assuring us that he knows exactly what goes on and we have nothing to worry about.
I'd say there's a possibility that the government, or organs of the government, are worried this evidence may exist and would like to know what it could show were it to be released.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, not quite. They're claiming that GCHQ haven't circumvented or broken the law. That's probably true, because we in the UK have basically no absolute protections against people like GCHQ at all. There's feel-good privacy laws and the like but they all have vague, loose exceptions about "unless properly authorised" or "except in cases of national interest". The loopholes are so big it would be trivial for GCHQ to route the internet through them.
Intimidation (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to put it another way, if he wasn't a journalist then wtf did they detain him for 9 hours for?
There would be no point unless he was acting in the capacity as a journalist.
Lets see, his partner Mr. Greenwald [bbc.co.uk] (the one actually reporting on Snowden) thinks :-
Intimidating the 'enemy' seems to be the point.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)
He was detained, not arrested, under section 7 of the Terrorism Act.
Part of the point of this is that not having been arrested, he did not have the rights of a suspect who has been arrested.
However he was _required_ to answer all questions, no matter how irrelevant to a case, asked by the police.
Also remember he wasn't entering the UK. He was transiting from Germany to Brazil. So, relevance to a crime?
this was about intimidation, pure and simple.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, he was detained and had less rights than people who were arrested, doesn't that strike you as odd, how can rights be taken away from you, isn't that the whole point of them being rights, that the exist regardless of any particular situation.
So now the cops can detail you and remove rights that you have but not arrest you and therefore have no burden of proof required in order for that person to have as much protection.
That's fucked up right there.....It's just a tool of intimidation, not of justice and it seems to be getting used in ACTUAL intimidation instead of the pursuit of justice too.....awesome!!
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
No one was "abducted"
Under the legal definition, he absolutely was abducted. Kidnapping is a subset of abduction, and because police used the threat of force their actions would also qualify under that clause.
The key difference is that it was done under color of law.
When the police abduct people, it gets names like "detaining" and "questioning". If a citizen does it, it become "abducting" and "kidnapping", even if they are released after a few hours. The actions are identical.
Re: Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
No they don't.
Does the 1st amendment say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. But the cops can shoot you for being atheists, or if they don't like what you write, because some bootlicking twatass on the internet says they have blanket immunity"?
No they didn't. Miranda committed none of the actions mentioned here.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/1 [legislation.gov.uk]
Re: Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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First amendment of which document? I don't know of any British Congress. USA, which does have a congress and bill of rights, threw out the brits, making a separate legal system.
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Re:Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Regardless of which side you fall on, I just can't imagine the scene where the decision was made for the Met to detain David Miranda was made without "send in the clowns" playing as the backing track.
Don't you mean Yakety Sax?
mods! rate parent funny! (Score:3)
That (Score:2)
means that it will be harder to decipher what is going on. I realize all reporters have a bias, but they at least go through most of the material and point out the notable items. Now whomever is interested will need to go through the data dumps for the interesting stuff. That will make the "reporting" less effective.
Re: (Score:3)
Funny you should mention Groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
Considering this news... [groklaw.net]
Re:Funny you should mention Groklaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:we need people like PJ spreading encryption (Score:4, Informative)
Pj got dragged through the mud and personally attacked just covering a minor intellectual property skirmish. Reporting the mundane briefs and filings of copyright proceedings.
Sure it was big news here, but in mainstream msm media it was a mousefart.
After that, in a real showdown with the actual government on one side, would you stick around? I wouldn't.
Re:That (Score:5, Insightful)
But even Groklaw has shut down [groklaw.net] due to the mere fact it is impossible to communicate in private, and Groklaw never did a single illegal thing as far as I can tell.
We think that making multiple copies cached around the world will keep the information public, but that is probably not correct. Look at the "practice run" the authorities are carrying out with Child Porn and a training exercise of how to combat access to any information, even when you don't control where that information is stored.
Having Snowden's windfall on a million drives all decrypted and open for all to see wouldn't help, because anyone accessing it at any time from any computer on the net could and would be instantly tracked, and forced to have a computer bashing party in their own basement.
We are on the tipping point of losing ALL freedoms. Anyone who sees this as anything but the beginning of end of freedom is an utter fool. The frog in the water and the heat is on.
Re: (Score:2)
> Having Snowden's windfall on a million drives all decrypted and open for all to see wouldn't help, because anyone accessing it at any time from any computer on the net could and would be instantly tracked, and forced to have a computer bashing party in their own basement.
Perhaps the solution is to overwhelm the system. Label the download as, I dunno, The Avengers Director's Cut. Get it on as many computers as possible.
Re:That (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution here will not be solved with technology. The parlor tricks were fun when the law was unclear; but now that the law is clearly compromised, real action, in the real world, must be taken.
The people have been patient with the courts, with the law in general, as it has sorted through the general maze that is technology, and its effects on society. They need not be patient in areas where the law has already been clearly stated, for over two hundred years, in plain text, and in a copy that many people, even outside this country, own, and can easily reference. "Congress shall make no law..." and here we are, with secret courts, unable to face our accusers, dealing with gerrymandered accusations, and proof positive that the highest laws themselves have been violated. What more, one of our Founding Fathers did say, supposedly, "I prefer a hundred guilty men go free, than one innocent man be imprisoned."
So, what happened to that America? I signed up for that America, not this one. Did someone mislead me? Was I lied to? Was there a bait and switch in the womb of my mother? Having been born in this country, with full citizenship, rights and privileges, why have I been denied, since my birth, these plainly written guarantees? I've been taxed, I know this much...who represents me? What are their names? How have they voted in the last six months, so that I know they are truly representing me, and my closely-held values, as well as this country's written values, in our national capital?
Re:That (Score:5, Interesting)
Au contraire, my dear Watson. Providing raw material is exactly the service news providers should be doing in the first place. Let other reporters and bloggers sift through this publicly available raw data to point out interesting stuff. There's no reason reporters should be entitled to exclusive access to raw material, and the rest of the world would have to accept what reporters say without a way of controlling that.
That was exactly the problem with Wikileak's initial redacted release of Cablegate. It was only after they've released the whole data unredacted that real reporting could begin (and can still take place).
Whitewash (Score:4, Informative)
Yea, but once it all comes out, and we read it ... we realize there isn't anything amazing or unknown in it, and the whole big deal was actually nothing new.
Interesting whitewash.
The details in the released cables was one of the triggers that sparked the Tunisian revolution [foreignpolicy.com]. Maybe not new or important to you, but I imagine the Tunisians would beg to differ.
Re: (Score:2)
Or there will be more people going through the data because it is freely available, so fewer notable items get missed.
It's never going to be a case of "the raw data is available online, no point writing an article about it now!"
Do it now! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do it and do it now. The news doesn't need censorship.
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Thinking this through, I wonder if the NRA knows which side
they should be on...
I've been highly non-sympathetic to the NRA for years, but
lately I'm beginning to wonder if one of it reasons-to-be might
not present itself a fortiori, what with Total Surveillance and
the Totalitarian State oligarchian style being upon us.
A Hard Rain's (Score:2)
A-Gonna Fall...
If you have nothing to hide... (Score:5, Insightful)
And? If the government has nothing to hide, as they've repeatedly claimed, then what's the problem?
Re:If you have nothing to hide... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the government says they have nothing to hide BUT their actions scream "We have metric shit loads of things to hide". Things are going to get "interesting" in the next few years. It would be best if people started being more paranoid and start learning how to drop off the grid. We here in the west spent 40 years in a cold war with the Soviet Union. Some of the lessons that were learned on how to conduct activities while dealing with those guys, eg. Moscow Rules, would be instructive to those peoples and groups the government is and will be going after. Google the phrase, "Green in the new Red"
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At least they don't have imperial shit loads of things to hide.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At least finally some part of the US is going metric.
Re:If you have nothing to hide... (Score:5, Funny)
Google the phrase, "Green in the new Red"
All I get is pictures of a Canadian hick wearing plaid and putting duct tape on everything.
Re: (Score:3)
And? If the government has nothing to hide, as they've repeatedly claimed, then what's the problem?
Ah, well played sir!
For some frikin reason, I haven't had mod points in over two years.
My Kingdom for a mod point!!
Re: (Score:3)
All the fuss about the data monitoring programs have revolved around what the government COULD or MAY do with the information. There has been corroborated evidence of the government actually misusing this information to inflict harm on someone. In a perfect world the government should have no secrets but we don't live in a perfect world. Not even close. But governments do have secrets that when exposed can cause a lot of unexpected problems. Leaking some PRISM documents may be OK but releasing details of fo
Re:If you have nothing to hide... (Score:4, Insightful)
some PRISM documents may be OK but releasing details of foreign intelligence operations is another matter.
Remind me to shed a tear. NSA/CIA are controlled by politicians who are controlled by corporations. Most spying twoard "western" countries seems to be of the selfish self-serving variety.
Snowden will probably go down as the person responsible for starting up the cold war again.
In the same way a gun manufacturer is responsible for the misuse of the weapons they produce.
Of course he is certainly not solely responsible but he has definitely contributed another issue into international relations that eventually will harm someone down the line.
Secret capabilities once used naturally erode over time. They've had a heck of a run, certainly much longer than stealth Helos used in Bin Laden raid...They knew from day one eventually it would come out. If not Snowden it would be someone or thing else...this is how the game works. Its why the NSA does not waste their stash of 0-days on petty LEA crap.
The real kicker in this entire mess is that the people pushing out the information will get the opposite of what they are seeking.
The more people are aware of TLA willingness (to use) capabilities the more people can take technical measures to counter capabilities used against their interests. It also serves to increase legislative pressures to fix overreach which unecessarily harms trust in US government and US corporations.
Instead of introducing transparency to government affairs the government will double down and put policies and procedures in place to get rid of any existing transparency.
While they are expected to take measures to mitigate leaks it is also possible to see "legitimate" channels strengthened for example legislative action to provide more public data/oversight of covert activities.
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Some secrets are not yours to release.
The NSA doesn't do stuff, it just sits there listening and writing down the information. It knows you have contacted an STD from your nieghbor's wife. It knows the password to your facebook account.
It knows the secret things because it sent men in dark suits around to collect the SSL keys. Those men in dark suits answer to a secret court which meets in a dark place. And how are you going to say no to them?
And now Snowden has the keys and the passwords and the secret
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If the government has nothing to hide, as they've repeatedly claimed
Have they? All I keep seeing is them repeating that they do have to hide things because otherwise the terrorists will win. Or something.
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That's why the releases come in small chunks, or with warnings first.
As much as they are demonized, people like Snowden aren't out to cause damage. He's not doing it for the lulz, or trying to troll the government just because he can. He genuinely believes that the people need to know what their government is doing. So he gives us a tiny hint of the information. Just a little taste. Enough for the government to know he's not bluffing, and hopefully with enough time for the government to come clean.
O
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The point was that such a family could be known of by a friendly government, who then has their information leaked. The effort to redact information from leaks before publishing them is to prevent that kind of thing from happening, because nobody wants that.
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Okaaaay... now you're talking about redactions, which seems to contradict your earlier point about WikiLeaks and Manning. If WikiLeaks "can't be sure" that it's safe to release a given document, then why do they always go to the trouble of roping in journalists, governments, etc. who can perform the required redactions?
Morons in government don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
They must not understand the concept of a digital backup copy. You can take digital files of even gigantic sizes and copy them within minutes. They'd need to destroy every single copy at the same time before someone made another copy. No intimidation tactic is going to work at this point. There are copies around the world of what Snowden took with him.
You take all of the files and dump them on ThePirateBay, Wikileaks, or wherever, and the government can't stop it. No amount of threats or harassment can prevent people from getting the information once it is out in the open. It would be like trying to return used paint to the bucket or gluing together a smashed window pane. A useless exercise.
The government lost the information war. They are going to need to refocus on something else to win. Martial law. Election stealing. Murdering people. Extortion. At that point you're no longer looking at democracy and civilization but totalitarianism and military rule. We already lock up every marijuana user. Why not start locking up "terror violators" or some other nonsense 'crime'?
This is the breaking point. Will people vote in politicians who will stop the wars (terror, drugs, guns, privacy)? Or are we going to get another Bush/Obama clone?
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They must not understand the concept of a digital backup copy.
Its merely a power game. The government thinks it has won this round, and the
jackboots are chuckling over their brandy.
Lets have their names, lets get them before cameras.
Re:Morons in government don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
... Or are we going to get another Bush/Obama clone?
This, this right here, is a huge part of the problem. The office of President is NOT the only office that matters here. I've watched election after election where people fuss and fume over the president, but literally seem to pick at random for every Senator and Congressman. People have GOT to start paying attention to the people who are supposed to represent them, not just the President.
Re: (Score:3)
You're the moron!
You think this is about digital copies? This is about intimidation.
> Will people vote in politicians who will stop the wars (terror, drugs, guns, privacy)? Or are we going to get another Bush/Obama clone?
The latter. Duh
Please read the original article (Score:5, Informative)
Geebus, the factual errors on these summaries are becoming eye-watering!
The Guardian destroyed the laptop and the hard drive rather than turn them over. Shit, the title of the article has that in it:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london [theguardian.com]
I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.
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Geebus, the factual errors on these summaries are becoming eye-watering!
The Guardian destroyed the laptop and the hard drive rather than turn them over. Shit, the title of the article has that in it:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london [theguardian.com]
I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.
Does it matter who held the hammer over the drives? So the police held the hammer over the head of the guy who took the hammer to the drives. How's that really any different than if the government smashed the drives themselves? The error is more that of semantics than facts.
The act of defiance would have been to make the data available to the public as soon as the police tried to strong arm them. Smashing the drives was an act of compliance, not defiance.
They should dump the data (Score:4, Insightful)
Put it out there, let some people get outed and killed, they are collaborator scum anyway. Sure it sounds harsh and it is, but until the security apparatus suffers some major political damage and loses some people they think of as friends they will never appreciate the harm all there secrets are doing. They have proven this over and over again.
Re:They should dump the data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Traffic fatalities also vastly outnumber murders. Better just let murderers off with a fine and some community service.
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Traffic fatalities also vastly outnumber murders. Better just let murderers off with a fine and some community service.
Hang on, I don't think anyone said give terrorists a free pass; rather, we still go after them, but we don't compromise the rights of the entire population in the process.
So to continue the simile, you still prosecute murderers to the fullest extent of the law, but you don't make everyone take off their front doors in case the police needs to go in to their houses looking for a murderer.
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until the security apparatus suffers some major political damage and loses some people they think of as assets
FTFY.
Siezed not destroyed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Siezed not destroyed (Score:5, Insightful)
Seized or destroyed makes little difference when your livelihood depends on it. You need replacement equipment now. Not in a week. Not in a month. Today. Or you can't make money. And with so many professions needing a computer... whether it's seized or destroyed you're still at the computer shop the next day buying a new one. And when you get your old one back... it's useless.
The difference between the two is pretty minor. This is also why you, like me and many others, should keep multiple off-site backups, not in banks, not at a friend's house, but buried under a tree in a public park or something... so you can always quickly recover.
Because whether it's the government that steals your shit, or a burglar... you're just as fucked.
no more secrets (Score:2)
this is the way of the electronic revolution, where once again (like in the village), whatever you do is "public", and you better behave the way you are "supposed" to. the only fun part of the story is watching the watchers spazz out as they look through their panopticon and discover a big eyeball blinking at them.
Re:no more secrets (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever read David Brin's "Earth?"
That happens, but getting there is ugly.
Imagine the vault of secrets burst open. Every dirty deal, every evil plot, every political murder and wicked deed done in the name of power and wealth.
Now imagine the lengths to which the perpetrators of those deeds would go to hold on to the kind of wealth and power that rests atop the United States.
If your blood didn't just freeze, you have no imagination.
Re:no more secrets (Score:5, Insightful)
What scares me more is that even if all that came out into the open, there's a better than good chance that the American public will ignore it and just keep on keeping on. The actions of some of our leaders and (corporate and political) have become so brazen, that in any other country or maybe even any other era of American history, heads would be rolling (and in France, literally). Instead, the public has been giving the "meh" heard round the world. :(
Re: (Score:3)
You know, in 2008 the American public did vote in an executive who promised "the most transparent administration in history", among other things (with pretty high participation and voting rates). Granted that person immediately stabbed us in the back, expanding and fiercely defending the surveillance apparatus, it's difficult to see how the public would expect any light of hope, any feasible strategy for improvement, from the political system at this point.
The Inevitable Escalation (Score:5, Insightful)
Which Messier would that be? (Score:2)
M64?
unsubstantiated claims in summary (Score:4, Insightful)
That's quite an allegation. Do we have any reason to believe that Miranda was transporting anything of the kind?
Re:Small Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
The British police did not destroy the newspaper's hard drives. They just watched and took notes and photos while the paper's people destroyed the hard drives. This in no way justifies the actions of the British government, which are completely reprehensible.
I agree with Dan Tynan. Future leaks will be dumped without regard for how much they might hurt individuals or groups only peripherally involved. In a surveillance culture, that may be the only way whistleblowers can continue to do what is right.
What is the point of that distinction? Does it matter at *all* whether the government agents destroyed the drives themselves, or coerced the owners of the drives to do it?
Re: (Score:2)
Not to be cynical, but Government could still say that the Guardian destroyed the drives, and it was all a big misunderstanding. It's like in the bad movies where the corrupt police officer orders you at point blank to injure yourself and later claims that it was you who did it to yourself and he couldn't prevent it.
Re:Small Correction (Score:4, Informative)
Destroy the drive in front of the gov 'now' or the gov will take the drive.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22library%2Fprspub%2FN16J6%22 [aph.gov.au]
".... office to cleanse the offending material from our computers. They transferred the data to a hard disk then gave us the option of having it taken away or destroyed in front of us. We chose the second option, then watched them do it with a special little disk-breaking hammer. They graciously followed up this service with a customer satisfaction form.12"
Re:Small Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
The British police did not destroy the newspaper's hard drives. They just watched and took notes and photos while the paper's people destroyed the hard drives.
What is the point of that distinction? Does it matter at *all* whether the government agents destroyed the drives themselves, or coerced the owners of the drives to do it?
It reminds me of a bully using a weaker child's hand to hit that child: "You're hitting yourself. Why do you keep hitting yourself?"
The bully could punch the child directly (and likely cause more physical pain), but chooses to get the child to hit itself, because it isn't just about control, it is about humiliation and control, in order to try to stamp out any chance of resistance.
The paper's people were forced to destroy their own equipment for the same reasons, and it distresses me no end that UK government officials are using schoolyard bullying tactics in this situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
On the bright side, the Info Leak Wars might actually beat the Leafs.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But what if Messier objects?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:FUCK THEM (Score:5, Insightful)
The above, of course, is the kind of rabid response that the over-reaching actions of the government and it's agents are causing.
These morons are creating the next generation of terrorists with their stupidity.