The Network Is Hostile 124
An anonymous reader writes: Following this weekend's news that AT&T was as friendly with the NSA as we've suspected all along, cryptographer Matthew Green takes a step back to look at the broad lessons we've learned from the NSA leaks. He puts it simply: the network is hostile — and we really understand that now. "My take from the NSA revelations is that even though this point was 'obvious' and well-known, we've always felt it more intellectually than in our hearts. Even knowing the worst was possible, we still chose to believe that direct peering connections and leased lines from reputable providers like AT&T would make us safe. If nothing else, the NSA leaks have convincingly refuted this assumption." Green also points out that the limitations on law enforcement's data collection are technical in nature — their appetite for surveillance would be even larger if they had the means to manage it. "...it's significant that someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies."
Hostile governments... (Score:5, Informative)
And some of those will be the governments of Western democracies. That's the truly maddening part.
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And some of those will be the governments of Western democracies. That's the truly maddening part.
Look at how much power we've ceded to those governments - "free" health care for just one example (geez, and you're worried about the privacy implications of the NSA tracking just your phone calls?!?!?! Yet you'd willingly put all your private medical data in the hands of that same government. WTF?!?!?!)
Why do the same people who want the government to get more power and the resources to back that power (usually via something like "pay your fair share") act surprised when that power gets abused?
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because one of the worst of offenders is also one of the weakest, gridlocked western 'democratic' governments, and not the more powerful socialistic governments?
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No, the offenses of the more powerful 'socialistic' governments are simply censored more effectively.
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"weakest, gridlocked western 'democratic' governments"
The failure of western democracy is not fault of the democratic system but of the west preventing democracy to grow and evolve
western political systems have became static because the wealthy class fear change, they fear that with increased freedom they will lose the privileges they think they are entitled to (self preservation)
Democratic governments were a great step forward, but we should not have stopped there 8 or more hours a day most people do not l
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Where's that "MOOOOO Cow" comment when it's really needd?
Re:Hostile governments... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. And "free" fire prevention, and "free" roads, and a "free" military, and "free" education.
Gosh, we'd all be SO much better without this "free" stuff.
Healthcare for everyone: YOU may want your fellow citizens to have access to healthcare based upon individual levels of wealth, but me, I'd just as soon the person walking down the street (a) doesn't have their effectiveness at their job reduced by disease or injury any more than is absolutely necessary, (b) is as little likely as possible to be passing along some communicable disease, (c) is available for work as much as possible. Because that's best for everyone. Including your selfish person. So I want them to have access to healthcare based upon the single issue of need.
The current welfare system for the insurance companies isn't optimum by any means. But it's a damn sight better than what we had before.
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Yup, you must learn to put all your trust into corporations.
People who make these sorts comments are being purely partisan. They are taking sides rather than trying to view anything objectively and weigh the pros and cons. It's easier that way, when you take sides then you don't have to think for yourself or ponder over complicated topics.
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The current welfare system for the insurance companies isn't optimum by any means. But it's a damn sight better than what we had before.
I don't buy that in the least. The same government that spies to the limit of its capabilities on everyone is not a government I want anywhere near my health care. It's going to be just another intelligence source to them.
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What on earth are you on about? I never understand how a level playing field for health is a bad thing. How is that ceding power? Isn't that protecting the power from being abused by capitalists? And lets face it, if you are where I suspect you are, spouting such nonsense, those have ZERO accountability to even economics any more, let alone morality.
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Why this obsession with the health care ?
Isn't the fact that those governments use trillions of USD from taxpayers to oppress whole nations an order of magnitude worse ??
Re:Hostile governments... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is even more maddening is that the governments of Western democracies are, in fact, The People.
Look honey, an optimist! How adorable.
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This is not optimistic at all. Who elected this "hostile" government? We did. The majority wants this government!
At least, with dictatorships, the people can overthrow the bad guy. But in a democracy the opponents will always be a minority, and they usually don't win unless they are of the most violent and tyrannical kind.
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Given the gatekeeper process involved in getting a candidate to appear on a ballot in most of the US (and certainly for any national office), your position is very much open to debate.
Re:Hostile governments... (Score:4, Insightful)
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and those treasonous citizens should be shot
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The majority don't think though. Politics is like a sports game, people choose sides, they wear their rally clothes, wave the correct flags, and vote how they are told to vote. They treat democracy as a competition rather than a cooperation.
In democracy you get the government that you deserve.
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That's why the US was explicitly not a democracy, but a constitutional republic with a democratic elective process.
A republic is not supposed to have a power greater than any individual citizen. The rights remain with the people.
A democracy, based on majority vote, can strip the rights of the people and redistribute them as they please.
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Of course, comrade. The People love you and wish you only health and happiness. Please report to The People's Acceptance Hospital for reeducation. Here, you will learn to love The People the same way they love you.
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The electorate is the pointy-haired boss of the government, and keeping it away means work is getting done. Democracies are the nemesis of governments. This fundamental conflict is not going to go away. Creating structures where the control by the pointy-haired masses does not lead to desaster, yet the government does not evade accountability is really tricky artwork. How do you write up a democratic constitution that does not eventually fall apart under those conflicting forces?
I like the Athenian model of assigning all the important government positions by lottery. It was the idea that governance was every citizens' job, and every citizen was expected to be ready to assume the responsibility of high office. Some sort of penalty should be attached to refusing, like we do with jury duty. This would be a good way to staff all of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court justices. So we would still have a republic, but we would get rid of this entrenched incumbency that's b
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It was a democratic Athenian government that condemned Socrates to death.
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I could be on board with adding to this, Heinlein's suggestion in the original (book) version of Starship Troopers. To be eligible to vote or serve in an elected government position means you have to have volunteered to serve in a non-elected position. And when you volunteer, you have no way of knowing where you might be assigned. You could be assigned as cannon fodder, if that's what is needed, or as an administrative aide to an elected official, or as a bus boy in a prison cafeteria. If you want a shot
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The problem with that is the same problem we have now -- it doesn't filter out the ones that cause problems with government. Nor, I might add, did it in Heinlein's fiction, so you might want to think about the message he was actually sending.
The only filtering you get with "random voluntary service" is for some level of wanting to participate and a fairly profound lack of a sense of relative value.
You know who wants to participate just as much as the person who would actually do good? Fundamentalists. White
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How is it possible that you can think this post out so well but still are naive enough to believe that being able to moderate where you posted under your own name would not create a system even more rife for abuse than it is currently? Normally I'd just assume you're dumb, but your post's content suggests you're capable of focused thought, so why are you so wrong about the slashdot moderation system? I can only assume the naivety is a facade and you actually have some clever, non-obvious ulterior motive f
Re:Hostile governments... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. That is made clear. Almost all of the article is about the NSA's capabilities. Then, at the end, some text, including the quoted part, about how this is important even if you don't mind the actions of the NSA.
"Even if you're not inclined to view the NSA as an adversary ... America is hardly the only intelligence agency capable of subverting the global communications network. ... While it's cheap to hold China out as some sort of boogeyman, it's significant that someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies."
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Holding the NSA's feet to the fire -- assuming we could, which we can't -- won't slow down other governments or corporations or other actors in any way.
The correct approach is, and has been for some time, to treat the Internet as a means to make your views, data, and image available to anyone who takes an interest, regardless of their white- or black-hattedness.
If you want something to remain private, don't put it on the net or your computer if it's connected to the net. Period.
-- fyngyrz [slashdot.org]
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We all live in a "state of permanent preemptive counterrevolution."
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And some of those will be the governments of Western democracies. That's the truly maddening part.
Pfft! It only means they're somewhat less hypocritical. I mean, how naïve do you have to be, to believe all that "freedom" and "democracy" crap we're taught as schoolchildren? Almost any adult-level history book should disabuse you of these notions, pronto.
Also, how is the OP Informative? I can sorta see Insightful, except that TFA is about how a Western democracy already has been vacuuming up all our data.
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I've been trying to think of governments that aren't "hostile to the core values of Western democracies.". The only possible candidate I've come up with is Switzerland. This causes me to wonder whether it's a design problem, or whether those values just don't scale.
Unfortunately, I think that the values don't scale. This is one reason I support using a lottery rather than elections...and it's necessary correlate the decentralization of power, so that one bad apple can't do excessive harm. This would sta
Someday? (Score:5, Insightful)
"..someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies.."
You mean, like the US government? /That was way too easy.
I'm not one of the many self-loathing Americans, but it's pretty irrefutable that the US government is "at least to some extent" hostile to the core Western, humanist values that are even laid out in its own Constitution.
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You mean, like the US government? /That was way too easy.
No. Democracies. /* And that was like shooting fish in a barrel...*/
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The US is not a full democracy, it's a republic.
The day the US have a proportional election system and frequent referendums is the day they have achieved democracy.
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The US is not a full democracy, it's a republic.
The day the US have a proportional election system and frequent referendums is the day they have achieved democracy.
And people usually forget that the mission statement of the United States is: Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Democracy, Republic are merely a means in pursuit of those goals. People truly believe that a representative form of government is superior to a dictatorial form of government because the represented self interest of the many will outweigh the interests of the few. Also, if you haven't noticed, dictatorships (even the well established monarchies) usually lead to violent transitions of
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The day the sovereign cancels a major piece of legislation is the last day the farce of the monarchy will be allowed to continue. The brits love their royals but if they were to actually interfere in politics outside of their back room advisory role they will be pushed aside by those with real power.
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The day the sovereign cancels a major piece of legislation is the last day the farce of the monarchy will be allowed to continue. The brits love their royals but if they were to actually interfere in politics outside of their back room advisory role they will be pushed aside by those with real power.
An extremely well-connected family worth literally trillions is more powerful, entrenched, and tougher to get rid of than you seem to think.
Though they probably also realize that it usually works better to operate behind the scenes and use that money and clout to "arrange" things, than to blatantly flaunt their power in the manner you describe. That's how political processes are frequently manipulated. As for the people themselves, propaganda and not in-your-face force has been the preferred tool of tyran
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loads'a bollocks
The royal family as a *whole* is worth a lowly $1 Billion USD. The monarchy itself is worth less than half of that.
Today, they mostly exist as a cultural icon that's popular with tourists & looks after a couple of old estates. Perhaps doing the occasional ambassadorial visit.
Since the enactment of parliament, they are expected to remain politically impartial. The next prince in line to the thrown has stood out recently, as he's caused a lot of controversies of late after it was discovered he had been wr
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The idea of freedom of speech is as, and perhaps is even more controversial today as it was when it was added to the Constitution.
Weird, isn't it? We've seen so many examples since then of why freedom of speech is important, and yet people still think it's a good idea to suppress others who say things they don't like. "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." [findlaw.com]
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Nonsense.
The reflexive self-loather is no more 'valid' than the reflexive patriot: both are blind.
The fact is - as usual - the reality is somewhere in the middle.
AT&T is not reputable (Score:3, Funny)
Since when is AT&T a reputable provider?
AT&T is only reputable if you include negative reputation.
Re:AT&T is not reputable (Score:4, Interesting)
Having worked with many telcos world wide, they all suck. The only thing I found 'good' about ATT was that they could organize dedicated circuits around the world if you wanted to bypass the internet. And I thought we were getting a nice deal, but now I see we were being steered into a special collection bucket that we have the privilege for paying for.
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Be hostile back ... (Score:1)
Sorry, but if the security apparatus of western democracies have lost the plot are are hostile to western democracies ... then it's time to pretty much realize that burning those assholes to the ground is the only real solution.
Nobody who works for these agents should be off limits. Doxxing, publishing their banking information.
It's time to hit back at the fascists before it's too late.
They can't pretend to be protecting our liberties by eroding them as bad as any totalitarian regime ever has.
This notion t
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I think the grandparent post is completely wrong. We need to fight this on 2 fronts: Technically with encryption *everywhere* (even dram contents -- a DMA controller / IO processor should *never* see plaintext), and politically -- advocating against the surveillance state, voting for politicians who reign it in where ever possible.
(In Canada, in my opinion, this means your obvious choice in the next election is the NDP. They took Alberta, they can take Ottawa.)
Breaking the "rules" as the grandparent post ad
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When one shares on a network it is with direct parties and security can be implemented to restrict who shares what with who. The problem is the NSA et. al. are third party leeches siphoning off the data, storing it, cataloging it, and exploiting it - and breaking any security in place to achieve this end.
That ain't sharing, champ.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder how many Zimbabweans wish they still lived Ian Smith's Rhodesia.
Re:Enough with the "democracy=freedom" tripe (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the worst governments in the modern age were ones built on being "for the people." Let's start judging governments based on what they do, not their structure.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried from time to time."
You're cherry-picking two cases of worst-case scenarios, one of which wasn't even really a democracy. (Stalin was appointed to power long before there were any "democratic" elections.) There have been plenty of monarchies that have done things just as bad.
That said, democracy is "least bad" when:
1: Everyone can vote
2: Everyone is educated
3: Most people _do_ vote
4: People feel like their vote actually matters
5: The government is responsive to the will of the voters
The sum combination of all those is that it is impossible to have a (successful) revolution (other than in the sense of voting out the current party) because in order to have enough people to violently overthrow the government, you'd already have enough people to vote someone else in.
Unfortunately many modern democracies screw up one or more of those. The US is screwing up almost all of them:
1: There continue to be many attempts to disenfranchise voters in many states through various means. Statistically the number of attempts at voter fraud are non-existent compared to the number of people whose legal votes are denied, but it makes better show to pretend otherwise.
2: The US tends to fail on both the systemic and systematic levels. As a society we're not providing enough support for the education system, and when it comes to elections allow ourselves to fall prey to the spectacle of network news soundbites and commercial advertising too easily, rather than really educating ourselves about the people and issues involved.
3: The US passes this one. Barely. On years with presidential elections. But barely passing on a technicality but only some of the time is rather damning with faint praise.
4 & 5: These two are rather tied up together, and contribute greatly to the issues with #3. A first past the goalposts election system almost inevitable leads to a two party system, in which the voters grudgingly and unenthusiastically vote for the (perceived) lesser of two evils and in which the winner feels only a vague sense of responsibility to those who elected them. (If you piss off your constituents what are they going to do? Vote for the greater evil instead of the lesser one? Not likely!)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Voter ID laws are based on the idea that voter fraud is rampant, when in reality it is extremely minor. They get away with it by passing out the myth that it is common and that it is being performed by people who are not like good upstanding Americans; ie, voter fraud is caused by immigrants, felons, people from the other party, etc. That is, scare the voters and they'll do what you want.
Voter ID laws are too close to examples of disenfranchisement in the past: literacy tests, poll taxes, etc. And these
Re:Enough with the "democracy=freedom" tripe (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
The actual paper if here:
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
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The US has officially been proven to be an oligarchy as described here
You know you're on the Internet when a single study counts as "official proof".
Now you just need someone to reply asking for confirmation, then a person to reply that it is confirmed, since they saw that the same study does in fact exist. (Needless to say, no involved parties have read the study.)
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Ask a Jew in 1940 if they missed the Kaiser, who was a strong monarch
In 1940, the Kaiser had been exiled from Germany for over 20 years.
Ask the average Russian pleb under Stalin if they'd not have given a small body part to be back under the Tsar.
Despite the propaganda you hear in the west, the average Russian pleb seemed to like Stalin. (The average Armenian or Ukrainian, maybe not.)
need moar encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep everybody safe. Encrypt everything!
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jung ur fnvq!
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Using the encryption and ciphers that the NSA helped build in the first place? You must have forgot the tags.
Lets recap....
The application level is compromised (windows, apple, 'nix)
the transport layer is compromised (ssl, bad ciphers, bad random number generators)
the data link layer is compromised (the physical network has been built to specifically allow the tracking they are doing)
The physical components are compromised (nsa intercepts cisco devices and even end user computers to pre-install malware)
So
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Mod parent up +10,000.
I'm not saying "don't encrypt." Don't make it easy for them. And make them have to tip their hand that you're compromised if they act on it.
But you will never find a technical solution to this problem. Mathematically, an unhackable computer is impossible, because no machine can calculate all of its valid operating states. To do so would be to solve the halting problem, which has been proven to be impossible. Practically, well, see the parent post. There are so many attack vectors. And
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Even the *cables* and patch cords can have bugs hidden in the connectors. Trust *nothing*. Encrypt everything -- I think outside sram caches on the CPU there should be no unencrypted data at all -- even dram contents should be encrypted.
Of course Key generation and distribution will be the soft underbelly for NSA, CSEC, GCHQ et al to feast on.
But as you point out, give yourself the "reasonable expectation of privacy" that encrypting everything will allow you to claim in court. Force them to tip their hand w
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Well, the people that build the Internet Protocols agree with you:
"Newly designed protocols should prefer encryption to cleartext operation. There may be exceptions to this default, but it is important to recognize that protocols do not operate in isolation. Information leaked by one protocol can be made part of a more substantial body of information by cross-correlation of traffic observation. There are protocols which may as a result require encryption on the Internet even when it would not be a require
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Keep everybody safe. Encrypt everything!
Yes and no. It's fairly trivial for ISPs to engage in MITM attacks against individuals. For instance, suppose I want to do some online banking. If they serve a false certificate to me as my bank's certificate, they'll be able to read every message during the encryption handshake process, allowing them to decrypt any subsequent encrypted messages we might send each other.
The only way that encryption works as an adequate defense against ISPs is if we have an out-of-band means for establishing trust in the fir
Of course it is (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are truly paranoid about security - or these days, at least overly aware of security issues - any network where you are not 100% in control of everything from source to destination and all spots in between should be considered as possibly hostile.
That said, how many people/groups/organizations/businesses really care about this?
We (Score:2)
even though this point was 'obvious' and well-known, we've always felt it more intellectually than in our hearts. Even knowing the worst was possible, we still chose to believe that direct peering connections and leased lines from reputable providers like AT&T would make us safe
Who on earth believed that peering connections and leased lines would make them safe, and why does this man keep using the word "we"?
Did anyone here think peering agreements and AT&T would keep them safe?
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Did anyone here think peering agreements and AT&T would keep them safe?
The only thing I am sure about regarding AT&T is that they will try to screw you at every opportunity.
The network itself isn't hostile. (Score:4, Interesting)
The network itself isn't hostile, but the overlords controlling the net may be. But even worse are the darker corners of the web where your personal information is for sale in bulk for a dollar or less per person - including CC numbers.
Of course we need to keep an eye on the watchers on the net, but we should at the same time not exclude them completely but instead feed them with information that keeps them busy and hopefully have them make the net less risky for ordinary people. Feed them info about IS recruiters, CC fraudsters and Nigerian Scammers and they will at least put less effort on other tasks.
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Did you know that the majority of Slashdot readers are the kind of isolated individuals with a high technical competence the kind of which are recruited by IS?
High technical competence? This place?
How the mighty have fallen....
The network was always hostile and always will be (Score:1)
Anyone who ever thought the network wasn't hostile or believed Gilmore's "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" was a drooling idiot. Who do you think owns the telecoms infrastructure? Do you think those giant telecom businesses have the slightest interest in ignoring or defying a warrant or subpoena on your behalf? To whatever extent they do, it's only because it costs them money to comply.
There never was any freedom on the Internet. Every core router, ever backbone, every fiber
Just to set TFA straight (Score:5, Insightful)
"...it's significant that today a large portion of the world's traffic flows through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies."
We call that hostile government the United States of America.
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its not just good ole' USA number one, that is like that, man. Every country, no exceptions. And the worst part, everyone would do the same, given position and budget that USA is giving them.
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Also France, Germany, UK, Finland, Sweden, USSR, Australia, etc. They all listen in, and often with more abandon and fewer restrictions than the US.
Blushing (Score:2)
Ceausescu [wikipedia.org] would blush with envy at what the NSA is capable of (and apparently doing).
IOI (Score:2)
The Network? (Score:3)
No shit (Score:2)
Some of us have been pointing this out since... well, at least since someone decided it would be a good idea to let sites you have no control over run code in your web browser.
If you care about security, every site on the network other than yours should be considered hostile. If you let the hipsters convince you that the network is a happy, fluffy land full of unicorns and bunnies, you deserve whatever you get.
about those core values... (Score:3)
I think what you need to understand is that some of the "core values of Western democracies" are unintentionally totalitarian and fascist in nature. People vote for politicians and policies that they think are good (save lives, help the poor, protect children, bring about world peace, increase equality, decrease racism, ...) but don't understand the ramifications of their choices, and usually those choices involve using government force and violations of individual liberties and civils rights against someone. After enough such votes, eventually, everybody is subject to such force and society has effectively turned totalitarian. The problem is worsened by the fact that the fraction of the population imposing their will often isn't even a majority; the "majority" of many votes in the us is less than 1/4 of the population, and under European parliamentary systems, it is often even smaller. One proposed answer to this is to leave government mostly to experts (Plato's "philosopher-king" and a hallmark of today's progressivism), but that doesn't work either, because those experts end up fallible and corrupt themselves.
This isn't an intrinsic fault of "democracies", it's just a fault of the kind of democracies we have, Western democracies, democracies that tend towards majoritarianism and place more and more power in the hands of government. There are many other possible forms of democracy (i.e., self-governance by the people, as opposed to, say, monarchy or theocracy) besides majoritarianism.
The WORLD is hostile (Score:2)
There are malicious creatures, people, and governments everywhere. Accidents happen. Life itself is a struggle for survival. Why would networks be any different?
Information wants to be free (Score:1)
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Slashdot censors "Hollerith?"