The NSA has a picture of you

[midgnostic]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

I wonder if the NSA could be persuaded to protect us from hackers:

With more and more activity confined to the internet, access to personal correspondence and browsing habits allows hackers intimate knowledge of their targets. Although the hacker’s action may be limited to just one of sabotage, misrepresentation, voyeurism, intimidation or larceny, the victim’s anticipation of the potential threat – conceivably all listed offences in combination – reinforces the violence of the act.

It can be assumed from the higher risk of detection and the higher risk of serious recriminations that burglars are motivated by a greater degree of necessity than hackers and so have less opportunity for moral choice, yet whereas in many places burglars can be lawfully subjected to lethal summary justice, hacking is often considered a petty offence or even a laudable one where the effect is comic or flattering to popular prejudice.

[Roknrol]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

I wonder if the NSA could be persuaded to protect us from hackers:

Right off the bat, I think this is a bad idea.

With more and more activity confined to the internet, access to personal correspondence and browsing habits allows hackers intimate knowledge of their targets. Although the hacker’s action may be limited to just one of sabotage, misrepresentation, voyeurism, intimidation or larceny, the victim’s anticipation of the potential threat – conceivably all listed offences in combination – reinforces the violence of the act.

We are as secure as we choose to be unless our job happens to be one which relies on us releasing our own personal data. If you want to protect yourself from hackers, keep strong passwords (do NOT change them frequently, but also do NOT write them down or give them to *anyone*, including people you trust), don't leave your computer on when you're not at it, encryption helps, and AFAIC the best weapon that we have against our information getting out is our right to choose what companies we want to do business with. Is it "inconvenient" for me to not use Facebook? Sometimes. But it's far less inconvenient than being stalked (as you point out). Why does my sister, 600 miles away, need to know that I'm on the bus?

I did get sucked into FB for quite some time...I didn't buy into the "they're selling your data" thing, at least, not on the level that I understand it now. Frankly, privacy is one of my biggest issues right now. None of the below "anger" or whatever is directed at you in the least - it is all reserved for those that actively strive for the current model, which is quite frankly, broken. Ish. Just enjoy the rant

The simple fact is that it IS possible for people to build secure websites that don't sell your information. It is possible to protect your site from 90% of the malicious hackers out there, just by following some basic guidelines - something that IT guys (myself included) were extremely lazy about fixing because...well...we're the only ones that understand it. Hell, PF is just as secure as Facebook, and I guarantee that the Admins aren't selling your data anywhere. The only real difference between here and there are the bells and whistles...but you know, if just one single company (or dozens) were to put together a package like that, and the sheeple were willing to make a change (good Gods, do you remember how much of a clusterfuck it was when people left MySpace? ), they would have all of the funding they need without advertising. People *do* donate money to help out. I know, I'm one of them. They could get a couple of specific sponsers to pay advertising even (which is the way that it works in most forms of media). The Internet decided to adopt the newsprint model, which essentially reduces the costs to advertise to almost nothing, the usefulness of the advertising at far less than that, and the annoyance factor several grades beyond what any normal person should be expected to tolerate. You know, the only profitable part of most daily newspapers is in their Sunday edition - the one with all of the ads. Unless you clip coupons, I'm willing to bet that that entire 3 lbs of paper goes straight into the trash. And that's the profitable part.

Meanwhile, in areas like television (pre-Tivo), online advertising has always had it's own draw. Hell, one of the biggest moneymakers in the US every year are the commercials played during the Superbowl. The market and the competition has led to better advertising, not worse. Look anywhere on the 'net and tell me the last time you were entertained by a non-television or non-radio commercial.

I am deviating far from our starting point - my point here, is that the model we're using now, the one that drives the costs down to nothing, absolutely kills sites like PF, where the Owners and the few kind volunteers donate time and money, outside of their real lives. It kills them because when sites like Facebook are getting billions of hits, your price per click drops to $0.000000001. Per click. You can't pay server costs with that.

But these models are pushed by the advertising agencies, the salesmen, the corporate executives and the shareholders of people who already have too much goddamned money. You know, the people we all "trust".

Now, this is all in regards to private hackers - they will still try to get your credit card information, but the simple solution to that is to not give your credit card information to people you don't trust. Do you know more credit card fraud is perpetrated per year with the physical card than is perpetrated through the internet? You're more at risk by going to McDonalds than you are going to eBay. Of course, there are "bad" sites out there too - but there are also "bad" stores.

But these "hackers", as a general rule, don't give a shit about you. Oh, yeah, they'll try to extort money by installing viruses - but those are blind attacks. Literally flinging poo and charging a removal fee. They aren't after YOU...they're after *anyone*. Those aren't the people you need to be worried about.

The people YOU should be worried about are the people that our Constitution is supposed to protect us from: The Government. Do you know why we have a place like Gitmo and why the NSA is allowed to copy every single bit of electronic communication you participate in? It's because we asked the United States Government to protect us from the terrorist threat. Their response to us asking for better defense of our borders (including internal - it was an interstate flight) is a gross violation of our privacy and at fundamental odds with the various oaths and promises that we hired them to keep.

Some of the best tools that we had to protect our privacy were strongarmed into literally opening holes in otherwise secure software so that the US Government could snoop. This is not bullshit. They may have intended it to be for spying on the Chinese, but they are using it to spy on everyone, including the people sworn to protect us.

No. I don't think that asking the Government to protect us is a good idea. I think telling the Government, firmly and without compromise, that our individual Rights trump their curiosity. If you are unable to protect us without violating the Constitution, then shut down the f'ing programs and refund my tax money. Or better yet, put it toward education, or Tort reform, or prison reform, or environmental reform, or christ, mortgage reform.

But then again, I'm a realist - which is why I've started pulling back from the Internet.

Google cannot track me specifically, because I anatomize my access whenever possible, etc etc etc. And I have withdrawn from all of those areas that I just don't feel like learning how to deal with - like Facebook. Having to go in and double check my security settings every week, with multiple options having changed, been removed, or added, and reset, and having them in three different places, and learning that this was all done intentionally, so that you'd screw it up. makes me want to gag. It's fucking disgusting money-grubbing. And it's dishonest. So I don't participate. Now, granted, I have the technical acumen and background to do a lot of it myself, and that helps considerably. I realize that most end users don't even know where to begin looking to even find out what they need to be concerned about. Everything sounds like fearmongerging - and it is. Some of us (myself included) feel like we're on the cusp of losing the last bit of what used to make this country Great. That has been sold to the highest bidder for something like 30 Trillion dollars of debt.

No, everything the Government does, they fuck up. In my opinion? I think we should learn how to live with each other, and dissolve as much of the Government as humanly possible. They have earned less power, not more, and that's what they should get.

- - - Updated - - -

BAM! Wall of text. Sorry....I ranted

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

I have a parrot, therefore very good use for my newspaper!

[midgnostic]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

BAM! Wall of text. Sorry....I ranted

Not at all. I will take some time to read it shortly

[Wonder]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

A great victory on privacy in Canada by a ruling of the Supreme Court: Internet providers no longer have the right to provide user indentities to authorities without a warrant.

For more on this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/in...ourt-1.2673823

[Roknrol]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

A small victory on privacy in Canada by a ruling of the Supreme Court: Internet providers no longer have the right to provide users indentities to authorities without a warrant.

For more on this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/in...ourt-1.2673823

Yeah, saw that on Slashdot yesterday...at least our northern Neighbors are retaining some of their privacy....of course, now the NSA has more people available for spying closer to home...

Just kidding...the NSA doesn't rely on ISPs (that's the cops and the Feds)...NSA copies all of their own traffic...Canadians are probably still screwed.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The NSA has a picture of you

Just kidding...the NSA doesn't rely on ISPs (that's the cops and the Feds)...NSA copies all of their own traffic...Canadians are probably still screwed.

Project Prism.