Weekly Edition
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Security quotes of the week
This whole issue of privacy is utterly fascinating to me. Who's ever heard
of this information being misused by the government? In what way?
— Larry
Ellison as quoted in The Register
You, an executive in one of those companies, can fight. You'll probably
lose, but you need to take the stand. And you might win. It's time we
called the government's actions what it really is:
commandeering. Commandeering is a practice we're used to in wartime, where
commercial ships are taken for military use, or production lines are
converted to military production. But now it's happening in peacetime. Vast
swaths of the Internet are being commandeered to support this surveillance
state.
— Bruce
Schneier has advice for internet company executives
This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without
congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_
recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with
physical ties to the United States.
— Ladar Levison shuts down the Lavabit
email service
Today, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system lest
they "be complicit in crimes against the American people." We see the
writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down
Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security
letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting
now.
— Silent
Circle shuts down its email service(Log in to post comments)
Commandeering Posted Aug 15, 2013 10:50 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
Sounds about like this:
"...has combined with people others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."
It was a reason to start a war in 1776..
Commandeering Posted Aug 15, 2013 11:11 UTC (Thu) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link] I do not see which of the above quotes you are comparing to Indictment from the United States' Declaration of Independence nor do I see the analogy. Are you proposing the internet should become independent?
Commandeering Posted Aug 15, 2013 11:30 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] Seegras has used the Subject field of the comment entry form for its obvious purpose; only one of the quotes contains the single word used as the title of this comment thread.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 15, 2013 13:19 UTC (Thu) by jimbo (subscriber, #6689) [Link] Does any one else think that Mr Ellison's comments on jimbo
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 15, 2013 13:50 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Does any one else think that Mr Ellison's comments on notional national security were not intended to be taken entirely seriously?
I think his comments are fairly honest. At least in so much that he supports the NSA spying on the people it claims to be protecting. I suspect he feels this way because of the huge amount of money he is making from it.
It now seems fairly obvious what type of database technology the NSA is using to contain and/or query those terabytes/petabytes of information.
As far as 'government misusing information' it is pretty easy to understand how that happens. Everything from blackmail, destroying client/lawyer/doctor privileges, manipulation of markets, corporate espionage to covering up other crimes, stalking, harassment, etc etc. The CIA especially has a long history of interfering with domestic elections and blackmailing politicians and judges for the interests of themselves and the current executive branch. On top of the illegal activity they carried out in the USA there is the specter of foreign election manipulations, astro-turf style activism, and just plain blackmail and corporate espionage carried out for the benefit of large corporate interests. I expect that people are using the NSA for the same purposes.
The only 'protection' that USA citizens currently enjoy is if information can be proven to be obtained illegally then it can't be used as evidence in court. Besides that there is almost no restraint on criminal government activity.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 15, 2013 20:11 UTC (Thu) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link]
Plus, of course, you'd probably feel a lot less threatened if you could afford to hire every lawyer in the country, should the government step out of line.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 22, 2013 11:19 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
Plus, if he hires every lawyer in the country, and the government decides to kill all lawyers, it's a win-win :-D
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 28, 2013 14:34 UTC (Wed) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
Yay! Then no-one'll be able to hire a lawyer, and there'll be no legal restraint on executive overreach at all, no chance of challenging NS letters (or anything else) in court as the Internet Archive did, no rule of law at all! Woo! Win-win!
...Jokingly hating on lawyers is all fun and games till the FBI comes a-knocking. Rights you can't sue for are rights that don't exist.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 16, 2013 14:44 UTC (Fri) by Rudd-O (subscriber, #61155) [Link]
He's just corrupt, rolling in the dough he makes from government looting of us peasants. That's why he lies to us (and probably to himself too). Not rocket science.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 22, 2013 6:56 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
He does make a good point. It is well known that the government gathers a lot of information. But there are fewer examples of its misuse. Usually, the the only part of government which uses it is law enforcement and security. These are concerned with preventing and prosecuting violations of the law, which we accept is their legitimate function. As long as defendants get a fair trial, so that rights such as freedom from unreasonable search are upheld, you may argue that surveillance information is not being 'misused'.
It would be another matter if wiretapped communications were passed on to non-security branches of the government and from there to well-connected individuals, to help businesses copy their competitors' designs for example. This is alleged to happen in China. I don't think it has been shown to currently happen in the USA.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 22, 2013 10:51 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] It is fairly safe to assume that the NSA (among other three-letter-agencies) engages in industrial espionage in Europe on behalf of US manufacturers. Boeing vs. Airbus comes to mind. This was explicitly confirmed by former CIA director James Woolsey in 2000. Woolsey justified this by saying that the Europeans habitually bribe their customers into buying their stuff, which is more expensive and technically inferior to US stuff, so the US must spy on the Europeans to negate that kind of unfair tactics. Of course one could claim that that was long ago and that today the NSA no longer stoops to that sort of thing. But on the other hand, why shouldn't they? All that expensive equipment must be used for something, and actual bona-fide foreign terrorists are a lot thinner on the ground than one would think.
Security quotes of the week Posted Aug 23, 2013 7:38 UTC (Fri) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]
> It is well known that the government gathers a lot of information. But there are fewer examples of its misuse.
The thing is: data gathered now can be misused later: during the second world war the French security services's files where used to find jews..
To go back to the US, think about Prism and a new McCarthyism.
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