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Groklaw shutting down, again
Groklaw founder Pamela Jones has announced
that the site is shutting down in response to pervasive Internet
surveillance. "What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks
trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is
no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly
sad. But it's good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how
good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to
one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the
standpont of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an
atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this." (Groklaw's
previous
shutdown was in 2011).
(Log in to post comments)
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:21 UTC (Tue) by wazoox (subscriber, #69624) [Link]
The explanation seems bizarre."can't work without email, therefore I stop". Huh? What about GPG? Aren't you ready yet to sacrifice some ease of use for privacy?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:29 UTC (Tue) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]
Doesn't matter if you use GPG. Pamela is an American citizen and thus the authorities can force her into giving them all mails in plain text and then also not be allowed to tell any one that it have happened.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:36 UTC (Tue) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
I guess it depends on the judge, but there is legal precedence saying you have a constitutional right (the 5th ammendment) to not decrypt your drives:
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-upholds-...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 14:03 UTC (Tue) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
At least the U.S. border control is not bound to this, they can detain you until you decrypt your drives.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:21 UTC (Tue) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
The US constitution only applies to US citizen. That's why the border control can do stuff like that (to non Americans).
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 17:21 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
that would be the wrong interpretation.
As a US citizen, when entering back into the country, I can be asked to decrypt my laptop and any data drives for inspection. If I do not comply then my laptop maybe taken from me for analysis off-site and returned to me some time later.
https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-...
-jef
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 18:01 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]
> returned to me some time later
shortly after the heat death of the universe ... surely you can wait that long, can't you? :)
jake
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 18:08 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Meh... i dont travel internationally with personal equipment. If the state government property laptop gets taken, meh. I'll let my congressmen know and just wait down at the curling club until I get it back.
-jef
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 18:11 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
More seriously,
I actually want to see other countries start doing this to US citizens at their border very very frequently. The US government might not see themselves as a problem to US business interests when requiring business travels to decrypt their corporate drives.... But if other countries did this to US business travels coming into their country... that would be an entirely different spin on things. The US would not be happy at all if economic competitors were dipping into US business interest encrypted data, potentially gaining economic advantage.
-jef
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 15:43 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]
I think Russia does it (or at least in can do it with the existing laws). I don't see any positive effects.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 10:03 UTC (Thu) by andrey.turkin (subscriber, #89915) [Link]
I don't think this is true. There is (or was recently) some bizarre law against importing any devices what do cryptography into Russia (device has to be certified by FAPSI in order to be imported - and I guess most laptops and mobile phones sold in Russia are certified); however I'm not sure that applies to personal items, and I really don't think anybody can compel you to decrypt your already encrypted files. There were some cases when someone's computers or hard drives were seized on "suspicion of copyright infringement" but (at least some of) those were overturned by courts and property was given back to their owners.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 12:18 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] However strict Russia's laws may be, their full power is reduced because they rarely are fully enforced. We are talking not about legal papers, but about actual deeds.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 16:30 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
"rarely enforced laws" are a VERY VERY dangerous thing. You make an enemy in position to enforce it and next thing you know you are on jail, ultimately because you undercut a powerful asshole in traffic.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 17:24 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] And how is it any different from situation in a "free", "law enforcing" countries? I've never seen a case where people were sent in jail because they have undercut someone in traffic - not in Russia and not in any other country - and if someone needs to be sent in jail because of stronger offence, it easy enough to do in any country. If "free" ones usually either prostitutes or maids are used, but end result is essentially the same. Usually you can avoid actual jail sentence if you'll decide that you don't want to actually oppose a powerful asshole (or assholes) and do what "the right" thing.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 19:15 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
I know at least one case where a guy had a traffic discussion with a police chief and ended up in jail for having some pirated DVDs in his home. Bogus charges + all the city police looking the other way + no money for lawyers or bail = 6 months inside.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 2, 2013 9:07 UTC (Mon) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] … which is exactly the problem. In a proper legal system, there should not be a way for any "powerful asshole" to get someone sent to jail.Legal harrassment cannot be avoided, but again, in a proper legal system, the accuser ends up paying the defendant's legal expenses. Which serves as a mostly-working deterrent against powerful assholes.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 19:08 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> actually want to see other countries start doing this to US citizens
Why do worse when one can help do better?
Just follow Edward, there's some actual freedom left here between balalaikas and bears sipping vodka. :-) Disclosures are not strictly required I think.
I don't want to see Russia recruiting and arming insane fanatics to send them fight USA like USA did to Russia (back in Chechnya), Lybia (recently) and Syria (right now).
US Constitution applicability Posted Aug 20, 2013 18:21 UTC (Tue) by dfsmith (guest, #20302) [Link]
I'd like to clarify your wording there.
The US Constitution (as I read it) applies to US "persons", not just "citizens".
The Bill of Rights doesn't even mention the word citizen. The Articles do, but those mostly apply to government.
What you might be thinking of is the border zone: here's some (admittedly biased) information.
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/fact-sheet-us-...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 19:45 UTC (Tue) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] The US constitution only applies to US citizen.Hmm, not quite. It applies to people living in the US, even if they are not US citizens. For border control, that is technically happening before a person is allowed to enter the country (applies to all countries.)
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 20:16 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]
There is no more reason to think that the US Constitution only applies within the confines of the United States than there is to think it only applies to US citizens. It governs the powers conferred on US government representatives regardless of where they happen to be or whom they interact with.
Or, put another way, if they aren't subject to the restrictions the Constitution imposes, neither do they have any of the authority they would normally derive from it, which places you on equal footing. Without the Constitution, you're both just regular individuals. Anything they have the right to do, you have the right to do (and vice-versa). You have just as much right to detain _them_ as they have to detain you.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 7:01 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
but they have guns and you don't. At the US border control, is they say jump you better comply. Little choice...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 23:51 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] It applies to people living in the US, even if they are not US citizens. To put a finer point on it, it (and all US law) applies to persons in the US, i.e. on US soil. Even someone visiting for five minutes. Even someone with no legal right to be on US soil. For border control, that is technically happening before a person is allowed to enter the countryI don't think that's what makes the difference. Border control by US agents happens on US soil. All the rights of persons under US law apply to people being questioned by US border police. I know those rights are construed in pro-government ways with respect to border crossing processes, but it's because of the process, not because of the person.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 2, 2013 9:12 UTC (Mon) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
> Border control by US agents happens on US soil
Technically, maybe. In actual practice, not so much.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 2, 2013 23:37 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Border control by US agents happens on US soilTechnically, maybe. In actual practice, not so much. "Unreasonable search and seizure", anybody? I can't tell what your point is. Did you maybe quote the wrong part of the post? Are you claiming that in actual practice border control agents do their thing in other countries than the US? If you just meant that it doesn't matter that they're in the US because they don't abide by US law, then I get that. That's a common opinion, though you should clarify which of two versions you're talking about: 1) individual agents ignore the law and don't get caught; and 2) the US Supreme Court misinterprets the law as permitting those searches and seizures on US soil.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 3, 2013 9:53 UTC (Tue) by etienne (subscriber, #25256) [Link]
> 1) individual agents ignore the law and don't get caught; and
> 2) the US Supreme Court misinterprets the law as permitting those searches and seizures on US soil.
3) You, as a foreigner (nowadays assumed terrorist until proven guilty), do not have access to the law of that soil.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 20:19 UTC (Tue) by juhl (subscriber, #33245) [Link]
And you actually believe that anyone would actually uphold this???
To me that seems naive in the extreme.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:31 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]
The body of the email is private but I guess people are worried about the metadata.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:34 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Why does she not turn to Tor? It seems the only way to _really_ preserve online intimacy (contents) and anonymity (metadata) these days...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:39 UTC (Tue) by compenguy (subscriber, #25359) [Link]
I thought it was widely accepted that the NSA has Tor pretty heavily monitored as well, probably owning a large number of exit nodes, and having propagated browser hacks to monitor the activities of Tor users.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:45 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Darn. Should we go back to sealing letters and sending them using carrier pigeons then?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:09 UTC (Tue) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link] The post office logs everything too.
USPS monitors messages, too Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:14 UTC (Tue) by bkw1a (subscriber, #4101) [Link]
Possibly carrier pigeons would work, but not the US Postal Service:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57592319/report-posta...
"...Postal Service computers take pictures of the exterior of every piece of mail that passes through the system."
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:45 UTC (Tue) by torquay (guest, #92428) [Link] Because it's almost certain that the friendly folks at NSA are running Tor exit nodes? I'm not quite sure I understand Pamela's reasoning for shutting down in the first place. It's not like they're discussing terrorism, overthrowing governments, piracy or child p*rn. The best NSA would get is a bunch of interested and passionate people discussing the multitude of malpractices of Microsoft, SCO, and various patent trolls. Hardly stuff that would get you sent to jail or get a gag order for.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:47 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
I think it's not about her site, but really about her privacy. This said, she kept her e-mail addresses. Sounded like she was giving up on all 'electronic' communication at the beginning of the article... Dunno...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:11 UTC (Tue) by Homer512 (subscriber, #85295) [Link]
> This said, she kept her e-mail addresses. Sounded like she was giving up
> on all 'electronic' communication at the beginning of the article... > Dunno...
As I understand it, she becomes a passive Internet user. Not involved in any communication unless absolutely required or initiated by others.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 0:39 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It's both about her site and about her privacy. Have you actually read the link? Groklaw was build around the idea that there is rule of law in the US. My hope was always to show you that there is beauty and safety in the rule of law, that civilization actually depends on it. Pamela discovered for herself the inconvenient truth: US is not different from other countries - and law is a tool used by people in power to shepherd common folks. For real powerful people law is some guidance, nothing more. It can be bent, it can be ignored or rewritten if it's really needed. It's just a tool, nothing more. This is just fact of life, I don't see why it's such a "discovery" for PJ, but apparently it makes the whole endeavor pointless: if there are no beauty and safety in the rule of law, if law can be bent and broken by some people and it's impossible to do anything against that then what's the point of Groklaw? But there are another side to the question: if US is de-facto as totalitarian as North Korea (in reality it's, of course, is less totalitarian, but the difference is quantitative rather than qualitative) then how to live in this country? Thus new mail which tries to somehow make life more tolerable. And this change requires withdrawal from the Internet: if you can not trust anyone then this makes Internet as we know it pretty useless. I don't really see why it impacted PJ so much: most sane people assumed that this is exactly how the world works. I mean: how can it be otherwise? Spooks are supposed to illegally observe people - and if they can and do observe them in foreign countries where large anti-spying agencies work then what hope is there that they don't do the same in the US where government don't really have an incentive to fight them? Of course they collect information about everyone "suspicious". That's how such agencies work everywhere - but US was supposed to be different! This is the severe shock. Like the fist time child accepts the fact that Santa-Claus is not real. It just surprises me that seemingly intelligent people like PJ could have lived for so long with this naive belief that they live in country with where rule of law is somehow absolute.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 19:18 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
A friend of mine works on Linux deployments in North Korea, not sure if he would support your opinion on "US less totalitarian".
You're being told that there's a "dictator" in Syria or NK or Russia or whatever, you're *not* being told about many decades of Saudi family with no choice or FRS with, as JFK found out, no other practical choice left for fellow Americans or any kind of non-puppet government. At least not until people realise whom they pay interest for nothing.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 6:40 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
Arguing that the US is not less totalitarian then North Korea is a good way to get anything else you say ignored.
One test for totalitarian states is if they're trying to stop their citizens from leaving. You want to leave the US, go ahead. A plane ticket from New York to Pyongyang will run you about $1000. Can North Koreans save up and make the opposite trip? How about the flight from Pyongyang to Seoul? If North Korea isn't a totalitarian state, that should be as easy as NYC to Toronto.
Even with the most dystopic spin, I have a hard time buying the US being totalitarian. A totalitarian state requires a ruler; the US had 535 congresspeople, one president and nine Supreme Court justices; each group enjoys screwing up the two groups, and only the presidency is internally unified. Say whatever you want about elections, I have a hard time believing that there aren't two real groups battling it out there. I'll buy (in a conspiratorial mindset) that they're frequently rigged, but not that one group gets to rig them everytime. Judge the US government however you will, but unity is not exactly one of its features.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 9:17 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> Arguing that the US is not less totalitarian then North Korea
> is a good way to get anything else you say ignored. I know that but hope that at least some will get the message. I don't care about being politically correct or "being nice" as in trying to please anyone to get their attention.
> One test for totalitarian states
> is if they're trying to stop their citizens from leaving.
> A totalitarian state requires a ruler; the US had 535 congresspeople,
Heck, you cannot even choose to have your own currency -- not the one you borrow from the private gang named FRS but the state one as in Executive Order #11110. And it's a real trouble, wish you could overcome that.
> but not that one group gets to rig them everytime
We've seen that very crap here in Ukraine since so called "orange revolution": two presidents who ought to act quite differently but do basically the same, two parliaments which... don't actually differ as well. And the forces pressing them *against* Ukrainian people seem to be pretty consistent in what they do over the years.
> unity is not exactly one of its features
If any of the parties takes the Snowden opportunity to blame their "opponents" and dismantle the surveillance system for real, you're right. But it will survive unfortunately.
My point is not to make you think the way I do. It is to help you start noticing simple things they haven't told you about that are observable immediately and do not require trust in me or anyone for you to see.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 9:49 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
I think you're playing the devil's advocate here. Our states (US, EU, Australia, NZ, ...) are *not* totalitarian and you know it. They like to spy on people, like all states do, for security reasons. They just go a bit too far sometimes.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 11:24 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
It's kind of funny, presuming the commentator you're replying to wasn't playing advocate. You're essentially arguing against someone who lives in a somewhat totalitarian state, who may well have grown up when it was part of the USSR, that they are less able to discriminate between genuine totalitarian states and non-totalitarian states that "just like to spy for security reasons", than you (from one of those states you say is not/less totalitarian).
Personally, I find it hard to draw a line on the spectrum of state over-reach to say exactly where a state becomes totalitarianism starts. However, I do find it interesting when people who *have* lived under oppressive, communist/east-bloc regimes are raising concerns about what is happening in the West. Who knows, they might have knowledge borne from experience that we, who grew up in western democracies, do not.
I do find total surveillance unnerving. I can see quite a few examples from history where powers were granted, or data collected, that seemed not too bad initially, but ended up enabling abuse and terrible consequences for some. Even apparently benign things like keeping non-anonymous, central census records with details of ethnicity or religion have enabled the efficient rounding up and mass killing of some groups (Jews for one).
We should build our society's systems so they are not just safe in trusted hands, but safe in the hands of a future evil regime or invader.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 11:55 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
If you show someone who has only seen plastic plants a picture, they may be confident that it's a plastic plant. If you show it to someone who has never seen a plastic plant, they may be confident that it's a living plant. I don't think you can presume that either of this is right.
Starting to complain about the Federal Reserve System, especially in this context, is full conspiracy mode, and I think his arguments take away from the serious arguments about the issue. If I'm arguing against pervasive surveillance, I don't want the guy arguing against the FRS and "they" standing beside me.
I don't know that Hitler is really apropos. Krystalnacht happened without access to that data, and I suspect that Hitler would have killed as many people for being Jews, even if he was less reliable at telling Jew from non-Jew.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 12:10 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The census data comment was a reference to the Netherlands. The Netherlands kept meticulous, detailed municipal records on all residents, including on their religion. This is believed to be a factor in why Jews in the Netherlands had exceptionally low survival rates in War World II, compared to Belgium and France (27% in NL, vs 60% and 75%).
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 12:11 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
(Oh, collaboration is the other factor).
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 23, 2013 12:42 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Weird how, at first sight, this thread could be seen as off-topic. I think the saddest thing is it's not. I had this debate a few years back with UK colleagues who found it fine for the government to know where you were at all times as they had 'nothing to hide'. Difficult to make them understand that Hitler was democratically elected.
I have to say that being now in France, I am quite concerned about the rise of some right wing party which claims a mix of nationalism and socialism (put that in German and you'll see what I mean). What if *they* had access to my e-mails, web history, contacts...
I have been thinking for a while that there should be some parallel underground internet emerging at some point, maybe via mesh networking or something. Maybe it's time we seriously think about it?
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 23, 2013 13:34 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Difficult to make them understand that Hitler was democratically elected. No he wasn't. Hitler was installed as Reich chancellor by Hindenburg (the Reich president). The NSDAP (Nazi party) did have considerable popular support – it was the strongest party in the 1932 elections at 30-odd percent of the vote, although between the July and November elections in that year the percentage actually dropped by 5 points or so. However, contrary to the popular misconception, Hitler never actually managed to form a government through a proper parliamentary majority after a democratic election.
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 23, 2013 13:38 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
I stand corrected. Thanks!
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 29, 2013 5:42 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]
The Ermächtigungsgesetz (entitlement act) giving the NSDAP constitution-transgressing powers was passed by a majority.
Sort of like the PATRIOT act.
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 29, 2013 6:29 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Not quite. At least I'm not aware that in Congress, those people opposed to the PATRIOT Act were massively bullied, threatened, arrested, and/or basically shut out of the Capitol when the vote was up – like many German lawmakers had been when the German Reichstag voted on the Empowerment Act in March, 1933. The NSDAP needed a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag to pass the Act, which they didn't have (they did have an absolute majority together with the DNVP after the – rigged – election of 5 March 1933 but that didn't suffice). They could only achieve a quorum for the vote in the first place by changing the rules such that, among others, the Communist representatives they had detained earlier (under the unfounded suspicion that they had burned down the Reichstag building) were counted as »present« for the purposes of establishing the quorum although, being in jail, they were not in fact physically there for the vote. Other representatives had received massive threats to their physical safety and that of their families, and when the vote was going down there were armed and uniformed members of the SA and SS present to make sure everything was going the way Hitler &c wanted. The PATRIOT Act, on the other hand, commanded wide bipartisan support in Congress without the necessity of undemocratic and thuggish tactics to get it passed at all. It is also not as blatantly unconstitutional as the German Empowerment Act of 1933 was at the time. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Sep 7, 2013 21:42 UTC (Sat) by allan (guest, #75435) [Link]
cool.
so in the US "democracy", you don't even need to threaten representatives to get them to pass ("not as blatantly", but still) unconstitutional laws.
Maybe it's time we start rebelling now Posted Aug 23, 2013 17:09 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] What if *they* had access to my e-mails, web history, contacts... s/What/When/. After collapse of EU economy and effective dissolution of EU these parties will inevitably be elected and they will try to use your e-mail, web history, contacts to find out who'll be conventional scapegoat.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 13:27 UTC (Fri) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link] Today, as far as I know, the Netherlands does not record religion of its citizens, but still Germany does. In Germany, religious organizations can choose to, and mostly do, let the government collect substantial church tax on their behalf. This is about 9% of income tax. If you are not registered as being part of a religious organization, no such taxes are raised. Some religious communities choose to collect these taxes themselves, but still receive the income tax numbers of their members from the government. In the nazi regime, the registration of religion in the tax records was kept, but the collection of church taxes was eventually abolished. It was reinstated after the war.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 11:38 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
It's not about being politically correct or nice. It's about being correct and proportional. When you oppose something and refuse to recognize that things can actually be worse then it, you hurt your case.
The essence of the test is that a nation that feels it has the need to close its borders is one that people feel they want to leave; and that if that nation does prevent its people from leaving, that's a huge limitation on the liberty of its people.
Another is total surveillance, which is a lot more common in North Korea then the US. In fact, I understand it's more in common in a lot of the world then in the US; there's one surveillance camera in the UK for each 15 citizens.
Do I elect neoconservatives? No, but I know people who do, and have no reason to believe that they didn't make their way into office by appealing to what the voters wanted.
Stop the war in Afghanistan? The US is currently reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan. We feel obliged not to provoke chaos by suddenly removing our presence from the area.
Stop the Syrian Civil War? It's called a civil war because it's a war between Syrians. I don't know what exactly the US should do here, but it can't just stop the war short of nuking Syria to the bedrock, which I hope you weren't suggesting.
Which is another way of arguing that will get you ignored. If your listeners feel that no matter what the target of your complaint did, you would be complaining, they'll stop listening. I believe that no matter how the US responded to the Syrian Civil War, you would be complaining about it.
I've looked at what they do. The fact that they don't do exactly what you want them to do doesn't prove anything. In this case, both parties seem equally split on the issues; groups that oppose the president on everything like these programs, and groups that have stood by the president have opposed it. Certainly there are very real issues that show their differences in other subjects.
Here's something simple they forgot to tell you; the more you tear down, the more you must be prepared to build on rubble. If democracy in the modern world is a sham, then you have no evidence that democracy works at all in the modern world. If you can not provide an example of a working democracy, then we don't know that one can exist.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 12:58 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] Another is total surveillance, which is a lot more common in North Korea then the US.What do you base this on exactly? I don't know, but I think you could as easily argue the opposite could be true. Life generally in North Korea is technologically stuck in the pre-digital age. It's much harder to monitor non-digital interaction, and in North Korea, by necessity, most communication/interaction will be such. Total surveillance in those circumstances requires a tremendous amount of people power. Even the Staßi, with near half the adult population of the DDR acting as informants on the rest, couldn't have achieved total surveillance. The surveillance in North Korea apparently is not enough to prevent substantial black market trade and people smuggling along North Korea's northern border with China at least. A technologically sophisticated society where digital interaction is significant will be easier to monitor, as it is just so much easier to efficiently capture and process that data. Indeed, it is quite feasible to capture and sift *100%* of all that interaction. I guess the question is to what degree does unobtrusive surveillance of 100% of digital interaction comprise total surveillance of all interaction, and how does it compare to the more visible, pre-digital kind of total surveillance societies? Note, the chilling, oppressive effect due to the *use* of that information is another question. A surveillance system could be more total than another, but not create a feeling of oppression if it used only sparingly. While the less comprehensive system of surveillance could still enable a more oppressive state.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 8:25 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
I'm pretty sure that it's to protect her sources. She has reported about very wealthy and influent corporations, who would not hesitate to lean on their partners to get the people who provide Groklaw tips laid off if they could identify them.
Serious journalism (not parroting of press releases) requires some secure mean for sources to contact journalists.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 15:48 UTC (Tue) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
> I'm not quite sure I understand Pamela's reasoning for shutting down in the first place. It's not like they're discussing terrorism, overthrowing governments, piracy or child p*rn.
The classic "If she has nothing to hide, why would she care?" argument. Completely bogus.
Actually, she addresses that pretty well in her article. She very clearly explains how "privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance", and how that prevents her from running the site.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:22 UTC (Tue) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]
> The classic "If she has nothing to hide, why would she care?" argument. Completely bogus.
It's bogus if generalized, as with all generalizations. But there are cases when it's not bogus at all. Open source is based on the idea that you have nothing to hide in the source, thus you don't care (and reap the benefits).
This is groklaw, not Wikileaks. The day some whistleblower wants to talk to pj, having good means for private communication will be a problem. But for day to day operation I don't see what makes groklaw different from Wikimedia projects (e.g. Wikisource) which are run almost entirely in the clear via wiki software. Or from any open source project that uses mailing list for 99% of the work and phone or face-to-face meetings for the remaining 1%.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 17:07 UTC (Tue) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
> > The classic "If she has nothing to hide, why would she care?" argument. Completely bogus.
> It's bogus if generalized, as with all generalizations. But there are cases when it's not bogus at all. Open source is based on the idea that you have nothing to hide in the source, thus you don't care (and reap the benefits).
No, using that argument with regards to Groklaw and surveillance is completely bogus. This is not a generalization, it is a specific situation we are talking about. There is a HUGE difference between:
(1) The government _will_ invade my privacy. Since I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't care.
(2) I have nothing to hide in my source code, so I _choose_ to release it as open source.
> This is groklaw, not Wikileaks. The day some whistleblower wants to talk to pj, having good means for private communication will be a problem. But for day to day operation I don't see what makes groklaw different from Wikimedia projects (e.g. Wikisource) which are run almost entirely in the clear via wiki software. Or from any open source project that uses mailing list for 99% of the work and phone or face-to-face meetings for the remaining 1%.
Those projects chose to eschew privacy. Groklaw did not. Do you really not see how those two situations are different?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 20:29 UTC (Tue) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]
> Those projects chose to eschew privacy. Groklaw did not. Do you really not see how those two situations are different?
In fact, I don't see why Groklaw needs privacy. I don't see what part of Groklaw could not be done on a public mailing list or wiki. Is it that people can stalk the discussions and associate nicknames to faces who will be attending a trial to take notes for Groklaw? Fine, that's something that Groklaw volunteers will have to take into account. They probably already have to anyway. There may be certain issues that may need privacy, but pj can handle those via telephone calls.
FWIW, I do see why Wikileaks needs privacy, just not Groklaw.
I also can see why pj wants privacy for herself, but that's a different thing.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 22:10 UTC (Tue) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link]
Indeed. I hope groklaw continues in some form or manner. It seems there is a community there that hopefully will want to keep collaborating, analysing and making themselves heard. I'm convinced it is a very important voice.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 17:22 UTC (Sun) by klbrun (subscriber, #45083) [Link]
In Silicon Valley it has been taken for granted that the NSA listens to all telephone calls. Say certain words and recorders are turned on. Of course this evidence will be classified. Telephones won't give PJ privacy if the government decides to target her.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 17:54 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yeah.
I like telling jokes in Russian (liberally sprinkling them with words similar to 'terrorist') while I'm waiting for a party to pick up a phone or when someone puts me on hold. One my friend also used to say "terrorist alert" and then switch to Russian when we were speaking over the phone (she stopped doing it after the Boston bombings).
I hope we made some NSA spook's day. Kinda like: http://xkcd.com/525/
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 19:51 UTC (Tue) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] As Ken White over at Popehat said it: http://www.popehat.com/2013/08/20/faced-with-the-security-state-groklaw-opts-out/" I don't trust my government, I don't trust the people who work for my government, and I believe that the evidence suggests that it's irrational to offer such trust."
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 21:01 UTC (Tue) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]
Sure. I understand that for personal communication.
I don't understand what part of running Groklaw requires private communication, and thus requires placing such trust. Maybe I'm dense.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 1:01 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Probably. You are looking in the wrong place. This not about Groklaw. This is about PJ. The whole idea of Groklaw was that there is beauty and safety in the rule of law, that law is what keeps world going. To find out that for government law is just a tool, circumvented and/or changed on "as needed" basis and that you could do nothing against this idea... this was a shock large enough to stop doing Groklaw. This “revelation” (in quotes because I could not fathom that PJ actually believed that government is bound by the same principle as common folks) apparently made Groklaw pointless... and it also raised question: how to live in this world where law is not absolute, where people change and bend it when they perceive it's needed and where there absolutely no protection against such changes. Thus Kolab choice. P.S. It's really funny because PJ did more-or-less the same thing a lot of guys from China, Iran, Russia are doing when they switch from mail.ru or qq.com to gmail.com: they assume their mail will be read by government in all circumstances, but since they don't trust their own government they pick some other government which, they hope, will not cooperate unless they'll become someone notorious enough to warrant worldwide apprehension.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 6:23 UTC (Wed) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]
Now this makes sense. I understood it's about PJ, but this also gives a connection to the idea behind Groklaw. Thanks!
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 19:24 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> The whole idea of Groklaw was that there is beauty and safety
> in the rule of law, that law is what keeps world going. It's still correct but not for our artificial "laws"... as has always been.
Рад Вас читать, Виктор.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 19:41 UTC (Wed) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]
Ignoring the tradition of attorney/client privilege for the moment, and the way Glenn Greenwald's partner recently got detained for 9 hours without a lawyer in the UK because he made the mistake of transferring planes at heathrow airport, PJ has personally received numerous death threats from people related to SCO. She kind of doesn't want her home address posted as a punitive measure for pissing off some middle manager at an outsourced surveilance subcontractor.
Rob
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:51 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
These are all technical solutions to a social problem.
It's like how (as she wrote) her flat was broken into. Sure you can continue to live there, barricade the windows and triple-lock the door, but the feeling of being threatened will persist. Besides, this does not fix the problem – the next burglar might just decide to wait up for her and wave a large knife, or worse, in the direction of her throat.
Likewise, on the Internet, somebody could install a keylogger in her computer. Or mount yet another MitM attack – we know there are rogue CAs in that large list, we just don't know which. Or save all her traffic and analyze the hell out of the metadata.
The problem is social. The problem is that the government (yours, mine …) has convinced itself that it is OK to watch whatever you do, and the stressful feeling of being watched by Big Brother will not go away just because you're using tormail. If anything, that feeling will get worse because you're reminded of it every time you do.
No technical solution will solve that fundamental problem.
Besides, how many people who only surf via TOR will it take to make that service completely unuseable?
Go to Congress, or however your parliament is named. Shout at them to rescind the FISA's and NSA's and whoever-else's authorization to spy on anybody without VERY good well-documented reason. Flood them with lawsuits for taking away your rights. Do whatever it takes.
But don't tell Pamela to use TOR.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 14:02 UTC (Tue) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
> No technical solution will solve that fundamental problem.
Absolutely. Fascist regimes are a political (or in extreme cases, such as Germany 1939, a military) problem.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 14:14 UTC (Tue) by dlthomas (guest, #89935) [Link]
I only partly disagree. We should be doing everything you say, and more, on the social side, but I think we should explore technical measures as well. If nothing else, the NSA spying on onion-routed encrypted traffic is much more clearly stepping on my reasonable expectation of privacy.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 15:30 UTC (Tue) by torquay (guest, #92428) [Link] Any text written (such as an email) is automatically subject to copyright, which has international legality. Perhaps the EFF and/or ACLU can (perversely) explore with serving DMCA notices to the NSA, for engaging in services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works. This applies to all emails, whether they're from US citizens or not.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:20 UTC (Tue) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
+1 for cheekiness.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 13:44 UTC (Tue) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
This is disappointing. I was always happy to read what PJ has to write about the cases.
Once I used to read the FUD and lies that Florian Mueller was spreading with the Microsoft and oracle money, But I was sanitized only by PJ.
Where shall we all go for a fair point of view of cases against open source software?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 12:15 UTC (Wed) by jimbo (subscriber, #6689) [Link] I was very disappointed by PJ's response to the hot air generated by the recent revelations of hyperactivity in the notional security industry. Nonetheless, I understand the motivations behind not wanting to generate evidence thatI for one shall miss Groklaw, which has published many very interesting articles commenting on the law, its practitioners and their effect on the software industry. --jimbo
Disappointing overreaction Posted Aug 20, 2013 14:19 UTC (Tue) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link]
So governments are convinced they can track anything they want. Electronic communications, phonecalls, postal mail, your car plates, your passport as you cross borders, your mobile phone in your pocket as you move around town.
Luckily, computers still suck at facial recognition and CCTV cameras' image quality is crap.
Is giving up on communication and criticism the right approach? Specially for a smart, articulate, passionate and compelling advocate... it is not the answer I expected.
Keeping in mind that she'll be tracked anyway. Just the morning commute and the trip to your grocery store.
I do not agree with all of PJ's stances (we have argued in public and in private), but her voice is incredibly valuable, and she is a fantastic bridge between the legal world and the geek world.
We need her -- because we often believe we understand the law... and we don't.
Disappointing overreaction Posted Aug 22, 2013 21:42 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Computers suck at facial recognition if there is no context. Given a million people, the computer will probably not be able to identify me.
However, if the goal is to track somebody, you (a) usually have a much smaller sample space (the cell phone tower my phone is currently using is shared by ~1000 people, assuming I'm not attending some large-scale public event) and (b) lots of contextual information (the clothes I am currently wearing are reasonably unique and unlikely to change suddenly), giving a tracker much more to work with.
So once "the system" positively IDs me (e.g. at the border, using an ATM, …) automatically tracking my exact location throughout the day is entirely feasible, given enough cameras monitoring public space.
Disappointing overreaction Posted Aug 22, 2013 23:10 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
>Computers suck at facial recognition if there is no context.
They are already much better than humans at that.
And computers usually look for parameters that you can't change with makeup or disguises.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 15:14 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
There is a bright side to all the surveillance and monitoring and snooping. As they discovered with Ed Snowden, they have more to lose than the people they snoop on, in a way. They read all email and know all phone call metadata, at least, but very little of that has any benefit to them. Meanwhile, all that data is sitting there, waiting for someone to snoop through it for gossip on celebrities, politicians, corporate fat cats, and big wigs of all stripes. The more secure the repositories, the less useful it is. The more useful it is, the less secure it is.
The less powerful someone is, the less they are suitable blackmail candidates, having less blackmail material, less to lose, and less to give.
Who has more to lose from data dumps, you or Donald Trump? If cameras were as cheap as in Snow Crash (Diamond Age? I forget now), and you could find anyone on the internet, track them by the minute, watch them in their bedrooms and bathrooms, who would you rather watch, your boring neighbour or a few celebrities?
If you were a data analyst with a crushing mortgage or student loan debt, how long could you avoid the temptation to sell a few tidbits to the tabloids? And what could your bosses do realistically? If they fired every employee who crossed the line, they'd have to accelerate hiring, making their screening that much less effective and snowballing the disclosures.
It's a pittance, but it is a natural brake on their snooping and collecting.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:11 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The reality is that the NSA doesn't care about catching terrorists that much. Their primary concern is continued employment and justifying their budgets.
I am of the increasing opinion that large spy agencies are fundamentally incompetent and use 'state secrets' label on anything that could possibly expose their failures and stupidity.
They know there is huge issue with just collecting 'everything' and then have to sort through it later, but they don't care.. They just need to collect everything so that if something does actually happen they can show that they were investigating it and not look like complete failures.
> If you were a data analyst with a crushing mortgage or student loan debt, how long could you avoid the temptation to sell a few tidbits to the tabloids? And what could your bosses do realistically
The real terrible thing is that the NSA, like the CIA, will just use their information to serve their 'bosses'. Their 'bosses' are the ones that control their purse strings. Which are mostly going to be senators in special committees and such things. The CIA, apparently, is friendly towards the republicans and the NSA towards the democrats.
So that mean they'll use their information for investigating political opponents, blackmail, intimidating judges, breaking client/lawyer privilages for key court cases, gathering information on corporations for the purposes of exploiting insider trading information, etc. etc.
There is no oversite. They have secret budgets, with secret rules, secret judges, secret everything. There is literally no oversight to any of their activities and everything they do is automatically considered a state secret.
They can pretty much do with the information they gather anything they feel like and if some employee does something embarrassing like uses it to stalk they will just cover it up and hide it to avoid having to explain their actions.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 17:56 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I agree with you substantially, the BBC has an interesting story about their local counter-intelligence organization, MI5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER
> Their 'bosses' are the ones that control their purse strings. Which are mostly going to be senators in special committees and such things.
The ones with the most knowledge are the ones with the most control, the Senators think they are in the special club and have control but that is largely a sham, they are fed a diet of chickenfeed and lies and are merely along for the ride. Whether the elected officials are able to wrest control away from the intelligence services remains to be seen.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 5:57 UTC (Wed) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> The reality is that the NSA doesn't care about catching terrorists that much. Their primary concern is continued employment and justifying their budgets.
> I am of the increasing opinion that large spy agencies are fundamentally incompetent and use 'state secrets' label on anything that could possibly expose their failures and stupidity.
> They know there is huge issue with just collecting 'everything' and then have to sort through it later, but they don't care.. They just need to collect everything so that if something does actually happen they can show that they were investigating it and not look like complete failures.
So Hanlon's razor applied to the spies?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 14:16 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Pretty much.
I wouldn't say that it's 100% stupidity. There is certainly some malice in there as well as, I suppose, a certain desire in many people to actually protect the country.
But what do you expect to happen if you get a random group of bureaucratic and paranoid/self important/spook-types billions and billions of dollars and then set it up so that any possible oversight on their activities is considered a breach of national security?
It's like having the lunatics running the asylum. The results can't be pretty.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 5:51 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> But what do you expect to happen if you get a random group of bureaucratic and paranoid/self important/spook-types billions and billions of dollars and then set it up so that any possible oversight on their activities is considered a breach of national security?
That brings a slightly wicked idea to mind - trying to pass a law entitling people to financial compensation if they discover that they have been placed under surveillance without reasonable justification. I suspect that even many people who don't have strong views about surveillance might be able to go along with that. I am sure that in practice it would be very hard to show that there was no reasonable justification, but just the existence of such a law might provide a certain balancing factor.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 23:34 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
With as many felonies that there are on the books these days, I don't know that I'd ask the spooks "do you have a justification?" because I'm sure something can be drummed up.
Of course, the ridiculousness has got to reach a tipping point and something has to give. Right?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 0:13 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
google for '3 felonies a day'
lawyers also play a game over beers where they pick a public figure (the more highly regarded the better) and the winner is the person who finds the smallest, most convoluted, most obscure law that the person could be arrested under.
note that there is no room in this game for someone to NOT be able to be arrested, they always find many options, so they have to score based on other criteria.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 0:33 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
That's the article I looked at for a quick reference for how many felonies there are on the books, but it doesn't have one. ISTR something around 40,000, but I don't have a source other than a video I saw on a talk given by a lawyer and a cop to a college(?) class.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 1:46 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yes, the exact number is unknown. The US legal code need something drastic to be done to them.
A lot of countries (Russia, Ukraine, etc.) have very streamlined legal codes - the are small enough to fit into a single 100-page book and very clear. Why can't US do something like this?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 2:25 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I have a really hard time believing that all the laws (and regulations that have the force of law) for any country fit in a 100 page book.
I'd have trouble believing that the index to all of these would fit into a 100 page book (barring unnatural font and page sizes anyway :-)
But I also agree that the proliferation of laws in the US is out of control
part of this is the fact that it's easier to get support to 'do something' about a problem than it is to eliminate a law.
Remember that the Obama Health Care bill, technically a single law, was over 1000 pages.
I'll bet that a lot of homeowners associations have rules that run close to 100 pages.
I'll bet that the laws around building a house are >100 pages in any city
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 2:38 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I was talking about the criminal law - it really is small (95 pages, actually, http://www.books.ru/books/ugolovno-ispolnitelnyi-kodeks-r... ).
Civil code, tax code and some other codes are significantly bigger. But you still can easily place all of them on one small shelf. It's not impossible to know most of them in detail for a good lawyer. There's also a plethora of executive orders, clarifications, comments and so on - but they are NOT laws.
US legal codes are among the worst I've seen - they are either vague or specific to the point of idiocy.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 2:54 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> I'll bet that the laws around building a house are >100 pages in any city
Well, assuming that you have your labor paid on the books, I'm sure labor laws alone (OSHA) run this well over 100 right there.
Tor Posted Aug 20, 2013 16:26 UTC (Tue) by fungible (guest, #92456) [Link]
Tor is a joke. There are no technical solutions to social problem, and tor is run and programmed by state actors. Refer to Jacob Appelbaums' references to the US "mental health" system (an extension of the prison-industrial complex) in this video for proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw
Tor Posted Aug 20, 2013 17:11 UTC (Tue) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
Can you be more specific, or provide pointer to the right place in the video for this proof?
Tor Posted Aug 21, 2013 14:31 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
75% of the funding for Tor project comes from the United States Government?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/06/11/hiding.online.iden...
I expect that if Tor protocol is technically correct then the funding doesn't really matter. I am not a expert enough on the protocols to know this for myself, unfortunately.
Tor Posted Aug 23, 2013 15:03 UTC (Fri) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
I have no idea how the mental health section of Jacob's talk could be construed as proof of Tor being some government ploy. At all. It is a fine example of awful governmental overreach, but that is quite a stretch as "proof". Particularly as Jacob is himself very involved in tor.
There have been quite a few academic articles trying to attack tor, and the consensus seems to be that tor is very unlikely to be the weakest point of anonymity to break. There are also constant clever attempted attacks / subversions by China to disable tor, which the project is open about their defenses against.
Basically I have seen no proof at all beyond funding that tor is anything but what it claims to be. As for funding, lest we forget that spies need anonymity just as much as journalists or dissidents to stay safe.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 20, 2013 21:14 UTC (Tue) by lieb (subscriber, #42749) [Link]
This is very sad but unfortunately very true. In my first job after I got my degree was to maintain the Tenex network stack including sndmsg (Tomlinson's email program that introduced user@site to the world) and the install of our IMP at a west coast university. I have worked on the 'net for almost 40 years now and reading her article is disturbing. The 'net started off as a great idea and we all had great fun building our little bits of it but we've also given the dark(er) elements of our government and corporate power tools that would have made the SS and STAZI jealous. I have long run my own mail server but even that is not safe given that the NSA has access to the backbone. Forget about Gmail or yahoo* mail or whatever. I worked for a couple of them and know what they do and/or don't have the moral center not to do.
I am very disappointed in my Senator (Diane Feinstein). Either she is beyond naive or she is complicit. Maybe it is time she retires. In any event, I do not trust either her or the NSA/CIA because I have already verified...
So what to do? I think Pamela's decision is a right one, all the mitigating technical options offered here aside. We passed laws with felony penalties attached when the people realized that their USPS mail was being opened. We passed laws with felony penalties attached when it became clear that people and government were wiretapping our phones. But we have taken a silly, naive road called "de-regulation" and "self policing". It is time to come to the same realization about net traffic as we did about postal mail and telephones. Yes, there were more than a few illegal wiretaps and our mail envelopes are still being steamed open but the perpetrators were and are looking over the shoulders because we do catch them eventually and they do pay.
For a civil society and economy to function, we *need* to trust those facilities that we as a people and economy put in place for us to communicate with each other. Without that trust, the sensible position is exactly the one Pamela has taken. If enough of us do it ...
Gen Alexander should be fired. We have no confidence in him or the agency he has been building into his private empire over the last 8 years or so. Too bad we can't attach some felony class penalties to what he and his agency have done. He reminds me of J. Edgar Hoover, another spying political blackmailer who stayed in power long after his expiration date.
But what about Al Qaida you say? If it wasn't for all this spying on everybody, the bad guys in turbans will attack the local Dairy Queen! Having recently traveled outside the U.S., I was reminded in a stark way just how far we have fallen in our fear of some deluded kid blowing up his underwear. Bin Laden has won and even if he is food for fishes at the bottom of some southern sea, his remains are smiling. He has won. We are spending all our treasure and our democracy in spying on each other. If more people follow Pamela's lead and stop using the net for things like commerce, we kill the economy too. We are destroying ourselves from the inside, something he could have _never_ done on his own.
Snowden and Manning like Daniel Elsberg before them have done us a great service at the staggering cost to the rest of their lives. They have woken us up (some of us anyway). I hope there are more like them. May we not fall back into sleep (including trust in some technical fix).
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 1:49 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Bin Laden has won and even if he is food for fishes at the bottom of some southern sea, his remains are smiling. He has won. Won... what exactly has he won? I think you confuse cause and effect. Bin Laden was not cause of all that spying! Quite the contrary: he, himself, was just a tool. He was used to make it possible. I'm not saying that CIA actually funded Bin Laden (there are the controversy, but that's not what I'm talking about). Just who turned “terrorist - small” fry to “media phenomenon”? Mujahidun don't have media outlets in America and Europe, you know. If more people follow Pamela's lead and stop using the net for things like commerce, we kill the economy too. We are destroying ourselves from the inside, something he could have _never_ done on his own. And this idea is wrong, too. The whole thing is preparation for the inevitable economic collapse. When (not if!) tens (hundreds?) of millions of US citizens will be thrown from “middle class” to poverty there will be unrest. It will be confounded by the fact that these losers will be more angry than “normal” paupers: it's one thing to never have a stable income and never have a house, but to have that at some point and lose it without hope to ever achieve it again... that's different. To somehow manage riots US will need dictatorship and total surveillance. But it's not something you can build in a day! Well, dictatorship can be implemented pretty fast, but surveillance takes time. Of course it's implemented one piece at time as you've yourself noted: We passed laws with felony penalties attached when the people realized that their USPS mail was being opened. We passed laws with felony penalties attached when it became clear that people and government were wiretapping our phones. But then you, again, miss the point: Yes, there were more than a few illegal wiretaps and our mail envelopes are still being steamed open but the perpetrators were and are looking over the shoulders because we do catch them eventually and they do pay. You've started with right premise, but totally missed the problem government is trying to solve. The problem is the “illegal” part. This is the problem US government is busy solving. For the last ten years (or may be more) it changes the equation to make future dictatorship possible. But this is slow-going process and time is running out. And now Snowden made it even more difficult. Of course government is angry! Gen Alexander should be fired. We have no confidence in him or the agency he has been building into his private empire over the last 8 years or so. Well, you may not have a confidence but government surely does — which is exactly the point.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 5:00 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I remember when officials demanding your papers so that you could travel was something that Americans sneered at.
I remember when "Secret Courts" were something that only happened in countries where you really didn't want to live.
I remember when Hoover's FBI McCarthy's House UnAmerican committee, and Nixon's "plumbers" and use of Government powers against his political enemies were considered embarrassments that were used as lessons of how Government could run amok and needed oversight to prevent such things from happening again.
Thanks to Bin Laden's actions, and the absolutely idiotic reactions of far too many people in government who have forgotten Benjamin Franklin's quote "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety", America now has a new version of all of these things, all at once.
Yes, the CIA and NSA were created to spy on people, it had a charter that specified who is was allowed to spy on. Nobody every believed that there were no cases where they overstepped their boundaries, but they had boundaries, and when they were discovered past those boundaries they got in trouble, and people were fired or put in jail.
In other words, the system worked, imperfectly, but it worked.
In many ways, the Terrorists have won, America has changed into a country that someone from the 70's or 80's would not recognize.
The good news, is that there are still people questioning and opposing this. If it's not stopped, a new generation will grow up thinking that this is normal, and when combined with the blackmail that all this information allows, this will result is effectively silencing opposition.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 13:58 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> Yes, the CIA and NSA were created to spy on people, it had a charter that specified who is was allowed to spy on.
Considering how unsuccessful they have been using their extraordinary, illegal and immoral methods of spying, I think they could probably do a better job if they were constrained by the law in the same way that any other news and analysis organization is. They will tell you that they have a better handle on world events due to their privileged and secret information but I really don't believe it.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 19:51 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> In many ways, the Terrorists have won
Erm, I can quote a few relevant pieces from a book some refuse to even read (but that strangely correlates to the events observed during last century or so). That would be awfully politically incorrect but then again I don't plan to meet US border guards, ever.
Should I? :-)
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 11:58 UTC (Sun) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]
"McCarthy's ... UnAmerican committee"
(Note that they were on the trail of numerous real KGB infiltrators of e.g. the entertainment industry - it's not a witch hunt if there really are witches.)
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 12:37 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
The problem wasn't that they were hunting a real issue, the problem was the methods that they used.
I don't think that anyone is claiming that there aren't Terrorists out there, or that the NSA isn't trying to hunt them.
The problem again is with the methods used, and the damage those methods do to the country.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 16:53 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Sure, and Stalin's "purges" also caught a fair number of real spies and anti-Soviet activists.
Was it OK, then?
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 1, 2013 23:00 UTC (Sun) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]
Stalin's purges resulted in deaths. McCarthy's investigators didn't kill anyone.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 13:35 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I think you confuse cause and effect. Bin Laden was not cause of all that spying!
I think the evidence we currently have shows that while some of these programs existed in some small form going back to the Clinton administration and earlier, and the potential was there, Bin Laden was the force that got the stone rolling downhill, the response to his actions was to remove even the pretense of restraint and go full-throttle down into the abyss. Bin Laden wanted to change things with his actions and has accomplished those goals.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 14:28 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I think the evidence we currently have shows that while some of these programs existed in some small form going back to the Clinton administration and earlier, and the potential was there, Bin Laden was the force that got the stone rolling downhill, the response to his actions was to remove even the pretense of restraint and go full-throttle down into the abyss. History of terrorism goes back for many-many years. It predates both Clinton and Bin Laden. If you want to attribute all the problems to Bin Laden then you must explain what exactly he did differently from his predecessors. Hijacked four airplanes, not one? Sure, that's remarkable achievement, but still, only 0.0001% of population was affected. What's so different between what happened with King David Hotel in 1946 or Brinks Hotel in 1964 and what happened with WTC in 2001? Somehow all previous deeds never produced anything similar to the level of paranoia Bin Laden's talks did. These acts were never used as pretext to mount an insane War on Terror. Why? These things were done not by Bin Laden, but by some other people far, far, far removed from Bin Laden. Just why they used Bin Laden as scarecrow to do what they did is interesting question, but they are culprits, not Bin Laden. Bin Laden only hijacked few planes (even if he actually did that), everything else is not related to Bin Laden.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 16:15 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I'm not sure what point you are trying to argue, Bin Laden provided the shocking act of violence, in attempt to cause political change, but the elected representatives and appointed officials are culpable and responsible for the outsized and destructive nature of their response, Bin Laden's actions flipped that switch.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 21:42 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Bin Laden provided the shocking act of violence, in attempt to cause political change, but the elected representatives and appointed officials are culpable and responsible for the outsized and destructive nature of their response. My point is that Bin Laden's act was not 100 times worse then other acts which happened before. Take a look on the list: Bin Laden's is #1, sure, but there are dozens of acts with number of deaths measured in hundreds. They all are huge tragedy when compared with "normal" accidents, but they all are not even remotely comparable with what happens in "real" war (where death toll is measure in millions, not in hundreds or thousands). Bin Laden's actions flipped that switch. Sorry, but there were dozens of sacts with similar death toll. Yet they all didn't trigger that switch. If the reaction was over the top then it's caused by something else then just the size of the act. The elected representatives and appointed officials are culpable and responsible for the outsized and destructive nature of their response. Right - but this raises the question: what's different this time? Why 4x larger act causes 1000x larger response? Terrorism is not an invention of XXI century, you know. The first bill was introduced just two days after the act. Two days! Joint proposal of Republican and Democratic senators. Imagine that. It's as if all these elected representatives and appointed officials waited for the opportunity to change the status quo. Was that all Bin Laden's doing? I doubt it. Such changes don't happen when people in charge are not ready to instill them. How exactly Bin Laden prompted the we don't think outsiders should be here, and we won't talk unless they leave the room reaction? Perhaps Bin Laden's act triggered the change, but it was not the cause of change. It's as crazy as the claim that Gavrilo Princip caused the first World War. No. It may be the trigger, but it's not the cause. Cause lies deeper, much deeper.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 25, 2013 17:50 UTC (Sun) by klbrun (subscriber, #45083) [Link]
President G. W. Bush said Osama bin Laden did it. Bin Laden denied involvement, although he probably knew the people who did do it, since they were Saudis. It's a pity bin Laden could not have his day in a neutral court.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 28, 2013 15:28 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Um, Saudi Arabia has a population of circa thirty million people (according to Wikipedia -- I thought it was more). Among that many people, it seems implausible that one person knew all of, what, eighteen others all of whom simultaneously carried out a coordinated conspiracy without also being a member of that conspiracy. If Saudi Arabia were a village with a population of a hundred people what you are suggesting might be plausible...
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 5:43 UTC (Wed) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]
Actually, Elsberg got off pretty cheap in comparison. His case was thrown out of court since the judge considered the circumstances, namely wiretapping and theft at Elsberg's psychiatrist and a few other things government and prosecution indulged in, as making it impossible for him to deliver justice. He anticipated having to pay a price for his actions, but the government just went overboard and lost it.
But that stuff is par for the course nowadays. There is no such thing as prosecutorial or governmental overreach any more. Even if there is, you can slap a gag order on it and not even tell the defense.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 19:45 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> But what about Al Qaida you say?
Well it's *directly* supported by US *right now* (its onset aside). More than that, when the nice Al Nusra/Al Qaeda guys armed to destroy Syria come to Mali they're suddenly terrorists and not "freedom fighters" again.
BTW, add Aaron Russo to those who have paid with their lives for their disclosures.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 23, 2013 23:48 UTC (Fri) by lieb (subscriber, #42749) [Link]
I'm afraid I started a storm of sorts...
First with regard to Elsberg, he wrote an opinion piece when the Snowden story broke about the obvious comparison between them. All Elsberg had was surprise in that there were still plenty of agency managers from the '40s and '50s running the place for whom what Elsberg did was outside the scope of what they would assume an "organization man" would do. We have sunk much further than that since. Second, all he had was a Xerox copier (and only Xerox made copiers...)
On the other hand Snowden and Manning had thumb drives and Elsberg's example. Manning didn't "read the whole book" and was quickly caught. Snowden did (or saw that Manning didn't) and took extra precautions, something that Elsberg commented on.
The other piece is about various conspiracy theories and nefarious actors. I did some of my serious growing up in country in Viet Nam where, for some reason, we were privileged with daily, in-country, intelligence summaries (I was an air traffic controller, so why me???) I don't put much to these conspiracies. Based on Occam's razor, I subscribe to Hanlon's razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
We humans are not smart enough to pull it off successfully and if, by blind dumb luck, we do, we can't keep quiet about it, especially to our buddies. That is how Nixon and the Bozos in Reagan's basement got caught... BTW, that's how we found bin Laden in the end. Someone couldn't keep their mouth shut. No data mining, no deep packet inspection, just on the ground listening people who found the right blabbermouth. The same way those FBI agents found some flying students who weren't interested in learning how to land airplanes...
Back to my original point, our government and various Internet companies are playing with fire and in their stupidity, they could bring down a lot of grief on everyone's head. Most of the "unintended consequences" in the world are brought about but the culprits Hanlon is referring to.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 21, 2013 14:22 UTC (Wed) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link]
BBC notes the shutdown, quotes F.M.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23768810
I think I understand PJ's reasoning and suspect the shutdown may be more permanent. Groklaw will be missed.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Aug 22, 2013 8:03 UTC (Thu) by aaribaud (subscriber, #87304) [Link] Hmm... Maybe she might be convinced to stop being part of Groklaw without closing it, and to leave all of it in the hands of someone who would be willing to run it under the current circumstances, as she partly did in 2011 with Mark Webbinks.
Groklaw shutting down, again Posted Sep 5, 2013 20:32 UTC (Thu) by guymcarthur (guest, #23966) [Link]
Her statement is paradoxical. It seems like she's shutting down Groklaw in protest of the surveillance state, but it's couched it terms of a practical consideration (there's no way to guarantee anonymity to sources). But surely there is great value in continuing the project despite, or especially, because of, the compromise that would have to be made. Therefore, she must be doing this as a protest.
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