Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET) [LWN.net]

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 1:17 UTC (Thu) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205)
In reply to: Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET) by tialaramex
Parent article: Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

> Americans have spent _decades_ with their fingers firmly in their ears pretending that the NSA isn't spying on them. On those dirty foreigners (aka your allies) sure - but not the people who pay their salaries. Right? But nobody who'd spent more than five minutes thinking about the problem would find that believable. I'm sure it sounded kind of plausible fifty years ago, in an age of limited international communications, if you didn't think about it too hard, but in today's global society, and particularly on the Internet, it's nonsense.

As a Canadian, I experience American politics and culture (nearly) first-hand, but have no control over their decisions nor do I fund any of their shenanigans directly. So I have no motivation to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that nothing is happening -- quite the opposite, really.

And yet, my reaction to this news was much the same as that of my American friends. The recently-revealed behavior of the NSA is completely beyond the pale, and most any sane person would dismiss such allegations as unjustified paranoia, given that they are flagrantly illegal. At least, six weeks ago they would have. Besides, I have met many Americans of all ages who still speak of the cold war as though it were yesterday, and have a deeply seated repulsion to domestic spying or any "Soviet" behavior.

The kind of insanity we have been informed of recently goes beyond the law and beyond the culture of America, and I certainly don't think that anyone should have known it except that they "didn't want to think about it".

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Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 8:40 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (3 responses)

I certainly can't say (as a USian) I'm surprised. The signs were there all along, or at least from 9/11 on, from the virtually unanimous approval of the (anti-)Patriot Act, to the congress vote (including Obama) to give the telecoms immunity for rolling over and handing the keys to the spooks, to the very idea of forbidding recipients of national security demand letters from even properly consulting with their lawyers about them, let alone publishing even anonymous statistics about them.

I actually expected Obama to deliver some excuse for that vote at the Democratic convention where his nomination was confirmed, as while I predicted his win[1], there was no way I could even /consider/ voting for him (and certainly no way I could vote for the party that was asking for it all in the first place) without at least /some/ semblance of "apology" for his "mistake", but it wasn't to be, and since then he has demonstrated time and time again that he was the "Bush lite" that he accused McCain of being.[2]

The fact is, after 9/11, both parties handed the spooks pretty much anything they asked for, including immunity for those cooperating with them where it broke the existing law, with the barest hint of limits even for appearance-sake. And the sheeple public lapped it up as they were trained to do.

I'm glad Snowden happened altho I have my doubts it'll ultimately change much except dispel a few myths the sheeple might have had previously, but it's not like anyone who thought about it had any myths dispelled by his revelations in any case.

Meanwhile, this particular additional revelation is only surprising in that they're going /that/ far and that it actually got out. Given the timing it's unlikely that this pressure occurred post-Snowden, however. I guess it's likely that'll encourage them to lower the pressure a notch for the time being, but unless laws changing the status quo get enacted, I expect they'll be back at it pretty quickly.

As for the (anti-)patriot act, etc, I've long held that (as the US Declaration of Independence states, but the US Constitution unfortunately doesn't fully backup) if it's a right, it's a right for everyone, not just US citizens. Other nations may or may not support that right and the US may or may not in practice be able to do anything about that, but the US *CAN* and *SHOULD* control its *OWN* actions in accord with the human rights it asserts for its own citizens, for ALL people, and any hint that it's failing to do so is simply a hint of what it's going to doing to its /own/ citizens in a few years, if it's not doing so secretly already. Once it's not held to be an inalienable right for all people everywhere, the barrier's gone, and it's only a matter of time.

There's nothing recent events have demonstrated better than the truth of the above.

Duncan
----

[1] As political pundits have pointed out, with very few exceptions at the POTUS level, it's the candidate with the most firmly optimistic message that wins, and from well before the Democratic primaries narrowed to Clinton/Obama, it was apparent Obama had the most optimistic message of any major candidate on either side, so I was predicting he'd take it. Bill Clinton used that too, but Hillary couldn't use it so easily given her gender and that she had to demonstrate sufficient decisiveness, etc. Still, that was far closer than I expected it to be.

[2] FWIW I was so disillusioned with the choices available in 2007 that I didn't bother voting, but then I had to live with the personal guilt and shame of that for four years and vowed never again, so in 2011 I was watching Ron Paul, and when that didn't pan out, I ended up voting Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate and former governor of New Mexico. Not that I fully agree with the Libertarians either, but they'd hardly be worse than the choices the major parties seem to offer, and given 6-year Senate terms, I figure it'd take more than a 4-year presidential term to reverse the now over a decade old situation even if by some weird fluke it was a Libertarian clean slate win everywhere they ran.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 26, 2013 0:02 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

It's funny really. Americans react as if they are shocked are confused, but if you'll take a look on reaction in Russia (which is kinda relevant because that's where Snowden escapes) then you'll find out that people are not surprised (they expected something like this anyway) and government officials are disappointed not because such an awful thing as PRISM is discussed openly but because these same companies refused (and still refuse) to give similar level of access to Russian spooks!

Which kind raises the question: what Snowden is really trying to achieve? Why leave country where you can get good money for your [perhaps awful] work and go to the country where similar work is perceived normal?

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 26, 2013 9:34 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

The use of "democracy" to scare the rest of the world into resource serfdowm -- I guess that stinks.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 29, 2013 11:53 UTC (Mon) by njwhite (guest, #51848) [Link]

> Which kind raises the question: what Snowden is really trying to achieve? Why leave country where you can get good money for your [perhaps awful] work and go to the country where similar work is perceived normal?

Well I don't think Snowden became a whistleblower for the lifestyle implications. He was trying to achieve an improvement in the USA. I doubt being somewhat on the run the current USA government (and seeking refuge in other countries which have plenty of issues themselves) was something he would have preferred.

Is there an implication to your question? That he is a Russian agent or something?