Big Brother is Watching You

[Ombudsman]

It's never to late too change. ....

I think it is. Or at least to late to put Jeannie back in the bottle. Maybe new tech can be developed with more controls, but the culture of what is "private" is, IMNVHO, changed forever. Sure, you don't use them and neither to I, but "sharing" icons are everywhere. In my personal case, I love my Galaxy. I know the GPS that's so helpful to me can be used in ways not helpful to me. I know apps have access to location, contact lists, yada. My choices are, in general, to give up some features of my life I really like, or give up some measure of privacy in some matters. I choose the toys, generally. Now if a geezer such as myself makes that choice, what choices do you think those who have never been alive when there wasn't a Facebook are going to make. Who's the market for major changes in privacy?

The irony of all this hand wringing on the net is that those doing the hand wringing are posting on private servers located all over the world. I suspect even Banni doesn't know where the hard drive is for the server with this forum located on it, and that's true of most webmasters. Yet people will trust private individuals and companies, sometimes foreign ones, to house their most private thoughts then scream and moan that our defense department has access to this same info.

[bannination]

It's never to late too change. ....

I think it is. Or at least to late to put Jeannie back in the bottle. Maybe new tech can be developed with more controls, but the culture of what is "private" is, IMNVHO, changed forever. Sure, you don't use them and neither to I, but "sharing" icons are everywhere. In my personal case, I love my Galaxy. I know the GPS that's so helpful to me can be used in ways not helpful to me. I know apps have access to location, contact lists, yada. My choices are, in general, to give up some features of my life I really like, or give up some measure of privacy in some matters. I choose the toys, generally. Now if a geezer such as myself makes that choice, what choices do you think those who have never been alive when there wasn't a Facebook are going to make. Who's the market for major changes in privacy?

The irony of all this hand wringing on the net is that those doing the hand wringing are posting on private servers located all over the world. I suspect even Banni doesn't know where the hard drive is for the server with this forum located on it, and that's true of most webmasters. Yet people will trust private individuals and companies, sometimes foreign ones, to house their most private thoughts then scream and moan that our defense department has access to this same info.

That's just it though, I don't trust private individuals and companies to house my most private thoughts. If I have to use a private company you can be damn sure I'm encrypting my information.

There are some things that we consider none of a companies business even if it's stored on a private companies server.... for example passwords you guys use, they are all encrypted using an implementation of bcrypt. The host has access to the resulting hash, but it's absolutely useless to them. Also, even if we were hacked, there is no way someone can recover the original password you used. (At least if it met complexity requirements.).

I might be "hand wringing", but at least I'm doing from a viewpoint that is concerned with the average Joe's privacy. They shouldn't have to become experts just to protect their own information.

[O Really]

...
I might be "hand wringing", but at least I'm doing from a viewpoint that is concerned with the average Joe's privacy. They shouldn't have to become experts just to protect their own information.

There are differing levels of privacy and necessity of privacy. Access to ones bank account deserves major protection. But who has access to that? You (generically), the bankers and their IT staff, anybody you give your password to, and anybody who thinks you have enough to make it worth cracking a weakish password. There are some crooked (criminal) bankers, but generally we trust those who work in the banks not to steal our money or tell thieves how to get to it.

We happily give our credit card numbers to people we don't know and can't see. What is more secure - your number that you gave with your LL Bean order, or the number that you gave to the server in the restaurant who took your card who-knows-where? Sure, there are instances where a server has used a number, but for a variety of reasons, it's not so common that nobody gives their cards to servers. Whether LL Bean has ever had anybody caught using customers' numbers, I don't know, but that also would be very uncommon.

On the other hand, a lot of the information that leaks out about us is stuff we could hardly consider very "private" in the first place. Not to use the "if you haven't done anything you don't have anything to worry about" perspective, but seriously - why would anyone care if their SunPass is tracked unless they are hiding something? You're out there in public for everyone to see, driving your flashy black Beemer - it's not like you're trying to hide, or if you are why aren't you off the turnpike where you know there are cameras at the toll gates?

Point being, we trust people all the time to handle private or confidential information in accordance with their job, and not to sell it to thieves, drain our accounts, or even maliciously send a tool booth pic of our car to our bosses, who thought we were somewhere else. But for some reason, if its the government who is holding the information, whether it's call records or SunPass tracking, we immediately summon a "Big Brother" connotation and expect the worst.

(Speaking of "Big Brother" ....Julie's back!)

[bannination]

Ecuador's Interior Ministry tweeted that it was offering the United States $23 million in annual aid for human rights training.



Also renounces its U.S. trade benefits. Looks like the rest of the world is getting tired of putting up with our government's shit.

[Dryer Vent]

There are differing levels of privacy and necessity of privacy. Access to ones bank account deserves major protection. But who has access to that?

The bankruptcy trustee for one.

[Stinger]

The argument keeps getting made that corporate data retention somehow justifies government snooping. I don't get it. Giving that corporate data to government (and thus back to the private national security contractors) necessarily doubles or worse the loss of privacy, and corporations have no incentive to look for the things government does, and don't have the same powers to use what's learned against us.

Are you the only one that's making that argument?

Pointing out that the mega-corps of this world are collecting every shred of information about you is not making an argument it's okay for the government to do it too. Pointing out that businesses know far more about us than the NSA is not saying that it's okay for the NSA to collect our records.

You're far more likely to suffer any sort of misfortune as a result of the records that businesses have on you than you are as a result of records that the NSA has on you.

And neither is that making the argument that it's okay for the government to do it.

[Stinger]

What I mean is, the various alphabet agencies do a lot of stuff we don't know about. When we find out about it, we tend to jump to the conclusion that since we didn't know about it, therefore it must be evil.

The way you phrase that, it sounds incredibly like the wingnut brigade clamoring "Scandal! Scandal!" every time a new piece of information pops up.

[Stinger]

You cravenly run from the fact that you posted personal information about another poster on an anonymous forum.

Lies, again. I have not "run from" anything I've done and have already owned it several times in this tangent. Are you really so stupid and illiterate or just so desperate once an issue backfires on you?

You cravenly run from it because you excuse yourself. It's okay for you to betray what is considered to be personal info because no one had made a rule yet. That's cowardice. "I'm not responsible for the act I did because bannination hadn't made a rule yet. Most people wouldn't need that rule.

Not a distraction? You mean, this is the topic we've been discussing for 12 pages?

You're the one that brought the whole thing up, not me.
http://www.blueridgedebate.com/viewtopi ... es+#p24551
Why are you being such a baby about my responding?

Yeah, one little blurb in an ongoing discussion, and you go off on a tangent -- like you did with civil liberties -- because you think you're making some point ... failing to realize that whatever point you think you're making has nothing to do with the actual discussion. But carry on.

"I love it. It's okay to betray a person's more-than-reasonable expectation of privacy as long as there's not a rule, but, once there's a rule, you can't discuss what I betrayed."

Ummm, dummy, you and Ombudsman are the ones that continued to discuss what Ombudsman, banni and I "betrayed" long after the rule was posted.
http://www.blueridgedebate.com/viewtopi ... rX+#p23089

Ummm, dummy, I didn't reveal a thing, did I? I didn't post any new personal information, did I?

The epitome of integrity and personal responsibility

You asked me to do it for you just 5 months ago, well after Det.Thorn was outed!

Vrede, have you ever found any common IP addresses between Doo Hickey and Leo Lyons? DH said something the other day in reference to Latent Leo posts that sounded like he was too familiar with Latent Leo's body of posts.

Have you ever tried to run down Latent Leo's location using his IP?

Did you "forget"?

No, I didn't forget. Knowing and publishing are two different things. I also wouldn't try to intimidate a poster by posting that they're using a government server. That's chickenshit. You should argue on the merits, not bring up that someone might be posting from work in a cheap attempt to browbeat your opponent.

Run to the nanny. You sure you don't want to hang at CPF?

You're the one that brought up banni's new rule and I have not opined on it. Did you lose track, again? Maybe you should be the one running to CPF for a nursemaid.

You're the one who ran to the nanny. "Just ask banni. Just ask banni."

ROTFLMAO!!! "It's okay to reveal personal information. There was no rule then."

Despite at least 8 posts on the topic when I outed Det.Thorn, you never objected once.
http://www.blueridgedebate.com/viewtopi ... 4&start=20
Plus, you conveniently forget that it was after years of his still whining about my aliases even though I wasn't using any here. Seems like Det.Thorn (Troll Patrol?) and Stinger now have a mutual admiration society.

Seems like you're really, really desperate to cover your ass.

I don't know. Maybe it's a betrayal of a reasonable expectation of privacy to post someone's IP address and other personal information on what should be an anonymous forum. Maybe that's why Banni made the rule. Maybe it's intimidating to track someone down and post that they're posting from a government server.

You applauded it, asked for it and never once objected until now. That's very weird of you.

I applauded what? Asked for what?

Maybe it's just not an ethical act.

One "I don't know" and lots of maybes there, and you still have failed to explain how an IP address or naming aliases is "personal information", or how they are the uber-wingnutty infringing upon civil liberties and "intimidation".

Whatever one thinks of the new rule the fact is that Stinger brought it into this chat, I have not violated it since it was imposed and he and Ombudsman, and only he and Ombudsman, have broken it - "LOCATION, IP ADDRESSES, NAMES" - for page after page since it was posted.

How stupid is it of Stinger to bring it up and to then run away from his own self-described infringing upon "civil liberties", "intimidation", betrayal of "person's more-than-reasonable expectation of privacy", and revealing of "personal information"? Debating CPF types has made him way sloppy.

Hypocrisy and cowardice, thy names are Stinger.

You're running around like a little wingnut, shouting "Scandal! Scandal! Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!" because the government collected records you deem private. They might make them public or something. Civil liberties über alles.

You actually publish something that almost every internet user deems as private information.

And won't admit to the hypocrisy of having done so.

Hypocrisy, cowardice, and never wrong or responsible for your own behavior, they names are Vrede.

Sounds about as stupid as when you said it.

[Stinger]

Vrede's original source, The Guardian, sure hasn't been on Vrede's side about PRISM.

But soon after the President spoke, The Guardian newspaper posted more U.S. intelligence files classified at the "SECRET" level and higher, as well as "NOFORN," meaning it was too sensitive to be distributed to foreign allies.

The NSA and Department of Justice documents detailed a decade of collection of email data mostly of foreigners but also U.S. persons, which top prosecutors determined was not constitutionally protected because it was strictly time, date, Internet Protocol addresses – unique to each individual computer -- and email addresses. The actual content of the messages was not collected by NSA under the program codenamed "Stellar Wind," according to The Guardian.

To collect the content of emails, a warrant was required from the most secret bench in the U.S., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which convenes in Washington behind closed doors in an eavesdrop-proof chamber. The FISA court every 90 days renewed authority to collect the bulk email metadata – which was gathered primarily for use in counterterrorism – between late 2001 and 2011, when the program was shut down, the Guardian reported.

ABC News

Scientific American's on the same bandwagon:

Earlier this month, former NSA employee Edward Snowden revealed the agency is collecting data on millions on Americans, from phone call durations to Facebook posts, all through a program codenamed PRISM. The resulting media backlash has revived the debates about internet privacy and government surveillance techniques, but questions remain: how is the National Security Agency taking in the data, and how much of a threat to our civil liberties does such data-collection efforts pose?

To find out, Scientific American spoke with metadata expert Mark Herschberg, CTO at Madison Logic and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scientific American

So is Freedom Works:

There is much confusion about the NSA’s secret surveillance program Prism. It doesn’t record the content of all of our private phone and other digital communications. Rather, it stores so-called “metadata” about them for future reference, in perpetuity. By its own admission, the federal government is collecting massive amounts of ‘metadata’ on every single American.

Freedom Works

The Atlantic:

The defenses of the National Security Agency's program to collect and store records of every phone call and every email have not been very impressive. The NSA defenders point to a secret court that rarely says no. They point out congressional oversight, even though it's clear intelligence agencies have misled Congress. And some even dismiss the information being collected on Americans as unimportant, it seems because they do not know what "metadata" is.

Atlantic Wire

The Atlantic again:

President Obama said "nobody is listening to your telephone calls," even though the National Security Agency could actually track you from cellphone metadata. Well, the latest from the Edward Snowden leaks shows that Obama eventually told the NSA to stop collecting your email communications in 2011, apparently because the so-called StellarWind program "was not yielding much value," even when collected in bulk. But how much could the NSA learn from all that email metadata, really? And was it more invasive than phone data collection? The agency is well beyond its one trillionth metadata record, after all, so they must have gotten pretty good at this.

To offer a basic sense of how StellarWind collection worked — and how much user names and IP addresses can tell a spy about a person, even if he's not reading the contents of your email — we took a look at the raw source code of an everyday email header. It's not the exact kind of information the NSA was pulling, of course, but it shows the type of information attached to every single one of your emails.

Below is what the metadata looks like as it travels around with an email — we've annotated the relevant parts, based on what The Guardian reported today as the legally allowed (and apparently expanded) powers of the NSA to read without your permission. After all, it's right there behind your words:

Atlantic Wire

And there's plenty more where those came from.

[O Really]

Are you the only one that's making that argument?

Pointing out that the mega-corps of this world are collecting every shred of information about you is not making an argument it's okay for the government to do it too. Pointing out that businesses know far more about us than the NSA is not saying that it's okay for the NSA to collect our records.

You're far more likely to suffer any sort of misfortune as a result of the records that businesses have on you than you are as a result of records that the NSA has on you.

And neither is that making the argument that it's okay for the government to do it.

I may have said something that sounds like that. I think it's not unreasonable government "snooping" if what they're looking at is what is held without significant privacy protection by a bunch of other people. A secret is either protected or it's not. Once it's not, it doesn't really matter how many people may gain access, it's just simply not "private" "confidential" or "secret" anymore.

[bannination]

The Criminal N.S.A.


The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.

You know... in case you become important enough to be put away.

[O Really]

OK, so how about requiring Verizon, et. al., to keep all phone data for, say, 7 years in a database with capabilities of searching for connections, and when NSA wants to look at something, they get a court order or follow whatever process regular cops do to get access to phone records. That would not make many people happy, especially the phone companies. That would generate thousands of pages of regulation on how the records must be kept, by whom, how they must be accessed. Then there would be arguments over every request, and whether or not Verizon provided the information completely or correctly. There would be OSHA-type data inspections to make sure Verizon was keeping the data...I could go on, but what's the point?

[Dryer Vent]

No one can expect privacy. I bought a plus-sized shirt in Macys one day for another person, and now I get plus-sized catalogs from Macys on a frequent basis. Macys is monitoring my purchases on my account to try to figure out which ads to send me.

[O Really]

No one can expect privacy. I bought a plus-sized shirt in Macys one day for another person, and now I get plus-sized catalogs from Macys on a frequent basis. Macys is monitoring my purchases on my account to try to figure out which ads to send me.

Next thing, your health insurance will go up, and whenever you go to Expedia for plane tickets they'll add on a fat charge. Then you'll get form letters from the First Lady encouraging you to eat healthier. Then the damgummint jackboots will be at your door to take away your doughnuts. Slippery slope, that gift buying.

[Dryer Vent]

No one can expect privacy. I bought a plus-sized shirt in Macys one day for another person, and now I get plus-sized catalogs from Macys on a frequent basis. Macys is monitoring my purchases on my account to try to figure out which ads to send me.

Next thing, your health insurance will go up, and whenever you go to Expedia for plane tickets they'll add on a fat charge. Then you'll get form letters from the First Lady encouraging you to eat healthier. Then the damgummint jackboots will be at your door to take away your doughnuts. Slippery slope, that gift buying.

You got that right. How many people know about the viagara purchases. Pretty soon, you won't be getting any dates.

[Dryer Vent]

Or, too many. Hmmm.

[O Really]

This is interesting... http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/j ... picks=true

"The Secret History of Domestic Surveillance"

[Wneglia]

It's not only the NSA doing the snooping. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Board is into warrantless surveillance on consumers.

[O Really]

I love the term "warrantless surveillance." It clearly implies a warrant might have been required for whatever they were doing and was not issued. Maybe I missed it in two readings, but I didn't see anywhere where it said a warrant was required or on what basis.

[bannination]

No one can expect privacy. I bought a plus-sized shirt in Macys one day for another person, and now I get plus-sized catalogs from Macys on a frequent basis. Macys is monitoring my purchases on my account to try to figure out which ads to send me.

Next thing, your health insurance will go up, and whenever you go to Expedia for plane tickets they'll add on a fat charge. Then you'll get form letters from the First Lady encouraging you to eat healthier. Then the damgummint jackboots will be at your door to take away your doughnuts. Slippery slope, that gift buying.

Don't need to buy a plus sized shirt, your health insurance gets that information anyway. They don't call it a fee for being fat, they call it a "bonus discount" for being within their target range.