Irreal

I’ve been writing a lot about the NSA, government snooping, and what it all means for us. I’m an American and my writing has reflected that by viewing the events through the lens of what it means to America and Americans. Europeans have seen themselves, I think, as collateral damage in all this: the NSA is sweeping up their data too.

All that changed with Britain’s detaining of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s husband, over the weekend on extremely nebulous Schedule 7 grounds. British authorities may have gotten more than they bargained for. The incident has resulted in a firestorm of protest and outrage all over the world. Brazil, Miranda’s home country, has condemned the action and demanded an explanation from the British government and Miranda is threatening legal action.

Two European authored posts, in particular, are terrifying to read. In the first, Charlie Stross speculates that these are the beginning of efforts to shut down the open Internet. Read Charlie’s post for the details on how he thinks this will go down.

The second post is truly terrifying. Rick Falkvinge discusses the Miranda affair and the GCHQ’s raid on the Guardian to oversee the destruction of hard disks containing the Snowden documents. These are, he says, the last warning bell before the onset of totalitarianism. It’s easy—or, at least, it used to be easy—to dismiss such talk as overheated or even falling into tin foil hat territory but Falkvinge makes a good case and points to lots of supporting evidence.

Falkvinge says that there’s exactly one thing that can stop the slide into totalitarianism: the en masse firing of our current politicians and their replacement with those who support privacy and the rule of law. He ends is piece with this:

I wish I could ask how many more warning bells people need to see
what’s happening, but the question is pointless, because there won’t
be another one. This was the final bell.

As I said, truly frightening and something that you must read.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the much loved and extraordinarily influential Groklaw is shutting down. It’s nearly impossible to overstate how important Groklaw was in the bogus SCO-Linux lawsuits. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years. Now Pamela Jones (PJ) is shuttering the site due to concerns that it is no longer safe for people to communicate with her or Groklaw because of NSA spying. You can read what can only be described as PJ’s cri de coeur at the above Groklaw link.

With all these events and previous U.S. government actions it’s no longer possible to deny that there’s an active war on journalists and journalism going on all over the world. Perhaps it will at last persuade journalists to knock off the cheer leading and get back to looking into what the hell is going on in our governments.

Update Changed the Groklaw link to the permanent link of PJ’s last post.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article in The Atlantic entitled The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet. This is a great read and I urge you to take a look if you haven’t already.

The title is a little misleading, however. The article is really a strongly worded exhortation for tech firms to start fighting for their users. If they don’t, Schneier says, they will lose those users. Schneier tells them not to depend on the NSA protecting them, “The NSA doesn’t care about you or your customers, and will burn you the moment it’s convenient to do so.” As evidence for that he points to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others who are already seeing customers fleeing and who are pleading with the government to let them explain what they’ve been required to do and what information they’ve turned over but the government has refused. They don’t care about you or your problems Schneier tells them.

He tells other tech companies that haven’t yet been outed (or approached by the government) that the NSA will tell them that their participation will remain forever secret but their names will inevitably find their way onto internal documents that Snowden or some future leaker will make public.

The only alternative to fighting the government when it comes calling with its secret warrants is to break faith with your users. Do that, and when those users find out they will never trust you again and will start looking for someone else to do business with.

Again, this is a great article. Read it.

Update: say → says

The Internet is ablaze with reports of a Google lawsuit filing claiming that Gmail users have no expectation of privacy. After all the pixels I’ve spilled lately bloviating about privacy and the misdeeds of large Internet companies, including Google, you’d think that I’d be outraged by this. But actually, my reaction was, “Well duh!”

The folks suing are upset that Google scans their emails to remove malware and, more importantly, to target them with advertisements they may be interested in. Of course. What did they think was happening? It’s not as though Google kept it a secret. In fact, all those Gmail users whining about the scanning of their email specifically consented to it. I know, I know: who reads those click through agreements? But really, how else is Google going to make money to run what is, after all, a large and expensive service? It’s well known that Google’s main business model is targeted advertising and no reasonable person could believe that Gmail was any different.

Those complaining would do well to remember this useful bit of advice about Internet services: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. When you sign up for Gmail you make a bargain with Google: in exchange for a free—and, really, pretty good—email service, Google gets to scan your emails looking for keywords so they can target you with effective advertisements.

Google has plenty of things to answer for; this nonsense isn’t one of them.

Actually, there is no lighter side to what the NSA is doing. One thing that every politician knows is that they’re in trouble when the late night comics start making them the butt of their jokes. That’s already happening with the NSA scandal but there’s something else: the daily comic strips are mocking the government over the NSA scandal as well.

Here are two examples:

• Dilbert
  • {2013-08-13 Tue}
  • {2013-08-14 Wed}
• Sherman’s Lagoon
  • {2013-08-13 Tue}
  • {2013-08-14 Wed}

Doubtless there are other examples. If you have a favorite, leave a comment.

It’s my hope that all this mockery represents a tipping point in the sense that the issue has burst upon the general public’s awareness and is no longer the concern of just geeks, news junkies, and politicos. If that is indeed the case, it will be harder for Congress to pretend that everything is fine and that there’s no need for reform. On the other hand, no one ever lost money underestimating the common sense of politicians.

There is so much to love in this announcement. Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz is going to offer secure, encrypted email and house the server out of the reach of the illegal snooping of the NSA. Not content to make the US DOJ look like the Keystone Kops after their trying unsuccessfully, and probably illegally, to extradite him and destroy his business, Dotcom is once against sticking his finger in the US government’s eye by working to replace the Lavabit and Silent Circle secure email services with one of his own.

Really, I don’t know what the government was thinking. By again overstepping, and in a climate which already sees a majority of Americans worried about their activities, the FBI/NSA provoked the two services to shutdown. This guaranteed two things:

1. Someone would open a new service outside of US jurisdiction.
2. Many Americans (and others) who haven’t previously used a secure email service will sign up.

Add to that the likelyhood that an already skittish Congress will be more inclined to bow to popular pressure and significantly rein them in and it’s pretty easy to conclude that they haven’t done themselves any favors.

Like everyone else, I don’t want some wackjob blowing me up but the Fourth Amendment is the law of the land and there’s no wackjob exception in it. I get tired of hearing about “balancing security and privacy.” The Fourth Amendment says what it says: you want to go snooping, show probable cause and get an individualized search warrant. No short cuts allowed no matter how much easier it makes the intelligence agencies’ jobs.

Update: Secure Circle → Silent Circle