Links and Commentary

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” NSA chose to do their assigned jobs with a technically sweet solution of monitoring the internet and looking at anything that happens putting it all in a vast database. It is technically sweet, but it’s bad for privacy. If we have a change in the government sometime in the future, that government will have such a powerful tool of surveillance, that we will find ourselves in a terrible predicament that we won’t be able to get out from underneath. That’s the kind of fear I have from a public policy perspective.

Zimmermann’s Law: PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder Phil Zimmermann on the surveillance society — Tech News and Analysis

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Once upon a time the use of computer viruses as offensive weapons was a plot device in science fiction novels. Now it is a global reality spurred on by the reckless behaviour of the Barack Obama administration in violation of international law.

How cryptography is a key weapon in the fight against empire states

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My grandson was killed by his own government. The Obama administration must answer for its actions and be held accountable.

The Drone That Killed My Grandson

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If the E.U. cannot convince the U.S. to provide their citizens with stronger legal protections, then Europeans will have a powerful incentive to switch to online services that are under the physical jurisdiction of their own democratically-elected governments. So even if the U.S. government doesn’t care about the privacy rights of Europeans, it may be forced to change its policies for economic reasons.

Why “we only spy on foreigners” doesn’t work any more for the NSA

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“I am deeply worried about your staff if they cannot distinguish between a European couple looking for a quiet place to breast-feed a baby and suicide terrorists carrying a backpack,” Neijens wrote.

'Merica!

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As our leaders joined together on television to bloviate about the need to capture and try the “traitor” Snowden, they were affirming a system of laws that seems to apply to the governed exclusively.

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In this case, though, I’m with Snowden—not only for the reasons that Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?

Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On? : The New Yorker

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Reread that Skype denial from last July, knowing that at the time the company knew that they were giving the NSA access to customer communications. Notice how it is precisely worded to be technically accurate, yet leave the reader with the wrong conclusion. This is where we are with all the tech companies right now; we can't trust their denials, just as we can't trust the NSA -- or the FBI -- when it denies programs, capabilities, or practices.

Schneier on Security: New Details on Skype Eavesdropping

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Now, when countries like Russia and Iran say the US is simply too untrustworthy to manage the Internet, no one will be able to argue. We can’t fight for Internet freedom around the world, then turn around and destroy it back home. Even if we don’t see the contradiction, the rest of the world does.

Schneier on Security: Blowback from the NSA Surveillance

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This moment is, most of all, a test of that aphorism politicians will quote to almost any end, the one that begins (at least in one version) “First they came for the Communists, and I said nothing.” The tolerance of widespread surveillance of Muslims helped build a government apparatus, and the legal underpinnings of it, are now used much more widely than many Americans are comfortable with. The political path to rolling it back isn’t clear.

How Americans Got Used To Surveillance

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I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones.

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Google, which started out as an expression of independent Californian graduate student culture — a decent, humane and playful culture — has, as it encountered the big, bad world, thrown its lot in with traditional Washington power elements, from the State Department to the National Security Agency.

The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ by Julian Assange - NYTimes.com

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œWe lost out, said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.

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But so far the Internet has delivered — figuratively to date and soon literally. Jennifer and I relied on the Web to supplement our suburban farming knowledge. For today’s work, there’s a bucket of warm water and some clean towels nearby, and an iPhone in my hand with a Web page loaded that contains step-by-step directions on assisting with a goat delivery.

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Nicole Powers, who was originally denied access to weev because she was not wearing a bra, eventually made one with the help of a stranger in the parking lot. The whole thing adds additional absurdity to an already absurd case.

wtf, they call this justice being served?

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That’s the irony of the whole war on terror: that everything being done in the name of stopping terrorism is actually what fuels it.

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Greek yogurt companies trying to keep up with exploding consumer demand in the last few years didn’t have a good plan to deal with the ocean of whey they were producing. Now they’re racing to find solutions, all the while keeping mum about the results, if there are any: the yogurt industry is highly secretive and competitive.