Privacy and "Big Brother" issues

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Privacy and "Big Brother" issues

I don't think there was a dedicated thread, so opening a new one.

A recent publication of details about Yahoo attempting to resist massive unconstitutional survelianace and FISA court threatening them with fines into submission: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/

Kudos to Yahoo for resisting even though they failed.

 

[GuyNwah]

At the risk of not jumping on the bandwagon of fashionably bashing the government for unwarranted and unconstitutional surveillance, I have to say they are not the greater threat. The greater threat by far is corporate data collection, the kind that you sign your rights away for when you use most social media, commerce, or even search sites. This is information that is collected from you with the explicit intention and present means to use it (or sell it to people who will) to sell to you or even hold it against you. The next time you apply for employment or a loan or insurance, remember that a great deal of personal history that you gave away so you could watch funny cat videos is going to be considered as much as what you put on the application, and you will have no recourse, because they violated no law and broke no agreement.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@Guy N'wah : They complement each other. Corporate data collection is bad, but it becomes even worse when it's fused with unconstitutional dragnet surveillance which highly appreciates the former. It's much easier for the Big Brother to keep tabs on the whole population if corporations already did the major bulk of the work by collecting all kind of information about people. And given that often in corrupted environment the difference between corporations and power becomes very blurred all that is only expected.

And since now we live in the increasingly computerized world, the choices of technologies matter. People can either voluntarily proliferate that cycle by not giving their technological choices any thought, or they can be considerate.

 

[GuyNwah]

This reasoning makes the assumption that Big Brother is the government. My contention is that, except for a few police states, and we're not going there at all, Big Brother is the corporations. The government collects data just because it can. It has no use for most of what it collects, and focused use such as anti-terrorism for what little it can use. While it is an affront to liberty, it is not much of a threat. Corporations collect and mine data because they have a present economic interest in your personal data, habits, and utterances, and that interest is extracting money from you. It is a real and immediate threat, and I get more worried about the threats that cost me money than the ones that just piss me off.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@Guy N'wah : As I said, considering the corruption, government and corporate interests can be indistinguishable, so it can easily become one collective "Big Brother". It was already reported, that this dragnet surveillance data was used for industrial espionage and econimcal advantage of different companies. That's exactly the demonstration of the above point.

Examples:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-nsa-conducts-industrial-espionage-too/

 

[Unkindled]

I have to agree with the idea of the government and corporations complementing eachother. They scratch eachother's backs, and the corporations provide some of their means to more easily gain knowledge on us. The corporations are the instrument and the government is the wielder. Neither have ever been on our side.

 

[Blothulfur]

Governments never been that competent over 'ere, leastwise that's my impression. They're reactors, not actors. Still can't fucking stand how nosy society at large has gotten, used to be a virtue to mind your own business round our end.

Still i've got to agree that slowly, brick by brick the foundation of a very efficient and terrifying Orwellian society is being laid, just needs somebody smart to come along and start using it. This is especially true in modern Britain, which is a fucking surveillance state.

 

[GuyNwah]

While they do complement each other, it doesn't make sense to decry the one that's politically convenient to decry just because they get in the news for egregious abuses while the other does far more tangible damage and gets away with it because they can prove they did nothing wrong.

I'm not advocating a "no harm, no foul" position, but the damage is done by the corporations that are the actual wielders of the means of data collection, data mining, reporting, and marketing, because they do it precisely because it furthers their interest at your very real expense. They are the ones who benefit, the ones who are culpable, and to direct your anger at the government instead is merely fashionable and simply unproductive.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I don't think those who decry unconstitutional surveillance give a free pass to corporations which profit on violating privacy and exploiting users' data. Usually both are highlighted as related problems.

And we are talking about potential, not necessarily already caused harm. When technology is built in a wrong way and becomes widely accepted by society, it sets potential stage for Orwellian like outcomes. That's the main point and it concerns all - corporations, governments and whoever up to criminals for instance who all can cause damage with that technology.

 

[GuyNwah]

Not disagreeing with your assessment of the potential consequences, but what we have is real damage today and at best toothless protection (in Europe) to none at all (in the US). It's not so much an Orwellian future I'm worried about preventing as putting brakes to the Facebooglemazon present.

 

[Unkindled]

Governments never been that competent over 'ere, leastwise that's my impression. They're reactors, not actors.

Very very true, this is exactly it.

As for being mad at the government and not the corporations, that's really not the case, as far as it being fashionable goes. The reason people direct their anger to the gov't is simply because they can put face to them, whereas corporations, you really can't. Thing is, directing it at the corporations is pointless and won't do anything.

It's equally pointless against the gov't too, but politics gives people the illusion of choice, one of which being the side that advocates small gov't, and that side also is the one most vocal against the corporations nosing in our business and allowing the gov't to do so by using them. I say illusion of choice, because your vote barely matters, and even if it did, it's highly unlikely the gov't will cut themselves off from a source of valuable information now that pandora's box is opened.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

A development in the Tor project - they are working on collaborative effort with a major browser (most probably Firefox) to include Tor as an easily accessible privacy feature available in the browser out of the box.

 

[GuyNwah]

Not a good development. Tor is insecure and easily attacked. The sense of security you gain from it is false, and the possibility of innocent users being caught in a dragnet against child pornographers is real. Out-of-box availability will give the black hats an easier way to find, confirm, and operate exploits against Tor.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

So far Tor wasn't proven to be easily attacked. See http://www.syverson.org/tor-vulnerabilities-iccs.pdf
But if your computer is compromised already, you have much more serious issues to worry about than Tor being not secure enough. And if someone is targeting you, they can target what's easy to target. I.e. your direct system.

 

[GuyNwah]

I work in the industry that does things like find ways to attack Tor. It's very easy to attack. It's a gold mine for black hats. It's an open invitation for them to compromise and ransack your system, because of the widespread and true perception that a large fraction of Tor traffic is the most revolting use of the Internet imaginable. I'd have to break trade secrets to say more.

If you believe (or know) that your personal affairs require confidentiality, for the love of Melitele, find something better than Tor.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

So if it's easily attacked, who publishes vulnerabilities? Security by obscurity is known to be a very bad idea.

 

[GuyNwah]

So if it's easily attacked, who publishes vulnerabilities? Security by obscurity is known to be a very bad idea.

I think this is a case where there is a false sense of security created by a community that operates in isolation. Nobody wants to take the role of CERT for Tor, because, well, nobody has any legltimate institutional interest in doing anything other than stamping it out.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Nobody wants to take the role of CERT for Tor, because, well, nobody has any legltimate institutional interest in doing anything other than stamping it out.

Not sure about that. There is a push to create a robust network that can withstand attacks from whether criminals or Big Brother. So why should everyone want to stamp it out?

 

[grregg]

Interesting, when I was still attending security and privacy conferences (which admittedly was a decade ago), the word was that Tor is reasonably secure against global passive adversary. Apparently not anymore: http://cryptome.org/2013/08/tor-users-routed.pdf

 

[GuyNwah]

Not sure about that. There is a push to create a robust network that can withstand attacks from whether criminals or Big Brother. So why should everyone want to stamp it out?

Mostly due to the prevailing use of Tor, which is not to protect legitimate private activities or political speech in places where freedom does not obtain, but to distribute child pornography. No legitimate institution will act to further that purpose, or even tolerate it as some kind of acceptable detriment to legitimate uses.