While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Shadowbound]

You really underestimate the amount of damage done. Yes, Rousseff is playing to the base to a big extent, but eventually it will translate to concrete policies, in Brazil or elsewhere, that aren't entirely ******ed.

The US has benefitted greatly from being the center of world infrastructure, and the centralization of said infrastructure in the US has overall been a good thing. But the damage done because of the abuse by the US Intelligence Community threatens that, and could see a fracturing of global telecommunications.

 

[Symphony D.]

Sentiment is meaningless in the face of the enormity of the challenge. The expense alone would put it well above a Moon shot, from scratch. Even if all that money was sunk into it, it would never achieve even the slightest of its aims, because there is no such thing as a secure connected network. Just ask the Pentagon about Titan Rain or Byzantine Hades. The idea of securing an entire nation's data isn't stupidity. It's literally the height of stupidity. One might as well ask things to fall up or the Sun to stop shining.

You couldn't even just build a separate "secure" network, you would have to literally change the mindset of everyone on the planet as to how they treat and handle data. All this in a world where MBAs with six-figure salaries and a half-decade in higher education are still dumb enough to volunteer their passwords to IT support? No, not happening. Even if you did remove the Human elements (and how would you on a network handling banal Human communications?), it'd be cracked within a month, because you could never secure all the infrastructure.

This is all a bunch of reactionary baseplaying from people who would spy just as much if it were in their ability to do so. It's jealousy writ large. People don't like having their faces rubbed in a lack of capabilities, but that doesn't mean they can do anything about it. "We'll build our own internet," yeah, like they've all built their own nuclear bombs and space programs and PRISMs. Sure.

e: "Let's blow X billion dollars on a totally redundant system to copy the functionality of one that already exists that will do absolutely nothing of value unless coupled with a massive reeducation campaign and titanic data handling protectionism and massive expenditures in active cyberwarfare capabilities and that will only provide grist for the people we're mad at to do what they're doing even more all because people are angry about data being collected of which there is so much it is literally impossible to meaningfully analyze unless looking for very particular things or doing statistical analyses because you would need hard AI to do so, oh and also you would need hard AI to make any of this actually work." A plan that would pass any legislature.

e2: Particularly in a country where people were rioting over the expense of hosting the World Cup instead of paying for things like, oh, education.

 

[Golden1Knight]

Each Brazilian works about three whole months for the government. Our government has plenty of money to spend. About the riots, things can get a bit problematic. After our humiliating defeat, a crowd gathered in the street and burned the national flag.

Protests would be happening now if it were not for some preventive arrests carried out by the military police.

 

[Kozmos]

Well the big thing is ie people don't want to secure ALL the communications because it increases time costs, data costs, training people to understand how to deal with that cost and so forth. It might be possible in the future via some advanced hijinks with anonymized quantum transmissions which might just make it impossible to crack or trace due to the very physicality of it, but not even physics is necessarily an unstoppable barrier to hungry, hungry humans.

And as Symph stated our ability to collect data is awesome, but our ability to handle that data...well it's depressing. Even with a small database simply deleting all of it, containing relatively simple data structures takes a while, searching it and making sense of it is kind of a big job. I'm sure NSA has some sort of plan to make it work though. If you're really hell bent on security use some algorithms that haven't even been theoretically cracked, but I sure as hell wouldn't bank on it staying safe if someone like NSA has it and they really want to find about your porn preferences.

E.A: Cryptonomicon is a fun book if you're into this sort of stuff.

 

[Symphony D.]

This is a pretty accurate summary of what you need to do to actually maintain anonymity and privacy in the modern age. Even if you were to engage in this (hyperbolic and ridiculous) behavior, your continued privacy would only persist because nobody cared enough to break it. The Laws of Big Numbers and Apathy are the only things that protect your information, and they're the only things that have for as long as you've been alive. Your security is your irrelevance. Nobody at the NSA or MI6 cares that you're cheating on your wife unless your wife works at the NSA or MI6 (or they can use it against you to get something they care about, which you the reader almost certainly don't have).

Ever notice the people complaining about American spying are talking an awful lot about how they want to stop it, and not at all about how they'll take steps to prevent their own governments from doing the same thing (to their own citizens or others)? The only form of critique of America's spying by other nations that would hold an ounce of credibility would be to repudiate and renounce all forms of spying immediately. No one has, no one will.

Except maybe Costa Rica. I could see them doing that.

 

[Azale]

About the riots, things can get a bit problematic. After our humiliating defeat, a crowd gathered in the street and burned the national flag.

That's....it?

Protests would be happening now if it were not for some preventive arrests carried out by the military police.

Brazil sounds like an awful place.

 

[Luckymoose]

America lost and then we remembered July 4th.

 

[Golden1Knight]

Brazil sounds like an awful place.

It is true that these people who were arrested were potential black blocs, and that at the time of their arrest they had dangerous equipment at home. We are not a dictatorship, and although we have a military police, they act as a common police.

 

[Thlayli]

This is a pretty accurate summary of what you need to do to actually maintain anonymity and privacy in the modern age. Even if you were to engage in this (hyperbolic and ridiculous) behavior, your continued privacy would only persist because nobody cared enough to break it. The Laws of Big Numbers and Apathy are the only things that protect your information, and they're the only things that have for as long as you've been alive. Your security is your irrelevance. Nobody at the NSA or MI6 cares that you're cheating on your wife unless your wife works at the NSA or MI6 (or they can use it against you to get something they care about, which you the reader almost certainly don't have).

Ever notice the people complaining about American spying are talking an awful lot about how they want to stop it, and not at all about how they'll take steps to prevent their own governments from doing the same thing (to their own citizens or others)? The only form of critique of America's spying by other nations that would hold an ounce of credibility would be to repudiate and renounce all forms of spying immediately. No one has, no one will.

Except maybe Costa Rica. I could see them doing that.

I have always believed since the start of the Snowden disclosures that the main takeaway from the revelations over NSA spying isn't how much the government has abused our rights and freedoms, but how remarkably little they've abused American citizens, especially given the full scope of the potential abuses they could have carried out.

Granted, there were probably some rogue staffers who pulled up extramarital texting spats for fun on their off hours, but it's not like we'll ever know about that.

But overall the NSA seems to mostly have focused on abusing the rights and freedoms of foreigners, which is exactly why they have always existed. They could have been a little more discerning between 'foreigners who pose us absolutely no threat' and 'foreigners who pose a miniscule threat,' but that was their only real sin.

 

[Kozmos]

Granted, there were probably some rogue staffers who pulled up extramarital texting spats for fun on their off hours, but it's not like we'll ever know about that.

Well we do know that, even without the leaks.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...pied-spouses-watchdog-group-article-1.1469693

The Snowden leaks just shows you can't really have anything secret as long as humans have their grubby paws on the levers. That's why the idea of the Machine in Person of Interest is so fun. Also RL cybersecurity outside a very few specialized sections is usually very cheesy.

 

[Symphony D.]

I for one am in favor of any system that labels Juggalos a gang.

 

[Masada]

This is a pretty accurate summary of what you need to do to actually maintain anonymity and privacy in the modern age.

Ya'll probably be under surveillance now if you clicked that link, lah.

I have always believed since the start of the Snowden disclosures that the main takeaway from the revelations over NSA spying isn't how much the government has abused our rights and freedoms, but how remarkably little they've abused American citizens, especially given the full scope of the potential abuses they could have carried out.

Riiiight.

 

[Symphony D.]

chkilroy isn't under surveillance by the government. chkilroy is the government.

Also really if you're on this forum you've probably been under surveillance for years. Good thing, too. Means they know you're probably not a real threat.

 

[Crezth]

not nearly enough INTERNET LIBERTARIANS in this thread.

 

[Luckymoose]

You want to talk about third world conditions? Come to Georgia, where all people can carry guns anywhere anytime. The state is one giant Mexican standoff, and we don't know how to deal with it.

 

[Crezth]

Just legalize guns you freaking communist. Oh my god, it's so easy to eliminate crime. Just legalize guns. Legalize. Guns.

 

[Luckymoose]

Just legalize guns you freaking communist. Oh my god, it's so easy to eliminate crime. Just legalize guns. Legalize. Guns.

The only deterrence weapons are nuclear, so we should legalize carry permits for nuclear weaponry. It is the only logical step.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Those good old folks just need to turn their guns on the feds and fat cats.

 

[Luckymoose]

Those good old folks just need to turn their guns on the feds and fat cats.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - John Steinbeck

 

[Golden1Knight]

I wonder why the United States was spying on third world nations. They fear something? Or want to steal any secrets? After all, I'm pretty sure there are no Brazilian terrorists out there.

And I also wonder why our country did not give refuge to Snowden. If our president wanted retaliation, nothing better than having a former U.S. security agent. Who knows what else he has to tell.