NSA roundup

I don’t have to tell you that this isn’t the sort of “roundup” where you get to go, “Yipee-i-o-kyaaay!” It’s the sort where you go, “OMG, what will learn next about these creeping, peeping totalitarians?”

Some of the newest nooz:

Got a smartphone? NSA can get your data. Not yet a mega-scooping data project; they have to really want your particular data to get it. Mega-scooping? That comes next year, no doubt.

And when it comes it’ll be with the help of “Mr. Civil Rights” Obama himself. Seems two years ago the secret court, responding to a secret request, made another of its secret judgments removing various restrictions that formerly pretended to hold the NSA in check.

—–

I love what Bruce Schneier said in his call to action to his fellow engineers. Under the headline “The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back” he states (oh so correctly) that it’s up to the engineers to fix this mess and up to insider-engineers to blow the whistle on the UberGov’s dirty dealings. He concludes:

Generations from now, when people look back on these early decades of the internet, I hope they will not be disappointed in us. We can ensure that they don’t only if each of us makes this a priority, and engages in the debate. We have a moral duty to do this, and we have no time to lose.

Dismantling the surveillance state won’t be easy. Has any country that engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming totalitarian? Whatever happens, we’re going to be breaking new ground.

Again, the politics of this is a bigger task than the engineering, but the engineering is critical. We need to demand that real technologists be involved in any key government decision making on these issues. We’ve had enough of lawyers and politicians not fully understanding technology; we need technologists at the table when we build tech policy.

To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us have helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it.

Schneier also offers a few ways to stay safe. Well, safer, anyhow.

And fortunately, engineers and scientists are already at work on some fascinating stuff — even if at this point some of it is pretty science-fictional.

—–

I don’t in the least like the email I got from an acquaintance of mine. He wrote:

I posted the news about the NSA cracking common Internet encryption to a financial forum I’m on. This forum is full of people who rely on SSL (HTTPS) encryption for the security of virtually everything they do in the financial world. I expected a big discussion.

Not one person responded. Not one. We’re doomed.

This accords with what I’ve been noticing since that NSA shoe dropped. In the media, it’s all-Syria all the time (or Lamar Odom and his crack habit, depending on which level of media you heed). There’s next to nothing about this monumental threat to our financial security and personal privacy.

Okay, maybe only geeks understand the details. But don’t people see the ramifications?

Syria? A typical drum-beating diversion. “Hey, look! Over here! Blood! Bombs! Kill! Kill!”

Still, I don’t believe we’re doomed. I hope at least some of this is true.

—–

Speaking of geeks, I owe hat tips to several for finding some of the links for this post. You’ll find them still having a lively discussion on Friday’s “Other shoe drops” post.

One comment in particular would make me laugh if it didn’t make me cry. I was indignant because the NSA, in the latest Snowden docs to hit the presses, called every user of encryption (including, say, ordinary bank customers) “adversaries.” I didn’t know, but Chris pointed out, that in cryptography, the word “adversary” is a term of art with a very specific, limited meaning.

A meaning that happens not to describe encryption users at all. A meaning that nails the NSA right on its ugly little head.

So, since it’s obvious to any honest person that, in that sense the NSA is clearly the adversary, not us, this seems a good moment to remind ourselves of yet another definition of adversary. As Mark Call commented:

Funny the Nazi Stasi Army would call everyone ELSE ‘the Adversary’ – ’cause THAT term is usually reserved for, well, THE Adversary. THE Bad Guy — Ole Scratch, HaSatan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Molech, and so on – the one Judas went to spend some quality time with, perhaps.

There’s more irony in that than meets the eye…

Yup. That definition fits the NSA pretty darned well, also.

—–

Now we’re in desperate need of an antidote to all this systemic poison. CUTE DOGGIES. And there they are, courtesy of Mama Liberty.