The slow and painful death of the internet

[pacman]

I never was a Lavabit user, but there is some sad news related to the death of this email service:
Encrypted email service used by Snowden mysteriously shuts down ? RT USA

Basically, Lavabit was a subscription based email service that took a proactive stance on privacy to prevent both eavesdroppers and Lavabit administration from viewing users emails. Lavabit was also the email choice of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. Now, privacy in technology has been slowly going away for a while now, but the US government has decided to pick up the pace of the erosion of your rights. In this case, Lavabit was forced to pretty much either compromise their goal of providing a secure and private email service by being complicit with government requests or to shut down the service entirely to avoid legal trouble. The leader of Lavabit refused to comply with the government invasion of privacy and was pretty much forced to shut down Lavabit because of it.

What are your guys thoughts on privacy being criminalized in the US? Do you think the government is going way too far or do you think that trying to stop a tiny minority of citizens from committing crimes justifies destroying the notion of privacy of the law-abiding majority?

 

[Soup]

This is a touchy, frightening & complex issue. the constant & pervasive interference of the government in the lives of private law-abiding citizens is disturbing. I think, though, that this has always been the case except that few people really knew it was happening. I'm suspicious about virtually everything the gov't says. Sometimes these terrorist attacks that get miraculously thwarted right in the niche of time seem too convenient & coincidental. Think, for example, of those invasive airline x-ray searches & pat-downs. Just when public opposition was at its zenith & it looked like the people would succeed in getting these practices scaled back along comes guess who? The underwear bomber! Conveniently, he was concealing his explosive device in a very private place. All too conveniently as well, he was the son of a wealthy banker who had notified the authorities that his son had become 'radicalized'.

Now, along comes Snowden. A guy with no education or qualifications whatsoever who was, suspiciously, placed in a position where he would have access to extremely sensitive allegedly classified information. What does he do? He informs the public that their every phone call is being monitored & gathered by the gov't to allegedly thwart potential terrorists. WOW! Again the people are outraged & resent being spied upon by big brother. Then what happens? All of a sudden guess what? This same government announces that their spying has conveniently paid off! They have 'intercepted' conference calls between Al Qaeda members planning a series of potentially catastrophic terror attacks (think of how VAGUE the information is that the public is being fed). Due to their spying, they were able to prevent these attacks...allegedly...maybe. Then comes the new scary bearded brown face from the 'Axis of Evil'. Some other what's his name who has replaced Bin Laden. When ty shot bin Laden in his home in Pakistan, the gov't announced that Al Qaeda has been 'brought to its knees'. Along comes Snowden, the US gov't has egg on its face & again looks like a gathering of morons & then what? This same gov't announces that Al Qaeda is 'stronger than ever' & we all need to quake in fear & live in a state of red alert hyper-vigilance because of this new replacement evil guy.

I'm not alleging that terrorists are not dangerous or that they do not exist. They are & they do. The thing I don't like is the way that the perfect example of one seems to appear out of nowhere whenever the gov't needs a diversion from its outrageous violations of the citizens' rights.

 

[King_Oni]

It's not neccesarily that privacy is the matter here... though one can claim to feel violated. It's the fact that people either can't deal with the knowledge of someones private life or that in fact, governments can decide that it's wrong what you do, even if it's in the privacy of your own home.

Privacy is becoming matter along the lines of "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about". That's an argument that's often used. I'm actually worried, that while I don't have anything to hide right now, laws might change and things I do are becoming things I need to hide for fear of being judged for it. And that's a way bigger picture if you look at eroding someones rights.

The entire privacy/security issue is silly at most. People that have actual evil intentions will find a way. Have software to screen and trace every text? Use slang? Use encryption? Use something silly like pig latin? Reports have even shown that despite the knowledge they had, they were not able to prevent the Boston bombings earlier this year. Does this mean we should criminalize everyone beforehand? It's slowly becoming that.

 

[pacman]

It's not neccesarily that privacy is the matter here... though one can claim to feel violated. It's the fact that people either can't deal with the knowledge of someones private life or that in fact, governments can decide that it's wrong what you do, even if it's in the privacy of your own home.

Privacy is becoming matter along the lines of "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about". That's an argument that's often used. I'm actually worried, that while I don't have anything to hide right now, laws might change and things I do are becoming things I need to hide for fear of being judged for it. And that's a way bigger picture if you look at eroding someones rights.

The entire privacy/security issue is silly at most. People that have actual evil intentions will find a way. Have software to screen and trace every text? Use slang? Use encryption? Use something silly like pig latin? Reports have even shown that despite the knowledge they had, they were not able to prevent the Boston bombings earlier this year. Does this mean we should criminalize everyone beforehand? It's slowly becoming that.

Well, I think that privacy is definitely part of a larger picture of the government wanting and making an effort to erode the rights of the people. It's definitely an issue even if it isn't the underlying issue. One large problem is that government clearly wants the social zeitgeist to be something a long the lines of "only criminals want privacy/other rights. law abiding citizens have nothing to worry about," and that is really scary because most people probably do have something that they would like hidden, even if they don't immediately know it. There are also people who want to speak out, but can only do that anonymously. Examples of this include, but are not limited to whistle-blowers working for highly corrupt companies/agencies and closeted homosexuals/transgender people living in extremely bigoted communities. Those types of people are doing nothing wrong, but they do have things to hide for the sake of their own personal safety and security.

We are living in an era where it is highly encouraged to give your personal information out online. This is absolutely a bad thing. In my opinion, the internet should be anonymous by default and users should almost never give out their personal information unless they explicitly want to. Personally, I'm very open, and my my cell phone number is available to anyone with an internet connection if they know where to look. However, not everyone is in a position of privilege to have that openness, and the current trends on the internet only seeks to further marginalize individuals who don't have the privilege to share their opinions under their full name without repercussions. For example, if someone is an atheist in certain Arabic communities, they cannot speak about about it using their real name because they might face the death penalty. Being forced/coerced into having to reveal your legal name to use the internet is very harmful for people in those types of situations.

Also, if the government is promoting the message that "only those doing something wrong are those who want to hide," then they should be fully transparent in their actions. After all, by their logic, what wrong and unethical actions are they hiding?

 

[Mellotron]

I read about this earlier today and was glad to see Lavabit not give into the government's eventual demands. Not that its good that they had to shut down but I like that they protected the data and their integrity.

I believe 100% that this privacy issue is a major problem facing our world, definitely the US which is what I know more about than other countries. It is entirely illegal for the government to collect data on citizens without just cause. I don't care what the Patriot Act says, that thing is a sham and in violation of the US Constitution. Even at that, these crazy lengths they have gone to collect our data is in violation of the Patriot Act. The US Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights, were written to protect the citizens from the government in situations like this. It comes from a long history of this kind of tyrannical rule which I won't go into in detail here, but it has a basis in history. The fact that it is illegal makes the "if you don't have anything to hide, don't worry" argument moot.

The US government is more than happy to keep us busy worrying about endless foreign wars with no particular purpose, an economy in the toilet with no end in sight, and they love watching the citizens watch tv where they worry more about the latest celebrity gossip than about the state of their country. This is serious stuff, not to be taken lightly. The minute you give the government your silent consent to take a few liberties for the sake of personal security they will take more, and more, until we have no defense against it and they've gone out of control. This is where we have to say no and make them aware that we care about our liberties. I fear that the lessons of the 18th century and all of the hard work since then will go to waste with a few generations of complacency.

People have a right to their privacy no doubt. Lets hope we can protect those rights before they go and take over the internet as part of this drive to take our liberties.