Jeff Keen

Ed Snowden does a good job of explaining the other side of the argument regarding modern privacy, namely the line of “Sorry, if you want security, privacy has to go a little bit. It’s the price we pay to keep this country safe”

The interview was mainly around the Windows vulnerability that was discovered by cyber attackers causing worldwide damage, but the twist being that the NSA knew about this vulnerability and had been using it to their advantage for a long time. The debate being: was that right?

Paraphrased transcript below regarding some meaty bits of this interview.

Privacy and security improve together. They are actually tied to each other. When one is reduced, the other is reduced. Surveillance and privacy are the contradictory factors. When surveillance increases, privacy decreases.

And unfortunately…when surveillance increases security typically decreases. Now that might not seem obvious at first glance, but when you think about how surveillance actually functions it becomes quite clear, particularly in the computer security context. Surveillance operates by observing, witnessing, and exploiting vulnerabilities. Whether that’s you walking out on the street where you can be observed, rather than within the four walls of your home, that’s exploiting a property where you are insecure, and using that for the interests of whoever runs the surveillance thing.

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This interview was pretty interesting/terrifying and hey maybe it’d be easier to not even think about this and just la la la la la continue on like nothing is happening and wow new season of bojack horseman is coming out soon? So exciting.

SCHNEIER: Surveillance is the business model of the internet. Everyone is under constant surveillance by many companies, ranging from social networks like Facebook to cellphone providers. This data is collected, compiled, analyzed, and used to try to sell us stuff. Personalized advertising is how these companies make money, and is why so much of the internet is free to users. We’re the product, not the customer.

GAZETTE: Should they be stopped?

SCHNEIER: That’s a philosophical question. Personally, I think that in many cases the answer is yes. It’s a question of how much manipulation we allow in our society. Right now, the answer is basically anything goes. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1970s, Congress passed a law to make a particular form of subliminal advertising illegal because it was believed to be morally wrong. That advertising technique is child’s play compared to the kind of personalized manipulation that companies do today. The legal question is whether this kind of cyber-manipulation is an unfair and deceptive business practice, and, if so, can the Federal Trade Commission step in and prohibit a lot of these practices.

GAZETTE: Why doesn’t the commission do that? Why is this intrusion happening, and nobody does anything about it?

SCHNEIER: We’re living in a world of low government effectiveness, and there the prevailing neo-liberal idea is that companies should be free to do what they want. Our system is optimized for companies that do everything that is legal to maximize profits, with little nod to morality. Shoshana Zuboff, professor at the Harvard Business School, invented the term “surveillance capitalism” to describe what’s happening. It’s very profitable, and it feeds off the natural property of computers to produce data about what they are doing. For example, cellphones need to know where everyone is so they can deliver phone calls. As a result, they are ubiquitous surveillance devices beyond the wildest dreams of Cold War East Germany.

I live in Austin and my fuckwit texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn sponsored this lovely bill. I’m glad that for all their hard work, they both got a little side bonus from ISP lobbyists out of the deal. In total, $8,121,535 was donated across the house and senate to make our representatives continue to ignore their sense of ethics and vote for a bill that rolls back basic online privacy rights.

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I have had a few of these pretty weird experiences.

The guy being interviewed wrote this article for The Atlantic called If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Crazy, which might leave you terrified. In it, there was an interesting idea from a teenager’s perspective on surveillance.

Surveillance, he said, was pointless, a total waste. The powers that be should instead invite people to confess their secrets willingly. He envisioned vast centers equipped with mics and headphones where people could speak in detail and at length about their experiences, thoughts, and feelings, delivering in the form of monologues what the eavesdroppers could gather only piecemeal.

What I find ironic about this whole thing is that people are paranoid about the data that’s being collected on them, and some of that data is being collected because of paranoid national security measures. Can’t we all just fucking relax?