"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Who was Joseph Goebbels? Per Wikipedia: Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Hacker News has officially jumped the shark when not only do we have 300 stories about the same (political) topic on the front page, we have a top rated comment following Godwin's law.
Can I get an email or something when this site decides it wants to return to technology and not be r/Politics?
I can't think of any single topic more important to the health of the Internet as we know it then this, right now. Sorry to be harsh, but dismissing these discussions as merely "politics" is short-sighted and naive.
If you think this is anything different from what has been happening over the last 30-40 years, (and probably longer than that) you are the one that is naive, not me.
There is nothing new coming from this, other than the fact that people seem to have had their bubbles of ignorance burst.
The internet is the same today as it was yesterday, because a large majority of people simply don't care. You may find this disturbing, but it is undeniable.
The circle jerk of the last few days has more properly resembled a university politics class than it has technology and entrepreneurship. I'm not saying politics isn't important though, I'm saying it is better discussed elsewhere.
There is nothing new or insightful being added at this point. It's all just meaningless twaddle.
If you care, get off your ass and go join a campaign for a person that will stop this stuff.
If you knew this was happening and had proof before two weeks ago then you've got a great point.
This is different. Now there's proof. Leaked documents implicating the largest consumer Internet companies that are recognizable names for every US citizen. Now these large Internet companies have to stand in front of their customers, their shareholders and say something about this. Now's our chance to demand answers from them and from our government. Now there's money involved; this strikes me as a very nice lever with which to move the world.
I agree, standing around saying, "Well, I know there's spying going on but, oh well!" is not productive. My ass has been gotten off of for a very long time.
But thinking that nothing is different today is over-the-top cynical.
Call me cynical, I don't care. I've grown out of my desire to completely change the world. Right now I want a nice safe place for my family to be allowed to go about its business. I have that now, like I had it yesterday, and based on all available data I'll have that tomorrow. Yes, even with someone possibly monitoring that I called Indonesia 10 times over the past 15 years.
In case you haven't noticed, none of the nonsense around constitutions, human rights, legal decrees and such really matters. They're just guidelines, and how we interpret the words can and does change every damn day. The same law that upheld segregation is the same law that maintains that it is unconstitutional. It's all just interpretation.
Get enough people to agree with your interpretation, and you can justify anything. Good luck fighting against that.
The majority of what you said here is right, but the key is in your last sentence. How better to get enough people to agree with our interpretation (that we want privacy and accountability) than to get everyone pissed off about what's going on (and has been for years, so what).
For the last few days, these huge comment threads have been completely empty of information. People are complaining about "NSA spying" or simply "this" and calling it unconstitutional without defining what these actions were and why they are unconstitutional. In the absence of detail, people are substituting their own worst fears. For the most part, that is also the case in the linked articles.
So far, by my understanding, we have:
1. A court order for Verizon to create a database of phone transaction metadata and make it accessible to the NSA. We don't know what (if any) procedures are in place for controlling access to the data.
2. A non-technical document claiming that the NSA has direct access to "the servers" and is getting information from several companies. News reports imply that this refers to internal company servers. The companies named unanimously deny that this is the case. We don't know the details of what information the NSA is collecting or how they are collecting it; specifically, we do not know and cannot say that they are failing to follow the 4th Amendment and other legal procedures.
3. Something called PRISM exists. People are fearmongering about PRISM being some horrible unconstitutional crime when nobody knows what it is (my guess: it's just a UI for collecting reports from the companies that they send enough information requests to for them to use a standard data format).
None of this justifies the current panic, the uprating of spammy slogans, and the top-rated comment in a 300-point thread saying this is just as bad as Hitler.
First, for the record, I think it's helpful to not define this surveillance in terms of illegality or unconstitutionality. By definition, if the branches of the US government have enacted this (executive made the policy order, legislative reviewed it, judicial signed off) then it is constitutional and legal. It's not very useful to debate it on those terms.
My primary objection is the lack of transparency by my government. Democracies simply do not work without the informed consent of the governed. How do I know who to vote out if my elected representatives don't tell me what they're doing? Thus my definition of "this" includes "keeping the extent of the surveillance a secret". Every time you say "we don't know" you are agreeing with me.
My secondary objection is the institutionalization of easy spying. Every defense I've seen from the administration includes some proviso that they're only gathering data about foreign nationals suspected of terrorism. I prefer my governmental legal structures built with the understanding that they could be used for ill. Having no public, non-governmental discourse about these processes prevents the electorate from making that judgement call.
My third objection is to the easy reliance on xenophobia and fear-mongering in the defense of these policies that we don't know enough about. "Oh good," I (am supposed to) sigh with relief. "This network is only to be used for spying on foreign terrorists." Given that global relations are the new reality I find it deeply troubling that my government is defending itself by throwing the rest of the world under the bus.
I wouldn't call my reaction panic. I never said this was "as bad as Hitler" which, in itself, is a meaningless and unhelpful statement.
The "discussion" this comment is part of is one step away from "wake up sheeple." Comparing PRISM, about which we know very little, with the propagandists of the third reich is disingenuous, unoriginal, and unproductive.
Sounds fine to me, no Nazi comparisons needed here. But I was speaking to the grandparent comment's world-weariness WRT politics being all mixed up in his/her technology.
>If I wanted to know what the major cybersec/surveillence stories were in the country with defacto control of a large portion of the world's internet, a hotbed of technological innovation, and the home country of this website, I'd turn to one of the least reputable news sources in that country.
Which would give you a ridiculous caricature of what's actually going on in the US. As much as I'd like to just ignore the US, they don't seem willing to let us.
The reason why this is very important for Hacker News (and my business) is that me and my business depends on "internet" and "cloud". If people starts loosing confidence (i.e., that their data in cloud is mined to find "things"), we will be losing customers, people will be more and more hesitant to use "cloud" and "internet" (especially ones outside US), etc.
Even for those who don't accept it, the fact that so many others do means your data do effectively live in the cloud (at least to a significant extent). Particularly in the case of email. So ... it still matters.
"Ingram’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of an improper invocation of Godwin’s Law approaches 1.
"...it should be evident Ingram’s Law does not excuse irrelevant, improper mentions of Nazism in any discussion. It is not a purely rhetorical device. But it ought to be used to counter any attempt to side-step proper mention or comparison with Nazism and Hitler or avoid admitting the similarities between Nazism or Nazi practices"
In the comments to that article, Godwin himself showed up, and wrote that his Law was intended only to discourage frivolous comparisons to Nazis, not substantive ones.
Fool? What sort of word is that? I'd look it up but I don't trust wikipedia... Wait, what? Fool? Really? Did you call someone on HN a fool? My oh my... What strong words! Sheesh, whatever happened to courteous discourse? Has that gone the way of the dodo?
Yeah, when you've been here more than a year you can lecture me on "courteous discourse".
Making a comparison equating a US spy/wire tapping program to a homicidal antisemitic lunatic that played a major role in exterminating 9 million people is naive at best and idiotic at worst.
Believing such a comparison is apt does in fact make you a fool, by definition, because what you are displaying is foolishness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foolishness
By all means though, continue to believe in nonsense. That's your right. Don't attempt to tell me I can't call a spade a spade however.
>Yeah, when you've been here more than a year you can lecture me on "courteous discourse".
I've been around here for more than a year. More than a few years, actually. It looks like you're throwing a temper tantrum over these NSA-related posts on HN. Come back next week, I'm sure there will be something new over which you can complain.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of us for whom this is a very important topic. No, government spying isn't new, whether in the US or elsewhere (I'm in Canada). But there is a place to talk about how we ought to handle this, as the targets of that spying.
Regarding your later comment claiming to be banned, I think you might've just used a word or phrase that tripped an automatic filter for that one comment. Note that I don't have any inside knowledge of how HN's banning system actually works.
Regarding this thread, it was probably time to let it die before it started. There's nothing to be accomplished by arguing over wording and metaphorical choices from five posts back.
The comment did not say that the spying is as morally bad as the Holocaust. It compared to specific propaganda tactic advocated by Goebbels to propaganda tactics in use today.
It's on point. Obama claimed a day ago that "nobody is listening to your calls". Give me a break -- that defines "the big lie".
Nobody said the US government is a bunch of Nazis. But the US government is following a public relations play book that is similar many ways... A deeply disturbing development.
I wish people would stop carrying on about "Godwin's Law". It's completely meaningless and references to it are no more than just another Internet meme.
Actually, having been around long enough to watch the fall of the Berlin wall on TV and not only remember it, but understand its significance, the more I hear of this story, the more it seems exactly like business as usual.
You want the dog, but not the poop it is making, huh?
"The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." -- George Orwell
I'd argue something similar goes for HN. Especially since "Politics" basically means how people live together in cities, and here a lot of the architects of our virtual city hang out. Yes, surveillance and effectively autocracy is older than technology, but with how the marriage is going lately, it's very much our concern. It's not like any of this would be possible without engineers and mathematicians who made it so.
Interesting, there are still correctly attributed points that fit this whole debacle:
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."
"War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler
I'm referring to the constant reuse of the term 'no direct access to servers'cough propaganda cough
<sarcasm>And what? You dare to question the absolute veracity of wikipedia? You will be sent to the Re-Education Camp immediately?</sarcasm>
<notsarcasm>Having to use the sarcasm tag means enough people are unable to recognize sarcasm. I blame the education system. It's a damn shame though.</notsarcasm>
The sentiment has value, but it feels misleading to need to back it up by aligning the idea with the Nazi Germany. (The closest quote by Goebbels appears to be about England rather than Germany, not sure if that makes it more or less relevant here)
Sarcasm is a word that has been so misused by Americans, that people have tried to actually re-write the definition.
-the use of irony to mock or convey contempt -
It does not mean 'joking'.
Funny, that quote could be said about the "FISA ruled PRISM unconstitutional" mantra that is implied in the title. We have no idea if FISA ruled about PRISM, if they feds changed it to comply with those rulings, or it was something else completely. We ought to know and that in and of it self is enough.
Correct. This is an awfully misleading title. The blogs cite blogs upon blogs, not any actual court filings, which do not reveal any ruling whatsoever about the merits of the constitutional matters. The coverage of this looks like an out of control telephone game.
No, that's not true. There's an actual source document, which I link to in the post. It's the argument by the Obama administration that the secret ruling should be kept secret. The contents of the secret opinion was revealed by two U.S. senators. See the EFF article for details.
There is a link to the motion to keep the court filing secret. The entire point of the EFF piece is that the constitutional merit of the legal argument underpinning PRISM is being kept under total secrecy, so obviously they don't have access to the actual ruling.
Of course there must be many, but the parent comment drew particular attention to this possibility. Using the Economist house style offers an elegant alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see "Google, a search giant", "GE, an American conglomerate", or "Tim Cook, boss of Apple". In this case, the first line of the post could be changed to "A quote by Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany:", and the final paragraph could be eliminated.
There is nothing wrong with the fact that he didn't know it either. Only willful ignorance is a sin, not accidental ignorance. Nobody can know everything, you shouldn't judge someone for prioritizing different knowledge than you.
The state of history education is abysmal, at least in the US.
I sure as hell was not taught enough (and most of what I was taught, prior to high school history classes, was whitewashed propaganda. Things like "The Russian space program was awful", "The Native Americans and settlers got along swimmingly", or "Columbus thought the Earth was flat". Stuff no adult familiar with the material believes for a moment, but that we teach children anyway.)
The meme I more recall is "Columbus uniquely thought the Earth was round." Really, most people thought the Earth was round; Columbus thought the Earth was 1/3 its actual size...
Knowing that Hitler heavily leveraged propaganda to further his cause might be of use to an individual. I don't think knowing Goebbels' name is necessary for learning such lessons though.
Possibly true, though I would question the quality of any lesson about Nazi propaganda that did not mention Goebbels' name. If you are doing the "3-lesson 10,000 foot overview" of the 1930s and 40s then I can see how Goebbels' would escape mention, but otherwise he is definitely in the top 10 figures to mention.
I don't know about you, but I tend to forget details that I don't regularly use. I have learned about Goebbels and forgotten his name at least once. I focus primarily on remembering the lessons learned because I know I am likely to forget details such as names. I can usually remember the overall lesson learned because it resonates with my intuition and world knowledge.
Not knowing the names of prominent figures is some (quite inconclusive) evidence of insufficient familiarity. Any encouragement of the type I was speaking of should recognize that (and should be polite on other counts as well, of course) or is not entirely appropriate.
How should I approach learning more about this sort of thing? I mean obviously reading about Nazi Germany, but what sort of materials? I had no idea who Goebbels was.
Something like "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" following would probably be reasonable, if a bit hefty.
The Nazi's managed to document things exhaustively, so it serves as a jumping off point into a bunch of other places you will very likely find interesting books and articles about most of the aspects of the regime.
"This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution
works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.
This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America, and that is why the fifth part of my strategy is doing the hard and patient work to secure a more resilient homeland."
I'm still wondering when this idea of defending the people against this type of thing went out the window. . .
If there was a reason to impeach a president this might be it.
Nixon was impeached for spying on a few competitors but eerily similarly using the FBI, CIA and IRS to spy on competitors and was statesman enough to resign.
Bill Clinton for being too good and making people pry into his personal life.
So far this trumps both combined.
Granted this is the first time technology has allowed this amount of spying and illegal search and seizure of papers so timing would put any president there.
I am scared at what will happen 2-3 presidents from now if the executive branch overreach continues, the exact thing Obama was complaining about in 2008. Considering he was not for it before he became president.
Thank you for posting this. I posted the exact same speech yesterday on another thread. The reason why this statement by Obama doesn't jive is because he's not working for you and me. He's working for people who put him in power. You, me, your mom, your dad, we're all being lied to by our government. I'm mad as hell...and I'm not going to take it anymore!
One of the things I don't really understand about the way laws work here in the US is when something like this happens. We will declare something unconstitutional and then its like "okay lets form a committee to make sure it doesn't happen again...whats that you say? What the NSA is doing is secret and we can't monitor it? Okay, well then just go on with what you're doing, I assume you're following the constitution now"
I mean, I feel like following the constitution is probably the most important thing we can encourage, and its basically like "meh, lets hope they stop violating the constitution". I simply do not get it. Priority #1 should be making sure that the NSA is following the constitution. There is 0 point in fighting foreign wars or anything like that until this is fixed. The NSA's budget should be reduced to 0 until there is 100% proof this has stopped.
There's nothing in the US legal code that creates consequences for disobeying the judicial branch's judgement.
Obeying them is a strong suggestion, and disobeying could conceivably be used as evidence in an impeachment trial, but that's about it.
This isn't a new issue either. It's over 150 years old. Andrew Jackson didn't even get a slap on the wrist for not enforcing the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia.
Actually, it's one of the fundamental checks and balances. The judiciary has no executive power. The reason a conviction in court sucks for the defendant is because the executive branch actors enforce that conviction by taking the convict to jail.
However the legislative branch pays for those guns (and the men who hold them, the ammunition that goes in them, the vehicles which transport them, and the fuel which powers those).
It's called checks and balances for a reason.
There is no center of power, though the balance may shift over time (and yes, the executive has a great deal of power).
The people who vote for the NSA budget don't know what they are voting for, because the NSA activities that the budget is paying for are State Secrets.
Also, of course, these activities are Very Important so America can win the War on Terror and eliminate Al Qaeda and all the other Evil People in the whole World, so, as a Senator, you would find yourself hard-pressed for raising your re-election campaign funds if you were to "side with the terrorists" and failed to approve the budget for these secret activities.
They don't actually. A member of Congress can't just ask the head of the NSA to tell them what's going on and expect the complete details. Each house has a Select Intelligence Committee who do in fact receive briefs on these subjects from time to time. The Speaker of the House and Minority Leader in the House serve as ex officio members of the House committee and the Majority Leader and Minority Leader of the Senate serve as ex officio members of the Senate committee.
When it comes to these votes on these issues where intelligence is discussed, members look to follow the lead of members of this committee for guidance on how to vote, as these members are barred from divulging the exact contents of the meeting. (Though it may be argued they could easily enter it into the public record and have immunity via the speech and debate clause.) This committee is also supposed to exercise oversight but that's often problematic because...
Once the Congress has passed these laws, the Executive Branch will often interpet the laws as they see fit, and because of the clandestine nature of all of this, there is currently no mechanism by which they must or do inform the committee on how they've interpreted the law. There is very little Congressional oversight of clandestine activities, and this has been the case historically except for very rare occasions where the lid has been blown off so to speak and public hearings were held. The oversight here is the weakest link and in the absence of strong oversight, people in power will continue to expand and condense their power in Washington as history has shown.
In theory, the Congress achieves this power by their ability to approve appointments by the President. However they have greatly diminished the impact of that power by allowing partisan politics to pollute the business of vetting someone for competence.
And most hard line, true progressives. I think many folks have a hard time stomaching the Pauls and their cohorts on a variety of other issues. Unfortunate for the Pauls (and Amash), but true.
That said this is a good opportunity for both ends of the spectrum to work together.
Enough people can stomach them in their districts to elect them.
Progressives would turn a lot of stomachs off the blue coastal areas. This site has an overrepresentation from California and Europe, which skews our perception.
>The opinion Movant seeks cannot be released by the Government not only because it is classified but also because it is under this Court’s seal. As Judge Bates has explained, “[t]he FISC is a unique court,” whereas “[o]ther courts operate primarily in public, with secrecy the exception; the FISC operates primarily in secret, with public access the exception.” In re Release, 526 F. Supp. 2d at 487-88. The FISC maintains this operational secrecy because, unlike any other court, its “entire docket relates to the collection of foreign intelligence by the federal government.” Id. at 487.
It's secret simply by the nature of the court, not by specific executive instruction.
The court is not secret, nor are its decisions intended to be permanently secret.
The idea behind seeking temporarily secret court-orders was that they would effect ongoing investigations, but that the court-orders would become public when the charges were brought.
An example is obtaining a wire-tap order for an individual. If it were automatically public, the individual might be watching the public record and see that they were being wire-tapped and make the wire-tap meaningless.
Now we have a situation where the decisions remain in secret for perpetuity? It's simple bullshit and an attempt to "route around" the Constitutional protections.
The broader metadata requests had a declassification date of 2038 - they must have argued that it isn't tied to any one case, and that it could always threaten an ongoing case if made public.
It is interesting that yet again we end up in a preposterous situation, where you can suck in all call data and not tell anyone, due to a long chain of small concessions (patriot act, fisa review, 'business records' condition, etc.)
How misleading of you! Why quote the DOJ's obviously biased opinion? Better to quote the simple fact pointed out on that very same groklaw page that the secret court did in fact make a ruling that some surveillance was a violation of the Fourth Ammendment and/or violated the spirit of the law:
"EFF asked the government for a copy of "any written opinion or order" of the FISA court in which the court held that the surveillance conducted under the FISA Amendments Act (2008 version) "was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" or had "circumvented the spirit of the law." After some of the usual back and forth in discovery, the government revealed that it had found one such [!], but it refused to provide it on the grounds that it had no authority under FISC rules "to release FISC opinions to a FOIA requester or any other member of the public without a FISC order." So that's why EFF is now approaching the court itself, asking for a ruling that the government is allowed to provide it. The ACLU asked, and was denied, once before for the same relief it now is asking for, but now, after the latest events and the President's encouragement of public debate saying it's healthy for a democracy, it is renewing its request."
Joe Biden (2006) I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to; I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.
Nothing in the filing cited here even implies that any court found anything unconstitutional whatsoever.
This seems to be an instance of the old "telephone game" of blogs citing other blogs, in an admittedly emotional issue, although as far as I can tell the actual court activity here involves the rather technical issue of unsealing court records, not the merits of any constitutional matters.
The only real way I see of swinging the power back to the people is to use encryption in all our personal communications, that includes e-mail, voice, video. Unfortunately there is a very real possibility that the government has access to the CA keys so that it would render any encryption useless.
However, it seems that a new type of quantum key distribution system [1] may allow us citizens to share the keys such that not even the government may be able to get them. I don't really know much about this but it does seem promising. It may be the only way to ensure that only those that we choose can see our data. I would not be surprised though if the government tried to pass laws to make such technology illegal. Just like it tried to make military grade encryption illegal by claiming it was a munitions weapon.[2]
A hostile entity owning the public CAs doesn't render "any" encryption useless--just PKI that trusts those common CAs. We could revert to the PGP signing parties of the 90s, or a variety of other key exchange protocols... just no more relying on a certificate because Thawte, Verisign, or (ha!) Comodo say it's good.
I am having very hard time seeing the difference between going door to door just to find something, or going from computer to computer / account to account, just in case, to find something. Sure, the meaning of transportation changes, but just because you have a way to do something, it doesnt mean you should do it.
Whether its door to door unreasonable search (hello first amendment), or account to account unreasonable search, its still the same thing! And no court in their sound mind should find it different.
What I find scary is that if the government can keep the secret rulings of the secret court secret at will, what is the point of bypassing even the nominal oversight that the secret court provides?
1. It goes to the original source, not a blog post giving a five-line summary of another blog post.
2. It is relevant to the acts of which the NSA was recently accused (specifically, the collection of Verizon metadata) and not about some other vague undefined activity that the NSA has already been forced to stop doing.
3. It discusses in detail the Constitutional issues involved and the history of related court rulings.
4. It is the actual US Supreme Court ruling on the subject.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Who was Joseph Goebbels? Per Wikipedia: Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)