For a completely average US citizen, I don't think NSA spying has a practical impact today, at least directly -- it's almost all future risk. It's very serious future risk, that NSA will start to use its capabilities for entirely unlawful and immoral things (political activities, repression) vs. just spying on too many people when going after a smaller number of people.
So, the correct thing for average individuals today is to stop this from going farther -- not trying so much to mitigate the effects today. There are two main tools for the individual: politics, and commerce.
I'm willing to vote single-issue on reigning in NSA; I'd vote for Brian Schatz or Ted Cruz based on this single issue, even though I hate them otherwise.
As for commerce: I'll choose companies which resist spying activities (Google, Twitter, Sonic) over companies which cooperate completely (Telcos, eBay, etc.).
(legal challenges kind of fall in between; if I had the resources, I'd certainly fight vs. settle on these issues, individually or as a company, but it's not fair to expect others to do so)
If I were a foreigner, I wouldn't be able to directly influence US politics. I would lobby my government to end EU Safe Harbor and any other pressure they can put on the US Government, and to fix my own crazy data retention laws. And I'd probably prefer domestic companies, even when they also spy, just to put pressure on the US.
> For a completely average US citizen, I don't think NSA spying has a practical impact today, at least directly -- it's almost all future risk.
While I think it's true. The keyword is direct. Though it should be mentioned that indirect impact is measurable, now.
> 1 in 6 writers has avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance. Another 1 in 6 has seriously considered doing so.
I have seen this survey before and I have to say I am a little suspicious of how they came up with this pullquote. I do not understand how the 11% who responded "have seriously considered" is presented as "1 in 6 have seriously considered."
This is from Question 12.a in the survey.[^1]
12 Over the past year or two, have YOU done or seriously considered
doing any of the following because you thought your communications
might be monitored in some way by the government?
12.a Avoided writing or speaking on a particular topic
%% | Response
------------------------------------------
16 | Yes, have done
11 | Have seriously considered
70 | No, have not
3 | Not sure/Not applicable
---+--------------------------------------
27 | NET Yes/Have seriously considered
73 | NET No/Not sure
"Have seriously considered" is not even "1 in 6 respondents excluding the respondents that answered 'Yes, have done so.'"
I hope I am missing something obvious but as far as I currently understand the survey/math this quote is fucking shameful. Getting popular support for privacy protections is not going to happen by giving up the moral high ground. It is hard enough to fight against the "weak on security issues" label, it is going to be next to impossible to overcome "weak on security AND cannot be trusted to tell the truth."
> "Have seriously considered" is not even "1 in 6 respondents excluding the respondents that answered 'Yes, have done so.'"
Interesting. Yes, correctly excluding those 16, 11/84 isn't even close to 1/6. Incorrectly dividing by the NO answers (11/73) is. I'm inclined to believe whoever came up with the quote made that mistake.
It depends. Do you believe that NSA is stifling citizen activism?
If that's the case, than NSA spying affects a large portion of Americans. If that's the case, that would put a dampening effect on democracy, which theoretically affects everyone in the entire system, immediately.
> Do you believe that NSA is stifling citizen activism?
Let's say you were preparing an Occupy 2.0 movement. Do you think the government would bring the NSA to bear on you? Do you think you might get "stifled?"
> Let's say you were preparing an Occupy 2.0 movement. Do you think the government would bring the NSA to bear on you? Do you think you might get "stifled?"
Perhaps it's just the nature of activist groups, but I've been reaching out to various groups of protesters and activists since the Restore the Fourth protests last year.
Anecdotally, I have yet to contact a single group that doesn't believe that they have experienced government surveillance, infiltration, or subversion. Now, perhaps this is due to the closeted nature of activist groups and the paranoia can go hand in hand with activism, so take it for what it is.
There's reports of JP Morgan offices inside the NYPD surveillance complex. The NATO 3 case is an indication to me that this type of activity (Surveillance, infiltration, disruption) may be widespread. Certainly, it seems to coincide with the attitude and perspectives that led to COINTELPRO and other Hoover-esque tactics such as blackmailing Martin Luther King.
This is all to say nothing of the Arab Spring, and the subsequent development of practices and technologies that have "stifled" activism on social media. The other thing to take into consideration is that protests and activism in the US may play into the narrative put out by Russia or other foreign national interests, in the same way that the United States covers Pussy Riot or stories of unrest in Ukraine.
I tend to think in the coming months, you'll hear more about this topic. We'll see, though.
Wish I could double-upvote this. Great comment that puts it in context. We are not seeing this abused at the average citizen level right now. What we've done is establish new standards where the government in the future will be able to do really bad things without oversight. That has to stop
>>I'm willing to vote single-issue on reigning in NSA
That's it, in a nutshell. The tech community, and those interested in not living in an Orwellian state in 20 years, needs to go single issue on this and ditch the traditional political parties. If we were to get serious on this the way the prohibitionists got serious on alcohol, politicians will listen. Otherwise it's going to be 50 years of bullshit with small gains made every few years just to keep the yokels happy.
I firmly believe that this is the worst change in the system of governance for the United States in its entire history. Our type of government was not made to be on a constant war footing, with the government mass trolling the net. It just wasn't made to operate like that. It won't work. It's not that there isn't a threat, or that we don't take the threat seriously enough, or that it's not a new world and so on. It's that it doesn't work. Right now the politicians and those in power are too ignorant to understand this. They think that the danger outweighs the damage they're doing. We're going to have to get a big club out and beat them over the head for that to change. Single-issue voting is that club. (Assuming a large-enough percentage of people buy into it).
I agree with you, but I find it weird that Goolge is seen as a privacy respecting company.
People happily give up privacy for neat services like Facebook or Google or whatever, and some of these have caused actual harm to real people by leaking data.
Google builds amazing security technology, but also amasses huge amounts of information which wouldn't otherwise be centralized and retained. That's a lot better than people who only amass lots of data but don't build decent tech, and worse than people who just build awesome tools. I'd still put Google as a strong net positive, including the performance multiplier the Google tools give everyone. Even Facebook, which builds none of those good tools, and is essentially just a huge data repository, is kind of a net positive in that it brings people together to communicate. (that's a bit more debatable)
> For a completely average US citizen, I don't think NSA spying has a practical impact today, at least directly -- it's almost all future risk
I keep trying to come up with a catchy term that describes this, and/or the phenomenon of carrying out really serious human rights violations against a very small number of people (e.g. Guantanamo). So far I've come up with "police microstate".
> over companies which cooperate completely (Telcos, _Microsoft_, eBay, etc.).
FTFY.
I don't mean to sound like a Microsoft basher (and if you look at my history, I frequently defend them), but they are perhaps the most highly-documented (esp. in regard to Skype, Hotmail, etc) at collaborating with the US IC. They absolutely deserve a mention in that list.
So, the correct thing for average individuals today is to stop this from going farther -- not trying so much to mitigate the effects today. There are two main tools for the individual: politics, and commerce.
I'm willing to vote single-issue on reigning in NSA; I'd vote for Brian Schatz or Ted Cruz based on this single issue, even though I hate them otherwise.
As for commerce: I'll choose companies which resist spying activities (Google, Twitter, Sonic) over companies which cooperate completely (Telcos, eBay, etc.).
(legal challenges kind of fall in between; if I had the resources, I'd certainly fight vs. settle on these issues, individually or as a company, but it's not fair to expect others to do so)
If I were a foreigner, I wouldn't be able to directly influence US politics. I would lobby my government to end EU Safe Harbor and any other pressure they can put on the US Government, and to fix my own crazy data retention laws. And I'd probably prefer domestic companies, even when they also spy, just to put pressure on the US.