I understand the point, however, IMO there have been significant revelations since Snowden. If I tried to start a conversation under the assumption that the NSA has full access to all my emails prior to Snowden, most people would have called me crazy. Heck, even after Snowden, when I suggested it, not everyone thought that our emails were being read. Prior to Snowden, everyone in the NSA and the US government would have denied it. For the general public, we've gone from something that could be believably denied to cold fact in the last three months. That's not to say that techies shouldn't have been paranoid enough to use lavabit or something like it, but I think it matters to Jones that even options like that are becoming unsustainable. But, that aside, I think stopping Groklaw was about as strong a statement that she was in a position to make. A lot of people will miss that newsletter. There is a tangible change brought to their lives due to a surveillance state. It's kinda like the SOPA blackout. Consciousness raising and all that.
Most people don't know what the NSA does, despite the dust-up over warrantless wiretapping from 2005. It's a willful ignorance. Outside of Sneakers and Good Will Hunting, there is a whilsting in the dark about what, exactly, the NSA does. You excuse that from the general public. This is a newsletter about tech law. "Options like that" AREN'T "becoming unsustainable," THEY WERE NEVER EFFECTIVE. That's the truly stupid thing - we're not talking about a bunch of hackers on Tor using 256-bit encryption, we're talking about gmailers. "Consciousness raising?" Seems to me the argument put forth is "hey guise they're reading our email." The brave thing to do is soldier on and keep doing what you're doing despite the fact that suddenly you feel like your underwear is being pawed through. 'cuz that's just it - IT WAS NEVER REALLY YOUR UNDERWEAR DRAWER TO BEGIN WITH and if the revelation that your private thoughts on public wire weren't all that private is enough to send you into a tailspin, what use are you anyway? I smell Yellow Ribbon Syndrome - the idea that a meaningless gesture in the face of a large problem is actually accomplishing something, despite the fact that the gesture is only visible to you.If I tried to start a conversation under the assumption that the NSA has full access to all my emails prior to Snowden, most people would have called me crazy.
I smell Yellow Ribbon Syndrome - the idea that a meaningless gesture in the face of a large problem is actually accomplishing something, despite the fact that the gesture is only visible to you.
I'm conflicted. I think it will probably take plenty of both going on if we are to ever get any real push back. If Yahoo or Google pulled a Groklaw, then there would be a reaction. But there's no way that public companies are going to give a damn unless it affects their bottom line. The only scenario I see there is if enough start moving to an off-shore option that makes it tough on the NSA (not that Deutsche Telekom is that option), but there maybe be money in it for someone in a country that will take a stand on their behalf, maybe Norway, for instance.
..except that Qwest told the NSA to pound sand and all they got was frozen out of GSA contracts. It's not going to happen until there is a legitimate, violent reaction at home. So anything short of demanding the NSA be disbanded is pretty much pointless. "Fans of sausage and politics should not watch either being made." The United States is the world's puppetmaster and a large percentage of Americans have foolishly presumed there were no strings holding them up.
Blood in the streets has more of a likelihood of doing something than Google giving up marketshare to Bing. The CIA did not pull out of Lebanon until William Francis Buckley was kidnapped - not even the Beirut bombings did the trick. There has to be a real human cost for things to change, and even then, it's a reorganization so they can say "The National Security Agency has stopped spying on the American people" while congress authorizes a trillion dollars for the formation of the National Security Association under seal. We were back in Beirut within 9 months. Go take a peak at Total Information Awareness. see if the Powerpoint doesn't have the same designer as PRISM. It certainly has the same mission, and we violently fuckin' killed TIA in 2003. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.