John Oliver: The Patriot Act, John Snowden, and D**k Pics

[EricKei]

Last Week Tonight strikes again. Note: Rather NSFW, especially a certain image towards the end. Stop watching after Snowden's quoted comment below to avoid the image in question.

From last night's episode:

The usual LWT mix of TL;DR news reporting and dry humor; a summary of the problematic Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is up for renewal (even the guy who wrote it feels that it needs to be overhauled, and is shown saying so); and a surprisingly civil interview with Edward Snowden -- in Moscow (Oliver tends to try and piss his guests off in interviews at times, but it seems he didn't quite succeed with this guy, despite his best efforts). Also, man-on-the street interviews of people who don't seem to quite know who Snowden is or what he's done, but REALLY care about being able to send each other d**k pics without having them looked at by the government. PRIORITIES!

Quote of the day, courtesy of Snowden:

"You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we're afraid, we don't care about those values very much."

The above comment was, of course, his reaction to Oliver asking him if people should stop sending each other pictures of their junk, due to the fact that the NSA can intercept said images if they cross international borders in any way, at any time.

So...whaddya think?

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

In the end, it hasn't changed. Unless there are single issue voters (which I do not believe there are in this case), it really doesn't matter. Both the left and the right are paranoid that if they hamstring the NSA, a major terrorist event will occur on their watch which would be incredibly politically problematic.

The components that created this really haven't changed. The NSA is still mandated to do their job which will result in them taking the loosest interpretation of laws in order to accomplish their goals. The electorate is still on average stupid when it comes to these issues because as Snowden points out (and anyone would who does this for a living would as well) it's incredibly hard to condense something most of us spend 10+ years learning, relearning, and modifying into a five minute conversation. The politicians, are still only ultimately responsible for failures of national security. They are not incentivized to remove the program unless the electorate is angry enough to replace them over it.

That simply has not occurred. I think it's great people discuss it, but like over the top Police Departments and African Warlords, if talk's all you've got then you might as well just get used to it. You need to have the political savvy and desire to actually engage these issues at a grassroots political level. Most people posting vids don't have that. They just assume they vids they are posting will do that for them.

[Greenday]

So...whaddya think?

Just as before, no one cares until it personally affects them.

[Aragarthiel]

As I grew up, my mom told me that the government had software that could look for keywords in emails, phone calls, and the like. I thought it was common knowledge. Then this whole NSA thing happened and all I could wonder was, "Didn't everyone already know about this?" So it really doesn't bother me. I know most people say it's an invasion of privacy, but I don't care if the government wants to know that I called my grandma for her meat loaf recipe.

[lordlundar]

Eh, five minutes at DEFCON would spark far more concern than anything Snowden has said.

Think about it. The people who keep screaming about privacy have a habit of updating their personal information on their publicly displayed Facebook page on an unencrypted cell phone which is broadcasting on a conventional radio frequency. A person with a basic RF packet sniffer setup can get more info for identity fraud in 5 minutes than the latest big company security breach.

I'm all for privacy protection but don't try to scream about the "ebil gubberment spying" when you're broadcasting it out there.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

You know Argarthiel... that's always been my confusion.

I guess I've been in the business so long that I get shocked how innocent some people seem about it. E-mail is by default, unencrypted. Send personally identifiable information and anyone along the path of that communication can intercept it. Ditto anything in http or ftp.

You have to take proactive steps to encrypt things. And even once you do that, a sniffer can literally be located anywhere along that path and given enough time and enough data sftp, https, or your secure e-mail implementation are open to read as well.

I think the illusion of privacy existed because people thought the internet was analogous to a phone network which requires a tap and (until it was put on the TCP/IP stack) physically required you to find the line you wanted and get a warrant with cause. The government can't intercept say.... 100K calls because they had an order and then back into your phone call off that probable cause. They had to have a reason to be listening to your call.

The internet is a data network with a lot of backbone links in it. A few well placed taps and all you really need is time, patience, and hard drive space to destroy any illusion of privacy that might have existed. Here's the thing... TECHS use these tools all the time for technical reasons. But they're the same tools that can be used to spy and they're built into the infrastructure.

So for me, being from the industry I tend to parrot what my teacher told me about securing my communication in 1998, if you want secure data unplug your machine.

It's cynical, but it's also the truth. The privacy you have is in the physical space of your house. It is not in the public/private infrastructure of the internet. That was a system DESIGNED to aggregate data.

[Aragarthiel]

The privacy you have is in the physical space of your house.

With technology that hacks webcams, phone cameras, and video game cameras becoming more an more common, you don't even really have privacy at home anymore.

[s_stabeler]

It's based around the 4th amendment actually- basically the idea is that someone reading you e-mail, or browsing history, should be considered a search under the 4th amendment, and require a warrant. In other words, the issue is less that the government do it- it's that they do it without bothering with the traditional safeguards.

[Andara Bledin]

You know. The fact that it's possible for shadowy agencies to spy on your every move via technology is absolutely no excuse for them to make use of said technology. They shouldn't be allowed to, and they should be punished when it is found to be happening.

The whole theme of victim blaming people who complain about data they haven't chosen to share being snooped just because they choose to share a whole lot of other data is part of the problem, really.

[Aragarthiel]

Andara, I don't see it as victim blaming so much as stating a fairly obvious consequence of technology use. I can see where you're coming from, however. It should work from both sides- privacy should be protected, but individuals should also do what they can to protect themselves. The methods for this vary depending on who you're trying to protect your information from, and from my experience, most people do nothing to protect their information.

[HYHYBT]

It's completely different. What I put on Facebook, for instance, is stuff I CHOOSE to make public. The contents of my hard drive, I do not choose to make public. If you're reading them anyway, and you didn't go through the process of getting a warrant, either you or someone between us has done something they're not supposed to do, and you (or they) should reap any punishment that comes of it.

Now, if you are only seeing them incidentally, as an unavoidable part of, say, repairing my computer, that's different yet again. But even in that case, you shouldn't be snooping more than you can reasonably help, nor should you reveal what you find in most cases.

[s_stabeler]

what's really obnoxious is cases where people make a massive scene in the supermarket when asked to give something like an e-mail address, yelling about ID theft and all that, when juts visiting their facebook profiles will give you enough information to be able to steal their identity anyway. ( the issue is making a massive scene about it.)

[TheHuckster]

I can see the argument of not assuming privacy by, say, nefarious hackers and criminals if you use unencrypted means of communication. That simply falls under the same category as leaving your house unlocked. The criminals are wrong, but you still could have better protected yourself by locking it.

What we're talking about here, though, is the equivalent of government knocking on your door and, upon realizing the door is unlocked, entering your house and looking through all your drawers without a search warrant. Not that they would have been stymied by a locked door, mind you. All they'd do there is use the equivalent PRISM to force a locksmith to unlock it.

And somehow, despite these blatant breaches of the 4th amendment, it's been ongoing for almost 15 years now without any challenge from SCOTUS. Stuff like PRISM and other NSA actions were under wraps, but a lot of it was written plain and clear under the patriot act.

[s_stabeler]

Oh, I agree. It was juts a point about people being idiots about their privacy, even as they complain when it turns out (say) a company has harvested facebook for their public info.

[Greenday]

What we're talking about here, though, is the equivalent of government knocking on your door and, upon realizing the door is unlocked, entering your house and looking through all your drawers without a search warrant. Not that they would have been stymied by a locked door, mind you. All they'd do there is use the equivalent PRISM to force a locksmith to unlock it.

Actually, it's more like patrolling a neighborhood, looking at everyone's houses, and then going into the ones that have a sign in the front yard that make claims of terrorism or terrorist affiliation, etc.