Privacy in the 21st century

[Bonam]

Apparently quite a number of people put a piece of tape on their built in webcams due to stories and alleged accounts of hackers spying on people.

I've done that for years. Originally, just in case I forgot to turn some video chat application off.

[bush_cheney2004]

Nah, it's all over in that regard. And terrorist or not, there's already been a culture change, from assuming that online communications are private to realizing that they are all monitored by government. It's already engrained in the way of thinking of many people I know.

Right...now that it has been made abundantly obvious to those who should have known all along. "Private online communications" is an oxymoron.

[bush_cheney2004]

I've done that for years. Originally, just in case I forgot to turn some video chat application off.

Don't forget the microphone !

[eyeball]

The damage is already fully done in this regard. Everyone who cares at all about it now knows that the US government has the will and the ability to collect and scan through all data sent through email, telephone, instant message, irc, social media, online games, forum PMs, etc. No court order or official policy declaration from a president could possibly change that now. You really think that a terrorist that heard about the NSA stuff and decided to no longer use these forms of communication would resume communicating through these media if Obama made a speech promising that such surveillance would not happen any more?

Of course the NSA knows this too meaning the only point of their program now is everyone else. Its Frankenstate.

Nah, it's all over in that regard. And terrorist or not, there's already been a culture change, from assuming that online communications are private to realizing that they are all monitored by government. It's already engrained in the way of thinking of many people I know. People constantly joke about it, refer to it. People now recognize that they live in a surveillance state, and no one will buy it if politicians, who are known first and foremost for doing nothing but lying, promise otherwise.

There is no going back.

Nope. Our society is not what it used to be by a long shot.

If this is all the result of 9/11 and people who hate our freedoms then it was probably the most spectacularly successful operation in history. In a very real sense the target is still collapsing.

[Bonam]

Right...now that it has been made abundantly obvious to those who should have known all along. "Private online communications" is an oxymoron.

Well, it is now, but it need not have been.

[Bonam]

If this is all the result of 9/11 and people who hate our freedoms then it was probably the most spectacularly successful operation in history. In a very real sense the target is still collapsing.

I think 9/11 is only partially at fault here. The reality is that the technology to be able to collect, store, and analyze ALL data has only been becoming feasible recently. As the technology to do this comes into existence, agencies like the NSA naturally try to do it, because gathering data is their "job". That would have been true 9/11 or not. The problem is that there has not been any sufficiently robust legal framework, oversight, and transparency to prevent them from doing so. Given enough protest and outrage, there is even a chance that these things may come to exist. But even if these things do come to exist, it would take decades for people to start to have any measure of trust again, and by then the technology landscape will have changed enough that it won't really matter anyway, as the technologies of 30+ years in the future will be different and law will as always be far behind.

[eyeball]

Look ahead 20 years and what do you see ?

Dystopia. That said, welcome to the future. I don't recall imagining we'd be here 20 years ago do you? Only a crackpot would have imagined this.

Strangely enough it was about 15 years age I started imagining aiming the Telescreens the other way, but mostly why.

Edited December 17, 2013 by eyeball

[bush_cheney2004]

If this is all the result of 9/11 and people who hate our freedoms then it was probably the most spectacularly successful operation in history. In a very real sense the target is still collapsing.

Don't kid yourself....this had been going on long before 9/11. It happens at all levels whenever the technology is capable of intercepts. "Civilians" even did it with telephone land lines, cordless phones, cell phones, and other analog devices.

[Bonam]

Don't kid yourself....this had been going on long before 9/11.

The technology to collect essentially ALL online data has only existed for a very short time, well under 10 years. I'm sure the government always did its damnedest to collect as much data as possible, but only recently has it become the case that for your average online communication, it would be more likely for it to be collected than not.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Bonam

[Bonam]

Strangely enough it was about 15 years age I started imagining aiming the Telescreens the other way, but mostly why.

Orwell already imagined it before you.

[bush_cheney2004]

The technology to collect essentially ALL online data has only existed for a very short time, well under 10 years. I'm sure the government always did its damnedest to collect as much data as possible, but only recently has it become the case that for your average online communication, it would be more likely for it to be collected than not.

True, but you don't need it all until targeted intercepts are the goal. Warehousing data comes in to play for retrospective analysis. The real challenge was not collection but analysis of huge data volumes with limited resources, since solved by software.

[Bonam]

True, but you don't need it all until targeted intercepts are the goal. Warehousing data comes in to play for retrospective analysis. The real challenge was not collection but analysis of huge data volumes with limited resources, since solved by software.

Both storage and analysis were considerable technological challenges, now largely overcome, though considerable advances continue to be made on the analysis end.

[bush_cheney2004]

Orwell already imagined it before you.

People fell in love with their clever little devices and computers, with few realizing the privacy compromise inherent in such communications. Convenience and efficiency trumped privacy concerns. All worth it to text my BFF...for sure !

[bush_cheney2004]

Both storage and analysis were considerable technological challenges, now largely overcome, though considerable advances continue to be made on the analysis end.

But that's the beauty of the InterWebs....data stores are maintained by service and content providers. No need to duplicate unless the data is not persisted. Hell, Google told us years ago that they saved EVERYTHING.

[dre]

But that's the beauty of the InterWebs....data stores are maintained by service and content providers. No need to duplicate unless the data is not persisted. Hell, Google told us years ago that they saved EVERYTHING.

Noi most network providers to not store any data at all besides whats available for burst style caching.

You seem to lack the knowledge of how a basic network functions....

[bush_cheney2004]

Noi most network providers to not store any data at all besides whats available for burst style caching.

You seem to lack the knowledge of how a basic network functions....

And you seem to lack the knowledge that governments had been "spying" on such networks for years.

Cheers...

Edited December 17, 2013 by bush_cheney2004

[dre]

Both storage and analysis were considerable technological challenges, now largely overcome, though considerable advances continue to be made on the analysis end.

Not thats simply not true. Most persisted data is store on spininng disks like it was 20 years ago. Costs per gig have come down, but the ESI universe has exploded.

Both storage and analysis of WAN data is cost prohibitive. Companies like google do incremental chaching of web pages, but thats is mostly semi static data.

In terms of enterprise storage there isnt much new out there. Its all just the same spinning disks we have been using for twenty years. You can set up DDR or NAND arrays to increase performance but at the end of the day storage is still very expensive. And a comprehensive context extraction solution is very expensive as well. Theres only a handfull companies that can actually pull it off, and they charge a shitload of money

Edited December 17, 2013 by dre

[Bonam]

In terms of enterprise storage there isnt much new out there. Its all just the same spinning disks we have been using for twenty years. You can set up DDR or NAND arrays to increase performance but at the end of the day storage is still very expensive.

Expensive yes but not prohibitively so. You get about 3 TB / $100 right now, and that's commercial cost, not government cost on massive procurement. That's $30 million/exabyte. Total internet traffic is like 30 exabytes/month. So that's $1 billion per month or $12 billion per year in hardware costs to store ALL internet traffic. In practice only a small fraction of internet traffic is relevant communications (you don't need to store all the videos people stream from networks, torrents people download, etc), so the real cost in hardware to store all new communications is likely < $1 billion per year, especially considering reduced procurement costs when buying hard drives by the millions. Expensive, but well within the budget of a US government agency determined to do so. Yes you also have to pay for data center facilities, electricity cost, etc, but do the math and while expensive it's all totally feasible given that the US government is determined to do these things and burn billions doing so.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Bonam

[bush_cheney2004]

.... Expensive, but well within the budget of a US government agency determined to do so. Yes you also have to pay for data center facilities, electricity cost, etc, but do the math and while expensive it's all totally feasible given that the US government is determined to do these things and burn billions doing so.

Agreed....even Canada is building such facilities. Not so expensive after all.

Here is the new NSA data center in UTAH: (note message on monument)

Edited December 17, 2013 by bush_cheney2004

[bush_cheney2004]

Money is no object for the NSA....Got Data ?

Edited December 17, 2013 by bush_cheney2004

[bush_cheney2004]

NSA at your service....

[Bonam]

One HD is like what... 6 in x 4 in x 1 inch? Conservatively, double that space to allow for cooling, that's 48 cubic inches of space, or 0.001 m3. Those buildings look about 4 stories tall which is like 20m. Scaling off that those buildings are about 300m x 100m x 20 m = 600,000 m^3 = 600 million HDs. If each HD is 4 TB, one building can house 2400 exabytes. Based on the 30 EB/month, each building could store 80 months of internet traffic at current rates.

Don't think the NSA has any trouble at all storing ALL data.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Bonam

[bush_cheney2004]

Don't think the NSA has any trouble at all storing ALL data.

I would think not. The NSA even stores God's data...plus a backup to optical or tape.

The joint only cost about $2 billion.....cheap...cheap....cheap:

"Data Halls"...I like that.

Edited December 17, 2013 by bush_cheney2004

[bush_cheney2004]

Canada's CSEC has a new "spy" center too....somewhere near Ottawa. Does anybody know if it's complete yet ?

[Michael Hardner]

Dystopia. That said, welcome to the future. I don't recall imagining we'd be here 20 years ago do you? Only a crackpot would have imagined this.

There are all kinds of reasons that things could be better, though. For example, if corporations don't employ people in North America to the degree that they did, their political power will be greatly reduced. Does that make you happy ?