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wing-_-nuts 1 days ago [-]
Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'
Given how fast and lose I've seen the DODGE folks play with the data they have, absolutely not. I still shudder over the fact that my OPM data was hacked years ago
AnthonyMouse 1 days ago [-]
> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about',
"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
pardon_me 1 days ago [-]
Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.
BoredPositron 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
MentatOnMelange 22 hours ago [-]
You realize that without the door it would be even more obvious whether the stall is occupied?
jackyinger 21 hours ago [-]
It's not about it being occupied, it is about what is happening inside.
inetknght 19 hours ago [-]
Everyone knows what's happening inside.
magicalhippo 15 hours ago [-]
Indeed, people are snorting coke. Hence why they want doors.
classified 14 hours ago [-]
Meaning what?
harry8 14 hours ago [-]
The misguided who say they don’t need privacy suddenly have a dense memory of the thousands of times they’ve turned the lock on a bathroom door and consider the idea of deficating in full view as an alternative.
The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.
fsflover 5 hours ago [-]
This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. Thus is what Snowden probably meant, not bathrooms.
gwinkle 16 hours ago [-]
Snowden is comparing two things that, in fact, are not alike. Surveillance gathers information, whereas censorship suppresses expression. It might sound like clever rhetoric to people of a lower intellectual capacity, but these are fundamentally distinct concepts.
Revanche1367 15 hours ago [-]
Or he was not comparing those two things to say they are the same thing but rather making an analogy based on the common factor of people in the US often wanting legal protections for both speech and privacy to draw his point that one is giving up their rights by making the excuse about not wanting privacy which they would probably not do when it comes to speech.
Thinking comparisons of two similar things are always for the purpose of saying that they are the same thing is ridiculous, don’t you think? It might sound like clever reasoning to people of a mediocre intellectual capacity but it is not logically coherent.
Surveillance suppresses expression through chilling effects.
howard941 7 hours ago [-]
It only chills when the watchers are hidden. See David Brin's The Transparent Society for an example of how sousveillence ought to work.
AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago [-]
> It only chills when the watchers are hidden.
How does that even help? The concern is that you're deterred from e.g. admitting that you're a lesbian under your own name because your religious grandparents wouldn't approve, or advocating for school choice because your boss is married to a public school teacher, or criticizing the government.
Knowing that they're going to see it doesn't stop them from cutting you out of their will or putting you on toilet duty or playing "show me the man and I will show you the crime".
howard941 3 hours ago [-]
Those things happen right now. My concern is with government and powerful corporate watchers. Ubiquitous sousveillence ends that. It answers the question of "Who's watching the watchers." You'll be watching the watchers and heaven knows they need watching.
Think cops with always-on cameras, not grandma poking around beneath your mattress.
fsflover 5 hours ago [-]
But how do we achieve such society?
howard941 3 hours ago [-]
With great difficulty? The watchers don't want to be watched. I know the solution but I don't know how to get there.
EDIT: IIRC Brin addressed this in his fictional treatment of the concept in the novel Earth
goatlover 15 hours ago [-]
He's comparing two rights and how giving up one right (to privacy) because you think you have nothing to hide is like giving up your right to speech, because you have nothing to say (and therefore don't have to worry that someone in power might find it offensive).
tomwheeler 1 days ago [-]
> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'
And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.
rurban 1 days ago [-]
You forgot that your government is the bad actor. For them the laws do not apply
alpple 1 days ago [-]
if you're not doing anything wrong, a government that is doing something wrong may not like it
EGreg 1 days ago [-]
This, exactly.
And governments are always doing something wrong...
kjs3 20 hours ago [-]
It's not "if you're not doing anything wrong" you need to worry about, it's "what will they make wrong down the road to trip me up" you need to consider.
briffle 1 days ago [-]
I have seen what happens with garbage-in/garbage-out in databases, so this kind of stuff terrifies me. I often think of a case where we had a person listed twice in our database, with same address, birthday, etc, only thing different was gender, and last 2 digits of SSN were transposed..
After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office.
Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.
cestith 1 days ago [-]
My uncle married a woman with the same first and middle name as one of his sisters. My new aunt chose to use her husband’s name as her married name, without hyphenation or anything. His sister, my aunt, never married. One was an RN and the other is an LPN.
They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close. For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other, a married name. They went to different colleges and had different credentials. They did live in the same town.
When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own databases was evidence of fraud.
irishcoffee 1 days ago [-]
I’m missing something. Was your uncles spouse alive after your uncles sister passed?
kjs3 20 hours ago [-]
Funny. I have a brother. We have at times lived together, went to the same school, and after not living together, lived on the same street. A couple of times, one or more credit bureaus decided we were the same person and silently merged our credit files. Not a nightmare per se since we're both fiscally (mostly) responsible, but we generally find out how incompetent the bureaus are when we're trying to make some very large transaction (I was trying to buy a car, he was trying to buy a building for work) and suddenly get "why do you own 2 houses, a bunch of cars, and you're apparently a bigamist". And then we had to scramble to untangle the whole mess. Lawyers were involved. The bureaus do not care in the slightest.
quesera 1 days ago [-]
That's funny as a human, amazing as a developer, and terrifying as a data processor. All at the same time.
I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.
Ancapistani 1 days ago [-]
I'm a man in my 40s. My eldest daughter is 17. We have the same first name (spelled differently, at least) and have had many cases where medical records have gotten confused.
We always double-check dosages for medications before taking them.
dboreham 1 days ago [-]
Wait until you live in the same zip code with another person that has the same first name, last name and date of birth!
projektfu 1 days ago [-]
This was a story I found amusing when I read it: "Letter from Chicago. Confusion oriented medical records."
When I was 18 I got called up for jury duty along with someone with the same name and age. It was confusing. They started referring to us by the suburb we lived in. Luckily both of us got passed over.
briffle 1 days ago [-]
They both showed up in person, because that was NOT the first time that had happened.
zrm 1 days ago [-]
I have two younger brothers. They have the same last name, first initial, a history of having lived at the same address, and the same birth date, because they're twins.
Every time one of them goes to a particular medical facility, he has to explicitly decline having them merge their charts.
Polizeiposaune 22 hours ago [-]
A couple years ago the WSJ had a feature article on the phenomenon of married couples who shared the same given name:
Being married to someone with the same name could be very confusing!
thaumasiotes 16 hours ago [-]
How?
FpUser 17 hours ago [-]
Some time in the 90s I used to live at XXX Some Street West apt #1234 and my close friend at XXX Some Street East apt #1234. One day someone knocks on the door. I open and there is a pizza man. We argued for a while and he kept insisting that I did order it. Finally I asked him to show the order. Of course it was all the same but East instead of West. Anyways I called my friend and thanked for a pizza. This was so funny.
anonzzzies 7 hours ago [-]
But with ICE arrests of people who did their best to make that craphole their home that line of thought must be wearing thin yeah? Nice for making a lot of money faster than mostly (china can be faster but chinese know they have to leave asap after they did instead of be proud to sit in it) anywhere else but outside that?
(I am from the EU, lived in US and China and am rich because of both, would not live in either ever again)
kasey_junk 1 days ago [-]
Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security.
That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
Have you ever sat on a jury in a criminal case? A frighteningly high percentage of people will swallow every lie a cop tells, even when thoroughly discredited in cross-examination. There's no shortage of people to guard the concentration camps.
jrockway 1 days ago [-]
I've been on a grand jury... the cops lied through their teeth, couldn't keep their stories straight through a prepared monologues reading from notes and ... everyone in the room picked up on it and didn't indict the suspects. Our grand jury was so cynical the DAs stopped giving us cases and made the other two grand juries stay late to make up for the lost capacity. It was great. We did something good. And it was just a bunch of random people from Brooklyn.
The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my minimal experience, anyway.
(One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to select jurors after talking to them, so there is some selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't have.)
nwallin 23 hours ago [-]
I was on a jury a few years ago. The defendent was a homeless person with mental health issues. The cop was obviously lying about the one thing that was the core element of the crime. It was like a child telling the truth about every element of the indoor soccer game expect the part where they were the one who kicked the ball.
The jury was me, (white) nine other white people, and two brown people. Me and the brown people thought the cop was obviously lying, and was therefore not guilty. The nine other people thought he was guilty.
Like the cop was obviously fucking lying.
After three days of deliberation we declared a hung jury.
I was speaking with the prosecutor afterwards and he mentioned they were going for the felony version of the crime instead of the misdemeanor (he was obviously guilty of the misdemeanor, the felony depended on the element the cop was lying about) because the dude was a bad dude and they needed to get him.
I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that) He had done something bad and went to prison for four years. He did his time and got out. They were still trying to throw the book at him for bullshit.
I looked him up recently. He was never convicted of anything ever again, but died in jail two years after we declared a hung jury. Prosecutor got what he wanted in the end, I suppose.
thaumasiotes 16 hours ago [-]
> I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that)
Why is complying with that rule more sensible than believing the cop because he's a cop?
saagarjha 15 hours ago [-]
Because it is a well documented source of bias.
tptacek 22 hours ago [-]
What does this have to do with what he just said?
array_key_first 21 hours ago [-]
That most people have a simplistic, naive, and child-like perspective of the world. One based on just-desserts, on causality, on fairness.
You see, there are good people and bad people. Giving the good people more tools is always good, because they're good people. If you're a good person, you need not worry either. Bad things don't happen to good people.
Cops are good guys, criminals are bad guys. The government fighting criminals is good. If you get caught up in it - well, that's fine right? Because you're a good guy, too. So that's good for you. And, if something bad DOES happen to you... well then you were never a good guy. Obviously, because bad things happen to bad people.
We see this in so many things. Well, rich people MUST be hardworking and moral, right? Because good things have happened to them, so they must be good. Well, the janitor must be lazy or stupid right? Because their job is bad, so they must be bad. Well, the cops raiding my house must be good thing right? Because I'm good!
If there's one thing I have learned from life, it's that life is not fair. Children starve, innocents get murdered, the evil can thrive, and happiness isn't doled out to who deserves it. It's never about who deserved what or what is right. It's about systems, structure, and incentives.
tptacek 20 hours ago [-]
He didn't say any of these things.
If you have to make a caricature of his arguments to so much as address them, what does that say about the strength of your own argument?
expedition32 11 hours ago [-]
We don't have a jury system in my country for the same reason we don't grab randos off the street to operate nuclear reactors.
Being a judge is an actual job that requires training and experience.
Ofcourse it makes court cases a lot more boring if you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing.
stinkbeetle 9 hours ago [-]
You don't even need to leave your basement, or even this website to see this in action. A frightening number of people are totally subservient to the government and place blind faith in politicians and their paid-for "experts" and bureaucrats and regulators.
arealaccount 1 days ago [-]
Yes all the time and it’s not worth debating them as they are not about to say anything interesting.
Usually just make a quip about having curtains then move onto discussing just how moist the turkey is this year
1 days ago [-]
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
Constantly. Most people have a hard time dealing with tradeoffs and think in absolutes. It goes along with "if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to fear from police," another disturbingly common sentiment.
Not that exact phrase, it is too elaborate. Most people grunt "eh, don't care" and "it's free, right?"
The average person really is that apathetic.
kerkeslager 21 hours ago [-]
> Does anyone ever actually use that line?
Yes, I've heard that exact wording from cops.
From normal people, the more common way of saying it is along the lines of "well I don't really care if the cops see anything on my computer".
fragmede 1 days ago [-]
The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away with the conclusion that because people don't post that reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do find that does come up here on occasion). People with "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the Netherlands which was later used against them after they were conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are doing it.
smcin 22 hours ago [-]
To correct the mangling of history, there was no "list of Jews kept by the Netherlands [pre-occupation]". There were only pre-existing Dutch population registries of all people, where the personal details collected by the Dutch had included religion, not for any ill purpose.
(The Nazis subsequently compiled a list, post-occupation, but that's not what you asserted.)
thaumasiotes 15 hours ago [-]
So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?
magicalhippo 15 hours ago [-]
It wasn't a list of Jews, it was a list of everyone from which Jews could be easily identified.
The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.
This is relevant to data collected by companies and governments today.
Consider a list of children with their parent names and the parents' preferred pronouns. You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
thaumasiotes 12 hours ago [-]
> The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.
How does that make the distinction important? The lesson to draw is "you shouldn't keep a list of Jews, whether you think you're doing it for good reasons or not". The list is a list regardless of whether you think calling it a list is fair in some abstract sense.
> You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
Well, you're almost right. Except of course that you do have a list of gays. That's why Grindr having Chinese ownership was seen as a national security risk.
magicalhippo 8 hours ago [-]
> Except of course that you do have a list of gays.
If you go to your kindergarten and tell them to stop keeping a list of gays they will look at you weird and most likely dismiss you as a nutjob. Because they don't have a list of gays, they just have a list of kids with their parents' names and pronouns.
That's why I think it's important to keep the distinction rather than conflate the two like you want to.
expedition32 11 hours ago [-]
The Netherlands today is a secular country in which the government doesn't give a flying fuck about your religion or identity.
But the situation in 1940 was very different: religion permeated every fabric of society.
Mind you the government simply took over the job of record keeping from the churches, temples and synagogues.
I am sure Jews today still keep lists about who is a Jew and so does every other religious denomination because such mundane information matters to them.
goatlover 15 hours ago [-]
The reasoning sounds like status quo from the majority group who hasn't experienced discrimination and thinks the powers that be could never become like those awful countries with dictators. Also a complete lack of imagination (and knowledge of the past) about how something considered legal and common now could become criminalized.
jasomill 1 days ago [-]
I'd go further and say that checks on police and intelligence agencies exist to protect both the innocent and the guilty from abuse of power.
If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate the interests of all parties involved).
halJordan 1 days ago [-]
So, in theory, you do agree with the current fisa setup and were just haggling over details.
tim333 8 hours ago [-]
As someone not very worried about privacy I don't use that line but think it's worth while using some reasoning as to the likelihood of bad stuff happening. Cambodia 1975 - terrible data but chances of genocide very high. Google knowing what I'm up to now, very likely but probable harm beyond seeing an ad, very low. I think sometimes people worry about the wrong things on that kind of basis.
Re the current US government I'd be more worried about their cruelty as illustrated by ICE, DOGE etc.
roenxi 18 hours ago [-]
And if we're talking about 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' - the other irony is they probably are doing something wrong. There are a lot of rules out there. The only reason it isn't being bought up in the conversation is because the person has a certain level of privacy.
One of the interesting things the Epstein drama has kicked up is legal or not, the powerful get up to some wild things at parties. And in their business dealings just based on the background number of scandals. If there is an organised group of people allowed to look there is just endless blackmail material which is going to get used, just like LOVEINT.
CamperBob2 1 days ago [-]
Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about'
The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their call.
PetriCasserole 14 hours ago [-]
People who are paying attention see that the government is changing rules daily. Feel safe today? Wait until tomorrow when Trump decides he wants to do something that you're in the way of.
quickthrowman 1 days ago [-]
> but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'
This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent.
This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented.
I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.
hollywood_court 1 days ago [-]
This is why I deleted all of my social media when it began to look like Trump was going to win his second term. I had already suffered enough harassment and death threats from the Nextdoor app and a bit of the same from Facebook.
I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family from the local MAGAs in my area.
I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.
Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is exactly what will enable such an administration to come to power.
What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in 1936.
9 hours ago [-]
20 hours ago [-]
hedora 19 hours ago [-]
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
the_af 1 days ago [-]
> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about'
The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal must be public.
You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop, or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival gain access to it.
themafia 1 days ago [-]
"If you have money in your pocket you always have something to worry about."
capricio_one 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dylan604 1 days ago [-]
DOGE != DODGE
They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it
SauntSolaire 1 days ago [-]
The article lede reads: "Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing."
Technically the full quote from Wyden is: "when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information."
It's a small thing, but I find the click-bait editorializing from techdirt a bit off-putting.
tehwebguy 1 days ago [-]
The interpretation of the law is classified? That’s stupid and everyone who protected that classification, regardless of whatever the interpretation is, is a traitor!
simulator5g 1 days ago [-]
Secret laws, secret courts... Jeez, man.
AceJohnny2 1 days ago [-]
no no don't worry! They have courts! They're following due process, you see!
24 years of the Patriot Act, and counting...
Analemma_ 1 days ago [-]
This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now matter how much damage control Altman tries to do with "look, we reworded the contract to have redlines too!". Yeah, legal redlines that the administration can bypass with their secret memos and secret rubberstamp courts. This isn't even a Trump thing: the Bush DOJ wrote secret memos making torture legal, the Obama DOJ wrote secret memos making it legal to assassinate American citizens. Non-technical redlines which aren't under the vendor's control aren't worth a piss squirt.
palmotea 1 days ago [-]
> This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now matter how much damage control Altman tries...
Altman is like Musk: he showed his true colors long before the current politically-inflected drama.
Musk was over-promising about self-driving, so much and for so long it became pretty clear he was a shameless liar. There are also so many reports of Altman lying (e.g. that's apparently why he got fired) and engaging in Machiavellian manipulations that you can be pretty sure he's a shameless liar too.
Gud 1 days ago [-]
By using ChatGPT, OpenAI are losing money.
So if you want them to die faster, use their services.
Analemma_ 1 days ago [-]
Contra the popular memes, I don’t think they’re losing money with every query sent (the money pit is capex on new models and hardware, but I don’t think inference itself is unprofitable), so this wouldn’t actually work.
I was already paying for Claude Max before the War Department fiasco, so there’s not much more I can do to hurt OAI apart from complain about it online, although I did persuade several people on various group chats I’m on to switch.
bigyabai 1 days ago [-]
I think it's a lost cause. Anthropic is still getting used at Palantir[0], their software is used in strike planning whether they consent or not. We can support them all day and fight OpenAI to the last breath, but ensuring AI is used responsibly is not up to any of us. It's the government's job to hold itself accountable, and they can't do it. By digging in their heels, Anthropic is preparing for an unwinnable fight against an enemy that doesn't play fair.
Considering how many lines Anthropic has crossed, it all feels like forced outrage to me. I feel ethically justified supporting none of these companies, it's reminiscent of the forced duopoly between iOS and Android.
It will go faster if they have no customers and they are building out software with expensive engineers.
stackghost 1 days ago [-]
Probably the actual classified artifact is an NSA policy document that details the NSA's own interpretation of the law and thus forms part of its governance.
cobbzilla 19 hours ago [-]
No, it’s a secret FISA court decision that the public can’t see but a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee can, but he can’t tell us what he’s seen. But he can ask questions to get the surveillance state to pull another Clapper-esque whopper and get away with it.
gzread 11 hours ago [-]
Can he tell us in Congress with immunity, like the one who read out all the redacted names of the Epstein pedophiles?
QuercusMax 5 hours ago [-]
I assume if he did that then:
- The story would become about "leaking" classified information
- He would likely lose his access to this stuff in the future
w10-1 23 hours ago [-]
Key point (mostly drowned): Feds can compel A to surveil B if A maintains equipment or services for B. The Feds can also compel A's silence on point.
Originally applied only to the largest communications companies, this now has effectively unlimited scope.
The only safeguard (which took years to add legislatively) was that the FBI had to clear it; but now the FBI is refusing even to record such requests, to avoid any record of abuse (and the person responsible is dubious).
Surveillance seems necessary, but in the wrong hands, it's systemically deadly: it grants overwhelming advantage, and destroys arms-length trust, driving transactions of any size into networks prone to self-dealing and corruption.
blueone 1 days ago [-]
I’ve stayed private for most of my adult life. Network wide dns, vpns, alternative personas online for different purposes, etc. Nonetheless, my personal data has been exposed numerous times.
Once in a while, I’d get into a conversation with a friend or a stranger I met at some random function, and they’d ask how to stay private online and protect their data. I used to go in depth about how to do it, with excitement. Now I just say: be normal, fit in with the crowd, freeze your credit.
newsclues 1 days ago [-]
As someone that worked in an illegal industry (urban pharmaceuticals), you need to appear normal and hide your crimes. If you just hide your crimes, you stick out and become a target.
Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.
blueone 1 days ago [-]
Yes.
MengerSponge 1 days ago [-]
It's very hard to participate in a digital society while truly remaining private. The things you do to ensure privacy generate their own type of unique signal!
You know this, but "normal" patterns are less remarkable.
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
The whole concept of 'secret interpretations of law' is anathema to me. Secret information makes sense, there are lots of reasons a government might legitimately want to maintain a veil of obscurity. Secret interpretations of law are a manifestation of tyranny.
I like Ron Wyden but he should just employ his Congressional privilege here and read it out.
rincebrain 8 hours ago [-]
I believe the problem here is that that works precisely once, then they stop inviting you to the classified parties.
So as he gets older, the cost/benefit changes, but I believe that's why he hasn't, is that his calculus involves him being the only one this reliable on screaming about what's going on behind closed doors.
mogwire 21 hours ago [-]
Coincidentally, there’s an article about this exact topic and it happens to mention Senator Wyden.
I can't imagine it's anything people haven't been suspecting for years - if I had to take a wild guess, it's the government's interpretation of not needing a warrant to scour things for intelligence on citizens using things like adtech and stuff that probably should require a warrant.
RyanShook 21 hours ago [-]
Does anyone today think their communication is truly private? Encryption means very little when you hold zero-day exploits and as we’ve seen there are plenty of those.
JohnMakin 21 hours ago [-]
you dont need exploits for privacy incursions, it’s all for sale
jmward01 1 days ago [-]
I have wrestled with the concept of 'classified' many times. The question is always how you balance democracy's need for information with the real need to keep some things away from adversaries. I think the only answer is to vigorously enforce automatic declassification AND dissemination but also ensure that this happens within the useful lifetimes of those involved. This last part is especially important for accountability. Laws need to apply, without a statute of limitation, to abuse of classification and for that to happen this stuff needs to come out while those involved can still be held accountable. Additionally, if abuse is found while something is still classified there should be an immediate evaluation if the public interest in understanding the abuse outweighs the danger of releasing the information with an explicit understanding that the public has already received real harm compared to a theoretical harm of release.
Another aspect is that we need to lower the bar for declassification in general. The reality of classified information is that it is almost universally boring and time limited in its value. Also, so many people have access to it that it leaks out slowly anyway. Just look at how much of the US military and contractors have or have had secret and higher clearances. [1] When multiple percentage points of Americans (and other governments) have access currently or have had access in the past to supposedly 'top secret' information then hiding it from the rest of the population just sounds silly. It is time to start re-asserting the public's requirement to be informed even if that has some potential risks or even actual harms associated with it.
The warnings are nice but he could just say what it is. Members of Congress have immunity for what they say on the floor of their chamber in session, classification or no.
alwa 1 days ago [-]
Immunity from prosecution, maybe, but not immunity from consequence. I can’t imagine congressional leadership would think of it as a good look—and isn’t the “need to know” based on the congressperson’s role? For example don’t they brief only congresspeople in specific roles on specific matters, like the so-called “Gang of Eight” on intelligence matters? [0]
It feels a little like keeping the filibuster around: maybe technically it’s within their power to change the norm, but once unilaterally spilling secrets becomes The Done Thing, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t spin out into a free-for-all.
For all the mud that gets slung around, I think congresspeople really don’t get there without some kind of patriotic instinct, some kind of interest in the United States’ ongoing functioning. And I certainly can’t imagine they’d keep getting access to new secrets after pulling something like that, one way or the other…
This is all true and it kind of defines the scope of the harm he is talking about: bad enough for vague warnings, but apparently not bad enough to risk consequences to seniority etc. by outright revealing it.
Worth noting his full quote is that people will be “stunned that it took so long” for the info to come out. Which is not quite the same thing as being stunned in general.
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
You can say the same thing about secret laws and tyrannical executives.
themafia 1 days ago [-]
> congressional leadership would think of it as a good look
Why do they have any power? Wyden was elected by his constituency. The "congressional leadership" can go pound sand. To the extent they have any power here it should immediately be completely neutered and then removed.
Hizonner 1 days ago [-]
They can remove him from all his committees, including the ones that give him access to this stuff to begin with. If they really work at it, they can freeze him out to the point where he can't get anything done on this or any other issue. And they can use him revealing the information as an excuse to avoid blowback from their own constituents. It's not as bad as in the House, but it's pretty bad. Oh, and they can probably deprive him of the floor the second he starts to say anything "interesting".
Yes, there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized, but there's probably a reason that practically every parliamentary body on the planet has similar problems.
themafia 1 days ago [-]
> and they can probably deprive him of the floor the second he starts to say anything "interesting".
So, move the show off the floor, never has it been easier to reach the population as an individual. Are the citizens that enraptured by "the floor" as it is? It seems to me, that if you were serious, this would be no problem at all.
> there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized
None of that is dictated by the constitution. You can change the way committees work overnight if you want. Some would argue that this happened in the 1970s and 1990s when party politics fully invaded what used to be assignments of seniority and experience.
> but there's probably a reason
Corruption. It's worth a lot of money to certain people. You can either design that out of the system or reduce the total power of that system relative to the population.
I'm not sure you can do much until you get down to the bedrock problems here.
snowwrestler 1 days ago [-]
To answer your question, Congressional leaders are elected by their colleagues. Their power comes from that and from the rules that Congress writes for itself.
ImPostingOnHN 20 hours ago [-]
That is correct, and also it would likely result in a revocation of clearance.
contubernio 1 days ago [-]
Secrecy is anathema to governance accountable to the governed.
dlev_pika 1 days ago [-]
So glad to see my Oregon senator regularly on the money.
WarOnPrivacy 22 hours ago [-]
I can name 3 ethical politicians, Ron Wyden, John Huntsman and Bob Graham. It's a painfully short list, considering my longish life.
ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago [-]
Soon-to-be US Senator James Talerico (D-Tex)?
My "ethical" list has several dozen politicians, but it is definitely short. And their names don't seem to last very long into each career...
avazhi 21 hours ago [-]
“ Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing”
This is not the same thing as saying people will be stunned by how long it took to discuss/investigate the matter, which is what Wyden actually said…
ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago [-]
"When the American People figure out what we've been up to, there will be riots in the streets" former analyst George Herbert Walker... decades ago.
dmix 1 days ago [-]
FISA courts are not sufficient oversight of this stuff. Not to mention there’s little rules for foreign data, including Americans talking to foreigners on the phone. As long as one end is foreign…
query_demotion 1 days ago [-]
You're right. FISA courts are not sufficient oversight. Even Judge James Robertson resigned from the FISA Courts (FISC) in 2005 because:
>On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance,[11] and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a secret body of law.[12] The government's apparent circumvention of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests. In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.
rootusrootus 1 days ago [-]
One of the things I am proud of as an Oregonian is that Wyden is one of my senators. And it looks like maybe, possibly, he is starting to make Merkeley a true believer as well. Which is good, Wyden is getting kinda old, and there aren't enough people like him in Congress, by a long shot.
WarOnPrivacy 22 hours ago [-]
> Wyden is getting kinda old, and there aren't enough people like him in Congress, by a long shot.
I can't name another indisputably ethical congressman. I dread the day he leaves office.
Under "Oversight", they point out that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that that the government's Section 702 program operates within legal constraints, as recently as 2014! Wow! </sarc>
jeffrallen 1 days ago [-]
Wyden is a national treasure.
Thank you for your service, Ron.
Also: Hello from Roseburg.
davidw 1 days ago [-]
I hope we get someone as good as he is when he retires. Waves from Bend.
dlev_pika 1 days ago [-]
Wyden is a vote I cast without issue.
He is one of the few that is actually looking into Epstein bank accounts movements.
mpalmer 1 days ago [-]
No means of law enforcement should be so secret that even the legal basis for it can't be revealed to voters. If that renders said means impractical, too goddamn bad.
losvedir 1 days ago [-]
Wyden has been special, as long as I can remember. I feel like a lot of us early tech people had something of a libertarian bent. I think to some extent I've grown out of it in my less idealistic older age, but the whole idea of freedom from the government, living your own life, not being spied on, still resonates with me, and Wyden has always been a champion of it to some extent. You used to have Ron Paul, and these days now Rand Paul and Thomas Massie sometimes waving that flag, too.
It was definitely swimming upstream in the post-9/11 days. I was hopeful for a while with Trump that we'd see more of a mainstream resurgence, but it's not looking like it to me anymore.
Anyway, I can only imagine what he's alluding to here...
dlev_pika 1 days ago [-]
I think he is a reflection of the broader libertarian streak of Oregonians.
Source: am Oregonian.
xbar 1 days ago [-]
Thanks Senator Wyden. Please do not stop fighting for us.
chinathrow 12 hours ago [-]
Gotta fill Bluffdale somehow, right?
root_axis 1 days ago [-]
It's been my experience that most people already assume full surveillance of everything happening on all devices.
ionwake 1 days ago [-]
You'd be surprised, I know IT managers with 20 years experience who ( probably incorrectly) think otherwise.
kittikitti 1 days ago [-]
I think it's going to be more about how many people have access to the surveillance who might use it for needless things or personal reasons, at a large scale.
electronsoup 1 days ago [-]
If it was so important, wouldn't he just filibuster it till he got what he wanted?
nozzlegear 1 days ago [-]
It's my understanding that a single senator can't just filibuster anything they want unless the conditions are right. It depends on a few different factors and requires the bill to be brought to the floor for debate, which itself would require cooperation from the majority leader. That's not likely to happen.
recursivecaveat 1 days ago [-]
If you're solo you have to actually stand up and talk still it seems. (And even then a 60+ person majority can vote to close the debate on you) Nobody has done it solo for more than 24 hours or so. Presumably at that point you're about ready to keel over.
Hizonner 1 days ago [-]
Filibuster what, exactly? No proposal is before the Senate...
ON edit: Oops, sorry, 702 is up for renewal. Still not clear he could win a cloture vote, though.
kelnos 1 days ago [-]
He needs 40 other Senators to agree with him; 60 votes can close debate and stop a filibuster.
bram98 1 days ago [-]
Whatever we imagine, the NSA seems to top it each time.
markus_zhang 1 days ago [-]
I wouldn’t be surprised by anything nowadays.
1 days ago [-]
djoldman 1 days ago [-]
As I've said before:
"I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to hide" is trivially disproved:
Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information.
Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.
SilentM68 1 days ago [-]
That's insightful. Traditionally both political parties have expanded surveillance powers and engaged in actions that have usurped privacy of US citizens citing national security as the reason. That's historical fact. In my view, when one side does it, it is to stop the other side from doing something that does not align with the former side's interests or goals. But that's just a humble opinion.
tim-tday 8 hours ago [-]
Disappointed yes. Surprised? No.
UltraSane 1 days ago [-]
I can easily imagine that the NSA has exabytes of data with Splunk style search capabilities. It would be ridiculously powerful.
kittikitti 1 days ago [-]
I'm going to guess warrantless search of all of our data, retention policies, and the worst part is who gets access to search through it. Basically, I speculate that anyone under a loosely defined classification would be able to access it legally. I also think there's a bunch of information and password sharing between people who don't even have a clearance for it. Perhaps sprinkle in abusing this system for personal or political reasons.
My word of caution is if you do have access to these systems or a shared password, tread very carefully.
ticulatedspline 1 days ago [-]
Will we? like doesn't everyone already assume the the NSA has had their hooks in basically everything possible.
Like I'm having a hard time concocting a reveal that would be "Stunning"
"NSA wiretapped all major phone carriers, recorded every voice conversation and text message of every citizen"
Meh, not that stunning. at least not in a "violation of rights" kinda way. Maybe in a "wow they had the technical acumen to even handle all that data" kind of way
"NSA has secret database with all medical records", "NSA has logs of every credit card transaction", "NSA can compel anyone anywhere to spy and reveal all data on anyone for any reason"
Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like "wow, that all they're doing?"
like opening a diaper on a kid with IBS, you expect it to be so bad when it's a normal turd you're suddenly really happy about shit.
Rooster61 1 days ago [-]
That's not what the quote is referring to directly (the title is a bit misleading):
"In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information"
You are correct that the American populace has normalized this already. The fact that this is done without congressional oversight is indeed stunning. Or at least it would have been a decade or two ago.
embedding-shape 1 days ago [-]
> Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning",
Everyone knew the NSA spied on everyone, yet Snowden leaks were truly stunning, because no one had evidence of the sheer scale of what the NSA (and collaborators) were engaged in. Wyden Siren was already firing off about that many years beforehand, before we knew the actual truth, so considering his record, I'm also skeptical it'll be "truly shocking" for the average HN tech-nerd, but for the general public, to have evidence of what the government does? Probably will be "stunning", but the one who lives will see.
rockskon 1 days ago [-]
So - given the law allows the NSA to do things given legal constructs, reality be damned, then what new legal construct do you think Wyden is sounding the alarm about?
When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.
Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches through our persinal data in bulk.
And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the practices?
Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to replace a large part of various agency's workforce - specifically those who care about the agency's culture!
lokar 1 days ago [-]
HN readers won't be surprised, but I don't think that's who he is talking about.
Most Americans have this kind of thing tuned out, that have bigger issues in their lives.
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
I wouldn't be surprised by it, but "they're actually using all of the above, laundered through some extra steps, to provide leads to state and local LEO" would probably get people pissed off.
HoldOnAMinute 1 days ago [-]
Soma ( social media ) keeps everyone comfortably sedated
bram98 1 days ago [-]
anxiously sedated
imglorp 1 days ago [-]
Don't forget backdooring or interfering with multiple cryptography standards, at least Dual_EC_DRBG and RSA.
Or backdooring most major microprocessors (tpm).
Etc?
runjake 1 days ago [-]
To which TPM backdoors are you referring?
I am aware that similar accusations are leveled against Intel ME and AMD's Platform Security Processor.
imglorp 1 days ago [-]
Yeah. Obviously we can't know officially for decades but there's still some signals. One is the HAP flag (1, solid) to turn off IME, which has had at least one pubic vuln. Are they merely reducing their attack surface? Why can only they buy CPUs without IME (2, rumor)? Etc.
> Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like "wow, that all they're doing?"
You’re far more cynical than the typical citizen, who Ryder is addressing.
IshKebab 1 days ago [-]
Uhm this article is a total lie, no?
Claim: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section 702
Actual quote: I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.
He said people will be stunned that it took so long to be declassified; not that people will be stunned by what it is.
casey2 7 hours ago [-]
AND that Congress has been devating this authority with insufficient information. That's what will stun the American people. He said AND not NOT.
IshKebab 5 hours ago [-]
Good point but it doesn't change the conclusion because being stunned that Congress are debating it with insufficient information also isn't the same as being stunned about what was actually done.
Given how fast and lose I've seen the DODGE folks play with the data they have, absolutely not. I still shudder over the fact that my OPM data was hacked years ago
"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.
Thinking comparisons of two similar things are always for the purpose of saying that they are the same thing is ridiculous, don’t you think? It might sound like clever reasoning to people of a mediocre intellectual capacity but it is not logically coherent.
Surveillance suppresses expression through chilling effects.
How does that even help? The concern is that you're deterred from e.g. admitting that you're a lesbian under your own name because your religious grandparents wouldn't approve, or advocating for school choice because your boss is married to a public school teacher, or criticizing the government.
Knowing that they're going to see it doesn't stop them from cutting you out of their will or putting you on toilet duty or playing "show me the man and I will show you the crime".
Think cops with always-on cameras, not grandma poking around beneath your mattress.
EDIT: IIRC Brin addressed this in his fictional treatment of the concept in the novel Earth
And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.
And governments are always doing something wrong...
After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office.
Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.
They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close. For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other, a married name. They went to different colleges and had different credentials. They did live in the same town.
When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own databases was evidence of fraud.
I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.
We always double-check dosages for medications before taking them.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/
Every time one of them goes to a particular medical facility, he has to explicitly decline having them merge their charts.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/taylor-lautner-taylor-dome-wife...
(I am from the EU, lived in US and China and am rich because of both, would not live in either ever again)
That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.
The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my minimal experience, anyway.
(One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to select jurors after talking to them, so there is some selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't have.)
The jury was me, (white) nine other white people, and two brown people. Me and the brown people thought the cop was obviously lying, and was therefore not guilty. The nine other people thought he was guilty.
Like the cop was obviously fucking lying.
After three days of deliberation we declared a hung jury.
I was speaking with the prosecutor afterwards and he mentioned they were going for the felony version of the crime instead of the misdemeanor (he was obviously guilty of the misdemeanor, the felony depended on the element the cop was lying about) because the dude was a bad dude and they needed to get him.
I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that) He had done something bad and went to prison for four years. He did his time and got out. They were still trying to throw the book at him for bullshit.
I looked him up recently. He was never convicted of anything ever again, but died in jail two years after we declared a hung jury. Prosecutor got what he wanted in the end, I suppose.
Why is complying with that rule more sensible than believing the cop because he's a cop?
You see, there are good people and bad people. Giving the good people more tools is always good, because they're good people. If you're a good person, you need not worry either. Bad things don't happen to good people.
Cops are good guys, criminals are bad guys. The government fighting criminals is good. If you get caught up in it - well, that's fine right? Because you're a good guy, too. So that's good for you. And, if something bad DOES happen to you... well then you were never a good guy. Obviously, because bad things happen to bad people.
We see this in so many things. Well, rich people MUST be hardworking and moral, right? Because good things have happened to them, so they must be good. Well, the janitor must be lazy or stupid right? Because their job is bad, so they must be bad. Well, the cops raiding my house must be good thing right? Because I'm good!
If there's one thing I have learned from life, it's that life is not fair. Children starve, innocents get murdered, the evil can thrive, and happiness isn't doled out to who deserves it. It's never about who deserved what or what is right. It's about systems, structure, and incentives.
If you have to make a caricature of his arguments to so much as address them, what does that say about the strength of your own argument?
Being a judge is an actual job that requires training and experience.
Ofcourse it makes court cases a lot more boring if you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing.
Usually just make a quip about having curtains then move onto discussing just how moist the turkey is this year
Some prominent examples:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22832263
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSVJmOajGDe/
https://thestandard.nz/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-...
Not that exact phrase, it is too elaborate. Most people grunt "eh, don't care" and "it's free, right?"
The average person really is that apathetic.
Yes, I've heard that exact wording from cops.
From normal people, the more common way of saying it is along the lines of "well I don't really care if the cops see anything on my computer".
(The Nazis subsequently compiled a list, post-occupation, but that's not what you asserted.)
The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.
This is relevant to data collected by companies and governments today.
Consider a list of children with their parent names and the parents' preferred pronouns. You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
How does that make the distinction important? The lesson to draw is "you shouldn't keep a list of Jews, whether you think you're doing it for good reasons or not". The list is a list regardless of whether you think calling it a list is fair in some abstract sense.
> You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
Well, you're almost right. Except of course that you do have a list of gays. That's why Grindr having Chinese ownership was seen as a national security risk.
If you go to your kindergarten and tell them to stop keeping a list of gays they will look at you weird and most likely dismiss you as a nutjob. Because they don't have a list of gays, they just have a list of kids with their parents' names and pronouns.
That's why I think it's important to keep the distinction rather than conflate the two like you want to.
But the situation in 1940 was very different: religion permeated every fabric of society. Mind you the government simply took over the job of record keeping from the churches, temples and synagogues.
I am sure Jews today still keep lists about who is a Jew and so does every other religious denomination because such mundane information matters to them.
If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate the interests of all parties involved).
Re the current US government I'd be more worried about their cruelty as illustrated by ICE, DOGE etc.
One of the interesting things the Epstein drama has kicked up is legal or not, the powerful get up to some wild things at parties. And in their business dealings just based on the background number of scandals. If there is an organised group of people allowed to look there is just endless blackmail material which is going to get used, just like LOVEINT.
The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their call.
This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent.
This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented.
I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.
I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family from the local MAGAs in my area.
Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is exactly what will enable such an administration to come to power.
What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in 1936.
The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal must be public.
You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop, or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival gain access to it.
They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it
Technically the full quote from Wyden is: "when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information."
It's a small thing, but I find the click-bait editorializing from techdirt a bit off-putting.
24 years of the Patriot Act, and counting...
Altman is like Musk: he showed his true colors long before the current politically-inflected drama.
Musk was over-promising about self-driving, so much and for so long it became pretty clear he was a shameless liar. There are also so many reports of Altman lying (e.g. that's apparently why he got fired) and engaging in Machiavellian manipulations that you can be pretty sure he's a shameless liar too.
So if you want them to die faster, use their services.
I was already paying for Claude Max before the War Department fiasco, so there’s not much more I can do to hurt OAI apart from complain about it online, although I did persuade several people on various group chats I’m on to switch.
Considering how many lines Anthropic has crossed, it all feels like forced outrage to me. I feel ethically justified supporting none of these companies, it's reminiscent of the forced duopoly between iOS and Android.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/karp-palantir-anthropic-clau...
- The story would become about "leaking" classified information
- He would likely lose his access to this stuff in the future
Originally applied only to the largest communications companies, this now has effectively unlimited scope.
The only safeguard (which took years to add legislatively) was that the FBI had to clear it; but now the FBI is refusing even to record such requests, to avoid any record of abuse (and the person responsible is dubious).
Surveillance seems necessary, but in the wrong hands, it's systemically deadly: it grants overwhelming advantage, and destroys arms-length trust, driving transactions of any size into networks prone to self-dealing and corruption.
Once in a while, I’d get into a conversation with a friend or a stranger I met at some random function, and they’d ask how to stay private online and protect their data. I used to go in depth about how to do it, with excitement. Now I just say: be normal, fit in with the crowd, freeze your credit.
Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.
https://chuniversiteit.nl/papers/browser-extension-fingerpri...
You know this, but "normal" patterns are less remarkable.
I like Ron Wyden but he should just employ his Congressional privilege here and read it out.
So as he gets older, the cost/benefit changes, but I believe that's why he hasn't, is that his calculus involves him being the only one this reliable on screaming about what's going on behind closed doors.
https://www.pointoforder.com/2013/08/06/congressional-releas...
Another aspect is that we need to lower the bar for declassification in general. The reality of classified information is that it is almost universally boring and time limited in its value. Also, so many people have access to it that it leaks out slowly anyway. Just look at how much of the US military and contractors have or have had secret and higher clearances. [1] When multiple percentage points of Americans (and other governments) have access currently or have had access in the past to supposedly 'top secret' information then hiding it from the rest of the population just sounds silly. It is time to start re-asserting the public's requirement to be informed even if that has some potential risks or even actual harms associated with it.
[1] https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/16/how-many-people-ha...
It feels a little like keeping the filibuster around: maybe technically it’s within their power to change the norm, but once unilaterally spilling secrets becomes The Done Thing, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t spin out into a free-for-all.
For all the mud that gets slung around, I think congresspeople really don’t get there without some kind of patriotic instinct, some kind of interest in the United States’ ongoing functioning. And I certainly can’t imagine they’d keep getting access to new secrets after pulling something like that, one way or the other…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Eight_(intelligence)
Worth noting his full quote is that people will be “stunned that it took so long” for the info to come out. Which is not quite the same thing as being stunned in general.
Why do they have any power? Wyden was elected by his constituency. The "congressional leadership" can go pound sand. To the extent they have any power here it should immediately be completely neutered and then removed.
Yes, there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized, but there's probably a reason that practically every parliamentary body on the planet has similar problems.
So, move the show off the floor, never has it been easier to reach the population as an individual. Are the citizens that enraptured by "the floor" as it is? It seems to me, that if you were serious, this would be no problem at all.
> there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized
None of that is dictated by the constitution. You can change the way committees work overnight if you want. Some would argue that this happened in the 1970s and 1990s when party politics fully invaded what used to be assignments of seniority and experience.
> but there's probably a reason
Corruption. It's worth a lot of money to certain people. You can either design that out of the system or reduce the total power of that system relative to the population.
I'm not sure you can do much until you get down to the bedrock problems here.
My "ethical" list has several dozen politicians, but it is definitely short. And their names don't seem to last very long into each career...
This is not the same thing as saying people will be stunned by how long it took to discuss/investigate the matter, which is what Wyden actually said…
>On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance,[11] and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a secret body of law.[12] The government's apparent circumvention of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests. In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.
I can't name another indisputably ethical congressman. I dread the day he leaves office.
Under "Oversight", they point out that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that that the government's Section 702 program operates within legal constraints, as recently as 2014! Wow! </sarc>
Thank you for your service, Ron.
Also: Hello from Roseburg.
He is one of the few that is actually looking into Epstein bank accounts movements.
It was definitely swimming upstream in the post-9/11 days. I was hopeful for a while with Trump that we'd see more of a mainstream resurgence, but it's not looking like it to me anymore.
Anyway, I can only imagine what he's alluding to here...
Source: am Oregonian.
ON edit: Oops, sorry, 702 is up for renewal. Still not clear he could win a cloture vote, though.
"I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to hide" is trivially disproved:
Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information.
Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.
My word of caution is if you do have access to these systems or a shared password, tread very carefully.
Like I'm having a hard time concocting a reveal that would be "Stunning"
"NSA wiretapped all major phone carriers, recorded every voice conversation and text message of every citizen"
Meh, not that stunning. at least not in a "violation of rights" kinda way. Maybe in a "wow they had the technical acumen to even handle all that data" kind of way
"NSA has secret database with all medical records", "NSA has logs of every credit card transaction", "NSA can compel anyone anywhere to spy and reveal all data on anyone for any reason"
Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like "wow, that all they're doing?"
like opening a diaper on a kid with IBS, you expect it to be so bad when it's a normal turd you're suddenly really happy about shit.
"In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information"
You are correct that the American populace has normalized this already. The fact that this is done without congressional oversight is indeed stunning. Or at least it would have been a decade or two ago.
Everyone knew the NSA spied on everyone, yet Snowden leaks were truly stunning, because no one had evidence of the sheer scale of what the NSA (and collaborators) were engaged in. Wyden Siren was already firing off about that many years beforehand, before we knew the actual truth, so considering his record, I'm also skeptical it'll be "truly shocking" for the average HN tech-nerd, but for the general public, to have evidence of what the government does? Probably will be "stunning", but the one who lives will see.
When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.
Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches through our persinal data in bulk.
And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the practices?
Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to replace a large part of various agency's workforce - specifically those who care about the agency's culture!
Most Americans have this kind of thing tuned out, that have bigger issues in their lives.
Or backdooring most major microprocessors (tpm).
Etc?
I am aware that similar accusations are leveled against Intel ME and AMD's Platform Security Processor.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/562761/researchers-say-now...
https://www.franksworld.com/2025/09/18/the-intel-backdoor-no...
You’re far more cynical than the typical citizen, who Ryder is addressing.
Claim: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section 702
Actual quote: I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.
He said people will be stunned that it took so long to be declassified; not that people will be stunned by what it is.