skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know what Congress's level of approval is. Here are the specific issues that should concern everyone irregardless of what their approval or disapproval of this behavior is:

#1 The existence of the spying is top secret. This isn't surveillance of a suspected serial killer or corrupt Governor. The only reason for this to be secret is fear of political backlash.

#2 The secrecy is protected and enforced by law. However this was leaked, if identified the individual(s) involved will go to prison.

#3 This blanket secrecy is also being applied to elected members of
Congress. How can something be opposed if its existence is secret, as protected by law?

I am coming to grips with the issue that there may be no turning back on the mass surveillance state. While we may be capable of barricading certain activities from surveillance, others have become integrated in to the operation of every day life, likely irreversibly.

However we have a much more chilling problem when this surveillance, by the government, is a one way mirror. If the activity is secret and that secrecy is enforced through the punishment of imprisonment, all accountability is lost.

The NSA is not a branch of government, and yet it is in effect dictating what the other three branches of government must do. Congress, forced in to secrecy through law -- even if some support what is occurring dissenters can not voice their opinion, Executive, who even knows what is going on there, and Judicial, which serves as the secrecy enforcer.

I think the people in the crypto community just assumed the NSA was doing this decades ago. Now it is unquestionably reality. This must serve as a wake up call for us to terminate our relationships with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft and figure out how to provide blacked-out alternative services to our users.

If not, in 5 years, every single waking moment of your life will be available electronically and in perpetuity. No matter what happens most of it will be, which makes it ever more important that the protect-able segments are not.

Up until now cryptography & privacy have been very poorly marketed. There are polished solutions such as Silent Circle, but for $240+ a year it provides little to offer for mass adaptation. Email, instant messaging, and video conferencing all have a wide array of solutions and plugins, but between manual configuration and out of date code, the marketing is on par with programmer drawn graphics in video games.

Snapchat may offer little more than faux privacy, but its mass adaption proves that there is a huge market for privacy.
There are promising projects, like Crypton.io, which enable the use of cryptography in cloud applications. You, HN readers, have more influence on the direction of these things than anyone else in the entire world. Your start ups will determine what 5 years from now look like.

Make Privacy a Feature and its a win-win for both business and individual rights.
I'm not sure what good immunity is if you don't exercise it in difficult cases. I honestly think 99.99% of the people at the NSA and in the Executive branch are vacuuming up that data out of a sincere desire to keep America safe, too. But only members of Congress enjoy the legal immunities of the 'speech or debate' clause; they're invested with the rare power to exercise their conscience in how they fulfill their oaths of office, unlike most of the executive branch.
How a skeleton can be your friend
And I'm upvoting him. Because hes right. I don't want to read 3 of the same stories. And this happens way too often with HN. He knows what hes talking about.
"The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers."
Excellent points. He isn't building a profitable, sustainable business. The fundamentals are completely off.

However, based on not-very-reliable data, Zoho's revenue per employee is less than Salesforce
It's Rand Paul.
Apple is number two for me. Number one is app.com.
I've flagged this submission. You are welcome! :)
I guess when you're illegally collecting trillions of pieces of information per year from American and overseas citizens, you need people to help figure out where to store it all, right?
This is untrue. It is not "illegal" for a senator to disclose classified material. The Constitution's speech and debate clause trumps federal criminal law, meaning he or she could disclose the material on the floor of the Senate or in committee. (Doing so may not be wise, of course, but it would be legal.)

The Supreme Court has ruled on this (Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606) after Senator Mike Gravel read a copy of the classified Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record.
The Zoho blog wants Bernanke to do the same thing Japan has done for the last two decades: kill the economy with tight monetary policy. They're blaming Bernanke for high stock prices. Because the whole economy should depend on what one blog poster thinks of a handful of stock prices.
Idea: a subreddit or subHN (if that existed) for bootstrappers?
You might be interested in this article. http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Skype-with-care-M... (Microsoft visiting all HTTPS-links sent over skype). They do, however, still tell you that the connection is end-to-end encrypted http://download.skype.com/share/security/2005-031%20security... (See section 1.2, Security Policy).
Now, if they can read all your links using https, they can read anything else too.

Edited: Spelling
> The reason for the lack of a "management team" page is that we don't the org chart typical companies do.

Would you say Zoho abides by open allocation for its workers? [1] I'd love to hear more about the organizational structure of the company.

[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/11/26/what-is-open-al...
I argued something very similar in my blog post here http://www.battle-school.co.uk/Blog/2013/01/14/the-second-am...
That was following the suicide of Aaron Swartz, which is also the last time I saw the front page of Hacker News swamped with almost identical stories.
It's disturbing because if things as sensitive as this are leaking, it means other things will leak that could cost lives.
There's a simple solution to this - click on new, and upvote stories which have technical content, and add some new stories with content you'd like to see. There are many stories with no votes which deserve to be seen.
The Secretive Gathering Of Elites That Happens Every Year
If I were a spook, I would throw myself under a bus.

Are you saying that you don't believe that governments (at any level) should engage in any kind of intelligence-gathering or espionage, ever? Or that there is ever any role for secrecy? If so, I regard that as a valid position, but also a naive one.
> I'm smarter than all my peers at work.
If you are sure of that, then create something on your own. Try to apply your AI skills, find a problem to solve (big data, NLP etc) and get a prototype running. If you can't find a new problem to solve, you could as well solve an already solved problem in a better way.
But set the target. Re-evaluate yourself at the end.
The Startup Guy | The Weblog of Vijay Anand – from The Indian Startup Trenches
"I'm not the same person who critiqued the Atlantic in the first place."

Apologies - I should have noticed that.

Having said that, I stand by my call for evidence of application of critical facilities if that's what's being claimed - a call to which you're risen with flying colours.

I _broadly_ agree with all of your points - but in my opinion you're selling him short with your final summation sentence "In my view, his punditry is emotional rather than analytical."

As I see it, he's built a reputation (and career) about being well-informed on security issues, and also being able to communicate those issues at a "popular media" level - perhaps sometimes oversimplifying, but almost always informing enough that a curious reader has enough knowledge and keywords to search for further information (and, like in this article, often providing many many more detailed and specific links). And while it would be even better if he provided solutions to some of the problems he writes about - educating the wider general public that the problems exist at all does a nett good for society.

Expecting him to "show leadership" (or even have any solutions) as a prerequisite to pointing out problems seems unduly onerous.
I've listed to William Binney a few months back on the Joe Rogan Experience talking about this. Very interesting.
LOL, how are those rose-colored glasses working out for you? Of course you'd feel more free, everything that threatens your freedom is swept under the rug here! 'Massive uproar' (read: more than 3 newspaper articles) about something (like EPD)? Just shelve it and try again next year! Never takes more than 2 or 3 tries! Do you realize how extensive the data logging (phone and internet records, plus phone taps) is here? And while we may not have the technology just yet to do really impressive data mining, in a few years time we will (or rather, 'they' will) and there will be nothing left that is private, especially when (in 10 years time) cash payments will be relegated to only buying things costing as much as a packet of gum. Think that's crazy? Sure, that's what people said of me when I said the same thing about data mining debit card payments 10 years ago - and look what was in the news just two weeks ago! The biggest Dutch processor of electronic payments will start selling that data to BigCo for marketing purposes! Sure it's been called off for now, but see my first sentence; next year, they'll be a lot more careful about not making any noise about it when they introduce it.
How is your argument different from "some innocent people might get lifetime jail sentences, so we must give out no long sentences"?
Hi there, i'd be interested in hearing details on studygig. Looking to expand my portfolio (as you can see from this thread!)

Email in my profile...
Ask HN: Is NSA tapping into Hacker News?
That's more like it! Please post top-level comments of this quality next time. This could have been a valuable discussion if more people saw it and weren't distracted by the Atlantic ad-hominem.
Read the statutes. 18 USC § 1409(c), 18 USC § 1510(c) "knowingly and with the intent to obstruct an investigation or judicial proceeding violates such prohibitions or requirements applicable by law to such person shall be imprisoned for not more than five years, fined under this title, or both." My reading is you'd have to do more than change a web page to run afoul, specifically, you'd have to intend to disrupt an investigation or judicial proceeding.
Would be interested in hearing more about the t-shirt site, email in my profile.
Come back in 5 years (assuming HN still exists) and ask yourself if everybody trying to bring awareness to a very alarming trend is a bit overkill.

I'll leave you with a pertinent quote from Desmond Tutu: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Proposal HN: Build this with me;
Very disturbing information has come to light in the last two days. The situation with respect to the NSA's data creep and the complicity of some of the biggest names in tech to subvert any trust in the idea of informational freedom has been an eye opening revelation for most, and a confirmation of the suspicions of others.

A modest proposal, and, if interested, contact me to participate, contribute, critique or…

---

"The 'black box' recorder for your life": Every modern aircraft has a black box, every household should as well. A resilient and feature rich appliance that serves to capture and host your digital life.

This device would be based on the open designs of something like the BackBlaze storage systems and provide a high capacity, fault tolerant storage system with an Application Suite providing you with the basic services you have come to rely on from multiple parties -- but 100% owned and controlled by you:

"Facebook in a box" -- but without the one-dimensional vertical column, and focused primarily on you and your family. With the ability to share out exactly what you want with other parties using the same system -- or through the web portal hosted on the appliance.

Starting with a picture and file repository, the device will house your important content. It would provide an internal, multi-user life management system (profile, calendar, contacts, messaging, blog etc). An external view provides a public facing site - you control what information is presented.

An evolved data access policy allows you to share limited information with the world at large - and specific information with friends and groups; link up with other families and households and share out information relevant to only that connection through the assignment of data tags and subscribers.

There is a lot more to this - but given the events of the past day - I wanted to field this out there to HN and see what type of input you might have...

Interested?
This just goes to show that it took both political parties, working together for decades, to arrive at the current juncture.
Rich Hickey on rethinking databases with Datomic
Absolutely. I think all presidents should be expert programmers.
> What's so wrong with asking someone in an elevator? I'm all ears.

If the request makes them uncomfortable, the closed nature of the space makes it difficult for them to make a polite exit. The same applies to other locations where someone is temporarily unable to leave.

This also isn't really so much about dating or gender. Equally inappropriate would be uninvited political or religious commentary, bleak comedy, reference to recent very sad topics (violence, disease, natural disaster, abuse scandal,) or other topics with an unusual likelihood of creating distress.

The general idea is, just wait for the elevator to open, and ask once they have stepped outside; thirty seconds isn't going to kill you.
They are not even hiding they are going after journalists who expose their crimes now, are they?
Had to really scale back what i wrote due to the 2,000 character limit...

This is a long time coming and was formulating even prior to this current state of things, but it feels really urgent and important now.

Let's redefine the state of the way services are used.
> Does that somehow make Obama more culpable for the surveillance state?

Actually, yes. Because back when people were angry enough about the issue, they focused all that anger on Bush. Then comes Obama and all that energy gets transformed into support for him because people honestly believed that he was different, that he was against ever-expanding warfare abroad and ever-shrinking civil liberties at home. And when he won in 2008, the people of this country, who were outraged at everything Bush had done, got their satisfaction.

There was vast public sentiment against this kind of thing. Obama subverted it and destroyed it.
Forget about going to a friends house to play a game you just bought. Gaming has become less and less social.
And I've joined you by flagging the OP as well.

Some people don't seem to understand the cost of democracy and need to put aside their sense of entitlement for just one or two days for the greater good.
For what it's worth, I was able to track down the date via one of their RSS feeds:

https://www.aclunc.org/home/features_aclu_of_northern_califo...

National Security Letters

05/06/2008 03:05 PM
High Performance Assembly Programming
How to route the thing? Through a peer-to-peer network? If so it's slightly better, but using a peer to peer architecture for just "facebook" seems strange.

It'd be very hard to maintain without a central location somewhere. Surprisingly facebook has a huge amount of data associated with it. So eventually even if this got large it'd have problems.

Batman peer to peer tried to do free wifi for all mobiles which would be awesome, but I don't know really what came of that because peer-to-peer networks are hard to maintain for connectivity.
Generally, it's pure insidiousness. When Congress wants to push something through they always give it either an innocuous name like the PAA, or something nobody will publically disagree with, like a "Keep Pedophiles Away From Children Act," which mandates things more mundane and far-reaching than the title's goal.
Just pondering wordplays: Assume I implement a messenger, and I want to obtain full access to messages, but I also want to be able to put "end-to-end encrypted" on my product.

Couldn't I go ahead and encrypt everything with an encryption system where I know all the keys? It end-to-end encrypted, since your client encrypts and my client decryptys and hey, it might even be some good asymmetric encryption, but nothing matters as long as I don't disclose my key management or, even better, put all key management into your hands.

And even worse, if I don't give my transmission servers access to these keys, "no intermediate node" has access to this information, because only secondary nodes have access to the information.

It's a scary twist of words, but I dunno... I could probably convince a lot of standard users with such smoke and mirrors.
you dont have to tell the police when you move. only the local goverment (Einwohnermeldeamt)
A campaign promise Obama made was to revisit the PATRIOT Act and when it came up for renewal to implement better oversight for NSL's and sneak-and-peak warrants.

The Patriot Act was reauthorized in 2009 without a single modification, despite there being a bi-partizan bill on the floor of congress that looked to implement many more checks and balances, as Obama wanted.

Here is what candidate Obama said in opposition to the FISA extension bill in 2008:

> "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."

Guess what he did when he became President ..

He also said he would kill warrantless surveillance, but by extending the FISA Act. they changed the warrantless period from 48 hours to a week, at the same time banning states from requesting information and plugging a lot of other loopholes that legal challenges to FISA and warrantless wiretaps could have used in courts.

Obama did a complete 180 on civil liberties (there were other issues as well - Gitmo, habeas corpus for enemy combatants, the coke/crack sentencing disparity, assassinating US citizens with drones etc.) and for some reason seems to enjoy the tough on crime/tough on terrorism stance.
https://disconnect.me/

Also blocks as many other tracking scripts as can be found. I've found it to be faster than ghostery etc.
I think the main strange issue I have with your idea is that you can do all that stuff you are saying on a peer-to-peer network and it'd at least be a bit more encrypted. Developing a whole new "facebook" appliance almost seems silly.
Don't worry about it. Everyone's on the monitoring list.
My pennies are on California AG Kamala Harris being groomed for the same role and purpose.
AFK–A game for the Digital Revolution
[Honest question with absolutely zero bad intentions] I hate to bring this up again and again, but how long before the USG turns into Nazi Germany? Right now, they're in the data collection phase, and are squashing dissidents.

I don't live in the US but I casually told this news to a 'normal person' I met yesterday [my parents] and they weren't even flinching. Almost like it wasn't their problem. I wonder if the 'not living in the US' part has anything to do with this.

The reason I'm worried about this is, now that USG has this tech, they won't hesitate to sell this to other countries.

EDIT - To the person who downvoted me, I am not upset but can you tell me why my post does not contribute to the discussion? It is a known fact that any tech the US researches and implements is soon commercialized and sold to other countries, and as compared to weapons, surveillance tech sales is definitely a walk in the park.
It's not even Precrime, more like Maybecrime.
"How are we any better than China - because we at least eventually find out? Because people don't get disappeared off the street?"

Perhaps this doesn't happen that much within us borders, but it routinely happens to others, including EU citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
Tent in a box? (https://tent.io/)
Upvoted for awesomesauceness. Good read.
What do you mean by "machine"? Your point is well taken, however. You can fit 80 3.5" drives in a commodity 4U enclosure, say 3.2 PB raw per rack with 4TB hard drives and only two head nodes. Then we only need a mere 312,000,000 racks to get to a yottabyte. At 30 square feet per rack, that's 10 billion square feet, or 360 square miles. So. I think the 'yotta' is either anticipating a massive improvement in storage density, or the Wikipedia editor was a bit off...
....I don't want to buy Google Glass anymore.
Oklahoma City drinkup
Flip all the parties next go 'round. In a reliably red district and/or state? Vote Democrat, and vice-versa. Vote the bums out, especially the Yes on PATRIOT Act ones. The law of averages will keep the distribution we have now.
There is a strong correlation between intelligence and suggestibility. Intelligent and educated people are more susceptible to hypnosis and propaganda, including the American mythology. Many would normally immediately dismiss these claims, but this latest set is coming from 'trusted' news sources. So being forced to accept them as true, they are probably experiencing a high level of cognitive dissonance.

So rather than doubting their intelligence, it's precisely because of their intelligence that it's causing such a stir.

Of course for those of us who are intelligent and deeply cynical, questioning everything, there is a double edge. Knowing the world as it actually is, rather than how it is marketed to us, can be deeply depressing.

But I would rather be depressed and have the truth set me free, than live in ignorant bliss.
The pain point of your solution is data security. Not in the sense of it being vulnerable to surveillance or digital theft, but what happens if someone breaks in and steals your little black box, or if the house burns down?

Syncing it to a CloudBased service kind of breaks the concept.

One possible solution I can think of is to allow people to store encrypted copies of oneanothers black boxes.

Imagine that your blackbox would automaticly sync all it's data to my blackbox where it was encrypted with a key that only you had - and of course I would do the same the other way.

That solution is, however, only possible if all partipitants have really solid internet connections.
Remember that EFF funded Tor for a year[1] to help it get started, and currently codes and releases HTTPS Everywhere [2] to increase opportunistic crypto for everyone. Your donation[3] will fund open source technological solutions, as well as legal work and activism.

(Disclosure: I work for EFF)

[1] http://www.onion-router.net/History.html (2004)
[2] https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
[3] https://supporters.eff.org/donate
Hacker News for South Asian Student Organizations
I am going to repeat some advice I once received, you can not change others you can only change yourself. As applied to this situation, the NSA story has dominated HN front page less than 24 hours, and things will go back to normal, but not because you or anyone else forces others behavior. In the meantime, what you do have control over is the fact that you are only a click away from reading an unlimited cache of interesting stories all over the web, you do not need them feed to you through HN. Or take PG's advice and stop reading HN and get back to hacking. Give it another 24 hours and I imagine you will come back to a diverse HN front page.

For the record, I do not want to discourage you from trying to change/modify the behavior of others, but sometimes it is important to focus internally and the things we can immediately control.