skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>"You don't get to be CEO unless you can learn to lie & keep secrets."

That doesn't actually answer the parents question. What is the likelihood that a bunch of tech leaders would know about this and it wouldn't get out? That any group of people wouldn't let this out?

I agree with the latter half of your comment, but the first sentence is as powerful as saying, "The only way to keep a secret between three people is if two of them are dead."

They both sound like ominous truths, but neither is a particularly compelling argument.
Proper Use of Asserts
How about someone with even better knowledge on it than Obama?

"The top intelligence official in the United States condemned as “reprehensible” leaks revealing a secret program to collect information from leading Internet companies"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/intelligence-chief-call...
It is the phrase 'direct access'. It basically makes the whole sentence meaningless (i.e. whatever the truth is, the statement is defensible).
Re showing when things don't work. That's the best part of the egghead videos; showing things broken.

I forget sometimes how much you learn from doing it wrong before doing it right.
Consider the sheer volume of data we're talking about here. Unless you think these companies would miss a fiber optic trunk running out the back door of their data centers, does that make any sense?
I asked them about this in an interview.

Simply put, they said that if you don't feel comfortable working on a project, you just say so, and get moved elsewhere.
Immigration Bill: startup visa is a go, h-1b quota to rise
> If you think it matters, I'm afraid, you give the American public too much credit.

Not just the American public. This is blanket spying on the people of the world. Now that might sound less problematic for Americans who want to see those pesky terrorists brought to justice, but it also allows the NSA to build up profiles on everyone.

US border security is already a nightmare, god knows what they can do with this kind of information. Ever searched for torrents on Google? Your next trip to the States might be interesting.

It seems also they could be sharing this data with other national security agencies, which is where this gets really scary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22813893

Global Big Brother.

Personally as a user of Gmail, Skydrive, GDrive, Dropbox, Facebook,... I find this incredibly disturbing. I will be doing whatever I can to remove my dependency on any service hosted in the US.
I guess keeping an eye out for Larry (et al) cashing out shares over the next few weeks/months might be a good indicator of the likelyhood of exactly that "coming out later".
Well, I don't think you can accuse Stallman of being diplomatic.
> I never thought some technology standard could be lobbied by something like the NSA.

Has been done already, and to a good effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard#NSA.27...
Honestly it could be as simple as a "Law Enforcement API", that's configured with a company-run interface to NSA.

The NSA analyst gets intel on such-and-such an account ID/phone number/email/etc., uses PRISM to send a request (probably something stupid like SOAP, it's the govt after all).

The company computer verifies a valid warrant ID, valid request type, "hoovers up" the data requested and spits it back to NSA.

Technically not direct access. Certainly not a direct wiretap into the entire company database. But NSA is able to get the "special source data" they need for correlation on their end (possibly using tools as provided by Palantir).

They figure out whatever network of conspirators they're researching, develop "actionable intel", good guys win (note: depends on your interpretation of good guys, obviously :P).

Zuck and Page are still right in this scenario. I just wish someone would speak up about what the hell is actually going on!
If this company were not in the USA I might have confidence in their product being truly anonymous. All they've done is serve as a concentrating function for the NSA. You're far better off buying a phone for cash from a different 7-11 each month.

Perhaps this might be a business opportunity for the North Koreans?
Google just recently got out from under anti-trust scrutiny. It would be trivial for the Feds to bust Google's chops using that at any time. They've got Google's number any day of the week now. Step out of line, suddenly a new anti-trust inquiry begins.
To help with the other half (of learning the existing shortcuts) you can learn them at https://www.shortcutfoo.com

Shortcat seems like a great complement to shortcutFoo! Very cool idea.

(disclaimer: I created shortcutFoo)
> US engineering (except houses) uses metric, even though the public uses imperial.

I don't know that I'd make this claim, in general. Everything from bikes to American cars can still be found with imperial nuts and bolts. Even the robotics work I did in school was mostly in imperial units due to the greater availability of, for example, 1/4" 6061 Aluminum stock.

People will stick to whatever system is most convenient for most tasks. It makes it difficult to escape local minima.
That's news to me. And it would also explain why the spy scandal is pretty much a non-story on Reddit.

At the moment all there is on the front page are 2 stories on Greenwald and some "collecting anti surveillance arguments thread".

I guess after their role in promoting the anti-SOPA movement they got some "special attention.
It's well-known that there are restrictions on how much companies can legally disclose about some of these government requests.
There is no perfect way around rubber hose decryption, but we've some defenses. Off the top of my head, some significant ones:

1) Proper anonymity, so they don't know who to beat.
2) Deniable encryption.
3) Steganography.
4) (with 2) Sacrificial data of less significance to "give up" after sufficient beatings.
5) Social norms against beatings and similar coercion, extending to extreme circumstances.
6) Governmental transparency.

Neither individually nor collectively are these perfect security (and some are only relevant to certain circumstances) but they help to limit it.
I wonder how long countries will continue to compare the U.S. to Myanmar because of the metric system, while these same countries refuse to switch their primary official language to English and their decimal separator to the '.'.

What's good for one is good for the other after all. ;)
Honest question: what prevents someone from feeding misinformation to the press if all IDE tidying info is stripped away? If the journalist has no way to contact you, why should they trust your leak? Could the FBI or NSA send out bogus leaks and the go after journalists that publish the fake info for revealing what they believed to be confidential information?
But they're not controlling anything, they're just doing now what they would be doing if the leak had been real, assuming it was orchestrated. They would've done a better job letting everyone stay distracted by all the other crap being dropped on Obama's head right now.
Discrimination for kids
What is discrimination for kids

To know what is exactly the discrimination definition for kids we have to know what is the discrimination definition in general.
Discrimination is the incommensurate dealings with persons, generally on the grounds of gender, race, age, religion or disability. It is an unfavorable acting against organs of a certain societal group.
Discrimination includes classifying people into diverse groups and according to that, the members of some group are generally incommensurate in treatments and rights.
Usually, the aggrieved group is thought by the discriminator as substandard to other people.
What's the problem with most traffic being unencrypted? If you have something in particular that you want hidden, it's possible to make sure that it gets hid. What more do you need?
I would expect the rolling hash to be much faster than H.264 while also being lossless.
I'm almost 100% sure engineers use the SI system. (unlike physicist that use a system that seems to be fitting). And the SI system says that 100.000 and 100,000 are the same. The Si system only uses space to group numbers like 12 343,123 12 for twelf thousand and so on.
Proposal for the HN community: Tor Chat Web App
HN, in light of the NSA news, we need a Groupme-style anonymous chat web app based on the Tor project or similar.

I know of this, https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat but there's no mac client and a web app seems more logical in terms of remaining anonymous (installed software could raise a red-flag if your device is confiscated).

Are there any existing chat apps that can be modified to be routed thorugh the TOR network without the user having to set up TOR?

Who's in and where should we start?
Deaths are deaths. And if the former kills thousand of times more people than the latter, I'd say the former is much worse. And the response to the terrorism threat so far was hugely irrational and mostly achieved exactly what they planned to.

Remember, for terrorists bombing and killing are only means to the end. The goal is political/social change; deaths are only collateral damage.

Basically, in this case one should shut up and multiply [0]. And [1], since we like Schneier around here.

[0] - http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply

[1] - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparativ...
To be clear, this is the chief architect of Google+, not Google as a whole. Would he necessarily know?
God can verify any question. Don't fuck with God.

God says...
wrong adjusted_for_inflation subsequently Apostles cherished
hundred conclude Maker costs torn empire notion price
perchance deliberation December Moreover understands attack
abhorred shade scraped defers won image Same sore famous
straitly wisely forth blasphemous stripped unpraised Jove
recondite fervently chambering sowing securely portion
highly openly pertaining none willing sat overhastily

The Bible says...
4:36 And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is,
being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the
country of Cyprus, 4:37 Having land, sold it, and brought the money,
and laid it at the apostles' feet.

5:1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a
possession, 5:2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being
privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles'
feet.

5:3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie
to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
5:4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold,
was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in
thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

5:5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost:
and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

5:6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and
buried him.

5:7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife,
not knowing what was done, came in.

5:8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for
so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.

5:9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together
to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have
buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.

5:10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the
ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying
her forth, buried her by her husband.
Realistically I would expect people to reuse as much Weston code as they can.
Option #6: PRISM is the NSA-end of an interface to each named company to help automate data collection. The company still grabs the data, still runs each request through their legal team, etc.

But there's no email or fax needed, requests arrive via something like a JSON request and are automatically returned to NSA once the company looks up the requested data.

Company doesn't know NSA calls it PRISM. As far as the company is concerned it's just a bridge from their systems to the NSA for valid law enforcement reasons, why should they care what NSA calls it?

That would also explain why it's so cheap ($20 million). Or rather, why it's so expensive given how little it really is...
Yes. Storing sensitive corporate documents in plain text on servers owned by Microsoft, Google, etc, with no legal protections in place, is retarded.
I think it just says more about the types of people running the CIA. Not the smartest... not very moral... etc
Have you seen W.A.S.T.E.? http://sourceforge.net/projects/waste&#x2F; Has chat and file sharing, friends at Rose Hulman used it a lot. Might be a good starting point.
You're getting a lot of flak, but I immediately noticed the same thing.

Google: "we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers"

FB: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers."

Google: "We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

FB: "We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday."

Google: "there needs to be a more transparent approach."

FB: "governments to be much more transparent about all programs"

Call me nutty, but this can't be coincidence.
> Do they spend billions of dollars, spy on American citizens, molest them before getting in their cars, and erode other rights?

Moreover, this is completely wrong reaction to the terrorism threat. The right reaction is to ignore it completely. Terrorism is not about blowing stuff up, it's about scaring people into changing their society and politics. By overreacting like this, America (and others) pretty much did exactly what the attacks were supposed to achieve.
The government at least mentions that it's a maximum sentence. There's no other specific number they can quote anyways, it's not like they know what the judge and jury might approve that far ahead of time.
It's long been understood that this was the basis of the ECHELON system, right?
Bad link, sounds interesting.
There are several governments (Spain, France, Netherlands, Japan) who publicly have Root CAs in the trusted browser list[1]. It seems pretty likely (cf say, Prism) that the NSA has a CA cert where they can generate whatever certificates they want in order to MITM browser SSL communications...

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs&#x2F;
How to make $100 million disappear in 10 seconds.
Yep, which is why it's appropriate to quote the same figures when criticizing the bad behavior of the prosecution.

Even if they won't get the maximum, the number is still significant, because it serves as the anchor for extorting a plea bargain, as well as sentencing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
Does it have a "my mind has been poisoned by emacs" mode?
Even if it costs hundreds of millions of dollars, big woop.

How much have we spent on F-35 research, trillions? And those things don't even work in space.
That's only because the facts suggest that they are involved. It is very hard to state an obvious lie without sounding dodgy. That's hardly our fault.
Your disagreement isn't with my definition of "papers" (we both probably agree that "papers" can easily be read to encompass both physical and digital documents). Your disagreement is with my assertion that handing your "papers" over to a third party robs you of any 4th amendment interest you might have had in those documents.
Oh I see, in the screenshots directory. That's nice. Point still stands, put your screenshots front and center.
ok, so $14M + parts and labor
Errr http://sourceforge.net/projects/waste&#x2F;
It would require a new interpretation of CALEA. Right now, even "non-interconnected voice over IP" (e.g. Teamspeak) isn't covered by CALEA.

They do use some pretty bullshit stretching to count e.g. Skype as "interconnected" even though only a tiny minority of calls touch SkypeOut/PSTN.

I'm curious how this works if you have a disinterested third party running the interconnect; e.g. if I took TeamSpeak and set up a SIP trunk, does that make all teamspeak "interconnected voice over ip"?

I think some new "general purpose centralized voip" CALEA interpretation is the next most likely. I wouldn't be surprised if that happened already in some cases, at least semi-officially. ("it would be a shame if we had to seize a bunch of your servers every time we have a subpoena, you should just give us a nice UI and we'll even pay you per use...")

Going after pure peer to peer stuff is hardest. Commercial software would be easier, obviously, than open source, since you could apply some commercial levers/threats.
"For example, two Mike Fikri objects each have two properties..."
OT: the computer on Obama's desk is running Windows XP.

Full-size image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4753683646/in/set-72...;

Maybe it's time for the White House to upgrade...
"Registered firearms" in a nation with the 2nd Amendment? Even in states that require it I wouldn't trust that info with my life. :)

And either way I don't see why you'd not be OK with rifles but would be OK with handguns. Once you're OK with the arresting officers being armed the rest is just a matter of degree.
I presume he was listing things in order of the magnitude of outrage, not geographic distance from his person.
No. The main point of an IPO is to raise money which profitable companies need less.
Also interesting that it is Yahoo news reporting this...
Or maybe not that hard.

"Feds: Postal Service photographs every piece of mail it processes"

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/woman-arrested-for-ob...
The title is like an onion article. Of course it's photographed as it's sent--how do you think all that mail is sorted and processed?
Hopefully you are not using Windows, because there is a backdoor in it too so that they can grab it before the encryption...
Unless you actually created the phone itself, all you are doing is putting a Sim card in it, and calling it a BurnerPhone. No offense, but I can't just buy an iPhone, put a Sim card in it, and call it the YoPhone.... Can you clear up the fact that you make the phone or you buy it yourself in bulk?
NSA does not need to break AES or PGP.
They can access pre-encrypted information or post-decrypted information.
Yes. The uniformity of their responses is too similar to ignore or dismiss. It's chilling to read. It's a big fat hint to anyone not already drunk on the kool-aid that the NSA is coercing them to lie.

They couldn't say it louder if they used a bullhorn.
> traffic accidents are distributed among a large population of road users, rather than orchestrated through a chain of command.

It doesn't matter. Deaths are deaths[0], and terrorism threat is pretty much neglectable in comparison with cars, murders and suicides[1].

[0] - http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply

[1] - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparativ...
> go online

IP address

> call the number

Phone number

Careful.
Also worth reading is the comment thread. " We don't sell our users' information to anybody.... we do use user information to target ads: this approach has made us what's technically known as "large stacks of cash:" "
The thing is we can't trust any statement by anyone because of the gagging component of NSLs. I've heard it said that the above information is for FBI requests under the patriot act and doesn't include NSLs. For all we know NSL gags could explicitly forbid that kind of reporting and may even compel the recipients to lie if asked.

The last sentence he made, that the government needs to be far more transparent about what they're doing is the only sentence I can really trust as honest, especially given that the alternative to lying could be being thrown into Guantanamo for 'assisting terrorists'.
Those statements are probably true. The NSA has probably subcontracted the operation out to a private corporation. So Facebook, Google, et al, don't deal directly with the government, they deal with the private company.
Why not connect to your favorite public XMPP server[1] over Tor and use OTR? Also, see Cryptocat[2] extensions for popular browsers.

[1] http://xmpp.net

[2] https://crypto.cat
> The implication that there is some central figure behind this giving these companies scripts to read meets the most common flaw of governmental conspiracy theories.

Oh come on. We all know that it's Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD that's doing this. "This isn't my first rodeo," he said.
Hey Matt.

While I honestly think _you_ believe Google is doing "the right thing" - there's a nagging suspicion that there's some NSL-style legal (or possibly extra-legal) compulsion being used at the very top levels. Even if I believe that Larry is 100% "on my side" against the government - I'm also under no doubt that Larry and Google are effectively powerless against the pressure the various US government agencies could apply if they so chose.

While explanations of the similarity between Larry's and Mark Z's posts based on direct rebuttal of the WaPo article are plausible, when combined with Apple's, AOL's, and Yahoo's suspiciously similar structure and wording - cynical-me can't help but wonder if all 5 CEO's are being compelled to disseminate the same government supplied message (and are possibly intentionally using almost word-for-word similar language as a plausibly deniable way of telling people that).

I'm not sure if there's much Google can say or do - given the depth and seriousness of the seeds of suspicion that've already been sown… (Having said that, I was pleased to read Yonatan's G+ post earlier today…)
Marc Ambinder, a well-respected national security journalist who literally wrote the book on this topic, speculated (or perhaps stated what his sources have told him) how this could work on Twitter earlier tonight. Buzzfeed recapped it here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/direct-access-is-the-defin...

> On the “no direct access” —ISPs push to a separate server the subset of accounts that the FISC order covers; NSA monitors them in real time

> Let’s say court order says “all Yahoo accounts in Pakistan” Yahoo would push those accounts to the server; NSA could watch them in real time

>They’d try & figure who & where the incoming emails were coming from. US persons data minimized automatically if possible (often it’s not).
As a reminder, this is what you said upthread:

My conclusion is that his application-level networking experience has fooled him into thinking he knows more than he does about actual network architecture, management, and performance issues. Or maybe he doesn't realize the issues even exist.

My conclusion is that you made that comment having absolutely no idea what my experience was, and then decided to get pissy when the facts didn't line up with your bet.

I've made the same dumb bet on HN a bunch of times. "This is just some Ruby dork who knows fuck all about", I don't know, "tax law". It never works out for me, either.

The thread is now full of technical commentary about the point I made. Lots of smart people disagree with me; no surprise! You've contributed none of that commentary. Maybe now's a good time to start? You seem to feel passionately about the issue.