skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eric Schmidt, in March 2010, knew about this when he said the following for users who wished their actions to be private:

> But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we're all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.
OP here - someone left a comment on the blog who's clearly more knowledgeable than I am. I'm copying it here:

The quotes are necessary if an atom starts with something
other than a lower-case character. Any unquoted token
that starts with an upper-case letter is a variable.

As for atomic_list_concat, it's an optimized library
function that requires the separator. It's certainly
possible to write an equivalent that is completely
flexible.
Stupid article, stupid comparison.
The list of resources starts with a book rated 2.5/5 stars and whose description misspells model/view/controller.
Strong competition is a barrier to entry.

If I'm an enterprise, I'll go with Twilio over some 2 week old startup because of its proven track record and the likelihood of being around in a year.
>Senator Wyden has openly talked about how he wanted to say something about these programs, and even now he can't reveal details of what's going on because it would violate national security and he'd probably be put in prison or at the least removed from Congress.

Which is complete bullshit of course. Mike Gravel anyone?
"All licenses, including proprietary ones, are shunned by some people; the effectiveness of the GPL is evident in the simple fact that it's the most common free software license in use today by a wide margin."

I'd appreciate a source on this - not in a "I doubt it" sense, but "I would find it useful"!
We've had this same conspiracy appear a number of times.

It isn't chance that their statements look similar: You can be absolutely sure that each looked to the other for some sort of direction, and once that came they followed the leader simply because it makes sense.

Even excluding that, really how many variations could there possibly be? Someone said you did something illegal. Say "no I didn't do something illegal, and everything I have done has been above the board and transparent". Do the same thing to twenty people and you would get remarkably similar statements, because a response can only come in so many forms.
Facebook is opt-in https and I believe google is https by default. I don't know about the other services.

Without their keys having it over the wire won't get them what they want.

EDIT: poor wording.
they will catch you trying to get a dot-matrix printer working
Damn, Angela Lansbury's in on it too. They got everyone in PRISM: http://colingourlay.github.io/deny-prism/?company=Angela+Lan...
yea, exactly; it's all obviously BS
This is what happens when you use commas instead of proper decimal points.
Something like this? https://plus.google.com/+BradleyHorowitz/posts/SM5RjubbMmV
I think that you are broadly right. The government can already get access to Google, facebook etc so PRISM could be just a friendlier user interface around the whole process.
So instead of:
1)investigate
2) get warrant
3) send warrant to companies with data request
4)companies send data back
5) repeat 3-4 until investigation complete

PRISM allows an analyst to load up a warrant and start exploring data immediately without having to wait for the company to verify it and then do a ETL operation back to the NSA.
alright, I'm convinced. Now how long before I can use it on my Debian desktops?
Turing in fact dismisses the question in the famous letter. The Turing test isn't proposed as a test of whether machines can "think" but a test of whether they can imitate a person.

Turing considered the question of whether machines could think as being "too meaningless to deserve discussion".

http://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA317&lpg=P...

Also

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test&#x2F;

Sorry this links quote Turing, I couldn't find the original source.
Creating a non-regulated market is not a bad thing. More programmers = more programming jobs.
> you made that comment having absolutely no idea what my experience was

I made the comment based on the fact that the only thing you ever talk about actually doing is security-related. On everything else, you just pontificate context-free.

You implied earlier I should have looked at your "public linkedin profile". You should know that, for me, your profile contains nothing but your current and past employers, and your university. Nothing about what you did there. What was I supposed to conclude from that?

I've spent most of my career working for companies that do video-related work, but if you ask me a question about MPEG transport streams, I'll refer you to the guy who, y'know, actually deals with MPEG.

At this point I am pissy, yes, but that's not because I was wrong, it's because of the asshole who decided he knows better what my personal time commitments are than I do.

> The thread is now full of technical commentary about the point I made.

No, it isn't. The thread is full of cursory rejections of your equally cursory commentary. There is absolutely nothing interesting about any of it, because it's all surface bullshit that everybody already knows. There are no details. There's nothing concrete. There's nothing new. Boring, hand-wavy crap.

Propose something concrete, something that actually addresses the obvious criticisms you already know are going to be leveled, and I might get interested.

Right now, all I'm interested in is ignoring HN for a while.
> “It [PRISM] cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States,” said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

And how are we supposed to believe this? We were already blatantly lied to.
If yu haven't already, consider a "warrant canary" - something like this:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
Similar issue occurs in iterm: http://i.imgur.com/UBybMP4.png
Oh wow, this is brilliant. My only problems with it are that it doesn't work with some applications, which is the perfect problem to have, because it means I can now identify applications that have accessibility issues that I didn't notice before.

Demand for accessible apps increases -> I become more productive and apps become more accessible for people that need them. Perfect!
> From what I understand, modern X applications run remotely are just painting a region of bytes to be shot over the wire anyway.

No, that's incorrect. X server sends high level commands over the network and let the client render the requests. VNC on other hand work exactly as you describe, by simply copying the servers image buffer (a region of bytes), compresses it, and sends it over to be painted on the client's screen.

My general approval of X method rather then the VNC approach mostly comes down to performance (less traffic, smother rendering) and style. Its the same reason why I like the concepts of vector graphic over pixel formats.

But if Wayland is designed to not have any high level commands (like "create a window"), and thus only push buffers of pixels between server and client, I guess that is that then. Anything beyond copying the image buffer would then be in conflict with Waylands core design.
I think it awesome product with brilliant.
He is responding in the thread, so you could actually ask there, and maybe hear an answer, as opposed to merely being snarky here.

Unless, of course, you are someone who actually needs a pseudonym even to ask such a question, in which case such a forum is not for you...
This reads a little more smoothly, I think: http://colingourlay.github.io/deny-prism/?company=Urban+Dict...
I think the market will be more the ineffective but paranoid types. Anyone who wants to be truly anonymous will work hard to reduce, not increase, the amount of interaction other people have with their plan.

The old saying "two can keep a secret if one is dead" is apt as using this service only adds extra layers of things that can go wrong and are out of control of the person buying the burner phone. The only way I could see this as even potentially useful is to maybe buy the phone and store it in case its needed in the future hoping by the time its needed the trail has gone cold.
Could it be that the presentation describes targeted surveillance? PRISM may just be a program to standardize a process and the type and format of information returned.
UTF-8, not ISO 8859-1.
http://colingourlay.github.io/deny-prism/?company=Nuthin%27+...
> Things like search warrants? What has been described in the PRISM slides is a interface in which a NSA agent can access a subject's data at will, in a few clicks and an affirmation that "yes, this person is a terrorist".

Google has officially denied being a part of PRISM. The way you phrased this statement makes it sound like the OP is sneakily leaving out the PRISM implementation, which would be sneaky if Google were a part of PRISM.

(this doesn't mean that Google's isn't flat-out lying about everything...but you seem to be alleging a contradiction where there is none, at least in the OP)

> "Also the US government has confirmed that systematic collection of user data was indeed happening for non-US citizens. What of that? Are they users of lesser rights in the eyes of Google, etc?"

NSA's mandate since its inception is to conduct surveillance of foreign communications suspected to be a threat to America...So while it's still worth arguing whether the surveillance they conduct is unethical or unproductive, it's not going to be worthwhile arguing whether they do it at all.

edit: removed sarcasting phrasing that was too assholish for a Friday after work.
That is correct. Blackwater working for DHS essentially.
Privacy is worth sacrificing human lives, for some amount of privacy and some number of lives...

However, that's not even the biggest problem with the knee-jerk response: it's not a trade being offered. If you could guarantee me 3000 lives saved in exchange for more invasion of my privacy and that of my billion closest friends (assuming they agreed), I'd have to think about it.

But no! 3000 lives were lost, and that is tragic, and it's more tragic that the fear it caused was then exploited to consolidate power. It was consolidated in the hands of people who are probably mostly reasonable people, and who are probably mostly trying to keep us safe, but there is no guarantee as to the number of lives saved (although "lives lost to terrorism in the 10 years prior when you didn't have these powers" helps us provide some upper bounds...), and moreover some of those people we're being asked to trust will prove not to be good people, power will be abused, and it might well cost more lives than it saves: governments have killed overwhelmingly more people than insurgents and terrorists over the past 100 years.
While I'm no cop and such actions are concerning to me - let me play devil's advocate. If you have to train a group of men to apprehend a wide variety of suspects/fugitives/badguys in a manner that is fast, effective, and as safe as possible, it makes sense that you keep the procedures, tactics, and equipment used consistent.

After all, pointing an M16 at someone wont hurt them any more than pointing a .38 special at them, but it's a hell of a lot less tempting to run/fight back against an overwhelming force.

That they seem heavy handed in this case is just a result of it being on the edge of the range they need to cover.
This is the sort of response that I find convincing. Thank you, Dr. Zunger.
http://colingourlay.github.io/deny-prism/?company=Internet
No, that says you can't use a pseudonym without proving to Google that it is one a lot of people know you by.
I don't think it's a stretch to think the government has the ssl keys. Or the ability to find the ssl keys.
Ergonis' KeyCue is an app that might also help with learning Mac app keyboard shortcuts. http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue
It's the only power I actually have and hold now, unlike the possibility of future influence that may come from running for office.
>"Google had no involvement in the PRISM program and the first we heard of it was when Greenwald's article hit the press."

Greenwald broke the story about the Verizon FISA warrant, not the PRISM story. These are (ostensibly) different things.
> Niether is a word. Use real words when you write.

Aside from the glaring spelling error, this betrays a complete linguistic ignorance coupled with utter historical illiteracy. In short: Every new word, or semantic shift applied to an existing word, was railed against, often by people with no knowledge of linguistics, and many have since become productive parts of our language down to the present day. Some haven't, admittedly, but not because of the people who ranted against them.

For example, is 'television' a word? Can 'nice' be used to mean 'pleasant'? Can 'actor' be applied to a woman? Can a house made of wood ever become 'dilapidated'? (Seriously.)

If you're seriously opposed to 'non-words', the answer to all of those questions is NO.
What happens with safety deposit boxes?
Google sends data between its data centers over HTTP, not HTTPS. This means if the NSA can intercept their traffic anywhere, they could read all of it
>>Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information
about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale
is completely false.

If you consider that PRISM is not a 'dragnet' but rather an automated system that processes FISA warrants on company premises then the denial wouldn't be wrong. There is no 'scale' that you wouldn't be able to get using regular data requests to internet companies. PRISM could just make the process a lot easier for everyone involved.

So instead of sending a warrant over, having the company verify and send the data to the NSA, then finally transforming the data into a reportable format PRISM automates the whole process.

If you read some of the media descriptions it almost looks like PRISM is more of a data aggregation and portal system that sits on top of a data source and allows analysts to explore content.
they don't care? so you may say,
my experience is that the industry includes some players who duck and weave to try to evade application of existing regulatory radiation limits.

and again the coal/nukes false dichotomy.
the fact that this is fundamentally flawed thinking is highlighted by your conclusion that more nuclear plants reduce public radiation exposure.
There are millions of ways to deny things.

This is the most clear and direct way

I accused you of doing X

You could say "you know, my brother and I, we once, 30 years ago blah blah blah blah blah blah but X, X never happened".

Most people, however, will just say "No, i don't do X".

They were accused, point blank, of providing direct access to their servers.
They said "we do not provide direct access to their servers".

But please, see a conspiracy here because people are trying to be as direct and clear.
"All they would need for unfettered access to user data is the SSL/TLS private key file used to encrypt traffic."

False, one can't passively mitm SSL when perfect-forward-secrecy is used.
I just checked, and google seems to be using it.

http://www.quora.com/SSL-Secure-Sockets-Layer/Is-it-ever-pos...
sure. whats to bet tho that the next reactor disaster uses the same unhelpful rationalisation, that better designs are just around the corner.
This is not about what the NSA does, this is about whether Google and co are handing out foreign users' data to the NSA. It appears they are.

I hope every non-american netizen realizes that their private communications are being systematically collected by US intelligence. It is now impossible to trust an american company.

Before the Internet, the ECHELON program was shown to have been used for private industrial espionage on foreign compagnies [1]. I assume this is happening on another scale entirely now, with the cooperation of Google, Apple, FB and MSFT.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
Why would the government choose to use this route to get data from Google/Facebook/etc?

This would require them to have to know, and be kept up-to-date, with how every one of their applications sends data across the wire.
In the sense that I don't have access to the source code for the software that I am interacting with as a user. It's not "free software" in more ways than that.
Well, just to be clear: you were pretty wrong about what I've "done".

Have a good weekend. Ignoring HN can definitely be a healthy thing sometimes.
I should mention that actual watermarks in digital media (images, audio, video, etc.) will not be removed by recompressing the media. These watermarks are specifically designed to remain readable through compression and simple transformations. This technology is widely available commercially, so presumably the government has even more robust versions.
Source? I imagine they're probably using a VPN or something.
Remember that there are plenty of people that think this is a good thing. Lots of people work in the government doing all sorts of terribly unethical things that they think is right. Elite hackers don't have a stranglehold on intelligence and technical prowess.

Even then, how much more do you have to pay someone? After all, it'll get done one way or another. There are plenty of intelligent people that will decide they might as well make a lot of money at it, and perhaps protest on the inside.
Can we remove Root CAs from our browser?

Edit: Found the answer:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:UserCertDB
The US, UK, Australia and NZ have had a bilateral intelligence sharing agreement since the 1940s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK-US_Security_Agreement
I think there are a lot of possibilities that could be consistent with Page's statement that also involve the NSA spying on Google users. For example, perhaps the NSA asked Google to disclose their SSL private keys; then, if they are willing to do an active attack with their own infrastructure, they could transparently perform a MITM attack on all requests to gmail, and it would be virtually undetectable.

Another possibility is that the NSA could have served orders on Google employees directly, and they are compelled not to tell their managers about what they did for the NSA.
What if "provider" is a euphemism? If they're intercepting and decrypting all traffic to and from the "providers", they have to write code to actually extract the data from those streams. Such code would "vary by provider", and an analyst could make "special requests" for code to parse a certain kind of data from the stream. The timeline of providers entering the program could be a timeline of when the NSA wrote the code to extract that company's data.

Also, the published slides are just three out of forty-something. The bottom of the slide that lists the capabilities says "complete list and details on PRISM web page." I agree that if they're doing this, they probably are already intercepting all unencrypted SMTP traffic.
I just grabbed a couple of examples. Surely there's a long list that can be added to mine.

Delusional? Probably.
The only part that's big enough and self-contained enough to be worth reusing in a Haskell project would probably be the cursor handling. For all the rest, writing the wrappers necessary to deal with them from Haskell would probably be a bigger job than just re-implementing.

The whole point of Wayland/Weston is that the display server is miniscule. All the complex parts are reimplemented in other parts of the stack already, so just let them deal with them and hand over pointers. It's so small that if there ever is a Haskell version of it, I expect it to be formally proven to be bug-free.
In other news, google knows the to and from address of every email sent from gmail.
That implies the same people who architected this are responsible for the damage control... highly doubtful. The press releases & language reeks of one thing... Lawyers.
What I don't get is:

from US government, we got confirmations - half-ass confirmations, but still confirmations - that PRISM is real, we maybe have some information wrong and we should stop asking and talking about it, but it's real.

While the companies and its architects all oppose the claims in a way that's very convincing.

I don't know what to believe anymore.
Can't toolkits use XRender over a network instead of sending huge bitmaps around? Or was XRender support dropped altogether when DRI2 proved so much better?
Those who have not read Orwell are doomed to repeat him
No, because "electable" may as well be shorthand for "will behave in the same fashion as the last two puppet stooges"

End the game, not the players.
Didn't they miscalculate a [the?] vital characteristic (buoyancy) on a 2.7B project. Seems news worthy.
If we can shoot them, we can cyber them
I was under the impression (and a brief skimming of the article you linked seems to support) that the one-child policy didn't apply in rural areas, so while it was a cute refutation of the government not caring "how many children were born" it seems to be an inaccurate one of the government not caring "how many children were born [...] in some remote village".

... I write this assuming the earlier comment wasn't amended to tack on the phrase; if it was, my apologies...
Triangulating On Truth - The Totalitarian State
If one were looking to build a PRISM at home (I'm specifically looking at the community detection part of it), would iGraph be a good place to start?

http://igraph.wikidot.com/community-detection-in-python
https://jitsi.org

Secure video calls, conferencing, chat, desktop sharing, file transfer, support for your favorite OS, and IM network

+ Tor ?
You got me wrong. I am not talking about learning to participate in government at all. I am talking about learning about life's realities.

A random example would be that there's a huge difference between an 18 year old kid and a 25 year old who has been working, going to school and managing his/her life. An 18 year old is bound to make voting decisions without any real context grounded in having lived a little. They are naive and tend to be innocently dumb. There are exceptions, of course, but I have trouble calling an 18 year old an "adult" other than under the legal definition.
Instead of voting me down, give me a proper argument. I'm stating a fact, if you don't like it counter argue.

This is nothing different than what the us government is doing by abusing their power and the people that can vote down are doing the same.
We've been "fully metric" here in Australia since the early '70's - I still find it amusing when seeing things like the building industries "standard sizing", where everything comes in 900mm increments and lumber all comes in sizes like "50 by 100mm nominal". Everything is still built out of 3, 6, and 12 foot two-by-fours and 3 by 6 foot 1/2 ply sheet - all labeled with metric dimensions of varying clarity.
It's what exactly what I've been wishing for years. Does it work in web browsers ?
All of that makes sense under the premise that the SWAT team should be used to apprehend an individual which is not know to be part of any criminal group nor has committed a violent act.
My thought was that anything that used the decimal comma could be confusing when dealing with vectors.

However, I wouldn't go so far as to say they use SI across the board. I know aerospace engineering in the US can often switch between imperial and metric depending on which contractors work on the project (this resulted in a mission failure on at least one occassion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter) and it could be the same for other fields.