skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not entirely sure why you think a non-us citizen using a web service in the non-us is not similarly targeted?

Either by other intelligence agencies, or even more likely, that the NSA shares these abilities with other friendly foreign governments (UK, NZ, AUS, etc) in order to ensure their tacit approval.

Even in the world of intelligence, diplomacy matters. Secrecy only counts for so much. You can't keep the fact that you have a huge listening post in NZ secret, huge dishes don't look like they belong in cow pastures. Same with fiber optic cable. It's not like they can splice them without someone noticing.
Instead, the way you accomplish this is by providing NZ what it wants while still retaining plausible deniability if things go south for them ("We had no idea the horrible NSA had secretly placed all this stuff here. We're completely outraged!")
This is the perfect distillation of everything that is right and hopeful and beautiful about the internet.
Elected officials respond to political pressure, but 100,000 books to officials from across the country do not represent significant political pressure by themselves. They could become political pressure if they turn into a news story, and more people hear about it; but if elected officials are the ones receiving the books, they have a high level of control over how much attention the story receives, and since they don't want to be subjected to pressure, it's against their best interest to publicize it.

Of course, you can create your own publicity to some degree, and I do agree that elected officials are the ones who need to fix this, which makes them a good target in many ways.
What can you do/make (something real) besides programming?
What skills, what can you do (non-digital, something real and valuable) besides programming?
I don't know why Slate gets to HN so frequently. Slate doesn't publish news, they publish commentary, and the commentary is generally lower quality than what HN commenters post about the news stories.

Slate is enjoyed by people who don't have any smart friends to talk to (hence their slogan: "Procrastinate better"); it doesn't fit on a community of thinkers like HN.
What I don't understand is how this squares with the Speech or Debate clause. Aren't members of Congress protected by the same sort of legislative immunity as they have in the UK, Canada, and Australia (where they call it "parliamentary privilege")?
> As a patriot, I feel that the only patriotic thing to do for all other patriots is to come out, rally and support Snowden.

The rally is in NYC's Union Square at noon tomorrow. I will be there.

https://twitter.com/birgittaj/status/343867459129974784

http://ow.ly/lRt5y
This is actually old news, but what is interesting is that recently Finlands gov. approved plans to layout new cable to the sea, so that internet traffic can be routed from Finland to Germany, bypassing Sweden all together...

http://yle.fi/uutiset/suomi_haluaa_oman_tietoliikennereitin_...

Picture from the article shows how the connection towards Europe/US goes trough Germany and the connections towards Asia will be directed trough nothern part of Finland, trough Norway - instead of Sweden:

http://yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/article6559090.ece/ALTERNATES/...
As Facebook, Google, and Yahoo! have demonstrated so far, a company can only make itself look worse by making any statement.

Any denial will be rejected as dissembling or sophistry and admissions of complicity would be suicidal.
Absolutely. I remember how in 2001 when the US as the first country ever invoked article 5 of the NATO treaty, within hours all NATO members had followed through with support. And the minute of silence that was held all over Europe for the 9/11 victims. Then we joined them in two wars.

We bought their cell phones, their operating systems and productivity suites, their internet adds, hosting and email services and movies and music. We even let some of their largest corporations get away without paying taxes on the money they made in our countries.

We may not be citizens of their country but we are allies, not terrorists. When it comes to the bad things groups of people, such as governments, do to individuals, whether it's killing, torture, imprisonment with or without trial, surveillance or any other of the misdeeds that seems to have returned from the dark ages we deserve the same protection as American citizens.
But if you had a Culture party succeed, the benevolent Minds heading it would just take over. You'd vote away democracy, basically.
The other NSA Whistleblower the US Govt framed (March 2013)
If you need a plan b I might be able to help. I've been a programmer professional for the last 16 years. (front end and backend web apps) If your interested I can provide more details of my background/experience and my startups.
If you read the title at the top of the page at the link you provides, you'll see it's "Providing material support to terrorists." Manning has not been charged with terrorism.
Using Metadata to find Paul Revere - Kieran Healy
There are two types of decisions made by SCOTUS. In the first type, they rule on Constitutional grounds, in which case it is binding to Congress. In other cases they simply rule on the interperatation of laws themselves; so if Congress changes said laws, the ruling becomes irrelevent. The law in question here is 'interesting' in the sense that it tells the court how to interpret the Constitution. If it ever gets brought up before SCOTUS, my guess would be they would deem the law unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress cannot tell them how to interpret the Constitution. Granted, they would need to find something in the Constitution (or precedent) that says this, but I suspect that would be relativly simple.
The point is they cannot get a court to compel you to hand it over. Yes, they can take what they can get.
Chicken Little, is that you?
I'm good at Math. lol
Not really good at anything else besides programming.
Would it be feasible to just encrypt the traffic?
Under the shower, your brain switches to a bit of an alpha state, the same when you go to sleep and you start using your right brain more, so you find solutions to problems intuitively rather than rationally (which means you aggregate and summarize all of your rational knowledge, without even knowing about it).

It's good to train your right brain even if you do a lot of programming (which is totally a left brain activity), it will help you to be a better in that either!
> He was accorded the NSA’s top security clearance, which allowed him to see and to download the agency’s most sensitive documents.

Document control works on two dimensions: clearance level and need to know. You need to both have the requisite clearance level and a need to know to be approved for access to a given document. Having a top clearance doesn't mean you get to freely look at whatever you want, although the press and general public seems to think it does.
... and create a Ministry of Truth. We already have a Dept of "Defense".
Similar actions has been affecting other businesses earlier:
"Due to this, Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera has, as of June 5, 2008, moved their Sonera (Finnish) e-mail servers out of Sweden, as Finnish law requires communication to be confidential. They have also transferred Swedish customers from Finnish to Swedish servers, to prevent Sweden-to-Sweden e-mail from crossing the border."
What iOS7 looks like (and other tidbits)
If you've got a really bad dictator, or an entrenched feudal system, then a revolution is probably worth it. If not, you'll probably end up with a dictator, and there's a chance they won't be so benevolent.

There's genuine problems with US Democracy. The lack of a good voting system (preferential, or better still - acceptance voting) means a stable two-party system.

Statistically, protest actions can be beneficial, as long as they don't go too far. No politician wants angry people on the streets. Media tends to cover it. It's a good way for a minority of people to have a huge impact (for better, or worse, depending on whether you support what the protesters want).

The problem is, a lot of protests are pretty much zero sum movements. They are things which half the people want, and half the people don't want (environmental protection, gun rights, gay marriage). A protest for something which would be popular, but most people don't really think about could be more useful.
I still would question why he didn't then hop on a flight from Hong Kong to Iceland before he let the cat out of the bag.

Edit: Maybe he left Hong Kong after the interview but before they published it?
It's safe to say that if i find a real alternative to Google Apps i will be moving a few hundred people away from Google Apps. Right now we just have to live with the 1984 feeling.
I'm sure that Germany is also running their own more or less secret intelligence operations. Great if we (Finland) get more international traffic, so we can wiretap it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Intelligence_Research_...
I don't know how much it would cost in latency, but I think one of the concerns is that all traffic is stored for future decryption.
I think a better way to look at it is that rights are cultural, but that if we are serious about living in a decent and respectful world we should in our actions extend to others the rights we want to have ourselves.

Does free speech extend to advocating going out and killing all African Americans at a white supremacist rally? In the US it does, but only because of our bad experiences during the Red Scares. In Canada or the EU it wouldn't. What right do either side have to force their definitions on the other?

This being said, the argument can easily be made that spying is somewhat different. The general fear is that since governments monopolize violence their actions towards spying on their own must be more restrained than spying on others because the dangers in adopting a "show me the man and I will find you the crime" apply at home to a much greater degree than they apply abroad.
Stellar Wind (Bush administration's PRISM)
Seriously, 'murica? One of the most important heroes of our time blows the whistle on the largest spying industry the world has ever known, and you pay him back with cash?

Edward Snowden has done the world and the US a huge deal by sacrificing everything and letting you know just how fucked up things are.

Use that knowledge, be inspired by his courage, and tear apart this messed up system of surveillance and oppression.
The underwater SEA-ME-WE 4 cable between Europe and India has a capacity of 1.28 Tbits/s. I am unsure about the current capacity. I think it would be possible to encrypt at those line rates, given enough parallelism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4
This may seem a bit off topic, but I do agree that we can't go back. So, I'm asking here.

We are building out a software development framework "from scratch" and would like to make security a core aspect of the framework.

Where would be a good place to start looking at encryption solutions? For example, would PGP be a good option?
OpenTechSchool into starting a Hacker School Programme for Europe in Berlin?
Rethinking Facebook Connect
It's not really that important for the CIA. They're pretty pragmatic, mainly because they have a huge hammer for minor offenses. They also believe in their ability to compartmentalize information.

Most of the time, when you go through the lifestyle clearance rigamarole, they're looking for any leverage someone might be able to use to coerce you to act against the employer's interests. Obviously, anti-government sentiment would be a flag, but you can get clearance by being truthful about the dishonest/illegal/etc. things you have done in the past, despite having done those things. In fact, willingness to disclose is a big trust builder.

It's about managing risk, which is why it's easy for me to believe that Marines and members of the LDS community would be given special consideration.
This isn't just a phenomenon within Silicon Valley. The National Association of Manufacturers research found that manufacturers in everything from aerospace to pharmaceuticals can't grow their companies because they can't find the trained workers. America has outsourced the push button jobs and now all that's left is the easy service jobs, which are too high in demand even now, and the high training/education jobs which suffer from far greater an information asymmetry about how to get into the field, get good salaries, etc.
Well tested? Yes.

Pretty good? It has been known for decades that it is pretty bad.
Ask HN: Would you be interested in a cheap but accurate Transcription service?
Hi,<p>I am a girl pursuing a Ph.D degree in Engineering from an American Ivy-League University. I also have a degree in English Literature. I am a Native English speaker and deliver timely, professional work.<p>This is the link: http://fiverr.com/amyskywalker/accurately-transcribe-16-minutes-of-audio-or-video-within-24-hours<p>16 minutes for 5 dollars. Less than 50 cent per minute.<p>Would you be interested?<p>Thank you for the motivation to start something small of my own. I owe a lot to hacker news.<p>Best
Amy
> you could perhaps measure the level of difficulty of finding your identity

Here you go:

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/security/Towards%20an%20info...

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/security/Towards%20measuring...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_of_anonymity

Also this is fun: http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20Anonymity
Its a little easier than that, but frankly the way data is stored now is the problem. Currently people just kind of "trust" that their service providers aren't looking, and now we know that the NSA is looking. But, the NSA has been looking at traffic since the 90s with Eschelon and Carnivore, so this isn't really new information.
How much of it was Bush rather than Obama?
Works great on my Nexus 7!
Also known as "the folder no one reads" or "orders to immediately disregard".
That's what happens when you rely on contractors with the lowest bid. Billions in cost overruns and a forgotten schedule.
Cook Condemns Pre-WWDC Leaks
We don't live in a utopic world. Nuclear weapons did fix a lot of things. Like being free from constant bullying tactics. It also led to the greatest stretch of indigenous development of technology since India's independence. The economic blockage helped us stand on our feet with pride.

So yes, it was a positive development.
Assuming you trust it (e.g. Google), Keyczar[1] is a good starting point. If you don't trust it and you can deal with the GPL, GPG[2] is probably a reasonable way to go, but key management is still a bitch.

Of course, these are very high level answers, and neither may actually work for you project, since you don't really talk about what making "security a core aspect" actually means.

Cryptography is insanely hard to get right. The more you can leave up to the peer-reviewed experts, the better.

1. http://www.keyczar.org/

2. http://www.gnupg.org/
Pirate Bay .onion torsite:

http://jntlesnev5o7zysa.onion/
Technically, Congress can pass any bill they damn well please, but it's not a law if it contradicts the Constitution.
Does anyone know where to find the full text that he has leaked? I see so many analyses, but I don't trust any of the people writing them. I'd like to look at the source if possible.
This is very loose wording. "Evidence" this is not. It is an argument supporting an idea, which is still therefore hypothetical.
What is your reasoning? I've never heard of phone companies being sticklers for proper warrants.
Yup, exactly. I've been at Y! for almost 4 years and when I started I was absolutely a workaholic, but over the last 3 years I've transitioned into having a much healthier (and happier) balance. You can certainly work as much as want at Yahoo, but I don't think too many feel forced to.
UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
I'm pretty sure there's a large area in the middle of the country, far from the coasts, where he can go just fine..
Ignoring the incarceration rate for a moment and considering a simpler issue such as capital punishment. Whether or not to kill someone in retribution for a crime is a moral decision not an economic one. No country I would call civilised currently practices capital punishment. There are some Islamic countries, China, developing world shitholes and the USA.

You can extend that same moral sensibility to many other areas of public policy and perhaps it will have some impact on crime and incarceration rates. Blaming it on economics or racial homogeneity is a huge copout. It is foremost a moral decision.
A simple public choice theory of universal surveillance
(6) This time we have Edward Snowden, the sympathetic hero-figure who is on the run from the US government.

The human brain is hard-wired to care about people, not about abstract threats.
Re. (2): The US could bolster its case by pointing to specific examples of products or technologies produced by Chinese companies which appear to have benefitted from IP stolen through hacking. This is something that the government hasn't done, as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Presumably Chinese industrial espionage hackers would want to do more with their stolen schematics than let them sit untouched on a server somewhere.
Tips For Building HTML Emails
I did not realize this was a 'hidden' part of Silicon Valley. It is one of the unique strengths of Silicon Valley (and the tech industry at large). People both overestimate and underestimate the value of an advanced technical degree in Silicon Valley.

On the overestimation side, you can work at the most extremely technical end of the spectrum without a relevant degree if you are good enough. You can be named an IBM Fellow without completing high school or do some of the most advanced theoretical computer science research without a degree. I know of several examples. The idea that a degree is required for this is nonsense even if it certainly makes it easier. Additionally many slightly more mundane jobs require a high degree of intelligence but the skill can be learned by a sufficiently motivated individual.

At the same time, most people are not that good. And in those cases, a degree helps considerably. People have a tendency to overestimate their own abilities so they do not really know if they are good enough to get on without a degree until many years after they enter the workforce, at which point that knowledge is moot.
This is just plain FUD. Windows 8 doesn't put anything but my login info on their servers unless I ask it to.
Poli-Ticks by Asylum 7 (2005)
This is the Europeans' "big break", and they need to take advantage of it. Hopefully they won't resolve around UK, because it's probably just as bad at this. Maybe Germany can be the center of innovation in Europe. At least they have some pretty strong laws and strict judges, and citizens can even create their own laws and referendums.
Not misquoted, it's directly from the video of the interview.
Check out beggi's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5852564

Iceland cannot make guarantees either. Also, I suspect that booking a flight would raise a lot of suspicion. Spies spy on spies -- people like Snowden are just as likely, if not more likely, to be watched, than your typical civilian.
This whole thing is so bizarre to me. The NSA has been doing this sort of thing since at least the early 90s. Who knows, probably earlier. What exactly did people think the NSA was doing? The only difference is that, before digital cell service, it was more difficult to monitor phones conversations because the infrastructure simply didn't support it.

Everyone's all riled up over a few PowerPoint slides (which may ver well be fake). I don't get. No mainstream company or consumer has ever given two shits about encryption. You send data in plaintext and are surprised that the NSA might be reading/logging it?

The public overwhelmingly supported the PATRIOT Act back when it was passed. Black box rooms in telecom facilities were exposed what, 10 years ago? No one gave a shit.

Why do people seem to suddenly care? You can't say it's because, "We have more information," because we really don't. People suddenly care about privacy?

I do not understand what those who are outraged thought the NSA did. Honestly, how can you be so ignorant?
What should I be teaching my students, post NSA revellations?
I am a teacher of Computing. I'm seeing plenty of stories and comments on HN with regard to how we can better protect out own privacy, and plenty of retorts explaining that the average citizen does not have the technical ability to enact these measures.

So tell me, what should I do differently in my classroom from now on?
What are the fundamental concepts and skills I should be teaching my students, to assist them in protecting their privacy and data?
POTUS v leakers & press.

Infants in Congress.

Finally have legit gripes
Actually the Navigation toolbar disappears on Advertisement in Chrome. But thanks anyway :)
I get the sense that the OP's work hours are actually what he likes and is comfortable with.
Has the destroying of his credibility already started? What's next? An uncovered rape case from his past?
It'll be done at a high level, but PR will be a large part of it.

The US is a valued trading partner of both HK and China. One doesn't generally go about pissing off their major trading partners unless there's something in it for them.

There are really only two things Snowden can give HK or China:

- Further intelligence. This seems unlikely if his story is what he says it is.

- A giant PR coup domestically, putting the Chinese government, for once, on the right side of a human rights/democracy/transparency issue.

That second part depends largely on how much the general population can be made to care about the issue. The Chinese won't hang onto a highly wanted American criminal that the US federal government desperately wants tried, not unless they can extract something out of the deal.
THIS IS ### TRANSPARENCY.
There is intense debate about whether US citizens rights are being violated, but almost nobody questions whether there's any moral or ethical issue with completely unrestrained spying on everybody else.

Almost nobody in the US, perhaps, but this whole mess isn't doing the US any favours at all with the international community, certainly not here in Europe.

I'd say there's a fair chance the cavalier attitude towards the rights of non-citizens so overtly displayed by leading US politicians and security people over the past few days could ultimately swing the entire public debate in a way the US administration really doesn't want it to go. Those statements get broadcast on TV internationally, too, and everyone in the room cringes when they hear them.
Users never pay you for your app. Yet you still make money. How?
> because the average SV programmer isn't plugging in cables, installing Windows, or fixing their company's simple PHP site.

A good number of programming jobs in Silicon Valley are actually closer to "fixing the company PHP site" on the complexity spectrum than many people would like to acknowledge.

Just because many companies have developed a recruiting process that tests for knowledge that is most likely to come from a computer science degree doesn't mean that, at the end of the day, a good percentage of said companies generally have little more than one or more mundane CRUD applications that need to be extended and maintained.
Take that Babbage A working mechanical computer.
Is it legal for them to violate traffic laws (not counting hot pursuit and maybe a few other delimited circumstances)? I supposed not, and that their practical immunity was regular informal corruption (instead of corruption written into the law), but I'd like to know if not so.