“In the longer term, we all need to work to reduce the power imbalance. Medieval feudalism evolved into a more balanced relationship in which lords had responsibilities as well as rights. Today’s Internet feudalism is both ad hoc and one-sided. We have no choice but to trust the lords, but we receive very few assurances in return. The lords have a lot of rights, but few responsibilities or limits. We need to balance this relationship, and government intervention is the only way we’re going to get it. In medieval Europe, the rise of the centralized state and the rule of law provided the stability that feudalism lacked. The Magna Carta first forced responsibilities on governments and put humans on the long road toward government by the people and for the people.

“We need a similar process to rein in our Internet lords, and it’s not something that market forces are likely to provide. The very definition of power is changing, and the issues are far bigger than the Internet and our relationships with our IT providers.”

via Schneier on Security: More on Feudal Security.

[Hey look! Scary information about the NSA! Surprise! -egg]

…In that way, Prism helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. But it’s the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree.

“I’m much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone,” said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. “I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to.”

via Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure.

[Hey look, it just keeps getting worse. -egg]

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analysts decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSAs formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadlers disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

via NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants | Politics and Law – CNET News.

[I am so friggin tempted. -egg]

“the Supreme Court has refused to consider the legality of the N.S.A.’s wiretapping programs on the tautological ground that no prospective plaintiff has standing to sue, because the relevant programs are so secret that any one citizen can only “speculate” whether or not he or she has been spied on.”

via The ‘One-Way Ratchet’ of Executive Power: Was Cheney Right About Obama? : The New Yorker.

[Hey, here’s an awesome short story about what intelligence professionals can achieve with metadata and the internet. Written in response to the new NSA revelations. -egg]

Nothing to Fear » Cyborgology.

Flood waters surround a pool in Germany.

via riotclitshave, Flood waters surround a pool in Germany..

[If you only read one essay about the NSA revelations, make it this one. Really insightful. -egg]

The frameworks of “innocent until proven guilty” and “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” are really really important to civil liberties, even if they mean that some criminals get away. These frameworks put the burden on the powerful entity to prove that someone has done something wrong. Because it’s actually pretty easy to generate suspicion, even when someone is wholly innocent. And still, even with this protection, innocent people are sentenced to jail and even given the death penalty. Because if someone has a vested interest in you being guilty, it’s not impossible to paint that portrait, especially if you have enough data.

via danah boyd | apophenia » where “nothing to hide” fails as logic.

One problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it assumes innocent people will be exonerated certainly and effortlessly. That is, it assumes that there are no errors, or if there are, they are resolved quickly and easily.

Suppose the probability of a correctly analyzing an email or phone call is not 100% but 99.99%. In other words, there’s one chance in 10,000 of an innocent message being incriminating. Imagine authorities analyzing one message each from 300,000,000 people, roughly the population of the United States. Then around 30,000 innocent people will have some ‘splaining to do. They will have to interrupt their dinner to answer questions from an agent knocking on their door, or maybe they’ll spend a few weeks in custody. If the legal system is 99.99% reliable, then three of them will go to prison.

Now suppose false positives are really rare, one in a million. If you analyze 100 messages from each person rather than just one, you’re approximately back to the scenario above.

Scientists call indiscriminately looking through large amounts of data “a fishing expedition” or “data dredging.” One way to mitigate the problem of massive false positives from data dredging is to demand a hypothesis: before you look through the data, say what you’re hoping to prove and why you think it’s plausible.

The legal analog of a plausible hypothesis is a search warrant. In statistical terms, “probable cause” is a judge’s estimation that the prior probability of a hypothesis is moderately high. Requiring scientists to have a hypothesis and requiring law enforcement to have a search warrant both dramatically reduce the number of false positives.

Related: You do too have something to hide

via A statistical problem with “nothing to hide” | The Endeavour.

[Good article on the current state of the sharing economy. -egg]

What’s new is that the sharing economy is deepening and spreading. Thousands of new businesses now sell access rather than ownership. For the young, hip and urban, collaborative consumption is a way to live light, waste less, to protect the environment, to create and associate with a community of like-minded people. But it’s not just a phenomenon of the hip. For everyone, it’s a way to de-clutter and save money.

via It’s Not Just Nice to Share, It’s the Future – NYTimes.com.