On Monday, a U.S. federal district court ruled that the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs "surely...infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment." It is the first successful legal challenge to the NSA's program since leaks about the programs began in June.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/16/this_court_case_could_kneecap_the_nsa?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Morning%20Brief&utm_campaign=MB%2012.17.13#sthash.pR3fdmNp.dpbs This actually seems a little more hopeful than individual encryption actions (most people won't do this stuff) or a quaint demand that government surveillance just stop. Surveillance will become increasingly easier, smarter and normal over time as we become surrounded by smarter interacting systems. These systems have benefits but they are prone to misuse, on purpose or though zealous incompetence. It seems much better to me to develop that there are baseline rules of what is acceptable and what is not - and back it up with some serious/extreme penalties for transgressions - rather than imagining that world should or could revert to some mythological pre-Internet age of information naivety. I'm not sure about this but I also appear to have a different scale of harm to most people of organisations that might be tracking me: I'd put the NSA somewhere near the bottom. Off the top of my head, something like: criminal organisations (clearly the worst), random shadowy uncontrolled companies, big name companies with a brand to support, the NSA (etc), the Australian government. The NSA appear to have achieved about nothing with their zillion dollar surveillance operation except pissing a lot of people off and promoting privacy awareness. - Jim _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
