Now That The NSA Has Made It The Norm, Total Surveillance During The Sochi Olympic Games Is No Longer Noteworthy
from the welcome-to-the-(permanent)-olympics dept
In addition to being an opportunity to stretch copyright and trademark rules way beyond the law, over the years, the Olympics has also become an occasion when the feeble "because terrorism" excuse is deployed to justify all kinds of additional restrictions on personal freedoms. It will come as no surprise to learn that the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Vladimir Putin's pet project, will continue the tradition:
every phone call, every email, every social media message in Sochi will be accessible, traceable by Russia's Federal Security Service -- the FSB -- the organization in charge of securing the Olympics.
The CBC News report quoted above goes on:
it's the extent of all the surveillance the FSB is planning that has deepened much of the disquiet, at home and abroad, over the coming games.
If this piece had been written a year ago, those paragraphs could have been read unironically. But today, in the post-Snowden world, it is impossible not to replace "FSB" with "NSA" or "GCHQ". Since we now know that practically "every phone call, every email, every social media message" in the world -- not just in Sochi -- is accessible to the US authorities, it's as if we find ourselves in a global Olympics lockdown. But unlike the quadrennial Olympics, this particular circus shows no sign of moving on.
For Russia, surveillance measures may be something of a force of habit.
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Filed Under: olympics, russia, sochi, surveillance, vladimir putin
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There's a difference
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Re: There's a difference
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Re: There's a difference
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Re: Re: There's a difference
ATTENDING OR PARTICIPATING IN THE SOCHI OLYMPICS MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR LONG-TERM HEALTH.
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Re: Re: Re: There's a difference
FTFY.
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Re: There's a difference
But, this surveillance MUST be temporary. As soon as the threat is over with, and things return to normal, it should be scaled back.
The difference between this period leading up to / including the Olympics and our own situation is CLEAR and PREVIOUS evidence of a threat. Unlike our own, in which we are told to "trust" in the NSA that they need to stay vigilant despite a large, organized attack not having happened for over a decade (Boston was by two guys who did it without massive support from any group).
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Re: Re: There's a difference
This is less egregious that the NSA programs if only because of that. Of course, I don't find it any more palatable, but I can avoid it by not going to Sochi (not that that's a risk, anyway, as the Olympics never fail to irritate me under the best of circumstances.) If a place is so dangerous that that level of surveillance is actually necessary, that's a place that people would be very wise to avoid.
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Those words on the statute of Liberty
thanks to our government, that is no longer just a description of the old world, but also of the new.
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This is where code caves come in handy because it's extremely hard to detect.
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Re:
Had you said something like "this is where encrypted VPNs come in handy", "steganography is a handy skill to have", that would have made sense...
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Sounds like the basement at any big tech corporation to me.
You know, that dark place downstairs where they keep the really good programmers. They slide pizza under the door every now and then and let them out into the sunlight on weekends to keep them happily coding along.
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Yet for all of the security, if an incident was to occur...
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Re: Yet for all of the security, if an incident was to occur...
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And yet...
The best defense against this has always been the equivalent of the british "stiff upper lip". A "Keep Calm and Carry On"-style resolve to not let the bastards grind you down. To move on and show that even a bomb-going off in your home town isn't going to change the way your society is, or the way you choose to live your life.
The way the US (and much of the western world) is reacting, they are playing right into the hands of what small guerilla organisations exist. It's our lockdown of our society that is causing us damage, not the guerilla acts themselves.
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Re: And yet...
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replace
Stretch much? Trying too hard? Did Mike give you an order as to how many NSA hater-aid stories you had to write this month?
Seriously, not everything is NSA.
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(now quite possibly now the title of my next album ..so thanks ;)
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to access-trace Vs to surveil
Even if it were to dissuade a majority of the would-be crims.
Traceability (and accessibility, with/without warrants) can help the backwards-looking, forensics, prosecutions. Again justice isn't fully dissuasive to the violently criminal.
The key issue is how much it helps the forward-looking. If it saved 1 local's life (or pick a number) was it all worth it? That's surely the nub of our genuine security-privacy disagreements. Is it not??
Moreover, to "surveil" is (historically merely of suspected spies/crims, now of everyone) is to "notice or perceive something and register it as being significant".
Whilst those "somethings" are non-existent or top-secret, then what hope can we have that the NSAs of the world aren't over-reaching into invasions of their citizens' privacy.
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HOW DARE THEY
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