alt.hn

3/13/2026 at 4:13:30 PM

The Wyden Siren Goes Off Again: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing

 https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/12/the-wyden-siren-goes-off-again-well-be-stunned-by-what-the-nsa-is-doing-under-section-702/

by cf100clunk

3/13/2026 at 5:51:51 PM

Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'

Given how fast and lose I've seen the DODGE folks play with the data they have, absolutely not. I still shudder over the fact that my OPM data was hacked years ago

by wing-_-nuts

3/13/2026 at 8:27:16 PM

> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about',

"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden

by AnthonyMouse

3/13/2026 at 10:32:49 PM

Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.

by pardon_me

3/14/2026 at 1:35:16 AM

[flagged]

by BoredPositron

3/14/2026 at 1:59:52 AM

You realize that without the door it would be even more obvious whether the stall is occupied?

by MentatOnMelange

3/14/2026 at 2:42:42 AM

It's not about it being occupied, it is about what is happening inside.

by jackyinger

3/14/2026 at 4:46:37 AM

Everyone knows what's happening inside.

by inetknght

3/14/2026 at 9:02:29 AM

Indeed, people are snorting coke. Hence why they want doors.

by magicalhippo

3/15/2026 at 1:29:55 PM

Good thing they were already in the stall, as that coke was bunk, and cut with laxatives

by xprnio

3/14/2026 at 9:11:38 AM

Meaning what?

by classified

3/14/2026 at 9:29:26 AM

The misguided who say they don’t need privacy suddenly have a dense memory of the thousands of times they’ve turned the lock on a bathroom door and consider the idea of deficating in full view as an alternative.

The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.

by harry8

3/14/2026 at 6:59:20 PM

This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. Thus is what Snowden probably meant, not bathrooms.

by fsflover

3/15/2026 at 11:20:29 PM

If you think the benefit of privacy to society and individuals is limited to activists, jounrnalists and providing them cover you might have missed the point yourself. The sheer number of distinct benefits flowing from privacy make the "nothing to hide" argument utterly absurd to anyone capable of thought.

by harry8

3/16/2026 at 10:22:42 AM

What are other benefits for people who don't really care? I could never convince such people of the importance of privacy.

by fsflover

3/14/2026 at 8:08:10 AM

Snowden is comparing two things that, in fact, are not alike. Surveillance gathers information, whereas censorship suppresses expression. It might sound like clever rhetoric to people of a lower intellectual capacity, but these are fundamentally distinct concepts.

by gwinkle

3/14/2026 at 8:21:45 AM

Or he was not comparing those two things to say they are the same thing but rather making an analogy based on the common factor of people in the US often wanting legal protections for both speech and privacy to draw his point that one is giving up their rights by making the excuse about not wanting privacy which they would probably not do when it comes to speech.

Thinking comparisons of two similar things are always for the purpose of saying that they are the same thing is ridiculous, don’t you think? It might sound like clever reasoning to people of a mediocre intellectual capacity but it is not logically coherent.

by Revanche1367

3/14/2026 at 8:28:09 AM

> Surveillance gathers information, whereas censorship suppresses expression.

Surveillance suppresses expression through chilling effects.

by AnthonyMouse

3/14/2026 at 4:51:36 PM

It only chills when the watchers are hidden. See David Brin's The Transparent Society for an example of how sousveillence ought to work.

by howard941

3/14/2026 at 7:11:45 PM

> It only chills when the watchers are hidden.

How does that even help? The concern is that you're deterred from e.g. admitting that you're a lesbian under your own name because your religious grandparents wouldn't approve, or advocating for school choice because your boss is married to a public school teacher, or criticizing the government.

Knowing that they're going to see it doesn't stop them from cutting you out of their will or putting you on toilet duty or playing "show me the man and I will show you the crime".

by AnthonyMouse

3/14/2026 at 8:29:37 PM

Those things happen right now. My concern is with government and powerful corporate watchers. Ubiquitous sousveillence ends that. It answers the question of "Who's watching the watchers." You'll be watching the watchers and heaven knows they need watching.

Think cops with always-on cameras, not grandma poking around beneath your mattress.

by howard941

3/14/2026 at 7:00:19 PM

But how do we achieve such society?

by fsflover

3/14/2026 at 8:25:01 PM

With great difficulty? The watchers don't want to be watched. I know the solution but I don't know how to get there.

EDIT: IIRC Brin addressed this in his fictional treatment of the concept in the novel Earth

by howard941

3/14/2026 at 8:28:44 AM

He's comparing two rights and how giving up one right (to privacy) because you think you have nothing to hide is like giving up your right to speech, because you have nothing to say (and therefore don't have to worry that someone in power might find it offensive).

by goatlover

3/13/2026 at 6:20:34 PM

> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'

And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.

by tomwheeler

3/13/2026 at 10:14:53 PM

You forgot that your government is the bad actor. For them the laws do not apply

by rurban

3/13/2026 at 5:56:49 PM

if you're not doing anything wrong, a government that is doing something wrong may not like it

by alpple

3/13/2026 at 7:00:04 PM

This, exactly.

And governments are always doing something wrong...

by EGreg

3/14/2026 at 3:37:06 AM

It's not "if you're not doing anything wrong" you need to worry about, it's "what will they make wrong down the road to trip me up" you need to consider.

by kjs3

3/13/2026 at 6:07:09 PM

I have seen what happens with garbage-in/garbage-out in databases, so this kind of stuff terrifies me. I often think of a case where we had a person listed twice in our database, with same address, birthday, etc, only thing different was gender, and last 2 digits of SSN were transposed..

After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office.

Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.

by briffle

3/13/2026 at 6:45:54 PM

My uncle married a woman with the same first and middle name as one of his sisters. My new aunt chose to use her husband’s name as her married name, without hyphenation or anything. His sister, my aunt, never married. One was an RN and the other is an LPN.

They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close. For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other, a married name. They went to different colleges and had different credentials. They did live in the same town.

When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own databases was evidence of fraud.

by cestith

3/13/2026 at 11:06:20 PM

I’m missing something. Was your uncles spouse alive after your uncles sister passed?

by irishcoffee

3/14/2026 at 3:50:58 AM

Funny. I have a brother. We have at times lived together, went to the same school, and after not living together, lived on the same street. A couple of times, one or more credit bureaus decided we were the same person and silently merged our credit files. Not a nightmare per se since we're both fiscally (mostly) responsible, but we generally find out how incompetent the bureaus are when we're trying to make some very large transaction (I was trying to buy a car, he was trying to buy a building for work) and suddenly get "why do you own 2 houses, a bunch of cars, and you're apparently a bigamist". And then we had to scramble to untangle the whole mess. Lawyers were involved. The bureaus do not care in the slightest.

by kjs3

3/13/2026 at 6:10:26 PM

That's funny as a human, amazing as a developer, and terrifying as a data processor. All at the same time.

I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.

by quesera

3/13/2026 at 6:24:31 PM

I'm a man in my 40s. My eldest daughter is 17. We have the same first name (spelled differently, at least) and have had many cases where medical records have gotten confused.

We always double-check dosages for medications before taking them.

by Ancapistani

3/13/2026 at 8:33:52 PM

Wait until you live in the same zip code with another person that has the same first name, last name and date of birth!

by dboreham

3/13/2026 at 9:06:48 PM

When I was 18 I got called up for jury duty along with someone with the same name and age. It was confusing. They started referring to us by the suburb we lived in. Luckily both of us got passed over.

by Intermernet

3/13/2026 at 6:54:43 PM

They both showed up in person, because that was NOT the first time that had happened.

by briffle

3/14/2026 at 6:18:41 AM

Some time in the 90s I used to live at XXX Some Street West apt #1234 and my close friend at XXX Some Street East apt #1234. One day someone knocks on the door. I open and there is a pizza man. We argued for a while and he kept insisting that I did order it. Finally I asked him to show the order. Of course it was all the same but East instead of West. Anyways I called my friend and thanked for a pizza. This was so funny.

by FpUser

3/13/2026 at 8:38:56 PM

I have two younger brothers. They have the same last name, first initial, a history of having lived at the same address, and the same birth date, because they're twins.

Every time one of them goes to a particular medical facility, he has to explicitly decline having them merge their charts.

by zrm

3/13/2026 at 8:08:15 PM

Being married to someone with the same name could be very confusing!

by LorenPechtel

3/14/2026 at 8:04:56 AM

How?

by thaumasiotes

3/15/2026 at 11:54:32 PM

Responding to someone talking to your partner. Or who is the message for?

by LorenPechtel

3/13/2026 at 7:20:25 PM

Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about'

The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their call.

by CamperBob2

3/13/2026 at 6:17:24 PM

Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security.

That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.

by kasey_junk

3/13/2026 at 6:52:18 PM

Have you ever sat on a jury in a criminal case? A frighteningly high percentage of people will swallow every lie a cop tells, even when thoroughly discredited in cross-examination. There's no shortage of people to guard the concentration camps.

by Zigurd

3/13/2026 at 8:09:21 PM

I've been on a grand jury... the cops lied through their teeth, couldn't keep their stories straight through a prepared monologues reading from notes and ... everyone in the room picked up on it and didn't indict the suspects. Our grand jury was so cynical the DAs stopped giving us cases and made the other two grand juries stay late to make up for the lost capacity. It was great. We did something good. And it was just a bunch of random people from Brooklyn.

The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my minimal experience, anyway.

(One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to select jurors after talking to them, so there is some selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't have.)

by jrockway

3/14/2026 at 12:59:20 AM

I was on a jury a few years ago. The defendent was a homeless person with mental health issues. The cop was obviously lying about the one thing that was the core element of the crime. It was like a child telling the truth about every element of the indoor soccer game expect the part where they were the one who kicked the ball.

The jury was me, (white) nine other white people, and two brown people. Me and the brown people thought the cop was obviously lying, and was therefore not guilty. The nine other people thought he was guilty.

Like the cop was obviously fucking lying.

After three days of deliberation we declared a hung jury.

I was speaking with the prosecutor afterwards and he mentioned they were going for the felony version of the crime instead of the misdemeanor (he was obviously guilty of the misdemeanor, the felony depended on the element the cop was lying about) because the dude was a bad dude and they needed to get him.

I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that) He had done something bad and went to prison for four years. He did his time and got out. They were still trying to throw the book at him for bullshit.

I looked him up recently. He was never convicted of anything ever again, but died in jail two years after we declared a hung jury. Prosecutor got what he wanted in the end, I suppose.

by nwallin

3/14/2026 at 8:07:21 AM

> I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that)

Why is complying with that rule more sensible than believing the cop because he's a cop?

by thaumasiotes

3/14/2026 at 8:16:05 AM

Because it is a well documented source of bias.

by saagarjha

3/14/2026 at 1:13:35 AM

What does this have to do with what he just said?

by tptacek

3/14/2026 at 3:10:04 AM

That most people have a simplistic, naive, and child-like perspective of the world. One based on just-desserts, on causality, on fairness.

You see, there are good people and bad people. Giving the good people more tools is always good, because they're good people. If you're a good person, you need not worry either. Bad things don't happen to good people.

Cops are good guys, criminals are bad guys. The government fighting criminals is good. If you get caught up in it - well, that's fine right? Because you're a good guy, too. So that's good for you. And, if something bad DOES happen to you... well then you were never a good guy. Obviously, because bad things happen to bad people.

We see this in so many things. Well, rich people MUST be hardworking and moral, right? Because good things have happened to them, so they must be good. Well, the janitor must be lazy or stupid right? Because their job is bad, so they must be bad. Well, the cops raiding my house must be good thing right? Because I'm good!

If there's one thing I have learned from life, it's that life is not fair. Children starve, innocents get murdered, the evil can thrive, and happiness isn't doled out to who deserves it. It's never about who deserved what or what is right. It's about systems, structure, and incentives.

by array_key_first

3/14/2026 at 3:30:41 AM

He didn't say any of these things.

If you have to make a caricature of his arguments to so much as address them, what does that say about the strength of your own argument?

by tptacek

3/15/2026 at 6:24:39 PM

Yes, he did.

"A frightening number of people swallow every lie a cop tells them" - I'm answering why that happens.

It's the just world fallacy, and it's very common. Nothing I'm saying is meant to be mind blowing or offensive.

by array_key_first

3/15/2026 at 6:25:43 PM

It's not offensive, it's just having a boring, trivial conversation with someone who isn't present on the thread. Nobody is here to defend the just world fallacy. Have at it, I guess.

by tptacek

3/14/2026 at 12:15:59 PM

We don't have a jury system in my country for the same reason we don't grab randos off the street to operate nuclear reactors.

Being a judge is an actual job that requires training and experience.

Ofcourse it makes court cases a lot more boring if you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing.

by expedition32

3/14/2026 at 2:47:42 PM

You don't even need to leave your basement, or even this website to see this in action. A frightening number of people are totally subservient to the government and place blind faith in politicians and their paid-for "experts" and bureaucrats and regulators.

by stinkbeetle

3/13/2026 at 6:55:08 PM

Yes all the time and it’s not worth debating them as they are not about to say anything interesting.

Usually just make a quip about having curtains then move onto discussing just how moist the turkey is this year

by arealaccount

3/14/2026 at 2:21:47 AM

> Does anyone ever actually use that line?

Yes, I've heard that exact wording from cops.

From normal people, the more common way of saying it is along the lines of "well I don't really care if the cops see anything on my computer".

by kerkeslager

3/13/2026 at 7:47:54 PM

> Does anyone ever actually use that line?

Not that exact phrase, it is too elaborate. Most people grunt "eh, don't care" and "it's free, right?"

The average person really is that apathetic.

by rootusrootus

3/13/2026 at 6:41:45 PM

The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away with the conclusion that because people don't post that reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do find that does come up here on occasion). People with "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the Netherlands which was later used against them after they were conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are doing it.

by fragmede

3/14/2026 at 8:42:22 AM

The reasoning sounds like status quo from the majority group who hasn't experienced discrimination and thinks the powers that be could never become like those awful countries with dictators. Also a complete lack of imagination (and knowledge of the past) about how something considered legal and common now could become criminalized.

by goatlover

3/14/2026 at 1:42:42 AM

To correct the mangling of history, there was no "list of Jews kept by the Netherlands [pre-occupation]". There were only pre-existing Dutch population registries of all people, where the personal details collected by the Dutch had included religion, not for any ill purpose.

(The Nazis subsequently compiled a list, post-occupation, but that's not what you asserted.)

by smcin

3/14/2026 at 8:33:29 AM

So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?

by thaumasiotes

3/14/2026 at 9:06:08 AM

It wasn't a list of Jews, it was a list of everyone from which Jews could be easily identified.

The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.

This is relevant to data collected by companies and governments today.

Consider a list of children with their parent names and the parents' preferred pronouns. You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.

by magicalhippo

3/14/2026 at 11:48:27 AM

> The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.

How does that make the distinction important? The lesson to draw is "you shouldn't keep a list of Jews, whether you think you're doing it for good reasons or not". The list is a list regardless of whether you think calling it a list is fair in some abstract sense.

> You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.

Well, you're almost right. Except of course that you do have a list of gays. That's why Grindr having Chinese ownership was seen as a national security risk.

by thaumasiotes

3/14/2026 at 12:32:09 PM

The Netherlands today is a secular country in which the government doesn't give a flying fuck about your religion or identity.

But the situation in 1940 was very different: religion permeated every fabric of society. Mind you the government simply took over the job of record keeping from the churches, temples and synagogues.

I am sure Jews today still keep lists about who is a Jew and so does every other religious denomination because such mundane information matters to them.

by expedition32

3/14/2026 at 4:02:14 PM

> Except of course that you do have a list of gays.

If you go to your kindergarten and tell them to stop keeping a list of gays they will look at you weird and most likely dismiss you as a nutjob. Because they don't have a list of gays, they just have a list of kids with their parents' names and pronouns.

That's why I think it's important to keep the distinction rather than conflate the two like you want to.

by magicalhippo

3/13/2026 at 6:13:48 PM

> but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'

This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent.

This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented.

I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.

by quickthrowman

3/13/2026 at 7:22:35 PM

I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.

Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is exactly what will enable such an administration to come to power.

What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in 1936.

by CamperBob2

3/13/2026 at 8:30:32 PM

This is why I deleted all of my social media when it began to look like Trump was going to win his second term. I had already suffered enough harassment and death threats from the Nextdoor app and a bit of the same from Facebook.

I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family from the local MAGAs in my area.

by hollywood_court

3/13/2026 at 8:37:39 PM

I'd go further and say that checks on police and intelligence agencies exist to protect both the innocent and the guilty from abuse of power.

If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate the interests of all parties involved).

by jasomill

3/13/2026 at 8:44:25 PM

So, in theory, you do agree with the current fisa setup and were just haggling over details.

by halJordan

3/14/2026 at 4:22:14 PM

But with ICE arrests of people who did their best to make that craphole their home that line of thought must be wearing thin yeah? Nice for making a lot of money faster than mostly (china can be faster but chinese know they have to leave asap after they did instead of be proud to sit in it) anywhere else but outside that?

(I am from the EU, lived in US and China and am rich because of both, would not live in either ever again)

by anonzzzies

3/14/2026 at 3:36:18 PM

As someone not very worried about privacy I don't use that line but think it's worth while using some reasoning as to the likelihood of bad stuff happening. Cambodia 1975 - terrible data but chances of genocide very high. Google knowing what I'm up to now, very likely but probable harm beyond seeing an ad, very low. I think sometimes people worry about the wrong things on that kind of basis.

Re the current US government I'd be more worried about their cruelty as illustrated by ICE, DOGE etc.

by tim333

3/14/2026 at 5:40:05 AM

And if we're talking about 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' - the other irony is they probably are doing something wrong. There are a lot of rules out there. The only reason it isn't being bought up in the conversation is because the person has a certain level of privacy.

One of the interesting things the Epstein drama has kicked up is legal or not, the powerful get up to some wild things at parties. And in their business dealings just based on the background number of scandals. If there is an organised group of people allowed to look there is just endless blackmail material which is going to get used, just like LOVEINT.

by roenxi

3/13/2026 at 7:40:11 PM

> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about'

The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal must be public.

You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop, or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival gain access to it.

by the_af

3/14/2026 at 9:58:31 AM

People who are paying attention see that the government is changing rules daily. Feel safe today? Wait until tomorrow when Trump decides he wants to do something that you're in the way of.

by PetriCasserole

3/14/2026 at 4:48:41 AM

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

by hedora

3/13/2026 at 7:25:30 PM

"If you have money in your pocket you always have something to worry about."

by themafia

3/13/2026 at 7:31:32 PM

[flagged]

by capricio_one

3/13/2026 at 6:02:46 PM

DOGE != DODGE

They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it

by dylan604

3/13/2026 at 9:50:02 PM

The article lede reads: "Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing."

Technically the full quote from Wyden is: "when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information."

It's a small thing, but I find the click-bait editorializing from techdirt a bit off-putting.

by SauntSolaire

3/13/2026 at 6:06:18 PM

The interpretation of the law is classified? That’s stupid and everyone who protected that classification, regardless of whatever the interpretation is, is a traitor!

by tehwebguy

3/13/2026 at 7:20:27 PM

Probably the actual classified artifact is an NSA policy document that details the NSA's own interpretation of the law and thus forms part of its governance.

by stackghost

3/14/2026 at 4:21:33 AM

No, it’s a secret FISA court decision that the public can’t see but a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee can, but he can’t tell us what he’s seen. But he can ask questions to get the surveillance state to pull another Clapper-esque whopper and get away with it.

by cobbzilla

3/14/2026 at 1:07:49 PM

Can he tell us in Congress with immunity, like the one who read out all the redacted names of the Epstein pedophiles?

by gzread

3/14/2026 at 6:54:39 PM

I assume if he did that then:

- The story would become about "leaking" classified information

- He would likely lose his access to this stuff in the future

by QuercusMax

3/13/2026 at 6:22:10 PM

Secret laws, secret courts... Jeez, man.

by simulator5g

3/13/2026 at 6:27:08 PM

This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now matter how much damage control Altman tries to do with "look, we reworded the contract to have redlines too!". Yeah, legal redlines that the administration can bypass with their secret memos and secret rubberstamp courts. This isn't even a Trump thing: the Bush DOJ wrote secret memos making torture legal, the Obama DOJ wrote secret memos making it legal to assassinate American citizens. Non-technical redlines which aren't under the vendor's control aren't worth a piss squirt.

by Analemma_

3/13/2026 at 7:41:30 PM

> This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now matter how much damage control Altman tries...

Altman is like Musk: he showed his true colors long before the current politically-inflected drama.

Musk was over-promising about self-driving, so much and for so long it became pretty clear he was a shameless liar. There are also so many reports of Altman lying (e.g. that's apparently why he got fired) and engaging in Machiavellian manipulations that you can be pretty sure he's a shameless liar too.

by palmotea

3/13/2026 at 6:41:32 PM

By using ChatGPT, OpenAI are losing money.

So if you want them to die faster, use their services.

by Gud

3/13/2026 at 7:27:08 PM

Contra the popular memes, I don’t think they’re losing money with every query sent (the money pit is capex on new models and hardware, but I don’t think inference itself is unprofitable), so this wouldn’t actually work.

I was already paying for Claude Max before the War Department fiasco, so there’s not much more I can do to hurt OAI apart from complain about it online, although I did persuade several people on various group chats I’m on to switch.

by Analemma_

3/13/2026 at 10:03:51 PM

I think it's a lost cause. Anthropic is still getting used at Palantir[0], their software is used in strike planning whether they consent or not. We can support them all day and fight OpenAI to the last breath, but ensuring AI is used responsibly is not up to any of us. It's the government's job to hold itself accountable, and they can't do it. By digging in their heels, Anthropic is preparing for an unwinnable fight against an enemy that doesn't play fair.

Considering how many lines Anthropic has crossed, it all feels like forced outrage to me. I feel ethically justified supporting none of these companies, it's reminiscent of the forced duopoly between iOS and Android.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/karp-palantir-anthropic-clau...

by bigyabai

3/13/2026 at 9:37:23 PM

It will go faster if they have no customers and they are building out software with expensive engineers.

by righthand

3/13/2026 at 10:57:27 PM

no no don't worry! They have courts! They're following due process, you see!

24 years of the Patriot Act, and counting...

by AceJohnny2

3/14/2026 at 12:44:34 AM

Key point (mostly drowned): Feds can compel A to surveil B if A maintains equipment or services for B. The Feds can also compel A's silence on point.

Originally applied only to the largest communications companies, this now has effectively unlimited scope.

The only safeguard (which took years to add legislatively) was that the FBI had to clear it; but now the FBI is refusing even to record such requests, to avoid any record of abuse (and the person responsible is dubious).

Surveillance seems necessary, but in the wrong hands, it's systemically deadly: it grants overwhelming advantage, and destroys arms-length trust, driving transactions of any size into networks prone to self-dealing and corruption.

by w10-1

3/13/2026 at 7:00:05 PM

The whole concept of 'secret interpretations of law' is anathema to me. Secret information makes sense, there are lots of reasons a government might legitimately want to maintain a veil of obscurity. Secret interpretations of law are a manifestation of tyranny.

I like Ron Wyden but he should just employ his Congressional privilege here and read it out.

by anigbrowl

3/14/2026 at 3:54:56 PM

I believe the problem here is that that works precisely once, then they stop inviting you to the classified parties.

So as he gets older, the cost/benefit changes, but I believe that's why he hasn't, is that his calculus involves him being the only one this reliable on screaming about what's going on behind closed doors.

by rincebrain

3/13/2026 at 6:43:38 PM

I’ve stayed private for most of my adult life. Network wide dns, vpns, alternative personas online for different purposes, etc. Nonetheless, my personal data has been exposed numerous times.

Once in a while, I’d get into a conversation with a friend or a stranger I met at some random function, and they’d ask how to stay private online and protect their data. I used to go in depth about how to do it, with excitement. Now I just say: be normal, fit in with the crowd, freeze your credit.

by blueone

3/13/2026 at 6:48:01 PM

As someone that worked in an illegal industry (urban pharmaceuticals), you need to appear normal and hide your crimes. If you just hide your crimes, you stick out and become a target.

Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.

by newsclues

3/13/2026 at 6:54:06 PM

Yes.

by blueone

3/13/2026 at 7:43:09 PM

It's very hard to participate in a digital society while truly remaining private. The things you do to ensure privacy generate their own type of unique signal!

https://chuniversiteit.nl/papers/browser-extension-fingerpri...

You know this, but "normal" patterns are less remarkable.

by MengerSponge

3/13/2026 at 5:49:28 PM

I looked up Section 702 and top result was an official government powerpoint justifying it to the public. https://www.dni.gov/files/icotr/Section702-Basics-Infographi...

Under "Oversight", they point out that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that that the government's Section 702 program operates within legal constraints, as recently as 2014! Wow! </sarc>

by phendrenad2

3/13/2026 at 5:54:44 PM

I can't imagine it's anything people haven't been suspecting for years - if I had to take a wild guess, it's the government's interpretation of not needing a warrant to scour things for intelligence on citizens using things like adtech and stuff that probably should require a warrant.

by JohnMakin

3/14/2026 at 2:22:19 AM

Does anyone today think their communication is truly private? Encryption means very little when you hold zero-day exploits and as we’ve seen there are plenty of those.

by RyanShook

3/14/2026 at 2:34:29 AM

you dont need exploits for privacy incursions, it’s all for sale

by JohnMakin

3/13/2026 at 8:28:15 PM

I have wrestled with the concept of 'classified' many times. The question is always how you balance democracy's need for information with the real need to keep some things away from adversaries. I think the only answer is to vigorously enforce automatic declassification AND dissemination but also ensure that this happens within the useful lifetimes of those involved. This last part is especially important for accountability. Laws need to apply, without a statute of limitation, to abuse of classification and for that to happen this stuff needs to come out while those involved can still be held accountable. Additionally, if abuse is found while something is still classified there should be an immediate evaluation if the public interest in understanding the abuse outweighs the danger of releasing the information with an explicit understanding that the public has already received real harm compared to a theoretical harm of release.

Another aspect is that we need to lower the bar for declassification in general. The reality of classified information is that it is almost universally boring and time limited in its value. Also, so many people have access to it that it leaks out slowly anyway. Just look at how much of the US military and contractors have or have had secret and higher clearances. [1] When multiple percentage points of Americans (and other governments) have access currently or have had access in the past to supposedly 'top secret' information then hiding it from the rest of the population just sounds silly. It is time to start re-asserting the public's requirement to be informed even if that has some potential risks or even actual harms associated with it.

[1] https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/16/how-many-people-ha...

by jmward01

3/13/2026 at 6:31:10 PM

The warnings are nice but he could just say what it is. Members of Congress have immunity for what they say on the floor of their chamber in session, classification or no.

by snowwrestler

3/13/2026 at 6:50:10 PM

Immunity from prosecution, maybe, but not immunity from consequence. I can’t imagine congressional leadership would think of it as a good look—and isn’t the “need to know” based on the congressperson’s role? For example don’t they brief only congresspeople in specific roles on specific matters, like the so-called “Gang of Eight” on intelligence matters? [0]

It feels a little like keeping the filibuster around: maybe technically it’s within their power to change the norm, but once unilaterally spilling secrets becomes The Done Thing, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t spin out into a free-for-all.

For all the mud that gets slung around, I think congresspeople really don’t get there without some kind of patriotic instinct, some kind of interest in the United States’ ongoing functioning. And I certainly can’t imagine they’d keep getting access to new secrets after pulling something like that, one way or the other…

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Eight_(intelligence)

by alwa

3/13/2026 at 10:01:37 PM

This is all true and it kind of defines the scope of the harm he is talking about: bad enough for vague warnings, but apparently not bad enough to risk consequences to seniority etc. by outright revealing it.

Worth noting his full quote is that people will be “stunned that it took so long” for the info to come out. Which is not quite the same thing as being stunned in general.

by snowwrestler

3/13/2026 at 7:02:44 PM

You can say the same thing about secret laws and tyrannical executives.

by anigbrowl

3/13/2026 at 7:27:33 PM

> congressional leadership would think of it as a good look

Why do they have any power? Wyden was elected by his constituency. The "congressional leadership" can go pound sand. To the extent they have any power here it should immediately be completely neutered and then removed.

by themafia

3/13/2026 at 8:03:31 PM

They can remove him from all his committees, including the ones that give him access to this stuff to begin with. If they really work at it, they can freeze him out to the point where he can't get anything done on this or any other issue. And they can use him revealing the information as an excuse to avoid blowback from their own constituents. It's not as bad as in the House, but it's pretty bad. Oh, and they can probably deprive him of the floor the second he starts to say anything "interesting".

Yes, there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized, but there's probably a reason that practically every parliamentary body on the planet has similar problems.

by Hizonner

3/13/2026 at 9:34:12 PM

> and they can probably deprive him of the floor the second he starts to say anything "interesting".

So, move the show off the floor, never has it been easier to reach the population as an individual. Are the citizens that enraptured by "the floor" as it is? It seems to me, that if you were serious, this would be no problem at all.

> there are serious problems with the way Congress is organized

None of that is dictated by the constitution. You can change the way committees work overnight if you want. Some would argue that this happened in the 1970s and 1990s when party politics fully invaded what used to be assignments of seniority and experience.

> but there's probably a reason

Corruption. It's worth a lot of money to certain people. You can either design that out of the system or reduce the total power of that system relative to the population.

I'm not sure you can do much until you get down to the bedrock problems here.

by themafia

3/15/2026 at 2:46:01 PM

> So, move the show off the floor, never has it been easier to reach the population as an individual. Are the citizens that enraptured by "the floor" as it is?

Nope, but his immunity from prosecution for disclosing classified information only applies during Congressional debate. Once he takes it off "the floor", they can just arrest him.

by Hizonner

3/13/2026 at 10:29:55 PM

To answer your question, Congressional leaders are elected by their colleagues. Their power comes from that and from the rules that Congress writes for itself.

by snowwrestler

3/14/2026 at 3:26:33 AM

That is correct, and also it would likely result in a revocation of clearance.

by ImPostingOnHN

3/13/2026 at 5:42:16 PM

Secrecy is anathema to governance accountable to the governed.

by contubernio

3/13/2026 at 8:51:39 PM

No means of law enforcement should be so secret that even the legal basis for it can't be revealed to voters. If that renders said means impractical, too goddamn bad.

by mpalmer

3/13/2026 at 6:29:33 PM

So glad to see my Oregon senator regularly on the money.

by dlev_pika

3/14/2026 at 1:12:33 AM

I can name 3 ethical politicians, Ron Wyden, John Huntsman and Bob Graham. It's a painfully short list, considering my longish life.

by WarOnPrivacy

3/14/2026 at 3:00:34 PM

Soon-to-be US Senator James Talerico (D-Tex)?

My "ethical" list has several dozen politicians, but it is definitely short. And their names don't seem to last very long into each career...

by ProllyInfamous

3/14/2026 at 2:44:26 AM

“ Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing”

This is not the same thing as saying people will be stunned by how long it took to discuss/investigate the matter, which is what Wyden actually said…

by avazhi

3/14/2026 at 2:58:35 PM

"When the American People figure out what we've been up to, there will be riots in the streets" former analyst George Herbert Walker... decades ago.

by ProllyInfamous

3/13/2026 at 7:32:19 PM

FISA courts are not sufficient oversight of this stuff. Not to mention there’s little rules for foreign data, including Americans talking to foreigners on the phone. As long as one end is foreign…

by dmix

3/13/2026 at 8:03:40 PM

You're right. FISA courts are not sufficient oversight. Even Judge James Robertson resigned from the FISA Courts (FISC) in 2005 because:

>On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance,[11] and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a secret body of law.[12] The government's apparent circumvention of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests. In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.

by query_demotion

3/13/2026 at 5:26:14 PM

Wyden is a national treasure.

Thank you for your service, Ron.

Also: Hello from Roseburg.

by jeffrallen

3/13/2026 at 5:46:50 PM

I hope we get someone as good as he is when he retires. Waves from Bend.

by davidw

3/13/2026 at 6:30:49 PM

Wyden is a vote I cast without issue.

He is one of the few that is actually looking into Epstein bank accounts movements.

by dlev_pika

3/13/2026 at 7:45:40 PM

One of the things I am proud of as an Oregonian is that Wyden is one of my senators. And it looks like maybe, possibly, he is starting to make Merkeley a true believer as well. Which is good, Wyden is getting kinda old, and there aren't enough people like him in Congress, by a long shot.

by rootusrootus

3/14/2026 at 1:22:18 AM

> Wyden is getting kinda old, and there aren't enough people like him in Congress, by a long shot.

I can't name another indisputably ethical congressman. I dread the day he leaves office.

by WarOnPrivacy

3/13/2026 at 7:29:45 PM

I'm going to guess warrantless search of all of our data, retention policies, and the worst part is who gets access to search through it. Basically, I speculate that anyone under a loosely defined classification would be able to access it legally. I also think there's a bunch of information and password sharing between people who don't even have a clearance for it. Perhaps sprinkle in abusing this system for personal or political reasons.

My word of caution is if you do have access to these systems or a shared password, tread very carefully.

by kittikitti

3/13/2026 at 10:56:30 PM

That's insightful. Traditionally both political parties have expanded surveillance powers and engaged in actions that have usurped privacy of US citizens citing national security as the reason. That's historical fact. In my view, when one side does it, it is to stop the other side from doing something that does not align with the former side's interests or goals. But that's just a humble opinion.

by SilentM68

3/13/2026 at 7:10:02 PM

Uhm this article is a total lie, no?

Claim: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section 702

Actual quote: I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.

He said people will be stunned that it took so long to be declassified; not that people will be stunned by what it is.

by IshKebab

3/14/2026 at 4:50:48 PM

AND that Congress has been devating this authority with insufficient information. That's what will stun the American people. He said AND not NOT.

by casey2

3/14/2026 at 6:46:02 PM

Good point but it doesn't change the conclusion because being stunned that Congress are debating it with insufficient information also isn't the same as being stunned about what was actually done.

by IshKebab

3/13/2026 at 5:57:31 PM

Wyden has been special, as long as I can remember. I feel like a lot of us early tech people had something of a libertarian bent. I think to some extent I've grown out of it in my less idealistic older age, but the whole idea of freedom from the government, living your own life, not being spied on, still resonates with me, and Wyden has always been a champion of it to some extent. You used to have Ron Paul, and these days now Rand Paul and Thomas Massie sometimes waving that flag, too.

It was definitely swimming upstream in the post-9/11 days. I was hopeful for a while with Trump that we'd see more of a mainstream resurgence, but it's not looking like it to me anymore.

Anyway, I can only imagine what he's alluding to here...

by losvedir

3/13/2026 at 6:33:14 PM

I think he is a reflection of the broader libertarian streak of Oregonians.

Source: am Oregonian.

by dlev_pika

3/13/2026 at 9:24:43 PM

Thanks Senator Wyden. Please do not stop fighting for us.

by xbar

3/13/2026 at 8:39:52 PM

I can easily imagine that the NSA has exabytes of data with Splunk style search capabilities. It would be ridiculously powerful.

by UltraSane

3/13/2026 at 7:18:36 PM

It's been my experience that most people already assume full surveillance of everything happening on all devices.

by root_axis

3/13/2026 at 7:37:11 PM

I think it's going to be more about how many people have access to the surveillance who might use it for needless things or personal reasons, at a large scale.

by kittikitti

3/13/2026 at 7:21:34 PM

You'd be surprised, I know IT managers with 20 years experience who ( probably incorrectly) think otherwise.

by ionwake

3/13/2026 at 5:56:08 PM

If it was so important, wouldn't he just filibuster it till he got what he wanted?

by electronsoup

3/13/2026 at 6:17:24 PM

It's my understanding that a single senator can't just filibuster anything they want unless the conditions are right. It depends on a few different factors and requires the bill to be brought to the floor for debate, which itself would require cooperation from the majority leader. That's not likely to happen.

by nozzlegear

3/13/2026 at 7:03:18 PM

If you're solo you have to actually stand up and talk still it seems. (And even then a 60+ person majority can vote to close the debate on you) Nobody has done it solo for more than 24 hours or so. Presumably at that point you're about ready to keel over.

by recursivecaveat

3/13/2026 at 8:05:01 PM

Filibuster what, exactly? No proposal is before the Senate...

ON edit: Oops, sorry, 702 is up for renewal. Still not clear he could win a cloture vote, though.

by Hizonner

3/13/2026 at 7:06:19 PM

He needs 40 other Senators to agree with him; 60 votes can close debate and stop a filibuster.

by kelnos

3/13/2026 at 7:00:43 PM

Whatever we imagine, the NSA seems to top it each time.

by bram98

3/14/2026 at 11:51:33 AM

Gotta fill Bluffdale somehow, right?

by chinathrow

3/13/2026 at 5:52:30 PM

I wouldn’t be surprised by anything nowadays.

by markus_zhang

3/13/2026 at 8:16:18 PM

As I've said before:

"I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to hide" is trivially disproved:

Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information.

Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.

by djoldman

3/13/2026 at 5:24:56 PM

Will we? like doesn't everyone already assume the the NSA has had their hooks in basically everything possible.

Like I'm having a hard time concocting a reveal that would be "Stunning"

"NSA wiretapped all major phone carriers, recorded every voice conversation and text message of every citizen"

Meh, not that stunning. at least not in a "violation of rights" kinda way. Maybe in a "wow they had the technical acumen to even handle all that data" kind of way

"NSA has secret database with all medical records", "NSA has logs of every credit card transaction", "NSA can compel anyone anywhere to spy and reveal all data on anyone for any reason"

Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like "wow, that all they're doing?"

like opening a diaper on a kid with IBS, you expect it to be so bad when it's a normal turd you're suddenly really happy about shit.

by ticulatedspline

3/13/2026 at 5:36:05 PM

That's not what the quote is referring to directly (the title is a bit misleading):

"In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information"

You are correct that the American populace has normalized this already. The fact that this is done without congressional oversight is indeed stunning. Or at least it would have been a decade or two ago.

by Rooster61

3/13/2026 at 5:27:10 PM

I wouldn't be surprised by it, but "they're actually using all of the above, laundered through some extra steps, to provide leads to state and local LEO" would probably get people pissed off.

by cucumber3732842

3/13/2026 at 6:23:42 PM

Soma ( social media ) keeps everyone comfortably sedated

by HoldOnAMinute

3/13/2026 at 7:09:40 PM

anxiously sedated

by bram98

3/13/2026 at 5:46:57 PM

> Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning",

Everyone knew the NSA spied on everyone, yet Snowden leaks were truly stunning, because no one had evidence of the sheer scale of what the NSA (and collaborators) were engaged in. Wyden Siren was already firing off about that many years beforehand, before we knew the actual truth, so considering his record, I'm also skeptical it'll be "truly shocking" for the average HN tech-nerd, but for the general public, to have evidence of what the government does? Probably will be "stunning", but the one who lives will see.

by embedding-shape

3/13/2026 at 7:13:37 PM

So - given the law allows the NSA to do things given legal constructs, reality be damned, then what new legal construct do you think Wyden is sounding the alarm about?

When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.

Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches through our persinal data in bulk.

And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the practices?

Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to replace a large part of various agency's workforce - specifically those who care about the agency's culture!

by rockskon

3/13/2026 at 5:36:27 PM

HN readers won't be surprised, but I don't think that's who he is talking about.

Most Americans have this kind of thing tuned out, that have bigger issues in their lives.

by lokar

3/13/2026 at 5:50:22 PM

Don't forget backdooring or interfering with multiple cryptography standards, at least Dual_EC_DRBG and RSA.

Or backdooring most major microprocessors (tpm).

Etc?

by imglorp

3/13/2026 at 6:16:02 PM

To which TPM backdoors are you referring?

I am aware that similar accusations are leveled against Intel ME and AMD's Platform Security Processor.

by runjake

3/13/2026 at 7:15:51 PM

.

by bram98

3/13/2026 at 5:35:51 PM

> Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like "wow, that all they're doing?"

You’re far more cynical than the typical citizen, who Ryder is addressing.

by TimorousBestie

3/14/2026 at 3:28:25 PM

Disappointed yes. Surprised? No.

by tim-tday