Reset The Net

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Unoski, Jun 5, 2014.


  1. From the Mojang Website:

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    The perceptive among you might have noticed the intimidating camera flash on Minecraft.net, followed by punchy message from Reset The Net. Here’s an explanation of what’s going on…

    I am extremely confused!
    A year ago today it was revealed that the NSA (National Security Agency) and GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) were intercepting data from phone and internet networks, and poking around in information stored by US technology companies. That’s extremely uncool.

    Should I click the massive “Click Here” button?
    Yes! We’ve put that on Minecraft.net today for a reason. Click it now, or read on for more information, then click it!

    Why should I care?
    The internet is a great thing, but the idea of companies operating closely with the government and giving away private data without consent is extremely worrying.

    It’s a bit like someone accessing your Minecraft server, rummaging through your chests, and reading all your chat logs without you knowing, only potentially more damaging (hard to believe – I know).

    Umm. I’m scared now.
    There’s no need to be scared. But there is a way to protect yourself. That’s what the Reset The Net campaign is about. It’s a place where you can learn how to fight against a potentially sinister side of the internet. Visit Reset The Net or watch the video below for more information.
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    I have decided to post this here to inform you guys of this action. I will be participating.

  2. I was going to post a thread about this because of Jeb's tweet, but I got beat to it. I as well fully support Reset the Net.
    xI_LIKE_A_PIGx likes this.
  3. I'm surprised that not more people are excited about this >.>
  4. Perhaps unpopular opinion time.....
    I honestly don't know where I stand on internet surveillance. It's very confusing to me and I don't agree with all the things the NSA do but some of them I do agree on. To me, safety and security is much more important than government agencies collecting my data. I don't even know if they're collecting my data because I live in the UK, but supposedly someone is. I honestly don't particularly care about them collecting data on me, I have nothing to hide. As long as it's kept safe and used for the right purposes, I am not bothered. It has never directly affected me so far. But then supposedly it isn't be used for the right purposes. Where you draw the line on that is a matter of opinion.

    But then on the other hand I agree with this campaign and that you should have freedom on the internet, but wouldn't that just create more problems as well? I don't know and I don't even understand half the stuff that's going, maybe if I knew to the full extent what is happening, my mind would change. :)
  5. I am very excited to see this happening. DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS, but the NSA did at first seem a good idea, until it got out of control. Tapping the German Governments, tapping the Vatican, random citizens, and collecting hundreds of trillions of gigabytes of data. It went from protection to just madness.

    I am going to sign up and do what is on their website happily.
    Palmsugar likes this.
  6. The NSA is compromising internet safety. The heartbleed virus hacked millions of computers, but the government kept it secret to use it to their advantage in the NSA program.

    This could be considered breaking the law. Spying on other countries people, even outside of war.

    Problem here. Keeping a ton of information on people in one giant building is not safe. People before have hacked the pentagon and other government agencies. If someone hacks the NSA, they will have information on anyone with a connected device.
  7. It may be illegal doesn't mean to say it isn't happening, because it probably is.


    I didn't know that, thanks for telling me.

    Watchdogs has kind of helped me to understand this. :p
  8. Watchdogs: teaching people since 2014.
    ISMOOCH and Jake_bagby like this.
  9. The government will always find a way to spy on the general populous, I would be more worried about the Net Neutrality issue that if not stopped will result in cable corporations to further their monopoly and raising costs for everyone.
  10. There's a big doughnut somewhere that's collecting all your information :p

    Like Jake, I'm not sure where I stand. I don't like mass surveillance, but there has to be a certain amount of it because there's no alternative. But the US have been going overboard with security and surveillance since 2001 and I personally think it's stupid. The fact that customs and immigration procedures take so long that they're having to be done in other countries (off shoring much) is just stupid.

    But I'm not big on these major campaigns. Often, they're just so far in the other direction, it's just as bad. I'll happily express my opinion on things, and I'll support opinions that I share, but I don't really go as far as joining mass campaigns.

    I understand this isn't a major campaign though, just giving bp my point of view.
  11. Can someone explain what clicking on this does? There's no clarification of what this, just messages saying "Click the button" and stuff like that.
  12. I tried to write a coherent post but such things escape my grasp at the moment.

    The internet is for anyone to use, in pretty much any way they want. That includes the NSA. You can only stop the NSA—and the hundreds of organizations that do the exact same thing—by removing freedom. Even government workers are people, after all. They're entitled to just as much as you are.
    mba2012 likes this.
  13. Don't you read George Orwell's '1984' in schools anymore (in the story the government uses a machine with a screen and a camera that can never be turned off; sounds familiar?)? Probably the book got off the list of literature because it raises to many questions...
    Potentially everybody can be affected by the practices of security services to log whatever piece of information they can find about a given person. Take for example the german journalist that wasn't allowed to travel to the US anymore, after he was digging out a story about surveillance in the US. How could they possibly know? The story wasn't published yet.

    Saying, 'I have nothing to hide', is so lame, that it borders stupidity- Our ancestors have been fighting for the freedom we enjoy today (ie United Nations, Human rights, Geneva conventions, etc; all in the last 60 years). With statements like that, you trash all their efforts to protect the individum from an omnipresent government. This resulted in the constitution of my country where it says, that no one can be observed without evidence for criminal activities. Therefore we must ask, 'What right do they (security services and governments) have to search through my personal stuff?'
    Please look a bit further, you might not be a journalist, lawyer or medic, but their professions relay on freely and discrete available information. For examples what happens with journalists in a regime that controls information flow just look into what is happening in Russia, China and other totalitarian systems.
    What we got to know from NSA activities might be a step in the direction of a completly transparent citizen. (leading to SciFi: RFD skin implants, personalized access to the net, automatic exchange of medical information between institutions and employees, ...)

    On a personal scale, I want to be able to search the web for things like scientology, nazism and other critical topics, and let it be Al Qaida. I want this because I am curious and want to build my own opinion. Honestly, nowadays I am afraid to raise suspicion by such search terms.

    Sorry, for the wall of text. I am very serious about this, because I have the impression that the 'digital natives' are very ignorant about what we are currently giving up and loosing. FREEDOM!

    cheers,
    K
    Luckygreenbird likes this.
  14. I'm not sure that I'm 100% understanding this post. Are you saying that government agents are entitled to my privacy? Or are you saying that the NSA can't be stopped without removing freedom?
    Choongjae likes this.
  15. Lots of people on the internet compromise the privacy of others. This has always been the way it is. Unless the internet is fundamentally changed (in ways that the collective userbase has already denied) this will continue to be the way it is. The NSA is probably one of the best groups to be looking at your stuff, because they have the least to gain from it.

    The internet is some big legal gray area. All attempts at regulating it have been met with incredible backlash. If we want it to work how it does, we've got to take the good with the bad. The NSA can do whatever they want because nothing can stop them. There are no laws in place that can take action against them, especially since the internet is a global organization. If the U.S. tries to regulate it, you run in to a lot of jurisdiction things.

    Honestly, what they're doing is just as much a breach of privacy as the EMC staff reading town chat logs. The NSA isn't exclusively looking at things that aren't readily available. If they weren't accomplishing anything, surely someone would have abolished them for inefficiency.

    That last sentence was sarcastic, by the way. Before someone takes it seriously and tries to say "hey you guys" or something.
  16. I partly agree with this. Only, EMC is a game and not my personal email, with groundbreaking scientific results, an eye opening background story for a news paper or schemes for a new invention.
    In general, I can't understand such fatalistic stand points...
  17. I disagree, somewhat. I don't feel that there is any "best group" that looks at my private information. The 4th Amendment of the Constitution protects privacy, and that should hold true for both physical things and digital ones. If this were an organization from another country, I would understand that there is nothing we can do to stop them; but as the NSA is a U.S. organization, I feel that they should abide by the U. S. Constitution and the 4th Amendment in it. Major computer hackers that breach other people's privacy are often sent away for a very long time; what gives the NSA the right to ignore that and view things that they deem are unacceptable to view by others. As an U.S. Citizen, I have a right to my own privacy, and no one else should be able to infringe that right. I also believe that every person on Earth has that right, regardless of race, country of origin, religion, etc. No person, agency, or government should be allowed to view information that is meant only for my eyes. Now, if I'm misinterpreting what you are saying, then I apologize. Of course I understand that things like this happen everyday, but just because hundreds of organizations do these things illegally doesn't mean the NSA should be able to do it and have it deemed legal to them. Please, again, if I'm missing something in this situation, let me know. :p Also, I've never been a staff member on here, so I'm not 100% sure how the chat logs work, but I assume that the EMC staff look through the logs do detect incidents that have already happened, such as confirming that someone curses or spammed, not to simply watch what people said because one of them MAY break a chat rule or MAY be rude to another player at some point. I'm completely open to criticism for my beliefs there; as I said, I'm not extremely knowledgeable about some of these things.
    Kaizimir likes this.
  18. It takes you to https://pack.resetthenet.org/ where you can download stuff for your phone or computer to encrypt your chat, protect your browsing habits and phone calls. You can also sign up for their newsletter and the main page has a bit more info.

    And for the people who want some more info about the nsa (and other intelligence agencies), here's a list of things they do:
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/65-65-things-we-know-about-nsa-surveillance-we-didnt-know-year-ago

    Things like:

    19. The NSA “intercepts ‘millions of images per day’ — including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images’” and processes them with powerful facial recognition software.

    20. The NSA facial recognition programcan now compare spy satellite photographs with intercepted personal photographs taken outdoors to determine the location.”

    34. The NSA has plans to infect potentially millions of computers with malware implants as part of its Tailored Access Operations.

    36. The NSA tracked access to porn and gathered other sexually explicit information “as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches.”

    37. The NSA and its partners exploited mobile apps, such as the popular Angry Birds game, to access users’ private information such as location, home address, gender, and more.

    40. The Guardian reported: “In one six-month period in 2008 alone, [GCHQ] collected webcam imagery including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8-million Yahoo user accounts globally.”

    But the private intelligence sector is not much better >.<
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-gallagher/private-sector-surveillance_b_5171750.html
    Kaizimir and Olaf_C like this.
  19. Controversial topic is controversial.

    Crazy Makes ridiculously correct statement. Shannon, you said that hackers who do what the NSA does get sent away for many years most of the time. Nah. Thanks to the anonymity of the internet and their ability to cover their tracks with it, its a very small percentage that actually get caught, and those that do get caught, go though giant legal fights for anything to really even stick.

    While I completely disagree with NSA's doings and what the entire operation has come to stand for, if someone turned to me and said 'You HAVE to give information to either Person A or Person B, there is not option to not give it, there is no way around it'. If A was the NSA, and B was a known malicious hacker, I would probably chose A. Though, I should not have to be a hacker to be able to remain anonymous. I should not have to worry about these things at all. The fact that there IS a government agency that does these things IS troublesome. But back to Crazy's post.

    You CANT prevent it. To prevent it, means to break what you know as the internet in its entirety and implement open regulation. But then... what is the internet? Would you be more upset that the NSA is monitoring your access or the fact that not only your government, but EVERY government says what you can and can't access. Right now, it takes about 10 minutes and 15 dollars to get a fully functional website online. What happens if that is eliminated? You look at things like SOPA/PIPA and the Net Neutrality arguments. These are highly controversial bills/movements current in US debates about how the internet should be treated. Are they fair? No. But it would REQUIRE something like that, to prevent what the NSA is doing, and others.

    I SHOULD not have to sacrifice one freedom for another. I SHOULD be able to do what I want in the privacy of my home, and not worry about being monitored/watched, even if I pose no threat (at that moment). But, right now, if it isnt the NSA, its a Hacker for Hire, a private sector security firm, or just some kid down the street who read a wikipedia guide on how to retrieve information through a WiFi router.

    To my BIGGEST point. My biggest issue with the NSA and how it uses its information, is that it will store that data whether you are problem or not, just in case you ever become one. Say in 2007 ( I was like... 15 or something), I looked at some crazy thing on the internet, just some shock site that my friends thought would funny to see my expression while I watched. They have that. SO in 2015, I feel like the oppression of the US government has reached my personal threshold, and I want to speak out about it. My thoughts are shared, it begins a movement. The movement grows to an uprising. The US government and its way of function are at a threat of a complete upheaval because of me. So the NSA uses the data have from 8 years earlier, to black mail me. To shove me out of the spotlight. This gives the NSA the power to do something dangerous. Whoever controls the NSA can control the politics and operations of the government to suit their own personal interests at any level. There is not ONE person that does not have a single thing they incriminate you with. You could not even run for a school board Representative for your small home town, if for some reason you are on the bad side of the NSA.

    In the end, it sucks.. it really does. But the biggest security firms.. like those that encrypt your data and calls, receive HUGE interest checks from the NSA to 'further their development'. And THEN.. just by happenstance, the NSA is all of a sudden able to access that encryption. Its a dirty circle of dirtiness.... but unless you personally feel like you are not corruptible, and you start your own company, and then NEVER share that position with anyone... then maybe. But you can't control everyone one of your employees, if the opportunity arises, someone WILL get paid to corrupt, and they will. Take Edward Snowden, the person responsible for bringing this all to light. He is a perfect example for why there will never be a secured system.You are talking about the ONE thing that the government would NEVER want the public to know, that we are monitored 24/7 whether we are threat or not, and that everything is saved, just in case we ever become one. If Snowden could succumb to the temptation to share that, then what is to stop someone from corrupting the inner workings of something to protect you from it?
    ShadyShannon, Kyzoy and Olaf_C like this.
  20. There goes most of the Internet population...
    SkyDragonv8 likes this.