<story><title>Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/technology/governments-turn-to-commercial-spyware-to-intimidate-dissidents.html?ref=technology&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustUhThought</author><text>Do other HN readers find themselves on the receiving end of ridicule by their fam &amp;amp; friends for taking this privacy stuff seriously? I&amp;#x27;m constantly being told I&amp;#x27;m unreasonably worried, borderline tin-hat wearing paranoid, for being concerned by the surveillance capabilities built into our modern consumer electronics which are available to governments and business alike.&lt;p&gt;But if someone my parents know have their identity stolen by stealing credit card bills and applications from their mailbox and then find themselves on the hook for $30,000 in fraudulent charges, well then it&amp;#x27;s all my parents talk about for the next 2 days.&lt;p&gt;That I understand the technology and they do not, seems to keep them from taking the issue seriously.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pascalmemories</author><text>Yup.  I actively work in security consultancy.  &lt;i&gt;Everyone&lt;/i&gt; outside of tech thinks and treats me like some sort of tinfoil hat salesperson.  I get sent all sorts of crazy conspiracy theory links because &amp;quot;that&amp;#x27;s the stuff you&amp;#x27;re really into.&amp;quot; on a daily basis.&lt;p&gt;Even when people read about Snowden, they just don&amp;#x27;t get it.  This past weekend, he came up and the response was, yeah, but Snowden was saying the spying is only on terrorists, they don&amp;#x27;t collect any information on people who are not terrorists because that would be way more information than they want.  Trying to explain that is the opposite of what Snowden was saying was pointless and futile because it just made me sound like the crazy one.&lt;p&gt;The NSA must be rolling around laughing as they listen in to peoples naive conversations about Snowden.&lt;p&gt;edit: oops, removed link added on the wrong posting.  Sorry.  And a typo. Sorry again.</text></comment>
<story><title>Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/technology/governments-turn-to-commercial-spyware-to-intimidate-dissidents.html?ref=technology&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustUhThought</author><text>Do other HN readers find themselves on the receiving end of ridicule by their fam &amp;amp; friends for taking this privacy stuff seriously? I&amp;#x27;m constantly being told I&amp;#x27;m unreasonably worried, borderline tin-hat wearing paranoid, for being concerned by the surveillance capabilities built into our modern consumer electronics which are available to governments and business alike.&lt;p&gt;But if someone my parents know have their identity stolen by stealing credit card bills and applications from their mailbox and then find themselves on the hook for $30,000 in fraudulent charges, well then it&amp;#x27;s all my parents talk about for the next 2 days.&lt;p&gt;That I understand the technology and they do not, seems to keep them from taking the issue seriously.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ottertown</author><text>For my family, definitely yes. Though it may just be that non-technical people are going to take longer to understand the gravity of technical problems, and I think that&amp;#x27;s compounded by most people&amp;#x27;s latent contempt for software &amp;#x2F; IT people.&lt;p&gt;My family initially decided Edward Snowden was a traitor and coward for &amp;#x27;fleeing&amp;#x27; to Russia. They threw every stale argument at me, from &amp;quot;I have nothing to hide&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;everyone is spying on everyone, what&amp;#x27;s the big deal?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve started to backtrack from these positions. I&amp;#x27;m not sure why or how, but I suspect they just needed people they trust (e.g. some columnist in the NY Times) to tell them they&amp;#x27;re wrong.</text></comment>