Before I discovered HN (of which I'm on daily), I was a frequent reader of Groklaw[0]- a site primarily devoted to covering the fragile intersection of the technology sector and legal system; where the two are often at odds with one another. We're more than a decade beyond it's voluntary closure after the Snowden revelations and it's left a large void on substantive coverage of these issues. The site was the blog of an anonymous tech reporter named Pamela Jones that did detailed deep-dives into the parties & issues involved in high-profile lawsuits between tech companies, like Apple vs. Samsung on the issue of design patents for rounded corners, over what have often been patents containing broad language that resulted in hindrances to innovation ranging from being unwilling to license to extortion of revenue streams for entire product lines. Part of why I find the technology industry to be continually interesting is its desire to innovate instead of litigate- there needs to be a check on bad faith actors whose goal is capture of a niche through regulatory means instead of fair competition; else we get these cases relegated to the infamous eastern district of Texas which has historically played favor towards non-practicing patent trolls. I'll be submitting my comment and suggest others do the same.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw

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NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

why would Snowden reveals cause it to close?

"everything is so bad it's hopeless" or smth?

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anonymous908213 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> On August 20, 2013, a final article appeared on Groklaw, explaining that due to pervasive government monitoring of the Internet, there could no longer be an expectation of the sort of privacy online that was necessary to collaborate on sensitive topics. Citing the closure of Lavabit earlier that month, Jones wrote "I can't do Groklaw without your input.... and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate." and "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure."

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Springtime an hour ago | parent [-]

Just on the pervasive passive monitoring aspect, I think an under-discussed aspect of the time frame covered in the material of Snowden's leaks is that sites/services by and large wasn't using encrypted protocols (HTTPS).

So much could be intercepted back then because of this. It wasn't until 2010 that various large services—including Yahoo Mail and Facebook—got a kick in their ass by a whitehat browser plugin that allowed anyone on the same network to trivially hijack session cookies of others, stimulating an adoption of HTTPS[1] during 2011-2012.

By the time the Snowden leaks occurred in 2013 the trend was heading toward encrypted-by-default and governments were having to adapt.

[1] https://threatpost.com/facebook-kills-firesheep-new-secure-b...

	▲	totetsu 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I thought these “lawful intercept” organisations had their taps inside the data centers after https tsl to the user had already been terminated. And so the infamous ssl removed here slide from prism.

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kregasaurusrex 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh dear. Its digital tombstone has been relegated to be adware for crypto gambling.