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NSA Owns Everything (2015)

blog.thinkst.com

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Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#91

Post by neolog »

feralimal wrote: post #76

The Snowden stuff was the event that shook me to my core. I was a happy technologist till then, thinking that such was the nature of life and progress simply was unfolding in front of me. However, the way the event was covered by the media - told a different story. The media focussed on the man rather than the info he provided, so the conversation was 'where was he?', 'where was his girlfriend?', etc - that told me e…

I found this comment so shocking I went and read your post history and I'm really interested how this view arises. Can I ask your background that made you think this way?

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#92

Post by agumonkey »

wil421 wrote: post #77
agumonkey wrote: post #67

One thing I'm curious is what's the source of energy behind all this. NSA failed to stop many important accidents (9/11, covid) .. Is it a survival bias and they're still keeping people safe without saying it or is it some finance/intelligence blackhole spinning due to some political quicksand ?

How would the NSA do anything about COVID or any illness for that matter?

Well... if you can hear every convo on the planet (allegedly) you surely can detect an increase cough / sick / emergency related calls in the same area.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#93

Post by ThinkBeat »

I think that the most severe vulnerabilities that are found have been known about for a long time by our intelligence community and likely others.

I doubt much of anything off the shelf for companies even if they open their wallets a lot can be realistically expected to defeat against advanced well funded nation state intrusions.

I would not add North Korea or Iran to that list. I think they are far behind. Maybe North Korea gets some scarps from China

The US has without a doubt the most powerful position. All major operating systems are made here. GitHub is for the most part here. A lot of equipment comes from there or at least in warehouses or just pass through. Given ample opportunities for modification. We have the FAANG. Twitter and lots of other worldwide platforms that have millions of users. All slurped Up by the NSA (at least if they want to).

The US has a very coveted position.

Presumably China possibly is next. So much manufacturing happens there on whole equipment or parts for it. Should give them rich opportunity to modify products they are interested inn.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#94

Post by Proziam »

Spooky23 wrote: post #88
grey-area wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tools are there, they will be used for evil. When you can surveil and blackmail the entire world, including your political taskmasters, what sort of person will that role attract?

2016 answered that question.

The issue far predates 2016. The NSA and the mass-surveillance apparatus has been around far longer, with massive bipartisan support.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#95

Post by mtgx »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #93

I think that the most severe vulnerabilities that are found have been known about for a long time by our intelligence community and likely others. I doubt much of anything off the shelf for companies even if they open their wallets a lot can be realistically expected to defeat against advanced well funded nation state intrusions. I would not add North Korea or Iran to that list. I think they are far behind. Maybe Nor…

So we know that Microsoft had a multi-billion dollar incentive from the NSA to buy Skype and remove its P2P encryption. And then we know that Microsoft removed P2P encryption as soon as it bought Skype, and then it joined the PRISM program revealed by Snowden.

https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...

I wonder if GitHub was bought for the same reason (the NSA could silently add backdoors to software code hosted on GitHub without the UX revealing anything of the kind).

Now that we're openly seeing how the US freaks about about "national security" because other countries might own these highly popular chip platforms or social media companies, I wonder what other events played in the same way in the past - like what other companies did the US "had to have" for the purpose of enabling much easier spying on rivals, and then "suddenly" some American company offered to buy out those companies.

Now I'm not necessarily saying this is the one and only reason these companies made these acquisition - most likely, in most cases, NSA approached the companies that would be open to the idea because it could also prove strategic for their business in some way.

So it would be a "win-win" for these companies to both acquire a possibly useful technology, as well as get paid later on by the US government through various "unrelated contracts" that would pay for these deals.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#96

Post by specialist »

roenxi wrote: post #41
dleslie wrote: post #5

The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the existence of ECHELON, the use of the American security apparatus to steal trade secrets, the surveillance of non-American politicians, et al... For many, many years before Snowden. And I'm just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news! We were ca…

> We were called Conspiracy Theorists ... It was a theory that there was a conspiracy. The issue is that people dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand - even when the theory is backed by means, motive and incentives. "This power is being used to influence the political process in the US" is still a conspiracy theory and will likely turn out to be true as well one day - because again the people involved have means, m…

I've long wondered how to side step the "conspiracy theorist" pejorative. Personal interest. A local newspaper called me a "sweaty paranoid kook". All true. But also a distraction from the lede.

There must be a Luntzian phrase for believing in proven conspiracies.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#97

Post by WhyIsItLikeThis »

Spooky23 wrote: post #88
grey-area wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tools are there, they will be used for evil. When you can surveil and blackmail the entire world, including your political taskmasters, what sort of person will that role attract?

2016 answered that question.

You mean Hillary Clinton?

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#98

Post by staticassertion »

pmachinery wrote: post #84
boomboomsubban wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that practice is common, this article does say >The purpose of this post isn’t to discuss the legality of the NSA's actions or the morality of the leaks, what we are trying to answer is: "Why did we never see it coming?" They clearly made it the central theme. With enough context what they are saying makes sense, but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something without evidence. I'm s…

> but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something That's really the only thing it means. It certainly doesn't mean "why did we never see it happening" (those words mean that) or "why didn't we identify the perpetrator". Edit: for example I saw the downvote coming, because some people here love downvoting simple factual statements, but I don't know who did it, because why would they want to…

Hi, I downvoted you. Normally I don't bother explaining why a low content post was downvoted, but whatever, I'm here.

1. Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. There was more than one sentence in the article and more than enough context to forgive an ambiguous or even incorrect sentence.

2. I don't agree that you're right. You state there's only one interpretation. I could just as easily interpret it as "Why didn't we see the NSA coming for our network?" or "Given all of these NSA attacks, how did no one detect them entering the network?".

So between those things I downvoted it.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#99

Post by mc32 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #88
grey-area wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tools are there, they will be used for evil. When you can surveil and blackmail the entire world, including your political taskmasters, what sort of person will that role attract?

2016 answered that question.

That sounds like conspiracy NWO kinds of things, but then again maybe there was a kernel of truth to that. It seems since Kennedy intelligence apparatuses have taken preeminence, perhaps somewhat necessarily though the results seem worse than the alternative of them not being there (Gulf II).

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#100

Post by reactchain »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #93

I think that the most severe vulnerabilities that are found have been known about for a long time by our intelligence community and likely others. I doubt much of anything off the shelf for companies even if they open their wallets a lot can be realistically expected to defeat against advanced well funded nation state intrusions. I would not add North Korea or Iran to that list. I think they are far behind. Maybe Nor…

The US has a very coveted position in the West, but the reach of this is getting smaller every year. Having root access to FAANG for instance is pretty useless in China, Apple is the only one of those five with any presence to speak of. And anything supply chain related China would be in the more powerful position.
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