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Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

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Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#431

Post by stjohnswarts »

switch11 wrote: post #39
aazaa wrote: post #8

> For those keeping score, not only does Amazon own the The Washington Post and oversees the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise, it now has on its powerful board of directors the most visible figure from the NSA who illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade. This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now. Man in a position to have reams of compromising intel on the current presiden…

This: This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now At some point we need to just say it some of the largest tech companies are basically NSA+CIA partners and we're well on our way to having Big Tech completely integrated into NSA and CIA and DoD

Do you have any evidence for that or just speculating because some business/government people move around in the same business arena?

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#432

Post by spurgu »

zorked wrote: post #410
pc86 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even taking into account the comments below, you can still see the URLs and thus determine the products folks are browsing even with SSL.

No you can't. You can only see the domain during initial protocol setup.

Unless you have NSA-level haxx to break SSL. Wonder who might have some knowledge on the topic..

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#433

Post by srean »

deathgrips wrote: post #416
srean wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard was it to get that room at AT&T with or without "court order" that you speak about. Do you consider secret courts to be in scope of this discussion. Then there is this That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

No court order was necessary because AT&T consented to the NSA presence. Just like how your employer can hand over your corporate laptop to the police without needing a warrant. If you don't like it, consider dealing with another business and encrypting your traffic with a full tunnel VPN. Yes. Secret courts are reasonable due process. Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information? Are…

So you agree that court orders are not that fancy a deterrent that you made it out to be.

You said

> If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order.

I just gave you an example when that did not matter.

> Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?

Whenever you are willing to have an honest discussion rather than a blinkered and intentionally misleading cheerleading

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#434

Post by srean »

deathgrips wrote: post #419
srean wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other 3 letter agencies and 3rd country jails for that and That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix I would not be hard to convince me that NSA inputs can place a person on these.

When you find a way for a country to exist with 0 enemies, please let us all know.

Don't change goal posts now. I responded to your claim

> I'm very sure that you're wrong. Do you have any evidence that the NSA kidnaps and tortures people?

that NSA can get people tortured or killed without much difficulty.

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#435

Post by srean »

deathgrips wrote: post #417
boomboomsubban wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/10/egypt-steps-u...

So you just have the word of one activist? Sorry, that's not enough evidence for me to believe it. If the NSA wanted to unlock a random journalist's phone, they would be able to hack it.

> that's not enough evidence for me to believe it

One popular quote by Upton Sinclair comes to me mind.

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#436

Post by smsm42 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #429
smsm42 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course he complained about data collection by the administration his political enemies are running. The question is what happened when he was running it. So far you said "reduced" - reduced how? PRISM still exists, doesn't it? And there are many more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_survei... So the question is not whether Joe Biden ever grandstanded on the topic - I'm sure he did, as every p…

> reduced how? I told you in the GP post. The email metadata program was shut down, and the phone metadata collection was reduced. > PRISM still exists, PRISM does not collect Americans' data. > The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him? Again, I told that to you.

Which email metadata program specifically, how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down and how do you know there's no other programs such as Room 641A, MUSCULAR, etc. that can do the same? Same for phone metadata - what Biden had to do with it and how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename?

You haven't told me anything in fact except that some things supposedly happened while Biden was a VP.

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#437

Post by dang »

Dahoon wrote: post #293
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that neither pragmatic nor ethically sound. If you're in a security alliance with countries you share values and goals with, how can you not apply different standards in terms of data sharing? And how can you not react somewhat differently to any transgressions, mistakes and imperfections? I know Trump has made this very difficult by making his personal whims indistinguishable from the interests and commitment…

>And I do see good reasons to side with them against completely illegitimate regimes that use their security services to keep themselves in power without a democratic mandate. Really though, with the system in place in the US it isn't in a position to point fingers. Do you really feel the poor homeless person has more power in the US elections than in those you just compared it to ? I really don't. So yes democratic…

If you keep posting nationalistic flamewar comments to HN, we're going to have to ban you, regardless of which country or countries you're flaming.

We've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23645175.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#438

Post by lern_too_spel »

smsm42 wrote: post #436
lern_too_spel wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced how? I told you in the GP post. The email metadata program was shut down, and the phone metadata collection was reduced. > PRISM still exists, PRISM does not collect Americans' data. > The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him? Again, I told that to you.

Which email metadata program specifically, how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down and how do you know there's no other programs such as Room 641A, MUSCULAR, etc. that can do the same? Same for phone metadata - what Biden had to do with it and how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename? You haven't told me anything in fact except that some things supposedly hap…

> Which email metadata program specifically

There was only one in the leaks. That one.

> how do you know there's no other programs

If there were any, Snowden would have leaked those instead of a program that had already been shut down.

> how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename?

Because laws were changed, and oversight was added that showed how many metadata records the NSA requested from the telcos.

> how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down

Does it matter if he was personally in charge or if he delegated? Collection of Americans'metadata shrunk while he was VP.

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#439

Post by phobosanomaly »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #365
boomboomsubban wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them particularly care about the average citizens interests, so treating the two similarly seems fair.

Who would you rather have logs of all your Internet activity: your own government, or another government thousands of miles away that is increasingly at odds with country's?

I could argue that I'm much more worried about the set of events my own government can set in action against me if they so choose.

The other government has less power over me because they are thousands of miles away and don't control the institutions that I need to function as a citizen.

That being said, the foreign government might be less afraid of using my information against me, since they would be less afraid of blowback.

I guess I'm not sure. Both suck.

Better use TAILS.

Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

#440

Post by phobosanomaly »

deathgrips wrote: post #135
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>figure from the NSA who illegally spied on Americans I like the way you included just 'Americans', may be because it's just the domestic spying which is against U.S. law, may be because you thought 'spied on Americans' hits harder for an American reader than just 'spied on everyone'. But, for someone outside USA or China; there's absolutely no difference between U.S. tech or Chinese Tech w.r.t Privacy, what U.S. doe…

America won't arrest you on your vacation here just because you criticized the country on social media. I'd take American hegemony over Chinese hegemony any day of the week.

US did more or less drone-strike this American and his 16 year-old son for criticizing the county on social media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

The difference between 'recruiter' and a guy who sent some emails to some people is unfortunately a distinction that is up to some dweeb with more top-secret security clearances than medals on a North Korean general.

I assume it's the same thing in China, they just have more dweebs that can disappear people.

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