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Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

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Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#281

Post by simoncion »

bb88 wrote: post #222
anonym29 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't simply tapping phones, it is the warrantless collection of close to all global electronic communications. And the immorality doesn't stop there, that's where it starts. "We kill people based on metadata." - General Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and former Director of the CIA. This includes innocent people. Women, children, civilians. D…

If you're in a war of attrition (like the the US was in Afghanistan), and the other side already has agreed it's okay to kill innocents (9/11), then you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means. I'm not going to defend the CIA/NSA for actions taken inside the country. On the other hand, I'm not going to second guess decisions happening on the ground in an active war zone.

> ...you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means.

By not fighting ethically abroad and by permitting our authoritarians largely free-rein both abroad and domestically, we gave the folks who planned and caused the destruction of the WTC towers nearly everything they were hoping for.

Overreacting and letting Bush II run his military campaigns in the Middle East was one of the greatest gifts we could have given Al Qaeda and those like them. Encouraging our populace to permit themselves to be (and continue to be) terrorized is a lesser but still significant gift to those same organizations.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#282

Post by [deleted] »

kortilla wrote: post #180
lurk2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this This is a false dichotomy. Federal agencies prove themselves to be fallible (even incompetent) all the time, they just have far more resources available to make up for their mistakes.

Unmarked vans drive around all of the time and nobody bats an eye at them. There is no reason to even bother with a big elaborate company name that anyone could google and do further background checks on

[deleted]

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#283

Post by jorvi »

lurk2 wrote: post #136
tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we do. It was a sewer inspection van. If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chai…

> the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this This is a false dichotomy. Federal agencies prove themselves to be fallible (even incompetent) all the time, they just have far more resources available to make up for their mistakes.

Legacy of Ashes is a great book about the CIA on this, on how they basically stumbled into some of their biggest accomplishments.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#284

Post by therealcamino »

kstrauser wrote: post #19
spaceribs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to believe it was an inspection van: https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ I'd like to believe that, but I don't.

That very well could be what it was. If it had been anything other than: 1. Spotless. 2. Parked right behind Klein's (and by extension, my) house. 3. Skittish, such that they closed the door right after I took the picture and drove off less than a minute later without pulling any gear up out of a manhole or something. then that's probably what I'd chalk it up to. I am absolutely not 100% convinced it was, say, an und…

Here's the thing, there's never going to be convincing evidence for you to decide that it wasn't what your hunch said it was. That's the nature of suspicion.

You could Google "national plant services van" on image search and find similar vans, and that the company is owned by is the Carylon Corporation, with revenue of $300m/year -- but that couldn't convince you that a government agency (it wouldn't be the NSA unless they're violating the law) didn't borrow it or copy it.

You could read that their services include "Digital CCTV inspection. Laser profiling. Sonar pipeline inspection." but that couldn't convince you that the monitor+joystick and other equipment is needed for sewer inspection, because you already believe it is for surveillance. (The irony being that the kind of mass surveillance Mark Klein exposed, or Snowden exposed, means there's absolutely no need to park a truck outside someone's house. You can track who they're communicating with already, and you can subvert their own devices to listen in, instead of parking a van out front for their neighbors to notice.)

You could look at who has the contract to inspect sewers in your town -- it's public record. But you could still choose to believe that the federal government did the same check, and went out and got an identical truck so as to be less suspicious (although in this thread half the people are saying "that's too clean/fancy/technological to be a sewer inspection van!" so if they did it would have backfired.)

Was he under surveillance? Who knows. Does this truck prove anything either way? No. Everybody is going to leave this thread with whatever hunch they came in with.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#285

Post by [deleted] »

saghm wrote: post #199
tptacek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant multiplier of my certainty here comes from the fact that I was responding to a thread full of people who seemed certain that no sewer inspection van could look like that, which to me says "this van is not inconspicuous", which defeats the whole purpose of having a cover-story van. You can second-guess that, but I think past this point, we're reenacting the duel between Vizzini and Westley.

> You can second-guess that, but I think past this point, we're reenacting the duel between Vizzini and Westley So I guess the reveal is that it _is_ a real sewer inspection van, but the NSA has legitimately been inspecting sewers for years to innoculate themselves from suspicion? I guess they must be down there looking for rodents of unusual size.

[deleted]

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#286

Post by potato3732842 »

ryanisnan wrote: post #88
themcaffee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

I mean, if a sufficiently capable entity is interested in snooping on an individual like this, mimicking a sewer tv inspection van is a trivial endeavour. You don’t know at all what that van was doing.

You're thinking like a normal person. You need to think like an institution that has the entire weight of government behind them and who nobody wants to be on the wrong side of.

They either find someone who has suitable vans they can threaten with prosecution. That person then agrees to be an "informant" because that's better than losing your life to the feds and then their handler asks to borrow a van. They like this because no money needs to get spent specifically on it so it doesn't tend to get scrutinized. If they're going full above the table they register a business with the state complete with valid HVAC license or whatever and then rent a van from some company the FBI owns/runs that rents white vans and have some decals printed up. (For those inclined to do further reading, the OSINT hobbyists have done a lot to expose this workflow as it relates to aircraft so probably start there.)

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#287

Post by dosman33 »

tptacek wrote: post #90
ryanisnan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if a sufficiently capable entity is interested in snooping on an individual like this, mimicking a sewer tv inspection van is a trivial endeavour. You don’t know at all what that van was doing.

Yes we do. It was a sewer inspection van. If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chai…

Regardless of what the real story is on this van, lookup the Bernie S. case if you want an easy case with proof of government surveillance incompetence. Under cover Secret Service agents were photographed surveilling a 2600 meeting in a mall court, then got embarrassed when the 2600 guys posted flyers with their photographs around. Most criminals are dumb which is a good thing as I like the bad guys getting caught, but unfortunately the smart ones graduate to become politicians.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#288

Post by leotravis10 »

ziddoap wrote: post #89
taosx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed. `Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws prote…

Mark Klein was not some mythical hero, but a real person who did heroic things. It's nice to be reminded of that. If anything, I find it inspiring.

Indeed, something that we sadly lack today. We need people like Mark more than ever, not less.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#289

Post by floweronthehill »

somenameforme wrote: post #200
zmgsabst wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People suspected there was funny business going on since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001. By 2003 gangs were aware government spied on phones at scale. NSA regularly came up in my high school tech class in 2004, in connection with War on Terror. By 2005, the program was confirmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(... Lots of people knew that mass surveillance was likely with the advent o…

Lots of people know lots of things. The problem is those things aren't always true. And until there is a defacto public acknowledgement of something many people defer to the 'official position.' Here's a present time one for you - all US based cloud providers, including Apple, are providing full (and probably indirect) real time access to everything stored on those servers to various organizations including, but not…

Here's another official position relevant to current events but that is beginning to change.

"Electronic voting machines are 100% safe and as safe as paper ballots if not more".

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#290

Post by eduction »

tptacek wrote: post #83
themcaffee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

Gotta love this site.

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