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Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

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Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#71

Post by timschmidt »

jeffbee wrote: post #66
timschmidt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A former senior U.S. intelligence agent described Alexander's program: "Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack. Collect it all, tag it, store it ... And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#NSA_appoint...

What you're describing is a program from 20 years ago design to surveil limited parties in a limited geographic region overseas, during a war, in a place that enjoyed Stone Age information systems. That is not in the sense that the people in this discussion meant by blanket surveillance. They are talking about broad interception of all communications by U.S. persons, an undertaking that it should be obvious to you if…

"After 9/11, they took one of the programs I had done, or the backend part of it, and started to use it to spy on everybody in this country. That was a program I created called Stellar Wind. That was seperate and compartmented from the regular activity which was ongoing because it was doing domestic spying. All the equipment was coming in, I knew something was happening but then when the contractors I had hired came and told me what they were doing, it was clear where all the hardware was going and what they were using it to do. It was simply a different input, instead of being foreign it was domestic." - William Binney

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#72

Post by throwaway29812 »

xbmcuser wrote: post #49
sdoering wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most ironic thing that never came to fruition was an X-Files spinoff [1]. The pilot aired a few months before 9/11. Depiction a plot by the (I believe) CIA to crash a passenger airplane into the WTC. And the three computer freaks/conspiracy theorists that often helped Mulder trying to stop that. I watched it a few months after 9/11 happened. That definitely was an experience I will never forget. Even as a German,…

Tom Clancy also had a similar plot in the Jack Ryan series

[dead]

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#73

Post by bandofthehawk »

sunaookami wrote: post #60

This comment section is strange, a lot of people trying to discredit Snowden, saying he shouldn't have released the files, should be in prison, etc. 12 years ago this was HUGE news and had a major impact on the internet and everyone thanked Snowden for these documents! I certainly am thankful. Disappointed in my country that they literally said that "spying between friends is a no-go" but then did nothing and intimid…

My memory is that Hacker News comments were even more anti-Snowden at the time, but I could be mistaken. I would have thought people here would be very supportive of his whistle blowing, but I think a lot of people on this site unfortunately have a strong loyalty to the government organizations that were exposed.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#74

Post by dylan604 »

jjordan wrote: post #7

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary. Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "yo…

> If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State",

any nuggets of truth like using the name Echelon is way over shadowed by "rotate on the 360 to see what's in his pocket" nonsense uttered by non-other than Jack Black which would be just at home in Tancious D Pick of Destiny

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#75

Post by dylan604 »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #52
jazzyjackson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!" Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers

Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies. During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personn…

> government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists.

The Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory goes into a version of this.

In the conspiracy world, there's the trope on Merlin's magic wand was made from the wood of a holly tree and was used to cause confusion and mind control type of spells.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#76

Post by [deleted] »

ginush wrote: post #41
ok123456 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We know now that communications are being intercepted in bulk as a matter of intelligence gathering, but that does not equate to everyone being surveilled by the government. Yes it does.

No it doesn't. Think about it. Some computer somewhere that is involved in bulk interception happens to record your browser connecting to, say, the Hacker News website, at various dates and times. This is stored in a dataset. No-one ever views these connection records. No-one ever writes a query for the dataset that returns these connection records. These connection records are automatically deleted after the retenti…

[deleted]

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#77

Post by aschla »

wood_spirit wrote: post #10
asdefghyk wrote: post #5

Some what (vaguely) related to this topic About surveillance. I recall a local political and business figure making statements you and/or I are being surveilled by the government. Everyone thought that's not likely , its not possible, he is a bit imbalanced.. After the dumping of documents' from Snowden and Assange it was shown to be possible Things like, if its even possible , it could plausibly be happening. The go…

The Soviets planted listening devices in American embassy typewriters between October 1976 and January 1984 - by intercepting them in the mail! Really sophisticated devices: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/

Wow, back in the 70s the bugs were only detectable by x-ray scan. Makes you wonder what kinds of things can be hidden in the ICs of today.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#78

Post by pseudalopex »

lucb1e wrote: post #61
ForOldHack wrote: post #58

Is there a mirror for this? my library has FortNight blocking it. ( bad certificate, leads them to believe its a spam site...).

What's FortNight? I tried looking it up but got fortnite as the top result, and forcing a literal search with quotes just brings up the dictionary definition. Sadly I don't know of a way to do a case-sensitive web search

They meant Fortinet possibly.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#79

Post by reorder9695 »

psunavy03 wrote: post #40
ok123456 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably, that he did the right thing at the right time.

No, he violated a trust given to him, he deserves to be in jail, and if he had an ounce of moral character he'd come back and face trial like a man. Unlike the movies there aren't secret death squads out to get him, just a courtroom where he can face the consequences of his actions like an adult. Instead, he's hiding out playing the victim in a country that's actively genociding Ukrainians to a degree beyond anything…

Would you not also say that the US government violated a trust given to them at the time? The government has such an imbalance of power compared to one person that it's only fair to hold them to a higher and much more stringent standard. Except wait no, they're often held to a much lower standard compared to the average Joe.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#80

Post by radicaldreamer »

ForOldHack wrote: post #30
lisbbb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote my dissertation on information privacy back in 2003. Post 9/11, privacy was WILDLY unpopular thanks to government propaganda. It's never recovered. I walk around all the time thinking about how we are so close to what East Germans had to deal with, it's just soft glove tyranny here .

i.e. The movie "The lives of others." :|

If they remade that movie with a modern spin, it would be an AI model deciding who is loyal and who isn't.
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