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How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

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Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#71

Post by timschmidt »

anonymousiam wrote: post #66

"One big change impacting surveillance was clear: Prior to September 11, the U.S. had what could reasonably be called a “wall” separating foreign surveillance for national security purposes done by the NSA from domestic surveillance for law enforcement purposes done by the FBI." It turns out that the above statement is not entirely correct. I was aware of this rule at the time (early 90's), and was very surprised to…

People need to know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction as well. The technique is used to shield these secret programs by laundering the information they collect through plausible evidentiary chains.

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#72

Post by alwa »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #34
alwa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you represent an agency?

Try it, it's really not that hard. I feel bad saying this and I don't do anything like this anymore but I did make a few accounts behind residential IPs that posted HN popular sentiments on topics that were actually factually incorrect and got a lot of upvotes pretty quickly. I stopped because I felt icky with how corrosive the whole thing could end up being. This was a while ago so not sure if new user sign up has b…

Your experience makes sense to me, and it feels like just the sort of hacker-ethos tinkering that brings a smile to a lot of faces around here, mine included. Complete with the thrill of discovering that kind of power, then the “ick” factor catching up with you, and you deciding to stop.

Reminds me of rougher-and-readier days, when everything about online discourse felt more self-evidently… what’s the word… contingent? Provisional? Local? Playful, game-like, made-up? Afforded the seriousness of pub banter, rather than any kind of indicator of some broader Truth.

I think my point—which I apologize for putting a little snidely—echoed @rkomorn’s: I completely accept that you or “agencies” can manipulate HN’s proudly old-school mechanics. I just feel like our hangout here is less important in the scheme of things than we’d like to imagine it to be. At least to the sort of agencies who do that kind of work. They could, but why?

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#73

Post by Karrot_Kream »

alwa wrote: post #72
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try it, it's really not that hard. I feel bad saying this and I don't do anything like this anymore but I did make a few accounts behind residential IPs that posted HN popular sentiments on topics that were actually factually incorrect and got a lot of upvotes pretty quickly. I stopped because I felt icky with how corrosive the whole thing could end up being. This was a while ago so not sure if new user sign up has b…

Your experience makes sense to me, and it feels like just the sort of hacker-ethos tinkering that brings a smile to a lot of faces around here, mine included. Complete with the thrill of discovering that kind of power, then the “ick” factor catching up with you, and you deciding to stop. Reminds me of rougher-and-readier days, when everything about online discourse felt more self-evidently… what’s the word… contingen…

Oh yes I agree. I doubt the big agencies are doing much here just because I don't think this forum is that "useful", it's not really an input into any big state or corporate actor's decision making that's worth paying attention to. I just think it's fairly easy to game this forum and I suspect it is absolutely being gamed by interest groups of individuals who want certain opinions to be more prominent.

I've been on Discords that have told their users to go and brigade HN threads to express their opinions. But these have been petty things like politics and programming language flamewars (two examples I've witnessed.)

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#74

Post by wildzzz »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #23
2ndorderthought wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah. First of all I hope you are aware there are multiple mental illnesses that can manifest with feelings of paranoia etc. like text book. Secondly. I doubt any agency is going to hurt or drug you over that. Investigate you? Maybe. But its not worth the money. Just keep in mind all the dangerous people who these groups investigated that they did nothing about that went on to do bad stuff. Although I'm sure these gr…

I would caution outright categorizing this as paranoia stemming from a mental illness. The problem with delusional paranoia and justifiable paranoia is that clinically they can present the same. > Just keep in mind all the dangerous people who these groups investigated that they did nothing about that went on to do bad stuff. There are numerous people that America's intelligence agencies have intimidated, harassed an…

Based on the stories of actual whistleblowers, what really happens is that they either get arrested or nothing happens. Unless OP has real firsthand knowledge of crimes and isn't just repeating information spread by other mentally ill people, I very much doubt something that was aired in a Netflix documentary is going to make the CIA follow him targeted-individual-style. If everything you are talking about can already be found online, you're not special. It's narcissistic.

There are plenty of laws on the books that can be used against people sharing classified information (whether or not they are effective is another question) so why would they need to follow you around and poison your food?

That's not to say that whistleblowers don't get followed, they certainly do but in an inconspicuous manner. Real intimidation comes in the form of two guys knocking on your door explicitly telling you to knock it off or else they'll arrest you, beat you, kill your dog, etc.

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#75

Post by wildzzz »

mannanj wrote: post #7
mannanj wrote: post #5

So, this is an uncomfortable read and comes from my personal experience. I'm posting this here as I haven't yet found great outlets and support for what I experienced, and this thread seems like a good spot. Open to outreach and support and ideas from people. In 2021-2022 I was vocal about the CIA being a terrorist organization (I bet many people adjacently believe similar things and are silent) and this got me atten…

2nd post here. When I share posts matching particular phrases and labels, on HN, I've noticed them get downvoted as though by an algorithm. Would anyone be surprised if the agencies are themselves running bots, algorithms and accounts to affect visibility of discourse on threads like these?

No, it's because you sound like a crazy person and what you talk about is not really constructive to threads about real things.

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#76

Post by dylan604 »

Calebp wrote: post #16
tedd4u wrote: post #3

This is literally old news - contemporaneous with Snowden, Prism, etc. in early 2000s. Go read about the current Section 702 / FISA authorization renewal battle about which Senator Wyden recently said: “I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized,” Wyden said in a Senate floor speech last month. “In fact, when it is…

Well, this report to EFF happened in Jan 2006, and the Snowden/Prism leak happened in 2013, so at the time, it was in fact not "old news". I don't think Prism was even in operation until 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_disclosures

ECHELON pre-dates Prism by several decades

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#77

Post by anonymousiam »

dylan604 wrote: post #70
anonymousiam wrote: post #66

"One big change impacting surveillance was clear: Prior to September 11, the U.S. had what could reasonably be called a “wall” separating foreign surveillance for national security purposes done by the NSA from domestic surveillance for law enforcement purposes done by the FBI." It turns out that the above statement is not entirely correct. I was aware of this rule at the time (early 90's), and was very surprised to…

> Unlike Snowden, I kept this to myself because I had signed (many) NDAs with the US Government. You say this like you are proud of it. Admittedly, I cannot say what I would do in that situation as I've never been in that situation, but I'd hope I'd have the fortitude to speak up on it. Having employees/contractors doing tasks that are illegal just because they came from the higher ups is no different than soldiers r…

I'm not proud of it at all. The revelation was startling to me, and I was pretty unhappy about it. It was done in the name of "stopping bad people from doing bad things", but it was still illegal (at least in the white world).

Snowden had the same dilemma. He was asking the NSA lawyers about the legality of their programs, and he never got an honest answer.

Quitting would not have stopped the activity, and disclosing it would have subjected me to the same treatment that Snowden got.

(Years later, I heard an NSA program manager boasting that they would keep asking different government lawyers for an opinion on the legality of proposed programs until they got the answer they wanted. This was after Snowden's revelations.)

Pretty much everyone in CIA has a "ends justify the means" philosophy. It's easy to fall into that trap when you learn about all the devious things our enemies are doing.

Apparently EOs have been used to circumvent the constitution for quite a while.

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#78

Post by rdevilla »

john_strinlai wrote: post #58
rdevilla wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Why don't you just misgender me next while you're making assumptions? what...? > until people derailed it by people, do you mean you? you are the one that brought up "overseas" vs. canada/san fran and made the false claim that you cant use cash in canada.

The purpose was to illustrate how even basic commerce is going to be monitored to a much greater degree in highly electronic socities like those in North America. Go ask the fucking corner store in the deep Philippine provinces, where the power goes out twice a month, to bring out the credit card machine - no, almost all transactions will be done in cash, whereas only 10% will be in Canada. Let's just assume one nine, even - 90% of your business conducted in private overseas in a cash-based society, vs. 90% of your business being surveilled by the government and private industry in North America.

The claim is not false. Did you read the Bank of Canada report or the CBC article, with actual stats and numbers in aggregate, or are you going to keep asserting your anecdata and personal experience?

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#79

Post by GeekyBear »

ambicapter wrote: post #62
GeekyBear wrote: post #18

The problem is that modern Americans politicize everything. There was a short period at the end of the Bush years when this was a big deal, but as soon as the gaslighting was coming from both political teams, it became a non-issue politically. > President Obama defended the U.S. government's surveillance programs, telling NBC's Jay Leno on Tuesday that: "There is no spying on Americans." "We don't have a domestic spy…

Everything _is_ political, as the other comment says. The problem is that no one talks about "governance", they just talk about "politics", which is not the same thing. Governance is the question of what good government should look like. Politics is just about accumulating power.

I'm afraid that caring about an issue (instead of caring about whatever stance your favorite political team happens to be taking at this moment) has become much less common.

When both parties threw their weight behind the "nobody is spying on Americans" lie, we went from only the hyperpartisan fans of the right wing making excuses for spying on Americans to the hyperpartisan fans of both parties doing so.

Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]

#80

Post by dylan604 »

bsimpson wrote: post #60

So much of surveillance should be blatantly illegal/unconstitutional, but I really don't understand how there can be such a thing as documents that are illegal to possess.

To think a group of people are not going to expend effort in learning about their adversaries is just naive at best. At some point, those adversaries are going to infiltrate your people. The only way to attempt to monitor them would mean you now have the means to monitor your own people.

I'm not saying I'm for this, but just acknowledging that it is only inevitable. You can hope for moral people, but that's farcical.

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