I would find it really interesting if some employees at companies like Google, Microsoft, etc would come forward and corroborate Snowden's claims as well. At some point, SOME engineering work was involved on their side to make it happen, and there is likely documentation. I would love to see design documentation on how the collection systems work so we can confirm exactly the government has automated access to.
Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#22Interesting that no one seems to be talking about what a treasure-trove such a storage system would be for organized crime and foreign intelligence services (such as China). Imagine if someone could compromise it and get to the same data. Doesn't seem all that far-fetched.
This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#23It's been purported here that the media is coloring its reporting to paint Snowden in a bad light. But when the bias favors Snowden, everyone looks the other way. For instance, they conveniently left out any mention of this quote by Binney: "But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't think he had access to th…
Personally, I think Binney has a difficult time speaking and, if he had written out his response, would have chosen a different word than "traitor," just based on the way he stuttered and struggled to complete that sentence.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#24I would find it really interesting if some employees at companies like Google, Microsoft, etc would come forward and corroborate Snowden's claims as well. At some point, SOME engineering work was involved on their side to make it happen, and there is likely documentation. I would love to see design documentation on how the collection systems work so we can confirm exactly the government has automated access to.
In another thread some Google employees were saying that it's unlikely that Google has a secret backdoor system, since keeping products of any size online requires a lot of collaboration amongst the different teams, and the infrastructure changes so often anything that was at one point installed would be broken by now.
But that's just hear-say.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#25I would find it really interesting if some employees at companies like Google, Microsoft, etc would come forward and corroborate Snowden's claims as well. At some point, SOME engineering work was involved on their side to make it happen, and there is likely documentation. I would love to see design documentation on how the collection systems work so we can confirm exactly the government has automated access to.
In another thread some Google employees were saying that it's unlikely that Google has a secret backdoor system, since keeping products of any size online requires a lot of collaboration amongst the different teams, and the infrastructure changes so often anything that was at one point installed would be broken by now. But that's just hear-say.
Yeah, my point is, we don't really know what the scope is -- we have Snowden's word and some slides that mention direct access to servers. But the engineers who worked at the companies and performed the integrations know and probably have evidence if it was just standing up a box they scp'd data to manually upon request, or a more elaborate automated system. If some of those people would step forward with evidence, we could could confirm or refute Snowden's claims.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#26"The idea that we have robust checks and balances is a myth." Albeit to be taken with a grain of salt, this is what I was supposing: you cannot have such a huge organization working "properly" on a day-to-day threat-response basis without some "elastic" access control. Even less if you are a contractor like B-A-H. This, in a private entity, is less dangerous. You can have a lot of sysadmins with some access to Google…
The biggest phrase that I see missing from the private vs government discussion is "monopoly on force".
The Federal government has the authority to create regulations, create laws, collect taxes, send people to your house to enforce those laws, remove/restrict your rights, sentence you to a prison term, send in armed officers to take down civilians groups viewed as dangerous, etc etc all the way to declaring full scale war. And, perhaps most importantly, the government has the authority to coherence third parties to cooperate in information sharing. Google will never be able to force Facebook to hand over their data, but the Federal government can force both of these parties to hand over their data to them.
The catch with having a monopoly on force is that your hands are supposed to be tied by the will of the people. There is a tremendous and intentional asymmetry in power. This necessitates an equally tremendous system of transparency, accountability and oversight.
I think once a day I hear "people willingly give all there data to facebook, why do they care if the NSA is listening", people need to understand what "monopoly on force" truly means.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#27Now all we need is someone like Edward Snowden to step forward from the IRS.
The major problem with the IRS is that is handicapped by law and politics from doing it's job. There's an insane amount of capital sitting in offshore accounts that probably should have been taxed. Loopholes for the big players are crazy.
If the law prevents the capital from being taxed, such as loopholes, then those laws are not handicapping the IRS in any way as the practice is perfectly legal. The IRS has no standing to do anything pertaining to that capital in the first place. If the capital should have been taxed and hasn't, then that implies law-breaking that's a bit beyond what involves just the IRS.
But you are correct about the politics, as it is politics that creates the loopholes to begin with. But that's a matter of annoyance, not illegality.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#28Now all we need is someone like Edward Snowden to step forward from the IRS.
The IRS has been put in an impossible position by the current state of election laws, which allow the creation of a variety of different types of special political organizations, each of which has different disclosure, tax, and spending restrictions.
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#29Interesting that no one seems to be talking about what a treasure-trove such a storage system would be for organized crime and foreign intelligence services (such as China). Imagine if someone could compromise it and get to the same data. Doesn't seem all that far-fetched.
This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.
Even better: Use the data to figure out when and where the citizens are going to organize a protest against the current government....
Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.
Even better: Use the data to figure out when and where the citizens are going to organize a protest against the current government....
I think the parent is slightly "better" in the followings senses. First, I think "surveillance state can be used to oppress citizens" is less novel a thought (though maybe I'm optimistic?). Second, yours presumes a corrupt government eager to secure its power, while parent presumes a corrupt individual eager to make money. While the former is not exactly remote, the latter is (I think) even more common.