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Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

theatlantic.com

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Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#41

Post by oarevalo »

jenandre wrote: post #25
asperous wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, w…

But the minute some Google (or Facebook, etc) engineer mentions some slight detail about how that access works, you will have half the Internet trying to break it. Although that would be kinda fun....

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#42

Post by mpyne »

logn wrote: post #36
nano111 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.

Or to predict elections. I'd recommend anyone running an election against a sitting president to encrypt all their email, probably with an encryption scheme not endorsed by NIST/NSA... or at a sufficiently high encryption level. Imagine preparing for a televised debate when you can access the competition's correspondence?

Good luck finding something that doesn't involve SHA-1 at some point. It wasn't merely reviewed or endorsed by NSA, it was invented by NSA.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#43

Post by wyck »

nano111 wrote: post #22
sologoub wrote: post #12

Interesting 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.

Well there is company called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_Future that was created by Google and the CIA, they just need another partner;)

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#44

Post by mpyne »

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #26
pfortuny wrote: post #6

"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 sca…

I wouldn't be so sure about Google vs. Facebook. All they need to do is hire away the right person (or simply conduct corporate espionage themselves).

But as you mention, that monopoly on force is tied to the will of the people.

If the government were to use force in a way other than approved by the laws setup by the peoples' representatives then you're already talking about something much worse on the totalitarian continuum than phone metadata.

And at that point, once the law has no limiting effect on the government anyways they could setup things hundreds of times worse. But they would hardly need to, as they could manufacture evidence of supposed "crimes" if need be and carry out sentences of their choosing for any reason at all.

They would only need things like Prism for dissidents, and dissidents would already assume that things hundreds of times worse were in place and take defensive measures accordingly.

So you're right that the monopoly on force is dangerous, but it has always been so. That's why it requires that tremendous system of transparency, accountability and oversight that you mention.

But given that we're able to provide those controls in the first place (controls which we cannot enforce on private companies, btw!) it makes sense again to ask the question of whether programs like these are both reasonable and effective, whether they can be properly supervised, and if so whether current systems are "proper supervision".

"Monopoly on force" is a warning about government, not the NSA. And especially not in the context of knowledge, where the government is mostly far out of its league compared with the private sector, and it's only getting worse.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#46

Post by mehmehshoe »

gruseom wrote: post #2

The interview he's talking about [1] was posted here [2] and it really is extraordinary. I highly recommend watching all the videos—unfortunately, they carved it into pieces and you have to scroll down the page to get at them. But it's worth it. The transcript doesn't convey how dramatic the discussion was, or capture William Binney's muttered asides ("including content! including content!") or show the meaningful ex…

Binney's comment on the serial number of the Verizon order was great. I never caught the number when studying the doc. By his logic there were as many as 79 other orders to other companies this year.

It is the second video down on your link and about 4 min in.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#47

Post by wavefunction »

jacoblyles wrote: post #45

It's time for a "Tea Party" of the left to take down pro-surveillance Democrats in the primaries.

Maybe all right-thinking (as in clear headed, not right vs left politics) Americans should dispense with the corporate duopoly presented to us by both the GOP and the Democrats.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#48

Post by Natsu »

logn wrote: post #36
nano111 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.

Or to predict elections. I'd recommend anyone running an election against a sitting president to encrypt all their email, probably with an encryption scheme not endorsed by NIST/NSA... or at a sufficiently high encryption level. Imagine preparing for a televised debate when you can access the competition's correspondence?

That's what makes me surprised that both political parties are on board with this. It has the potential to make the Watergate burglaries look positively small time.

What, exactly, stops one political party from using this system against the other one? They're all up in arms about the IRS thing, but either party could very easily adapt a system like this into the most powerful opposition research tool ever known.

Even more interesting is that, with loose controls like these, we have to assume that enemy spies are able to see everything. So every other country with half-decent spies can just tap the whole country's communications and blackmail any and everyone in power with whatever they find using the systems we set up on our own.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#49

Post by crucifiction »

grecy wrote: post #29
nano111 wrote: post #22

Earlier 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....

What would it matter? Does the extra lead time make it somehow easier to crush a protest (since we are assuming a tyrannical government). I am pretty sure you could get drones airborne and shooting missiles at protesters pretty quickly with or without NSA wiretapping.

Re: Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

#50

Post by wavefunction »

sologoub wrote: post #37
grecy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: Use the data to figure out when and where the citizens are going to organize a protest against the current government....

While the recent IRS disclosures of targeting Tea Party activists is deplorable, I'm still optimistic that it's the exception and not the rule in the US. Criminals gaining this access is definitely plausible. Foreign governments using it for oppression/retaliation is also very plausible.

What do you call government officials that don't respect the rule of law?
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