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NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

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Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#111

Post by _b8r0 »

fixxer wrote: post #103
tptacek wrote: post #14

This entire event was a staged press op. Keith Alexander is a ~30 year veteran of SIGINT, electronic warfare, and intelligence, and a Four-Star US Army General --- which is a bigger deal than you probably think it is. He's a spy chief in the truest sense and a master politician. Anyone who thinks he walked into that conference hall in Caesars without a near perfect forecast of the outcome of the speech is kidding the…

I agree with the basic argument that Alexander is a savvy SOB and knew what he was in for... BUT, you're making it sound like getting heckled on stage was desirable. I don't agree. I think it is more appropriate to say that the NSA is between a rock and a hard place. They could either... * Get heckled and look culpable, but maintain the illusion that they give a shit what the general public thinks, or... * Not attend…

> I think it is more appropriate to say that the NSA is between a rock and a hard place.

I think they're between breaching the constitution with far-reaching surveillance the Stasi would've given their left nut for, and hiding behind secret courts to legitimise their acts through rubber stamping. The surveillance continues. The genie is out of the bottle, justified by the biggest lie you were told - i.e. that there ever was a rock or hard place to begin with.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#112

Post by cenazoic »

rbanffy wrote: post #52

I find particularly hard to believe the "6,000 NSA cryptologists who have deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq" part. Why would anyone want to deploy cryptologists into a war zone? I also found disheartening the applause given to the general for his clever answers. "I have. So should you"?! I expected more from the Black Hat crowd. And, finally, I applaud Jon McCoy for his sacrifice. His willingness to endure all the cav…

In the Air Force I was a 'cryptologic Russian linguist' (it had nothing to do with code-breaking, although it was an intelligence field). I wonder if he was referencing linguists.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#113

Post by lukifer »

vijayboyapati wrote: post #99

Funny how Alexander says he's read the Constitution, and implores the heckler to do the same. If one can read the Constitution and square the NSA's mass surveillance with the 4th amendment then one can square a circle. There really is no point in debating people like this on the technicalities of the Constitution. What they understand is power. He has it and we don't. He knows how to pull the levers that matter, and…

My understanding is that their Constitutional dodge is rooted in Scalia's originalism: the 4th says "papers", which means specifically physical pieces of paper, not phone calls or emails.

What I've been wondering about though, is the legal definition of "effects" (noun, not verb). That term seems very broad to me, and should include emails, but I'm not a lawyer.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#114

Post by sneak »

samstave wrote: post #78
tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why anyone outside of the DoD would fear him. Again, the truth is simple: it was a press op. The event was corporate enough that nobody was going to throw pies at him, but just countercultural enough that he could be assured that someone would make him look better by heckling.

>" I have no idea why anyone outside of the DoD would fear him. " It was said, which is basically confirmed with this latest revelation, that he has all the information on everyone and can blackmail anyone.... I am trying to recall where I heard that though, originally.

I wrote something about how ubiquitous surveillance can be used to blackmail anyone about a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974734

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#115

Post by lukifer »

northwest wrote: post #106
IanDrake wrote: post #79

>the four-star general presented a timeline of terrorist attacks around the world, from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the Boston Marathon attack . Can anyone speak as to why, with the NSA's systems, they were not able to thwart an attack by the ass clowns in Boston? Russia even warned us about them and they made frequent contact with foreigners. I'm sorry, but that terrorist event seems like low hanging frui…

The question is: Did they want to thwart the attack? One obvious possibility is that the system that has been erected simply needs fear to be able to continue to exist. Let some attacks happen (and some Taliban prisons break) from time to time and people can be and will be manipulated via fear, so the powerful stay powerful and the rich become richer. Same old, same old... Next stop: Middle Class Gone. Then, people w…

In wartime, it's not uncommon to not act on intel to stop an attack, so as to preserve its strategic value and save more lives later. For any insiders who truly believe in the NSA's mission (which is being generous), "let a few die today to preserve a system that will save thousands tomorrow" is not a big leap.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#116

Post by sneak »

josh2600 wrote: post #45
kunai wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed; his extensive infosec background and smooth-talking politician talents meant that he probably had full knowledge of how this was going to go down. What's interesting is why he attempted PR reconciliation at a relatively niche conference. Black Hat doesn't have much connection to the mass public, and trying to make yourself look good in front of a mass of angry hackers is pointless anyhow because hackers tend…

I think he went to Blackhat because the feds were 'banned' from Defcon.

The feds were not banned from Defcon.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#117

Post by nhaehnle »

IanDrake wrote: post #79

>the four-star general presented a timeline of terrorist attacks around the world, from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the Boston Marathon attack . Can anyone speak as to why, with the NSA's systems, they were not able to thwart an attack by the ass clowns in Boston? Russia even warned us about them and they made frequent contact with foreigners. I'm sorry, but that terrorist event seems like low hanging frui…

The obvious conclusion to draw from this - and really, that anybody should be able to draw - is that the system doesn't work to protect regular people.

This shouldn't really come as a surprise, either. Surveillance is not effective for preventing crimes. It is somewhat more useful for investigating crimes after they've happened.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#118

Post by mindslight »

wavefunction wrote: post #84
JonFish85 wrote: post #22

All things considered, it seems like Keith Alexander did a pretty good job of handling the situation. Personally I think the heckler sounded like a douche ("read the Constitution" sounds like a dumb thing to say to a 4 star general who probably has better knowledge of it than your average hacker), even if he (the heckler) had some good points. It would have been easy for the situation to devolve into something much u…

I'm curious why you claim that a 4-star general would have a better knowledge of the Constitution than an average hacker? Especially one who seems to be running an illegal and unconstitutional program like Gen. Alexander.

For the same reason that an average hacker would have a much better knowledge of the code for various daemons than the sysadmins who administer them - they're reading critically and looking for vulnerabilities where the actual semantics differ from the purported ones. I've no doubt that what the NSA does actually is "constitutional" under the common corrupted interpretations of it - government programs are structured to avoid mortal conflicts with the constitution, sympathetic or even just probabilistic courts then assert that specific facets aren't actually over the line, and severable agents acting "independently" informally make up the difference.

Law is akin to code, and suffers from the same complexity-induced limitations that end up as the halting problem. With enough indirection, meanings and definitions divert wildly from what they purport. This divergence starts as soon as abstraction enters the picture - for example the widespread tendency to see rights as "primitives" that are acceded when forming higher-level emergent structures. Participation in the higher-level structure becomes de facto mandatory, and those purported rights end up nowhere to be seen. And once this erosion process starts, it becomes harder and harder for anybody to see that their rights should apply universally, rather than just in a nondescript wood shack on unincorporated land in Wyoming.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#120

Post by moxie »

mpyne wrote: post #77
northwest wrote: post #11

> “I haven’t lied to Congress,” Alexander responded And WTF was that, now? EDIT: I guess this is true because actually, he lied to the chairs in the room. Or some coffee mugs that were also present. Is that how one evades a lie detector, btw? It really can't get any sicker. We have now reached the bottom.

Last I checked he wasn't James Clapper (they guy who lied to Congress). But maybe I'm wrong.

First he said this in congressional testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmBAxEWxDFs&feature=youtu.be...

Then this came out later: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-fla...

And now this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-...

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