Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 158 posts

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#131

Post by irishcoffee »

DuskStar wrote: post #87
Shish2k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just having "Super secret spy details" on Powerpoint means its not being handled by "our top people" So if it was being handled by the top people, they would have outsourced the documentation to a graphic design company, to generate a super-professional looking PDF? (Seriously, how do you expect the high level management to communicate with each other?)

I expect them to communicate in person, or over the phone. You use PowerPoint to distribute information to GROUPS of people, which implies it's more than just high level management that will be seeing the PowerPoint.

You use powerpoint to give a presentation. Possibly to a group of high-level people.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#132

Post by MichaelGG »

jasonkolb wrote: post #105
xradionut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"While they may have unlimited financial resources, I would pit unlimited technical resources and creativity against that any day of the week." They are the ones with unlimited technical resources. You don't have armed drones nor biological nor nuclear weapons. You are an hostage like everyone else. You might as well accept that fact for now and just enjoy life.

I have to respectfully disagree. They have unlimited financial resources, which translates into unlimited storage capacity etc. But NOT (IMO) unlimited technical resources in the sense of brainpower and creativity. When I say technical resources I'm referring to the ability to create new tools. For example, I know for a fact that a large number of intelligence tools are written on top of open source projects. That ba…

> I know for a fact that a large number of intelligence tools are written on top of open source projects

I don't see how that's really relevant, at all. Did you expect the USG to continue to use Windows instead of Linux for everything? Of course they're going to use tools available that others create. It doesn't mean they don't have unlimited resources. They can easily hire extremely intelligent and creative technical minds (we're talking about the NSA here, come on) and unfortunately, IQ does not mandate a specific political view. This was hard for me to accept, but there are some people much smarter than I am that hold very different positions on things. (Edit: To my knowledge, they are wrong, but caused by operating from different priors than I have.)

You're deluding yourself if you think that somehow the only good tech people are going to be "good guys".

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#133

Post by GVIrish »

rainsford wrote: post #23
wil421 wrote: post #15

Lets condemn places like China, Russia, and Syria for they way they limit or monitor electronic communications but when the US and "Friends" do it its for mumble mumble TERRORISTS mumble mumble.... If the laws don't allow us to monitor our citizens lets just change the laws or interpret the words differently.

Except the US and friends aren't really "doing it" in the same sense that China, Russia, etc are. Those countries develop powerful surveillance capabilities and use them to target political dissent, among other anti-democratic things. Nothing that's been reported about the US comes even close to that sort of usage.

The US and friends may not be openly targeting and censoring political dissent yet, but clearly the first step is developing the capability. If they develop the capability in an environment without any meaningful oversight or accountability, true abuse is one simple step away.

Hell, they may already be using it for political purposes. How would any of us now barring a whistleblower exposing it? That is why this situation is so dangerous.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#134

Post by keithpeter »

yenoham wrote: post #19

When articles like this are submitted to HN, can we have a discussion on what us as individuals can actually do (if anything)? I'd rather drop 100 comments on general FEELING towards the news, for 1 or 2 comments suggesting 'Let's create a campaign site' or 'There is nothing we can do, lets just sit here in silence' Edit: For what it's worth my ONLY suggestion is that a campaign site similar to that for SOPA, etc. is…

"When articles like this are submitted to HN, can we have a discussion on what us as individuals can actually do (if anything)?"

I think we need to start explaining the privacy/surveillance issue and how the advent of powerful technology makes universal surveillance possible and, as others have commented, rather banal.

As one example of a possible 'hook':In the UK, there have been reports on the extent to which ordinary police officers are using the National Police Computer for purposes unrelated to police work (checking out boyfriends/girlfriends for instance). I imagine the potential for misuse is much higher with the comprehensive capturing of data from all communications. That might get people thinking.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#135

Post by bowlofpetunias »

kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

Well, my wife would have. But she was born and raised on the other side of the Berlin wall.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#136

Post by teh_klev »

arethuza wrote: post #5
kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

I honestly believe that the "morals" (for lack of a better word) of the UK government haven't actually got any worse over the last 50 years or so - what has changed is that now technology allows so much more so they are quite happy to do it. For example, in the 1980s there was an almighty fuss because an excellent journalist found out that the UK government had wasted vast amounts of money on a failed spy satellite p…

You don't have to trawl through YouTube looking for them, you can find pretty much all of DC's broadcast material here:

http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/broadcasting

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#137

Post by mabhatter »

ordinary wrote: post #110
keithwinstein wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would any of you have believed Yes, honestly. For more than 20 years, the basic message of the cipherpunks and related communities has been that the NSA spends tens of billions of dollars to spy on everything "foreign" that it can possibly get its hands on, and its foreign adversaries are doing the same, so you'd better use PGP (or more) if you want any chance of keeping your communications secret from the governme…

The M-x spook feature of emacs is not a new thing! I was just looking at the code for that, 5 minutes before I read your comment. It was written in May 1987. A comment near the top says "Help defeat the NSA trunk trawler!". It's interesting how our preceptions of this kind of counter-surveillance tool (primitive as it is) has changed from "OK, man, that's just crazy talk" to "Huh, I guess it really is happening!".

Settle down little froggie. Look at the pretty bubbles!

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#138

Post by adrianwaj »

kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

"Who's the real terrorists in 2013?"

Comfort-maximizing system-lickers.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#140

Post by astrange »

pcl wrote: post #119
Shish2k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just having "Super secret spy details" on Powerpoint means its not being handled by "our top people" So if it was being handled by the top people, they would have outsourced the documentation to a graphic design company, to generate a super-professional looking PDF? (Seriously, how do you expect the high level management to communicate with each other?)

I took "our top people" to mean "our best people, who understand the severity of what they're doing and try hard to keep it from leaking, so don't just save the info in a PPT". Which begs the question: what additional programs do the best of the best at the NSA know about?

How is a Powerpoint file more likely to leak than any other kind of file?
Post reply on HN