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The NSA: An Inside View

lorensr.me

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Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#21

Post by jjoonathan »

Zigurd wrote: post #4

Is this the best defense of the actions of NSA employees publicly available? He spends a lot of time denying pervasive surveillance puts us in a panopticon where the FBI and other LEAs can observe everything we do. And never mentions parallel construction once. He tries to justify a Cold War sized, and then some, security state by invoking North Korea. This is a big bowl of very weak sauce. The director's standard of…

On one hand, I completely buy his assertions about China's pervasive hacking attempts/successes and that the NSA is our best tool for stopping them.

On the other hand, you're right on the money about parallel construction. In my book, that's the one thing that sent the NSA "over the line." It's good to hear that many NSA employees take the police/military distinction seriously, but we know for a fact that some higher-ups don't and he didn't mention the most egregious case of this, not even once. Also, he invoked the "it only happened if they get caught" assumption while commenting on the frequency of abuses, which is highly suspicious.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#22

Post by lukifer »

Zigurd wrote: post #4

Is this the best defense of the actions of NSA employees publicly available? He spends a lot of time denying pervasive surveillance puts us in a panopticon where the FBI and other LEAs can observe everything we do. And never mentions parallel construction once. He tries to justify a Cold War sized, and then some, security state by invoking North Korea. This is a big bowl of very weak sauce. The director's standard of…

There's also little analysis (here or elsewhere) of the consequences of widespread data warehousing. Why pay agents to listen to personal calls, when you can stockpile intel for the day you might need it, and analyze it via algorithm?

I foresee a day when every American has a dossier, a smear campaign, and a law enforcement attack plan on file, in case they decide to "make trouble" for the powerful. It's highly probable we're there already. Look at the history of harassment against MLK if you don't believe me. Even if they're not doing it now, sweeping up all the data in perpetuity guarantees that they'll do it later.

(I may disagree with this guy fervently about the NSA, but I'm extremely psyched to try his mayo. Good for him for transitioning into something useful.)

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#24

Post by a3n »

The NSA copy of my emails won't be viewed by police or FBI investigating me about marijuana use, for instance. Law enforcement might get a search warrant and retrieve a copy from Google, but not from the NSA.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#25

Post by EthanHeilman »

lorendsr wrote: post #14
room271 wrote: post #3

While I do not agree with much of the sentiment, I enjoyed the article. My question to the OP: even if you believe that at the moment abuses are rare and that your colleagues are trustworthy and law-abiding, does the capability and level of information concern you in terms of the potential for future abuse it enables?

Potential future abuse, whether due to laws becoming more permissive or a radical in-agency culture change that led to more people ignoring the law, is certainly concerning. As are current abuses. I just believe that the capabilities provided under the powers currently given to the agency are worth the abuses and potential future abuse. If I thought there was much chance that in the future, law enforcement and intell…

How do you answer questions of the NSA's known past involvement in targeting political figures such as Martin Luther King[1], US journalists, and US antiwar activists? The NSA was known to pass this intelligence to LE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET#Domestic_target...

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#26

Post by undoware »

Sorry lorensr.me. "Trust me, they're good guys" is not an argument, and in the current context, it can only be read as a small piece of damage-control astroturf.

Or rather, the NSA's perfidy has left us with no other safe default assumption, so we have to ignore on sight. The data is tainted. All of it.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#27

Post by lorendsr »

andrewcooke wrote: post #6

The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. I am not one either. But I still have to obey the law. Maybe that's not what's implied by that statement? But if not, what on earth is meant (more exactly, what was the author's intent in saying something that seems obvious and irrelevant if taken at face value; what am I expected to infer?)?

I meant that the NSA is only looking at your information if a judge suspects that you are a foreign agent. It will not look at your information to determine whether you have done something else illegal, which is what it would do if it were part of a police state.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#28

Post by javert »

te_chris wrote: post #8

Thank you so much, kind American intelligence guy, for having the grace to not look at USA citizens emails, all the while not even mentioning foreigners, who should apparently just lie down and take it.

As a US citizen, I assume foreign countries (esp. China) spy on me. But I don't go around bitching about that. Why? Because the US will protect me. China cannot hurt me.

On the other hand, when the US spies on me, I am much more threatened, because nobody can protect me from the US. If the US turns against me (for instance, for supporting the Tea Party), declaring me part of a "violent organization", I'm in real trouble.

tl;dr compain about your own country spying on you, not other countries spying on you

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#29

Post by lorendsr »

mtgentry wrote: post #19

No offense to OP, but this reads like propaganda to me. It feels like someone at the Pentagon realized they weren't winning the war of the minds of hackers, so they encouraged some of their own to blog about their experiences. I hate to sound like a tin hat wearing conspiracist. I really do. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of concerted effort by the NSA to encourage a dialogue with hackers on platf…

No offense taken. I was not asked to write this, nor guided in its contents by the government.
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