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The NSA: An Inside View

lorensr.me

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Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#51

Post by jonknee »

revelation wrote: post #46
jonknee wrote: post #37

Interesting to get a look at what it's like to be inside the bubble. It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the assumed competence and benevolence of the others. > I didn't test it, but I'm sure there was automated analysis that prevented or flagged use of US selectors. The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I a…

Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. The cost of failure is zero, so really just keep trying. (I personally loved the bizarre mix between cyber war, nukes and North Korea. He seems to have the mindset of a paranoid Stalin, always wary of others when he's the one terrorizing.)

Definitely a bizarre mix, I thought it was a parody a couple of times. To combat the threat of nuclear war with the completely isolated totalitarian state of North Korea we must create and store copies of all global communication... (Of which approximately none will have originated in NK, our intelligence agencies still literally watch NK news broadcasts to find out what's going on in NK.)

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#52

Post by mercurial »

First off, congratulations for coming forward and giving what sounds like a honest account of your experience at the NSA. You haven't chosen the easiest forum to air your views, and that takes courage.

However, I can't disagree more with your views. You don't mind if [your] emails are copied to an Agency database and likely never read and because from a technical standpoint it would seriously impair our ability to spy if we couldn't gather everything. Really? You may be familiar with a certain Richard Nixon. How would you feel if a similar character came into power tomorrow? Imagine all the wealth of information at hand. All this... without independent oversight. The only thing you need is to make sure a second Snowden comes forward to explain how you're spying on your opponents. And I can't even begin to imagine how much this juicy information means in terms of economic intelligence. Of course, you cannot push this angle too much, because it would mean the end of the cooperation with your partners. This wonderful agreement you have to keep the free world safe. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want security at this price.

History is littered with examples of power without accountability. And we don't need to go very far... just read any history book about the CIA. I'm sure their personnel is mostly composed of law-abiding patriots. This ends up the same way anyway: coups against democratically-elected governments. Drugs. Assassinations. Torture. And don't tell me that times have changed. The Guantanamo inmates are laughing at you. The Bagram inmates are laughing at you. Even John Yoo is laughing at you.

And that's only looking at it with the eyes of an American citizen, which I'm not. But in the end, what difference does it make? NSA, GHCQ, DGSE... Aren't you all cut in the same mold? You certainly sound like you believe in what you are doing. I'm sure STASI agents did as well, but they were never this successful.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#53

Post by muglug »

lorendsr wrote: post #48
muglug wrote: post #5

Thanks for sharing your POV. Do you think Snowdon's revelations had any beneficial impact, or is your view of them entirely negative?

I think it was important for the citizens to know what powers they have given the NSA. They did not have an accurate sense of that before Snowden. But he released a lot more than that, much of which will hurt the NSA's capabilities.

Thanks for your response. I'd question whether the American people having given the NSA those powers - it's more like:

Lawyers working for the NSA have deemed certain methods of data collection as being in accordance with US law, as voted for by elected officials within the context of a not great two-party democracy.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#54

Post by jonknee »

Tarang wrote: post #20

Well looking at the end it says that its declassified/published with the NSA's blessing. If an employee had a contrarian opinion to the NSA would it be declassified like this one? Its hard to read it and feel that it is balanced or even truthful.

Humorously the answer to that is most likely itself classified.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#55

Post by sedev »

This reads like it was penned by someone who's never heard of the Stanford Prison experiment or Milgram's research. When I read "I have a very high opinion of my former coworkers ... NSA employees are the law-abiding type ... You take a long automated psych test that flags troubling personality traits," I take away "the NSA is full of the kind of person who won't look at the big picture, who will follow orders without exercising critical thinking, and who can be counted upon to be a Good German."

The problems that the HN crowd (speaking broadly) has with the NSA and related entities, are systemic problems. They are not about, "is act X legal or not," they are not about "was this particular incident harmful or not." They are about root of the thing: about the high-level agenda, about the strategies, about the ideas. It does not in the least address these concerns to say "oh, my coworkers are fine folks, we work hard to obey the law, there are scary people out there!" This says nothing to the counterarguments of "we shouldn't have to trust you" (really, you could say that the field of cryptography is about replacing situations where you have to trust a human with situations where you only have to trust math), "the law itself is a problem," and "you haven't proven that you are doing more or better compared to other ways we could push back against scary people."

As with any government agency, the more they insist that they must not be held accountable, the more accountability we should jam down their collective throats. The first sign of someone who can't be trusted with power is that they ask for more of it.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#56

Post by mercurial »

jonknee wrote: post #51
revelation wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, following his explanations, you can fail the polygraph and just do it again. The cost of failure is zero, so really just keep trying. (I personally loved the bizarre mix between cyber war, nukes and North Korea. He seems to have the mindset of a paranoid Stalin, always wary of others when he's the one terrorizing.)

Definitely a bizarre mix, I thought it was a parody a couple of times. To combat the threat of nuclear war with the completely isolated totalitarian state of North Korea we must create and store copies of all global communication... (Of which approximately none will have originated in NK, our intelligence agencies still literally watch NK news broadcasts to find out what's going on in NK.)

North Korea surely has contacts with the rest of world, to deal with China, for instance.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#57

Post by rdl »

"People who build security tools" are in the set of people under active monitoring and exploitation by governments. I'm personally far more concerned about China and Russia and others than I am about NSA, but if I were Nadim (who I believe is personally not a target of NSA, but by virtue of Cryptocat most definitely is), I'd be quite concerned.

I was actually waiting for the big reveal in this ... "x, y are good, but Z is not, and is why we have the problems we have now." I guess not having that is why it went through publication review.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#58

Post by nexttimer »

Don't fight it. Just let it take over. Stop struggling. Once you'll have stopped struggling, it won't hurt anymore. You won't feel any difference anymore. And it will be like it was never different.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#59

Post by makomk »

javert wrote: post #28
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 trou…

Except that unlike with China, the US is allied with some of the foreign countries spying on you and assisting them in their data collection, and quite likely even using the results of that spying themselves. Likewise, I'm in the UK which is allied with the US and assists them in spying on UK citizens.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#60

Post by sedev »

lorendsr wrote: post #35
jjoonathan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for letting me know about parallel construction - I hadn't heard of it. You're right, abuses probably have happened more often than those caught.

If you'd never heard of parallel construction before today, that seems to powerfully undermine your credibility. Why should we take you more seriously than someone who says "I was a secretary at the NSA for years and I never heard of anything bad happening, therefore nothing bad happened"?
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