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The NSA: An Inside View

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Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#81

Post by dmfdmf »

mythealias wrote: post #65
dmfdmf wrote: post #13

Translation: Trust us, we are the good guys. This blog post does nothing to answer the fundamental questions that the Snowden leaks have raised. This man basically argues that, with few exceptions, everyone that works for the NSA is a true American and a patriot who only has your interests at heart and what is a little spying amongst friends anyway. Follow that with some scary hints about cyber war with nuclear respo…

I think that giving credit to the terrorist, and saying that they have won, is wrong. The kind of paranoia that defense forces have operated under has always been there since WWII. The only thing different now it that people are a lot aware of what could be/is happening.

If we commit suicide by destroying the constitution and the freedoms it embodies then the terrorist goal of destroying America is achieved. I see your point though, they would not deserve credit for our failure to stand up to an internal threat, so consider it poetic license to dramatize my point.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#83

Post by jurjenh »

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…

How would they encourage "internal" blogs though - asking directly would most likely raise flags, or a flood of insincere blog posts that would counter the desired result.

What I'd be more interested in is how much this issue is being discussed internally. If these discussions are allowed, or even surreptitiously encouraged, then I'd take that as a possible internal propaganda push, subtle as it may be. What's in the conscious mind gets written about, hence you'd see these kind of "justification" posts.

If there was very little internal discussion, or it was frowned upon, then I would expect much less of these blog posts, as it would potentially undermine your career...

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#84

Post by sitkack »

lukifer wrote: post #22
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 proba…

The dossier exists in the form of all the collected communications. Moores law and Gustafson's law will allow your entire life to sliced, diced and trolled for breaches of the law in seconds. Lazy, deferred evaluation of the police state.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#85

Post by rhizome »

kabdib wrote: post #32

"Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization." Huh, so: - My best friend's dad was a spy in the CIA - During the 70s and 80s my dad worked with Russian scientists (also ones from Poland and other Communist Bloc countries). Ecology stuff, mostly. - I've been in…

Am I going to get my Name on a List because I've said that we need to stop allowing the NSA to build more data centers? That I think that Dianne Feinstein needs to be removed from office?

Beyond the monitoring, the deeper point of Big Brother in the book "1984" was the worry about whether what you were doing made you subject to punishment. Foucault also covers this in his discussions of the panopticon, where it is one thing to have a mechanism for constant and pervasive surveillance, and quite another when the windows of surveillance are tinted so you can never know whether the collection is being aimed at you.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#86

Post by jurjenh »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #71
alfiejohn_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your post have to go through some sort of internal review before you were allowed to publish it? I find it weird that you're allowed to blog, let alone blog about the NSA.

See bottom of post: This essay was deemed UNCLASSIFIED and approved for public release by the NSA's office of Pre-Publication Review on 11/21/2013 (PP 14-0081).

Hmmm... where do we find out about all the CLASSIFIED blog posts? NSA internal forums? Any place where there's a summary of these reviews as metadata, hence leaving the content "CLASSIFIED" ? Who is watching the watchers?

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#88

Post by md224 »

kabdib wrote: post #32

"Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization." Huh, so: - My best friend's dad was a spy in the CIA - During the 70s and 80s my dad worked with Russian scientists (also ones from Poland and other Communist Bloc countries). Ecology stuff, mostly. - I've been in…

> "Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization."

This really is a key quote. Even if OP's assertions about the NSA are totally correct, even if all security protocols are followed to the letter, the problem still remains that they have a tremendous amount of power that can be used to target anyone deemed an enemy of the state.

I think a lot of contention on this issue revolves around how much you trust the government to appropriately designate enemies of the state. Many people believe the government is responsible about this, and that it will only go after people who a reasonable person would consider "dangerous." The problem, of course, is that the United States doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record of appropriately focusing its wrath:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

(And yes, I know COINTELPRO was FBI, not NSA... I believe it's still an instructive example of government overreach.)

Anyone who defends the NSA on the grounds that it only targets those who are worthy of targeting needs to convince me that another COINTELPRO will never happen. I would actually welcome such an argument, since it would make me feel a whole lot better about this.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#89

Post by lucb1e »

This is interesting to read, but I have one very important question:

Why is a distinction made between US and non-US people? Why do some systems automatically ignore all US IP addresses?

What makes me a potential criminal, and Mr. Smith not? Why can he read my email without a court order, but not from someone from Nebraska? Why does my physical location, or proxy server for that matter, matter?

I think the only reason is because it's simply in the US law, so it doesn't really say much. It's just one of those things that are the way they are. But then...

why does he keep bringing it up as "you shouldn't be worried because we don't look at data from the US"... if I'm not from the US? Does this mean I should be worried that he is really reading my email if it has certain keywords? I could become an intelligence target because of keywords or activism in certain groups, merely because I'm not using a US-based proxy server?

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#90

Post by colinbartlett »

kabdib wrote: post #32

"Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization." Huh, so: - My best friend's dad was a spy in the CIA - During the 70s and 80s my dad worked with Russian scientists (also ones from Poland and other Communist Bloc countries). Ecology stuff, mostly. - I've been in…

You have a great point, and the TL;DR of OP's entire post is "Unless you're doing something wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Which is the slimmest argument I ever hear in favor of these pervasive civil rights violations.

I've never been a terrorist, never given any information to a foreign enemy, hell, I've barely ever even broken the law. But I do have a personal interest in Russia, speak Russian, and have been to Russia 14 times.

Am I on a list somewhere? Maybe I have done "something wrong" in the eyes of some automated, arbitrary algorithm that's connecting the dots of US citizens around the globe?

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