> I have a very high opinion of my former coworkers.
Well then, problem solved.
The NSA: An Inside View
221–230 of 323 posts
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#222I don't know if Loren is sincere, or if he's part of a disinformation campaign. Either way, I don't believe his reassurances. I think NSA surveillance is first and foremost a tool to control the American citizenry. The next Martin Luther King, Ralph Nader, or Daniel Ellsberg isn't gonna stand a chance.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
pera: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911100 > Really? why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? why should we listen to anything you say when historically, part of your strategy is to try to influence the PoV of society || specifics groups? OP is not the NSA. OP was an employee for a couple years and can only comment about what he specifically kn…
Another NSA muppet to the rescue. First one was a geek - easy to beat up. It was pretty quickly escalated to someone from PR dept - a fact twisting arrogant smooth talker. You guys are pathetic and frightening. Better stay quiet if you don't want people to hate you even more.
Did this PR drone hack HN to plant his comment [1] from "745 days ago" too?
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe the NSA should be giving data (or even just "tips") on citizens to LE. It's either illegal or done under a law I don't know about. Do you know what this is talking about? >FISA surveillance was originally supposed to be used only in certain specific, authorized national security investigations, but information sharing rules implemented after 9/11 allows the NSA to hand over information to traditional…
No, and I had not read that article, thank you. I do not know the law, if any exists, that allows that, although it violates most readings of the 4th Amendment.
The legal principle is that once the government legitimately comes into possession of evidence, it doesn't have to "pretend to have not seen it".
What this means is that if a given surveillance transcript is obtained legally (which is easy to do for foreign communications, even if a U.S. person is a party to the conversation), that it can be legally passed to LE. Once LE knows about it, they don't have to "close their eyes" to any U.S. nationals on the transcript, similar to how the police are not required to ignore evidence in plain sight (even if it wasn't listed specifically on the warrant).
By this route it is possible to pass incriminating evidence to LE about U.S. nationals even without a warrant, as long as one of the parties to the communication in question is actually a foreigner.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#225Thanks for posting what I'm sure you knew would be an unpopular opinion around these parts. Interesting read.
Braver man than I am, that's for sure. Someone even canceled their Kickstarter pledge for his mayo over it.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels like saying Bletchley Park just needed more diligent and loyal crib workers and they would have solved the Enigma. Without Turing and the Bombe where would we all be?
Yeah well back then we had actual opponents. North Korea are crackpots, and some fundamentalists prefer living with goats in caves to comfortable air travel, but never in a million years will those cranks be the threat that the Axis or even the Soviets were.
Obviously North Korea isn't near the threat of the Soviets/Axis, but I'd say they have a very real capability to destabilize, at the very least, the Korean Peninsula (non-violent dissolution), and at the most all of SE Asia (A nuclear attack/violent dissolution)
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#227"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…
Yeah, I suspect that if he named any actual members of Red Team that it would have been squelched almost instantly.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#228> The NSA is our best hope in this war Is this an inconvenient time to point out that we're technically not in a congressionally approved "war" with anyone?
A Congressional declaration of war would, by law, put an exceptional amount of wartime powers in the hands of one person, the President of the United States. For what are hopefully obvious reasons, Congress has not chosen to go through with that.
On the other hand, they have passed an "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" which is still current, authorizing military action in Afghanistan and wherever AQ or other terrorists groups might be found.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#229Well this comment thread went about as I expected it to go...
Lol, right. I thought the article was an interesting read anyway.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
North Korea surely has contacts with the rest of world, to deal with China, for instance.
Yes, but you don't copy all communications to try and find the astonishingly small number from the most closed-off country in the world. This is how the NSA gets smart people to build something they would never set out to build--an all powerful global snapshot of data . They tell you about North Korea and your radioactive future. You like big problems and give it your best effort, perhaps thinking that you had a smal…
I absolutely don't dispute that. I am merely pointing out that there is a small number of messages to intercept. The traffic with the AQ Khan network would be a good example. That said, no, it does not justify turning the world into a surveillance state.