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The NSA: An Inside View

lorensr.me

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Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#281

Post by rl3 »

secthrowaway wrote: post #257
rl3 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about. I think it's fair to say most rank and file NSA employees are honest and actually do believe in their mission. The far scarier thought is how things may work at an extremely senior level (contractors included), where there's literally…

> That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Determining if a "selector" is tied to a U.S. person is actually a very subtle and very hard problem. Let's take a phone number +1 (212) 555-1234 Is this a US selector? It's a selector for a phone in the US, but that's not the same thing as a phone number tied to a US citizen. Let's say I'm following a senior North African pirat…

I agree completely.

However, my statement was not intended to be read in isolation, but in context of "domestic collection programs that intentionally capture the full contents of nearly all domestic communications within the United States." I was referring to the bulk interception and subsequent long-term retention of data on US persons.

The implication of my statement was: assuming this type of collection didn't exist, selectors related to potential US persons (for whatever reason) would simply return intercept data beginning from the time said selector was invoked.

Contrast that to the present, where selectors are capable of retroactively returning the sum total of a US person's digital (and by some extension physical) life for the past 5+ years.

It's commendable that the procedures for accessing the data of potential US persons are so stringent, but at the end of the day there is still an incredibly intimate and detailed picture of almost every single US citizen's private life being retained on a long-term basis.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#282

Post by jessedhillon »

walshemj wrote: post #278
ANH wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather intel analysts have some cognitive dissonance than have absolute certainty they are always justified in their actions.

Unlike a lot of HN commentators who blindly follow the herd (i expect to get a ton a dv's for that)

Seriously, you can't win. Here you have an actual former NSA employee giving a first-hand account of his time there -- and not only his account doubted for no reason other than failure-to-comply with known-biases and unverifiable journalism, but some guy is now providing psychological analysis of him as well!

Some know-nothing armchair psychologist who read the NYT is telling this guy -- who has made an honest effort to be utterly transparent -- that he's cognitively dissonant and that comment is going to receive a hundred votes because it makes people feel good about the things they think they know. It's not truth, just an exercise in mass delusion.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#283

Post by jjguy »

HN, I'm ashamed of you.

The comments in this thread (and every other Snowden-related revelation in the last six months) have made it clear you are incapable of appreciating the magnitude and complexity of this scope of issue. The comment threads have been dominated by narrow, small minded thinking, bereft of any considered thoughtfulness. I quit reading your comments on these posts long ago, because they were a worthless echo chamber of self-righteous arrogance. I thought maybe, perhaps, this post would elicit better discussion. I should have known better.

Even after six months, I don't yet have a well-formed opinion on the topic. It's incredibly complicated and encompasses considerations most of us can barely comprehend. In an essay on the topic, Mike Hayden (ex USAF General, ex NSA director, ex CIA director) said: [1]

    it takes a special kind of arrogance for this
    young man to believe his moral judgment
    on the dilemma suddenly trumps that of two
    (incredibly different) presidents, both houses
    of the U.S. Congress, both political parties,
    the U.S. court system and more than 30,000 of
    his co-workers.
The HN collective deserves the same chastisement.

I expect more of HN than I do a typical forum. I dismiss the "not like the old days" cynics. Please don't prove them right.

1 - http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/opinion/hayden-snowden-impact/

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#284

Post by dreamdu5t »

jonknee wrote: post #78
mercurial wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

TLDR Everyone IS a potential terrorist and ARE monitored.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#285

Post by tfigueroa »

jjguy wrote: post #283

HN, I'm ashamed of you. The comments in this thread (and every other Snowden-related revelation in the last six months) have made it clear you are incapable of appreciating the magnitude and complexity of this scope of issue. The comment threads have been dominated by narrow, small minded thinking, bereft of any considered thoughtfulness. I quit reading your comments on these posts long ago, because they were a worth…

Really? An appeal to authority?

Besides, even a child can point out when an emperor has no clothes.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#286

Post by Marbux »

@ "Every Agency employee goes through orientation, in which we are taught about the federal laws that govern NSA/US Cyber Command: Title 10 and Title 50. We all know that it's illegal to look at a US citizen's data without a court order. I use the term "look" deliberately: the Agency makes the distinction that looking at data is surveillance, while gathering it from locations outside the US is not. We gathered everything, and only looked at a tiny percentage of it. I am okay with this distinction both because I don't mind if my 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."

lorendsr has far too much confidence that what he was taught about the governing law is correct. The governing law is far broader than the two titles of the U.S. Code he cites. The 4th Amendment, for example, protects against not only warrantless searches but also warrantless seizures. That line is first crossed at the gathering point, not at the point that the data is viewed. Put another way, the Amendment prohibits warrantless gathering of the haystack that includes private communications, not just the warrantless search of that haystack for a given needle. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment And that is only one example of his legal naivete.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#287

Post by GVIrish »

felipeerias wrote: post #119
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…

The most extraordinary thing about Snowden is not that he took the documents: it is that he sacrificed his whole life to make them public. And this should make us scared. A guy like Snowden was extremely improbable, and yet he happened. So, what to think about the far more likely case of NSA employees taking extremely sensitive information and selling it privately? How many of those have there been already?

1000 times this. If Snowden could do what he did and the NSA doesn't even know what he took, it is inevitable that a hostile foreign government will infiltrate the NSA. It is also highly probable that there are people in the intelligence apparatus that are abusing their power in some way or another.

There have already been about a dozen cases in the NSA of 'LOVEINT' where employees were spying illicitly on love interests. From what I recall, all of those people volunteered that they were spying illegally on their own, none of them were caught by any internal review process.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#288

Post by jjguy »

tfigueroa wrote: post #285
jjguy wrote: post #283

HN, I'm ashamed of you. The comments in this thread (and every other Snowden-related revelation in the last six months) have made it clear you are incapable of appreciating the magnitude and complexity of this scope of issue. The comment threads have been dominated by narrow, small minded thinking, bereft of any considered thoughtfulness. I quit reading your comments on these posts long ago, because they were a worth…

Really? An appeal to authority? Besides, even a child can point out when an emperor has no clothes.

you consider that an appeal to authority? how about your complete disregard for his point.

thanks for re-enforcing my point.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#289

Post by ANH »

fche wrote: post #273
ANH wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If someone in the NSA abuses his powers, it is very likely that nobody will ever know. You mean, besides his family, friends, and loved ones when he loses his job and potentially ends up in prison. You're underestimating the amount of training and internal oversight that occurs.

... because this has happened how many times?

Folks have lost clearances and jobs. I don't know about prison time. But I do know the fear of these things happening is a motivating factor not to cross the line. But I'm just some guy...

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

Marbux wrote: post #286

@ "Every Agency employee goes through orientation, in which we are taught about the federal laws that govern NSA/US Cyber Command: Title 10 and Title 50. We all know that it's illegal to look at a US citizen's data without a court order. I use the term "look" deliberately: the Agency makes the distinction that looking at data is surveillance, while gathering it from locations outside the US is not. We gathered everyt…

> lorendsr has far too much confidence that what he was taught about the governing law is correct.

I'm not sure that's a justified assumption. In the quote you present, he explicitly notes that what he was taught is a distinction the Agency makes, not one written into the law, when he says (emphasis added): «I use the term "look" deliberately: the Agency makes the distinction that looking at data is surveillance, while gathering it from locations outside the US is not.»

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