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The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

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Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#141

Post by LionRoar »

sneak wrote: post #26
allochthon wrote: post #12

Honestly, I don't really care. The NSA can read whatever they want of mine. I've heard the arguments about how you should care, even if you don't have anything to hide. And I find them persuasive on one level and simultaneously unengaging on another. By contrast, the parallels to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and living in a turnkey fascist state are most unpersuasive. The one argument against what I've written that…

The protection from snooping government for law abiders isn't for humdrum people like you. It's for people working to make the world better who come under fire through no illegal activity of their own. Did you know the FBI put MLK under surveillance at the orders of Bobby Kennedy (then-Attorney General)? They didn't find evidence of crimes, so they threatened to publicize his extramarital affair if he didn't give up…

Yes, this! Exactly to the point. This is in my view THE argument against all-out snooping. It is about control, not about criminality.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#142

Post by JunkDNA »

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On one hand, the NSA exists for the express purpose of spying. That is their job. You can not like that the NSA is a spy organization and we can debate whether we should conduct spy operations as a society, but I'm not sure what exposing their methods in this level of detail does for advancing that debate. Did people expect them to be a spy organization that was incompetent? A group that makes crappy and obvious listening devices stamped with "Designed by the NSA in Maryland"? On the other hand, the cases of potential abuses and dragnet surveillance capturing everything indiscriminately are extremely worrying. I don't know how a free society can do all this spying in support of legitimate foreign policy goals and at the same time not grow into an out of control, unaccountable organization ripe for abuse.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#143

Post by collyw »

joelhaus wrote: post #71
ewoodrich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a subset of random people, and one OP is less concerned about having his credentials than random people as a whole.

an interesting question GP raises... Who would you be more worried about having access to your email account and why? a. NSA b. a random criminal (unaffiliated with government) For me, the answer is not even close, but I'm more interested in understanding how others on HN process this.

What leads you to believe that a and b are mutually exclusive? OK a has probably not been caught and charged with anything, but may well have committed criminal acts. Is there not a statistic that the average American commits 3 criminal acts a day without realizing it?

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#144

Post by enkephalin »

JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

> Did people expect them to be a spy organization that was incompetent?

i'm guessing most people thought that spying of US agencies was an activity that was carried out abroad, and aimed at real threats.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#145

Post by [deleted] »

JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

[deleted]

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#147

Post by salient »

digitalengineer wrote: post #124
netcan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think you need to go that far, with extreme examples of totalitarianism. I'm not American, so obviously I'm less emotionally involved. My view on it is that the US is not under any meaningful threat of terrorism. 9/11 was big, but on the scale of decades it is still far down the likelihood list of violent ways an American may be harmed. Murder, Rape and other assaults are a reality too, a far more likely…

Yes. Let's put the threat of terrorism in perceptive: In 2010, 13,186 people died in terrorist attacks worldwide, while 31,672 people were killed with firearms in America alone, reports CNN’s Samuel Burke. http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/15/more-americans-kill...

You can't even average that out, because the vast majority of those 13,000 "terrorist attacks", if true, are certainly inside countries where they are basically at war with each other. And in many of those countries, US contributes to the kill count, although I assume these reports don't count that as "terrorism", even as they blow up 15 people going to a wedding.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#148

Post by Touche »

JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

> I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point.

I disagree, the article implies that Apple might (probably?) is helping them with their spying. This is not a minor point for me. I think it's very important to expose which tech companies are betraying their customers, and conversely which are not.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#149

Post by salient »

JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

First off, I don't think anyone except "tinfoil hats" really imagined the scale of NSA spying. Who really thought the NSA would try to subvert the cryptographic standards they pretend to create to "secure systems"? Who really thought they'd go to US service and hardware companies and ask them to implement backdoors for them?

Also, there's a big difference between letting NSA protect US against Real Threats - real national security people-are-going-to-die threats, and spying not just on every single citizen on the planet (which includes corporate espionage), but on American citizens and companies, too.

Just like everyone has a little "evil" in them, without all of us being Hitler, the NSA can do a little bit of spying on important targets, without going 10/10 on the scale of evil spying.

So no, I really don't think "this is their job" or that "everyone knew they were doing this". I think the vast majority of people thought NSA would be reasonable with their spying.

I also hate it when people say, "didn't you see when they passed the Patriot Act? You should've expected this." Perhaps, but if you go back to when they passed it, they did it in literally hours, and if you watch Bush speak about it [1], he makes it sound as if they are only going to use it to spy on the terrorists' communications - not everyone's. Going by how fast they passed the bill, and how few details were offered, you can't really blame most people for "not knowing".

Heck, it was even called the "anti-terrorism bill" on TV, so I don't think people imagined that meant all of their communications are going to be swept up, because they were now thinking everyone is a potential terrorist (which is what "collecting it all" means) until proven otherwise by their systems.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRcfTakhFo

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#150

Post by sigzero »

Touche wrote: post #148
JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

> I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. I disagree, the article implies that Apple might (probably?) is helping them with their spying. This is not a minor point for me. I think it's very important to expose which tech companies are betraying their customers, and conversely which are not.

No, the article didn't imply that.

"Here’s a problem: I don’t really believe that Apple didn’t help them."

That is a bullshit statement. It is pure speculation without a SHRED of facts to back it up.

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