Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

schneier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 145 posts

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#41

Post by yarou »

fit2rule wrote: post #35
ForHackernews wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A truly free people don't keep secrets. > What the NSA 'should be' is a National Communications Agency, wherein all harmful human activity they observe are communicated - to all and sundry! Openly! Publicly! Without any barrier to delivering full awareness - for all! This is ridiculous hyperbole. There are all kinds of legitimate secrets: trade secrets, private sexual kinks, personal financial or medical records, e…

The thing you must understand is that I do not actually consider a society with any investment in state secrecy to be actually functioning. Actually, a society ruled by secrets is little more than a mafia, playing charades. But I see you are limiting your viewpoint to 'what is real' and not to 'what could be done differently about the situation'. That's okay with me, to 'keep it real'. But I have no desire to live in…

Ok, here's an experiment for you. Why don't you broadcast every single detail of your life, every minute of it, even the parts you don't want others to see? If you don't, you must be hiding something and be committing crimes against humanity. This is how your argument reads.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#42

Post by cdash »

bri3d wrote: post #31
mahyarm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the amount of NSA staffers and people who have clearance being well above that number, really?

"Clearance" isn't supposed to be some magic card that lets someone go find every document marked with their level of "clearance." It's just a permission to receive knowledge marked with that level of "clearance" as necessary to do one's job. NSA staffers have defined roles and are given information on a need-to-know basis. Obviously the Snowden leaks proved that at least for a sysad, the technical component of the ne…

So instead the people who make our laws should be blind to the results of those laws or anything that is happening outside of the laws they have written.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#43

Post by shmerl »

This could be almost hilarious if it wasn't so sad. The Congress has to be briefed by someone with access to leaked documents to get an idea what a government agency is doing, because the later "is not forthcoming".....

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10

Imagine that the NSA was only doing legitimate, useful, necessary, highly secret things (humor me here). Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release. So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary. But who are these representatives Schneier briefed? Are they on the Intelligence Committee? If so, and they stil…

> So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary.

No, its not. At least, not in any principle grounded in the Constitution and the rule of law.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#45

Post by fit2rule »

yarou wrote: post #41
fit2rule wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you must understand is that I do not actually consider a society with any investment in state secrecy to be actually functioning. Actually, a society ruled by secrets is little more than a mafia, playing charades. But I see you are limiting your viewpoint to 'what is real' and not to 'what could be done differently about the situation'. That's okay with me, to 'keep it real'. But I have no desire to live in…

Ok, here's an experiment for you. Why don't you broadcast every single detail of your life, every minute of it, even the parts you don't want others to see? If you don't, you must be hiding something and be committing crimes against humanity. This is how your argument reads.

You've cut out an important bit: I am not governing anyone, nor do I hold the right to murder other human beings without repercussion.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#46

Post by maaku »

belluchan wrote: post #11
oceanstone wrote: post #9

Currently, the Intelligence Committees have special access to top secret information. Every member of Congress should have this.

With 535 of them not including staff, they really shouldn't. And clearance isn't enough, you also have to have a need to know. We just need a system of oversight that works well.

Congress is supposed to be the system of oversight.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#47

Post by mapt »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10

Imagine that the NSA was only doing legitimate, useful, necessary, highly secret things (humor me here). Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release. So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary. But who are these representatives Schneier briefed? Are they on the Intelligence Committee? If so, and they stil…

If Congress demands it? Yes, they can brief Congress on what they're doing. They were created by Congress and the career positions continue to exist at the pleasure of the Congress.

Further, there are procedures that exist to do so. Sealed sessions have been and are used for sensitive subjects to avoid inadvertent disclosures.

"All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes" are what we have. Their existence, their ability to speak freely without fear of prosecution, their diversity of opinions & constituencies, and their power to change things, function as a crucial check on the power of the executive branch. As representatives of the people it IS THEIR JOB to ensure that large secret programs that the public would never approve of, or which violate their oath to abide by the Constitution, are either reformed adequately or leaked, neutralized in some way, cancelled, or never funded in the first place. If they fail to do that for long enough because they've decided they're not able to, or because they don't want to know, then this all falls apart and becomes tyrannical the first time we get a President that wants power.

Notably, it ceases to be an option for Congress if the objectionable business is objectionable because it's a spy program that been turning Congressmen into blackmailed sycophants. That is hardly out of the scope of the technical power we have granted the NSA.

If they have created these programs and they've started to take on a life of their own, to the point that Congressional oversight and regulation is not adequate to control their activities (and yes, it appears that is what happened), then we have one option: Kill the tumor with radiation and a clean scalpel before it metastasizes further. Defund, publicize, interrogate, leak the objectionable programs, and end them. Maybe catch some loyal civil servants who were just following orders in the crossfire; But that's how it goes - they became an enemy, foreign or domestic, of the people and their Constitution. Too bad.

Sure, we might lose some tissue, but it's a damn sight better than letting a malignant cancer of our democratic system run wild.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#48

Post by AnimalMuppet »

KingMob wrote: post #40
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10

Imagine that the NSA was only doing legitimate, useful, necessary, highly secret things (humor me here). Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release. So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary. But who are these representatives Schneier briefed? Are they on the Intelligence Committee? If so, and they stil…

> Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release. Absolutely not. Keeping your (nominal) overseers appraised of your activities is not the same thing at all as informing the whole world in front of cameras. Your implicit argument is that Congress couldn't be trusted with the secrets the NSA would reveal. But this is countered b…

Congress (all of it) should be briefed on the overview. The details (some of which are, rightly, classified)? No way. That's pretty much the established way of dealing with classified information - all of Congress does not get to know the details.

> ...the NSA can't be trusted with the secrets it has.

Very true.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#49

Post by cwp »

davidw wrote: post #18
SEJeff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the level, they often have TEMPEST shielding aka faraday cages to prevent leakage of electromagnetic signals from computers and whatnot. (google Van Eck Phreaking for some ideas on why heh)

Or you could read Cryptonimicon, which is a lot slower, but more fun: http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/00605... Startups and science fiction... that book is a favorite of mine.

It's more historical fiction than science-fiction.

Re: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

#50

Post by strathmeyer »

rdl wrote: post #12

It makes sense that you need TS/SSBI and the correct SAP read-in to be inside a given SCIF belonging to a SAP; otherwise one might leave a recording device or otherwise damage the integrity of the SCIF. Plus, the SCIF would need to be cleared of all sensitive materials before you entered. Clearing a SCIF, letting someone inside, then recertifying it would probably be the correct choice; It could be done, of course, b…

I'm not sure if you understand. Bruce knows the top secret information because he read it in the leaks. The government officials can lose their security clearance for admitting to discussing top secret things with him.
Post reply on HN