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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#191

Post by jsmthrowaway »

Dolimiter wrote: post #188
adityab wrote: post #18

Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown: 1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great. 2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% autom…

NO Please, I read Hacker News for intelligent discourse, away from Reddit-type nonsense. There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the NSA hacked the Syrian core router. Snowden was passing on office gossip which he heard. Why isn't that fact mentioned? Because it doesn't suit the cultural narrative?

As a user of both Reddit and HN, I have much more fulfilling conversations on Reddit in some areas, more fulfilling conversations on HN in some areas. In general, however, Reddit is typically a far more positive experience. The proof is in the pudding, right here: you've haughtily stated that HN is more intelligent, and come now, how is that even remotely an intelligent thing to say? I contribute to Reddit on a daily basis and generally it's an improvement to my day, such as organizing something worthwhile, learning something, or sharing knowledge with an eager listener. Whenever I contribute here, I generally end up in a bad mood because it's just a quest to be more right than someone else. My comments are far more spaced out here.

Yesterday on Reddit we had a nice, enriched conversation about BGP with loads of young people learning things due to the routing table issue[1], including a comment on which $20 was spent to say "thank you." When's the last time a bunch of teenagers developed an interest in network engineering based upon a comment thread on Hacker News? Exactly. They're more likely to get better at arguing about minutiae here.

The real difference between HN and Reddit is that on Hacker News, you are not discouraged from downvoting opinions with which you disagree. I recall pg saying he considered that fine. Combined with graying out of comments almost immediately, with the first downvote, this means groupthink is basically encouraged. Even though most folks disregard Reddiquette, it is clearly stated that you shouldn't downvote opinions simply because you don't like them, and should instead take contributing to the discussion into account. I've found in some of the smaller, tighter-knit communities, discussion is extremely healthy, respectful, and accommodating to all sides. I don't even bother on gender in tech threads here, but I've soaked days into them on Reddit, learning from my peers and comparing notes.

This has been going on for ages, "oh, no, HN is turning into Reddit," you should be so lucky to be as positive as several of those communities. It's a tired meme. I come to HN to read valley opinions without Reddit slapping, so can I get my wish if you get yours? Just forget Reddit exists if it bothers you so much.

---

Now, then, that off my chest:

As for your point, at this point, Snowden has no motivation to lie. The article says he was told by an intelligence officer. This could have been a briefing and he might have further knowledge of the operation, or it might have been watercooler, we don't know, but the context of the revelation was indeed disclosed by the article's author.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2dcol3/the_interne...

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#192

Post by jtzhou »

logfromblammo wrote: post #56
toyg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that for every whistle blower there is two spies who spy for Russia or China That's an exaggeration, IMHO. This is not the Cold War, where many actors were moved by ideological considerations that crossed national borders (like the Cambridge Five, for example). Nowadays, national and cultural lines are extremely well drawn, so motivations for "traitors" boil down to money and/or blackmail, which are usu…

The Chinese spies are not in the NSA. They're in the Beltway Bandit and Silicon Valley companies, copying the source code for the drivers used in industrial machinery and weapons systems. They are smart enough to make spying into a profitable business instead of just a mechanism to move tax dollars to the right people. And with respect to using it as a tool of oppression, we simply don't have anything new to teach th…

There are plenty more hard-working, tax-paying Chinese engineers and high skilled workers making up for the occasional spying incident. And the high-earning engineers pay much more in taxes to help fund the American counterespionage programs. It seems a worthy trade for US businesses.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#193

Post by Dolimiter »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #191
Dolimiter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO Please, I read Hacker News for intelligent discourse, away from Reddit-type nonsense. There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the NSA hacked the Syrian core router. Snowden was passing on office gossip which he heard. Why isn't that fact mentioned? Because it doesn't suit the cultural narrative?

As a user of both Reddit and HN, I have much more fulfilling conversations on Reddit in some areas, more fulfilling conversations on HN in some areas. In general, however, Reddit is typically a far more positive experience. The proof is in the pudding, right here: you've haughtily stated that HN is more intelligent, and come now, how is that even remotely an intelligent thing to say? I contribute to Reddit on a daily…

What confuses me is that you agree with my point, that there is no evidence whatsoever for the Syrian allegation, it is heresay.

So why don't you also complain that everyone is discussing it as fact?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#194

Post by tinco »

jtzhou wrote: post #192
logfromblammo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese spies are not in the NSA. They're in the Beltway Bandit and Silicon Valley companies, copying the source code for the drivers used in industrial machinery and weapons systems. They are smart enough to make spying into a profitable business instead of just a mechanism to move tax dollars to the right people. And with respect to using it as a tool of oppression, we simply don't have anything new to teach th…

There are plenty more hard-working, tax-paying Chinese engineers and high skilled workers making up for the occasional spying incident. And the high-earning engineers pay much more in taxes to help fund the American counterespionage programs. It seems a worthy trade for US businesses.

It's not a trade. Those hard-working, tax-paying Chinese engineers would still come to the U.S., and U.S. companies would still gladly pay them for their services if the Chinese government did not embed espionage agents within them.

Neither the companies nor the Chinese engineers profit from this arrangement.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#195

Post by tinco »

peterwwillis wrote: post #78

Can someone remind me why Snowden became a public figure in the first place? The second leaker is anonymous and practically invisible, and here Snowden is, constantly getting more press. It's like he wants to be as visible as possible while other leakers want the opposite. Edit: Can somebody tell me what was downvote-worthy about this comment? This is getting ridiculous.

You are downvoted because you imply Snowden was not wise for becoming a public figure, and it looks like you think he didn't want to be as visible as possible. This is exactly opposite to his strategy.

He wants to be visible as much as possible for two reasons.

The first is that this is the way for him to make the release of documents as effective as possible, something which he has been very succesful at.

The second is that being in the public eye makes it more difficult for organisations to lock him up or assassinate him quietly. The same reason why you'd arrange to meet up with a stranger at a busy public location.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#196

Post by belorn »

tptacek wrote: post #185
belorn wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a french governemnt agency put a exploit in a nuclear reactor, and a bug caused a meltdown inside the US, should the US declare war on france? let me ask your question with an other question: How many lives can a spy agency kill until it is no longer acceptable?

What?

The job of spies around the world is to infiltrate infrastructure. The intelligence value of knowing how much power is being produce, and the option to turn them off in case of war is of high military value.

So let say the French intelligence service decide to plant one on a nuclear power plan in the US. Sadly however it has a bug which goes off and partial shuts down the reactor. A meltdown happens, killing a few thousands and irradiate the surroundings.

Do you go to war over this? Would you classify it as an attack, a accident, or a act of war?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#197

Post by ibisum »

This question: "Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government’s domestic surveillance programs?" .. hasn't it already been answered by now? Snowden did what he did because he feels the American people have been betrayed by their out of control government. He's said it enough times now for it to be perfectly clear.

Is this just lazy journalism?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#198

Post by trevelyan »

cmdkeen wrote: post #117
scrollaway wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This school playground logic of "it's ok because they started it" sickens me. OK. I get it; espionage is a reality and only espionage can deal with it. But for god sake there's people in here commenting that Snowden is a traitor because he leaked information that didn't directly concern the american people. Really, now. Compare those two situations: "A group of hackers have targeted Syrian ISPs and, in an attempt to…

Espionage and intelligence are vital if you want to do anything like the current relief operation in Iraq. In Syria there was an ongoing international effort to stop the use of, and then secure, chemical weapons. You need effective intelligence in order to do that. A 10 minute internet outage is an awful lot less bad than what happens when a human intelligence asset gets caught by the kind of actors involved in Syria…

Have you read the Seymour Hersh piece on Syria?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-an...

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#199

Post by walshemj »

tacotime wrote: post #190
walshemj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pro Wi-Fi gear will do that already out of the box you can set up an AirNet system with spare AP's that act as trackers and aggressor nodes to kill rouge ap's or host's

Yeah but you probably can't afford the gear/internet connection it would take to bring a Russian hospital to its knees whereas the NSA could probably bring every Russian hospital to their collective knees before any human knew what was happening.

Actually the airwave controllers was a few k and the ap's are 1 k or so and any civilian can buy this stuff probably of of ebay

Find the conduits that provide service open up the appropriate manhole drop some diesel and packing peanuts in light an retire to a safe distance.

one cold also sabotage the onsite generators with suger and drop their link to the grid.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#200

Post by oskarth »

scrollaway wrote: post #108
devindotcom wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting intelligence out of a country in the middle of a civil war, in a powderkeg of a region, seems pretty critical to me. We also have spies and malware installed all over the world, and the world is doing its best to spy on and infiltrate us. This is the reality of espionage, intelligence, and counter-intelligence.

This school playground logic of "it's ok because they started it" sickens me. OK. I get it; espionage is a reality and only espionage can deal with it. But for god sake there's people in here commenting that Snowden is a traitor because he leaked information that didn't directly concern the american people. Really, now. Compare those two situations: "A group of hackers have targeted Syrian ISPs and, in an attempt to…

> I call BS. Some people here either lack the most basic critical thinking skills, or are NSA shills.

Rightly so. And both of those are true. Thinking clearly is expensive for any individual, and shills are cheap for NSA.

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