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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#201

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.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#202

Post by BuschnicK »

adventured wrote: post #155
baddox wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems unlikely, considering that there is a massive incentive for private firms with tons of money to attempt to create such a storage technique. I doubt any government could beat them to the punch while keeping it a secret.

Especially given the NSA borrows an awful lot of its software inspiration from the private sector (eg Google's BigTable). There's little reason to think their hardware efforts would be dramatically more advanced if their software effort isn't. What the NSA has are three things: a lot of money coming in every year; a lot of relatively intelligent and highly skilled people working for it; and a license to do terrible t…

> What the NSA has are three things: a lot of relatively intelligent and highly skilled people working for it;

Do they though? I have sometimes wondered about this. In order to work for the NSA you have to make a lot of sacrifices. You have to be a US citizen. You have to pass a background check. You have to be contend with a government salary. You may never talk about your job (how does that look on a resume if you ever want to apply somewhere else? Prior experience: classified). You have to work in one of the few locations they operate in. You have to be a pretty hardcore patriot to put up with the things the NSA is doing and still be able to sleep at night.

In summary: it seems that the pool of potential employees should be severely limited. Hence my guess would be that the top talent ends up in the private sector instead of the NSA.

Or, just read the NSA quote from the movie Good Will Hunting again: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/quotes?item=qt0408102

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#203

Post by sarciszewski »

darksim905 wrote: post #126
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…

>There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% automates adversarial hacking in retaliation to detected attacks. Very Strangelove-ian, as the article says. I have peers who have known about that for a solid 6 months who talk about it. It's nothing new. The Gov't has been working on stuff like that, with stuff like that & have those ideas at the core of everything they do for years.

Who are these peers of yours? ;]

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#204

Post by meowface »

toyg wrote: post #44
nabla9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NSA started to move towards "two-man rule" system where system administrators work in pairs when accessing servers with highly classified information only after Snowden leaks. When you know that Russia and China have good track record of long running human intelligence operations in the US, this looks like really gigantic security lapse. They are not stupid and they must have been discussing it. There must have been…

> 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 numbers may be off, but China and Russia likely each have at least 1 source in NSA.

And I'm sure the US has 1 or more sources in many other countries' signals intelligence agencies, too.

We would only ever learn about that if there's a CIA leak/whistleblower, though.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#205

Post by peterwwillis »

tinco wrote: post #195
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…

People are reading too much into my comment, then. I didn't imply anything, actually - I made a comparison and provided no detail that could lead a conclusion, other than the idea that he wants to be visible, and questioning that decision.

Your first reason doesn't make sense because all the other leaks by secret leakers have caused uproar and changes, so a person behind them isn't necessary, clearly.

Your second reason doesn't make sense because as long as nobody finds out who you are, they can't kill you. Other leaks in the past have been done with anonymity. And honestly, they'll rendition him regardless of the public outcry because he's broken the law.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#206

Post by Shivetya »

yardie wrote: post #127
cyorir wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Considering the fact that the US was completely caught off guard by the scope and effectiveness of ISIS I have to question the effectiveness of SIGINT programs like the NSA. I have to assume honestly that these programs outlandish budgets are not for tracking terrorists but to control the domestic populace. I must disagree with this interpretation. I think that only the American public and (some) American media were…

A terrorist organisation has established a caliphate state in a country the US formerly occupied and control. If they are being coy about it they must love taking pie in the face. It doesn't look like it, that is a fact. The US doesn't have an answer to these guys. There is no upside to us losing influence in a region to a terrorist organisation and then letting them embed themselves as a valid government. How did th…

Consider we the public do not know all the details nor do we know the thinking of the defense department all we can do is arm chair quarterback.

for all we know the effect ISIS is having may have been predicted and even worse, allowed to play out. From a military standpoint, they are burning off manpower and munitions that would otherwise be directed towards elements we want to protect or have interests in. Until that changes, like with all those refugees recently, I doubt we would act.

Lately US foreign policy seems vindictive rather than friendly. As in, when someone does not treat the Administration how they think they deserve or do not do what it wants the Administration gets petty.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#207

Post by alsetmusic »

Dolimiter wrote: post #193
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Can't speak for anyone else, but I haven't been given any solid reasons to discredit things Snowden has brought to light, except by parties whose best interest is to undercut him. He may have got things wrong on a small or large scale and could have deliberately falsified information, but the evidence to suggest this is currently lacking. The NSA, on the other hand, has been shown to operate with questionable ethics repeatedly. For the moment, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt over them.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#208

Post by billyhoffman »

e0m wrote: post #137

This mentioned the NSA's "Mission Data Repository" in Bluffdale, Utah. They mentioned it could hold 1 yottabyte of data. Let's put into perspective 1 yottabyte: All Gmail accounts (~500 million users * 10GB/user = ~5000 PB) + All Facebook photos (~2 billion users * 1GB/user = ~2000 PB) + All of Netflix's videos (1-5 PB) + Library of Congress (10-30 PB) + Wikipedia (0.0005 PB) = ~7000 PB = 7 Exabytes. = 0.0007% of 1 Y…

Backblaze wrote an article last year where, based on the government agencies that have expressed interested in building their own Storage Pods, including the CIA, they conclude:

"So does the NSA store surveillance data on Backblaze Storage Pods?

We don’t know for sure and certainly the NSA is certainly not publishing their storage architecture. However, between the multiple government agencies using and exploring Backblaze Storage Pods and the pods characteristics as highly-dense, cost-efficient, and open source systems, certainly makes them a very likely candidate." [1]

[1] - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/is-the-nsa-using-backblaze-st...

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#209

Post by [deleted] »

tokenadult wrote: post #15

I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken…

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#210

Post by stephengillie »

tokenadult wrote: post #15

I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken…

The "cute" format of the article is easily defeated by Sending it to Kindle :D
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