GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance

I'm more surprised that NSA didn't already have programs to map the Internet, given how long nmap has been around.

However it has the key words N, S, and A so let's just assume it's something sinister and evil.

I don't see where blockfinder is actually reaching out and pinging servers to see what's up where. blockfinder seems to be downloading well known data sources as to where IPs are. The project the government is being accused of doing is essentially running a distributed nmap along with geo information.

At some point a 3 letter agency got a large sum of money and was told "here, gather intelligence". So they did. Hired people, poured money into projects, training, equipment, contractors, promotions. All this wrapped in secrecy and hidden in its own world. Joe Schmo head of department X heading cellphone baseband radio firmware hacks will make sure to lobby for his department and tell everyone how there are all these terrorists everywhere running around discussing dirty bomb plans over cell phone conversation, and only his department can save the world. Does he care about the world? No, but he cares about getting more recognition, more money, a larger budget, more people under him and so on.

Every time something like a terrorist attack, war, defections, leaks happened the tendency is not to evaluate, scale down and reconsider where they are headed. But to ask for more budget, more equipment, more projects. Basically double down.

So it is not that there is a cabal conspiring to hold us down that meets in a dark basement some place. But rather the constraints and rules present, if not actively thought against will lead to this.

Another element in this is that those that might disagree with how things are run, don't get to rise high enough to the top to make a difference. Here we had Binney, Snowden and a few anonymous leakers. But it is not like they could have reason to the top in the administration to make a change from within so to speak. To steer the agency on a Constitutional path. So the top if full of those who believe in doing things the same way they are already being done.

Deregulation in the sense of stripping very specific regulations designed to prevent exploitation are typically good for the owners of capital and bad for everyone else. Examples include the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (Led to Savings & Loan calamity), the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (Led to GFC), California's attempts to deregulate the energy market (Led to Enron and the energy crisis). It's easy to imagine many more scenarios where industries could be deregulated that would cause massive harm to most of society -- virtually all environmental controls fall into this category.

Some of those scenarios could have been prevented if more facets had been deregulated, but they weren't so we lost trillions of dollars in real value and drove debt through the roof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregul...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis