The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google • Hacker News Board

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#91

Post by omouse » Wed, Aug 27, 2014, 3:26 AM UTC

Jimbotron wrote: post #49

MalcolmDiggs wrote: post #3

It's kind of remarkable that they kept the lid on this on long as they did. With so many local/loosely-related agencies involved, I'm surprised somebody didn't leak this much sooner.

Yes, I find it VERY hard to believe that this went on and nobody mentioned it at all. Not one disgruntled employee, not anyone mentioning it to a friend at a bar? No way.

I wouldn't be surprised if they talked about it but if it's rebranded it could be seen as "Yet Another Tool That IT Provides". People talk about their favourite consumer apps, but only ever complain about the shit they're forced to use at work. In this case, the tool is working fine so there's no need to sing its praises. If it was a shitty search engine, they'd be telling everyone "we collect all this data and for the life of me, we can't even search it! what's the point of violating the constitution at all?!"

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#92

Post by scott_karana » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 12:50 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #77

scintill76 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's a line even Snowden wouldn't cross. It risks those tools falling into the "wrong hands", and is the most extreme way he could be said to be aiding terrorists by alerting them of our intelligence capabilities (which he is already accused of.)

Why wouldn't Snowden cross that line, given all the other ones he crossed? I mean, blowing PRISM by itself was far more than "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities", so he's already crossed the Rubicon on that topic.

Revealing the existence isn't anywhere the same as revealing the guts of its operations, which for all we know could allow compromise or direct access.

PRISM is bad enough in US hands, but can you imagine if Oceania/Arstotzka got their hands on the data? (irrelevant countries as to not have to argue that)

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#93

Post by scintill76 » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 3:25 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #77

scintill76 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's a line even Snowden wouldn't cross. It risks those tools falling into the "wrong hands", and is the most extreme way he could be said to be aiding terrorists by alerting them of our intelligence capabilities (which he is already accused of.)

Why wouldn't Snowden cross that line, given all the other ones he crossed? I mean, blowing PRISM by itself was far more than "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities", so he's already crossed the Rubicon on that topic.

How was exposing PRISM worse? I'll admit to being biased in his favor, and somewhat ignorant of what exactly was disclosed and how it could help the enemy, so I welcome some input on that. My starting position is that I don't see how knowing that, say, Yahoo is tapped, has changed the bad guys' day-to-day operations to the degree that you could reasonably say Snowden significantly aided them. Or even if it did, it falls under the category of 'merely' "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities" which we both agree was a "line Snowden crossed."

Anyway, however damaging it was, my point is that some slides with a bunch of code names, "data-sharing partners", hints at legal justifications and the bureaucracy set up to carry this out, and maybe some high-level descriptions of how the systems work, is a lot different than releasing the actual code that does it, private keys to the servers involved, etc.

It's not like graph theory and data mining are elite subjects only NSA knows, so some high-level descriptions aren't going to help the bad guys much. Handing over complete source code would.