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The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

arstechnica.com

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Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#41

Post by bakhy »

spindritf wrote: post #26
bakhy wrote: post #5

The same offensive narrative repeats itself. - The government is bulk collecting data on foreigners. - Meh... - They're also incidentally spying on US citizens in the processs. - SAY WHAT?! If the USA could try to acknowledge the human rights of non-US citizens, that would be really nice.

This approach makes perfect sense in a democratic country where people are the sovereign. That's like an intelligence service spying on their own king. It subverts the whole system in ways that spying on foreigners doesn't. It's not about human rights.

It is about human rights. "All men are created equal."

Of course the US government must only bow to its own people, and only US citizens can lead its policy, that is perfectly understandable. But we all deserve basic human rights and a country that is one of their biggest champions should, for the sake of its credibility, not ignore that!

It would be ideal if some oversight existed for ALL such surveillance. With allied countries, the US should try to work with their governments. With adversaries, it's reasonable to have more relaxed rules. But just bulk collecting data of all non-citizens, treating us all with the same lack of respect of our human rights, is not cool.

Perhaps the US government actually does do all this as I described, and cooperates with allied governments. Then it is just the US media and public that leave the impression like they don't give a fuck about the human rights of anyone other than US citizens... Not cool.

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#42

Post by vidarh »

XorNot wrote: post #24
lotsofmangos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you find any information on the internals of the NSA that isn't hearsay from a disgruntled ex-employee? Current employees who are happy and fulfilled in their work in the security services don't tend to say all that much to the press.

The structure of every single one of these stories is a single slide or page or quote, containing maybe less then 50 words maximum. From there, wild speculation then goes on to breathlessly exclaim about what this really proves, while failing to actually support any of the assertions. For good measure toss in some wilful blindness about the point of surveillance, mechanics of law enforcement, collective action proble…

The very article linked to here directly contradicts your claim that "The structure of every single one of these stories is a single slide or page or quote, containing maybe less then 50 words maximum."

The article cites statements from and interviews with 9-10 separate sources, quoting several of them at length, and combines that with additional quotes from government source materials.

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#43

Post by mpweiher »

toyg wrote: post #7

You can't make this stuff up. According to TFA: 1. CIA created black propaganda in USSR linking Soviets and international terrorists to foment dissent in Russia. 2. Somebody picked it up from outside and wrote a book about Soviet-terrorism links. 3. CIA director read the book, took it seriously, freaked out, lobbied for more powers. 4. CIA and NSA got more powers. It's clearly not the first time in history that an in…

As retold by Adam Curtis in the excellent BBC three-parter "The Power of Nightmares":

3a. CIA people told new director, "er, boss, that was actually us".

3b. CIA director does not believe his own people.

And of course the whole "Team B" episode (Rumsfeld etc.), where the complete lack of evidence that the Soviets had was reinterpreted to mean they MUST OBVIOUSLY HAVE and perfect secrecy, otherwise how could we not have found any evidence?

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

http://vimeo.com/84414208

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

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#44

Post by DanielBMarkham »

bakhy wrote: post #41
spindritf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach makes perfect sense in a democratic country where people are the sovereign. That's like an intelligence service spying on their own king. It subverts the whole system in ways that spying on foreigners doesn't. It's not about human rights.

It is about human rights. "All men are created equal." Of course the US government must only bow to its own people, and only US citizens can lead its policy, that is perfectly understandable. But we all deserve basic human rights and a country that is one of their biggest champions should, for the sake of its credibility, not ignore that! It would be ideal if some oversight existed for ALL such surveillance. With all…

I pay my government to spy on people in other countries to make sure they are not going to hurt me. And, more to the point, they aren't going to put in motion things that are could conceivably hurt me or those I care about.

I hate the security state, but I'm okay with that. We've got hundred of millions of people here. There are billions of people in the world. It makes sense to me to spy on all the folks in other countries. I don't see how else you would honestly do a good job of governing.

Spying or digging into the affairs of the people who are voting to make choices in a democratic society? Screw that.

There is a really good reason we separate foreign intelligence from domestic intelligence. The moves the U.S. made after 9-11 to tear down the walls were extremely bad.

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#45

Post by Padding »

The real issue here is that the public has no control over the spying. Imho, many would probably be fine with other people listening in on their phone calls, or going over their browsing history, if the only effect of that would be terrorists getting caught.

The problem is that currently there is too much potential for the surveilance data to be comercialized or abused for trivial legal matters.

I think much of the debate could be settled by alowing the public to scrutinize the surveillance process, and putting any abuse of the data (i.e. its usage in non-terror-related situations) under extordinarily humiliating punishments (like denationalization).

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#47

Post by themartorana »

ZoFreX wrote: post #22
tinco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for non-US countries nothing has changed. It's been a publicly known fact that the US spies on non-US citizens by monitoring internet traffic for over 20 years. Ask any hacker aged over 24. There's simply hardly anything worth being surprised about as a foreign national. If you asked anyone in The Netherlands 10 years ago if they thought their e-mail on Hotmail or GMail was monitored by authorities in the U.S…

Hacker aged over 24 here. Sure, we all knew. But it's one thing to "know", it's another entirely to have tangible proof. Whenever I spoke about this to people 10 years ago the reaction was "there's no proof, you're paranoid, you're a conspiracy theorist". Now we have proof the reaction is "so what, everyone knows that, I have nothing to hide". There's some serious goalpost shifting happening here.

Isn't that one of the worst things to come of the Snowden leaks so far? There aren't many conspiracy theories I can, with full conviction, point at and laugh anymore.

Maybe reptile people in government. But otherwise...

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#48

Post by mikeash »

This quote struck me:

"After the United States faced another existential threat in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks...."

I'm amazed at how accepting the media is of the threat of terrorism. That statement implicitly compares al Qaeda to the Soviets. The Soviets who, if they had had a bad day and decided to say "screw it" and wipe out capitalism for good could have done so within an hour. A country which, at any moment, could have pressed a button and killed a billion people. (And to be fair, the US of course had/has the same ability.)

This is being compared to a loose organization of fanatics where the worst-case scenario was pretty much, "What if they crashed the fourth plane into the White House and killed the President!"

I think we need an enemy. The country is built on it. After four decades of the Cold War, we needed something to put in the "USSR" slot. Terrorists are a terrible fit, but it's the best we could find.

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#49

Post by Dolimiter »

XorNot wrote: post #37
shiven wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pray, share it if you have anything that can disprove the wild speculation. Hysterical speculation is to be expected when dealing with the doings of an arm of the government that is willfully shrouded in secrecy. The leaks so far have only confirmed what was being called "tin-foil hattery" until pre-Snowden. If you are so concerned about subduing rampant speculation, how about showing up with proofs to the contrary i…

Because if you don't tow the party line on HN you'll be downvoted no matter what. Frankly, go check my post history on the matter if you want. The only topic on which I manage to accumulate downvotes is Snowden/NSA related. Doesn't much matter what the content or argument or tone is or was. Though I do chuckle at "disprove the speculation".

"The only topic on which I manage to accumulate downvotes is Snowden/NSA related."

Indeed, I got -40 karma on this story. Dissenting opinions are not tolerated on NSA stories.

Therefore people who do not agree with the HN consensus "self-censor", and a vicious circle is created, with only a single narrative displayed.

Re: The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

#50

Post by XorNot »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #39
XorNot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't tow the party line on HN you'll be downvoted no matter what. Frankly, go check my post history on the matter if you want. The only topic on which I manage to accumulate downvotes is Snowden/NSA related. Doesn't much matter what the content or argument or tone is or was. Though I do chuckle at "disprove the speculation".

I had a look at what you had greyed out, lets see... not trusting aspects of textsecure keeping encryption on all the time argument about billing bad reviews on yelp not liking lighttable ok, whether there is a need to hide political speech from the NSA. I don't think your claim stands up of it being the only topic. edit - why are you bothering making claims like this in a medium where the source material is immediat…

Of 5 examples you managed to get 3/5 having something to do with the NSA or related matters (encryption, which got explicitly tied to the NSA in that exact comment).

I would question why you think this is a "gotcha" given that I know how far back my post history goes (further then the initial Snowden disclosures for example), and more or less gave up on these topic-threads for exactly this reason.

Which circles around to my original point: these threads turn into echo chambers because who wants to spend karma on that?

People are instead ironically aggressive in silencing dissent.

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