71–80 of 295 posts
Domestic surveillance was controversial and surprising. Is a spy agency preparing ways to attack and cripple foreign infrastructure that unexpected or contentious?
In light of current revelations, it may or may not be all that surprising. Surprising or not though, it is most definitely contentious!
I can understand the support of Snowden for blowing the whistle on domestic spying, but how is this defensible?
What kind of idiot would ever want to stand on the wrong side in this world? We see that communication is not private, maybe every technical device could be used to spy on you and in a war against the USA you would not even see the enemy's soldiers. THIS is a reign of terror.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I think the Snowden revelations have harmed the NSA's reputation to the point where most people on HN just assume NSA is a bond-level villain. The NSA serves a purpose, they are meant to be prepared offensively and defensively for the USA's security, which includes the internet. I have no problems with the NSA's purpose and would prefer they continue to exist and prepare against threats to the country. I do b…
precisely, and this is why I'm starting to think that snowden has - at least - caused as much harm as good by his revelations. if he had stopped at revealing the domestic surveillance he would be an undisputed hero/patriot. but with all of these unnecessary leaks that does nothing but harm to national interest I can understand how others might view him otherwise.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they said some time ago that only 1% was published. So it would be impossible for Snowden himself to read everything and choose if it should be published.
I can understand the support of Snowden for blowing the whistle on domestic spying, but how is this defensible?
Consider, for example, whether you would be opposed to someone leaking information as to whether one of the nuclear powers had nuclear capability in excess of what was publicly known?
Oh, sure you can dance around the fact that the latter may be more of a violation of treaties, etc., but just because their are no treaties covering "cyber war" (correct me if I'm wrong), does not make it morally acceptable.
To be fair here, the NSA should very well be doing these things, for the purpose of attacking other states. The reason is very clear as the Russian attacks on Estonia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia ) demonstrate a clear need for defensive capability in this area, and where you have defence you end up needing offence. This persistent confusion between legitimate NSA operations such as pre…
I don't understand why there are so many comments saying that the NSA needs offensive digital capabilities. What valid reasons does the NSA have to ever be committing a cyber attack?
Along with threat deterrent.
I can't think of any good argument for why the US military should have no offensive capabilities in the digital realm. It'd be the equivalent of staying out of the skies when flight became possible.
In any war, the US is going to come under digital attack, and it should be fully capable of responding both defensively and offensively. Besides that, shutting down the power grid of a country you're at war with via digital means, sure beats doing it with hundreds of missiles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The NSA behaves very hostile against everyone not from the US. As an EU resident I think it is very important to have an idea on the lines the NSA is crossing to protect US citizens that might put me at risk.
But that puts it under espionage not "whistleblowing", we don't call a N. Korean scientist that defected to the west who spills light on N. Korea's nuclear program a whistleblower, we call him a defector and a spy. Intelligence Agencies act on the behalf of their respective nations, there is nothing surprising about the US spying on the EU and vice versa. As we already know the extent of the collection programmes the…
Fearmonger much?
So far my statistical risk to be killed in a train accident is significantly higher than being killed in a terrorist attack.
And somehow it has been this way since before the internet was even invented.
How did the internet make the terrorists suddenly so much more dangerous that we now need mass surveillance to defend against them?
Looking at the comments in support of the NSA here makes me suspect an astroturfing campaign is happening. Edit: I should add that my suspicion came from noticing that the vast majority of the comments when this was first posted seemed aligned in favor of the NSA's mission. It wasn't the presence of pro-NSA comments that was interesting but rather that these opinions were the overwhelming majority. This is, of course…
You're probably right. No need to consider the arguments made by people who don't agree entirely with a particular point of view, or even discuss it at all. They're obviously just shills. Edit: Much of the 'pro NSA' comments I see here seem merely to suggest that not everything the NSA does is evil, and not every disclosure is necessarily useful. As often happens in threads like these, any such comments are dismissed…
The other side of the debate has its own poorly reasoned comments. I haven't noticed many on this article yet, but they should arrive soon.
I doubt such comments are written by people with NSA connections, but their sudden appearance is odd. The only other subject that produces so many strongly opinionated, poor-quality comments is systemd.
There was a long interview with Snowden posted recently, which didn't make it to the frontpage. I guess because of Snowden penalty on HN and Snowden fatigue. Anyway, he kept repeating a point which is quite easy to understand for the public I think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8859606 And the reality is when it comes to cyber conflicts [...], we have more to lose. We spend more on research and development th…
There hasn't been any such penalty for many months. There used to be a weak penalty, which started during the period when there were hundreds of NSA/Snowden stories. But our intention was always to remove that once the quantity normalized, and so we did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you believe that NSA should be conducting economic espionage? There is a clear need for defense. But because of lack of oversight, NSA has overstepped its bounds in both foreign and domestic spheres. The other side of this argument, one made cogently by Snowden, is that we simply have more to lose by escalating the cyberwar.
Having offensive capabilities and actually utilizing such capabilities are two different things. You can acknowledge the need for the former alongside the dangers of the latter, just as you would with any standing military.
In information warfare, waiting until conflict begins is too late. The information you collect and systems you exploit prepare you for the conflict.
For example, country A wants to know about country B's new bomber years ahead of the conflict so they can design anti-aircraft defenses to stop it. Country B spends years gaining access to Country A's routers, servers, etc. so they can utilize them the moment conflict begins.
If you wait for conflict to begin to do these things, you will be much too late.