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New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

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Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#101

Post by anigbrowl »

markvdb wrote: post #90
fidotron wrote: post #16

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…

Are you a US citizen? How would you react if supposedly close US allies were bugging the White House, the US senate and AT&T? Repeatedly? Five Eyes, Echelon, Merkel, Belgacom, ...

I'm not a US citizen, but I presume that US allies which have the capability do unilaterally gather intelligence on the US.

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#102

Post by allendoerfer »

dthal wrote: post #7
ancarda wrote: post #4

> the only law that applies is the survival of the fittest. Is this such a problem? In a world where exploits are used to break infrastructure, isn't the best solution simply to build increasingly more secure code? If that won't solve the problem I don't know if legislation will. Right now a determined hacker can harm a company via the internet (e.g. Sony). Are laws really going to stop that from happening? If not, p…

I think you are exactly right. Any solutions to this have to be technical and largely defensive. Legal or diplomatic solutions will only bind parties that intend to follow the law. Counter-attacking and deterrence will fail if the attacker is not defending much of anything, so that approach might work against states and state-backed actors, but not against non-state actors.

> Legal or diplomatic solutions will only bind parties that intend to follow the law.

Simple rule of thumb: This argument is always false.

Our society is too complex. It is never about good guys vs. bad guys. It is mostly about money, who has the most and how laws can change incentives and prices.

It is the same with drugs, guns, atomic bombs and nearly every other topic were this argument is brought up. We need to get over this because it is just slowing us down.

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#103

Post by IBM »

hengheng wrote: post #92
fidotron wrote: post #16

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…

So I happen to be German, and obviously I don't have a say in what commands you guys give to your own secret services. But since this appeared in a German magazine, allow me to say this: given the track record of how you treat your alleged "allies", I don't feel comfortable seeing these developments. And I wouldn't ever trust anybody with these powers, least the nsa or even the US government. These people are still t…

It's a good thing for allies to spy on each other to understand intentions, as this article in Foreign Affairs argues.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140247/jennifer-sims/...

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#104

Post by [deleted] »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #86

Here's a story for you. I'm not a party to any of this. I've done nothing wrong, I've never been suspected of doing anything wrong, and I don't know anyone who has done anything wrong. I don't even mean that in the sense of "I pissed off the wrong people but technically haven't been charged." I mean that I am a vanilla, average, 9-5 working man of no interest to anybody. My geographical location is an accident of my…

[deleted]

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#105

Post by csandreasen »

pa7ch wrote: post #46
krapp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the interest of facilitating a open and fair discussion on the larger issue of state surveillance, I highly recommend checking out the 2014 Munk debates: http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/state-surveillance General Hayden and Glenn Greenwald are given fair time to discuss the issue and to give rebuttals to each other. Its much more informative then trying to parse HN comments to form an opinion about state survei…

For those who aren't Munk members, it's also available on C-SPAN[1]. I thought it was an entertaining debate, but not as good as I hoped it would be (I watched it live when it was first broadcasted). My memory is a little foggy, but as I recall, Glenn Greenwald went off on his usual 'the NSA is the epitome of evil and exists solely to invade your privacy' rants; Michael Hayden spent most of his time backtracking and focusing on where Greenwald was factually wrong rather than making his own argument; I didn't think Alan Dershowitz made a particularly convincing argument; and Alexis Ohanian made some greats points but was completely ignored by everyone else.

I personally enjoyed watching Jameel Jaffer (ACLU) square off against Chris Inglis (former NSA Deputy Director) at the Brookings Institute last year[2] - both sides had good arguments. For that matter, Benjamin Wittes (the guy moderating the debate) has had some good interviews on his blog[3] and podcast[4] as well - you don't see many outlets that will have James Comey (FBI director) one week followed by Chris Soghoian (ACLU) the next week.

[1] http://www.c-span.org/video/?319161-1/munk-debate-state-surv...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3KKEh2AS6E

[3] http://www.lawfareblog.com/

[4] http://www.lawfareblog.com/category/podcasts/

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#106

Post by SCHiM »

One thing to be said about the offence vs defence side of this story is that the adage the best defence is a good offence definitively applies here. It's so much easier to attack another system than defend your own. It's inherent to the way systems are set up:

A computer system has many services, programs and tasks running on it. Only one of these needs to contain a flaw for a system to be vulnerable, obviously this means that on a secure system everything must be perfect, for 1 flaw compromises everything.

Therefore I don't find it strange that the NSA allocates the resources it does to research and expand it's offensive capabilities, since trying to defend the systems of the US is probably a lost cause. The question remains if this is ethical and/or legitimate. Being a non us-citizen I'm certainly opposed to the practises of weakening standards and harvesting/exploiting services on the internet.

I also find the double-speak of the US government deplorable, on the one hand we have the government declaring that in many ways a cyber-attack will, and can, be reacted upon as if it were a conventional attack. And on the other hand we have the US government attacking and targeting civilians (Belgacom Sysadmins). I fail to see how attacks against the US can be labelled as a conventional attack, but that attacks from the US against civilians are apparently OK.

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#107

Post by diminoten »

pa7ch wrote: post #30

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…

There is absolutely no reason for the NSA to give a flying fuck about what you or I think.

There just isn't, and it'd be a waste of resources to even attempt something like this.

People do exist (I am one of them) who think the NSA is doing a nasty job that isn't very appealing, but is absolutely necessary for me to be able to sleep in my bed at night safely. They may not have the best guidance from the government, but there are people who do believe they're doing the best they can.

Why must there be a conspiratorial astroturfing campaign taking place? Why can't there just be people who actually agree with some/most of what the NSA has done, based on the laws that govern it?

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#108

Post by yourad_io »

zmanian wrote: post #56

There are a number of objectionable elements to the NSA foreign operations. - Mass surveillance of all humans is objectionable on human rights terms. - Attacks on civilian infrastructure. The NSA is executing military operations against civilian infrastructure even in NATO countries. It isn't conventional foreign policy or warfare for a military agency to be actively and continuously attack the civilian cultural and…

Attacking the economic infrastructure in preparation of War has been the US' m.o. since at least the 50's. Economic Hitmen, and what-not.

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#109

Post by [deleted] »

pa7ch wrote: post #30

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…

[deleted]

Re: New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle

#110

Post by matt4077 »

benstein wrote: post #10

How is this whistleblowing? What benefit do we as the public gain from this knowledge?

Belgacom was also targeted because its networks are a hub for non-Europeans roaming on the continent – including US citizens. Since this is the British intelligence service, US citizens aren't protected.

Remember as well that one of the CIA's targets in 2014 was the US Senate. Anything that damages the national security complex is a benefit to the US public.

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