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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

#181

Post by zipwitch »

diminoten wrote: post #124
task_queue wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's best to assume earnestness in opinions, I disagree with your opening. There absolutely is a reason for the NSA to give a fuck what you or I think. They are an intelligence and security agency, operating covertly with plausible deniability is what they do. More importantly, there are laws trying to be passed that can strengthen or weaken their funding and power. Making people at home feel that the ag…

There is no political stick for them to be on, because every decision-maker in the US government knows how important the NSA is.

Unimportant, because they neither provide useful intel nor prevent terror attacks. Or very important, because they have lots of blackmail material?

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

#182

Post by diminoten »

zipwitch wrote: post #181
diminoten wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no political stick for them to be on, because every decision-maker in the US government knows how important the NSA is.

Unimportant, because they neither provide useful intel nor prevent terror attacks. Or very important, because they have lots of blackmail material?

How would you know if they provide useful intel or prevent terror attacks?

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

#183

Post by sroerick »

whoopdedo wrote: post #174
MisterWebz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you were operating 50 accounts to try to influence the debate you'd be posting 50 informative and persuasive comments? I doubt it, that would take way too much time. If I were an NSA shill I'd just mention something about Snowden harming the US or Snowden being a spy. It's a controversial and dumb argument so it's going to get a decent amount of replies. It also doesn't take much effort. You'd derail the conver…

You only have to write the argument once. Then use the social media management software that's being peddled to tweak the wording slightly so you have prepared text stating the same thing 50 different ways. Then if someone gives a counter-argument that you have a prepared response for, you can copy-paste that in a matter of seconds. Arguments you haven't prepared for are ignored because the goal isn't to engage in di…

> A living straw man

The term is agent provocateur, I presume

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

#184

Post by sroerick »

diminoten wrote: post #149
rhizome wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, and that's a highly uncharitable reading bordering on bad faith. 1) the current state of affairs does not remove threats, because the agencies are starting trouble, too; 2) the people are the ones who have to live with the effects of something, in the US a result of a democratic system where the agencies may prioritize their own imaginations over citizens' actual lives, where the agencies may have perv…

Just to be clear, is there any form of this conversation where you admit to being anything except absolutely correct on all points you're attempting to make? I get the feeling you're one of those folks who won't accept anything except what you've already concluded.

To be fair to him, you accused him of saying something he didn't.

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

#185

Post by stiffled »

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…

Welcome to my world. "You all rationalize this by telling me that it "isn't surprising", and that I don't live in the [USA,UK] and therefore I have no rights." This is because Americans are naive enough to think we have rights. And I was once one of the fools that thought this was a free country until what made us similar happened to me. And anyone who thinks that they are 2 far removed to be affected by this is in for a rude awakening that I don't wish on anyone and if we don't open peoples eyes 2 how close it is to them before it happens to them they will find out for themselves when it's a moot point. So my question to you is how do you let go and move past something as violating as this? It is rape of epic proportions!

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

#186

Post by sroerick »

omphalos wrote: post #169
sroerick wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is quite astroturfed. Every web forum is.

One approach to countering sock-puppetry as a general problem is with increased transparency. Personally, I think lobste.rs' notion of a user tree is a step in the right direction: https://lobste.rs/u

Very interesting. I like that a lot. However I'm not sure it would ever work with an open forum.

Invite only is awesome, but open forums are important too.

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

#187

Post by diminoten »

smtddr wrote: post #154
diminoten wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it absurd? Because there's no evidence of it taking place. It's the same reason we don't believe in unicorns.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula... EDIT: Added firstlook url per reply, originally pointed to https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140224/17054826340/new-s... ...not really sure I see a substantial difference between the 2 articles, but there you go.

You don't see a substantial difference between GHCQ and CIA?

Interesting.

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

#188

Post by karmacondon »

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…

This agency gathered information on you, attempted to friend you on linkedin and infected your family's computer.

I don't think any of those actions warrant accusations of inhumanity. I can understand that it's disturbing to feel that you're being stalked, or even just monitored. But it doesn't sound like anyone took action to intervene in your private affairs or intentionally lead you to feel threatened. It's legal and at least arguably moral to hire a private investigator to follow a private citizen around, so long as they follow certain rules. Attempting to friend someone on linkedin under false pretenses is also legal and arguably moral. Infecting a computer with a virus is not legal as far as I know, but I think the real concern there is the nature of the software and not it's existence. As long as they did not harm, the morality of even infecting a computer is questionable.

These people are spies, their job is to spy. To them at least, it isn't a question of the rights granted to you by your citizenship status. It's a tradeoff between the emotional discomfort that you may feel and their job requirement to develop resources that will allow them to stop bad people from doing bad things. I think they made the right decision. If influencing an employee at an ISP can give them more insight into the capability and intent of people they suspect to be up to no good, and the main cost is the distress that said employee or employees will feel as a result of being spied upon, then do it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

I understand that we disagree on that, and there is ample room for both sides of the disagreement to be right or one of them to be utterly wrong. But I don't think that either decision is inhumane in any way.

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

#189

Post by JoachimS »

Briguy2k wrote: post #140

Speaking as a citizen, the problem with the US's newest brand of digital weapons, is that they can be used on US population under the radar and w/o killing anyone. This may justify legally their extended use for surveillance unfortunately. The development of the atom bomb and chemical weapons had no "convenient" use on the USs own citizens, and they clearly couldn't get away with it. However, these weapons do, and th…

Not only could use. These weapons are built using either weaknesses introduced into civilian domestic systems, or found in domestic civilian systems and not fixed. This means that the basic premise for this weapons created to protect US citizens is to weaken their security.

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

#190

Post by JoachimS »

diminoten wrote: post #107
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, b…

"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."

You and I are not the ones defining the reasons of and what NSA are interested in. You might think there are no reasons, but NSA may have a totally different view. For an organization that for real wants to capture ALL communication on this planet, waste of resources may seem like a minor issue.

Thanks to Snowden, we do know that NSA and GCHQ are actively doing astroturfing.

Without overstate the importance of HN, this is one place where a lot of technical talent hangs out. Talent that also talks, informs and educates others. If one want to moderate criticism from people that others listen to and rely on for information about security, privacy, HN would probably be a good place to focus on.

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