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"Billing servers to suppress SMS billing"
[1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/cne-a...
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Decrypting cellphone traffic is also a means. It's a means towards information and human connections and so on. That's the sort of stuff that can make or break an operation. Did it? Has it? Unknown. The trouble with intelligence is that it's only effective when done with secrecy and fairly broad latitude to operate. There are few easy answers here.
A fairly broad latitude? If the ends justify the means and yet the ends themselves are kept completely hidden, then the latitude, as you put it, is completely unconstrained. An intelligence agency operating under those principles can literally do anything claiming that it is for the greater good. In short, it sounds like you are advocating for an agency which can take arbitrary extralegal action at its own discretion…
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When you hold the Poisoned Chalice of Power you get to decide who is legally justified and who isn't. "Morals" doesn't even factor into things....unfortunately.
Only in a limited way though, the NSA can decide (or at least exert considerable influence over) what's legal in the US - but criminal actions in, say, The Netherlands or any other (non five eyes) country, cannot be "justified" or "excused" legally by another except those countries. I guess a _lot_ of what goes in in state sponsored espionage happens outside the civilian legal system - at least in "major" countries -…
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I wonder how many years with of jail time Aaron Schwartz's prosecutors would be talking about if this'd been done by a mouthy kid instead of the NSA? I wonder which non-US country, where the NSA's actions aren't made "legal" by secret FISA courts or acts of (US) Congress, will be the first to start throwing that kind of legal threat at NSA staff responsible for this?
What do you think spying is? By definition it is illegal. Other countries won't do anything but cry a bit because their hands aren't much cleaner.
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A fairly broad latitude? If the ends justify the means and yet the ends themselves are kept completely hidden, then the latitude, as you put it, is completely unconstrained. An intelligence agency operating under those principles can literally do anything claiming that it is for the greater good. In short, it sounds like you are advocating for an agency which can take arbitrary extralegal action at its own discretion…
We have a secret police now: what else do you call an organization that secretly collects information against the nation's own citizens to be secretly passed along for 'parallel construction'? That kept this policy itself a secret? Theoretically it's as a byproduct of foreign intelligence-gathering, not a primary function, but this frog feels the pot to be plenty hot already.
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As other people have stated here, security is a justified means to an end to those who practice it. I cringe a little bit whenever someone starts on the "first they came for..." monologue. Not because it isn't true, but because it first was used talking about the Jews in WWII Germany. You're effectively playing the Hitler card in a debate that isn't about Hitler. The US was built in part by this type of security. Cha…
I understand why that might make you uncomfortable, and I do hesitate to make such comparisons. But, you know who cringes when they hear about the surveillance apparatus that we are building in the Five Eyes countries? Germans.
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Can you please provide your definition of intelligence? I would argue that theoretically , a government (or other entity) could use intelligence but use it within a set of moral and/or ethical guidelines that uses a system of checks and balances.
Intelligence is the dirty-but-necessary stuff that makes it possible to accurately guide diplomacy, economic policy, trade, and military action to achieve the desired goals of a nation-state for a minimum of cost. It includes internal security. Generally, intelligence cannot operate openly, even under a strict set of guidelines. Further, there will always be situations where efficacy runs into guidelines and somethin…
Can this claim be substantiated with evidence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As other people have stated here, security is a justified means to an end to those who practice it. I cringe a little bit whenever someone starts on the "first they came for..." monologue. Not because it isn't true, but because it first was used talking about the Jews in WWII Germany. You're effectively playing the Hitler card in a debate that isn't about Hitler. The US was built in part by this type of security. Cha…
I understand why that might make you uncomfortable, and I do hesitate to make such comparisons. But, you know who cringes when they hear about the surveillance apparatus that we are building in the Five Eyes countries? Germans.
How is snowden still producing high-level stuff like this? Did he really steal info on that many headline-worthy stories all in one go, or does he have fresh sources? Sometimes this feels like another instance of what I call the "weird al phenomenon", where any person who hears a silly parody of a pop song attributes it to weird al, because "wait, you're telling me there are other song parody writers?"
It's safe to assume that the vast quantities of documentation he liberated have enough newsworthy material in them to last those with access a very very long time.