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It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

schneier.com

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Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#121

Post by LLWM »

EdSharkey wrote: post #120
LLWM wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the same will be true of all the billions of people that you think are making bad decisions today.

This dragnet collection and _permanent storage_ of all movement and communications data is not justifiable, though. Fundamental risk assessment fail!

As the cost of doing so diminishes, so does the requirement for justification. These days, the only noticeable cost is psychological. IMO, sufficiently justified by "we might need it one day".

Of course, 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, that wouldn't have been true, and that's the mindset most critics are coming from. That you need a really strong reason to be doing some kind of mass data collection like this. I just don't agree with that claim. If you can do it, you'd be stupid not to.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#122

Post by nickysielicki »

boyaka wrote: post #108
justcommenting wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1- tor is broken. For what definition of "broken"?

Broken means it doesn't do what it claims, is assumed, or is known to do. I think the general consensus is that Tor is supposed to enable a person to browse the internet anonymously.

Do you have a source?

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#123

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

worklogin wrote: post #117
IgorPartola wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and…

>As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because it's not simple, it's not all because of guns, and until you modify the 2nd amendment, there is no right of the government to remove guns from the public. I could go on about how our homicide rate is not too far out of line with other developed countries…

don't have to modify the second ammendement, just get non-conservative judges to interpret the consitution how it was meant to be.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#124

Post by ripb »

jellicle wrote: post #98
ripb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. Have you got any more on this? Would be interested to read.

This story covers it. FBI, not CIA. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...

Wow, great read. Very frightening, especially when one considers what they could be at today.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#125

Post by ripb »

hobs wrote: post #106
orthecreedence wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I encrypt something client-side, the Patriot Act has no influence over it whatsoever. The only person who can decrypt it is me. So, yes, they do need to break encryption. Especially as more and more apps move towards the "smart/encrypted client, dumb server as a storage dump" model.

The parent comment could be interpreted as "They do not need to break encryption as they do not need to prove guilt due to the patriot act, and breaking encryption is a dog and pony show when they can just hide you in Guantanamo or a Romanian black site."

But Romania is so beautiful this time of year, comrade hobs.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#126

Post by randcraw »

adventured wrote: post #23
edison_carter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But.. what about parallel construction? We know that the NSA is feeding tips to, among others, the DEA and ATFE -- they're just pretending to find out about criminal activity in other-than-blanket-surveilance ways. The practice is so commonplace that the NSA has a special division for seeding the evidence to other agencies, and there are indications that even state and local law enforcement agencies are in on the fun…

The argument being made by the parent, is that it would be far worse than the abuse that is already occurring, were the FBI to have direct control of the equivalent spying systems and data trove that the NSA already has on US citizens.

Yes, but I disagree. It's a matter of avoidance of oversight. NSA is designed to avoid it and FBI is not, they simply cannot. FBI is tightly constrained by the process of law in ways that Guantanamo and NSA were created and operate in order to escape.

What's more, FBI is also a MUCH leakier boat when it comes to intel gathering, storage, analysis, and sharing. Law enforcement personnel and practice could not possibly hide the decade+ worth of mass surveillance practices from US senators, congress, and the office of the President as NSA has.

As it happens I know something about the mindset within both orgs. With FBI, eventually the truth will come out. Not so with NSA - unless another Snowden is willing to commit suicide, professionally and personally.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#127

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

IgorPartola wrote: post #109
nickysielicki wrote: post #61

I don't understand why society thinks that certain things can be contained, while certain other things cannot be. The liberals will always be telling you that the drug war is a failure, and that drug users will be able to get their hands on drugs anyway, and we should embrace that fact so we can retain some level of control, and so otherwise innocent people don't have to interact with criminals. But guns on the other…

Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and…

Why is easy access to guns a cause of police brutality?

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#128

Post by amagumori »

ripb wrote: post #87
lkbm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People being inconvenient in pushing for social change are insufficiently protected. The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. If he had, that would have been a major loss to society. And now we have reports of the NSA developing dossiers of minor crimes and non-crimes of inconvenient people's behaviors for future use in discrediting the…

>The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. Have you got any more on this? Would be interested to read.

and then they went ahead and assassinated him for real.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#129

Post by belorn »

rhino369 wrote: post #56
belorn wrote: post #39

"Actively attacking enemy networks is an offensive military operation, and should be part of an offensive military unit." Key word here is offensive military unit , like a bomber squad or tank devision. You should not send out this kind of units to allies, neutral states or neighbors, not matter how "valuable" it would be in trade negotiations. Its to the benefit of all that on-line communication is restored to peace…

But this sort of spying clearly isn't like ordering a bombing run on Berlin or sending a tank division to capture Athens. Spying isn't even a military operation, it is mostly diplomatic. Spying has always been common even amongst allies. It is a form of hacked transparency. Countries hide as much as they can.

Tell that to people who died needlessly during a civil war thanks to the sabotaged communication system that NSA caused. I'm sure their death felt like a diplomatic problem, something people discuss between drinking port wine and eating walnuts on the embassy.

Attacking civil infrastructure of a foreign nation is not spying, especially if that nation has an ongoing war. If one uses the term spying like that, then the term spying has been extended beyond what can possible be reasonable. Just because someones intent is information extraction does not make it any less of an offensive military operation if the method used are offensive military in nature.

Re: It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)

#130

Post by dredmorbius »

mbauman wrote: post #3

I think an even better argument for breaking up the NSA is that there's a fourth category of work they (should) do that's totally unrelated to surveillance and that I'd classify as "very good:" actively working to secure the communications of US government and companies against the NSA-equivalents of other nation-states and rogue actors. Having this is on the same list as encryption sabotage is a recipe for mismanage…

Schneier addresses that later in his essay:

And third, the remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.

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