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

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

#131

Post by room271 »

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…

I agree with the point about cryto, but I'm not sure your general point about society being unable to contain anything is sound.

Guns are controlled in many countries quite effectively. Not completely of course, but compare for example gun crime in the UK with the US.

There are fewer (if any) examples of drugs being controlled effectively (in non repressive regimes) I'll agree though.

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

#132

Post by RankingMember »

shit_parade wrote: post #116
RankingMember wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therein lies the rub. There is a middle ground here, but people are (rightfully) foaming at the mouth with anti-NSA rage. In my eyes, this whole situation (NSA going off the map and doing whatever they want) stems from giving them free range with little to no oversight. They simply need better oversight and real consequences for leadership who don't act in the public interest (as determined by a neutral party, albeit…

'foaming at the mouth' is an Orwellian characterization of what is a profound and rational aversion to totalitarian state surveillance. Stop using the metaphor of a rabies infected dog to describe those who wish to live without the government spying on them.

To "stop" a behavior or other action, one would still need to be partaking in said action.

See, I can use a word or phrase in an internet comment as an excuse to be miserably pedantic too.

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

#133

Post by Balgair »

canistr wrote: post #79
Balgair wrote: post #17

Bruce makes a good point here. There is a balance between the COMSEC and SIGINT. Any advance you make in SIGINT is a failure of COMSEC and vice versa. The issue is then the 'viruses' of our internet ecosystem, the hackers and state level threats. How do you balance the two? Will the nature of the system self-balance as threats are discovered and then bandaged? Still, good job not just demonizing the NSA, they serve a…

It seems to be a sort of universal truth in that the people trying to break a system will always be ahead of people trying to secure/protect it. Why then, would prioritizing COMSEC over SIGINT change any of that? COMSEC will never catch up to SIGINT. I'm curious to know what exactly the NSA currently does to protect the US. Do they already use their existing SIGINT knowledge to update systems ahead of attacks?

Well, maybe the lemma is flawed. Maybe they are not always ahead. I mean, to date, no one has even been able to decode Kryptos, right out front of the CIA in plain view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos

Again, what the NSA does to protect the US is an open question; if they did their job right, you'll likely not know it. Updating systems, at least large commercial ones that foreign governments use as well as the US citizenry, is not in the purview of their mandate, its the opposite. They do try to tell the world what they do, so as to justify themselves in some degree to their ultimate bosses (the US voting public). The Iranian nuke viruses are a good example, though, as far as I know, they have not claimed that particular hack yet.

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

#134

Post by shit_parade »

RankingMember wrote: post #132
shit_parade wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'foaming at the mouth' is an Orwellian characterization of what is a profound and rational aversion to totalitarian state surveillance. Stop using the metaphor of a rabies infected dog to describe those who wish to live without the government spying on them.

To "stop" a behavior or other action, one would still need to be partaking in said action. See, I can use a word or phrase in an internet comment as an excuse to be miserably pedantic too.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

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

#136

Post by piqufoh »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #127
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…

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

A police office would be more likely to overreact to a situation if he/she believed a suspect carried a firearm (in fairness, for the sake of the officers own defence). In a state where guns aren't common, the police officer would feel less threatened and be less likely to overreact.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #127
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…

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

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

piqufoh wrote: post #136
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A police office would be more likely to overreact to a situation if he/she believed a suspect carried a firearm (in fairness, for the sake of the officers own defence). In a state where guns aren't common, the police officer would feel less threatened and be less likely to overreact.

Note that police brutality is the unjustified use of excessive force, not an appropriate response to an attack or a credible threat.

Our police in the US use this excuse far too often. They don't need to believe that someone has a weapon; many treat everyone as if it were the default when that simply isn't the case.

In fairness to the victims of police violence, this has got to stop.

>In a state where guns aren't common, the police officer would feel less threatened and be less likely to overreact.

We've allowed our police to develop a culture of brutality and cheating. Taking guns from the public (assuming that's possible) might make things worse.

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

#139

Post by WickyNilliams »

ripb wrote: post #124
jellicle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even more so when you consider the kind of dossier they had on him, they now have on everyone, by default

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

#140

Post by nickysielicki »

walterbell wrote: post #76
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…

Encryption is orthogonal to policy, which is the topic of the article.

I think that's untrue.

Encryption can't shape policy, but it can make policy nonsensical.

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