German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA • Hacker News Board

Re: German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

#31

Post by revelation » Thu, May 07, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #24

Newest news from Germany: An important information artifact that was needed to illuminate this topic, was deleted. So, it should be clear, that the BND did not change, but somebody is now hushing up the whole topic. (German) Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-Ausschuss-BND-hat...

This seems like a common theme with intelligence agencies, building datacenters to store petabytes, but no one can spare a 2TB external to store the list of selectors that were queried.

(I mean, there really aren't too many options here. Either they did store the data and deleted it, in which case the person in question and everyone up the chain in command committed treason, or they just don't store queried selectors, in which case 1) the program is probably illegal, 2) they are incompetent if they don't monitor what the 'allies' query. Intelligence agencies have no allies, that is the whole point of their existence.)

Re: German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

#32

Post by odiroot » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:15 AM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #28

odiroot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Privacy issues are something that boosted Berlin's (and German in general) startups or at least gave them an opportunity for easy marketing -- "we are not in five eyes". Now it's kind of awkward. By the way, the pictured building (new BND headquarters) is in my neighborhood; I cycle past it nearly every day. On the other side of the building there are two conspicuous palm trees; really tall and green, they…

I wonder what the fee for is for intentional damage of a public tree (hoping it would not be a "good tree, that would not be nice to damage). Worth trying? :)

It's behind a tall fence. You'd probably be in a bigger trouble for trespassing.

Re: German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

#33

Post by DamnYuppie » Tue, May 12, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

flyryan wrote: post #18

saiya-jin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there has been an attack - look how understaffed we are! we need more budget! and more control and surveillance! there has been no attack - look at how good we're doing our job of protecting you. but just to be sure, we need more surveillance.

What about the other side of the coin though? there has been an attack -see! the NSA can't even prevent single incident X and are doing NOTHING to protect us! there hasn't been a large scale terrorist attack in north america in 13 1/2 years -there is no evidence that NSA is doing anything to protect America!

Large scale no, but there was the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2014.

Re: German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

#34

Post by flyryan » Wed, May 20, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

DamnYuppie wrote: post #33

flyryan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the other side of the coin though? there has been an attack -see! the NSA can't even prevent single incident X and are doing NOTHING to protect us! there hasn't been a large scale terrorist attack in north america in 13 1/2 years -there is no evidence that NSA is doing anything to protect America!

Large scale no, but there was the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2014.

Here's the problem with the Boston Marathon attack; it was planned and conducted by US citizens in the USA without any planning with any foreigners.

When someone says "the NSA couldn't even stop the Boston Marathon bombing", they are implying that the NSA SHOULD have been able to. But for the NSA to be able to stop it, they would have to be collecting data on US citizens inside the USA.

You can't have it both ways. You can't blast the NSA for not being able to stop Boston but then also be against them doing domestic collection. The fact that they couldn't stop Boston shows that they weren't spying on Americans (even though one was on watchlists).