The NSA: An Inside View
lorensr.me
The NSA: An Inside View
1–10 of 323 posts
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#2"We all know that it's illegal to look at a US citizen's data without a court order. I use the term "look" deliberately: the Agency makes the distinction that looking at data is surveillance, while gathering it from locations outside the US is not. We gathered everything, and only looked at a tiny percentage of it. I am okay with this..."
This is more perverse NSA interpretations of the law.
Collection is the crime.
It does bother me that the NSA asserts a right to hold copies of my GPG-encrypted messages indefinitely. It bothers me more that my web traffic, address book, or phone metadata ends up in a government database even if only temporarily.
I don't care if Google's computers were abroad or not, but they belonged to an American company.
The United States government penetrated the network and intercepted the communications of an American company. That's one of the most egregious violations of the 4th Amendment that the American government has ever committed. Don't pretend this is something that is right.
The NSA had no legal right to spy on me, and they did -- even if you say it's likely no one looked at the data. I don't care. Collection is the crime.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#3While I do not agree with much of the sentiment, I enjoyed the article.
My question to the OP: even if you believe that at the moment abuses are rare and that your colleagues are trustworthy and law-abiding, does the capability and level of information concern you in terms of the potential for future abuse it enables?
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#4Is this the best defense of the actions of NSA employees publicly available?
He spends a lot of time denying pervasive surveillance puts us in a panopticon where the FBI and other LEAs can observe everything we do. And never mentions parallel construction once.
He tries to justify a Cold War sized, and then some, security state by invoking North Korea.
This is a big bowl of very weak sauce.
The director's standard of candor is "least untruthful."
I really don't care what a mid ranking employee says about what the NSA will and won't do. EVERY revelation where people in this forum have given the NSA benefit of a doubt in the form of "they could, but they wouldn't" has max'ed out at "would do, did do, and trying hard to do it more" once more revelations have emerged.
The NSA can't be trusted with what it has.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#5Thanks for sharing your POV. Do you think Snowdon's revelations had any beneficial impact, or is your view of them entirely negative?
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#6The NSA is not a law enforcement agency.
I am not one either. But I still have to obey the law.
Maybe that's not what's implied by that statement? But if not, what on earth is meant (more exactly, what was the author's intent in saying something that seems obvious and irrelevant if taken at face value; what am I expected to infer?)?
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#7These guys just don't get it. They're always saying the same thing "we don't want to look at it."
I want to scream "well maybe someday you will, and then you'll have it collected already."
What a dense mind, and I am not all inclined to insult people in fact I hate it, but in this case it is well deserved.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#8Thank you so much, kind American intelligence guy, for having the grace to not look at USA citizens emails, all the while not even mentioning foreigners, who should apparently just lie down and take it.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#9Thank you so much, kind American intelligence guy, for having the grace to not look at USA citizens emails, all the while not even mentioning foreigners, who should apparently just lie down and take it.
Not to mention other members of the Five Eyes who are not restrained from reading US intercepts.
Re: The NSA: An Inside View
#10> I use the term "look" deliberately: the Agency makes the distinction that looking at data is surveillance, while gathering it from locations outside the US is not. We gathered everything, and only looked at a tiny percentage of it. I am okay with this distinction both because I don't mind if my emails are copied to an Agency database and likely never read and because from a technical standpoint it would seriously impair our ability to spy if we couldn't gather everything.
I'm not mad at NSA they're just playing their role, they're grabbing everything they can. But, it should serve as a reminder of the goals we should all (civilians) strive for: encrypting everything. I think lot of individuals are working on these problems right now and I'm confident great tools and protocols will soon be created/improved.
edit: downvoted for proning mass encryption, great.