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Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

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Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#121

Post by deciplex »

ajross wrote: post #65
CamperBob2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Snowden was such a hero, why did he take Russian citizenship What choice did he have? Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? and not oppose the invasion of Ukraine? Did he actively support it? I hadn't heard that. Major bummer, if so. Otherwise, he didn't oppose it for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. I'm sure the reason will occur to you if you think hard enough.

Upthread, we have: > Thank goodness he [was more willing to betray his position for moral reasons] than the "I was just following orders" crowd. We know from WW2 that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse to help facilitate grave atrocities, Which dilutes to this when challenged: > he didn't oppose [the invation of Ukraine] for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. Those perspectives…

> Those perspectives both can't be correct!

Uh, sure they can: he saw an opportunity where he could make a difference and bring a program to light where the NSA was otherwise blatantly lying to Congress and the American people, and he took it.

There is nothing he can or could do to stop the invasion of Ukraine.

Which is to say, he didn't merely oppose US crimes. He brought them to light. Everyone already knows about Ukraine.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#122

Post by Atreiden »

neil_s_anderson wrote: post #18

I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed. I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk. You should all be sup…

This is at best a strawman, and at worst blatant astroturfing. The benefit of the doubt is given to these organizations a priori. The idea that the average person should not be able to know about government intelligence programs is common sense - if the average person knows, so do our adversaries, defeating the purpose of the program.

But there have to be limits on this power, or you enable, and even empower, an Orwellian regime.

NSA has been caught, multiple times, flagrantly disregarding the law, violating privacy rights afforded to every citizen by the Constitution, and gathering an amount of data that could easily enable a hostile regime to enact vengeance on dissenters.

So imagine this hostile regime comes to power. Now everyone is forced to either support the regime, or face harsh consequences without recourse. Any plan you construct, or group of supporters you amass, will inevitably be compromised by this machine and eradicated, one way or another.

You have totalitarianism, and no means to resist it. ou've given up your immune system. You no longer have a democracy, even if you do on paper. And before you make the argument that "the ends justify the means" consider that this hostile regime might not share your ends. You may get wrapped up in "the means".

Is that a desirable outcome for you? If not, you should rethink your position. If that outcome seems desirable to you, there are a very limited number of reasons why that could be the case, and none of them are charitable.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#123

Post by rogerallen »

dang wrote: post #11

Related. There were probably other relevant threads over the years—can anyone find some? Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507188 - Sept 2024 (5 comments) The secrets of Room 641A (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305501 - Nov 2023 (4 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984515 - Sept 2022 (2 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23350120 - M…

My top post ever on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6dwg/wired_unve...

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#124

Post by worik »

anonym29 wrote: post #56
kstrauser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this without intending to denigrate Snowden at all: Klein's situation was less messy. Snowden had a top secret clearance and vowed to safeguard all the secrets he came across. Klein was just a regular guy doing regular work for a regular company when he saw something strange. That doesn't mean I think Snowden was wrong, just that there's a ton of room for people to say "I agree with him but he shouldn't have do…

Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to cong…

> grave atrocities

Tapping phones is immoral and unethical, IMO.

But a long was from the "grave atrocities" that were uncovered at the end of WWII

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#125

Post by kens »

kstrauser wrote: post #5

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

I found a video with an identical National Plant Services sewer inspection van, inspecting a large-diameter sewer line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXceJ3Yxnw (The photo shows van TV-230 while the video shows van TV-217, so they are different instances of the van.)

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#126

Post by rogerallen »

rogerallen wrote: post #123
dang wrote: post #11

Related. There were probably other relevant threads over the years—can anyone find some? Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507188 - Sept 2024 (5 comments) The secrets of Room 641A (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305501 - Nov 2023 (4 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984515 - Sept 2022 (2 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23350120 - M…

My top post ever on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6dwg/wired_unve...

and only 1 link still works. 19 years is a long time to the internet.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#127

Post by Paracompact »

ziddoap wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we do. It was a sewer inspection van. If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chai…

I think it was a sewer inspection van. Having said that, reading comments like this, I sometimes think it would actually be great cover. Because you have respected people, like yourself, unequivocally stating that it couldn't possibly be an NSA van. But, to say it again, I agree that I don't think the NSA would need to do this. My above line of reasoning certainly doesn't hold too much water under serious scrutiny.

I see it like this:

You can either disguise your operation as a goofy sewer inspection van and hope you trick every single person who notices it into second-guessing themselves along the lines of "surely the FBI would be more low-key than that..."

Or you can just be low-key in the first place, end of story. I assume the tech in the modern day (as compared to, like, the 80s when this trope was born) is advanced enough to facilitate this option.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#128

Post by [deleted] »

taosx wrote: post #46
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed. `Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws prote…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#129

Post by netsharc »

neil_s_anderson wrote: post #34
BobaFloutist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law. It makes no sense for the requirements to get a wiretap to be so stringent but the requirements to monitor someone's internet traffic to be nonexistent, just because it's laundered through "intelligence gathering" and you argue it's therefore not "law enforcement."

The point of bulk data collection is to be able to, in effect, take a wiretap in the past before you knew what you'd need to be wiretapping in the present, by querying the bulk datasets for communications between specific endpoints within specific points in time. As time travel doesn't exist, this is the next best technology available.

Ah, the East German State Police mentality...

Sadly, governments end up becoming corrupt. In one formerly free nation (or at least it was one that obnoxiously bragged about being one), data about women's periods became weaponized in a witchhunt against abortions.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#130

Post by samstave »

rogerallen wrote: post #123
dang wrote: post #11

Related. There were probably other relevant threads over the years—can anyone find some? Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507188 - Sept 2024 (5 comments) The secrets of Room 641A (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305501 - Nov 2023 (4 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984515 - Sept 2022 (2 comments) Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23350120 - M…

My top post ever on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6dwg/wired_unve...

Thats awesome.

See my post below -- I have been tracking Eschelon since the early 90s...

Guess what NSA router backdoors have become (mobile phones with socialifelog media apps on them)

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And like @tptacek said

>>If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chains lowering you into the shark tank.

---

Love that but, I do think that both is true...

Look incompetent so they don't think you're competent (Stuxnet/DUQU)

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