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NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

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Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#131

Post by sliverstorm »

[deleted] wrote: post #125
sliverstorm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't govern non-citizens. Most people don't see why people who do not pay taxes, obey US laws, etc have to be treated with all the perks of US citizens. Recall a feudal model, where a lord governs his people and protects them, but is not generally obligated to extend his protection to non-subjects. It's not a belief that foreigners have no rights, but more like foreigners have their own government to watch…

[deleted]

I ask you to consider, who are The People? (The ones whose rights we are securing in that text) It's used repeatedly but never formally defined.

There is a clue though:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#132

Post by sitkack »

rayiner wrote: post #88
jeswin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for whistleblowing on how the NSA is abusing its powers to spy on US citizens, and I think it's extremely important that he did so. I really wish he'd constrained himself to that. I can't believe you're saying this. Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy? Let me explain the consequences of what you are suggesting here, apart from the obvio…

> Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy? It's not a matter of patriotism, it's a matter of self-preservation. We acknowledge that other people in our own society have rights because we also understand that they have reciprocal obligations. If there is conflict, we can resort to legal process to mediate the conflict and preserve everyone's rights.…

The human social contract goes beyond political borders and is exactly why the powers of the government were delineated in the Constitution. What part of the Constitution says US citizens have a free press, freedom of association and freedom of speech?

Short Answer: None.

So if the Constitution doesn't grant those things to citizens, how can we remove them from non-citizens?

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#133

Post by sitkack »

sliverstorm wrote: post #113
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm appalled that so many Americans who are outraged about their government's mass surveillance of Americans simultaneously seem to think it's acceptable for the US government to conduct mass surveillance on the citizens of other countries.

The US doesn't govern non-citizens. Most people don't see why people who do not pay taxes, obey US laws, etc have to be treated with all the perks of US citizens. Recall a feudal model, where a lord governs his people and protects them, but is not generally obligated to extend his protection to non-subjects. It's not a belief that foreigners have no rights, but more like foreigners have their own government to watch…

Not infringing on freedom isn't a perk, it is a natural born right. We don't live in feudal states, with live in the United States. "The People" formed the Union and wrote the exact rules that the government could operate under. You aren't granted rights by the Constitution. They are removed from federal government, the Constitution takes rights away from the federal government. A very important distinction.

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#134

Post by sliverstorm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #130
sliverstorm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? How, specifically? As I do not work for the NSA, I hope you will understand my lack of real-life NSA examples. But surely you have experienced the ways bureaucracy can drag down a good project.

> But surely you have experienced the ways bureaucracy can drag down a good project. Surely I have -- and all of those have been about personal empire building, which wasn't the issue being discussed.

You are familiar with the story of Kirk (Star Trek), and his exam at his academy? He cheats on the exam to beat an unwinnable simulation. This (well, Kirk in general) is portrayed as an example of the cowboy attitude at its best.

I know it's fiction, but you want examples and those are some of the first that come to mind.

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#135

Post by malandrew »

simoncion wrote: post #120
jessaustin wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think that exploiting human weakness is somehow out-of-bounds for attackers. Do you, by any chance, set policy for the NSA?

Exploiting human weakness is totally fair game. I am not an NSA policy setter. I have never directly worked for any government agency, but I have worked as a computer security auditor. If you don't account for human weakness in the threat models for your high value assets, you've already lost. While there are no silver bullets, there are auditing policies [0] and technological mechanisms [1] that attempt to prevent i…

Exactly. Exploiting the human elements of a system is often the best way into any system that is trying to be secure. It's been that way since forever. There's even an entire book on the subject by Kevin Mitnick that is very well known, "The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security"

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#136

Post by sliverstorm »

sitkack wrote: post #133
sliverstorm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't govern non-citizens. Most people don't see why people who do not pay taxes, obey US laws, etc have to be treated with all the perks of US citizens. Recall a feudal model, where a lord governs his people and protects them, but is not generally obligated to extend his protection to non-subjects. It's not a belief that foreigners have no rights, but more like foreigners have their own government to watch…

Not infringing on freedom isn't a perk, it is a natural born right. We don't live in feudal states, with live in the United States. "The People" formed the Union and wrote the exact rules that the government could operate under. You aren't granted rights by the Constitution. They are removed from federal government, the Constitution takes rights away from the federal government. A very important distinction.

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but as I discussed in my other reply in this little alcove of the discussion- the Constitution appears to operate on US citizens (The People), not humanity:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#137

Post by simoncion »

jessaustin wrote: post #103
simoncion wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...out-smarted the most technically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world at their own game... The lifting of sensitive NSA documents smells to me of gross incompetence. It troubles me that this hasn't gotten more discussion. Snowden was working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. While working for this government contractor, he managed to copy a great many secrets that were probably supposed to b…

You seem to think that exploiting human weakness is somehow out-of-bounds for attackers. Do you, by any chance, set policy for the NSA?

(Moved to another post, as editing posts after an hour seems kinda tacky.)

The media has been banging the "Snowden was the SMARTEST HACKER! NOONE ELSE COULD EVER HAVE DONE THIS BECAUSE HE WAS SO SMART AND STRANGE!!" drum really, really hard. I'm mentioning the human factors because human and internal policy fuck-ups are simply a far more likely explanation.

The Government would love for everyone to believe that this was a one-off event by an exceedingly clever adversary. "We were outsmarted by a super-smart guy who hates America" sounds so much better than "We failed to properly plan for an internal threat, and have failed to do so for years".

I really wonder how many times this sort of thing has been pulled off, undetected, by hostile actors. Just how much of the NSA's massive trove of data has been siphoned off by state-level actors?

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#138

Post by sliverstorm »

no_wave wrote: post #121
sliverstorm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's civil disobedience. If you fight back, resist arrest, evade the police, etc it is just disobedience. :) The point behind civil disobedience is to publicly demonstrate the unjustness of the law, not fight it head-on. Remember when those nonviolent University students a little while ago got pepper-sprayed? Much, much better press for them and their cause than "students start brawl with police". Some people…

Both Snowden and Assange are avoiding apprehension while being non-violent. I said nothing about violence - in fact, your comment is the first on this page to mention violence - so I don't really understand where you're coming from.

Ok, what's a better word? I mention violence because it is most common dividing line, but I think what I mean could be called "resistance". Whether we call it violence or resistance doesn't change my previous comment; as I clearly described, civil disobedience is typically considered to be passively accepting the consequences as part of a public display.

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#139

Post by rayiner »

sitkack wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy? It's not a matter of patriotism, it's a matter of self-preservation. We acknowledge that other people in our own society have rights because we also understand that they have reciprocal obligations. If there is conflict, we can resort to legal process to mediate the conflict and preserve everyone's rights.…

The human social contract goes beyond political borders and is exactly why the powers of the government were delineated in the Constitution. What part of the Constitution says US citizens have a free press, freedom of association and freedom of speech? Short Answer: None. So if the Constitution doesn't grant those things to citizens, how can we remove them from non-citizens?

Some people believe that there is a "human social contract" or "natural rights" or some variation thereof, but it's incorrect to say that the Constitution enshrines that concept. What the Constitution says is that the rights the colonists already possessed, by virtue of long-standing practice and their status as Englishmen, were not prejudiced by the new Constitution.

It's blatant historical revisionism to assert that a group of people who didn't believe that black people in America had any rights somehow believed in a concept of universal natural rights that we should apply to people in Yemen or Afghanistan.

The Constitution is fundamentally a product of "social contract" thinking. The preamble says:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

When you see uses of "the people" in say the First Amendment, it's a clear reference to "the people of the United States" not "people everywhere." It's not necessarily limited to U.S. Citizens, but it is limited to people who have some nexus to the U.S., either through citizenship or presence on American soil.

Re: NSA Coworker Remembers Edward Snowden: "A Genius Among Geniuses"

#140

Post by sitkack »

tsaoutourpants wrote: post #51
visarga wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is the stated mission of the NSA and while the details are highly classified, everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy. I don't think everyone considers NSA legitimate. NSA is a bunch of people with lots of information and an agenda that is most probably not in the best interest of all Americans, just those richest and most influential 1% or 0.01%. Their track rec…

I don't agree that it should be done as a matter of policy. I think that the NSA should be disbanded immediately. Poster above you should speak for himself.

And much of what the NSA and the CIA is benign and could be done in public. Like reading, understanding and communicating political events in other countries. Understanding world economies. Close it down and redistribute the funds to the Peace Corps, I know lots of out hipster kids I would like to send to Sudan.
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