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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

#151

Post by lern_too_spel »

genewitch wrote: post #87
aio2 wrote: post #2

Damn. I don't know if this started the whole movement or whatever you'd call it for this push towards privacy and the general public knowing about it, but it helped a lot. Before him releasing info about room 641A and whatever else, there really wasn't definitive evidence of any government spying and tampering, and either with the intention of starting this movement or simply letting people know, he was a big push in…

not only was there not "definitive evidence"; if you said that the companies did that sort of thing you were called a conspiracy theorist whackaloon. oddly 85% of the general public suddenly was like "well of course they spy on email" after all this came out.

The really odd thing is that 85% of the general public will say "well of course they spy on email" even today, after Snowden's leaks showed that the Obama administration had shut that down.

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

#152

Post by lern_too_spel »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #63
psunavy03 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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.

> What choice did he have? Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US?

Of course he would. We're in a thread about Mark Klein, who was treated fairly by the law.

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

#153

Post by lern_too_spel »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #26
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…

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 is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law.

It also violates the courts' understanding of the law. That's probably why one such program was shut down prior to the Snowden leaks and definitely why the other was shut down after.

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

#154

Post by CamperBob2 »

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…

The US harasses and jails prominent dissidents. Russia murders them.

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

#155

Post by zmgsabst »

genewitch wrote: post #133
philipkglass wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it depended on the audience, but I and others [0] guessed at broad electronic surveillance well before the 641A revelations. I was never called a conspiracy theorist for it either. In the 1990s if you had read Bamford's The Puzzle Palace [1] (published in 1982) and observed the government's legal fight against Zimmermann's PGP encryption software [2], you could make an educated guess close to the truth. If y…

> [1] (published in 1982) and observed the government's legal fight against Zimmermann's PGP encryption software [2], you could make an educated guess close to the truth. what percentage of the US population do you reckon could "make an educated guess" about the technological capabilities of the US government in 2002? please remember this is a technology discussion forum, not a general public forum. > Zimmermann's PG…

People suspected there was funny business going on since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001. By 2003 gangs were aware government spied on phones at scale. NSA regularly came up in my high school tech class in 2004, in connection with War on Terror. By 2005, the program was confirmed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...

Lots of people knew that mass surveillance was likely with the advent of the internet, prior to 641A in 2006.

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

#156

Post by autoexec »

ryanisnan wrote: post #88
themcaffee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

I mean, if a sufficiently capable entity is interested in snooping on an individual like this, mimicking a sewer tv inspection van is a trivial endeavour. You don’t know at all what that van was doing.

> mimicking a sewer tv inspection van is a trivial endeavour.

Why bother mimicking a sewer inspection van when you can just buy or commandeer an actual sewer inspection van?

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

#158

Post by autoexec »

Paracompact wrote: post #127
ziddoap wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think I'd rather assume that I couldn't successfully pull off low key 100% of the time while actively monitoring someone from the street in front of their house, so instead I'd make sure that while 99% of the people will see a sewer inspection van and think nothing of it, the 1% who catches a look inside of the van and thinks it's suspicious will easily find a perfectly reasonable explanation for what they think they saw.

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

#159

Post by waterlu »

foobarian wrote: post #131
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 mean, why not both? If I was a shadowy agency I would start an actual legit sewer inspection company that does real sewer inspections. And then just collect and share a little extra data as needed. Nobody would be the wiser!

There’s an HVAC company like this also, I’ll bet.

Corporate ventilation. A wonderful thing. Everyone needs it. No one suspects it.

Or maybe it’s the aquarium guy.

No, those are the guys making meth.

Gotta love paranoia.

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

#160

Post by labster »

tptacek wrote: post #83
themcaffee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

Gotta love this site.

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