Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 231 posts

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#151

Post by smacktoward »

7952 wrote: post #144
mythz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information is power and power is money. They can use it to protect themselves and control high-ranking officials to ensure, for instance, that they will always be well-founded to be able to continue unfettered in their mission to acquire even more information and power.

The scary thing is that they would not have any leverage on people who have no skeletons in the cupboard. A morally "clean" president may shut them down. In a twisted way it would be in their interest to see bad people in power.

I doubt they worry about that much. Everybody has something they'd rather the world not know about.

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#153

Post by junto »

prof_hobart wrote: post #146
junto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Within the UK, the general public has not favored the Guardian's reporting on the Snowden-NSA files. Many see it as anti-British and the much of the rest of the press has taken the government's side - quoting the government line concerning the protection of the country against terrorism and pedophiles. What little the Guardian has been allowed to report (outside the D-Notice that covers GCHQ coverage) has…

> Within the UK, the general public has not favored the Guardian's reporting on the Snowden-NSA files. Many see it as anti-British Apologies if I've missed it somewhere in your post, but where are you getting this from? Much of the rest of the press is, rather strangely given their seemingly life-or-death battle to defend their right to print celebrity tittle-tattle, mostly siding with the government on this. But I'm…

General public opinion was a bit exaggerated as I was talking about the people around me and their open reactions to Snowden's whistle-blowing.

However, if you feel like it, you can read the 1100 comments on this BBC article and enjoy the anti-Snowden sentiment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649

Hint: Pay close attention to the 'editor's picks'.

In my opinion the British public seem to see Snowden as a traitor. 'General public opinion' is not verifiable (as you pointed out).

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#154

Post by ethanazir »

7952 wrote: post #144
mythz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information is power and power is money. They can use it to protect themselves and control high-ranking officials to ensure, for instance, that they will always be well-founded to be able to continue unfettered in their mission to acquire even more information and power.

The scary thing is that they would not have any leverage on people who have no skeletons in the cupboard. A morally "clean" president may shut them down. In a twisted way it would be in their interest to see bad people in power.

In my experience with government and the legal field; it might not be as strict as 'silver or lead', but its 'dollars or the door.'

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#155

Post by junto »

vidarh wrote: post #138
junto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Within the UK, the general public has not favored the Guardian's reporting on the Snowden-NSA files. Many see it as anti-British and the much of the rest of the press has taken the government's side - quoting the government line concerning the protection of the country against terrorism and pedophiles. What little the Guardian has been allowed to report (outside the D-Notice that covers GCHQ coverage) has…

> What little the Guardian has been allowed to report (outside the D-Notice that covers GCHQ coverage) hasn't seen major coverage. A D-Notice has no legal power. It carries an implied threat that just maybe some of the stuff covered might be met with a legal challenge, and could you please refrain? But it does not bar publication of anything.

Indeed heeding DA-Notices are voluntary, but I don't know of any cases where an editor has chosen to break one. Therefore the Guardian are not "allowed to report" on this unless they want to find themselves in court or under the threat of court action.

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#156

Post by w_t_payne »

adventured wrote: post #129
belorn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surveillance service began their history by monitoring enemy armies, knowing what the troop movements were and locating potential weaknesses. Their purpose was to help the military in defending the nation. They later grow to encompass international commerce, as that too related to national defense. Knowing where, how, and who are able to transport material in and out of countries is paramount in successful wars b…

Virtual behavior modification and prediction. Inducing an entire culture to gradually change how it behaves, and its beliefs, through a mixture of opportunism on real events, simulated events, and trial balloons. Some of that isn't new, but the ability to use vast computing resources to map behavior prediction of 300 million people to an accurate degree, is. They no longer need your friends, family and neighbors to r…

At first glance, this all seems to be rather tinfoil-hattish and implausible. Mind you, after what we have learned in the past few months, who knows?

Here is an interesting cue for how social network information can be used to control the spread of unwanted ideologies & behaviours through a population: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNrOzgNWf4&feature=share

If anything like this was going on (and I am making no accusations; this is all speculation), then I suspect that it would work using mechanisms similar to those described in the above video.

No implausible high-technology mind control would be required, just the simple & conventional tools of the marketing/advertising/targeted-persuasion industry, directed towards a relatively small group of people, identified through the very surveillance mechanisms that have so recently been revealed to the world.

It is a pretty cool concept really, and (if we trust the people pulling the trigger), infinitely preferable to violent conflict. Better to counter the spread of hostile, dangerous and violent ideologies before there is loss of life, damage to property, economic disruption etc...

The key thing here is trust. Weirdly enough, I am normally* inclined to trust (the majority of) NSA & GCHQ staffers. My main concerns normally revolve around the proliferation of such technologies to groups and individuals with less noble aims.

* (Sometimes I get a bit depressed and cynical. At times like these I tend to reflect on the worst aspects of human nature, and the level of trust that I am capable of mustering drops in a corresponding manner).

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#157

Post by w_t_payne »

junto wrote: post #103
pvnick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this post being made here on HN around when the revelations first started coming out and we were still trying to collect ourselves and adjust to the new realities of omnipresent surveillance. It was on the front page and had a ton of upvotes. I really hope that Snowden has evidence of this. Whether he does or not is just about make-it-or-break-it for whether we'll see any real reform.

Makes sense as to why Obama flip-flopped on reigning in the NSA. Blackmail.

Hope not. Possible, though.

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#158

Post by pestaa »

jessaustin wrote: post #78
pvnick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this post being made here on HN around when the revelations first started coming out and we were still trying to collect ourselves and adjust to the new realities of omnipresent surveillance. It was on the front page and had a ton of upvotes. I really hope that Snowden has evidence of this. Whether he does or not is just about make-it-or-break-it for whether we'll see any real reform.

I can imagine a scenario in which even rock solid evidence of that sort wouldn't lead to real reform. "Hello Senator thanks so much for meeting with us today. We understand you're considering co-sponsoring that new 'privacy' bill. We just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to emphasize some points that we feel have some bearing on the bill in question. "I have here in front of me a few hard copies of some of y…

Sounds like more reason to step up and pass the bill.

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#159

Post by ihsw »

belorn wrote: post #121
conductor wrote: post #19

This is the top comment on the Reddit thread: "They went after high ranking military officers . They went after members of congress . The Senate and the House - especially on the intelligence committees, and on the armed services committees and judicial. But they went after other ones too. They went after lawyers and law firms . Heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges . One of the judges is now sitting…

The surveillance service began their history by monitoring enemy armies, knowing what the troop movements were and locating potential weaknesses. Their purpose was to help the military in defending the nation. They later grow to encompass international commerce, as that too related to national defense. Knowing where, how, and who are able to transport material in and out of countries is paramount in successful wars b…

The next step is bloodless, and the Stasi had it right.

> By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung

Data mining is extremely useful and a significant technological leap, but data manipulation on a massive scale is definitely something to marvel at.

Facebook is already impersonating your friends and family by showing fraudulent "likes" (but hiding them from their owners so as to prevent discovery), now imagine that the people you respond to on reddit and HN aren't actually people but instead they're trojan horses -- bots meant to influence society by manipulating it. MSM will no longer be the only domain that our elite overlords encroach upon.

Re: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

#160

Post by w_t_payne »

sdoering wrote: post #94
mpyne wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about Merkel's privacy . But I do care about the fact that she cares about her privacy, and that Germans care about the privacy of their elected Chancellor. Both of those feed into the relationship between Germany and the USA, and that relationship is important enough that the NSA should not put it at risk (or be allowed to be able to put it at risk).

Being a German I only care for Mrs. Merkels privacy because that was the first (and only) moment, when she got upset. Having her 80 million citizens spied upon by the NSA was no reason to issue a statement. Or to do her job and protect the German people from harm, as it is stated clearly in our constitution as the job of our leaders. On the contrary. Before anything was really on the table, they declared the topic cl…

Same thing occurred to me. It is so telling, and yet so sad that our leaders care so much for their own privacy, yet so little for that of others, even those that they supposedly represent & protect.

What can we do? We are being abused, yet we are powerless to stop it.

Post reply on HN