Even if you're in favour of surveillance, why does the surveillance also need to be secret?
How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
181–190 of 273 posts
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#182"One big change impacting surveillance was clear: Prior to September 11, the U.S. had what could reasonably be called a “wall” separating foreign surveillance for national security purposes done by the NSA from domestic surveillance for law enforcement purposes done by the FBI." It turns out that the above statement is not entirely correct. I was aware of this rule at the time (early 90's), and was very surprised to…
> Unlike Snowden, I kept this to myself because I had signed (many) NDAs with the US Government. You say this like you are proud of it. Admittedly, I cannot say what I would do in that situation as I've never been in that situation, but I'd hope I'd have the fortitude to speak up on it. Having employees/contractors doing tasks that are illegal just because they came from the higher ups is no different than soldiers r…
It is quite different, as an employee you can be convicted for what you were ordered to do by your employer.
If you do an illegal thing while following government orders you can only be convicted if your country loses a war.
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't sign NDAs with the government, you sign a lifetime obligation [1] where the penalty is treason. I doubt you did or saw any such things. 1. https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/18/2002875198/-1/-1/0/NSA...
Actually security clearances do include an NDA. When I signed mine it contained an amusing clause, something to the effect of you will not share classified information until 70 years have passed or you die, whichever is _later_.
Could the person who drafted that have been contemplating something like a Dead Man's Switch? Even if so, not sure how it would have much teeth in terms of consequences after you're dead.
Or some weird scenario where an individual technically dies but is then brought back to life?
Or maybe they secretly recruit zombies and only drafted one set of employment contracts.
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't sign NDAs with the government, you sign a lifetime obligation [1] where the penalty is treason. I doubt you did or saw any such things. 1. https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/18/2002875198/-1/-1/0/NSA...
I don't feel any compelling need to convince you. During my career I signed dozens of NDAs. They were all either umbrella or caveat specific. All of them cited Title 18 referencing punishments (including death) for violations of the NDA, and all of them were related to either Title 10 or Title 50 activities. Without being too specific, what I observed was the use of NSA assets to surveil grow operations within the US…
This got me wondering how often a person in your position sticks all their contemporaneous notes in a place where the inheritors of their estate would find them. But perhaps encrypted and somehow time-locked to ensure the forty-year minimum standard is kept. Since obviously national security is going to be the number one, but after that the law’s the law.
Oh maybe people assign law firms to disclose this stuff but that’s a decently sized tax to pay when you’ve done nothing wrong.
Hey thanks for sharing what you could
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#185"One big change impacting surveillance was clear: Prior to September 11, the U.S. had what could reasonably be called a “wall” separating foreign surveillance for national security purposes done by the NSA from domestic surveillance for law enforcement purposes done by the FBI." It turns out that the above statement is not entirely correct. I was aware of this rule at the time (early 90's), and was very surprised to…
My little piece... it seems like we're litigating your past below, which doesn't seem to be helpful. What's done is done; what is each of us going to do, now?
Unrelated but genuine question: When did it become vogue to use the word "litigate" in a casual context like you just did, outside of any legal proceedings or the like? Why prefer it over, for example, "debate"?
(I first observed it watching a broadcast of JD Vance, but have encountered others effect the same usage since then).
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course all governments want to control every move and thought of their citizens. It makes governing easier. We expect that in autocracies. I don't know about The West as a bloc, but at least the USA was supposed to have respect for the basic individualistic privacy and freedom of the average citizen. We've allowed that to largely evaporate. The differences between the US and something like the PRC are rapidly erod…
> Of course all governments want to control every move and thought of their citizens. It makes governing easier. We expect that in autocracies. Are you implying that all governments are autocracies? Rather pessimistic view, in my opinion.
All governments are autocracies in the same way that all directions are downhill if you are a marble.
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#187Shameless plug (as a board member): If you are interested in the book that this is from, a great way to pick it up is on the EFF website, where your purchase helps EFF keep up the fight for privacy. https://www.eff.org/Privacys-Defender
Clicked on your site in your bio
“This is a blog about how culture is made, continuously updated since 1999 for free, with no ads or trackers.”
Anyone who is more employed than me, highly recommend finding a way to support the EFF! They have proven themselves to be a firewall between the way we want to live our lives online and countless antisocial attempts to make like seven people richer, etc..
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
People need to know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction as well. The technique is used to shield these secret programs by laundering the information they collect through plausible evidentiary chains.
> People need to know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction as well. The number of terrorists who have been caught because they were controlled by a police officer "because they ran a traffic light" (yeah, sure) is wild. In the EU at some point after every single terrorist attack the terrorists' names were known because they had left their passports in a car they left at the scene. (yeah, sure aga…
Can you elaborate on these points? I would love to read more.
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#189Isn't AI both the problem ... AND the solution here? True, you can't publish a book anonymously anymore: that ship seems to have sailed. But if you want to publish a political piece or anything else potentially "substantive", can't you just ask AI to rewrite it for you? Instant anonymization!
AI doesn't seem like it'd be much help at all. Unless the AI is 100% offline and locally hosted there's a record there. Also generating text isn't really the hard part of being anonymous. You also have publish it somewhere, and somewhere it will be seen, and that also means a trail back to you. Most of the time the information you have to share, especially anything verifiable, will be traceable back to you. That's th…
I maintain top secrecy by following a modified Osama playbook. Compose in air gap, pass flash drive to courier, but have the cousins skip the vaccination program.
Re: How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]
#190Who runs this backbone now? CloudFlare?
Downvoted for mentioning the most likely candidate for MITM at scale tells you all you need to know about HN’s understanding of government surveillance.