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The NSA: An Inside View

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Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#191

Post by X4 »

sitkack wrote: post #76
rst wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's particularly interesting is that some of the recent disclosures don't seem to be visible inside the bubble. Take this assertion, for instance: "The NSA copy of my emails won't be viewed by police or FBI investigating me about marijuana use, for instance. Law enforcement might get a search warrant and retrieve a copy from Google, but not from the NSA." In fact, it's been known for months that the DEA receives i…

It really depends on how widely it is reported. Government employees even those with clearance are prohibited from looking at the wikileaks cables. If it makes it into the NYT and they see it, then it is ok. But they can't actively dig for it. Direct from the mouths of government employees.

Yes, but why can Loren Sands-Ramshaw use a blog, where he critics his employer and also use Kickstarter without getting fired? Not that I want him to get fired, but I worry that he risks his job in telling us this critical information!

Aren't those things, a spy shouldn't have? Is the working strategy, filling the web with disinformation about NSA employees, or is it to never use the web with a real identity for the period of contractual employment?

I mean, from a technological standpoint, every single HN member would love to work for the NSA. Because they have an extremely sophisticated set of technology that people would like to get their hands on. (Well, that's at least what we think they have). Keep in mind though, that in reality only a very small percentage of HN would actually like to work for the NSA! This is not because of the recent revelations, but because the government in general has not a positive image for most hackers.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#192

Post by are_you_serious »

What each section basically says:

1. We collect all of your data

2. That's okay because we're the good guys

3. Btw, there are bad guys hacking us and have in the past downloaded TBs of data from our systems

What happens when a bad guy gets access to our data? Whether from within or out?

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#193

Post by are_you_serious »

Did this line bother anyone else?

> If you are a citizen of the UK, Canada, New Zealand, or Australia, you may also be glad, because everything the NSA collects is by default shared with your government

He spends the whole post telling us its okay to trust the US and then completely throws that out the window by saying 4 other countries have all of our data too.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#194

Post by PeterisP »

lucb1e wrote: post #89

This is interesting to read, but I have one very important question: Why is a distinction made between US and non-US people? Why do some systems automatically ignore all US IP addresses? What makes me a potential criminal, and Mr. Smith not? Why can he read my email without a court order, but not from someone from Nebraska? Why does my physical location, or proxy server for that matter, matter? I think the only reaso…

This is trivial - the whole purpose of foreign intelligence is to help the interests of your country while disregarding or actively harming the interests of everyone else. They have no obligation whatsoever to protect (or even refrain from murdering) others, but they do have an obligation to protect their own citizens, so they have restrictions for that.

The only two valid reasons for NSA not to capture all the foreigners email is if (1) it's too costly (and it probably isn't); and (2) the goverment decides that the PR harm is greater than whatever they gain from having all the email (and it probably isn't either).

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#195

Post by vinceguidry »

secthrowaway wrote: post #184

I can confirm much of this article. (A couple years ago I provided some comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296691 ) There's lots of condemnation of the poster, and the NSA practices and some of the murkier parts of this article. I thought I'd tip in with some explanations as possible while staying outside of anything classified or naughty. jonknee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910978 - "It's…

> For example, how did Kim Jong Il buy all his whiskey? It's outright illegal for a U.S. company to sell to the North Korean government. Okay, so they sell to an overseas distributor who then sells to the North Korean government. Turns out that's illegal as well and the government must take action to not allow the U.S. whiskey maker or the distributor to operate in the U.S. any longer. Okay, so the whiskey make checks out their distributors finds one who doesn't sell to NK, but one of their customers does. Same deal, it's illegal for anybody in that chain to operate in the U.S. After that, the chain becomes so long it's not worth looking into and Kim Jong Il was eventually able to get his whiskey.

He just bought it retail. There was a great interview of Kim Jong-Il's sushi chef awhile back, the way he gets ingredients is the chef makes trips abroad to foreign markets and buys whatever he needs from wherever, presumably paying cash. If you're willing to pay the price premium and take care of packing and shipping yourself, you can buy anything you want to, legally, without anyone else knowing.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#197

Post by rst »

X4 wrote: post #191
sitkack wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on how widely it is reported. Government employees even those with clearance are prohibited from looking at the wikileaks cables. If it makes it into the NYT and they see it, then it is ok. But they can't actively dig for it. Direct from the mouths of government employees.

Yes, but why can Loren Sands-Ramshaw use a blog, where he critics his employer and also use Kickstarter without getting fired? Not that I want him to get fired, but I worry that he risks his job in telling us this critical information! Aren't those things, a spy shouldn't have? Is the working strategy, filling the web with disinformation about NSA employees, or is it to never use the web with a real identity for the…

He's no longer employed by the NSA. He left to play with a startup and some personal coding projects; the last paragraph of his post links to them. Any discussion of his employment there still gets reviewed by the NSA, but that's routine for anyone who does classified work. (And he does say up front that he sought that review, and that they had no problem with him posting what the rest of us read.)

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#198

Post by CamperBob2 »

The Agency is an intelligence organization, not a law enforcement agency.

Monstrously disingenuous. The term "parallel construction" apparently means nothing to him.

In 1991 the USSR dissolved and the Cold War ended. The world let out a sigh of relief, safe in the the knowledge that humanity wasn’t crazy enough to destroy itself. That security we had is gone. North Korea has nuclear weapons and is threatening to fire them at the US.

I'm missing the part where collecting my email and phone records will help with this problem.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#199

Post by rl3 »

jonknee wrote: post #37

Interesting to get a look at what it's like to be inside the bubble. It's compartmentalized enough that the individual actors can justify their actions by the assumed competence and benevolence of the others. > I didn't test it, but I'm sure there was automated analysis that prevented or flagged use of US selectors. The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I a…

> The mental leap here is subtle, but substantial. Since I have been told I can't use US selectors , I assume the system enforces this. As such, US citizens have nothing to worry about.

I think it's fair to say most rank and file NSA employees are honest and actually do believe in their mission. The far scarier thought is how things may work at an extremely senior level (contractors included), where there's literally nobody there to watch the watchers, or at least challenge them without being fired and blackballed.

That said, "US selectors" shouldn't return the results that they do in the first place. Obviously there's incidental collection, which is unavoidable. But the notion of incidental collection, as with metadata collection, was hijacked and used in public relations messaging as a cover for actual domestic collection programs that intentionally capture the full contents of nearly all domestic communications within the United States.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1...

Despite exceptions such as the article above, this messaging has largely been successful. Even The Guardian and The Washington Post---organizations who publish stories directly sourced from documents leaked by Snowden---routinely fail to underscore the critical difference between actual collection, and "collection" in the sense of mere authorized access to data that's already intercepted and stored. The two have been intentionally conflated as part of a semantics game, and it's working beautifully to mislead the American public about what's actually happening.

Re: The NSA: An Inside View

#200

Post by secthrowaway »

vinceguidry wrote: post #195
secthrowaway wrote: post #184

I can confirm much of this article. (A couple years ago I provided some comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296691 ) There's lots of condemnation of the poster, and the NSA practices and some of the murkier parts of this article. I thought I'd tip in with some explanations as possible while staying outside of anything classified or naughty. jonknee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910978 - "It's…

> For example, how did Kim Jong Il buy all his whiskey? It's outright illegal for a U.S. company to sell to the North Korean government. Okay, so they sell to an overseas distributor who then sells to the North Korean government. Turns out that's illegal as well and the government must take action to not allow the U.S. whiskey maker or the distributor to operate in the U.S. any longer. Okay, so the whiskey make check…

> He just bought it retail. There was a great interview of Kim Jong-Il's sushi chef awhile back, the way he gets ingredients is the chef makes trips abroad to foreign markets and buys whatever he needs from wherever, presumably paying cash. If you're willing to pay the price premium and take care of packing and shipping yourself, you can buy anything you want to, legally, without anyone else knowing.

Right. Most nefarious actors just buy most of their stuff retail. Figuring that out, from whom, what was purchased etc. and if it violates some sanctions regime is one of the things the NSA might participate in, handing off the findings to the State Department of the Commerce Department or whoever for action. The action being that participating companies would not be allowed to do business in the U.S. and would be monitored for further sanctions violations in case other U.S. involved companies want to do business with the retail outfit that sold the whiskey. No big deal if you're Mom & Pop liquor store in Italy with no U.S. involvement. But who knows? It could mean that your supplier is a U.S. based company and may not be allowed to supply you any more in the future.

In practice nobody gives a shit about a few cases of whiskey, but the same practice might be used for large shipments or for items that are undesirable for North Korea to obtain.

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