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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

#301

Post by ChrisKnott »

somenameforme wrote: post #221
lern_too_spel wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes PRISM is a mass surveillance program You're more than 11 years behind the news. Less than a week after Greenwald published his initial ridiculous description of PRISM, it was corrected by the people who actually built the systems at the tech companies. He stupidly thought that the DITU was a machine at the companies that could get any data, when anybody with half a clue could have told him that it's obviously h…

This is overt misinformation. PRISM works directly with the companies (well, "indirectly" to offer plausible deniability). The section you're linking to entirely quotes some random government organization which is obviously an unreliable source on such topics. As is the writing, as opposed to sources, on Wiki. This [1] is one of the more telling leaks. It's a technical users guide for NSA employees on using realtime…

In what way do you think your document contradicts GP?

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

#302

Post by belter »

themcaffee wrote: post #79
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

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.

https://youtu.be/HQY93oaaN6k

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

#303

Post by [deleted] »

showerst wrote: post #294
7e wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not a cynic. The EFF takes exquisite pains to hide from you the fact that these programs spied on foreigners, which is the job of the NSA. Thus, they are necessary and proper, and perfectly legal. The EFF is a propaganda platform. You shouldn't take its claims at face value.

Foriegners like the US citizen spouses and (ex)girlfriends of NSA employees? https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-...

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by potato3732842 »

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.

That's a really charitable way of framing the fact that a 15% minority screeching about "the government would never" and "but there's no proof" was able to control the narrative despite people generally having doubt or believing otherwise privately right up until the point that the proof was public record and so ironclad that even mainstream media had to report on it.

(I assume the 85% number is made up, but for whatever the number is the point stands)

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

#305

Post by potato3732842 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #214
rl3 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the fact that the leaks you're referring to are over a decade old at this point, they also established that GCHQ buffered the entirety of the UK's internet traffic for 72 hours, bit for bit. If you think there's no collection on e-mail, rather than just legal shell games being played with terminology and various compartments, then I've got a bridge to sell you. In fact, the bridge is made of metadata an…

SMTP connections are wrapped in TLS these days, so even if you were to collect email transfers bit for bit, you wouldn't be able to read them, not even metadata.

IIRC there's been speculation that the NSA can/has brute forced TLS keys up through 4096 bit size. I read a paper once that crunched the numbers on energy cost and compute time and whatnot it comes out looking like a reasonable investment for them.

Obviously they'd have to keep such an exercise on the DL if they did do it because increasing key size is pretty trivial.

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

#306

Post by ajross »

adastra22 wrote: post #84
ajross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He has never expressed himself to be anything other than a patriotic American. Why would he be putting his life on the line for a country that he does not identify with? People who do that ti support just cause like Ukraine have my respect. But I wouldn’t expect if of anyone.

> Why would he be putting his life on the line for a country that he does not identify with?

Edward Joseph Snowden is literally a Russian citizen!

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

#307

Post by shadowgovt »

fsflover wrote: post #249
kleiba wrote: post #230

This is the sentence I was looking for: > While we were able to use his evidence to make some change, both EFF and Mark were ultimately let down by Congress and the Courts, which have refused to take the steps necessary to end the mass spying even after Edward Snowden provided even more evidence of it in 2013. Do you have to be a cynic to pretty much have expected this?

Unfortunately this spying is exactly what all the government wants, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

It's also hard to make the case that it isn't, ultimately, what the people want, by "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" principle.

It's been nearly twenty years. If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now. At most charitable, this speaks to a deep ignorance or apathy in the American electorate and American citizenship. Or a general anxiety about what "the other people" are doing that exceeds their anxiety about what the government can do with panopticon surveillance.

I think, in general, hackers vastly overestimate the average human concern or sensitivity to this kind of thing.

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

#308

Post by ajross »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #154
ajross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So surely it's more important and not less that notable Russians like Snowden use their influence to drive policy and change, right?

Basically, you're just saying "It's OK not to challenge Putin if you're afraid". Which is fine. But I argue it needs to then inform the way we treat his other decisionmaking. The facts on the ground are at least as compatible with "Edward Snowden is a Putinist Partisan" as they are "Edward Snowden is a Patriotic American".

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

#309

Post by shadowgovt »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #258
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…

> started the whole movement or whatever you'd call it for this push towards privacy I don't really like this framing because it makes it sound like if you care for privacy you are some form of fringe advocate. We should always try to reframe: Would you be ok with government employees or law enforcement indiscriminately opening your letters? Ask any senior and the answer is a clear no. So why are we discussing this a…

It's also interesting to float the thought experiment of what Gen Z would say about this question because the online norms are so different.

"Hey, sometimes people try to send bombs through the mail. Would you be okay with the government opening 1% of packages, inspecting them, and re-sealing them to make sure they're safe?

... what if they threw in a coupon so the next package mailed is free?"

(... and suddenly I've discovered of my own psyche that if those "The TSA inspected this bag" slips included a coupon for a free coffee, the visceral response to their presence would do a 180. "Oh, sweet! Free coffee!").

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

#310

Post by michh »

trescenzi wrote: post #57

I’m watching Person of Interest for the first time. It’s interesting watching it today now that the premise, minus 100% accurate crime prediction, is largely a forgone conclusion. It was produced after Klein but before Snowden and does a good job exploring the expansion of surveillance and just how motivated the government is to have a system that tracks everyone. Of course it’s fiction but it’s a fun watch that asks…

It's weird how a lot of stuff in that show I dismissed as unrealistic techno-babble back then, now is very real.
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