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

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

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 393 posts

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

#371

Post by fsflover »

neilv wrote: post #329
0xffff2 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that you can collapse comments chains?

Yes, or go up and hit "next", but I don't normally have to on HN. With the mouse-over-to-and-click-on-tiny-gray-link UI, it's usually faster to autoscroll/scrollwheel or hit PgDn. So if you start doing the usual way, and it's not working, that's frustration with the post. And is it worth your time to figure out where to prune/skip within the tree, when you have to go navigate to the tree links. And probably have hide…

This is why I downvoted the first comment.

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

#372

Post by LoganDark »

fshr wrote: post #345
LoganDark wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now. Right now stuff is happening that does deeply bothers Americans, and what do they do? They walk around with signs, they file legal papers, and maybe some other forms of peaceful, albeit useless, protest... a lot of other countries truly would be burning down the government right now if somethi…

Can you give an example of a country where you think the population would do something violent or upending if they had an Elon?

There are quite a few countries out there that don't just do peaceful protest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots#2020s

In the US it's looking like the main aggressors are Trump supporters and most of everyone else is not actually out for blood, just Peacefully Unhappy.

Elon is 100% out for blood, he's practically a modern-day Nazi.

On many social media platforms you can see a lot of people from the UK, EU, etc. being totally bewildered that all the US is doing right now is useless peaceful protests.

There are also a bunch of people potentially even from the US who post things like: https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1j822ah/cmv_m...

Maybe eventually something will happen that changes things, or maybe eventually things will reach a tipping point, but right now at least they are still stuck in some peaceful protest limbo.

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

#373

Post by mulmen »

shadowgovt wrote: post #370
mulmen wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I literally had a young man confide in me day of election in 2016 that he was voting for Trump because he liked him on the TV show. That's your American voter, when they show up at all. I don’t find extrapolating a single anecdote to the entire population a compelling argument.

One shouldn't, but it does fit a pattern for American voters; I more intended it as an exemplar of known behavior. Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California on the back of his popularity as an actor, popularity which more-or-less carried him to the Presidency (he didn't have an outstanding record as California governor, unless you count "Passing the most restrictive gun control in history to curb the Black Pan…

I just don’t buy these unsubstantiated claims. If you can’t find evidence why do you believe it?

Why does it matter if people trust politicians who were actors more than politicians who weren’t actors? They’re all still politicians when they run.

You’re promoting an extremely negative, defeatist, unsubstantiated opinion and frankly it’s depressing.

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

#374

Post by shadowgovt »

mulmen wrote: post #373
shadowgovt wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One shouldn't, but it does fit a pattern for American voters; I more intended it as an exemplar of known behavior. Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California on the back of his popularity as an actor, popularity which more-or-less carried him to the Presidency (he didn't have an outstanding record as California governor, unless you count "Passing the most restrictive gun control in history to curb the Black Pan…

I just don’t buy these unsubstantiated claims. If you can’t find evidence why do you believe it? Why does it matter if people trust politicians who were actors more than politicians who weren’t actors? They’re all still politicians when they run. You’re promoting an extremely negative, defeatist, unsubstantiated opinion and frankly it’s depressing.

> they're all still politicians when they run

Trump in 2016 was able to use his lack of political history as a selling point; with no history of service in office, he'd had no scandals in office. Clinton's long political career worked against her in public perception.

I personally believe that there's some benefit to political expertise and demonstrated history of good choices and good leadership; the American electorate doesn't seem to value these things when they reject a career politician for someone with no track record in the highest elected office... And then reelect him in similar circumstances.

> It's depressing

We're in the second term of President Trump with a Congress that has carried a sub-30% approval rate for decades. I'm not going to be able to offer many optimistic observations about America's Federal elected offices... Or the people who elect them. It is entirely possible the American Experiment ends in this generation with the conclusion that Americans had a good thing going until they lost the tools to successfully self-govern.

I would welcome counter-evidence that didn't fail the conspiracy theory test.

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

#375

Post by lern_too_spel »

autoexec wrote: post #227
lern_too_spel wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were talking about mass surveillance. PRISM isn't that. They used to collect mass email metadata, using facilities like Room 641A. Snowden's leaks showed that they had already stopped. These days, it wouldn't even be technically possible, let alone legally possible, because pretty much all SMTP traffic is over TLS. Gmail won't even accept unencrypted SMTP connections.

> These days, it wouldn't even be technically possible, let alone legally possible, because pretty much all SMTP traffic is over TLS. These days the government wouldn't need to decrypt email traffic going over the backbone. They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. The vast majority of the…

> They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp.

This is illegal. If it were possible, they wouldn't have bothered with taps.

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

#376

Post by lern_too_spel »

autoexec wrote: post #226
somenameforme wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No it didn't, not at all. The leaks clearly showed email as being one of the many things being directly surveilled. Here is one of the many slides directly acknowledging as much. [1] If you mean the rhetoric around it, then yeah - politicians lie, especially when engaging in what would be seen as deeply unpopular behavior. This isn't a shock. I assure you the admin that passed indefinite detention without charg…

I actually believed Obama when he spoke about ending the NSA's mass surveillance on the American people. He taught constitutional law. He knew exactly how wrong it was. I suspect that once he got into office he was either strong armed into changing his tune (and into ultimately giving the NSA more spying powers on the public) or he was shown enough secret evidence that it scared him into thinking it was necessary to…

> I actually believed Obama when he spoke about ending the NSA's mass surveillance on the American people

He did. Snowden's leaked documents showed that he has already ended mass email surveillance. He ended mass phone surveillance after the leaks. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that he didn't?

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

#377

Post by lern_too_spel »

serial_dev wrote: post #210
lern_too_spel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s really odd, indeed, that people think some reorg and a smooth politician didn’t in fact change the very nature of the surveillance companies.

The leaks didn't talk about a reorg. They said the program had been shut down.

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

#378

Post by Natfan »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #375
autoexec wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days, it wouldn't even be technically possible, let alone legally possible, because pretty much all SMTP traffic is over TLS. These days the government wouldn't need to decrypt email traffic going over the backbone. They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. The vast majority of the…

> They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. This is illegal. If it were possible, they wouldn't have bothered with taps.

Because a government has _never_ done anything illegal before(!)

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

#379

Post by lern_too_spel »

Natfan wrote: post #378
lern_too_spel wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. This is illegal. If it were possible, they wouldn't have bothered with taps.

Because a government has _never_ done anything illegal before(!)

After the Church Committee, it is very difficult for the government to do illegal things and for it to remain a secret. That's why in all of Snowden's leaks, he revealed only a single extant illegal program, and its legality wasn't so clear that it couldn't be argued in court.

Beyond that, you ignored my previous argument. If they were already doing this, why bother to collect metadata from taps?

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

#380

Post by tehjoker »

shadowgovt wrote: post #354
tehjoker wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this comment would make sense if this was the only issue where this was true instead of one amongst almost an uncountable number

Vectors pointing in all directions can sum to zero. If people are generally dissatisfied, but can't find common ground to coalesce their dissatisfaction into action, movement, or party, the status quo vibrates but does not move. Broadly speaking, on one side of the aisle in the US I see people who refuse to coalesce, spend more time tearing at each other than figuring out how to work together, and find the entire ide…

what is missing from this surface level analysis is any real content about what the US government is, what it does in the world, the structure of the constitution, and the legacy of anti-democratic movements under the banner of anti-communism. All roads point to a conspiracy by the rich to deprive us of agency and sow death and destruction like a supervillian.
Post reply on HN