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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

#381

Post by somenameforme »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #379
Natfan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh this is such absolute misinformation. The reason court cases against the NSA spying (and other related issues) fail is because you need to prove standing which means you need to not only prove you were spied on but that it also 'materially' affected you. And in order to do so you generally need to have reasonable justification to engage in discovery - in order to get the data from the NSA themselves. At that point the NSA simply declares 'nah, national security or something', discovery becomes impossible, you can't prove anything, and the case is dismissed.

These programs all overtly violate, amongst other things, the 4th amendment, but the structure of our legal system makes it effectively impossible to legally challenge them.

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

#382

Post by CamperBob2 »

hulitu wrote: post #363
CamperBob2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US harasses and jails prominent dissidents. Russia murders them.

Cough* OpenAI, Boeing, MLK ... cough*

I'm sure that seemed relevant when you typed it.

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

#383

Post by shadowgovt »

tehjoker wrote: post #380
shadowgovt wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No need to even hypothesize a conspiracy when incentives alone suffice to explain behavior.

There is benefit in controlling the governmental process and the wealthy have resources to take the time to do it (and pay others to use their the to do it). Individual citizens don't have the money but they have the numbers. What's missing is the actual collective action.

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

#384

Post by 1oooqooq »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #330
1oooqooq wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean, exactly like most the public on this site did when moving from Gmail and abandoning their isp provided email?

Why would ISP provided email be any more private than Gmail? If anything, I expect ISP provided email to be more compromised.

at&t main revenue channel wasn't selling you to advertisers before google showed them how profitable, and willingly everyone was.

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

#385

Post by rl3 »

kbolino wrote: post #317
potato3732842 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A 4096-bit RSA key is still well beyond the means of even a very capable state actor. The standard nowadays is 2048-bit RSA keys, cracking of which is also (probably) still beyond anyone's capabilities. Maybe a multi-year effort directed at a specific target might manage to crack a single key, but I wouldn't bet on it. RSA cracking efforts would almost certainly focus on smaller keys that are still being used despite…

>It's much easier to send an NSL to Google to read your email than to try to intercept it over the wire. The latter capability would be reserved for high-value targets unreachable by the US legal system, not mass surveillance.

https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her...

That pissed a lot of people off at Google, and served as a major catalyst for their in-house RISC-V networking hardware.

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

#386

Post by immibis »

shadowgovt wrote: post #145
CamperBob2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Snowden was such a hero, why did he take Russian citizenship What choice did he have? Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? and not oppose the invasion of Ukraine? Did he actively support it? I hadn't heard that. Major bummer, if so. Otherwise, he didn't oppose it for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. I'm sure the reason will occur to you if you think hard enough.

> Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? Honestly, yes. He was extremely visible and it was the Obama administration. I think it was well-understood how much damage it could have done to Democratic party interests if they nailed him to a wall for exposing behavior that was extremely unpopular among their constituents. Manning did far worse with far less duty-of-care and received a pardon af…

Democrats are always sabotaging their own party interests to support the supreme power of the state. They'd have no problem putting Snowden in Guantanamo.

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

#387

Post by bb88 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #367
bb88 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The end never justify the mean It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe. If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.

I believe it to be a bit shortsighted. The long term result of justifying the mean is always the subordination of the individuals, you migrate from a democratic society to totalitarian state. I feel it's safe to say that no society prefer dictatorship to democracy. So you won (maybe), your life is worst, you have no freedom anymore. Beside you say in some case war is inevitable because there is too much hate. I don't…

> I feel it's safe to say that no society prefer dictatorship to democracy.

I'm not sure about that.

If you're in the majority, and you have an opportunity to enslave/kill/jail a minority, would you not go for it?

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

#388

Post by kortilla »

seanw444 wrote: post #312
kortilla wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unmarked vans drive around all of the time and nobody bats an eye at them. There is no reason to even bother with a big elaborate company name that anyone could google and do further background checks on

Unmarked vans drive around all the time. They don't typically park out front of a whistleblower's house. There is more scrutiny there than driving down any random street. Therefore, a more sufficient cover would be required.

An unmarked van could park in front of any arbitrary public neighborhood house with street parking for a few hours and nobody would care. As long as people aren’t visible in it.

Multiple days would be suspicious but that would be true of even the “sewer inspection” cover van

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

rl3 wrote: post #385
kbolino wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4096-bit RSA key is still well beyond the means of even a very capable state actor. The standard nowadays is 2048-bit RSA keys, cracking of which is also (probably) still beyond anyone's capabilities. Maybe a multi-year effort directed at a specific target might manage to crack a single key, but I wouldn't bet on it. RSA cracking efforts would almost certainly focus on smaller keys that are still being used despite…

> It's much easier to send an NSL to Google to read your email than to try to intercept it over the wire. The latter capability would be reserved for high-value targets unreachable by the US legal system, not mass surveillance. https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her... That pissed a lot of people off at Google, and served as a major catalyst for their in-house RISC-V networking hardware.

[deleted]
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