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

NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

thehill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 139 posts

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#41

Post by toyg »

I'm not shocked in the slightest - spying is likely the most harmless of actions performed by US and NZ against Dotcom.

It's still much more shocking to me how NZ authorities de-facto renounced their sovereignty, by letting US agents free to walk all over their laws when they raided him. They did that with glee, with the happiness of a servant who knows he's making a great job for his master and rewards will ensue. It made a mockery of the NZ justice system, all involved police chiefs and politicians should have been thrown in jail for treason.

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#44

Post by jonknee »

The only mention of NSA seems to come from Kim... His logic appears to be that as a Five Eyes member the NSA and GCSB have some shared resources and that means the NSA used those resources to spy on him. That might be true, but he has no evidence that the NSA cares one bit about him. I seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case, but that's me.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11897719

> Dotcom, who should have been protected from GCSB surveillance as a New Zealand resident, said the GCSB did not know because its equipment was being used by the NSA, which was "directly involved".

> The GCSB documents do contain an admission of NSA involvement, although it was not made outright. In response to the accusation the GCSB had accessed NSA networks, the bureau refused to answer on national security grounds and acknowledged that under High Court rules that doing so would be seen by the court as an admission it had.

> Dotcom said the details showed some other party was using GCSB systems and he believed it would be the NSA."The US government has requested my extradition. The NSA is clearly the most interested party."

> "The NSA has unrestricted access to GCSB surveillance systems. In fact most of the technology the GCSB uses was supplied by the NSA."

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#45

Post by adrianratnapala »

wildmusings wrote: post #39
1024core wrote: post #16

Since when did the NSA become the copyright industry's police? There were no security implications of Kim's operation; why was he targeted by the NSA?

The US intelligence apparatus exists to protect the interests of the citizens of the United States. A foreigner who violates millions of dollars of intellectual property belonging to American citizens and companies is a threat to our interests, and also of the interests of the nearly 200 nations that participate in the global copyright regime, whose copyrights he was also violating. Foreigners on foreign soil have no…

You are right, or something resembling right, as regards Kim Dotcom in relation to the US.

But there is still something troubling here for Americans, because it means that there is an existing mechanism (and/or set of social relations) in place by which American copyright interests can turn the intelligence agencies into their servants. Once such machinery exists, it is at least as dangerous to Americans as it is to foreigners.

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#46

Post by jonknee »

mtgx wrote: post #2

And now waiting for the other shoe to drop: FBI doing parallel construction with evidence obtained through that illegal NSA surveillance.

Except for the part he's not an American so it wouldn't be illegal for the NSA to snoop his emails and no parallel construction is needed to know that Kim Dotcom ran a massive pirate site. He boasted about it and his wealth from it openly!

Kim's great at getting press and that's about all there is to see here.

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#48

Post by benevol »

1024core wrote: post #16

Since when did the NSA become the copyright industry's police? There were no security implications of Kim's operation; why was he targeted by the NSA?

If you remember the Snowden revelations, then you also remember that the NSA had been using their power for other then "legal" purposes, such as for economic espionage, and for a long time already.

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#49

Post by adrianratnapala »

wildmusings wrote: post #40
tenpies wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just protective. Snowden indicated that part of what they consider national security involves economic security. In their interpretation, their mandate includes corporate and economic espionage, and ensuring that the US maintains its economic edge. See: Spying on Petrobas, a a Brazilian oil company: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... Spying on an EU Anti-trust official: https://w…

Economic security is national security. You can't really separate them once you're thinking past the immediate short term. A richer enemy will have better weapons, better technology, better surveillance, and better leverage.

The agency's existence is politically feasible because people see it as protecting them from terrorists and foreign governments. Peforming spy-work to marginally improve the bottom line of American companies doesn't really stack up on that scale; even if you beleive the beggar-thy-neighbour economics that it implies.

And even if we naively assume some economic gain to the US, isn't that outweighed by the cost of their own war on encryption and instence on backdoors and other meddling in the ordinary functiong of the US tech industry?

Re: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

#50

Post by adventured »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #49
wildmusings wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic security is national security. You can't really separate them once you're thinking past the immediate short term. A richer enemy will have better weapons, better technology, better surveillance, and better leverage.

The agency's existence is politically feasible because people see it as protecting them from terrorists and foreign governments. Peforming spy-work to marginally improve the bottom line of American companies doesn't really stack up on that scale; even if you beleive the beggar-thy-neighbour economics that it implies. And even if we naively assume some economic gain to the US, isn't that outweighed by the cost of thei…

> Peforming spy-work to marginally improve the bottom line of American companies doesn't really stack up on that scale

That's laughable. The Russians and Chinese have made a gold mine out of ripping off America's military and commercial technology. The cold war would have been very different if the Russians/Soviets hadn't stolen the US (and allied) technology on the atomic bomb.

It's neither naive nor some economic gain to be had. It's blatantly obvious and it's vast. If - as one example - China is really going to be a serious long-term competitor to the US economy (and its technology interests) over time, and it certainly appears they are, then the US needs to be capable of advanced economic espionage, exactly the same as China has been doing to the US on their way up. If they come up with some new marvel of technology (it's bound to happen given their economic scale at this point), the US should plunder it exactly the same as China and Russia would happily do to the US.

Post reply on HN