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Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

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Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#41

Post by monetus »

tootie wrote: post #6

Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier? Risen exposed operation Stellar Wind which was the grossest abuse of spying apparatus approved by the Bush admin over the express objections of their own DOJ. Risen also appeared in court for every summons about his activities and was dutifully defended by the NYT until he was ultimately exonerated.

Not to diminish anything he did, risen pushing the NYT to eventually publish was really cool, but delaying that push himself until he could monetize it in a book always bothered me. I always thought snowden, hale, and the "insider" whistleblowers were looked at kind of differently; they faced prosecution. Really wild what has become of bill binney and kiriakou; they aren't like snowden IMO either.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#43

Post by geek_at »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #14

I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.

Or Dell who allows the NSA to use them as a fake employer for their spies/hackers

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#44

Post by amoshi »

>Intelligence professionals talk about how disorienting it is living on the inside. You read so much classified information about the world’s geopolitical events that you start seeing the world differently. You become convinced that only the insiders know what’s really going on, because the news media is so often wrong. Your family is ignorant. Your friends are ignorant. The world is ignorant. The only thing keeping you from ignorance is that constant stream of classified knowledge. It’s hard not to feel superior, not to say things like “If you only knew what we know” all the time. I can understand how General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, comes across as so supercilious; I only saw a minute fraction of that secret world, and I started feeling it.

This really well describes the feelings I was getting around the time of the revelations, as I scrolled through the secret documents, it's like a different world out there.

Hackers can hack. But these agencies can do so much more.

Intelligence agencies have the law behind them, can force you/the hardware suppliers (so called "interdiction")/software providers (PRISM etc) to play ball and force you to sign an NDA (non disclosure agreement) at the end of the day.

Don't want to agree? You end up like Qwest (CEO got jailed) or Yahoo ($250k daily fine until they comply). The power gained is immense though, just read about XKeyScore.

Again, it's just a different world out there. Would love to know what their capabilities look like nowadays.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#45

Post by monocasa »

andsoitis wrote: post #26
iJohnDoe wrote: post #14

I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.

> Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. What is a good example?

Xbox live is mainly built on a custom VPN protocol. The only part they don't encrypt is their chat in order to allow "lawful intercept". This is a custom protocol to allow this at the level of TCP and UDP called VDP so that you can't really forget to flip the 'don't encrypt' flag for surveillance.

They also switched Skype to using a centralized system for signalling when they acquired it. It's still decentralized at the protocol level, simply Microsoft whitelists their own nodes as supernodes.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#46

Post by dijit »

EA-3167 wrote: post #40
dijit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just posted a dismissal of your claims in a sibling comment. You owe it to yourself to think critically about what you think you want out of intelligence services, being secretive is one thing, not permitting any oversight is not ok and being in direct violation of the law is also not ok. It's not a hypothetical situation, people were using these tools to stalk women for crying out loud, you can't defend…

There isn't a system in the world which isn't subject to abuse, every police force in the world for example suffers from it. Some people such as yourself take that to mean they need to be torn down, the rest of us just think it means there needs to be more controls to minimize those abuses. It's not as though MOST of the activity of these agencies is stalking women, and it's profoundly disingenuous to pretend otherwi…

> Some people such as yourself take that to mean they need to be torn down, the rest of us just think it means there needs to be more controls to minimize those abuses.

Yeah. some oversight would be nice.

Shame that this is exactly what I am advocating for and not at all for tearing down intelligence services… Shame that this is not happening and this was the entire problem.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#47

Post by ineedausername »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #14

I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.

Honestly, people couldn't care less.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#48

Post by drumhead »

Realistically intelligence agencies have access to whatever information they want. If they can crack encryption they're not going to tell us and they will probably act like they can't. You're compromised and you have no secrets and can't hide anything from them. The best thing we can do is stay safe from criminals.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#49

Post by _8j50 »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #14

I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.

Not just cooperative but eagerly begging to be useful to them, to develop profitable relationships.

But people will not be sickened by this. People mostly only react to consequences and will find someone else to blame.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#50

Post by acdha »

newZWhoDis wrote: post #25
iJohnDoe wrote: post #14

I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.

Microsoft is also responsible for the Orwellian (and as far as I know still secret/closed source) PhotoDNA, which is an incredible tool for censorship and surveillance. A lot of people are dead or in jail because of that software, and not just “predators”.

Do you have any examples?
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