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An Apology to my European IT Team

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Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#61

Post by Jgrubb »

pc86 wrote: post #60
leoc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One unintended consequence of the Snowden leak is to advertise this service to US businesses. My guess is that the discreet inquiries are already winging their way towards Congressmen.

No. With the exception of the handful of Members on relevant intelligence committees, most Members of Congress were not aware of the massive scope of this program, or even that it existed in its current form. Access to this type of information by a private citizen would require a hell of a lot more access than writing a big check to a Representative can get you.

Color me skeptical, but it doesn't appear that there's anything that's outside the scope of what a big check to a congressperson can get you these days. I do hope you're right, though.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#62

Post by seclorum »

skrebbel wrote: post #42
Camillo wrote: post #39

While OP's apology is appreciable, there was more than enough information available in 2008 to understand that his Czech colleagues were right. The Prism scandal may have come as a surprise to US citizens, but the US has been spying foreign nationals and companies for years, and we've long known about it - haven't you heard of Echelon? It was also well known that these systems were used for industrial espionage.

Huh. How is "You should've known!" a useful response to an apology? Of course he should've known, that's why he's apologizing.

It is a useful response because it allows for the solution to these sorts of things to occur: continued discussion of the need to enlighten oneself, and be aware of the lies of the world as they are told. An apology is not the last step, merely the first, in amending the situation .. and thus a continued dialog is of use.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#63

Post by grey-area »

XorNot wrote: post #57
grey-area wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's released more than 'a powerpoint presentation'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/veri... http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/interactive/2013/jun/21/fisa-c... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhi... QED. That's not all of course, but gives the lie to your claims. This is not counting the thousands of documents submitted to journalists, who have only published a selection,…

Lie to my claims? My question is, what has Snowden released which confirms the idea that he had the type of broad-ranging access which you claim. Nothing you just cited confirms that: the first is Verizon phone records. Again - public knowledge since 2007 if anyone was actually paying attention. The second and third are a warrant of the type used to request surveillance (you know, due process and all that) and a docu…

Lie to my claims?

Some of your assertions were simply untrue - if you want people to take you seriously, don't try to distort the truth. If the documents above were common knowledge they would not be stamped 'TOP SECRET/NOFORN', he released more than the powerpoint slides, etc.

Because nothing you just linked proves that he has anything substantive which actually proves wrongdoing, overreach, or the NSA going beyond mission parameters.

To take just this one example, I consider tracking the domestic phone records of all Americans daily to be a huge infringement of the NSA's stated mission and the privacy of hundreds of millions of Americans, which you so blithely dimiss as 'public knowledge'. YMMV on that, but frankly your arguments that this is nothing of consequence are absurd given the reaction of the US President, Congress, the NSA, Foreign governments, and journalists around the world to these leaks - clearly they are important and clearly the revelations have shocked many people.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#64

Post by driverdan »

The author is overlooking one major flaw in his discussion: security (and possibly also reliability). His implication is that they can run internal servers more securely than Google and Salesforce. While government collection of encrypted emails is problematic, securing your own server and making it reliable is an entirely different issue. Unless they have an absolutely top notch security team they'd be better off on someone else's servers.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#65

Post by honzzz »

driverdan wrote: post #64

The author is overlooking one major flaw in his discussion: security (and possibly also reliability). His implication is that they can run internal servers more securely than Google and Salesforce. While government collection of encrypted emails is problematic, securing your own server and making it reliable is an entirely different issue. Unless they have an absolutely top notch security team they'd be better off on…

When your provider is forced by their government to just hand over your data, security is pretty much irrelevant. Anything is more secure than that.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#66

Post by leoc »

pc86 wrote: post #60
leoc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One unintended consequence of the Snowden leak is to advertise this service to US businesses. My guess is that the discreet inquiries are already winging their way towards Congressmen.

No. With the exception of the handful of Members on relevant intelligence committees, most Members of Congress were not aware of the massive scope of this program, or even that it existed in its current form. Access to this type of information by a private citizen would require a hell of a lot more access than writing a big check to a Representative can get you.

I don't understand your objection. My point was that US businesses are likely to be highly aware of the possibilities of PRISM now, after the Snowden leaks. That most US congressmen weren't aware of PRISM before the Snowden leak is neither here nor there.

And while it's certainly possible that they will all simply be told to shoo (and I didn't assert otherwise), a large number of big, clouty US companies (not individuals) hinting that they would like to see some more results from PRISM aggregates to the kind of political pressure that I'm not certain Congress will simply ignore.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#67

Post by XorNot »

grey-area wrote: post #63
XorNot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lie to my claims? My question is, what has Snowden released which confirms the idea that he had the type of broad-ranging access which you claim. Nothing you just cited confirms that: the first is Verizon phone records. Again - public knowledge since 2007 if anyone was actually paying attention. The second and third are a warrant of the type used to request surveillance (you know, due process and all that) and a docu…

Lie to my claims? Some of your assertions were simply untrue - if you want people to take you seriously, don't try to distort the truth. If the documents above were common knowledge they would not be stamped 'TOP SECRET/NOFORN', he released more than the powerpoint slides, etc. Because nothing you just linked proves that he has anything substantive which actually proves wrongdoing, overreach, or the NSA going beyond…

People have been throwing hyperbole around liberally in this issue, so again: powerpoint slides or mundane documents, none of it proves what you're claiming it proves. Edward Snowden has not shown he had any of the capability or access he is claiming. The fact it's marked "Top Secret" does not prove this - confidential information is always "need-to-know" - you can have Top Secret clearance but you don't get to just go and ask for all the Top Secret documents in the archive unless you have a provable reason to have them. It was perfectly clear what I was saying, if you want to get pedantic then its certainly too early to wildly speculate on Edward Snowden's secret NSA leaking team (as in the parent of this thread).

You may consider the phone records a huge infringement but again: this program was public knowledge. There were articles written about it. In fact it was public as early as 2006: [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-ns...]. Edward Snowden releasing anything on it is thus mundane except for the fact Edward Snowden is doing it, and again - doesn't prove that he actually knows anything significant or had the type of access he claims to have.

Which is the point here: not what you personally find invasive, but the idea that Edward Snowden has the goldmine of data and knowledge people are wildly speculating he does, despite scant evidence in that direction.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#68

Post by XorNot »

narcissus wrote: post #59
XorNot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's released - again - a powerpoint presentation. The NSA phone record stuff? That was public knowledge in 2007. The GCHQ stuff seems like it was a powerpoint presentation too - no one's claimed anything more. It's a leak, yes. He should be prosecuted for it, yes. But it's also widely disseminated internal data by nature of being a presentation. Everything else is him claiming to have knowledge of things, without pr…

If he hasn't released anything of use, why is he being charged with espionage?

Just because you failed to release interesting classified materials doesn't mean you weren't trying to. Just because you didn't kill anybody doesn't mean you don't get charged with attempted murder.

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#69

Post by pconf »

It doesn't take much reading of the literature to understand industrial espionage or any of the other substantive risks of outsourcing. Prism or not, when you put your intellectual property on someone else's networks you are taking a risk.

Yet most of the managers I see who make this decision just don't care. They ignore the advice of their systems admins and follow the old adage "you can't get fired for buying IBM" like sheep to a slaughter. It's typical of the short-term mindset that drives so many business decisions.

I chalk this up to a lack of education, both in business and IT. While CS professors obsess over data structures and algorithms, and non-IT departments preach about the relevance of the next quarter's results, "Rome is burning".

Re: An Apology to my European IT Team

#70

Post by mpyne »

bigiain wrote: post #27
rasterizer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google "NSA powers" in their case are restricted to FISA orders, so I'm not sure how a random worker at a government contractor can produce these. Snowden was a sysadmin for a contractor and that is how he got his hands on their internal documents. Is no one else paying attention to anything beyond the "slides" in this story?!

Aren't the NSA claiming they only need a FISA warrant if both ends of the correspondence are (reasonably believed to be) US citizens on US territory? For those of us in "the rest of the world" or any Americans corresponding with us I believe the restrictions on the NSA are "Yeah, do whatever the hell you want!"

The NSA is claiming that FISA warrants are required if either end is a foreigner, and that if the connection is US-US that they're not allowed to examine that conversation at all.
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