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Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

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Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#91

Post by hueving »

Tomte wrote: post #65
xnull2guest wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify I mean that I don't believe it adds much to the corpus of information about domestic and civil rights infractions. On the other hand it deals a pretty big blow geopolitically/internationally. The big deal about this article is that it reveals the major tactical capabilities and efforts the NSA has invested in the intelligence war. Edit: Right now HN is limiting the number of replies I can initiate. Will re…

> To clarify I mean that I don't believe it adds much to the corpus of information about domestic and civil rights infractions. As a foreigner, I'm actually more interested in non-domestic stuff.

Of course, but to be honest, that was the previous expectation of the NSA. It's not that apparent that there is anything useful to gain by leaking their attempts to spy on foreign counties like every other country does.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#92

Post by WorldWideWayne »

dandelany wrote: post #88
WorldWideWayne wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not allowed to be imaginative or speculate here about topics that people have been conditioned to patriotically think non-critically about! Just give it up man! We all know that the official stories about 9/11 are 100% true! (For a group that hates censorship as much as these "hackers" do, isn't it funny how they love a site that lets everybody censor each other by downvoting comments into invisibility? See? H…

When you speak in front of a crowd of people and are arrested by police for the things you're saying, that's censorship. When the crowd boos you off the stage before you're finished, that's not censorship, it's other people also asserting their rights to free speech. Perhaps you should reconsider what you're saying or find a new group of people to say it to.

Your analogy doesn't work because 3 or 4 downvoters does not constitute a crowd. No, this is basically censorship by a small set of group-think leaders.

Thanks for the unsolicited advice though!

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#93

Post by meowface »

xnull2guest wrote: post #18
meowface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually condone a lot of the NSA's activities, but I take serious issue with: -Warantless surveillance of US citizens (this is bad whether it's by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, or anyone). -Infiltration of foreign companies in allied or neutral nations purely for economic or geopolitical insight, not for military purposes (Brazil's Petrobras oil company, all sorts of spying in Germany and Norway and othe…

> Warantless surveillance of US citizens (this is bad whether it's by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, or anyone). Agreed very strongly. > Infiltration of foreign companies in allied or neutral nations purely for economic or geopolitical insight, not for military purposes (Brazil's Petrobras oil company, all sorts of spying in Germany and Norway and other places). See this is where the NSA really shines. We (T…

>See this is where the NSA really shines. We (The US) delayed Iran's nuclear program by THREE YEARS with Stuxnet! Three! And after they finally figured out it was sabotage the US and Israel had the director assassinated for further delays.

I'm honestly okay with this (except for the assassination part, though it was speculated that was Mossad and not US).

The other things though are simply to gain an unfair advantage in political and economic situations, even against countries that are supposedly our allies. Realistically, these things happen all around the world and have been forever, but ethically I don't think it's a good thing for the NSA or CIA to be doing.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#94

Post by xnull2guest »

Perseids wrote: post #67
xnull2guest wrote: post #2

“The facts contained in this program constitute a combination of the greatest number of highly sensitive facts related to NSA/CSS’s overall cryptologic mission,” the briefing document states. “Unauthorized disclosure…will cause exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The loss of this information could critically compromise highly sensitive cryptologic U.S. and foreign relationships, multi-year past and…

> global cyber intelligence war I'm really starting to take an issue with declaring all this stuff as "cyber war" or "cyber warfare" (here and everywhere else in this thread). It's not a war if there is no intend of actually killing people. Even something as intense as the "cold war", had the qualifier cold in it, because there was no open confrontation. And what is now summarized as cyber (intelligence) warfare is o…

> I'm really starting to take an issue with declaring all this stuff as "cyber war" or "cyber warfare" (here and everywhere else in this thread). It's not a war if there is no intend of actually killing people.

Countries are owning each others' communications, power, transportation, energy, food production, etc infrastructure. Sabotaging these can cripple a nation, not to mention kill people (check out damage from the recent Great Northeast Blackout - note here that it is not known whether this was a cyber attack).

The military and defense contractors are targets of attacks as well as industry. Titan Rain, Moonlight Maze and Operation Aurora are some well know geopolitically motivated attacks that breached defense contractors (includingLockheed Martin, Sandia), US internet infrastructure (including Rackspace, Google), aerospace (including NASA) and military (including the DoD).

You may remember this year that Wall Street and JP Morgan was hacked, that the DoD was hacked, that several hundred defense contractors were hacked, and that the list of people with top secret clearance was hacked. You may remember this year that Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system schematics were hacked.

In the eyes of the military, these things constitute an attack. They give it the name warfare. It certainly isn't classical warfare. Maybe we need a new term. I do like the "cold" term.

No matter what we call it, it is serious.

As a country we are invested in it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-...

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#95

Post by xnull2guest »

Zigurd wrote: post #86
xnull2guest wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 123 of the documents released in Glenn Greenwald's "No Place To Hide" lists at least 37 countries (that the United States has cyber partnerships with). http://cryptome.org/2014/05/npth-docs-compare.pdf (on page 16 of the link)

Of those 37 countries, only a minor fraction have the budget to operate the way NSA does. That leaves approximately 160 other sovereign entities. Let's say half of them are despotic and don't count. That leaves 80. Out of those I'd wager that more than half are have governments too under-resourced to have the ability to put their people in the kind of panopticon Americans live in. In other words there may be hundreds…

>Of those 37 countries, only a minor fraction have the budget to operate the way NSA does.

There will be differences in cost and budget for each nation. The United States has 25% of the world GDP (compared to 4%) of the population. That we can afford to fund the Lamborghini of intelligence operations isn't to discount other states that have less well funded capabilities.

You'll see plenty of parallels with traditional warfare: like that countries with smaller budgets ally themselves with countries that have more capabilities.

> Let's say half of them are despotic and don't count

Let's not. Those are some awfully large numbers for one. But more fundamentally why don't the armies and intelligence capabilities of tyrannies count?

> Out of those I'd wager that more than half are have governments too under-resourced to have the ability to put their people in the kind of panopticon Americans live

The nice thing is that surveillance, if done right, is reasonably cheap. Many other countries, especially in the ones you 'don't count' have laws preventing citizen use of any reasonable encryption whatsoever.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#96

Post by meowface »

xnull2guest wrote: post #36
grey-area wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Merkle's cell phone? During the Eurozone crisis? It would have been awful (financially) for the United States not to have that information. The cost of this sort of machiavellian policy is of course the opprobrium of former allies and friends, and a loss of moral standing. The US loses a lot of soft power if it chooses this route, and the consequences will be felt for decades in mistrust and distance from her…

I fluxuate with how I feel about it (it = 'machiavellian policy'). I'm not going to defend US policy in this case, nor claim to understand all of the nuances required to make global strategic geopolitical decisions. But I will say that the NSA's perspective is that: it is only because of the Snowden leaks if we have lost face with allies. To the NSA, the secrets were kept well enough until Snowden and friends disclos…

>But I will say that the NSA's perspective is that: it is only because of the Snowden leaks if we have lost face with allies. To the NSA, the secrets were kept well enough until Snowden and friends disclosed them.

Of course that's their perspective, as is the perspective of anyone committing an embarrassing or morally unscrupulous act.

"The thing I regret most is getting caught."

Secrets of this nature have a tendency to leak. If it wasn't Snowden, it could've been anyone else.

I don't think all of the NSA's capabilities or actions should be leaked, but reporting of confirmed infiltrations of US and allied companies and systems is fine by my book. All's fair in love and war, but we are not at war with Germany or Brazil or, hopefully, ourselves.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#97

Post by xnull2guest »

grey-area wrote: post #64
xnull2guest wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fluxuate with how I feel about it (it = 'machiavellian policy'). I'm not going to defend US policy in this case, nor claim to understand all of the nuances required to make global strategic geopolitical decisions. But I will say that the NSA's perspective is that: it is only because of the Snowden leaks if we have lost face with allies. To the NSA, the secrets were kept well enough until Snowden and friends disclos…

This is my basic issue with this article. America and the NSA ate mud pie for the actions disclosed in the leaks. This article has the very real possibility of doing a lot more damage. Not because of the leaks, but because of their actions. That's an important distinction. If you take actions like this, you should be prepared for them to be exposed, and if you use the argument the NSA and you yourself have made here…

> Not because of the leaks, but because of their actions. That's an important distinction.

Right. I agree with that. There's actually sort of a boolean AND. Because we did them AND we got caught.

My guess is that all major players are doing the same stuff and that if the US doesn't participate it loses. I doubt the US hacked Germany on a whim - I bet it was a pretty labored decision with cost-benefit analysis (one being chance of getting caught).

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#98

Post by xnull2guest »

spopejoy wrote: post #78
xnull2guest wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warantless surveillance of US citizens (this is bad whether it's by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, or anyone). Agreed very strongly. > Infiltration of foreign companies in allied or neutral nations purely for economic or geopolitical insight, not for military purposes (Brazil's Petrobras oil company, all sorts of spying in Germany and Norway and other places). See this is where the NSA really shines. We (T…

It seems you've decided that US hegemony is a "good thing" regardless of the moral implications for ourselves and the world. However, some find actions like the following to be dangerous, immoral, unnecessary: * "the US and Israel had the director assassinated" * "we won offshore drilling" * the blase assertion that a nuclear Iran is any worse than the existing nuclear powers (especially Israel!!!) "Energy security"…

> It seems you've decided

Nah that's not what I think or believe.

I'm trying to explain broader context. The US is not hacking in a vacuum. It has to make strategic decisions. We can arm chair the US strategic command all we want.

There seems to be a presumption that the US is doing these things 'just because'. What I believe is that the US is making decisions based on incentives, costs, benefits and other tradeoffs. I believe that if we don't participate in cyber intelligence warfare, we'll lose.

There are certain principles I don't want to give up in the process for sure - civil liberties of all people everyone is #1.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#99

Post by xnull2guest »

meowface wrote: post #96
xnull2guest wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fluxuate with how I feel about it (it = 'machiavellian policy'). I'm not going to defend US policy in this case, nor claim to understand all of the nuances required to make global strategic geopolitical decisions. But I will say that the NSA's perspective is that: it is only because of the Snowden leaks if we have lost face with allies. To the NSA, the secrets were kept well enough until Snowden and friends disclos…

>But I will say that the NSA's perspective is that: it is only because of the Snowden leaks if we have lost face with allies. To the NSA, the secrets were kept well enough until Snowden and friends disclosed them. Of course that's their perspective, as is the perspective of anyone committing an embarrassing or morally unscrupulous act. "The thing I regret most is getting caught." Secrets of this nature have a tendenc…

> the perspective of anyone committing an embarrassing or morally unscrupulous act

In this instance it was embarrassing because it brought into question how well the US would be able to keep secret strategic information.

And yeah hacking into allies is pretty unscrupulous. A bunch of the Snowden leaks showed that Israel, France, Germany and others have hacked into us.

It's the way it all works.

> Secrets of this nature have a tendency to leak. If it wasn't Snowden, it could've been anyone else

There were many such leaks, e.g. Binney.

> reporting of confirmed infiltrations of US and allied companies and systems is fine by my book

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

#100

Post by xnull2guest »

meowface wrote: post #93
xnull2guest wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warantless surveillance of US citizens (this is bad whether it's by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, or anyone). Agreed very strongly. > Infiltration of foreign companies in allied or neutral nations purely for economic or geopolitical insight, not for military purposes (Brazil's Petrobras oil company, all sorts of spying in Germany and Norway and other places). See this is where the NSA really shines. We (T…

>See this is where the NSA really shines. We (The US) delayed Iran's nuclear program by THREE YEARS with Stuxnet! Three! And after they finally figured out it was sabotage the US and Israel had the director assassinated for further delays. I'm honestly okay with this (except for the assassination part, though it was speculated that was Mossad and not US). The other things though are simply to gain an unfair advantage…

It's one of those catch 22's.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

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