Can’t we all just admit that Snowden is a limited hangout who’s sole purpose is to benefit the establishment and NSA?
The forms of spying he discusses are trivial at best (backdoors in COTS technologies) without peep said about real advances in espionage. I want to hear about how TEMPEST-based projects are so good they can passively grab memory (and encryption keys) from miles away over the air, if that machine uses DDR memory buses.
I don't care if the Scots are spying on me (after all I'm Scottish); I want to know who's spying on the spies in Scotland thereby allowing terrorists safe passage because they now the see holes in their security. Damn turtles.
>Can’t we all just admit that Snowden is a limited hangout who’s sole purpose is to benefit the establishment and NSA?
No, because that's absurd.
A "limited hangout" is fundamentally a damage control measure. At the time Snowden went public, there wasn't any damage to control. Most of it had already been done many years prior with the 641A scandal.
If you want to suggest that Snowden was an overarching plan to somehow influence public perception in the NSA's favor, then perhaps /r/conspiracy would be more receptive.
I love that he went from being a network admin to the savior of the internet. At what point in his career did he have perfect visibility into every topic he's quoted on. He wasn't even a part of the groups he tried to out (TAO). My guess is he was genuine in his curiosity, something happened that frustrated him (maybe he was worried about being let go from yet another contracted position, maybe he was denied on his application to join the Remote Operations Team in TAO for the third time due to lack of technical acumen and personality conflicts.....). My guess is through Greenwald and Co, he was sold a narrative to drive him to collecting data they otherwise wouldn't have had (he himself was socially engineered). It's amazing how much money they've made off the leaks and yet that topic hasn't really come up at all. Everyone has a motive, many have multiple.
His first application to join TAO as a remote operator was denied due to personality conflicts (the interviewers felt he was cocky in his responses and weren't sure of his ability to fit in with the rest of the operators.) This was circa 2011 when he was working with the CIA in an NSA joint Billet.
Early 2012 during expansion and hiring within TAO Hawaii, he was given a second chance to prove technical talents in a test designed to pre-empt RIOT (Remote Interactive Operator Training). He failed the test twice both at NSAH and NSAW. His only option was to transition as a contractor at BAH where he was the equivalent of an R&T analyst even though he was in a network administration billet(he was never assigned to TAO directly, because his administration billet supported missions he was asked to fill a critical shortage of manpower). The technical requirements to become an R&T analyst while high, were well below those that perform as Interactive On Net operators (ION). As an analyst he worked projects targeting the exact groups he leaked information about. During his time working his targets he submitted numerous plans that were rejected and greater HQ at NSAW began to ignore is operations proposals. His projects were ultimately removed from him and placed in the hands of capable analysts. It wasn't long after that he decided to lash out. So no he was never offered a job within TAO (which has multiple groups), when he did work with BAH interacting with them he failed miserably.
Metadata includes who a surveillance target is calling,
emailing, what websites they visit, and, when location
data is available, a person’s movements.
That an impressive definition of "metadata". To the defenders of these efforts i continue to point to the common trend among these agencies: expansion. First the definition of terrorist expanded without merit. Then the application of spy tracking data expanded similarly. Now metadata, the comfy term these agencies have used to limit public outcry, is expanding as well.
This is a frustrating time we live in. Far too few are taking the necessary steps to prevent this serial erosion of, what just some years ago, was common privacies and judicial rights.
Let's say you tear down the FVEY agencies. Enemy nations can then go rampant. If we collect, then it's obvious they must as well and they have less laws than we do limiting what we can do.
Having been on both sides, it is difficult to see the good they are doing, because they are shrouded in secrecy due to necessity.
Indeed. It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks, and more serious organised crime, were our security services not using the bulk surveillance data sets for their analyses.
Of course, none of the details can be revealed for operational reasons, so the more paranoid fill in the blanks with 1984-style dystopian fantasy. It's unfortunate, as they really are doing good work.
"It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks"
Why is it true to say? I doubt there would have been more terrorist attacks. They definitely would have mentioned at least one such planned attack that was stopped as it is in their best interest to change public perception.
Would they? Acknowledging attacks could give clue to operations in play. They're certainly not going to risk sources and or collection that's proven valuable.
And to be fair there have been a good amount of publicly acknowledged plot disruptions.
Except you can't prove that. Are they going to directly say, Satelite XYZ in geostationary orbit was monitoring data link 111322, during which we captured intelligence on platform 2342342 which resulted in a lead then passed on to domestic intelligence agencies. Nope, not going to happen. Everyone here likes to talk about the government and their parallel construction when it supports a negative notion, yet forget that it's also a legitimate tool to protect origination sources.
There is no need to prove someone's claim false, they must prove it true.
eg: Except that the government has claimed that they have foiled attacks and those claims have been shown to be bullshit.
So, given that they have made these claims and they are false, what conclusions should we draw?
A. The government gave us false information to reassure us that their blanket information gathering programs work, they cant tell us operational details or made some other mistake(even though operation details of various programs leak like a sieve.)
B. Their argument is specious, and someone made a list to prop up a program they do not have evidence for.
All claims need evidence to support them, its just that the poster said that the government is doing great work, too bad we cant show or prove that they are(citation needed, big time.)
There is no need to argue for balance in the discussion to protect our government, they clearly can operate these programs without our approval or understanding.
> They definitely would have mentioned at least one
> such planned attack that was stopped as it is in
> their best interest to change public perception
They managed to keep quiet about WMDs, despite poor public perception:
Even beyond that, the fact that we are discussing courts and legal limitations, though they aren't perfect, is an example of the systems in place trying to work. One only has to look at law from any other angle to see that nothing is cut and dry regardless of the topic.
I too have worked on both sides of the game and the irony is that outside of the government it's far easier for me to get raw collection simply by buying a feed from one of the provider(s).
I've taken data from marketing firms that have extensive details on users that have been linked and culled from a myriad of databases sold by the big brokerage firms like Experian. There is far less governance when profitability is involved.
I only hope that in 75 years 1/10th of the work done is shared. Not everyone in the government is evil despite what people project.
I can only speak from the POV of my country (left unnamed), but I encourage anyone wanting truly interesting work to apply to your country's SIGINT agency. Only there will you find real answers.
.. which it's illegal to tell anyone else. And if you find evidence of abuse the only way you can do anything about it is to flee to a country from which you can't be extradited.
This is why we can't have a discussion about this and as much as possible needs to be moved from "intelligence" (secret, unaccountable) to "evidence" in courts.
The only sensible answer to "how many terrorist plots have been prevented" should be a count of convictions.
At the July sentencing hearing the presiding judge, Richard D. Bennett of the Federal District Court, issued harsh words for the government, saying that it was "unconscionable" to charge a defendant with a list of serious crimes that could have resulted in 35 years in prison only to drop all of the major charges on the eve of trial.[61] The judge also rejected the government's request for a large fine noting that Drake had been financially devastated, losing his $154,600 job at the NSA and his pension.
Yeah as long as you're willing to lose your job, shutter your business and have the FBI confiscate all your computer equipment in a pre-dawn, guns drawn raid of your home.
It is frustrating as I call it schrodinger's terrorist, why, well, say everybody is in a box.
now you do not know if that person in a box is a terrorist or not and by terrorist, a bad person who will impact others right to life.
So not knowing you can only tell if you look in a box, well if they are not and you look you are lambasted, if you look and they are then your just doing your job.
Now from a PR perspective, it gets down to let us not look as if they are not we get lots of people upset at us, and bad media more so if we get it right.
Which is fine but with one cavet, if you do not look and they are a terrorist then that box can go off and take out all the boxes around it.
So I call it schrodingers terrorist in a box and with that, you see the perspective more clearly.
That is why they look, and yes for those who are not terrorists/bad people it can be intrusive, but most if not all will not even know they are looking. Though many presume the worst and equally it is that mentality of the populous that also carries on in the security services and mentality of presume the worst, hence they look.
But this argument ignores the original probability of a random person being a terrorist. It is a gross violation of the trust necessary to maintain a republic.
And further arguing that it's okay because most people won't know they were violated is like saying a plastic surgeon is justified in violating every unconscious patient in surgery just in case they would have wanted it anyway. Not a good direction for society to go.
The apologists are out in full force on this thread.
It does not ignore the probability at all as that is what the boxes are unopened, so your wrong.
I'm not arguing its ok, I'm stating the situation. your plastic surgeon analogy does not map onto this problem and bit strawman in posture.
As for you labeling people apologists for wanting to discuss a situation clearly indicates a bias in perspective and step back and look at both sides of the problem.
There is no cookie cutter solution to this, and it requires a balance, otherwise you might as well scrap all security services as you are effectively replacing them with police who equally would not be allowed to do any form of surveillance or anything that might possibly entail the potential that they are looking into innocent people. You see the problem now.
So please, look at the problem from all sides, don't just dismiss and label, as we have facebook for such level of discussion.
The US did shut down its WWI-era spying in 1929. The (Republican!) Secretary State did so with the simple comment "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".
> Enemy nations can then go rampant
The main enemy of the FVEY agencies has always been the population of the FVEY countries. This goes back a long time - in the era that US Republicans actually did believe in smaller government and Stimson was shutting down the Black Chamber, British intelligence was manufacturing the Zinoviev letter to bring down the Labour government in 1924. Peter Wright discussed more modern efforts by MI5 against the Labour party in Spycatcher, especially in the 1970s, and this has been discussed in other sources.
Similar machinations were happening in the USA in the 1970s, with Nixon using ex-CIA operatives to, among other things, break in to the national Democratic campaign headquarters in order to rig the election his way. That's against the background of COINTELPRO, spying on blacks seeking their civil right to vote and such, or that part of the electorate that wanted to withdraw from a war in Vietnam that the top brass and chiefs were privately saying was a lost cause. FVEY intelligence also helped bring down Gough Whitlam's Australian Labour government in the 1970's, an American, Christopher Boyce went to jail for, among other things, revealing this news to the Russians.
Insofar as enemy nations, England has had a litany of enemy nations in the 20th century - Indians who wanted independence, Argentinians who wanted the Malvinas returned, Irish who wanted English troops out of Ireland and on and on - think of John Cleese in the Meaning of Life waning on about efforts to "keep China British!"
US intelligence caused Daoud Khan to turn his back on the Soviets who had helped propel him to power, and when the Russians backed another horse and their former friend was ousted, the US said the "enemy nation" of Saur Afghanistan with Soviet backing was "going rampant", so the US helped launched a mujahideen-led jihad against secularizing Afghanistan, financing and arming Osama bin Laden and other proto-Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Then years later the US decided to plant military bases in Saudi Arabia, causing this Arab nationalist to send his fighters with planes into the Pentagon.
Now we're told we need we need to work and be taxed to finance these FVEY agencies to protect us from these dangers which they themselves created. Whereas the real enemy they are fighting against is their own populations - as MacDonald, McGovern and Whitlam could all attest to.
A curious footnote on "Spycatcher" is that the lawyer who defended the author against a gag order in Australian courts, Malcolm Turnbull, is now the PM.
Let them. I've never been to I dunno, North Korea, I have no plans to go there, let them know whatever they like about me. It's a problem however when a government that DOES have some say over my life does it.
> The problem is you can't control countries... by a border so that approach simply doesn't work.
Countries are kinda defined by border control, in some sense. Unless you're posting from some alternate reality where the Korean People's Army is free to march on Times Square.
That weaponizes–as if it hasn't been already–personal data collection.
Collect data on a foreign nation's citizens, preferably the only global hegemon, which also happens to have internal constraints on what it can collect on its own citizens.
Then play Let's Make a Deal. Trade personal data for foreign aid, arms deals, oppression of rivals, etc.
Anyone on the planet should be concerned about personal data collection by anyone else on the planet, whether that be North Korea, Google, or anyone else.
Then the mission of GCHQ, NSA et al should be on hardening our own networks, commercial and governmental, rather than exploiting the same holes that allow foreign threats in. In the current scenario, our own governments are incentivised to leave us vulnerable so they can exploit us themselves!
One of the more concerning matters on this is that the BBC, for some reason, are choosing not to report on this at all. Gone are the days when the BBC were the most trusted and reputable news source. http://www.bbc.com/news/scotland
Meh. Its not clear to me this is news - its secondary reporting about an Intercept article that doesn't appear on the intercept front page nor on any other Scottish newspaper.
And it's not even the main theme of the Intercept article, which focuses far more on the intelligence agencies collecting far more data than they actually had the capability to use and failing to read harvested emails of identified suspects.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveill...
Snowden is a global pys ops designed to shape human behaviour on a global scale.
Considering how many websites exist, just visiting a few websites regularly is enough to identify who you are.
Its all in the patterns.
If you cant stay off line, then at least stick with using the most popular devices, and only visit the most popular websites from public or work places in a futile attempt to blend in with the crowd.
So the application of specialist knowledge like using the Linux distro Tails to supposedly cover your tracks using Tor is enough to highlight you when considering how many people know about the existence of Tails, how many in your area even if your ISP fudges your location, and the time of day regularly visiting your favourite websites, especially when considering how many are online compared to those doing other tasks like being at (shift) work, watching TV or simply out and about. You can soon whittle the numbers down to id the individual.
You can even tell if someone is using a 32bit version of an OS which comes in 32bit and 64bit flavours because 32bit OS's always run faster as there are less addresses and pointers available in 32bit compared to 64bit.
You can even work out the type of processor in the device by the speed some things occur online, when considering the instructions sets that exist in cpu's and those that have to be emulated by code.
If you use a PC with UEFI bios, your bios is the backdoor into your system as its just a cut down posix system which allows remote access along with Intel Wake on Lan and everything they have developed like out of band support ie Intel AMT/vPro.
FreeBSD as another example has some "bugs" which allow you to bypass any block rules you might setup in PF as one example. So you can forget using things like PFsense.
Very few people in the world have found the hidden partition which exists in Windows 7 which is activated by a switch in your PC bios reporting everything you click and type back to Amazon cloud servers to cover the hackers aka spooks trails.
Spooks have been spying since the earliest telephone exchanges existed which required calling the operator to be put through to someone. The operators were typically women and as we see today with MI5 recruiting women because women are the best liars/fakers as they dont have the physical attributes namely strength to otherwise get themselves out of a tricky situation http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2980933/The-s-Bond-J...
Even your medical records, your finance details, school reports are used to psychologically profile you automatically with big data, so coupled with your parents behaviours and their genes passed onto you, effectively your card will be marked as soon as you are born whether you like it or not! Theres your Minority Report pre-cog.
Most people dont have a clue how big brother it is today, even encryption can be used against you if you trust a certificate authority to issue your certs considering how they have been hacked and no company has to admit they have been hacked to their users. Are you even competent enough to understand the code in your opensource distro to spot the bugs?
If you trust the HW companies who built the components in your devices, more fool you. Govts and big business have been in cahoots well before WW2, although WW2 history shows how some big businesses played both sides.
And if you believe the spooks dont break the law, think again. They will break into your property if they want to, if you are in the UK, they will even use your NHS tr...
>... and more serious organised crime, were our security services not using the bulk surveillance data ...
In the unlikely case these aren't pranks, they would almost certainly be GCHQ astroturfing accounts. Of course, the astroturfing itself is of so poor quality that they probably outsourced the job to either some apathetic social media/perception management firm, or clueless interns.
I could easily see a social engagement platform that's primarily used to spam Disqus comment sections also having support for HN, just for the sake of ticking the box.
>Anyone who disagrees with you must either be joking or astroturfing? How impolite.
More like anyone who creates two fresh accounts within minutes of each other, one replying to the other in agreement—is either astroturfing, or trying to make it appear as if they are.
Personally, I think you're just a decent troll. If so, at least it was creative.
>There was nothing trollish at all in my earlier comment - you just wish not to believe it.
You're correct in that I do not wish to believe that astroturfing either directly or indirectly commissioned by GCHQ could be so incompetent. It sullies their good name.
Granted, what you're doing would actually qualify as somewhat competent if the goal was to simply to derail meaningful discourse.
it seems like a lot of people here are in a feedback loop, only upvoting / listening to what they think fits. Everyone's quick to believe they know it all, when in fact that is the very issue the arguments are about.
I get why you used a throw away. I'm not against civil discussions, I just hate when people don't use logic and take all evidence with a grain of salt. I don't for a second doubt parts of the govt. are hiding valid evidence for the conversation any more than the media is lying to sell their narrative too. Bottom line is the media has the upperhand, they can make baseless claims and choose what to say knowing damn well that the Govt. can't refute it.
There's nothing wrong with throwaway accounts or opposing views; both are perfectly welcome.
What's problematic is when there's two throwaway accounts created at the same time, replying to one another in agreement, using the same writing style, and advancing same the narrative that's worded as if it's straight out of a public relations office.
HN has seen at least one NSA employee and one American intelligence community member posting in the wake of Snowden, and both were overwhelmingly treated with respect by the community despite their views. I myself often express views here that are staunchly anti-Snowden in nature.
The throwaway accounts you're defending received such hostility because they were perceived as being insincere due to their suspicious posting behavior. It was not due to their views or opinions.
Until people stop supporting hierarchical power structures, ie voting for presidents, working for a company where there's a single boss at the top and so on, using only a limited number of sources to obtain your data (ie media) which fuels your bias making your knees jerk and the current implementation of the financial system, people will always distrust new faces in the neighbourhood, foreigners in "enemy" countries and so on.
Its all too easy to give out just enough info to get people chasing after the wrong thing. Misdirection is one of the key elements of the spooks work in order to maintain secrecy.
Trust is the key element here, how can trust something done in secret?
Then how can you trust the intercepts cherry picking of the documents trove snowden took?
My argument is it's pretty ballsy to call people out about transparency knowing they can't argue and that there are likely contradictions or at least further details being omitted by hand selecting documents for dissemination. It's really the same issue on both sides. Neither are telling the whole story.
I would argue your comment "Its all too easy to give out just enough info to get people chasing after the wrong thing." is a correct statement for both sides.
The Intercept is just making money, people will do what they can to make money, including murder sometimes as our armed forces demonstrate, as do other killers.
Capitalism is the best control system which no one can buy.
If you know you are being watched will you "behave" better?
This is in effect what is going on, and the spooks already admit that some "suspects" have gone to ground since Snowden. The debate on whats right and wrong which forms our laws will still rage on though.
Perhaps The Intercept is just a useful idiot including Snowden in the scheme of things. I saw a comment that said Snowden has never thanked Putin or Russia for giving him asylum, and apparently its very rare for Russia to give asylum.
I agree about calling out those who cant speak out due to be being bound by secrecy, but this is the problem. Today us humans have created a society that could well come back to bite us due to technological advancements. Sometimes its not what is said that counts but the actions that ensue which matters more, or who benefits from the disclosure. In this case if you take spying/hacking, one of the things thats now going on is other countries like Russia and China are now concentrating on developing their own chips, HW, software and generally improving security at a country as well as a business & individual level. This helps the spooks in some ways as they no longer have to defend their own in the same way or with as much resource. Likewise this also promotes innovation after all, what will the Chinese or Russians or anyone else come up with in a bid to keep "foreign" hackers out of systems?
Take religion, it was generally an effective method to control the uneducated by putting the fear of god into people. Could you or anyone else come up with anything better than religion all those hundreds of years ago?
We had limited knowledge, limited tools, less communication which includes travel so as always intelligent people "mis"directed less informed/educated people. Its human nature to climb the monkey tree so to speak. Who doesnt want to be top dog?
Some people learn from being dictated/taught and others learn from experience.
So fast forward to today and we are still dealing with the ramifications of decisions think ISIS with their religous killings made by people hundreds of years ago still causing problems even though at the time it was thought to be the best solution, after all who could have imagined todays technology back then?
Arguably we are now capable of playing god with what has been developed today. But at the same time we face new problems like a still increasing global population on a finite planet with limited resources. Ok the development of agrichemicals has helped increase farm yields so we can now feed more people today than ever before, and money also helps control people as you cant do much without x amount of money, but as we now go into a grand solar minimum, famine is the biggest issue we now potentially face right when this planets population is at its greatest.
The population exploded with the discovery and development of oil. If we took fossil fuels out of the equation the global population would fall over night very rapidly and chaos would ensue. Who wants to put their kids through a dystopian future?
So whilst there may be justifications for the actions of the spooks, their methods imo stink as it could be argued they including Govt have betrayed our trust. So Snowden has been useful for focusing our attentions using perhaps the best method to get us to stand on our own two feet with regard to computer security. Le...
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadThe forms of spying he discusses are trivial at best (backdoors in COTS technologies) without peep said about real advances in espionage. I want to hear about how TEMPEST-based projects are so good they can passively grab memory (and encryption keys) from miles away over the air, if that machine uses DDR memory buses.
I don't care if the Scots are spying on me (after all I'm Scottish); I want to know who's spying on the spies in Scotland thereby allowing terrorists safe passage because they now the see holes in their security. Damn turtles.
No, because that's absurd.
A "limited hangout" is fundamentally a damage control measure. At the time Snowden went public, there wasn't any damage to control. Most of it had already been done many years prior with the 641A scandal.
If you want to suggest that Snowden was an overarching plan to somehow influence public perception in the NSA's favor, then perhaps /r/conspiracy would be more receptive.
His first application to join TAO as a remote operator was denied due to personality conflicts (the interviewers felt he was cocky in his responses and weren't sure of his ability to fit in with the rest of the operators.) This was circa 2011 when he was working with the CIA in an NSA joint Billet.
Early 2012 during expansion and hiring within TAO Hawaii, he was given a second chance to prove technical talents in a test designed to pre-empt RIOT (Remote Interactive Operator Training). He failed the test twice both at NSAH and NSAW. His only option was to transition as a contractor at BAH where he was the equivalent of an R&T analyst even though he was in a network administration billet(he was never assigned to TAO directly, because his administration billet supported missions he was asked to fill a critical shortage of manpower). The technical requirements to become an R&T analyst while high, were well below those that perform as Interactive On Net operators (ION). As an analyst he worked projects targeting the exact groups he leaked information about. During his time working his targets he submitted numerous plans that were rejected and greater HQ at NSAW began to ignore is operations proposals. His projects were ultimately removed from him and placed in the hands of capable analysts. It wasn't long after that he decided to lash out. So no he was never offered a job within TAO (which has multiple groups), when he did work with BAH interacting with them he failed miserably.
Wikipedia is wrong.
Snowden is a traitor to the USA, and an enemy to its friends.
This is a frustrating time we live in. Far too few are taking the necessary steps to prevent this serial erosion of, what just some years ago, was common privacies and judicial rights.
Having been on both sides, it is difficult to see the good they are doing, because they are shrouded in secrecy due to necessity.
Of course, none of the details can be revealed for operational reasons, so the more paranoid fill in the blanks with 1984-style dystopian fantasy. It's unfortunate, as they really are doing good work.
Why is it true to say? I doubt there would have been more terrorist attacks. They definitely would have mentioned at least one such planned attack that was stopped as it is in their best interest to change public perception.
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...
eg: Except that the government has claimed that they have foiled attacks and those claims have been shown to be bullshit.
So, given that they have made these claims and they are false, what conclusions should we draw?
A. The government gave us false information to reassure us that their blanket information gathering programs work, they cant tell us operational details or made some other mistake(even though operation details of various programs leak like a sieve.)
B. Their argument is specious, and someone made a list to prop up a program they do not have evidence for.
Just trying to understand as Point A and B lack the same evidence.
There is no need to argue for balance in the discussion to protect our government, they clearly can operate these programs without our approval or understanding.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleea...
Any details at all on plots that have been found and stopped via surveillance would lead to changes in behaviour of bad actors.
I too have worked on both sides of the game and the irony is that outside of the government it's far easier for me to get raw collection simply by buying a feed from one of the provider(s).
I've taken data from marketing firms that have extensive details on users that have been linked and culled from a myriad of databases sold by the big brokerage firms like Experian. There is far less governance when profitability is involved.
I only hope that in 75 years 1/10th of the work done is shared. Not everyone in the government is evil despite what people project.
All hail General Krupp.
-Signed, Little Girl
.. which it's illegal to tell anyone else. And if you find evidence of abuse the only way you can do anything about it is to flee to a country from which you can't be extradited.
This is why we can't have a discussion about this and as much as possible needs to be moved from "intelligence" (secret, unaccountable) to "evidence" in courts.
The only sensible answer to "how many terrorist plots have been prevented" should be a count of convictions.
Not true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intelli...
At the July sentencing hearing the presiding judge, Richard D. Bennett of the Federal District Court, issued harsh words for the government, saying that it was "unconscionable" to charge a defendant with a list of serious crimes that could have resulted in 35 years in prison only to drop all of the major charges on the eve of trial.[61] The judge also rejected the government's request for a large fine noting that Drake had been financially devastated, losing his $154,600 job at the NSA and his pension.
Sounds so easy.
now you do not know if that person in a box is a terrorist or not and by terrorist, a bad person who will impact others right to life.
So not knowing you can only tell if you look in a box, well if they are not and you look you are lambasted, if you look and they are then your just doing your job.
Now from a PR perspective, it gets down to let us not look as if they are not we get lots of people upset at us, and bad media more so if we get it right.
Which is fine but with one cavet, if you do not look and they are a terrorist then that box can go off and take out all the boxes around it.
So I call it schrodingers terrorist in a box and with that, you see the perspective more clearly.
That is why they look, and yes for those who are not terrorists/bad people it can be intrusive, but most if not all will not even know they are looking. Though many presume the worst and equally it is that mentality of the populous that also carries on in the security services and mentality of presume the worst, hence they look.
And further arguing that it's okay because most people won't know they were violated is like saying a plastic surgeon is justified in violating every unconscious patient in surgery just in case they would have wanted it anyway. Not a good direction for society to go.
The apologists are out in full force on this thread.
I'm not arguing its ok, I'm stating the situation. your plastic surgeon analogy does not map onto this problem and bit strawman in posture.
As for you labeling people apologists for wanting to discuss a situation clearly indicates a bias in perspective and step back and look at both sides of the problem.
There is no cookie cutter solution to this, and it requires a balance, otherwise you might as well scrap all security services as you are effectively replacing them with police who equally would not be allowed to do any form of surveillance or anything that might possibly entail the potential that they are looking into innocent people. You see the problem now.
So please, look at the problem from all sides, don't just dismiss and label, as we have facebook for such level of discussion.
> Enemy nations can then go rampant
The main enemy of the FVEY agencies has always been the population of the FVEY countries. This goes back a long time - in the era that US Republicans actually did believe in smaller government and Stimson was shutting down the Black Chamber, British intelligence was manufacturing the Zinoviev letter to bring down the Labour government in 1924. Peter Wright discussed more modern efforts by MI5 against the Labour party in Spycatcher, especially in the 1970s, and this has been discussed in other sources.
Similar machinations were happening in the USA in the 1970s, with Nixon using ex-CIA operatives to, among other things, break in to the national Democratic campaign headquarters in order to rig the election his way. That's against the background of COINTELPRO, spying on blacks seeking their civil right to vote and such, or that part of the electorate that wanted to withdraw from a war in Vietnam that the top brass and chiefs were privately saying was a lost cause. FVEY intelligence also helped bring down Gough Whitlam's Australian Labour government in the 1970's, an American, Christopher Boyce went to jail for, among other things, revealing this news to the Russians.
Insofar as enemy nations, England has had a litany of enemy nations in the 20th century - Indians who wanted independence, Argentinians who wanted the Malvinas returned, Irish who wanted English troops out of Ireland and on and on - think of John Cleese in the Meaning of Life waning on about efforts to "keep China British!"
US intelligence caused Daoud Khan to turn his back on the Soviets who had helped propel him to power, and when the Russians backed another horse and their former friend was ousted, the US said the "enemy nation" of Saur Afghanistan with Soviet backing was "going rampant", so the US helped launched a mujahideen-led jihad against secularizing Afghanistan, financing and arming Osama bin Laden and other proto-Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Then years later the US decided to plant military bases in Saudi Arabia, causing this Arab nationalist to send his fighters with planes into the Pentagon.
Now we're told we need we need to work and be taxed to finance these FVEY agencies to protect us from these dangers which they themselves created. Whereas the real enemy they are fighting against is their own populations - as MacDonald, McGovern and Whitlam could all attest to.
Let them. I've never been to I dunno, North Korea, I have no plans to go there, let them know whatever they like about me. It's a problem however when a government that DOES have some say over my life does it.
Countries are kinda defined by border control, in some sense. Unless you're posting from some alternate reality where the Korean People's Army is free to march on Times Square.
Collect data on a foreign nation's citizens, preferably the only global hegemon, which also happens to have internal constraints on what it can collect on its own citizens.
Then play Let's Make a Deal. Trade personal data for foreign aid, arms deals, oppression of rivals, etc.
Anyone on the planet should be concerned about personal data collection by anyone else on the planet, whether that be North Korea, Google, or anyone else.
Snowden is a global pys ops designed to shape human behaviour on a global scale.
Considering how many websites exist, just visiting a few websites regularly is enough to identify who you are.
Its all in the patterns.
If you cant stay off line, then at least stick with using the most popular devices, and only visit the most popular websites from public or work places in a futile attempt to blend in with the crowd.
So the application of specialist knowledge like using the Linux distro Tails to supposedly cover your tracks using Tor is enough to highlight you when considering how many people know about the existence of Tails, how many in your area even if your ISP fudges your location, and the time of day regularly visiting your favourite websites, especially when considering how many are online compared to those doing other tasks like being at (shift) work, watching TV or simply out and about. You can soon whittle the numbers down to id the individual.
You can even tell if someone is using a 32bit version of an OS which comes in 32bit and 64bit flavours because 32bit OS's always run faster as there are less addresses and pointers available in 32bit compared to 64bit.
You can even work out the type of processor in the device by the speed some things occur online, when considering the instructions sets that exist in cpu's and those that have to be emulated by code.
If you use a PC with UEFI bios, your bios is the backdoor into your system as its just a cut down posix system which allows remote access along with Intel Wake on Lan and everything they have developed like out of band support ie Intel AMT/vPro.
FreeBSD as another example has some "bugs" which allow you to bypass any block rules you might setup in PF as one example. So you can forget using things like PFsense.
Very few people in the world have found the hidden partition which exists in Windows 7 which is activated by a switch in your PC bios reporting everything you click and type back to Amazon cloud servers to cover the hackers aka spooks trails.
Spooks have been spying since the earliest telephone exchanges existed which required calling the operator to be put through to someone. The operators were typically women and as we see today with MI5 recruiting women because women are the best liars/fakers as they dont have the physical attributes namely strength to otherwise get themselves out of a tricky situation http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2980933/The-s-Bond-J...
Even your medical records, your finance details, school reports are used to psychologically profile you automatically with big data, so coupled with your parents behaviours and their genes passed onto you, effectively your card will be marked as soon as you are born whether you like it or not! Theres your Minority Report pre-cog.
Most people dont have a clue how big brother it is today, even encryption can be used against you if you trust a certificate authority to issue your certs considering how they have been hacked and no company has to admit they have been hacked to their users. Are you even competent enough to understand the code in your opensource distro to spot the bugs?
If you trust the HW companies who built the components in your devices, more fool you. Govts and big business have been in cahoots well before WW2, although WW2 history shows how some big businesses played both sides.
And if you believe the spooks dont break the law, think again. They will break into your property if they want to, if you are in the UK, they will even use your NHS tr...
In the unlikely case these aren't pranks, they would almost certainly be GCHQ astroturfing accounts. Of course, the astroturfing itself is of so poor quality that they probably outsourced the job to either some apathetic social media/perception management firm, or clueless interns.
I could easily see a social engagement platform that's primarily used to spam Disqus comment sections also having support for HN, just for the sake of ticking the box.
More like anyone who creates two fresh accounts within minutes of each other, one replying to the other in agreement—is either astroturfing, or trying to make it appear as if they are.
Personally, I think you're just a decent troll. If so, at least it was creative.
You're correct in that I do not wish to believe that astroturfing either directly or indirectly commissioned by GCHQ could be so incompetent. It sullies their good name.
Granted, what you're doing would actually qualify as somewhat competent if the goal was to simply to derail meaningful discourse.
I get why you used a throw away. I'm not against civil discussions, I just hate when people don't use logic and take all evidence with a grain of salt. I don't for a second doubt parts of the govt. are hiding valid evidence for the conversation any more than the media is lying to sell their narrative too. Bottom line is the media has the upperhand, they can make baseless claims and choose what to say knowing damn well that the Govt. can't refute it.
What's problematic is when there's two throwaway accounts created at the same time, replying to one another in agreement, using the same writing style, and advancing same the narrative that's worded as if it's straight out of a public relations office.
HN has seen at least one NSA employee and one American intelligence community member posting in the wake of Snowden, and both were overwhelmingly treated with respect by the community despite their views. I myself often express views here that are staunchly anti-Snowden in nature.
The throwaway accounts you're defending received such hostility because they were perceived as being insincere due to their suspicious posting behavior. It was not due to their views or opinions.
Better luck next time.
Until people stop supporting hierarchical power structures, ie voting for presidents, working for a company where there's a single boss at the top and so on, using only a limited number of sources to obtain your data (ie media) which fuels your bias making your knees jerk and the current implementation of the financial system, people will always distrust new faces in the neighbourhood, foreigners in "enemy" countries and so on.
Its all too easy to give out just enough info to get people chasing after the wrong thing. Misdirection is one of the key elements of the spooks work in order to maintain secrecy.
Trust is the key element here, how can trust something done in secret?
My argument is it's pretty ballsy to call people out about transparency knowing they can't argue and that there are likely contradictions or at least further details being omitted by hand selecting documents for dissemination. It's really the same issue on both sides. Neither are telling the whole story.
I would argue your comment "Its all too easy to give out just enough info to get people chasing after the wrong thing." is a correct statement for both sides.
Capitalism is the best control system which no one can buy.
But I also believe Snowden is a false flag global psychological experiment to see if human behaviour can be shaped with the "leaked" knowledge from Snowden. If you watch this https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_...
If you know you are being watched will you "behave" better?
This is in effect what is going on, and the spooks already admit that some "suspects" have gone to ground since Snowden. The debate on whats right and wrong which forms our laws will still rage on though.
Perhaps The Intercept is just a useful idiot including Snowden in the scheme of things. I saw a comment that said Snowden has never thanked Putin or Russia for giving him asylum, and apparently its very rare for Russia to give asylum.
I agree about calling out those who cant speak out due to be being bound by secrecy, but this is the problem. Today us humans have created a society that could well come back to bite us due to technological advancements. Sometimes its not what is said that counts but the actions that ensue which matters more, or who benefits from the disclosure. In this case if you take spying/hacking, one of the things thats now going on is other countries like Russia and China are now concentrating on developing their own chips, HW, software and generally improving security at a country as well as a business & individual level. This helps the spooks in some ways as they no longer have to defend their own in the same way or with as much resource. Likewise this also promotes innovation after all, what will the Chinese or Russians or anyone else come up with in a bid to keep "foreign" hackers out of systems?
Take religion, it was generally an effective method to control the uneducated by putting the fear of god into people. Could you or anyone else come up with anything better than religion all those hundreds of years ago? We had limited knowledge, limited tools, less communication which includes travel so as always intelligent people "mis"directed less informed/educated people. Its human nature to climb the monkey tree so to speak. Who doesnt want to be top dog? Some people learn from being dictated/taught and others learn from experience.
So fast forward to today and we are still dealing with the ramifications of decisions think ISIS with their religous killings made by people hundreds of years ago still causing problems even though at the time it was thought to be the best solution, after all who could have imagined todays technology back then?
Arguably we are now capable of playing god with what has been developed today. But at the same time we face new problems like a still increasing global population on a finite planet with limited resources. Ok the development of agrichemicals has helped increase farm yields so we can now feed more people today than ever before, and money also helps control people as you cant do much without x amount of money, but as we now go into a grand solar minimum, famine is the biggest issue we now potentially face right when this planets population is at its greatest.
The population exploded with the discovery and development of oil. If we took fossil fuels out of the equation the global population would fall over night very rapidly and chaos would ensue. Who wants to put their kids through a dystopian future?
So whilst there may be justifications for the actions of the spooks, their methods imo stink as it could be argued they including Govt have betrayed our trust. So Snowden has been useful for focusing our attentions using perhaps the best method to get us to stand on our own two feet with regard to computer security. Le...