If spying on citizens was a business

4 points by clubhi 13y ago ↗ HN

If spying on citizens was a business I would ignore Google and Facebook.

Wouldn't it be better to hook into a few major desktop players.

You have your Adobe Acrobat type programs that are wide spread and lots of chatty client/server communication.

Better yet, you can your anti-virus programs. These also have lots of network activity. Better yet they come with escalated system privileges.

And the more obvious. You have Windows/OSX. Both closed source and are now always phoning home.

I realize you can't do as much on a single system as you can with an aggregated data set back at your main server. But it seems like you only need a few bytes of flags to be able to deduce that this system is worth looking into further.

Sometimes less is more. If spying on citizens was a business... Forget about downloading all the data in the world. Reduce it at client side and send back the results.

1 comment

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 9.6 ms ] thread

cheeseprocedure 13y ago ↗

Sadly, it is a business, and it's become an entrenched part of the political landscape. It's hard to read "Top Secret America" [1] and not come to that conclusion.

A lack of transparency for intelligence operations means their outcomes are difficult to measure, which in turn means the bang-for-the-buck efficacy of those operations is probably not a significant deciding factor in the funding they receive.

[1] http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/