[HN Gopher] Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
___________________________________________________________________
Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 307 points
Date : 2023-05-27 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ietf.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ietf.org)
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| 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.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Honestly I am not really surprised.
|
| Companies only grow if they are allowed to otherwise they are
| legislated out of existence. I imagine that growth is actually
| encouraged if they are bearing fruit.
| ineedausername wrote:
| Honestly, people couldn't care less.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Or people care, but they don't care in the direction that GP
| wants. I _want_ US spy agencies to spy on non-American living
| outside the US who have information that affects national
| security without being slowed down by too many procedures. I
| _don 't_ want them to spy on Americans, but the government
| actively works to prevent the agencies from doing this, so
| it's working as intended.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| _Not caring less_ and feeling utterly powerless to change
| anything look identical at a distance of more than twelve
| feet.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| youtube has radicalized jihadi terrorists and white
| supremacists, facebook has manipulated emotions and played a
| role facilitating genocide in myanmar, tiktok is controlled
| by a genocidal regime, instagram depresses teen girls...
|
| though this isn't much new I suppose, how many times has nike
| been caught using child labor? how many waterways has nestle
| depleted, how many animals have been tortured for
| cosmetics... how many bison were slaughtered to spite the
| natives, how many whales for lamp oil...
|
| we seem to always find something or someone to exploit
| badrabbit wrote:
| 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.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to
| make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance
| systems.
|
| I don't doubt you but a reference would help folks know what to
| make of this.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Enterprise_Defense_Inf.
| ..
|
| This for example
| mickeypi wrote:
| FTA:
|
| "Companies interested in the contract included Amazon,
| Google, Microsoft and Oracle"
|
| and
|
| "The deal was considered "gift-wrapped for Amazon" until
| Oracle (co-chaired by Safra Catz) contested the contract".
|
| So pretty much every single large cloud provider went after
| this, though Google did eventually bow out early. Other
| than winning the second round of the bidding (and not
| actually going live), is there something Microsoft did
| specifically that warrants being singled out?
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-
| nsa-...
|
| Kind of an older article, but illustrates the situation
| pretty nicely.
|
| Microsoft has also done development work in recent years to
| enrich the data with more identifiable information and to
| make the data easier to process for surveillance.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Azure and AWS have so much money coming in from the government
| that I doubt either company is going to find anything but jelly
| in their backbones when it comes to government demands for
| data.
| 93po wrote:
| Amount of courage doesn't even matter, NSLs are handed out
| like candy and force companies to comply without saying
| anything.
| geek_at wrote:
| Or Dell who allows the NSA to use them as a fake employer for
| their spies/hackers
| [deleted]
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| 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".
| acdha wrote:
| Do you have any examples?
| trunic wrote:
| It's only used to match on known child sexual abuse images.
| If you're someone who has collected any of these, then you
| deserve to be locked up in jail. No excuses.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to
| make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance
| systems.
|
| What is a good example?
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-
| nsa-...
|
| Kind of an older article, but illustrates the situation
| pretty nicely.
|
| Microsoft has also done development work in recent years to
| enrich the data with more identifiable information and to
| make the data easier to process for surveillance.
| monocasa wrote:
| 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.
| confoundcofound wrote:
| We have a crisis of morality in tech and society at large. When
| the ends justify the means, and the ends are in fact unending
| pursuits of power, then no amount of deception, deceit,
| collusion is off the table. And yes, people who work at FAANG
| et al are complicit.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| I have a vaguely related question about Signal. People say it's
| secure and encrypted but it was widely publicised that Sam
| Bankman Fried's Signal messages were inspected by authorities.
| How did this happen?
| dmbche wrote:
| Signal protects your messages while it's on the web, on the way
| to your recipient. During this time, it is encrypted - but
| while on your or the recipients device, its plain text (as you
| can read it).
|
| There are many ways to get to those messages, like getting
| access to your unlocked phone/unlocking your phone, if your
| signal is not password locked (and if they can't break that
| password), or doing this with your recipient.
|
| OpSec is a process, not single tools!
| ben_w wrote:
| While I can't prove this, my expectation in this case is:
|
| The authorities asked for them and, possibly after consulting a
| lawyer, he handed them over.
| from wrote:
| There were cooperators in the same chatroom, a participant in
| the chats gave up their phone at an airport, or he volunteered
| it (probably not this). Same way it was obtained in all these
| cases:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%22signal%22+AND+%22encrypt...
| c420 wrote:
| Interception occurs prior to encryption
| drumhead wrote:
| 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > If they can crack encryption they're not going to tell us and
| they will probably act like they can't.
|
| The thing that was pretty apparent from Snowden's leaks is
| primarily that _they don 't need to_. This fear that "NSA can
| crack cryptography" is the wrong fear. First, as others have
| noted, there are legions of other researchers evaluating and
| attempting to break widely used crypto-systems. There is no
| reason to believe the NSA has some unique brilliant minds that
| aren't available elsewhere.
|
| More importantly, though, why bother with a "frontal assault"
| on breaking crypto schemes when endpoint security is a million
| times more hackable. That is, usually at some point someone
| wants to _view_ the encrypted data that is being sent, and at
| that point it needs to be decrypted, so why not just try to
| hack at that point (which is exactly what they do). As an
| example, just look at all the stolen cryptocurrency heists.
| _All_ of these heists resulted from stolen keys or from
| implementation bugs, not from cracking the crypto schemes that
| protect cryptocurrency in the first place.
| fsflover wrote:
| A case against security nihilism (cryptographyengineering.com)
|
| 468 points by feross on July 20, 2021 | un-favorite | 333
| comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975
| leptons wrote:
| Take this as an anecdote, but I have a friend that works at the
| top of a large quantum computing program at a well known
| company and he related once that the government is making it
| _very_ difficult for them to retain talent in the field and
| make progress. The government feels it _has to be at the
| forefront_ of quantum tech because of the possibly game-
| changing encryption capabilities. It was a bit chilling to hear
| but not at all surprising.
|
| As a participant in the "digital underground" since the early
| 80's, we were very aware of "ECHELON", "5 eyes", and other
| spying programs. The "Snowden revelations" are not really
| anything new, living a life around digital communications 20
| years before most people ever heard of the internet it was
| clear very early that surveillance is just something the
| government is going to do. And yes, they definitely would
| consider it top-secret info if they did create a quantum
| computer capable of cracking modern encryption. We wouldn't
| know about it unless someone leaks it, but I don't really care
| if anyone leaks that info - they either already have it or will
| have it first so it's fair to just assume that they do have
| that capability.
| flangola7 wrote:
| I find odd enjoyment in observing how one arm of the
| government is pushing for quantum surveillance abilities
| while another is urging everyone to quickly adopt PQC.
| nabogh wrote:
| Some cyphers maybe. But it's highly unlikely that all or even
| most in use are compromised. There are many cryptography
| researchers who aren't part of the NSA. Other nations for
| example. And banks obviously trust some cryptography.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Even if they were compromised I imagine the nsa would
| probably hesitate to use it in a detectable way and "save it
| for a real threat"
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I want to downvote you but can't think of a better reason than
| I don't like what you say.
|
| Surely we can encode better behavior into our institutions.
| motohagiography wrote:
| When the Snowden docs came out, the main thing that surprised me
| wasn't the tech, it was the scale. I thought I had seen the tip
| of the iceberg doing security work for over 15y prior, but I had
| barely seen ripples in the surface. Most of what I saw would have
| been in the category of "BULLRUN," which I incorporate into
| client threat models today, but also some of the ISP interception
| equipment I saw at peering points / IX's during the 90s that had
| just been called "some old police telco stuff, ignore it."
|
| I think an unintended consequence was that it also emboldened a
| lot of authoritarian personalities to just say, "yeah, we do
| this, you are with us or against us, here's the line, toe it." A
| decade later, participation in elite circles like media,
| academia, and politics is based on how convincingly one can be
| seen to parrot obvious untruths, not because anyone believes them
| at all, but because it signals status to be able to lie to the
| faces of people who know you are doing it, and still say nothing.
|
| Snowden's leaks were an unambiguous act of conscience. They made
| sustaining dissonance about how the sausage of empire gets made a
| lot harder for regular people - even if we also learned that most
| people really just like sausage.
|
| I tolerate the spook-adjacent types in my field who parrot absurd
| official lines and slogans about russian interference because
| being seen to align with it is just how they are trying to
| survive, and I can't judge what people do to keep their families
| fed. But the ones who know what's true, yet take a kind of
| pleasure in repeating official lies because it makes them feel
| powerful - I think the real impact Snowden had is showing people
| like that for what they are, and how low the bar is for getting
| involved in public service and just doing better. There are
| amazing people in public service, and they are mostly sidelined
| by a minority of these eels who demoralize their agencies by
| normalizing small acts of deviance, corruption, and partisan
| favours. You can change that.
|
| The best way for a technologist to leverage their skills to
| effect change in government is to go get a Privacy Professional
| certification https://iapp.org/certify/cipp/, and do work for
| your state, municipality, or a federal agency. Privacy laws
| everywhere got absolutely gutted over the pandemic, but the work
| privacy pros did in the decade prior prevented some of the worst
| abuses by people leveraging that crisis, and it's going to take a
| lot of smart technical people working in government to ensure
| there are technical limits on what a few sleazy appointees like
| the very ones who exploited 9/11 to build the panopticon Snowden
| exposed, can do.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > parrot absurd official lines and slogans about russian
| interference because being seen to align with it is just how
| they are trying to survive
|
| That was out of left field. What about people who believe it
| was plausible that Russian intelligence services were behind
| the leaks of the DNC and Podesta emails, that the intent behind
| those leaks was to interfere in elections, and that such leaks
| had a non-trivial influence given the election was so narrow?
| That seems like a reasonable set of beliefs to hold, not
| "absurd official lines". I don't have access to the evidence
| behind the set of claims, but it strikes me as highly
| plausible.
|
| Many of these "spook-adjacent types" (why not just call them
| "NPCs", wasn't that the lingo as of a week ago?), don't believe
| such attempts are primarily trying to skew the outcome in favor
| of Trump, they believe a general effort is being made by Russia
| and China to weaken confidence in elections, liberalism,
| democracy and the West broadly. Not because Russia and China
| are intrinsically evil, but because they are rivals, and as
| rivals have found an effective tool capable of undermining from
| within. The DNC/Podesta email leaks being only one of the more
| visible outcomes of these efforts.
| tlow wrote:
| Would that require CIPP/G to be able to participate at the
| state, muni or fed level?
| dralley wrote:
| >I tolerate the spook-adjacent types in my field who parrot
| absurd official lines and slogans about russian interference
| because being seen to align with it is just how they are trying
| to survive
|
| I present to you a real, still-active Russian troll account.
|
| https://twitter.com/blackintheempir
|
| How do I know it's a troll account? Take a look at this:
| https://twitter.com/reshetz/status/1662112840554098688
|
| Just like "There is no panic in Balakliya", there are
| occasionally moments when whole networks of these accounts
| tweet clearly scripted messages all at the same time which kind
| of gives the game away.
|
| https://twitter.com/JoniPyysalo/status/1567799462751309826/p...
|
| It's quite interesting to read, honestly. They have a decent
| pulse on what narratives are effective, but present it in such
| an consistently hamfisted and exaggerated form that it makes it
| just a bit too obvious if you're taking in more than one or two
| tweets. But it's twitter, most people don't do that.
|
| We can argue about how effective this kind of stuff is, but
| that it's happening is pretty indisputable.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| Very eloquently phrased. Some of the commonly accepted truths
| and geopolitics narratives are quite disturbing and actually
| very Orwellian in a genuine (and not cliched) sense. Narratives
| around China and Russia, narratives around our own liberty are
| completed warped, and to speak out singles you out. There's
| definitely a chilling effect about what is acceptable to talk
| about and what isn't.
|
| See my other comment on this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097082#36098762
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Russia is legitimately bad. Russia does not have supernatural
| powers.
|
| It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no
| reason, and are responsible for tons of atrocities, but they
| don't have microwave guns and using ten-year-old NSA code for
| ransomware is not beating America in a cyberwar. People blame
| them for things like the election of Donald Trump, which is
| just dumb
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for
| no reason
|
| This is not true. Real people have motives, ,,being evil"
| is a child's explanation for things it doesn't understand.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > A decade later, participation in elite circles like media,
| academia, and politics is based on how convincingly one can be
| seen to parrot obvious untruths, not because anyone believes
| them at all, but because it signals status to be able to lie to
| the faces of people who know you are doing it, and still say
| nothing.
|
| I don't understand this. Can you elaborate on what untruths you
| mean? Who's parroting these lies?
| bboygravity wrote:
| Random examples that I can think of: Trump has/had (strong)
| ties with Russia, needed those Russian ties to win the
| election and used them to win the elections.
|
| People still believe this to this day. Globally.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > People still believe this to this day.
|
| Who? It is accepted that Trump got help from Russia and
| that he publicly asked for it. It is not accepted that he
| has strong ties with Russia, and unlike what the GGP has
| claimed, there is no "official" story saying that. The only
| person who did say that was private investigator Steele, in
| a dossier that Clinton didn't believe and discarded but
| that McCain did and leaked.
| pstuart wrote:
| As I understand it, the Wikileaks DNC email dump was just
| a front for Russia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Co
| mmi...
| nyolfen wrote:
| more realistically, it was israel:
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-israel-
| collusi...
|
| perhaps you recall trump's first two acts in office --
| recognizing jerusalem as israel's capital, and
| sanctioning russia. curious!
| pstuart wrote:
| Ha! Makes sense.
|
| I abhor partisan politics but there are things associated
| with (e.g., Trump) that call for scrutiny.
|
| Trump is a fascinating character and has broken so many
| norms that it's been mind bending. It saddens me that HN
| has many of his rabid acolytes that make any such
| discussion a shit show.
| api wrote:
| Trump openly asked for help from Russia on national TV. I
| don't see how the existence of _some_ degree of Russian
| collusion is debatable given that it was done in the open.
|
| I do agree that there are people who vastly overestimate
| the extent or effectiveness of whatever Russia did do.
| Trump won due to general discontent with the status quo
| coupled with the fact that Hillary Clinton was a
| politically tone deaf candidate who ran a terrible
| campaign. If anything Russia did succeeded it's because it
| was able to capitalize on this dynamic.
| redeeman wrote:
| are you serious?
|
| Lets take your example at 100% face value as this is what
| trump did. OK, trump wanted the TRUTH to come out, he
| wanted facts exposed to the american people, that
| admittedly benefitted him, but still, facts relating to
| illegalities to his political opponent.
|
| Then we have mr biden, who said on national television:
| "We have put together, I think, the most extensive and
| and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of
| American politics."
|
| Whats this then?
|
| The same biden we can see on national television bragging
| about how he got a ukranian prosecutor fired, that just
| so happened to look into the company that his son worked
| for, in a huge corruption case.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Makes a fun sound bite but given the context was he was
| speaking about a program for people to navigate voter
| suppression, do you really think he has a secret voter
| fraud plan and accidentally revealed it like that
| Politicians speak a lot and I know I myself can mix up
| words sometimes and I don't speak nearly enough.
|
| > OK, trump wanted the TRUTH to come out, he wanted facts
| exposed to the american people, that admittedly
| benefitted him, but still, facts relating to illegalities
| to his political opponent.
|
| That's just clearly false.
|
| > Russia tried to hack Hillary Clinton's office five
| hours after Trump called on Moscow to find her deleted
| emails
|
| https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/19/18507580/mueller-
| report-...
|
| So basically Trump solicited a third party to commit a
| crime on his behalf. As far as I know that makes you an
| accessory. Also Russia later also hacked the RNC so the
| lack of release of anything incriminating there leads a
| reasonable person to conclude I think that they have
| blackmail info on the RNC that they're holding back
| because they have an agreement with the elites in that
| party. Notice how especially pro-Putin right wing media
| has been since that time period.
|
| The Meuller report is pretty thorough. If you haven't
| read it at least find unbiased analysis of what it shows.
| redeeman wrote:
| > Russia tried to hack Hillary Clinton's office five
| hours after Trump called on Moscow to find her deleted
| emails
|
| Emails that were deleted in a crime, that should have
| been public record. so while he may have been soliciting
| a crime (he didnt, and there were never charges, also, if
| you knew ANYTHING about trump, you knew he joked when he
| said that. but regardless), he wanted the truth to come
| out
|
| > think that they have blackmail info on the RNC that
| they're holding back because they have an agreement with
| the elites in that party.
|
| yeah you think, but you have no evidence, its entirely
| possible there was nothing there, and we have some
| evidence to point to that, regardless of how criminal the
| RNC may have been(and they are for sure every bit as bad
| as the democrats), in that Trump has talked plenty about
| how he put great effort to not having any digital copies
| of important stuff that COULD be hacked, and in addition
| to that, invest in "cybersecurity"
| pstuart wrote:
| The fact that you cite has been been shown to be false:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-biden-
| voter-pr...
|
| From your enthusiasm I'm going to guess you'd not be
| satisfied with that fact.
| redeeman wrote:
| i saw the full video. did he or did he not say the words?
| yes/no
|
| edit: Biden has also been rambling telling voters "I dont
| need your vote to get elected", that is, when he is not
| busy talking about his hairy legs to children, saying
| "look, fat", and an assortment of other things
| pstuart wrote:
| Joe is gaffe prone, and from the article that I linked to
| he apparently said the words but misspoke.
|
| I voted for Joe and I like the guy but I've definitely
| got issues with him. He certainly wasn't my first choice.
|
| But you appear to be a True Believer and there's no point
| in furthering this discussion because you mind is made up
| and that's that.
| redeeman wrote:
| no, I also believe he misspoke, but the point was, "we"
| take trumps jokes at total face value, as to actually
| believe he asked the russians, where if you watch the
| video, and know anything about how trump talks, you know
| he was not really asking them to do that, but making a
| joke. Something he often does. It may have been a stupid
| joke to make, all things considered, but it was one
| nonetheless.
|
| If you can suspend blind faith in the media narrative and
| out-of-context clips, and smear campaigns, and see what
| the man said, you'd see that too.
|
| Trump is a moron for many many reasons, but not what they
| accuse him of
| [deleted]
| sanderjd wrote:
| The only incorrect part of that is that it played an
| important role in his winning the election. But that part
| isn't necessary for the whole thing to be very bad, in my
| view.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a
| discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. It's the
| space around politics and think tanks and national security.
| There's an implicit expectation that you talk about certain
| topics in a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the
| narrative that's acceptable to the apparatus of power. It's a
| vague description but that's because of the nature of this
| unspoken expectation. More concrete examples would be how
| you're expected to just completely agree that Russia and
| China are essentially evil and enemies. Like that's the
| unspoken premise. Or in the US, playing this game of theatre
| around how Democrats or Republicans are bad. I'm not American
| but there's a talk show host called Tucker Carlson who goes
| around talking about how Democrats are ridiculous and holds
| all these inflammatory and demagogue views on air, but is
| known to be completely normal and reasonable off air and in
| his private life. That's the kind of skill that's seen as
| necessary in these kinds of "elite" circles, where you're
| just expected to be able to hold two contradicting views and
| milk them to your advantage. You're expected to be able to
| peddle mistruths and warp facts convincingly and worse,
| you're seen as higher status and more "refined" for being
| about to pull this off convincingly. Another example I'm
| reminded of is an Australian one, where a think tank that is
| funded by arms manufacturers called ASPI, had its CEO defend
| itself on live television. As you'd expect, he was
| surprisingly able to spin a tale where they were seen as the
| good guys using all sorts of deception and rhetorical tricks.
| I don't know how these people sleep at night but it's the
| very definition of double think from 1984. I do believe more
| people will see this subtle aspect of how opinion is shaped
| in future.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a
| discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. There's an
| implicit expectation that you talk about certain topics in
| a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the
| narrative that's acceptable to the apparatus of power.
|
| How do you know that this is true without mind reading or
| lie detection powers? I'm not being sarcastic. You see
| these people talking and have somehow arrived at the strong
| belief that they do not believe what they are saying. How?
| theaussiestew wrote:
| First, it's because I noticed myself and others doing
| this through observation and intuition. Secondly, it's
| because there are literally accounts and articles where
| these people say out loud what they're doing. E.g The
| Tucker Carlson example wasn't me just surmising
| something, I read it in an article that where
| acquaintances literally said he held no outrageous views
| privately and was literally doing it to rile his audience
| up.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Russia commits countless war crimes on a daily basis (there
| is tons of documentation) and China has concentration
| camps. America is not perfect but they are legitimately
| much worse
| yeetsec wrote:
| [flagged]
| user6723 wrote:
| When I tell someone to use Signal app and they say "I'm not that
| important" all I can do is smile and nod: "no.. you are not that
| important".
| bee_rider wrote:
| I prefer to point out: if only "interesting" people encrypt
| their messages, then encrypting your messages becomes a signal
| that you are interesting. As a boring person who thinks the
| state shouldn't be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on
| anybody, I have a responsibility to encrypt my boring brunch
| plans.
|
| I think "I'm not that important" is basically either the result
| of someone not thinking very hard, or it is a dishonest anti-
| encryption position. Embedded in it is the message that only
| certain types of people ought to be worried about the scrutiny
| of the state, and that the person holding the position is happy
| to take advantage of the fact that they aren't that sort of
| person. Force them to face that position head-on, I think.
| Zetice wrote:
| What about as a boring person who _does_ think the state
| should be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on people?
|
| And that person doesn't have to be anti-encryption, just
| anti-bad opsec.
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| [flagged]
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I suppose this is supposed to make Snowden look bad. It
| doesn't.
|
| The author is James Clapper, who Snowden's revelations proved
| lied in Congressional testimony about whether the NSA was
| collecting information on millions of Americans. So when he
| says that "multiple executive branch agencies, Congress, and
| federal courts [...] were all aware of and conducted oversight
| of the very programs that concerned [Snowden]," he's talking
| about the Congress that he lied to about these programs. How
| are we supposed to trust that Congress can conduct effective
| oversight when the intelligence community lies to them?
|
| (We shouldn't.)
|
| Snowden embarrassed the intelligence community and they won't
| forgive him for it. Americans (and others) should take that
| into account when they read or listen to the intelligence
| community's criticisms of Snowden.
| dijit wrote:
| I haven't heard many criticisms of Snowden that fall outside
| of:
|
| A) He's a Russian plant, HE IS IN RUSSIA!one!11
|
| Which is easily disproven because he could have done a lot
| more damage from the inside and it's the US that forced him
| to stay in Russia, Snowden was provably en route to Ecuador
| when his passport was revoked.
|
| "But he doesn't criticise Russia"; well, he can't leave and
| it's not his fight, his fight was for the soul of the western
| world (primarily America, though as a Brit I am glad he
| revealed what he did); Russia is very well known to be
| corrupt, there's nothing more to be said on that.
|
| B) He put lives at risk!!two!2
|
| Also very easily disproven as he only gave uncensored data to
| two Journalists whom had a track record for ethical
| disclosure (even to their own detriment).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| And honestly, those put at risk by what was actually leaked
| deserved it. In the sense that yes, running massive
| surveillance networks against your own citizens should be
| dangerous and if anything they got away with it very very
| easily.
| 93po wrote:
| > when they read or listen to the intelligence community's
| criticisms of Snowden.
|
| Or anyone who has reason to toe the same line, which is all
| of corporate news and most any politician.
|
| One can also include Assange as a target of this biased
| criticism.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| [flagged]
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah he should've martyred himself when those who actually
| ran these programs got away with it completely. And it's
| amazing that you attack Russia for being what it is, an
| authoritarian country ran by its intelligence agencies...
| While using the exact same rhetoric that is always used to
| justify authoritarianism. Actually, you might very well be
| surprised by how much you'd agree with the Russian
| government if we go by your last sentence.
|
| I hope you realize that all of this was justified because
| of the war on terror. It had nothing to do with Russia.
| They weren't going against a super power (which you could
| at least argue might justify the means), they were trying
| to find boogeyman terrorists that may or may not have
| existed in the US. If as you said they did their damn job,
| they wouldn't need to cast such a wide net like they did
| with their surveillance. And we would also have had more
| example of said surveillance actually saving lifes or
| leading to results.
|
| What we do have instead is countless example of suspects
| being listed as at risk but nothing being done since the
| lists are so huge and impossible to act upon. it's not even
| a form of survivorship biais either; authorities are very
| very happy to announce that they thwarted some terrorist
| plot before it happened. Its just that it happens very
| rarely.
| dijit wrote:
| 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
| that. _Those tools shouldn 't have even existed in the
| first place_, it was a flagrant violation of authority.
|
| The reason in the UK police are charged with harsher
| sentences than ordinary criminals is because they have
| authority and an enormous capacity to do harm. So do these
| agencies.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| 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 otherwise.
| dijit wrote:
| > 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.
| pixelbash wrote:
| How is anyone to say what most of the activity of these
| agencies are without any oversight. That's why the leaks
| happened in the first place, it was the only way to say
| 'hey we need more controls on this stuff'. Unless you're
| suggesting that was going to happen anyway somehow?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| They have enormous oversight, just not by the general
| public.
| monocasa wrote:
| That's hard to believe when Clapper literally perjured
| himself before his oversight and faced no consequences.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| But where are the countless, or at least fragmentary,
| stories where they did much, or any good?
|
| Secrecy and transparency and democracy just don't mix
| well, imo, if you want an absolute state that's fine.
|
| I can also agree that some rare situations may require
| absolute secrecy for some services, but that then must be
| limited and fully disclosed for later oversight, control
| and consequences.. 10 years is already a lot, 20 years
| absolute max, in my opinion. But almost nothing ever is,
| except what's leaked, that is shocking.
| glogla wrote:
| He didn't just ran to Russia, he went to China first.
|
| It would be lot more believable he did it for the greater
| good, if he only took documents related to internal spying
| (and not bunch of other stuff) and if he didn't take the
| documents on joyride through territories of biggest
| ideological enemies of his home country.
|
| But now he has to live in Russia, which I guess is
| punishment enough.
| woah wrote:
| This is such a ridiculous take. The fact that Snowden did
| not somehow martyr himself enough for you has no bearing on
| the important information that he leaked. He could have
| easily kept his mouth shut and enjoyed his cushy job in
| Hawaii like so many others do. Instead he threw it all away
| and is now stuck in Russia. Now you're saying that we
| shouldn't look at anything he revealed because he's not
| willing to speak out against Putin and get thrown in the
| gulag? What would be a sufficient level of martyrdom for
| you? Should he have set himself on fire on the steps of the
| Capitol?
| throw7 wrote:
| James "not wittingly" Clapper.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Pesky leaks. Protecting democracy when they work in your
| favour, defending terrorism when they don't.
| layer8 wrote:
| Username checks out.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Great find, love it! But the downvotes are maybe unfair for
| the Clapperish, wasn't that a parody?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > wasn't that a parody?
|
| I can't see how. Post was a wall of copypasta from James
| Clapper's book.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _the secrets Snowden was releasing were revealing to our
| adversaries and international terrorist groups how to avoid or
| thwart our surveillance._
|
| And yet, I don't see these international terrorist groups
| having been particularly successful since the Snowden leaks.
|
| Of course Clapper is going to try to paint the leaks in a bad
| light; the leaks painted _him_ in a bad light!
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > The materials Manning had leaked were embarrassing; the
| secrets Snowden was releasing were revealing to our adversaries
| and international terrorist groups how to avoid or thwart our
| surveillance.
|
| Dang, sounds like they should have cast a finer net or
| something eh?
|
| > he had appointed himself as judge over what he had seen, and
| then, without conducting an investigation or calling out
| wrongdoers, was going to bring about justice in ways that
| multiple executive branch agencies, Congress, and federal
| courts - which were all aware of and conducted oversight of the
| very programs that concerned him - apparently were unable or
| unwilling to do.
|
| And yet the American people, who ostensibly hold the reins
| here, weren't uniformly enthused about what they heard. This is
| an insider with immaculate insider mentality griping about a
| whistleblower whose complaints in the previous paragraph
| apparently went miles overhead. What an eye-roller.
| 93po wrote:
| > the secrets Snowden was releasing were revealing to our
| adversaries and international terrorist groups how to avoid or
| thwart our surveillance.
|
| Good, maybe this will incentivize intelligence agencies to not
| abuse their power knowing people will whistle-blow and reveal
| secrets. When you remove all other methods of accountability,
| this is what happens. Intelligence agencies did this to
| themselves.
| cronix wrote:
| Maybe, but more likely, if history has anything to show, is
| that they just become more draconian in their methods as well
| as increased ability to identify and go after leakers.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Exactly. They talk about how he ruined their ability to spy
| on bad guys, but never mention how they were missing that
| ability to spy on citizens and friendly foreign governments.
| Maybe if they had stuck to spying on bad guys, Snowden would
| still be using his intellect today to help them.
| 93po wrote:
| Agreed. They're not sorry for their actions, they're sorry
| they got caught. If they're sorry at all.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Parent is referring to the same James Clapper who lied (to
| Congress under oath, to the public) for a living.
|
| ref: https://reason.com/2018/01/17/time-is-running-out-for-
| prosec...
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| The fact that James Clapper is not currently behind bars is
| appalling.
|
| He lied to Congress and lied to the American people.
| 93po wrote:
| The list of people who should be behind bars and aren't is
| extremely long and probably includes most any household name
| politician.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| There is a worrying number of pro-Russia, anti-security services
| sentiment in this thread. I find this quite baffling as I thought
| hacker news generally had a very educated readership. I guess
| it's as baffling as the 'hard left' also being pro-Russian,
| despite the literal rape, murder, and other war crimes they have
| provably committed.
|
| Even ignoring the current war in Europe, have people forgotten
| the Russian state backed cyber attacks on American infrastructure
| and private businesses.
|
| It's obvious that education isn't a barrier to people becoming
| useful idiots.
| amoshi wrote:
| >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.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| Regarding Qwest, wasn't the CEO jailed for insider trading? Or
| is there another side to this story?
| ls612 wrote:
| He claimed that he was actually jailed in retaliation for not
| playing ball with the NSA before 9/11. Idk if what he did
| specifically is something you'd usually be charged with
| insider trading or fraud for, which would seem to me the best
| indirect evidence of who's story is right.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The whole situation was a mess. One of the things Nachio
| was accused of was inflating the share price by making
| statements that growth would continue when it didn't.
| However, the reason it maybe didn't is that the CIA blocked
| the lucrative contracts that Qwest was otherwise eligible
| for in retaliation for Nachio not going along with their
| request for illegally wiretapping everyone (he asked for a
| court order). Suddenly statements that would have been
| reasonable looked not so. However, he did also engage in
| insider trading but it's less clear if that's again just
| the CIA keeping an eye on him and helping the prosecutors
| get him through dual reconstruction (ie yes he did wrong
| but the government went about figuring that out illegally).
|
| Of course a lot of this is just conjecture and we may never
| know what happened from the government side.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Dual reconstruction == parallel construction right?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In other words, there's the possibility that others in his
| position was doing it, but only his trading was thoroughly
| scrutinized.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Or that others weren't doing it but the CIA helped point
| prosecutors in the right direction using information that
| is illegal for the government to have.
| ls612 wrote:
| Yeah I'm saying if that were the case it would be
| evidence for his story. I legitimately don't know though
| the details of his actions and the extent to which they
| are unusual or not.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > > It's hard not to feel superior,
|
| Schneier would know.
| hosteur wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| To take what you've said a little further, intelligence
| agencies have the "law" behind them, but once you become aware
| of everything they (all of them, worldwide) are doing, you get
| a completely different perspective on the "law" itself.
|
| Being involved in these activities can also diminish your
| ethical base, which I guess explains some of the crazy law-
| ignoring/law-breaking activities within all governments.
| kossTKR wrote:
| So true. And don't forget that these agencies answer to an
| elite group of people that benefit from specific world orders
| that promote various industrial complexes transnationally.
|
| And people that get too specific get daphnied, lombardied,
| assanged or jfk'ed.
|
| Or maybe not, but you won't find out because all media above a
| certain threshold is in a spotlight, and has been since before
| CIA bragged about its all encompassing media operations 50+
| years ago.
|
| I remember this info being somewhat widespread when the
| internet was still new, but wikis, forums and blogs are slowly
| being disappeared from search or drowned in noise while
| clownish conspiracies have conveniently smoke-screened all
| attempts to create an alternative to the status quo.
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, agencies have all these capabilities, but at the same time
| they rarely sway the practical course of history. When the
| "euromaidan" demos in Ukraine forced regime change, and the
| Russians hacked and leaked all US/EU diplomatic chatter around
| it, the contents were utterly banal and predictable. There was
| no grand conspiracy or execution, just a bunch of interests
| scrambling to react.
|
| Intercepting communications gives them a leg up, but that's
| about it.
| scraptor wrote:
| I didn't follow that at the time and I'm finding it hard to
| find information about it, would love a link to those leaked
| documents.
| 36097082 wrote:
| TIL that the Arab polymath al-Kindi invented frequency analysis &
| wrote the first cryptanalysis book 'Manuscript on Deciphering
| Cryptographic Messages', in the 9th century.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| If you're interested in this sort of thing you'd probably like
| David Kahn's _The Codebreakers_. It 's pretty much the
| authoritative source of what's publicly known about the history
| of cryptography. I believe he had some trouble getting it
| published at first, actually, because he made what was
| considered sensitive material more accessible.
| tootie wrote:
| 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.
| viktorcode wrote:
| IMO because of the impact they had in the media. I would argue
| Snowden revelations put privacy and data protection questions
| on top of the list across the world, for instance.
| colordrops wrote:
| Because you had journalists and documentarians like Greenwald
| and Poitras doing an amazing job of getting the story out
| there.
| monetus wrote:
| 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.
| hgsgm wrote:
| 2004, far less Internet connectivity to sustain awareness and
| outrage, and less impact.
|
| Our lives weren't nearly as completely mediated by online
| services.
|
| "Total Information Awareness" made a splash in the news around
| 2004 also, but then faded.
|
| Also, Bush's team was busy outraging everyone so many other
| ways, like blowing up Iraq for oil money, and making up
| nonsense legal defenses for kidnapping and physical torture of
| civilians.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't think that's it. I think it's more that the public
| was just more accepting of this kind of thing closer to the
| wake of 9/11. But regardless, that may explain the muted
| reaction when the story broke, but not why everyone seems to
| have forgotten about it. I honestly have a hard time
| understanding what it is that Snowden even exposed given that
| the PATRIOT ACT was public record.
| edge17 wrote:
| I think because one day everyone woke up and heard about PRISM,
| including a lot of the tech companies, which had to go into
| damage control to deny their involvement. It was big news with
| brands that every American was familiar with.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| That explains why Snowden was a big deal, but as soon as we
| all figured out that PRISM wasn't what he claimed it was (and
| Greenwald stupidly believed without running the docs he was
| given by experts) and instead just a data integration project
| for processing communications from targeted foreigners,
| Snowden should have become a smaller deal.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and
| not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier?
|
| Because, historically, the US Press is compulsively deferential
| to the NatSec state.
|
| It's the same reason the press twistered themselves to report
| the Mark Klein revelations as a warrantless wiretapping issue -
| instead of the NSA live cloning internet backbone traffic in a
| room custom built by AT&T for the purpose.
|
| ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein
|
| That the US press was loudly silent over US Gov's revenge
| campaign against - not only James Rosen but also James Risen
| and other journalists who outed NatSec wrongdoing - is for me
| one of US Journalism's most defining (non)actions.
|
| ref: US Gov's persecution of James Risen
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/james-risen-anonymou...
|
| ref: US Gov's persecution of James Rosen
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/05/james-rosen-name...
| hgsgm wrote:
| The US major media reported on this.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The US major media reported on this.
|
| There were some one-off stories but
|
| by the time we got to the point where PotUS candidates were
| pausing their campaigns so they could return to DC to vote
| in favor of amnesty for AT&T,
|
| 99% of the coverage was about the ancillary warrantless
| wiretapping issue; NSA's bulk collection of US citizen's
| data was soundly ignored. Every bit of this process was
| stunning to witness.
| rektide wrote:
| Bellovin's _Governments and Cryptography: The Crypto Wars_ is the
| most grand & sweeping review of governments & encryption across
| time that I've seen! https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
| farrell-tenyearsafter-...
| [deleted]
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