Comment by exo762 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exo762 | Hacker News Reader

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>>a book she’s publishing to accompany the exhibit includes her journal from the height of that surveillance, recording her first-person experience of becoming a spying subject, along with her inner monologue as she first corresponded with the secret NSA leaker she then knew only as “Citizenfour.”

> That line really highlighted the fallacy that "mass surveillance is effective" for me.

Ohh it is so much worse than that. For me eye opening moment was CCC 2015 talk "What does Big Brother see, while he is watching?".

The main takeaway. People engaged in surveillance are not "evil", "villainous", "dark", "shadowy" or "dangerous", or even "malicious". They are bunch of very sad, very pathetic wankers. Their job has less meaning than any other job I can think of. (Even TSA airport checks may be more meaningful)

This is a powerful talk. And it frames global surveillance just as it should be framed. As a waste of money, people going through soul killing, democracy killing, privacy killing motions. Without any chance of getting closer to declared goal, using methodology that if anything, hurts their declared goals.

Unless their real goal is control! But in such case they should be called out on that and de-funded.

>People engaged in surveillance...They are bunch of very sad, very pathetic wankers

However the reality is neither "evil" nor "pathetic" - they are us, the people reading this article, they are techies, hacker news readers, hackspace users, friends, geeks. They believe what they are doing is right, or they like being challenged by the mathematics, or they want to make a difference for their country, or they want to be at the leading edge of crypto.

That's the reality - the people engaged in the technical side of surveillance are hacker news readers.

What you're forgetting here is the "analyst." The non-technical person who sits in front of the X-Keyscore UI and just punches in a name and has all the information about them. Sure, someone with engineering talent built parts of that system, but they probably didn't know the full picture since everything was compartmentalized.

Exactly. Most of them are analysts with no sense of the tech or big picture.

It's a lot easier to get people to obey orders if they don't have enough information to make a moral judgement.

Former analyst inside large intel agency here. Analysts definitely span the range of technical aptitude. However, most understand what is happening, why what they're doing is specifically legal, and most buy into the narrative that what they're doing is right. I imagine the people responsible for technical surveillance of whistleblowers are a separate, possibly specially selected group. But I'd be willing to be they're selected for being intelligent and true believers in what they do.

I agree with your comments. When I discuss the big picture, I'm talking how their activities and intelligence will be used by politicians on top. The things people in the field are told and what's actually going on often differ enough to impact loyalty.

So, for an example, the analyst might be monitoring aspects of the situation in Syria, including comms of Assad's people, to forward to people who make decisions to compete with that regime. The analyst will know there's others, esp various terrorist groups, trying to topple that regime. The analyst may or may not know CIA and British are giving support to those terrorist groups without regard for blowback that will murder their own. So, their work is indirectly supporting and fueling terrorist organizations that will kill those they claim to protect.

I doubt they knew that. Or their ideology of "protecting" their country was very different than they'd project publicly.

" But I'd be willing to be they're selected for being intelligent and true believers in what they do."

Bingo! That's how the dirtiest stuff remains secret for the longest time. They have to be smart, true believers. They can also be among the most effective given how long they're typically in the game. I like using an easy, fictional example to illustrate this to people. Favorite is the "operator" on Serenity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0GGndnnOqw

Thanks for the recommendation. The link to the talk you mention:

"What does Big Brother see, while he is watching? [32c3]"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Teu5qXJDFow

The site of the presenter:

http://simonmenner.com/

> They are bunch of very sad, very pathetic wankers. Their job has less meaning than any other job I can think of.

I would love to solve the problems that one would encounter in this industry if I did not have to avoid it for moral reasons.

Have you considered a career in sousveillance [1]?

In High School I read and gave a report on David Brin's The Transparent Society [2] and that still has an impact on how I see some of these topics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

So you're saying the "pretend to upkeep security while in reality maintaining an iron grip on society for your friends in [REDACTED]" market is ripe for disruption? ...

I think Mass Surveillance is a bad idea, extremely high risk and the potential for abuse is high. I also think that it consolidates too much power in one place which is dangerous for the future and the secrecy is a big problem.

That said there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks and pretending there isn't is weird to me.

> That line really highlighted the fallacy that "mass surveillance is effective" for me.

Specific evidence of success is likely to be classified. It's possible attacks have been stopped - the classification of information makes it hard to know either way.

Though mass collection can help, if you have intel of suspicious people you could look through the entire history of their communication - see what they've been saying and to whom. When you newly learn that a person is a part of ISIS (for example) you can look through their entire communication stream retroactively. Since the attackers are not always that sophisticated (they used SMS in Paris) you can potentially learn a lot of information by doing this (their network, maybe plans).

They're posting videos of themselves on youtube showing off weapons and locations - I suspect there's a lot of information available in their communication that's useful for stopping attacks. It's a tool you would obviously want if you had to do the job.

That said I think the secrecy is dangerous because it prevents the public from being able to determine what level we'd accept (and legal recourse against abuse). It also is more likely to encourage abuse and since James Clapper lied to congress about it we can't trust the organizations that have tasked themselves to do it.

Thinking long-term, it took a long time to get relatively benign governments - consolidating this much power in one place (especially in secrecy) is something we probably shouldn't do.

> That said there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks and pretending there isn't is weird to me.

Where is your evidence for that claim? This article is an example which should be PERFECT to detect. Poitras was under targeted surveillance. And she was still able to communicate with Snowden without detection. The security industrial complex has a terrible track record of success.

there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks

It's not that obvious to me. Can you explain why you think this is obvious? Because in order to stop attacks, you need specific, actionable intelligence. Indiscriminate collection of data just muddies the water.

I was going to do a simple calculation here, but wikipedia already has a nice illustration from Cory Doctorow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox#Discuss...

Sure - as mentioned in my previous comment it gives you an entire history of communication to retroactively analyze.

It's not likely to reveal much alone (too much noise - like you suggested), but given a lead from some other means you can use it as a tool to look through the recent communications of that suspect and their close network.

This would be a tool that would be useful to have and since people planning violence are likely communicating about plans - looking at comms could lead to actionable intelligence.

Is this potential intel worth the risk of abuse? I think probably not, but that should probably be decided by the society being surveilled. Either way it definitely should not be done in secret.

I worry that trying to argue surveillance is entirely useless will do more harm overall because to those 'in favor' of surveillance it's a dumb position.

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