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Comment by oneloop | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with this country, that nowadays people are so afraid of being disappeared that they run away to Russia, Ecuador, and Germany. We're doing something wrong.

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What's wrong with her you mean? The type of people affected by rendition or hit teams are a rare breed. Ultra-rare. The typical method is arresting, optionally a high bail, plea offer, and then rough time in court. If convicted, you're in a prison where you usually get to at least talk to outsiders and maybe get out early for good behavior.

Quite the opposite of people disappearing you. Now that she's in Europe, the CIA's jurisdiction, she's at greater risk of this happening in form of thug violence against Americans, tourists, whatevet. I'm guessing that's uncommon to rare step, too, so dont know risk level

You mean you actually believe that an organisation with no transparency and no accountability that routinely slaughters civilians in double digits, is engaged in illegal torture etc etc will staunchly follow an arbitrary jurisdiction?

In jail she might die on accident just because your jails murder people for fun. Or she might get murdered purposefully - for eg deny medical care... Written on a broken phone, sorry for any typos

The comment you're replying to was bad enough, but turning up the rhetorical indignation like this takes the thread in exactly the wrong direction. HN needs fewer grandiose denunciations and generic tangents, and more concrete and thoughtful discourse.

How so?

I mean the ECI leaks state a clear division of labor on SIGINT issues. If it's domestic, the FBI handle it as we've seen in leaks and court cases. If it's foreign, then the CIA or other operators handle it. Their methods are typically bribery, extortion, or B&E's. Targets of high interest are sometimes kidnapped under rendition program or executed via drone program. Both of the latter are active in Germany. BND also cooperates strongly with NSA and CIA.

I doubt she's at risk of serious stuff but she's outside FBI's more limited scope now. Instead, if they escalate, local authorities will grab and extradite her with assistance if needed from CIA or NSA. Probably none will be needed past local cops if she thinks presence in Germany is safe from US authorities.

> Now that she's in Europe, the CIA's jurisdiction, she's at greater risk...

History has shown that geographic location is no protection from the CIA. MKULTRA being a clear example of obviously illegal activity. But I really doubt that the CIA would be interested in a TOR developer, that is NSA territory. While the NSA has a much less colorful history, they do burgle when they feel they need to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_United_S...

The only thing protecting you from the CIA are nukes. So what you need as a hacker is some really good zero-days and some excellent viruses - leashed to your survival. If that would be done by a lot of people, backing each other up, keeping the digital backbone of society as hostage, something like a justice system could be restored.

Or go with the more direct route, ala Snow Crash, and drive around with a nuclear motorcycle sidecar.

Nah, history shows CIA rarely messes with people unless they threaten it or are a target. NSA's TAREX and HUMINT teams come from CIA and ISA. They do the foreign work for them. So, if NSA or FBI escalated, a CIA or ISA team could come after her. More likely CIA as they're default.

> ...come from CIA and ISA.

ISA, yes. CIA, no - or at best extremely rarely. The CIA keeps what it pulls from the military, the NSA by comparison is a revolving door and relies heavily on loaned assets. For TAREX you can pretty easily find the USMC MOS that regularly gets loaned out, they don't even try to hide it. If the NSA wanted something they'd be much more likely to use resources from the host nation, not ISA and especially not CIA.

I can't speak to tgat. What I do have is numerous writeups from journalists on spooks that did it plus lots of different slides saying it's CIA with a few referencing ISA. National Clandestine Service naturally. You got a solid, public source saying TAREX or NSA HUMINT is rarely CIA?

Likely the same sources you do, but with a different interpretation.

https://edwardsnowden.com/docs/docs/tarex-class-guide.pdf

Pg 2, change 1: this is very telling - as they've basically redefined the mission statement in order to avoid the association.

Pg 3: NSA HUMINT is from the US Army command. Bonus info - this is the primary point of connection to the other services (USMC CI being a good example).

Pg 7: TAREX personnel are loaned to CIA operations, not the other way around.

Besides that, the history and culture of the two (NSA and CIA) are very important to keep in mind. The NSA is very old school military, it is structured that way and it behaves that way. The CIA is a very different animal, to the point where comparing the two is like comparing the FBI to the National Park Service.

I overlooked that Army command part. Might be my memory loss from injury since every reference I'm digging up has Army on it. Tks for reminder. I know there's a joint NSA/CIA group similar to TAREX with human assets and CIA capabilities since I used to track them. It's possibly ever secretive Special Collection Service (SCS) mentioned here:

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB506/

It's Sentry Osprey in ECI leaks that mentions TAREX and CIA assets. So, my memory was right. SCS is just a hunch, though, as it's a natural collaboration point that has massive SIGINT resources too.

https://theintercept.com/document/2014/10/10/national-initia...

Far as NSA vs CIA, I'm well aware of that. CIA's history back to Wild Bill is well-documented. Here's NSA's in case you missed the declassification:

http://usafssdad.com/files/The-Early-History-of-NSA.pdf

Note: This tangent gone on too long so I'm backing out. Hope the docs are enlightening. Thanks for your tips.

Wow you're naive.

This person had no reasonable reason to flee to Germany. Beyond paranoia and maybe a persecution complex. The FBI isn't going to "disappear" someone they subpoena.

Yes unlikely this person would be disappeared.

Tor Project distributes binaries, though. So it's not unreasonable to immediately hop on a flight to leave the country permanently. Once they hand you a national security letter (or use some other leverage), not sure what effective recourse you have. I think it would be like dodging service in a lawsuit (which can work).

I think this is the most likely answer. Once handed an NSL, you either have to quit the project or hurt people; or maybe even less than two options.

What is a NSL supposed to achieve here?

What non-content information could they have wanted from her?

If she has commit rights to the tor project they could require her to submit a patch which could be used to reviel metadata about tor users.

What you said. The ECI leaks say they use them gor SIGINT-enabling. In Lavabit, the court order was to compromise all the keys then lie to users that it never happened.

Or ignore the NSL, talk to the press about it openly, and become the case which invalidates them.

I'd do it.

That's really easy to say behind a throwaway account on the internet. It's a much harder choice when it's your life and freedom on the line, and I don't know if anyone can truly say it for sure until they're in that position.

This is an absolutely fair observation.

I seriously don't understand this NSL business. There's this secret institution misusing the name court which kinda doesn't exist but makes rulings and if you're on the naughty list of the powers to be, you might get an invitation. To me this all sounds like dark ages of inquisition. I thought we were over that with Enlightenment and such and there were no witch burnings anymore. The painful effect is that many people self-censor and act like they're in China or DDR (communist Germany). Better not get on their radar.

NSL only cover "non-content information" (metadata) and can't force you to do something like backdoor TOR. And you can fight them in Federal Court.

You can't NSL "how does TOR work?" or "give me the encryption keys to X."

What an NSL can do is say "give me a list of emails sent by XYZ@yourdomain.com" and you aren't allowed to tell anyone.

How do you know?

What verifiable evidence do you have that no NSLs have been issued demanding encryption keys, or that all such NSLs have been successfully challenged in court?

What verifiable evidence do we have that no NSLs have been issued demanding that someone dance around naked on the FBIs parking lot?

Probably the fact that that simply isn't what NSLs are for.

Encryption keys are most definitely "content".

It's irrelevant. The ECI leaks had one statement that said that the FBI "compels" US companies to assist in "SIGINT-enabling" (backdoors or taps). We should assume they can secretly order such things given it was in the most secretive leaks.

For foreign companies, they sent the black bag operators of CIA or ISA to get job done. ISA is an interesting outfit to have coming after you or your data.

So, she could legally be compelled to do something disuptive to catch criminals like Feds do all the time in physical spaces (esp hotels). Thing is, leaving to avoid that might put her at risk of what's used outside jurisdiction. Fleeing was a bad move.

That is what is legal. So sure, if the FBI was going to completely violate the law they can send something that looks like an NSL. But they could do that even if NSL isn't legal.

Are you serious? Have you read what the FBI has done so far? It's one thing to get subpoenaed by a public servant of a real court, but it's reasonable to be afraid if FBI agents act like they want to serve her papers in person by a fake court named FISA and either shut her up or force into cooperation in something she wouldn't do if given the option.

FISA is a real court but this information wouldn't be under FISA court jurisdiction.

If it's secret, it's not a real court. Even the founding fathers of the USA would disagree and they're kinda still fresh history-wise in terms of justice systems around the world.

> FISA is a real court

No, its not. FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is a real law.

FISA creates two courts, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

I believe she was planning the move well in advance of this story.

That's already explicitly stated in the article:

> "Lovecruft had intended to move to Germany someday, but she put those plans on overdrive."

My recollection was from her blog post a week or two ago.

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