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Comment by luso_brazilian | Hacker News Reader

This had the potential of being a positive development brought by Trump's election: many behaviors by the US three letter agencies that were glossed over for the past 8 years (due to the party in power being "on the right side of history") are again reprehensible and deemed a threat to be fought by the tech community.

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I'm not a US citizen, but if I was, I would want professionals sworn to defend my country and the constitution to be able to modernize their capabilities. Today, these tools are essential to defense. It may turn out to have been the best defense against RU attempt to Balkanize USA.

The best offense is a good defense. Improving the quality of software in general would be far more beneficial than developing zero-day short-sighted tools.

That wouldn't help you break into a Russian generals email account to read his email to his mistress saying he's going to Ukraine for a couple weeks.

The CIA isn't even really responsible to cyber defense. They are an offensive spy agency.

I've never heard the phrase "the best offense is a good defense," but I have heard a great many times the phrase "the best defense is a good offense." I don't have any data to back it up, but inclined to believe the more popular form of the statement.

"the best offense is a good defense" - 51,600 Google results

"the best defense is a good offense" - 143,000 Google results, and the only one with a Wikipedia article.

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

I haven't heard of RU attempts to Balkanize USA; could you please elaborate.

Some people have connected Trump's Putin connections with the Russian connections of Calexit to conclude that they are part of a coordinated effort to exacerbate regional divides in the US to the point of Balkanization.

The same way Obama's election was going to bring transparency and "change"?

This comment is just too depressing and accurate. It kills me I voted for obama and the dems, and they just spied on people nonstop. It is uniparty...

I agree but unless every other nation stops doing this there is little value in being the only "clean" country (assuming somehow we stop). And what are the implications of doing so? We used to believe that free and open societies would naturally prosper compared to authoritarian/totalitarian societies but what if that was all a lie? "Five Eyes" dates back to the 1940's, ECHELON at least the 1980's - none of this is new. Maybe we are all just naive to the realities of geopolitics? Is this just the modern version of "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."?

Personally, I'd rather live in a world dominated by America/Europe than one dominated by Russia or China. All parties have lengthy histories of atrocious behaviour but the US/Europe doesn't have a "Great Firewall" and critics of our leadership are not disappeared (yet?). I just hope "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." remains fictional....

> We used to believe that free and open societies would naturally prosper compared to authoritarian/totalitarian societies but what if that was all a lie?

Then give up your freedom and start advocating for monarchy in America.

Wouldn't it be easier to try and push for a return to a more open/free society? I don't see how a monarchy solves anything in the US.

How do you justify that with

> unless every other nation stops doing this there is little value in being the only "clean" country (assuming somehow we stop)

If there is little value in being "clean", intelligence agencies have minimal to 0 oversight and accountability, and a non-trivial percentage of the population wants them to dominate geopolitics through any means necessary, how will we ever have an open/free society again?

Domestic surveillance using these tools seems like a different issue than whether the US or its allies use these tools for geopolitical advantage?

Hypocrisy aside, in theory it would be possible to have an open society domestically even if these tools are used internationally.

Given the track records of the US intelligence community in that regard [1-4], I honestly don't understand how anyone could possibly believe them when they say they aren't using their tools domestically. There is insufficient oversight of their activities for anything they say to be believed, given their long history of lying directly to the American public. Saying the CIA doesn't use their hacking tools on the American public is like arguing the sky is green.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensor...

2. https://www.thenation.com/article/cias-student-activism-phas...

3. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000538627....

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)

I think you are confusing my hypothetical question with me somehow condoning mass surveillance, disagreeing that it is currently happening, or disagreeing that it wouldn't happen in a hypothetical future?

I have no doubt that these tools are used against domestic targets, perhaps not from the CIA but certainly by agencies like the FBI - I work in aviation and routinely see mystery flights. Everyone in the office can guess what they are (http://imgur.com/a/17hSR - 6 hours of circling - Maybe they had a warrant, who knows.

My point was that even if we could somehow stop domestic mass surveillance, I'm not sure it we would stop using them internationally or even have any obligation to do so?

Nothing will stop them from using their tools anywhere, which is my point. When the agencies themselves are fundamentally untrustworthy, as they have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be, the distinction between surveillance domestically and abroad isn't meaningful. Especially with the data sharing rules Obama pushed through at the end of his presidency.

I don't think it's possible to value open and free societies while spying on the entire world for the purposes of asserting your geopolitical dominance. Freedom for me but not for thee.

We have one and this shit is what we came up with.

If we are ever going to be dominated by something, I wish it's an Artificial Superintelligence

The tech community has been pretty up in arms against the three letter agencies ever since Snowden's revelation, so I'm not sure how Trump's election is going to change that; if anything it might produce the opposite effect since these agencies seem to be feuding with Trump on some level. Besides, wikieaks is a pro-Trump organization so I doubt that Trump losing the election would have caused them to go more softly with their criticisms of the government.

> I'm not sure how Trump's election is going to change that; if anything it might produce the opposite effect since these agencies seem to be feuding with Trump on some level

A big part of Trump's appeal is that he's seen as anti-establishment. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that he may make significant changes at those agencies as a result of their "feuding" with him.

> wikieaks is a pro-Trump organization

I don't believe that for a moment. WikiLeaks helped Trump's campaign, certainly - but their reason for doing so was orthogonal to Trump himself.

If WikiLeak's behavior during the 2016 election was driven by anything personal or partisan, I would say it was Assange's own personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton.

> I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that he may make significant changes at those agencies as a result of their "feuding" with him.

And? What does that have to do with the tech community being critical of three letter agencies?

> but their reason for doing so was orthogonal to Trump himself.

I don't care what the reasoning is, Assange explicitly stated that he wasn't going to release info on Trump because he felt the media was sufficiently critical of him and he has kept up with that promise and maintained a mostly positive disposition regarding Trump, that's Trump support. Don't misunderstand, I don't think supporting Trump invalidates any of the info that wikileaks has released, my point is precisely the opposite, that this info was released despite their support for Trump so if Trump hadn't have won the election, it makes sense that they would have been just as critical if not more so.

Can you source Assange stating this? As far as I remember, his explanation was that since there was already a bevy of mainstream media ready to publish any dirt on Trump, leakers did not have to go to Wikileaks to publish their stories, therefore it was unlikely anyone would send their leaks there.

“I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day," Assange said.

So this seems like a clear admission that they are in possession of controversial material regarding Trump, but Assange figures, why bother publishing it, it's not much more controversial than what comes out of Trump's own mouth, so we won't bother publishing it, nothing to see here.

Anyone that thinks the Trump administration is going to lead the charge on reforming these agencies is foolhardy.

Governments rely on information to function.

Once an administration comes into power and sees the amount of information provided to them through these means, there's no way they would relinquish it in any meaningful sense.

> Anyone that thinks the Trump administration is going to lead the charge on reforming these agencies is foolhardy.

I think they were saying that the public (and tech community especially) will demand the reforms because they view Trump as nefarious; not that Trump & co will freely relinquish them.

Do you have any examples of them being glossed over?

In this case the enemy of your enemy is a deranged megalomaniac. I'll take the enemy thanks.

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