As a matter of fact, those of us who were warning about the NSA et al before Snowden were heavily relying on these 90's revelations to extrapolate what they were doing given the same system and new technology in a super-connected world.
So, for all the people in this thread to act like it's absurd that NSA was spying on KDC is ridiculously intellectually dishonest. NSA might not care about KDC individually, because they are just backdooring all the equipment (core router/switch backdoors, fiber splitters, etc) at backbone node junctions and they are gobbling up as much as possible for sifting later. Hence the word games the NSA leaders were playing with congress about collection vs wiretaping etc.
It's the NSA sharing raw data with Israelis in reverse, and it's happening all over to the point that the data sharing agreements themselves seem to me to be more of a security risk than the individuals they might deem worthy of a selector.
What's even more amazing to me is that on hn in years past you would have already been called out on this. I think hn is quickly becoming a place for business-people pretending to be hackers instead of the other way around, and it's shameful, but a different discussion I suppose.
This is often repeated, but I don't believe any evidence has been published to indicate this is happening.
Look, as a fairly rational conspiracy theorist, I recognize the importance of evidence, but in cases like this, it's very unlikely unless a leak happens for you to ever get it, and hence instead of looking for deductive evidence you can never rely on getting, you have to use inductive logic instead, and the difference between the two logical methods (inductive/deductive) is an important distinction that isn't made enough.
Do we have hard evidence that KDC was spied on specifically? No. Do we have inductive reason to believe it's probable? Very much so.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...
If there was evidence of such loopholes, people could demand change from their representatives. Without proof, I guess the only thing someone can do is repeat it in any IC-related thread on HN to get some easy karma points (Seens to work well!).
None of that matters.
What matters is just how little any of us give a fuck.
When Snowden hit the wires, it was a digital apocalypse for a lot of people. The GCHQ "catalog of intercepts", such as it was, just hurt like hell. The details about Keyscore and the technology that out-Google's Google: horrific. I can't explain how depressing it is to know that there are hardware y-combinators out there, in the oceans, providing an elite class with advantages none of us will ever see, in their effort to project power in the new, digital, order.
It was absolutely disturbing.
What made it hard to wake up from the hangover was the realisation: 99.95% of the digital-using world just don't give a fuck, because they don't understand.
We cannot trust our computers any more. We never could, really, but now: we just can't.
How do we back out of this situation? It has to start with a local revolution: roll your own. Grow your own. And, unfortunately, that isn't happening. Technological centralism has enslaved us all - and there are only a few, elite, who can escape these bonds.
Are you one of them, "citizen"?
Off the top of my head:
- NSA surveillance of the semi-public Brazilian oil company Petrobras: http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents...
- NSA tapped the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/merkel-calls-obama...
- NSA spying of Indian diplomats to uncover details about their nuclear and space programs: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-among-top-target...
This article is a decent compilation of Snowden-related stories from the first year after his leaks: http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-leaks-timeline-2016-9
I'm not aware of any assistance rendered to piracy investigations, but there is ample evidence of them sharing intel for the purpose of domestic law enforcement - which is way worse. So the call for direct evidence is nice (and silly considering the nature of the evidence), but the logic of "our boys would never" is pretty soundly blown out of the water. They have every reason to - and no reason not to, as there is no punitive action even after being caught.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...
The call for proof on individual cases is, of course, a valid one. But to overlook the fact that we have no way to put the genie back in the box - that, in fact, there are two computer worlds - one for us, and one for the elites - is to allow ourselves to be enslaved by secrets.
The secrets that Snowden gave us all have only really further served to enslave us all. We, the people, do not care. And now that we have demonstrated that we don't have the gumption to care about our own enslavement, the deal is sealed. Nobody is fighting back, because nobody is aware, because nobody wants to know the truth: the world has gone computer, and none of us have the keys. Only our masters do.
In this context though, it is because the headline indicates that it is a proven fact. However, it is not, it is an assumption directly from Dotcom. I think there would be no issue if it were more clearly stated as an allegation.