Comment by carvalho | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carvalho | Hacker News Reader

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Way down this thread, so time to ask the question: Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military?

I've always found it suspicious that Russia and China created their own social networks, email providers, and search engines. Almost like they know the power of a capable search engine or social network for intelligence gathering purposes.

Google and US anti-virus companies must work closely with the NSA too.

> Kuok repeatedly expressed fears that he might be dealing with an NSA, CIA or FBI agent, but continued to negotiate with the undercover officer, even cautioning him to avoid referencing the items by model number in e-mail, because "your country has this system to analyze" e-mail for keywords.

https://www.wired.com/2010/05/kuok

Also after the "theft" and premature release of Stuxnet by Israel, I wonder how strong the collaboration between the US and Israel is.

> A 43-year-old former Akamai employee has pleaded guilty to espionage charges after offering to hand over confidential information about the Web acceleration company to an agent posing as an Israeli consular official in Boston.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/239187/akamai_employee_tried...

> Facebook, for example, previously announced its DeepFace facial recognition system is capable of determining with 97 percent accuracy whether two images are of the same person. The company, which itself is accustomed to criticism that it views users as guinea pigs, is able is make such accurate identifications because of the network of images from which it draws, something that could take police agencies a decade or more to build up.

Snowden worked for Dell as a cover for his intelligence work. Russia told their military to move off Linkedin the moment it got acquired by Microsoft. Do Dell and Microsoft work closely with the DoD and should this concern non-US citizens that rely on their software and hardware?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/mapping-israels-marketing-...

> Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military?

Doubtful. Keep in mind that in Russia / China the state has a lot more leverage against commercial companies. It's very easy for the state to effectively shut any non-complying company, not to mention far worse (Russia and China have thrown businessowners into jail for no reason before).

> Almost like they know the power of a capable search engine or social network for intelligence gathering purposes.

Absolutely, the typical pattern is that some dominant foreign provider refuses to comply with say, Chinese Firewall rules, so the Chinese block it and instate a friendly domestic provider instead.

>It's very easy for the state to effectively shut any non-complying company

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

> Doubtful. Keep in mind that in Russia / China the state has a lot more leverage against commercial companies. It's very easy for the state to effectively shut any non-complying company, not to mention far worse (Russia and China have thrown businessowners into jail for no reason before).

That is pretty disingenuous. Noncompliance with an NSL is a quick route to contempt charges. On top of that, the gag order prevents you from explaining your position to shareholders or customers.

This coercion makes it much more straightforward for most businesses to simply comply with US demands, unless you voluntarily shutter your company, e.g. Lavabit.

NSL is a statutory authority document issued directly by the executive without judicial involvement. It is not a legal proceeding nor a warrant, nor is it even on court letterhead. There are no statutory penalties for noncompliance set out in the law defining NSLs, but it has provisions to request a court order to enforce if the recipient does not comply. That requires filing a federal case, bringing the intelligence operation to the attention of the judiciary, and probable argument with an opportunity for the target to argue. This is where you hear about folks like EFF defending an NSL, since replying to an NSL usually does nothing.

After a court issues an order, contempt of court is a possibility. Just clarifying that the route to contempt is not quick. It’s also largely untested. Writing an NSL is two pages in a Microsoft Word template, while arguing a federal case to get your way is a much bigger prospect; if the investigation is small enough, or they’re not totally legal in how they got intelligence, etc., etc., they might not wish to argue and calling the bluff might be smart.

The gagging facility of NSLs actually has a non-coercive purpose: as designed, an NSL basically invites an unknown third party into a sensitive intelligence or counterintelligence operation. Tipping off the target or anyone else could lead to a collapse of the investigation, burning other sources that were used before you got your NSL, diplomatic repercussions, and so on. That’s the thinking that went into it, and it’s actually understandable. Two problems are that (a) the gag is indefinite, with no circling back once the operation concludes and (b) NSL is horrifically abused for stuff it shouldn’t be, since FBI realized the gagging lets them mostly get away with it.

Source: Have held more than one and read the citations.

'I've always found it suspicious that Russia and China created their own social networks, email providers, and search engines. Almost like they know the power of a capable search engine or social network for intelligence gathering purposes.'

Seems like the Europeans are the only ones stupid enough not to.

Europeans had a few. There was StudiVZ in Germany and tuenti in Spain.

Once Facebook arrived with localised versions on the European market it destroyed all of the clones. Talk about network effects.

But search engines and email services? Operating systems? Europe is really not on top of this game.

Most of the countries had a local one.

Being local ones, they didn't have the same network effects like the US ones. Some of them still live, though.

The Europeans were developing one of the most interesting secure distributed platforms 10 years ago as part of the European Multilaterally Secure Computing Base initiative, but it appears to have gone dark. Maybe funding priorities shifted, or the technology was deemed to be something that shouldn’t be open.

Operating systems seems like a weird one to throw in there. For a start I'm pretty sure some Finnish guy wrote and maintains one of the better-known operating system kernels, which happens to be used in certain popular operating systems as Ubuntu (UK) and SuSE (Germany).

Or perhaps you meant mobile operating systems, in which case I would note that the most promising and well-known mobile OS after Android, iOS, and Windows phone (all American) is SailfishOS, which is... Finnish.

So the US is definitely on top, what with all the software tech giants being based there, but Europe seems pretty relevant.

I was thinking more alongside of mobile systems, true, but I never heard of SailfishOS. I think it's pretty irrelevant in the market right now.

Also FOSS software can't solely be attributed to the one guy who started it. I would say the Linux Kernel is global and it took a lot from Unix.

Indefinite Pessimism. China and to a large extent Russia are Definite Pessimists.

The US and the UK are Indefinite Optimists while many in US tech are Definite Optimists (such as Elon Musk.)

Cultural attitudes about the future of our world has a huge influence on the type and velocity of innovation.

Those are generalizations, but just compare investment philosophies of various countries. EU: with a few exceptions that prove the rule, very conservative, less likely to back 100x technology innovations, more likely to back 2x innovations that have low risk and low reward (but enough reward to make a return.)

Russia and China: more likely to invest in keep-up technology (me-too stuff) that promotes domestic stability — much more defensive investing to promote Juche ideas. North Korean “tech” is the extreme example.

US: willing to bet huge on low percentage, future changing tech (speaking of the Valley specifically,) while much of the rest of the US tends to be closer to the EU in terms of risk tolerance, with notable exceptions.

You won’t have an EU investor funding self-driving cars generally and you won’t have a Valley investor funding incremental 2x tech (generally.)

All countries have visionaries and innovators, but due to who controls the finances (and tax policy,) most of those future Elon Musk types are shot down before they even get off the runway.

Exceptions abound of course, but that’s my general take.

also: Czech Republic has seznam.cz , which makes a big difference in their market

Poland has several, but none can match the juggernauts

It isn't stupidity.

Europe has been destroyed in WWII only to be liberated by the USA and the USSR (China is also among the winners). The USSR collapsed and withdrew from Eastern Europe, on condition that it remains a buffer zone (think about Ukraine in this context).

The EU is therefore essentially a peace project, subject to the peace treaties ending WWII (this hasn't happened in N. Korea, think about it in this context).

Those treaties are still in force today, including the stationing of liberating forces. This pretty much sets the boundaries, including the defense (read supervision) of strategic resources, such as gas pipelines, energy grids, and yes, communication lines and information technology. Obviously, these restrictions hardly reflect current German economic strength (just like after WWI), which inevitably leads to tensions (‘The Germans Are Bad, Very Bad’, as the POTUS puts it).

Well there were the Snowden revelations of the PRISM program which apparently had all the major US tech companies onboard. So it’s highly probable.

>Way down this thread, so time to ask the question: Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military?

Is the Pope catholic?

> I've always found it suspicious that Russia and China created their own social networks, email providers, and search engines.

Yandex search predates Google.

Not to mention that the quality of it's search in Russian had been much better than Google's until at least 2010, as a Russian when I needed to search for something in Russian I didn't bother with Google because their search results were visibly much worse.

Facebook has CIA related people on its board.

Source?

While it's quite plausible CIA has penetrated Facebook, the interference is very unlikely coming in through the board meetings.

Really? Which ones?

Poster is probably referring to Peter Thiel who's company Palantir was funded through CIA contracts.

That's true. At least in the beginning, there were some people near the CIA on the board and some of the early investment funding came from entities close to the CIA.

However, that's a very old story, I doubt that there is much of a connection now.

Care to expand on the "theft and premature release of Stuxnet by Israel"? Most information seems to point to it being a joint US-Israeli creation or even primarily Israeli.

We do know for a fact that US General James Cartwright pleaded guilty to leaking Stuxnet. And then got pardoned by Obama.

No, he pleaded guilty to making false statements, not to leaking Stuxnet. More specifically, he admitted to providing classified information to reporters in 2012, over a year after Stuxnet was identified.

Now, whether or not he was guilty of more than that, I don't think we know, but that's often the nature of plea deals.

Good catch, sorry about the fake info!

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