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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

I’d love to see the intercept publish the equivalent for China, Russia, etc. It feels the press has very overindexed into the NSA.

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It's not a secret in the West, or even in China, that there's a "Great Firewall" which surveils and regulates all internet access.

It's just America that pretends it doesn't have a secret police.

> a secret police

The term "secret police refers to intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political opponents" [1]. We have no evidence the NSA is "used to protect the political power of an individual" or even political party. They're an intelligence agency, purely and simply.

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

That spies on members of Congress on the orders of the President... https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/spying-on-congress-and-i...

One of the few groups that should be spied on

No, their activities should largely be public. The NSA having privlaged information on their actions is dangerous, they have no incentive to share them with the public unless it benefits the NSA.

> No, their activities should largely be public.

I can agree on that

As important as that is, even if they're completely corrupt you still don't want a secret police watching them.

I believe COINTELPRO is now firmly in the realm of "documented fact" rather than "conspiracy theory"? That was the FBI though.

More recently e.g. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/judge-orders-fbi-cia-...

Of course it's documented fact. And the CIA had a comparable program called CHAOS. Moreover, read up on JTRIG's use of sigint to conduct psychological warfare, as revealed by their own documents (GCHQ leak from the Snowden archive)-- smearing people online, destroying reputations. Presumably, they are only conducting such operations on radical terror leaders, but how do we know? And what's to stop them?

Are you implying that people believe the US doesn't have an intelligence community that engages in covert surveillance?

In the past few years, the debate seems to have shifted from "What is appropriate oversight and behavior for intelligence agencies" to "Literally all national-level intelligence operations are a crime which must be stopped". The difference between the US and China/Russia is that in theory we have an intelligence community that is answerable for its actions to an elected civilian government. The extent to which that is true is obviously debatable, but to try to draw some equivalency here is absurd.

It is ironic that the "democracy dies in the dark" people still won't report on this even though it has been common knowledge and public record for over a decade.

Still won't report on what? The Chinese firewall is public knowledge, and Cisco helped build it. China doesn't have a democracy and doesn't pretend to.

NSA spying to an extent is public knowledge, but the submission is full of new information. I'm sure it will be reported by other sources in a few hours.

The Intercept is "overindexed" to the US in the same way that the Daily Mail is "overindexed" to the UK. That's the whole point.

The Intercept, though I like much of their work, has shown some sympathy with Russia and repeated things that were Russian propaganda from agencies like Sputnik and RT. Wikileaks itself is possibly even a Russian front operation.

I like The Intercept, but it's mainly Glenn Greenwald who seems to have gone off the deep end and really dug in his heels, even when other authors in the group have written articles disagreeing with his unyielding conclusions.

They haven't shown sympathy towards Russia, they just don't view Russia as the sole bogeyman responsible for all troubles. Like the Trump-Russia scandal, they have reporters on the case but also point out there is similar or more damning evidence of collusion with Israel or Saudi Arabia.

Your post illustrates why they take these positions. Even an unsourced insignificant link to Russia is used to discredit anyone.

If you tried in China or Russia you'd probably get a nice visit to a permanent-stay "resort" with "daily exercise" where you get to work in fields without pay

you're really optimistic...

why would PRC provide a stable "work" and "exercise" routine when it can simply use a death-van?

PRC is wiser to do a quick off-with-their-heads when it wants to shush someone

True, a .22 round is much more efficient then lodging and food

Suicide by multiple gunshots

Professor Chomsky has often had to respond to criticism that he singled out the U.S. for his criticisms. He rightly points out that, as a citizen of the U.S., he is obligated first to attempt to address the wrongs (as he sees them) of his own government first, since he (at least in theory) has some ability to influence his own government.

Stories like this often rely on some access to privileged information. If you were in a non-English/Portuguese country and had that privileged information, what reason would you have to expose it to an online paper you've never heard of?

This line of criticism is often brought up but there is no merit in it. How many Russian language news sources are you aware of?

China and Russia do not hide what they do or the fact they monitor all their citizens data

The US on the other attempts to play like the US Government is high and moral, respecting the freedoms of their citizens, while in the background they are just as Authoritarian as Russia and China

well good luck trying on those countries!

with PRC operating quick-death-"police"-vans, aren't you telling the intercept reporters to risk their lives?

maybe you should try...?

America can't claim to be near the peak of human culture, freedom and civil liberties while also wanting to be compared against places like China and Russia.

Hold yourself to higher standards if you really are No. 1.

Nice whataboutism.

While I agree China/Russia has the intent, but do they have the ability to conduct wiretapping on this scale? It sounds like the US is uniquely able to do this since so much of the internet's backbones/services reside here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM

Thanks for the link. Doesn't seem to address my contention that the US has unique levels of access. I assume that all countries spy on their own citizens, but NSA is uniquely positioned to get traffic at a global scale.

That article has details about their implementation Nationwide. It's very similar to the CALEA requirements in the US.

Please read my posts carefully before responding. You are talking at, not to me.

Why? Because this hurts your sense of national pride?

Of course it wouldn’t. Greenwald is effectively a Kremlin puppet and he’ll never admit he was conned.

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