NSA assisting Minnesota with intercepted communications | Hacker News Reader

NSA assisting Minnesota with intercepted communications

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59 pointsmonocasa24 comments

I saw an article saying that the government was conducting contact tracing of people arrested at the protests.

At the time I wasn't sure what that meant, but now my guess is that it means precisely what it sounds like: the authorities are using the same tools they use against COVID-19, for the purpose of identifying looters and rioters.

Personally I think we must dismantle a large portion of our surveillance apparatus.

> conducting contact tracing of people arrested

I'm pretty sure this is standard when police think that more than one person committed the crime. I don't think "contact tracing" in this case is any different than just "investigate the crime and follow the leads".

The 50 states and many large metros have fusion centers that were already gathering, collating, and redirecting national security info. If the NSA was given authority to target the protests (probably, because the president and DoJ are claiming other nations are agitators), this might be happening.

Given the current admins' penchant for blaming others for what happens here, pointing at other nations seems like par for the course by now. It's easier than looking in the mirror, and a convenient distraction.

I don't disagree with what you say, but I don't see how it's relevant to my comment.

Which is why the google/Apple system is better than any of the state ones.

No, it isn't. Once the police seize a large enough network of phones, all those id's are trivially correlated, even if they are ostensibly decentralized. If the capability exists to contact trace for epidemic tracking purposes, the capacity for abuse by law enforcement for mixing with bad actors whose id's are also known through device seizure also exists.

no, because you need to publish your data to do anything, which means they can't track anyone who's phone they don't have, and they can't track anyone who's details haven't been published.

So all the can actually track are people's who's phones they already have complete unlocked access to. At that point they can just read out the google and Facebook tracking data and subpoena them for the full information.

Contact tracing, in the epidemiological sense, is a process of interviewing and mapping out contact graphs.

What is presumably going on here is tracing through devices and accounts.

Those are very different processes.

Fox News updated the story to say the MN Governor public statement that the NSA was involved in interceptions of messages for the military supplied intelligence report was in error, per the Governor’s office.

SOURCE: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/minnesota-intelligence-supp...

Read: Getting caught was the error.

Yeah you cannot trust the NSA for anything. Especially related to your own security. They would be do more societal good as fertilizer to water thirsty ornamental plants in a minimally populated desert. Where maintenance of said plants was paid for by taxpayers watered by contractors at extortionate rates while the workers only receive minimium wage.

It's quite likely there is foreign interference, but it would be nice to have some solid evidence for once. The bets are open, I guess.

In Romania we are used to have praceful protests turn into vandalism, it’s a known thing already: agitators are brought in, chaos starts, police ram onto peaceful protesters, including moms, kids , some grandmas and grandpas, some disabled. They thus end the peaceful protests and more vandalism takes place. This is a classic tactic form soviet opression and control manuals, since we’re in their sphere of influence. I shouldn’t be surprised if Amerika has mighty methods of control and supression, sure, not like China and Russia but in an perverted way nonetheless

We all said this tech would be used for no good, and now here we are.

Already been denied by Minnesota Governor, and it's outlandish to begin with. I'll believe it when it's written somewhere other than Twitter.

Isn’t the nsa explicitly prohibited from operating in the US? Or is that just the CIA?

Another comment stated that Fox news retracted this story.

The charters prevent them from spying domestically, but there are a handful of cases where domestic agencies are allowed to request their assistance.

> Another comment stated that Fox news retracted this story.

A US company retracting this story. Not weird at all.

> The charters prevent them from spying domestically,

A long time ago that was the case, but I believe that hasn't been true (or followed) for over 30 years.

The AT&T "splitter" rooms are one example. Tapping Google's WAN links is another.

One of the fig leafs used for email gathering is if one recipient is not in the US, then it's "international." But they could just say, "we thought one of his contacts might have been foreign", and there's nothing anybody can do.

Yes, sorry I didn't expand on this. The capabilities of the IC have changed (during Cold War, after Church Committee, after 9/11, etc).

I'm aware of the evidence that you listed.

> But they could just say, "we thought one of his contacts might have been foreign", and there's nothing anybody can do.

I would argue the US military could invade another country and "there's nothing you can do". We, as lowly citizens, have no standing in court and no authority over the NSA/DoD/CIA (except through our elected representatives).

They break that prohibition all day every day. That's one of the things Snowden objected to.

Turn-key police state exists.

The race is on. Do we dismantle the apparatus before someone turns that key or dues someone get there and turn it first?

This probably isn't it. This is just another warning, right? We still have time, right?

I think Biden's handlers are more likely than Trump myself but it might be singing that vibes after.

"singing that vibes after" from "someone that comes after"

Phone autocorrect is not something I'm working with very well nowadays... Sigh.

As long as the signals leave US borders the NSA looking into it is fair game.

Or if it started internationally before reaching the US.

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