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Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

So these people do not want to talk about and are generally unable to provide examples of their surveillance stopping an actual threat because "they do not want to give away their capabilities", but when they get shown up for being absolute fools by taking an obvious joke seriously, they have no problem starting noisy court proceedings? They were likely just so giddy that they finally got something, they didn't stop to think whether it was real, suing that kid in red-faced anger and embarrassment afterwards.

These fuckups should be paid for out of their budget.

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At least in the US a lot of the surveillance is probably illegal and cannot be used in court. They way they get around this is parallel construction. [1] Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2] The NSA or whoever spies on somebody they're not supposed to be spying on. They see he's e.g. selling drugs, and further spying shows the time of a sell. They pass this onto a local law enforcement agency who then finds some sort of plausible justification to go stop/search the involved car. A cop, who just happens to have a drug sniffing dog, stops the car for 'driving erratically' or whatever.

If the intelligence agency revealed they were involved then not only could the person involved sue to get his own charges dismissed, but more importantly he could also sue the NSA to try to get the entire program scrapped. Countless entities (Wikimedia, EFF, and others) have tried to sue the NSA for this but it always ends the same way. They can't prove they were hurt by spying, or even that they were spied on, so the cases get tossed for lack of standing.

So they are actually being honest when they say they don't want to give away their capabilities, but that's because what they're doing is probably illegal. At least in the US, but I assume the UK must have something akin to the 4th amendment. To not have a government randomly spying on everybody is one of the foundations of a Free society. We were supposed to learn from KGB, Stasi, and so on. And maybe we did, but not the right lessons.

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[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130806082051/http://www.reuter...

How often does this even get used? How does the NSA even communicate to a police officer in the field? I think you give local cops a ton of credit. At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever before despite all the spooky tech and warrantless searching.

> At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever

Nobody said they're doing it to get drugs off the street.

I think selling drugs was a simple, if dated, example. And nobody suggested the NSA would contact an officer 'in the field' - they said contacting the agency/department

They aren’t going after drugs they are going after people for their political beliefs. Remember when the IRS audited every organization just for having the word “patriot” in their name?

It was probably used in the Silk Road investigation.

The NSA (probably) communicates it to the DEA’s Special Operations Division, which creates an entry in the DEA’s DICE database and tips off a DEA field office, which then asks local law enforcement to do a “random” stop and to use some Parallel Construction to keep it hush hush.

> Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2]

It seems the link stopped working some time in the past 2 weeks or so.

https://archive.is/wmthA

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39191639

The people that gravitate towards positions of unrestrained power often seem to have an authoritarian bend. If there's an opportunity to use their power to be a hero, that will scratch the itch, but in the absence of that opportunity, they seem to readily turn their power on the rest of us.

A man's urge to be a Hero and save the day, and a bureaucrat's fear of losing reputation are a deadly cocktail.

That's a great statement. DDG seems to think you came up with it. Is that so?

Thank goodness I'm not inebriated near an all-night tattoo parlor.

> Thank goodness I'm not inebriated near an all-night tattoo parlor.

Speaking of brand new sentences ...

The nerve they have to try and make the victim pay damages too?

"We messed up, send the Spanish authorities to scramble a jet to escort the flight, but he should pay for that"

The balls on these guys.

Who is the "We" in "We messed up" here?

Presumably, the "We" is British intelligence, but it's Spanish prosecutors that were asking for the kid to reimburse the Spanish government for the cost of scrambling the fighter jet.

> but it's Spanish prosecutors that were asking for the kid to reimburse the Spanish government for the cost of scrambling the fighter jet

The point still stands, regardless who was asking for the reimbursement.

In fact the last person who should be expected to pay out is the victim of this incompetence. A delivery driver being sent on a prank order delivery doesn't expect the victim to pay for the order.

I totally agree that joint failures by the British and Spanish government shouldn't be paid for by the victim. I'm just saying that there isn't any evidence that British intelligence asked for any restitution. I think they screwed up, know it, and are keeping quiet.

The Spanish prosecutors, on the other hand... shame on them for having the nerve to continue prosecution, particularly after Spanish law enforcement subjected the victim to time in jail.

> but when they get shown up for being absolute fools by taking an obvious joke seriously, they have no problem starting noisy court proceedings

Those aren't the same people, though.

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