Hacker News Reader

Comment by tswartz | Hacker News Reader

Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch. I hope we learn more about how the NSA is scaling their operation due to the absurd amount of data they have. In East Germany they had to use lots of people listening to every phone and apartment bugged conversation. That doesn't seem realistic for the NSA. Do they have software that is processing the data looking for keywords or phrases? That seems useless because an actual terrorist probably doesn't say 'bomb' on the phone.

View on HN

"Comparing what the NSA is currently doing in the USA to what was going on in East Germany is a stretch."

Well, let's try this: which agency, the NSA or the Stasi, does the following describe:

* Keeps records of who talks to whom

* Knows personal details of most citizens' lives

* Monitors the personal, business, and political communications of large numbers of citizens

* Operates in secrecy

* Has the cooperation of the nation's industry

* Collects more information that it can possibly process

* Claims to be working to protect the public

No, the NSA is not kidnapping people; that's the CIA's job. The NSA is a signals intelligence service. The Stasi's signals intelligence/surveillance system is what is relevant to conversations about the NSA, and there is nothing wrong or stretched about the comparison. Where the Stasi had informants, the NSA has Facebook. Where the Stasi had wiretaps, the NSA has room 641A.

We need to teach more history to the youngsters.

I think it might be helpful to read the article: "But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."

These are indeed the end times; I quote, with approval, The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/civil-li...):

"Few Americans believe that they live in a police state; indeed many would be outraged at the suggestion. Yet the everyday fact that the police have the right to monitor the communications of all its citizens – in secret – is a classic hallmark of a state that fears freedom as well as championing it. Ironically, the Guardian's revelations were published 69 years to the day since US and British soldiers launched the D-day invasion of Europe. The young Americans who fought their way up the Normandy beaches rightly believed they were helping free the world from a tyranny. They did not think that they were making it safe for their own rulers to take such sweeping powers as these over their descendants."

Or in the acid wit of Iowahawk (https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/342683624216330242):

"I'm grateful to the American heroes who stormed Normandy and made NSA monitoring of this tweet possible."

I am not sure you realize that UK citizens go to jail if they express unpopular opinions on twitter.

Oh, I do, that's one of mean reasons I find it remarkable I'm quoting from The Guardian with approval.

And should I mention that yesterday was the 64th anneversary of the publication of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (http://ygwomanup.org/this-day-64-years-ago-orwell-published-...)? We all know what culture inspired it and The Prisoner.

Although set in London I always thought 1984 was rather Soviet.

But inspired by the time he spent at the BBC.

Obviously it and Animal Farm were based a lot on Communists and Fascists ... he saw them up close and personal in the Spanish Civil War. But various details of flavor, ways in which the U.K. had already moved towards them ... well, that period also inspired Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which was in all seriousness and honesty dedicated to "THE SOCIALISTS OF ALL PARTIES", who as you know took over after Churchill.

ADDED: I don't think it would resonate with American and Commonwealth audiences as well as it does if it wasn't as the above that I believe it to be. In part; plenty of it is universal enough.

Right, because the people in today USA are completely different then the people in East Germany 25 years ago. Information today is literally the ultimate power. "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Something devised 50 years ago might have looked for the word "bomb." These days, it would be self-training systems that even the operators would have little idea of what it was recognizing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com