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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Here's an interesting thought (to me). Supposedly there is a law that forbids NSA from using PRISM to directly spy on Americans. Let's imagine, for a brief, laughable moment, that this law is followed. It would be technically compliant with the law if the NSA could send a request to Dutch authorities, and ask that they send any information they have or can obtain on a US person. The Dutch have access to this system, and would know what the NSA is getting at, so the Dutch would query the system and send the info back. This could all be done via API in a matter of milliseconds.

The NSA could then tell their overseers that they have never used PRISM to spy on Americans, which would be technically true, while they would enjoy unfettered access to intelligence on US persons with absolutely no oversight or authorization from anyone. This seems to be one of only a few logical explanations for giving other countries access to the system.

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That doesn't seem like a huge stretch of imagination at all. There have been rumors years ago that they're doing this with the UK, too, and probably other countries, too.

I wonder if that's why Germany is the most spied upon in EU. Does Germany have the same deal with US? You spy on us, we spy on you?

It can either be that, or US spies on Germany because they want all sort of information from their politicians, businesses, and so on. I doubt most terrorists reside in Germany. So those can be the only 2 explanations.

I suspect the NSA and CIA remember the Cold War and still regard Germany to be an occupied US possession.

I think so long as the Germans allow the substantial US military occupation to continue, it's VERY likely much of the bureaucracy views Germany as a quasi-possession (ditto Japan and South Korea).

The way the US regularly gets various major countries to dance upon command, probably just helps reinforce that view (eg the US directly threatening Britain in regards to leaving the EU).

> (eg the US directly threatening Britain in regards to leaving the EU)

Can you clarify this, I haven't heard of it?

Do the flip test:

Would the US allow the Dutch, the Germans, the Belgians and the French to have military bases on US soil?

They come over here and train all the time. If they had the numbers they probably could carve out a base within one of ours, or even a separate area.

There is at least one U.K. facility home-based here in the U.S. in fact.

If you're talking about Nellis that's a US airbase with a few UK planes/pilots stationed there mostly for training purposes, which is clearly not the same thing.

I'm not talking about Nellis.

Edit: I can't say what I am talking about, but I will say that we (the U.S.) ended up having to lease usage of the U.K. facility even though it was physically located here in the U.S. and protected by U.S. forces.

Guy...

You're not inspiring the average American's confidence in the US Government.

So? Inspiring confidence in the government is not my job, defense of the nation is.

They are the same thing.

They are not at all the same thing.

In fact if Americans weren't in general wary of the government I'd be wondering who kidnapped all of America and replaced them sleeper cell aliens. There's no finer American pasttime than distrusting the government, it's right up there with chopping cherry trees and baseball.

I don't see how your question follows from my post.

If you intend to imply that I agree with the NSA that Germany is a US possession, then you're wrong. In the 80's I protested American occupation personally.

However, it's useful to understand the mindset of the people in power in Washington. They really do regard everything as American soil.

Finally, from a logical perspective, the Germans didn't allow US military bases; it was part of the post-war occupation accord. The French and the UK got their sectors, too, as did the Soviet Union.

Most German i2p developers were motivated by what you were wondering. It was part of the negotiated agreements.

(A bargain was also struck with the UK: they got bombs from the USA in exchange for data - Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn was Postmaster General)

You're implying here that the NSA or the US government is somehow bound by laws. I haven't seen any repercussions for the US's inhuman prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, the civilians murdered by the thousands (in total) in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the secret CIA prison facilities where fuck knows what happens.

Actually downandout wasn't implying that the NSA was bound by laws which prevented them from spying on US citizens, in fact downandout went to great lengths to specify that the scenario was hypothetical and unlikely.

This is how they've supposedly done an end-run against these restrictions with Echelon for decades.

Pre-2001 from what I've read that is how Echelon worked. The UK would spy on Americans, Americans would spy on the UK, and they would both exchange intelligence to bypass each one's respective laws.

But following 9/11 there would be no way the UK could keep up with the US's new intelligence quantity/demands, so the US started spying on themselves and new laws had to quickly get penned to make that retrospectively legal.

Thanks for pointing this out. I've brought this up many times, but people seem to gloss over it. These more recent programs simply remove red tape. This has been going on at least since the Regan administration(perhaps before with Carter). While it may be "illegal" to spy on your citizens, there's nothing against spying on your ally's populace and then having them reciprocate the favor. Share intelligence reports and you are now successful in spying on the entire world.

Most companies don't collect nationality information, so there is no question in my mind that the program (if it collects more than metadata) has spied on Americans, in violation of the law.

If I sign up to Yahoo France, while in France, and give my French address, I assume the NSA (or Dutch AVID, in this case) would assume I'm French and could spy on me. But this may be incorrect, I could be an American... Yahoo never asked me nor verified my identity, let alone my nationality...

Even if they did, some people are dual nationals, and some people are nationals of the US and the US doesn't know about it (Children of Americans born and raised abroad, who have a foreign nationality as well, have no US birth certificate, never lived in the US, have no SSN, and have not yet asked for a passport). These unregistered people are Americans, too, the law says they cannot be spied on without a warrant...

The NSA would have to be able to prove that accounts do not belong to Americans (impossible, for many reasons).

This is an interesting point but I doubt any court would prevent the NSA from spying on foreign communications based on this argument.

Immigration and nationality are exclusively "guilty until proven innocent." The burden on proof is on YOU to prove that you are a US citizen, whether you're stopped by some police department or the border patrol. This is why you're supposed to always have your Green Card on your person.

This is completely incorrect.

In most states it is not required to have ID on you. Most US citizens do not carry proof of citizenship (passport or birth certificate), and a Drivers License is not proof of citizenship.

US citizens travel abroad, and it would be illegal for the government to intercept communications between a US citizen and someone else, regardless of location of either party, regardless of the location of the communications intercept.

Furthermore, based on your logic, the government could intercept all emails where someone's passport was not scanned and attached...

Sounds similar to the Double Irish Arrangement [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

That is not a mere thought, it is an actual thing called UKUSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukusa

That is how it works, and how it has worked since WW2, at least in the English-speaking countries and NATO.

I believe that this was supposed to be how things operate (or at least used to operate during the cold war) between the UK and US. The US outsources domestic spying on the UK, the UK spies on the US in return.

I don't think the access is intentional just the sheer number of companies involved make it easy to have double agents placed who report to more than one intelligence agency.

Just another example of how the program is a complete failure and unnecessary.

All that personal and confidential information available to virtually any half decent intelligence agency.

Nothing new really, acting via proxies to stay within lawful bounds has been used for years, inteligence agencies do not hesitate to pay for or exchange services with sometimes very shady people to reach their goals. The most common example would be the outsourcing of "interrogation" to 3rd parties.

Some reporting suggested that the NSA and FBI are working together in a way. Perhaps the NSA uses PRISM to spy on foreigners (freely) while the FBI uses PRISM to spy on Americans (with more restraint, hopefully)?

Possibly, although FBI tends to be shackled by a much more restrictive set of laws and guidelines. They tend to get warrants and follow the book because they know that in many cases their work will be eventually made public and scrutinized by skilled defense attorneys as part of a trial. They don't want their cases tossed out because they were based on illegal searches ("fruit of the poisonous tree").

By contrast, if NSA were doing what I have theorized above, they would have unfettered access to all PRISM data with no oversight, and it would be entirely legal.

Has 'fruit of the poisonous tree' ever shut down a line of evidence in a terrorism investigation? Will it? I don't really expect our security apparatus would tolerate a restriction like that. 9/11 changed everything...

If they can't get their way in the courts, who takes the fall for "letting a terrorist go free"?

If it would, they just leave them in gitmo.

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