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116 pointskpierre104 comments

Actually you laugh, but being spied on by someone with no jurisdiction over you is better than being spied on by someone who can name you an enemy combatant because they misunderstand your e-mails that contain a plot synopsis for a book you're working on or that can label you a child pornographer because you have naked photos of your grandkids playing in your yard.

So that's happened when, in American history?

Are you saying that at no time in American history has the FBI or NSA intercepted someone's emails, telephone calls or internet use and used that information to either capture them or force them into becoming a mole?

As for the OP comment about the grandkids and child porn - that was a front page story a few days ago on HN.

I guess I'm looking for an example of the FBI or CIA misunderstanding an email and "declaring someone an enemy combatant".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825087

Pretty sure that's not America.

"British weather", "barrister", what gave it away? RTFA.

This happens fairly frequently unfortunately, like this case of paranoia.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/04/30/baby-taken-from-par...

I presume you have heard of McCarthyism? There are many, many examples of American abuses on American citizens, where innocent people lost their jobs, friends, families and even lives because of what they believed, or even what the American Government thought they believed.

Imagine the McCarthyism mindset combined with today's surveillance culture and the disaster that would be.

McCarthyism is a good point. I agree.

Catch 22. Worth remembering that this is a secret program, governed by "secret law", run by secret police, with strong penalties (including international manhunts) for those who expose abuses. You want us to rattle off incidents? Then start by giving whistleblowers immunity to actually report abuses.

The "secret law" part is the one that really floors me. The FISA court orders are themselves secret. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But knowledge of secret law is itself a crime.

America is now watched by secret police.

The FISA cases that authorize surveillance are secret. Laws used to prosecute people are not.

Who's prosecuted? They are just disappeared via extraordinary rendition.

https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343549654916542464

For context: you're referring to Steve Clemons reporting on overhearing a bunch of people affiliated in some way with foreign intelligence services babbling at an airport about how Snowden should captured or killed.

When I hear someone who works for the USG talk about how we should turn some supposed adversary of the US into glass with a barrage of nuclear missiles, I do not immediately fear for the future of the planet.

I hope the people Clemens overheard are identified.

I actually think Yandex is a good alternative. Assume that all countries have similar projects like PRISM. Which one would you rather have: your country spying on you or a foreign country?

If your country is spying on you, it can use the data it gathers against you in a court, etc. If it's a foreign country, what could they possibly do?

The NSA spies on all major email providers.

Sell it to your country?

Technically, the FISA law being used by the NSA to capture phone records doesn't generate evidence that is easily used in court. If you're not a legitimate foreign target, you can suppress evidence that originates from FISA, and the NSA is obligated to destroy evidence it inadvertently collects on citizens.

Do you actually believe what you're writing? Seriously, the NSA or any other govt agency would be stupid to delete data and I highly doubt that the "checks and balances" measures actually care about doing their job. If they had done so then the leak would not have been necessary.

Yes, I actually believe what I'm writing. If you doubt any of the checks and balances work, what's there to discuss? The only conclusion I see you as being able to come to is that we'd have to eliminate all foreign signals intelligence.

Or, hey, we could restore the pre9-11 checks and balances. Just a thought. Maybe we could demand our government not use every small threat to our country as an excuse to move the goalposts, the Overton Window. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Why are the pre-9/11 checks more trustworthy than the post-9/11 checks?

tptacek, I can't reply to you directly. The checks haven't changed, the obeying part has. The executive branch of our government needs to return to following them. How to enforce that on the branch tasked with enforcement it the problem. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence seems to lack a backbone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Permanent_S...

It is easy for them to use info against you outside of the courts in all sorts of ways, from blacklisting to blackmail. Or if you really piss them off the government can just throw you in jail and refuse to prosecute you, like the guys in Gitmo.

If you think the government is going to disappear you to Guantanamo, what's there to discuss at all? You clearly believe the government is bound by no laws at all.

Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement on my part unless you're a middle eastener. But they've proven over and over that they'll throw out the laws when it inconveniences them.

What's the example that most sticks out in your head of the US throwing out its own laws?

Maybe warrant-less mass eavesdropping. Though admittedly they did give everybody retroactive immunity once they got found out.

Are you ok with the information that has come to light about our government collecting masses of data about US citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism? I think what is coming to light here is that the Government does whatever the fuck it wants and justifies those actions in any way they see fit. As a United States Citizen, I am NOT ok with this.

Interesting. I see a government largely doing what the people of the US voted them into office to do: allocating resources to pursuing organizations (or, really, if we're honest, entire ideologies) that "we" perceive as threats to our security; moreover, from what I can tell, they're doing it within the bounds of the law.

I feel the same way about NSA surveillance at this point, on Tuesday June 11, as I do about airport security: it's ineffective and offensive, but not the start of the decline of the Republic.

I don't jive with your analogy on TSA screening/NSA blanket spying on all citizens. Flying is a choice, in one form or another. We volunteer to be subjected to TSA when we buy a plane ticket. We don't agree to give up our rights as a citizen when we vote people into office, even if we support that candidate's views on fighting terror.

Let's vote this gal/guy into office so we can have our rights suppressed in the name of freedom, said no one ever.

I disagree with you that flying is a "choice" that turns airport security into an opt-in procedure.

you can live your entire life and never fly. if you are a citizen of the world communicating inside the US (or internet traffic passing through the US), evidence seems to indicate that some portion of your communications are being recorded and stored under the pretense of fighting terrorism. everyone communicates. these are worlds apart as from each other.

As you say, this is a technicality. Everyone is guilty under a microscope, and the FISA dragnet can provide authorities with a license to use a microscope on you. That's quite enough to be scared about.

In theory. In practice, they spy on you for a week, and then obtain a warrant because they have "probable cause", taken from all the spying.

Is that how it happens in practice? Interesting. Where can I read more about how data from FISA warrants are used to build probable cause for domestic criminal cases?

http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-m...

See links to primary sources, including David Kravets:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/spy-court-stats/

I read the Kravets piece at your recommendation only to find that there was no mention in it of anyone using data obtained through FISA to build domestic criminal cases of any sort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

Use the information against your own country and the people in it, which likely includes the people you're closest to?

Since you're not a citizen of that country, use the information in your email in far less scrupulous ways? Perhaps they could blackmail you into being a foreign intelligence asset. Perhaps a corrupt employee could slip your information to a criminal organization who will then steal your identity.

All of these things seem rather unlikely, and chances are you're equally boring to both governments. But your assumption that the government of a country you're not a citizen of will treat you better than the government of a country you are a citizen of seems pretty odd to me.

Seriously? Whatever you do for a living, it ain't what most of us do. The fact is, almost all of us ARE boring to foreign governments. Almost all foreign governments WILL treat our correspondences better because of this. If I were designing fighter jets, it'd be different, but I'm making luxury yachts. Russia doesn't care. In fact, a few rich Russians own some of our boats.

unless you make a yacht for someone the russians would like to track or listen in on

I'd be much more comfortable having the Russian mafia targeting me than I'd be with the NSA spying on me. You can pay the mafia.

I think you're conflating television with reality. You don't give or pay the Russian mafia, they take what they want. The Russian government (Russia is a "virtual mafia state" [1] so gov't == mafia) is responsible for some of the most visible politically motivated assassinations and scams in the world. I.e., look at the use of polonium to assassinate Litvinenko in London (the assassin suspected by the British gov't is now in the Russian parliament) [2] or the use of police and official stationary to steal $230 million by quietly signing over companies owned by Hermitage Capital Management [3].

The NSA, as secretive and as evil as it may become, is still a US government agency run by Americans with a moral code. The same cannot be said for the KGB (colloquial for FSB), Russian government, or Russian organized crime (all three of which are pretty much inseparable).

It's far less likely that they'll care about you but if they do notice something that they want, you're fucked.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinen...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

Of course the NSA would do nothing against anyone, and it only gives access to this data to the people that need and deserve it, and it would never fall in the hands of someone who would betray our trust, or their trust, like this Snowden guy, and...

Oh, wait-.

Of course the Russian mafia state would do nothing against anyone, and it only gives access to this data to the people that need and deserve it, and it would never fall in the hands of someone who would betray our trust, or their trust, like, for example, any bum from the military, intelligence, or business community that offers enough of a bribe for it.

Oh, wait-.

This assumes that you give a shit about the collection of papers with ink that is your 'state'. I don't. I give a shit about not being locked in a cage.

Dulce et...

> All of these things seem rather unlikely

More generally, anything that nobody has ever seen happen is unlikely.

I have heard of many occurrences of a government profiling, targeting or even suing their citizens over national security. I have never heard of anyone having their identity stolen by a criminal organization who got it from a foreign nation's government.

If you are in danger from a foreign government reading your email, you are an employee of your own government.

How about an Indian provider? http://mail.sify.com/

KGB is much better than NSA: they simply don't have money for data processing on that scale.

Yandex Mail is a great competitor to gmail, some things even work better -- you've got a separate list of thread's attachments, ability to unsubscribe from whole spam categories in one click, SMS (maybe only in russia) and so on

That's a dangerous assumption to make, many world governments may have purchased intelligence from the NSA and now they'll have to re-allocate funds for locally-sourced intelligence.

Outsource your domestic spying to the NSA cloud!

EDIT: How do we do it? By saving money on counter-intelligence! it's a win-win!

Only until patio11 convince them to increase the monthly price 10-fold.

A quick search found estimates for the FSB's budget in 2005 was over 60 billion rubles, which would have been about $2 billion USD back then.

http://www.agentura.ru/english/experts/safranchuk/

That seems like a very healthy budget to me.

FSB does not need the money for it, but they already spy on everyone for 15 years. In Putin's Russia, the ISPs purchase the necessary equipment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM

I'm russian. I've left Russia for good because of weather and politics. Now I'm laughing out loud.

All jokes aside it's interesting to observe politics and technology interplay. But I'm not too excited I have to take part in some of the events.

What about the low taxes you would have had there?

For that low taxes you get: 1. Awful state clinics 2. Corrupt police 3. Poor public infrastructure 4. Irresponsible government So, you have to pay separately for security, for medicine etc.

1. Many countries with good care are on the verge of bankruptcy.

2. Sad to hear.

3. From what I gather, the corruption in the construction industry extremely bad there.

4. Are they really worse than any other country? Starting off of the base of the previous regime, there's obviously going to be a lot of work to do.

Why do you refer to taxes in Russia as low? Could you please provide some comparison to other countries?

I live in Russia and I don't think taxes here are low.

Didn't east germany have warehouses of piles of paper of records of everyone spying on each other?

It bothers me as a progressive that many liberals don't see how we are a hop, skip and jump away from that mentality.

From birth to death there is going to be a record of your child's phone calls, friends, dates, etc. It will never be deleted.

Aye, and we're still at it deciphering shreddered papers :)

http://www.goethe.de/ges/pok/ddg/en2491168.htm

This quote from that article gives me chills because it's what they are saying now:

Erich Mielke's mania for information: the long-time head of the Stasi, Mielke believed that "you have to know everything in order to be completely safe"

That's a really good quote in the light of the NSA drama.. i still don't understand how people can defend this..

In case you hadn't heard, the KGB no longer exists. They've been replaced by the FSB and SVR.

The FSB is still colloquially referred to as the KGB.

So is this post just an excuse to make snarky comments or is there a point you're trying to make?

I'm sure the FSB and SVR are only looking at the metadata.

If you are that worried about FSB spying on you, make sure you are not running a Kaspersky product: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/

But in all seriousness... it seems to be a rather unfortunate reality of using FREE email service, that the actual level of privacy afforded to you is minimal. Russia has a very stringent set of anti-extremism laws that curb free speech big time. If your content is labeled extremist, it has to be taken down by an ISP via a swift court order. Note that the "court" is either a single judge or a small panel of judges making the decision. Under that set of laws.

The hosted paid services like Google Apps is another matter all together. There the privacy expectation should be extremely high... but who knows if that's really true.

If you are that worried about NSA spying on you, make sure you are not running Windows.

Because, you know, routine software updates is just what the doctor ordered for on-demand installation of backdoors.

I know very little about how Linux works internally, and I use proprietary video card drivers in Ubuntu. Given Linux's internal handling of driver binaries, how much damage would these be able to cause if they contained malicious code?

Quite a bit - not total kernel access, given the GPL symbol table export restrictions, but at least as much as a process running as root in user space.

That said, it's quite likely that such malicious behavior would be detected by somebody.

Because NSA cares about whether it's a free service or a paid one, or about the company's ad tracking technology?

Verizon is not a free service. Where's our privacy?

Wasn't the KGB dissolved in 1991?

Yes - it was superseded by FSB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service_(Russi...

I imagine the NSA will still find a way to read your mail.

Remember how Google complained loudly about Chinese hackers breaking into a few Chinese dissidents' gmail accounts?

How pedestrian of them. The NSA is apparently far more efficient at that game.

Slightly off-topic, but how do people here think Yandex search stacks up against Google? I mostly use DuckDuckGo at this point, but I like to have several alternatives and Google is not going to be one of them anymore.

It's pretty ok. It definitely crawls a different part of the web than G and DDG, so that's always refreshing.

I used to like it because it still had a lean, plain HTML no-frills interface, but I see they've added some JS interactivity to it (not much, though).

I thought they had an English version, but I can't find the link :) So all I'm seeing is Russian, which I cannot read.

> I thought they had an English version, but I can't find the link :)

http://www.yandex.com/

At least they still have an RSS reader. It seems more like a valid replacement for most Google Reader alternatives that have passed around here before.

I don't think this would be a crazy thing to do.

Russia doesn't drone 'suspected' terrorists based on their meta data.

Is this a really subtle joke...? The FSB will very definitely kill you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anna_Politkovs...

Well, at least they got and only got the target. Drone strikes seem to regularly take out many innocents. Or are no A-Rabs innocent?

Seriously? Are you completely unfamiliar with the conflict in Chechnya and the surrounding regions?

From Wikipedia's article on the Second Chechen War: > According to the 2001 annual report by Amnesty International:

>> There were frequent reports that Russian forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas. Chechen civilians, including medical personnel, continued to be the target of military attacks by Russian forces. Hundreds of Chechen civilians and prisoners of war were extra judicially executed. Journalists and independent monitors continued to be refused access to Chechnya.

This is not precise comparison. The Russian military actions in Chechnya are quite similiar to the ISAF actions in Afghanistan, including bombings of civilians and refusals for journalists (http://www.stripes.com/news/files-prove-pentagon-is-profilin...) This is the face of modern warfare, not security operations.

Better comparison to drone attacks on terrorists is killing of Dzhokhar Dudaev by laser-guided missiles in 1996 and, possibly, killing of Shamil Basayev in 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Dudayev#Death_and_leg... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev#Death

Note that while not as widely deployed as the US versions (most likely due to spending barriers), Russian UAVs are under active development. If/when combat ready, you better believe they'll deploy them. Probably with the same attitude as US/NATO. As sad as it might be, it's the rational thing to do - not endanger any of your citizen's lives, get the target, remain relatively untouchable... From the military's perspective, the "innocents" are collateral damage, to be minimized, but acceptable within a given range.

A personal friend of mine, Darren Hickey, was kidnapped by Chechen rebels. As a result of a bungled Chechen attempt to rescue him and his 3 fellow captives, he was beheaded by a road side.

Have a read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/230215.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1215350.stm

So, yeah, I am fairly familiar with it.

And let me tell you, you are not even slightly comparing the same things.

Somehow that is better. It gets people who are involved in it to get their hands bloody. That is necessary when taking lives. It should be damaging to ones psyche and it should be difficult and stressful to kill. It should not be a push of a button. Go blow up kids herding goats all day, then pick up your own kids for soccer practice in Langley at night, that's what we are up to now.

I agree

"Trust KGB to read your mail (http://www.russianpost.ru/) "

more likely, trust KGB to steal your mail

Nah, you're more likely to never receive your snail mail due to incompetence of the goddamn service.

These are not photoshopped:

http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_01.jpg

http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_02.jpg

http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_03.jpg

What's the problem? This is in Russia where it gets REALLY cold in winter and never thaws for several months. Or did you think that they would haul the parcels into a heated building for sorting? Nope. As any Canadian knows, that kind of snow falls off as soon as you shake the parcel and the paper (at freezing temperatures) is so slick that it is as if it was lubricated. Most of that snow will fall off from the vibration of the ride inside the sorting building. And the recipients will never know that it happened.

Plus, it is a Russian tradition to wrap things in plastic before putting them in the parcel postal boxes.

> What's the problem?

The problem is that processing centers are overloaded. As a result, more and more boxes and parcels pile up. Sometimes it gets even more ridiculous, like recently in Moscow, when some boxes caught fire.

Besides, the whole processing system is so ineffective, that you could send a box from China to Far Eastern Russia (relatively small distance), which would first land to be processed in Moscow (great distance) and then be sent back to Far East.

Also, there is a queueing problem in the goddamn post offices, I won't even get started on that, it is so infuriating.

We're going from "companies launching social networks so they can get your data to do better advertising" to "governments launching social web services so they can get your data do better 'threat monitoring'"

In Soviet Russia, your mail reads the KGB.

Reddit in-jokes will get you downvoted here, just a heads up.

It's a Slashdot in-joke, actually.

It's actually a Yakov Smirnoff joke, but either way it doesn't really advance the conversation very much.

Yup, the original was:

“In America, you can always find a party.

In Soviet Russia, Party always finds you!”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversa...

I have always thought it was all his pun on: "Under capitalism, a man exploits a man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!" But I may have been mistaken.

That’s a real possibility, as that Russian (or Polish, depending on who you ask) joke had been making the rounds for almost 30 years when Smirnoff moved to the US in 1977.

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/unde...

It's a Slashdot cliche joke to be precise.

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