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Comment by SonicSoul | Hacker News Reader

going to try for devil's advocate angle.

could there be a case where the parties in a conversation are legitimate suspects? in such a case, why does it matter if it's Microsoft or some other private company that the NSA hires to break encryption?

it seems that the article is presenting the Microsoft / NSA relationship, and later states “If you look at what happened when Bush, Cheney and General Hayden – who was head of the NSA at the time – deliberately violated the law to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant" which hints at a vague conclusion that Microsoft is helping to spy on citizens without a warrant.

possibly i missed something, so is the point that Microsoft (or any private company) should not do any work for NSA, or that it should not do it without a warrant, or that we can't trust it with anything because it did some work for the NSA? Or is that the details are still not disclosed so it's pure speculation?

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It is important for me as a customer of Microsoft. This means I will end all future contracts with them, because I'm not a US citizen.

NSA needs no warrant to wiretap me as a European and I'm not going to send my money to Microsoft so they can use that money to help a foreign government agency , that I or any of my fellow citizens have no oversight over, to spy on me.

That would be totally absurd.

Of course. If you are a legitimate suspect, any local police department can get a warrant to go inside your house and put your underpants in plastic bags and take them away. For that matter, they can cuff you and put you in jail. The question is what is the NSA doing without a warrant or rubber-stamped, secret, blanket warrants.

correct. i'm just having a hard time with the point (or lack there of) in this post.. as far as i can tell it's something like: NSA = PRISM, therefore any company doing work for NSA = evil.

The NSA is skating on very thin constitutional ice, but honestly they haven't really done anything that even qualifies as evil. The KGB did this kind of spying, but they did for the express purpose of sending dissenters to gulag. I haven't seen so much as a credible accusation that the NSA are doing anything other than their duly authorized mission.

This is the same as the British Stamp Act from the American Revolutionary War. If the Stamp Act was an argument for revolution because it was evil, this is too.

The difference is that the colonists had no recourse. "No taxation without representation" and all that. Without sending delegates to parliament, they had no channels to complain through, so rebellion was the only option. We could end the NSA completely by voting for candidates who support that.

I can't vote in the US as a resident in Sweden, so I'm in the exact same positions as the first colonists in America.

I guess my only option now is to rebel.

But sure for those living in the US they can do that. And they did that with Obama. However that just increased the surveillance.

"...honestly they haven't really done anything that even qualifies as evil."

Firstly, how can we be certain?

Suppose, for a moment, I had the data that the NSA has. To whom could I sell that data? If I could prove to questioners that I had such data, to what ends might they go to get it from me(Ans. there are entities that would take it by force and then kill me and my family to remove the traces)?

NSA is sitting on a goldmine. Many, if not most, large corporations, businessmen, academics, organized crime members, politicians, or bureaucrats would sell their home (and possibly their family into slavery) to obtain that information. How can the NSA possibly ensure that it is safe ? How can they ensure that their employees do not pass some of that data to the above? What if a significant chunk of that data is copied and enters the black market? How could it possibly be recaptured?

Snowden has, by example, shown that all the above can and indeed did occur.

As we speak there are undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who are attempting to gain access to the NSA's treasure vaults. Some groups are smarter and better organized than the NSA. It's merely a matter of time before huge leaks occur. They may or may not be leaked publicly.

Neglect can be criminal too.

They're not skating on thin ice, they fell through some time ago. I'd also call the way they claim to bypass checks and balances by "storing" instead of "reading" data (assuming that's even true which seems unlikely).

And the NSA might not have sent anyone to the gulag but the Obama administration has gone after whistle-blowers at an unprecedented level. Hard to imagine the NSA wasn't helping them out some.

The point is that Microsoft opened up their services for the NSA, i.e. they was not just doing some contracting work on encryption in general, they were misleading their customers on privacy, something they should go to court for.

>could there be a case where the parties in a conversation are legitimate suspects?

It doesn't matter if they are. No one expects coffee shops to put microphones at every table on the off chance that a terrorist plot is planned there (how many mob hits could have been prevented back in the day).

We shouldn't accept the government listening in on digital communication just because it's easy.

are you saying Microsoft helped to wiretap email?

That's what you got from what I said? I'm saying that people think because communication is digital, and digital is easy to listen in on that we should be listening in on it. I say fuck that. Today it would be easy to listen in on anyone anywhere with a little hardware. Easy is not a justification for doing something.

you're stating a general argument which everyone can agree with. but how is it tied to this post about Microsoft helping with breaking encryption?

I'm replying with someone who was challenging the general assertion that the spying might actually be good.

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