Sen. Wyden imagines the White House is willing to reconsider surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Sen. Wyden imagines the White House is willing to reconsider surveillance

rt.com

113 pointsj_baker96 comments

There was an article on the BBC site recently about a spy program during WW2 that consisted of pampering high-ranking German POW's in a mansion while British agents listened in through bugging devices.

Apparently, the program worked wonderfully, and they got a lot of useful intelligence out of it. However, word somehow got out that German prisoners there were being treated like royalty while the British public starved. There was outrage in Parliament, and Churchill ordered the program shut down.

British intelligence pretended to follow Churchill's orders, but actually continued the program in secret. The information they were getting was just too useful. They just stopped telling Churchill about it.

I expect something similar might happen here. To the public's knowledge, to most of Congress, and maybe even to Obama, the program might appear to be shut down. But it'll either continue wholesale or morph in to something else that's effectively the same (or even worse).

Unfortunately, there really is no way to verify the words of these spy agencies. Virtually no one has the clearance to go inside their datacenters and check. Now they'll probably just be a lot more careful about keeping what they do secret.

Remember that the NSA is far from the only secret agency in the US. For a long time its very existence was denied. The running joke in Washington was that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency". Eventually, its existence was confirmed. But there are probably dozens if not hundreds of other secret agencies that operate under the so-called "black budget" that Congress authorizes. Who knows what they do? Something like PRISM could easily migrate to one or more of them.

Very good point - but at least it won't be as easy for them to do it. These NSA activities require the co-operation and silence of a lot of different entities - and that would be much harder to obtain if they don't have legal standing.

Plus - if you get caught going against the executive and the congress - you'll eventually lose your funding.

Having said that - I tend to agree with the comments above suggesting that the executive will just rename it all and try and make the story go away while actually ramping up the program.

As far as funding goes, I heard an interesting program[1] recently on History Counts[2] which claimed that the CIA was covertly funding its own operations in Southeast Asia through drug trafficking.[3][4]

In comparison, the wholesale spy program that's been in the news recently has far more potential for profit through economic espionage, blackmail, and various types of political manipulation. It could easily be self-financing if the information gathered through it was exploited.

This program is a proverbial goose laying golden eggs for the government. I really can not imagine them closing it down over a bit of bad press (which will probably die down and blow over as soon as the next big scandal hits).

[1] - http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/30027

[2] - http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/History+Counts

[3] - A small excerpt:

Q: "Through the drug profits, were these operations essentially self-financing?"

A: "Everything in the Far East was self-financing"

Q: "And they were off the books, so there was no public record or accounting?"

A: "Of course I'm speculating here, because no one has done me the favor of showing me the CIA's books, but I think when we get to the scale of a 35,000 man army in Laos in the 1960's -- Congress found out about that and held hearings in to it and were complaining they've never been told about it, so I assume all of that was financed by the drug traffic than it was -- whatever input there was from the CIA's legitimate budget was minimal compared to what was happening... that was built up continuously from the 1950's"

[4] - I'm not saying I believe in this particular conspiracy theory. I've really not looked in to this subject beyond this one History Counts show. But I could see something like it happening, and the current mood is one where such conspiracy theories are starting to look more probable than usual.

Exactly. With the access to information that the NSA has they could easily feed themselves, and may already do so to some extent.

PS WRT CIA funding things in Southeast Asia, there was a movie Air America about that. I have no idea how close to the truth any of it was, but I liked the movie.

Forget drug trafficking. That's peanuts and far more risky that the other alternatives they have.

They could easily fund themselves with the information they are gathering by just maintaining a large investment fund that trades on any investments vehicles that are unlikely to result in insider trading finger pointing, such as commodities and currency.

Equity and debt markets would be hard to work with at scale and not get caught, but commodities and currency leave more than enough room to accumulate a sizeable operating budget if your information is very good.

Were I an institutional investor, I'd be very concerned about participating in the markets given this possibility.

Good story.

It'll be easy to see if the NSA's survelliance programs continue, just check if the parking lot is full at their Utah data center: http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/

Just like how they closed Guantanamo! Oh wait.

Total Information Awareness becomes Prism becomes Blackadder.

This reminds me that I don't think Larry, Sergey, Eric, or Marissa have security clearances, do they? Let's trace the problem.

If there is no legal recourse for blatant violations of the Constitution, then our rights are already gone. We should not have to rely on the generosity of those in charge.

Of course, laws don't enforce themselves, so unless you're doing it yourself, you're always relying on the "generosity" of someone with power to enforce laws.

Well, what we're relying upon is the integrity of those gov't officials involved, especially the courts, strength of whistleblower protections, and the press. All have IMO abdicated their constitutional responsibility.

I agree... I seem to recall a time when "yellow journalism" was frowned upon, yet recently it's about all we've seen from the mainstream media.

In a proper system, the electorate has the power to remove and empower officials, who therefore do not have independent power. And, the electorate is "generous" (rational) enough to concede to invididual rights. The latter is actually the problem in the USA. Unlike in 1776, the intellectual leaders of the country (and therefore the populace) are anti-individual rights.

In 1776, only a small group of the educated elite could vote. In 2013, you don't even have to be literate.

It's strange though. I'd bet that you could depend upon the illiterate to make a reasonable choice. I think they'd favor the candidate/party who would educate their children. It's crap like in this video where some guy apparently has no trouble finding people willing to sign a petition to "repeal the Bill of Rights" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0he0cqHH20

PS Forgive me for the partisan nature of the video, the guy seems to maybe imply that the opposite party is less likely to fall in line so easily. I don't think that's the case at all. Just that people in general give very little attention and thought to politics.

Could or could not depend upon the illiterate?

I ask only because I'm having trouble making sense of the whole comment under the assumption that we can bet on the illiterate to make a reasonable choice when there's no trouble finding people to repeal the Bill of Rights... :-/

One way that blacks and minorities were discriminated against in the US is via mandatory literacy tests[1] before they would be allowed to vote. Blacks and poor people were treated that way because it was expected that they would vote a certain way.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_right...

Sure, but I don't see how expecting that the illiterate would vote in a reasonable way when the literate do not (given the Bill of Rights example) is actually much less discriminatory.

> I think they'd favor the candidate/party who would educate their children.

Coercing other people to provide education is not the right thing to do. There are other economically reasonable ways of providing education that don't infringe rights.

A nice side effect is that a market for education would, in the long run, commoditize high-quality, affordable education. The market has worked well in every industry that has remained a reasonably free market.

The US K-12 education system is currently pretty bad except in well-to-do areas, and higher education is a massive bubble.

After all, isn't not stealing the first thing we ought to be teaching our children?

Perhaps you've heard of the "Electoral College?"

It's a special group of people who actually do the voting in Presidential elections.

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/a...

Exactly.

Back when the constitution was written it was common to prosecute criminals yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_Stat...

Not generosity. It's all politics. If you adapt a more cynical view, you can say Edward Snowden is part of the process.

Translation: Obama is getting hammered by wealthy people harmed by the PRISM backlash. He'll consider renaming the surveillance programs.

They will redefine the definition of the terms "surveillance" "citizen" "enemy" "foreigner" "whistleblower" and "leak"

The laws will be reinterpreted around these new definitions and he'll claim victory.

We'll get here eventually:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

CIRCLEJERK IS ACTION

Huh, I thought that word auto-killed comments. I am so sick of seeing it.

but... but...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6029098

Ha! Touché.

Don't forget: Privacy is sedition

Careful, Big Sis is watching us. Literally.

Like how Total Information Awareness went away in 2003:

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

This is basically my worry as well, these programs aren't going away, they'll just get hidden better.

What recourse exactly do we have? It seems like states secrets have gone overboard exactly like everyone has feared. What can we as a populace do when our courts have this legal concept enshrined in case law?

Few people are willing to do what it takes: ostracize everyone who supports it, and boycott the supporting businesses.

In WA state a turning point for gay marriage was http://whosigned.org/: "Coming soon: A Facebook application that helps you find people in your friend list who may have signed Referendum 71 [against gay marriage]".

I'll believe it when I see it. Also, someone broke the law. We need to demand prosecution or the program will simply be renamed and moved on to a different budget.

>I'll believe it when I see it.

Right. And, that's just it. Will we see it? We will continue to have no idea what's going on, unless another Snowden steps up.

And one thing we have seen before was push-back on the TIA (Total Information Awareness) program causing its proponents to "reconsider" and Congress to defund it. In other words, stop talking about it and just do it quietly under a million different programs with a million different names.

Ironically, this NSA program itself that "Obama is considering ending" was one of the original TIA programs.

The only thing that was defunded was any program called "TIA." The behavior has continued apace under other names just fine. Thus it was always so, and this is just another "if you can't change the product, change the packaging" non-change from Obama. He's just trying to trick you, because they're going to keep on doing whatever they want to do until people start getting voted out of office in favor of people who won't fund the behavior.

>"until people start getting voted out of office in favor of people who won't fund the behavior"

And add to that the fact that we don't have the information we need to make those choices as voters. Remember, the only reason we know about this instance is that someone (Snowden) was willing to take a risk, and he is now considered a criminal for that.

Who knows what else is out there and who knows what else is coming (including this, again)?

People need to be prosecuted. Beyond that, the entire architecture needs to be dismantled: the "War on Terror" ended and the egregiously overreaching, rights-curtailing government culture it created needs to be rolled back. The security-industrial-military-complex needs to be finally checked as well.

We need to roll back the Patriot Act, examine the ethos of a Justice department that works overtime to loosely interpret our Constitution to expand its power, and put this run amok unitary executive theory back in its box.

There is no way to "see it."

Those were secret programs justified by secret laws written by secret courts. The whole system has gone so far already that a negative proof is impossible in the current legal framework. There is simply no credible way anymore an official could present evidence of the absence of mass surveillance.

The only way to be sure is for Congress to cut the funding for the NSA to zero. Of course, others would spring up, but they would think twice, knowing that getting busted gets you the boot.

Putting the director of the NSA behind bars for 25 years would also act as a deterrent for future would-be spy-on-americans-is-ok directors of whatever agencies.

I agree.

The director of NSA who lied about the capabilities of the program needs to be prosecuted for perjury.

Except that he was hired, and the last one was fired, precisely because of his willingness to grow the NSA thusly.

Rather than lying about anything and claiming "state secrets," he should have said, "No comment," or "I can neither confirm, nor deny."

To purposefully perjure oneself before the entire nation is inexcusable.

Prosecution would merely serve to force someone to choose a scapegoat. We need to ensure that Congress is meaningfully providing oversight of the executive branch.

Better title: The propaganda arm of an enemy state reports that a politician in our state said that the head of our state is considering ending a surveillance program that would be completely unremarkable in the enemy state, at least according to the propaganda arm of our state.

Exactly what I though, although perhaps not as strongly. But yes, the headline seems misleading to me as well. There is nothing from Obama at all in this article, just Senator Wyden saying that he imagines the White House is willing to reconsider the surveillance policies.

FTA: "Sen. Wyden said he imagines the White House is willing to reconsider the current surveillance policies ..."

That's just a little bit different from what the headline would lead you to believe.

Holy s. That is 100% not what the headline says.

Ending, or ending and restarting with a new name so they can say "That program was discontinued" without lying?

I picture exactly this happening. "Oh Trendstone? Yes that project was shelved. It's now called Blackbriar, but as you didn't ask that, so we wont' tell you it's the same thing with a different name."

Just like when Steve Ballmer claimed[1] that "Vista has never been delayed" because they changed the name.[2]

[1] http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-09-25/online-extra-...

[2] http://windowsitpro.com/windows-server-2008/hasta-la-vista-l...

Alternatively: "Obama considers preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States."

Which he swore an oath to do, lest he become an enemy of it.

To those saying "I'll believe it when I see it" and the like - I do think that statements like this should be taken with a grain of salt. The most important part of this, however, is that we are seeing that the US administration is actually continuing the conversation on these programs and not just insisting that they're legal.

I think this is an important step in the right direction, and we need to keep pressing the issue and not just focus on where Edward Snowden is in the world.

I bet the NSA internal branding dept. will have a tough time coming up with clever names for the new programs. Maybe something in the lines of FOCUS or LIGHTSABRE ;)

But seriously, these govt. programs have been closed and restarted under so many new codenames in the past, it's really tough to believe this. And even if it will happen, how will we find the trust? Closing down PRISM etc will be an admission of wrongdoing, and the subsequent lying about it. And the 'weasel' wording like Snowden mentioned; the distinction they make in wiretapping between 'information aggregation' and actually looking into it. Which obviously is the most absurd justification as all arguments against wiretapping still apply with this concept.

With this kind of mindset, one must think they will just restart the programs and make them even more covert, not?

If we're being cynical, the administration can just announce an "organized" shutdown and give a timeline, say 2 years. All government projects are delayed at least 50%, so let's say 4 years (government math). Four years from now a new president will be in office and can blissfully ignore the timeline and re-open the projects. Look at how long it took to exit Iraq, or how long it's taking to exit Afghanistan, or how long it's taking to shutter Guantanamo.

Hell, if Guantanamo is any indication, the executive will blame the legislative for not passing laws allowing them to shutter the program, and the legislative will blame the executive for not closing the program down. Blame goes in a circle and the populace gets screwed.

Sad but true. If those who in the end are responsible for allowing unconstitutional or straight-up criminal actions by government appointed commissions not being held accountable after they are relieved of their function, the justice system is evidently corrupt, and we could expect anything to happen.

Yet, I'm really sad these days, for common sense is being ridiculed, and only a minority seems to notice. If you don't agree with absurd infringements of your privacy : you are not a patriot; if you are not a patriot then you are a traitor. I know it's a bit black/white, but these kind of speeches are reminiscent to that kind of status quo:

"The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry, but we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will,” Bloomberg said during a press conference on Monday. “And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

There are still US troops in Iraq.

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/12/09/277127/3000-us-troo...

There are also around 5000 contractors in Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/27/144198497/no-u-s-troops-but-an...

It's not cynicism when you refuse to believe the people who have lied to you in the past.

As "Dubya" once said... "...fool me once... Ah, er... Ya see, ya can't get fooled again..." (or something like that) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux3DKxxFoM

I could believe it after an organizational death penalty, a post-mortem like the Stasi got, a new organization with believable independent oversight, and preferably real penalties for the people most responsible (powerful people, not scapegoats). I don't know exactly, but something along those lines. (The probability of this is infinitesimal, yes. But we're going to be offered some pittance, and it's worth thinking clearly in advance to tell how far it falls short.)

It would like an Oriental Rug dealer in my area, who constantly has a going out of business sale, only to open with a new name next year.

Seattle? :)

That sounds more like tax evasion, using business bad debts[1]: the rug store is owned by a parent corporation from whom the property is leased (and/or which provides other goods/services, like the rugs themselves). A rate is charged in excess of the store's profit such that the store is in debt to the parent corp when the store goes out of business. The parent corporation makes off with the profits, offset by the tax break from dissolving the partner's debts.

Then again, I have no idea how taxes work and can't help but view everything pessimistically :(

[1] http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch10.html

A big issue is that after all these revelations it is clear that the NSA and other branches of government has not been transparent. The trust has eroded and it's hard to take Obama at face value when he says he may end or reduce these programs. They can easily just change them around. I'm hesitant to say it, but more congressional oversight is needed in this area.

I wonder if Congress didn't support such matters in the first place.

I feel like Congress must have known what was going on. Washington is all about using secrets as political currency. I find it hard to believe that so many politicians had no idea. Most likely trying to deflect negative public reaction.

The Senator merely said he has "a feeling" that the administration is concerned about bulk phone records collection. As of yet, there's no definitive confirmation that this is true.

Obama considered closing Guantanamo, too.

That ending surveillance requires consideration indicates the probable outcome at the end of that consideration. The historic precedent for an agency unfettered with regard to building dossiers on citizens is Hoover's FBI. His files included elected politicians. I suspect it is naive to suppose that there is not a big file on each member of the executive branch.

> Obama considered closing Guantanamo, too.

Then he ran headlong into that Article I side of the government and had his ass handed back to him.

This appears to be speculation on Wyden's part. It's my fervent hope that he's right, but I see no reason to believe this is anything more than hope on his part, as well.

It's easy to tell if this actually happens -- you'll see massive layoffs of IT people when the top secret clouds dissipate.

Exactly. Will be interesting to see Obama shutting down the NSA program, while some other official will be cutting the ribbon in Utah in three months from now.

http://news.yahoo.com/utah-home-nsas-mega-warehouse-data-080...

This is politics. In the short term, the politician gets a boost from being associated with this and the perception if his having influenced Obama. In the long term, even if nothing happens you won't remember his involvement because Obama is mentioned and has a much bigger name.

It's well done, but it's just political posturing.

That it says "considered" and not "will be revoked immediately" is incredibly telling.

I'd be surprised. Most people seem not to care. It doesn't strike me that there would be a political advantage. I don't think that Democrats would suddenly turn Republican since the Republicans are at least as bad on authoritarianism and spying.

I'm getting the vibe that it may destroy world consumption of American electronics and software, but those birds have flown. I can't see us regaining any credibility on that issue any time soon. The only saving grace is the involvement of practically every other Western government.

But, I would certainly welcome such a development.

I'm nitpicking here, but I thought that Microsoft was based in Redmond, WA.

(from the article) how Microsoft worked hand-in-hand with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to ensure that law enforcement could bypass encryption mechanisms and easily listen-in and watch conversations conducted over Silicon Valley giant’s Outlook.com chat portal and Skype messaging platform.

I'm not from California (been there twice,) and I've lived in Washington state, but is Microsoft considered to be a "Silicon Valley giant?"

We've fallen into a trap where no one will believe the program is over regardless of what he says, so he gets no benefit from actually doing it.

...Other than doing the right thing. But then again, it seems that stopped mattering long ago (Guantanamo, wars etc).

Sure he is. After all this negative publicity, how could he not be saying that? Even seriously considering it or just doing it, even if it were just to save his own ass. It doesn't matter what impact on security it has really. Either surveillance is not important for national security, or it's beneficial for himself to stop it. It might be either of the two, we don't know.

Honestly the only way this will happen is as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. No, not because Democrats are better on privacy, but because the only thing Republicans love more than voting in draconian policies to fight "terror" is voting on anything that makes Obama look bad.

burden of the proof will be on the president as trust is now gone, at least of those who were paying attention. proof has to be quite extraordinary - otherwise it might be construed as dismantling and hiding said programs even more. Or augmenting their visibility.

Obama promised that when he was running for President. Sorry, I don't believe him.

I'll believe it when I see it. Oh wait, its top secret. I guess I'll never believe it or even trust the government on this matter.

If Clinton would say "I am considering ending relationship with Monica Lewinsky" - that would sound much less ridiculous ...

According to Obama "everything was legal". I don't buy it, but if we assume that what he said was true, then it doesn't matter what he does until the laws themselves get repealed.

You would want to go further and actually have laws passed to make metadata collection and foreign surveillance illegal (or at least more strictly controlled) since otherwise they'd still be legal after repealing FISA and its amendments. And then go further along with repealing the odious portions of the USA PATRIOT Act.

If you believe this then you believe in "hope" and "change".

What pisses me off is that the only reason any of the politicians are even considering the repeal of any domestic surveillance is because of "blowback."

What about doing the right thing?

What about our Bill of Rights?

What about that fabled "Moral High Ground?"

I'll believe it when there is a signed pardon for Snowden! So... Never.

Oh, that's a good one. Time to create a new Three Letter Agency.

This doesn't change anything as long as FISA is the same.

Is that until the next whistle-blower shows up?

Just like he promised in his 2008 campaign.

"ending"

So just getting this newsbyte out into the zeitgeist is really what they want. Put out this little sentence - let people latch onto it and carry on as normal.

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