The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I don't think so. I think the NSA would fold if those five cards were played simultaneously.
Will they? They're of course competitors, they could be played off against each other by the government. Anyways, such talks would have to remain ultra-secret.
Lets disconnect this behavior from the specific instance's moral outrage:
If Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell simultaneously came out and ignored all EPA restrictions would their CEOs all go to jail, doing enormous damage to the stock market?
This sound like a good thing to anyone?
It happens all the time, though, if you look at the financial, banking, insurance and oil industry - even without the slightest (moral) excuse. And nobody goes to jail, just some ridiculous fines to pay.
This time, there is a very serious moral imperative.
You are either for the rule of law or you arent.
To vastly summarize, if a law is unjust change the law.
No, it doesn't.
"Despite wide use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been described as 'an exceedingly elusive notion' giving rise to a 'rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it but have contrasting convictions about what it is.'
"At least two principal conceptions of the rule of law can be identified: a formalist or 'thin' definition, and a substantive or 'thick' definition. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do not make a judgment about the 'justness' of law itself, but define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include certain substantive rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of law."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
If believing in the rule of law that you are defining here means that one would believe that one should absolutely follow all laws at all times, then I'm not a believer in the rule of law.
'The rule of law (also known as nomocracy) generally refers to the influence and authority of law within society, especially as a constraint upon behavior, including behavior of government officials.[2] This phrase is also sometimes used in other senses.[3]
In its general sense, the phrase can be traced back to the 16th century, and it was popularized in the 19th century by British jurist A. V. Dicey. The concept was familiar to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, who wrote "Law should govern".[4] Rule of law implies that every citizen is subject to the law. It stands in contrast to the idea that the ruler is above the law, for example by divine right.
Despite wide use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion"[5] giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it but have contrasting convictions about what it is."[6]
At least two principal conceptions of the rule of law can be identified: a formalist or "thin" definition, and a substantive or "thick" definition. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do not make a judgment about the "justness" of law itself, but define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include certain substantive rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of law.[7]'
Individuals banding together for civil disobedience is completely different from commercial entities banding together. Hoping for commercial entities to break laws because you hope to happen to benefit from this rule breaking in this particular instance seems to be ill advised from my perspective.
Really?
Two completely different things.
Not sure what is going on with the massive cognitive dissonance being displayed.
Government ignoring constitution/laws for perceived moral/efficiency benefits BAD, commerical entities ignoring laws for perceived moral/efficiency benefits GOOD.
The fines and environmental regulations imposed against corporations are viewed very poorly by libertarian extremists, so the comparison is apt. Advocates the KKK certainly identify with the likes of Ghandi, too.
The negative externalities are pollution and secret monitoring of customers. Polluting more doesn't reduce or eliminate either of those for the public, while informing the public of how it is being monitored does.
That being said, it would be a protest, and all useful protests against government are unlawful.
Utilitarian morality could be that the net effect of the free market demands for an unwatched internet is the correct moral course of action. But as you may have unwittingly hinted at, it is entirely dependent on how the position of the companies and choice of action relate to the benefit of the society. In this case with the NSA the answer is yes, in your example, no, but that should prove that the idea of corporate collusion and interference with gov't isn't intrinsically morally wrong. Just depends on what the companies stand for.
I think our fundamental disagreement however is i don't think a company 'stands' for anything but making money. I think further that if commercial entities are allowed to hide behind 'morality' when determining which laws to follow this will lead to extreme abuse, since in my worldview commercial entities do not have a 'moral' code.
If say, mark zuckerberg wanted to do a sit in in front of the NSA knowing he is violating tresspassing laws (for the sake of arguement) then thats his personal moral choice, and as long as he is willing to face the consequences, kudos to him.
But realistically the majority of the american people dont have a problem with the NSA programs. I know it burns a lot of HN up, but as of right now, thats just reality. We know that the elected executive branch, the judicial branch, and the elected legislative branch more or less have signed on to this NSA thing. If perhaps they were in the dark before, this is no longer the case. This is democracy at work people, sometimes the majority of people want something I dont agree with, thats democracy.
Now just because democracy 'failed' doesn't mean I want some small cabal of very rich and powerful folks to decide they will not have to follow the laws of this country because they have the power to do so.
Markets serve customers first. If the companies colluded to act morally in their customers interest and against repressive governments, then I don't see it being a comparable issue. They would be rewarded longer term with customer loyalty.
If oil companies collude to ignore safety regulations, that would harm customers, then it's something that would result in a different market response and much greater legal implications from citizen lawsuits, not only from the government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_m...
Executives who are still playing along at this point are just cowards.
Through such an arrangement the USG would be able to exert considerable control. One can enter serious conspiracy territory and speculate that the entire recession recently was orchestrated by the USG to launder billions of dollars to gain influence in a variety of companies and property across the world.
Why wouldn't they?
> doing enormous damage to the stock market?
If they willfully broke the law to act against the interests of their stockholders, that's another thing to keep them in jail for.
Playing chicken with an out-of-control government is a very dangerous game for anybody.
They're happy where they are. Profits are good. This article is one of the most naive pieces I've ever read.
What do Google, apple, etc want now? For this subject to go away and so that their big mass of users forget about it, that is what they want.
I would argue that a shut down is exactly what the NSA wanted from lavabit.
Of course the flip side is that you don't want to be complicit in aiding the NSA, so the stance is honorable. I do think that it would take a company with the utility Google drawing the line for any traction to occur with the average person. Google would either have to: - suspend operations like the SOPA blackout - put up a fight very publicly to the point where there is so much transparency the NSA has no either back down or to penalize them in a way that would piss people off.
Otherwise, this is and will always be a fringe topic.
I think Ladar Levison answered that question, implicitly, in his shutdown announcement: "I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."
It is high time to provide secure services hosted in countries without secret surveillance courts, or maybe even in countries where law enforcement has bigger problems to fight than "Internet crime".
There is a much deeper issue here: as Americans, we need to decide how much protection we actually want. One group says everyone is responsible for their own protection, another says everyone needs protecting from everyone else, yet another group says we'll protect you if you don't look to closely behind the curtain, and so on e pluribus ad-infinitum ...
Nobody has a good solution, yet. Personally, I don't mind the NSA spying on foreigners (that's their job) and if you're not from the US, I feel like you should have known that was a possibility.
What I'd settle for at the moment is more independent oversight by people not intimately connected to the defense industry and less secret courts and judgements that make us look and sound like cartoon banana republic.
"if you're not from the US, I feel like you should have known that was a possibility."
Known exactly what was a possibility? In another comment I brought up Endgame Systems, here is some of their offerings:
'There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies. Maui (product names tend toward alluring warm-weather locales) is a package of 25 zero-day exploits that runs clients $2.5 million a year. The Cayman botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million.'
When you say 'foreigners' should have known the NSA "doing their thing" so to speak is a possibility, does that include them being exploited, or their stolen financial/personal information on botnets being used by the NSA?
NOTE: Where I said "foreigners" I probably should have written "foreign countries". The term "foreigners" reads a bit offensively on review.
As for the "stolen financial/personal information" bit, that's part of the information gathering (and technically, it's not stolen - see the whole argument on copyright). As long as the data is being used for analysis, that's a fair use for a government organization dedicated to spying. If it's being used for financial gain, that's a very grey area dependent on current laws, and if it's being turned over to or collected by private entities operating without oversight, that's just out-of-bounds.
Ultimately, the point was that one should be able to trust one's own government to be operating in one's own best interest, but never assume that another government or it's framework of laws will ever be of any help to you. If it is, then you got lucky.
There are no guarantees that my information is safe from prying eyes. However, I think I'd be much happier if I felt like I could at least trust the people who purport to be on my side. Right now, I do not trust them.
Absent massive efficiency advances in multi party computation and fully homomorphic encryption, most of the cloud is antithetical to privacy, no mater where it's hosted.
Had lavabit capitulated, we wouldn't know about it.
I also don't like this, "us vs. them" rhetoric that this story has turned some people towards, where the NSA are the unequivocal bad guys and we, the "little people", are the unequivocal good guys. That's a great way to get absolutely nothing done. The NSA is, despite everything we're being told by some people (Bruce), on our side. It's paranoid delusion to think the NSA is actively out to get us - at least ostensibly, the NSA is trying to help the citizens of the US.
What we should be doing is asking for changes and modifications to how things are done. There are some not-so-big tweaks to the currently running programs which can feasibly be made without compromising these program's efficacy while also providing more insight into what's going on. We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy) - it's possible.
That's what we should be figuring out, not this chicken little/us vs. them bullshit.
How do you know? The Internet backbone was developed using US government funding. How do you know that the US government did not put backdoors there? It did in the case of the long-distance telephone network.
We can have our cake (terrorist monitoring) and eat it too (maintain individual privacy)
I agree that this could be done in theory; I'm not sure it can be done in practice.
None of that counts to you because "there's just no reason to believe such a thing." You are essentially saying you don't believe anything you may have read in the past few years counts as control.
What IS control then, other than the ability to control others, which the US/NSA has attempting to keep on top of since the shift in data traffic trends in the 1990s.
You're responding to all of the things I said with tricks and games. You don't want to talk facts, so I don't want to talk with you. I'm done, unless you want to stop drawing conclusions and start painting a real picture.
No reason to believe what to be true? The US government's placing of backdoors in the long-distance telephone network is historical fact. That historical fact is a reason to believe that what the US government has done once, it could do again. It may not be a reason you want to accept, but it's still a reason.
So no, this is not historical fact.
When it became public knowledge that the US government had backdoors in the long distance telephone network, that did alter people's behavior and the course of events. Similarly, the public knowledge that the NSA is spying on the Internet is altering people's behavior and the course of events.
I agree the NSA can't stop people from visiting HN, but they can certainly change the incentives faced by people using the Internet. Perhaps this doesn't meet your definition of the word "control", but you still seem to find it significant.
this is not historical fact
What isn't? Are you saying that you don't believe the US government put backdoors into the long distance telephone network? Or that you don't believe the NSA is spying on the Internet? Or are you just saying you don't care, because you can still visit HN? That doesn't change the historical fact; it just means you don't care about that particular historical fact.
So again no, it is not historical fact.
What isn't? You're not saying the stuff I mentioned isn't historical fact; you're just saying that the historical fact doesn't meet your definition of "alter" or "control". Right?
If so, I'll be glad to adopt your definitions of terms for the purpose of this discussion. Then my question is: is "control" by your definition the appropriate threshold at which to be concerned? If so, why? If not, what is the appropriate threshold?
(If you're just objecting to the word "control" because Schneier used it, that's an argument about words, not about substance. Maybe Schneier should have used another word; but that doesn't change the substance of what he said.)
The word used was control. The NSA does not control the Internet. The US has not commandeered the Internet - frankly, they've always had power over the Internet because it was invented and is still maintained in the US.
As for where concern begins, concern should never leave us. We should always be concerned. It is fundamentally different, however, to claim someone or something can monitor a thing vs. manipulate that thing. It is an entirely different scenario and set of conversations that get had when someone monitors something vs. when someone controls that something.
So basically, the US hasn't "commandeered" the Internet because it didn't have to? It already has power over the Internet, so it didn't have to take any? I don't see how that in any way opposes the point Schneier was making in his article. He wasn't talking about "control" in the sense of the NSA dictating who can visit what website: he was talking about "commandeer" in the sense of the NSA being able to commandeer whatever information it wants, whenever it wants, from any provider of an Internet service.
Define 'our side' please. I'm not convinced of that. And if you take the temporal element into account you might very well find that the NSA is even against 'your side' in the longer term. Information gathered indiscriminately has a tendency to concentrate on the bad parts. If I vacuum up all your communications over the last 20 years or so and pick out the bad bits while deleting the good bits you'll look like a pretty bad person no matter how saintly you are in real life.
A disputed quote (but generally attributed to Richelieu and quite applicable):
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
The potential of abuse of this data is simply too large, no matter what the potential benefits and whether or not the NSA is on 'our side'.
There's a lot of speculation about what could happen, but if we look only at what has happened, people aren't being snatched up off the streets because of the NSA's monitoring programs.
The language of the above article seems too adversarial to be effective at getting anything done. If we continue to take this "death to the NSA" stance, we're not going to get anything that we want because, like it or not, the NSA, or someone else doing the same things, is going to have to exist on some level for the remainder of the US's existence as a representative democracy. We need to be talking scope and extent, not existence/abolishment, and this article is a little too polemic to be helpful.
How can you possibly know this? In fact I would argue as much as we 'know' anything at all related to the NSA program we know that it has lead to interventions. The NSA claims this surveillance has been instrumental to stopping 'dozens' of terrorist plots, which would mean by definition people ARE being snatched off the streets because of the NSA monitoring programs.
Ignore and refuse to participate in wild speculation until evidence appears. That's how we have to operate, lest we succumb to every conspiratorial fantasy the Internet can come up with.
but arguing that the NSA program has never lead to anyone being 'snatched up off the streets', is WILDLY disconnected from reality. The whole purpose of the program is to snatch terrorists up off the streets, the whole purpose of it being classified is to enable it to function without explicitly giving terrorists a good understanding of our ways and means...
how on earth is assuming a program is used for at least what the government claims it is used for a conspiratorial fantasy?
Do you have evidence that indicates US citizens are being 'snatched' from the streets of the US without being arrested, tried, or convicted as per the US criminal justice system?
You say it's wildly disconnected from reality and that the NSA's entire purpose is to do precisely this, and if that's the case you should be able to easily show me examples which demonstrate the 'snatchings' are a) occurring and b) the norm.
If it's not conspiratorial fantasy, then the evidence should be in abundance, right?
The relevant parts:
In April 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama placed al-Awlaki on a list of people whom the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was authorized to kill because of terrorist activities.[32][33][34] The "targeted killing" of an American citizen was unprecedented. Al-Awlaki's father and civil rights groups challenged the order in court.[32][34][35][36] Al-Awlaki was believed to be in hiding in Southeast Yemen in the last years of his life.[26] The U.S. deployed unmanned aircraft (drones) in Yemen to search for and kill him,[37] firing at and failing to kill him at least once,[38] before succeeding in a fatal American drone attack in Yemen on September 30, 2011.[39] Two weeks later, al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver, was killed by a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen.[40][41][42] Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar's father, released an audio recording condemning the killings of his son and grandson as senseless murders.[43]
And US officials admitted the killing of the boy was mistake.
Got it.
I do know the government has claimed that this system has stopped dozens of terrorist plots. I make the assumption based on my judgement that these terrorists are not given a 'stop it or else we will arrest you' but are instead 'detained' in some way. Maybe you disagree with that, and feel these folks are issued a subpoena to appear in court at some later date. Further my understanding is this program is classified, and whatever is done with these 'detained' individuals is not a matter of public record. I guess this is an assumption as well, but seems like a pretty basic one, you don't issue gag orders and maintain top secret security and then throw on the publicaly available court dockets 'this guy was arrested due to the fact the NSA data captured he was interacting with a known foreign terrorist', this doesnt mean he wasnt tried by some secret court, I make no guesses as far as what happens once someone is 'detained'... disagree with that if you will, but its not a conspiracy theory, thats as far as i understand it the official government line on what the program is used for.
> Do you have evidence that indicates US citizens are being 'snatched' from the streets of the US without being arrested, tried, or convicted as per the US criminal justice system?
Is what I asked. Non-US citizens aren't necessarily granted the same rights US citizens are granted.
Use of NSA info in the manner described above is scope creep because they aren't terrorists, or foreign.
Here's the article linked from the wikipedia page. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...
"A similar set of instructions was included in an IRS manual in 2005 and 2006, Reuters reported." [2]
Basically they use "evidence" obtained illegally, tip off the DEA and it seems the IRS.
Choice quote[1]: "Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011, described the practice of "parallel construction" as "a fancy word for phonying up the course of the investigation". It was one thing, she said, to create special rules for national security, but creating rules for ordinary crime threatened to undermine the bill of rights, set up as a check against the power of the executive."
Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's criminal law reform project[1]: He said that the concealing of information about the source of an investigation was unconstitutional because it did not allow defendants their right to confront and examine the evidence the government has against them.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/06/justice-departm...
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE...
It doesn't matter much if you construct an investigation while being led by information obtained outside of the chain of evidence - at least it doesn't matter with any other kind of information.
You say, "basically they use evidence obtained illegally to prosecute someone" - but that's not what they're doing. They're doing exactly the opposite. They're using the legally obtained evidence to prosecute someone, and taking guidance from the other data that can't be admitted.
"Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away."
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...
Your quotation marks are out of order, because I took pains not to say "basically they use evidence obtained illegally to prosecute someone". It's more subtle than that.
In cases where the parallel construction was successful, it was probably illegal, and the convicted can appeal.
In refutation of your general thrust that all investigations are like this and it doesn't matter[2]: "Not all evidence gathered by a private investigator is legal, however. For instance if the PI breaks into a private residence, taps a phone, or uses a planted microphone or listening device in a private place, then in these cases such evidence is not generally admissible. That is because any conversations or activities done in private places, behind closed doors have a reasonable expectation of privacy."
[2] http://www.claydugas.com/legal-process/is-evidence-gathered-...
one last edit, just in case you had any doubt about the chance of successful appeal, this is legal terminology so it has a strange name but it is worth reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisoned_tree
Better article on the IRS link:
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE...
You literally said "basically they use evidence obtained illegally to prosecute someone". Whether you went back and changed it later is a different story, but I copy+pasted what you wrote.
And if you think this is how fruit of the poisoned tree works, you're sorely mistaken. What you can't do is break into a home, take evidence, and use that evidence.
What you can do is, while you're executing a warrant on a home for another reason glance at your suspect's mail, notice a piece of mail is from someone you investigated prior who claimed to not know your suspect, go find another link between those two people, and then use their testimony once you've gotten them to confess to knowing the person as a link in a legit evidence chain. This isn't "fruit of the poisoned tree", and is basically what NSA tips are.
COMPLETELY different.
I may have written that quote and edited out because it was wrong. Sorry about that.
I doubt I am mistaken about the poisoned tree though because a source of evidence that may have exculpatory evidence is being obscured. It may also be acquired illegally but that is obscured too.
Implicit in your reply is an admission that the NSA tips are being used. "people aren't being snatched up off the streets because of the NSA's monitoring programs." Do you still stand by this because now there's evidence presented to you that the IRS and the DEA have access to NSA tips through the SOD?
A statement from the NSA: "If the intelligence community collects information pursuant to a valid foreign intelligence tasking that is recognised as being evidence of a crime, [it] can disseminate that information to law enforcement, as appropriate."
I think your example of NSA tips is rather convoluted, I prefer the NSA's statement above as it's pretty clear and leaves little to the imagination.
I still stand by what I said regarding the lack of "snatchings". If a parallel chain of evidence can be constructed that leads to an arrest, that's not "because of" the NSA's monitoring programs. That's because there is a valid reason to investigate this person. The lynchpin is not the NSA's tip, it's the ability to find evidence against a person that is obtained according to the law. A "snatching" would be attributed to the NSA if the only evidence were to have been obtained through the collection of "information pursuant to a valid foreign intelligence tasking". And that's clearly got no evidence to support it.
1:
a. NSA collects American national's "information pursuant to a valid foreign intelligence tasking". (this may be illegal, violation of fourth amendment rights, no supreme court decision)
b. NSA tip SOD (if 1. is illegal, then it follows it's illegal to pass on)
c. SOD instruct police force to stop and search for 'traffic violation' at time and place, obscure evidence trail. (DOJ investigating if this is illegal)
d. d:a) no evidence is found.
d:b) evidence is found, parallel construction begins.
a. law enforcement agency DEA/IRS/SOD asks NSA to get foreign intelligence, because of investigation already underway.
other steps as above.
My problem is with the first mode. Given the first mode, do you stand by your earlier statement and: "If a parallel chain of evidence can be constructed that leads to an arrest, that's not "because of" the NSA's monitoring programs."
See the NSA's statement re: evidence of a crime. If the first mode leads to an arrest it is by definition "because of".
In both scenarios I have a problem with d:a) where no evidence is turned up because it seems like a very unreasonable search to me.
Of course there is no credible evidence when evidence is known to be actively suppressed. See: 'Intel Laundering.'
Also the US boasts that spying resulted in thwarted attempts. Where are those court cases? More importantly, where are the bodies of those involved? Sure is easy to not have credible evidence when all evidence aside from one sided snippets and meaningless statistics is never published.
edit: diminoten sure shifts goal posts around a lot. Changing persons to US persons, etc.
Is Snowden the first mistake the NSA has ever made, in your eyes, then?
edit: Tried to respond below but have been "submitting too fast" while submitting nothing for far too long to care to wait more.
I am not saying the NSA has flawless execution, you are the one repeating it for whatever reason.
I'm saying the NSA/Administration when pushed had to put out something that showed the spying was 'working.' In response they said multiples of domestic plots were foiled. Given the lack of full disclosure as to what the US's secret laws are secretly doing, we are forced to parse the headlines and the body count of the population for information on what has happened, where people went.
Problem is there is only a handful of incidents revealed to the public. The Boston bombers don't count because even though they fit NSA criteria for observation they apparently had no clue about their actions. The Al-Shabaab money provider was explicitly mentioned, so that is one.
Since we know the US kidnaps and tortures people, then makes every attempt to have the guilty escape[1], we don't require further evidence to ask the questions:
Where are the bodies, living or dead, of the others involved in domestic cases the NSA said they helped foil? The NSA says the program is for terrorists, the US government is known to rendition their victims away to be tortured under claims of them being terrorists. This has been documented enough to appease you.
If the NSA's spying program is not meant to result in the kidnapping and torture of others, what is it for? Bringing people to court?
Again, where are those involved in the domestic incidents cited as being foiled by the NSA?
Not all in court, that is for sure.
[1] http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/18/how_a_cia_off...
Because, if you'll recall, that's what we were talking about.
This thread is called 'The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet.' Throughout it you have been attempting to diminish or shift the subject to "US citizens on US soil."
Please stop.
edit: I just noticed you took the subject of CIA renditions and attempted to turn it into a "US citizens on US soil" subject as you have done to the others in this thread. While completely ignoring the subject you made the response to.
What the heck, guy.
You are essentially asking for proof that may or may not exist but that certainly will never come to light.
I suspect signals intelligence plays a major role in just about every US operation on foreign soil, if it didn't what justification would there be for the NSA to exist to begin with.
Furthermore, I'd like to see what you've read that shows the TSA doesn't need to exist.
Also, what makes you think the UK hasn't had a global intelligence network since its inception?
I didn't say anything about the majority US opinion (which is volatile of course), but it's plausible that a sufficiently large number of powerful Americans could call time out for a restructure as they see their international business interests heading rapidly towards the plughole. That could well be taking the shine off being the gatekeepers of the gov info economy for example.
As for the TSA, you may disagree but I'm sure Bruce Schneier has more intelligent things to say about it than me - http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/tsa...
But you didn't do what I asked. Can you show me why you think what you said was relevant to today's global and technological landscape? What does the UK's hundreds-year old behavior regarding spying have to do with the NSA today?
We have the years before 911. We have the various rail systems, which are vaguely similar to airliners.
And, really, the onus for providing proof of efficacy is on the people spending the money and adding time to everyone's travel.
And while I agree, the onus is on those spending the money, this isn't your typical experiment. The people spending the money don't get to play with the variables, as the variables include the lives of others. It's a very tough question, how and where scaling back on airport security can work, and the answer isn't simple.
Understanding that it is theater is enough. You realise nobody needed to prove the emperor had no clothes.
> What does the UK's hundreds-year old behavior regarding spying have to do with the NSA today?
Well you brought it up yourself when you said:
> Also, what makes you think the UK hasn't had a global intelligence network since its inception?
My point was simply that it would be inane to assume that any organisation is required to stay around forever, purely by dint of it existing today - let alone one that is giving every indication of careening out of control. Plenty of people are already calling for Clapper to face consequences.
They are being assassinated by drones overseas.
The NSA doesn't decide what to do, the other part of the government does. It's of absolutely critical importance to remember that when discussing the extent of what the NSA knows and does.
Yes, and those guns were widely distributed among the general populace. It was this wide distribution that contributed to a democratic society.
Whereas, the tools of the NSA are closely held. You and I do not have access to comparable tools, not at all. This creates a power imbalance, and this power imbalance is ripe for abuse.
Until the definition of a "terrorist" grows to include people who engage in activities previously considered harmless and private.
Just because they can, doesn't mean they will. Gun owners could all go out and harm innocent people, but they generally don't, do they?
At least we don't convict them before they do.
So whenever they do hurt someone it's a case for an actual judge to figure out what happened and if we class it as self defence or not.
Gun owners harm innocent people more often than not.
What I'm asking is why you insist on assuming the US government is going to abuse all of the power it has. If that were true, wouldn't the US military be in charge? The idea that the US is absolutely and irrevocably corrupt is demonstrably false, and frankly I'm getting sick of the insinuation.
As for 'the little people' being the good guys, that's kind of fundamentally what a democracy implies. Now whether the paranoid HN types really represents the people, or the soccer mom who would scream bloody murder if their family was injured because a terrorist plot went off that 'could' have been stopped with widespread snooping without warrants really represents the people is an entirely different question.
It's just as important to understand his motivation as it is to understand ours, and assess the reasonableness of each in comparison to the other, comparing our current situation to others in history that were similar, and the result they had.
And secondly, is not the motivation to stop terrorists in the US from harming US citizens a noble goal, in theory? Now granted, we shouldn't have to sacrifice our privacy to get that done, but it's not like Keith Alexander is trying to harm the US. He wants to help, and depending on who you ask, may be misguided, on the money, or completely wrong in how he plans to help.
It'd be more useful to correct than to abolish, because abolishment of the NSA and it's surveillance programs is never, ever going to happen, nor should it. ZERO surveillance (this might be arguable, I suppose) results in US citizens dead on US soil. Unacceptable.
Agree with you on the charicterization going on here, its one thing to feel his motivations are a given way, another to imply he has public made statements indicating this to be fact.
Do you have information on this or do you keep on stating your opinion as fact?
http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Key_escrow/Clipper/nsa.charter
I'm not interested in getting into an emotional mud-slinging contest with you.
"Terrorists driven by a desire to 'create a caliphate' of sharia law in the middle east continued to plot attacks. 'Terrorists live among us,' he said"
GP conflates these statements to imply that those among us want to create Sharia or whatever among us, but Alexander did say the words.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-keith-alexa...
I'd like to add,
The Gulf States are already under Sharia, and have been since their founding almost a century ago. The Taliban copied Saudi Arabia, even using the exact same names for bureaucracies. [2] Relations with them were excellent before 9/11.
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_Promotion_of_....
But, as Iraq showed, there's no need to understand elementary facts about their culture before you invade and engage in a massive social engineering project, or engage in an global, eternal, "war on terror".
I can guarantee you that the people who directed the Iraq Wars knew full well the elementary facts about their culture before invading and engaging in a (partially) global war on terror. They know that you can't win a war against a technique, and they know that going to war in these areas attracts terrorists who want to fight against you. The only question was where the game board was going to be placed, and that question was answered over 20 years ago.
It was only in the portrayal to the taxpayer and the invaded that these were left as unknowns.
You are wrong to suggest that he believes that there is an imminent threat to American government itself from Islamists living in the USA. Some people do believe this, but he is not one of them, based on his own words.
I agree. I've actually been having trouble deciding whether or not this us vs them mentality has been deliberately cultivated by people who don't want things to get better or not. It would not surprise me to be told that there's an NSA program intended to do that; after all, the FBI sent in undercover cops to suspected terrorist groups who ended up being overzealous, so it's not like such false flagging is unknown.
Is it a paranoid delusion if you're a drug dealer to think that the NSA is out to get you? Not anymore. What about a drug user? What about a file-sharer? A child porn viewer? You might not be any of these things, but a huge portion of the American citizenry is, and I'd argue they're not doing anything wrong. Sorry but I'm not going to just take it on faith that the NSA is on 'our side'.
Your opinion officially doesn't matter any more. Sorry, I have a 10 yr old sister and I simply can't abide folks who won't even do the research to understand what it means when they say things.
And yes one opinion of mine invalidates every other opinion I have, how true.
You win, good arguments.
Edit: For a more serious reply, there is evidence that countries that have decriminalized viewing child pornography (not production) have seen decreased rates of child sex abuse.
Also, the definition of child pornography is so broad that we have a lot of people rotting in jail for looking at a naked picture that a 14 year old took of themselves in the mirror. Once in jail, these people become targets for violence and ironically sexual abuse.
The topic is not black and white, and when you try to shut down conversation the way you did, it's not helping anyone, children included.
Either way, you can strike "child pornography viewers" from my original comment and replace it with "prostitutes", "on-line gamblers", or any other person guilty of a moral crime. The point is that it's us vs. them because a large number of "us" are at risk of being targeted and incarcerated by "them". I have friends in jail for drug offenses, and it's very possible a lead from an intelligence agency was instrumental in their arrest. My own apartment was raided not that long ago, and I can't help but wonder if it's due to some text messages sent back in my college days, so speak for yourself when you say that they're on "our side".
So you have no clue, do you?
The NSA is on your side when it comes to international threats. If you decide to break the law, and they find out about it, that's a different ball game.
Pro tip: don't break the law.
I understand that you're taking this position with the best of intentions but 'child porn is bad' does not equate with 'a surveilance state is good because it gets rid of child porn or its viewers'.
Fear is such a bad counsel.
There are clear distinctions, yes, but this line can get extremely blurry real quick. I often wonder at what point a police state would get the wrong idea and arrest a parent for their own perfectly innocuous photos.
It just always fascinates me when morality can be subjective like this and completely up to individual interpretation.
Aside from the people who control the hardware, and the NSA/others seem to have control over those people, getting them to install monitoring hardware.
"I also don't like this, "us vs. them" rhetoric"
I am able to be prosecuted for creating "hacking tools" while Endgame Systems has the NSA pay them a million+ a year to access data from those "hacking tools."
'There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies. Maui (product names tend toward alluring warm-weather locales) is a package of 25 zero-day exploits that runs clients $2.5 million a year. The Cayman botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million.[1]'
In this environment of immunity granted to profiteers while my friends and I are prosecuted, it is "us vs. them."
Stop attempting to blow out meaningless opinions like "The NSA is on our side" in response to articles showing the opposite.
The US military uses weapons citizens are not allowed to own or create on a regular basis. Is Lockheed Martin or Boeing not on our side because they make fighter jets that only the US government can buy?
It's only "us vs. them" in your head. You're why we can't get jack shit done in congress - people like you get time of day from congressmen and women and then when someone like me wants to talk the same conversation (except, you know, rationally), I get lumped in with crazies like you.
Well you turned rather insulting.
Of course, you won't see the story about a federal judge ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk was illegal[0], despite it being a much graver offense to individual rights, because it doesn't affect rich, white techies. But an email service you never used shut down and cited "NSA did it!" as its reason? Put that shit all over the front page!
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-pr...
The stop-and-frisk program doesn't really have anything to do with technology and is a social issue about race and expectation. Technology can't even begin to fix that one - it comes from some other place inside us.
It worries me that HN seems to be turning into more of a sub-reddit than anything.
The "Us-vs-Them" rhetoric directly feeds our pack-animal drive for tribalism, from which nothing good ever emerged.
However, it does make for some amusing rabble-rousing.
Now that the rabble has been roused, so to speak, we need to move the debate onto a more mature phase:
1. We need to work out how to live our lives in a state of total surveillance - when our lives are transparent not only to the NSA but also to innumerable other state & non-state security services.
2. We need to work out how to maintain the balance of power between the individual and the state.
3. We need to work out how to maintain business & personal relationships in an era of total transparency.
4. We need to work out how to maintain our freedom and independence of thought when the objects of our attention, our knowledge and our feelings can be observed and (potentially) controlled in detail.
5. We need to become familiar with what are the functions of the new Fort Meade agencies, having to be recently created to supplement the NSA. The NARUS moniker goes "See Clearly, Act Quickly". NSA's `Unbounded Awareness' et al, gets repeated discussion day after day, this is brought about by Snowden's leaks. The `Intelligence Made Actionable' side of the scale has not even been `tin-foiled' yet.
It is believable McCain's poking Putin's eye is no idle threat, or even possibly Russia will be coerced into extraditing Snowden back to US by orchestrated `Action'. This new `Parallel Construction', Bruce's `NSA Creep' is all I've seen suggesting this `Act Quickly'. Who are these new unknown silent baddest alpha predators --without peer-- being fashioned to be released onto the unbounded wild, to take action, or manufacture outcomes whatever USG wants?
I can think of quite a few lines to divide up the power-centers and sociological groups, and the intelligence community/military-industrial complex is almost always on the wrong side.
How about Congress vs. the Executive? The people in congress, our elected representatives, have been asking serious questions about these programs behind closed doors, and they have been lied to. They have been lied to by the representatives of the intelligence community (IC) in open court. Representatives of the IC continue to lie and dissemble on national TV, getting softball questions from sycophantic 'journalists'.
How about the IC vs. the Internet community as represented by open standards bodies and the rest of the international internet? The IC has been involved in numerous plots to undermine the basic security of the Internet both by engineering military-class viruses and trojans (Stuxnet), and inserting their hardwired and software backdoors in critical infrastructure - all unilateral decisions done w/o consultation of any of the open governing bodies of the Internet.
I could go on. These are critically important actions and concepts being debated here. The IC has given absolutely no indication that they are willing to compromise or work with the rest of the world, and almost every positive step towards openness has required civil disobedience.
How is this not an 'us vs. them' battle on almost every front one could draw?
Pretending like the intelligence community is some kind of evil monster is a great way to get ignored by the intelligence community, and for good reason.
This statement sounds hopelessly naive to me. Sure, those groups say they work to keep people free and save, but their track record with those goals is tragically abysmal. In fact, there is mountainous and credible evidence that their activities are accomplishing the exact opposite of their stated goals (see the history of intelligence activities in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the Americas and familiarize yourself with the phenomenon of 'blowback').
Additionally, even if we take them at their words, their efforts at secrecy prevent us as citizens from any kind of meaningful oversight.
> Pretending like the intelligence community is some kind of evil monster is a great way to get ignored by the intelligence community, and for good reason.
Given that the intelligence community ignores the questions and objections of the very powerful - our Senators and Represenatives - how is anything I say going to effect who they ignore or pay attention to? Oh noes, they're going to ignore us even harder! What are we going to do?!?!
What's naive is believing that you have enough information to make a decision about whether or not the NSA is effective at what it does, or that you have enough information to determine that US foreign action is why we're being threatened.
You elect representatives because there is no possible way to inform you about everything. This is not a direct democracy for many very good reasons.
You are ignorant of basic historical information necessary to have an effective discussion on this topic. If you were up to date, you would know about our elected representatives that sit on the security council being stonewalled, ignored, and lied to by the representatives of the intelligence community which are supposed to inform them. They are supposed to inform them of what they are doing so that they can do their jobs as our representatives. If our representatives are ignorant, how can they possibly do their jobs as our representatives?
Clapper LIED to Congress. This is not a disputable fact. He lied. This is Federal offense - why is he not in jail? The US Government is issuing the most bizarre, hypocritical, carefully parsed statements about everything relating to this fiasco - are you cool with this kind of behavior from the most powerful organization in the world?
I'm not advocating direct democracy or direct knowledge of what the NSA does. What I am advocating is that the IC follow the goddamn law - both the statutes and the Constitution: 'social contract' which keeps our society running.
I also note you skipped the entirety of my first point.
Its the same thing with implied political blackmail. Politicians know the NSA has all their data, so best not annoy the NSA.
The idea that there are "not-so-big tweaks" that could be made to these programs is false if preserving privacy and democracy matters to you.
Is it?
> The idea that there are "not-so-big tweaks" that could be made to these programs is false if preserving privacy and democracy matters to you.
So I'm either wrong or unamerican? Right.
The threat to privacy and democracy is that anyone with access to this data can blackmail anyone. The NSA is storing as much data as possible for as long as possible. This means they have the communications (metadata or otherwise) of every potential politician, and thus the ability to blackmail them to distort their decisions. We're told that there are safeguards in place to prevent such abuse, but those safeguards are secret, and I can't imagine any safeguards being foolproof. The best safeguard to protect our democracy is to not allow such a system to be built.
Like hell it is. The NSA is part of the US Government, which is on its own side, and is only on "our side" to the degree that it depends on us for tax revenue and political legitimacy.
Surely not an appropriate point to raise when defending an agency whose raison d'etre is to acquire and analyze all foreign communications. Its existence comes from a us vs. them mentality.
What's happening is that for the USG, "them" now includes not only foreigner suspects; it includes all foreigners and many Americans—probably all Americans.
I don't expect the intelligence agencies of a dictatorship to explain to me, as a non-citizen, how they're "on my side". I wish I could have better expectations for a non-dictatorship, the US: I wish, as foreigner, I wasn't assumed to be an enemy.
So no, the NSA is not on my side, and it's probably not on most Americans' side. Also, things change, and all they're collecting will be using against you when they decide to no longer be on your side.
If you're a US citizen, then the NSA is trying, at least, to prevent you from being harmed by foreign threats by gathering data on those threats and alerting other US government agencies. That's what they do. As long as the US exists, someone will have to do this.
If you're not a US citizen, then the NSA will take a look at you. Period. That's what they do, and your government will be taking a look at me in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reasons. Neither of our respective intel groups are assuming either of us are enemies, but that doesn't mean these intelligence groups aren't going to look at us. Being investigated does not mean you're an enemy. You're not a "them" just because someone looks at you, I don't know why people think this is how it is.
So no, if you're not a US citizen, the NSA is no more on your side than the British NHS will pay for my appendix removal.
I can understand the USG watching a tourist, since they might commit a crime on US soil. But I'm a not a tourist. I'm not on American soil. My data is flowing through servers in the US, American-developed routers and American-developed OSes only because of the historical accident that the US loved globalization so much that its corporations now dominate the world and made the technical standards the whole world depends on.
If I could limit my exposure to the USG, I would. I want nothing from them, just as I don't expect an appendix removal from the NHS.
The line drawn between foreigners and American citizens stands on very thin ground. It's fraying. Think about it: who are the people with the greatest power to commit a terrorist act, the people who are already inside the US or the people who are outside?
Americans will be spied on. The NSA merely collects all data, and the magic of parallel construction will distribute it to the FBI or your friendly corrupt local authority.
It's massively near-sighted to think there are no groups in the world plotting the harm of US citizens. You might not be part of those groups, but how do we know if we don't look at you?
It has no troops, but it has the CIA, who can assemble a makeshift covert "troop" in no time.
>You might not be part of those groups, but how do we know if we don't look at you?
Exactly the reasoning soon to be used to allow domestic mass surveillance. Mark my words.
edit: US citizens already get looked at by other government orgs. What you're talking about already happens.
Well, if you ignore that thing where the NSA is an part of the Department of Defense, and that its director is also the commander of a sub-unified command of the US military, sure.
You cannot justify arbitrary powers simply by pointing to the fact that (US and ally) citizens may be safer from terrorism. Otherwise you should be advocating for more invasive surveillance.
> Being investigated does not mean you're an enemy.
No it means I lose my autonomy and therefore my freedom. It means I can never have goals that meaningfully oppose those who surveil me.
There will never be a "next" Stalin. We're past the days when such a person is possible.
I find that somewhat naive, especially when Putin is enjoying wide popularity. (Not because he has anything resembling Stalin's track record of evil, but rather to demonstrate that many in the public still desire a powerful unitary executive.) There is an instinct in the human animal that craves charismatic, authoritarian power when times are tough.
But even if you're correct, I'm honestly more concerned about institutions than individuals. Institutions, whether "public" or "private", have a tendency to converge towards the survival of the institution as their only goal, and in some ways take on a life of their own; replacing any one employee or leader doesn't necessarily change the overall momentum and internal culture. This is my middle-of-the-road estimation of the danger, nestled between the unlikely extremes of "100% selfless heroes guarding us while we sleep" and "shadow government quietly pulling the strings of the world".
In other words, I'm much more nervous about "Brazil" than "1984".
See also: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-...
> If the citizenry didn't like what the representatives were doing, they'd elect different ones.
We're working on that.
Aren't US citizens at risk of being harmed everyday in normal diplomatic bargaining? Isn't it debatable, among US citizens themselves, as to what constitutes harm or benefit? Isn't that what political discourse is about?
What, google and apple "fighting" the US Government they've gladly been cooperating with since forever???
Why doesn't Schneier call them out for what these corporations really are, government snitches? What makes Schneier think any of these companies want to do what's "moral"??
This article is one of the most naive pieces I've ever read. It parts on the principle that these companies want to do what's moral, but the government is keeping them from doing it. That is absurd.
Google, Apple and friends have been willingly cooperating with the government in exchange for perks, for immunity against FTC probes and so on. They're NOT gonna "fight" because they have nothing to fight against.
Look at it this way: if every tech CEO is complicit without coercion (a strong possibility), the purpose of the article is to take away their shield, and convince the reader that those CEOs are morally culpable for not defending their customers. It's about calling the bluff by proxy.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/photocop...
As more and more information is gets thrown into the light, I find it disturbing that the NSA's capability has grown under the Obama Administration. I would think they would have less powers compared to Bush Admin post 9/11.
Wait till they attach listening instruments onto drones and send them to scan the sky's across America under a directive from the FISA court.
This is weird. Why should size dictate whether one should act morally or not. It's a very slippery logic.
I think we need to step back from hoping that business will protect the people. The people will protect the people, and if the people dont, a for profit entity wont (and shouldn't) step in as guardian.
Of course they do. They can comply or not. If they do not comply they may face court. Of course it is impossible to say how that court would go since none of them are making a choice to stop being co-conspirators.
Here they are creating internet experiences made as addictive as possible, meanwhile gathering every damned little piece of miniscule information possible about each of their users: where they are, who their friends are, what they like, what they hate, their favorite colors, their favorite brands, and so on.
Hell, people are happy giving away this stuff! And all of if can be plugged directly into a big honking machine to sell stuff!
Then the government comes along and wants in on the action too. They start vacuuming up data gigabytes at a time.
It must seem like the only people not getting in on this action is the common folks, the patsies.
I have no idea and could care less what their official statements are. It's obvious they have no problem with gathering the information as long as they were the ones doing it. But in private, what kind of opinion must they have about all of this?
Really wondering what 'zuckerberg' or 'brin' feel like is kind of besides the point.