My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander | Hacker News Reader

My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander

forbes.com

97 pointssinak53 comments

I liked the article, but the part i found most interesting was the comment.

I just want to point out a flaw in your individual count calculation. Although normal person would have just 40 contacts you forget that some of us call very common number and that lets NSA to connect even more people that 19mil. Even I never met this article author, we are probably connected in less than 3 hops :). If I called Verizon support and author called Verizon support, we are connected. And if some suspect called Verizon support, our phone call history is in that “corporate store” where NSA can query any way they want :). You are absolutely right – evil is in details…

so this is a huge loophole. i think every one i know and people i don't have called verizon or comcast. so if someone that is a foreigner makes a call to verizon or comcast, i am now able to be collected on? welcome to the party everyone. i'm in a terrorist bin at the NSA.

EDIT: also, i was just thinking: if i want to track someone and all i have is the phone number, why can't i just have someone i know that's overseas call them once? they are now able to be tracked. isn't that a flaw to the system? there is no way this kind of power can be contained.

And you better believe that after being harangued by the President and Congress for years following 9/11 to "act more creatively", the Intelligence Community is using exactly these types of loopholes.

Are you using a pay as you go mobile? Under that definition, everyone that 'tops up' is connected.

I also receive free text messages from my provider (Edit: e.g. the texts that say 'thank you for paying your bill'). Does that mean that I'm connected to every subscriber on the network that also receives these free texts?

What about the emergency alerts that we get on mobile?

Recently I got a pair and they did help: http://imgur.com/a/03Ipl , but as always this is what that companies FAQ says about the process:

WHAT: ----- Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are free wireless notifications that are delivered to your mobile device as part of a new public safety system provided by Authorized Senders. They are designed to inform you of imminent threats to safety or missing persons alerts in your area.

In order to receive WEAs, you must have a capable device and be located in an area (e.g., county) targeted by Authorized Senders to receive the alert.

If every provider has some sort of program like this that connects everyone on that network.

I didn't think of that, I suppose it would by the same standard. They aren't really 'free' but they are offers and information and so on, about 25% of my inbox is from them.

Or if you text 40404 to tweet? This is really ridiculous. In my opinion, no sane person would sign off on it if they knew these details.

interesting issues, but 3 hops is too much no matter...

I think the author's most important point is that she sees the NSA Director as a "good man," even though she considers his activities to be criminal and a threat to democracy.

I agree with her.

I think it is important to realize that authorities aren't necessarily caricatures of evil like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. I don't believe Gen. Keith Alexander is conspiring to undercut democracy. I believe he is earnest but misguided. And I believe the present institution rewards and promotes those who are earnest and misguided. I believe it is simply an emergent phenomenon.

Of course there exist evil people who will intentionally abuse their power for selfish gain. I do not believe though that blatant evil is the dominant force in the world. I think the most common case is that there are just people in power who are trying to do something "good," yet they share different values and concerns than their opponents.

How could someone be "good" yet conduct mass surveillance? (1) The belief that terrorism represents a grave threat, (2) the belief that mass surveillance is the best way to combat terrorism, and (3) the belief that their implementation of mass surveillance doesn't represent a significant threat to civil liberties.

This is important to consider when you oppose someone's actions and policies. It won't be productive to assume your opponent is evil. Rather, it will be better to have an honest intellectual discussion and debate about your values and the pragmatic dangers of secrecy and mass surveillance.

This one line

"The General seemed convinced that if only I knew what he knew, I would agree with him."

Makes me think back to that Daniel Ellsberg article where he's briefing Kissinger for the first time about having access to the whole of the USA's intelligence banks:

"First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well."

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...

> if only I knew what he knew, I would agree with him

So then tell me what you know that I don't.

Oh, you're also convinced that it's best if I don't know? Well then you'll forgive me if I maintain some healthy skepticism.

Exactly. I believe Gen. Keith Alexander (and the others who espouse that idea) have been seduced into believing in benevolent dictatorship.

That's not how democracy works though. Fundamentally, democracy is premised on mistrust in authority (hence voting citizens, checks and balances, the bill of rights, etc.) In a democracy, the citizens aren't expected to blindly trust the authorities. The citizens must be informed, the citizens must make their own judgements, and then they will vote for legislators and executives who share their platforms.

I believe the government's stance is "but if we debate these issues publicly, it will tip our hand to the terrorists, which would defeat the whole purpose of mass surveillance in the first place." That's a legitimate concern.

However, my stance is that in a democracy not every form of law enforcement and secret surveillance is possible. If a law or policy only succeeds if it is kept secret from the citizens, then that law or policy is incompatible with democracy. Only that which can be publicly debated can be made law.

The key in debating these issues is that opponents and advocates need to discuss and debate the issues without assuming each other are evil. And everyone must maintain an open mind. Because otherwise, we will never find ways to overcome our differences and address the root issues (differing values and concerns).

It could also be that if she knew what Alexander knew, she'd only become more disgusted than she already is.

"...if only I knew what he knew, I would agree with him": in 1995 Phil Zimmerman told me that is exactly what the establishment types were saying to the cypherpunks.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

--W.B. Yeats

I don't buy it. Clearly it's simplistic to try to cast this as being "Alexander == the devil". But that doesn't make Alexander a good person.

I've yet to see any evidence of Alexander being an earnest individual. I have seen evidence that Alexander is good at convincing people he's an earnest individual despite evidence to the contrary. And that scares me tremendously.

I don't know for a fact that Alexander is a good person. I just assume he is because I assume people are good in general, and, pragmatically, that assumption leads to more fruitful debates.

People lie all the time, to themselves and to everyone else.

The stunning thing to me is that Gen. Alexander clearly sees this at least partially as a left/right issue, or at least that was his game at this dinner. In fact, most of the left-leaning people I know, with the exception of the civil libertarian leftist, have been averting their eyes from the whole surveillance issue now that Obama is in office. The left and right are hand-in-hand together in this. The only people opposing it are the civil libertarians on the left and the libertarians on the right, both with equal conviction.

So the fact that he attributes her concern to being "to the left of Sen. Wyden" is very interesting and tell me a lot about his worldview. And yet so many Democrat leftist have been defending this program (or at least ignoring it) and going after Greenwald with an energy unseen from the right. Some thinking Democrats may be finally waking up to the threat this poses to our democracy, regardless of who is now in office, but the majority of them still are standing behind Obama (see recent vote on defunding the NSA surveilance program).

The easy explanation here is that both the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States are 'right of center', America at present does not have a functional 'left', just the illusion of one.

No, this issue neither falls on the "left" or "right"; it is better framed as the tension between central authority vs personal liberty. Both progressives on the left and conservatives on the right ask the government to regulate and control different aspects of society.َ†

George Washington was widely praised for disbanding the Continental Army after dispelling the British, and also declined a third term as President despite unflagging adoration from the public.

Times have changed, and some of this idealism has perhaps been lost to pragmatism over the years, but this is the golden legacy that the General and the other officers of the Executive are willfully squandering in the pursuit of a few terrorists.

† Hence the old joke that progressives want the government in their business but out of their bedroom, and conservatives want government out of their business, but in their bedroom.

Indeed, this is far different than just a left/right thing.

Assange, for instance, has been pushing a lot of these disclosures but he is not a leftist. He denies climate change, opposes unions (and social entitlements in general) and says the best politicians in the U.S. Congress are in the libertarian wing of the G.O.P.

Note that I'm not trying to denigrate his political views... just agreeing with you that it's not as simple as left-wing/right-wing. Just because you believe in 'no secrets' doesn't mean you believe in the workers controlling the means of production.

Similarly, I'm surprised that I haven't heard about much overlap between 2nd Amendment groups and those concerned about NSA surveillance. What's the use is your stockpile of assault rifles if all your communications are tapped?

I am a state-level leader in a firearms education group that the SPLC characterizes as a militia. Every individual instructor I've worked with has spoken out against this overreach.

The organization you identify later in the thread (Project Appleseed) does not appear to be on any list of militias, "patriot groups", or hate groups published by the SPLC that I can find [2].

The closest evidence thing I can find to anyone from the SPLC identifying Project Appleseed as a militia is a 2010 New York Times article [1] about Project Appleseed in which the article (not the SPLC) spends some time discussing Appleseed in the context of militia and Tea Party movements, and someone from the SPLC -- not labeling Appleseed a militia -- is quoted referring to the possibility that someone from an extremist group would come to Appleseed and learn to be a sniper in a paragraph about that being a threat to (not from) Appleseed.

I do find lots of links to that article on right-wing, pro-gun blogs pointing to this article referring to it being the NY Times and/or SPLC and/or the Jews supposedly behind either or both of those organizations targetting Appleseed, but I don't see any evidence that the SPLC has actually labelled Appleseed a militia.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01Appleseed-t.htm...

[2] Particularly, its not on this list of Patriot groups (of which militias are subset): http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/br...

I stand corrected. My information came secondhand from a Border Patrol agent, who asserted that we were part of a list he'd seen, and from conversation with some of those folks who are posting on the forums you mentioned. I should've sourced it myself before speaking, and I apologize for my failure to do so.

My point was not to impugn the SPLC specifically, but rather to indicate that a group that draws some criticism for its firearms association includes a whole lot of people who are very angry about NSA surveillance.

Now I'm curious, which group gets this honor?

It's called Project Appleseed. There certainly are some people involved with whom I disagree, but the stated goals of civic engagement, firearms safety, and political neutrality are things I can get behind.

Uh, wtf. That's approximately as threatening a group as the Boy Scouts. SPLC is crazy, now I have to question the rest of their work.

As dragonwriter points out, I mislead you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263959

Ah, makes sense. I guess I'm sensitive on the militia issue, because I think it would be awesome to set up a militia to provide the non-combat military services (communications, medical, maintenance, operating airfields, water, etc.) in a post disaster environment -- and doing it in a way with organic security, so you could go in directly to a place like Haiti or even Somalia without delay.

The "light infantry fighting in the woods" militia is dumb, though.

>The "light infantry fighting in the woods" militia is dumb, though.

Tell me about it.

Old tech is (currently) still much harder to ubiquitously surveil. See the US Millenium Challenge wargame[1] for some ideas.

Widely deployed domestic drone surveillance, automatic license-plate scanning cameras, and facial/object recognition could change that over the next decade or two though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

An easier explanation is that most Americans are incredibly tribal in their thinking and how they evaluate the ethics of a particular situation. The left trusts Obama, and didn't trust Bush, and therefore surveillance that would have yielded passionate protest under the latter is A-OK under the former.

Much the same situation in the UK - left and right are remarkably quiet on the issue. Any political party that has held the reins for a term or two has ridden close enough to the devil to know the deal they must make.

Gen. Alexander, Obama, Bush, Feinstein, all these people's arguments basically boil down to "trust us." I always want to ask those people this question: Sure, maybe you're a trustworthy, good man. What mechanism is in place to guarantee that the next person is? And the next one? And the person after that?

Without an external mechanism -- as external as the courts are to the Justice Department -- we're putting our trust in men and not in laws. This nation's foundation is the rule of law, not the rule of men. "Trust us" only works when there's another trusted adversary overseeing the trusted, who are themselves subject to scrutiny.

It's a very good question and should be the focus of criticizing the NSA's programs unless we have evidence that what they did was malicious (blackmail, etc).

But I don't think they mean that when they say trust us. They typically mean: trust us, if you knew the threats we face and the fact that this is effective, you'd think the risks were worth it too. In addition they mean trust us not to abuse that power, but that is the smaller point.

In fact, I suspect they'd argue the risk for abuse is outweighed by the consequences of terrorism(a statement I'd disagree with), even if you aren't sure they are honest.

> they'd argue the risk for abuse is outweighed by the consequences of terrorism( I statement I'd disagree with)

Precisely, and I agree with your disagreement there. They tout "zero deaths from terrorism" as though that were the primary objective. It isn't. I'd rather die in a terrorist attack while living free than live in fear of the state.

There's a fundamental flaw with this idea. The existence of multiple participants in the chain of decision making doesn't make it secure and trustworthy. If those participants have little to risk or lose anything by being corrupt, then it doesn't matter how many of them there are, they'll find ways to hack it. You can't just call a judge trustworthy because he's a judge and he's supposed to be honest and uncorrupt. If you ask me, I'd say that judges should probably be even more corrupt, since they don't even risk losing their seat.

In order for trust to work, a price tag should be put on it. That's why it works so great in business: if you give money to Apple and they don't deliver you your iPhone, their reputation would be severely damaged and they might lose a lot of money as a result. With politicians it doesn't work this way, because the maximum they can lose is their seat, and even then they just go and work for some company as a lobbyist.

I agree with most of your points actually. It's the problem that I was addressing with "who are themselves subject to scrutiny"; note that somehow we find that corrupt judges are the exception rather than the rule, in no small part because we are able to publicly examine their work. So the idea of a secret court poses its own especially difficult problems.

On the other hand, it's impossible to have a society anything like ours if you build around zero-trust systems. If you say that fundamentally nobody in power can be trusted, for any length of time and under any system of checks and balances, then you may as well advocate true anarchy or survival-of-the-fittest.

I do think you can't fundamentally trust anyone in power, because the incentives for them are in the wrong place. The problem with people's view of government and democratic systems is that they judge it by intentions, not results. The result will almost always be the same: abuse. Even democratically elected government will have distorted intentions, because there are no true market mechanisms preventing it from disserving its customers: you can vote once in 4 years and even then you're not guaranteed any results. If a politician fails to deliver on his promises (which they always do), there are no severe sanctions.

Anarchy doesn't mean lack of rules, poor people dying on the street and violent gangs killing each other. In fact, violent gangs ruling people is what we have now with governments - it's just that it is presented in a good light. But the true nature of violence can still be occasionally seen, as recent events prove.

The demand for safety net, protection and all other things government currently provides doesn't suddenly evaporate when you don't have a government. If people want something, market provides it. If the majority of people don't want poor to starve, there is nothing in the world that can stop them from donating to charities. If they believe a charity fails to deliver, they withdraw money immediately.

"I think Gen. Alexander believes that history is made by great individuals standing against evil."

I wonder how many people think Edward Snowden would fit this description!

This thing about hastily stating how much you love your country seems bizarre. I don't know if it's a uniquely American thing but to British ears it always seems odd. It seems like a constant struggle to reassure patriotism in a way that suggests that the 'battle' for liberty and freedom of expression is lost, in the same way that self-censorship does (is it a McCarthyist hang-over?).

This is just my opinion - purely conjecture based on my own experiences.. As someone who has done the very thing that you are questioning, I know that the following have somewhat been a motivation for me...

It is a very common tactic in interpersonal political debate/discussion in the U.S. for one side to discredit another's opinion by quickly painting their sentiments as "anti-American" or "anti-patriotic" - I've generally seen this tactic put into play by our right-leaning conservatives.

I think that the 'disclaimer' of stating that you are in fact a patriot is often merely an attempt to derail the oft-used "SEE - YOU'RE A FREAKING LIBERAL COMMUNIST WHO HATES PUPPIES, KITTENS AND AMERICA! YOUR OPINIONS ARE NOW INVALID!"

As sad as it is to say, political debates in the U.S. are rarely about what's ultimately right or wrong... It's a contest and it's about winning... Not for everyone, mind you - I'd far rather lose a debate than defend an incorrect point - but for a lot of people, it's about yelling louder and forcing the other to concede.

Case in point.. Years ago, I worked in a field that exposed me to A LOT of military - active and retired... In a "friendly" discussion regarding socialized healthcare with a person I admired and respected, I stated that I was 'ok with paying more taxes if it helped fix our healthcare system'. He quickly became heated, immediately turned aggressive - yelling something to the effect of "YOU WOULD STEAL MY MONEY AND GIVE IT TO A [racial derogatory term omitted?!"... He then proceeded to pull his knife off his belt and wave it towards me in a threatening manner while continuing to rant about me being a Nazi, before stabbing the knife into a counter and walking off in a huff as he continued to cuss me out...

We are an interesting and odd mix here in the states...

> stating that you are in fact a patriot is often merely an attempt to derail the oft-used ...

I actually quite welcome that poor tactic because it enables me to me to say: "No. Really, I have absolutely no loyalty to America or any other country for that matter. I'm loyal to humanity, and you should be too."

I think that you've misunderstood me.

Generally, the "I'm a patriot" line is utilized by the left/liberal - who is usually the more rights, humanitarian, privacy, social healthcare minded of our two parties.. It's used to preemptively dismantle a favored attack employed by "the right" - who are our conservatives, which favor fewer social services, lower taxes, security being valued over liberty/freedoms (generally, they supported the Patriot Act and similar such things)...

Consider this contrived example, as it clearly isn't evident from my previous anecdote...

Liberal: "It's our duty to ensure we don't do damage to human rights for a little temporary security via overreaching surveillance programs..."

Conservative: "You're a freaking liberal nutjob who would bring harm to America! YOU LOSE!"

Then...

Liberal: "I am a patriot and love 'Merica, but I feel that it's our duty to ensure we don't do damage to human rights for a little temporary security via overreaching surveillance programs..."

Conservative: "Ah. Well.. 'A patriot', you say? I can't argue with that.. [more 'civil' discussion may ensue]"

This has just been my experience.. The general 'caricatures' of our two main political mindsets could be summarized as: Conservative - Religion over Education, Christian Government, Guns, Moral Laws, Military, Exclusionary ("If you don't like it, you can get the hell out of MY country!") Liberal - Education over Religion, Separation of Church and state, More Restrictive Gun Laws, Support of Social Services (healthcare), Higher Taxes, Diplomacy over Military Aggression, Inclusionary ("While I may not see eye to eye with you, there is room here for us all... That's what makes America great - we don't have to be of the same faith or belief, yet we can both call this home...")

Again, these are the far ends of the spectrum.. These are stereotypes.. These are broad generalizations made for the purpose of demonstration - I don't mean to offend anyone who identifies with either side.

One final bit, using your rebuttal:

Person 1: "No. Really, I have absolutely no loyalty to America or any other country for that matter. I'm loyal to humanity, and you should be too."

Person 2: [Whips out knife and waves at you aggressively] "You're a communist puppy hating hippy! You lose! Get out of my country!"

We've got a "T" word over here!

You should have pointed out how completely socialist the military healthcare system is.

Not to mention its retirement system...

Bear in mind, Britain has been in steady decline for about 100 years now (in terms of its geopolitical standing). So there isn't much in store for being patriotic.

In Russia patriotism was big during the Soviet years, then dived during the breakup of USSR and has been making a comeback now. So basically patriotism tends to be there when people actually have something (or are made) to feel good about - a positive vector, if you will.

People do this when they feel stress and internal conflict for bending their own morals to do what they think might be best for their country overall. Sort of like the things you might do to save your own kid, even if immoral, but finding some comfort reminding yourself it's ultimately for a good cause. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, only pointing it out.

It may simply be to find a justification for ones actions which when not seen through some kind of rosy lens might cause one to self-reflect and ask pointed questions.

I do think he is a bad guy and they're always the best at hiding their true intentions. I also think you're naive, more so if you admit he lied to your face.

See, why can't all those who oppose the NSA be as well-meaning as Ms. Granick here?

She makes a lot of great points and honestly I'd probably agree more with her on this article than with Gen. Alexander.

I find it somewhat insulting that he pulled the "go to Pakistan" card, given that we're generally arguing about domestic spying, not spying in specific target countries.

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