Comment by conductor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conductor | Hacker News Reader

This is the top comment on the Reddit thread:

"They went after high ranking military officers. They went after members of congress. The Senate and the House - especially on the intelligence committees, and on the armed services committees and judicial. But they went after other ones too. They went after lawyers and law firms. Heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the supreme court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after state department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House - their own people! They went after anti-war groups. They went after US companies that do international business around the world. They went after US banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs like the red cross and people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few anti-war civil rights groups...

Now here's the big one. I haven't given you any names. This was in summer 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something year old wanna-be Senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It's a big White House in Washington DC. That's who they went after. And that's the President of the United States now. And I could give you names of a bunch of different people they went after that I saw! The names and the phone numbers of congress. Not only the names but it looked like staff people too, and their staff. And not only their Washington office but back home in their congressional offices that they have in their home state offices and stuff like that. This thing is incredible what NSA has done. They've basically turned themselves - in my opinion - into a rogue agency that has J Edgar Hoover capabilities on a monstrous scale on steroids."

--former nsa officer Russ Tice...

June 20th interview on Boiling Frogs... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPyxeqcCjkc (full 1hr+ radio interview)

or watch 11 minute RT interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m1XbWOfVk

The surveillance service began their history by monitoring enemy armies, knowing what the troop movements were and locating potential weaknesses. Their purpose was to help the military in defending the nation.

They later grow to encompass international commerce, as that too related to national defense. Knowing where, how, and who are able to transport material in and out of countries is paramount in successful wars between nations. Of course, having access to private information in the international market, they were also able to start supporting their own nations companies and improve the nations ability to commercial out compete foreign companies.

Afterward, the next step was to encompass everyone in ubiquitous surveillance. Having a working social graph of their own citizen, as well as anyone else can very much relate to national defense, now called nation security. Knowing who might in 10 years become the next President of the United States is important, as otherwise the wrong candidate might get elected. Surveillance of news papers is also of paramount importance, as otherwise state officials won't have time to react to the fast pace of inquiries that otherwise might happen. Documents destined to be shredded could be laying around for just anyone to read.[¹]

The next step they took was a bit more bloody. Secret indefinitely incarceration, torture, and kill lists (The renamed Deathsquad of old). Using military force in targeting journalists, and publications.

I wish I know what the next stage is. The insight from the old big leaders of west Germany, USSR and China has not made any new innovations on this front. At most, they were better at scaling the last step up and increasing the size of the kill lists, torture chambers, and the nastiness of the military force against journalists. I wonder if the national security agency feel a need to go one up on this, and innovate further. The virtual strip search by massive radiation machines are a nice touch, but they surely can do more.

[¹]: http://snowdenandthefuture.info/

Virtual behavior modification and prediction. Inducing an entire culture to gradually change how it behaves, and its beliefs, through a mixture of opportunism on real events, simulated events, and trial balloons.

Some of that isn't new, but the ability to use vast computing resources to map behavior prediction of 300 million people to an accurate degree, is.

They no longer need your friends, family and neighbors to rat you out as a traitor (terrorist sympathizer?). They already know everything you have said, everywhere you have been, and everything you've done.

ARGUS is very new. And it's a required cornerstone of behavior control. They'll have a hard time dictating who you are, if they don't know where you are at all times.

The ideal fascist state is one of total compliance. A step forward for them would be to accomplish that with even less bloodshed, by essentially brain washing an entire culture toward a new way of thinking (war is peace, slavery is freedom). Not just empty slogans, posters, and fear, but actual belief across an entire culture.

When you look at the near complete lack of protest against the rise of the fascist state in America, you can see they're already well on their way to having accomplished that.

At first glance, this all seems to be rather tinfoil-hattish and implausible. Mind you, after what we have learned in the past few months, who knows?

Here is an interesting cue for how social network information can be used to control the spread of unwanted ideologies & behaviours through a population: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNrOzgNWf4&feature=share

If anything like this was going on (and I am making no accusations; this is all speculation), then I suspect that it would work using mechanisms similar to those described in the above video.

No implausible high-technology mind control would be required, just the simple & conventional tools of the marketing/advertising/targeted-persuasion industry, directed towards a relatively small group of people, identified through the very surveillance mechanisms that have so recently been revealed to the world.

It is a pretty cool concept really, and (if we trust the people pulling the trigger), infinitely preferable to violent conflict. Better to counter the spread of hostile, dangerous and violent ideologies before there is loss of life, damage to property, economic disruption etc...

The key thing here is trust. Weirdly enough, I am normally* inclined to trust (the majority of) NSA & GCHQ staffers. My main concerns normally revolve around the proliferation of such technologies to groups and individuals with less noble aims.

* (Sometimes I get a bit depressed and cynical. At times like these I tend to reflect on the worst aspects of human nature, and the level of trust that I am capable of mustering drops in a corresponding manner).

The fascist state is not rising in America. Fascism is ideology not way of governing a country. Since USSR was oppressive too is like saying the communist state is raising in America.

What USA is having is the possibility of devolving into totalitarian state, but what ideology will rule it is yet to be seen IF that happens.

The moment when a drone kills US citizen on US soil without judicial oversight you will know that that danger is real. But you are still far far away from that.

Whining is a pathetically accepted pastime in Europe. It assures they will never do anything about their position in the world, which should be equal or more with the US, and condemns them to live in a world where they are helpless.

We only settled into our long period of whining after stomping round the world and setting fire to bits of it whenever people complained. I sort of prefer us in our current mode.

Fair enough. Hopefully the US will eventually pull back and take better care of ourselves regardless of the consequences for Europe.

It would probably get a bit safer.

Weakness provokes aggressors.

So does state aggression.

The moment when a drone kills US citizen on US soil without judicial oversight you will know that that danger is real. But you are still far far away from that.

What, six months? Three years? What can be done, will. It's possible it's already happened but isn't yet deemed appropriate for public knowledge. When it is, either for the intimidation factor or because it's become so widespread it can't be hidden, the copfan broadcast media will celebrate it rather than question it.

I wonder who is playing the role of Hari Seldon.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/07/olxii-w...

The next step is bloodless, and the Stasi had it right.

> By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung

Data mining is extremely useful and a significant technological leap, but data manipulation on a massive scale is definitely something to marvel at.

Facebook is already impersonating your friends and family by showing fraudulent "likes" (but hiding them from their owners so as to prevent discovery), now imagine that the people you respond to on reddit and HN aren't actually people but instead they're trojan horses -- bots meant to influence society by manipulating it. MSM will no longer be the only domain that our elite overlords encroach upon.

Or people paid to post scripted material, human bots - which I believe there has been evidence leaked at some point that this happens - can't remember where or when or other details unfortunately.

I suspect this is already happening. There was a guide/tutorial posted a while ago on how to hijack a forum/thread and redirect the flow of conversation. I can't find the link but it was very detailed and wouldn't surprise me if someone was profiting from selling such a service as pr/thought/damage control.

It's a major battleground already. The Russians are either far ahead or very unsubtle in this - it's particularly obvious with any story about Russia.

I'm curious to know what can be done to subvert this form of control both online and in the real world. Zersetzung sounds incredibly frightening and you're 100% correct that that's the direction we're going.

> Facebook is already impersonating your friends and family by showing fraudulent "likes"

Do you have a source for that?

They are using old likes of users for pages, to any new story that the page creates and pays for.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267575/Is-Fa...

Disproportionate retaliation against insurgency has been popular at around that last stage of yours. It's not that innovative, though, and doesn't qualify as a step.

I remember this post being made here on HN around when the revelations first started coming out and we were still trying to collect ourselves and adjust to the new realities of omnipresent surveillance. It was on the front page and had a ton of upvotes. I really hope that Snowden has evidence of this. Whether he does or not is just about make-it-or-break-it for whether we'll see any real reform.

I can imagine a scenario in which even rock solid evidence of that sort wouldn't lead to real reform.

"Hello Senator thanks so much for meeting with us today. We understand you're considering co-sponsoring that new 'privacy' bill. We just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to emphasize some points that we feel have some bearing on the bill in question.

"I have here in front of me a few hard copies of some of your communications. I must say, they make for some interesting reading..."

Sounds like more reason to step up and pass the bill.

For all that the US government has done some really nasty stuff, I don't believe they are really evil people. They are doing what they think is best for their country, based on their ideas of what is best. No one is rubbing their hands together and cackling over the evil laws that they past.

Given this, congress has passed some pretty nasty stuff. But they were doing it for all the best reasons. They are honorable people, who likely wouldn't fold to blackmail, if they thought that they were being blackmailed into doing something bad for the US. I respect them that much, at least.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Why don't you dig around and look at all the pieces of information, abuses, problems not corrected, situations allowed to spiral out of control, the waste of trillions of dollars, the cover ups, the intimidation, the assassinations, the governments overthrown, the hundreds of thousands of dead in other countries..., then come have a discussion about evil and the folks the control our government.

They are honorable people, who likely wouldn't fold to blackmail, if they thought that they were being blackmailed into doing something bad for the US. I respect them that much, at least.

I'm curious to know your age. I used to feel as you do, but as people get older they tend to get more cynical. In particular, the idea that Americans are intrinsically honorable died an abrupt death in my mind after studying some of our history. Blackmail is one of the most basic tools in politics, and it's just that: a tool. Framing an effective tool as evil is beside the point, because an effective tool is always going to end up being used. And indeed we see that it's been used astonishingly often since WWII (and certainly before that as well). The most obvious example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover but there are many more.

For what it's worth, the founding fathers probably wouldn't want you to assume our government are honorable people who wouldn't fold to blackmail. They would encourage you to assume the worst, and then be pleasantly surprised if your expectations were proven wrong. Thus far, the evidence has been pretty grim.

Snowden seems to share your ideals and belief system (e.g. belief in honor for honor's sake and "people will do what's right, not merely what's lucrative") yet he was so offended by what he ultimately discovered at the NSA that he fled the country and left his life behind in order to expose it. In other words, he did what he thought was best for his country based on his ideas of what is best, and his ideals seem to be pretty close to yours.

Makes sense as to why Obama flip-flopped on reigning in the NSA. Blackmail.

Hope not. Possible, though.

100% of every possibility regarding NSA surveillance has gone from "That's possible, but surely they wouldn't" to "Wow, they did, and did it bigger than anyone imagined."

Why wouldn't that include suppression of political initiatives that could interfere with the NSA's mission?

It's conceivable, but it would be a considerable step-up from what has been leaked so far.

I am more willing to accept the possibility if it's shown to be true that they've been conducting surveillance on US politicians and officials. Not that spying on foreign politicians is good or moral, but the reasons are different at least.

Why would you consider it "a considerable step up?"

We already know that surveillance in the US is pervasive. And that includes politicians, judges, and everyone else in government.

It's just a small step to using that information for safeguarding NSA's mission.

Well, you're suggesting they are actively engaging in blackmail and political manipulation to retain their position. Even if they do have the information to blackmail in many cases, it does not mean they actually are.

Perhaps I'm just naive, but I like to think at their core they're not so immoral as to degrade themselves to that sort of behavior.

Just as I am certain they do not think of anything we are certain that they do a crime, neither would they think of using available information to influence political support a crime, either.

The big question is, who controls this security state? The information is being collected, but who's the audience?

And what is their agenda?

Information has become the most valueable thing. Whoever controls it, they surely do have much more power than any elected leader.

Being elected means being public. In the information security state, that's a huge weakness.

When pervasive monitoring is the normal, the powerful are those not being monitored.

The primary agenda of any bureaucracy is to perpetuate that bureaucracy. The targets mentioned fit very well with that goal.

The first thing people in power do, is make sure they stay in power. They can't have anyone changing anything that would cause waves and disruptions.

Rule number 1: It's ALWAYS about the money.

The agenda is the protection of excessive money/wealth.

Which tells you where to look for "who's behind it": Rich people, very rich people. Also: The military-industrial complex.

And I honestly don't know how one can take down such a power structure that's in such an advanced stage.

I think it's like terminal cancer: it will only die when the host dies.

The military industrial complex is the biggest pile of assignable loot in world history.

$5+ trillion over the last decade alone. Far more if you count everything connected to it.

They knew the wars couldn't go on perpetually forever, and they'll be damned if they're going to give up all that money. One way to dictate that is through control of the political process.

"They knew the wars couldn't go on perpetually forever" is very optimistic. Europe hadn't had a large scale war for decades before WW1.

> And I honestly don't know how one can take down such a power structure that's in such an advanced stage.

Revolution would work. Except, most Americans are living rather comfortable lives, despite all the surveillance uproar. As you keenly noted - it's always about the money (including the American Revolution). So as long as common folk gets their bone from the elite - they will happily wag their tails.

Information is power and power is money. They can use it to protect themselves and control high-ranking officials to ensure, for instance, that they will always be well-founded to be able to continue unfettered in their mission to acquire even more information and power.

The scary thing is that they would not have any leverage on people who have no skeletons in the cupboard. A morally "clean" president may shut them down. In a twisted way it would be in their interest to see bad people in power.

I doubt they worry about that much. Everybody has something they'd rather the world not know about.

In my experience with government and the legal field; it might not be as strict as 'silver or lead', but its 'dollars or the door.'

Not at all. Lies are proliferated as truth as a matter of official policy -- misinformation campaigns. The truth doesn't matter when you can drown it out.

The FBI did this for decades - Hoover's level of corruption is truly scary. He had dirt on every incoming US President and most representatives for years, and would offer to help his chosen candidate during the election cycle.

But it ended with his death and there was a backlash from power. That's what doesn't make me worry about the NSA actually spying on US political figures.

As for them spying on foreigners - so what? It's been common knowledge for years that Western countries spy on each other, Echelon demonstrated that electronic means were being used to. The British ran a mole inside the German finance ministry for years - unsurprising when you consider the damage Black Wednesday did to the British economy.

But it ended with his death and there was a backlash from power. That's what doesn't make me worry about the NSA actually spying on US political figures.

On the contrary, FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt brought down Nixon through the Washington Post, in his role as Deep Throat of Watergate fame.

This all happened after Hoover died in 72.

There will always be career men/women who have seen a lot of laundry, who might be bitter when passed up for promotion in favor of a political crony, and find that helping along justice makes for sweet revenge.

That is why extremely malicious conspiracies involving more than a dozen or so people are not believable. As the circle of those in the know increases, the likelihood that someone will think they did not get dealt fairly goes up rapidly, and those with gripes will find they are holding the moral equivalent of nuclear weapons against those who wronged them.

>That is why extremely malicious conspiracies involving more than a dozen or so people are not believable. As the circle of those in the know increases, the likelihood that someone will think they did not get dealt fairly goes up rapidly, and those with gripes will find they are holding the moral equivalent of nuclear weapons against those who wronged them.

Exactly.

That is one of many reasons why I find all the 9/11 conspiracies completely infeasible. Especially since those would require the cooperation of not only a few dozen, but probably a few hundred people.

I have never been able to follow the logical step between "this is pretty obviously a bad thing" and "but it's okay and everybody should shut up about it because it was 'common knowledge' -- i.e. what we might have previously called conspiracy theories -- among some unspecified set of people who may or may not have been dismissed as tinfoil hat wearers".

Does this mean an unknown person or group that has control of the NSA intelligence is effectively running the United States?

No, it means that the NSA can, and has, collected data on just about anyone. What they do with it, my guess is not much unless there is an actual national security threat, is still up for question.

When in doubt, assume the worse so that you might only be pleasantly surprised. Assume there is a J. Edgar Hoover 2.0.

That would not be assuming the worst; A J. Edgar Hoover 2.0 would still be a person.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

— C.S. Lewis

What you think is a security threat and what they think is a security threat are not the same thing. That is the essence of the problem.

Am I being too cynical to think that if the person/group with this intelligence wants to move the United States in a certain direction, they can easily threaten, blackmail, or leak embarrassing/illegal information about those politicians/high-ranking military officers/CEOs of large corporations standing in their way.

I am not saying every powerful person can be blackmailed, threatened, or have career-ruining secrets, but even if you have the power to control the actions of 1% of those people, that's a pretty significant power.

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