I am gathering not a lot of people actually knew what was happening at the beginning, and the tools they were using for "valid" purposes were just refocused.
I do not think they were stupid, but just didn't see the entire picture, or were never given the entire picture.
---- Most programmers are very much unlike you or I. Think about those legions of DoD/DoD contractor engineers that trust government implicitly and totally, and really don't give a shit about more "hacker"/"technologist" subjects. ---- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836416
It is a very rare person who can see all the things wrong with the various Wars on Dignity (drugs, terror, etc) and yet has a nose so clean as to qualify for a top secret clearance. It's kind of like the saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes before you criticize them - most people just can't conceive of what life is like for someone with an entirely different set of experiences and the logic of authoritarianism is so deceptively simple.
That's not to say that the people with clearances aren't perceptive, just that they are likely to have a focus on other, more technical, issues.
Incidentally, the U.S. system is strongly anti-authoritarian. There is no wise man or even thug running the show, just a parliament of whores tarting themselves up for the next election. We could really use some authorities in charge. Even a bad plan would be better than what we have if we just stuck to it.
There are some politicians, judges and journalists who agree with what they do - why should any other field be different?
Plenty of good engineers work on weapons systems, despite the use those systems are put to. The fact the systems are also used for national defence is often used as self-justification.
More directly: many good programmers build viruses and/or sell exploits for systems (and don't try and claim "they aren't from the US" - plenty are). Being a good programmer does not mean a persons moral code is the same as yours or mine.
1) terrorists - someone has got to stop them blowing up innocent babies and children
2) kiddie porn - someone has got to take the war on paedophiles seriously
3) organised crime - who knows? Selling arms to the terrorists? Laundering money. That's it. Laundering money and drugs. I remember now.
These 'reasons' can be trotted out like a mantra and working for them is a bit like being a soldier fighting a noble cause that everyone else has to respect.
As per other comment on 'The Cube', people at GCHQ are kept in little boxes and not made aware of what the big plan is. It is a system that works really well. So, even if someone's job has nothing to do with the war on kiddie porn, the war on drugs or The War Against Terror, they know that without their organisation's effort then we would be flooded with the evil stuff and democracy would be doomed.
The 'I cannot talk about my work' thing works really well. Although I am not convinced by it. I think that it is all too convenient to hide behind that rather than be honest about how dull/wrong a given job is.
I think you also place too much thought into the idea that NSA/GCHQ build these systems. Actually it is the guys at the contractors - Lockheed Martin - that build these things, the NSA/GCHQ guys are no more involved in things than the checkout staff at a supermarket are involved in all the evil things Walmart/Monsanto/whoever do. That is the saddest part of it. We uphold NSA/GCHQ to be omnipotent and omniscient, but they are not. The main contractor - Lockheed Martin - are upstream of what the NSA/GCHQ does and they are experts at getting government contracts. Since they can listen in to what all of the other contractors bid they can bid competitively if they really want the work. Since they also own most of the politicians and can promise so many jobs in so many states, they can own the entire government. NSA are not the enemy, Lockheed Martin and their rivals are. And, to answer your question, the dark side programmers work for them.
His reply: "Dude, all this shit comes out of Israel! its the whole tech/NSA bullshit used against the palestinians!"
It was a casual comment - but very interesting in that its a foregone conclusion that the surveillance state is just a function of the culture of Israeli tech development.
I think the point being that Israel happens to excel at this type of thing due to the simple fact that they have been surrounded by countries who have wanted to wipe them off the map for a long time. This has happened to breed the talent that is very useful to the NSA / surveillance industry.
About who made these tools, I would say that this was built through a combination of different people:
- very patriotic individuals: e.g. someone who joins the military and gets a military sponsored world class education in comp sci; or someone who gets recruited at an early age on the campus of berkeley/stanford/yale/mit/etc (remember how spies were recruited back in the days)
- consultants: Palantir, Booz Allen and many more
- buying outsourced tech (e.g. from startups in the Valley/Boston/Penn/Virginia/Maryland or Israel)
- captured black hats in exchange for softer sentences
- renegades from big tech companies: i.e. ex-google employees. You'd be surprised how pissed off some people can be at their previous employees and to what lengths they might go to hurt them
Not possible. You cannot unwittingly buy a house in Cupertino, fill it with 48 V batteries and wave division multiplexing transceivers, and trench the back yard. The maintenance techs driving the fake pool service van knew exactly what they were doing.